Last blog ever

Confusion- that's where I think am at the end of this semester. Chaos and confusion. It doesn't sound like a happy place to be. In Paradise Lost, it was kind of between hell and earth. . . but I think it's where everyone should be when they want to learn something or achieve something. I'm not implying that ambition and knowledge are on the road to hell, but I think opening yourself to chaos helps banish away fears and inhibitions. It clears the way to truth, because true truth shouldn't be obscured by fear.
Sometimes, when our focuses are so narrow, we miss the bigger picture for the path we are familiar with. I admire Christina's blog and paper on depressing topics. Stories that end in sadness are often dismissed or disliked, I think, because people fear to feel sad or depressed or to put themselves in someone else's shoes. The people who do that miss out on a fundamental aspect of humanity. We can't empathize or sympathize with other's sorrows if we refuse to open ourselves up to the whirling torment they experience. My family used to watch tons of Law and Order SVU- special victims unit. It was full of gorey, horrific, "heinous" crimes. It made you feel kind of icky on the inside when you think about all the child rapists and killers out there in the world. But glancing at those actions and dismissing them in the same breath as sad, without looking at the victims or perpetrators, I feel like we're missing something crucial.
Narrowing down isn't bad though. We wouldn't make any sense of anything, if we didn't try to break things down in a focused, organized strain. I just think that when we do narrow down,we can't forget to open back up again. "Invention does not create out of the void, but out of chaos." Shelley. In another class, I have been focusing on things too specific and in this class, I have had little organization to absorb anything. For awhile, I felt like I was on the brink, looking down in the spaghetti soup of everything with no way to get in without going mad. By midnight on the night I finally finished my paper, I felt like I had a small toilet paper of direction trying to contain a universe of ideas. I felt awful, but how exciting is it to know that there are so many things that can connect and create truth if you could only find a toilet paper tube large enough to get them organized. Or if you could only empty the tube you follow and fill it up with new information and life. Like my brothers once took water samples from this fountain in Boise to study the organisms that live in it. Each water sample was full of life, but not necessarily the exact same speciman of life. But they couldn't take in more water until they emptied the cup they had. So in chaos, we are emptied and filled up. Maybe we're the toilet paper tubes. I don't like that image at all. I'm so little. I'd be a tiny toilet paper tube.
But maybe a class like this, where we can read and discuss online and in class, expands how much we can hold, so we're not bipolarized into low and high brow. We can flow between the two and make connections. Networking at its best.
Thank you all for your reflections. Now I'm done.

Individual Presentations

Reflection on individual presentations:
I thought they were all entertaining and wonderful. They just made me happy. I can't say they've all made me think- some have- but thinking is just too hard at the moment. I don't know what else to really say. I think the one that stood out the most (if I had to choose) is Rio's. Rio- I totally relate to the problem you were having. There were so many elements and so many things that were connected and seemed impossible to analyze as separate units. Trying to split the topic or narrow it down made my head explode a little bit. I sort of managed it in the end, but I'm glad that you left it all together. In some ways, it feels like that that is how it should be.
And someone said today in the presentations- my mind is going- that the paper was going down a confusing path- I bet it was Tom- this whole semester is so huge and contains so much, I think we should all be left to confusion. We should feel unsettled, like we know nothing. Or maybe we shouldn't. . . maybe that's just how I'm feeling and I'm projecting it on everyone else. I will reflect on this more later.

Presentation recap

Alright- in general, I enjoyed all of the presentations- there were all just fun. Kudos go out to Twenty Minute Lifetime- that movie was hilarious and trippy. Even now, I can't get the image of the pregnant man out of my head. I thought the tea thing was really cool, in the symbolism and the filmography. Kudos again Tom!
I liked how Dolce Domum picked a lot of low brow movies to illustrate how the themes have manifested into mainstream culture. Gladiator is one my favorite movies ever. I'm glad Rio picked it, because it does have such beautiful ways to think about death and immortality. It always surprises me how much Disney slipped into its cartoons and movies. I thought Hercules was a little hokey, but Beauty and the Beast was classic. As was Homeward Bound. I think I heard Lisa say that the movie made her cry rather than laugh. I did too. I love dogs.
The final group I saw- Eternal Return- did such a beautiful job with their script- way to be! I was seriously impressed with the dialogue and thought that some of it must have been quoted from somewhere. Sarah and Brianna were hilarious.

Newspaper

This has nothing to do with class, but if there's anyone interested in writing for the Exponent, you should let me know. Lots of the writers, myself included, will be studying abroad next semester, so there are plenty of open editor/writer positions. From what I understand, the editor positions for distractions, opinions and something else. ..I forget. . .are open. Those positions have stipends attached to them for anyone wanting a little more cash. The writing positions offer people a very little bit of money, but the experience is good and the hours/work are extremely flexible.
I can email applications to anyone who is interested. Applications are due relatively soon.
Thank you. . .That is all.

Page 191

Reading this page, I had a great sense of Catholic churchyness. At the beginning, he seems to be talking about a Catholic homily, which he doesn't seem to like very much, because he calls the priest an "unfrillfrocked quackfriar." The tone is mocking and disrespectful- he calls him a monkey- "Afferyank!- "Affe" is Monkey in German. The following passage affirms that sense of disrespect/mockery feel, at least for me, because the passage has the flow and sound of this church song they sing back at home called, "One Faith." "There is one faith, one hope, and one baptism, one God and Father of all" - "one gob, one gap, one gulp and gorger of all!"
The page then moves into childhood, which is connected, I think, because Joyce himself went to a Catholic boarding school. The boy on the page comes from "uncivilized" type of area, or at least a poverty stricken area, maybe, but people can see his potential. The older people seem to think he will turn out well, "incomeshare lotetree(lottery)"- they just have to take the chance. Kids seem to like him, and the speech switches to that of a youth- "tome to Tindertarten, pease." The tone shifts yet again from this optimistic view of this boy to something more negative, paralleled with the passing of a day. "but him you laid low with one hand one fine May morning in the Meddle of your Might, your bosom foe, because he mussed your speller on you." Something competitive perhaps? Maybe the guy encountered a bully or two. He's the nerd getting smacked and crammed into a locker. Or perhaps not?
This is what I got out of my page. That was a fairly anticlimactic way to end.

Paper Topic-Brainstorm Ramble

Even though all of the themes are all related, I'm most interested in the themes of Myth and Dream, Life as Fiction and the 20 Minute Lifetime. The recurring element to all of these is time and reality. I'd like to discuss that side of scientific time with philosophic time and how that all ties our themes together. I want to talk about death, reincarnation and life. I think a huge resource for all of this will be this paper Terry L. Fairchild wrote entitled, "Time, Eternity and Immortality." I don't know if Terry's a guy or a girl, so I'm going to call it it. It incorporates the scientific view of time and transcendental meditation with the Four Quartets. If you'd like to take a look, you could check out http://www.mum.edu/msvs/9199terry.html. I think it's a fascinating read on Eliot.
Time is all relative to the individual. I kept trying to think of how to verbalize this, but then I gave up, went to YouTube and found a video from the old version of the Time Machine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVlr24zD_KQ&playnext_from=TL&videos=2MHb7a0rIkk Time for the person "at rest" will be different than the person "in motion." It depends on perspective and consciousness. Patrick Stewart in the Inner Light fainted and found himself in a world where he was supposedly sick and feverish for four days. When we travel from this time zone to others, it's kind of like time traveling, because when we go east or west, we are either going backward or forward in time. "Time cannot be said to exist until someone witnesses it or feels its effects."- Fairchild.
Sorry this is so jumbled. . .I'm just trying to wrap my head around this. I think myth and dream come into the picture with time and consciousness, because we've created time to give ourselves a solid foundation for reality. At this time, this happened. . or in a few days, this will happen. It gives us a way to chronologically organize our lives. I think that's why we get so panicky and worried when we lose track of it all. Sick in bed, head injury. . .the Hangover. But dreams seem to be a more realistic way to look at life in terms of time. So many things can get accomplished in dreams. I've been wondering lately if dreams are just the other lives we have when we're not in this one. Herman wakes up to another kind of life. "My dreams have always borne a disturbing resemblance to life, as if even in my sleep I could not come up with something new, but now it was the other way around, now at last my life resembled a dream."
Back to Fairchild, it brought up E= mc² as "an image of immortality." And it was like a lightbulb turned on in my head, which is funny because the equation is about the speed of light. Ha ha. Anyway, something I remembered from high school science- energy cannot be destroyed or created. It can only be transferred, or metamorphosed. People have energy, in body and mind. When the body goes out, it returns to the earth, dust and ashes and all that. Does the mind do the same thing? Or does that energy transfer to something or somebody else? The Amber Spyglass talks about that. The spirits of those characters, their energies, returned to the land of the living, becoming the grass, the trees and the sky. When we dream, our conscious mind takes us somewhere, transferring our thoughts to a new world. The many worlds thing, by the by, could be possible if you take up String Theory and Quantum Mechanics as truth. So when we die, which I've often heard as "going to sleep," maybe it's just our mind traveling off to find a new home to occupy. I met a lady at the retirement home in town. She told me that reincarnation was real, because she could remember all of her past lives. She said that they were wonderful lives, but she was so tired. She told me that the next time she goes to sleep, she just wants to wake up in Heaven, and live the rest of her life(lives) up there. In Scrubs season 2, I think, they have an episode about death. A patient sees it as a big Broadway musical coming to an end. "As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed/ With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of dark-/ ness on darkness." It doesn't sound too scary to have a scene change, a change in worlds, but I think people fear it anyway. I think it's far worse to be left with "only the growing terror of nothing to think about;/ Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing--"
This is pretty much what I've been thinking. I have a lot of organization to do with it, but I think it's really fascinating.

For Good Friday. . .

I'm a little early. . . but with Easter looming nearer, I couldn't get this passage out of my head.

"The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
It's a passage I want to repeat over and over, until I can gifure out what he means by this.
I'd ponder this more, but my right contact has been funny for awhile and now suddenly I can't really see out of it anymore, making typing ridiculoulsy hard.

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.

Another Wake

I was internet surfing and came across this song by, Flogging Molly called, "May the living be dead (In our wake)." It made me happy, because the band is Irishy, and I understood the reference.
: )

Real Love Abides- thoughts on a review

Sept. 1956, William Barrett wrote a review of the Three Novels by Beckett, called "Real Love Abides." I like how this guy describes reading Beckett as having "to take him in short gulps, coming back again and again." This guy wasn't impressed by Beckett's writing at first, but it sounds like he read it twice. The first time, he read as if it were a "normal" novel, and the second, in gulps, in gasps, it would seem to me. Barrett describes him as a wounded bird, who tries to give it all out before he dies. He calls him an artist, who takes the paint from the canvas, but keeps the increasingly white surface exciting. It makes me think of those last moments, we talked about. Like the woman in the Inner Light or Socrates. You know in movies, when dying characters noisily grasp for breath, all raspy and rattling? I'm starting to think that they might not be trying to rake in more moments or more life, but instead, they're trying to get rid of something while they still can. I could be wrong, but there's kind of a beauty in it. It's like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when they guy chooses to release all his emotions, instead of retreating to his mind and holding everything in. I guess, by that time, you'd have everything to lose and nothing to gain, or everything to gain by losing everything. I don't know.

Child's Play

In high school, my class read portions of "Waiting for Godot" and I can't say I remember much about it, except we all knew the characters were waiting for God and we all knew God wasn't going to show up. My dad was really excited when he heard my class read bits of it, especially the clown/servant speech. He thought the whole thing was fascinating. When a movie version came out (I have no idea what the year was), my dad took my mom to see it or rented it or something, I think for a date night. He told me it was so fantastic, and my mom told me she wanted to die. She said it felt like four hours watching two guys by a dead tree. I looked at the Beckett site and found this guinea pig production of the play. http://www.musearts.com/cartoons/pigs/godot.html I liked it; I just totally got what was supposed to be said and when the guy and the servant walks across, I laughed, because I remembered that part. The whole thing was about three minutes. My roommate walked out after about ten, maybe fifteen seconds. I kind of prefer the guinea pig version to the actual play, but I'm glad I know enough about the play to understand why three minutes of silent blinking guinea pigs are funny.
Anyway, I was thinking about the five moments where you can tell Beckett is creating fiction, and while reading Molloy, I finally realized that the whole thing was creating fiction. I know we talked about it, but I kept reading, "I think, I don't think. . ." It was this or that.. . the way he talked about the setting and the people reminded me of children playing with doll houses or playing pretend. "A little dog followed him, a pomeraian I think, but I don't think so." When little kids tell you stories, don't they say this? I was at a preschool over winter break, and I was having a conversation with a little girl with pretend telephones. At some point, she was having a conversation with the phone (I'd say she was pretending, but she was really having a conversation, listening and responding). When she was done, I asked her who she talked to. "Oh, my mom." She sighed. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, she wants to . . . (sometimes three year olds are hard to understand, but I think she said something to the effect of her mom wanting a new carpet or traveling??) "Really?" I asked. "No."
These kids made up all sorts of stories, and when I asked them to clarify or if I said, "Really?" they would either say, "No-" With that look on their face that told me I was stupid or they would say, "Oh yeah!" And they would make a bunch of elaborate details before getting sidetracked and coming up with a new story. I was just struck by Beckett in Molloy, and how much he reminded me of those kids. He comes up with little side stories or characters, and he seems to get close to them, but then he dismisses them so easily. He seems to explore the imagination and the art of writing, in a cynical little kid kind of way, and I think it's intriguing. I think everyone does it at some point. It makes life interesting. And that brings me to Haroun too, (and I was really excited when I found this spot) because he says, "I've disbelieved only too much in my long life, now I swallow everything, greedily. What I need now is stories, it took me a long time to know that, and I'm not sure of it." "What is the use of stories?" Also in Pullman's Amber Spyglass. "Tell them stories. . . " I'll end with the story. My best friend and I liked to make up stuff, I guess you might call them lies, but they were so ridiculous, I didn't see why people should believe them (and I actually now prefer stories that are true, but don't seem like it, i.e. my friend Mark, who is a story). Anyway, my best friend and I usually got a ride from my other friend and her dad. My little sister got a ride with us too. One day, she got a ride from my mom, because she had some project due and had poster boards and whatnot. Later on in the afternoon, my friend asked me where my sister was that morning- she just noticed or remembered that she wasn't there. I told her she had an Anne Frank project. Christy- my friend- asked why that should matter. I said, because my sister really wanted to get to know the character of Anne. She was going to walk to school, because that's what they did back in the day, but then a family friend said, why let her walk when she can ride in a horse and carriage like everyone did in the early 1900s. ("Really?" Christy said- that's so cool. . they still rode in carriages?) Well, it was more like an open wagon, but she still got the feeling for it. The bumpy seat and the fresh smell of horse poo. She totally felt like Anne. And my other friend, who was listening said, "Wait a minute- wasn't that like WWII era?" I would think they'd have bikes or automobiles or something." I said probably. I didn't know that Anne Frank ever rode around in a horse drawn wagon. She probably didn't. Christy was mad for a second, because she believed me, but then she said she was just too gullible. I agreed, but I had a good time. The end.