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.