tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14168281983274852592024-03-13T05:51:55.642-07:00But I DigressSMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-10921769556548776282010-07-29T20:50:00.000-07:002010-07-29T20:50:25.703-07:00The Purpose of LifeI've been thinking tonight about the purpose of life. Mostly on someone else's behalf, which makes it tons easier to rationalize.<br />
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A lot of people want their lives to be meaningful and worry about whether their lives are meaningful, and as they get older that desire seems more insistent; though, I think it fluctuates a bit too. I think a lot of people worry about whether they've served a purpose, or whether they've lived life to the fullest, and worry about life passing them by. I think that's natural and probably a good thing to be concerned about. But maybe that concern shouldn't last too long.<br />
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I was re-reading the Screwtape Letters last month, and something Lewis (in the guise of Screwtape) wrote really caught my attention: "For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity."<br />
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In other words (and to give a bit more context), the Present moment is the only moment in which something is actually occurring and has no past or future (no beginning or end), therefore to be in the Present is to be touching eternity. Lewis is saying that God's desire for us is either to dwell on thoughts of future eternity (with Him), or to live fully in the present moment, living for Him. No dwelling on past wrongs, future insecurities, etc...<br />
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In Matthew 6:25, Jesus says, "For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"<br />
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I think a lot of us have got the hang of this one. It's one of the first lessons we're usually taught: life is more than money, clothes, etc... Don't be materialistic. There are a lot of places to go from there. You can become the ultimate anti-materialist and give everything away, getting rid of all desires, until you achieve "excarnation"; or you can just be more concerned with something else that isn't a material good, such as family, significant other, business, art, humanity, justice, etc... Big concepts, or people. I think we get closer to a good answer when we start trying to find a purpose in other people.<br />
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In one of my favorite books, The Cider House Rules (John Irving), Dr. Larch tells the orphan Homer Wells to "Be useful." And he means with regards to other people. I think that holds a lot of what we're looking for in terms of purposefulness. Being useful to others. But that gets labeled "being an asset to society" and "society" is an empty word, so it's probably more personal than that. Be useful to your family, your significant other, your neighbor (the person who lives near to you), and anyone else you happen to meet.<br />
And that keeps you in the Present, because other people, most likely, are in the present with you. You can't help past people, and you can't really help future people apart from a bit of planning, so the only people you can be useful to are the ones who are with you in the moment. This is simple enough.<br />
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I, of course, think there's more to it than even that. I think the purpose of life is experiencing God's love. Or just Love; that's another way to put it. Saint Therese of Lisieux (known as the Saint of the little way) says, "When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past or the future." When we're thinking of the past or the future, we're not living, but we're also not letting Love love us, thought I see nothing wrong with contemplating the past acts of His love for us, or looking forward to being with Him completely. But still, the thing I continue to come back to year after year is that contentment is the real opposite of the worry over our lives' purposes. Finding a purpose once and for all doesn't really work because we often don't find "it"; we find people, hopefully, and even then we can drive ourselves crazy if we aren't honest about being useful to those around us. (Every large cause: the environmental movement, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Theater, even Art, generally has a person or group of people at its center.) <div>I think being honestly invested in the moment as it comes, in the work of that moment, and the people of that moment, and, of course, God in that moment, probably leaves us the closest to fulfilled that we can be in this life, and the closest to being content with what we have. It was hard for me to accept that I didn't need to do anything more than love my family for my life to be meaningful. We're often taught in movies, books, and things that we have to do something really amazing in order to be remembered (because that's purposeful), or that we have to achieve some level of success in our fields and professions to be purposeful. But that's a lie, surely. All we have to do is love someone (as cheesy as that sounds) and our lives are immediately purposeful. And to not worry about whether our lives are purposeful, but rather just work now and find out later. If nothing else, it relieves a lot of stress over many things we could never control.<br />
And I think, for Christians, it's when we set our sights on God and not on our own lives, that we<br />
become useful to Him like we want to be, and our lives are never useless, no matter what. He keeps telling us not to worry about anything, "instead pray about everything" and to "cast [our] anxieties on Him because he cares for [us]" - We need so many reminders to stop worrying. It's probably because we need to stop worrying. </div><div><br />
</div><div> Of course, I write all of this, and I know tomorrow I'll be worrying again. But I hope I'll eventually get caught up in the present and forget to worry. Anyway, that's what I think and now I'm going to bed. :)</div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></span></div></div></div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-60897717250291399002010-02-25T17:30:00.000-08:002010-02-25T17:30:32.337-08:00HidalgoThere are a lot of articles about the fact that Frank Hopkins's story of long distance races can't be true. Most of the argument rests on the fact that no evidence can be found to support his claims (although I've seen precious little evidence to the contrary). Not that that clinches anything either way.<br />
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The article I've included below demonstrates the lack of attention to detail I keep finding in each of the articles. I have no idea if <i>Hidalgo</i> is a true story or not, or even (which is more to the point) which parts are true and which are fabricated, but I do like the movie. I like the story. I've seen a lot of articles written by people angered because the film is racist as well as misrepresentative (well, that's a little repetitive, isn't it?) and I don't know how truthful its representation of turn-of-the-century Sioux, Imperial British, or Arabs is - but I would like to find out more about it. The point I got out of it wasn't that Westerners (in particular Americans, in particular Western Americans) triumph over the Other (nations, in particular Arabic nations); call me crazy, but that just didn't seem to be the point. The movie opens with a frank condemnation of the American government's treatment of Native Americans and at no point in the film does Frank Hopkins associate himself with white America; nor do I think anyone would come away from that movie seriously doubting the capabilities of Arabian horses or riders. If anything, the movie was proto-feminist, and inverted traditional notions of the white Western woman being pure and good, and the darker, Eastern woman as seductive or designing. Both were portrayed as passionate, albeit in different ways. I think the British would probably have the most cause to feel offended by their portrayal as snobby, shallow sycophants.<br />
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The message of the movie seemed to me to be a love letter to the Mustang. Anyone who has had a meaningful relationship (not to put too fine a point on it) with a horse would enjoy it. The relationships between horses and their riders seemed to be the main focus of the movie, and there were a variety of those relationships. I'm not saying that Disney understands that better than anyone else. But I think the movie might have had a different effect for a particular audience.<br />
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Overall, I still like it. Here is the article, my beef with it being that this reader doesn't appear to have paid very close attention to what Viggo Mortensen is quoted as having said. She or he has conflated two separate statements into one meaning, as far as I can tell. Mortensen said that he spoke with Lakota people, some of whom did not speak English, about Frank Hopkins. He also said he spoke, in particular, with a 94-5 year old woman who had met Frank Hopkins. He never says the woman couldn't speak English. He never says those he spoke with who were not English speakers did not have interpreters, nor that they were 94-5 years old. He does state that the stories he'd heard were passed down through "generations" which would support his story without being contradicted by the critiquer's assertion that no one old enough to have known Hopkins would be a non-English speaker; therefore I can find no plausible reason, inclusive of the evidence provided by the critiquer, that would indicate that Mortensen's story is illogical.<br />
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<div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">The star of “Hidalgo,” Viggo Mortensen, has been telling the press that he has <span lang="en-us">had conversations with </span>several native Lakota </span><span lang="en-us" style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">who cannot speak English.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> <span lang="en-us"> He says they </span>verify Frank Hopkins’ assorted absurd claims, including that he was half Lakota.</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="en-us" style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Mr. Mortensen seems to overlooked the fact that in 1910 Frank Hopkins told the US census taker that he had been born in Texas and that his parents were "unknown." It would appear that Mr. Mortensen is instead eager to accept Hopkins' baseless later claim that he was born in Wyoming and that his mother had been Lakota.</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Mortensen is apparently ignoring the stark facts which plainly state that not a single one of Hopkins’ claims can be verified.<span lang="en-us"> Here are a few examples of the Hollywood star's comments:</span></span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: maroon; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Star Viggo Mortensen said he spoke with Native Americans whose family personally verified Hopkins' story.</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">"To have many families on reservations to talk about Frank Hopkins specifically, and his horsemanship and his connection to their tribes with stories that have been handed down through generations, why would that not be true? In my experience and the stories I've heard, these people, </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">some of them don't even speak English </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">and certainly could [care less] about Hollywood movies. But [they] say, 'Yeah, my mother told me that and this guy, this and that, a painted horse...' and it speaks for itself.</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">(</span><span style="color: blue; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.horsecity.com/stories/030304/lif_hidalgo_HB.shtml" style="text-decoration: underline;">http://www.horsecity.com/stories/030304/lif_hidalgo_HB.shtml</a></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">)</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span lang="en-us"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Another example:</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">"I found that people, older people, still talk about him and about Hidalgo. There was one woman who was 94, 95, and she talked about being a little girl and meeting Frank Hopkins," Mortensen says, obviously harboring a respect for the story and those who keep the tradition alive. "There's a tradition of speaking about him and his experiences with horses and his connection to the people, beyond what you can find written."<br />
<span lang="en-us">(</span><a href="http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/2004/02/26/diversions1.html">http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/2004/02/26/diversions1.html</a><span lang="en-us">)</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Mention DeLoria's criticisms to Mortensen and anger flashes through his normally mellow mantle. He's read all of DeLoria's books, he says, admires the man's scholarship, but with all due respect, the man hasn't seen the movie. There's an oral history that supports Hopkins's story, he argues. (The film's writer, John Fusco, took 12 years to research the story. And while filming the movie, Mortensen says, he met a 96-year-old Lakota woman who told him about meeting Hopkins when she was a young girl.) </span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">(</span><span style="color: #3366ff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28830-2004Mar3.html" style="text-decoration: underline;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28830-2004Mar3.html</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">)</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">This is what Dr. DeLoria has to say in response to Mortensen’s public claims:</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: 700;">It's utter nonsense that Viggo Mortensen talked with Lakotas who couldn't speak English - how old would they have to be? If you had just talked with an 94 year old elder you would have to take into account that he or she was born in 1910, schools on the reservations began around the 1880s and children who did not attend school were denied rations - so the chances are any 94 year old elder was in a government or church school between the ages of 6-18 and they were forbidden to speak their native language in schools. So how did they grow up only speaking Lakota?</span></span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">I am 71 years old and can recall but a few elders in my early childhood who could not speak English - but that was over 60 years ago and those people were rare and in their 80s and 90s at that time. I would like to have Viggo Mortensen give me the names of those families who only speak Lakota that he can converse with - he has uncovered people overlooked by the several educational programs that teach and analyze the Lakota language?</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">Not hardly.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">My Aunt - Ella Deloria - was the foremost scholar of the three dialects used by the Sioux people - "D", "L" and "N" - and she bemoaned the fact that she could not find anyone on any of the reservations who could speak fluently in any of the dialects because there had already been substantial erosion of the language. She said she missed talking with elders who would create words to express certain ideas. Now, suddenly a Hollywood star is able to go to a Sioux reservation and immediately find families who don't speak English?</span></b></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">I don't think so.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: 700;">I would like Viggo Mortensen to tell me the name of the 94-year-old woman, where she lives, and how he was lucky enough to locate her.</span></div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-14609966754594689842010-02-03T17:04:00.001-08:002010-02-05T22:41:13.028-08:00Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to KnowThis is a project I've been talking over with DPL for quite some time (which means approximately less than a year) and I've decided to test drive it here tonight. <br />
<div>Simply put, we're going to write a play about the night Mary Shelley wrote <i>Frankenstein</i>, working title "The Night Shelley Wrote Frankenstein." Yes, the ambiguity is intentional.<br />
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</div><div>It will be a fabulously historically faithful rendition of that book's creation packed into one magnificent evening with appearances from our favorite young Romantics: Byron, Percy (of course), Keats, and maybe, if he's very lucky, Hunt.</div><div><br />
</div><div>But in preparation for that, I am putting up some ramblings centered on the idea of the young Romantics slumming it in early 19th century Britain and their marvelous escapades were one of Shelley's ridiculous forays into science to actually work: namely time travel.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So here goes:</div><div><br />
</div><div><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><i>Tuesday, February 2, 1813</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>I awoke this morning to find myself famous. As usual. Reassured that my plans for acquiring a suitably notorious epithet were still in order, I breakfasted alone, but happened upon a sticky black mess that reeked like a sheep's gut three days marinated in bog filth. One of Percy's failed science experiments, no doubt. Told the parlour maid to clean it up before the dogs were at it and made sick, though it would serve the man right were we all to succumb to some debilitating illness. At least we might keep Someone in good company then.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Speaking of Someone, our resident physician came down just as I had finished, complaining of a headache and coughing dreadfully. If I wanted a man to fill the air with repugnance everywhere I went I would have hired Baron Brougham to follow me about and prate about prisms all day long. Gave him a cold shoulder and hoped he would take the hint, but all Keats seems capable of catching is chills and then trying to foster them off on perfectly respectable people who don't want them. Took care that he stepped in the mess on the floor but was sure to be gone before I could be blamed. Highly satisfying start to the day.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Wrote a few pages of a new work. Trying something different this time. Have decided that the present theme: young man (dark and handsome, of course) falling prey to curse of love (beautiful woman, of course) and crushed within his soul is too usual. New theme to center on young man (dark and handsome) falling prey to several love affairs (beautiful women, maybe a few men?) and ultimately crushed within his soul. Think it will cause quite a stir among the usual public, especially middle-aged, unmarried ladies. Keats tells me that they especially admire my work, but can only credit this with pen envy on his part. Still, very intriguing. (Have heard, however, that the author of </i>Pride and Prejudice<i> is an ardent admirer.)</i><i> But I really am resolved to finish this one. Thinking of calling it "Don Juan" and then ignoring the Spanish pronunciation, just because I can.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Went to find Percy after last night's debacle. Watched him fag poor Mary to death over her new novel, Something-something-or-other-Prometheus, or something like that. Percy was trying to tell me about it last night, but was too foxed to remember what it was about. Caught something about the Asian continent, I think, though God knows what he thinks he knows about Asia - stupid blighter can't even sail a boat around the pond properly. Tried to get Mary to tell me instead, but got her to confess she was actually writing something else entirely and that P had made up the Prometheus in Asia thing that moment because he'd been smoking something he'd got from STC. Stupid git. P, I mean. Not Mary.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Woke up later in the afternoon and discovered P. had nearly burnt the house down with one of his experiments. Decided to have strong words with him, but when reproaching him with it he went off into one of his long-winded defenses and attempted the acrobatic comparison of the poet's genius with some kind of hot-air balloon which transformed into a wave in the ocean. Didn't understand a word of it. Left wing still ruined.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Saw a pretty little thing by the lake today. Handsomely offered her mother fifty quid for her, but woman had the audacity to refuse and insult me. Considered challenging her to a duel, but realized that schedule wouldn't permit it. Booked solid til next month.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i><br />
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<blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Ok. so...that's a first try at being in Byron's head. DPL?</span></i></blockquote></div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-14787894834054418852010-01-22T08:34:00.000-08:002010-02-05T23:10:15.800-08:00What is Up with Austen?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn4FMw15uDfUNpOjsbdGO21iSkhVFSk5V47vzcb_WNsuZWOr_T5apxPw-8LVvhw6eGTV0FZmXkp7U0R7YzyR4Ne8HU44GbAFtl-SmoHDm9NCgdULvB5TlBPZQ4G3LO-4OxbkTZAEVB9F__/s1600-h/austen.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429603551520556178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn4FMw15uDfUNpOjsbdGO21iSkhVFSk5V47vzcb_WNsuZWOr_T5apxPw-8LVvhw6eGTV0FZmXkp7U0R7YzyR4Ne8HU44GbAFtl-SmoHDm9NCgdULvB5TlBPZQ4G3LO-4OxbkTZAEVB9F__/s200/austen.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 198px;" /></a><br />
So, I know very well that the topic has had numerous treatments, but I just heard the recapitulated plot of a film titled "Lost in Austen" and the mind is still reeling.<br />
"Lost in Austen" is another in a long line of strange rip-offs of the Jane Austen Franchise which appears to be as popular as it was in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But the thing that confuses the heck out of me is why there are so many of these adaptations that seemingly so little to do with the original works or author.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 16px;">I just finished reading "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" last year, and I have to say that I thought it, beyond being a funny book, a very good parody of the Austen industry itself. You can put anything with Austen, robots, natural disasters, time-travel, sea monsters, and it will sell, apparently.<br />
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I've heard several theories as to Austen's ongoing popularity and have narrowed the reasons down to the following three categories:<br />
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1. Some people actually just like Austen. They know enough about the period to get a lot of the subtle humor and darkness, and they will watch the BBC adaptations for correct historical representation and wonder why exactly there's a circus at the end of "Persuasion."<br />
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2. A lot of people look to the books as a sort of relationship guide (or even a guide to life) and have read most of the originals and the fanfiction/literary criticism spin-offs (I'm sorry, I meant perfectly plausible adaptations and continuations). They tend to classify Austen with "chiclit" - which we will get to later.<br />
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3. And then there are a few people who want Regency manners to come back into style. These people seem to know the least about Austen as a person, or the period in general, and have probably not read any of the original books.<br />
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You may fall solidly into one of these categories, or share in all three, but regardless of your leaning I feel that there is something to be learned from each category taken as a whole.<br />
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For those who side with the third reason and wish that we'd all bow to each other, engage in country dances, and never travel on Sunday, well, I can't help but think that this is a very impractical wish fulfillment.<br />
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The manners of Austen's time were nice and polite, and governed by exacting notions of propriety (as far as we know, since, hey, none of us was there), but there are a lot of things that go with that (things that we often prefer to ignore) such as the fact that financial stability doesn't really exist for women outside of marrying wealthy men ("P&P," "S&S," "MP," "NA," "Persuasion") or having a rich dad and no brothers ("Emma"). Also, I'd like to note that as for men behaving like gentlemen, if you think about it it's often hard to find a</span><i> gentleman</i> in Austen's novels.<br />
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Take, for instance, the ever popular P&P: That's two gentlemen, Bingley and Darcy (by today's standards, i.e. kind, considerate, able to provide, honest, sexually moral, financially responsible, family oriented, etc) against Mr. Bennet (financially and parentally irresponsible), Wickham (charmingly amoral), Capt. Fitzwilliam (kind, but unable to provide), Mr. Collins (insensitive nit wit, though financially stable), and a slew of idiot soldiers and absentee fathers and guardians.<br />
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Not good odds. And P&P has the pick of the crop with 2 gentlemen in one novel! The rest of the Austen cannon has, arguably, only one gentleman per book! (If you doubt me, go back through and actually try to find the responsible men.) Usually they are the heroine's choices, but not always (especially if there are two heroines) - sometimes the girls have to settle.<br />
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In any case, gentlemen, like good manners, are not abundant in Austen and their very absence is usually the focus of the plot. So I don't understand the longing for a utopia of manners that doesn't seem to exist, even in Austenland. Anyway, we have manners in the here and now as well...and what's even better: the vote and property rights.<br />
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The second category is one I can understand only slightly better. Looking for guidance in relationships you can find either patient women (Anne Eliot being the prime example, with Elinor Dashwood, Jane Bennet, and Fanny Price behind her) or assertive women (Elizabeth Bennet, Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, and maybe even Catherine Morland - she's sort of on the fence). Take charge in your relationships (if you dare to and financially can) or be willing to wait, or marry the guy with the money. Far from championing love matches, I think Austen often asks: is love so important? Rarely does anyone advise against marrying for money (which, btw, equals security) unless the partner is truly hideous like Mr. Collins. Remember that Elizabeth tells us that she first started to love Darcy<i> after</i> she saw Pemberley. Purely altruistic? I think not. Nor does anyone of her heroines marry a penniless man for the sake of love. All of these marriages come with a home, respectability, and connections (except for Anne Eliot, who may or may not be living on a ship - no one will ever be sure). The closest we get to matches based on love are Lydia Bennet and Wickham (awful!) and Marianne's attachment to Willoughby.<div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div></div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>I don't think I will ever forget the moment in "The Jane Austen Book Club" (which I liked, over all) when the misguided French teacher, on her way to a tryst with a not-so-good-looking sixteen year old (yuck), sees the words "What Would Jane Do?" on the cross signals. I kid you not.</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div></div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>To sum up, what actual lessons can we take from Jane Austen (assuming, naturally, that her books are intended to be used as self-help relationship guides)?</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div></div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>1. That we all have crappy family members and we just have to deal with them.</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>2. That "happiness, in marriage, is entirely a matter of chance" or<i> </i>very careful deliberation<div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div> (and financial security).</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>3. That being poor and dependent is worse than not being in a relationship.</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>4. Never trust a parson or other religiously self-important persons.</div><div class="'jump-link'"><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div> </div><div class="'jump-link'">I want to end this by saying that I love Austen. I came to that love through a long and arduous process of sitting down to research her life, read her letters and books and juvenilia, and impersonate her on weekends. I know the woman had a maliciously wicked and ridiculous sense of humor. That's why I think she'd be greatly amused and maybe even touched by the wealth of insane adaptations of her stories and interpretations of her views on other people's love lives. I don't think she'd be in a snit about "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" - I think she'd actually enjoy it and she wouldn't be snobby to the people who liked it without ever having read the original.</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>But I do think she'd be a bit surprised by the fans who take her "laws of love" (again, I kid you not) so seriously. I think she'd find them a bit too Byronic.</div><div><div class="'jump-link'"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27data:post.url"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a></div>Which of course would be anathema to a proper Austenite.</div><a cond="'data:post.hasJumpLink'" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1416828198327485259&postID=1478789483405441885"> </a><br />
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</span></span></span></span></span></pre><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: monospace; font-size: 13px;"></span></div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-19029742404725972982009-11-24T08:05:00.000-08:002010-02-05T20:17:07.218-08:00L.E.L. and Ethel ChurchillToday I want to talk about Letitia Elizabeth Landon, also known to her adoring fans as L.E.L. (which, if you take off the first "L," is my granpa's name - coincidence? I think so). Anyway, LEL wrote a little book (three 350 page volumes) called <em>Ethel Churchill.</em><br /><br />Here is a <a href="http://tinkerhellion.blogspot.com/p/lel-and-ethel-churchill.html">summary of the plot</a> (don't read it if you don't want to spoil the book):SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-40247034816847887242009-10-10T09:58:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:13:14.274-08:00Mr. Rochester vs. St. John RiversBeth and I were talking about this the other day, and I recently watched the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation again, so it's been on my mind. <br />
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First of all, what kind of a name is St. John Rivers? Who would name their kid St. John?</div><div><br />
</div><div>St. John is perhaps either John the Baptist (which would make a bit of sense, a martyr and an ascetic) or John from the gospels (the disciple Jesus loved). The first John, in considering the temperament of St. John Rivers, makes the most obvious sense. St. John Rivers has long been acknowledged as cold, calculating, exacting, ambitious, stoic, severe, etc, and does make himself and his passions martyrs to his religious zeal. On the other hand, we know he has a passionate side from his love for Rosamonde Oliver - albeit an unacknowledged and smothered passion. In this he might be more like the apostle John in a way - he does love. He can love passionately, but he consciously subdues his love to his greater love, which is sometimes difficult to dissect or understand. Does St. John love God with so much cold and fiery passion? Or is it really himself, his own pride of martyrdom, the kind of craze that drives some ascetics to starve themselves or live on top of pillars for years, the kind of passion that is really ambition, that is on the borderline of being pharisaical? I've read <i>Jane Eyre</i> many times over the years, and I still can't figure St. John out. Jane finds him frightening. I think he's fascinating.</div><div><br />
</div><div>And on the other hand, of course, we have Jane's choice, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester is as equally brusque as St. John and as practical and unsparing of the feelings of others. He is also, we might argue, as prideful and ambitious. The main distinctions most people seem to make between Jane's two suitors is that St. John is holy, cold, and antiseptic while Rochester is a sinner, warm-hearted if tough. As he says of his own heart, it is like an India rubber ball that is very tough, but that can change back with the right encouragement. St. John, on the other hand, is inflexible, like steel.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Some critics that I have read have presented the difference between the two as the natural dichotomy of a religious tale - Heaven rejoices more for a repentant sinner than a peerless saint, so Jane, a missionary in her own right, chooses the sinner rather than the saint. Well, that makes sense in a way, I suppose. </div><div><br />
</div><div>There are other readings of it (more feminist readings) which see St. John as the more intractable husband - who will, as Jane herself admits, force her to hide half of her nature and expect her to be something she can't ever be - like himself - classically, dogmatically perfect. And though Rochester also begins as a dominator, because of her resistance and the circumstances of the novel, he becomes a tractable partner who Jane will lead rather than follow. And that reading makes sense too.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Dr. Menke's take on it is somewhat amusing. He says that most of these Victorian novels (even beginning as far back as Austen) operate under the stipulation that the real suitor is the one whom the heroine first rejects and then accepts only after deception or misunderstanding has been removed. I like that one, to some degree. Darcy, Rochester, Wentworth, Thorton, even Heathcliff (in a way) make their first proposals erroneously and only after it seems like the two characters will never get together do they end up clearing up the miscommunication (or obstacle) and reunite (even in death). It's a common plot of romances. I wonder which came first?</div><div><br />
</div><div>But about St. John and Rochester. Here's my take on it. I think that St. John and Rochester are really almost the same person, in a way, or the same kind of man. They are both severe and cold and rigid in their own ways; they both want and expect obedience and compliance. I think it's significant that Rochester tells Jane on that first night that he was once her equal, before life dissipated him. Her equal in goodness. I think St. John sees the same thing in Jane - her goodness. I won't say "niceness" because it doesn't really mean anything any more, and certainly not what it meant then. But, the funny thing is that Jane resists and rebels against both of them. She rejects both their proposals (neither a clear proposal of marriage - one is a invitation to adultery, and the other a business contract). She makes it clear that marriage has to have love and legitimacy. Form and content. She is good, but she isn't nice and she isn't exactly kind. She's often quite mean. For good reasons, but still. She isn't who they think she is - and she knows that.</div><div>"I'm no angel," she tells Mr. Rochester, and he shouldn't expect her to be. The same is similar of St. John; Jane knows she can't become a saint alongside him; she can't turn her green, changeable eyes blue (like his). </div><div><br />
</div><div>And what I also find fascinating is that Jane does not begin as the heroine we should expect St. John and Rochester to love (especially not for her goodness). If we wanted the promise of that we would look to Helen Burns. She is closer to being the "good angel" or the helpmate that the two men rhapsodize about. Not Jane. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Jane is a rebellious, sensitive, overly-imaginative, willful, vengeful kid. I like her for it. But I think only Rochester is capable of liking her for it too. St. John tends to get a bad rap, and I think he does have a great understanding, but I think even if he can acknowledge those attributes in Jane, her elfin side, he would already expect her to curb it (just as she's spent most of her life doing). </div><div><br />
</div><div>Jane's greatest strength is remaining true to herself by learning how to control herself. Rochester can't (or won't) control his feelings, and St. John has so much control that he daily murders his feelings. I think Jane is the stair step between them, rather than simply the spoke. Jane has the potential to become Rochester or St. John. She could give in to her passions as she did when she was younger (that was for justice's sake) and the even more powerful motivator of love is very convincing. But she doesn't. She can sacrifice. She already even has a bit of a taste for self-mortification. She and St. John could be a pretty pair of masochists. She could spend her life in achieving something she already knows is impossible. She's already skilled in self-deprivation.</div><div><br />
</div><div>But she doesn't. But the only reason she doesn't is because of a miracle. For Jane, the right answer is to go with St. John and become the next thing - to bury that passionate part of her once and for all and realize that she really is formed for labor, not love. It's only though a miracle that she doesn't go down this road. </div><div><br />
</div><div>I think it's interesting that <i>The Eyre Affair</i> capitalizes off of this very feature. I think it's significant that Jane has that part of her nature that responds to St. John's powers of persuasion. I think sometimes there is something in that idea of being utterly obliterated in something else that is almost irresistible. </div><div><br />
</div><div>That's why the end of <i>Jane Eyre</i> always puzzles me. Most people know "reader, I married him" but they don't remember that the book actually ends with St. John's last letter. It always has intrigued me on a personal level. </div><div><br />
</div><div>I think if I had been Jane, I probably would have gone with St. John. That influence, the idea of a half sacrifice being unworthy, would most likely have swayed me at one point in my life, and at this point, I would likely have left both of them. It seems they both want something Jane can't give either way. </div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-92198187502532907932009-10-01T19:48:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:13:30.387-08:00Alice and the Cheshire CatI realized that there was something I'd been missing while reading <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i>, and that something finally became clear about a week ago. <br />
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</div><div>For many years I had blindly believed, or trusted, that the Cheshire Cat was an unbound entity within an already tenuously bound dreamworld, and that his movement and transparency were simply natural attributes and in accordance with his nature and function. But then, when I started to think about the moments that the Cheshire Cat reappears after he's met Alice in the woods, it dawned on me that he might be a figment of Alice's imagination (within a larger figment of imagination). For a great deal of his episodes, the Cat is only visible to Alice (though I think the Queen does eventually see him and thus ensues a long argument about how to behead the Cat since it is already separated from its body). I wondered then, would it be possible to read the Cat as a double of Alice? In other words, could Alice and the Cat be the same person in separate guises?</div><div><br />
</div><div>I find it telling that Alice first meets the Cat when she's trying to discover which way to go (after the mad tea party which has left her a bit disillusioned and frustrated, and during which her identity, reason, and values have been questioned by three mad persons already!). She's confused and she comes, aptly enough, to a crossroad. There in the tree, waiting for her, is the Cat. The Cat is unfettered and has absolutely no limitations within that world, while Alice is continuously hemmed in by other characters who either physically detain or trap her (like the Queen) or who criticize or make her doubt her own mind (like the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, the flowers, etc...) There are very few affirming characters - but Cheshire Cat, while not affirming exactly, is in some ways encouraging in that he is open-minded. He doesn't tell her which way to go, or question what she is, or try to tell her what she is in physical terms - he just tells her the one truth of Wonderland (which we would hope she was already beginning to work out for herself, and which she must have at least come to realize after the tea party) namely: everyone there is mad. </div><div><br />
</div><div>The Cat explains what madness is (i.e. acting the opposite of how one is expected to act, or against propriety) and defines (the only definition he offers) Alice as mad. Then the Cat continues to reappear at moments in which Alice is trying to behave according to the rules (for example, the croquet game) but is being frustrated by the unfairness of the circumstances. Alice tries playing by the rules, and the Cat appears and disrupts the rules - specifically making fun of the Duchess and the Queen (the two main cheaters). Then during the trial, when Alice is being unfairly judged, the Cat also reappears and disrupts the scene, focusing on the Queen and making fun of her and perplexing her by eluding her favorite punishment by his very nature. </div><div><br />
</div><div>If we were to imagine, for a moment, that Alice and the Cat are two different sides of a child's personality, we might see that Alice is the outer face of a well behaved child (who responds to things beyond its control by trying to be patient and logical) while the Cat is the more disruptive, inner side that responds to injustice by creating havoc, and eschews rules that it finds pedantic and ridiculous by making up its own and making fun of authority. Of course, Alice doesn't have to be the outer self and the Cat the inner self, it might just be two equal sides, or a blending that is virtually inseparable, as I think it is for almost all of us. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But it's been a while since I've read <i>Alice</i>, so don't take my word for it. Especially since I was too lazy to look any of this up.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So, all of that to say, I was thinking today about some remarks a friend made to me after class. She said that another girl told her that I have a "soothing voice" and I am "so calm" in general that I put people at ease, and that if she were my student, I would probably put her to sleep. I don't think she meant it in a mean way, and I didn't take it that way either, because I hope that I've become a better judge of character than that by this point. But the description sometimes rankles. I think it's fair to say that that is probably how most people perceive me: calm, rational, soothing, nice - these are the usual adjectives. My mom once said that, if she didn't know me, she would think, by my eyes alone, that I was a very calm, tranquil person (green is a soothing color). (She then made some snide comment about looks being so deceiving, etc... - thanks, Mom.)</div><div>Anyway, it's a common thing with me. I guess I do appear calm. Maybe too calm...</div><div><br />
</div><div>T. H. White writes in <i>The Once and Future King</i> (pg. 339 - see, I wasn't too lazy to look this one up):</div><div><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> "</span>But the curious thing was that under the king-post of keeping faith with himself and with others, [Lancelot] had a contradictory nature that was far from holy. His Word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented...People have odd reasons for ending up as saints"</div><div><br />
</div><div>I've always liked White's characterization of Lancelot; I feel like I can relate to it. My two favorite colors are red and green - not just apple red, or sage green - I mean crimson and sea-green; we're talking deep colors here. Serious stuff. I like them, even though they are opposites, and recently I realized that I like them equally. When I was younger I always gave the preference to red because I felt that it had more to recommend it. Red is the color of passion, assertion, aggression, blood, pugnacity, spirit - things that I value very highly because at one time I felt that I had them, and somewhere down the road I think that I lost them. Before, green was Drew's color (it's his favorite) so I never thought of claiming green for myself (and it hadn't occurred to me that I could have more than one favorite color without being a confused person). Drew and I split everything, instead of sharing. He takes math, I take English; he takes karate, I take theater; he drafts, I draw; he writes poetry, I sing, etc... We have an unspoken agreement that we don't compete with each other - we always pick our separate battle fields and compete against other people, but we don't encroach on each other. Whatever he chooses to be good at, I will choose the opposite (if there is such a thing). It was the same way with colors. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But now that I'm a grown up (or something resembling one) I have come to value green as much (and sometimes more) than I value red. Green is the color people associate with me (according to Lainey), for various reasons, I'm sure. Green is calm, alive, tranquil - basically everything that blue is except without being sad, and everything yellow is but without being (don't hate me, yellow-lovers) a little on the ridiculous side. Green is not a passionate color, though. At least, that's not how I see it. Green sort of thinks first before it acts, or most of the time it doesn't act - it waits. Not as much as blue, but it's still not an action color. I think. </div><div><br />
</div><div>So why the T. H. White quote? Basically, I think that people tend to have two (or more) sides to them (I won't go so far as to say 'personalities'), and I think that those sides aren't clearly separated, but rather they are a blend (on the inside I would be a blend of green (my outside color) and red (my inside color)) - which all sounds very weird, but I'm doing my best to "make it more sense". </div><div><br />
</div><div>I think people have different colors that blend to create who they are (metaphorically speaking). But I don't know if everyone's colors are opposites. In other words, I think that many people have complementary colors in their natures - purple and pink, blue and green, yellow and orange, red and gold, silver and indigo. I think a lot of people are balanced, and that perhaps less (though I don't know, the numbers might be equal) have contrary, contradictory natures. Like Lancelot, and, I think, like me. Maybe everyone has some aspect of contradiction. Probably so. </div><div><br />
</div><div>My contradictions tend to lie along the lines of red and green. Lancelot's Word, for me, would be what most people perceive as my ability or predilection for liking people, for being "nice," essentially, and for looking on the bright side and always remaining calm, poised (as, today, one person even went so far as to say "perfect"). I do these things often; they are the green part of me, the visible part. But the only reason they exist is because of the invisible, red part. Because, truth be told, I don't naturally like people, and I don't view things optimistically at all, and I'm a very moody person. And as for being "perfect," which I take her to have meant it in a Mr. Rogers' everything's-great-in-the-neighborhood kind of way, that's simply not true at all. </div><div><br />
</div><div>So, I want to introduce, for a brief and narcissistic moment, the red side of me. In class today, a classmate criticized the idea that a teacher should "like" her own writing first in order to then like all her students' writing - all this liking being requisite to good teaching. I agreed with that statement, so I was surprised at the contempt he had for the idea of liking being a necessary thing in teaching. I think his standpoint was that bad writing is bad writing, and no amount of hippy-dippy "I'm OK, you're OK" is going to change that, with which I totally agree.</div><div><br />
</div><div>However, I think it is important to like other people and their writing, and to look at the world with a view focused on the potential in things rather than their reality. I defend this position mainly because I agree that bad writing is bad writing, and frankly speaking, to my mind, there is no such thing as good writing. </div><div><br />
</div><div>The reason I look for the potential in people and things is not because I naturally view the world through a rosy lens but precisely because I don't. I am an extremely critical person - almost to the point of being hyper-critical. When I first meet a person, I involuntarily begin to make a note of all their physical imperfections (which is why I can remember the eye color of almost every person I know), and I make notes about their personalities as well; whether they are perceptive or dull, quick-witted or dense, starving for attention or distant, a complainer or a joker. Most people fall into these categories - the girl who called me "perfect" and "calm" is a complainer, by the way. It is because I see these things in everything I look at that I try not to look at them, but instead see what they could be. </div><div><br />
</div><div>It's the same with writing, acting, pretty much everything. When I hear someone sing, I think "oh, that could have been better - not enough breath, a little flat" - when I watch a show, I almost can't enjoy it because I'm so busy thinking about how forced the acting is and wishing that the actor would just let go and be (I have seen perhaps one or two performances in my entire life that I would classify as "good" acting). All of this to say, to me there is only a black and white standard in the end. Things, concepts, theories, and people are either perfect, or they are irrelevant. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Can you see why I'm a Presbyterian?</div><div><br />
</div><div>If the standard for good is perfection, nothing is good. Which is why, when someone asks me how they did, I say "you were great". I'm not lying and I'm not being fake - because I'm not judging them by my standard of good and bad - what has happened is that I've enjoyed something because of the potential I saw in it and the moments in which it came close to anticipating perfection. And because I think there are things that are more important than being bad or good or perfect or relevant: if I like something, that's enough for me. And because I like it, instead of judging it, there will be room for it to grow into something else. </div><div><br />
</div><div>So, what I'm trying to get at, in the end, is that because of this standard I have, and my own natural disinclination to get close or bother about other people, I have worked hard to become a person who encourages others and tries to build meaningful relationships. That's my Word. And I have it because I need it. It's the bad people who need principles to restrain them, and it's the selfish misanthropes who need friends. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But I like my red and green selves equally. Even if they are at odds with one another, and cause me a lot of confusion and frustration with myself. I think they give me an insight into things that I don't think I would trade for a more balanced disposition (even though I'm sure my Mom and Dad would heartily disagree!). And if people want to see me as calm, it doesn't really do me or them any harm in the long run, does it? I figure if they like my green side, they'll eventually like red me too. </div><div><br />
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</div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-48405352793700314862009-09-27T14:40:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:13:42.622-08:00Anything Goes With VampiresI couldn't stop thinking about this today, so I decided to write it all down here. On the way back from Church, Sarah and I realized we were missing a prime opportunity for stardom and fortune by not seeing the full potential of the recent Vampire-mania. <br />
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</div><div>Anything Goes With Vampires (because they go with anything, apparently). Here are some snippets from the show:</div><div><br />
</div><div>In <i>Night, Not Day</i>, the Vampire lead serenades the lovely young ingenue with this heart-felt ballad:</div><div><i><br />
</i></div><div>Night, not Day!</div><div>Under the bite of me.</div><div>There's an Oh! such a hungry yearning,</div><div>Burning inside of me!</div><div>And this torment won't be through</div><div>Til you let me spend your life draining blood from you!</div><div>Not Day, but Night!</div><div>Night, not Day!</div><div><br />
</div><div>The world-weary Vampiress, Reno, sings of her attraction for the young (not yet turned vampire), Billy, in <i>I Get A Kick Out of You</i>:</div><div><br />
</div><div>My story is much too sad to be told, </div><div>But practically everything leaves me totally cold.</div><div>The only exception I know is the case, </div><div>When I'm out on a quiet (hunting) spree,</div><div>Fighting vainly the old ennui (and village priests),</div><div>And I suddenly turn and see...you're fabulous neck.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I get no kick from my victims' pain,</div><div>To kill or maul doesn't thrill me at all.</div><div>So tell me, why should it be true?</div><div>That I get a kick out of you?</div><div><br />
</div><div>It's genius. Clearly. Sarah and I will be millionaires in no time.</div><div><br />
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</div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-72619799155977216262009-09-02T17:38:00.000-07:002010-02-05T23:00:50.381-08:00New Romantic - movies?Not to be confused with New Romanticism.<br />
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</div><div>I watched <i>500 Days of Summer</i> with Ansley yesterday. I liked the movie, but I had had a sneaking suspicion that I would.<br />
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</div><div>Not to spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it, but the two young people do not end up together in the end, which was wonderfully refreshing. I don't really dislike it when people do end up together (which seems to be the majority of the time) but it does make me feel very desperately uneasy when they do. I feel like I have just watched something pretty but unreal, and it's a feeling similar to when you know you have a test coming up but you decide to read a book instead. It's nice to read the book, but after you're through you just feel panicked because it wasn't what you needed to read to prepare you for the coming ordeal. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Something like that. Anyway, it's hard to communicate these days. At least, it is for me. I liked the movie. I was glad that it went the way it did, and above all else it was very funny. Summer's motivation was often difficult to guess, but she made a lot of sense. Mostly I just felt sorry for the boy, and I wished again that I had been able to be that easy around another person. I talked about this with Ansley last night - it's that triangle thing. </div><div><br />
</div><div>I was not completely right about the Romantics. Their sense of "Romantic Irony" was something I left out, and something I really like. Apparently romantic irony is the sense that one wants to make sense of the world, but ultimately one knows that everything will resort to chaos. But one has to keep trying. (Where did one jump in from, all of a sudden?) Entropy. I like that because I feel things are that way to a certain extent. But I wish I could express myself with greater clarity.</div><div><br />
</div><div>It was a long day. At the end of it, I felt like hiding in my room and never speaking to anyone again. This was partly due to hormones, I think, but also partly due to just feeling sad. And being around people too often in two days. Byron expressed the idea that when in solitude we are<i> least</i> alone. I like to be alone to recharge, but I still wish I didn't feel that I constantly miscommunicate with other people. That's the wrong kind of solitude. But it's also life, I guess.</div><div><br />
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</div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-66822152225471301872009-08-27T06:18:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:14:23.535-08:00New Romanticism? What's the World Coming To?"New Romanticism" is a phrase that, as far as I know, was coined by the writers of my Post-modernism text book (circa Junior year of undergrad) to describe the movement they felt was likely to succeed our current (is it?) state of Post-Modernism. I don't know if we are still living in a post-modern age, or if New Romanticism has already begun - probably we won't know these things until I'm 80 years old. What a waste. But the point is that I agree with the idea that New Romanticism is our next (current? freshly taken?) step.<br />
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</div><div>But what is New Romanticism? Well, if it's anything like anything else (which I guess it is), then it's bound to be a reaction against post-modernism. But then, what's post-modernism? I think (tentatively) that post-modernism is the impulse to embrace chaos in the light of overwhelming, institutionalized and sanctioned insanity. For instance, since the post-moderns realized that the world has gone mad and that nothing can stop entropy, and that the tragedy is that we are all reasonable beings in an unreasonable world, they decided that they should just stop trying to fight the feeling and go with the madness. Accept the chaos. It's the anti-Alice position. Which, to my thinking, is like hiding in a hole inside your mind, but without trying to stay yourself in that hole, which is what Alice somehow achieved. If she hadn't, she probably would have stayed in Wonderland, which is where the post-moderns are. Except that Wonderland might be the world as we know it. Or something.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Anyway, if the world is mad and you don't want to embrace chaos, what do you do? The original Romantics didn't think the world was exactly mad, just that it was corrupt (which is part of the post-modern realization as well, I think). The thing is, they didn't feel helpless in the face of overwhelming odds; they felt that they could change the world to suit them. It's terribly egocentric, I know, that's always been the weird flaw/strength of Romanticism - it's what my eighteenth century lit professor hates and what my nineteenth century lit professor and my Blake scholar professor admire. It's a double edged sword. Wordsworth thought that the mind of man was everything, and that when it was somehow married to the outer universe (Nature) it would produce some sort of perfect state (like nirvana, but the goal would be creation). I think that's what he's saying. Another facet of Romantics is that they are difficult to understand, mostly because their language is so cryptic, metaphysical, or autobiographical to the point of intelligibility. They're always looking inside themselves for the answers, or just the questions. Byron and Jane Austen are pleasant exceptions to that, I think because their share in the Romantic balance of irony and passion (?) is tilted toward irony; Byron knows we're doomed, but he keeps going anyway, not for a hope of changing life or achieving wisdom, but just because he wants to keep going. Austen goes a step further in abandoning the passion/imagination/metaphysical part altogether and just keeping her sense of humor through the irony. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But back to it. What would a New Romantic be like? Well, I think that the current state of the world (and by world I mean the U.S. since I don't know much about the rest of the world, which is anti-Romantic as well as just plain ignorant of me) seems to be one of reeling, discombobulated reaction to the sudden inundation of technology and information. <i>Rent</i> calls the 90's "the information age" and, alternatively, "the isolated age" - which seems like a paradox until you realize it's completely true. We live in a world, as Sarah was saying only the other day, in which you can talk to anyone and get all the information you could possibly desire, and yet you will be spending most of your time alone with your computer (or your guitar, if you're Roger). The Romantics reacted to the French Revolution, the hope of some new world order that collapsed into chaos, so that failure haunts them, and they are sandwiched between that and the Napoleonic Wars, where the government takes a strong arm but doesn't always make the best choices, and if you don't play the game, you probably won't be heard. The Romantics realized, through all of this, that being people of the world was important - Byron traveled all over Europe. We talk now about becoming Global, but a lot of us don't really want to get involved with other countries or think about the world in terms of something larger than the U.S. Which is frightening, and I understand it. Who can comprehend everything? I'm not saying that Byron was really that into other people and cultures, really I think he was a snob, but the idea is there.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So, what I think New Romanticism will be like, artistically, politically, ecumenically, hygienically, etc...is this: New Romantics will be more globally conscious, trying to connect the world physically rather than just 'informationally', and maybe even culturally; they'll be more radical in some ways, probably not traditionally conservative, but they'll appreciate the traditions (our Judeo-Christian heritage, as the text books like to call it), or maybe they won't; I think art will become more fantasy centered, perhaps - will be unafraid to experiment in mixing genres and using older forms, stories, inspirations, etc...; I think the New Romantics will be artistic scientists and scientific artists; they'll want to change the world and they'll be egocentric enough to think that they can - and I think that we've already started to see that - to my mind that's the Pres. in a nutshell. They're going to be so Romantic - and there will be those who ascribe to the ironic side of it, but I think the New Romanticists will be much more ironic in their Romanticism than their predecessors generally were. But to be honest, I think we'll need the moving/shaking power of Romantics in order to improve the things that the post-moderns know will never be improved because like all institutionalized philosophies and regimented ideas, they've become a Catch 22 system. (Like our educational system, or so I hear from Sarah) - or from the current literary critics who think that the Humanities won't survive in the University. Where will we go? </div><div><br />
</div><div>We'll have to look to the Transcendentalists, who really are just Romantics in disguise. </div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-89549537196685252702009-08-20T20:14:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:14:38.000-08:00If you can't read, you're stupid.That seemed to be the major theme of the video I just watched in my teaching practicum. The video was a compilation of images and voice overs (I assume) with material taken from a 1940's/50's study of members of a mostly oral, rural community in Stalinist Russia.<br />
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</div><div>The people of a small village, most of whom were illiterate or just learning to read, were given a series of questions and intelligence tests, interviewed, and surveyed within an inch of their lives - all to prove that illiteracy equals stupidity (or, at the least, dreadful close-mindedness). But the video, while amusing at times, was wholly unconvincing as an argument for the advocation of teaching writing, and did not really prove its initial point about literacy.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I am a new writing teacher, and I'll be the first to support the establishment that pays my bills and keeps me fed, as well as the pastime that brings me hours of enjoyment. However, this video fails to convince me that literacy is important on the basis that it vastly improves uncultivated human intelligence. </div><div><br />
</div><div>First of all, intelligence tests, as a rule, are simply useless. Standardized tests meant to prove college performance (not intelligence, though many people seem to equate the two) such as the SAT or the GRE have (I'm not making this up) about 0.9% accuracy when compared with actual college performance. [That's from the statistics of a psychology department using only psychology students in the study, but still - the point remains that it's just not a major factor in prediction.] One wonders why colleges continue to use them, except that they are a useful weeding tool. What they actually weed out, I have no idea. I admit that I don't know the accuracy of actual intelligence tests, but I do know that when you try to pin down a sociologist or psychologist (or any person, for that matter) on what intelligence actually means, he or she very rarely has a concise answer. Most of the time we talk about different types of intelligence: emotional intelligence, spatial intelligence, verbal intelligence, etc... When asked how to define intelligence, well, how would you define it? I can't. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But if that isn't enough to convince you (and I don't know why it should be), lets examine the actual tests administered to these farmers, factory workers, and laborers. First, they are asked to put things into a grouping, to sort these objects: a hammer, a saw, a log, an axe. Now, we are told (by my teacher, and afterward by the moderator) that the right grouping (and by right, I assume this means intelligent) is the hammer, saw and axe (tools) opposing the log, which does not belong. We are given the dialogue of three women who sorted the objects this way: they put the log, axe and saw together (because one can cut the log with the axe or saw), and then they put the hammer, saw, and log together (because if one has a saw, one doesn't need an axe). I understand the conventional way to classify these tools, not because I actually use any of them, but because I've been through years of public school and have learned how to classify things in accordance with standardized tests which judge standardized thinking. What gets to me is that we assume that people who sort things rationally, and not, perhaps, purely logically, are therefore less intelligent. Can someone explain this to me? Why are their answers, based on practical experience, and very creative in terms of the possibilities of the objects as groups, are less intelligent than the purely logical, abstract game of classifying the tools?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Another question, which I completely fail to see the use in, was, "What is a tree?". The questioners wanted the people to define a tree. Not getting the responses they wanted, they told the people to describe a tree for a person who had never seen one, to which the woman being questioned answered, "Then why is he asking about trees? If he's never seen them?" Everyone laughed, including me, but the point is entirely relevant and so much more perceptive than just describing/defining a tree (who could really define a tree? What would you use for criteria?). How could a person who'd never seen a tree (didn't know they existed, we'll assume) ask for its definition?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Because when it comes right down to it, all these intelligence tests and writing games are really nothing more than logic games. They are exercises in syllogisms. All bears who live in cold climates are white. All of North America is cold. North American bears are white. - When they gave these first two premises to the laborers, the laborers replied, "I don't know what color bears are in America. I've never been there, so how I can I tell? You should only speak about things you know." The literati criticize this, amazed that these simple people can't understand the game - the syllogism. But I think a more discerning person would realize that isn't the entire story. Because the syllogism is useless - it has no practical application. The laborers are intelligent enough to realize that there is no practical use, and realistically, how could they be expected to know the color of bears they've never seen? To me, this is the kind of thinking we want in the writing classes - it seems like the kind of thinking we've spent the last week (and academia has spent the last century) trying to produce. Reality checks - real, applied logic. Not taking things on hearsay - waiting for actual evidence. A syllogism is wonderful in a synthetic argument, but it won't help a bit in actual analysis and that's what we're supposedly trying to teach. In actual analysis, I would not jump to a conclusion unless I had proof. A syllogism is (excepting geometry) not proof of anything. </div><div><br />
</div><div>None of the examples convinced me in the least. And, most curious of all, towards the end of the movie the words to an anthem (almost a hymn) praising Stalin rolled over the scenes. The words were something like (pardon my paraphrasing), "Thou staunch heart, thou fount of joy, thou beautiful wisdom, Stalin, light of the world," and so on, in that vein. I supposed the purpose of that was to show us that uneducated people will follow anything because they lack the intelligence and the critical mindset that individualism (itself a product of literacy and education) brings. But this makes me laugh, and surely you do too, because it's very obvious that these people didn't write that hymn, were not capable of writing it. Which begs the question: who did? Who wrote that song? A writer. An academic. A literate, well-read person. Or at least, someone well versed in hymns and eulogies. So, where does that leave us? It is wrong to follow the status quo without question when that status quo is a lie or is wrong - but who is the more intelligent: the lemming who jumps off the cliff or the lemming who writes the "jump here" sign? Educated people write lies that they know are lies, and they sell them as truths to simple people who will believe them on the basis of trust. I'm not excusing ignorance, I'm just trying to point out that the ignorant people in that video seem to me to be smarter than the wise people who made it.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Anyway, sometimes academia just gets to me. A lot of people seem to equate a diploma with knowledge, a high IQ score with actual intelligence, literacy with understanding. I understand why - there is a correlation between these things - but not, necessarily, causation. I know many people who've never been to college who are better read and capable of more precise literary analysis than a lot of the pompous, abstract goofballs I've had to read these last two years. I'm not bitter - I just think that two things are very true: namely, that if we want literature to survive into the next century, we should focus on teaching it and making it relevant instead of trying to beat dead horses or participate in the current literary criticism circus acts and (2) just because no one understands you, it doesn't make you an artist (or intelligent). </div><div><br />
</div><div>And all the questions they asked, to which they didn't receive the right answers, just remind me of the lesson we learned only last week: if you aren't getting the answer you wanted, it's probably because you are asking the wrong question. </div><div><br />
</div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-10671177177028758202009-08-06T16:03:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:14:57.633-08:00Some rambling thoughts<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57WtNRoj91yeLwXdlBZfpHY8WwUWBo1ra2E7aAKhUkYRwf9AQQhGNrZ3_zNQWPIuVMnO8XFeAfirq1xGkjg2egWKJNoB9st00-UAB3cCtmrDXBI3TbcAc2yyPgTa9qq65itrdHagCKYFS/s1600-h/tree+bed.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366990921595097874" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57WtNRoj91yeLwXdlBZfpHY8WwUWBo1ra2E7aAKhUkYRwf9AQQhGNrZ3_zNQWPIuVMnO8XFeAfirq1xGkjg2egWKJNoB9st00-UAB3cCtmrDXBI3TbcAc2yyPgTa9qq65itrdHagCKYFS/s200/tree+bed.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 200px;" /></a><br />
On this 6th day of August. <br />
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</div><div>I really like this bed. I want Lainey's Ninja in residence to make it for me, but not until I have a house to put it in. </div><div><br />
</div><div>It's been a really interesting week. Lainey and I have started plans for a theater/theater company, which has really made me excited for the future. </div><div><br />
</div><div>But the point of the rambling thoughts is, of course, something better than a list of my week's activities. So. </div><div>Let's talk about books.<br />
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</div><div>I want to re-read <i>The Cider House Rules</i> and the ranscella and Tain bo Cuailgne again. And I want to adapt those for the stage.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I also wonder why it is that so many villains have dark hair and green eyes....</div><div><br />
</div><div>And Propagators. I was thinking today about my brother and I remembered the plays he wrote in high school and college while he was studying computer science and playing Mr. Is in the computer lab. I have numerous copies of "The Historically (in)Accurate Titanic," which is a masterpiece, but I really wish I could find "A Rose for Miss Emily the Musical" which I so much enjoyed. Very catchy tunes and good lyrics as well. I've noticed a trend in my brother's writing - namely that he kills off all of the characters in the third act and then resurrects them for the fourth and fifth. In "Titanic" they all die of food poisoning. In "Miss Emily" there is an epic gun battle and only Orphan Annie survives. Deus ex machina in the form of Bill Gates in a boat made of money saves the Titanic and Leonardo di Caprio (who is himself in the play), but I don't remember how "Miss Emily" ends.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I mentioned propagators because I remembered the screen play Drew and his friends were working on his junior year (I think). It was called "Night of the Propagators" and was a <i>vaguely</i> Indiana Jones-ish concept based around the character of "Agamemnon Jones" who, due to tragic hubris, released the millenniums old curse of the "Propagators" (they are blow-up crocodiles like you put in your pool) and must destroy the Queen of the Propagators before the night is over, otherwise the world is doomed or some such, because she keeps, you guessed it, propagating propagators. I would have liked to have seen it in production - there was a lot of potential.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I think all those scripts we used to write, and the games we used to come up with, are what inspired me to do the Twilight Parody. They are a good way of releasing stress and getting a really good laugh out of my friends. Drew liked the Twilight Parody - he and Donna were the first persons to see it, last Christmas.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I'm reading <i>Coraline</i> right now. So far, it's good. </div>SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-63249996400454753412009-08-02T10:41:00.000-07:002009-08-02T10:53:06.348-07:00SermonsI watched Coraline last night with my mom, dad, and the dog. I really liked it, even if it was somewhat predictable. With Neil Gaiman, it seems to be something you just don't worry about. I think this is because his stories are like the old stories where you know what happens and that's part of it, but it never takes away from the story or the suspense. Like a fairy tale.<br /><br />Two sermons in a week; more than I'm used to. One at the funeral of a friend and the other this morning. Different deliveries, but essentially the same message: unconditional love. Sarah and I agreed; it's a difficult thing.<br /><br />Coraline had the same message - so perhaps it's three sermons this week.<br />Maybe the Lord's trying to tell me something.SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-52296159357835768672009-07-31T15:15:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:15:09.955-08:00Dreams I Had Last NightI dyed my hair black again yesterday. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but I think it's better when it's longer and black. Then it makes me feel Celtic for some reason. Mostly I just like the smell; it reminds me of cherries.<br />
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It's Friday and I just finished my last exam for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">UGA</span> - the courtesy of a split-level course on Shakespeare. I walked out of the class on Monday in silent protest to having my time wasted. Then I realized that I had nothing better to do, so I suppose I should have stayed and watched my professor hunt for his page number a little longer. I've decided that I like him. I probably shouldn't have walked out. It wasn't so much that the class was boring (it wasn't), I was just in a bad mood and I realized I didn't need to be at school. I don't normally do that, because I know you should stick things out. But I think this was one of those cases where it was alright to leave. Sometimes you just have to.<br />
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I had two dreams last night that were extremely vivid, visceral, and slightly disturbing to me. After thinking about it I'm just going to post the second one.<br />
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In the second dream, I was a child, and my family (not my real family, of course) lived in a wooded area in a cabin, sometime in the early eighteenth-century, in a place reminiscent of Salem, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Massachusetts</span>. It was winter, and it was night time, and I was scared because there were these things floating in the air that looked like tiny <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">crossworks</span> of fiber or flax, so thin you could only see them when the light was right. They were actually people, aliens, I think, but I was afraid, even though my dad told me not to hurt them; I tried to hit them out of the air and break them apart. I sucked them into my lungs and in reparation for that they started to kill me by cutting me up from the inside. Eventually they scratched my face off.<br />
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After that I wasn't the child, but I saw what happened to her. The aliens, in a larger, more human-like form, dressed in long robes that remind me of the judge's robes the puritans wear, brought a platter to our house. The platter had the face of a man on it, skinned off of his head, but his face could talk even without a body, and move a little bit. He talked a lot and shouted about wanting his body back and that it wasn't fair. They told my mother that they would save my (the child's) life if she agreed to let them put this man's face on my (the child's) body. My mother (who was a very old Michelle Pfeiffer) looked at the man beside her who wasn't my dad (I think he was her lover even though they looked remarkably similar), and she smiled at the alien men.<br />
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And they put that man's face on the girl's body. She was grown up by now. I could see in this double mirror reflection what she would have looked like with her own face. She looked like Drew Barrymore and had beautiful red hair. But the man wasn't happy and neither was the girl. They could hear each other, but they shared one body. Eventually they somehow fell in love with each other.<br />
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I assume that it ended happily. The whole thing struck me, upon waking, as a perfect analogy for how I think about marriage. But also, I realize that a lot of this was reminiscent of <i>North and South </i>(Gaskell) with the whole flax floating through the air and the lung damage.<br />
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The End.SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-29157159781360582802009-06-04T06:34:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:15:26.585-08:00Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesI didn't mean to turn this blog into a book review place, but since books make up such a huge part of my life, I suppose it's only natural.<br />
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This week I am reading (before I have to go back to school tomorrow and start on Shakespeare) a delightful novel called 'Pride and Predjudice and Zombies' by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. And it is precisely what it sounds like: the complete text of Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> with every fourth or fifth speech having an insertion of zombies into the original text. Genius.<br />
Someone gets paid to do this.<br />
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Now, I am enjoying it tremendously, all the while being an Austen fan, a fan of the book by itself, and a hater of zombies in general. So in consideration of all these facts, this book is pretty remarkable to have kept me so amused. But I think it is the very ridiculousness of the thing that is so attractive.<br />
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However, I do have a few problems with it. First of all, re-writing Austen is all very well and good, but when we do it (I'm going to use a snooty tone of voice for a little while, because it's lots of fun), we should always take care to remember to use our prepositions correctly. Incorrect preposition usage is one of the first things that tips you off that someone doesn't really get the language they're aping (even if it's their own language), por exemplo:<br />
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Mr. Grahame-Smith uses the phrase, "dispense of" when usually we would say we dispense with something. And there are many more. This isn't a biggy, most likely the editor either didn't care or didn't know, or a combination of the two, and for an enjoyable sort of book about zombies, who really cares? Not me. Anyway, it's not as if I've never used a preposition incorrectly on my life; I'm quite sure that it happens all the time over these parts. But there's simply no use beating on top of the bush, is there?<br />
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The second thing is these strange illustrations which seem to depict all of the characters dressed about a hundred years later than the book is set. The women wear spats, boots, Victorian looking jackets and corsets, whereas the men are dressed relatively correctly to period. I wouldn't make a fuss over this either, except that someone must have realized something was amiss (or so one would think) when they saw that the illustration for the cover of the book (a highly creative re-working of a zombie version of a period portrait) is not at all the same period as the illustrations inside the book. How did this escape us? Oh, well. I mean, it's not as if they made a recent movie adaptation of the novel with a huge budget and big name actors like Kiera Knightly that are actually mainstream and that most people might go to watch becuase the romance has been revamped with an injection of extra-sappiness. If only. If only.<br />
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And third, what is with these ridiculous fight scenes? It's true that perhaps an Austen affecionado might not be up on his or her martial knowledge, but a zombie expert (or a zombie writer) ought to know a little something about the 'deadly arts,' right? Take this example (or don't), from the 21st chapter, in which the sisters, out for a country walk with their muskets (circa 1799-ish, if we go by the original) come across a herd of zombies (which must mean more than two) which they dispatch with ease and rapidity. First of all, even late 18th century muskets are notoriously slow to load and inaccurate. Even with five of them they would still have to load and re-load on a staggered basis in order to adequately shoot all of the zombies. It's not as though they have a volley of fire from a milita, or the accuracy afforded by later guns. I can understand Lydia's waiting to fire her musket until the zombie bride was close enough to have its head catch on fire - the proximity allows for greater accuracy in the shot - but if the zombie is already that close, how is Lydia expected to reload in time to shoot something else? Tsk, tsk.<br />
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It seems to me that zombies, in general, are not as cool as vampires and werewolves. They are just, unless I am very much mistaken (and I haven't read up on them at all, so this is entirely possible) animated dead bodies. They seem to be killed quite easily. Where is the fun in all of that? Is it because there are a lot of them? Maybe they are like the perfect enemy foot soldiers in war - droves and hordes of them swarm you, and you get to relish hacking your way through all of them without guilt over their being alive or hurt. It's like a dream come true for the hack and slash rpg-ers... I begin to see the winsomeness of zombies, I suppose.<br />
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Anyway, I highly recommend the book.SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1416828198327485259.post-46287191013387857692009-05-20T15:01:00.000-07:002010-02-05T21:15:38.382-08:00I want some chocolate or A Short Treatise on Peter Pan.<span style="font-size: 85%;">Yes, I do. My American Lit teacher gave me some notes on last semester's paper (which I wrote in one night and earned a B- on, which I totally deserved. It was crap.) I'm kicking myself, but there's only so long you can kick yourself before your foot gets tired. So, suffice it to say, I'm going to try to be much more to the point and economical with my writing from here on out - in other words, let's cut out the B.S. and say exactly what we mean. No more shilly-shallying.</span><br />
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There's something I want to address that has come to my attention lately. And that is - what is with all these Peter Pan sequels? Why don't people understand something so perfect as Peter Pan?<br />
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Now, L has been kind enough to let me borrow two of her Peter Pan prequels, <i>Peter and the Starcatchers (PSC)</i> and <i>Captain Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth (CH:ANY)</i>. I also recently read the 'official' and authorized sequel to Barrie's <i>Peter Pan</i> (like it needs one), <i>Peter Pan in Scarlet (PPS)</i>. Well, alright. They're all pretty fun reads. And creative. My goodness - 10points for creativity. But.<br />
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The only adaptation of Barrie's original Peter Pan that comes close to capturing the spirit and the heart of it is the 2003 film 'Peter Pan' - it is absolutely wonderful. Peter is Peter and Hook is Hook. This is the thing that is missing from these other adaptations (except maybe <i>PPS</i>.) It's the characters that make 'Peter Pan' work, because they have so much truth in them, and so does the book.<br />
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The problem is that a lot of the sequel, and especially the prequel, writers want to give Peter, Hook, and Wendy horrible childhoods (or early childhoods), and twisted adventures, or, in the case of Hook, truly sadistic personalities. I suppose they do this in order to reinvent the characters, to make them dark and tragic, or to explain why Hook is a sadistic monster and why Peter is an egotistical thrill-seeker. But the real Pan and Hook don't need these explanations. Barrie's Pan is stronger and truer and tougher than any of these tortured children with neglectful parents and abusive nannies, or school bullies and slave masters. They have moments of doubt and fright. Peter is never afraid. Neither is Hook. Teenage romances and 'why doesn't mommy love me' are not issues for them. (And even though 'Peter Pan' (2003) includes these it does it in the subtle way that Barrie's original work includes them. Those elements are there - they just aren't in thrown in our faces.)<br />
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When I read these new adventures, I'm very into them, but I find myself thinking, 'the real Peter would have already stolen the trunk, the real Hook would have already found a ship without all this fuss, or the real Wendy would be far too sensible to do that sort of thing.' I can't help it, because it's true. Maybe all these new writers are trying to make Peter <i>their</i> Peter, but I like things to be as they are. And Peter is Peter, no matter who or what you want him to be. That's why he's Peter Pan.<br />
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But I still like reading about him in other books.SMFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09892350376281189669noreply@blogger.com6