"What are we renewing? From what to what? How long-suffering is the transition?" (Herrera 32)
-This is an interesting quote because it shows you Herrera's deeper more thoughtful, less eclectic side. He is talking about life after death..."rising from the ashes", being reborn. His question for his friend Victor, that he is writing this letter to is why would you need to be renewed? After death why would you want to have to be turned into something else, and how long would this transition be. For Herrera that renewal is a painful idea, so why stand all that suffering for so long? What then is the point of death in the first place??
"What have we learned from our Capitalism? The decapitation of our joys? The desire for simulations of consciousness?" (Herrera 43)
-Here, Herrera is trying to figure out why America is the way it is. The societys that put aside all of their joys and livelihoods for this normal persona, this Capitalist ideal. Why do people have to constantly pretend to always be in the now and care about the now, the "consciousness"? This consciousness is the reason for people never seeing what they truly want, the reason people always put it on hold as if it doesn't matter. Why do they have to pretend to want these mundane things that "simulate consciousness" and make you believe you're part of some wonderful fast paced world???
Friday, May 11, 2007
"Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler"-J.F. Herrera (1-29) QR
"Step ahead, be careful - the ice, you can slip." (Herrera 6)
-The way the author says this at the beginning of his poem about dropping his burdens is kindof a way of warning the reader. It makes the reader feel what hes feeling, that life is constantly on the edge, never stable. You could always fall, something could always go wrong. It gives the reader a heads up in a way for his poem to come, like the power of it is so great you might fall and slip into it like on ice. It also sets a tone of caution, of unpredicatability, of spontaneaity to the poem that you wouldnt feel without this line at the beginning.
"I worry about smiling obituaries...I worry about monolingual emergency signs..." (Herrera 28)
-This is part of a poem where the author simply lists over and over again "I worry..." and then whatever one of the things he worries about is. The funny thing about this poem is that much of it makes alot of sense. He worries about things that shouldn't happen, or that if they happen are probably worth paying attention to. The two worries above are good examples. Why would an obituary smile? To him that is something that you should be worried about, a person that spends all their time with dead people, yet smiles anyway. Monolingual emergency signs are also a worry because if they're monolingual some people will not understand them and therefore possibly be hurt, or is that for a reason??? He asks alot of indirect questions that have logical obvious answers but just are not thought of as important because they are so normal....or not ridiculously strange.
-The way the author says this at the beginning of his poem about dropping his burdens is kindof a way of warning the reader. It makes the reader feel what hes feeling, that life is constantly on the edge, never stable. You could always fall, something could always go wrong. It gives the reader a heads up in a way for his poem to come, like the power of it is so great you might fall and slip into it like on ice. It also sets a tone of caution, of unpredicatability, of spontaneaity to the poem that you wouldnt feel without this line at the beginning.
"I worry about smiling obituaries...I worry about monolingual emergency signs..." (Herrera 28)
-This is part of a poem where the author simply lists over and over again "I worry..." and then whatever one of the things he worries about is. The funny thing about this poem is that much of it makes alot of sense. He worries about things that shouldn't happen, or that if they happen are probably worth paying attention to. The two worries above are good examples. Why would an obituary smile? To him that is something that you should be worried about, a person that spends all their time with dead people, yet smiles anyway. Monolingual emergency signs are also a worry because if they're monolingual some people will not understand them and therefore possibly be hurt, or is that for a reason??? He asks alot of indirect questions that have logical obvious answers but just are not thought of as important because they are so normal....or not ridiculously strange.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Interview
Interviews being conducted through Melissa Larson who is forwarding emails to others.
(only 7 questions because the start of a dialogue will bring more questions and answers)
-How long have you been attending the Burning Man
Festival?
-What do you feel are the highlights of the festival?
-Does attending Burning Man change your view of your
life after and before the festival?
-What would you say are the biggest changes you make
when at Burning Man in terms of emotional and living
changes.
-Are there specific feelings that you associate with
arriving at the festival and leaving the festival?
-What do you think are the main things that make the
festival counter culture, or different? (if you agree
it is, if not I'd love to hear your thoughts)
-Is there anything else that you think would be
beneficial to my project??
(only 7 questions because the start of a dialogue will bring more questions and answers)
-How long have you been attending the Burning Man
Festival?
-What do you feel are the highlights of the festival?
-Does attending Burning Man change your view of your
life after and before the festival?
-What would you say are the biggest changes you make
when at Burning Man in terms of emotional and living
changes.
-Are there specific feelings that you associate with
arriving at the festival and leaving the festival?
-What do you think are the main things that make the
festival counter culture, or different? (if you agree
it is, if not I'd love to hear your thoughts)
-Is there anything else that you think would be
beneficial to my project??
Monday, May 7, 2007
Selections from "A House on Mango Street" - Sandra Cisneros QR
"..the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there." (Cisneros, 748-The House on Mango Street)
-This type of writing that Cisneros has such an incredible dominance over just shows you every emotion in an image. It brings to life the words and makes you see straight out of the eyes of the narrator. Its almost as if Cisneros doesn't have to say "it made me feel like nothing" because the reader feels like nothing just reading it. You hear the nun's voice and you feel the shame that makes this girl and yourself feel so small and useless. This is also a good quote just to show the way that many people feel about their lives, in America or anywhere else. America especially however because of this expectation of living that we seem to have.
"She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake." (Cisneros 749-Linoleum Roses)
-Once again Cisneros draws you into the life of Sally. This girl who, desperately trying to get away from her father, her life, her emptiness, got married too young and now is taking pride in the only thing she has, her possessions. This quote shows an extreme of women in society. It shows the prison many of them lived in during their marriages and the desperation that they had which, in turn was translated into a strange artificial love for things such as ceilings, and walls, and lamps and rugs.
-This type of writing that Cisneros has such an incredible dominance over just shows you every emotion in an image. It brings to life the words and makes you see straight out of the eyes of the narrator. Its almost as if Cisneros doesn't have to say "it made me feel like nothing" because the reader feels like nothing just reading it. You hear the nun's voice and you feel the shame that makes this girl and yourself feel so small and useless. This is also a good quote just to show the way that many people feel about their lives, in America or anywhere else. America especially however because of this expectation of living that we seem to have.
"She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake." (Cisneros 749-Linoleum Roses)
-Once again Cisneros draws you into the life of Sally. This girl who, desperately trying to get away from her father, her life, her emptiness, got married too young and now is taking pride in the only thing she has, her possessions. This quote shows an extreme of women in society. It shows the prison many of them lived in during their marriages and the desperation that they had which, in turn was translated into a strange artificial love for things such as ceilings, and walls, and lamps and rugs.
topic for Paper #2
A comparison of two very different books, Dharma Bums and The Great Gatsby. Focusing on particular characters and parallels of how realism creates an avasion to life commitment, creates the tendency to drift. Characters will be compared: Japhy, Ray, Nick, Gatsby (possibly to japhy)
Sunday, May 6, 2007
"Seeing" - Annie Dillard (Second half) QR
"..daughter carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house, especially when she comes to a staircase, and that she is never happier or more at ease than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness." (Dillard 702)
-This quote is when the author is discussing a book she read about people who are blind and are given their sight through surgical procedures. The way that she talks about these people seems to make you think she envys these people. They are discovering something completely new and wonderful to them. Everything in the world is beautiful to them, every color different and new. She envys this because to her the world is just a blur, she wants that new discovery, that special love for something new. At the same time she realizes how much easier it would be to be able to avoid all that. Never have to deal with seeing, never have to watch yourself do something, watch yourself fail, be able to have an excuse for not loving some small thing the way that people like thoreau do.
"I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen..." (Dillard, 706)
-The author finally finds what shes looking for. Something so beautiful to her that it seems to be reflecting back, awakening her life. She feels "seen" for the first time, by herself, by the world. To her the lights she sees are something shes worked to see, theyre hard to see because its hard to let yourself completely believe in that beauty that is so encompassing.
-This quote is when the author is discussing a book she read about people who are blind and are given their sight through surgical procedures. The way that she talks about these people seems to make you think she envys these people. They are discovering something completely new and wonderful to them. Everything in the world is beautiful to them, every color different and new. She envys this because to her the world is just a blur, she wants that new discovery, that special love for something new. At the same time she realizes how much easier it would be to be able to avoid all that. Never have to deal with seeing, never have to watch yourself do something, watch yourself fail, be able to have an excuse for not loving some small thing the way that people like thoreau do.
"I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen..." (Dillard, 706)
-The author finally finds what shes looking for. Something so beautiful to her that it seems to be reflecting back, awakening her life. She feels "seen" for the first time, by herself, by the world. To her the lights she sees are something shes worked to see, theyre hard to see because its hard to let yourself completely believe in that beauty that is so encompassing.
Friday, May 4, 2007
"Seeing" - Annie Dillard (first half) QR
"But I don't see what the specialists sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the tottal picture, but from the various forms of happiness." (Dillard, 694)
-The above quote just shows how Dillard is trying to explain how, because she has no specific love for anything her world is very small. She doesn't see specifics or large pictures, she only sees her life, bland and unexamined. She can't enjoy anything, any form of happiness because to her nothing is special, nothing is beautiful in ONLY her eyes. Because she cant see any of those things that people with special loves sees she simply refuses to see anything in particular and walks around in a haze.
"Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, 'What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!' It would be nice to think so." (Dillard, 694)
-This further shows the authors desire for some type of belief that clouds her judgement. She wants to believe just to believe and be able to have complete faith in something. The way thoreau is so in love with his work that he is fascinated with every single aspect of the smallest things such as peas and sprouts is a type of metaphor for her life. Her life has nothing small and fascinating in it, which in term tends to belittle her life making her feel small and unimportant herself.
-The above quote just shows how Dillard is trying to explain how, because she has no specific love for anything her world is very small. She doesn't see specifics or large pictures, she only sees her life, bland and unexamined. She can't enjoy anything, any form of happiness because to her nothing is special, nothing is beautiful in ONLY her eyes. Because she cant see any of those things that people with special loves sees she simply refuses to see anything in particular and walks around in a haze.
"Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, 'What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!' It would be nice to think so." (Dillard, 694)
-This further shows the authors desire for some type of belief that clouds her judgement. She wants to believe just to believe and be able to have complete faith in something. The way thoreau is so in love with his work that he is fascinated with every single aspect of the smallest things such as peas and sprouts is a type of metaphor for her life. Her life has nothing small and fascinating in it, which in term tends to belittle her life making her feel small and unimportant herself.
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