lily briscoe's vision

Here are some of my notes from the last paragraph of To The Lighthouse.

Oedipus complex- Lily desires Mrs. Ramsay, and hates Mr. Ramsay because he had what she wants. Also mad at Mrs. Ramsay because she went and died while Lily desired her.

Also could be the other way around, Lily desires Mr. Ramsay, hates desiring him, and so hates herself. She is mad at Mrs. Ramsay for getting to him first, and then dying and putting him off limits.

Therefore, because the lighthouse represents all of this suffering that she has endured, the image in the center of the painting could be the lighthouse. Also, since the blues and greens are blurred and murky, much like having these feelings could be, the line could a penis, which would represent all of her struggle and emotional turmoil.

Lily and her thought- Because of Lily’s life, and its recent focus on the lighthouse, she cannot escape from its shadow, and that is what the center line is. Mrs. Ramsay, her idol, died because of the lighthouse, and her life has been quickly and permanently changed because of the lighthouse. The recent events where a whirlwind and are represented by the blues and greens, surrounding the constant throughout the times, the lighthouse.

Lily and Woolf- Lily is clearly a medium through which Woolf can express her thoughts and problems. The blues and greens and the blurry, swirled nature of them, represent the same thoughts that Woolf has been having in her own life. There is always one character that an author most closely associates with, and puts his or her feelings into, and that character is clearly Lily.

to the lighthouse and the fall of mrs. ramsay

Clay Parrish


“...she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6

This was my first moment of “disturbia,” this line in the book kind of jumped out of the page at me, and made me smile, because I thought that it was a great description for Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf’s amazing ability to describe things is something that I have touched on in class before, because she seems to describe common things, and by being intentionally vague, every reader is left with a very good personal image to fit the description. When I read this is made me think of a mother sighing, doling out explanations all day long, spending all day cleaning and rearing children, and being so spent at the end of the day, just as she gets into bed to read a book, her baby cries. There is nothing for her to do but to sigh, lay her book down, and get back to work. Her work is never over, she must be simultaneously strict and loving, protective and prohibitive. To me, this is the perfect description, because a mother seems to soak up every emotion she can every morning, preparing to dole them out as the day goes on, squeezing every last drop out until the end of the day.

“To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other
people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so
brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without
replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of
jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There
was nothing to be said.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6

This created another moment of "disturbia” for me because it is such a foreign concept to me. While my mother always taught be to be honest and truthful, other people’s feelings have always mattered more. For Mr. Ramsay to blast through his child’s hope and his wife’s promises just because they may be false seems so foreignly cruel to me. Obviously Mrs. Ramsay agrees, so much so that this is one of the scenes in which Mrs. Ramsay’s tiredness and weakness begin to show themselves. It is as if she has been physically hit, “dazed and blinded.” Clearly she is taxed, spent, much as (relating to the first quote) a sponge losses is ability to retain water after a long time of use. I found it interesting that Woolf says dirty water, because that could be another reference to the sponge from earlier. It is like life has kept hitting her, and for a long time, she fought back, but now her will to fight is leaving her. This is what we looked at in class today, her folding in on herself, drawing away from the person that she used to be. Her husband has made her callus and unresponsive to the things that she would normally protect her children from. I can imagine that at this point, Mrs. Ramsay has a splitting headache.

worldwide fame

It's really cool, at the bottom of my site, there is a little link called "sitemeter" and it tracks the location, the time spent, and the way that all of my visitors get to my page. Since posting my Lit X paper, on the sitemeter people having been accessing my site from not just all across the country, but from the UK, and from Poland. Various searches such as, "sleepwalking as sign of guilt" or "sanity and insanity in the bell jar" have turned APe Talk as either the second or third search result on google. The great thing about this is the more time people click on me in a google search result, the higher up it moves on google's list. So, depending on the search, you can now find me on the first page of google! How exciting.

A Question of Degree

A final copy of my Lit X paper.

The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind” (1), yet that definition has almost universally been deemed unacceptable. To individuals, madness has many definitions, from depression to schizophrenia. The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper. The goal of this paper is to put forward a concept of madness as defined by three works of literature: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown all similarly portray madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical. An insane mind reacts to a mental distress in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.

Before delving into this topic, it is necessary to explain its origins. Stress, according to WebMD, can be an “emotional problem, such as unexpressed or uncontrolled anger, depression, guilt, grief or low self esteem” (2). According to Doctor Nieske Zabriskie, ND, things such as stress often manifest themselves physically, “in addition to insomnia, stress can play a major role in depression, cognitive dysfunction, digestive disorders, weight gain and muscle and joint pain” (3). Stress is like a microcosm of insanity, while extremely stressed people sometimes act insanely. Now, I know that stress is not insanity, yet almost all of these physical symptoms are demonstrated in the characters of The Bell Jar, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Edgar Huntly, it is just a matter of intensity and scale. A question of degree. My conclusion is that all of these characters are insane because of stress, whether it be strong emotions, a traumatic experience etc., not only have caused the normal physical reactions, but led to an inability to distinguish between a mental and physical hurt. Whereas a sane person might become depressed or cognitively unstable, they would recognize these things as physical depictions of mental pain. To the insane, they are one and the same.

To start with, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a prime example of my concept of madness. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Chief Bromden is insane because of his inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical. One example is Chief Bromden’s inability to differentiate between actual fog produced by a fog machine, and the fog that he has imagined to surround him. When Chief Bromden mistakenly believes that Nurse Ratched has started the fog machine he becomes engulfed in the fog, and cannot “see six inches in front of [himself]” (7). The fog represents Bromden’s desire to be free of the asylum, and by hiding in the fog, he believes that he can accomplish this, if only for a few minutes. Often, when Bromden is in the fog, he is taken back to the home of his youth, and pictures his father standing up to the white man, or hunting. Of course, the fog is a mental construction that does not exist, yet Bromden believes that the fog is physically real enough for him to hide in, and he often does, “I’m glad when it gets thick enough you’re lost in it and can let go, and be safe again” (110).

Bromden also imagines other physical objects that are only present in his mind. For example, the machines that the ward uses. Yes, there really is a shock therapy table, but there different are machines, such as the fog machine, that Bromden has only imagined, yet he thinks that they are real. For example, Bromden thinks that Nurse Ratched has implanted tiny machines into all of the patients, to control all of them. Another example is the scene where an elderly patient dies in the night. Bromden awakes to a horrifying scene,
[The attendant] twists a knob, and the whole floor goes to slipping down away from him standing in the door, lowering into the building like a platform in a grain elevator!...It-everything I see-looks like it sounded, like the inside of tremendous dam. Huge brass tubes disappear upward in the dark. Wires run to transformers out of sight. Grease and cinders catch on everything, staining the couplings and motors and dynamos red and coal black (83-84).
When the patient, Blastic, is killed by an attendant, there is no blood or innards, “just a shower of rust and ashes and now and again a piece of wire or glass” (85). Bromden has imagined this mechanized world, because it represents the control that the ward has over everybody. Everybody runs like a machine, because they are too afraid of angering Nurse Ratched. The ward breaks down the human element inside everyone, making them cold and emotionless. To Bromden, they might as well all be machines, because no matter what they do, they cannot escape. Bromden’s dream, of which he thinks is real life, shows his insanity, because it shows an inability to distinguish from real life, and this cold world that his brain has imagined. It seems to Bromden as if everybody is actually a machine, that, like Blastic, if the nurse or any of the other patients were opened up, they would be made of gears, not fiber. Bromden is insane, however, because he does not just see how the ward mechanizes people, but be believes that they are actually made of metal, and are actual machines.

The last thing that demonstrates the insanity of Chief Bromden is his perception of size. To Bromden, people are sized based upon their power, not upon their actual size. For example, after the first of McMurphy’s many offenses, as the Nurse goes to reprimand him, she grows, “Her nostrils flare open, and every breath she draws she gets bigger, as big and tough-looking’s I seen her get over a patient...when she rumbles past she’s already as big as a truck...every step hits the floor she blows up a size bigger” (93). Bromden actually sees this, instead of just thinking about it metaphorically. As Nurse Ratched reaches McMurphy, however, something changes, “Then, just as she’s rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine door right in front of her, holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! She shrinks to about head high to where that towel covers him, and he’s grinning down at her” (93). Bromden has also experienced a loss in size because of Nurse Ratched, and says that he used to be big, but is not any longer. Bromden cannot recognize that he has just been belittled in his mind, and while his perceptions about metaphorical size of other characters are correct, they are not physical changes. This confusion proves that according to my concept of madness, Bromden is undoubtably insane.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not the only literary work that fits the concept of madness through indistinguishability, indeed Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown is another such book. This book is slightly different from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because instead of having many different allusions to insanity and the mind and body relationship, this book has mainly one reference to a union of the mental and the physical. In Edgar Huntly, madness is exemplified by the sleepwalking of both Clithero and Edgar. Clithero, after having narrowly escaped accidentally murdering his fiance, traveled to America from Ireland. This voyage across the ocean, however, has not cured him of his guilt, and as a result, he has spent his nights sleepwalking through the wilderness of Delaware. It is important to remember that sleepwalking, although not legally viewed as a mental disorder, was one of the prime ways of showing insanity during the 18th century. There was very little information about what caused mental insanity, and to that time, sleepwalking was one of the most easily visible signs of insanity. Since there was no way of diagnosing mental insanity, physical signs were the only clues that doctors had. In Brown’s time, if one acted sane, then one was, but if one acted insane, then one was insane. Sleepwalking, especially to Charles Brockden Brown is the ultimate form of insanity. Sleepwalking is often caused by high amounts of stress, and Clithero’s sleepwalking proves that his previous life in Ireland has driven him mad. He tells Edgar that he is indeed guilty of a crime, and that by digging up his past, Edgar has ensured that Clithero will never escape his fate. Clithero has been driven mad by his past, saying, “Till consciousness itself be extinct the worm that gnaws me will never perish” (35). His guilt has suffocated him, and his sleepwalking is a manifestation of his madness. In sleepwalking, Clithero explores the woods, an unthinking act that is indistinguishable to him from his normal life. Clithero does not even know that he is doing this, and therein lies his madness.

In this same way, Edgar proves that Clithero’s story has driven Edgar mad when Edgar himself starts to sleepwalk. Edgar ends up walking to the cave that Clithero frequents, because he believes that he will find a way to help Clithero and relieve him of his guilt. Edgar feels such a strong sense of compassion of Clithero’s plight, and also some guilt for forcing Clithero to tell his story, that he falls to the same level as Clithero. Edgar proves his madness by waking up in a pit inside a cave, unsure of how he arrived or where he is, “I had determined to explore this cave on the ensuing day, but my memory informed me not that this intention had been carried into effect. Still it was only possible to conclude that I had come hither on my intended expedition” (156). To the characters in Edgar Huntly, madness is represented by their sleepwalking, and the minds inability to separate guilt and remorse from the physical actions that the characters act out in their sleep.

Finally, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath embodies the concept that people are insane because they have an inability to distinguish the difference between the mental and the physical. The book’s main character, Esther Greenwood, is undeniably abnormal. She spends time in multiple asylums and tries, unsuccessfully, to kill herself several times. However, the thing that makes her insane is her inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, in this case, situations of pain. She associates and combines the mental with her physical body. There are several instances of this in The Bell Jar. A perfect example of mental pain being interpreted physically is in Esther’s hospital stay after her attempted suicide. She asks to look in a mirror, and describes the experience:
It wasn’t a mirror at all, but a picture. You couldn’t tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. On side of the person’s face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person’s mouth was a pale brown, with a rose-colored sore at either corner (174).
In a superb example of mental pain represented physically, each different issue with Esther’s face can be used to represent something that has troubled her. To start with, the chicken-feather hair is a representation of the result of shock therapy, and the stress and pain that it caused her. Her facial discoloration also represents her pain. Her brown mouth represents the destruction of her sexuality and her idea of love by Buddy. She found his kisses to be uninspiring, and now her lips are dead to feeling. Also, the sores on either side represent the loss of her virginity, and the pain of that memory. The purple half of her face represents her experience in New York, and the mental bruises that have just started to heal. The “sallow yellow” represents the guilt of her lack of remorse towards her dead father. The green edges around the purple represent the attempted rape as a particularly scarring event in the city.

Another example of mental pain is the attempted rape of Esther by Marco. Obviously a traumatic experience, the attempted rape leaves Esther with torn clothes and Marco with a bloody nose. In this case, the madness is not in Esther, but rather in Marco. After he suddenly calls off his attack, he suddenly says, “Yes or no, it is all the same” (109). Esther thinks that Marco seems to be talking to himself, and later he crawls around in the dark looking for a black bag. Marco also drools and loves his cousin. All of these things would suggest that Marco is unstable, and it is illustrated when the emotional pain of his sexual and romantic advances that have been foiled result in his blood being spilled. Plath does a good job of showing how insanity is not just developed in Esther through indistinguishability, but that a confusion of the mental and the physical is a sign of insanity in any character. In Marco’s case, this means that the mental pain of his incestuous love of his cousin, coupled with the pain of failing to lead a normal love life, have driven him mad. He is mad because all the pain is flushed out in bloody nose, and the pain becomes both physical and mental to him. To Marco, his pains are one and the same. A bloodied nose and bloodied pride are the same thing, his failure to rape Esther is the same as his failure to love adequately.

There are several more, minor revelations that prove Esther’s insanity. One is during the pain of her depression, she thinks about converting to Catholicism, where she would be “dead white” (165) as she threw herself at the feet of the priest, asking him to save her. In general, as Esther’s condition worsens, her body begins to deteriorate, and only after she begins to recover does she feel like her old self. Although not a painful experience, at least in terms of confusing mental and physical, another example of her mental and physical unification is in her blood-letting. As she cuts herself, she feels a “deep thrill” and feels better as some of her emotional demons are exorcised with this physical act.There are many reasons that Esther’s peers view her as insane, but her confusion of mental pain as a physical thing proves that Esther is mad, not simply confused or depressed.

For the most part, the clinically insane have been treated deplorably throughout history, despite the fact that insanity is as much of a disease as cancer. Often feared, always misunderstood, insanity has never been clearly defined. I offer up one qualifier for madness, as supported by the literary works One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. These three works support the idea that insanity comes when an individual loses the ability to distinguish between the physical and the mental, the real and the conceptual. Madness cannot be given one definition, because there are so many different cases and ways that in reveals itself. If madness were correctly defined, then one would find that everybody is mad. Clearly, by the fact that we are all different, it is inevitable that people will do things that others view as eccentric, or strange. By Miriam Webster’s definition, it would be easy to label everybody insane. There are so many cases of madness, and so many different types, that one has to draw the line between sanity and insanity. By labeling the insane as people who have an inability to distinguish between the mental and the physical, it becomes easier to correctly label the insane. Of course, there are minor cases, just as in the law, and to make a choice one way or the other, it becomes a question of degree.

a question of degree

OK, so this is my first stab at an intro paragraph to my Literary Exploration paper about Madness. I know that I'm waiting a bit too long (the paper is due on Wednesday), but that's how I operate. Chia gets emails when I update, so hopefully he and the rest of my rabid fan base will approve.

Without further ado:

The definition of insanity is a very unclear one. The classic definition is “a severely disordered state of mind,” yet that definition has almost universally been unacceptable. To individual people, madness has its own definition, from “loving” to “being sane.” The cry that the insane are not as crazy as we think has been analyzed, pursued and reexamined, and that is not the goal of this paper*. The goal is to put forward a definition of madness as defined by works of literature. While there is no one definition for madness, several different literary works, namely: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Edgar Huntly: Or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockton Brown hold similar concepts of madness. That concept is that madness is the inability to distinguish between the mental and physical, especially in situations of pain. An insane mind reacts to a mental pain in a physical manner, treating it as a physical thing, without the ability to distinguish between the sadness of a loved one dying and the pain of a broken arm.



*I should note that I am not sure if referencing the paper by calling it "this paper" in the writing itself is OK, but that was the way that it came out.

A return to normalcy

OK, so I know that it's been awhile, but, faithful readers don't despair, I'm back. A combination of college and school and extra curricular activities have left me without my inspiration and will to write. So, now I'm feeling it again, and to return to posting, I am posting something that I wrote last summer.

It's my journal thing from my mission trip in Chicago, courtesy of the folks from Youthworks. Before I get into this, I want to make it clear that this is nothing against the Youthworks program, but rather the way that it tried to get us to follow their ideas. Even beyond that, it was the people who ran the Youthworks chapter in Chicago, four young college kids who didn't really know what they were doing. They handed out a workbook of ideas a quotes for us to reflect upon every morning. I guess what bothered me was the format of the booklet. It was like a test, with annoying questions about how we would interpret different quotes. Everything is as it was written, I haven't edited it, so forgive any grammar mistakes. Anyway, on to the journal.

Day 1

Sometimes words and thoughts, pictures and messages, can make meaning clear. In school, a simple reading and discussion will suffice for most things. There is no real issue with understanding. In life, this is not always the case. Words may not make on feel, pictures may not lead to comprehension. The forced attempts of enlightenment, such as this devotional booklet, are not effective. Sometimes, to truly understand, to find enlightenment, one must experience for themselves. One must have one moment that changes their lives in a way that pictures never could. (exert from booklet) "Jesus takes our imaginations far beyond where we can go on our own. What we see as impossible is possible through the Spirit. Aligning ourselves with God's dreams for us expands our capacity to love and serve. This week you will be challenged to stretch your imagination. Many new people and places await you. Let Jesus shape your experience, drawing you beyond boundaries of self and into the mind-boggling adventures of following him. Imagine!"

Imagination cannot be forced. Jesus may indeed expand our imaginations, but this devotional book does not bring us to Jesus. This week I will challenge myself, life as I know how to bring meaning to my life. A book made by people I have not met is not the answer, is no the path to salvation. That path comes from the heart.

Only one page for journal entries? So they want us to think, just not too hard. We have to follow their path instead of our own. I have finally become unafraid to voice my true thoughts. I know now that it is not necessary to share them with the world. The rages and satires against devotional and club time, and the over-excited college leader are not something that the world has to know. I know them, and that is enough. Maybe someday, to the right person, I can show them.

Day 2

I saw some neat things yesterday. I saw third-generation gang members smile. I saw them smile, not out of hate or malice, but out of joy, and love. 5-8 year old children with the most beautiful smiles. In the children 8-10 year olds, those smiles had started to fade, become more rare, more out of coldness than any love. I have finally realized that the purpose here is to keep that beautiful smile alive, so that Hod has a chance to work, and keep them smiling. I came here looking for a God moment in my actions. Instead I have found my God moment in the innocent smile of a child.

Obviously I could ignore this book, refuse to do it. When we discussed it last night, that is what people suggested. I could do that, but my problem with this book is not that I have to fill it out. I don't have to fill it out. The problem I have is with the principle of the thing. The point of this book is to help us find God. It, however, is not the God that I am looking for. This book looks for us to find their God. I would find it far more meaningful if we were given blank paper, and given two word instructions: "find him."

Day 3

Why is everything a test? Life is a test, but there is no reason to answer these questions. They do not provide enlightenment or enrichment. If these were on a test in school then I would get annoyed because they would be annoying questions. These things do not make me think about my faith, they make me want to avoid it.

George says that the Youthworks staff lives in a room with computers, and TVs, and beds and floors. I understand the bed and computer, they are here for much longer, and need to keep in touch. Why though, do they have TVs, does their work give them some better quality than us? Are we young and irresponsible? Doomed to watch TV instead of helping if they provide it? I think not. I am only 4 or 5 years younger than most of the staff. Am I less mature than them? No. DId they give me a chance? No. Is this accusation fair to them? Probably not.

When I look around the room, I see some of us with eyes closed. I can tell for some that they are praying, and that others are obviously hiding. There are also people in the middle whom I cannot tell if they are sleeping or praying. Which do I assume? Do I assume God is at work, and that they pray? Or, do I assume teenage human nature is at work, and that they sleep? One is unfair to the kids, one to God.

Ask yourself, "How can I live more like Jesus?"
Does Jesus want us to live like him? Are we supposed to be sin free? I don't think so, I think God wants us to sin, because humans sin, but God wants us to put his faith in him, to trust that he loves us, and will deliver us from evil.

On a side notes, if God loves unconditionally, is it fair to love some more than others? If not, then why worship, why seek God's redemption and forgiveness if he gives that to us anyway?

Day 4

So I'm not sure if I have had a God moment yet. There have been plenty of moments where I know God has done work, but no moment of clarity such as I have had in past years. I want my God moment to touch other people as well, to make them see what God can do. Sometimes I hear a God moment, but it doesn't really impact me. But, other times, I hear or see a God moment that touches me and everyone who sees or hears it. Maybe I am asking too much, but that is what I want for my God moment. The only moment that comes close, comes close because of the way that I can tell it. To most it would just be a smile. To me, it was a smile, until I thought about it afterwards. I think that I can make this moment special, but does it fit the criteria of a "God moment?"

As I write this, however, I wonder, does it have to? No, I don't think so. A god moment is what you make of it, and I have taken God's opportunity, and made it into a moment, a thought, a story that will last forever.

Day 5

My writing in this booklet has changed from angry to thinking about God. This comes not from less hate of this book, but form a change in me. I still would burn this book if I could, but I won't, because I know I have written some good things in here. The questions that they ask me to answer have not furthered my faith journey. The questions that I have asked myself, they have.

madness, insanity, and going crazy

For our "Lit X" paper, we are writing, essentially, a paper that allows us to dig into literature about a topic of our choice. Our first pre-write for that paper is due on friday. The pre-write isn't a first draft of the paper, thankfully, but just a collection of our ideas and progress. If you couldn't see it coming, here are some of my ideas and initial research. The links don't work right off, and I'm not sure if the database is accessable to other people outside of my school's network, but next to the link is the keyword that I searched, or the title of the article. I don't intend all of these to look like an annotated bibliography, but some of them need to be, others will be more of my ideas.

http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=25&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Madness

I think that this is a good summary of the idea of Madness in literature, and I'm basically thinking of this as a good background knowledge/intro paragraph area.

http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=8&hid=6&sid=400d3db9-baa8-4237-a371-e859d7129adb%40sessionmgr8 Linking Insanity and Creativity

This is an idea that I have thought of in terms of a thesis (that I am still looking for), but I think that this link between the two is too established for it to be a really unique idea. I am, however, keeping it in mind, because what I tend to do in papers like this and the Research Paper last year, is too get too excited, and too take on an idea that is too large for me to explore deeply enough to do the toic justice (another reason that I am excited for college, hopefully more time to explore more deeply). It seems to me that a lot of people who are truly artistic geniouses, whether it be in painting, writing or music, seem to be tortured, that their ideas and actions are often miscontsrued, only to be understood after the artist has passed away (sometimes through suicide). At the same time, it seems that the really tortured artists have declined in recent years, and whether this indicates a new ability to deal with depression and acceptance of differences, or, more frighteningly, that the quality of art and the geniouses of art have declined.

This is a list of some of the outlinish ideas of my paper.

Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=36&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Mind Style

I loved this book, but, unfortunately, I'm not sure that this book and this author is going to fit into my thesis. It's actually probably my favorite book out of all of them that I read, and maybe that means that it is the least tortured, and least mad of all of them. The ideas in it seem a little predictable, that the mad aren't as mad as we make them out to be! GASP!

Sylvia Plat
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/pdf?vid=53&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Plath and Woolf and the Self

I read The Bell Jar, but haven't yet read the second book on the list, and even though I haven't read much Poe or Woolf, she may be the most tortured, making me think that it could be a really good resource.

Virginia Woolf
“Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/pdf?vid=53&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Plath and Woolf and the Self

Like I said, I haven't read her yet, but people have been telling me that she is a really good source, that not only is she a person who I could use, but that she is an amazing writer.

James Joyce
Ulysses: “Nighttown”
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=22&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Joyce and Madness

I saw on my sister's recent post that this book is considered #1 on the list of the best 100 books of all time. I didn't know what the book was about, but this chapter is supposed to be an ideal representation of all the different kinds of madness.

Edgar Allen Poe
Selected Poems
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=12&hid=115&sid=98f41691-b1df-46d4-963e-01782b7ef3c6%40sessionmgr104 Madness vs. Genius

Who better to study in a madness paper than Poe? He is kind of the king of all mad geniuses, writing lots of poems that are not only brilliant, but talk about madness in them. I think that what I also need to establish in this paper is whether I am analyzing the madness of the writers, or the madness of the characters, or something else entirely. That's another tendency I have, to get too broad of a focus, and write essentially two different papers.

Charles Brockton Brown
Edgar Huntly: Or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker
http://web.ebscohost.com/lrc/detail?vid=8&hid=6&sid=400d3db9-baa8-4237-a371-e859d7129adb%40sessionmgr8 “Insanity: A Fragment”

I wasn't going to inclue him until I found this article, because while Edgar Huntly is very "maddish" it is not a contemporary piece to most of these authors (except Poe, but his work is more timeless than Brown's). But this article is all about Brown and insanity, so its making me rethink my exclusion of his work.


I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me, and that my plan is probably too ambitious. If I could, I would love to read through all of these and pick out my favorite/best utilized parts. I don't really have time for that, however, so I will have to rely on a lot of other people's opinions and interpretations, something that I don't really like to do.

The biggest issue with this paper, as I kind of said earlier, is going to be settling on a thesis, rather than just rambling on about how madness exists in the these books. I think that the time of year has kind of gotten me re-interested in this topic, as Poe and Halloween kind of go hand in hand. Also, my sister's blog about ghosts has helped. I feel weird and too slightly too bloggerish, and I don't know how much more I need, but if anyone has any suggestions, someone such as Amanda or my mom or anyone else who has read more literature than I have, feel free to comment.

tangent? why yes, i do go on tangents

One quarter of the way done. Only three more to go. Is that a good thing though? I'm not necessarily looking forward to the last three quarters, because with the speed that this one flew by, the next three will be over in a blink too. I don't really want my senior year to end. Not just because then I'll be going off to college and leaving the people that I know, but because this is the most fun I've ever had going to school.

I mean that in the best possible way. I love all of the classes that I'm taking, every one of them is either fun to go to, rewarding, or both. Without a doubt it is the best class load that I have taken in my four years. Even though I wake up each morning already tired, I'm excited to go to school, excited not only to learn, but to experience the jokes and laughs with my friends. A lot of people say that they don't like school, but without school, my daytime would be filled with sitting around at home. Yes, I would be free to go see my friends, or to sleep, or write, but there would a large amount of my time that I would not know how to utilize.

This is one of the reasons that I like the idea of teaching. Not only do I get to go to school and be with people that I like, presumably, but also because I would get to teach the things that I love, hopefully to a few students, if not a class, of like mind. Then, I would still have my own free time at home. Yes, I know that teaching is a lot of work, that there is grading and other things that go on, but I am used to the school schedule, and I love the idea of having summer off. My sister and I are similar in that way, we both love the idea of summer, which is somehting that being a teacher would give me. It is hard for me to imagine working through the summer just like my dad does, that I would need some time off.

I also think that teaching would give me a good oportunity to write. Instead of this blog being one of my only outlet (and because of the time continuum I don't get to spend as much time as I would like on this) to express my creative writing, I could sit down and actually write a short story or a book, developing characters in the way that I long to do. Maybe it is an ambitious dream, but someday, I wish that I could sit in on a class talking about my writing, dissecting why I put this word there and that phrase there. It would so fascinating, I think, to look deeper into my own physcosis and see why I write stuff the way I do.

When I think about teaching and writing and learning, I think that I just want to learn it all, have it all, to teach, to love it, to write and to love every second of it.

winter morning, summer afternoon

This is my least favorite time of year. Maybe it's more this year than any other, but this part of the year really makes me mad. When I wake up in the morning, I'm freezing. I get out of the shower and I jump to put on anything and everything that will warm me up. I run outside to my car, and my wet hair gives me the chills.

It wouldn't bother me that I use the seat wamers on the way to school so much if I wasn't taking off layers on the way home. Yesterday, when I got out of school, it was 78 degrees. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt, with shorts under my sweatpants. Needless to say, I was a bit toasty.

I love when it's warm, nothing is better than the summer. I also don't mind it when it's cold outside, because I like to wrap up in layers. But I hate when I am freezing in the morning then sweating in the afternoon. I can't win.

Fall is pretty, sure, but I would like it a whole lot more about if the day dawned at 50 degrees, and stayed that way the entire time.

required evaluative questions

Chia said today that we should/had to post our answers to the editing evaluation sheet that he gave in class. It's for, as he said, the people who were worried that they had no posts on their blogs, but now they can say, "woo, one post!"

Anyway:

• What are the major content/critical thinking/writing issues that you were confronted with on this draft?
o I was confronted with the issue of making my ideas more focused. When I wrote the first draft, it was more stream of consciousness, so to go back and refine it to make sure that my points are focused was a big part of the second draft.
o Also, I wanted to make sure that specific words that I used were clarified. Some of the things that I used to analyze my thoughts were vague, so I concentrated on making the terms more specific and clear.
o Finally, I concentrated on making sure that the essay tied in to The Sound and the Fury enough, making sure that it wasn’t just personal examples.

• How well do you understand the content/substance of what you are writing about?
o Pretty well, it is something that I have thought about before, and that has helped me to make sure that I know what I am doing. The one thing that I did find, however, was that parts of certain ideas led me down a whole new path which I did not have time or space to explore in my essay. Also, sometimes the ideas were off topic, and frankly would have just made my essay confusing, so I didn’t explore them. I’m hoping that to somebody who hasn’t thought of these ideas, these gaps in exploration aren’t noticeable.

• What was your plan or strategy that you used to address these issues for this draft? Was this plan similar to the plans you have used in the past? How did you go from blank page to finished copy? How, and why, did you know those steps would work?
o First, when I am going over a draft, I make edits on my own, before I even look at a teacher’s comments. I check to see what I think needs work, what I messed up grammar-wise, etc. It’s pretty standard.
o Next, I look at the teacher’s comments and go through to see if I agree with them or not. Even if I don’t necessarily agree that something is wrong, or that a term is used incorrectly, I will try to clarify, because my opinions may be skewed by me being the one who thought of them. I may leave out jumps in logic that I have made that a reader may not have made.
o The most daunting part of a draft for me is a blank page. One I have thought of a hook, I usually get into the ideas, and let them flow. In general, instead of planning out my thoughts beforehand, I just write, putting all of my ideas down. After I’m done, I go back to see what works and what doesn’t, what’s relevant and what isn’t.
o I know this works because it helps me put all of my good ideas down. When I go through a detailed analysis of an idea, then it leads to more ideas, but when I just note it, I don’t get to go in depth, so little nuances are lost.

• What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and thinker? Are you a strong thinker but no so good at the follow-through? Are you best at the big picture or the details? Are you a last-minute writer or do you plan things out and stick to the plan? Do you start relatively early in the time frame given for completing a writing task, or relatively late? Do you go through several early drafts, or do you simply work on your text once and then turn it in?
o I think that I am a good thinker, but sometimes things get lost in the shuffle, because ideas come and go so fast that I can’t get them all down. I end up losing some of my better ideas because I am concerned about finishing up another one. Also, this leads to me unintentionally stopping an idea in the middle and picking up with another one, without even realizing it.
o I’m definitely better at the big picture. I tend to be able to make a statement about a theme or mood or some other piece of literary analysis, but it will be hard for me find specific evidence, quotes etc., because I worry more about the idea.
o I start relatively late, because oftentimes I wait, hoping that the mood to write will strike me. Sometimes it does, and I crack off papers and ideas in a few minutes, (this also tends to be when I write in my blog), but other times, I just have to force myself to do it, because the paper is due the next day.
o I usually only work on my text once, and it is usually all on the computer. My mom much prefers printing it out and seeing it in print, but I am so used to the computer, that it is easier for me to edit it on screen. Also, this helps me because the ideas are still fresh in my mind.

• How well do you understand the written and verbal comments that were provided to you? What do these comments tell you about yourself as a writer and thinker?
o I think that I understood them well, they tended to set off a light bulb, so that when I went through to edit, I would said, “Oh, yeah that makes sense.” It helped me a lot because not only did I realize where I had problems, I understood why.
o These comments only confirm my thoughts that I need to focus more on the specific, because I know that I do well with the big ideas, but finding quotes and specific evidence is daunting to me.
o One question I had was about the third comment. Chia said, “Hmmmm…you are getting really philosophical here.” I wasn’t sure if that meant that it was too philosophical and that I should change it, or if it was just a note of my philosophicality.

• What advice did you solicit for this draft? What was/were the source(s) of this advice? What advice were you given on this draft?
o I sometimes solicit my mom for advice before I write a paper. Usually I just talk to her about ideas, and oftentimes more because it is interesting to get into a discussion about a paper than just to get help.
o Either my mom or my sister are good sources, especially since my sister sometimes has some overlap in terms of authors that she is studying.
o Pretty much what I thought, that I needed to get specific examples, but that my general idea was good.

• What advice did you accept? Reject? Why?
o I accepted most of the advice that I received, because in some aspect or another, most of it can be accommodated into the paper. I rejected things that were about my ideas themselves, because, since this paper has no wrong answers, and I have my own opinions, that I should stay with my own ideas.

• Describe the major changes that you made on this draft. Provide a rationale for why you made these changes.
o One major change was removing an entire paragraph that I decided didn’t tie in and was also vague. I decided that it would be more practical to remove it than to completely remove it. Also, expanding on that idea would have made the essay convoluted.

• How has the revision process allowed you to see content, in general, in a more sophisticated way.
o Revising my work lets me look back on my work with a fresh eye, because I usually haven’t worked on it recently. What this allows me to do is to read my work more critically and more truthfully. This way, I am seeing my work in a more complete way.
o When I look at other work, sometimes I think about the editing process, whether they went back and forth on one word or another, whether they had a tangent to this point here…. Basically, it allows me to see each piece as a piece that a person wrote, instead of something that just sprung from the air.

• How has the writing and thinking that you have been asked to do in the past prepared you for the kinds of writing and thinking that you were asked to do for this assignment?
o The exploratory essay last year in English really helped me with this, because the thought process was similar. Also, my blog is basically a bunch of different essays a lot like this one, so that helped to prepare me for what I was supposed to do.

• What are your goals for your next piece? Where do those goals come from?
o My goals are always to make something that I am proud of. I don’t just want to write something that I turn in to get it out of the way, I want to write something that I want to post on my blog, or that I want to peer edit about. These goals come from a lot of self-pride, I want to write the best thing ever written every time I try because I am a bit selfish, and I want people to marvel at my work.

• What are your over-arching goals for yourself as a writer? Why are these your goals?
o I would love to write a book, especially the typical dream of writing “The Great American Novel.” I would love to know that there are teachers in English classes in America assigning my book to high school kids and having them analyze it. I would love to get emails and letters from people asking about themes, themes that I didn’t even know were there.

• What do you think your main goals should be as writer and thinker, given what you have experienced so far in AP English?
o I think that I need to work on specific details, as I mentioned earlier. Also, I need to work on being less dramatic, sometimes I write like a script to a documentary, and I need to work on that. I’m not saying that writing is bad, it’s pretty good, at least I think, but it’s just a bit over the top, because some times in writing all you need to say is, “He bought milk from the store.”

• What are your criteria for quality work?
o Work that I am proud of, because some times I am not proud of my work, just satisfied with it. Other times, however, I know that what I have written is really special. I strive for that every time that I write, and only when I have achieved that do I consider it quality work.

• What was the most important thing you learned while working on this piece?
o I learned a lot about my self as a writer. A lot of the things that I said from these questions I had kind of realized, but never actually said, “Wow, I need to do this differently.” It has really helped me be forthright an honest about my writing.

leaving home

I realized that in less than a year from now, I won't be living in Westport. I was thinking about it today when I was driving home. It is not a comforting thought. I'm looking forward to college, the freedom, the classes that I want to take, etc, but at the same time, I've never lived anywhere else except for my house, in my room.

I realized driving home today that in less than a year, I won't ever live in this house again, that I'll always be a visitor, then in a few years, when I come home, it won't be to the house that I've known all of my life. Sure I've been away from home for weeks at a time, but never with the intention of not coming back, never knowing that I won't be able to come home in a few days.

I realized that in twenty years or so, when I take my wife and kids back to my home, that they won't know this house, that they won't ever have lived here, even though I know it so well. At the same time, I won't know it anymore, and it's depressing to think that I'll slowly forget my first, and to this point, only, home. While I forget my home, so this house will forget me, becoming something different, the moment that I drive away from my house on my first day of college, this house will begin changing, and it won't ever be the way that I know it now.

I guess this made me realize that when my parents took my past their first house, that while it meant nothing to me, it meant everything to them. They have laughed, cried, loved and hurt in that house. To me, it's just another building. I wish that there was some way that they could have imparted that knowledge to me, let me see into the window of their first home. But that is impossible.

As I prepare for life in college and beyond, I'm realizing that this is the only "first house I've ever lived in." I won't have the same intimate relationship with any other place that I live for the rest of my life. It makes leaving for school that much harder.

a million lights

This is a little story that I wrote on the flight back from Carleton last month. On the flight back last night, I remembered it and thought that I'd post it.




The light flashed, and faceless black flickered past. Whiteness shone, the dull shine of wet metal stared back at him through the window. is it raining, or are we in a cloud? is that the moon?

He landed, and the metal bird breathed heavily from the exertion of flying halfway across the dark country. home. almost.

It was late, but not late enough that he couldn’t be exited by a hot shower and warm coffee. He was tired, but not tired enough that he couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the strong asphalt, ceaselessly supporting and guiding the tired travelers, like him, home. home. i wish i weren’t so tired.

Finally, he was home. The familiar shapes rose out of the darkness, friendly from years of proximity, yet foreboding because of the shadows. The light shouted, scattering the shadows and dispelling any demons of his sleep-deprived head. He climbed the stairs, too tired even to change, and collapsed in the shower, letting the warm water on his face wash him to sleep. amazing how much better a shower feels when it’s yours.

The cold gasped him awake. The hot water heater had finished its race, and stood panting in his basement, covered in hours of sweat. The towel offered little comfort once he was already wet, and he had no choice but to shiver dry. The bed grabbed him, its already cool sheets taking the last vestiges of warmth from him. But he could stand it no longer, and exhaustion took him. amazing how much better a bed

He was aware of the light as it brightened. the sun is a much friendlier alarm. It slowly embraced him, gently carrying him down the stairs in the welcome haze of sleep. He was still in his clothes from the airplane. i think.

He was fresh now, warm coffee and clean clothes. The day stretched out ahead of him, three o’clock seemed to far away to comprehend, the harder he tried to draw her to him, the farther she seemed to be. Instead, it was time to work. It was not such bad work, but the work had forced itself upon him, unrelenting despite his hesitance. oh Edgar. at least he was short, only two hundred pages. that will make the wait longer. i would rather wait than work.

The light pulsed. finally.

The outside was happiness, the bushes, the trees, and the stones, even the mud. He stopped the car, barely letting it exhale before pulling its key from its brain. It reeled, silencing, falling back into the stillness. He did not notice. The sun was out. He did not notice. He had left the garage door open. He did not care.

The light grew, and so did the shadow. The light grew, and so did he. The light grew, and so did she, and he ceased to exist, and she ceased to exist and it all ceased to matter.

The light shone, and shone, and there was nothing to stop it.

briony, cinnabons and conservative jews

Is Briony credible? Could she actually be a living, breathing human being? How does McEwan make the character seem so real?

Briony is definitely a credible character. Not only does she have thoughts and actions, but she has hopes, dreams and aspirations. The Trials of Arabella, for example, show her true desires, as does her stories later in the book. The scene where she sees Robbie and Cee at the fountain serves to make Briony real. She is made real because she is not just a passive viewer of the event, but as a result goes on to think about how she could write something wonderful about it. The way that McEwan gives her her ideas makes her seem real. I don't often think about whether a character is real or not, but now that I do, I realize that Briony seems real because she goes through a process to discover her true thoughts and desires. When a character is more two-dimensional, usually they come to an action relatively quickly, which makes the decision forced, or the decision is overly drawn out, making it obvious that it is a pivotal point. McEwan assumes that his readers are smart, and figures that they will know when something is significant and when it is not.


What, then, is McEwan's opinion of Briony?

I think that McEwan really likes Briony. At the beginning of the novel, before the plot starts to develop I thought that Briony would be the main character, that the whole book would be from her perspective. Instead, Robbie and Cee's sections are necessary for plot. Briony is more of the conduit to McEwan's thoughts, I think. He represents his ideas, maybe even his childhood actions and thoughts through Briony. One complaint that I had about Briony is that she is a bit too advanced intellectually for a ten year-old. Yeah, I get that she's smart, but most ten year-olds that I know don't go around thinking about writing a novel about a scene from three different people's perspective. I think that McEwan is very sympathetic towards Briony, and that he thinks that Robbie and Cee's treatment of her is unfair. Since McEwan (and, obviously, the reader) has insight into Briony's mind, McEwan knows her motivations, knowing that she is not as horrible as Robbie and Cee think that she is.


What is your reaction to Briony? Are you sensitive to her and to her situation? Do you feel empathy toward her? Does she deserve what she "gets" in the story, or is her fate undeserved?

I touched on this in the last question, because I hadn't read this question yet and I don't what to change it. I think that Briony's fate is undeserved, that she is treated extremely harshly, that a decision that she made when she was really young followed her the rest of her life. I know that we have all made decisions that we wouldn't make again, especially when we're ten. Also, I am sympathetic towards her because sometimes I harbor the private thoughts that Briony has, about writing, I mean. I think about how I would write a certain scene, make it in the mold of some of my favorite writers. I do think, however, that the reason that the reader is partial to Briony is because we don't get into the minds of Robbie and Cee until after the event. We don't learn very much about them until their own narrative sections. We hear from Briony both before and after, and the before is when we learn about her character.


Does Briony say anything to you personally? How do you relate/respond to her? Why do you respond the way that you do?

Again, I talked about this in the last question. Briony speaks/relates/whatever to me because of the way that I think about writing in my everyday life. While it may not be as constantly as Briony does, or as constantly as McEwan makes it seem, I still think in similar ways to Briony. Also, sometimes I feel like I am really naive in some areas of my life. A lot of times I do things that I have a feel for, or act the way that my instincts tell me to, later to hear someone talk about how my actions had a name or mean something about my thoughts. This happens a lot in terms of politics. I have no idea what I am, I just know what I think, but I don't know if it is liberal or conservative (because those are the only things that people can be nowadays). At the same time, however, people tell me that I would be a good politician or lawyer because of the way I deal with people/speak. I don't realize what I am doing however, or how it will turn out. This relates to Briony, finally, because she oftentimes doesn't understand her reactions, but she just acts in a certain way, not sure why. Sometimes, it turns out to be wrong, but oftentimes her instincts are correct, even if she doesn't know that's what told her to act.

This isn't the most reader friendly blog I know, and I commend anybody other than Chia who managed to get through it. Also, sitting in an airport waiting for "high winds" in NY to subside and listening to teenaged-conservative Jews talk about baseball can be distracting. Especially since they don't know what they're talking about.

various pontifcations on the mental state of my cranial cavity

Chia has mentioned that, as we read, we should keep in mind that the characters in the books, novels, articles, short stories etc. that we read aren't real people. I've been trying to do this, but obviously, my mind had to carry me further.

I started to wonder, when I do think about a character, or at least in the way that I used to, where does that character go? I have two interesting theories/ideas. One is that for each topic/book/creation, I create a new, floating area on which all of their actions occur. It is actually a lot like the game The Sims. My characters act the way that the author tells me that they act, and I can see them going around carrying out these actions.

It is interesting to me, however, to think about the world that I have created for them. Obviously an author has a place in mind when he or she writes, and at the same, I create a place when I read. I have noticed, however, that in this world, everything is ambiguous, that nothing is clearly defined outside of a small bubble that the characters operate in. For example, in my "reader's eye," I might see a tree in the background when I hear one person talk, yet when I hear another person talk, and turn back again, there might be a bush and a tree, or three trees, or a mountain. I would assume that this is similar with everybody, that nobody is thinking out the descriptions to the point of being able to return to the same place after putting the book down for a week.

As an aside, it is also really interesting to think about how I know I am reading a good book. I know that I am reading a good book when, instead of reading what is happening, I see the events unfolding, if I read about a character riding the train to go to his castle-school in the mountains of England, I am either sitting in the car with him, listening to a conversation, or outside of the train, watching it puff its way uphill.

I mentioned that I have two theories about the viewing of my literary world. The other is that I have, instead of creating small, floating islands, created one massive world that encompasses all of my characters. They carry out their purpose in this world, and tell me the story, never seeing other people from other plots.

This, of course, raisies the question, what do my characters do in their free time? I'm not sure if I've come up with that yet. I suppose that they would do one of three things: act out the plotline over and over again, cease to exist when the plot is completed, or just live the life that character would create for him or herself. I think that the last is the most likely, but I have no way of knowing, I can't just check in on Holden, The Cat in the Hat and Othello without recalling the plot, meaning that all I see them doing is enacting the plot.

I know that some of this is a bit fairytale-ish, especially the one big world theory, but what fiction reading isn't just a little bit magical?

the unexpected scientist

Today in English we had a really interesting discussion about the science of writing. When we first walked in to class, Chia had two things on the board for us to work on. One was to find the molality of a glucose solution. The other was to find the derivative of x^2. In English class. I have often heard of strange things such as this in a class ending up changing people's perspective about a teacher, how they learn, life, the universe, etc. I was excited to see where Chia would go with this. Chia then asked us, if Meaning of The Great Gatsby=X, find X.

Unfortunately, I had to wait until after second lunch to find out why molality and derivates matter. Next we read the story of Goldilocks, complete with enlarged text about the great big bear, middle sized text about the middle sized bear, and small text about the teeny tiny bear. Finally, Chia explained himself, slowly getting us to work through the idea that we used a formula to find the math questions, so we could use formulas to find meanings in books. He started to tell us about the first of these formulas, deconstruction, before the period ended. Deconstruction is the idea of looking at what we accept as fact, such as Goldilocks being a white, young, pretty blonde, and asking, "What if this weren't true?"

I enjoyed the lesson, and even though I knew something strange was coming, I still never really figured out what Chia was going for until the last few minutes of class. It's weird, because I love writing, love English class, love words. On the other hand, math and science aren't my strongest suits or preferences. Because of my previous dissassociation between math and english, I find myself strangely hesitant to embrace the idea of finding out the meaning of a text through using formulas. I would much rather find it through thought and discussion. I guess that I am subconsciously using these formulas, but now that I know/am learning them, I will be conscious of them. It will be difficult for me to apply known science and math into, gasp, English class.

I know that I'll get used to it, but I wonder if it will change my perception of either English or Math class. I guess I'm more of a scientist that I realized.

eye of the tiger

I've noticed that ever since I started posting here, I walk around and I notice things that i could write about. I think, "Oh, that would be interesting to write about, I would write '.........'" Unfortunately, I often forget these after about 10 minutes, because I have other things on my mind. I would write it down, but oftentimes I am not in the best place to write stuff down. For example, on my trip to Minnesota and Iowa this past week (the reason the masses had to languish in the agony of an old post), I saw plenty of stuff to write about, from in the airport to at the schools where I stayed.

It's frustrating to forget, but I guess that I can take heart that I'm thinking of all these things, and that hopefully I'll remember one day.

giving credit where credit is due

Today I was sitting in class and I tried to articulate an idea that I have been stewing over ever since I finished The Sound and the Fury, the idea that Benjy is much smarter than most readers, let alone the Compson family, give him credit for. What stopped me is my inability to explain as well as I needed to without taking up 20 minutes and boring the entire class. So, instead, I will take 20 minutes here and bore everybody (just kidding, hopefully it won't be boring...or 20 minutes).

Most people in class identified Benjy's ability to notice things and attribute it to his mental problems, saying that Benjy's senses are heightened because of his problem. At the same time, however, people are still making the same stereotype that the Compson family is making, the same generalization that the class is quick to point out. If people are willing to say the Benjy is the only clear, objective voice in the entire novel (except for perhaps Dilsey), I don't see why it is so much of a reach to say that Benjy not only is noticing things, but that he is cognizant of some of the implications. It is not so strange that a figure in literature would know more than society would anticipate, take One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Phil made the interesting point that Benjy only notices the significant events in the book, that he is aware of things like his name change and Damuddy's death. Benjy also notices Caddy's change from smelling like trees to smelling like perfume, and her dirty underpants. I don't think that this is just a naive observation, as some people in class thinks, but rather Benjy's awareness of what has happened to Caddy.

Benjy is not unaware, he is just not able to convey his thoughts in the way that "normal" people would. Instead, Benjy conveys his emotions and thoughts through pure emotion and simple explanation of the situation. His screaming is not just sadness at being apart from Caddy or from being pushed down, but his only way of expressing his distaste for the situation and world that he is living in. Also remember that Benjy is 33, he has seen a lot, and his unique way of recollection keeps things that have happened years ago fresh in his mind, because it is difficult for him to discern a memory from the present. Maybe Benjy is supposed to be the idiot, but, in my mind at least, it is the other narrators who are idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

freezer burn

So I was walking to my AP Mod and African classroom today, and Garrett comes up to me and goes, "a window just shattered in my classroom." It just so happened that it was my classroom. I need to explain.

This room, ever since the beginning of school, has been the coldest room in the entire school. Whenever we come back to school the school always has the air conditioning up too high, and this year was no exception. This year, however, the second floor of the new building is extra cold. My African teacher actually told us the first day of school to bring a sweatshirt for that class, because it is so amazingly cold.

When I walked into Mod, the temperature was actually a little bit better, up to around 45 degrees. The custodian was in the room putting a board up on the window. Apparently, and get this, the temperature difference between the outside and the inside of the room was so great, that the window completely shattered.

I literally walk out of that room shaking with my teeth chattering every single day. I don't understand why the school cannot just change the temperature of the automatic thing up a few degrees. I know that they want to keep it nice and regulated for us, but what is wrong with opening the windows and letting the amazing weather we have been having take care of it?

what is writing, why do we do it, and what makes us good at it?

So I just started thinking about this. I don't really know how it came into my head, but I started thinking about what writing actually is (by the way, this isn't really an English class blog, despite the fact that it is about English). Writing, I decided, I think, is just a means of communicating thoughts and feelings that we want other people to share (for the most part, obviously journals and the such are not necessarily meant for others eyes). Writing, in its most basic form, is the communication of ideas, the process of making you see what I mean.

So, then, what makes some people better at writing than others? It is certainly not intelligence. Some of my friends are extraordinarily smart, could tell me things about math that I don't even know exist, yet I know that I could write something more coherent while I was asleep than they ever could. I don't even think that it is the way that certain people think. Some people say "Oh, well right brain v. left brain." I'm not sure if that argument holds water, if only for this question: what makes writing good?

Is Fitzgerald's Gatsby a better piece of writing than Darwin's Origin of the Species? Not necessarily (even though I think that Fitzgerald's is far better, I'm trying to be objective). Sometimes I think that what makes people better at writing than others is the ability to love what they are writing about. That sounds simple enough, but think about it. Sometimes, when one sits down to write a boring paper about the impact of the fourth line of the third scene of the fifth act of MacBeth, the paper turns out to be terrible. Or, when one sits down to write a narrative about the modern dancing, aka "grinding," it could also be terrible. Even when somebody sits down to write about how a certain flower was this color because of the color, height, and type of the flowers that came before it, it could be lousy.

At the same time, however, the phenomenal thing about writing is, that all three of those could be equally great. This goes back to loving what you write. Personally, anything that I think to write on my own, or anything that is of a creative nature is just going to be better than anything else that I write. It's because I know what I want to say, and I know that in general my reader will be of typical mind, and I know how to express my thoughts in words that will make my reader follow me. In the same way, Darwin knows what excites him about evolution, and, I'm sure, to somebody who loves science, Darwin's love and expertise comes across clearly.

I guess what I am trying to get across is that writing is a great thing, something that I love. I can also admit, however, that there have been times where I have snubbed other pieces because I disapproved. I realized today that just because a piece of writing was about something I didn't love, wasn't the one thing that I craved to learn more about, doesn't mean that to somebody who does crave the knowledge in that subject, that that particular piece of writing could be an amazing read.

putting them in their place, so to speak

In our class discussion to day about families, one of the themes that came up a few times was the idea of "putting our parents in their places," albeit, politely. This, I believe, goes hand in hand with another idea that we had, the idea of seeing our parents as parents vs. our parents as people. When we were young, I think for the most part my loyal readers and I can agree on the fact that our parents were special. They were an enigma, people for us to fear, love, respect and generally, be-in-awe-of.

I also think that my fanbase; my mom, Mr. Chiapetta and I, can agree that as we grew older, our perceptions of our parents changed. When I was young, everything my parents did was perfect. If they were angry it was because my sister and I had done something wrong, and we deserved to be reprimanded. If they were happy, then all the world was right, and, as children, my sister and I had nothing to worry about. I think that the inbetween times, the times where my parents had to cover up their sadness or their hurt, their worry, and their tiredness to put on a happy face are the times that I never noticed. They were still my parents, as implacable and immovable as ever.

I think that the perception has begun to change, and not necessarily in the way that the title of this post suggests. Now, instead of always seeing my parents as the people who run the well oiled machine that is my family, I have the opportunity to see my parents as not only people, not only adults, but as friends. I can see my mom on days where she is not herself, and I can talk to her about it, to make her feel better. Instead of always being cordial, my mom and I can get in a mildly heated debate about the school's new attendance policy (which is ridiculous by the way). Instead of seeing my parents as the people who have raised me, I can see them as the people who I will continue to grow with, people who make mistakes, say the wrong thing, get sick. I think that I have come to terms with this, and I love the depth with which I can now converse with them. In youth, it might have been limited to basic conversation, but now it can be so much more than that.

The hardest part of this realization for me to wrap my mind around is the part where I realize that they were the same way when I was younger, I just couldn't tell.