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.

The Silo (Revised Fairytale)

            She pulled the old, brick-red pickup off to the side of the road, dust spinning wildly around as the wheels settled into the gravel.  She listened to the engine slowly putter and die, then listened to nothing at all.  It wasn’t until every last particle of the dry cloud had sunk back to sleep on the earth that she reached for the door.

            The afternoon sun blinded her momentarily before she could see the land in front of her.  What had been her great-grandfather’s perfectly maintained and harmonious farmland 100 years ago was now a tangle of arid jungle.  The bounty of the land gone, nothing remained of the farm but a slowly sinking silo.  Tumbleweeds caught in the thorn-filled brambles like lovers intertwined.  She hugged her abdomen tightly at the image.

            Taking a deep breath, she let the hot, still air fill every last space in her aching body.  There was a bitterness to the dead wind, as if the pain of her childhood seeped into her lungs and blood along with the dust.  It had been thirteen years since the old woman had died, but she carried the curse of her family in everything she saw.  She kicked at a mound of weeds.

            A flash of color caught the corner of her eye.  Stalking farther away from the safety of the truck, she approached an especially malicious-looking thicket.  The gleam of soft red could barely be seen through the slight openings in the vines, but she reached for it like an infant reaches for a flame.  When the first thorn dug into the pale skin of her finger, she merely looked down at the beading drop of blood with surprise.  There was no pain.

            Then she was tearing.  She ripped at the hedge with a ferocity envied by a black sky opening and roaring at the land beneath it.  She felt the hot tears stream down her face as she madly beat and pulled apart the thicket.  She didn’t stop until she had unearthed the wild rose growing beneath the hideous mess of nature, it’s red petals matching the color of the blood smearing her hands.  She crumpled the flower to her chest as she herself crumpled to the earth, petals and body alike coming to curl in the soft dirt.

            If only she could lie here for a hundred years more, she thought, the land would drink and drink every last drop of her blood and tears, soaking up every bit of her wasteland body until she was nothing more than the dust and the field itself was green and fertile again.  The river would return, the roses too, and the animals would stay for good.  The earth would wake as she slept.

            The uneven ground cradled her as her eyes slipped closed.

The Lady from France

The best children’s rhyme, or limerick, I have hear to this day was written at my brother at the age of 8.  It captures completely his childhood essence, and I would like to share him with you all.  It goes:

            There once was a lady from France,

            Who bought some new ruby-red pants.

            She went to a ball,

            And fell down the hall,

            And that was the end of her dance.

I have nothing more to say on this brilliance.

Cenicienta

 

I felt the effects of this course on my life outside of class for the first time last night.  I have to admit, it was a moving moment.

It began by snuggling down with a late-night glass of wine to watch a movie for my Hispanic film class.  I propped myself up with a few pillows, preparing for the difficult task ahead of staying awake.  The film began, just as cheesy and sensual as I expected, but instead of drifting off I felt myself growing more alert as the tale spun itself: a hopelessly-in-love daughter oppressed by her wicked mother into a life of servitude, her two sisters living the freedom she herself would never taste.

Un momento, I thought, This isn't the story of a Mexican farm-girl, this is la Cenicienta!  With that realization, the tale of Cinderella unraveled before my eyes.

As the plot unfolded, revealing detail after detail that supported my hypothesis, I found myself analyzing and dissecting the film in its entirety without a second thought.  The main character, Tita, is locked in a tower by her mother.  Cenicienta.  Helpers in the kitchen who make her feel valuable, like mice.  Cenicienta.  Handsome Prince falls in love with Tita.  Cenicienta.  Mr. Handsome wants no one in the end but Tita.  Cenicienta!

My initial and honest reaction was disbelief at myself for willingly tearing apart a work of entertainment analytically.  What's going on? I thought, I'm supposed to be watching a movie, not doing HOMEWORK!

When that moment of immaturity wore off, however, I realized what a gift this course has given me already.  I am more aware of life's happenings revolving around me, of plots and twists and people and motives.  I find the myths and fairytales silently trailing my study-worn sway wherever I walk, flitting through the back of my mind whether I am conscious of their presence or not.  I love the feeling of inspiration, when the moment the myth behind the story hits me, that comes involuntarily.

I am grateful for this inspiration.  I am grateful for la Cenicienta.

Signs and Symbols

Signs and Symbols tells of a foreign family who has voyaged to New York to live alongside the father's brother "the prince" and begin a new life.

The son of the family is severely mentally deranged.

The boy believes that the outside world is out to harm him; he is afraid of nature, of technology and of humankind in general.  He has attempted to take his life more than once, the last time by hanging himself.  For his own safety, his parents have locked him away in an institution.

It ends with a phone call to the parents at midnight looking for "Charlie".

The can spot a few fairytales in this story, the first being Little Red Riding Hood.  There are references to a "basket of jams" that the parents attempt to take as a present to their son in the institution, just as Little Red Riding Hood takes to her grandma in the forest.  The family's journey could be seen as Little Red's journey through the forest.  Lastly, the story makes reference to a girl's "grubby toenails", Aunt Rosa's "wide eyes" and the father "removing his tooth plate", symbols of the wolf's teeth, eyes and claws in the fairy tale.

The wolf, then, could be the sadness of life and the son's illness that the family is trying their best to disguise in happiness, like a wolf dressed as the grandma.

There is also the symbol of the boy locked in the institution, just as Rapunzel is locked away in her tower from the outside world.  He is also locked away from the "Prince", just as Rapunzel was.

Lastly, there is a reoccurring symbol of insomnia.  The father can't sleep at night, and the son suffered from insomnia at age six "like an old man".  The only relation to a fairytale I can draw here is that of Sleeping Beauty.  Perhaps the son is trying to escape life for that final sleep, a deep rest just like the princess, also locked away in a tower waiting for the Prince to come and wake her with a kiss.

One can also see The Odyssey in this story as the family has traveled over seas to finally land in New York.

The part that puzzles me of this story is the fact that the main character, or damsel in distress, is male.  I would like to discuss this in class.

As I find myself drifting to day-dreams instead of focusing on the endless possible signs and symbols of this blog, I will leave you all with my mind's image that has been nostalgically present ever since coming back to Bozeman from a weekend surrounded by love.  It is of my hometown, Sandpoint.

Persephone & Connie, Children to Women

When I was young, I owned an illustrated children's book of Greek Myths.  I would spend hours flipping through the colorful pages, pausing on my favorites to read of the love, envy and wickedness of the varying gods and goddesses.  I always found myself pausing most on the story of Persephone.

Whether it was such a straight-forward explanation of the changing seasons, the loss I felt for Demetre or the horrible fate of Persephone to forever return to the Underworld, I was hooked.  However, my young and naive mind never made the connection to the harsh foundation of kidnapping, and even as we discussed in class, rape, this myth laid for future stories.

It wasn't until I read the short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? that the myth was brought out of the rose-hued glow of my childhood and into the evil possibilities of the world.

Reading it made me uncomfortable, disturbed and terrified.

I immediately saw the relationship to the story of Rapunzel; her long golden hair, her over-bearing mother who guards the tower of her home, Arnold Friend coaxing her to escape and join him.  The story of Persephone took a bit more thought, however, because there was no loving mother with whom Connie was forced to part.

The connection came, however, when I finally realized she would go with Arnold in the end.  And I have to say I prefer the children's myth much,. much more.  The darkness of the ending haunted me.

I was also engaged to think again of my thoughts on marriage.  The comparison is highly exaggerated (marriage is not the Underworld... at least not in all cases), but for me is still there.  I have begun to form the opinion that marriage is a way of conforming to society, of "doing what you are supposed to do" and settle down.  The man looks for a wife, finds a woman looking for a husband, and whisks her off to his domain of the home.  I hope that if I ever do choose the path of marriage one day, it will not be a form of binding me to the love of my life because we will already be bound emotionally.  It will not be a necessity, it will not stop me from traveling and interacting and exploring and being an individual.  In all honesty, I would probably get married when it becomes more convenient financially after having been with one many years.

We'll just have to see.

Story-Telling, Reading, Pen-To-Paper Type of Girl

There are few things I dig more than a good book.  An imaginative book.  A book that paints a picture like a dream invades your mind at night and takes you to another world.

That being said, the reading I have found to be so far most enrapturing are The Swimmer.





 

Cheever's The Swimmer transported me to the hot, lost, unhappy, summer twist on The Odyssey. A man embarks on a "journey" (even if it is a journey of drunken pool-hopping) to his gated home where his family should be awaiting him.  The drunk swimmer parallels the story of Odysseus in many ways, eluding to the travel by water, the meetings with different characters at each stop and the obstacles (such as the highway, the community pool, the brush and sharp ground).  It is an obvious recounting of the classic journey, modernized with a melancholy tone.

However, where Odysseus comes home to find his family and home (as well as other obstacles), the swimmer reaches the grounds to find his home sold and his family gone.  For me, this simple detail makes it much more tragic than a battle with cocky suitors as in the case of Odysseus.  It leaves a sad taste in my mouth, and ends with nothing more with which to wash it away.

The two biggest themes I found in the story were that of the water and of alcohol.  Where the water seems to be his beautiful release from the realities outside of the pool's edge, the author creates heavy, negative connotations to the swimmer's consummation of alcohol.  A world of rich yet unfulfilled alcoholics is illustrated, a world where the swimmer includes a drink with each pool stop.

I wonder if this is a reflection on Cheever's personal life.

Hellos, Dreams, and Darshan

I've never introduced myself before with a dream.

"Hi, my name is Katie. I used to fall hundreds of feet off a sandstone cliff into a river almost every night when I was a child."

Interesting, but I liked it.  I actually listened while the others introduce themselves, each revealing an intimate part of their personality while telling stories of bears, wolves, flying and falling.  Stories similar in many ways but completely different and unique in others.

Just like people.

And so begins my first thoughts on this class- the relationship between dreams, stories and individuals.  One falls asleep and sees images completely unique to that oneself.  One wakes and reflects, continuing on into the story of the "conscious" life.  One writes and speaks and shares stories.  But what are dreams?  Do we dream them, or are dreams forceful natures revealed to us as we lie helplessly asleep?  Are dreams messages from a higher energy, or merely a reflection of our mind processing the day's work?  Are dreams the actual reality- could I be asleep while writing this?

I am looking forward to reading many stories, myths, and whatever else one might have to write from many different individuals to find where these stories come from, and to find how similar or different the themes carry from one to the other.

To conclude, here are a few images from the Darshan project, which awaken the dreams from my slumbering mind and bring them into the Bozeman sunlight of my living room.