Nature

In the article there's a line; "Hemingway often voices this pessimism, but it is nowhere to be found when his protagonists are in the natural world" there's an interesting connection between masculinity and the connection with optimism and hope in nature.  I'm reminded of The Swimmer where nothing brought Neddy more joy than thinking he was exploring un-mapped terrain and swimming this great river.  His illusion came crashing down and it was reveled that it was all artificial and factory made.  The sadness of the destruction of his hometown isn't a hopeless sentence to Nick when he sees the fish swimming freely nearby.  In The Road, it is never revealed whether or not the catastrophe that turned the world into what it has become was natural or man-made.  I feel like an natural disaster explanation lends itself more towards this narrative.  Now it is not Man's fault that we are forced back to nature and savagery, it is a betrayal on the part of nature.  And once people are forced back into the wild, it becomes harsher still.  This takes the humanity away from the population,  the ties that bind them are meaningless when the world around them has rejected their way of life and forced them into the wilderness.

What are your thoughts on what happened to the world?  

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Dystopian Parents

While reading The Road I started thinking about the differences between it and the popular genre of dystopian novels we're seeing right now.  Books like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent, and even The Giver (a slightly older book but a recent film) are all either lacking supportive and present parents or are completely devoid of parents/adults.  It strikes me as interesting considering all the recent novels are in the Young Adult genre, whereas The Road is considered a "regular" novel.  Now these books weren't written by teens, but they're tapping into something that speaks to them, and part of that is the lack of parenting.  I think for McCarthy, as an adult writing for adults, the idea (and the hope) is that if something like this were to take place, they as the adults could take some charge if only just to protect their child.  They hope that their added years will provide more insight and intellect to help their family survive.  This may just be my age bias, but I feel like it makes more sense for it to be younger people, not children necessarily but the sharp, adaptable young, those who haven't had the years to get used to this world and who (even if they're wrong) believe that there's got to be more out there than whatever they've grown up in.  The older they are (in a dystopia) the more experience they have seeing the rest of the world is no better.  Parents (good ones anyway) want nothing more than to be able to protect their children from anything, no matter how impossible it is for them to actually do that.  As horrible as the events are that are happening to the father and son, it almost reads like a parent's fantasy (again, not a pleasent one) but that despite everything that's happening, they will and can do whatever it takes to protect their child.  We all know, especially in war zones and places like this setting, that's frequently not possible.

Thoughts?  Do you think the teen hero makes more sense in this setting?  Or does experience trump gumption?  

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Forche's Women

I used to study fashion and I still find costume design extremely interesting and informative.  Using the website Polyvore, I want to create looks showing the difference and loves of the different women that Forche depicts in her poetry.  She paints quite the picture of the vivacious free young women, some of whom are less than free later in life.  And the bookish friends who develop late but travel to Paris.
I made a set after reading A Good Man is Hard to Find, showing the grandmother and the mother - based off of the heavy descriptions O'Connor provided.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by eleano 

Examining how the characters are depicted is easier in later works because more care is paid to describing them because there's so much difference to what they can wear.  Particularly when a woman is writing about other women because she knows firsthand just how to consciously decide on their looks.  I want to examine what pysical differences are presented to show the women's overall difference in character.  

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Fathers

Reading Alison Bechdel's comic, I was reminded of the character assassination that Sylvia Plath wrote specifically to "kill the memory" of her dead father (Daddy).  I do not doubt that what Bechdel describes did happen and is an accurate portrait of her father, unlike Plath's story.  It is interesting how these women, who live(d) outside the realm of the expected feminine ideals, attribute much of their identity to the early deaths of their fathers.  Sylvia's father did not directly kill himself, but refusing medical care and examinations led to his early grave.  Bechdel's father did have a sordid life of secrets and problems, which the author writes about candidly, clearly still working out her own feelings on his parenting and her affection for him.  Unlike Sylvia who seemed to genuinely look up to her father in life but whose death and her experience with her own older, suffocating, husband, led her to seek release form his memory.  Some of us cannot escape the influences of our past, like Plath, and other choose to continually grow and learn from it - the look for it's influence in their adult lives and try to remember more or see things differently, like Bechdel.  Did you notice any other similarities that I missed?  

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9/11

I've been having a lot of trouble with this weeks assignment and I'm going to assume that I'll have a bit of a different perspective than most of the class on the events of 9/11.  I was in the 3rd grade (like Kayla wrote about) but I was also living in New Jersey with both parents working in New York City.  We were told at school that anyone who had parents working in the city who picked them up was to come to the office after school, that was all we heard.  I remember I was supposed to go over to my friend Miru's house afterward school so I didn't think about it.  Walking out with Miru we saw both of our mothers waiting for us at the entrance; I ran to mine, excited she was there (I usually went straight to an after-school program so my parents never picked me up at school).  My mom told us what happened, point plank, she couldn't hold it in, "The Twin Towers are gone, you can see the smoke from our house - you guys are going to be okay.  Dad is walking home from work."
None of it made sense, why would someone do that?  Why the Twin Towers?  Why was dad walking?  It would take forever and he'd have to walk across the George Washington Bridge?  I couldn't grasp it - but over the next few days, weeks, and months, I sure started to.  You see, my mom worked across the street from the World Trade Center, only a short couple of weeks before, she'd stopped working Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Miraculously enough, despite her building's proximity, the most damage done was having the windows blown in.  Her office, which she and her friend were always complaining had no windows, was shook up badly, but otherwise unharmed.
We did see the smoke from our house, we could see and smell it for days  My dad walked about 15 miles up the length of Manhattan, randomly running into my godfather along the way and walking together, crossed the George Washington Bridge and walked the rest of the way (a couple miles) home.  No phones, no trains, no buses.  It was a long time before either of my parents went back to work.  Two years later my mom was diagnosed with cancer, we always wondered if her going back to work when she did had anything to do with it - our beautiful city had turned toxic.

I have a really hard time talking to people (especially those who weren't here) about my feelings about the whole situation.  I'm extremely liberal from a family of the same values, but when Osama Bin Laden was killed, I didn't know what to feel, but I knew no one could tell me how to feel about it.  My neighborhood in NY now, (about 15 miles uptown from the WTC) is filled with blocks named after dead cops and firefighters who didn't even die in their precinct, they died in 9/11.  This is why I can't talk about this, I still don't get it.  I still don't know what to feel every anniversary.  On the 10th anniversary I went down to the firehouses that are closest to the World Trade, I stood with many people who had the same idea, reading the names of brave men and women I didn't know.  I wept watching an old former fireman salute a flag.
Tragedies like this belong to the people who lived through them - people who saw, and lost, much more than I did.  Kids from my school lost parents and family, and a giant monument is up in my hometown, one that's on the other side of the Hudson River from where it all happened.  I can't really feel much for pieces on this because it's one person's heartache, and I still don't understand mine.

Many people try, I think with the best of intentions, to inform others of what they are, or should be, feeling - and this just doesn't work.  Why do we do that?  What makes us think that we have the authority and can formulate these thoughts better than others?  Are we merely helping ourselves work through our own pain?

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New York Day Women

In Haiti when you get hit by a car, the owner of the car get's out and kicks you for getting blood on his bumper.
I see a parallel between the car owner and the narrator and the victim and her mother.  The narrator can't help but feel ashamed of her mother at times, she feels like she's suffered due to her mother's cultural differences and eccentricities. She blames her mother, if subtly and sometimes unconsciously, for some of her own struggles in the US. Really her mother was the immigrant who had to make it on her own much of the time, she had to raise a child and be without her family and people like herself.  Her mother suffers quietly, with dignity and grace, while the daughter sneaks away behind a Sweden Tours bus.  I don't completely blame the daughter, she has it hard too, she doesn't hate her mother she just doesn't understand her.  She doesn't realize any pain she might have or why she does the things she does.  But she does blame her mother, she definitely does, her Haitian blood is on her bumper and now everyone can see the stain and just how clumsy her mother is.

Do you see other quotes from her mother that are oddly fitting? Which ones? 

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As Children Together

I can't get the last stanza of "As Children Together" out of my head:

If you read this poem, write to me
I have been to Paris since we parted

It's amazing how childhood dreams and promises stick with us - how they seem more important to fulfill.  Everything that has gone on between these two women, everything that's happened since they last saw each other - I can completely understand this to be one of the most important things that's transpired since their last meeting.  I immediately think of the plans my childhood best friend's and I made, the pacts we made when we also declared to be friends forever, I'm sure we've all said that to people it ended up not being true with.  I had a similar encounter with my best friend from kindergarten, we hadn't spoken since maybe middle school but in our senior year of high school - she called me up just to tell me she got into Harvard.  When we were little kids all her Barbie's "went" to Harvard and she'd tell all of our teachers throughout elementary school that that was where she would be, barely knowing at the time what that meant.  After all that time she remembered how I knew that about her, how after she'd moved a few times no one at her current school understood that like I did.  I've talked to her maybe a couple times since, that was four years ago and she graduated back in May.  We didn't talk directly again but I said congrats on Facebook and she thanked me.
I think of the promises I've made to my best friends now, the ones I've known for 2, 5, 10 years - the plans we've made and how many or how few have gone through.  I still take those oaths very seriously.  One of my closest friends I only met two years ago, but we were roommates on a study abroad trip to London.  I'd never been on a plane before that and she'd never been out of the country.  We're both broke and could barely afford the trip but we made it happen.  I've promised her dozens of times that we'll go together again, and I intend to keep that, no matter how long it takes.

I do wonder though, am I doing this for her, or more for me?  Is it important to us to keep those promises not only to our friends, but to our dreaming childhood self?  

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The Red Convertible

I first read this story a few years ago in a short story class and the impact is similar.  One thing I find interesting is my reaction to Lyman and remembering my classes reaction to his life post-Henry.  When my class read it then my teacher and then the students all made a big scene out of pointing out that Lyman was drunk and stoned when he tossed the picture in a bag and then in the closet.  They, and I think I went along with this, made it sound as though he was on a bender, like his life was out of control.  We talked about him as horribly sad and some people even made him sound a bit pathetic or like he'd become like Henry, just blankly watching the TV and not living.  This is a pretty bleak outlook on this young man and a guy in the mid seventies (or now) who has had a few drinks and smoked a joint is not "out of control", nothing about what he described sounds like he's fallen into a pit of sadness.  He was down one night and this happened, as things do.  Were we s convinced that he had to be spiraling in sadness to want to take down the picture of Henry?  I think so.  I think we have trouble allowing people to grieve how they want to, and we want to pass judgement on what they can and cannot handle.  Lyman probably went back and forth, up and down, had good days and bad over Henry's death for years - but it is much more dramatic for us to think of other wallowing.  To see tears being shed is much more concrete than someone who moves on only to have occasional bad nights - it doesn't make their suffering any less or their mourning.  Why do we like to impose how we think people should be sad?

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Draft

In the Bible, Jesus calls to the disciples they put away their jobs and material things to follow him:  "And Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men." Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.…" (Mark:1:17-18)  

They cannot have these things if they want to fully devote themselves to Christ.  The grandmother must put away her affectations and air of Christianity before she can truly accept grace.  Throughout the beginning of the story, we see the Grandmother's less than Christian approach to her fellow man; she criticizes people at just about every turn, "People certainly aren't nice like they used to be" (2778), she lies to get her way (2779), and she's entirely concerned with appearances. She sees beauty in things she knows nothing about, like the poor boy on the steps of a shack and the graveyard plantation (2777).  There is nothing romantic about these places she wants to paint and sighs lovingly over, she simply cannot see them as people such as herself.  Tossing blame around at everyone but those she likes, "The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now." (2779)  

Before becoming a disciple, Matthew was a tax collector (Matthew 9:9) something that was, and still is, considered one of the most hated of professions.  When others confronted Jesus as to why he would bring someone like that into his fold he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."  The Grandmother is not a perfect Christian, just as the Misfit says at the very end, "She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."(2786) She has to become good, become a disciple before she dies at peace.  

The reader first sees this change in her with regards to her appearance, at the beginning of the story, O'Conner clearly makes a point to make sure we get a full picture of what kind of a woman the grandmother is "...but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim...In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." (2776)  She is vain and preoccupied, worried about keeping up her image and dolling out criticism.  However, when she if faced with The Misfit - when first confronted with the very real possibility of her death, she withdraws this pretense, "The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground." (2783)  Suddenly, the idea of dying "a lady" doesn't matter anymore, because it's not important.  For a woman her age, at this time to cast aside the hat at all was just not done.  To drop the ornamentation, the status and civility it represents, is to "leave her net", to leave what tells others who she is and makes her, her.  She is now free to "follow" God; to become his messenger.  At no point in the story does she actually pray.  It is only when she has her moment of revelation towards the Misfit that the reader sees her understand God.  When she realizes her death is drawing near, just before her exclamation, "She sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her" (2786) She falls down to her knees, almost in prayer.  “Humbled” is something we read about a lot in the Bible in the presence of Jesus and God, and she experiences this effect with The Misfit himself.  During most of their talk, as his associates are taking her family into the woods, he is kneeling below her and she literally "...was standing up looking down on him" (2784) and then he is standing above her when she first falls to her knees.  Just before her moment of grace however, "She saw the man's face twisted close to her own..." (2786) This is the first time she is "equal" to The Misfit; this is the stance they are in when she is killed, at equal height.  

In the same verse from Matthew describing tax collectors, Jesus says, “‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:11) The Misfit is there to bring this sinner towards Christ.  Even if he doesn’t mean to, even if he doesn’t realize his purpose, he seems to be sent to deliver her salvation. Like Pontius Pilate washing his hands after whipping Jesus Christ, The Misfit wipes her away, “Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them."(2786)  The Bible verse goes, “When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this Man's blood; see to that yourselves." (Matthew 27:24).  By washing them away, the two men attempt to cleanse themselves of their demise.  

I'm not very good at rough draft's so I want to be sure I'm heading in the right direction, also I want to use the quote about the Grandmother smiling when she dies but I don't quite know how to fit it in. 

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Power

The difference between poetry and rhetoric

is being ready to kill

yourself

instead of your children.

Even after reading the rest of her work, much of it for the third or fourth time, I keep coming back to this stanza.  Thea idea of the destruction that can be inflicted using either form of writing/speaking is what makes me stop.  The idea that putting yourself down on the page, your true self and pouring over these words can be equated with laying down your life is a frightening thought.  Almost as frightening I think as saying that empty promises or colorful, meaningless language can kill your children.  I think it's more frightening because rhetoric already has a negative connotation, we already know that pomposity can be detrimental and harmful.  Poetry we see as a form of self expression, something that can help us say things we might not be able to in a straightforward way.  We think of poetry as something that can be an extension of our own souls.  To say that to be able to express these deep innermost feelings about yourself means that you are "ready to kill yourself" is a frightening idea.  It makes it that much scarier of an idea.  

Do you agree with Lorde's sentiment?   

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Signs

The scene showing Twyla's response to Roberta's "MOTHERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO" sign is an interesting insight into the influence each other their mothers had over them.  Roberta emphasizing the mother's rights in a school case remind us of her god fearing mother.  A woman who would have been probably a strict, structured mother to her daughter had she not been so ill.  We also see that Roberta's opposition to busing has nothing to do with the racial implications, she's simply concerned about what she feels is right by the families. Just like when she was a child and didn't understand why her mother didn't shake Mary's hand.  She doesn't think in terms of the differences of people, just in certain moral ideals that she probably isn't even sure why she possesses.
Twyla's sign on the other had ("AND SO DO CHILDREN***") marks her soreness for the encounter with Roberta's mother when they were children.  Also, she has always viewed her own mother as childish, the way she was oblivious or uncaring to how she dressed and not able to keep composure during the church service.  She seems to be saying not only do the literal children have rights, but also the mothers who may act less than motherly still have feelings too.  They are still worth something despite what Roberta's mother (and now Roberta) may think.  The way she vindictively writes "HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?" shows us she still holds Roberta more responsible for her mothers actions than her mother, because Twyla always had to be the one looking out for and corralling her own mother - she expected others to do the same.
Does this encounter prove to you that Twyla is the black character and Roberta the white?  Or are you still unsure?  There were plenty of African Americans that protested integration because they didn't want their children going to school with people they assumed would all be bigots.  

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Callisto

I've been wondering why Pynchon chose the same 'Callisto' for one of his protagonists.  From what I could remember on my own (and then looked up to confirm) Callisto was a woman who, after being tricked by Zeus, was turned into a bear for getting pregnant, and gave birth to her son (Arcas).  Years later her son was hunting and came upon the bear, not knowing her to be his mother, he almost killed the bear but just before he could Zeus intervened and made them both into the constellations of Ursa Minor and Major.
Applying this to "entropy", where the amount of heat causes the system to lose useful energy, we see the connection.  There is a lead up to something big and then the momentum doesn't stop itself, it just ends, it is cut off.  Aubade suddenly breaks the glass open with her hands, she's allowing the heat from inside to escape and the cold air outside to enter.  We don't know what this will bring the two characters, but the death of the bird and Aubade's sudden action after so much stagnation leads us to believe that it will change the course of things.  We as readers just have no idea what it will be, for the action ends.  Arcas never kills his mother but is forever in the motion of doing so, he is immortalized in the stars as "the little bear".  While he was born human, he will for eternity be the son of a bear, the child of a raped and mistreated woman, and always about to kill her.
Does Arcas seem like a better name for Pynchon's Callisto?  After all, he has the least action in Entropy, and is what cause's Aubade's pain and (seemingly) momentary lack of senses.  She is the catalyst, whereas Callisto just is.  Aubade is the one being taking advantage of, being stuck in this room taking notes with a man so caught up in his own thoughts; like Zeus using Callisto to satisfy himself. Our Callisto seems to have a lack of energy, heat, and action right from the beginning, Aubade never loses hers.  

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Gorey, Dahl, and Creepy Kids

Why is it so hard to understand that some kids love creepy stories too?  One of the reasons Roald Dahl is so popular with adults and children is because of his colorful characters.  I stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we see that children can too be the villains in a story.  In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, the stories start with the three nice Baudelaire children's parents dying in a fire and they are sent to live with their horrible distant relative, Count Olaf.  Throughout the 13 book series, they are relentlessly pursued by Olaf and are surround by sorrow, death, and humor.   These books are as funny and witty as they are dark and mournful.  Children are no strangers to darkness and violence, many of there playtime is spent acting our scenes far more deadly than they even realize, slaying dragons and fighting wars with action figures.  When they can see something potentially frightening, like the death in a Gorey drawing or Augustus Gloop almost drowning in chocolate - seeing the humor allows them to realize it's not real and overcome their fears.  It helps them in future unsettling situations to look past what scares them and decide what is really happening.  They are not being desensitized, for they know (thanks to how sensational the stories are) that these are stories, fantasy, fiction.  In my opinion, as long as you are not forcing something you know for a fact scares your child, you are doing them a service by exposing them to the comedic creeps like Dahl, Gorey, Snicket, Tim Burton, and R.L. Stine.  Their imaginations expand and they learn ways of dealing with their own fears.
Do you agree?  If not, why?

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Steps 1-3: A Good Man is Hard to Find

When re-reading 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' the more subtle Christian imagery jumped out at me, such as:

• The grandmother's ridiculous obsession with appearances, "...but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim...In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." (2776)
• But, when she if faced with  The Misfit, when first confronted with the very real possibility of her death, she withdraws this pretense, "The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground." (2783)  Suddenly, the idea of dying "a lady" doesn't matter anymore.
• "She sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her" (2786) She falls down to her knees, almost in prayer.
• "She saw the man's face twisted close to her own..." (2786) This is the first time she is "equal" to The Misfit; at first he is kneeling below her and she literally "...was standing up looking down on him" (2784) and then he is standing above her when she first falls to her knees.  This is the stance they are in when she is killed, equal height.  
• "Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them."(2786) Like Pontius Pilate washing his hands after whipping Jesus Christ, The Misfit wipes her away.

Did the grandmother have to give up her superficial affectations before she could die a child of God? Was she like the disciples before her, putting away their possessions before they could truly follow Jesus?

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The Monster

Arnold Friend is a monster stemming from the radio and teen magazines Connie surrounds herself with.  As I read the story I started to imagine that Friend wasn't even human at all, simply wearing a human suit.  From his hair and clothes, "the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks...and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his..." (Oates 3129) are all designed to make his as appealing as possible (much like Kayla brought up) but none of it quite fits.  She says, "His whole face was a mask..." and that he can't seem to walk right (3131).  All the right pieces were there for the ultimate dreamboat, but they didn't come together right.  Like Frankenstein's monster, he has been put together to be a perfect man.  The creature of Frankenstein's features ended up becoming grotesque when put all together, frightening people away and making something gentle into a vindictive creature.  The creature is described as:

"His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips." (Shelly 68)

Arnold has a similar description, from his "shaggy, shabby black hair" (3126) to his eyes, "...she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light" (3128)  Friend is a cheap imitation of what Connie and so many girls like her would desire, but his cunning and force keeps them from running away.  I noticed that Connie never actually describes him as handsome or cute, his clothes and demeanor are (at first) appealing, but it has never fully come together for her - even when she first saw him in the parking lot.
The creature in Frankenstein is a victim to his own creation, whereas women are a victim to Arnold's.  I couldn't help but think of the similarities between them multiple times while reading the story.  I don't believe Arnold Friend was of this world, but then that begs the question, was he created like Frankenstein's monster?  Fabricated like some of the bands, the atmosphere, and the culture that Connie so desperately wants to believe in?  Or is he more like Victor himself?  More like the Devil, of his own making and trying to play god?

I think my real question stems from the dedication to Bob Dylan - does this read like an act of admonition to the culture makers like Dylan, The Beatles, or The Who? Is this saying, "You created this monster. This idea that this is what young kids like Connie really want. You've made them think that this (Friend) is the peak of what is out there, and you've weakened them because of it."  Is she saying Connie was taken advantage of (indirectly) by guys like Bob Dylan?

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Plath

Says the man who wrote Manhattan, romanticizing a grown man's relationship with an underage girl. Apparently his life's story was fine for the page.  It's a funny thing that Kerouac and Hemingway's escapades can be written and re-written about and rarely see the same scorn.  We as a culture tend to romanticize young deaths, suicide or otherwise, James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe - because of the potential that was lost, and the eternal youth we're now left with.  Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, and Cory Monteith will be this generation's group - Amy even joins the proverbial "27 Club" and Joan Rivers still joked about her death.  Why do people feel the right to scorn these young people, even in untimely death?  Whereas I've had plenty of people jump down my throat for saying anything il of Ms. Rivers - someone who got to live a long life and got to tear down those who were already down.  Does age allow us a level of respect not offered to (basically) kids who die?  People like Woody Allen, Joan, and others who are now older than these tragic youths feel the right to scorn them even if death?  If Sylvia had lived a long and tragic life, dying of old age - would she still be considered the hero of silly college girls?  Would her books still be sold in Urban Outfitters, much to the scorn of our parents?

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How much sin can one take?

"In a town full of bedrock crazies, nobody even notices an acid freak." (13)

I find the idea of the people raised and working in Las Vegas more interesting than the city itself a lot of the time.  The people who have to accommodate the guests coming and going around them, all looking for a very specific "Vegas Experience" and expecting to be handed whatever that entails.  It's a lot to live up to, like any big city, Milan, Los Angeles, Tokyo, out-of-towners have certains ideas in their head of what they're going to see.  Vegas however, is the only place I can think of, where your expectation, and intent, is to do bad things.  You expect to be able to go to Vegas, live in a land of vice for a few day and skate away.  Now many of the people living and working there, have no interest in giving you that experience, it's not actually their job.  They're restaurant works, bartenders, cab drivers, and even most of the people who work at the hotels along the strip.  However the fact still remains, this is where you go to be bad.  No wonder Gonzo Journalism is the perfect fit.  Take a bunch of drugs and just write everything until you pass out - in a town like that, it's the only way you can write.  No one is going to go to Vegas and sit in their hotel room typing away on their work, usuing only their imagination and taking in the scenery.  That's for Paris, London, New York - those are cities you can sit in.  

Anthony Bourdain went to Vegas for his show Parts Unknown, highlighting many of those very people, the ones who are still there, even once the dust clears and the crowds fall into a stupor.  Most of the people there are much more cynical than those who arrive - so the question remains, what's the point?  What does it really offer?  

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Minor Characters

"Minor Characters" resonated on a deep level with me.  The feeling of excitement and eagerness over being a writer, being a female writer, only to be told you're too late, the men have already done it better.  Told be told to go out into the dangerous world, a place far more dangerous for you than it was for Kerouac, Twain, London, any of the rest - go out and "live" because nothing about your life is interesting enough yet, there's no way you're good enough on your own.  Once you do of course, once you take up or pack up, once you move or leave everything behind, suddenly the questions come.  The concerned glances and fearful leading questions, "You're not running from something are you?", like when the super asks her mother if she's pregnant (3001).  I feel such a kinship towards her and her bravery is inspiring.  This move of hers was a true movement, in every sense of the word.  Young women leaving their homes, taking charge of themselves; this wasn't an en mass bra burning or march on Washington, these women weren't trying to be political, they were trying to live for themselves.  Unlike men such as Kerouac and Burroughs, leaving comfort for the thrill of a fabricated adventure, these young women were in danger of being completely cast out by their families, many moved to dangerous neighborhoods or couldn't find work.  They made real sacrifices following their dream.  Why then are they not remembered?  

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Erasure and Inaction

I've been sick all week so I apologize for both of these posts coming today.  I had fully planned on getting both of these done at the beginning of the week but I wasn't sleeping at all and I couldn't focus.  I'm better now and at least I'm getting these in!

I'm trying out a video too!  We'll see how well this works

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Sonny's Music

We've had a few stories/poems this week that seem to deal with what it takes to truly view your fellow man as a person.  In Filling Station, the narrator at first sees a terrible, dirty gas station and then sees the love and care that's gone into it and realizes a loving family lives there just like hers. In Sonny's Blues our narrator never really understands his brother until he sees his reaction to the revival and then ultimately when he sees him play.  What it the spark that sets off this recognition in us to ultimately empathize with our fellow man?  What is the edge that we must cross or go over in order to see our struggling brothers or young children sitting at home as human beings just like we are?  The narrator has faced many of his own struggles in life, personal tragedies that have shaped his personality.  Why though are Sonny's tragedies not perceived until his brother sees him perform?

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