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.
Friday, November 22, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Once we had wings...
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Entropy, Humanity, Melancholy
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