So my roommate Gbrilla brill ( http://gabbygp.blogspot.com/ )is a film major and she thought that I was interesting enough to do a visual essay on for her directing the documentary class.
Thissis what came out of it.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
"Myself moving forward then and now and forever"
Another American Lit response paperrrrrr.
I think I'm going to talk about three different things that, at the moment, have nothing in common, but maybe by the end they'll have some sort of connection.
The first topic I wanted to discuss comes from Walk Whitman's "Song of Myself". Section 28 seems to be about touch. He describes touch in such a way as if it is violating or raping him. I can understand how this section might be about sin or thoughts unwanted, but I'm going to pretend it's about touch. What really got me interested in this section was the last two lines; "You villain touch! What are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat, unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me." I've never really thought about touch. Of course when something pleasing or uncomfortable comes along I notice it. But I never really thought about what touch is. It's so common and always there, almost insignificant in light of all the other things going on. Though, in reality, it is all things going on, isn't it? If the world is how we perceive it, and touch is one of the six tools of our perception, then touch is part creator of our world around us? I feel like suddenly enlightened! The way Whitman describes touch seems to be completely correct to me, in a way. What we feel, physically, is uncontrollable on our part. We cannot control the sensations we get on any part of our body by the surrounding world. We are essentially always being raped and violated by everything else physical.
In the same poem, Whitman also comments on reality, saying "I accept Reality and dare not question it." This brings me to my second topic of believing what's in front of you, or listening to those assuming and uncontrollable thoughts we call our intuition. In Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno", Captain Delano is a very optimistic and unassuming man. He goes aboard a sketchy ship, which seems to be in distress, and tries to lend a hand. Throughout the story, things are happening around him, giving him "clues" that something is not how it seems. But, Captain Delano, being the positive man that he is, fights his assuming thoughts, and tries to stick to the facts he is presented, believing everything he is told and shown. By the reader, this may be viewed as naïve, but had Delano reacted to his first suspicion, thinking the ship was a pirate ship, he would have been wrong. Also, had he allowed those thoughts to permeate, creating imaginary stories of what could be, he may have reacted in a way that could have gotten him killed. The mind is a very powerful thing; it can create separate and very believable realities, different from the one which is perceived by our six senses. This is demonstrated by the narrators in Poe's "Ligeia" and "William Wilson". Therefore, I think it's important to always question, but never to over react on assumptions, which is what Captain Delano did. So, perhaps Captain Delano is a wise man, and not so much naive.
The third topic I want to talk about also deals with reality; the reality in death. Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a great representation of the progression of life during and after death. In "Song of Myself" Whitman states his belief of death, "The smallest sprout shows there is really no death." With a belief such as this one, one would think that this man might celebrate "death", and not mourn it. But, as shown in the beginning of "Lilacs", when death is something close and present in his life, Whitman does mourn and is put in a state of depression and deep sorrow. Though, as time moves forward and the poem progresses, Whitman joins his belief in the celebration of death, because it isn't at the moment present. I think Whitman sees this cycle of contradiction he makes and states it in the third line of the poem "I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring." With every death he will mourn, even if he believes in his mind that death is celebratory, when it becomes a reality, he unwillingly will feel the sorrow. I mentioned before that the mind can create separate realities, and here, I think it is an example. We can take everything presented to us in life, and deal with it and mold it into whatever we want to. Death seems to be the worst possible outcome, especially for those we love. It is inevitable to feel sorrow when it happens and is present, but we can choose to allow the thoughts to permeate our lives and destroy us with this sorrow, or we can look at it under a new light, make peace with it, and believe that the dead is in fact living, just in a different form. Yay! I made connections.
I think I'm going to talk about three different things that, at the moment, have nothing in common, but maybe by the end they'll have some sort of connection.
The first topic I wanted to discuss comes from Walk Whitman's "Song of Myself". Section 28 seems to be about touch. He describes touch in such a way as if it is violating or raping him. I can understand how this section might be about sin or thoughts unwanted, but I'm going to pretend it's about touch. What really got me interested in this section was the last two lines; "You villain touch! What are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat, unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me." I've never really thought about touch. Of course when something pleasing or uncomfortable comes along I notice it. But I never really thought about what touch is. It's so common and always there, almost insignificant in light of all the other things going on. Though, in reality, it is all things going on, isn't it? If the world is how we perceive it, and touch is one of the six tools of our perception, then touch is part creator of our world around us? I feel like suddenly enlightened! The way Whitman describes touch seems to be completely correct to me, in a way. What we feel, physically, is uncontrollable on our part. We cannot control the sensations we get on any part of our body by the surrounding world. We are essentially always being raped and violated by everything else physical.
In the same poem, Whitman also comments on reality, saying "I accept Reality and dare not question it." This brings me to my second topic of believing what's in front of you, or listening to those assuming and uncontrollable thoughts we call our intuition. In Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno", Captain Delano is a very optimistic and unassuming man. He goes aboard a sketchy ship, which seems to be in distress, and tries to lend a hand. Throughout the story, things are happening around him, giving him "clues" that something is not how it seems. But, Captain Delano, being the positive man that he is, fights his assuming thoughts, and tries to stick to the facts he is presented, believing everything he is told and shown. By the reader, this may be viewed as naïve, but had Delano reacted to his first suspicion, thinking the ship was a pirate ship, he would have been wrong. Also, had he allowed those thoughts to permeate, creating imaginary stories of what could be, he may have reacted in a way that could have gotten him killed. The mind is a very powerful thing; it can create separate and very believable realities, different from the one which is perceived by our six senses. This is demonstrated by the narrators in Poe's "Ligeia" and "William Wilson". Therefore, I think it's important to always question, but never to over react on assumptions, which is what Captain Delano did. So, perhaps Captain Delano is a wise man, and not so much naive.
The third topic I want to talk about also deals with reality; the reality in death. Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a great representation of the progression of life during and after death. In "Song of Myself" Whitman states his belief of death, "The smallest sprout shows there is really no death." With a belief such as this one, one would think that this man might celebrate "death", and not mourn it. But, as shown in the beginning of "Lilacs", when death is something close and present in his life, Whitman does mourn and is put in a state of depression and deep sorrow. Though, as time moves forward and the poem progresses, Whitman joins his belief in the celebration of death, because it isn't at the moment present. I think Whitman sees this cycle of contradiction he makes and states it in the third line of the poem "I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring." With every death he will mourn, even if he believes in his mind that death is celebratory, when it becomes a reality, he unwillingly will feel the sorrow. I mentioned before that the mind can create separate realities, and here, I think it is an example. We can take everything presented to us in life, and deal with it and mold it into whatever we want to. Death seems to be the worst possible outcome, especially for those we love. It is inevitable to feel sorrow when it happens and is present, but we can choose to allow the thoughts to permeate our lives and destroy us with this sorrow, or we can look at it under a new light, make peace with it, and believe that the dead is in fact living, just in a different form. Yay! I made connections.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
i dont know
I wonder if there are people, who, because of this whole impending end of the world scare, are devising these great and elaborate plans to vacate the earth...
If there is this super intelligent group of people working to build an alternative space to live. You know, some great space station.
It could be happening.
you dont know.
If there is this super intelligent group of people working to build an alternative space to live. You know, some great space station.
It could be happening.
you dont know.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
"The smallest sprout shows there is really no death."
1. My mom is the greatest. and weirdest. and I love her. and she made this guy from scratch!!
This is little Mr. Snowman. My mom and Mr. Snowman sent him to me so he can learn how to make art, like me, so says my mom :) haha
2. I finished the purse I started over winter break:
3. I just finished reading "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman.
You should read it too. It's long, and might not make much sense at some points. But..it's worth it..I think. To me it's a song about everything. a song of the rambling mind of Whitman.
It's good.
so good.
This is little Mr. Snowman. My mom and Mr. Snowman sent him to me so he can learn how to make art, like me, so says my mom :) haha
2. I finished the purse I started over winter break:
3. I just finished reading "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman.
You should read it too. It's long, and might not make much sense at some points. But..it's worth it..I think. To me it's a song about everything. a song of the rambling mind of Whitman.
It's good.
so good.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
our sphere is not the only way
I took notes in class while we were discussing Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil", and one of the things I wrote down was "there is no meaning in anything. Meaning is a human perception and way to find/create order." In The American Scholar Emerson says "what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind?" Nature is man's perception of it.
If a person does not have a 'concrete' meaning or explanation for something, their minds will germinate into knots trying to figure out an explanation, and will not stop until the sturdy tree of explanation is found to rest under. But, not everything needs an explanation, and that concept is very hard to grasp sometimes, because as humans, we fear the unknown. In "The Minister's Black Veil", the parishioners allowed themselves to live a life of dis-ease because of the obsession of what Father Hooper's veil might mean. I understand how Father Hooper might be considered a villain, and how as a pastor he shouldn't have necessarily brought this gloom onto his parishioners, but ultimately it was they themselves who allowed the gloom to linger. It's a situation of mind over matter. A person's life is what that person makes of it, how that person deals with the cards dealt. Also, Father Hooper's donning the veil at a whim, with whatever notion he had, and with whatever time-span he intended it to be, it eventually grew into this permanent exiling burden that defined the rest of his life. It was the idea, the principle, the lesson, that he felt he could not deter from or go back on. But I was told that it is okay to contradict yourself.
In Hawthorne's "The Birth Mark," Alymer allowed his thoughts to wander about Georgina's birthmark. In his mind, the birthmark went from a mark on the surface, to a terrible gash deep within. The story says "selecting it [the birthmark] as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Alymer's somber imagination was not long in rendering the birth-mark a frightful object…" In the beginning, Georgina loved her mark, but because of Alymer's feelings towards it, she began to detest it as much as he did; and eventually, his imagination wondering what it might 'mean' wandered into dangerous territory, which eventually led to her death.
The human mind is a very powerful thing, and I believe that we can eventually convince ourselves that anything is true. I was in Wyoming, walking down the Granite Canyon trail, in the Grand Teton Mountain range; all around me were huge mountains, lush green shrubbery, a clear blue creek, and a pale blue sky overhead. I was so overwhelmed that I felt the need to thank something or some One. Then, it suddenly hit me; I realized that this is how it must have started long long ago, before religion and the belief in a creator. The immense and tantalizing landscape calls forth in humans the demand for an explanation. This beauty could not just be, it had to have been made; but by whom or what? And so, with our great imaginations, we began to ponder and to find "clues" that led us to many explanations.
When a seed is planted, it will sprout and germinate, and can sometimes grow into a huge, seemingly immovable tree. The tree means we've found an explanation. Eventually having the tree will force us to forget about other trees (or possibilities), and that one seed becomes fact. From this "fact" we form habits and everlasting traditions. In "The Great Lawsuit," Fuller phrases it as "the slavery of habit." We contain ourselves in a "sphere" and forget that the present way is not the only way.
If a person does not have a 'concrete' meaning or explanation for something, their minds will germinate into knots trying to figure out an explanation, and will not stop until the sturdy tree of explanation is found to rest under. But, not everything needs an explanation, and that concept is very hard to grasp sometimes, because as humans, we fear the unknown. In "The Minister's Black Veil", the parishioners allowed themselves to live a life of dis-ease because of the obsession of what Father Hooper's veil might mean. I understand how Father Hooper might be considered a villain, and how as a pastor he shouldn't have necessarily brought this gloom onto his parishioners, but ultimately it was they themselves who allowed the gloom to linger. It's a situation of mind over matter. A person's life is what that person makes of it, how that person deals with the cards dealt. Also, Father Hooper's donning the veil at a whim, with whatever notion he had, and with whatever time-span he intended it to be, it eventually grew into this permanent exiling burden that defined the rest of his life. It was the idea, the principle, the lesson, that he felt he could not deter from or go back on. But I was told that it is okay to contradict yourself.
In Hawthorne's "The Birth Mark," Alymer allowed his thoughts to wander about Georgina's birthmark. In his mind, the birthmark went from a mark on the surface, to a terrible gash deep within. The story says "selecting it [the birthmark] as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Alymer's somber imagination was not long in rendering the birth-mark a frightful object…" In the beginning, Georgina loved her mark, but because of Alymer's feelings towards it, she began to detest it as much as he did; and eventually, his imagination wondering what it might 'mean' wandered into dangerous territory, which eventually led to her death.
The human mind is a very powerful thing, and I believe that we can eventually convince ourselves that anything is true. I was in Wyoming, walking down the Granite Canyon trail, in the Grand Teton Mountain range; all around me were huge mountains, lush green shrubbery, a clear blue creek, and a pale blue sky overhead. I was so overwhelmed that I felt the need to thank something or some One. Then, it suddenly hit me; I realized that this is how it must have started long long ago, before religion and the belief in a creator. The immense and tantalizing landscape calls forth in humans the demand for an explanation. This beauty could not just be, it had to have been made; but by whom or what? And so, with our great imaginations, we began to ponder and to find "clues" that led us to many explanations.
When a seed is planted, it will sprout and germinate, and can sometimes grow into a huge, seemingly immovable tree. The tree means we've found an explanation. Eventually having the tree will force us to forget about other trees (or possibilities), and that one seed becomes fact. From this "fact" we form habits and everlasting traditions. In "The Great Lawsuit," Fuller phrases it as "the slavery of habit." We contain ourselves in a "sphere" and forget that the present way is not the only way.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Emerson
It's a new quarter and I have new classes. One of which is an American Literature class. I'm super excited about it. We have to write response papers every week on what we read, soooo I'll probably be posting those here. I'm just going to pretend that everyone wants to know what I think.
yah...here we go, and I know it's a bit hypocritical because I'm utilizing technology as we speak to type and post it. But, everyone is a little hypocritical.
Emerson touched on a subject that I continually see in the world today. In his essay, Self-Reliance, he stated, "The civilized man has built a couch, but has lost the use of his feet…" People are extremely dependent upon their inventions and if left without most of them they would be left in a complete stupor, or even fail to survive. We have become so immersed in the convenient life, so fascinated by producing actions by the click of a button, or without the use of hands that we have lost the ability to use our inherent tools, our body and mind, to complete a task. What saddens me the most is the lack in use of our mind. In the same paragraph, Emerson also stated "notebooks impair his memory…," but today it isn't even the notebook, because it's now rare for people to write anything by hand. We have computers that allow us to send our notes to any device anywhere in the world in a split second. We have phones that instantly remind us what to do, when, where, and why if we want them to. Therefore, our brain realizes it doesn't have to work so hard to remember, so it forgets.
That reminds me of a lecture I listened to on ted.com, given by the author Douglas Adams, called Parrots, the Universe and Everything. He tells the story of the kakapo. The kakapo is a large now-flightless parrot, native to New Zealand. At first, the kakapo had no predators; therefore, it had no need to worry or fly, so eventually he lost his ability to fly. Before the Europeans arrived, the kakapo species flourished. But the Europeans introduced rats, dogs, cats, and other predators of the kakapo. But, because the kakapo was new to the idea of something wanting to eat him, he did not run away, and even if he wanted to, he could not fly away. Rapidly, the population of the kakapo dropped from somewhere in the hundreds of thousands to the low forties.
I think that this story says something similar to what Emerson is touching on. Because of convenience, we lose the abilities we would otherwise have, and eventually something might come in defiance of our convenience, and we will be left helpless with no ability to provide for or protect ourselves.
Earlier in Self-Reliance, Emerson states, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." We think we are enhancing and advancing our civilization by providing these new tools and gadgets that do everything we can think to make them do; we believe that these new high-tech tools give us power and superiority. But in reality, these tools are only hurting us in the long run. They are making us lazy, overweight, and dumb. Instead of power, they are making us weak.
In Emerson's The American Scholar, he quotes the proverb, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." In the context of today, it might read, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must get a crane, an airplane, and higher others to carry the wealth of the Indies."
Today, it's rare for someone to rely on themselves, without the use of technology. But because we are so engulfed in it and some of us have never lived without it, it's hard to understand how life could be possible without it. But life is very possible without it, and I think that it's important for us to put ourselves in the situation of not having our treasured technology and conveniences, and understand how to survive without it, in case one day it is compromised.
yah...here we go, and I know it's a bit hypocritical because I'm utilizing technology as we speak to type and post it. But, everyone is a little hypocritical.
Emerson touched on a subject that I continually see in the world today. In his essay, Self-Reliance, he stated, "The civilized man has built a couch, but has lost the use of his feet…" People are extremely dependent upon their inventions and if left without most of them they would be left in a complete stupor, or even fail to survive. We have become so immersed in the convenient life, so fascinated by producing actions by the click of a button, or without the use of hands that we have lost the ability to use our inherent tools, our body and mind, to complete a task. What saddens me the most is the lack in use of our mind. In the same paragraph, Emerson also stated "notebooks impair his memory…," but today it isn't even the notebook, because it's now rare for people to write anything by hand. We have computers that allow us to send our notes to any device anywhere in the world in a split second. We have phones that instantly remind us what to do, when, where, and why if we want them to. Therefore, our brain realizes it doesn't have to work so hard to remember, so it forgets.
That reminds me of a lecture I listened to on ted.com, given by the author Douglas Adams, called Parrots, the Universe and Everything. He tells the story of the kakapo. The kakapo is a large now-flightless parrot, native to New Zealand. At first, the kakapo had no predators; therefore, it had no need to worry or fly, so eventually he lost his ability to fly. Before the Europeans arrived, the kakapo species flourished. But the Europeans introduced rats, dogs, cats, and other predators of the kakapo. But, because the kakapo was new to the idea of something wanting to eat him, he did not run away, and even if he wanted to, he could not fly away. Rapidly, the population of the kakapo dropped from somewhere in the hundreds of thousands to the low forties.
I think that this story says something similar to what Emerson is touching on. Because of convenience, we lose the abilities we would otherwise have, and eventually something might come in defiance of our convenience, and we will be left helpless with no ability to provide for or protect ourselves.
Earlier in Self-Reliance, Emerson states, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." We think we are enhancing and advancing our civilization by providing these new tools and gadgets that do everything we can think to make them do; we believe that these new high-tech tools give us power and superiority. But in reality, these tools are only hurting us in the long run. They are making us lazy, overweight, and dumb. Instead of power, they are making us weak.
In Emerson's The American Scholar, he quotes the proverb, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." In the context of today, it might read, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must get a crane, an airplane, and higher others to carry the wealth of the Indies."
Today, it's rare for someone to rely on themselves, without the use of technology. But because we are so engulfed in it and some of us have never lived without it, it's hard to understand how life could be possible without it. But life is very possible without it, and I think that it's important for us to put ourselves in the situation of not having our treasured technology and conveniences, and understand how to survive without it, in case one day it is compromised.
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