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.

Don't Trust Them!

They call them man's best friend. They call them lovable, adorable, furry.

I think they're awful.

Maybe it isn't fear--maybe it's grown more into a hatred, a loathing vengeance against perhaps innocent canines--but they're awful nonetheless.

I must have been only six or seven years old. My father brought home a puppy, a Shiba Inu. Adorable! Its little brown eyes gazed from a fuzzy, striped black-and-white face. But it was only a demon in disguise.

Not long after it manipulated its way into our home, it began ravaging us tenants with its fits of barking, its snarls, its hungry eyes. I shall never forget the way its nose curled up like bunching fabric caught in a sewing machine, the way its eyes glared out at anyone, everyone!

It was hard enough living with a demon, but no one warned me that they bite.

I came home to find that my gum--my lovely, sweet BubbleTape still in the pink case--was stolen from its countertop home. Dakota, I thought with clenched teeth, heading for said beast's cage. I've no idea how the little monster reached my gum as he was no taller than my knee, but I saw the flash of pink cradled within his paws.

Like any candy-craving seven-year-old, I angrily reached in to grab my chewing joy.

But it bit me. The demon bit me. My hand, penetrated in three pale dents where its teeth had gripped, throbbed and faded like an Icy-Hot.

My father, ever the disliker of animals, came to my aid and went for the beast, but it bit his thumb harder--I still remember the blood ebbing from his thumb into the sink.

That demon was put down soon after, and thank heavens we had it so for it might have eaten me had it been given the chance.

So now I see those little monstrosities, those ones every person likes to coo at, and I twinge in repulse. Some find it amusing to place their animal in my face, those slobbering cheeks dripping like a broken hose, and I can only feel a mix of fear, horror, and need for revenge.

Only recently have I begun to heal from this fear. Only a few times in my life have I ever been able to trust a canine enough to pet its shaggy head. Maybe one day I'll forgive them. But I still see those snarling eyes.

Skyscraper

This song seems quite appropriate now--both on a personal and a patriotic level.

"Skies are crying, I am watching
Catching tear drops in my hands
Only silence, as it's ending
Like we never had a chance

Do you have to make me feel like
There's nothing left of me?

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper
Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

As the smoke clears, I awaken
and untangle you from me
Would it make you, feel better
to watch me while I bleed?

All my windows still are broken
But I'm standing on my feet

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper
Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

Go run, run, run
I'm gonna stay right here, watch you disappear

Go run, run, run
Yeah, it's a long way down
But I am closer to the clouds up here

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper

Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

(Like a skyscraper)

Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper"

Clearly Demi Lovato remembers the falling of the Twin Towers and, alluding to the Freedom Tower set to be finished by 2012. Though it seems a poor choice to build a skyscraper that symbolizes two others that were attacked (rather like a challenge), it is to be built with safer measures than the original World Trade Center. The song mentions being "made of glass" and how the "smoke clears" just as it was in 2001. It is a song of strength: "Go on and try to tear me down/I will be rising from the ground" to give hope for the 9/11 victims' families.*

It also envelops America on a personal level--how though we may be struggling financially ("made of paper"), we can still stand strong together to rise up from the ashes.

*song may be taken completely out of context

How DO I Write?

I see a little girl with pretty pigtails or a quiet bridge laced with vines. Sometimes I sketch it first; sometimes I feel a color and select a matching-hued notebook from my hoard. Some things are surefire inspiration each time like warm summer rain; some are flickering lightbulb ideas that pop in sudden bursts like a touching line.

Some days I can plan to write with my special writing songs' aid ("Never Stop" and "Bandoneon Acorazado" have never failed me--so helpful in November when I'm churning out sixteen hundred words a day), but some days I must pack my bags and grab my passport to start the journey at the spur of an instant.

Some days I use a clicky pencil to do deeper, more thoughtful pieces as it gives me a moment while writing to plan the next word; a Pilot pen is my rapid-fire beast for sputtered bursts on other days. Many aeons ago I used a miniature laptop to spill forth my ideas, but the poor thing was in an amnesiac accident and had to be retired. As of late I've discovered how the dusty musk--like a deliciously old book--of a typewriter keeps me punching away at the keys.

Some days I have to wrack the "guys in the sweatshop," as Stephen King so rightly wrote, yet others I find myself scrambling for the nearest notebook to pour down my whim-of-the-moment thoughts and watch it come alive like a Phoenix smouldering from the ashes.

Clouded Words

It's funny attempting to unscramble the cyphers of confusion wrapped up in some of these addresses, these vague ideas that sound so clever yet have little meaning.

Even in this mess, however, there is honest writing. Ronald Reagan clearly stated that he wanted to ease the Soviet threat by making shields to block missiles, and he adds that "It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons."

I keep hoping we will one day have an Average Joe for a president, one who would gladly announce, "Yes, I'll fail you lots of times. But this is what I wanna do." And he would then in very short words and plain steps state his plan to help America. And who knows? Maybe it'll happen.

So Many Ways To Say It

This summer I read a lovely book called The Five Love Languages for Singles by Gary Chapman. The book is not fancily written nor difficult to pore over; indeed, it is perhaps the most simplistic book I've read in a very long time.

The Five Love Languages is just as its title suggests: the five different ways of communicating love to others: through time, touch, words, gifts, or service and which of these is most effective for every different person.

It was a wonderfully relatable book as it featured a bountiful supply of real stories about real people and their real struggles. It has caused me this summer to see people in a very different light.

This novel explains how to determine a friend's love language and how to fill it--complimenting a friend whose language is words, giving a hug to a friend whose language is touch, and so on. This has made friendship take on a different perspective for me; now I want to find out my good friends' languages and be able to make them feel loved.

I've been able to rebuild a broken relationship with my dad, hold tight to a best friendship that is falling apart, and make an outcast feel a little more wanted just by giving her a hug.

It's so simple.

Well, I'm off to find another way to tell my recently returned sister that I love her.

Gnarly Brains

I feel that part of my head has been twisted into a gnarly tree stump after such strenuous reading. Miss Wollstonecraft certainly had a long-winded way of saying things, didn't she? (Makes me wonder if I ever do that.)

Many parts of this piece I had to reread and double reread--and I'm pretty sure some of them do not qualify as legible sentences.

I couldn't help but feel edgy at the way she worded some of her ideas, using phrases like "it is a farce" and "contempt of the understanding" (paragraphs 11 and 16).

I did find interesting her paragraph on how kings are treated differently, how it is completely unfair for men who show no better qualities than others are revered in paragraph 69 (it was also at this point I figured out "shewn" really meant "shown" and apparently those olde Englishe people didn't know how to spell).

It made me wonder why kings or celebrities or the like are so "treated with a degree of reverene that is an insult to reason," as she put it, when they are just average Joes in most aspects. What makes a king or president special enough to photograph, admire, and obey?

Miss Wollstonecraft made a good and completely unrelated point when she said that "Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship" (paragraph 39) as she explained that two marriage partners could not have a good friendship if the man always viewed her as a frail, sickly thing, that instead they needed a common respect and equality.

This article reminds me a little of Jane Eyre and the fight for women's equality amidst a society in which women were little more than pretty little jewels to be admired and then forgotten. It makes me very glad to be an American and, while perhaps not everything is equal, it is far fairer than it once was.

My brains at the moment

My Girl Hallie

As I contemplated this article, I was reminded of my favorite radio drama, Adventures in Odyssey (besides being distracted by the boxes of links that led me to too-long pages), in particular the episode My Girl Hallie.

As I had never heard of 2001: A Space Odyssey (coincidental title), I was unaware of Adventures in Odyssey's play on the aforementioned film; however, upon reading the first paragraph of Mr. Carr's article, I at once saw the correlations--the machine's emotion contrasted with human stoicism, the final words, et cetera--and was greatly pleased to have made connections.

I also felt both guilty and scammed at the research mentioned of students unable to concentrate: by the end of the third paragraph, my concentrating was drifting. Thoughts of Ray Charles and trimming my fingernails distracted my attention from the very colorful description of sea words and scuba divers.

Throughout this article I was unable to find a specific cure for our stupitidy (now that's just sad.) except for the simple act of reading.

So I suppose I should be off to read some lengthy essay that will enhance my brain.

Scent of Chimera

As I pored over our most recent piece of literature, I was struck with a sense that I had read something similar previously. And then it dawned on me on page 345: The Catcher in the Rye was just like this!

It was at that moment that I decided I did not like the reading with the lengthy sentences and off-topic paragraphs. However, there is much to be delved into.

On page 345, Ms. Erdrich mentioned a quote from a Mr. Adam Phillips: we "never know whether obstacles create desire or desire creates obstacles." This I felt I could connect with, for I have pondered that subject myself. Why do we like the things we do? Is it because we cannot have them? Is it simply in human nature to want what we are not permitted to possess? Or do the things we want purposely make themselves unattainable?

The following paragraph also made me stop and marvel. If we did not have something to overcome, we could never grow. While this principle is obviously the building block for life, the manner in which Mr. Phillips expressed it blew me away: "Without obstacles...There would be nothing to master."

I feel that the timing for this piece, as tangent-loaded as it may be, could not have been better: I have just freshly returned from a week-long journey into the mountains of the Upper Peninsula, and as Ms. Erdrich weaved her colorful descriptions of the forest, I felt I could imagine them more vividly.

"The world turned dazzling green, the hills rode like comfortable and flowing animals. Everywhere there was the sound of water moving (342)".

Talking Towns

Upon reading our first assignment of the year, I was delighted to discover they were both in some way optimistic.

I personally found John Updike's piece to be more relatable than Ms. Sontag's because of his literal proximity to the destruction and his hopeful end; he saw it not as an end but as a time to remember and be grateful for his remaining treasures: a glorious New York, a dignified sense of freedom, and his wife and kin. Yet he was not oblivious to the lives lost, the work to be done, the pain dealt. "The nightmare is still on," he consented (paragraph 2, page 2), but he imagined the views of the martyrs better than I had.

Susan Sontag was a bit harsher in her condemnations of America; however, she still protruded a sense of dignity--empathy for complete strangers, even--and that of America's greater purpose. While her pointed comments about President Bush nettled my loyalties, her powerful, emotional speech on America's flaws stirred in me a sense of renewed patriotism, that I should help the cause to make America more than just strong. She also caused me to think about the other side, those who made martyrs of themselves to further a cause.

For a moment I could imagine them, disallowed to say a last goodbye to their families, tears welling in their eyes as they saw all the innocents in the plane they would take with them, a tight thudding in their throats as their last moments of life faded into the blur of broken windows. They were people.

I wish I knew why they did what they did. I wish I could have done something. Maybe I'll get the chance next time.

And in the meantime I can fold money into the Twin Towers.

Who? Me?

Hello, and welcome to the very first edition of this exciting new adventure just waiting to be unraveled!


(The duck says hello.)

As thrilling as the entirety of my life may be, these are the bullet points of my major discoveries:

1. Stopping and smelling the flowers. What's the point of life if I can't drive over a turbulent bump in the road, slip and splash into a gigantic puddle of mud, or marvel at the watercolor paint streaked across the sky just before the sun goes down? Maybe a cookie isn't that exciting in your world, but in mine it makes things a little brighter.

2. Doing one thing at a time. By "discovery," I really meant "trying to discover." I try to see that huge mountain of dishes as just a spoon there, a bowl here, and soon enough it's all done. This is much harder to put into practice when faced with mind-boggling homework assignments and college applications, but somehow it makes my life a little easier to focus on one assignment at a time and forget about the jumbled mess still on the floor.

3. Loving for real. I don't mean the fluttering butterflies or screaming "I LOVE YOU!" to a best friend; I mean desiring the best for someone even if it costs everything. I mean showing a friend love through whatever they need. I mean seeing people through God's eyes, knowing that though they may be a monstrous pain at times, they have a grandiose purpose, too.

That's who I am--who I'm trying to be, at any rate. Maybe one day I'll be good at it.

Look! Duck! How exciting!