Very Becoming.

Poachers

2011-08-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

I love eggs prepared any way, which is probably why I love French cuisine so much. The French love eggs and have hundreds (millions) of ways to prepare them and recipes to use them in. When I was in Paris, I didn't think I could possibly find an egg dish more delicious than a quiche or souffle actually prepared in France, but I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, the Quiche Lorraine and cheese souffle I had in Paris were divine, but the sardine and olive pizza with an egg baked in the middle was something not from this world. It was genius!

I don't know why it seemed unfathomable when I first saw it on a menu; I love making baked eggs and cheese, but this is an egg baked into the center of a pizza we're talking about here. This pizza was messy and needed to be eaten with a knife and fork. It was beautiful. Once I ran my knife down the middle of the pizza, the yolk flooded over everything and soaked through the cheese and wafer-thin crust. (Please, give me a moment to regain composure.)

Since that night in Paris, I've had a revelation: the best way, nay, the only way to prepare eggs is one that allows the yolk to become the luscious, liquid gold it hopes to be.

I discovered poached eggs a month ago when I first ordered Eggs Benedict at the Skylark Diner on Route 1. I don't know why I had never ordered Eggs Benedict before. I mean, the dish has everything anyone could possibly love: toasted English muffin, slice of Canadian bacon, poached egg, hollandaise sauce. Words really fail me, here. First off, a poached egg is extremely delicate and fair. A fork only needs to prick the egg white for the golden yolk to pour out and mix with the hollandaise atop the English muffin. Needless to say, I have been hooked on Eggs Benedict and poached eggs ever since but only ate them whenever I went to a diner because I assumed that poaching eggs would be very difficult.

Until I searched YouTube and found some videos on how to poach an egg. It only takes two minutes for an egg to poach in a pot of boiling water. Voila! Well, I have to say that my poached eggs have improved with practice and from acquiring these few tips:

1.) Make sure the eggs you are using are at room temperature.
2.) Do not crack the egg directly into the boiling water! Instead, crack it into a small bowl before transferring it to the boiling water. Also, (I think this is common sense) make sure you only crack one egg into a bowl at a time.
3.) Add a drop of white wine vinegar to the boiling water to help the egg white come together. Trust me, this will keep you from making egg drop soup.
4.) Use a spoon to stir the water before pouring in the egg. Making a small whirlpool will help the egg white come together.

I make pretty good poached eggs, now. I eat them in a simple fashion: I add a little salt and pepper and soak up the yolk with two slices of toast. But Aida Mollenkamp has this great recipe for Eggs in Purgatory, Shakshouka, that I tried and loved. I love the idea of poaching eggs in sauce as opposed to water. This Tunisian dish really is delicious. Aida would never steer you wrong.

I Could Do This For a Living

2011-08-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have become a food writer/restaurant reviewer of sorts for the Woodbridge Patch. I don't pretend to be of the same caliber as Gail Simmons, Bourdain, or a New York Times food critic, but I have been eating all my life and think this qualifies me to make judgments about what constitutes "good" food. It qualifies me to pass judgment on local restaurants for the Woodbridge Patch, anyway. And I'm proud of my restaurant reviews. I really enjoy writing about food. Granted, I am not able to be completely honest because restaurants usually offer me free or discounted meals and treat me like a minor celebrity, so I feel obligated (rather my editor obligates me) to write only lovely things about the restaurants I visit. I only refuse to write a review if a restaurant is absolutely terrible, in which case I tell my editor that I refuse to lie and she reimburses the restaurant for my meal.

So, yes, lately I have considered becoming a food (and travel) writer. I suppose those who don't cook because they can't afford the awesome gadgets used on the cooking channel or don't have access to a kitchen of their own must eat other people's food and write about it or judge it critically. Hypocritical? Well, no one ever said writers are not hypocrites.

I've been cataloging (keeping a list) all the recipes I want to try once I can get my hands on the ingredients and convince my mom or someone who has their own kitchen that I won't make a catastrophic mess. One of my new cooking idols Aarti Sequeira, who hosts Aarti Party on Food Network, showed how to make paneer on her most recent episode. Paneer is a cheese used in Indian and Middle Eastern cooking that tastes like cottage or ricotta cheese, is very firm, and doesn't melt. It's so simple to make, too. The only ingredients are milk and lemon juice. On her blog, I also found a great recipe for roasting halloumi cheese, which is another cheese used in Middle Eastern cooking that doesn't melt. I actually encountered this cheese while I was in England, only I came to know it as "squeaky cheese" because it squeaks when you chew it. It seems that the cheese is usually grilled or pan fried; I never saw any restaurant roast it in England. Aarti says that roasting the halloumi cuts some of its super-salty flavor, but I really love the saltiness of the cheese. However, if you don't like salty food, you probably won't enjoy halloumi.

I ate at Bonefish last night and had the Maryland Crab Cakes. I really love their crab cakes. Why? Because they're all crab! They don't seem to use breading or stuffing to make them at all; just huge lumps of crab held together with a spicy tartar sauce. And they're boiled rather than fried, so they're actually healthier than crab cakes you'd find at most other restaurants. I try to eat healthy most nights of the week, but I do not believe in sacrificing flavor to save calories, so the Maryland Crab Cake dinner at Bonefish gets my seal of approval.

I'm not a "regular" at Bonefish, but I try to eat there as often as I can--special occasions, my parents want to treat me, my gentleman caller is excited to spend his paycheck on an exciting, nice dinner. Actually, last night was the first time my gentleman caller had ever eaten at Bonefish. I think he enjoyed it. He's a picky eater but can recognize good seafood when he tastes it. And his tastebuds would have to be dead to not fall head-over-heels in love with the complimentary bread.

Bonefish has my favorite bread basket. It's a simple, typical crusty white bread. The crust is crispy but not crunchy, and the center is soft and served hot. I don't need butter or olive oil on this bread. It's so good that I hate to cover it up.

What I really like about Bonefish is its high-end New York restaurant ambiance. Oh, and its sangria (red and white) and extensive wine list. Bonefish definitely sets the bar for chain seafood restaurants.

Her Body's A Landscape

2011-07-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

a short story
by M. Blaha

Desdemona started posing in the nude for her husband ten years ago, in 1983. Every morning she enters his studio—the large annex space in their country cottage in Rodmell—at eight and waits for her husband, Toby, to relay his vision and instruct her to pose in a certain manner in a certain part of the house. The most recent portrait of Desdemona hangs over the fireplace of the south parlor and features her sitting in a loveseat and reading in front of a bookshelf in a Victorian-cluttered drawing room. Her left leg is curled under the right one that rests on the floor and a white sheet flows loosely from her waist and over her right hip, just covering her pelvis and pubic triangle. Her torso is turned toward the back of the sofa, and she holds some book in front of her and appears charmed by its contents, as her lips hold the slight curve of a smile. “I’ll call this one, Naked Woman Reading in her Sitting Room,” Toby declared proudly, as usual. When titles for his paintings strike him, he feels the need to herald them as though he were claiming a country.

The first nude portrait he ever painted of Desdemona was a cliché variation of the Odalisque. He hung a thick, red velvet curtain to hide the wallpaper of this studio and had her pose on a divan so that her backside was facing him. She turned her head so that she was looking at Toby over her shoulder, only she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at some of the framed landscapes hanging on the wall that Toby had painted so many years ago when his eyesight allowed him to paint without much strain. Toby claimed that painting her nude helped his vision. It was good practice for him to try and capture the lines and contours of her naked body, the contrast of her skin and hair against the red velvet curtain with his oils on canvas. Desdemona suddenly felt like a mountain. She felt as though she was part of the English landscape her husband was quite famous for rendering in his art.

Desdemona had been self-conscious of her naked wrinkled body at first, despite Toby’s assertion that she was just as beautiful as the day he met her, almost fifty-four years ago. In the first few portraits he did, which were all Odalisque-style but in different rooms of the house, he allowed her to cover the lower half of her body with a sheet so that only a hint of the crack of her bottom was revealed, and to wear her long, gray-white hair down so that it covered the part of her back that was most wrinkled, fat, and speckled with moles and sun spots.

It was six months before Desdemona was able to bare her breasts for Toby to paint. When he grew tired of painting his wife’s backside—she was eventually able to pose without the sheet covering her body and to tie her hair up in a bun—he decided he wanted her to pose as Eve in their gated, heavily shrouded, backyard Garden of Eden. In his first few renderings he allowed his wife to curtain her sagging breasts with her long hair, and he only painted her from the belly button up.

Toby couldn’t understand why his wife was so self-conscious about her body. It was not like the Desdemona he thought he knew. Certainly she was older—much older—than the fearless twenty-one year-old woman he married fifty-four years ago who was an aspiring painter herself (she dabbled in watercolors), but it wasn’t as though he was going to sell these nude portraits of his wife or put them in a gallery exhibition.

These paintings were for them. For their marriage. Toby had devoted his life to his painting, and Desdemona devoted herself to Toby. Toby believed in his art, and his wife believed in him as an artist. She supported him, cared for him, helped him to continue to paint in spite of his worsening vision. She guided him through colors and lines and contours. These paintings symbolized the artist he had become because he was supported by the woman he loved.

Toby had troubled vision since he was a young man. He was unable to enlist in the British army during the Great War like his baby brother (killed at Passchendaele) and fellow countrymen. His relatively poor vision did not affect his ability to mix and blend colors, to render the stone beaches of Brighton, the waves pulling away and throwing themselves at the shore, the sun racing across the tall grass of the fields, the trim grass of the bowling greens, the sunlight drying the country houses that stood proudly on the Sussex countryside after a rainstorm.

He bought himself a Breton shirt and decided to devote himself to his passion for painting. He began teaching and taking classes at the Royal Academy of Art, where he was surrounded by like-minded people, by people who were not able to devote themselves to the war effort for one reason or another. Many of the artists he met were not prevented from enlisting in the army due to medical conditions, but rather because of their personal convictions, some brand of pacifism. These men who were devoting themselves to their art never even considered enlisting.

Toby was not particularly dismayed by the fact that he was unfit for combat. He was only enlisting because his father expected him to. “It’ll be a great adventure, my boy. You’re an Englishman; you’ve got to defend England.” Toby’s father wanted him and his brother to experience the excitement of war, to learn discipline and gain a sense of honor from participating in the army.

Toby had never seen his father look more disappointed in him than the day he told him that he was unfit to enlist in the British army because of his eyesight, and would therefore join the Royal Academy to paint. His father was grateful that he had at least one brave and honorable son to be proud of, but he was angered when one day a boy on a bicycle delivered a telegram from the war office, relaying the tragic news that his young son, his baby boy, was killed at Passchendaele. Toby’s poor mother cried herself to sleep at night because her dear boy perished in a war her husband wanted him to fight in, and his father bewailed the fact that his son would not return a decorated war hero.

Toby’s subject had always been landscapes. He began teaching a class on finding inspiration in landscape in 1927, nine years after the war, because he had already made a name for himself, hosting some small exhibitions and auctioning off some of his paintings of the valleys and mountains of North Wales, where he usually spends his summer holiday to this very day. It was in this class that he met Desdemona.

She was seven years his younger. She always wore a Breton or man’s button-down shirt cinched at the waist with a thick belt, khaki trousers, and boat shoes. Her deep brown hair was shaped like a bowl around her ears, and her hands and forearms were always noticeable splattered with paint. In her attire, the way she stood, the way she sat, anyone would have mistaken her for a man had she not had a pre-Raphaelite female figure and a beautiful face so unlike any other woman’s Toby had ever seen. Her cheekbones were high, she had a long razor-thin nose that grew thick and plump about the nostrils, freckles that dotted around her forehead and eyes like a raccoon, and eyes that were really nothing special—brown, almond-shaped—but seemed mysterious, entrancing because of the freckles that formed a mask around them.

Toby was attracted to her, he supposed, but his first impression of Desdemona was that she was like the handful of other women who managed to save enough money to take one or two professional art classes. They took these classes with the hope of expanding the skills they learned in drawing lessons they received as part of their female education into a career.

They all came in dressed like Lily Briscoe, hoping to shape lives for themselves where they didn’t need to find husbands and become housewives. But after they found that a successful career as an artist required them to do more than paint vases and table settings and trace silhouettes, when they found that they actually didn’t have any talent, they dropped the classes, became upset that their money couldn’t be refunded, and went out into London society to find husbands. Perhaps some of them managed to try their luck in other lines of work.

When Toby first saw Desdemona at the canvas in the front right corner, he classified her as just another Lily Briscoe imposter. He knew that within two weeks’ time she would find that she had no real talent and decide to start dressing like a woman so she could find a husband and become a housewife. Or, perhaps, find some other line of work.

As the class went on, he discovered that Desdemona had a vision of her own. While he didn’t care for her art—it was not to his personal taste, nor did it take the direction he wanted to see art take—he could not deny that she was a skilled painter. Well, he couldn’t deny it to himself, anyway, but he could certainly lie to her if he wanted to. She used watercolors, a common feminine medium, to render landscapes as reduced shapes. Mountains looked like triangles; valleys looked like rectangles; trees were lines with circles or diamonds for leaves, but she skillfully placed them, skillfully used colors. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was of the Post-Impressionist school of art, without even knowing it, which sought to convey the general sense and idea behind things rather than actually trying to render reality, actual forms. But she would never classify herself as belonging to such a school; Toby did that for her. She simply just painted. She painted things as she saw them and sensed them.

Toby didn’t like her painting or the school of thought he believed she belonged to, but he was intrigued by them. He was intrigued by her and even found that she had never read To the Lighthouse or anything else by Woolf. She was not deadest against marriage like the other women who tried to take his class. She had no opinion on marriage. She wasn’t painting because she didn’t want a husband, but because she loved it. Because she had a vision she needed to convey. She didn’t just have an opinion because she was told to have one. Desdemona was the only genuine woman Toby had ever met.

He found himself always thinking about Desdemona, always wanted to be around her just so he could take in her scent. She always smelt like she had run through a field on a warm summer’s day. She always smelt like flowers. Like elderflowers. She made him crave elderflower cordial. She made him crave her.

During class, Toby would spend more time with Desdemona, discussing her work, than with any other student, trying to make the men believe it was because she needed a great deal of guidance. He would always find ways to touch her, to allow his fingertips to brush over her shoulder, between her shoulder blades, or the small of her back. He found himself engrossed in the explanations she provided for her work, but he grew to hate it more and more. As her work became more detestable to him, Desdemona became more attractive.

Desdemona was convinced that her marriage to Toby was a marriage of minds. They were two artists who could work together and sleep together and live together and support each other’s artistic visions. She loved that Toby invested interest in her art, and, of course, she thought he was brilliant. There is something majestic about his paintings, she thought, the way he’s able to paint fog atop the hills on a gray cloudy day. Anyone would want to hang his paintings in a gallery, over a mantelpiece, in a grand hotel. But Desdemona just couldn’t create the same way Toby could. She didn’t have that same vision. Her paintings would probably never be hung anywhere, but she couldn’t just paint in a fashion she thought would please other people; she had to paint her vision no matter what other people thought.

“You just haven’t acquired the skill to create like I do. You just need to learn the basics, which I will teach you, and practice them. Then you will no longer be afraid to take risks, to paint more sophisticated forms,” Toby wanted to be reassuring to the woman he loved and wanted to take her under his wing.

Of course, she thought, I probably just have a basic vision; a vision that needs refinement. She thought she unconsciously wanted to achieve Toby’s greatness, to have her painting rival his. Toby made her realize what her work could be. I am afraid, she thought, I am afraid to even try to convey the world in its actual, realistic form, and so I reduce reality to shapes.

Their marriage began as a union of two artists’ careers, but it soon turned into a marriage of two artists focusing only on Toby’s career. Desdemona not only had duties as an artist, but also duties as a wife. In her marriage to Toby, the sense of duty she once felt toward her art no longer seemed as important at the sense of duty she had for her husband.

Toby’s painting compelled him to go out walking for long periods of time, to lock himself in his studio for hours on end. His absolute devotion to his art left little room to think about anything else. He was absent-minded, prone to melancholy, and incapable of really doing anything for himself.

Desdemona respected her husband and believed in the importance of his work, so she did everything she could to provide for him. The only time she ever really saw her husband was when he returned from his walks or came out of his studio for meals, which he expected his wife to have prepared. While he was at work, Desdemona would tend to the house and ensure that life was comfortable, peaceful, and conducive for Toby’s creativity.

Toby’s eyesight started to decline more and more each year following their marriage, and he relied on Desdemona to help him paint. He mostly mixed up colors and needed her to differentiate between them, and he sometimes needed her to help him make out different shapes in the landscape that appeared blurry and unclear. He asked Desdemona to pose nude for him when he found himself straining to make out different forms in the landscape on a regular basis. He thought creating these nude portraits would keep his mind sharp. Toby needed Desdemona to be willing to help him keep painting.

Desdemona agreed even though she was an old woman and uncomfortable with doing something her younger self, whom she lost long ago, would do more readily. But she was no longer an artist who painted for love or dressed in men’s clothing or wore her hair shore because she didn’t see much distinction between men and women; she was a dutiful wife. Desdemona recognized the change within her, but she saw it as growth in a different direction.

Not once did she ever feel she was oppressed. (Not consciously, anyway.) She was helping her husband create his art, which she believed was the same as creating her own. She never thought she was giving up her art so her husband could become a great artist, but rather she realized there are more important things in life to work toward. Desdemona and Toby’s marriage simply fell into place. Their roles within the marriage were imperceptible to one another.

Desdemona became comfortable with being the subject of Toby’s paintings. Over the course of ten years she became bolder and more willing to pose for him in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the parlor, on the roof; in the library, in the garden, in a tree, on a mailbox. It wasn’t so much confidence that she gained, but practice.

Every morning for the past ten years, Desdemona has disrobed for her husband. Not just for her husband, but for his art. Sitting before him in the nude, feeling his eyes on her as though she were a mountain in North Wales, became something she did naturally, unconsciously. Instead of creating her own art she was held in place by the gaze of an artist.

From time to time, Toby allows Desdemona to strike her own pose as long as it suits the overall vision he has for his portrait. This is the only freedom she has to create something of her own. Sometimes she is allowed to have her own vision as long as it doesn’t stray too far from her husband’s art.

Writers and Ghosts

2011-07-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like I've abandoned this blog; I was beginning to feel like I no longer needed it. Very Becoming isn't fully out of my system, so I think I'll keep it around for a little while longer. I feel that I have things to write about, some unfinished business. I have just returned from a month-long whirlwind tour of Europe, and the different cities I've seen, cultures I've experienced, people I've met, and foods I've eaten have seeped into my bones. I understand why Woody Allen's films seem to be odes to cities--New York and Paris, mostly.

Cities become metaphors and symbols for life and human existence. In their architecture, in their very air, cities carry decades, nay, centuries of history. A city is made up of the past and the present. A city makes no real distinction between the two. When you're in New York or Paris or Berlin or Amsterdam, it's easy to imagine what the city was like in the 20s or 30s or 40s. Something from those times--some piece of them--seems to transcend all human constructions of time. The city remains constant. Only people change over time.

I had a two-week intensive creative writing course in Lewes, England before traveling to other major cities in Western Europe. Where I was staying was forty minutes away from the town Virginia and Leonard Woolf's summer home, Monk's House, was located. The River Ewes even cut through Lewes, which is the river V.W. drowned herself in. When I visited her house, scrutinized every inch of the small shed where she spent hours hunched over a table, writing her novels and diaries, I could feel the presence of her ghost. I wonder how V.W.'s ghost must feel about her home and writing room becoming a museum. What would V.W. think about this generation? About the state of the world today? Would she like the direction and form the novel has taken? Are there any contemporary writers she would admire? I haven't tried to answer these questions, yet, but perhaps they would make an interesting story. How, exactly, does the passage of time reshape the past? This is something V.W. wrote about and tried to analyze.

V.W.'s ghost is not the only one I encountered. I visited the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam, and I could feel her haunting presence not only in the secret annex that has been transformed into a museum, but throughout the very city of Amsterdam. It's a very small city with a canal that runs down its center. And everyone rides a bike. The city is so quiet. Maybe I felt Anne's presence because she painted such a vivid image of the city in her diary. The buildings, the streets, everything looked like the pictures of Amsterdam I've seen pasted in Anne's diary. And each time I heard the bells of the Westerkerk ring, I literally got chills--she describes the bells as a source of comfort and hope in her diary.

The house is well done. Otto Frank did not want any furniture to be added or the rooms to be recreated. The annex has been absent of furniture since August 4, 1944, when the eight residents of the annex were arrested. The Gestapo emptied the space of all furniture, valuables, books, and papers, except, of course, for Anne's diary, which Miep Gies found and kept safe. There are parts of the house enclosed behind glass that visitors are not allowed to enter because the floor does not have strong enough support--the attic, for instance, where Anne liked to go to be alone and look out the window can only be seen through a wall of glass.

Visitors are meant to feel claustrophobic. Blackout curtains shield any outside light from entering through the windows, and many of the original walls have been replaced by moveable white walls that each have a particular quote from Anne's diary painted on them, which describe different aspects of a life in hiding.

Perhaps it was beginning to feel as though I was gone, that my ghost was haunting this very blog. This was not the case, though how cool would that be? When I die, I'm totally going to haunt this blog. My spirit will shake its head at how little has been done with it. I am such an inactive blogger. Technology and I just aren't bosom buddies.

Paradigm

2011-02-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

I sometimes pronounce the 'g'
in 'paradigm'----
it's just one of those words
I need to linger over
when I read
in order to realize
what it is and means;
Otherwise, I will end up pronouncing it
para-dig-em.

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

2011-02-25T20:47:00.000-08:00

I don't really know what I can say about To the Lighthouse as a whole, so I decided to reflect on two sentences from the novel that, to me, really represent its central themes. The first sentence is from the section where Mr. Ramsay is wondering whether or not his books and work as a writer is really important to civilization. He wants to know that his books are good enough to stand the test of time. The other sentence is from the third part of the novel and pertains to Lily Briscoe's work as an artist. I suppose I'm comparing and contrasting Briscoe and Ramsay's art.

The only other novel I have read by Virginia Woolf if Mrs. Dalloway, but I don't think any other work could have prepared me for To the Lighthouse. I was blown away by how artfully Woolf conveys internal and external states, simultaneously. There is very little action in the novel, but there is still a sense of time passing.

Is art an expression of human life, or is it a decoration imposed upon it? It depends on whether or not someone relies on art to bring him fame and greatness. Mr. Ramsay is concerned that no one will read his books, that he won’t be remembered by future generations. He is very insecure about his writing because he feels that no one needs him to write; no one’s life depends on whether or not he expresses himself through the ideas in his books. He worries that his writing is merely decoration and not necessary to the whole of human culture and existence. He does not write to express himself or to find some meaning in human life, but rather, he writes to ease his insecurities, to establish some feeling of self-worth. He only writes so that others will believe he is important.

Lily Briscoe, however, does not paint in hopes of being remembered or deemed important. She is compelled to paint by the voice of Charles Tansley that continuously chants, “Women can’t paint. Women can’t write.” But she is compelled by something even greater than Tansley’s need to assert himself. Lily Briscoe’s paintings are physical renderings of her desire for unity, her desire to fill emptiness with shape, “the empty places. Such were some of the parts, but how to bring them together?” (151). She believes that connecting seemingly unrelated things and isolated people, reveals some whole truth and meaning behind life.

Lily tries to connect masses within her paintings. The painting she begins of Mrs. Ramsay and James remains unfinished for ten years, until she returns to the house at Isle of Skye after Mrs. Ramsay’s death. She doesn’t know how the masses in her painting connect. She doesn’t know the best way to lay out shape, light, and shadow. She doesn’t know how to relate or fill empty spaces, but she paints to uncover these relationships.

The empty places Lily refers to are the ones left by Mrs. Ramsay. She is the mass that light shines on, and everything and everyone else in her life are the shadows cast by the light hitting her form. Lily is angry at Mrs. Ramsay because she left behind empty spaces—the step she sat on, the kitchen table with the leaf pattern, and the old ramshackle house itself—with no clear way to unite them. Without Mrs. Ramsay, the house was “full of unrelated passions” (152). Her family came untied—there was no knot tying Cam and James to Mr. Ramsay anymore.

To the Lighthouse, like Lily’s painting, is made up of three parts that connect to form a greater whole. The first two sections—The Window and Time Passes—contain empty spaces; these spaces rely on Lily, in the final section, to step back and view everything from a distance so that all forms can be seen at once. It is only when different viewpoints and different relationships are observed that the true meaning of life can be discovered. Love, culture, art, and poetry are created from human relationships.

E. M. Forster's A Room with a View

2011-02-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

A Room with a View
E. M. Forster

The portrait of Queen Victoria that hangs on the wall of the Bertolini reveals that Victorian ideals continue to loom over England, and will continue to do so unless the younger generation breaks away from the older generation that tries to control them. Miss Bartlett continues to live in the Victorian Era, and she tries to hold Lucy within the world she lives in. The drawing Mr. Beebe sketches of Lucy and Miss Bartlett is representative of the situation Lucy is trapped in. In the drawing, Lucy is a kite flying in the air, but she cannot fly freely because she is still bound by a string held by her cousin. Lucy is not free because she does not understand the truth, her body, or herself. She moves and thinks according to what has already been dictated or prescribed. She thinks she needs Baedeker’s guide to culture, for example, to explain which Italian paintings are important or beautiful. She does not trust in herself to decide this on her own. She believes it has already been decided. Lucy does not have a view.

Mr. Emerson and George challenge Victorian ideals. Miss Bartlett and most of the English tourists at the pension consider them to be ill-bred because they speak the truth about what they are thinking and feeling. Mr. Emerson does, anyway. (There are moments where Mr. Emerson seems to be speaking for George rather than allowing his son to speak for himself. It is hypocritical since he tells Lucy to express what she is really feeling.) It is clear that many of the characters do not “understand people who speak the truth,” and so, Mr. Emerson is misunderstood because he thinks freely and believes in free will. The books in his house indicate that he believes in Libertarianism and Socialism. Mr. Emerson believes in equality for all, which threatens the English class system.

Mr. Emerson wants George to find a woman who can be his comrade so they may inhabit a community of sense, a Garden of Eden. He believes that men and women need to trust themselves and stop despising their bodies. The poetry of the 19th Century declared that the body is merely a vessel for the soul. This belief in a division between mind and body led people to despise and repress their own desires. Emerson professes a need for men and women to inhabit their bodies, and love each other mind, body, and soul. They can only be free when their bodies no longer disgust them.

In the scene where George, Mr. Beebe, and Freddy are bathing in the Sacred Lake, they seem to be washing their tainted bodies, freeing them from the artificial, man-made world. They become more like their younger, more innocent selves through their interaction with nature. Swimming in the pond seems to be a sort of baptism for George, who is indifferent to the water when he first enters it, but becomes more alive after he plunges into the water.

The narrator is trying to filter his readers when Lucy makes an “unfortunate slip” in the speech she recites to Miss Bartlett. She unconsciously describes the day she fell into the violets from her perspective rather than George’s, which reveals that she is in love with him. The narrator draws attention to this ‘slip,’ insisting that the careful reader may have detected Lucy’s error. The narrator is uncertain whether or not Miss Bartlett actually detects this error. It can be argued that the narrator does not believe anyone like Miss Bartlett can understand this novel and would miss Lucy’s error. However, at the end of the novel, George suggests to Lucy that Miss Bartlett may not have been against their love, but secretly rooting for it. If this is the case, then Miss Bartlett might have detected Lucy’s real feelings from her speech.

T.S. Eliot's Confidence is Fragmented like His Poetry

2011-02-18T06:22:00.000-08:00

My professor was not as 'confident' of Eliot's 'confidence' as I am. She found my comments on The Waste Land to be thoughtful, but she feels that Eliot's confidence in continuity and normal everday life returning had been broken, which is why his poem is written in broken fragments. Poetry, too, seems only accessible in broken fragments.

I just finished reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; I hope to post a thoughtful response to it soon. I just finished writing some comments on E. M. Forster's A Room With A View, which I hope to post later today.

This weekend I must read Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust and James Welch's Winter in the Blood. It will be a busy weekend.

On top of that, I have to write a brief bibliography for my technical editing research article. I, thankfully, only have four articles I need to read in order to write the paper.

Sometimes work is really suffocating.

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2011-02-12T06:59:00.001-08:00

What is the Waste Land?

2011-02-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Waste Land is the meaningless “modern situation” (Langbaum) people of post-World War I Europe find themselves in. The people who inhabit the waste land are the living dead. Langbaum’s essay describes these characters as being “nameless, faceless, [and] isolated” with“no clear idea of themselves.” It is the voice of the narrator, according to Langbaum, that enables readers to understand these characters in terms of past figures, such as symbols on Tarot cards and mythological heroes. In Eliot’s essay on tradition and individual talent, he suggests that time is not a linear progression, but, rather, it is circular. Eliot does not believe there is a difference from one generation to the next or that future generations will really know better than present or past ones, because ancient practices and meanings are acted out within every generation. Poetry exists because humans are conscious of the past. Eliot builds his poem upon mythology, religion, and Shakespeare, even though the waste land is a world trying to bury the past to make room for the new. It is a world without hope of rebirth or fertility, because it has buried God. It is also a world without poetry.

The poem references Dante’s Inferno to emphasize that this modern waste land represents death-in-life, that none of its inhabitants are really living. In “The Burial of the Dead,” the “narrating consciousness” first refers to this world as an “unreal city,” suggesting it has a nightmarish quality. It can also be suggesting that the waste land’s inhabitants do not accept or live in reality, but reject it. These people are living in a kind of hell. The two references to Dante in lines 62-65, describe the two kinds of people waiting in hell. One group is those who are without blame or praise, and the other is those who have never been baptized and are, therefore, hopeless. Brooks’ analysis states that the categories of the waste land’s inhabitants are secularized people, and people with no knowledge of faith, which means that “their life is in reality a death” (190). The people who are secularized are those who do not do good or evil; they do nothing, which Eliot says is even worse than doing evil. Those who have no knowledge of faith were never baptized and are hopeless from the start of their lives. The inhabitants of the waste land are dead because they do nothing. It is only through action that humans exist.

The reference to the Battle of Mylae in line 70 and the title of the second part of the poem, “A Game of Chess,” seem to suggest that war is universal and all wars are the same. The Battle at Mylae was fought in the ancient Punic Wars, and it is used here to suggest a connection between the recent Great War, and the Punic Wars fought between Rome and Carthage. The idea that all war is the same fits Eliot’s conception of how the present and future cannot exist individually from the past. Nothing is separate from what comes before it except the waste land, which is a living hell because none of its inhabitants have any conception of the past that shaped it. The footnote for “A Game of Chess” says that the title is derived from a satirical play that “allegorized English conflict with Spain as a chess match.” I wonder if this is meant to suggest the same of the Great War. It would also be another way of connecting a past conflict with a more present one.

Shoes Fall Apart

2011-02-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

I have lost two pairs of shoes, my rain boots and my combat boots, to the harsh winter snow. (Bless their soles.) A good rule of thumb is to never buy cheap shoes, but low prices are enticing when you're poor.

I recently left my job at the Zimmerli to pursue a marketing inernship at an independent book publisher, called Blooming Twig. The job does pay, but I am required to go through a 2-3 week unpaid trial period. So, I will be living in a Dickens novel for the next few weeks--digging in pockets and under couch cushions for change so that I can afford a crust of bread and a diet coke for lunch.

I am going to be penny-pinching more than usual, this semester. I just spent a lot more on books for classes than I anticipated, so I am once again floating in credit card debt (the dead man's float).

But, today, I decided to have one last money-splurging hurrah, since I desperately needed new shoes. I went to a decent shoe store and purchased calf-length, lace-up combat boots. They're fashionable, great for walking (I think/hope), and they will surely hold up to the snow.

(Now I must lock up my credit card).

2011-02-01T15:26:00.000-08:00

"The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those that cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. " -Alvin Toffler

2011-01-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

Woody Allen's 1979 film, Manhattan, pokes fun at phonies, sellouts, cultural snobs, and general human vanity, only not in a preaching manner, as the main character, Isaac, comes to realize his narrow-mindedness in the end.

There is a memorable scene where Isaac tries to convince his friend that extramarital affairs are wrong, no matter how much he tries to justify them with 'love.' Isaac goes into a long spiel about the degeneration of morals and culture. He points to a replication of a primitive human skeleton that is hanging in the classroom they're in, and he tells his friend that one day they are just going to be hanging skeletons that future generations are going to study, but what are they going to say about our society?

I often ask myself this question whenever I am forced to ride a Rutgers University bus. The people I'm surrounded by and conversations I overhear, make me wonder why none of the people riding the Rutgers buses seem to be concerned about our culture's reputation.

I wonder why so many people find nothting wrong with having a private phone conversation in a public space. People don't seem to hear themselves when they are talking; I'd like to think they would stop if they could. Unless, for some ridiculous reason, they want me to hear their phone conversations and draw my own conclusions about their characters.

I suppose it's wonderful that people feel they can express themselves, freely. But even if the people on the Rutgers buses draw no distinction between their public and private lives, it does not mean that I want to hear about the big fight Rob and Becky got into, Thursday night, via Kimberley's cellular gossip. If you are going to use public space for your private calls, please keep your production to a minimum.

I don't believe our society is morally decaying; that would make me as narrow-minded as Isaac. I do have faith in people. There are just some things people do that I will never understand.

Anyway, Manhattan is a great film. It stars Woody Allen, the lovely Diane Keaton, and Mariel Hemingway.

I just love how Woody Allen's life is one big Existential Crisis.

Nathan Bransford First Paragraph Contest

2011-01-24T20:09:00.000-08:00

My entry:

My parents are interesting, but they’re not 'fascinating.' And they can't be anything but boring when compared to other people who have 'fascinating' parents. My mom and her family have great stories. I hate the fact that I wasn't alive when any of these exciting things happened.

I hope Mr. Bransford likes it.

2011-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

I envision having a home where the walls are lined with bookshelves. I will have so many books that I will have to build furniture out of them. The thicker titles will be stacked into tables and nightstands; I will always make sure to put a coaster under my coffee mug so that a ring won't stain the covers. Eventually, I will have to fashion chairs out of books and upholster them. I will even have to build bookshelves out of books, to cut open the floorboards and store some under the hardwood.

I want to buy more books than I know what to do with. I will stop buying clothes, jewelry, unecessary food and movies, and budget my money so I can afford stockpiles of books. I will live in the delicious and beautiful world of literature. My goal would be to read at least fifty pages of every book. To memorize meaningful quotes. To read the book jackets, introductions, editors' notes.

I have found that I sometimes read a beautiful story or novel without really understanding the meaning of the words being expressed. But something will happen in my life - usually something mundane and ordinary - and it somehow sheds light on a book or article I read a month ago. I can't explain it. Books are metaphors for life, so it only makes sense that life experiences explain what happens in books. Life gives meaning to books, to literature. Oscar Wilde would say it is because life is the imitation of art. Perhaps this is true. Literature isn't an escape from reality. Reality just tries to imitate literature and sometimes falls short. And so we think that by reading we are escaping, crawling out of life and into fiction, when life, itself, may be fiction.

Edit of The Pious

2011-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

[I've revised my first chapter/bit/part/something of The Pious. I think it's more effective this way.]

The lamp on Meryl's nightstand was the only source of light in the bedroom. It's glow was enough for her to pretend to read by. Her husband fell asleep, at least, an hour ago, but he must have sensed his wife's unease. He turned to face Meryl, his eyes tightly fastened against the light that seemed to glare directly at him.

"Okay, you were on page fifty when I went to sleep, and now I turn over and see you've made no progress," Philip's ability to see through thinly parted eyelids always impressed his wife.

"Yes, well the book isn't very good," she continued to stare at page fifty, her pointer finger waiting to turn the page corner.

"Something on your mind?"

"Philip, is our daughter crazy?" She hugged the book against her chest and turned to look at her husband.

"Of course not."

"No?"

"No."

Meryl leaned back against the head board and stared out onto nothing.

"What?" Philip looked at her.

"Then how do you explain...her behavior?"

"How do I explain it? She's a teenager, Meryl, they all go through phases."

"Do you know anyone else's daughter who--" Meryl looked at her husband, not finishing her question because she assumed he would finish it for her.

"Is it so weird that she wants to be a saint? Devote herself to God?"

"It's not that it's weird, it's just uncommon," she was trying to defend the doubt she had of her daughter's sanity to her husband. "We didn't even raise her to be religious. Sure, we sent her to Sunday School while my mother was alive, but that was because she was a Catholic nut."

"So, Joan found God on her own," Philip had practically convinced himself that his fourteen-year-old daughter was a typical teenage girl.

"Philip, there's something Medieval in her desire. And pious. Too pious for my taste," Meryl was trying to get her husband to understand that Joan's recent behavior was questionable.

"I just don't think we should be so quick to wrap her up in a straight jacket, Meryl."

"She wants to be a virgin martyr. She says she wants to die for the one person she loves above all, and that is God."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating what she said," Philip turned to face his nightstand. He was frustrated with his wife and wished she would just drop the matter so he could sleep.

"I'm not exaggerating? She thinks she's not pure enough because God doesn't speak to her. She says she has to be patient and remain chaste in mind, body, and spirit so God will want her."

"Alright!" He sat up and faced his wife. "What do you want from me?"

"I," Meryl swallowed, "I don't know."

"Shouldn't we be grateful she wants to be a virgin? She could be a meth addict, knocked up by some hippie, or one of those mall rats, but she's not. She just....she just want's to be Christ's bride," Philip rubbed his eyes.

Meryl and Philip sat in silence for a moment.

"Who's up there?" Philip looked towards the ceiling.'

"Christ's bride."

"What is she doing up in the attic, it's two o'clock in the morning?" Philip began to wonder if his daughter really was crazy.

"She locked herself up there before you came home from work," Meryly rubbed her husband's shoulder to relax him.

"I figured she was at a friend's house. She was so quiet..."

"She was praying. She has to pray six times a day."

"Oh, God."
"You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain--"

"Do you think this is funny, Meryl? Well, I'll tell you it's not funny. It's the opposite of funny."

"That's what I was trying to tell you, Philip -"

"I mean for Christ's sake, she's been eating nothing but bread and water; she scalped herself the other morning."

"Today, before she went into the attic, I caught her rubbing her face with a pepper."

"A...what?"

"A pepper. She wanted to blister her skin so no one can think she is beautiful...St. Rose of Lima did it," Meryl's tone was so rational that Philip couldn't tell if she was being serious or mocking their daughter's behavior.

"Well, I guess if St. Rose of Lima did it-- Why is she in the attic?"

"Apparently, most virgins' fathers imprison them so no one can touch them, but since you weren't going to force her into the attic, she thought she'd go willingly."'

"Is she going to come out?"

"She didn't say she was going to stay up there forever."

"Is that supposed to be better? The fact that she only locks herself up there sometimes?!"

"Don't yell at me! Just a little while ago you were trying to defend Joan's behavior to me -"

"Yeah, well, you seem to have changed your mind about your daughter's sanity."
"My daughter?"

"Yes, your daughter."

"Last time I checked, Joan was our daugther," Meryl crossed her arms and turned away from her husband.

"I know. It's just weird. Couldn't she have been pregnant or into drugs?"

"Philip..."

"Well, it would be easier to explain, wouldn't it?"

Meryl organized her thoughts.

"Well, why do we have to explain it to anyone?" She asked. "Is it crazy for her to want to be closer to God?"

"She wants to be a virgin martyr."

"I know, but does that mean she needs help? Psychologically, I mean?"

Joan's psychological and emotional state was not something either of them were ready to talk about. For the past two months they both ignored her Medieval behavior because neither of them wanted to admit there was a problem. The acknowledgement of Joan's desire to be a virgin martyr is sure to be the stepping stone for a longer, more in depth discussion.

Meryl turned out her light on the nightstand. Philip decided he needed a good night's sleep in order to think clearly. They shut their eyes, hoping that by morning things would be different. Then they wouldn't have to continue their discussion.

The Obsession Continues...

2011-01-11T21:00:00.001-08:00

Necklace is $46 on Blugrn Design.

I'm thinking about it....

Coming to Grips with the Holocaust in The Reader

2011-01-06T15:23:00.000-08:00

I recently read Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and watched the film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry. I found myself as conflicted as the main character and narrator, Michael Berg. The novel offers more insight than the film because, since the story is told in first person narrative, it allows direct access to Michael’s thoughts. The movie certainly provokes the viewer to sympathize with Hanna when she is on trial and throughout the duration of her prison sentence. It does an excellent job of convincing the viewer that Hanna is the victim of uncontrollable circumstances that forced her into her position as an SS guard of a satellite camp of Auschwitz, but, unlike the novel, I think the film fails to properly convey the struggle Michael has in trying to understand her crime, while simultaneously having to condemn it. Hanna and a group of women stand trial for allowing three-hundred Jewish women to burn to death in a locked church that was bombed during the camp’s evacuation, even though these Jewish women were placed under their care and protection. In the novel, Michael clearly states that in trying to understand Hanna's crime he is humanizing her actions, and making it impossible to condemn her crime. Perhaps Hanna does not deserve Michael’s understanding. Maybe condemning a crime leaves no room for understanding.

The courtroom scene has the most emphasis in both the novel and film, as it spotlights the question Hanna asks the judge during the trial, "What would you have done?" Hanna wants to know what she could have done differently. This question is very important when discussing the Holocaust and convicting those guilty of Nazi War Crimes. "What would you have done?" It's easy to blame Hanna without considering the context of her situation, "Hanna had not decided in favor of crime. She had decided against a promotion at Siemens, and fell into a job as a guard." Hanna does not wake up one morning and decide to work in a Nazi concentration camp, containing women like animals as they await transport to their deaths. She only decides against a promotion and finds another job to support herself. Hanna’s decisions are all made for her own sake.

Most of our decisions are made for us, our families, and for the good of the people we know and love without thinking about how they affect other people. Humans are not capable of looking beyond their immediate relationships, unless they have a position that requires them to make decisions to benefit more people than themselves and the people they know directly. I recently watched a repeat episode of Law and Order: SVU that is an interesting example of how a decision a single member of a community makes, takes a heavy toll on the lives of other people in the area.

A little girl dies from contracting the measles because she is too young to receive the vaccination to protect her from the disease, which forces the SVU to search for the source of a possible measles epidemic. The source of the measles chain is a little boy old enough to receive the vaccination, but does not because his mother believes his natural immune system is strong enough to fight off the infection, which it does. The boy’s mother does not think her decision concerns anyone outside of her own family. Her research on vaccinations and the power the body has against fighting disease are the only things that inform her decision. Since her son’s immune system is able to fight the disease, she does not consider herself responsible for the death of the little girl; she is just trying to be a "good" mother to her son. The woman is arrested for the murder of the little girl. The episode shows that while the woman’s decision was best for her family, it was detrimental to society at large. We have privacy and freedom of choice, but there are certain rules that help society function, and if these rules are disobeyed, society will crumble. Her decision would be applicable in a small, sprawling area where the lives of people are more private, but not a densely populated area like New York City.

The Reader is concerned with whether one person knows what is best for another person. Is the law or the community at large able to define what is good for its individuals? Michael has information that can serve to give Hanna a lesser sentence, and disprove accusations the other women on trial blame her for. Michael knows Hanna is illiterate, and that to reveal this would be exposing a life-long secret she goes to great lengths to hide. Hanna simply accepts the accusations the other women make, because defending herself would force her to face the humiliation of her secret. Hanna’s illiteracy affects her entire life. She refuses the offer of a promotion at Siemens because she cannot read, and accepts a position as a guard where she chose prisoners to read to her "because she wanted to make their last month bearable before their inevitable dispatch to Auschwitz.” At the trial, Hanna is too concerned with keeping her illiteracy secret that she does not consider what it means to be exposed as a criminal.

Since Michael knows Hanna’s secret, he wonders if he has a responsibility to share this information with the judge. Hanna does not try to defend herself, and she says things that constantly infuriate the judge, which compels Michael to want to help her; he wants to help the judge understand Hanna’s behavior, and, also, justify her behavior for himself.

In the novel, Michael’s father, who is a philosopher and lawyer, tells him that Hanna’s freedom and dignity must be considered in the situation, and he poses this question, "don't you remember how furious you would get as a little boy when mamma knew better what was good for you? Even how far one can act like this with children is a real problem.” The movie does not emphasize this point as much as the book, but this question is important to keep in mind when considering Michael’s inner conflict. A person cannot place what other people say is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves because, as the father puts it, "it was no comfort to you [Michael] that your mother was always right." In order for Michael to help Hanna, he has to address her about the matter and allow her to decide what she believes is best. Hanna needs to have "the last word;" doing it any other way would deprive her of her freedom and dignity, without giving her some promise of a future.

The movie focuses on Michael's need to understand Hanna's actions, and his struggle to come to terms with her crime because he loves her. The novel weaves Michael’s inner conflict into the struggle of subsequent generations trying to make peace with Germany’s Nazi past and the Holocaust. Michael's generation is exposed to films and literature about the concentration camps to the point that it is no longer a subject beyond imagination. Michael and other young people cannot rely on past generations to provide them with answers about Nazi atrocities, because their parents either committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen.

Coming to grips with a Nazi past was not just a generational conflict, because the children of the second generation, portrayed in The Reader, did not know whether condemning their parents was enough. They would punish the guilty, but would continue to be "silenced by revulsion, shame and guilt."

This generation needed to know how man could practice such cruelty toward other men, and, most importantly, how any group of people could choose to become victims without fighting back. In the novel, Michael ventures to the site of a concentration camp to experience it firsthand. He meets a man while hitchhiking, who explains that executioners do not hate the people they execute; execution just happens to be their line of work. The people that hated the Jews never directly killed them, but devised a plan that distanced them from the mass execution of the people they despised. The people who carried out the physical part of the extermination were indifferent toward the Jews, which made murdering them easier; it's easy to discard something you have no emotional attachment to. The Jews, to the executioners, were a matter of such indifference that they could "kill them as easily as not." It is numbness. Literature I have read about the perpetrators of Nazi crimes describes how difficult killing was at first, but after doing it over and over again, mass execution was all in a day’s work. This "numbness" is somewhat akin to the numbness that pervades the literature and other accounts of concentration camp survivors. A prisoner in Auschwitz who manages to survive for several months becomes accustomed to seeing death, and to doing whatever it takes to survive. Prisoners of the concentration camps began to exhibit selfish and indifferent behavior to the other inmates. However, prisoners of Nazi concentration camps were stripped of their humanity, and so their actions and behaviors became animalistic; morals cannot be applied to the victims of Nazi atrocities.

Perhaps we cannot judge people’s actions without considering their circumstances, but should a person’s circumstances make a difference in how we judge her behavior? It does not make a person’s actions any better or worse. Behavior is an independent faculty. It is influenced by circumstance and other social factors, but in the end, it needs to be judged separately. The law is designed to punish actions. The novel states that behavior has its own sources and is a person’s own, just as a person’s thoughts and decisions are her own.

The novel and film adaptation of The Reader, both question whether “law” is something that is actually written and obeyed, or whether it is something that “must be” obeyed – written or not – in order for society to function. So, what is law?

An Education

2011-01-02T21:11:00.001-08:00

Just finished watching An Education.

I am currently in love with Carey Mulligan.

Of man's first disobedience, and Milton's Sonnets

2010-12-31T14:11:00.000-08:00

Sonnet I
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Though with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in som Grov ny:
As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

Sonnet 23
Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Joves great son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old law did save
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

The speaker of ‘Methought I saw my late espoused wife’ has his vision restored to him through his dreams. The poem describes night as the time when he can see his late wife, while the day returns him to his blindness, his darkness. ‘O Nightingale’ is an earlier poem by Milton that contrasts day and night, using the nightingale and cuckoo to symbolize them, respectively; the nightingale portends success in love if it is heard before the call of the cuckoo, while the cuckoo is considered the ‘bird of hate’ because it foretells infidelity and cuckoldry. The speaker of this poem has never been fortunate to hear the nightingale’s song before the cuckoo’s call, but he devotes himself to love and poetry just the same. Night, within the poem, is described as when people fall in love, while the speaker says the day will “foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh.” At the end of ‘Methought I saw,’ the speaker uses ‘night’ to describe his blindness; his reality. The speaker awakes from his dream, in which he saw his wife resurrected from the dead, and is returned to his real state.

The speaker compares his wife to Alcestis, who is known for her love and devotion to her husband, Admetus. Admetus won her hand in marriage with the help of Apollo, who was banished from Olympus to be Admetus’ shepherd. Alcestis and Admetus marry, but Admetus angers the goddess Artemis when he does not make the sacrificial offering he was supposed to make upon his marriage to Alcestis. Artemis is the goddess of chastity and purity, so the sacrifice made unto her is meant to purify their union. Artemis punished Ademetus by filling his bed with snakes, and she was going to take his life until Apollo made the Fates drunk and convinced them to allow anyone who wanted to die in place of Admetus to do so. Alcestis chose to die for her husband. She was rescued from Hades by Jove’s son and returned to her husband because of her ardent love for him. She was saved because she chose to give her life for her husband.

The speaker’s wife is canonized as a ‘saint’ in the first line of the poem. He expected his wife to be given the same appreciation from the Fates because she lost her life after giving birth to his child, even though she was supposed to be ‘washed from spot of child-bed taint.’ Women were thought to be impure in marriage and after child labor. The line ‘purification in the old Law did save’ refers to the Bible passage Leviticus 12, which states that the Lord told Moses to relay to the Children of Israel that “if a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child, then she shall be unclean for seven days” until the eighth day when the boy is circumcised, “and then she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days.” The woman is not permitted to touch any “hallowed thing” or enter the sanctuary until the end of her seven days of Purification. Once Purification is fulfilled, she is to “bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering…unto the priest.” Sex within marriage, for the purpose of procreation, needed to be forgiven by God. The priest is supposed to make atonement for the woman so that “she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood.” But the wife was not saved after her Purification, she died just the same. The speaker combines stories from Greek Mythology and the Bible to emphasize that his wife was fated to die, and there was no way of swaying the Fates or receiving atonement.

Even though his wife did not receive atonement after her Purification, he still trusts that he will be reunited with his wife in Heaven, ‘as yet once more I trust to have/Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint.” Like the speaker in ‘O Nightingale,’ who at the end continues to serve the Muse and love even though he has never been lucky enough to have success in love, the speaker in ‘Methought I saw’ lives, and trusts blindly, that he will see his wife in Heaven. But while he inhabits the Earth he can only see her at night, when he dreams. At night, his sight is restored. His wife appears to him in white, ‘her face veiled, yet to my fancied sight/ Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined.’ In his dream he is unable to touch his wife, a desire he hopes to have fulfilled when they are reunited. The vision of his wife tried to embrace him, but the cuckoo sang and daylight broke, awaking him from his dream. ‘And day brought back my night,’ meaning the day restored his blindness.

Jane Austen Note Cards

2010-12-19T18:13:00.001-08:00

How could I possibly resist purchasing Jane Austen note cards? Austen's stationary transports me back to the early 19th Century when people wrote letters and notes all the time; when people would visit each other's homes and leave calling cards (not phone cards, but cards with their personal information on them). I hope to write people many letters on my new stationary.

I love this:

And I realize I'm on my way to becoming this:

"Shadow" and "Stain" in Great Expectations

2010-12-18T16:08:00.000-08:00

‘Shadow’ and ‘stain’ are used to describe how traces of crime and Satis House linger in Pip’s life, ‘faded’ but never ‘gone.’ Pip’s expectations are connected to Satis House and crime, material and inhuman connections that overshadow real human ones – Estella is only a symbol for his expectations, while Magwitch represents the criminal filth that ‘contaminates’ Little Britain. The connections Pip makes throughout the novel are faded ‘stains’ that ‘pervade’ his ‘advancement’ in ‘new ways.’

Pip’s visit to Newgate Prison with Wemmick presents crime he first confronts as a child on the Marsh in a ‘new way.’ In ‘Wemmick’s greenhouse,’ Pip sees criminals rooted in the prison. Newgate contains convicts like potted plants. They are kept away from the world without the freedom ‘to act of their own devices.’ Pip had only seen crime hiding amongst society; the prison introduces him to the world of punishment; the world of fallen men, a rank garden where gentlemen cannot grow. Pip feels ‘contaminated’ by this world and realizes his past, his connection to this world of crime, is an inescapable ‘stain.’

As he waits for Estella to arrive, he wishes he never agreed to go to Newgate with Wemmick. Newgate is the opposite of everything Satis House represents for Pip. His ‘thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined’ (292), makes him conscious of the traces the prison has left on him, just as she once made him conscious of his ‘commoness.’ Estella has the power to erase his gentleman status. He tries to ‘beat the prison dust’ off his shoes and ‘exhale its air,’ so he may break free from ‘the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick’s Conservatory.’ Pip feels that the seed of crime has been planted in his new life, while the ‘shadow’ of gentility he associates with Satis House passes him by with Estella’s carriage. His ‘contamination,’ his connection to crime and prison, will always keep him from having Estella.

It is not until the end of the novel – after Magwitch dies, Satis House burns down, and Estella and Pip have been left to live their own lives – that Pip and Estella are able to form a human connection. Pip returns to the ruins of Satis and finds he can ‘trace out where every part of the old house had been’ (501). Satis is now a house of ruined expectations, and Pip returns to it a changed man who realizes he cannot move forward without his past. He finds Estella at the brewery, ‘the freshness of her beauty’ faded. Estella, too, has been changed. Satis House remains the only possession she is not stripped of, and she returns to the ruined land to part from it for good. Estella and Pip are able to realize that they are connected to Satis House and each other. The power it had prevented them from forming a real connection bound by love, not money, greed, conceit, or crime. They take leave of the ruined Satis House together, without a ‘shadow’ of ‘another parting.’ From ruin, from stains, from shadows, something real and uncorrupt is formed.

"Music of the Spheres"

2010-12-13T19:32:00.001-08:00

This diagram from Peter Aprian's 1539 Cosmographia shows the celestial spheres in their orderly concentric motions around the earth. Their harmonious turning generates the "music of the spheres." Milton and many 17th Century poets reference this model in their poetry, even though this model was becoming obsolete during Milton's time. It is unclear whether Milton had a Ptolemaic or Copernican view of the universe. Either way, it's a beautiful diagram.

Message from the Inn Keeper

2010-12-12T12:44:00.000-08:00

I don't know who, if anyone, still reads this blog. I am returning from a long leave of absence and hope to be posting fairly regularly, but it doesn't matter to me whether or not someone is reading (though, it would be a plus). Returning guests will notice that I have refurbished the place. Very Becoming needed a facelift, don't you think? I feel that my humble abode is now more warm and inviting. While this blog does not have a definite theme, I've decided to make it an expression of my intellectual growth. This past semester I have done a great deal of reading and writing, and I hope to share everything I have learned from books. I can feel how much my mind has expanded! It's a strange feeling. At first it felt as though I didn't know enough or anything, as though I was empty inside, but now it just feels like there is space or room to grow, to continue expanding. I realize that I only want to associate with people who have heard of Pale Fire, who have read "Paradise Lost" and other poems by Milton, and who have also received their moral education from Austen, Hemingway, Waugh, and Nabokov. I want to create a society of book people who do not care about the bull shit society feeds them.

I love the English major if only because I find people who have priorities, morals, interests that are above and beyond those of mainstream culture. My Principles of Literary Study's class created a group on Facebook to discuss Nabokov's Pale Fire, and over the winter break we are hoping to read Lolita. It feels as though we are the book people in Fahrenheit 451. Perhaps we can remake society so that it cares about books and reading again. Maybe we can overthrow Facebook and turn it into a book site, as opposed to a social networking site. Professor Dowling was so proud of my class when we told him we created a Nabokov group on Facebook that he almost cried. He stresses how much he wants us to be intellectuals, to have sense. What I've learned from Dowling is that I have to live inside of my head for the rest of my life, so I better people it with thoughts and ideals that bear importance. There is nothing that can do this better than books. There is no one who can do it better than Austen, Hemingway, and Nabokov.

The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway turned out to be my favorite book this semester (except for Pride and Prejudice, of course). The novel is set in post-WWI Europe, and the characters are American expatriates living in France and drinking to exist, except for Jake Barnes who is the hero of the novel; he is the only character that isn't drunk for the story's entirety. Jake is able to stare into the meaninglessness of the modern world and find some hope in it. Jake's penis was shot off in the war. His balls and testicles remained intact, so is was still capable of being aroused, but unable to consumate his love with Brett, the love of his life. Because he cannot satisfy her sexually, he makes the ultimate sacrifice out of love: he allows Brett to sleep with other men. He watches her satisfy her physical, animal desire with men she does not really love. It is the most painfully romantic book I have ever read. It's a novel about being authentic.

In the years directly following WWI, Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway, "You are all a lost generation." Hemingway wrote the novel in response to Stein's insensitive ignorance. He placed Stein's quote at the front of the book, and used this quote from Ecclesiastes to respond to it:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever...The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose...The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits...All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

It is this quote, this idea that gives the narrator in the story hope. It should give us all hope that the universe knows what it's doing. Even though Dowling explained Existentialism in this book as though he believes in it, I know that he still believes in God. He still believes that there is something beyond philosophy that gives rhyme and reason to the universe, to us all. Dowling is a sensible man, therefore I believe his faith in God is sensible. I used to find religion and people who have faith in religion to be insensible, but when I remember my Grandpa and how he believed in God because it made sense, well, then, I have no reason to think God is a ridiculous notion. There are many religious people who do not have much or any sense, but my Grandpa was not one of them. Neither is Dowling.

The fact that the sun riseth and goeth down is tangible evidence that there is rhyme and reason to the universe. This is my reason for believing in God. I define God as nature, as the big picture, as the Universe. God is everything that is beyond ourselves. As time marches on there are things that remain permanent...the sun also rises.

Existentialism says we have to live our lives as though they are ends in themselves. If you want to live a good life and be an 'authentic' good person, you have to do it because it's good, because you want to, not because it may get you into Heaven. The question, then, arises about whether or not good morals can exist in a Godless world. Whether people can do things for their own sake. In the novel, most of the characters drink all of the time because the world is meaningless and it doesn't matter what they do; they don't realize they have a responsibility to live a good life.

Hemingway uses bull-fighting as a metaphor for this authenticity. Good bull fighters will do it for its own sake, not as a performance for someone else. The descriptions of the bull fights are so beautiful; I hope to see a bull fight in Spain, one day. I leave you with this:

Romero's left hand dropped the muleta over the bull's muzzle to blind him, his left shoulder went forward between the horns as the sword went in, and for just an instant he and the bull were one, Romero way out over the bull, the right arm extended high up to where the hilt of the sword had gone in between the bull's shoulders.

Jane Eyre's Imagination

2010-12-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Reed tells the young Jane Eyre to “be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent” (1). Jane is often positioned outside of events because she is not connected to anyone, which allows her to observe her surroundings with a “spiritual eye.” As a governess, she is a surrogate mother to Adele, and, to Mrs. Reed, she is a beggar not fit to live with her children. The narrator relays conversations and events that Jane was not a part of but that she witnessed from a distance, which the narrator, the older Jane, is able to recollect in her autobiography.

Jane’s feelings about the paintings she shows Mr. Rochester parallel her position in life as a spectator, an outsider, someone who does not belong. Before the narrator shares her paintings with readers, she assures them “that they are nothing wonderful” (142). Here she evokes humility topoi, stating that her artwork is, perhaps, substantial considering it is done by a woman. The narrator remembers the images she envisions to be superior to her actual renderings of them, “before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy” (142). Her paintings seem to be only shadows of what she conceives because the physical does not have the power to embody the imagination. Jane cannot physically embody what she imagines because of the distance between her thoughts and her body.

At Gateshead, Jane peruses volumes of books filled with pictures because they evoke a feeling of freedom within her. Her imagination, her freedom to think cannot seem to find a place in the outside world. The pictures she beholds tell stories of the artists’ feelings. She is intrigued by these tales even if she cannot fully understand their meaning or the sentiments behind them, “I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quiet, solitary church-yard, with its inscribed headstone, its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly risen crescent attesting the hour of eventide” (3). Jane doesn’t know exactly what the artists feel, but she senses the pictures in the books she reads to be manifestations of inner thoughts and feelings.

As a child, Jane feels contentment in reading, “I was then happy; happy at least in my way” (3). Jane is happy when she can be absorbed in her thoughts and forget about the world outside of herself. Mr. Rochester asks her if she was happy when she painted her pictures, to which she responds “to paint them, in short, was to enjoy the keenest pleasures I have ever known” (143). She finds pleasure in painting, but she is disappointed with the result of her labors. “I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realize” (143). Jane can render a “shadow” of her thoughts, but she does not know how to convey her feelings to the outside world. Her “drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar,” as Rochester says, but they are void of feeling. Jane may have a visual eye and may be a keen observer, but she cannot connect her thoughts and feelings, to embody them.

The Dumpling Dump

2010-11-24T19:55:00.000-08:00

My hands cradle the Pacman shaped cookie like a baby chick just hatched from its egg. Routine brings me to the dollar dumpling hole-in-the-wall every Friday; this Friday proves no different. There is no liberation from my now unconscious habit. All habits must begin as conscious decisions. I don’t remember the first time I came upon Greasy Hank ‘Cho’ and his MSG-saturated Chicken Chow Mein. That moment, the origin of my habit, is buried beneath repetition. Now, every Friday, I escape my claustrophobic office cubicle only to huddle in a dimly lit corner at an un-sturdy table in dire need of disinfection. “Call me Cho,” Greasy Hank tells me. He offers me his nickname as an award for being such a faithful client.

Cho puts the bill down in front of me. “Whenever you’re ready.” He flees from the table as though he’s the perpetrator of a hit and run. Cho always places the cookie so that it covers the price. He tries to conceal the damage the meal has racked on my wallet, which is nothing compared to what my stomach endures. A meal at Cho’s is lethal. I inhale and feel nothing until I’m two bites shy of cleaning my plate. Now it feels like a whole watermelon is lodged in my stomach.

I digest while meditating on the palm-sized cookie. If I never open it, my future remains unsealed, un-solidified. Not that these cookies provide any substantial reading; only food for thought and lucky numbers to play in the lottery. The cookie is part of the novelty, though. I like to hold the cookie and pretend that inside lays the key to my life’s happiness. I treat it like a present. I anticipate what’s inside, but I don’t want to open it and come face-to-face with disappointing contents.

I sit and mull over the idea of breaking open the cookie, but I only get as far as removing it from its plastic wrapper. I leave the unopened cookie beside the heart etched into the table that reads, “Dustin and Becky Forever.” I hope they’re still together. I’m sure they’re a lovely couple. Dustin probably took Becky here on their first date only to find out that Becky hates dumplings. She probably ordered chicken wings and French fries, and Cho probably spit in her food. Cho rolls his eyes when white people come in and order chicken wings and French fries. Not that the food at Greasy Hank’s is really authentic, anyway. I wonder if Dustin and Becky come here as often as I do. I wonder if they sit at this table. I don’t need to know my fortune. I’ll leave this cookie for them.

This Modern Age

2010-11-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

This is the most recent article I have had published in the Johnsonville Press.
I find the comments very interesting. While the article is a response to Tyler Clementi's tragic suicide and the way our society treats homosexuality, I was really only using them as an example to emphasize why I think we need to acknowledge our individual moral responsibilities.

I ‘unthinkingly’ made an offensive quip about homosexuality the other day. I did not consider the content of the joke, the people in my presence, or the impact the joke would have. I just didn’t think. I suppose I thought the joke was harmless. I only realized the seriousness, the disgusting homophobic undertone inscribed in my words, after they were uttered. I am still mortified about my carelessness. For that brief moment, I allowed myself to mimic the widespread hateful attitude our society seems to have toward homosexuals, and I am almost ashamed to admit this shortcoming, but how can I think about the tragic event that recently transpired at Rutgers University without acknowledging my own prejudice? I am not afraid of being labeled homophobic because of my joke; I know that we all have made offensive jokes and remarks at one time or another. To a certain extent I probably do harbor a prejudice toward the homosexual community because I do sometimes accept stereotypes about the community; because I would not want to be mistaken for being a homosexual because I am afraid of being classified as a member of this stigmatized group.

Homophobia exists because the gay and lesbian community is stigmatized; it is mocked and joked about in the media. Our society has a sense of humor. Sometimes I think we try to gage the amount of time that has to pass before we can start incorporating tragic, heated, and controversial events in our “comedy routines.” It’s good to have a sense of humor. It can be good to laugh at ourselves and each other. The fact that we can make jokes about the way we stereotype our differences can be taken as a sign of acceptance, as an acknowledgment of our common humanity, but we always have to consider that it is very easy to take a ‘joke’ too far. We cannot make jokes at the expense of others; there needs to be a level of comfort for the subject of a joke. What needs to be acknowledged is that there is a fine line between what is funny and what is offensive, just as, in this age of technology, there is a fine line between public and private life.

Tyler Clementi’s roommate violated his personal space by, allegedly, leaving his laptop turned on, allowing Clementi’s private life to be streamed onto the internet for the world to comment on. I don’t think that the roommate thought about his actions. He probably found Clementi’s personal encounter funny, and did not think that invading his privacy was anything more than a joke. Obviously, he should be held accountable for his actions, but this incident should also instigate an examination of our society. The roommate did not see anything wrong with streaming a live video of Tyler Clementi for a wide audience to comment on. I wonder how many people viewed this video and laughed. I wonder how many of those people who watched and laughed were members of the Rutgers community. Why does our society find homosexuality funny? We seem to consider it to be a joke in itself. Can anyone explain the punch line?

Perhaps the issue is that homosexuality is not taken seriously. The portrayal of gay men and lesbian women in the media either hyper-feminizes or hyper-masculinizes these communities, situating them as outsiders that exist on the fringes of male and female categories. In other words, there is a notion, I think, that lesbian women are incomplete women, and that gay men are not men at all. Straight women seem to be more accepting of lesbian women than straight men are of gay men. Lesbian women may not be welcomed with open arms, but they don’t seem to be completely ostracized from the category of “woman.” Women still bear a minority status next to men, so women tend to be more accepting of other minority statuses. However, gay men seem to be excluded entirely from the category of man. The media often turns them into a spectacle, something to mock and laugh at, but that is not meant to be taken seriously. Television shows like On the Road with Austin and Santino or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, present us with the preconceived notions society has of gay men, like being hyper-feminized and flamboyant. The fact that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a show about gay men helping straight men become more cultured and better dressers only helps to reinforce the distinction that is made between gay men and straight men.

Gay men are considered something other than ‘men.’ I wrote a paper for a Women’s Studies class freshman year on Johnny Cash’s A Boy named Sue, which addresses the humiliation a man feels going through his life with a feminine name. ‘Sue’ stands in for ‘gay.’ A straight man is terrified of being labeled ‘gay’ not only because he will then be a member of a stigmatized group, but also because it is de-masculating. In Cash’s song, the boy goes through his life being criticized for having a girl’s name. At the end of the song we learn that the boy’s father named him Sue because he wanted to assure that his son would grow up tough and able to fight even though he was not around to raise him. His father realized that with a name like Sue the boy would “have to get tough or die.” Sure, the old man could have stuck around and raised the boy himself, but he was a drunkard, after all. This song is an example of the gender constrictions men face. The privileged category requires men to reject an emotional, feeling self that is often deemed to be feminine. Only those who can conform to the strict gender constrictions of this category can be considered ‘real men.’ This is a serious and frightening reality, but Johnny cash presents it in a humorous manner.

I question whether technology and the media have the power to erase the seriousness of everything. Can we take anything seriously? Is life just one big joke? People post their entire lives on the internet without even thinking. Some people look to gain fame from a scandalous sex video they post on the internet, but some people’s lives and careers have been ruined simply because they were tagged in a slightly distasteful picture on Facebook. No one seems to think about privacy in the cyber world because it is a public domain, but after the recent tragedies I think we should all become more responsible with the technology we use on a daily basis. The internet is a shared, public space, meaning we should be careful and considerate about what we choose to share with the other billions of people who are active within this ‘community.’ We should be careful not to offend another person, as it would deface their share in this public space. It’s true that everyone is entitled to free speech and their own opinions, but common decency should trump even the First Amendment. Common decency is the law of man and should dictate our interactions with each other, either face to face or via the World Wide Web.

Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster

2010-10-10T05:18:00.000-07:00

2010-10-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

Project thesis has begun. I technically begin my senior year next semester, so I have to opt for writing an interdisciplinary thesis as opposed to an honors thesis for the English department. Tomorrow, I am meeting with a subject librarian and my advisor to discuss my topic and proposal. I'm not entirely certain that I want to embark on this project, simply because I have very little free time as it is, and adding a 60-page thesis and extensive research to an already full course load means that I will probably have to forego sleeping, never mind weekends.

I am enrolled in a thesis workshop that is supposed to help me through this grueling process. My first assignment was to create an annotated bibliography using five texts that have shaped who I am as a person.

Annotated Bibliography

1. Slapstick or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut considers this novel to be his biography. He sees life as a Laurel and Hardy slapstick comedy that doesn't, necessarily, include love. In order to combat loneliness, decent people need to support each other and form artificial families. The lives of humans are all interconnected, so we shouldn't worry about finding one person to love but, rather, act decently toward all people - "I have had some experiences with love, or I think I have, anyway, although the ones I like best could easily be described as 'common decency.' I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it." Abraham Lincoln, afterall, said that doing goog and being good was his religion.

2. Reading Like a Writer by FrancineProse
Any English major, reader, or writer should peruse through this 'Guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them.' Prose writes that we should take our time with literature and enjoy the process of reading as opposed to worrying about how fast we can finish a book. Finishing a book isn't as important to me as it once was. It's the slow, wonderful process of entering the world of the novel that makes reading enjoyable. It's easy to forget this when you have a reading list that outstretches the Nile. This book helped me rediscover the fun that can be had analyzing a novel's discourse.

3. The Quiet Man directed by John Ford (1952)
Old world Ireland clashes with 20th century America, since Ireland still practiced traditional marriage customs, such as courting and women keeping a dowry. I love this film because of its Yeatsian poetic overtones, and the notion of romantic love and passion constantly being trodden on by these customs and traditions. The spirited female lead does marry for love and finds romantic passion with an American man, but her dowry is still important to her. She is very independent and considers herself fully entitled to her dowry, and she responds to male domination with physical defiance. This woman was able to create a place for herself that was not submissive to her husband, even though she wasn't raised to think that way. Companionate marriage is able to triumph at the end of the film.

4. "I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate." - Julia Child
Julia Child's passion for food lead her to become a chef. I am hoping that my love of books will one day lead me to become a writer. I can't expect myself to be great and accomplished without years of experience. I will have many trial and error sessions when it comes to writing, and I will always remain a reader. But what it all boils down to is that I am passionate about books and love them enough to pursue a career in them. It makes sense: find a career based on your love, your interests. I just love how Child simplifies it; she is always unintentionally witty.

5. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
I wish to live in Austen's "community of sense." The novel brilliantly relays how ill-breeding has nothing to do with lineage, as it was commonly thought to. The fact is that the upper-class can be just as immoral as the lower class. Austen's community is created at the end of the novel when Elizabeth and Darcy are married - the marriage of true minds - and senseless people, like Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins, are banished from it. It is important to think of manners as morals and to always treat other people as 'persons.'

I intend to write my thesis on Anne Frank as a mythic figure, how she is no longer a person but a symbol. Anne doesn't even speak for herself: her diary has been censored, and plays and films that are adaptations of her diary portray her as either a bubbling idiot or a saint. What does it mean that children are taught about the Holocaust through Anne and her diary? Who is Anne Frank as a person?

The Balcony Scene

2010-09-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

I shall write on this image another time.

The Aluminum Swan

2010-08-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

I ate in one of those fancy restaurants where they wrap your leftovers in aluminum foil swans. The restaurant served delicious 18th century fare. I had the venison stew.

My Term of Service with AmeriCorps

2010-08-22T09:03:00.001-07:00

From day one my summer job was frustrating. It took only moments for the campers to make me realize that I was not mentally, physically, or emotionallyprepared for what they had in store for the other counselors and me. After funding for my volunteer abroad experience fell through, countless rejections from employers and internship programs, and with no "Help Wanted" signs in sight, I turned to AmeriCorps. I always find it rewarding to give back, and AmeriCorps is a service program that provides members with a weekly living allowance, plus a $1,000 education stipend. I was matched with a summer camp in New Brunswick that offered kids a full day of activities, two meals and an afternoon snack, and two weekly field trips.

Summer camps are especially important for inner city kids. The majority of the campers have parents who work all day, so they would have been left to fend for themselves, to be nurtured by television, video games, and junk food. The largest number of kids we ever had over the course of the camp's run was thirty. Enrollment was pricey for inner city families, but the kids who attended had parents who were willing to pay the price so their children wouldn't be forced to spend the summer languishing on a couch, mindlessly watching Cartoon Network or episodes of iCarly. Mandy of the kids hated the camp and wished they could have stayed in front of the TV. On a bus ride to one of the field trips, I sat next to an eight-year-old boy who spent the entire ride complaining to me about all of the television shows he was missing.

The kids complained a lot; I never heard them express gratitude about anything. This is what I found most surprising about the kids I worked with, the fact that they come from broken homes, broken lives, and yet they have an over-developed sense of entitlement. These kids were spoiled; they had no manners, nothing was ever good enough for them, there wasn't an ounce of discipline in them. It was clear that there was never an adult in their lives to tell them "no," or to pass onto them any values or a work ethic. Instead they walk around with their heads held high, their chests out, and a disrespectful attitude toward everything. Everything they owned had been bought and handed to them by their parents, who just want to give their children better lives than the ones they had. I remember when one of the girls in the older group was mocking how basic my AT&T Nokia cell phone is compared to her Blackberry.

All of the counselors were responsible for daily programming. Another AmeriCorps member and I were in charge of arts and crafts; there was also music class, kite making, games, and Gospel. My partner for arts and crafts and I had reminisced over our own camp experiences and how much we loved arts and crafts. We assumed the kids would be interested and easy to engage, so we spent over one hundred dollars on supplies. On the first day we received a rude awakening: the kids were not interested in learning or doing anything. Instead of sharing interesting tasks and games with the kids, we found ourselves having to chase after campers who would run out of the room, reprimand them for yelling at others, hitting each other, and cursing. We had to focus on keeping them focused. Most of them did enjoy arts and crafts, but only because they got to touch things and use Play-Doh. The first craft I had the kids make was a small banner with their names and pictures and decorations that represent who they are. At the end of the first day, more than half of the supplies purchased were destroyed in some fashion, even the glue. The poor game room was in much the same state. Hundreds of dollars worth of games, which had been donated, were ravaged, mutilated, paralyzed, left in ruin. After that first day, I don't remember exactly what thoughts crossed my mind. I must have been baffled by the lack of respect the kids had for everything and everyone, even each other. But I didn't yet dread coming to work. (The dread came later, I'd say around the end of week two.)

I skimmed an article in a recent issue of TIME magazine called The Case Against Summer Vacation by David Von Drehle. The article discusses how detrimental summer vacation is to American students. A century's worth of academic studies concludes that all students lose a month of progress in math and reading skills every summer. Low-income students, on the other hand, lose three months when compared with middle-income students, so by the time these students enter third grade they are a year behind their more privileged peers. Summer vacation is cited as one of the more prevalent causes of the academic achievement gap that separates low-income students from middle-income students. More privileged children are not usually completely inactive over the summer months. They go on family vacations, to museums, on tours, and to summer camps. Children from low-income families usually face summers filled with boredom and inactivity, "kids can't go exploring if their neighborhoods aren't safe. It's hard to play without toys or playgrounds or open spaces." Not having any toys was not an issue in my experience. In fact, the kids had more toys than I ever had as a kid, not to mention more expensive cell phones, sneakers, and ipods. And let's not forget the video game consuls. The kids are bored and inactive because they are not used to thinking creatively, because no one has ever engaged their minds. They can't think of anything better to do.

I don't know if I really made an impact on any of these kids. As an AmeriCorps member it was my responsibility to show these kids that there are people who care about them. They don't consciously realize how unfair their circumstances are, but they must have a deep felt, unexpressed sense that no one really cares about their futures. The most visible sign of this, I think, is the playground littered with cigarette butts and broken condoms, with monkey bars held together with tape. Then again, they may not even realize that there are nicer playgrounds in nicer areas where more privileged kids get to play. I know I did my best, even though I became known as the "mean counselor" or the "Nazi counselor." These kids don't stand a chance at having a bright future, at escaping their environment if they don't learn to behave. I developed a discipline system where the kids formed teams according to their age groups and competed for points. Whichever team received the most points by the end of the week got to have soda or ice cream with their lunch. I enforced time out, and there were days where I placed every kid in time out. I was not the most popular counselor because I wouldn't let any of them get away with anything. I was hard on them but it was my responsibility as a counselor and, in the end, I think I may have garnered at least a little respect. I also made an effort to have heart-to-hearts with most of the kids, expecially the girls. Girls as young as nine were shocked that I am twenty-one with no boyfriend or baby. One girl told me that I should hurry up and find myself a man, already. I tried to explain to them that it is my choice not to have a boyfriend, that I am young and trying to earn an education and have my own life. The point was to try and get them to realize that having a boyfriend doesn't complete them or make them more valuable, but I don't know how much of what I said really sunk in.

The last two weeks of camp, I was emotionally drained and couldn't bring myself to care about controlling the kids. In my head I kept reminding myself to suck it up because the torture was almost over. Kids yelling, screaming, biting, hitting, cursing were all just everyday occurrences I didn't want to deal with anymore. I was no longer concerned with making an impact, not even with the few kids I felt could be reached, but only with getting through each day and completing my hours for AmeriCorps. The truth is that I never sympathized with each child's situation, I just focused on trying to get them to see the bigger picture, and how their choices now will affect their futures. To sympathize with their situations is to consider them excuses for their behavior, which doesn't solve anything but continues to reinforce those actions that will keep them living in their current situations. By the end of camp I had given up on yelling and stopping such behavior. I had completely given up hope of having any kind of influence on their lives. I wonder if this also influences any academic development gap between low-income and middle-income students: the fact that many people may just give up trying to get through to urban youth, or just refuse to try.

If Books Could Talk

2010-08-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

One-Minute Writer prompt for Tuesday, August 10th: If the books on your shelves could talk, what would they say?

They all huddle around the warmth of the desk lamp and bear their souls; spill their ink; recite the words printed on each of their pages. They become friends. They acknowledge and accept their differences. They are all members of different genres, and some have traveled from distant regions and faraway lands. Their common ground: they each await to be relished, read thoroughly. In the midst of their heart-to-hearts as they wait to share their stories with the reader, they realize that all books are created equal.

"Most of us live in two worlds"

2010-08-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

I just started watching The Maxx, an animated series based on the comic book created by Sam Keith. The show aired on MTV in the 90s. An episode I just finished watching introduced me to Sara, an angst-ridden and unpopular teenage girl who wants to be a writer. In the episode she is struggling with the aftermath of her father's homicidal-suicide, and her mother's new found sense of self - a liberal feminist. There is a scene where, just for a moment, she feels the anger that must have provoked her father to kill himself. She is confronted by a boy named Jimmy, who was her best friend until he was offered the opportunity to be popular if he ditches and humiliates her.

"You're not mad, right? Cuz we can still be friends as long as nobody sees us."

Sara could feel the barrel of her father's gun in her pocket. In that brief moment, she could have killed Jimmy, but she decides she is not mad. She realizes she could be just like her father, and she makes a keen observation: if she had the opportunity to dump Jimmy and become popular, she would seize it.

"I think it's important for every writer to know that she has the potential to become just as rotten as everybody else."

This is easy for me to forget, and this forgetfulness is something I need to work on. My good opinion and my trust are usually gone forever once someone crosses me. I have a hard time accepting human fraility. I separate myself from other humans by thinking myself something other than human. Not alien, but definitely foreign. Someone capable of everything, of being alone. This is how I write myself. This is my alternate reality. It is how I escape what I actually am in this world.

I realize that years of putting myself down have transformed me into an automaton of negativity. I have negative thoughts, but they go unperceived by my conscience. Now there is just a felt sense of worthlessness, with no concrete rhyme or reason. I'm going to start keeping a negativity journal. I have to try and shed light on all of the ways I put myself down, and then concoct some positive reinforcement that will combat the pain and suffering caused by treacherous inner monologue.

Oxymoronic #1

2010-07-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Prose chock full of oxymoron goodness.

She looked awfully pretty sitting at the bar, eating her jumbo shrimp cocktail and kissing the rim of her dry martini glass. She ate carefully, diligently, making sure each small bite was enjoyed until she reached its tail, and even though her lips were port red, she somehow mastered the art of drinking out of a martini glass without leaving any stain.

The dim lighting of the bar room enhanced the highlights in her dirty blonde hair. She looked to be the oldest woman at the bar, probably an aging yuppie hoping some thirty-something would try to make a pass at her. Unfortunately for her, younger men thought her to only be attractive for her age - I would guess late forties, maybe early fifties. I could see that her rejection by the yuppie men in the bar left her with diminished confidence. At the beginning of the evening she tried to attract the attention of any breathing young male who asked the bartender to send a drink over to table #19 where six luscious ladies, only twenty-two years old, were promiscuously drinking - accepting different drinks from different men throughout the evening. The woman would smile, raise her little black dress above her knee, and circle her finger around the rim of her martini glass. Seductively.

I recognized her pain, I've experienced it myself. I've been to many a bar, drinking my share of whiskey sours and hoping some hot young thing would notice me. I admired her attempt to act naturally, to pretend she wanted to be at the bar alone with her dry martini and jumbo shrimp. She wasn't fooling me, however. I'm a clever fool. I thought my chances of connecting with this woman were heightened because she had no one but desperately wanted someone.

In any other bar populated with middle-aged singles, I wouldn't stand a chance. I'm a fifty-something acrophobic mountain climber with balding hair, and I drive a Cherokee Pioneer. (And these are my good qualities). But in the yuppie singles bar, we were alone together. We were the oldest people in the bar, each looking for affirmation that we are still deisrable.

I watched this woman with relish. I desired to know her name, her smell, her touch, how many sugars (if any) she puts in her coffee. I longed to know the little things about her, and I longed to know why she no longer feels desirable. She was beautiful. To me, she was beautiful by any standard, and I found myself absolutely unsure of the best way to approach her. She was out of my league, and I was afraid she would say so - her rejection would be an emotional holocaust. It suddenly felt like high school, again. My tongue was swollen with embarrassment - I was embarrassed for my pathetic self trying to attract a beautiful woman.

"Be cool, be cool," I thought, "act casually concerned."

I took the seat next to her. She didn't notice me until I cleared my throat which diverted her attention from the light dancing on the surface of her third martini. She looked at me. Her pupils were dilated. I was imprisoned in them.

"Hi."

"Hello," she seemed disappointed. She sent a text message just as I greeted her, and I wondered if she was begging a friend to rescue her.

"I'm Craig."

"Kim." She shook my hand. I was glad she didn't leave me hanging.

"Huh, we both have one syllable names." I couldn't believe I said something so stupid. I was surprised she didn't pick up her things and leave.

"You're really awful at relating to people," she laughed.

"Uh, well, I usually don't do this.."

"It shows."

I could feel the awkward silence rising, heating up. I had to say something to redeem myself. I tried to complement her.

"That's a great ugh...hand bag..or purse.."

"Clutch, and thank you. It's genuine imitation leather," she ran her hand along the clutch's surface.

"What makes an imitation genuine?" I hoped this wasn't a stupid question.

"It was a joke. I thought I was being witty."

"Oh, yeah, you were. I was also joking." Idiot, idiot, IDIOT! "Look, can I buy you a drink?" I clenched my fists in anticipation. The brief moment I waited for her response was an eternity.

"Sure." Her whisper-thin smile almost made me explode in my pants.

Summer's Progress

2010-07-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

Books Completed

1. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

2. "Just A Housewife:" The Rise and Fall of Domesticity by Glenna Matthews

3. The Invisible Heart by Nancy Folbre

4. Shopportunity!" How to Be A Retail Revolutionary by Kate Newlin

5. The Bitch in the House by Cathi Hanauer

6. Pride & Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

7. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Currently Reading

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2. Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World by Mary Pipher

Books I would Like to Purchase

My Current Rituals

1. Playing Scrabble Every night

2. Writing paragraphs that contain a lot of oxymorons

3. Learning Strategies for Chess

4. Playing new games, like Chopsticks and Ninja

5. Going out on dates with silly boys who think they are cool

6. Catching up with old friends in new coffee houses

Plans for the Near Future

1. Skydive

2. Get a tattoo of an origami crane

Things I need to do

1. Buy my Textbooks

2. Write two more chapters for my Children's book

Today I was talking with the woman who runs Camp Oasis, Estella. She was telling me that she is from Patagonia, Argentina, and when she is home for the summer months, she works as a guide for ice climbing and tours of the Antarctic. I mentioned how I really want to go to places like Iceland, or anywhere cold so I can ice fish and walk on top of glaciers. She gave me her information and told me that if I want to travel to Argentina she would give me a place to stay and food; all I would have to worry about is the plane ticket. Airfare to Argentina can come to $1500, a nice chunk of change, but definitely worth it if I'm going to be ice climbing and always having this for a view:

I hope everyone is having a lovely summer.

The Inn Keeper

Daily Spark Writing Prompt #105

2010-07-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

Make an acrostic using your name.

Margot is

An alternative identity that

Guards a young woman with insecurities and

Gives her a fictional life that

Internally

Exists.

Daily Spark Writing Prompt #3

2010-07-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

Write a paragraph describing a typical August afternoon without using the words, hot, humid, heat, or sun.

Stillness hung about the neighborhood like clothes left on the line to dry. An occassional breeze was stale as morning breath, offering no relief. Not a soul could be found outdoors any longer than a moment; it only took a moment to feel mummified in sweat. No man mowed his lawn, for grass had turned to straw due to want of rain. No child or teenager roamed the sidewalks aimlessly - they were kept in the air conditioning by their mothers.

I know not what possessed me to walk to and from work - a total distance of four miles. Somehow, walking in the suffocating air was like walking through molasses - sticky, strenuous. It was one of those days where showering was unnecessary. The walk to work wasn't terrible, almost bearable. Those powerful rays had yet to strengthen, but I knew my afternoon trek would be unforgiving. I prayed for the weather gods to have mercy on my pathetic, panting, well-done soul. Unfortunately, my borderline atheism and want of faith meant that my prayer was in vain. As I walked home from work that afternoon, I thought I was going to spontaneously combust; that my flesh was going to ignite. I returned home, delirious and half-baked.

2010-07-17T20:45:00.001-07:00

I love these photos of Anne; they're so artsy. She has a quiet intelligence that is visible in her facial expressions in these photos. I believe these were the last photos taken of her in the annex (ever) before the eight people in hiding were discovered.

A Professional, Cultured Dinner Guest

2010-07-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

I never have a real, satisfying answer to the question "what do you want to do with your life?" - my answer is neither satisfying for the inquisitive relative or myself. Now I even get the question from my peers. There is hardly ever a day where I'm not forced to quickly scrape my brain for an answer to this question. What's worse is that I now find myself asking other 20-somethings this very question I want to escape, that makes my skin crawl. I just ask because I want to find other people who are as confused, unsure, and terrified as I am. Whenever there is that odd person - the person who has known exactly what he has wanted to do since he was twelve and is now preparing to pursue his pipe dream - I am stung with jealousy. Yes, I find myself hating that person who has his life planned out and thinks he knows where he's going to be in ten years. I know I don't want my life planned out. I just want to take it one day at a time, but I'm also scared shitless and sometimes just desire to have order or a plan (even if it's half-assed).

I always respond "I'm not sure" (never "I don't know, I don't want people to think I haven't got a clue), or "I'm undecided," but internally, my real, un-uttered answer is simply that I want to know everything and experience everything. What I really want is to stumble in and out of sophisticated dinner parties and be able to impress people with my wide array of knowledge and experiences. I want to converse with Master Ansel Xavier on any topic, and laugh smugly over gin and tonics. Oh, yes, what a fine profession that would be.

Less Love, More Common Decency

2010-07-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

"I have had some experiences with love, or I think I have, anyway, although the ones I like best could easily be described as "common decency." I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. love need not have had anything to do with it." -Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick or Lonesome Nomore

Jane Jetson, the Futuristic Homemaker and Wife

2010-07-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

My dad was watching The Jetsons when I got home from work, today. The Jetsons are the futuristic, space age counterpart to The Flinstones, the modern stone-age family. What I found ironic about the show was the role of Jane, the wife and homemaker of the Jetson clan. Like most housewives in the early sixties, Jane tended to the house and children while her husband, George, went to work everyday. In the opening credits of the cartoon, George is driving his family around in their space ship on his way to work. He drops his son and daughter off at school, and then proceeds to take his wife to the shopping mall. Before he lets her out, George tries to give his wife a single bill from his wallet, but Jane, instead, takes the large stack and heads to the mall.

Jane represents the typical housewife. She is obsessed with fashion, gadgets, and belongs to a women's society outside of the home. In fact, Jane Jetson and her gadget-run household is probably more of a comment on the degradation of housework than a projection of what housework could be like in the future. A housewife's 'job' was considered easy because she had vacuum cleaners, ready-made food, and dishwasher's to make housework easier and more efficient. New technology had provided housewives more leisure times to shop with the money their husbands gave them to be good, little consumers. Jane's household was run entirely by machines; she didn't need to lift a finger. In this episode I watched, there was a machine that cleared all of the dishes and uneaten food, a machine that wiped milk off of the son's face, and a machine that spoon-fed the teenage daughter her cereal like an electronic mother, relaying that a mother and homemaker can easily be replaced.

I just found it odd that this futuristic utopia has people living in space, flying around in space ships, and living amongst robots, yet women still maintained the homemaker role, only with no home to make since all of the gadgets these women were encouraged to buy took over their role. Jane Jetson was basically a consumer: a consumer of gadgets that were invented to take care of her family. Granted, the cartoon was aired in the early sixties, but if such advancements in technology could be made with a little imagination, why couldn't more equal rights for women? Betty Friedan's book had already been published, the problem was named, but it wasn't considered a serious problem. Housewives just were not serious creatures. "They only care about shopping and fashion, so their position probably would never change." Yes, I'm sure that was the attitude. Actually, the idea of Jane being anything else was probably not even thought of. It was just a little unnerving that a show set so far into the future could still maintain the oppressive gender roles of the 1960s.

Joan La Pucelle, The Pious

2010-07-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Joan looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. She was in love with the new dress her mother bought her for Confirmation, but she wouldn't admit she looked beautiful. Vanity's a sin, she thought. Joan only cared about her person. If she was beautiful, it was only because of her love for God.

The dress was a shade of ivory only a little lighter than her skin with short, capped sleeves and a long empire waist that was cinched be a belt tied in a bow in the back. Joan was poised in front of the mirror with her long, brown braid draped over her shoulder like a shawl and her arms hanging neatly at her sides. As the circled date on the calendar next to her desk - October 4th - drew nearer, Joan had begun rehearsing for the Confirmation ceremony on a daily basis. She was going to be renewing the vows made at her Baptism; the ones her parents confirmed for her. Now that she's of age, she can speak for herself and be in control of her relationship with God.

"Do you renounce Satan?" She said in Bishop O'Connor's voice.

"I do."

"And all his works?"

"I do."

"Joan Elizabeth Bernadette La Pucelle, do you believe that in one God there are three Divine Persons - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost?"

"I do." Joan searched the mirror. She thought about trying to summon the ghost of the Catholic Tudor Queen, again. In the back of her mind she could hear Greg Flynn bragging about his daring feat to her during rehearsal for their middle school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"No, really, if you stand in front of a mirror in a dark room and say 'Bloody Mary' three times, she will appear to you."

"You're lying," Joan had feigned disbelief, even though she was intrigued and couldn't wait for rehearsal to end so she could go home and try it for herself.

"Seriously, it was the most terrifying thing I ever saw! Like the first time I saw Freddy Krueger. I was so scared I ran out of the room; I didn't want to look at her."

Joan believed he was sincere, otherwise he wouldn't have admitted to running scared from the Queen's reflection.

"Well, what did she look like?" Joan wasn't going to let Greg believe he had convinced her.

"She's just too horrible to describe."

When Joan got home from rehearsal that day, she ran to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She dimmed the light and stood in front of the mirror. Greg Flynn told her that it was only Bloody Mary's reflection you can see; that if you turn around to glimpse the physical form that must be standing behind you, there is no one there. You are alone.

Joan took a deep breath, as if filling her chest cavity with air was inflating her with courage. She closed her eyes and enunciated each word, "Blo-ody...M-a-r-y." She opened one eye to see her own reflection in the mirror. She closed her eyes again, wet her lips, and recited the second "Bloody Mary." Joan opened both eyes. She took three deep breaths, rolled her head along its axis and tried to make her lips say "Bloody...bloody...ugh." Joan switched on the bathroom light. She leaned over the water basin, her arms pressing down on the counter so hard that her back was arched like a cat's. She had been too afraid to say it.

"I'm fourteen," Joan said to her reflection in the mirror, "surely I can bear to say it, now." Joan still desired to see the body of the Queen who died a Catholic martyr, and not because Greg Flynn dared her to do it in sixth grade and she was unable to. Her desire was for the flesh. Rather, to be in the flesh or near it, to take on the human form of others, the way Christ put on human flesh to suffer as man does and save him from sin.

People suffering were attractive to Joan, in that she wished she could suffer like them. In fourth grade she read The Diary of Anne Frank and became obsessed with her. She learned everything she could about Anne, but it wasn't her personality she craved to assume for herself; it was her suffering. Joan thought the only way she could be closer to Anne was to suffer like her; the only way to be closer to the virgin martyrs, the saints, is to suffer. Through suffering, these women felt God, and Joan desperately wanted to feel him.

Joan undid her long braid so her hair rippled over her left shoulder and fell just beneath her hip. She watched herself run the mahogany locks through her fingers, and she was reminded of O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi. Della Young had such beautiful, long hair, she thought, and she cut it all off for the man she loved. Joan walked to her desk and took the pair of scissors sitting in the pencil cup in the top, right corner of the desktop. She walked back to the mirror hanging on the wall behind her bedroom door and twisted all of her hair so she could cut it as if it were a single strand.

Character Sketch of Philip La Pucelle from The Pious

2010-07-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Damn breeze spreads 'n burns like dragon's breath," Karl wiped his brow, then picked up the McAllister's garbage cans to be emptied into the back of the sanitation truck.

"Breeze nearly singed my eyebrows," Pip hopped on the back of the truck and gripped the bar. "You think this heat'll ignite all this dead grass?"

"Nah." Karl dropped the McAllister's empty can and let it roll down the street. He hopped onto the back of the truck and smacked its side like a stallion; the truck continued down the road. "We've seen hotter. Much hotter."

"I always forget how hot this Indian summer is," Pip had to yell over the grumble of the truck, "isn't that funny? Happens every year, but I'm never prepared for this heat."

"You said the same thing to me this winter."

"It was a bad winter," Pip asserted.

"It's fucking Wisconsin; every winter's a bad winter." The sanitation truck stopped at the next block. Karl and Pip jumped down and dispersed to their sides of the street. Karl always takes the even-numbered houses on the right, while Pip handles the odd-numberd houses.

Karl did everything in his power to make his job finish faster. It's why Pip always wants to work with him. Their mornings begin at five, and within four and a half hours, they cover fifty blocks. Karl dragged the cans of five or six houses close to the truck so he could rip the bags out all at once and toss them into its ominous mouth. He was against making more than one trip, and his method did help get the job done faster, even though he couldn't remember who each of the cans belonged to. Not that he cared. When Karl first became the town's sole sanitation worker, the residents tried to make a formal complaint about the displacement of their garbage cans. Neighbors often argued with each other about the whereabouts of their trash cans, until Philip La Pucelle witnessed Karl rolling trash cans like bowling balls and tossing them on the nearest lawn without even attempting to match the house number painted on the trash can with its proper owner. Philip and several of his neighbors called the department of sanitation to complain about Karl's conduct, but their efforts were in vain since the department head always responded "we'll do something about it right away," only nothing ever was. Everyone just learned to accept the displacement of their garbage cans. Everyone except Philip.

The sanitation truck reached Dunbar Avenue where the La Pucelle's reside. Karl and Pip took to their sides, dragging garbage cans into the middle of the road to be emptied, systematically, into the sanitation truck. Karl grabbed the trash cans of the first six even-numbered houses and arranged them in a flower formation, and then lifted the heavy sacks by their draw strings and swung them into the truck like boomerangs.

Philip took a sip of the burnt coffee his wife had made when he spotted Karl through the kitchen window. He decided he would confront Karl about the trash cans himself. Karl is a sensible man, Philip thought to himself. Afterall, he's a fellow Elk. Philip put his coffee mug into the sink and went out into the front yard, acting as though he was just coming outside to fetch his morning paper. Karl didn't notice Philip come out and walk down the walkway as he habitually went through the motions of swinging bags into the sanitation truck and rolling cans into the curb. Philip noticed Karl kick his garbage can across the street, and Pip tossed it onto the Truetts' lawn.

"Oh, Karl, what are you doing?" Karl stiffened noticeably; caught red-handed.

"Hey, Phil.."

"It's Philip, Karl."

"Mhm. What can I do for ya, Phil?" Karl gripped the La Pucelle's white picket fence with his dirty gloves.

Philip looked down at Karl's hands with disgust. The contrast between his sterile white fence and grimy, grease-caked gloves Karl was touching it with made Philip cringe. He was embarrassed that he was wearing a well-ironed business suit while Karl stood on the other side of the fence in coveralls made of canvas. What right did he have to tell Karl he was doing his job incorrectly? Philip didn't understand what it was like to be a sanitation worker. Philip has a comfortable job as a marketing assistant for a small publishing company, and so he has no idea how difficult being the town's garbage man must be. As Karl looked at him, Philip wished he could be in Karl's shoes just so he could understand the suffering and degradation a garbage man must feel.

Philip realized his cowardice. He couldn't confront Karl because he doesn't want Karl to know that he thinks he is superior, so, instead, Philip complains to his wife about the trash cans and attempts to make formal complaints to the sanitation department.

"Phil? What?" Karl was growing impatient. He and Pip still had twenty blocks to cover.

"Oh," Philip shifted uneasily as he was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt, "nothing."

Karl shook his head and sighed. He walked away from Philip and signaled to Pip that he would catch up. Pip was halfway through with his side of Dunbar Avenue.

Philip wished he said something. Dammit. It was too late to call Karl back now. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the dirt smudge left on his white picket fence. I'll give it a good polish when I get home from work, Philip thought.

"Philip," his wife honked the horn and waved to him as she pulled the car into the dirveway. Philip waved the dirty handkerchief like a Southern Belle and walked towards the car.

"You haven't left for work, yet?" His wife closed her door and walked around to empty the shopping bags out of the trunk. "Joan, grab the things in the back seat and come and help me, will you? We got a lot of shopping done. Were you polishing the fence again?"

"Father, Mother and I bought my Confirmation dress," Joan walked to the trunk to help her mother gather their purchases from the local department store.

"That's great, Joan. I just got a little sidetracked," he returned to his wife's question, "I'm on my way out now."

"Sidetracked with what?" Meryl handed Joan three shopping bags to carry and laid the dress on its hanger across her arms.

Philip looked down the street to see Karl and Pip staring at Joan as they hopped on the back of the truck to move on to the next street. The way the two garbage men looked at his fourteen-year-old daughter as she balanced shopping bags made him feel uneasy, but as the truck receded into the distance, Philip told himself he was only imagining it.

"Just Karl," he answered his wife.

"Would you like to see my dress, Father?"

"Of course. I have to go to work now, but why don't ya try it on for me when I get home." Joan nodded and went inside the house.

Meryl slipped the handles of two shopping bags onto Philip's wrists in a manner that said you're already going to be late, so ya might as well help me with the bags. Philip followed his wife into the house and dropped the two bags he was carrying in the foyer.

"Alright, Meryl, I really have to go," he kissed his wife and turned for the door.

"Wait," Meryl grabbed her husband's sleeve. "Did you hear how she called us 'father' and 'mother' just now?"

"And?"

"It's strange. She's been acting strangely since she started preparation for Confirmation at the beginning of the year."

"Meryl, I have to go to work. We will discuss this when I get home." Philip kissed his wife again and left for work.

Note: Philip really isn't religious, and he is not supposed to be the sterotypical, self-righteous evangelical type. However, he is evangelical only in the sense that he contrasts himself, sets himself apart from the dirty, impure, immoral sanitation worker in an effort to glorify himself. But Philip is complex because he feels guilty about this strong sense of superiority. The Pious really isn't about Joan, it's about Philip, though, lots of crazy things will happen to Joan. I have an idea of the aboutness of this story, but I really don't have a set fabric to tie all my characters to. The sanitation workers will appear again....I sort of set up a story line concerning them and Joan.

The Good, the Bad, and the Meh of My Current Movie Watches

2010-07-01T20:47:00.001-07:00

The Good
1. The Hurt Locker

2. How To Train Your Dragon

3. The African Queen

4. Charlie Wilson's War

5. Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth)

The Bad

1. Ghost World

2. Ink

The Meh

1. Brideshead Revisited

2. Toy Story 3

A Coop is Not a Home

2010-06-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

A woman I work with grew up on a farm and loves farm animals, especially chickens. She has fond memories of being awakened by a rooster and collecting eggs from a hen house. She was delighted when I told her about Greta and asked if she would like to have her. Greta will have a lovely home, I feel, even though she will be living in a backyard in New Jersey. Hopefully Greta will be able to move in with her new owner by the end of the month; my coworker wants to build a hen house first and collect some supplies. Taking care of a chicken is very costly, though a part of me would have liked to keep her. The part of me that longs to live on a farm or ranch in the midwest, but that part hasn't grown enough yet. Not to mention I make very little money and do not really have a place of my own. But one day.

I will miss my featherless Greta, but I know she will be in good hands.

Le Cordon Child

2010-06-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

I caught the last half-hour of a biography of Julia Child; she really was a very funny, warm, and fascinating person, and the relationship she had with her husband, Paul, was "Childishly" unique.

Julie & Julia is a favorite movie of mine because I think it introduces today's generation, myself, to a figure who might otherwise be misconceived. I, myself, knew nothing about Julia Child and thought of her only as an uptight society lady. But the movie was a small window into Julia's life in Paris, her relationship with her husband, and her determination to publish a cookbook that would make the art of French cooking comprehensible for American cooks, better-known as housewives.

Julia was remarkable for her time. She didn't marry until she was thirty-one (the norm was 21), and she had a fine education. She was uncommon for American society at the time, anyway. She met Paul in 1944 while they were both stationed in Ceylon, Paul was 10 years her senior and an OSS Officer. He was well-traveled and actually introduced Julia to French cuisine. Julia reportedly never cooked until she married Paul. She said that the first meal she ever cooked for him was a complete disaster, "Paul married me in spite of my cooking." It's just funny that Julia Child wasn't always Julia Child.

It was while she was living in France that she realized she wanted to spend her life cooking and eating. She called her first meal in France a "culinary revelation -" oysters, sole Meuniere, and fine wine. She studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris under the instruction of master chefs, until she became a master herself. She wanted fresh food, real cooking to be introduced to America, so she tested every recipe to make sure the recipes for her book were perfect, and could therefore be easily mastered. Mastering the Art of French Cooking totals 734 pages and was critically acclaimed for bringing French culture to America in the 1960s.

In Post-WII America, canned-cooking was the norm. During the war, housewives were encouraged to purchase canned, frozen, and processed foods because they were inexpensive and could be stretched to last longer than fresh ingredients. Not to mention that a significant number of women entered the work force to help the war effort and no longer had time to cook a meal from scratch. After the war ended, housewives saw no need to return to fresh ingredients, to back-breaking stove-slaving if they could just as easily get dinner from a can. It was faster, more efficient, and allowed for more leisure time. Domesticity was devalued in American society by men and women alike. Cooking was seen only as housework to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible (thanks, Betty Friedan).

Julia enjoyed cooking, it was never work for her. She is responsible for making food an experience, for making food and its preparation enjoyable. Julia became the most widely seen cook when she began hosting her own cooking show called, The French Chef. Julia knew how to think on her feet. The show was always live, so audiences saw every little mistake and mishap, which only endeared them to her, for she never stopped because of a mistake. She would quickly acknowledge a mistake but would never dwelled on it because everyone makes mistakes. Julia Child truly had an appetite for life.

I've been reading a lot about the housewife in American society and the rise and fall of domesticity for a research paper I'm writing. I've been thinking about keeping another blog - not that I need another one- where I pretend to be a 1950s-60s housewife, answering questions about life and housework. I'm still only thinking about it. Domestic Goddess.

Some Chicken and Waffles

2010-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

I splurged a little and purchased a Bella Cucina Circus Waffle iron on Amazon. It only set me back $17.15, plus shipping and handling, but I think it will be totally worth it. I know I want to eat a waffle shaped like an elephant. The product is also quality: non-stick surface, includes a recipe book, waffles take only a few minutes to cook, and it is easy to store. Then, of course, there is this product description: "Here's a great way to put more fun into breakfast - make waffles in circus shapes. Your kids will enjoy eating a lion, an elephant, or a clown. The non-stick surface is easy to use, easy to clean. Use a box mix or your own favorite recipe. Breakfast never tasted so good."

My first reaction when I saw this incredible waffle iron was, "hey, I think I would enjoy having circus shaped waffles for breakfast." I can't wait for the waffle iron to get here!

In other news, I am now the proud, temporary owner of a Delaware hen. I was in South Jersey on Wednesday, and I saw this poor chicken fall off the back of a truck on a back road. She rolled about fifteen feet after rolling out of the truck, which was moving approximately 40mph. The hen was practically featherless by the time she stopped rolling. Apart from losing a lot of feathers, she was perfectly fine. I drove her to one of the local farms, but the farmer said that if he were to take her he would only kill her because her feathers will probably never grow back and there may be internal damage. So, I rescued the chicken and took it home.

I've been calling her Greta, she just looks like a Greta to me. I'm currently trying to build her a little chicken coop in my backyard, and I'm purchasing some feed and basic supplies online. I cannot keep this chicken because it is too expensive to raise, and I am moving into an apartment at the beginning of August, so I have to find a nice place for this chicken to live and lay eggs. Until then, I will read up on Delaware chickens and nurse this featherless bird back to health.

Planes, Trains, and Paper Cranes

2010-06-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hadley was upset that she could never go anywhere. She felt as though she was stranded in cornfields, trapped between bales of hay. She wished to be old enough to escape: to drive, to fly, to purchase a plane ticket.

In school one day, she learned how to make a crane by folding paper. Her art teacher said it was called origami. Hadley was fascinated, and she was able to make origami cranes better than anyone else in her class.

One night, Hadley was sent to her room because she refused to eat her supper. Her father was a fisherman, and he often brought home the day's catch for his family to feast on. Hadley never particularly liked eating things that still have their eyes intact.

"I don't particularly like eating things that still have their eyes intact."

"Are you being smart with me?" Her father grunted, taking a break from chugging his ale.

"No, Sir. I'm simply stating what I don't like."

"If you don't like what I give you, then you don't eat," her father's face was fire-engine red, now. Hadley didn't know if it was his Irish temper or the pint of ale he was drinking that brought such color to his face.

So Hadley was sent to her room without supper and no promise of dessert. "I wouldn't have eaten that fish if he paid me," Hadley said to herself as she ascended the stairs to her bedroom.

Hadley lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the grumbling in her belly that was beginning to growl. A light breeze tiptoed over her windowsill and tossed the two paper cranes dangling from her ceiling. Hadley smiled with delight as she watched the breeze animate the two cranes, dancing and swaying on their yarn like puppets.

She wondered if a paper crane could really fly, and if it would help her escape her hum-drum life if she made it big enough. Hadley fell asleep, plotting and dreaming of her escape.

Your World. Your Chance. Make it better.

2010-06-20T19:57:00.001-07:00

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." This quote began my entry for Anne Frank's birthday. It is a quote from her diary that I am in love with, inspired by, a quote that I firmly believe in. Human nature can be frustrating, particularly man's inhumane treatment of another man. But what frustrates me more is man losing faith in his fellow men. Humans are interdependent. We can stand on our own and make our lives worth living, but the fact remains that no man is an island, and even if he claims to be an island no island is entirely self-sufficient.

My point is that if something in your community, in your world bothers you, don't write a facebook status, a twitter statement, or a blog entry about how much you hate people and how we are going to destroy each other and the Earth. Instead, you should just do something about an injustice you see or feel. Any small thing can make an impact, which is why community service and civic responsibilityare so important. Community service may not overthrow a system or make radical world-wide changes, but the smallest actions do have an impact. The fact is that complete change may never come about. I know that education and freedom of choice probably won't be equally accessible to everyone in the United States, but I can do my part to educate people in New Brunswick about their choices, and I know that my service will help impact the community. The country is made up of thousands of communitites that need to have a voice in civil and public society.

A person's environment is important. Environment is the impetus for what a person does or chooses to become. Environments are escapable, but since they become a way of life a person may find no reason to escape because he thinks he is his environment. A person can escape their environment if he desires to, if he desires something better for himself. This is why it takes a village to raise a child. The village works to create opportunities for its youth, so that future generations will have better lives than previous generations. I know that my life is better than my mother's; my mother's life is better than my grandmother's; my grandmother's life was better than her mother's. The past shapes the present; this is inescapable, and it is also why there is always a possibility for history to repeat itself. Because it is always sitting there, waiting. And there have been many relapses in the present, moments where we have fallen into what has already occurred, like an old habit. We have a tendency to romanticize the past, so when the world seems to be falling to ruin, when morals and values seem to be decaying, society has a tendency to revert back to what seems to have been a much simpler time.

But we can't go backward. Never. We can learn from the past and use it as our impetus to move forward. To make changes. If something affects us enough we can't just reuse old models that we know have previously worked. We can, however, recycle these models into something new, suitable for the present - the 21st century is not the 18th century, and it cannot be made to act that way.

I recently became an AmeriCorps Member for the summer, and my term of service begins next week. I will only be a minimum time member, but I hope to serve a full-year term sometime after I finish school. My service will be completed in the New Brunswick area, working with youth from ages 6 to 13. Many of the children have incarcerated parents. I will be working with an organization that is affiliated with the Youth Empowerment Services, that is meant to give the kids a summer camp experience. My personal goal is to show kids that they don't have to become what their environment dictates they should. I know I will only be working with the program for a short time, but I hope to jumpstart a few things. I at least want to find volunteer opportunities for the older kids and engage them in reading or conducting programs for the younger kids; teens investing in young children. I would, at some point, like to start some program where we find part-time jobs for kids in the area. These kids need to learn to be self-sufficient and depend on themselves, but they should also feel that they have people, have a village that is backing them.

I am not waiting a single moment to improve the world. I am not waiting for legislature to be passed or protesting. I am directly making an impact. I will physically be able to track the progress of the kids I am working with. People need to stop feeling as though they are powerless. If you think the world sucks, if you think there aren't many good people, then join AmeriCorps. It is a nationwide movement that does improve the world. It doesn't end poverty or hunger or the cradle to prison pipeline, but it attracts people who know that they can do something about these injustices which plague our society. AmeriCorps enables communities of people so they can have the freedom to choose what kind of life they want for themselves.

The Phantom Tick

2010-06-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

When I was ten-years-old, I remember waking up one morning, in the darkness before dawn, and instinctively rubbing the back of my left shoulder, feeling a strange bump. I didn't reach for my shoulder because there was pain or an itch, and my shoulder was not the reason why I woke up so early. I don't know the reason why I reached for my shoulder other than I was, for some reason, compelled to.

I was curious about the bump, so I went to look in the bathroom mirror. It looked like a black mole, but a mole could not have formed over night, and I could not recall this black hole in my shoulder (that's what it looked like) being there before going to bed. I wasn't frightened at this point. I just found this black lump to be rather curious. I didn't start crying until my mom examined my shoulder and noticed small legs unfurling from the bump. My mom had said it looked like a tick. The word tick was terrifying for me. At Girl Scout camp that summer, the importance of protecting ourselves from ticks was emphasized by the camp counselors, and every time we went hiking we were forced to check ourselves t omake sure no ticks had attached themselves to our clothing. Ticks carry Lime Disease, the camp counselors told us. I didn't know what Lime Disease was, but my imagination probably invented gruesome, deadly symptoms.

I cried all the way to the emergency room, probably thinking I was going to die. My mom wasn't sure how to remove the tick without the possibility of only being able to extract half of it from my shoulder. So, we drove to the hospital so a doctor could remove it.

Since then, I sometimes notice myself feeling the back of my left shoulder, especially if I've been outside for a period of time. There are times where I almost sense a tick burrowing into the back of my shoulder. I sometimes have a slight tingling or crawling sensation. It's like having a phantom tick. As though the tick was an extremity that had to be removed. It's just strange that a tick, something that couldn't have been stuck in my arm for more than a few hours, became so much a part of me that I feel its absence, every now and again.

You're A Real Woman, Now.

2010-06-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Liddy,

"You look like a person, now," my mom said to me when I recently asked her if I look good, because I still doubt myself and am terrified that maybe I have put on a lot of weight; that maybe it's wrong for me to feel good about my body.

I didn't question my mom's response - well, what did I look like before? - because I know what she meant. I know that I have never really felt like a person, I have never really had a life. I'm not saying that I'm cured, but I think that I'm gaining. Gaining means progressing, growing. I'm becoming a person with a life and interests and friends and thoughts that don't revolve around food. Since the onset of the eating disorder nine years ago, it has been difficult to think about anything but food, weight, calories, "good" food and "bad" food. I almost feel like my mind has gone to waste, but I'm finally crawling out of the spiral I kept falling into.

My mom's remark was in reference to my physical appearance, that I actually look healthy. But I feel healthy too - physically, mentally, emotionally. This healing has been long overdue. This past year has been my hardest and most trying struggle with the disorder. It has been a year of restricting, bingeing, laxative abuse, purging, excessive exercise, weight loss and weight gain. But I have been able to combat all of these things by doing one simple thing - eating. Eating healthy. Eating normally. Eating three meals a day.

The change in my behavior didn't come about until my grandpa passed away in February. His passing forced me to confront suppressed emotions, the reality of my family relationships, and, mostly, all anger that has been repressed, suppressed, and is now unable to be expressed.

I am now closer to being the woman I want to be, although, maybe this woman has existed all along and has just spent all of these years trying to will the sapling of a girl to grow into her. It's like how Zen Buddhists believe that the oak tree creates the very acorn it's born from. The acorn only holds the "promise" of growing into a tree, but it is the future tree itself that pulls the acorn into being because of its desire to exist. This woman I'm growing to love has always existed and has been pulling me, cracking my shell, so I may realize my potential and grow into the woman I am now.

Happy Birthday, Anne Frank.

2010-06-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

Anne Frank would have been 81 years-old, today. It's strange, but I actually marked that today is Anne's birthday in my planner. I'm not sure why I chose to write it in my planner, as though Anne is alive and well; as though we're good friends; as though I need to remember to say happy birthday to her, or to remember to buy her a card or a gift. I suppose I wrote it down to make her more real to me, to establish some kind of relationship with her.

I didn't wake up today thinking about Anne Frank, or even remembering it was her birthday. I went to work, as per usual, and never gave Anne Frank a thought. It wasn't until a little while ago, when I opened my planner to check something, that I was reminded of Anne's Birthday. I made note of it in my thoughts decided to make an entry in my darling little electronic diary. (Instead of Kitty, I think I will address each entry to 'Liddy.')

Happy Birthday, Anne!

Sincerely,
TinKettleInn

A Slice of Life

2010-06-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

Some of my friends say I've become very cynical, sarcastic, a little cold and judgmental. I think I'm struggling with wanting to be rational, logical, and practical while also wanting to be spiritual, faithful. I want to believe in something. I want to have faith in something that doesn't make sense. This doesn't mean that I want to find religion. I do want to find God. He is real. I say 'He,' but I don't believe God is man. I'm not a radical feminist, I don't believe God is woman either. Man, woman, He, She are human identities used to categorize people according to their bodies. But who is to say God even has a body? He probably doesn't. Humans have no way to imagine God without a gendered body because it is how we identify each other. However, assuming God to be man or woman gives one body privilege over the other, when the divine should be open to all people.

God is an experience, a level of consciousness that human life seeks to achieve. Elizabeth Gilbert describes turiya, a fourth level of consciousness the Yogis believe to be a pure awareness that connects the three other states - waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep. Turiya informs you about your dreams when you wake, a witness to your thoughts, watching them from the outside. God is this consciousness. God is awareness. You know you have reached this state "if you're in a state of constant bliss" (Gilbert, 196). I feel it may be impossible to live in this state all the time and still be a normal human being. The mind has to interject sometime. To be in this God-state all of the time would take human beings above their human world.

I'm not looking to find myself - I already am myself - I just want to understand who I am. To be able to like myself, live my life for myself, and make choices that are in line with my beliefs. I can't change who I am. I don't believe that people can change, but they can improve. We are able to improve who we are. We can always become better people by improving those flawed aspects of our personalities.

My creative sinus seems to be gone. My mind was clogged like my mom's nasal passage during allergy season. There appears to be clarity, now. My head just needed to sneeze. In other words, I've been reading for strength, inspiration, and courage, and I suppose reading has acted as ragweed for my creative blockage. I've been reading so much and so intensely that my people watching business has suffered. I don't really notice people walking through the park when I'm sitting on a bench, reading. I don't really notice there's a world around me. That I even exist in it.

Tomorrow I'm going to have a free kickboxing lesson. I was walking through Highland Park after work and found a family Martial Arts Academy. I figure that since it's family-oriented Karate, the kickboxing class shouldn't be ridiculously intense. I'm not sure why I want to try kickboxing. Maybe because I have gained a lot of muscle mass in the past few months, and I want to become stronger. I also want to be able to defend myself. And look like I can defend myself. I hate that most people probably think I am fragile. This is only going to be a trial session. I doubt I will be able to afford more than a month's worth of classes.

Highland Park is such an interesting town, mainly because of the different stores and businesses located on the main street. This is a really cool used book store I scoped out called Nighthawk Books.

The Care and Feeding of Stuffed Ducks

2010-05-31T11:16:00.001-07:00

I'm going to be posting chapters, revisions, illustrations, and news about my children's book here. Keep yourself in the loop! (I'm currently in the middle of chapter 3.)

Make Love not War

2010-05-31T05:31:00.001-07:00

The Beauty of Doing Nothing

2010-05-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

Il bel far niente.

Naming God

2010-05-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

"Alternatively, I could call God "That," which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced. But that "That" feels impersonal to me - a thing, not a being - and I myself cannot pray to a That. I need a proper name, in order to fully sense a personal attendance." -Eat, Pray, Love

Wild Things Must Be Caged

2010-05-28T21:46:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure PETA would have my head on a plate for this.

Youth Empowerment Services

2010-05-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working with a girl named Faith at the after school program. She always seems to have math homework, which I was anxious about at first because I'm terrible at math, even on a fifth grade level. It's been a long time since I've done long division or changed improper fractions into mixed numbers, so I was nervous that Faith wouldn't respect me because I am too stupid to solve fifth grade math problems. I decided to be honest with her.

The first day I started working with Faith on her homework, I admitted that I'm bad at math and we would struggle through it together. At first she was skeptical: "a tutor who has no idea what she's doing?" Thankfully the math came back to me, but remembering the difficult time I had with math in fifth grade helps me remain patient. I've started teaching Faith some of the little tricks I remember using to get me through math class.

Most of Faith's trouble lies in not knowing all of her multiplication tables. I've explained to her that if she knows some of her multiplication tables, she can find the answers to the more difficult ones. If she knows that '5 x 2 =10,' then '10 + 5 = 3 x 5,' which is 15. I still have to use this method from time to time, and when I was younger it helped me pass my multiplication tests. I made Faith flashcards with the multiplication tables and corresponding addition equations so she can get the hang of it. She doesn't have them memorized, but the other day when we were working on her homework, she knew that since '3 x 3 = 9,' then '3 x 4' is the same as adding 3 to 9.

Faith doesn't like school and isn't encouraged to. New Brunswick is a pretty rough area, and all of the kids who come to Youth Empowerment Services come from low-income families. Faith is big and tough, and she can easily destroy any of the other kids with a light shove. She wants to become a vet, one day. She's at an age where it's easy to aspire to become anything and think that school isn't needed to achieve a career. She always says "I don't need math," a motto I used to have, though I've discovered that math becomes easier with age and maturity because it is easier to focus.

Faith has a hard time focusing because she only wants to play and run around, and it takes her a great deal of time to actually complete her homework. The other day Faith and I sat doing her homework on fractions for the entire three hour period. There were only 12 problems, but Faith couldn't sit still. She kept getting up to get a snack or sharpen her pencil, and every time someone came into the room she started a conversation with them. I had to walk her through most of the problems, but I knew she was listening when she walked me through the last two. She repeated things I had been saying over and over like, "whatever you do to the bottom, you have to do to the top."

I'm really considering going into education, working in areas where the quality of education is poor and where there is a shortage of teachers.

How to Train a Dragon

2010-05-28T07:26:00.001-07:00

My new favorite movie.

The film has a lot of themes from Moby Dick.

New Endeavor

2010-05-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

http://maggiebedwetter.weebly.com

Summer Reading and Hobbies

2010-05-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

My original plan was to go to Costa Rica to teach English, but my funding fell through. I'm pretty sure I have enough to do for the summer, though. Since I did not sign up for the summer schedule at the Zimmerli - because I thought I would be rid of New Jersey - my boss said I can take all of the extra hours I can handle. I also scoped out a coffee shop in Highland Park called PJs. They make a mean latte, and they definately see more customers than Luccas ever did. I don't think this place has the same cast of characters as Luccas, which is what I really loved about my barista days; but hopefully i get the gig. Then there's the Rutgers Telefund where I will be acting as a telemarketer 3 nights a week, trying to solicit donations from alumni. I also hope to keep my volunteer position with Youth Empowerment Services, even if I can only make it once a week.

On top of work, I need to write a 15-page research paper to receive credit for my internship at Woman's Day. It's a little unfair that my work throughout the semester doesn't amount to anything, but since I get 6 credits for the internship/paper and enjoy writing papers it shouldn't be terrible. I'm examining the role of domesticity and the housewife - the magazine's audience - over time by reading copies of the magazine from various decades, beginning with the 1940s. I hope I can write an intelligent and coherent paper on the subject.

I am making sure I leave time for hobbying.

Here's my to do list for the summer:

1. Children's book

2. Build a bike

3. Play golf

4. Cook something elegant

5. Knit more

6. Spin my own yarn

7. If I don't physically garden, I at least want to read about gardening

8. Espionage Business

9. Go to a meeting of the Quakers

10. Use a grill/learn to barbeque

12. Go on bike rides just as the sun is rising

Now, the books of summer. I want to complete some heavy reading. You know, those ominous, massive books that are terrfying to look at or even think about reading? Those are the books I want to fill summer with.

Book Sketch

2010-05-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Found this great site.

My favorite is "Pigs are Texting," for Animal Farm.

Kiran Desai

2010-05-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

Kiran Desai came to speak at Rutgers and read from her novel, The Inheritance of Loss.

I took a class taught by Josephine Diamond last year called Literature of Immigration, Migration, and Diaspora, and the languaged used by the writers we learned about in the course relayed narratives which are inextricably tied and torn. Kiran Desai said "It's a wonderful thing to be an immigrant writer," and I only wish I had such a luxury.

Kiran Desai was a very fluid and open speaker. Her voice was smooth and clearly inscribed in her writing, as her voice bears an accent that is a mixture of the places she comes from. Desai read from her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, which is a singular work of fiction that combines the narratives of many different places and many different characters.

Desai read the section of her novel that revolves around the character Biju, who works in several restaurants within New York City. Desai, and many immigrant writers, write about New York simply because, like The Inheritance of Loss, it is a singular point where many stories converge. The city is the perfect example of a network of stories that are interconnected: the narrative of the woman on the upper East Side cannot exist without the narrative of the woman who lives in Harlem. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitave Ghosh describes Penn Station in particular. A train station is a place of transit, yet Penn Station holds a multitude of stores and restaurants, and functions as a point where people, traveling from various points of the Tri-State area, converge in this center. Immigrant writers, like Desai, examine the funnel effect of the everyday and the singular interacting with each other.

Desai said that her own writing is interconnected and inscribed in her own mother's writing, Anita Desai. The resemblence between their prose is detected by readers, but Desai is unable to detect it herself. The mother and daughter have seen and experienced many of the same things, so the subject matter they both describe is the same. But Desai said that they each describe their experiences with different voices. A writer's voice is like their fingerprint, in that no other author can have the same voice no matter how hard they try to emulate it. Desai said that her writing is very much shaped by the books she has read, and she grew up reading her mother's books. It makes sense, then, that her own writing's tone and style is similar to her mother's. After all, as Francine Prose emphasizes in Reading Like a Writer, you learn to write just by reading as many books as you can.

Desai never considers her audience when she writes. She also does not really need to consider an audience if it is true that people are interconnected. When reading literature of migration or displacement, I think what makes it 'universal' is its ability to encapsulate the human condition. Readers are able to identify how different narratives recognize our solitary existence, but also how we are all united in "our search for loneliness in its different forms."

On Habits.

2010-03-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've started twirling my pen like a baton. It's a habit the girl sitting next to me in my creative writing workshop has. I don't know if I picked up, inhabited the action simply because I see her everyday sitting and twirling her pen, or if I observed the motion, decided it was a habit I wanted to pick up, and therefore made the effort to twirl my pen in my hand. The latter actually seems feasible.

I think many of our unconscious habits had to have started as conscious decisions. The habit of pen twirling isn't completely in the sphere of my unconscious, as I am aware of it and can feel myself doing it. I'm still a little clumsy in my twirl, but I am only a beginner. Cracking my knuckles didn't come easily at first, nor was it always unconscious. It took time and perserverence for me to reach intermediate, and then, advanced stages of small joint explosions.

The Pious Character Development

2010-03-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

Fluid dialogue can do a lot for a story. The Pious lacks character and plot development. I feel that many of my stories go nowhere, and most things, including the characters, are left unresolved or undeveloped. I want to develop my characters more, but I'm not really sure what The Pious is even about, yet. It was just an exercise in dialogue. I'm thinking the little piece that follows will be used to define Joan a little more. But I don't know.

"No, really, if you stand in front of a mirror in a dark room, and you say 'Bloody Mary' three times she will appear to you."

"You're lying," Joan retorted in feigned disbelief. She was really intrigued and couldn't wait for school to end so she could go home and try it for herself.

"Seriously, it was the most terrifying thing I ever saw! Like the first time I saw Freddy Kruger. I was so scared I ran out of the room; I didn't want to look at her," Greg defended his vision.

Joan thought Greg must be sincere or else he never would have admitted to being scared and running out of the room.

"Well, what did she look like?" She didn't want Greg Flynn to believe he had convinced her of anything.

"She's too horrible to describe."

Joan had to see 'Bloody Mary' for herself. When she got home from school, she went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Joan figured it was best that her parents not know she was summoning the spirit of the Catholic Tudor Queen. Joan dimmed the bathroom light and stood in front of the mirror. Greg Flynn said that you can only see her reflection in the mirror, but if you turn around to see the physical being that must be behind you, there is nothing.

She inhaled deeply, as if filling her chest cavity with air was inflating her with courage. Joan closed her eyes and enunciated each word, "Blo-ody...M-a-r-y." She opened one eye to see her own reflection in the mirror. She closed her eyes again, wet her lips, and recited the second "Bloody Mary." Joan opened both eyes. She took three deep breaths, rolled her head along its axis and tried to make her lips say "Bloody...bloody..ugh." Joan switched on the bathroom light. She leaned over the water basin, her arms pressing down on the counter so hard that her back was arched like a cat's.

"Dammit," she slapped her open palm against the marble surface. "Greg Flynn probably wants me to be afraid to say it three times."

The Pious

2010-03-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

The lamp on Meryl's nightstand was the only source of light in the bedroom. The glow of light was a spotlight on her, just enough light for her to pretend to read by. Her husband had fallen asleep at least an hour ago, but he must have sensed his wife's unease. He turned over to face Meryl, his eyes tightly fastened against the light.

"Okay, you were on page fifty when I went to sleep, and now I turn over and see you're still on the same page," he was gradually opening his eyes to allow light in.

"Yes, well, the book isn't very good," she continued to stare at page fifty, her pointer finger waiting to turn the page corner.

"Something on your mind?" He hoisted his body so he was leaning against the headboard.

"Philip, is our daughter crazy?" She hugged the book against her chest and turned to look at her husband.

"Of course not."

"No?"

"No."

Meryl pressed her head against the head board and looked out onto nothing.

"What?" Philip looked at her.

"Then how do you explain...her behavior?"

"How do I explain it? She's a teenager, Meryl, they all go through phases."

"Do you know anyone else's daughter who --" Meryl looked at her husband, not finishing her question because she assumed Philip would finish it for her.

"...wants to be a saint? Devote her life to God? No, but teenagers aren't all the same."

"That's true."

"Is it so weird that she wants to be a saint? To devote herself to God?"

"It's not that it's weird, it's just that it's uncommon," she was trying to defend the doubt she had of her daughter's sanity to her husband. "We didn't even raise her to be religious. Sure, we sent her to Sunday school while my mother was alive, but that was because she was a Catholic nut."

"So? Joan found God on her own," Philip had practically convinced himself that his fourteen-year-old daughter was a typical teenage girl.

"Philip, there's something Medieval in her desire. And pious. Too pious for my taste," Meryl was trying to get her husband to understand that Joan's recent behavior was questionable.

"I just don't think we should be so quick to wrap her up in a straight jacket, Meryl."

"She wants to be a virgin martyr. She says she wants to die for the one thing she loves above all else, and that is God."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating what she said," Philip turned to face his nightstand. He was frustrated with his wife, and wished she would just drop the matter so he could go to sleep.

"I'm not exaggerating! Philip, she thinks she's not pure enough because God doesn't speak to her. She says she has to be patient and remain chaste in body, mind, and spirit so God will want her. This isn't normal..."

"Alright!" He sat up and turned to face his wife. "What do you want from me?"

"I," Meryl swallowed, "I don't know."

"Joan's a teenager; they do weird things. Shouldn't we be grateful she wants to be a virgin? She could be a meth addict, knocked up by some hippie, or she could be one of those mall rats, but she's not. She just...she just wants to be Christ's bride," Philip rubbed his eyes.

Meryl and Philip sat in silence for a moment.

"Who's up there?" Philip looked toward the ceiling.

The floorboards in the attic creaked as Joan paced back and forth. She had eaten only bread for the past three days to feel closer to God. She found it difficult to sleep on an empty stomach. But she needed to understand suffering. She needed to know the pain Christ endured during the Passion. To endure her own pain, the pain of hunger writhing beneath her ribcage, she turned to God.

"Dear Lord, I am one of your children, and I need your help. Don't let me go astray, God. I want not to lust after food and flesh. I am tempted with images of Jude Law and Clive Owen, but I try not to submit to them, God. I think only of how I may please you. I wish I would be delivered from all temptation, but I know you are testing me. And I know you will provide me the strength to overcome these shameful, animal desires. I know you will forgive me all my sins so that I may live with you eternally. I know it without you saying it. I long for this day! I live for it!. Oh, God, just give the word and I will rid myself of this heavy, earth-bound form to live spiritually with you," Joan bound her hands with Rosary beads. She continued to move about the tiny attic space in a kind of delirious euphoria. Joan was so happy, she was dancing. She was in love, and we all do funny things when we're in love.

"What is she doing up in the attic? It's two o'clock in the morning," Philip began to wonder himself if his daughter was crazy.

"She locked herself up there before you came home from work," Meryl rubbed her husband's shoulder to relax him.

"I thought she was at a friend's house. She was so quiet..."

"She was praying. She has to pray six times a day."

"Oh, God..."

"You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain --"

"Do you think this is funny, Meryl? Well, I'll tell you it's not funny. It's the opposite of funny."

"That's what I was trying to tell you, Philip -"

"I mean, for Christ's sake, she's been eating nothing but bread and water; she scalped herself the other morning -"

"Today, before she went into the attic, I caught her rubbing her face with a pepper."

"A...what?"

"A pepper. She wanted to blister her skin so no one can think she is beautiful...St. Rose of Lima did it," Meryl's tone was so rational that Philip couldn't tell whether his wife was being serious or mocking their daughter's behavior.

"Well, I guess if St. Rose of Lima did it - Why is she in the attic?"

"She wants to be away from the world. Apparently, most virgins's fathers imprison them so no one can touch them, but since you weren't going to force her into the attic, she thought she would go willingly."

"Is she going to come out?"

"She didn't say she was going to stay up there forever."

"She has to go to school," Philip asserted.

"I know. She didn't say she wouldn't. I think it's her secret refuge away from the world. A solitary place to be with God and rid herself of sin," Meryl explained her understanding of the situation to her husband.

"Is that supposed to be better? The fact that she only locks herself up there sometimes?!"

"Don't yell at me! Just a little while ago you were trying to defend Joan's behavior to me - "

"Yeah, well you seem to have changed your mind about your daughter's sanity."

"My daughter?"

"Yes, your daughter."

"Is that how it is? She's not the little girl you want so you're just...just going to disown her?"

"No! I DON'T...I don't mean that. I'm sorry, our daughter. Joan is our daughter."

"Yes, she is," Meryl crossed her arms and turned away from her husband.

"Just, this is weird. Heh, couldn't she have just been knocked up or into drugs or a mall rat?"

"Oh, Philip..."

"Well, it would be easier to explain, wouldn't it?"

Meryl was silent for a moment, thinking to herself.

"Well, why do we have to explain it to anyone?" She asked. "Is it so crazy to want to be closer to God?"

"Joan is a little extreme, Meryl. She wants to be a virgin martyr."

"I know, but does that mean she needs help? Psychologically, I mean?"

"Has the school said anything? How about the kids at school?" Philip was concerned about his daughter's reputation, and his own.

"She doesn't hang out with the girls because they are sinful, and she keeps ample distance from boys. But, her teachers, the principal all say she keeps to herself and is very quiet. She appears to be floating through the halls. And they say she looks as though she is waiting...maybe for the day to be over...or life."

"So they have said something?"

"They don't know she longs to become a saint or that she's in love with God. She doesn't flaunt it. Joan doesn't reveal anything about herself at school."

"So, she has no friends?" Philip asked.

"I think she's an outcast."

Meryl and Philip turned out the light and layed flat on their backs. They held hands as they looked up at the ceiling.

Joan kneeled on the floor of the attic before a gold crucifix she nailed to the wall. In the darkness of the early morning, the shining gold of the cross was about all she could see aside from the gold band she placed on her left ring finger. The ring was a token of her love and affection for Christ. The ring was a symbol of her unending, eternal devotion for Him, whom she loved above all else. As Joan looked at the cross she thought of Christ's crucifixion and how she wished she could have been there, standing beside Mary so she could have seen the Savior's body in the flesh. She wished she could have witnessed the Passion so she could better understand the bodily suffering of both Christ and his Mother.

"Lord, I know I have not suffered enough, and I know that no trial I ever face will evoke the same suffering you endured. My God, my Father, and my Mother, I wish you to work your goodness through me. And when my life ceases, may it be to your glory."

Confession

2010-03-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have a girl crush on Dr. Temperance Brennan.

Anne Frank Was Storyteller at Nazi Camp

2010-03-18T05:11:00.000-07:00

Holocaust survivor Berthe Meijer says Anne Frank spun stories to cheer up children at Bergen Belsen.

READ MORE.

10 Home Hair Coloring Tips

2010-03-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

Check me out on Woman's Day Magazine's Web page.

Mistaken Identity

2010-03-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

She had forgotten who she was. It wasn't amnesia. She isn't always who she had forgotten to be. That's why it's hard for her to remember. So it wasn't amnesia. She just lost track of who she was supposed to be when she sent an email to her Medieval Women Writer's professor stating the topic she wished to examine in her paper.

Over and over she repeated to herself: remember to sign it Margaret...remember to sign it Margaret...

Calling herself 'Margaret' isn't instinctive. She went through life trying to suppress her legal name. When her teachers in elementary school and high school referred to her as 'Margaret' during roll call, her face would pucker as though she was eating a lemon. The first day of school was always filled with the exhausted request that her teacher's call her 'Maggie.' She was embarrassed of 'Margaret' and didn't want anyone to know she existed. And people forgot about 'Margaret.' They only knew her as 'Maggie.' She only knew herself as 'Maggie.' But on the first day of school 'Margaret; would always resurface. She just couldn't kill 'Margaret.'

She'd come to know and think of herself as 'Maggie,' so it was hard for her to sign an email as 'Margaret' or to respond "here" when the name 'Margot' was posed as a question during role call.

Dear Professor Coiro,
I intend to write my paper on how the virgin is eroticized. Do you think this is a good topic?

Her roommate, Emily, must have gotten back from class right before she signed the email. It's the only explanation. She was prepared to sign the email 'Margaret Blaha,' and was relentlessly willing herself to do so: remember to sign it Margaret...remember to sign it Margaret.. But when Emily came in and asked if she wanted to go to dinner, she must have lost her focus. Then her instincts took over. Instinctively, she must have signed the email 'Maggie.'

In class the following day, Professor Coiro asked if she would prefer to be called 'Maggie' since it was how she signed her email. "How could I have been so careless?" She thought. "Either is fine," she responded in an effort to cover her tracks.

"We have another Maggie in the class, so would you mind Margaret?" Professor Coiro asked.

"Margaret's fine." And so, order was restored. It wasn't such a big deal.

She thinks names are personalities. More than that. She thinks names are full-fledged identities. She wanted her first year in college to be a rebirth. At first she didn't know how to go about this. Already she had colored her hair, lost her baby fat, took up yoga, but nothing felt different. Despite her new hair and yoga body she still seemed the same person to everyone, including herself.

The first day of classes, the professors reviewed their rosters. In her first class she instinctively asked, "can you call me Maggie?" The professor made the correction on the roster, and she is Maggie for the rest of the semester. But when Professor Coiro read the roster for the first time, she didn't want to correct the name she been suppressing all these years.

"Margaret?" Instinct almost took over, but she sat up straight, gained her composure and answered, "here." For the first time in her life, she willingly accepted the name.

In her Feminist Theory class she invented a new name for herself. The professor asked the women in the class to individually introduce themselves by stating their names and their majors. She sat in the middle of the classroom. Instead of listening to the rows of girls introducing themselves, she contemplated whether or not she was going to introduce herself as 'Maggie.' She had to alot herself time to process the decision. If she wasn't going to be 'Maggie,' she would have to force herself to say whatever name she decided on.

She made her decision. The professor motioned her to speak. "I'm Margot, and I'm an English and Women's and Gender Studies double major."

Behold...

2010-03-03T19:09:00.000-08:00

The smallest library in the world is located inside an old red phone booth, within a small village in Somerset, England. The library boasts a collection of over 100 books, movies, and CDs. Learn more, here.

That's Mod!

2010-03-02T13:13:00.001-08:00

www.shopbando.com

"Hi. Welcome to ban.do. We are so happy you’re here! In 2008 we started making fun stuff for our heads And shared it with a few friends, and now we have a small empire. Well, not really, but it sure feels like it to us."

I've been deckin' the headband, lately. ban.do specializes in bands for the head.

I just bought this one.
Some of them are more period or costume pieces; I wouldn't be too comfortable wearing them.

Vanity or Genius?

2010-02-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

In my writing workshop on Wednesday, the girl sitting to the right of me was using the web cam on her lap top for a mirror - she turned it on during the workshop so she could fix her hair and makeup. I didn't know whether I should think "Really?!" or " that's pretty clever." I felt that she was pretty pathetic, but, I must admit, it was a pretty innovative use of a web cam.

I really do hate it when people use their lap tops in class. Pen and paper does suffice, no matter how archaic it may seem.

A Virtuous Man Who Passed Mildly, Whispering His Soul to Go

2010-02-21T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sirach 44

But we will praise these godly men,
whose righteous deeds have never been forgotten.
Their reputations will be passed on to their descendants,
and this will be their inheritance.
Their descendants continue to keep the covenant,
and always will, because of what their ancestors did.
Their family line will go on forever,
and their fame will never fade.
Their bodies were laid to rest,
but their reputations will live forever.
Nations will tell about their wisdom,
and God's people will praise them.

Leslie J. Blaha died on Saturday, February 13, 2010. He was 82 years old. He and my grandma would have celebrated 60yrs of marriage this April. Grandpa was very ill and now his suffering has ended, but he leaves his family with a void. He was a godly man.

Julia!

2010-02-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."
-Julia Child

I'm inspired!

A Close Reading

2010-02-10T12:32:00.001-08:00

Now I sit me down to write. But what? Ah, here we go. I've been leafing through Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer.

She preaches close reading which is a technique for reading and writing I have encountered this year in my Principles of Literary Studies class. It's the idea that who the author is, what his childhood was like, where he came from has absolutely nothing to do with the story s/he has written. When reading a text, all the information the reader needs to have to comprehend it is on the actual page. Placing importance on information outside of the text would only distort it, or just take it completely out of context.

Prose explains that language is the writer's medium, and language is all the reader needs to understand a written work. Writers are perfectionists (I don't think there are any exceptions) so every word they use has meaning and serves a purpose. Language is carefully crafted to convey the writer's intention. If you unpack a single word in a poem, short story, or novel, you will find that it has a role - like a character - in the setting, plot, and general flow of the piece. Language is the most important component of any written work, and it often receives the least consideration or analysis.

In Professor Dowling's Literary Studies class, we would sometimes spend an entire class analyzing a ten-line poem. An entire class. For longer poems we would divide them into sections to cover twenty lines over the course of three class periods. (There was one class where we spent the time analyzing a single word). Professor Dowling would sometimes ask the class if they wouldn't mind staying a few minutes after the class ended in order to finish a thought, and the class would actually stay. In every other class I've ever taken at Rutgers, students run out the door in a stampede. But Dowling's class was different. I think we all really loved close reading. It's upsetting that we aren't taught to close read in high school because I think it makes reading pleasurable. Granted, it takes time and focus, which are two things our generation has a difficult time alotting.

First, we have to get our attention spans back. We have to [re]learn how to search for information as opposed to just googling it. (I'm always afraid my attention span is weakening. I want it back).

Prose writes that we should take our time with literature and enjoy the process of reading without worrying about the pace at which we're reading. She says this is why survey courses in Literature are not ideal. It's impossible to properly read and analyze ten great works of literature in a single semester. More attention needs to be given to reading a novel, not finishing it. Though, in the back of the book is a list of books in alphabetical order that Prose thinks should be read immediately. The list spans three pages. 'Immediately' sounds urgent. My fear is that I don't have time. Or how will I get the time? It's a strange fear. I'm only twenty-one.

I do love reading and close reading. It's a slow and wonderful process. Finishing a book isn't as important to me as it once was. I've been reading long enough to be able to judge what's worth reading and which books just aren't worth finishing. It's also important to analyze what makes a book forgettable as well as what makes it memorable.

2010-01-28T05:49:00.001-08:00

This used to be me.

Now this is.

The 'Six' Sense

2010-01-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

THAT FAT SANDWICH ASSAULTED MY THIGHS.

Barbie: "Buy my friends; I'm lonely."

Maybe socks don't have to match...

How Many Licks...I lost count.

I Tweet, therefore I'm a Twit.

My flash fiction is not quite as up to snuff. Check these out, Smith Magazine.

"For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." - Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway said that the above is the best piece of writing he ever did. It only took him six words.

Short-short: Imaginary Friend

2010-01-26T04:19:00.000-08:00

Molly Bruha sits at her round kitchen table in her square studio apartment that is modestly decorated and exhibits her catholic taste. Anyone could live in this apartment. It has no real or unique personality. This is Molly Bruha's apartment. At her kitchen table, her fingers anxiously ply apart the pages of The New York Times Book Review. Her hands shake as she struggles to turn the pages. "This must be a joke; someone glued my pages together," she thinks, "maybe the critics. Hah!" She jokes to herself.

Molly eventually manages to flip to the page where her lastest novel has been reviewed. This is her first novel, but it is the third in a series that has been critically acclaimed and has a large following. But the literary critics felt this third novel - Rope Skippers, Spitters, and Bullshitters - did not compare to the previous novels in the series. "This novel seems emotionally superficial. The charming, tender voice of Ms. Posen seems to have disappeared. Rope Skippers, Spitters, and Bullshitters could be the work of a completely different writer - an amateur writer who works too hard to evoke any form of emotion within the reader."

Molly Bruha wanted to be a writer ever since her third grade teacher, Mrs. Banko, told her the description of her vacation at the beach made her feel like she was there. Molly assumed that this meant she was destined to write. Only she was too afraid to write. She was too afraid to find out she couldn't. Molly imagined Rosalind Posen - The best selling author of the series about a secret society of elementary school girls. Rosalind was a talented writer who was able to convey Molly's thoughts better than Molly. But Molly felt she didn't need Rosalind anymore, and she decided she was going to write this third novel herself. She was not going to be a secretary writing Rosalind's stories forever.

"Face it Molly, you need me. You live off my career, do you really want me to vanish?"
"I want this career to be mine. I want to be proud when people recognize me."
"They'll still only know you as Rosalind Posen. If you write this novel, you won't be gaining your own career, you'll just be ruining Rosalind Posen's."

Writing Spurt

2010-01-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning an internship this semester with Woman's Day Magazine. My cousin Melissa is the beauty editor for the publication, so I will be acting as her intern. At first I was too proud to accept the internship because Melissa helped me get it, but I eventually came to my senses. The publishing industry is a difficult one to navigate, and the only way to really break into it is to know someone who is already situated in the business. Melissa informed me that I'll be reviewing different beauty products. I can't say that I am particularly excited to write about beauty products, but I will get to be in New York two days a week and will be working for a real publication. (If I want to do freelance I have to be prepared to write anything for anyone.)

I've tried my hand at various forms of writing this school year. I am a contributing writer for The Daily Targum, Rutgers University's daily newspaper. I have five articles published, and two of them were even printed side-by-side on the front page. They were supposed to be, of course. During the campaigning for the gubernatorial election, I interviewed the presidents of both the Rutgers Democrats and the College Republicans. I asked them about the election and how both organizations are active on campus. I mainly focused on what it is to be Liberal or Conservative, and how a Democrat isn't necessarily Liberal and a Republican isn't necessarily Conservative. (The Rutgers Campus is mostly Liberal. Most college students think it's 'hip' to be Liberal because it is assumed that Conservatives are against human liberties. The Republican Minority on campus (not necessarily Conservative) has to defend why it's Republican, and so I found the President of the College Republicans to be much more intelligent and witty and informed than the President of the RU Democrats. The Democrats seemed to be telling me what they thought I wanted to hear, or what they wanted me to write about them. I enjoy writing about politics. I hate politics and most politicians and refuse to affiliate with a party, so I feel I am very impartial when writing about them because I actually want to hear what both sides have to say.)

The writer who most inspires me is Anne Frank. Even though she has become an icon and her diary has been read by almost everyone, Anne is usually not considered a writer and her diary is not thought to be a work of literary genius. But Anne wanted to be a writer and worked hard to be one. She wanted to be more than a young girl keeping tabs on her life in the secret annex. She constantly revised her diary in hopes of developing her skill, and with the intention of it someday being published as a novel.

Miep Gies recalled a time when she interrupted Anne while she was furiously writing. Anne had not noticed Miep enter the room because her concentration was devoted to her writing. As Miep started to go, Anne looked up, surprised to see Miep standing in the room as she was writing. She describes the look on Anne's face as being "a look of dark concentration, as if she had a throbbing headache. The look pierced me, and I was speechless. She was suddenly another person there writing at that table."

I've read and reread papers I wrote last year and ones I have written this past semester. The change, the development I recognize is extraordinary. I'm so proud of my growth, and I find it to be just as mysterious as a child's growth spurt; how a child can seem to have grown three feet over night. I wish I could plot this growth on my wall in the manner a parent marks a child's height each year on the kitchen wall. My parents never did this, though I wish they had. Still, there's nothing remarkable to me about growing physically. It's a fact of nature. No. It's my growth and development as a writer I wish to keep track of. How do I do this? By just writing.

It's strange that as my writing improves my attention to grammar and other elementary aspects of writing seems to be lacking. Suddenly, I find myself losing track of tenses as I write, and I am unable to correctly place my commas and semi-colons. My grammar used to be fairly impeccable. Ever since I found my voice and have wanted nothing more than to just use it! use it! use it!, everything else has been sidetracked. Maybe grammar is unimportant as long as I can convey what I set out to. Spelling, punctuation, and tenses don't add meaning to a piece of written work, and there's always editing. (An English teacher of mine once pointed out, "people will use the meaningless things to try to undermine the meaningful things you say.")

Revision is my middle-name. (I must beg forgiveness for using this cliche.) I used to try to revise my writing as I was in the process of writing. It's the reason why writing used to be so difficult for me. I realize why it is important to have two separate processes. What I love most about revising my work is that if I look at something now that I wrote years ago, I will have maturity and experience to add to the piece. A piece of writing can always be revised in some manner, rendering all writing perpetually unfinished. A writer can usually sense when their work is complete, but I feel that I would be afraid to have any of my work published because it may rob the piece of the potential it has to become something even greater if I only wait five years. (I can always publish a newly revised addition, I suppose. Now I'm just fishing for excuses to keep my work hidden.)

New Books

2009-12-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday, and left with:

A review of the book can be found here.

I think this review sums up exactly why I am excited to read this book:

"Seth Grahame-Smith has taken Pride and Prejudice, changed a few details and then added an entire…well, subplot is not right…more like an underlying condition to the story. It turns it from a story of love and marriage into a story of love and marriage amidst zombie brain-lust."

And:

Apparently, Paramount Pictures is going to adapt the novel into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Ugh.

Happy Reading!

The Doll Couldn't Burp

2009-12-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

It was Christmases ago: I was six and Katie was four. Katie received one of those baby dolls that you burp after feeding it a bottle. When Katie tried to nurse the baby doll on Christmas morning, she found that it wouldn't drink or burp. My mom said that it must be broken, and that she would exchange it for one that works. Katie refused to give up the doll. She said, "If I was broken would you have returned me?" So Katie kept the broken doll.

I always look back on this and think that the doll was pretty lucky to have been received by Katie. If any other little girl got a broken doll for Christmas, the doll would have been returned and sent to the island of misfit toys. Katie takes care of things, people even if they're "defective." This memory proves she'll be a good nurse.

The Tenth Circle 2

2009-12-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

I am enjoying the novel. I think Picoult develops very real and very elaborate characters. I can't believe I allowed my friends to talk me out of ever picking up one of her novels before. Granted, most of her novels become Lifetime movies - like this novel - but it isn't reason to judge her books. This book is interesting: it has Dante, comic books, rape and the different words Eskimos have for snow all in one novel! Well done, Ms. Picoult.

The Writing Self and the Lazy Self

2009-12-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

There is always a part of me that wants to pick up a pen and write something. I think about writing and about things to write. I vividly imagine myself at my desk penning my thoughts while, physically, I am laying on my bed, saying to myself that I will write something later.

Professor Dowling says it is having two selves: the actual self and the imagined self. You can have a big Economics exam that you have to study for and that you plan on devoting time to study for, but when your friend comes over and asks you to go see a movie, your imagined self says "I'm sorry, but I really have to stay home and study for my Economics exam," while your actual self goes on the internet to look up movie times.

I Hung the Pink Nightmare in the Closet

2009-12-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I hated the feeling that was left when Christmas was over. It was something akin to loneliness in that I felt empty, but obviously it wasn't loneliness. It was just a lonely sort of feeling. The feeling left me frozen. As Christmas night was drawing near midnight, I found myself saying in my head, "now what?" It's the Christmas season I always enjoyed, but Christmas day has always just been sad, depressing. After Thanksgiving I couldn't wait for Christmas to come, I was overcome with anticipation but never actually wanted Christmas to arrive.

Last night these feelings returned, only they were worse than when I was a kid, and I think it's because Christmas just krept up on me. I went to sleep and suddenly it was Christmas day. Since I was at school I didn't even realize that the holiday season was upon us. I live from assignment to assignment trapped inside of my syllabus. I wanted my finals and the semester to be over; Christmas never really crossed my mind.

It was a nice Christmas, I just really hate how it snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder so I would turn around so it could punch me in the face. Okay, it wasn't quite like that. Christmas just seems to bear a morbid undertone. I'm only in my twenties and life already seems to be moving too fast, and I'm told that as you get older the year moves even faster. I don't really like this creeping, sneaking quality time has, and I guess the holiday's "sudden" arrival made it somewhat sad.

I did find time to buy everyone gifts though, so I guess Christmas wasn't so "all-of-a-sudden." Finding something I think everyone will like is something I really enjoy doing. I usually buy people things I would like to have myself. I found this great fair trade store where I bought most of the gifts I needed to. For my Dad and Grandpa I bought these wooden stands to hold their eyeglasses that are shaped like a nose. I bought my sister a mobile that has dangling fish made from palm leaves, and I bought my Grandma coasters that were hand crafted in Bangladesh, and were originally used to hold the pulp of fruit used to make wine and juice. I found my Goddaughter the coolest gift in this store, and she declared it her favorite present. It was a little man made out of yarn sitting on a wire bicycle, and he was attached to a long wire handle that you push as you walk which causes the little man to peddle the bike. I just love how everything in this store has a story. For my friends Kimber and Tara, I bought necklaces made from bottle caps. For my friend Chris, I bought him a book with some of Edgar Allan Poe's stories and it was even illustrated by a Celtic artist. For my Mom, I found her a travel Scrabble game. (I have a feeling I'm going to be playing a lot of Scrabble while I'm home).

I received things that I need for Christmas. I got clothes for my internship, some money and gift cards, and an electric tea kettle so I can boil water in my dorm. My favorite gift was definitely my garden gnome. I can't explain why I really wanted a garden gnome, I just think they're awesome! Oh, and my sister found 'The Pink Nightmare' bunny pajamas Ralphie's Aunt Clara made him in A Christmas Story. I was forced to wear them as we opened presents.

My Grandpa's been sick so my family brought Christmas to them. My Grandma's very upset by my Grandpa's illness, and the past few months have really been wearing on her. Even though my Grandpa's ill we all worry about my Grandmas because if my Grandpa does pass away we really don't know what would happen to her. They both always say they want to die together and most people think it's really sweet and endearing, but I just really find it selfish. They don't even acknowledge how painful it would be for their grandchildren to lose both of their grandparents. My Grandma kept crying and saying things like "if we're here another Christmas," and the man sitting in my Grandpa's recliner seemed to only be a shadow of my Grandfather. I found myself really annoyed and angry with my grandparents. They both looked so shriveled and old. Somehow my grandparents never seemed old to me before. Am I angry at how old they've gotten?

Christmas Eve was much more pleasant. I met my friend Jay at the mall for hot chocolate. (He's a procrastinator and was still doing his Christmas shopping). He called me and asked if he could buy me a hot chocolate because he had a business proposition for me. He has an outline of an idea for a children's book he really wants to have published, but he has no idea how to really convey his thoughts in writing so he wants me to write it. (I said, "Absolutely!") I'm really excited! He said I can even illustrate it if I want to. (I will update on my progress with this regularly).

Later on we went to my Aunt Mimi's, as usual, for ham and potato cakes. I asked my friend Chris to come because I knew he would go out and drink with his friends if he didn't have something else to do. Our friendship is a kind of exchange: he keeps me in comic books, I keep him out of trouble. It's fun hanging out with Chris. A lot of times we sound like an old married couple.

Now it's the day after Christmas and it's still just as when I was a kid. Boxes are unwrapped, there's no mystery or surprise left, the house is in disarray, and outside the world returns to normal. Hum-drum life begins again. At least I have a month away from Rutgers. I intend to read, knit, work, see friends, and write. Oh, and watch a lot of movies. Hm, I guess I don't feel as sad anymore.

The Tenth Circle

2009-12-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

I have never read a Jodi Picoult novel before; this will be my first. We'll see how it goes. I've avoided reading her because I assumed I wouldn't like her, and because I didn't want to be one of "those girls" who inhale Jodi Picoult novels and claim to "relate" with the subject matter she writes on. But someone recommended this novel to me. Someone who isn't one of "those girls." I think most people know what I mean when I say "those girls."

I just finished reading Out by Natsuo Kirino. It was a dark read but very well-written. Towards the end I had to stop and take breaks because the description was so gruesome. Other than that, the novel is so intense that it is difficult to put down. (Lets just say I neglected studying for my Arabic exam because I was so caught up in reading this book).

Happy Reading!

I Am Honored. Thank you Musings of Mom2Four.

2009-11-19T05:25:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Musings of Mom2Four for nominating me for this award; I'm truly honored. It's suffice to say that I love blogging even more now.

7 Things You Don't Know About Me
1. I live inside of my head, for the most part. I create a world for me to play and act in like a little boy builds imaginary worlds with his Leggos.

2. I have an addiction to ex-Lax, which I am desperately trying to break. I have a deep, sincere fear of gaining weight, and I distrust my body and my own perception of it.

3. I think with my head, not with my heart, though, sometimes, I think it's a fine line that separates them, and so which faculty is actually doing the thinking tends to be muffled or obscure.

4. I'm really good at lying and making up stories that it actually scares me, and these lies become so real that I cannot even discern the difference between fact and fiction. I'm probably living a lie.

5. I've been having really good days, lately, and it's because I am forcing myself to 'seem normal.' Especially when I'm around new people, I often hear a voice in my head hissing, "seem normal, seem normal!"

6. I'm very confused about what I want to do with my life. I've been examining different forms of writing.

7. Julia Child is my idol.

I have Nominated the Following Bloggers:
1. Dani's Daily Drop
2.Monica Manning
3. Christine's Chatter
4. Cake Wrecks
5. Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent
6. Telecommuter Talk
7. Editorial Anonymous

Rebirth #1

2009-11-17T19:18:00.000-08:00

This is the clean slate she's been looking for, hoping for. This blog is her rebirth as a completely new person. She lost affection for her past, for that person she once was, and so couldn't bring herself to write anything of significance or consequence on her old blog. She doesn't feel particularly inspired now, but she feels invigorated from starting anew, but not anew as who she may have existed as previously, but as some completely different identity. Hell, some completely different being.

There must be others like her living among the human population. There must be a line of beings who inhabit the Earth but don't feel of the Earth. She knows not where she came from, for she has always inhabited this planet, was born, bred, raised as a human. Memories, pictures, old toys and clothes in the attic reveal a relatively normal childhood. As normal as any human childhood can be.

She knows not who she is, what she is, how and of what she was created. Humans, she knows, have always struggled with these enigmas, and have yet to settle on a definitive explanation. A battle has been waged between Darwin and God, but it is unclear who the reigning victor is. Though, the field of Philosophy seems to be a culmination of both science and religion. Philosophy seeks truth and looks to find and give meaning to things. But within Philosophy, different ideologies are at war, fighting to become the true belief, the true aesthetic, the end all, be all answer to life and existence.

Perhaps her apathy toward finding this meaning is what separates her from humans. When considering these questions in reference to herself and her participation in this human world, she realizes she doesn't seek an answer so much as an understanding. An understanding of who she is, what she is, what her purpose is. Most of all, she seeks to understand why humans care so much, why they need such a definitive answer, even though rationale seems to indicate that there is no such answer. She doesn't know the answer and still finds herself content, while everyone around her always seem uneasy, stressed, pressed for time.

Her creation story is different, as she believes she is neither clay nor ape. While the revelation of how she was created isn't imperative, she feels it's important to have some basis or means of identification. (Even she needs clarity). On a daily basis she associates with people, but she is unable to identify or understand them. And so, she feels the human emotion loneliness, but it doesn't despair her because she has no desire to become close or attached to these beings. She wants only to feel and move on, to be unbounded and free of any human constraints.