Disney-Forest Kristin

Kristin Sanders is from Santa Maria, California, home of the Michael Jackson trial and some broccoli fields.  She now lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she creates poetry, songs, and drawings, and teaches English classes at Loyola University.  She is the author of the poetry chapbook, “Orthorexia” (dancing girl press).  Come say hi at blue bike, red door.

Optional bonus question: What are your favorite and least favorite sounds? Did you ever have a job where you got to hear your favorite sound(s)?

My favorite sound is Big Sur.  Yeah.  Any sound that Big Sur makes is what I love the most.  So that means beach waves, waterfalls, silence.  Lucky for you, Studiola readers, I was in California for six weeks while Alison was in my apartment, and so I have magically brought a snippet of Big Sur sounds to you!  Right now!

(I’ve always thought that the rock formation to the left of this beach looks like a man’s face.)

I just realized one of my least favorite sounds while I was in New York City last week.  I heard it in a Turkish restaurant: the sound of young girls talking with a lot of “likes.”  Can’t stand it.  Especially since I know we all, myself included, do it too much.  My father was once an English teacher, and he constantly corrected my use of “like” as I was growing up.  Have you ever considered that when you speak with people who sound calm, confident, and wise (regardless of age or education), it may be more their lack of “like” and their overall manner of speaking than their content?

I think we should all work on saying “like” less.  I think the air would sound a lot prettier.

I have never had a job where I got to hear Big Sur sounds, or not hear “like” sounds.  (Teaching the college-age crowd, “like” figures in to a lot of classroom airspace.)  But  maybe one day I will pull a Robinson Jeffers or a Henry Miller and go live in Big Sur and write angry, sexy books.