When I first started to read through Afternoon, a story, I went through and read what was said. It all started out as what seemed to be a fairly "normal" story that had a linear progression to it. In the beginning of reading this, however, there were a few instances of when all of a sudden the characters, settings, and subjects being talked about would seem to change. I didn’t think much of it at first, but after I noticed this change the second time, I hit the "return to previous writing space" button and tried to make sense of what the connection was. Usually I couldn’t make a connection and just went forward with the reading. After spending more time with the story, I felt that the pace was staring to pick up and I wasn’t as confused at the content I was reading about as I was in the beginning. Then, once I started to be able to follow a story-line (it seems there are a few here), there would be a page that I had read before. When I read it the first time, it didn’t make sense in the context of what I was reading. When I read it the second time, however, it did seem to flow and make sense. An example of this is when I first read about the two men in their office and the waitress comes to them with coffee. One of the men made a crude comment to her and she walked on out. It seemed like this page was just thrown in there in the beginning of the story to possibly throw the reader — or maybe keep his/her attention due to the comment. The second time this page came up, it seemed to have more of a propper fit with the rest of the story. There seemed to be more supportive pages surrounding it, rather than just having a random page pop up.
Maybe it was due to the fact that I would hit the Y or N button when a question was asked. I noticed that typically, neither button took you to a different location, even when answering a question. I hit the "return to previous writing space" button more than once to make sure I wasn’t missing anything by not hitting the Y or N button. It turned out that no matter what I hit — enter, left-click, Y or N — it would take me to the same page. I had the thought of the CYOA books while going through this, but as it turned out for me anyway, it didn’t seem to have as many branches as a CYOA novel. For the most part, I felt it had a linear progression. In a few ways, it did break from the normal novel-writing convention.
Installing Afternoon was a challenge for me. My main computer didn’t like it so I had to load it on an old one. So, this piece is different from Hegirascope. I can actaully take time out to read the lexia versus having to read them fast before they change. I mainly played with clicking words to go form one page to the next. Some pages would connect one after the other on the same story. Sometimes another would start up and then later go back to the previous story. One story I read was about a girl talking about her life as a whore/prostitute. I came across another that talked about a man who was in a therapy session. There are various other stories that I’m sure are imbedded in the piece.
I have a dance friend who’s now pursuing an Emergence Medical Technician (EMT) cert. . I’ve taken various rescue classes over the years and lent her my EMT textbook tonight at a dance gig. My current cert. is that of Wilderness First Responder. One of the pages talked about had like the word “emergency” on. I clicked it since rescue stuff was on my brain tonight outside that of dance. At some point in my reading, I came across a page that talked about a car crash. I guess your mood can affect what you are going to click.
The author plays with words. He used “Jesus S. Bach.” In reality it really John Sebastian Bach. The musician inside caused me to pursue words for a while that were music related. In addition, I played around with typing various words in the text box. Some were maybe “dance” or “music.” I don’t remember the pages going off to anywhere with the words I typed.
I came across a page that seemed to be coming directly from the author of Afternoon. It seemed to imply the project was two books. I wish I had book marked the page or cut and pasted it into something. It seemed to try to talk about the strcuture of Afternoon. The book is from a first person narritive a lot. It uses “I” quite a bit.