Well, I didn't go clinically insane, so I'll call my first semester a success.
I also haven't technically finished the semester yet, so I won't bust out the mechanical bull and throw a party tonight.
I really don't have any idea what to blog about right now. I feel like I'm not capable of a self-reflective, deeply impressive, insightful blog tonight. So I'll write a horrible poem about this class.
We read some books and looked at some art.
I must say, Virginia Woolf didn't exactly steal my heart.
I feel as if I've reached that point at the end of Dancing With the Stars when they show a ten-second recap of each couple doing the best/most entertaining part of their dance. It's my last chance to strut my stuff on this blog and go out with a bang!
When this assignment was presented to us at the beginning of the year, I must say I was quite excited. Both of my AP English courses in high school required a blog, and that was always my favorite part of the class because I got to be satirical, witty, and give my real opinion. I got to relate my readings to pop culture, music, or anything random that reminded me of the reading, and I feel like this blog served the same purpose for me. The blogs also helped me to better understand the material we were covering because they forced me to think about what we discussed in class and develop some more ideas on my own, which I hardly ever do after a class is over. I wanted to create a blog that was actually entertaining to read and insightful at the same time. In Dear Diary..., I felt like I achieved my goal of writing something new and entertaining.
Staying away from the classic approach to blogging about readings was one of my main goals. I didn't want to simply comment on the readings, I wanted to give them another dimension. I know I learn best when I can relate the information to something I already know well. I did this more than once on my blog, but my favorite was when I wrote Sisterhood of the Traveling HeLa Cells. It was difficult for me to decide how I felt about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and this blog post helped me understand my feelings towards the harvesting of Henrietta's cells and her history while fulfilling my requirement to write a blog that week. My analogies got better by the end of the semester with my most recent blog, Parental Guidance. This blog helped me to define the trials of Ama in my own words.
This blog helped me in class because it allowed me to give my opinions about the discussion if I missed my chance in class. It also allowed me to share my thoughts when we didn't have a class in which to discuss. I used Endangered Wildlife as my outlet to share my reaction to James Carroll's talk. I hope to continue to make my own assertions about my future readings like I did with I'll take a double shot of emotion please. After this semester, I won't have a class urging me to reflect on a book's impact on society or an author's writing style in comparison to another author's style. I reflected on Angelou's memoir as a means to understand how she reflected on her own life.
I tried to learn about my own learning and discussion skills as well in that class, and I now have confidence in my abilities to discuss something. One of my favorite aspects of this blogging assignment was the requirement to read my classmates' blogs and comment on them. The writing styles of my peers fascinate me, and I was honored to get a backstage pass into the thoughts of my classmates. I also trust the influence others have on my insight into works of literature much more now. The discussions we had in class enlightened and challenged me, and I hope to seek the opinions of others in the future more.
I must say I'm excited to not have to remember to blog every week, but I can't pretend I'm not sad to lose my chance to dump my thoughts into something and be guaranteed an audience.
While reading the second third of Power, I was struck by the similarities between the situation revolving around Ama's trial and the relationship between two best friends or a parent and their child. Ama first went through a trial that followed the laws of the American government. During the trial, Taiga members supported Ama. They testified in her favor which eventually led to the court declaring her innocent.
Despite their support of Ama in court, the Taiga people held their own trial of Ama. During this trial, their actual opinions came out, and they ended up banishing Ama.
These situations reminded me of when someone is in trouble in a public setting and their best friend or parent backs them up no matter what simply because that is what friends and parents do. However, after the public scene is over, the friend or parent reprimands the person in trouble or offers advice in private. This usually happens because that friend or parent cares enough to offer the person in trouble help and advice on how to never get into that situation again. They also care enough not to do it in public.
In this situation, Ama is the child, and the Taiga people are the friend or parent who protect the image of their people in public before offering their own opinions and judgment in private.
I've decided to take you on a journey through my thoughts while reading "Servants of the Map." From the title, I thought it might be some weird, satanic story about people who worship something that is either an actual map or that goes by the name of map. Then, once the story started, I thought it would be an intriguing story of discovery about the man who was found dead at the beginning. Then, I realized I would have to focus most of my attention on deciding if I thought Max would go back to Clara in the end. And I thought he would. Then he might his mistress and I lost all hope. I thought that he was too good a man to not tell his wife of this saucy relationship, and that he would ruin his marriage over it. Then I thought of his children. He hadn't even met his second daughter yet! I thought surely he would have to return to meet her. When he decided to stay on to study botany, I lost all hope. He would never find enough knowledge to satisfy himself enough to return home.
How can one know when one has learned enough?
Max obviously valued the quest for knowledge quite a lot, and he was willing to jeopardize his relationship with Clara for it. When I read the last paragraph about him triangulating the points, I thought that meant he was moving on to a new horizon that eventually would include his family. But I didn't realize until class on Monday that he meant he would wait for his wife to interpret his words. He found a way to make a commitment without actually committing.
When I was a kid, I pictured my life folding out in this sequence: grade school, high school, college, possibly grad school, and then the rest of my life. I thought that after the school part, I wouldn't have to write anymore papers. And I probably won't unless I specialize in some form of nursing and go to grad school for it.
I also thought everyone's life would follow this similar path. I didn't realize I was so wrong.
I also never thought about the entire process that goes into something being called "Peer Reviewed." The title makes complete sense, but I just never thought about it.
I think what I took most from today is the level of respect I have for those who dedicate their lives to teaching others and continuing to learn through the articles and knowledge of others. I plan on continuing to learn until the day I die, but I don't think it will be anywhere near the process of reviewing articles. I think I'll stick to reading them once they've already been approved.
I've decided to rewrite "Translations" and turn it into a love story. So here goes:
If this was a love story, Manus would be the main, hunky character who is drop-dead gorgeous but still a bit reserved and mysterious. He's incredibly caring, but he has a twisted and unknown past that causes him to be scared to fall in love.
Maire would be the overly-confident woman who flirts with everyone and never settles down until the story has resolved and she randomly finds someone.
Hugh would be the old man that everyone tolerates but who never actually adds anything to the story except for 5 minutes of inspired wisdom that blows everyone's minds.
Sarah would be the secretly beautiful woman who everyone just passes over but then she takes off her big, dorky glasses at the end of the movie and BOOM! she's the love of Manus' life!
And everyone else wanders around filling the space in the movie!
During class on Monday, I was struck by a memory of a scene in the second Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie that reminded me of the overlap of emotional and scientific ties to the HeLa cells. In the scene, Bridget is in Turkey at an archaeological dig, and she is asked by her leader when a person's death stops being an emotional thing and becomes something to study scientifically. Bridget's answer is that that transition occurs when the last person who knew the deceased person dies. Her leader questions her answer, but it is not elaborated too much further in the scene.
This reminded me of Henrietta's life because that transition never happened. She became a scientific being before she was even dead! Her children were never even given a chance to mourn her before her body was being slashed open in hopes of recovering her immortal cells.
This book emphasized most to me the importance of a mourning period. If that period is abandoned or skipped, it will have to creep back up eventually. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, emotions have a way of finding you no matter what you try to do to evade them. It's best to just deal with them as soon as possible, but Henrietta's family wasn't given that chance.
In Satrapi's book, she portrayed her mother as a strong woman. However, I noticed in the movie that her mother was much stronger in one scene of the movie than in the book in particular. When her mom was confronted at the grocery store by the man who threatened to rape her, she shouted back at him in front of Marjane. In the book, we only see the mother after the traumatizing experience when she is in tears talking to her husband. Also in the book, Marjane was not with her mother when the offensive man confronted her mother. The mother tells the husband that she yelled at the man in the book, but she is also crying, and in our culture, we associate tears with weakness. Marji's mom proves to her daughter that women don't have to be weak even if they experience emotions. Bravo, Mrs. Satrapi!
I'm going to comment on the absurdity of some of the things that occurred in Marjane's life. They all, of course, make sense in the story, but they are still absurd. Therefore, they deserve to be commented on.
First, Marjane pretended to smoke pot during her adolescence when in fact she wasn't even inhaling anything. Obviously, it isn't a bad thing that she wasn't partaking in these illegal actions (at that point in her life, at least) but it's still bad that she felt obligated to pretend. This just shows that peer pressure exists everywhere, not only in America. Wherever there are teenagers, there will always be peer pressure and kids succumbing to it.
Secondly, I admired her father for allowing her to marry Reza even though he knew it wouldn't work out. It must have taken a lot for him to watch his baby girl enter into a marriage that he knew would be ending in the next few years. But he was right, she needed to realize on her own that it wasn't going to work. It was smart of him to at least have the meeting with Marjane and Reza before they were married that forced Reza to admit that he would allow her to divorce him if she so wished. But still, it's absurd that he couldn't at least warn her that she was making a mistake. Oh well, though.
Here's a little video of my favorite way to say "that's absurd" from one the funniest and most ingenious musicals ever written.
I must say, tonight's talk was nothing like what I expected it to be. I don't know why, but for some reason I had this vision of James Carroll spending an our discussing American Requiem, and I was a little taken aback when he didn't do that. I understand now that that would have been a totally absurd way to give a talk since everyone in the audience probably hasn't read his book.
So once I got past my initial shock, I was struck by his quote, "The human species has the capacity to make itself extinct." I had never thought of our dependence on nuclear warfare games like this, but it makes complete sense. We are the only species that would willingly cause ourselves (or a portion of ourselves) to go extinct if it meant winning a war. We would be willing to lose entire cultures just to have the right to say we won. But who does that help in the end? Absolutely no one, that's who.
Nuclear warfare, and all warfare for that matter, is absolutely disgusting to me, and it amazes me that any civilization or country believes that they have the right to decide when another city or country deserves to die. Carroll agrees with me, and I hope that his talks and books can influence the word to abolish nuclear warfare once and for all.
One of the special qualities of writing that interests and intrigues me the most is the power of perspective. Perspective can change a negative to a positive or a truth to a lie. It can change someone's opinion faster than seems physically possible, and it can ultimately portray someone as the hero or the villain. Like we said in class, there are two sides to every story, which makes a memoir difficult to deem as historical fact because bias is so strong in the book.
I first noticed the role of perspective in James Carroll's book when he wrote about Angelo Roncalli, or, as he's more commonly known, Pope John XXIII. This name jumped out to me because I graduated from Roncalli High School, so naturally I liked the book infinitely more simply because it mentions my alma mater's namesake. Because of my attendance at a school named for him, I know more than I ever expected to about Roncalli, and it struck me that my perspective of Pope John XXIII is much different than Carroll's. I've learned everything I know about the Pope from teachers and other sources who never actually knew him. James Carroll was fortunate enough to meet and share a moment with the Pope. Although our perspectives are different, Carroll proved to me that when certain opinions match up, they must share some truth. Our own particular opinions line up where Pope John XXIII's affinity for the papacy is concerned. Carroll reassured me that Pope John XXIII was an incredible man, and this realization helped me to trust Carroll's writing more.
Maya Angelou has a true gift for imagery, that's for sure. But I've noticed throughout her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, that she throws in bits of information that would normally be a big deal to other authors in unassuming ways that catch the reader off guard. It's almost as if she wants you to perfectly visualize the small details but form your own assumptions of everything big. This is an unusual technique, but it actually adds to the gravity of some situations because it lets the reader know that this event or topic was so big in her life that she didn't feel the need to use colorful words to describe it. She just wrote it out.
For example, on page 203 of this book, she says, "But Momma left for Arkansas without me with her solid air packed around her like cotton." Minimal imagery, minimal words. She simply states what happens. When I read this, I initially thought she was a bit heartless to give the woman who raised her such an unceremonious goodbye, but I realized it was just the opposite. She loved this woman so much that to write about watching her leave for the last time would have turned this memoir into a requiem of sorts for her lost grandmother. She was moving on to a new place in her life, and this was the transition.
I also noticed this odd lack of imagery in her tale of her pregnancy and the birth of her son. 7 pages. That's all she used to tell the reader about her life-changing experience of conceiving and bearing a son. However, I've realized that this lack of words doesn't correlate to a lack of emotion. In fact, her minimal account of his birth emphasizes how big the event was in her life because even in that short chapter, I still can feel her love for him. Maya Angelou, bravo.
I found it ironic in the movie "Girl Interrupted" that Lisa and Susanna both seemed to portray one type of character while, in actuality, they were just the opposite of what they first seemed to be. Lisa was a fighter at first glance. She broke out of the mental hospital on many occasions, and she had dreams of moving to Florida to work at Disney World. This image of a fighter was juxtaposed with Susanna's quiet acquiescence to life in the mental hospital. She only briefly fought the institution before she began going about her normal life there.
Lisa was the fighter. Susanna was the compliant, quiet inmate.
But not for long...
Lisa proclaimed herself as the "lifer" at one point, and it was obvious that she actually believed she would never be released, so why not have some fun until she destroyed herself? Susanna made a mental shift to get better and actually benefit from the program, and she did.
Susanna was the fighter. Lisa was the compliant, not-so-quiet inmate.
This sharp contrast in views on fighting the institution shows that the screenwriter and director of the movie wanted to prove that appearances can change, and that first impressions are rarely true. The movie proves that the meek underdog can end up being the one who breaks free. Slow and steady wins the race, you know.
I asked Father again today to buy me supplies for the stories I wish to write. He denied my request yet again. I do not know why I even began to hope that today's request would bear a different response than yesterday's, but I am diligent in my longing to write as my brother does. He has already published 15 works, and I none. Father does not understand my need to form stories as my brother does. But I do not want to write hopeless tragedies and farcical comedies like my brother. I dream to write about truth and life. I long to study works of philosophy and publish my thoughts regarding the nature of this earth for others to read and enjoy. However, Father believes my place is in the home. He wants me to marry. How much I abhor the thought of tying myself to yet another man who will treat me as a possession and not as his equal!
I seem only to be treasured for my ability to reproduce, but I shan't bear any children to this earth out of fear of having a daughter and losing her to the toils of this silly world as well. I shall lay my head down to rest this evening, and like every night, I will pray that my dreams transport me to a world where I can join my brother among the ranks of scholars and men of literature.
Rings of color fill the floor. Scuffs from character shoes and set pieces mar the vibrantly painted stage. This is the place upon which I laid for a brief yet perfect five minutes with my best friend during the intermission of my senior musical's closing night. This setting was not only unique to me because of the atmosphere and vibe that accompanies one's last production ever on a stage, it was also special because the stage is always black, never multi-colored. However, it was painted for our production of Seussical, and this is where I chose to remember the good times and the bad.
As I lay with my best friend absorbing the setting of so many fond memories, I was able to finally grasp the true enormity of the space where I spent so much of my time and energy. The ceiling stretched before me to a distant point that was practically indiscernible because it was so high in the air. The almost deadly grid could be seen so easily from my vantage point, and I knew that somewhere up there were my classmates and friends waiting to literally shine the spotlight on me. The air was practically damp from all the sweat and love that we poured into that closing night, and I understood why so many people yearn to be upon that stage to showcase their talents: the energy. The floor practically rumbled from the base of the band playing their inerlude, and the air held the memory of triumphs and failures past. The greats had given their talents to this stage. Andrew Lockhart and Nick Males poured their souls into The Secret Garden here, and Meg Duell gave her unforgettable performance as Belle on this very ground. I was privileged enough to add my own quirky talents to the mix, and I knew in that moment that this stage would always hold a place in my heart as home.
I'll be out of college in five years, and I can hardly fathom the idea of no longer having to worry about school and how to handle my classes. However, I know I'll have newer worries to occupy my mind, so at least I know I won't be bored. I wish I could describe the work setting to which I'll be adding my skills in five years, but unfortunately I have no inkling of what I will actually be doing. So instead I'll focus on the vacation I'll be enjoying.
I'm in France or some other European country, I have a worn-down backpack on my shoulders, I'm dirty, I have little money left, and I am utterly and completely happy. I've just spent the summer backpacking through Europe, and I'm reveling in my successful trip. The landscape around me is sunny, but not too overwhelmingly hot, and it's almost time for my last dinner. I'm splurging on a nice meal to celebrate my success, and I'll be meeting up with friends I've made along the way. The atmosphere at dinner will be perfect, and I'll be sad to leave but ready to go home and jump into the next phase of my life. This vacation has been a welcome reprieve, but it's time to move on.
