The Worlds Left Behind (Teresa Wang)

My creative writing comps, The Worlds Left Behind is a non-fiction memoir, separated into sections “Chongqing, China”, “Hongkong”, “Airport”, “Chicago, the United States”, and “London, the United Kingdom”. The memoir explores the writer’s dynamic interaction with places and times, including getting lost, establishing connections, and processing prejudices. Moreover, the memoir records the writer’s reflection on the action of walking itself. As she travels to more places, the writer’s attitude changes from curiosity to frustration, and then to resolution. The isolated mindset is also replaced by a broader perspective.

 

Transcript

Hi, I’m Teresa. Thanks for coming to my virtual comps presentation. 

I did a non-fiction creative writing comps, and it was a memoir focused on my experience of “walking”.

I was fortunate to have lived in different countries and encountered different cultures. And ‘walking’ turned out to be a perfect thread connecting all my experiences. 

For me, walking was more than a hobby. In fact, the only two things that help me concentrate are writing and walking. 

Therefore, while the memoir is an open album of places worth traveling to, it was also a personal reflection on the action of “walking”. 

Walking, or wandering, has always been there with me. As I grew up, it was also evolving. Each walking experience is not a random choice to kill time, but part of a process of change. An important role of this memoir was to help me organize and record that process. 

In the early state, to walk somewhere was to adventure. It was the excitement of conquering different markets, streets, and neighborhoods. It was, however, gradually mixed with the anxiety of getting lost in a variety of circumstances. 

It was much more common to get lost when the realm of walking continues expanding, to a city, a country, or a culture. The concept of walking started to be tagged as “walking as a young woman”, “walking as a foreigner”, “walking in downtown”, or “walking in the wild”. All the tags carried more complexities than road crossings and forest trails did. I even got lost in how big the world is, and how impossible it was to see all of it by just walking.

But the pace of walking never changed. Even in times of confusion and anxiety, I cannot walk faster than step by step. I kept walking, until there was finally a moment, when I came to a resolution with the slow pace of walking, and started to appreciate the unique perspective it gave me. The excitement for conquering evolved into the appreciation for people and scenery I see at the moment. 

I will read a paragraph from the section “London”. I was walking by the Thames river. It was a world full of romantic colors and sounds, and even the quietness was refreshing. The slow pace walking is a key to that world.

The South Bank, where the London Eye was located among other attractions, was young and lively. There were not only tourists, but also skateboarders, street dancers, and second-hand book sellers. There were pubs, too. On a pleasant, sunny afternoon, people sat outside. In their round-shaped wine cup was rosy liquid like shiny amber. Even the empty cups and bottles sitting on the edge of the fences were filled with sweet drops of light from the sunset. The North Bank, on the other hand, was quieter. People rested on the lawn in Victoria Tower Garden, away from the crowds around Westminster Abbey. It took fifteen minutes to walk from Big Ben to the Tate Britain Museum. Along the North Bank were office buildings and water bus stations. Steps away from the city center, most voices were already filtered out, leaving only tranquil benches, and the dancing shadows of trees. When I arrived at the white building of the museum, the fifteen-minute walk had let me come down from fast-paced modern entertainments, and got me ready for art works slowly narrating their stories from centuries ago. 

This project was completed during a difficult time, and There are are lots of people to say ‘thank you’ to. I especially wish to thank my comps supervisor Susan. Susan is a great professor and a great listener. She helped me settle on the right focus for this memoir, and gave very helpful comments. And more importantly, she convinced me that the comps should be meaningful to myself. It has been a major motivation of mine, and has helped bring this work into existence.