Milo <3

I just want to forewarn everyone that this blog has absolutely no relevance to class but it's all I can think about right now, so it's all I can write about....Tomorrow after class I have to go and put my cat to sleep. His name is Milo and I've had him ever since I was five. I got him at the Farmer's Market with my mom and my best friend and her mom. On the car ride home we were dicussing what to name him. I wanted to name him Nala because The Lion King was the new Disney movie out and my friend and I were obsessed with it. But then my mom told me that I couldn't name him Nala because he was a boy. So then, obviously, I wanted to name him Simba. Right like that would happen. So my mom suggested Milo because he looked like the cat from the movie Milo and Otis, which I watched pretty regularly. So that was it, he was named Milo. I remember when we moved houses from close to Emily Dickinson Elementary School to out in Four Corners, Milo disappeared for about a week and we thought he got lost because he didn't know where he was. But he knew exactly. Our old neighbor called and said that Milo had been sitting on the front porch of our old house for a couple days. What a crazy cat, he traveled miles to where he thought home was. It's unbelievable that he made it! He is my cuddle bug and when I was younger, I would purposely lay my arm out onto the pillow next to me when I went to bed, because he would come up and lay his head on my arm and go to sleep. He became like a security blanket, there were times when I couldn't and wouldn't go to sleep without him in my room. Unfortunatly, after I moved out for college and then came home for the summer I couldn't do that anymore. He was having health issues and had no control of his bladder. Actually, the vet told my mom that he peed when he was comfortable, which was normally on my bed. At least I know that he was comfortable being with me. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't think I can say goodbye. I know it's not like losing a grandmother or a nephew, but in a sense it kind of is. He's been a part of my family for the majority of my life and now I just have to say goodbye and send him into another room, knowing that I'll never see him again. I've been a wreck all afternoon and I know tomorrow is going to be no different. I want to be selfish and keep him around because I love him, but I know that he is hurting and I can't be selfish, I have to love him as much as I can until the very end, and I know that through all of my sobbing that's what I'm going to do.

Monday's Questions Answered...

The first question of the day on Monday was How do Oedipus Rex and The Importance of Being Earnest "talk" to one another? Well, both Oedipus and Earnest are orphans who ultimatly discover who their birth parents are and they both in some form "get to know" their relations: Oedipus with his mother and Earnest with his cousin. But although their characters live fairly similar lives, their tales are very different. Oedipus ends up with nothing, he banishes himself and Earnest, I assume, lives a happy life with his one love. They are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but they both show you what happens on each end!

The next question posed was What do I think is the most endearing line in literature? But there was a catch, it couldn't be anything ide

ological, wise, or with any meaning. After reading a few other's blogs I agree with most of there lines "Call me Ismael" fabulous, "Everyone called him Popeye" ect. The line I love though, has been cinematically tweaked, but there is no doubt in my mind that the actual line is more convincing, despite the movie line being equally convincing. The line is not at the beginning of the book but is almost the very last line "My dear, I don't give a damn." Rhett Butler just makes my heart melt. Although he does leave Scarlett, she deserved it. The line is straight forward and absolutely perfect!

I kind of forget how this book came up in class but I wrote it down, I think it has to do with how only after writing down an event does it become an expereince, anyways after looking it up and reading about it, it sounds really interesting, so I thought I would add it to my blog to share with everyone courtesy of our beloved Wiki... Haroun and the Sea of Stories and also this quote from The Importance of Being Earnest... CECILY. "I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down I should probably forget all about them." page 22

And finally, I know Professor Sexson said we were going to watch a clip of the movie version of The Importance of Being Earnest, but I wanted to share the trailer for the movie...it's rather funny...

The Tale of My Sonnet...

So I decided that instead of sending my sonnet home to my dad, where I also live, I figured I'd send it to his work! So I got home from work today and he said that he got a very nice letter at work today and that he cried and that all the office ladies cried too...I was confused....then he explained that all the mail, regardless of who it's to, is read by the owners secretary and once she read the first line she couldn't stop reading! I thought it was very sweet that they all cried over my sonnet! My dad also told me that he is going to keep it forever and ever!

Mister Pip's Great Expectations of Matilda

The three passages I choose from Mister Pip were:

1) page 69 Mr. Watts is telling Matilda about losing his big toe, but how it's not that important that he's losing it because another one will grow back. "You gain as you lose, and vice versa." He tells her. I think I'm going to start my paper out with discussing losing and gaining. Matilda's world has been thrown upside down by this war that is going on. The island doesn't get any new supplies, they don't have electricity, or anything. But then the children gain a teacher. They gain a friend in Mr. Watts and in Pip. And even more, when Matilda loses those she loves on the island, she gains her father back. It's like a never ending circle.

2) page 123 "'We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes,' he said. 'But these lessons, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.'"Mr. Watts is explaining this to the children after the redskins destroy the village. He's telling them that no matter how many material possessions you have, no matter how rich or how poor you are, no one can take your mind. You will always have your beliefs, your dreams, your imagination. I think he's trying to give them hope. No matter how old Matilda got, Pip was always her friend.

3) page 231 Matilda is explaining the people ask her "Why Dickens?" and she tells them, "It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as esily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens' England. Now, if that isn't an act of magic I don't know what is." It's back to the imagination that no one can take away from you. Matilda is continuing what Mr. Watts started she's showing people her friend and that he can be their friend too.

I feel that with these three passages I can conjure up The Great Expectations of Matilda!

Sidenote...

I just wanted to mention something on a sidenote before I write my actual blog in the morning. I was in Great Falls this weekend visiting a friend and I got home on Sunday evening to find The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch on the counter! I know it's another coincidence, but I thought it was worth mentioning! I'll write another more informative blog in the morning!

Catching Up...

So the power at my house was out from the storm Tuesday night until 7:15 pm on Wednesday...So I have a little catching up to do...

After discussing Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce in class I couldn't get the word Finnegan out of me head...then it hit me...I used to watch a sing-a-long movie called We Sing in Sillyville and they sang a song called "Michael Finnegan". The lyrics are totally all about ending and beginning again...here's a site with some cool music and the lyrics... Michael Finnegan

Then after looking for more about Finnegan's Wake I found out that James Joyce actually composed a song for the book titled "The Ballad of Persee O'Reilly"...here's a clip of the music and a different site with all the lyrics. I thought that was kinda cool!

I really enjoyed Mister Pip! I concur that yes it was depressing and not really a children's book, but I also feel that the sad and depressing parts, as significant as they are, shouldn't be focused too hard on. When I was in fifth grade my teacher read aloud Where the Red Fern Grows, a sad book, and every day before he started to read he told my class "The dogs die" and then would start reading. I realize now that he told us that, not to spoil the ending, but to show us that however sad it may be, it's not the point, it's the experience. I feel that in some sense this logic also works with Mister Pip. It doesn't really matter who dies, it's all about what each character believes and the experiences of what they do.

Sonnet to my Daddy...

I wish I could say this is easy as pie

but I just can't find the right words to use.

I sit here and coax myself to just try,

and not worry about which words to choose.

For this I don't want to sound elopquent,

just simple and caring precisely like you.

My thoughts just need to become coherent

then all of my feelings will come rushing through.

There's so many ways to show someone love

and in nineteen years you've used all of them,

now I try to go beyond and above.

I've got what to say and it is a gem.

Daddy...you will always have my heart

and from yours I will never ever part.

Intimidation...dun dun dun

Our discussion today about intimidation really hit home for me. Luke said it perfectly...he may be book smart and intimidating in that sense but, there are things that others do, such as Medina and her reciting poetry to a random stranger, that he couldn't (Sorry Luke if I'm making this up). I realized that there are things that each of us achieves that others may not necessarily be able to do and can be classified as "intimidating". In the back of my head I'm constantly thinking of what others are thinking about me. Am I wearing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? What do they think of this? Everyone is going to think my sonnet's crap. Am I doing this right? And it's always been a struggle for me to do things for myself and not think of what others think. So frankly, I realized that I'm intimidated of almost everyone, but that I shouldn't be because they may be intimidated of me...crazy to think. It's like a football player being intimidated by the band geek or the popular girl and the artist...I don't know for what reasons...but there probably is one. I've recently been trying to think of me and how I feel and doing things for myself and for no one else. So far it's been scaring not thinking of what others think of me, intimidating almost, but I know that in the end I'm going to become a better me. I hope this makes sense and is sort of relevant. 

Carpe Diem

Here's a link to a clip from Dead Poet's Society about Carpe Diem...kinda long...but well worth the watch!

I Found It...I think...

To come up with the material for my found poem, I decided to put my itunes on shuffle and use the words from the titles of ten songs. The songs I ended up with are 1) Most Of Me by Mandy Moore 2) Give Up The Ghost by Storyhill 3) Simply Because by Rooney 4)Blank Sheet of Paper by Tim McGraw 5) A Taste of Honey by The Beatles 6) Cry by James Blunt 7) Last Call by Plain White T's 8) On The Road Again by Canned Heat 9) When You Look Me In The Eyes by The Jonas Brothers and 10) Why Georgia by John Mayer. This is what I came up with...I don't know how good it is since writing poetry isn't my forte...and it doesn't have a title, at least right now...

A cry of Georgia ghost eyes

Blank when most look

Simply because of me.

The call you give last,

On the paper sheet road...me.

You look a honey ghost,

The last cry of Georgia eyes.

Of Modern Poetry

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what 

Was in the script.

Then the theatre was changed

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.

It has to face the men of the time and to meet

The women of the time. It has to think about war

And it has to find what will suffice. It has

To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage

And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and 

With meditation, speak words that in the ear,

In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,

Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound

Of which, an invisible audience listens,

Not to the play, but to itself, expressed

In an emotion as of two people, as of two

Emotions becoming one. The actor is

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging

An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives

Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly

Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, 

Beyond which it has no will to rise.

It must

Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may

Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman

Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

"The poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice." This opening sentence, I feel is exactly what the rest of the poem is about. The poems are in your head, the "modern poetry" as modern as you can get, is always trying to find what will please everyone. The third line shows how until pretty recently, poetry has all been the same, it has just followed a script. But now everything has changed, speech is different, men are different, women are writing, and there's war. And while taking all of these differences into consideration, poetry has to please its audience. Therefore, it has to build a new stage and "slowly and with mediation" show the audience what they want to hear, but also the emotion behind what they are hearing. The author, as Stevens suggests, could be a "metaphysician in the dark." Well I didn't really now what a metaphysician was so I looked it up on dictionary.com and I found that it is a student or specialist in abstract philosophical studies. So a metaphysician in the dark could be anyone and everyone. And this author of poetry can write about whatever satisfies them, because it's the poetry of their mind. 

The Struggle of Pip

In class and in blogs it seems that most have strong views about Pip and what he does throughout the novel. I find that I am torn. Yes, Pip dreams about being someone better than just a blacksmith's apprentice and once that happens he forgets the people that should matter to him. But then in the end he's sitting there with Magwitch, who's on his death bed...and I believe if I read correctly, that he doesn't even get the billfold that had all the money in it...I think it's taken when Magwitch is arrested, so I question...does he even know what land has been given to him?? Maybe I read too fast or just didn't absorb this part or it's to be understood that he knows..but it kind of baffles me. He also does the right thing in telling Magwitch that his daughter lived and is a lady with powerful friends..I know that if I knew something like that and was in his situation I would have done the exact same thing. In the end I figure that I like Pip, but only a smidgen more then not liking him!

I have to say that my favorite scene in the book, as simple and non-important as it may be, it Wemmick's wedding. Just the way that Mr. Dickens goes about having Wemmick get married I find humorous and charming. I laughed out loud when I figured out what was going on! "Halloa! Here's a church! [...] Let's go in! [...] Halloa! Here's a couple of pair of gloves! Let's put 'em on! [...] Halloa! Here's Miss Skiffins! Let's have a wedding!" pg 355 Shall I say funny how everything was there....on purpose. And finally in the middle of the service "Halloa! Here's a ring!" pg 356

I believe I experienced the ultimate coincidence (or not...because there are no accidents) today. I was reading the "Scorn Not The Sonnet" in Ex Libris and after the poem "Interview with a Soldier" Anne Fadiman mentions Miss Farrar's ninth grade english class at the Marlborough School for Girls. Well...my mom went to the Marlborough School for Girls, so I called her up and asked her if she knew Miss Farrar. She said she did and that she was the toughest english teacher ever! Then I asked her if she knew Anne Fadiman and my mom said that Anne was a year older than her and the most studious person she knew! I couldn't believe it! Then my mom said she'd been wanting to read that book that Anne Fadiman had written but she hadn't gotten around to buying it and low and behold it was sitting in my lap! To end the whole coincidence my mom said to me, "What are the chances of that happening?" and I replied, one in three. 

In class we talked about frame stories and how Arabian Nights is one of the greatest frame story. A frame story by definition (according to Wiki) is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. I find that frame stories work because they draw you in and then stop making you want more and then start again, just like Shahrazad does each daybreak. Now that I think about it there are many novels that are frame stories, The Princess Bride by William Goldman and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley just to name a couple. 

We also discussed that while reading we need to be shifting the point of the story to the experience of the story. I whole heartily agree with this. There's no one point that a story makes, there's probably thousands that start on page one and end on the last page. While you're traveling with a character you experience their faults and their troubles but also you see them learn and change. It's not just the moral of what their doings it's how they live their life (however brief it is in some novels) and as mentioned in class our lives are stories and for some reason I think that there are no specific morals to our lives, just the experience of living. 

We were asked in class to recall our earliest memory of pain. I thought about this for a while and came upon something that I'm not sure if it's pain, but it defiantly hurt. I was in kindergarten, so age five or six, and my parents were in Mexico. My grandma was wait at home for me to hop off the bus and spend the afternoon with her. Well I got on the bus at school and told the bus driver that instead of going to day care like I normally did on that day of the week, I was to go home. She didn't believe me! So we got to the place where I was supposed to change buses to go to day care, but I wouldn't budge, so the bus driver took me off and put me on the other bus. There I told that bus driver that I wasn't suppose to be on today. But it was too late, I was headed to day care. Once we arrived I started sobbing. I sat in the coat room and just cried. I thought that my grandma would forget about me and that I would have to stay at day care, and I was so mad and hurt that the bus drivers didn't listen to me, I mean come on I was a big girl not a baby! Anyways, one of the teachers then came and told me that my grandma called and she was on her way to come and pick me up. I couldn't have been more relieved (if you can be relived at five or six) so I stood in front of the door until she got there. 

p.s. My vocab is at the bottom of my page! :-)

Connections and Gentlemen

With the plethora of information in each of our classes I can't seem to find a sensible place to start this post. I guess the beginning...the first note I made on Wednesday was...How is one thing connected to another? There may not be an exact answer...we are all connected to everyone and everything through a multitude of ways. Pip is connected to the convict through the graveyard and he is connected to Mr. Jaggers through Miss. Havisham and so on. The gun that is pulled out of the bag, in a book yet to be written, is connected to the to victim through an act of treachery. Like I said there is no one way to be connected, but so it happens that one thing is connected to another and baffling as it may be the idea of Six Degrees of Separation is becoming more and more convincing. I found a website the created a game based on Six Degrees of Separation, where you try to stump the game...check it out at www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/six_degrees_game/index.html .   

As I continue to work my way through Great Expectations I feel more and more connected with Pip. A blacksmith's apprentice wanted to become so much more, although it's for the sake of a girl. He knows that he can become so much better and he's trying, and finally he can with the handsome property he has come into and the help of Mr. Jaggers and Mr. Pocket.  As Mr. Jaggers tells Pip and Joe, "...it is the desire of the present possessor of the property, that he be immediately removed from his present shpere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman -in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations." (pg 107) I just don't think that Pip realizes yet how those expectations are going to affect him and who he is.  WH Auden said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Pip thinks he wants to be this gentleman, but with only being in brief contact with other gentleman, he doesn't know who he is going to become. I guess I'll find out tomorrow  when I hopefully (cross your fingers) finish the book!