My Last Blog

This class was the most eye opening experience I have ever had. This was my first class with Dr. Sexson and I have to say...it was incredible. I learned more this last semester than I have learned in any subsequent classes and I want to say thank you to Dr. Sexson and thank you to my classmates. My favorite books were The Following Story and The Four Quartets, which I intend to carry with me for the rest of my life. I could not possibly summarize this class in one blog but I will explain my paper, which was my summation of the class.

A girl's mother dies and she is blamed by her father for the tragedy. He locks her in her room because he can't stand the sight of her and she sits there through seasons, looking out the window. Finally, the pain becomes to great and she jumps from the window, ending her life. That is the forward. I was trying to capture the changing from one state to another, where the girl, as the rose petal has fallen from the rose, falls from her life. In the moments she is falling to the ground she flashes through everything that has happened in her life, but through the experiences of the rose petal. When her fall ends, she is then home, in a different sense of home. Since her room, her space has become her coffin, she jumps into a new beginning, and ends her old one. But since she falls at the feet of her mother or the rose and becomes the earth, she then begins again and the cycle renews.

This is a very sad story, obviously, and I certainly hope it is not depressing. I was simply trying to capture the themes of the class in the fashion of a story.

I would also like to compliment everyone on their final presentations. They were so dynamic and so entertaining. From dancing to singing to rapping, I think the past few days have been the most entertaining I have ever experienced in a class. I love how you poured your hearts into your work and I am really really glad I had the opportunity to see how your papers became what they were.

I am sad the class is over, but on the bright side Bible as Literature and Mythologies next semester!!! I am actually embarrassed by how excited I am for those classes but I have a feeling alot of you feel the same about classes with Sexson...or should I say Mr. Jones. =) And as a note that I think is wonderful and daunting at the same time, I have made an endless list of books I need to read. This class has made me realize what is out there for me to experience and I am ready to begin again and again and again and read every book on my list.

Group 5 Presentation

I thought your presentation was really interesting and I enjoyed the mingling of high brow and low brow material...and I also enjoyed watching some movie clips. After you explained it further, I understood the themes you were trying to capture much better and it made alot of sense in relation to the class.

Eternal Return

Your skit was very interesting. I have to admit, I wasn't a huge fan of the constant flatulence, but I understand the point you were trying to make. I am really glad you incorporated The Four Quartets, since it repeatedly covers the theme of the eternal return. Now, it's our turn. I hope we live up to the standard you have set for us...I guess we'll see on Monday!

Life as Fiction and Language

Your skit reminded me so much of the Alchemist. Especially the twelve-step program part. As a fellow blogger said before, Coehlo's novel reads just like a self-help manual, as did your skit. I thought you played your parts well and the idea of illusion was really prominent. Every one of your characters was under some illusion, sure that they were playing the leading roles of their lives. The self-help program seemed to me to represent the reading of the story, the eradication of the illusion, or the realization that what they were performing was, in fact, fiction.

Group Presentations!

Wow! I feel a little overwhelmed after watching The World as Myth and Dream and 20-Minute Lifetime groups. Their performances were phenomenal.

The first group to go, Myth and Dream, kept me laughing the whole time and portrayed their topic perfectly. Watching Biz and Jon trek across about thirty different slideshows of scenery was hysterical and thier dialogue switched between high-brow and low-brow, which was also cause for some entertainment. The ending, I thought, was perfect, very Tempestesque.

The second group's presentation was also awesome. The time and effort put into making that movie had to have been extensive, and it definitely showed. I tried to describe it to one of my friends and they didn't quite get my fascination, but I plan to acquire a copy and let her see it for herself. You guys really did set the bar and watching your film was a high point of my day.

Monster of the Sea April 11th

The excerpts, an interesting array of science and romanticism, focus on the idea that the whale is the "monster of the sea". This is understandable, if you ask me. I can't imagine sitting on a boat the size of a car (1987 Cadillac Brougham that is), holding nothing but a harpoon to bring about the demise of a mountainous being submerged beneath the waves. The feeling in that moment could be something near sublimity, but in my case, the terror may outrun the sublime (just as "reality outran apprehension"). I, personally, can't even imagine the immensity of such a creature, or, for that matter, the immensity of this text. The last quote in the excerpts hit a chord:

"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea."
Whale Song

This poem, in every aspect, reflects the intricacies of the novel Moby Dick. Capitalizing the word 'whale', first of all, sets it at the level of God, in which all his denominations require capitalization. Why not, then, capitalize the god of the sea? "Where might is right..." Could there be a better way to address the massive depths of the ocean. Although subtle, this suggestion says it all.

"But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans..."

These words, once again, encompass the entire novel. I am beginning to beleive that if I choose to blog on every instance where a line, phrase, paragraph, or chapter represents the novel as a whole, I will be blogging for all eternity. This novel is so involved with itself, it is almost astounding. Obsessively, I read every line looking for a vast meaning, which I yet have failed to find. It seems every word swims with suggestion. Libraries, oceans, words, waves, poems; they all flow, undulate, blow our minds and wash away our land-locked blues (Bright Eyes).

My fave bloggers

Sorry I'm late but I've struggled with this, since I hate to pick favorites. As far as a wealth of useful information goes, Rio and Sam have been infinitely helpful throughout the entire semester. I missed one class and listened to the entire recording of Rio's smart pen posting and read the notes from Sam's blog and I felt like I didn't miss a thing. Thank you much...

Apart from those blogs I found Shelby Seoule's to be beautifully written and she had some great insights. Rachel's was also a delight to read and I loved her posts about The Following Story. Christina, also, was awesome, with her illustrations...very artistic. Thomas's conistent blogging about his struggle with FW was also really helpful and comical at times.

Thesis

For my term paper, my subject is going to be "little did he know". I will focus mainly on The Four Quartets, The Following story and possibly FW, interweaving my paper into every theme of the class, in story form. My main character, name undecided, will immerse himself in the themes of the class while I simultaneously show what I have learned from Emergent Literature.

Nap Time

I took a nap in Leigh Lounge today, easily my favorite place on campus, and had an interesting, although abbreviated, dream. I had awoken, suspecting my treasonous phone of missing its set time to alarm me, and I soon dozed off again, realizing I still had a whole three minutes to sleep. In these three minutes I dove into blackness, but not the blackness experience while not dreaming, but a blackness of anticipation, like the uncertain darkness before opening your eyes when you know someone is staring at you. Very eerie indeed. This black anticipation grew and grew until finally, in my dream, I opened my eyes to see a man wielding a hammer high above a rock. Staring straight at me, he brought the hammer down with a crashing blow, crushing the rock and jolting my body into a violent convulsion, which led to my awakening. Sparks flying from the rock became the lights hanging from the ceiling of the Leigh Lounge. My eyes seemingly open to reality this time, I realized my treasonous phone had indeed neglected to alarm me, and I set off for class, which was cancelled (something I daydream about on a regular basis...except for emergent lit., that is).

BeginningEndBeginningEnd

To arrive where we started, and to know the place for the first time. We started in the womb, correct? Will death be like the womb? We do not recall the beginning, at least I don't; churning in warmth and darkness, relying entirely on another, although we have no inkling to who that other is. So when we die, what if we churn in eternal darkness, warm, alone, concious, but unable to percieve? The end will be the beginning, the beginning of another end, if one beleives in reincarnation, thus perpetuating recurrence.

The Alche...mist sorry I dozed off

I finally finished the book...finally. I found every page, as someone said in class, (sorry I can't remember exactly who it was, it may have been Christina and her book throwing) to be a repetetive beating of my head against an impenetrable wall constructed of bricks made of Personal Legends and mortar of Soul of the World. The very phrases made me shudder each time they were iterated, which incidently was e.v.e.r.y. page. I am not snobbish and I have never considered myself of the "highbrow" faction, but wow, how many times must we hear about the same damn thing? I suppose this business about relearning to read is important, but this "moral of the story" thing, made so painfully obvious in The Alchemist, is tiresome. I felt like I was reading children's literature with an ending that teaches an important moralistic life lesson, like "we must share with others". Instead, it was "we must follow our Personal Legends and fulfill what is meant for us in life". Contrived is the word I'm looking for, and possibly cheesy. I must say, though, there is no more obvious way to address the subject of Dolce Domum.

What is the Matrix?

The Matrix, in my estimation, is every story we have ever read, every dream we have woken up from with a strong, realistic emotion, every dream we have woken up from(or perhaps stayed in), period, for that matter, every time we have forgotten to remember that a story is not reality, and every time we have forgotten to ask "What is reality?". Also, and importantly, the Matrix is in the realm of our mind. The stories becoming true in our hopeful brains, our eager minds clinging to untruths, relating to them, making them real to us. We choose to believe them, even though they are called stories, and when asked to forget the absolution of their reality, we choose to relate to them, which is another, more obscure, form of reality. To escape the Matrix we "...must go by the way wherein there is no ecstacy./ In order to arrive at what you do not know/ You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance./ In order to possess what you do not possess/ You must go by the way of dispossession./ In order to arrive at what you are not/ You must go through the way in which you are not./ And what you do not know is the only thing you know/ And what you own is what you do not own/ And where you are is where you are not." (EC 139-146)

Next, dreamland. Have you ever awoken lividly angry with someone? I have. Christi (pseudonyms are a necessity in touchy situations) was a girl in my class in highschool, a girl who didn't exactly see things the same way I did. In short, we weren't the best of friends. In my dream we engaged in a full-blown fist fight, ending in seriously hurt feelings and maybe some bruises and cuts. She had said some things to me that cut to the quick and I woke up ready to fight, once again. All day at school, due to my disgruntled subconcious, I found myself fiercely angry about the things she had said to me in my dream. Some part of my mind had chosen to accept the dream as reality, triggering emotions originally derived from a simulated fight. I never capitalized on my latent anger, but believe me, my brain told me to consider otherwise. This emotion I felt during the day, after I had supposedly "woken up" made me think I was still in a state of dream. Had I really woken up? Does anyone ever wake up from their dream or is the dream the reality and the supposed reality the dream? How could one part of my mind be angry when I was telling it not to be, not to dwell on a dream? This enigma that is my mind defies me, much to my frustration. As for the Matrix, it is entirely in the mind, which is a scary place to venture endlessly, but is also a place we venture endlessly with no choice otherwise. Although our bodies move and we simulate the motions of everday life, isn't our mind where we truly "are"? Locate yourself and say "I am on the couch", but also consider the couch's reality without the faculties of the mind.

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders" Friedrich Nietzsche. When a person forgets to remember that a story is a fabrication, not the stuff reality is made of, they are vaulted into a dreamworld where the words on paper become tied to emotions, which become tied to ecstacy. In relating the world of words to the world of their reality, a person becomes ecstatic, unable to decipher between the simulation on the page and their actual life. They also forget to remember to ask "What is reality?". Even though the words on the page aren't reality in the common definition of such, are our lives reality, or are they simulations created by our minds to occupy our existence? Maybe in our minds is the only reality, making dreams, days, nights, foggy mornings, cold metal, smelly garbage, de ja vu, basically any one thing percieved by human senses, reality. Perhaps, when our mind tells us a story is real, and we watch the story unfold, watch the characters come to life, it is our reality projecting onto the story. After all, doesn't a person place themselves in the situations of the characters and let themselves be lost in the plots, emotions, and twistings of the reality of the story?

Stranger Than Fiction

The title of this movie intrigues me especially. It implies that fiction, the telling of lives of fabricated characters, is indeed a very strange custom. I definitely agree with this. As if our lives aren't strange enough, let's create characters, somewhat molded after ourselves, and puppet them through a series of everyday motions, focusing on their little quirks and oddities. I will allow that not every work of fiction does exactly this, but for the most part, fictional characters are just as common (or uncommon) as you and I, especially when they're alone, practicing their own routines, in their own little worlds. Now, when you take a character such as Harold Crick, and show him in his own little step-counting, brush-stroke-innumerating, (I can't repeat a verb, thanks to my high school English teacher) world, and then jerk him out of it, creating an entirely new conciousness for him, that is when the strangeness of fiction is exceeded. By creating a fictional movie about a non-fiction, fictional character, the author of this movie, the true puppetteer, lends a new meaning to life as ficiton and language. Maybe we're all walking around, assuming our identities are truly ours, when really the language of others is driving our existence. Maybe someday a character will enter our lives solely to end that very existence we strive so hard to maintain. Or, if our narrator is kind, we will live to a comforatable old age, self-assured in our wisdom and disdainful of rabble such as that I am dictating at this very moment.

As Beckett would say "Conspicuousness is the ABC of my profession." As a narrator, Beckett is completely conspicuous in his ABCs of storytelling. Jane, the narrator of Harold Crick's life, becomes conspicuous when her voice is suddenly made manifest to her character. Her intent towards a fictional novel, one where she kills her character in a climactic fashion, bringing the book to a perfect end, is suddenly changed from simple language to a concious choice. This choice is whether she should take a human life for the sake of a perfect novel, or whether she should spare this life, risking her idea of an ideal ending. Harold's life is controlled by the language his author chooses to use. His entire existence is a fabrication wrought from the twisted workings of anothers mind. Yet, he conciously chooses to adhere to this fiction and language when he hurls himself in front of the bus, in order to facilitate the perfect ending. Not only is his life leading up to the point of Jane's voice becoming manifest controlled by language, he lets his life after be controlled by the very language meant to kill him.

Also, as a quick note, Malone hears his own narrator throughout the novel Molloy. "And the voice I listen to needs no Gaber to make it heard. For it is within me and exhorts me to continue to the end the faithful servant I have always been, of a cause that is not mine, and patiently fill in all its bitterness my calamitous part, as it was my will, when I had a will, that others should...Yes, it is rather an ambiguous voice and not always easy to follow, in its reasonings and decrees...And I feel I shall follow it from this day forth, no matter what it commands." (Molloy 126) This connection between Samuel Beckett's three novels and Stranger Than Fiction coincides with the idea of life as fiction and language. Both characters being controlled by voices vociferating commands, they share a likeness in situation as well as conciousness. They have their own conciousness, deciding to listen to the voice, but they also portray the conciousness of their author.

Instances of Story Telling

The more I look into it, the more I see Beckett's thinly veiled directive. He is always trying to show the reader his capacity for telling stories, not truths, but stories.
"And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing" (pg. 27 Molloy).

This, I personally felt, is a jab at the gullable reader... "I should add, before I get down to facts, you'd swear they were facts, of that distant summer afternoon, that with this deaf blind impotent mad old woman, who called me Dan and I called Mag, and with her alone, I-no, I can't say it" (Molloy pg. 15) In particular, the bit about "you'd swear they were facts" seems to be a direct insult to any reader believing Beckett's story. Also, the implication at the end, where the reader is left hanging with the disturbing thought of incest, Beckett seems to seek out the gullable side in the reader, directly after slapping him/her in the face with the little comment about facts.

"Oh the stories I could tell you, if I were easy. What a rabble in my head, what a gallery of moribunds...Stories, stories. I have not been able to tell them. I shall not be able to tell this one" (Molloy pg. 132). This, I beleive, is one of Beckett's moments of irony.

I Googled portmanteau, to ensure my full understanding of the term, and clicked on images, finding this very picture in the first few images available. Interesting... I then looked further into the term and found that Lewis Caroll, the creator of Humpty Dumpty, had also been the pioneer of the portmanteau with words such as "slithy", which is a combination of lithe and slimy. Now I think I understand why Humpty Dumpty is such a prominent figure in FW.

Finnegans Wake in Modest Mouse

I don't know if any of you listen to Modest Mouse but their song Bukowski has a nice little reference, or so I saw, to Finnegans wake. Here is the link. Go about 3 minutes and 35 seconds into it...trust me it's worth it! Also, this may be kind of a stretch but there is a Beckett expression about 1 minute and 6 seconds in. In a related subject, since every subject is related to Finnegans Wake, here is a really cool song about the Fall.

My grandma has 13...or 14, I'm not entirely sure, steps leading to the basement of her house. She also has 13...0r 14, I'm not entirely sure, steps leading out of the basement of her house. My cousins and I used to be blocked from these stairs with a fence meant for boisterous children bound to crash down a set of 13 or 14 steps. Once I was allowed to traverse these stairs, and once I was able to count, they became my constant torment. From the top, one steps down, counts one, two, three, four...so on, until that nagging bottom step, potential step number 14. Is the floor at the bottom considered a step or is it just part of the floor? I then ascend the stairs, starting at the bottom, the first step up counts one, then two, three, four...so on, until that damned top step, potential step number 14. Is the top step to be counted or is it part of the floor of the first level? Like I said, constant torment. In times of little conciousness, my habit of counting stairs of a truly Beckettian obsession, I still count the stairs and after reflection find myself varying in outcomes. Sometimes I count 13, other times 14. What is the solution for my predicament? "I will tell you. No, I'll tell you nothing. Nothing." (Malloy pg. 129)

Below is a yew-tree, which could live to be 2,000 years old, at least that's the potential lifespan of this kind of tree. To the left, as everyone probably knows, is a rose. The actual flower of the rose only lives through the warm season of each year. "The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree/ Are of equal duration" (Eliot 58). I have an inkling that this may be in relation to the twenty-minute lifetime, but in a more obscure way. The life of the rose and the life of the yew-tree are contained in one moment, a lifetime in one moment. It doesn't matter how long the yew-tree outlives the rose because the rose and the yew-tree are in a cycle of constant life and death where each moment represents their beginning and their end.

T.S. List

"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, To the vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, And dark the Sun and the Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha And the Stock Exchange Gazette, The Directory of Directors..." (Eliot 27). This list seems to signify the darkness of death which is inevitable for all of mankind. With this list of people, thier rankings stated but of minimal importance, Eliot places every human on the same plane, the plane of fate or the plane of the inevitable.

Reading Finnegans Wake

Excuse me for seeming rude...

This is not meant to be vulgar or rude but Dr. Sexson referred to faeces the other day and the recurrence of its appearance in the works we are reading. Well, I was reading the very beginning of East Coker and I came upon an interesting line and formed a theory. "Old fire to ashes, and ashes to the earth/ Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,/ Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf." My interpretation of the importance of faeces is that it is in constant cycle. Beginning as a living organism; a plant or animal, it then becomes part of the earth to nourish more plants and in turn more animals. This may seem simple and very Lion Kingish, but it seems to be one possible definition of eternal recurrence.

...in a Lapsummer skirt an damazon cheeks...

After some searching I found a reference to "...the black water of death polished like onyx..." (Nooteboom 107). The Amazon, in Nooteboom, bears an undeniable likeness to the river that is Finnegans wake. Beginning, or ending, or middling, from the first page, and ending, beginning or middling in the same place. This river winds and wends and winds again. Just as night "Falls again" (Nooteboom 106). The night falls again so a character can begin or end or middle thier story, but they are always on the river, in the beginning and the end and the middle. As they relive thier story they relive thier twenty, or thirteen, minutes of life. "Thirteen minutes--of course Captain Dekobra still remembered precisely--had elapsed between the moment that the first of his four engines had failed and the moment he touched the surface of the sea." Earlier on that page, page 108, Dekobra recalls "...he had been able to store his entire life in that instant..." On the damazon, recalling, reliving his story, Dekobra lives his lifetime, begins, ends and middles his story. Just as Peter Harris mentions on page 98 "...you depart from Belem, you arive in Belem. There's something cyclical about it, something of eternal recurrence."

From Beginning to End

What's interesting about Finnegans Wake and The Skin of Our Teeth is one major difference I noticed. What's odd about this difference is that it also creates a likeness. While the skin of our teeth covers thousands of years, Finnegans Wake only covers one night. But in that one night FW covers the entirety of history. Both books cover every aspect of history, although The Skin of Our Teeth is slightly more abridged. Also, and obviously, both endlessly reference the Bible, and with very little subtelty. What also seems very important, in both books, is the surroundings. While chaos reigns, the setting of the Antrobus's house is in chaos. When peacetime comes, the characters physically pull thier domain out of chaos. The surrounding scene is symbolic of thier lives, as it is in Finnegans Wake. Lastly, both books begin and end exactly the same, with the same scene, the same words, the same concerns.

Jack n' Jill

Well...I don't know how to say this but Joyce managed to pervert Jack and Jill. I shouldn't be surprised but I am somewhat shocked...I don't really think they are the same thing. The kind of shock I'm feeling isn't that he's capable of such a perversion but the portrayal of Jack and Jill so lewdly. Since this is a clean blog I will just give the page number: 462, from the very top.

Listlessness

I wandered about today and saw several things. I saw a cat with yellow eyes, black fur, an evil countenance and a gruesome personality. After said cat I experienced a table with four legs, made of wood, would I have looked closer, I'm sure the wood would have been identifiable, and one leaf. Outside I saw my car docked, a cadillac (not of the modern type), gray in color, square in shape, a veritable boat. I also studied the contents of my backpack, which, very much like my room, was in upheaval. There was a notebook, the Four Quartets by T.S. Elliot (browny points?), Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, an Almanac, which I always carry, erasers, pens, pencils, scraps of nondescript paper, Kettle Brand potato chips, three folders (red, blue and gray), my passport (in case I need to flea...ha kidding), deodorant, a bouncy ball, shnozmitts (Joycean word of my own fabrication), a flash drive, an i clicker (arhg), cough drops; mentho-lyptus flavored(as if any flavor could make cough drops good), some money and last but not least, a piece of plastic which used to cover one of my books. Not least, I say, because this piece of plastic could serve a number of purposes. In the beginning it covered a book but now the possibilities are endless. With its bag-like shape it could carry a sandwich, an orange, any lunch-like accoutraments, it could plug a hole in a not-so-tight window, it could cover pressed flowers in need of preservation, it could be used to smother afore mentioned cat (I'm not a creepy cat killer and I would never harm an animal but this cat and I do NOT see eye to eye), it could be used as a garbage sack, etc. Like I said the possibilites are endless...

My Grounded Experience

Well, yesterday started as a normal day. The very first thing I saw, much to my dismay, was the red glare of my alarm clock, which, by the way, makes me levitate every time it goes off. After three years of the same blood curdling sound one would think I would be accustomed to it, but the sound this alarm clock makes is at best unnatural. After hitting the snooze button and dreading the end of the nine minutes, I realized I had to pee and was very disappointed. My day always begins with alarm, snooze, alarm and the disruption of this process due to bodily functions is simply not acceptable. After peeling myself out of my brown snowflake flannel sheets I clumsily felt my way to the light switch and recieved my second shock of the day. I hate turning on lights in the morning. Not only does it jolt my senses, but it brings to life the harsh realization that my sleeping time is no more. Since I dearly love to sleep, my mornings consist of a series of arguments with myself, constantly convincing myself that I need to wake up and get my lazy ass out of bed. I jumped, no lurched, into the shower and I was instantly at peace. As much as I love sleeping, I love showering even more. Turning the water to just below the point of being unbearable, I revel in the heat and steam of a fifteen minute shower. The first thing I heard after exiting the bathroom was the ominous sound of sirens. One thing I definitely miss about living in the middle of nowhere is the lack of traffic noises. All this occurred, by the way, while singing "Joy" by Against Me to myself, a pleasantly cheerful song. Usually I wake up with the reverberations of some terrible song ringing in my head, so this was a welcome change. I then proceeded to turn on my CD player and listened to quite the array of music. The mix CD, entitled Happy Graduation, Love Sally, had music by artists ranging from Incubus, Tool and some stupid baller rap song to music by Nirvana and Dido. Being exhausted, a fault of my own I assure you, I made a futile attempt at putting on makeup and doing my hair and eventually resigned myself to the bare minimum. Since I have to go now, I will quit and label this blog as my Groundhog's Day morning. I assure you, there is more exciting news about my day to come.

riverrun

Friday night I laid down in my bed, utterly exhausted and, admittedly, a little more than buzzed. Usually I am not able to dream on nights like this but I was soon immersed in an ethereal landscape, never before seen, but somehow familiar. Oddly enough, my dream began with a river. This river was shallow and erratic, flowing every which way, never changing depth, lazily moving across a grassy, marshy plain. Wading the river with four other people, I constantly found myself tangled in branches, hindered by beaver dams or woven in webs of rushes and grass. As I always feel intense emotions in my dreams, my feelings at this point were that of frustration and anxiety. My heart was heavy and I began to feel an emotion akin to dread. After wading the river for what seemed like an eternity, we reached an electric fence. Once again, I felt anxious as we gingerly crossed the fence, avoiding the wires. Soon we came to a small house haphazardly connected to a large barn. The house was yellow and dilapitaded, leaning slightly to the right. Upon entering the house we found nothing but a small kitchen that led into an even smaller dining area. There was a closet directly opposite the door that looked like an airplane bathroom and a mirror to the left of it. After finding nothing of interest we left the house and Brian, one of the other people in my group, left and caught a steer...

This is when my dream took a turn for the worst.

I'm not entirely sure if the steer had any significance but immediately after it was caught I found myself in an entirely different scene. My sister and I were in our barn at home, each of us with a horse. Sally, my sister, had her horse Urf Quake and I had mine, Stanley. Urf was extremely sick and he kept falling. As I left Stanley to help Sally with her situation, he followed me into the stall. As my sister's horse went down for the fifth time, Stanley was crushed underneath him. I somehow managed to drag him into an adjacent stall and as I sat trying to keep him alive he metamorphosed into my border collie, R.P., my dog that my parents had to put down less than a week ago. Crying and yelling for help, I sat on the floor of the barn while my dog died on my lap. I think this may have constituted as a nightmare.

Nooteboom in Relation to Borges

I was reading The Following Story and a passage caught my eye. In relation to what Ben Leubner was talking about in class today, the theory that everyone is a part of everyone, this concept fits perfectly. "The first hours no one spoke. A priest, an airline pilot, a child, a teacher, a journalist, an academic. They made up the group, someone or no one had decided: these were to be the mirrors in which we would see ourselves." (Nooteboom pg. 67) On the page preceeding this passage, another, more subtle reference to the same theory emerges. "All of us stared at the process, all those different eyes, which would become so familiar to me during the next few days..." (Nooteboom pg. 66). The piece about the eyes becoming familiar to the narrator is of little importance, but the idea that all of these people's different eyes are looking at the same thing connects them in some way.

The Best Epithet

Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson here.

Finnegan again and again

So I opened Finnigans Wake, on a whim, the best way I suppose, and decided to look for a repetitious description. Needless to say, it took less than a minute to find such a passage and here it is: "...and the whole mesa redonda of Lorencao Otulass in convocacaon was this disinterestingly low human type, this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity, this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at, it will be precise to quarify, for he seems in a badbad case?" (pg. 179). As usual, this passage succeeded in obfuscation, but I am not too proud to admit that this will be my lot throughout the entire book. Although I didn't understand it entirely, it made me laugh. Maybe that's because he deems it "precise to quarify" when there is no quarity or clarity, that's how I understood it, in this book. It's cruel irony. Plus, his so-called quarification, if I may use his word, conists of words such as Cloaxity, Biloxity and Atroxity, which are a slap in the face of clarity.

Iff Only

Iff only my room weren't such a disaster, a pig sty, in utter disarray. I find it nearly impossible, almost implausible to even begin to divulge the disaster that is my domain. Although I could, should, and will eventually clean it, at the present moment, time present (and regretfully in time past) the area which I consider my cave is unspeakable. In using the simile cave I would like to divert any future confusion; I am not referring to myself as a bear, or bat, or anything like that, but rather strictly defining my room, which is small, dark and used expressly for sleeping, nothing else. As I believe myself to have deviated, went on a tangent, strayed from the topic at hand, it is incumbent upon me to return to the original problem, which is that of my room, cave, what have you. Now, as a person of few words, I would like to close this with a regretful declination; I wish not to offend, affront or eschew the intended topic, but for the sake of every possible person partaking in my blog, I will avoid such descriptions.

Finnegans Wake

The page I chose, at random of course, from Finnegans wake is page 179. This should be interesting.

A Brief Lifetime

Although I may not understand the twenty-minute lifetime fully, I will give it a shot. My perception of this phenomenon, in every day life, is when a person makes a concious decision that will alter the course of their life drastically. I know that the twenty minute life time we have been speaking of in class refers more to literally feeling the aging of a lifetime in twenty minutes, but for more practical purposes I suppose my thoughts on it will suffice. While making a life changing decision, time slows down and drags to a near halt. This could be part of the feeling of a life time, but I would rather see the true lifetime as an aftershock of that decision, which was conveyed or decided in twenty minutes. An example of this could be when a person decides between two careers while choosing their major for college. If one path is taken, the life of that person will be completely different than if they had chosen the alternate path. Although this may have seemed like a comparatively small decision, measured against a lifetime, the person may not realize the gravity of what they have decided. This, in my opinion, is an everyday account of the twenty minute lifetime.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

I found this story to be vastly entertaining and really enjoyed reading it. Haroun and the Sea of Stories was representative of human emotions and the effect they can have on every day life. Throughout the beginning of the story, the inhabitants of the town without a name, the town with the sadness factories, are in constant lament and despair for their situation. Towards the end, though, even when the town remains the same (except for the remembrance of its name), the people cheer themselves. In doing so, they show that the mood of a group of people, even the mood of an entire town, is controlled by the people's own will. Rather than feeling sorry for themselves, the people in this town, now named Kahani, make the best of thier situation.

Along with the representation of human emotions, this story entertains the reader with allegories of other occurrences. Interestingly, one would think that the only representations would be in the alternate world, on the moon of Kahani. This is not the case in this story, though. Before even entering the world of Iff the Water Genie and Butt the Hoopoe, Haroun encounters the Dull Lake, which displays the emotions and characters of the people on and around it. The Dull Lake, paradoxically, is not dull at all, but instead is brilliant and capturing. What makes this lake dull, though, is the general attitude of its occupants. When the evil mayor is gone at the end, the lake's inhabitants cheer considerably and are able to see the brilliance of their world. This, I beleive, is the case in any situation. If a person chooses not to see the brilliance of thier surroundings, they simply won't.

As many people, as well as Dr. Sexson, have mentioned, the theme the Myth of the Eternal Return plays a huge role in this novel. While Haroun is searching for answers for what seems to be a concrete problem, ie the loss of his father's "gift of gab", he comes to realize that what he is really searching for is a new, or perhaps old, beginning. This beginning is to be found with his mother, at home, singing, as usual, and his father retaining his position as the "Ocean of Notions". New beginnings, in this particular novel, seem to be synonymous with old beginnings, in accordance with the Myth of the Eternal Return. While seeking out a new beginning, a new and better life, what Haroun really seeks is the recovery of his old beginning, his old life.

High Brow vs. Low Brow

I am really looking forward to this class and am excited to explore the dynamic of high-brow and low-brow further. My perception of high-brow literature is that it is less popular throughout the masses, but intensely popular in certain groups. Those who understand this dense, complicated form of literature become enthralled by its trappings and meanings, making it very popular in its own right. Low-brow, on the other hand, is deemed popular by large quantities of people, or possesses the conventional definition of popularity. Although low-brow literature may seem less important to some, it is undeniable that a book with the approval of millions must hold some merit. On the same bent, high-brow literature can't be overlooked because of its lack of general approval. Perhaps, some may say, the "quality" of readers outplays the "quantity". This is merely speculation, and I am not one to judge any type of reader, so please no one take this personally.