Be Who They Be

Re-reading Alaine's poem, I am still shocked at it's power.  It's unexpectedness.  If it wasn't enough to hear it the first time, reading it doesn't take away any of the impact.

It's raw.  It's unexpected, further clarifying exactly who she is. The power of the introvert, thrown out in an explosion so random that none of us see it coming; it was her fierceness she described, lashing out in her moment on the stage.  Then, again, retreating.

I too have moments like this.  Moments when, my seemingly calm demeanor retreats and I throw my head back to the heavens in what Jonah calls a freedom stance and yell WHY.  Why am I here?  Why am I going to school?  Why do I feel the pressure to be an extrovert?  Why do I feel the pressure to impress ANYONE?

These moments of helplessness (or clarity, I haven't yet decided), although leaving me nostalgic at the prospect of my life, give me hope that I am aware.  I am absorbing, just like Alaine, and forming my own opinions.  And Alaine's presentation gave me just enough inspiration and motivation to form a big one.

I AM NEITHER AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT. (Yes, she also inspired me to capitalize whatever the hell I want).

Maybe according to others' labels, I would fall under the category of introvert after 5 p.m. on a weekday.  Maybe I would be called an extrovert on the weekends when all I want to do is be with my loved ones.  But at this point, I'm sick of trying to figure it out.  I'm sick of trying to put a label on myself to define what settings I best thrive in, because they change daily.  I change daily.

Introvert or extrovert, the question most commonly resorted to.  Why is is so important? WHY? Why can't we be both? Neither? How fantastic would it be if we weren't constantly asked to put ourselves in a box, if we weren't told what was right for extrovert and wrong for the introvert?  How wonderfully splendid would it be to relax or adventure into whatever action next comes your way, without feeling guilty about the choice you make?

I am adventurous.  I travel like nobody's business and take leaps sometimes way too big for me.  Meeting new friends is one of the greatest remedies I've found for any ailment, and I continue to do so on the daily.  Yet, I'm not out there go-go-going all the time.  I like to sleep in on the weekends.  I enjoy the mornings when I have the house to myself.  My physical activity consists of yoga and walking to school.  So give me a break!

Don't label me, and I won't label myself.  Stop trying to categorize and organize and find the answers to every fricking problem out there, because much of the time they aren't even problems to begin with.  Let people be who the be, guilt-free.

The Fiends of Dreamland

“The improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent world of romance reminds us that we are not awake when we have abolished the dream world: we are awake only when we have absorbed it again.” -Northrop Frye

The sky was turning darker as the day grew full.  Clouds massed on top of each other so thick that the girl began to wonder whether the sun had strewn from its normal, arcing path over the sky and had decided instead to rest on the horizon for the day.  There was no way to tell.

She stood up from the couch, too-quickly, and took advantage of the light-headedness to stretch her arms high above her head until she felt as if she would lift off of the ground.  She knew she wouldn’t.  She probably wouldn’t even ever lift out of this city.  The girl had been taught since grade school that humans can’t fly.  There existed things simply unattainable.  However, last night she had...

؂

Dream 1: Improbability. I’m walking up a wintery slope, the sun shining bright in my eyes, reflecting off of the crisp snow.  I am in a line of voyagers- I don’t know where we are going or where we have come from.  Frosted pine trees and dead weeds push through the edges of the path. I turn, and to my back is a man in furs. I reach out to grab his hand, and all of a sudden lucidly rise from the path, the hill, the pilgrims, and begin to fly over the Northern landscape.

The wind pushes my hair back from my face and bites my ears, cheeks, neck.  From the heights I gaze down at a silver lake that lies ahead.  I ache for it, and slowly descend upon the frozen banks.

When both feet have touched the hard earth, I look up and am face-to-face with a centaur.  He awaits me, and the air of desire only strengthens.  He steps forwards, I reach out, and open my eyes.

؂

Back in the small space of her life, the girl begins to brew her afternoon tea.  At least she thinks it is afternoon. Just as the kettle begins to whistle, there is a soft knock on the door.

She freezes.  The only muscle that noticeably moves in her body is her heart that visibly pounds through her shirt.  As if in response, the knock turns to pounding.  “Please open the door,” her mother calls from the stoop. “Please.”  She doesn’t open the door.  She doesn’t move until she hears the steps of retreat and the start of a car outside, then releases the breath she was holding.

She had never gotten along with her mother.  For as long as she could remember, their relationship had been an up and down train wreck of screaming matches and sullen silences.  It seemed as if every time she began to let her guard down, to love her, one of them would rip it painfully away, like a band-aid leaving repeated swollen welts that never quite healed.  To the girl, the days went by much easier without her.

By the time she crawled into bed later that night, she pretended to have forgotten all about the knock on the door.

؂

Dream 2: Desire. I sit, swinging my legs off of the end of a dock with my mother.  I’m not aware of how it happens, but suddenly two of her valuables are spilled into the water- a silver key and necklace.  I confidently pull off my clothes and dive into the blue-green water, summoned by the items, reaching slightly into weeds as I grasp the glinting key.  I need to breathe, and come up without the shining chain of the necklace.

          We have to leave right then, so although I long to have it within my grasp, I reason that I will find the necklace upon my return.  The cool water quickly dries off of my skin underneath the late-summer sun, and we move on.

          We take the train across the land to a ruined colosseum.  It is both eerie and beautiful traipsing through the archeological soil.  I feel comforted in this ancient place although the sky threatens with looming clouds.  Before I am ready, we must return to the home on the water.

          I run out to the dock to resume my diving search as soon as we arrive, but the lake has been filled with dirt.  Tractors roam in the the new basin, preparing irrigation systems as if the space will be used for agriculture.  I desire the necklace more than I can ever remember wanting something, and am still mourning its loss as I open my eyes.

؂

Lounging in the neighborhood park with a book, the girl involuntarily reaches for the hollow of her throat.  She is vaguely reminded of a something, a necklace, but brushes the memory off as unimportant.  She again turns her gaze down to the worn pages, but the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

           Ever so carefully, the girl brings her gaze upwards.  Sitting in a patch of evening sunlight across a bluff in the grass is a man.  It’s not the sharp angles of his face, nor the attractive way he leans back on his hard arms, nor the light playing off of his many rings that holds her attention; it is the way he is staring at her.  Not the kind of people-watching-in-a-park staring that can be excused as acceptable- he is holding her gaze as if hungry.  He wants to devour her.  Her mouth falls open, and she feels her body responding to the heat of his presence.  Then, as if awakening from a spell, the girl blinks, drops their visual connection, gathers her belongings, and retreats from the park.

           As soon as she is out of sight, she begins to run.  She runs and runs until her lungs feel about to burst, until her legs catch on fire, until she tumbles through the front door of her house and collapses in a shaking heap.

           She only rises to carry herself to bed, long after the sun has set.

؂

Dream 3: Eroticism. I am lounging in an old lake cabin with my lover, at his bon voyage party, knowing that I will soon have to say goodbye to him.  Throughout the day, we use a log to float far out on the water.  I’m introduced to many of his friends.  We lounge underneath the shade of the back deck.  We dance in an unfamiliar living room late into the evening.  We intertwine, his angular body and my soft one, sleeping and awakening again and again in an old blue bedroom.

I awake in the morning to arrive at the breakfast table, reintroducing myself to his friends before I’m reminded, to my shame, that I had met them the day before.  My skin flushes.  I am naked from the waist up.  My lover then joins us downstairs, lovingly brushing my light hair as I hug him around the waist as if it is normal to do so in front of a group of guests.

I simultaneously squeeze him and my shut eyes tighter, then let them open.

؂

The girl bolts up in her bed to her alarm shouting, covered in a film of sweat, panting.  Angry at her reaction, she grabs hold of reality by dousing herself in the cold water of the shower.  It’s Monday, and for once she is thankful for the dreaded day’s predictable nature and lack of excitement.

           Sitting in her first class, she immediately notices the figure slouching in the corner.  She doesn’t need to look longer than a moment to know who it is.  She fidgets impatiently through the hour, rising from her seat and out the door as soon as the class is dismissed.

           But the day continues in this way.  She notices him leaning against a tree across the road, watching her walk between class; she sees him ducking under an eave on her way home as the rain begins to come down; and finally, mulling through the shelves at the local grocery store, she turns a corner and finds him standing at the other end of the aisle.

           He is impossibly tall.  His gaze is just as intense as the day in the park, but this time holds an air of aggression, although she senses it is because he is uncomfortable and not towards her.  She could yell.  She could tell the creep off.  She could run.  Instead, she finds her feet stepping towards him, as he mirrors her, their bodies drawn closer and closer as if pulled together on a wire.  They stop when they are a foot apart.

           Just like yesterday, the girl blinks and suddenly realizes the strange reality of the situation.  She turns to leave, but he reaches out and grabs her by the arm.  As soon as he touches her, she is filled with a sense of empowerment and energy, a wickedness that she hasn’t felt since childhood.  Whipping her head around to look im in the eyes, she yanks her arm away, reeling with the high, and turns her back on him.  She buys her groceries and walks out without looking back.

           The feeling keeps her up long into the night.

؂

Dream 4: Violence. It is any ordinary night as I drive with my friend under the streetlights.  We talk about guys.  We laugh as we pass a restaurant with a ridiculous name.  We reach a pier, and it is revealed to me that the point of our journey is to pick up two friends waiting on the end of the pier.  She backs up onto the pier because she won’t be able to turn around on the narrow stretch once she reaches them.  It all makes sense, it’s all realistic, even the way she confidently drives backwards with speed down the pier.  It never once crossed my mind to worry, that is until I look ahead at how far we’ve driven from the land.

            “Hey, I think we’ve driven far enough-” I’m cut off by her slamming on the breaks, but it’s too late.

            We sail backwards off the pier into the churning, pitch-black water.  My friend starts to scream.  I immediately try the automatic windows, but they refuse to roll down.  The pressure against the door is too great to open.  My seat belt has locked up.  I am able to remain the calmer of the two while the car sinks because my subconscious tells me I’m dreaming.  Then the hiss of the water seeping through the cracks in our doors and windows becomes so loud that I know that’s it not.

           I hear her scream again, and gasping for breath, I open my eyes.

؂

    The girl wakes up to a knocking on the door.  She gets up to look out her second-story bedroom window, but doesn’t see her mother’s car.  The knock sounds again.

    She hurries down the stairs.  Peeking out the living room window that grants her a view to the front porch, she sees his figure.  Although she hesitates, freezes in an attempt to hide from him like she so well hides from everything else that might hurt her, she already knows what she will do.

For the first time in months, the girl answers her door.  She tilts her face up to meet his, searching his for answers only to find that same sense of primitive vibrance awaiting her.  He steps over her threshold, and she begins to live.

؂

Dream 5: Reality. I am lying in my bed, unable to wake, as our class surrounds me.  My roommate has invited the session into my room for today.  Joe asks, “Are you sure this is alright, Dr. Sexson?”  He replies, “Why yes, because Katie is a part of this class.”  I open my eyes.

Wicked Truths and Fallen Princesses

 

I found it quite coincidental (as we find almost everything said in this class to be) that our conversation turned to the Wizard of Oz the other day while discussing the Nicholas being the subject of the God Game.  Dorothy and Nicholas were both turned upside-down and inside-out by external forces in order to discover qualities about themselves that lay dormant long before their adventures started.  "It was in you all along," Glinda explains simply to Dorothy, communicating that her inner power had always existed, she just needed help finding it.  Similarly, the qualities Nicholas discovered about himself  by the end of The Magus had always been there, but were not discovered until Conchis acted as a catalyst for these discoveries.

I find this coincidental because I just finished a novel in which Glinda is revealed as a ditzy snob, Dorothy a naive problem, and the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood heroine. Yes, I read Wicked, and loved every sentence of it.

I enjoyed this work so much because it is a well-known story told from a different perspective, revealing a reality behind the happy ending of Dorothy's adventure that makes us question the entire plot.  Wicked caused me to think a little deeper, and by the end I found myself questioning everything.

Even more coincidental is that I stumbled upon Dina Goldstein's series on "Fallen Princesses" just this morning. Just like Wicked, Goldstein takes what we've always known (and studied in this course) to be the basic fairy tales with happy endings and reveals their reality, but through photographs instead of literature.  I thought I'd share this photographer's modern inquiry with you all as to what happens after the "happily ever after".  I hope it will make you start to question, too.

 

Arcadia Ignorance

 
"You have a duty to keep her in ignorance!"

My initial reaction? HA. It's supposed to be funny, Thomasina's mother angry at Septimus for teaching her, awakening her to the knowledge of the outside world (although I think this reaction came from his lesson on carnal embrace).  Yes, a certain degree of censorship in front of children can be necessary to their overall development, but we find this statement comical because it is so blatantly mocks the opinion of too many adults: that children are children, and shouldn't know things until a certain age.

In many cases, this age never even comes.  So many adults want to shield their children from the "horrors" of the outside world for as long as they possibly can.  But what is the difference between a "horror" and knowledge? A horror is a horror if we believe it to be so, just as it can easily be turned into a lesson if we so choose.

Yes, there is a world of information I hope that my future children don't discover when they're five years old: the "ideal" (aka fucked-up) body image of an American woman, the overall influence of media over our minds, what it sounds like to hit a loved one, what it feels like to hurt someone so deeply it won't ever be forgotten, war, crime, rape, murder. The list goes on.

But I would hope that my children eventually learn these things, learn everything about them, so that they may develop their own opinions and own identities.  That instead of remaining in ignorance from these horrors, this knowledge, whatever you want to call it, they embrace it and learn from it.

I was blessed enough to be brought into this world by loving parents who have always treated me as an equal.  They have thirty years more life experience than I do. Thirty years more of loving and fighting and messing up and growing up than I do. They have thirty years more knowledge than I do. Yet they never belittled me. By giving me their respect, answering my questions when asked, letting me make my own mistakes and conquests, they gained my respect.  I hope that for every child.

"You have a duty to keep her in ignorance!"

My reaction after having thought about it from a different perspective? Ignorance can be used as a good thing. As Dr. Sexson explained in class, it can pertain to the belief that one must first empty their mind in order that it may be filled with knowledge.  I can think of a number of cases in which this is true.  In order to open yourself to new ideas without bias, you must let go of your previous beliefs.  If you attain to truly listen to what one is saying, you must quiet your own voice first.

And so, we reach the delicate balance (as everything comes to in the end) of emptying oneself, remaining in a state of ignorance in order to welcome knowledge, and soaking up information to create as many beliefs as we possibly can. Or perhaps we can simultaneously retain both states?

I think we can.

Hello, My name is Ammu

The re-creating, re-telling of the common myth.  That is what this class has taught me to look for in each book I read, story I hear, event I witness.

After being assigned the Magus, one of the main themes communicated was the characters' literal reenactment of these myths.  Not only were we given a novel to interpret on our own, to search for the stories within the story, but also a handful of scenes directly involving classical literature and Greek mythology.  Whether to aid in our search for the myth or merely to confuse us more, it was more than prevalent that the favorite activity of the majority of the characters was dressing up literally as Greek deities during an already-emphasized-as-important scene, often while referencing some important piece of literature.  It was exhausting to read.

And what does one (well, at least this sleepy girl with no weekend plans) do when they are exhausted from reading?  Read some more!  Having had so much assigned reading, it was the perfect surprise to receive a book from a friend in the mail last week.  A book called The God of Small Things. I decided to take the time to read solely for the purpose of enjoyment, and spent the weekend under the spell of this nostalgic tale.  I hope you all can read it at some point in your lives.  It is a beautifully written account of a terrifying time in a child's life- very hard to read at times, very strange, sad, but worth every sentence to reach the end.

One of the main characters is a young, troubled mother called Ammu.

Ammu is not a happy woman.  She is divorced, forced to move back into her mother's house, live with malicious relatives, and take care of her twins who both save her and kill her a little more with each loving look.  She realizes she is aging down a straight, foretold path in which she can see all the way to the end: her death.  During one scene, she inspects her almost thirty-year-old body in the bathroom mirror, touching her stretch marks from the birth of her children, feeling the width of her hips flare beneath her slender waist, tickling the small of her back with the ends of her hair.  She conducts the Toothbrush Test, inserting a toothbrush underneath a breast to see if it stays on its own, to see if gravity has already affected her body.  It falls to the floor.

The novel haunted me all weekend, as most stories do while we are in their midst.  However, last night my mind was in a thousand other places, happily buzzing with the days conversations and going-ons as I stood underneath the light stream of the shower. I let it quickly scald my body before stepping out, and without being conscious of my actions, scanned my body in the mirror.  I let Ammu's eyes, my eyes, look over each limb, each curve, and out of pure curiosity took the Toothbrush Test myself.  I laughed at Ammu in the mirror.

Whoa Katie, we don't need to hear about you sticking a toothbrush underneath your boob.  Sorry for getting personal, as that isn't the point of this blog.  The point is that as I stood there, I realized I was re-creating the myth, re-telling the story of the beautifully unhappy woman and her beautiful twins.  Just like Conchis's staged scene of Apollo and Artemis, his actors dressing up as the Gods, I stood there dressing up as Ammu.

 Dressing up with nothing on.

What I Wanted to Add to Our Conversation...

 

As mentioned in my last blog, the most prominent message the Magus conveyed to me was that of human nature's constant search for answers instead of acceptance of the unknown.  Another important theme came to me during today's discussion, however, which was the theme of sex.

Why is it that Nicholas becomes so emotionally tormented, so deceived, and so astounded at Lily-Julie-Vanessa's betrayal?  It's because she has sex with him.  Well, she also flirts, kisses, and feeds him all sorts of amorous promises, but the convincing factor for Nicholas of her trust is the offering of her body.  Although Nicholas doesn't treat sex as a sacred act himself, womanizing and even visiting brothels for release, he expects the sacredness from his female partners.  As he explains in his own words, "...no girl could pretend to want and to enjoy such things unless she was a prostitute."

The irony of the situation is that Nicholas uses sex in many of the same ways the young Lily uses sex: to trick the partner into believing in the love of the act for selfish benefit.  Where Nicholas uses sex for pleasure, Lily appears to use it for the game in which Nicholas is the experiment.  However, because Lily is female, Nicholas mirrors societies views that if she uses sex for selfish reasons she must be a "prostitute".  Only a morally corrupt woman could seduce a man outside the boundaries of love, whether it be for a moral test or pleasure.  "Why did she let me make love to her?" he incredulously asks her mother, astounded at how she could use her body against him.  She simply responds, "I understand it was her wish."

For this, I believe the novel is extremely contemporary for its time.  The entire group of the "God Game" treats sex casually, as one sharing their body with another, and for this can use it easily to trick Nicholas.  We find this attitude towards sex more often than not nowadays, used more as a natural connection (and yes, in many cases for selfish reasons) with less sacred or emotional attachment.  Although women still carry the stigma of being "loose" in comparison to men when developing this attitude, the stigma has softened from the time of the novel's publishing in 1965.

Sex is such an important component to human life, it is no wonder that throughout human history the act has been tied with the sacred.  I appreciate Fowles' challenge of it, especially in his decade, for there is no more interesting a theme to ponder than that of sex.

The Magus

 One man's search for answers.  This is what almost seven hundred pages of the Godgame comes to. Answers.

Isn't that what mankind does?  We constantly need solutions to continue in life, to become satisfied and reach peace with a topic before we can move on to the next.  The answer to one's happiness.  The answer to a relationship.  Even the answer to the future.  How many times this year has a conversation come down to the dreaded What are your plans after college? conversation piece?

Not only are we constantly searching for answers, but also providing answers.  More than this, we feel obligated to provide answers.  Society requires that you have a plan or solution to your future in order to achieve a state of contentment.  Everybody knows that.

So it is not a surprise that we find Nicholas frustrated and tortured throughout these six-hundred-some pages because he is given not one reliable answer.  He is given false truths, forcing him to continue to question everything he has been told and to think one step ahead.  Towards the end of the novel, he confronts the mother of the twins, Lily, about the "game" they have played of him.

"Am I ever going to be told what you really think you're doing?"

"You have been told."

"Lie upon lie."

"Perhaps that's our way of telling the truth."

By feeding him constant stories, the makers of this game show Nicholas a truth (although through cruel and harsh methods) that he might not have discovered otherwise: always questioning allows one to truly think, and therefore truly live.  To be left without a solution, to be left with the unknown, is an uncomfortable and often scary situation.  Our minds are muddled, the human nature of inquiry pushing to overcome the obstacle by resolving the problem.  However, is it a problem?  Is it a negative thing to be satisfied with pondering instead of an answer?  When we are thinking is when we are expressing our individualism and true self, challenging our surroundings and expectations of others.

"'An answer is always a form of death.'" Lily quoted Conchis.

"I think questions are a form of life."

That they are.  Maybe not all answers are a death- when one can find solace in a solution it is a beautiful occurrence.  What I will remember personally, though, is witnessing an individual step in the direction of the unknown and move forward into life without that solace.  To forever question and find acceptance in life's mysteries- that, to me, is even more beautiful.

It Startled Me to Read...

It startled me to read Eliade's paragraph on Nazism, on "...how such a pessimistic vision of the end of history could ever have fired even a portion of the German people."

This startled me because that was my exact thought since learning about the holocaust.  How could one man convince almost the entirety of Germany to follow him down such a horrendous path?  How is it possible that so many people became so devoted to the Aryan race and such an outrageously horrible cause?  It wasn't until last November, while in Berlin's German History museum, that I began to see how.

Three of my friend's and I decided to take the weekend away from our studies in Spain to gallivant around in the snowfall of the German Christmas Markets. We spent long nights strolling through the smells of bratwurst and gluhwein, ice skating underneath warm colored lights, and drinking too much beer with new friends in our hostel.  But don't get the wrong impression- during the day we put our historian faces on and took a walking tour of the city (after which we nearly lost all of our fingers and toes to frostbite), and ended the day by ducking into the museums to warm up.  We politely started on the top floor of the History museum, pretending to be fascinated by the old roman artifacts and battles, but consciously working our way quickly down into the 1930s where the answer to Eliade's question lay.

I walked through the years of World War II.  Entering from the more-or-less innocent stages of the beginning, of Hitler's rise to power, the slow scapegoating of the Jewish people, one notices the troubles begin to arise but doesn't think much of it. "It's just propaganda," I thought as I looked at a red, firey, Nazi character rise above the ashes of a city on a poster, "There's always another side to politics, someone will create more powerful propaganda to balance its evil."  But there wasn't.  It was all of these miniscule steps that Nazism took forward, so little that one doesn't give too much worry, until the steps had built and built on top of one another to wobble treacherously, reaching closer and closer that horrible ledge of "ragnarök" (the last battle, or the end of the world, as Eliade translates it), to form this black staircase of complete brainwashing.  There was no other word I could think of to describe it.

And then I was there.  I was standing in the museum room of the Holocaust, of ragnarök, watching citizen after perish before my eyes in the concentration camps.  I whipped my head back around, tears filling my eyes- how did this happen so quickly?  I had literally been standing amongst those first "harmless" years of propaganda just and hour or two before.  How did one man eventually convince the commoner to "give up your old Judaeo-Christian stories, and re-kindle, in the depths of your souls, the beliefs of your ancestors the Germans; then prepare yourself for the last grand battle between our gods and the demonic forces."

He reanimated Germanic mythology, and he did so through complete brainwashing.  I think Eliade's use of the term "pessimistic" is a little too light here, don't you?

This term "brainwashing" was also mentioned in class the other day in relation to the Bible.  Hold up, hold up, I am not trying to relate the Holocaust to the Bible, but merely searching for other places in our world "brainwashing" might exist.  We talked of how the difference between religion and the Bible is thought of by many as the difference between the spirit and authority, of belief and brainwashing.  I would have to say I agree.  Not that I have ever read the Bible (who am I to talk?!), but I have personally seen the difference between an individual who believes in Christianity and an individual who follows the Bible.

It was a day earlier this Spring, in a class where we were having the good ol' gay marriage argument . No one would speak up, so I finally did.  "My brother is gay." I didn't say anything else.

NOW no one would speak up. I tried not to laugh as, when we were asked to go around the circle and each give our individual opinion, everyone answered in favor of gay rights. That is until we reached the end of the circle.  A blonde with a light voice answered a sweet little, "no."

When asked why, she answered simply, "It is clearly written in the bible that man should be with woman. And that's how it should stay."

Killer argument, I thought sarcastically.  I bit my tongue, though, because it was in that moment that I saw a true believer in the Bible.  Not necessarily in Christianity, but in the bible.  Maybe it should be its own religion.  Not that it is a bad or wrong belief, but a belief in which the reader submits to its authority, and yes, allows themselves to be slightly brainwashed.

I think it is a much more beautiful thing when one can think for themselves, outside the lines of authority, and question authority, to create good.  To reanimate the more loving myths of our history.

Quality

Quality of a stream, a river, an ocean.  Quality of the sky and the sunlight and a word.  Quality of a thought.  Quality of you.  Quality immeasurable because it is uniquely measurable, unimportant because it matters so, to each and all.  A brick baking in the heat of a fireplace.  What makes it a good brick? The fact that it can hold its own against the licking burns of the pit beneath it?  Because it works alongside the others of the same quality to hold the immensity of the chimney above?  Because it is strong?  What makes a quality friendship?  A quality idea?  What matters to one can matter to none, and the immense blessing that is quality in the eyes of one perceiver can be a curse to the next.  A stream may have more quality in your eyes than anything you have laid those eyes on before.  A river may have none in mine.  Quality exists suddenly, and is gone in a breath of the next moment.  It is as unique and indescribable as the minds that create it within their spectrum of belief.  And just as beautifully as it came to be, woosh, it disappears.

Now that I've gotten my poetic side out of the way, I can address the question of quality's role on the collegiate level.  I suppose what brings quality to a campus or course would be many factors coming together to make a whole.  For example, the quality of a class would be measured by the engagement of the professor, the content of the course, the setting, and the classmates themselves.  The quality of a professor could be measured on his passion for the subject, his knowledge of the subject, the manner in which he instructs, and his grading styles.  Every piece of quality can continue to be broken down and measured in smaller quantities, but that still leaves the question of how we measure these pieces of quality.

As Robert Pirsig argues in the Metaphysics of Quality, quality depends largely on perception.  I agree with this tangent of perception based on the description that the measurement depends entirely on the perceiver.  One cannot truly measure all the tiny pieces of quality because they are all based on opinion.  However, one can measure the majority's opinion on quality to develop what might be a "collective opinion of quality".  This will never account for everyone's opinion of quality, though, and here we must choose whether it is better to account for many but not all, or none.  Woosh.

 

 

Quality or craziness?

For the Time Being

Upon starting Dillard's For the Time Being, I didn't know what the hell was going on. However, that didn't stop me from immediately falling in love with her poetic words and fleeting style, the way she paused only for a breath on each idea.

Upon completing the narrative, I still don't know what the hell is going on.  This time, though, I found meaning withing the sometimes-chaotic impermanence of her ideas. Before I reveal this meaning, I think the best way to go about it is in the same manner as Dillard- to share my favorite individual passages in their unique beauty before attempting to paint a common theme.

Page 8: "Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think you can go it alone."

Page 13: "'...the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.'"

Page 36: "There might as well be a rough angel guarding this ward, or a dragon, or an upwelling current that dashes boats on rocks.  There might well be an old stone cairn in the hall by the elevators, or a well, or a ruined shrine wall where people still hear bells.  Should we not remove our shoes, drink potions, take baths? For this is surely the wildest deep-sea vent on earth: This is where the people come out."

Page 44: "'If I should lose all faith in God', he wrote, 'I think that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world.'"

Page 47: "...simply take yourself--in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love--and multiply it by 1,198,500,000.  See?  Nothing to it."

Page 71: "Is it useful and wise to think of God as punctiform?  I think so."

Page 85: "Many times in Christian churches I have heard the pastor say to God, 'All your actions show your wisdom and love.'  Each time, I reach in vain for the courage to rise and shout, 'That's a lie!'--just to put things on a solid footing."

Page 94: "We are one of those animals, the ones whose neocortexes swelled, who just happen to write encyclopedias and fly to the moon.  Can anyone believe this?"

Page 100: "...someone thought of making, and made, this difficult, impossible, beautiful thing."

Page 119: "Are we ready to think of all humanity as a living tree, carrying on splendidly without us?"

Page 160: "'Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.'"

Page 169: "I don't know beans about God."

Page 197: "'It says in the Bible that to save a life is to save the entire world.'"

Whew.  That's not even all of the passages I had marked, but the ones I couldn't bear to leave out of this blog.  Looking back at them all and the narrative as a whole, the overriding theme is that of the importance of life in context of the individual and in the context of humanity.  Although Dillard is overly-careful to keep her direct opinions out of the work, she goes through lengths to prove both that: A)humans are mere, insignificant numbers and B)each human is as important as the universe that surrounds us.  These two themes come across as contradictory, but they in fact work together to relay the message that no one being is more important than the next in this existence.  Each life contributes to the impossible beauty that is life itself.  We are each and all more important than we can ever fully grasp or imagine.

And this is about as close to explaining life as you can get.

How the Past Possesses the Present in Night-Sea Journey

        

             To be a possessor, to own, to have, to control a thing, is a power extreme and true to the core.  You cannot fake possession; to have a thing at your complete and utter will is not an earthly gift, but divine.  Of the few concepts that could fall into this divine category, time is now of question.  Does the past possess the present?  In Night Sea Journey, Barth creates a cycle of life in which, without question, the present is completely dependent upon the past.

            A sperm tries to reach an egg.  He swims and swims through an endless night, his comrades falling dead, drowning, all around him.  He despises this journey, his faith in the “shore” lessening with each fallen brother, however he continues to pull through.  His will cannot overcome the call of nature, of the past of creation.

            “’I am love all love. Come!’” She (the egg) whispers, and I have no will.” The sperm admits his submission.

            In the past was born this sperm with the birth of its human.  The past created this present sperm.  The past cycle of life, of endless swimming, created the current cycle, an endless call to nature which none of the sperm can overcome.  The past will continue to create the cycle of life which possesses the future generations of eggs, sperm, and humans.  It is endless.

            This endlessness drives the swimming sperm insane.  He cannot stand to watch another one of his comrades die at the expense of, in his view, a pointless journey merely because it is what has always been done.  He is possessed by the past into an incredulous madness, a madness that is a part of his genetics, his genetics also created by the past.

            The sperm is a victim of his this never-ending past.  It is the past, present, and future of life.  Our life.  Are we, therefore, victims of our paths?  Are we no better than the sperm that created us, swimming the cycle of life- breathing, sleeping, eating, birthing- until we drown in our own death?  Is there anyway to liberate our present selves from our pasts of human nature?

            I should think not.