"The Last Blog"

I really wish that I could be creative and say that this isn't the last blog but merely a continuation of what we have already done, but I know that I won't be the first to do that. I wish that I could think of some clever and poetic way to cover all of the things that we've done without returning to the same redundant phrase over and over again. I wish I were smarter and could blow everyone away with some final thoughts on what I have learned in this class and how it has profoundly changed my life and that I will never be the same person that I was when I first stepped into class on January 15.

Sadly I feel as if I cannot escape the vicious circle that seems to be entrapping me every time that I try to blog for this class. I know that others have said what I wish to say far better than I could ever say them, that as I sit here struggling to type each and every word of these two small paragraphs, another student has, in the same span of time, written a blog longer than all of mine put together that incorporates everything that we have done throughout the entire year in class. Slowly I feel my inspiration for this blog slipping away as I come closer and closer to actually trying to explain what exactly I learned this year.

In the end I can only hope to touch the poetics of Joyce and Rushdie, Beckett and Nooteboom, Eliot and Shakespeare. I have struggled, often blindly, through class hoping for some moment of brilliant inspiration that seemed like it would never come. I have read blogs that put into words what I had been feeling but could never quite express. I had hoped that this being my fourth class with Dr. Sexson that I would have finally been able to break through with my blogs and dazzle others with my brilliant insights into the books that we had read in class. This being somewhere around my fourteenth blog and knowing that Sam probably has closer to fifty by now, I can, regrettably say that I have once again fallen short of my goal.

Now I catch myself staring at the paragraphs above. The writer reminds me so much of Samuel Beckett, who I truly hated for his brutal and wintry tone. I get the feeling that something of the man may have rubbed off on me while I wasn't paying attention.

In all honesty those first few paragraphs came in a spark of inspiration that I feel is slowly receding into the depths of my mind again. I can only add that I hope this Beckettesk writing that I scribbled above is somehow the winter of my own style and that through it I can gain the inspiration that I have sought all along.

Maybe that is what this class has taught me then, that each of us goes through our own cycles of death and rebirth, of knowledge and ecstasy, pain and disillusionment. As I type these words, I feel them coming more and more easily again, as if my mind has only been waiting for the right time, the proper catalyst, to awaken to its full potential, to spread its wings and soar into the clouds where dreams are reality and there exists an ocean of stories.

I must admit that I kind of like this new feeling of knowledge and understanding that has come over me, but with that comes the realization that perhaps there is more that needs to be discovered. In the end, my hope is that this class has given me the inspiration to reach higher, to excel where before mediocrity was enough, to begin again and know the place for the first time.

Term Paper

I have already mentioned my fascination with the symbols for the rose and the yew tree in a previous blog, and so I intend to write a term paper on the topic. Here is my thesis paragraph:

In life we are often confronted with the possibility of death, which is not a happy thought, but it is something that we have to live with every day. Many however cope with the idea of death through faith, a faith that will lead them to immortality, whether that is through constant rebirth or a single one. Often, these religions use symbols to show their promises. Two of the more powerful images used in religion are the yew tree and the rose. Both are, in their own ways, beautiful reminders of life, celebrations of the wonders of the world we live in. In attempting to understand what they mean to us, we can better understand ourselves and look forward to a brighter future.

The Rose and the Yew

While reading through "The Four Quartets" I noticed that Eliot mentions two things almost above all else. The first is the rose, and the second is the yew tree.

In class we discussed the rose as a symbol of love and romance, even carnal desire. It is the symbol of the immediacy of passion and love. Perhaps that is why Eliot links it with "Little Gidding" and his idea of fire. After all, do we not often say that we burn with passion or that love is kindled.

On the other end of the spectrum is the yew tree, a symbol of immortality, of death and rebirth. It is almost the perfect symbol for the entire book where the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Everything comes around to a perfect circle.

The two symbols together form the perfect image, the immortality of love. No longer is it a fleeting feeling that burns hot and bright for a second before finally disappearing almost as if it were not there, but it burns eternally, purifying everything it touches and leaving it as if born anew.

In the end, I wonder if this poem is not Eliot's faith coming to the surface. It is said that Christ was crucified on a cross made of yew. That the yew symbolizes his mortality, perhaps the rose then is the undying love of Eliot's savior. He does not share it openly, perhaps, because he thinks that only those who can wade through the muck are truly deserving of the message.

Transmutation of the Soul

Since we have been talking about the transmutation of the soul in the last few classes and how that was connected to The Alchemist, I found myself returning to a previous class where we mentioned the soul. In major author's, we discussed the idea of the soul as a butterfly. Apparently many ancient civilizations thought that butterflies were either wandering souls or connected to the creation of new souls. In other words, everytime a butterfly came out of its cocoon, a new person was born somewhere.

It's interesting that ancients would use the butterfly as the symbol for the soul, as if they knew the connection between the transformation that the soul must go through in life and the transformation that a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly.

I am imagining Plato explaining to one of his students the importance of knowledge and the transformation of the soul into something higher, an angel.

"We must remember how to fly," he tells his pupil, we'll call him Aristotle, who looks on in confusion at what the old man has just said.

"How can we learn to fly, Master?" Aristotle asks, still befuddled.

"Why, simply by remembering all the other things that we have forgotten. It is only after we remeber everything else that we can regrow our wings and take flight," replies the teacher, as if it were obivious.

"Will you teach me to fly, sir?" the boy ask eagerly.

Plato stares at his star student for a long moment as if he has asked the stupidest question. "It is not my place to teach you how to fly boy," he says finally. "You must learn on your own."

With these mysterious words, Plato leaves Aristotle to his own musings.

So we are all trying to transform ourselves into something better. Much like the young Aristotle, we crave the guidance of another to show us where to go. But the butterfly does not seek any help. It tranforms through its own power into something far greater than it was before. Where it was once chained to the earth, now it soars into the sky. It remembers how to fly and becomes the angel.

Alchemy in Literature

In Multicultural Literature, we have been reading a book entitled The Ghost of John Wayne. It is a somewhat confusing book filled with a bunch of short stories that almost seem to have no ending. It's so confusing, in fact, that I found myself flipping it over to read the back cover and see what others may have thought, or how someone could have described the book in a flattering light when I read the following:

"Ray Gonzalez is a literary alchemist, blending contemporary culture with ancient tradition..."

I was so shocked at finding the one word that we had almost beaten to death the day before, that I had to keep myself from laughing out loud in class. But now that I think about it maybe the stories are an alchemical experiment. All of them take place in modern settings but seem to have a mystical quality that supersedes everything else. As the author of the quote above says Gonzalez is blending the past and the present into something new and original. He has taken what many may consider to be a dead or dying genre and breathed new life into it, transforming stories that have been retold a thousand times into tales that even people of today can appreciate.

The Truman Show and Beckett

While we were reading Sara's blog today, I thought about this movie that I'd watched a couple of weeks ago called The Truman Show. The movie stars Jim Carrey and is about a man whose life is actually a TV show, even though he doesn't know it. Eventually he starts to realize that he's been trapped in this one town his entire life. Eventually he tries to escape and the producer tries to stop him at every turn until finally Carrey's character escapes from the world.

Anyways I was just thinking about how the main character's entire life is controlled by a god figure, much like the author in both Stranger than Fiction and Beckett's trilogy. Eventually Carrey, much like Will Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction.

My Own Quirk

When we started discussing the sucking stones section of Beckett I thought about one of my own weird quirks that I use to have. I didn't really want to put this down but maybe nobody will read it and I'll be able to just slip this by. Anyway, here goes:

When I was about ten for some reason I decided that I would start counting the letters in words. Anytime I would hear an interesting word, I would have to dissect it. First seeing it in my mind and then separating the letters into even parts. Usually I would put two or three letters together in the hopes that the groups would come out even. If they did not, then the words were disregarded as uninteresting and "odd."

For example if I were to hear the word provision, I would see the word in my head and then break it apart so that I saw instead three different parts pro-vis-ion. I did this for about two years or three years, until I finally realized that I had become somewhat obsessed with breaking down almost each and every word in a conversation. I would literally break down every word longer than three letters to the point that conversations usually took a while and ended with the people I was trying to talk to walking away in frustration or staring at me with a strange look on their faces.

Anyway, I thought that I would share my own quirk with you guys and hopefully it was at least a little interesting.

A Thought On Beckett

I've been thinking for a couple of days about Beckett and been trying to make some sense of his writing which is simpler than Joyce's but that kind of goes without saying. What interests me the most is the idea of decay that we've been throwing around for a few days. Of course, obviously the first story actually deals with decay, but I think more than that, the writing itself almost seems to be decaying the further we go in the book. Where many would have created new paragraphs there are none. Where others would have used quotations, Beckett ignores them. It's as if the writing is slowly falling apart along with the characters in the story, as if it is somehow connected to the very characters that it tries to portray.

Anyway, just an idea that I had earlier and thought I'd put down.

3 Similarities

So I thought that I would write down a few of the similarities between "The Skin of Our Teeth" and Finnegans Wake.

1. The first I noticed was the continual references to the bible and Greek mythology, especially continual references to creation, Cain and Able, etc. There are also several references to the Muses as well as other myths. It seems that Wilder is, much like Joyce, trying to fit as much as possible into a few pages.

2. The second similarity that I noticed was that Wilder actually states what we have been discussing as part of the purpose of Finnegans Wake, that is the fact that in our dreams we are part of a different world from that when we are awake. In fact, one of the characters, Sabina I think, actually refers to this openly in the third Act.

3. The third similarity I would point out is the return to the beginning of the play much like Finnegans Wake returns to the beginning. The plays transition actually makes it obvious, literally restarting the play at the end but the concept is the same.

Thoughts on Skin of Our Teeth

I've been reading "The Skin of Our Teeth" and I thought that I would put down some thoughts that came to me while reading it. I have to say that the play itself is extremely confusing. One minute the people are in a modern setting and the next they are talking about inventing the wheel and the alphabet. There are a lot of references especially to the bible and classical literature in what I've read so far so its interesting to say the least.

I'm going to try and understand this a little more and I hope it starts to make more sense but right now it's almost as confusing as Finnegans Wake.

Finnegans Wake

I am going to focus on page 432 of Finnegans Wake. I haven't decided what 30 words or so that I will memorize, but that might be simply because I'm scared to death of this book and am going to try and maek some discoveries before anything else. We'll see how well I do. On my first read through I found nothing but I am going to try and "crack the code" as it were.

The Muses?

I think that I found the 9 Muses in "The Skin of Our Teeth." I'm not sure but the passage is on page 38 and reads "Up in town there are nine sisters. There are three or four of them here. They're sort of music teachers-- and one of them recites and one of them--" In case anyone is curious, here is a link to the 9 Muses and what they represent.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881991.html

First Impressions of Haroun and the Sea of Stories

The first thing that really struck me while reading this book is something that we talked about in Sexson's Nabokov class last semester, that is the fact that everyone steals from everyone else. None of what we say is original because it has all been said before. But this does not seem like a bad thing to Rushdie. In fact, he seems to applaud the works of those authors who borrow from other stories, keeping older stories alive while injecting them with new twists and turns.

The image that he uses to convey this message is especially effective. First you have this enormous sea. Anyone who thinks of a sea will at first think of the ocean, or at least I did, and how vast it seems once you're out there. But the next thing I thought of was the fact that the ocean is always in a constant state of flux, constantly changing. It is not stagnant like an inland lake or a small pond.

But Rushdie does not stop there. Instead he immediately shows us the contents of this vast ocean, the thousands upon thousands of stories that make it. Each is of course a different color, and we, as good readers, instantly try to picture this vast swirling sea of infinite colors. I though of the world's biggest crayon box and tried to imagine all the colors I could in one ocean. It's a lot.

Now I am left with an image of an enormous swirling sea of color, each a story in and of itself, but each story mixing and mingling with other stories to create entirely new tales that can be told. On and on the cycle goes, and each time a story is retold it surfaces for one brief moment shining under the light of the moon which, if you think about it, is also a thief, but I think some guy already did.

First Thoughts on Class

I guess the first thing I should blog for class is make an observation on what I think the class will be like and what I think we are going to do. The first part I can't really begin to guess at. It's obvious that we are going to be reading some very complex books, most notably Finnigans Wake, but we should also be reading some lighter material and the movie selections look enjoyable. It will be interesting to see how we tackle the five major themes layed out in the syllabus. Actually, the more I think about it, the more excited I get.

As for what I hope to get from this class, I hope that it will expand my reading repertoire and allow me to escape from the shell that I have been living in over the years that has only allowed me to read some of the most low brow of books. Of course I got a taste of the high brow with the Nabokov novels last semester, however, now I must delve into some even harder material and I hope that it can give me the confidence to read more dense books and truly enjoy them.