Read Me Once, Shame on Me; Read Me Twice, Shame on this Lame Blog Title

I love the color blue, and my attire today definitely confirms this--from my polo to my pants to my socks.
The shirt, from my eyes: If the light blue shirt, with the darker stripes running through it like the lines on college-rule paper, that I am wearing today could speak, it would say, "Thank you Ruben, for finally taking me out of the confines of your dark, much too stuffy closet, and allowing me to breathe the fresh spring air." Indeed, today is a celebration as it is the first time I have donned my "clima-cool" Adidas polo. In response to what my shirt might tell me, I would say, "Well, my dear polo made of funny synthetic fibers that keep me unusually cool, you should know that I have been waiting for just the right day to take you out of your nest because I only wear you when the cold and damp Seattle weather finally, and always suddenly, surrenders to the sun and heat." My polo would then be very happy that it serves as a synecdoche for spring rejuvenation.
The shirt, from someone else's eyes...Wow, I am feeling a bit of an out of body experience here...
What a beautiful shirt that wonderful chap is donning. It's relaxed, yet professional. It's mature, yet fresh. Its color resembles delicate spring clouds, and it flows just as freely as those clouds. And look at the ingenious material at the underarm; my skin is breathing better and I feel a cool breeze just by looking at it.

Let's Take A Long Walk, Around the Blog, After Dark

For this assignment, we were supposed to select a blog entry from one of the previous Amsterdam programs and analyze it utilizing ideas about the social construction of space as delineated in Lynch's A Walk Around the Block as well as Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space. For my selection, I chose to investigate and meander through the digital space of Demi's first blog entry (from 2006) entitled, "A Little About the Little Ol' Me." As I will discuss in this post, the main deliberate construction of space that I noticed being used by Demi was the embeddedness and specific positioning of photographs - which we can think of as 'visual text' - within the typed text. The interplay of visual and typed text in turn creates a digital space which the author found conducive for the discussion of her "Little Ol'" self.
Looking at the blog entry for the first time, I immediately noticed the juxtaposition of the first paragraph to a photo of Demi and three of her friends at a Huskies game. On a simple, but essential, level the photo serves as an enhancement to the text right next to it that discusses Demi's social and academic life as a student at the UW. Yet, there is more that is conveyed by the picture and the manner in which it is positioned within the blog post. The photo does not appear after the first paragraph. Rather than the photo appearing below the typed text, the text surrounds the picture. Since there is no text to the right of the photo, the photo isn't exactly in the center of the post, but it certainly takes up most of the space, allowing only a few words per line to appear to the left of the photo. When the text appears in such a narrow column to the right of the picture, after reading each line, one is forced to look at the picture as if it were a continuation of the words -- as if, after reading the last word of every line, the photo continues the thought of the typed text. The lines of the paragraph do become longer, but only after we reach the end of the photograph. Thus, as the typed text encircles the picture, it is as if the text becomes the picture's frame, thus seeming almost secondary to the photo. The usage and arrangement of the photo within the typed text consequently shows that the picture is telling just as much of the story - if not more - as the "traditional" text. However, as I have stated before, the picture cannot really be viewed as something that eclipses the text since it is in fact part of the text! As Jessica conveyed in our second class meeting, images should be regarded as a textual form that warrants close reading just as much as literature and writing in general. I fully agree, JB.

Oh, and by the way, if the reader has not figured it out, my title for this post is an ode to Jill Scott's "A Long Walk," a song I was listening to as I was typing this entry. If you are so inclined, you can hear the song, and watch the video, below. Incidentally, on the topic of the construction and use of social and urban space, much can be extracted and pondered over from the video's unique cinematography. Enjoy neo-soul at its finest:

And now, for a close reading...

On the heels of a class session dedicated to learning about and engaging in the literary (and what can also be visual) process of close reading, our first homework assignment for the pre-departure seminar was to conduct a close reading of a recently received e-mail message. Due to laws and ethics regarding privacy, we were not to post the e-mail message. But -- and I think Jessica and Clifford, our two class instructors, would agree -- aren't the effects of sharing our close reading with a public (by posting it on the internet) compromised by not showing the original piece of writing that we are trying to analyze?! For that reason, I will (slightly) steer away from the original assignment and perform a close reading of a Facebook wall-post message, which, by its nature, is not in the private domain since it can be viewed by countless of people at any given time. With that lengthy introduction, I now present the original message:

It was good to meet up today! At least I didnt get caught in traffic this time (which I really did by the way! and you can tell JC and LW that) =P
I'm planning on coming back up to SEA one weekend this quarter to surprise my mom -- I'll let you know if I make it up.

For this particular close reading, I will break the passage down sentence by sentence. Here goes.
It was good to meet up today! - Using the phrase "meet up," the reader can deduce that the encounter that my friend and I had was not random; hence, we were "meeting up," instead of "running into" each other. And, by the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, the reader can can infer that my friend was probably very excited about "meeting up" with me.
At least I didnt get caught in traffic this time (which I really did by the way! and you can tell JC and LW that) =P - The reader is now informed of the fact that something unexpected and unfavorable had previously happened that made that event less "good." The reader also learns that that "JC and LW" did not believe whatever caused the unsavoriness of that event. Furthermore, a close reading shows that the writer of the message has designated me as the mediator between him and "JC and LW", urging that I tell JC and LW that he "really did...get caught in traffic" that previous time. Finally, although the writer might have been typing a section of a chemistry equation with the last two characters of the line, this was probably not the case, and the reader is expected to recognize that an equals sign followed by a capital P represents emotions of a happy, jovial, joking, or laughing state.
I'm planning on coming back up to SEA one weekend this quarter to surprise my mom -- I'll let you know if I make it up. - The final sentence of this message allows the reader to realize that the writer is presently somewhere south of Seattle, since the person is "planning on coming back up to SEA." To make this conclusion, however, the reader must also realize that the writer is not returning to the sea, but rather to SEA(attle).