Why Does the Past Always Seem Safer?

"Why does the past always seem safer?" Just like Chris Rice questions in his song "8th Grade," so does F. Scott Fitzgerald express throughout his masterpiece the struggles of leaving the past behind and coping with the present--this expression is shown, while in many characters like Tom and his big football game and Daisy and her romance-ridden youth, most predominately through the character of Jay Gatsby.

"'You can't repeat the past,'" Nick tries to convince Gatsby (pg. 116), but Gatsby's biggest character development is letting his unreality suppress reality (pg. 105), including his absorption with crystallizing the moments he had with Daisy.

Wistful of the beautiful past in light of the pain-stoked present, Gatsby barely has the ability to exist in the present--even when he is finally with Daisy, he feels hollow, as if he will never be able to relive their beautiful memories, never be able to regress to the safety of the past (pg. 98).

"Why does the past always seem safer? Maybe because at least we know we made it."

Transcend

An idea I found fascinating was Emerson's return to humans being reliant on each other for their own identities. On his second page of "Self-Reliance," he says that society is damaging the growth of "every one of its members." Why are we so tainted by the want to impress others? Is that all it ever is? Do people ever think, act, or even believe on their own? or is it all, the self you call your identity, just a plastic webbing painted on by those who pass you by?

I noted another idea upon reading "Self-Reliance": my interpretation differed greatly from its general critics; however, to say that I agree with my interpretation of his transcendentalism is entirely true. I saw his arguments, instead of as a fight for the "self-existence" of God within us, as a deeper thought into God existing with us.

On the very first page of his essay, Emerson talks about how we humans only "half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents." While many readers took this as a claim that we are all gods, that each of us has a god within us, I at once thought of God piecing us together with unique aspects of Himself. I thought of how He fabricated us to each display some part of His being--"made in His image"--and to reveal to us Himself through each other. This idea made me wonder, What is the aspect of Him that I reveal? What thread of my being is really just a reflection of a glorious part of Him?

And what is yours?

Self-Reliance

When in the spanse of one woman's life it grows time to discover new worlds, expand horizons, and sever the threads of her interim country, a vocalized gratitude to her ephemeral homeland seems only fitting at the edge of her embarkment.

I claim these as my obvious, undebatable reasons as why you, Wisconsin, shall always be part of me and yet the reasons I have to bid you farewell.

Wisconsin, despite your waylaying, eternal winters, you have rested, comforted, and kept me for beyond the expanse of eight long years--the most growth-filled years of my life up to this juncture, and half of my current existence.

You've been the countryside I have run; you have opened up your trees and hills and valleys and lovely rains and paths to my restless feet for hundreds of miles and would gladly have allowed me still more had I asked.

You've been the place I first was enamored with a boy.

You've been the education that taught me how to read beneath the words, how to paint a picture with my words, how to see the world beyond my eyes.

You have been the church I grew up in, learned to live in, learned to love in.

But you have been the house of my great sadness, too, the home of my biggest fears and worries.

You have been the nights and days I spent in tears, the chilling blanket to my heartbroken soul.

You have been the joyful, turbulent dips in the road--but now it's time to say goodbye.

Still, take heart, my dear Wisconsin, for I shall always come back again to see you smile.

Chairman of the Board: Commander-in-Chief

My darling America,

You have always been my kind of country. This could only happen to a guy like me--and only happen in a country like this, a country so full of good people. So may I say to each of you most gratefully, thank you from the bottom of my heart for picking me--one with little political experience--to this highly esteemed position as your president.

I can see that look in your eyes that you're wondering how I got here--and don't worry about it, so am I! But when I get up here, we'll just fly starry-eyed out where the air is clear!

I'd also like to thank my wife, Nancy, and the whole Pack--Dean, you and the boys have made this whole thing a lot easier.

I promise I'll do whatever I can to make sure all of you can make it here too--since if I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere. And so can all of you.

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king--and see where I am now. And that's all thanks to you, my dears. I'd like to think I'll be able to lead as well as I've led the Paramount girls--if we can be a strong a voice as the bobby-soxers there, we'll have no problem against rival nations.

But I'm not blinded to fear or reality. Sometimes other nations will get their kick stomping on our dreams. Sometimes they'll beat us down. But that's life. We've gotta pick ourselves up and get back in the race!

And my dear Americans, when the end is near, when we face the final curtain, when one day other nations try to challenge us, try to shoot us down, try to tell us we're doing it wrong, we will have but one thing to say:

We did it our way.

And dear Americans, the best is yet to come.

~Frank Sinatra, January 20th, 1957

Possession: French

The lovely French symbol of the fleur-de-lis is employed as a symbol in this map in a subtle way to establish French ownership. As much as England did, France used maps to portray its possessions as greater than perhaps they were. Ignoring the current inhabitants, France drew out a map of all the new colonies it desired, erasing any memory of past owners with the sly word choice of "Nouvelle Georgie"--New Georgia, now Old Georgia Already Claimed. New Georgia.

Even Americans today have a mental block of newness as soon as ownership is achieved: when I buy a used book, in my mind because it is newly mine it is "new." It doesn't matter that anyone else ever owned it, read it, wrote in it. It only matters that it is mine now.

"A growing sense of European entitlement to the Americas" (page 50 of Ms. Babb's essay) is clearly evident in the French and English misconceptions of new ownership portrayed in their maps, particularly this one that is doused in French names and symbols.

http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/1764b4.jpg

The Higher Culinary Experience

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/bruni-dinner-and-derangement.html?ref=columnists

This piece about how ritualistic certain fancy-pants restaurants have become made me flinch--"make a memory" of water?--but it caused me to realize how grateful I am to not suffer such eccentricities. The article goes on to explain all the odd things one must do in particular restaurants and how the culture has changed to be so centered around the rituals of food.

(This seemed very related to our current topic of the "Carnivore's Credo.")

I enjoyed his many examples and the colorful language he used in a simile: "I felt like a...bamboozled cheese."

He very much pursuaded me to stay in my happy middle-class food district out of the $245 person meals of the higher up.

Pardon me while I go find a cheeseburger.

A Quiet Life

Maybe we've gotten it wrong all along. Maybe they do have it better than we, we the hearing.

In Mrs. Fortune's class freshman year, we went around the room stating which of the five senses we would give up if we had to. Thirty students: not one said hearing.

We find so much enjoyment in the music, the conversation, the ambience of life. But how many times have we complained about a music station we don't like, a person who babbles incessantly, a thunderstorm that kept us awake at night? How many times have we wished away a semi's belting honk or a fire alarm's eerie buzz? How often have we escaped from a crowd into a deserted room just for a moment of silence?

We resent those noisy, distasteful places that blare fuzzy, awful songs from terrible speakers; we wear noise-blocking headphones to escape the constant whir of machinery. We wish we could get those irritatingly catchy, reproachful songs from our heads (how often do we wish to heavens we had never heard "Friday"?).

A "disabled" deaf person has none of these complaints. No air horn surprises, no dreadful child's wails, no horrific explitives.

It's so quiet, so peaceful to imagine what life must be like for the deaf.