Weekly Blog #15: Hey Toni, I don't like the things you do

Maybe it's just because we started the book so late in the quarter--when I got all those end-of-the-quarter assignments that make me want to grab my teachers by the collar and shout "Come ON! Don't you get it?! I'm BUSY!"--but I really have not been enjoying Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark. I wasn't so sure about blogging about this, but it's gotten to a point where I feel like I have to for, if no other reason, catharsis' sake.

I can't speak for the class, but, personally, I've found Morrison's book to be one of the most dense I've ever read. She consistently has way too much going on on one page and writes in a way that makes me feel like I'm being talked down to. We've been given several days to complete reading assignments only thirty pages long, yet at the four-page-an-hour pace I somehow seem to go with this text (you'd think that'd be an exaggeration. . .but you'd be wrong), I feel like I need a lot longer.

Also, from what I do manage to get through, I've noticed that I don't even really enjoy the subject matter of her book. She's formed interesting, truthful general concepts, but I don't particularly care for the way she applies them to text with race at the center. I mean, I don't think I'd care for a text that did that with just about anything that's been a big issue in our country, which is why I don't understand why she chose to do it. I never get why people point those kinds of things out and leave it at that. It doesn't fix anything, and things are rarely "just pointed out" if they're not broken.

So. . .curiosity? A "close exploration. . .without the mandate for conquest"? I'm not sure what I buy and what I don't, but, regardless, this just seems like a terrible aspect to want to examine in literature. "To each her own" is one of few justifications I have for it. I don't know if I agree with her or not either--too much of what she writes is far too cut-and-dried for me to connect with--but if I did, I wouldn't be glad about it. It might be an "interesting" topic, but it's also horrible, and I don't see why she wants to highlight that without getting all revolutionary about it. To me, it just seems to strengthen the presence but do little to change it. And I suppose that's the point of an analysis, to illuminate but not makeover, to serve as the foundation and the foundation alone for said makeovers, but I guess I just don't see the sense in that.

Art

Alright, so for this art activity that Mr. Kunkle is having everyone do, I chose this oil painting by Francis Barrand, which I found in the Smithsonian's American Art inventory.

Oddly enough, this plain piece of artwork that depicts little more than an attentive canine actually reminded me of Toni Morrison and her main idea in Playing in the Dark: the constant presence of race in American society and literature.

In the painting the dog is listening through the phonograph to his master's voice. Though his master is not there, the animal is still poised and willing to follow his unseen owner's orders--to be affected by his presence even though it seems not to exist. This concept seems to reflect that of Morrison's book with the subject of race taking the phonograph's place and American society, problems, and literature filling in for the dog. These aspects of our culture, according to Morrison, are still influenced by race despite frequent inabilities to see such influence. In other words, both America the featured pup are impacted greatly by an invisible master.

Weekly Blog #14: Relating to a Psychopath

The title of this blog, in addition to being a pretty snazzy song by one Miss Macy Gray, is in regards to the novel I've chosen to read for our final paper, The Bell Jar.

The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel and was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the main character, Ester Greenwood's, descent into mental illness paralleling Plath's own experiences with what may have been either bipolar disorder or clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first publication.

I'm a little over half way finished with the book, and I absolutely adore it. However, I'm a little torn about that because a big reason I have for this adoration is because I can relate to the story. In any other situation, it would be a good thing. I would want to applaud the author for her ability to put me in the protagonist's shoes, and I would realize new things about myself. Well, I guess I can say that at least the latter is true. I'm realizing now that I'm thinking along the same lines and appreciating the thoughts of fictional character modeled after a real person who had a mental illness that led her to suicide. . .

Still, I feel it unfair for me to discredit Plath's writing just because she was going under, especially considering how beautiful it is. So I guess the former of that statement is true too. It shouldn't matter what her mental state was. If anything, it only helped her create a better book, and for that she deserves praise. She has a fantastic way of describing people, places, colors, thoughts, and stories, and Ester's thought process, though sometimes like mine, is just so shockingly different at other times that I can't help but be blown away by it.

Esther describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship in New York around the time of the Rosenbergs' execution and reminisces about her friend Buddy, whom she has dated and who considers himself her de facto fiancé. She returns to her Massachusetts home in low spirits. All of her identity having been centered around doing well academically, she has no idea what to make of her life once she leaves school and is rejected from a writing course taught by a famous author, and none of the stereotypical life choices for females of the time period presented to her appeal to her.

Currently (I mean, as far as I've read), Esther has become increasingly depressed and finds herself unable to sleep. She goes to see a psychiatrist she quickly learns to resent for his good looks and conceitedness, and he diagnoses her with a mental illness and administers electroconvulsive therapy, which actually seems to traumatize her and push closer to the suicide I've just read about her attempting unsuccessfully. (Obviously, it's in this part I've just explained that I begin to see the differences between Ester and myself.)

Overall, I'm really looking forward to finishing the novel and am quite pleased with myself for selecting it. Yet, as always, I am not looking forward to picking it apart in yet another book analysis. Doing that never ceases to wreck the book a little for me unless I find a way to repress it like I did with The Book Thief last year (nothing was going to ruin that for me). By the looks of it, I'm going to need to do the same with this incredible book.

PS - My "research" about the book and author may be credited to Wikipedia. . .of course.

I Can't Sing

I hear America singing
the varied carols of each being, loud and long,
and it seems I need to ask myself,
"What is my song?"

Mouths open,
they tell of what belongs to them today,
and I see that what belongs to me
is what I need to say.

Yet, of this
there is little I know.
Time has passed,
but much more is to go.

The words to my song
are something only coming days may bring,
and so, I can't--at least not yet.
I simply cannot sing.

Weekly Blog #13: The sun came out today. . .

and I don't just mean outside.

This week has been has been the dreariest I've had in a while. It's been foggy and damp, and I've been cranky and out of character. I sliced open the stomach and large intestines and removed the kidney and heart of a fjarking cat in Human Anatomy for goodness sake! Finally back in my old state of mind, I can hardly believe that--how desensitized I was. I'm mostly glad to be back but sort of curious about what else I could have made myself do. Regardless, here's how the return to normalcy happened:

I was walking home from school, coatless and as close to blissfully as a person like me can get lost in my thoughts, when I came to an abrupt stop. For a worm. He was struggling with all his earthy, little mite to inch across a soggy receipt someone had dropped, but the poor dear couldn't get any traction on that smooth piece of paper.

Now, I don't really like worms. I mean, they don't do anything wrong, and goodness knows I thank them for the soil that makes these bad boys possible (come on, tell me that's not one of the coolest flowers you've ever seen), but I'd much rather they remain in that soil. So, knowing that, a person can, hopefully, understand what a big deal it was that I actually reached down to help this little guy back into the grass.

However, the bigger deal in this story was what I noticed while I held that creature in the palm of my hand--the date on the receipt. March 10, 2010. "Oh, that's weird," I thought to myself, wondering why a receipt had been printed with a date that hadn't happened yet.

I think you can all guess what happened next. A jaw, a cell phone, and a worm were all dropped as I realized today's date, the eleventh of March. This day, which, up until that moment, had been little more than warm and long, had suddenly exposed its true colors. Written with double digits, this day is so close to final exams, so close to spring break, so close to graduation, so close to summer, and so close to college.

That's right. This post was actually making its way to college all along. Didn't think I could handle talking about that, didja? Yeah, well. . .I'm still not sure that I can.

Anyway, I was just wondering what you guys were feeling about that. I guess I've just been assuming that everyone is excited about it, and maybe that's true. I know I'm anxious for it, but, as I hope I made obvious in this post (and as you probably could have figured out just from knowing me), the faster it approaches, the longer my lists get and the quicker my heart beats.

It's especially butterflies-in-stomach inducing (more like hornets) when nearly everyone around me already seems to know where they're going. And I guess you could say that's partially where my inspiration for the poem we wrote earlier this week came from (which, for some reason, posted above this post). I feel like there's a lot of things I still need to figure out not just about school next year (although I'd say that's the biggest concern in my life right now) but also about myself in general. That last sentence sounds a lot like something those "deep and cultured", attention-seeking types that I don't care for much would say, but. . .it's just the truth.

Sorry if this is a "senior only" blog post. Juniors can still comment, obviously (not that people really comment on my posts anyway), but if any of you turn out to be one of those juniors whom I've already heard complaining about people asking them where they're going to school. . .I will have but two words for you: NO SYMPATHY

Even with the slight possibility that I was doing the same thing this time last year. . .

Weekly Blog #12: Drop Everything and READ

Do you guys remember DEAR time? Goodness knows I do. It was one of my favorite things about school. Few things seemed better than criss-cross-applesaucing it up somewhere in New England on the United States of America rug on the second floor of the third grade corner at Waubesa (holy prepositions!). There are so many things I'd do to earn back those fantastic twenty (thirty? forty-five? I don't even remember) minutes of quiet--time to relax, to explore a book of our choice, and to learn how to be better readers. Who decided that we didn't need that anymore?!

This quarter, I have had more assigned reading than I've ever had in a quarter of my high school career (not necessarily length-wise [I think third quarter of my junior year would take the cake for that if I hadn't repressed it] but more so in the number of assignments). I find that I like the majority of what I'm supposed to be reading but that when I don't, I've got a serious issue. My mind gallivants off to places eighty thousand miles from the subject matter of the piece of writing, and I just can't get through it. I count remaining pages every three minutes, hoping desperately that the next is my last.

That's not okay. Reading should not be that way, and I know it. So why has it gotten that bad for me?

It is the pursuit of the answer to this question that reminded me of Nicholas Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" that we read last summer. The writing explained how our frequent reliance on the Internet could be a big contributor to the problem many of us have with focusing on one piece of writing for a long period of time--a reason why so many of us could admit to having formed a "staccato" way of thinking.

This article, combined with my dilemma and my longing for DEAR time, made me realize that I've discovered another reason for this inability to focus: liking (or, rather, not liking) what we read. Now I know what you're thinking. You're scoffing and you're mentally saying, "DUH, Ali. Of course that matters. You didn't discover anything."

Well, if you'd let me finish, I could explain what I really meant, thank you very much! Ha. What I actually had in mind in saying that was that it seems like these days, the line between reading for work and reading for pleasure is really blurred. It feels like it's gone from "Okay, I have to read this book for Multi-cultural Literature and I'll read this book on the weekends" to "Yeah, the book we're reading for American Novels is a lot better than that book we had to read for College Literature last quarter." Basically, instead of choosing to read things we might like, we're choosing to like (some) things we have to read.

I know there are obvious exceptions to that. Some people really do have time to read what they like, and that's great. But, a lot of people don't get to do that very often or at all, and, in my opinion, that's helping the "lack of focus" issue. People in this situation are the ones choosing to like what they read. In my case, I order what I'm assigned by what seems most interesting and tackle the least impressive things first. Sometimes though, people, myself included, just aren't interested in what they're assigned, and you can't blame them for that. It's just that when this happens, focusing is hard, especially when there isn't a piece of writing of choice to look forward to reading when finished with homework. When this happens, a person has to be "staccato" to get everything done.

And so, I guess my point is that it might be a good idea for me (and anyone who can relate to me) to take this lack of DEAR time into my own hands. I think I just arrived at the sixth time (that I can recall) since the beginning of grade nine that I was able to choose my own piece of writing to read for a class. SIXTH TIME. (And, two-thirds of those came from AP Composition, so thanks, Mr. Kunkle.) Knowing that I've selected that little reading material without constraints is sort of upsetting and has made me realize that change is very necessary. I need to quit starting and stopping books at the mercy of spare time, and I need to get back to doing that spontaneous research of random things that catch my attention, which used to be such a defining part of me.

If I could pick one, just ONE, book and stick to it, I'm almost positive I'd stop feeling like such a slave to my schoolwork, and, without question, I'd enjoy myself. Assuming I'm right about this, trying to make this happen for myself should also reduce that angry, ants-in-my-pants feeling I get when I don't like what I have to read for a class. And boy do I (and will I) need that reduced. . .especially considering I'm not about to stop using the Internet. . .

Ralph Waldo Emerson, meet the concept of moderation

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his."

In all honesty (like I'd ever be one to give any less than that), I was really overwhelmed by Emerson's piece. It was obviously very well-written--nearly every sentence seemed as though its formation had been considered extremely carefully and as though it could stand alone and still produce high impact--yet that was almost my problem with it. Emerson's writing, intentional or not, was just too heavy for me. Tone it down, Ralphie. . .

Anyway, from what I did manage to absorb and appreciate, I did find several lines that I liked a lot for the lovely way they were crafted and for the insightfulness I sensed behind them, the aforementioned quote being one of those.

I found this statement to be very truthful and appropriate support for the advice Emerson seemed to be pushing throughout the piece. Many people do underestimate the power and quality of their own ideas simply because they are the ones to think of them. It's as though some, myself included, can't trust that an idea could be a good one--or, what's more, one of the best ones--and theirs simultaneously, which is what Emerson seemed to be saying we need to overcome to keep the world moving.

Also, the message that Emerson appeared to be to presenting in this article was that of a need for fresh ideas from all people. As a result of this, he used lines like this to stress the importance of faith in one's thoughts because it is this faith that leads to the originality Emerson was convinced we needed or, at the very least, could always use.

Personally and as always (almost), I am torn by this point that Emerson seems to be trying to get across. Part of me is in agreement with the implications that lines like the one mentioned earlier and others found throughout the reading offer that belief in your own ideas is not only important but necessary for development. However, I also feel that Emerson's argument was a little contradictory and incorrect.

For example, if everyone focuses on his own original thoughts and develops his own great ideas, there doesn't appear to be much room for believing in the potential of anyone else's idea. Emerson believed that we'll achieve nothing if we don't believe in the power of our ideas, but I don't see how we can achieve much more than nothing if we're the only ones who believe in our ideas too. I think that the real method to progress and accomplishment involves a balance between having faith in your own ideas and having faith in the ideas of others because in helping them execute their ideas, you put yourself in a better place to receive help executing your own later on, thus attaining more overall.

Weekly Blog #11: Initial Reaction to Fitzgerald's Book

I need to work on my attitude. Anyone who knows me can vouch for that because there's no denying that I can be a really negative person. I mean, I wouldn't exactly consider myself a pessimist, but if you were to have me look at that metaphorical glass of who knows what, the first thing I'd point out is that I wasn't getting my money's worth. We don't need to get picky with words to figure out that I'm still going to be thirsty. And we'll say that that makes me a realist, okay? That's fair.

Anyway, the point in my saying that was to highlight that, yet again, my poor outlook managed to hinder my ability to dive into a book with an open mind. In quite the same way that finding out that The Things They Carried was about war made me less eager to read the book, stumbling through the first few pages of The Great Gatsby, my eyes getting wider and my annotations becoming more confounded as each additional paragraph supplied more confusion, had a similar effect. However, after discovering how much I loved Tim O'Brien's novel, I should have been able to predict that my astonishing ability to wrongly assess how much I'll enjoy a book based on just one aspect of it would rear its ugly head once more.

And so, after just a week (not even, actually) of reading, I have already found it necessary to admit that I misjudged The Great Gatsby and see myself liking it the more I read it. Mind you, it's by no means my favorite book after just a few chapters, but I'm developing more respect for it than I anticipated I would. Fitzgerald has a really fantastic way with words--a way of making me smile to myself when I read it and write one too many annotations that read "haha" or "beautiful".

Also, I find myself relating a lot to Nick already, if that even seems feasible. We don't get to read much about Nick as a character, but just by taking in his reactions to the situations he encounters or noting the subtle quirks and humor in the text, we can get a pretty good feel for his personality already. I seem to think along the same lines as him, for the most part, which is a nice change of pace from getting flustered and angered by what happens in my Multi-cultural Literature book (which is chock-full of injustice, rodeos, and death). I'm not quite sure yet if Fitzgerald structured his book in a way that makes everyone feel connected with Nick (thoughts anyone?) or if it's just a me (and, apparently, Andrew) thing, but regardless, it's working with the mystery of Gatsby to keep me sufficiently interested.

Weekly Blog #10: Way to go, Benny

After a week or so reading articles that, in my opinion, could be classified as "just okay", I found Benjamin Franklin's piece "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America" to be an interesting and refreshing change. His viewpoint seemed to counter those of the other authors we read regarding the same or a similar subject without being harsh or uncivil, and I was definitely a fan of that.

I thought it was really fantastic that Franklin was finally able to make it known how decent, tolerant, and respectful the Native Americans could be, thus making a huge yet subtle point in a calm and rational way. He made the elitist and racist ideals of early colonists look ridiculous and left little room for argument against his statements. Crafting this argument essentially required almost no effort on his part simply because it was an undeniable byproduct of choosing to write about the truth, and it is because of this fact that his argument was made even stronger.

I especially loved the recount of the interaction between the Swedish minister and the chiefs of the Susquehanah Native Americans. It was such a good point and a perfect reflection of the ignorance of the times to include the Native American's quote: "My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practice those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?"

Speaking of education, it was also a truly beautiful thing to me that Franklin included the portion about how the early colonists offered to take Native American children into their schools to teach them how to be "worthy men", yet they rejected the Native Americans' offer to take white children into Native American society to learn how to be "worthy men" by their standards. This explanation of the occurrence did a wonderful job of highlighting the unfair way that colonists refused to hold the Native American customs as high as their own--to reciprocate the respect of differences that the Native Americans had offered to them.

On a whole (wow. . .how clichéd can I get?), this article was really enjoyable for me because Franklin finally addressed the facts that others writing about this topic failed (intentionally) to shed any light on. It was a much needed expression of the truth and helped to give Native Americans some of the credit that they were so often denied. I am sure that if I'd read this piece when it was originally created, I would have had my thoughts completely altered (assuming that they did not already follows these lines), and I am convinced that there is no way it didn't have an affect on the opinions of anyone who really did read it during that time.

Weekly Blog #9: We've Changed, But Are We Different?

I had a really difficult time getting this blog post started because, in all honesty, the readings from the last few weeks left me rather uninspired. I wanted my own spin on what we'd read about, but I couldn't come up with anything that didn't sound really similar to what everyone else had already written. However, I now believe that I've formed an original enough collection of thoughts based on an interpretation and application that, up until the weekend before last, I hadn't developed.

Though I'm grateful to finally have a topic for my blog post, I would trade that and about a million other things to have not have experienced the incident that led to this inspiration. Events essentially played out as follows:

Of all things I could have been doing with my weekend, I had chosen to sign on to Facebook early Friday night. Upon entering the site, one of the first "recent activities" in my "news feed" was that of a boy in my grade using his "status" to explain quite harshly his dislike of the decision of one of his favorite musical artists to sing a song with another obviously less enjoyable (at least to this individual) artist. The status had received some feedback from the Facebook community, all of which came from this individual's friends and all of which were sentiments of agreement, and for whatever reason I decided read these comments.

Instant regret. The first word I saw was "gay" followed shortly by context that I already knew I'd hate. These boys (all of them, boys), these ignorant, insensitive, intolerant boys, spewed that formerly innocent word like their lives depended on it, leaving a sickening trail of negative connotations behind it as their words blazed down my computer screen. And they did it in ways I wasn't exactly expecting. While some were obviously using the word to express that the artist's choice to do this duet was stupid, others were actually implying that doing the song together qualified this artist as a homosexual and that that was a bad thing.

Reading this made me sick and it made me angry. So angry. So I did something. The only thing I could think to do: write my own comment asking them not to use the word like that. I ignored the idea that it wasn't my place or my business. In anger, it just was.

And do you know how they responded? They fed off of that comment like maggots on a carcass. They were fueled by it--inspired maybe. And their comments got nastier, sometimes aimed directly at me. I was disgusted. I had honestly expected more, if only a very little bit more, from them, people of this time period--of this generation, who I was quickly realizing I had little more than age in common with.

But it did really get me thinking.

And you're probably wondering how I managed to relate it to anything we read last week, and, to be honest, you might still have questions by the time I'm done. . .but I'm willing to take that risk.

I actually ended up thinking about the piece of writing we read by Valerie Babb, "Crafting Whiteness in Early America", from her book Whiteness Visible after I was so generously provided the extreme displeasure of this experience. In the chapter and the entire book, Babb explains the history behind the values and customs that created whiteness in the United States. According to Babb "whiteness" was partially defined by identifying other races, usually negatively, to show, rather, what "white" wasn't instead of what it really was.

This basic process of forming a concept of any sort of group by defining another first is still incredibly prevalent in America. In fact, as my situation proved (at least to me), this means of label-making is much more frequently applied and is applied to so many different things other than race these days.

The boys who said these terrible things were prime examples of not only disrespecting a group of individuals that are (apparently) so unlike them but also of incorrectly using one group of people to describe another. Though the insolence to homosexuals is what bothered me most about the situation, it was something a little different that proved Babb's point in this new time. These boys had taken their closed-minded, ill-formed knowledge of a collection of people to help them define "rightness" of the conduct of musical artists like that mentioned in the status, "wrongness" being defined as homosexuality.

And so, I have to ask. . .how different are we? What are we all about now? Times have changed as have people, opinions, and norms. But, Babb's concept of this form of definition hasn't, and I'm seeing now that it's applicable to more serious issues than I would have expected. I mean, we've obviously come a long way from the views of early colonists, but it's incidents like this that remind me just how much further there is to go.