There are multiple factors that have gone into my embarrassing lack of knowledge of the City of Chicago. I've lived here my entire life, jumping neighborhood to neighborhood before eventually settling down in a quiet cul de sac, close enough to the main street to be able to hear the bustling of people at the crack of dawn but far enough to still be able to wake up to pure silence. I've watched people around me come and go, seen the concrete steps leading to my house crack and smother as the years went by. I was never allowed to go downtown, never past the front lawn or the streets or even my school district. I wasn't allowed to go to my friends houses a lot, not unless I begged and pleaded my parents to let me go, I'll stay safe, I won't do anything, I'll stay inside— And I did. I stayed safe and good and sat still if that meant I got to go out more.
I may not have gotten to go out but I did see a lot through the little freedom I had. My neighborhood has always been a tranquil place, where everyone keeps to themselves, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens. My neighbors are quirky in their own ways, I may not known their names or what went on in their lives but I still got to envision my own ideas of who they could be from what they showed me. One neighbor in particular always watered her flowers. There is a beautiful set up in her backyard, a pond full of fish, covered in fresh flowers and small bushes that I could see over the wired fence that separated us. She must love the scent of roses I would think to myself she must have cabinets lined with spices, each a different scent and flavor to add to her dishes. She hides a stock of dirt in her garage and makes sure to leave a bowl of seeds out for the birds that come by so on and so forth. Besides this, I had spent my day's inventing myself with the help of my close friends. I had discovered who I was and who I wanted to be. I figured out that I wasn't a girl, I would never be a girl and had started to present myself in a more masculine manner. I cut my hair, against my parents wishes, and changed my name. I came out to close friends of mine and soon enough I started to put it out more presently to anyone I came in contact with. Kids in my school didn't like this, they didn't like how I would speak up about things going on in the LGBT community or when I would call them out on their ignorance.
High school was not prime time, but College is a different story. My experience's now may dull in comparison to other's but it has been a roller coaster of a ride for me. I learned how to take to the bus and the train, I can roam around the city without getting lost, I've gotten to stay out and go to the park with my friends at questionable hours. There have beens and many many downs but I've learned to take it as it comes.

Multimodal Essay

home.

identity.

Introduction to Portfolio

When the assignment had first been assigned to us, I had no idea what to write about for the first essay. It was hard to try and come up with something that could talk about Chicago but also touch on my own experiences in the city. The big question that came with the writing was, is there even an ethos I could talk about in my own experience? I was stuck between making up something to try and add a little bit of spice to my life, or to just stick with what I know. I decided with the latter and created an ethos that specifically revolved around my lack of knowledge about the city. I talked about what I know; from the smallest cracks in the sidewalks to my own mini-adventures within the confinements of my home and school. Some constraints I had while writing were that I wasn't able to properly portray the imagery that I wanted while explaining my point of view. It's what had kept me writing and rewriting every little detail in the essay portion of the assignment.
Both the multimodal and the essay had touched on the issues that I had felt were big part's of my life. I was never allowed to go out which led to a lot of issues in the years that would come by (and even now). Which takes on the form on how I felt that was like in the first multimodal drawing. In the second piece for the multimodal, however, I touched on the fact that I was part of the LGBT community which brought a lot of homophobia and transphobia in my life as well. Both of the drawings are something that I'm proud of, since I am going into art and have been doing it for most of my life, but I also feel as if they don't portray what I want them to in the best way. They're three panel comics which make it a lot harder to put out the message I want. They can be extremely vague to the audience unless they have read my essay about it previously. These were things that I had to come to terms with, since I had originally wanted them to be vague so that people could draw out their own idea of what they could mean. This all waters down to what I wanted to get through my writing and art. The lack of ethos that I have writing about my place in the city, but also the ethos that I found when writing about myself in a way that could resonate with other's who also haven't been able to really experience life besides how their parents wanted them to view it.