Confessions and Thoughts on the Following Story

To start, I just wanted to mention how cold it was today. Walking home from class made me feel like one of the 101 Dalmatians trying to soldier through that wintry storm. So moving onward, my confession- I didn't actually read Nooteboom's book at the beginning of the semester. Don't get me wrong, I did try. I got to the first page, and then I always found something better to do. Now, I finally finished it for the first time, and it was such a challenge. I don't know what the deal is with this book, but it really took it out of me. In reality, it didn't take me that long to get through it. . .maybe a couple of days, but it feels like an eternity. I made myself read it today. . . at the gym, in the SUB, at home and at the library and I just feel so drained. I had to migrate from place to place just to keep my mind going. Even doing that, I actually, legitimately, fell asleep while reading it in the SUB. It was super annoying. I just hated it, but when I turned the last page and looked back, I think I must have liked most of it, because I had dog eared what looked like every other page from section 2. Usually, when I find a passage interesting, I will bend the page and maybe write down or underline the stuff I like. My book was kind of like a lame origami project with flaps.
Something I found really interesting about the book was the continued references to time. It was really Four Quartetesqe. "Can you keep track of my tenses? They are all past tenses, my thoughts were wandering; do excuse me. Here I am, back again, the imperfect reflecting on the past, simple past versus pluperfect. My present tense was a slip; it applied only to now, to you, although you are nameless. After all, we are both present here, still." I think the question of time that Eliot brings up is most fascinating, and I think it's a kind of bridge linking our themes together, dreams, life as fiction, and the eternal recurrence. I think I'll ponder that more. The idea of immortality. I like the way that word tastes on the tip of my tongue. Not immortality in the sense that this body and mind will live on forever, but that my soul or my essence lives on. "The only greatness for man is immortality." That's James Dean. It's a dangerous word, but I think it's a natural belief. Whether you attain it through grace or glory, I think it's something that's just out there.
"And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury. I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you. . .As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness." Priests in a Catholic funeral will wear white. When I was little I asked my priest why. He said priests wear white on days of celebration- funerals are meant to celebrate a person's passage into his next life. A mean part of myself thought that it could also be to celebrate a person's absence from this one. I like the passage from Eliot, because it makes me think of a play. When the scene ends, the lights go down and the curtains rustle past your face. You can hear a roaring in the crowd that starts out low and slowly rises. At its peak, the lights come back on, fiercely awakening you to see the shadows turn into people you recognize, standing up and applauding one life's end and your emergence into another. You've shed that character, and you reappear as yourself. Anyone remember Gladiator? "And just as your mother was there at your beginning, I shall be there at your end. And when you die - and die you shall - your transition will be to the sound of...[claps his hands]"
At my beginning, is my end. . . just some thoughts to ponder.

Which child is my favorite?!!!!

So, I agree with Christina about the blog situation. We're like those mothers with dozens of children, who have different personalities, and love all of them the same. I refuse to pick a favorite. To be honest, I don't really follow any one person's blog. Whenever I open up my dashboard, I pick the three at the top of the "recent blog" list and read those. If I have already read those three, I pick the three underneath it. I think this is a great method, because it lets me read a little bit of everything. If I think of some of the top of my head, Erin's recent post made me happy. I liked how she not only found our names, but a part of our identities in FW. Brianna Barber's blog about low brow material-not only for the young. I recently read Zach Smith's blog about learning to fly through memory, just like Plato. I get a lot out of these blogs, and like Christina, I could go on. I think I've spent so much time reading as many different blogs as possible, that specifics don't really stand out. I'll name drop some more. . .Shelby Soule's blogs are generally beautifully written and are fun, Maggie has crazy stories, Jon really makes you think in his blogs, Kyle is a wonderful writer- very engaging and beautifully written. . .and I just like them all.

Anime Alchemy

The first thought that pops in my head when I think of "alchemist" is that anime show, "Full Metal Alchemist." One of my best friends was a huge fan. Anyway, the beginning of each episode had this quote: "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth."
I looked up some definitions of alchemy online, and got the basic meanings- it's a philosophy aimed toward transmutation of the base metals into gold, curing disease, prolonging life, or a medieval chemical science, a power/process of transforming something common into something special or an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting.
I enjoyed Zach Smith's take on alchemy, much more than these web definitions. He said, "But now that I think about it maybe the stories are an alchemical experiment. All of them take place in modern settings but seem to have a mystical quality that supersedes everything else. As the author of the quote above says Gonzalez is blending the past and the present into something new and original." This goes along with the anime, because they're both saying the same thing- they're both rules. The first states that you can't create something out of nothing. I guess that's a basic scientific thing (I think). Like energy- you can only convert it or transform it into another form of itself. Maybe. I'm not a scientist. But the literary side says the same thing. You take what's there- the past and present, and try to blend the two to make something "original" or new, but really it's all the same thing with a different name attached. Water is water, regardless of its form. The themes in literature, regardless of what you blend in it, how you present it and whatever, it always feels like the same thing. Not to be negative, but when people express a fondness for our reading materials, because they related to the themes and to each other, I wonder why. How could you expect anything less, when we're looking for those connections and when all of literature relates to one another in some way. I don't know. I'm tired.

Second glance

I think I definitely did and didn't enjoy the Alchemist. I was reading other blogs, and almost everyone talked about how delighted they were with it. They loved how easily the book fit into to themes and how it related to their lives. But then I read some others that said that the book did include all those themes, but they still didn't like it for whatever reason. I really like Sarah B's blog. She said that story was engaging and she was sure it was meaningful and profound, but the message was lost to her. I think I relate.
I liked the way the book was written and how it flowed- it had a kind of magic to it, like the Little Prince. There are gems of wisdom embedded in it- little sayings that apply to almost any age. In a way, I guess it's like FW, because of how it appeals or applies to any person who can read. Unlike the Little Prince, though, I don't think I would let my children read this book for awhile. I think they would be confused.
People have to go on adventures to appreciate the home and life they left behind, like Wendy. She didn't want to grow up, until she got what she wanted. She left home, had adventures and realized that heroism in real life is different than heroism in stories. I think what frustrated me most about the Alchemist was how it ended. This is what puts me in limbo. When the robber told him about the dream of the churchyard, and the light bulb in his head goes on, I felt that one of the most important lessons he learned in his epiphany was to not listen to anything but himself and his heart. He allowed himself to be persuaded and pushed, maybe to make that link between his mind and heart stronger. I don't know. I know it's just a story, but our lives are just stories too, strung up in patterns and rearranged as we move onward.
I wonder about oracles- in the Matrix and back in the Greek day. If we ever listen to them, we will always live life wondering if all of our actions will fall in line with the pattern they said (which is always the case) or if we can rearrange the story as we go. I'd like to think the second. I think everyone would. Maybe the guy in the story was meant to lose everything three times- three is a magic number.

Am I missing something? Initial Thoughts

When I read the last page of the Alchemist, I felt like I should laugh, but I wasn't exactly sure why. It's like when someone makes a joke in a foreign language, and you know they've said a punchline, because they look at you expectantly, so you laugh, but you don't quite know what they meant, because you only a know a few words of their language. I mean, I guess it's kind of funny that this guy traveled this long distance, got rich and lost it three times- got the crap beaten out of him, and then has the huge epiphany that he should have stayed home. It's a bit of sick joke, when all of these wise people tell him to keep going onward to find his treasure.

I am not sure what I think about this. . . I think I need some more time. Meanwhile, I guess I'll just chuckle and maybe slap my knee and pretend I get it. Perhaps I need to go on a journey of my own to get in on the joke. . .

I think therefore I am . . . right?

I was reading Sarah Knox's blog last night, and I felt a little overwhelmed. Maybe it was because it was really late and I was tired, but her contemplations of everything happening in the mind made me wonder if I was actually there reading, or if I was dreaming I was reading, because I had seen it earlier that day- I had skimmed it, and maybe I was just filling in the blanks that I couldn't remember. She mentioned how powerful dreams can be- how you can dream about someone or something and the emotions attached to that dream splash into "real" life. But are we truly real? Derrida had those same issues back in the day, pondering God, the world and his own existence. He came up with the famous, "I think, therefore I am" and a bunch of other math/philosophy stuff. It's kind of subjective though. I think, sometimes, but that reality- the stuff I see is different from what others think and see. Is there an all encompassing "reality?" I think it's easier to share a dream than the "truth," whatever that is. Maybe the world itself is the dream that we share. Reality lies only in the mind of the individual, so those things we do to express that reality is our attempt to communicate it to others, but it doesn't always stick. Of course, this is only speculative. It may not be true. Or it might. Does that really matter?
I read an interesting essay about the red and blue pill that Neo has to choose between. http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php In a few classes I've had with the same professor, he's asked us which one we would take, the red or the blue. The red tells us that secret- "What is the Matrix?" and the other lets us stay in the dream world, asleep. Do we really wake up though? I think we may just find ourselves in another layer of another man's dreams. It could be that the reality, I though existed in each person, is really just my own dream. Or maybe all of those realities, if they do exist, are just dreams that globbed together to make one huge dream that we all live in. We are deceived, delusional, dreaming. Or maybe those dreams are the only reality that exist, but we are too scared to explore that realm. Does your head hurt yet? Mind does.

We just want to be fooled

All of the discussion about magic and illusion in class today reminded me of the Prestige. The whole movie challenges you to figure out what the trick is as you watch these two guys try to come up with the ultimate illusion. At the end of the movie, Michael Caine says, "Now you're looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled." I think this is a well-placed line, because by the end of the movie, I really don't care to know about what really happens behind the scenes- all of the sneaking around and sabotaging. I don't want to know about the sacrifices the two main characters went through, or the heartache, but I do anyway, because I watched the movie. I saw how their characters transformed with success and obsession, and I didn't like them or their world. I like this quote that Hugh Jackman, one of the magicians says near the end. "You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don't know?... it was... it was the look on their faces..." What does illusion do for us? What is the point of stories that aren't true? They let us escape for a few seconds? Or do they trap us? I really don't know. Some days, I'd like to live in a dream, because it feels like I have more control over what happens. But then again, I wonder if I really do have as much power as I feel. I didn't play a lot of video games when I was little, but when I was about 11 years old, my best friend got the play station Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon is a game where you become this farmer guy, who has just inherited his grandfather's farm. In order to win the game, you have to re-establish the farm, cultivate so many acres of land, become a part of the town community and get enough money to expand your house and get married. In game time, you have three or four years to accomplish all of this. In real time, Mary and I devoted two years to playing this game. We worked hard to work the land, go mining and date girls. Mary and I had different tastes in women. She thought this one girl was the prettiest of them all, so we had to woo her; and although we did end up marrying her, I still think the inn maid or the librarian would have been fun. We would pull all-nighters at her house, worrying about getting enough produce to the market or saving money to buy hot girl, Karen, a present. I was really good at raising our chickens for chicken fighting contests. Mary was awesome at training our dog for racing. By the time we "won" the game, we had a family- although I don't know when that happened/ we had a 50's two bed system with our wife- good standing in the community and a flourishing farm. But the game didn't really end. There was an anti-climactic celebration and then the game kept going. It was so depressing, we started doing crazy things- totally mid-life crisis. We divorced our wife- didn't know that could happen- accidentally ate our dog, also didn't know that could happen, and just started dating a bunch of women. We wanted to stop, but we invested so much time in that life, that we just couldn't believe it was over or wasn't going anywhere. We spent two more years in it, and in that time, our baby boy didn't grow at all, we were on okay terms with our wife- we had married someone else, got divorced again and remarried our first wife- and life was just the same thing over and over again. It wasn't real, it was like an illusion, and when it was over, it kind of felt like a huge waste of time. Instead of really living, we chose to live a video game. But now that I look back on my life, I seem to always be living some other kind of life in books and movies and daydreams and playing pretend- yeah, I still do that sometimes- I'm my own magician, putting myself in illusions, pulling the wool over my own eyes, because I see and know of the world, but I'd rather live elsewhere every now and then. I guess I'd just rather be fooled.

Did that really happen?

Memory is a funny thing. It doesn't have a beginning or an end and it doesn't seem fulfilling for an individual. Memory is meant for lots of people, I think. We rely on others to fill in details or remind us about events. But does that make memory true? Prosper tells Miranda about her past- asks her if she knows any details or remembers anything, then builds on it. The rest of the play verifies his story, but the way he says it, reminds me of how you would tell a child about his past. When a kid broke a bone or something, and you add all these details, the kid gets excited and fabricates more details. Lyra in the Golden Compass does that. Ana in the animated movie, Anastasia, does that too when she "remembers" her life as a princess. Do implanted memories ring a bell? Put a story in someone's head, and they apply it to their life. The heroine in Northanger Abbey applies the stories she reads to her own life. I guess that's not quite the same as remembering another story for her own life, but you could fill in the gaps of your memory with stories that you read or hear. My sisters, my mom and I all have different versions for the same story when we used to play together. My doll is bald in back with flecks of nail polish in what remains of her hair. I claim that my sister did that and cut up her hair. My sister thinks she did the nail polish, and I did the cutting. My mom says I did all of it. Maybe we'll never know.

Little did he know. . .

I think Sarah Burke's blog about free will was thoughtful and very relevant to everything. I'm taking a class right now, where we often discuss who has the control, individual humans or a supreme being/force, like God or the laws of physics. Puppets and puppet master. . .I think therefore I am and all that jazz. . .it's nice to talk about things like this with others, but personally, I prefer to just think about it. I remember a few times in high school when some friends and I would lie back on the hood of cars or on someone's roof and just think. We wouldn't really talk, just think. It's too cold here to do that all too often. But sometimes I contemplate such thoughts when I'm someplace totally private and secluded- a bathroom stall. The best thing about bathroom stalls is that nobody can really see you and you can't really see anybody else. I thought it was funny that Sarah mentioned the Truman show, because that movie and all the cameras in the bathrooms scared me so much, I didn't ever want to go the bathroom in my house. We have a huge mirror in there. . .I thought someone could be watching. In fact, I had a terrible fear of mirrors for a few months before it petered out into a slight worry. I still think about it. Anyway, a stall is just a quiet place to contemplate one's own existence. No one is loud if they can help it in a public bathroom. And generally, no one will disturb you there. Even if you think so hard, the words accidently come out of your face, people still won't know it was you. It's a safe place for a confusing topic.
Are we the writers of our own destiny? Did someone lay out the framework, and we're filling in the blanks, like mad libs? Did God create us or did we create God? I really like that Stranger Than Fiction movie, because it makes you wonder if it's just a chain. In my head, I created someone, but that person's real, and I feel like I have responsibility or power, but really, someone else just created me to create someone else so when that person wants the person I created to die, he will use me, the creation to kill the creation's creation. I can understand Beckett's confusion and anxiety. His "I think this, but then again, maybe not" mentality. It makes my head hurt. It's so trippy to think that everything I touch isn't real. Or that I'm not real, but I think I must be real in some sense. I mean, if I'm not, I guess I don't have anything to lose. I could go eat pancakes, if I wanted. Course I would get sick, because of my stupid food allergies, but then I would wind up back in the bathroom and I would be thinking again. Not that I never stop thinking. Though now that I think about it, I probably do stop every now and then.
I think I'll stop now.

Tempest reflections

Initial thoughts: why is forbidden love so alluring? Because Prosper wants his daughter to fall in love with Ferdinand, he basically forbids it. "Silence! One word more Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What an advocate for an impostor?" It reminded me of Scrubs, season 2, when Turk helps Dr. Cox get a date with Turk's med student by forbidding any romance between the two. At first, Dr. Cox had a "What??!!!" kind of look on his face, but then Turk asks him, "Dude, do you know like any girls at all?" or something like that. Next scene, the girl shows up at Dr. Cox's apartment and she totally wants him. What a great show.
Similarities between it and FW. . .I guess the word play is interesting. Pg. 157 in FW when they go at each other
-- Unuchorn!
-- Ungulant!
-- Uvuloid!
-- Uskybeak!
And Act II
"The old cock"
"The cockeral"
Done. The wager?
A laughter.
A match!
They're both about plerosis, filling up. And I think the action is twisty and turny like a river. There's so much going on. It's like a soap opera, with all the intrigue. I think that could be why it's so appealing with audiences today. Drama in any form is always relevant and interesting. We just can't help ourselves; it's so delicious.