When I think of a labyrinth, it coincided with my thoughts of being alone. I picture the journey into a labyrinth as a solo journey. A spiritual journey even, as was mentioned in class. Perhaps this journey even mimics that of life. I would imagine walking through a labyrinth to symbolize walking through life. You end where you began...ashes to ashes and all that jazz... You can only move forward, to progress...what's the point in regrets, when you can't change what happens... You live it alone...you have to work things out with you. You are the author of your fairytale/nightmare. Since last week's discussion on solitude, I cannot help but notice the solitude of each character in the book. Each character is experiencing solitude in some way. Some characters, like Amaranta and Colonel Aureliano, embrace it, while some, Fernanda and Petra, reject it. Solitude can represent safety and control, but it can also represent loneliness and the fact that no one wants to be around you. Whether or not solitude is self-imposed or forced, makes a huge difference. This may be what the title means. One hundred years...the time span of the novel...of solitude...the different kinds of solitude that exist within the one-hundred year chronicling of the Buendia family.
Maybe.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Solitude is an interesting situation. They say that no one is an island, and this is supposed to make us feel...comfort. The knowledge that we are not alone is intended to insight feelings of camaraderie with our fellow man. This knowledge should create feelings of universality and oneness with humanity. So, if this is true what about all that crap about individuality. We are conversely taught from childhood, if nothing else we innately understand, that we are unique and different. Biologically, anyhow, no two people are alike (so to speak). So what's so bad about solitude again? Doesn't solitude just say that simply, "I (we) are different from you." And in cultural terms, you cannot separate the I from the We. We are Americans. I am American. Maybe these terms don't work for our country, since we are so exclusive of one another. But we are unified in our general experiences. I think what Gabo is describing in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, is what many who have experienced "abnormal" circumstances struggle with. How else can you describe the demeanor with which a victim of a devastating situation can speak about it, after the fact, so matter-of-factly to the utter puzzlement of their listener. I have seen this same puzzled look on people's faces, as I have told stories of my childhood. It becomes clear, that what was normal to me...in my world, was abnormal to others. This knowledge is initially devastating, as it stamps me as an other. But it also gives one access to a very different world. One in which only those who have been to can ever understand. And even then, no one can really ever understand any individual case of any similar situation. The honest truth is, that when you feel alone sometimes you need to own that solitude. To know that you're not crazy for falling apart, you are justified for it because what has happened to you is different and new. Their is no standard for how to act because this situation hasn't even been invented yet. Solitude has two faces. When I look in the mirror, I too see solitude, I too want people to understand what brought it about, but I want it to stay b/c it is what makes me unique. I am ever-justified in this way...their is no standard for reactions. There is no particular way of living. Each situation is different and new. I am justified and welcome to fall apart, or not, at any time.
It made sense to me...
It made sense to me...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The God of Small Things: Oneness
I was so fired up when I finished the reading. The idea of oneness has always haunted me. I found myself crying during the incest scene between Rahel and Estha, and yet catching myself b/c incest is wrong of course. But I was overwhelmed with compassion for them both. For some reason, as I was reading it I was reacquainted with the emotions that I encountered when I was depressed...the emotions that I still struggle with. And yes, I definitely feel that both twins were depressed. (flat/inappropriate affect, lack of motivation, not finding pleasure in the things that they usually found pleasure in, mainly just being together). During depression, psychologists say that patients seek to find a physical manifestation of the "good" feeling that they may not be feeling internally. (This can be seen in a very graphic sex-scene in Monsters Ball between the two main characters). Patients feel that if they can physically feel good, then perhaps the emotion of feeling good will follow. Couple this with the sensation of lonliness that comes along with the separation from that which you have always known. It is said that patients who experience limb-removal experience a sort of mourning for the physical loss of the limbs that their minds can still feel. This tells me that prostetic parts are not just there for looks. In the absence of said limb(s), the brain is still sending commands for them to do work (out of sheer habit.) Such are these two-egg twins. They were severed from eachother at the train station. Separated, but always experiencing the absence of the other. I can make this connection-
When I had my daughter, I underwent an intense depression at our separation. We were no longer we, but she and I. The day after she was born, I stared at her. Silently. I felt that I would have to get to know her all over again. Separate from me. That oneness was gone. For months after she was born, I found myself talking to my stomach ("what should we eat this morning?"). I felt a gaping emptiness in my womb...As I read, it occured to me that when we are in the womb, and when we are making love, are the only two times that we as humans experience oneness. Perhaps, all mankind is just trying to recreate the oneness that was present at our very first breath. I have loved so hard, that I have wanted to absorb/be absorbed by that which was the object of my affection...(there's a thin line between love and crazy, this almost sounds like canabalism).
When Jill was two, I was in the mall with her, and there was this guy there (in the Sbarro line) staring at her. She was waving and smiling at him, as is typical Jillian, and he just stood there and stared at her. He never said a word, never even smirked. He just watched her. I paid for our food, and quickly walked away utterly freaked out. This saying blared in my mind: "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." In that moment, as I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the terrible things that could happen to my child, I saw that as complete bullshit. I tend to be more morbid than most in a lot of ways. I would have rather never known Jill, (I wouldn't miss her that way anyhow), than to love her like I do and have to suffer the loss of her existence. This is how the God of Small Things ends...was it worth it? I think for Ammu, she would say the same as me. No. She loved those that were hurt in the process too much, and would not have acted had she known the result. But what a beautiful story anyways...I'm just glad it isn't mine to tell.
When I had my daughter, I underwent an intense depression at our separation. We were no longer we, but she and I. The day after she was born, I stared at her. Silently. I felt that I would have to get to know her all over again. Separate from me. That oneness was gone. For months after she was born, I found myself talking to my stomach ("what should we eat this morning?"). I felt a gaping emptiness in my womb...As I read, it occured to me that when we are in the womb, and when we are making love, are the only two times that we as humans experience oneness. Perhaps, all mankind is just trying to recreate the oneness that was present at our very first breath. I have loved so hard, that I have wanted to absorb/be absorbed by that which was the object of my affection...(there's a thin line between love and crazy, this almost sounds like canabalism).
When Jill was two, I was in the mall with her, and there was this guy there (in the Sbarro line) staring at her. She was waving and smiling at him, as is typical Jillian, and he just stood there and stared at her. He never said a word, never even smirked. He just watched her. I paid for our food, and quickly walked away utterly freaked out. This saying blared in my mind: "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." In that moment, as I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the terrible things that could happen to my child, I saw that as complete bullshit. I tend to be more morbid than most in a lot of ways. I would have rather never known Jill, (I wouldn't miss her that way anyhow), than to love her like I do and have to suffer the loss of her existence. This is how the God of Small Things ends...was it worth it? I think for Ammu, she would say the same as me. No. She loved those that were hurt in the process too much, and would not have acted had she known the result. But what a beautiful story anyways...I'm just glad it isn't mine to tell.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Blog Paper
Ashique S. Berry
Dr. Paul Gleason
English 303: Non-Western Literature
October 8, 2008
Blog Paper:
Climbing the Reading Ladder
Reading is an activity that I have always enjoyed and felt privileged to participate in. At the beginning of this semester, I was just completing my 6th book for the summer, Richard Wright's Black Boy. I typically spend my summers catching up on literature that I hear referenced during the semester. I believe that the stage that I was, and am currently, at can most efficiently be described as an amalgamation of all three of the stages. (Although, truthfully, I still spend a great deal of my time reading literature by African-American authors, which is a reflection of the fact that I have a lingering position in the “Self” stage.)
The catalyst for my love of literature was its relate-ability potential. Since high school, I would read literature as though there were some common driving force connecting all forms of it. This force was the described to me as “the human experience.” Everybody hurts, so to speak. High school was a difficult era in my life, and literature provided for me a way of escape. Through literature, I could decentralize my thoughts and vicariously experience the lives of others. I found that reading books, listening to music, and watching movies about people in difficult situations took the edge off of my loneliness, and feelings of unwanted and uncomfortable “uniqueness.” It was at this time that I began to see commonalities in texts of all forms. Different texts could insight different feelings, but they could also remind me of each other both explicitly and implicitly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was picking up on intertextuality. My favorite book at the time was Alice Walker's The Color Purple. My initial response was very “I-centered,” but it was what I needed at the time. I read a great deal of African-American literature for the very purpose of finding myself. (I'm still lost on that one.) I never wanted to believe that my experiences were exclusive of others, this would only pay homage to my loneliness. It wasn't until English 150, in college here at Cardinal Stritch, that I began to truly decentralize the “me” from the text, and put names to the possibilities that I had seen in texts.
Deconstruction for me, was a word that represented an overhaul of all my preconceived notions, and prior taught conventions about literature and text. In English 150, we explored such a broad spectrum of texts, and in so many ways, that I began to see literature for all of its correlations, conventions, as well as varying contexts. All of a sudden literature could be compared to art, art could be seen in film, and film could be related to prose. Literature was no longer just books, by definition, in my mind. Text broke free of being words on a page. Everything is suddenly text. Whole movements of literary form existed that I had never even considered. I went from symbolism, to realism, to modernism, and beyond. We worked with paintings, and music, and poetry in relation to each of these historical time frames, and I was awe-struck. From this point, the next logical step was finding the agenda of the author. What was the point of writing this in the first place?
I was first introduce to foreign author's when I took a course called “Images of Women in Literature.” This is when I read the works of non-western feminist authors Helene Cixous, and Gayatry Spivak. In these works I began to wrestle with the issues of cultural decentralization and politics. The question of authenticity presented itself. How does colonization influence a culture's ability to retain it's original forms? Although as an African-American I have always considered my experiences unique from the average American, I never saw the truth in the fact that my experiences were still American. I drudgingly swallowed the hard pill that said that everything is not necessarily relate-able. I was completely removed from the experiences that these women wrote about, by way of respect for their individuality, and reverence for their authenticity. These women wrote about situations that are removed from Westernized culture. They wrote about situations that are removed from me. The purpose being just to let us know. Not for us, as readers and Americans, to necessarily say “I understand what that must be like,” but for us to say “I can't understand what that must be like.” These writers put us in the “know.” A binary is created between knowing things and being in the know. Literature becomes a way of documenting occurrences, in order that we may discuss them, analyze them, hold them to a light and examine their authenticity, and change ourselves accordingly. Literature becomes a small part of history (or her-story).
This semester, I have been re-confronted with the way that I view literature. I noticed that I continue to, whether by way of the subconscious or embedded education, symbol hunt and insist that stories follow the plot diagram. I demand that events make sense, and that the story ends sensibly. When we read Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories I was intrigued. I found the style to be fun and nontraditional. It was more like reading a sophisticated fairy tale. By the time we read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, I found myself feeling agitated. As I wrote in my blog, “For some reason, my brain seems to want everything to fit in their own places. I am a prisoner of my socialization, education, and over analyzations. This story challenges that part of me.” Reading works like this have been good practice for me. I related to absolutely nothing, and understood very little, in the Murakami piece, although I could read what was being written. It took about 60 pages into the story before I could vaguely follow what was being said. Class-time became invaluable to this aim. Murakami simply reminded me that the text is not about “me” but about the “why.” Complimentary to this, the “why” doesn't need to make sense. I suppose this puts me at number three mostly. This is especially apparent in my reaction towards the Roy piece. I fully realize the uniqueness of the culture in this story, and am attempting to preserve it's integrity in my mind, but not comparing it to other universally human experiences or historical occurrences.
I believe I am on the right path to solidifying this “world “ stage of reading development. My mind is open to the fact that, I don't know certain things, nor can I ever truly. But just as they say in therapy, “The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.” In this case, “the more I know, the more I know that I don't know,” is the most appropriate phrase. This is what makes literature so wonderful in my mind. It is wholly multifaceted, and ever-evolving. Who knows, by the time I get this stage down there may be another.
Dr. Paul Gleason
English 303: Non-Western Literature
October 8, 2008
Blog Paper:
Climbing the Reading Ladder
Reading is an activity that I have always enjoyed and felt privileged to participate in. At the beginning of this semester, I was just completing my 6th book for the summer, Richard Wright's Black Boy. I typically spend my summers catching up on literature that I hear referenced during the semester. I believe that the stage that I was, and am currently, at can most efficiently be described as an amalgamation of all three of the stages. (Although, truthfully, I still spend a great deal of my time reading literature by African-American authors, which is a reflection of the fact that I have a lingering position in the “Self” stage.)
The catalyst for my love of literature was its relate-ability potential. Since high school, I would read literature as though there were some common driving force connecting all forms of it. This force was the described to me as “the human experience.” Everybody hurts, so to speak. High school was a difficult era in my life, and literature provided for me a way of escape. Through literature, I could decentralize my thoughts and vicariously experience the lives of others. I found that reading books, listening to music, and watching movies about people in difficult situations took the edge off of my loneliness, and feelings of unwanted and uncomfortable “uniqueness.” It was at this time that I began to see commonalities in texts of all forms. Different texts could insight different feelings, but they could also remind me of each other both explicitly and implicitly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was picking up on intertextuality. My favorite book at the time was Alice Walker's The Color Purple. My initial response was very “I-centered,” but it was what I needed at the time. I read a great deal of African-American literature for the very purpose of finding myself. (I'm still lost on that one.) I never wanted to believe that my experiences were exclusive of others, this would only pay homage to my loneliness. It wasn't until English 150, in college here at Cardinal Stritch, that I began to truly decentralize the “me” from the text, and put names to the possibilities that I had seen in texts.
Deconstruction for me, was a word that represented an overhaul of all my preconceived notions, and prior taught conventions about literature and text. In English 150, we explored such a broad spectrum of texts, and in so many ways, that I began to see literature for all of its correlations, conventions, as well as varying contexts. All of a sudden literature could be compared to art, art could be seen in film, and film could be related to prose. Literature was no longer just books, by definition, in my mind. Text broke free of being words on a page. Everything is suddenly text. Whole movements of literary form existed that I had never even considered. I went from symbolism, to realism, to modernism, and beyond. We worked with paintings, and music, and poetry in relation to each of these historical time frames, and I was awe-struck. From this point, the next logical step was finding the agenda of the author. What was the point of writing this in the first place?
I was first introduce to foreign author's when I took a course called “Images of Women in Literature.” This is when I read the works of non-western feminist authors Helene Cixous, and Gayatry Spivak. In these works I began to wrestle with the issues of cultural decentralization and politics. The question of authenticity presented itself. How does colonization influence a culture's ability to retain it's original forms? Although as an African-American I have always considered my experiences unique from the average American, I never saw the truth in the fact that my experiences were still American. I drudgingly swallowed the hard pill that said that everything is not necessarily relate-able. I was completely removed from the experiences that these women wrote about, by way of respect for their individuality, and reverence for their authenticity. These women wrote about situations that are removed from Westernized culture. They wrote about situations that are removed from me. The purpose being just to let us know. Not for us, as readers and Americans, to necessarily say “I understand what that must be like,” but for us to say “I can't understand what that must be like.” These writers put us in the “know.” A binary is created between knowing things and being in the know. Literature becomes a way of documenting occurrences, in order that we may discuss them, analyze them, hold them to a light and examine their authenticity, and change ourselves accordingly. Literature becomes a small part of history (or her-story).
This semester, I have been re-confronted with the way that I view literature. I noticed that I continue to, whether by way of the subconscious or embedded education, symbol hunt and insist that stories follow the plot diagram. I demand that events make sense, and that the story ends sensibly. When we read Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories I was intrigued. I found the style to be fun and nontraditional. It was more like reading a sophisticated fairy tale. By the time we read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, I found myself feeling agitated. As I wrote in my blog, “For some reason, my brain seems to want everything to fit in their own places. I am a prisoner of my socialization, education, and over analyzations. This story challenges that part of me.” Reading works like this have been good practice for me. I related to absolutely nothing, and understood very little, in the Murakami piece, although I could read what was being written. It took about 60 pages into the story before I could vaguely follow what was being said. Class-time became invaluable to this aim. Murakami simply reminded me that the text is not about “me” but about the “why.” Complimentary to this, the “why” doesn't need to make sense. I suppose this puts me at number three mostly. This is especially apparent in my reaction towards the Roy piece. I fully realize the uniqueness of the culture in this story, and am attempting to preserve it's integrity in my mind, but not comparing it to other universally human experiences or historical occurrences.
I believe I am on the right path to solidifying this “world “ stage of reading development. My mind is open to the fact that, I don't know certain things, nor can I ever truly. But just as they say in therapy, “The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.” In this case, “the more I know, the more I know that I don't know,” is the most appropriate phrase. This is what makes literature so wonderful in my mind. It is wholly multifaceted, and ever-evolving. Who knows, by the time I get this stage down there may be another.
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