Rapper that might actually have a point??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1oV71o2b8g 

Hierophant!!!

So I learned an awesome new word today which describes this class perfectly: Hierophant. It comes from two Greek words: hieros, meaning sacred and phainein, meaning to show or reveal. The current definition of the word is this:

hierophant (plural hierophants)

1. An ancient Greek priest who interpreted sacred mysteries, especially the priest of the Eleusinian mysteries.
2. An interpreter of sacred mysteries or arcane knowledge.
3. One who explains or makes a commentary.

This is what we have been doing all semester; interpreting sacred mysteries (though we didn't always find answers). Or in modern day's habit of turning any noun in to a verb, we have been hierophanting! (No that's not actually a word in the dictionary, I made it up).

More Poetry- Looking Back to Look Forward

We are 


the lost, the lonely hearts that seek
relief- those shattered fragments of
souls, smothered by the guilt. We are


confused by all and yet we try,
to find ourselves among the thorns.
The tribulations of life leave

us here- with scars and broken hearts.
Desiring connection over all-
Discovering humanity.


~Carol Clonan

I'm currently putting together my final project for my Poetry class which is a book of 10 poems I have written over the semester. I reread this one and thought it was fitting to add here. This is what this class has been to me a process of discovering humanity. As I look back over what we have done this last semester and look forward to where I go from here I hope to keep this spirit alive. 

Learning Objectives for Tracings: How the past possesses the present

As an English Education major I am currently talking a class on assessment, which is basically how we discover if a student learns what was supposed to be taught. Usually teachers use something called "backward design" to make lesson plans by first finding the state learning standards, aligning them with objectives on what the students will be learning, and then creating the lessons. In this way teachers (theoretically) know what the students should be learning to assess if they succeeded in learning it.

I feel like this class can not easily fall in to this pattern. Though I feel I have learned many things and thought about a lot of interesting ideas throughout this semester, I doubt that Montana has any state learning standards that can put all of these things neatly in to a box to tie up with a bow.

Instead I have composed this: a list of ideas that I have remembered (because I must have known them at some point ) and wish not to forget again. These are themes from the semester and my attempt to produce one possible answer to the question of where we go from here...

1.  This class was about reality. It was about humanity. It was about connection. It was about mythology. I will always remember it as being more than any other class I have ever taken because it taught me about things I really wanted to know; it taught me about life.

2. Nothing is ever lost, it is only displaced. When I heard this it gave me hope. To me this means that everything, ideas, people, the world, and even atoms are never truly lost, only turned in to something new. This means that though I am sad when I loose the ones I love or forget that perfect line of poetry before I can write it down or even when I wake up from the perfect dream and loose it the moment the alarm goes off, the world hasn't truly lost these things, someone else will pick them up on the way. Similarly, nothing is ever lost, it is only forgotten.

3. All literature is displaced myth. Myth is at the center. These stories are important and our lives mimic them.

4. Truth is a mobile army of metaphors.

5. Knowledge is not something you discover, it is something you invent.

6. PAY ATTENTION! Be present where ever you are. Living in the moment will not only make you more aware of your life it will make you happier.

7. We must make our experiences memorable.  If you live every day and have nothing exciting, new , and memorable each day you really aren't living a full life. Even if it is the little moments, a smile, a beautiful sunset, or a kiss make sure that you have something in your day that you want to hold on to.

8. "Stories of your culture make you who you are. If you don't read, you don't live. Read Books." So tell your children bedtime stories. Read the newspaper and novels, especially great novels. Watch movies and see the myths they displace. Discover humanity.

9. Look up etymologies not definition. You will learn so much more when you see where the word came from.

10. The meaning of a poem is the experience of a poem. The moral of the story is the story itself. The literal and the anagogical are irrefutably linked. When you complete the circle of interpretation you can see how seeming opposites are the same.

11. Life is an imitation of art. 

12. Apocalypse is an unveiling. It isn't just the end of the world. It may just remove a metaphorical veil so you can see something new.

13. It's all music; be the music while the music lasts. Experience things fully, especially music because it is something the supersedes both the arts and the sciences. Hear the music, joint the dance. 

14. Dreams are important; they are improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent but that is ok. We should never be ashamed of our dreams. They may contain things that we would never do in our waking lives but that doesn't mean they are bad. There are whole cultures that believe that the dreaming lives are actually our real lives and maybe they might have a hint of truth to this.

15. Only connect. Humanity needs connection. This doesn't mean having 300 Facebook friends, it means real one on one conversations and true intimacy. We can learn to connect, learn empathy through books but you need human connection.

16. Wanting to know is the important thing. We may never have all the answers. Answers might be a form of death, but keep seeking them.

17. Be happy first. Don't work for the goal actually work for the sake of the action. If you only ever do something for the reward of it you can't be happy. You have to choose to be happy (despite the crazy chemicals in your brain) and do something for its own sake.

18. Science and the Arts are both forms of storytelling. So I guess this means I only get to smile when I am criticized for studying English because science is basically the same thing (only making more money). All good science is art and all good art is science. 

19. Smile. Smile for freedom, understanding, and everything else.

20. It's ok to be vulnerable; this is when you are your strongest. Thank you Brooke for explaining this, I hope that someday I can take this idea to heart.

21. There is something going on here! I may not understand it yet but I know its there.

22. Memorization is important, someday it might save your life. Though I know I am going to fail at the Kubla Kahn poem today in class, this is something I want to work on in my life. Having great poetry or prose in your head can keep you sane in the worst of situations.

23. The past possesses the present. You can't escape it so you might as well see how it all connects.

So thats all I have for you. I'm sure I missed many things but this is what I have learned I hope that everyone else has enjoyed this class as much as I did. You are all interesting and brilliant people and I have been glad to be in this class with you.

My notes from my final project

Carol Clonan 

11/26/13 

Before I get in to my presentation I want to take a moment to let my past possess your present. So bear with me and close your eyes for a few minutes while I describe something to you. Try to imagine it as vividly as possible. 

You’re six years old. It’s a school night and you’ve already gone through most of your normal bed time routine. There was ice cream for a snack, a hot bath (which you whined about), and now your cuddled in bed wearing your favorite pajamas. Your parents come in to kiss you good night and tuck you in. One of them is holding a large, brightly colored book and lingers afterwards. Sitting down on the bed next to you, your parent opens the book and begins to read.  

Tonight the book is a children’s collection of Greek myths. As the words are read off the page they seem to dance around your head, creating an entire world. Gods and Goddesses run rampant, horses fly through the sky dragging the sun in a chariot, evil monsters are slain by great heroes, a woman is transformed in to a spider, and a boy flies too close to the sun. This world seems to have endless possibilities and through it you explore more than any six year old could in the hour before bedtime. Eventually, despite your protests, the book is put away, the world fades from view, and the lights are shut off leaving you alone to dream.  

You can open your eyes now. So what I was describing is hopefully something that you could all relate to. This description in particular is based off my own life. My dad would read to  

Katie and I every night before bed, and one of the many books we heard was indeed a collection of Greek myths. Though this memory is a personal one to me, I think it shows something more universal about humanity: We teach our children through stories.  

Every culture has stories. From the beginning of time to modern day, humanity has used stories to teach our children about who they are, how they got here, and what they are supposed to do in this world (The Cultural Function of Stories). Originally these stories were not written down, but performed orally to the people, normally by an elder, bard, shaman, or other designated person of power. Though the method of storytelling has changed in modern society, its function has not. In class Dr. Sexson said to us “Stories of your culture make you who you are. If you don’t read, you don’t live. Read books” (Sexson Lecture). What was once told around a fire with dances, drums, music, or costumes, is now for modern cultures written in books, preformed on a stage, or even acted out in movies. The human race continues to tell our stories, even though nearly everything else about how we live has changed.  

One medium of storytelling in today’s society is of course literature. Though, to many, the word literature has the connotation of something only stuffy, boring, old professors would read, we know it is something else entirely. Northrop Fry says, “Literature is ‘displaced’ mythology” (Dubois 2) and Dr. Sexson explains mythology as “the precedent behind every action” (Sexson Lecture). Mircea Eliade explains further by saying “a myth is a true history or what came to pass at the beginning of time, and one which provides the pattern for human behavior” (Eliade). Thus, literature is a displacement of the core stories that reside universally in all cultures, which are played out in human lives. These stories, more specifically archetypal myths, are the overarching tales of our lives. Whether we are aware of it or not, we live the same stories that the generations before us did.  

This sheds an interesting light on the debate in our culture over the value of the arts and the sciences. In the United States our educational system emphasizes the sciences. In her article, Paula Allen-Meares says “A great deal of attention recently has focused on an issue of real importance to the future of our nation – the need to train more undergraduates… in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields” (Allen-Meares). She goes on to discuss how these fields are important to “sustained U.S. economic recovery in our increasingly competitive world” (Allen-Meares). The U.S. wants students to study these fields because they stimulate the economy. Though profitable, what these fields lack is introspection. While the sciences look at the world, the arts look at humanity.  

It is not a coincidence that the arts are sometimes referred to as the humanities. They attempt to understand the human element through the mediums of literature, art, music, theater, film, ect. In the beginning of this course Dr. Sexson told us that “the act of writing is the act of understanding.” Throughout my life I have found this to be not only true, but key to my own mental stability in rough times. Though what I write is rarely excellent or even read by others, it helps me to understand what I am thinking, feeling, saying, and experiencing. It is my method of introspection. There is a process that occurs between the thoughts in my head and the words on the page, and it is during this process that I begin to understand my own ideas and clarify them. A better expression of why this process occurs is the quote that says, “Literature is the human compulsion to create in the face of chaos” (Sexson). When humanity looks out on the insanity of the world we feel something unsettling; to deal with this feeling some of us write.  

Yet it is not only creating literature that humanity turns to when faced with chaos; we also turn to music. Music is the one medium of the arts that rises above all others because it is both introspective and extrospective; it looks at the world and humanity. It speaks in a language with no words so is not limited by the imprecision of normal languages. It has the mathematical calculations and structure of the sciences, with the intense emotional reactions that the arts produce. It is two supposed opposites, science and the arts, melded together to tell unconscious stories of humanity and the world. It is the language of Yung’s universal unconscious. 

Think about it for a moment. Yung described an unconscious that existed within all humanity and connected us to the myths that are continually being played out in our lives. This unconscious is, by his description, universal, meaning that all of human kind has access to it. Yet all of humanity speaks different languages, except of course in the case of music. Think back to the oral storytelling I discussed earlier. Many of these stories were accompanied by beats or melodies. As humanity developed and introduced language, it held on to the expression through music. Music expresses ideas and emotions without the barrier of language. It is pure emotion, pure thought, and pure knowledge.    

It was said that “knowledge is not something you discover, it is something you invent” (Sexson). I would argue that not only do we invent knowledge, but that one of the ways we invent knowledge is through writing, both in language and in music. Writing in language forces us to imperfectly describe experiences or things with stories and metaphors. Friedrich Nietzche said, “Truth is a mobile army of metaphors” (Nietzche) which is a perfect description of how we create knowledge, through language, in writing. Just as two objects can technically never touch because of the vast amount of space in each atom, so the word for an object (the sound) can never perfectly describe the object in real life. Writing in music skips this step because it does not need the imprecise words of language.  

To someone from a more technical background this idea might be confusing, especially if applied to things other than writing and music, but the logic of how there is a disconnect, is still sound. For example the disconnect in history. History is a series of observations from people who were there, taken and combined with other personal accounts by a third party. This third party must then metaphorically connect the dots between personal accounts to create a story of what happened. This story is then called history, but it is not what truly happened. It is a metaphor for what happened and might be very close but it is not absolute. Just as Calder discussed in his presentation, history can be interpreted to say many different things. We call it truth though it is made of metaphors.  

This same logic can be applied to science. For example look at a scientist who is performing a series of experiments. Following scientific method, the scientist must first ask a question. Then, he must come up with a theory that can answer the question and test it. During the test the scientist gathers data. The final, and most interesting, step is to interpret the data. Like the personal accounts in history, the data are merely points of information and must be connected to explain what is occurring. In this way the scientist fills in the gaps, creating an explanation of outlying data and coming to a conclusion. I would say that “this isn’t science, its storytelling” (Sexson Lecture). The scientist tells a story about how he believes the world works and most likely someone else will come along and write a story that fits better than the first.  

The debate between science and the arts is really not a debate at all. Science is the arts. Both tell stories, but the arts focus on humanity while science focuses on the world. Though many people will argue that these two areas of study are too opposite to coexist, from this class we know that sometimes seemingly opposite concepts need to exist together. When these two fields of study come together they are music. As was said in class “It’s all music” (Sexson).  

So with this information I shall pose Annie Dillard’s question: “Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?” (Dillard). My answer to this question is this: do what you want to do, be it the sciences or the arts, but acknowledge that they are overlapping and connected. If you want to create art, create art, for life will imitate your work. If you want to write literature, write literature, for you are retelling human kind’s myths. If you want to study history, study history, for you will be able to see how the “truths” were formed out of metaphors. If you want to study science, then study science, for if you do it right, you are telling stories as well. And lastly, if you want to study music, don’t let anyone stop you, for music is the universal invention of knowledge that both sides strive for but fall short of- a perfect expression of both humanity and the world.  

Responces to Presentations Day 5

Brady- After hearing your presentation I was talking about it with my sister and she called it "the stereotypical Literature Major move." I laughed at this but I can see the hint of truth in her statement; you are so sure of yourself and what you are studying and I admire that. As much as I will call you a downer at work, you do know your stuff  when it comes to literature and to this class. Your right, your blog on circles could have been your final project but you explored Kubla Kahn and gave it the attention it deserved. I loved your idea of a poem being just the ghost of a poem.

Logan- Every time you speak I feel like I'm a step behind understanding you. When you did your displacement earlier in the semester I was compleatly lost. You make connections that I struggle to see, probably because they are brilliant. I had to laugh, after class my sister looked at me, slightly befuddled, and asked if you always talked like that. The answer of course is yes. Your presentation shed a misty light on some of the things you have been talking about all semester and, though I am sure I missed a lot of it, I look forward to looking back over notes and trying to understand. 

Responces to Presentations- Day 3

Rose- Thank you for being so real with all of us. Just as Brooke said in her presentation man is strongest in his most vulnerable, you were strong during your presentation both because of this and because of the incite you had in to emotions. I like that you combined the two theories behind emotions; they are both subjective reactions based on whether something helps or hinders in your goals and effected by physiological changes in your brain. We are a chemical creatures but we get to choose when we connect and detach from the social myths we are living out. At my high school graduation I presented a speech which was a less personal (and less mythically insightful) version of your presentation. My main point was that no one has control of what happens to us in life; we only get to choose how we react to the situation and the emotions it brings. I loved the lines you said about "as everything fell together, I fell apart," and "I am my own myth." 

Katie- Your game was frustratingly awesome! It never occurred to me that you wouldn't have had a killer named. You simultaneously addressed the idea of " its the wanting to know that matters" and how Conchis manipulates Nicholis' world. I was frustrated during the game because I approached it like a detective novel; that there would be an answer in the end. Yet you ended your presentation the only way that would be fitting for our class. We have talked about questions without answers and the importance of the questions themselves. I think you managed to address that idea and how Conchis controls the God Game to keep those under him questioning really well.

Joe- Just like Finnegan's Wake attempts to include everything, your presentation seemed to encompass nearly everything that we have talked about in class. I liked how you brought everything back to the circle- first the circle of interpretation, of the water cycle, the circle of life, and your own circle of acknowledge- perception- reaction- assertion of perspective. I also like how you used the concept of water in your presentation. The idea of the wave being part of the water but also rising above the water fascinates me. I think it is an analogy that can be applied to a lot of different concepts. I connected it also to us, as in humanity and us as individuals. The water would be humanity, we are all the same and part of the whole. The wave would be what we strive to do: rise above the social norms and mythologies so we can see what we are a part of, what myth we are living out as a society. I love that you remembered the quote form Dr. Sexson, "Something is going on here!" I have had several of those moments in life, all but one revolving around classes Dr. Sexson has taught. I wrote a blog about this earlier but I feel like there is well... something going on here! This something is bigger than any of us, and even larger than all of us combined, but what it is exactly I haven't figured out.

Reactions to Presentations- Day 2

Alaine- WOW. I loved you poem. I have always enjoyed spoken word poetry and, coincidentally, we were studying it in my poetry class the week you presented. In your poem I thought you were referencing two other slam poems. The first is this poem,  Growing In when you said "Because of my past I didn't grow up, I grew in." The second, Pretty, I thought of when you said "Bars where girls constantly ask, 'Am I pretty?'" Both I really enjoyed but I think yours topped both of them. I truly hope you find somewhere to practice because it would be a shame if we were the only ones who ever heard you preform it.

Brooke- Man is strongest in his most vulnerable state. When you first mentioned that this was going to be your topic for your final presentation I was not convinced. I don't enjoy vulnerability. There is something in me that first fears others judgments which generally translates in to vulnerability. But this class overall has made me look deeper not only in to the world, but myself. In your presentation you said the "change is the lens though which we see the world" and in a world that changes as quickly as this one does I think this is the only possible way to see it and stay sane. I've seen, in myself and those close to me, what avoiding change does to humanity and it isn't pretty. Much like change, we have to embrace vulnerability. This is when we can actually connect with others. Thanks Brooke for helping me see this.

Spencer- Thank you for being a science major who can see the other side. You related thermodynamics to our class and the arts brilliantly in your presentation. It is a pet peeve of mine when STEM majors are unable to see the value of the arts and you clearly are not one of those people. The ideas we discussed in class have obviously impacted you and I loved the quote that "All good science is art. All good art is science." If you ever hear of a class on quantum mechanics and poetry count me in.  

Responces to Presentations- Day 1

Wow. All of the presentations so far have been awesome (and by this I mean actually awe inspiring). My complements to everyone so far and apologizes for being behind in my resonances. You all have set the bar high.

Jonah- I loved the quote about how everyone builds a shelter around them and the only difference between us and the homeless man is that he gets to break his down and recreate it more often. Your right; in a way this man is more free than any of us here at college living in cheap apartments or dorm rooms, shackled to the college life. Freedom is one of those concepts that everyone has a definition for in their heads but when they go to put it on paper, it never says exactly what you are thinking. I think despite this you managed to show us how the dichotomy of being free and simultaneously not free is possible. I have always struggled with ideas that seem mutually exclusive and yet seem to exist together at the same time. Duality is something that seems conflicting but in reality many things in life are a contradiction. The past possesses the present.  

Katie- Dreams- Improbable, erotic, desiring, and violent. I strongly considered using much of this as a final project so I was extremely intrigued by where you took your presentation. For a while in high school I was obsessed with dreaming. I kept a dream journal, tried methods to teach myself about lucid dreaming, and was honestly happiest when I was asleep. I spent a lot of time researching what the dreams I had meant, and came up with a lot of the general Freudian interpretation guide style crap. I wanted answers from my dreams in a textbook kind of way at that point in my life but  what I didn't understand at that point was that I didn't need to. I love the idea that when we are dreaming, this is the real world. No daily grind, no homework, but the mythic and primal stories flowing through us that leave us waking up trying to cling to an incomplete adventure.

Yasmin- Just Smile! There is so much in a smile and so many different kinds of smiles. I love that you mentioned we are born smiling; it gives me hope for the human race. I started to write down a quote of something you said about "There will be pain and you will weep. There will be joy and you will smile" but I'm not sure I got the quote exactly right. I also wrote down "You wish to be liked. I wish only to be" from the Magus. I really liked this quote because I think this is something I am yet unable to accomplish in my own life. I still cling to the desire to be liked even though focusing on just being is probably a better life goal. If I spent less time worrying about if I was liked and more time smiling I would probably be a lot happier. Though the happiest smile you showed us had to bet Nelson Mendel. I had the opportunity to travel to South Africa and talk with with a couple who had some strong opinions about the changes that happened there (some I agreed with and others I couldn't understand the reasoning behind) but no matter what people I spoke with said they all respected him. His smile, after 27 years in prison, is one that no one in history will be able to forget.

Once we had wings...

 (c) Kyle Thompson
http://www.viralnova.com/kyle-thompson-photography/

This guy, Kyle Thompson, is incredible. I saw this picture and I was immediately reminded of story we talked about in class about how humans once hand wings and could fly but lost them when we fell. I thought this was one of the coolest pictures I have seen of a man remembering his wings so had to share. Take a minute to look through some of his other pictures, they are all incredible.

Big Dream

A while ago we were given the assignment to go out and have a big dream. I finally took the initiate and set my alarm for 8 this morning and instead of getting up, I went back to sleep and dreamed.

In my dream I was at my grandparents in house in Alaska. It was fall and just starting to turn cold so I could smell the woodsmoke from the stove downstairs. My grandma has a side sewing room in the house that she runs a small fleece business out of. I remember sitting in the living room, staring up at the bear head mounted on the wall, and hearing her call for us from the sewing room. We (myself, sister- Katie, and my Papa) rush in to the sewing room, concerned. She is sitting at one of her machines (the one that makes wool blankets I think) and seems upset. She tells us that she can't move her foot and the machine is getting away from her, sewing too fast. Papa goes over to help her, moving her food to stop the machine, and discovers her food is made of stone.
That's right, she was slowly turning to stone. 
In the dream I remembered instantly recognizing that not only was this process irreversible, it was also contagious. Papa, who had touched her in the process of moving her foot was probably doomed, and just from staying in the room Katie and I were at risk.
The dream gets frantic at this point, Papa rushes to go find a machete, presumably to hack off the foot, when his own fingers turn a light grey and he can't pick it up. The grey is slowly moving up Grammie's leg and Katie and I are trying not to panic. Grabbing Katie we run out in to the living room. I hear Grammie form the other room yelling at us to take the family photo albums and run. Rushing to her bedroom we each take an armful and run out of the house. Looking back as we run I can see the two of them holding each other and slowing solidifying. 

Arcadia

Before I say anything else I just want to say that I loved Arcadia. Tom Stoppard managed to combine two seemingly contradictory genres: theater and science. Gardening, mathematics, carnal embrace, thermodynamics, grouse, fractals, history, Lord Byron, poetry, death, lust, and madness; Stoppard combines contradictory ideas and themes to create a dualistic play that is both intellectually intriguing and entertaining.

As I listed above there are many themes of this play that could easily be addressed in the context in this class. The first I want to talk about is heat.

Thomasina dies in a fire. In the context of this play this is the only fitting death for her. She discovers the third law of thermodynamics in the play and diagrams heat exchange. Literarily the theme of fire is underlying throughout the whole play, both in her studies of what will later be named thermodynamics and in the theme of sex.

 “Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef. 

The play begins by talking about sex. When Thomasina, only 13 at this point in the play, asks the question above, Septimus joking lies to Thomasina claiming it is when someone hugs a slab of meat. The audience later discovers that Septimus had been participating in a "perpendicular poke" with a married woman in the gazebo. This establishes Septimus' reputation as a bit of a ladies man. The play is peppered with sexual innuendos about Septimus and several other characters Yet in the end of the play Septimus resists the heat and temptation to join Thomasina in her room which ultimately results in her untimely death by fire.

Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

We all die. Whether we like it or not, eventually we have to come to terms with this fact. In the end you fail. You and everything around you will one day turn back in to the star dust it once was. Thomasina understood this, realizing that you can not un-stir something. The jam, once stirred in to the rice pudding, will never be just jam again. This is the worlds movement toward entropy. In the end everything will be room temperature. 

I really struggle with this quote though. My own nature is to be a perfectionist; I don't like failure. It's something that I have been taught from a young age to avoid at all cost. It is painful and makes me feel guilty because I did not "try hard enough" if I failed. The TED talk the Booke posted talked about this but I think this is why our generation has trouble being happy. We view ourselves entirely by our successes and the moment we achieve something there is just another thing that must be done. This constant test to trying to prove one's self through our achievements is making us miserable. We keep thinking that if we could only do this (pick anything, get a good job, make more money, get all A's, graduate) then we will be happy; we are wrong. We don't find happiness if all we are doing is trying to postpone the failure.

But someday I will fail one time too many. Someday I'm going to walk in front of the wrong buss, or (more likely giving my family history) contract some disease that will ultimately end me. I know this rationally, I've seen someone who was dying and the end result of this process, but there is still a part of me that doesn't quite understand. I think this is one of the reasons I fear loosing those I love more than anything else in the world. My last blog was a video which talked about love and how ultimately humans know that nothing is permanent and that this makes us sad. I notice this sometimes in myself. I wake up from a dream that I remember only bits of but am left with this sense of melancholy and loss. I know that these dreams are the ones where I am alone after loosing those I love.

When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore. 

Humans don't want to be alone; we are social creatures. This image, being alone on an empty shore, is one that strikes some deep cord in me. I think this is why most of the movie UP is so depressing to me. For those of you who haven't seen it this is a quick clip that gives their love story. 

I watched this movie for the first time with my boyfriend last weekend and spent (embarrassingly) at least a quarter of the film in tears. I just can't stand that he is left alone and seeing it makes me think that someday this happens to most of us.

"Can you bear it?....How can we sleep for grief?"

 Though my grief came from a disney/pixar film intended for children, Thomasina's came from the thought of the loss of knowledge that occurred during the burning of the Alexandrian library. Though she might have been a little melodramatic (what 13-16 year old girl isn'?), she does have a point. We have lost and forgotten nearly everything there is to know. If only we could remember. 

“It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.” 

This at least, is reassuring. I may have forgotten many many things (and as a population we have forgotten nearly everything) but as long as we continue wanting to know, this is the important part. 

It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. 

This quote is played out through the entire sections of the play that consist of the present day. Continually the characters are attempting to figure out what happened in the past, but nearly every time they fail. They believe many different things, but much of what they "know" turns out to be wrong. It also continues to be true in today society as we discover more and more about our world and ourselves that disproves what we thought previously.

So how does the past posses the present in Arcadia? The past is the present at the end of the play, they become so intertwined that they become indistinguishable.

Entropy, Humanity, Melancholy

I was surfing facebook today (wasting time) and found this video. I think it speaks to how humanity reacts to the shadow of inevitable of death in ourselves and those we love. We try to create something permanent.

"'Only connect.'"

"'Only connect.'"

"Who said that?"

"An English novelist."

"He should not have said it. Fiction is the worst form of connection."-The Magus ch.18

I had to add this quote to my blog because earlier in the semester we talked about how reading can effect empathy. The idea I got from that discussion is that reading, especially reading fiction, will make a person more empathetic- more likely and able to connect. Because isn't that what empathy is? Seeing and understanding the emotions of another person and being to connect to that? 

I would argue that Conchis is wrong about this one. Yes, connecting, relating to others, and  being part of something larger than yourself is important, but fiction is not the worst form of this connection. It may not be the best form of connection (personally I see face to face communication as the best form of connection because it allows for all of the senses to be involved) but it is not bad. It should instead be seen as a way to practice connection.

 As young children most of us were read to. We heard stories that we grew to love (or hate) and immersed ourselves in the the words created by our parents voices. We became a part of the story and the characters became our friends. We were sad when the story was sad and excited when characters were excited. In essence we connected with these stories and mental worlds. In this way we learned how to connect to people more easily. In putting ourselves in the minds of the characters we experienced their feelings first hand and making an important jump from "this hurts me" to "if this hurts me it will probably hurt someone else too."

Here is a video I found below about one study done on children about reading and empathy:

 http://tvoparents.tvo.org/video/162393/connection-between-reading-and-empathy 

 I also think it is really interesting (and a conicidence :-) ) that later on in this video (7:30ish) Ramon talks about the funcition of fairy tales specifically as moral guides.

Contemplations in the form of a sestina

Sooo I'll admit it I'm kinda on a poetry kick right now so I'm going to share something else I wrote for this weeks writing class. We are writing sestinas. For those of you unfamiliar with the form it is usually seven stanzas of which the first six are six lines long and the last is three lines long. In the first six stanzas there are only six words used to end each line. In other words you repeat the same six words, in a different order each stanza, as the end of each line of poetry. The last stanza uses two of the six words in each line.

To preface you reading this poem I just want to say that I am sharing it because I wrote it when I was thinking about finding answers. Annie Dillard's quote "Given things as they are how shall one individual live?" has been stuck in my head since the moment I read it. I think my poem speaks to the confusion in lacking an answer for this question. Just a warning though, one of the end words is fuck so  if that is going to bother you I suggest you stop reading now.

Contemplations 

I sit alone and wonder  

about how we live life. 

Does it have any purpose- 

struggling through the daily grind? 

Sometimes I want to say “Fuck 

it!” and succumb to madness. 

If we let the madness 

in would others wonder 

about us? Call us fucking 

idiots who waste our lives? 

Would they watch us grind 

to beats? If the purpose 

of existence is to find the purpose 

how do we not go insane? The madness 

creeps in like a glacier and grinds 

out the mind’s landscape leaving us wondering 

why… Each man lives his life 

day by day: eating, sleeping, fucking, 

and repeating. No one knows why the fuck 

we do. We may search for a purpose 

but discover only this: that life 

is but a slow decent to madness. 

It is humanities greatest wonder 

that our minds survive the daily grind. 

If we spend the days grinding 

out work that we fucking  

hate how can we wonder 

why we are unhappy? We lack true purpose, 

chasing satisfaction and flirting with madness. 

If only we could live our lives 

as if there was more to life 

than work- more than the grind. 

Maybe what society sees as madness 

is but the contemplations of those who fuckin 

care. Maybe our true purpose 

is just to let ourselves wonder… 

Life should be more than the mind-fuck 

of the daily grind. The purpose should be 

to find the fine line between madness and wonder. 

~Carol Clonan