Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo

This week I used the SAT subject test as a way to avoid yet another epic battle with the Regal Popper. Sans popcorn grease burns, the weekend came and went with a crash of Indian music and spicy food--I danced and laughed until the next morning when Maestro Ludwig buckled under pre-concert pressure and nearly threw the Soprano at us (he is a very small man). Now I'm sitting here wondering how I can possibly connect my thoughts to Shakespeare.

I have been slightly disappointed so far in lit class. I feel little to no connection with our reading material, Madame Bovary aside. Shakespeare can't be to blame. But maybe that is the problem--Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I feel as though I have been conditioned to accept it. The only vestige of intrigue I find in the works of Shakespeare is the subtle-or-not-so-subtle touch of sexual humor. And I can't really expound on that either. Othello is dead, Desdemona is dead, Cassio is dead, Rodrigo is dead, Emilia is dead, and Iago gets away. What can I say about that? What themes can I find? Sure, trust, faith, look before you leap, yadda yadda yadda. It's all very didactic.

Connection, for me at least, comes rarely and sporadically. Which feeds into another annoyance with lit class--I believe pop-culture has just as much literary value as Shakespeare. Wasn't Shakespeare considered pop-culture back in the day? I just think that film and music is so much a part of us that I can't help but talk about it. This weekend I watched Blue Velvet, both versions of Clash of the Titans, and The Triplets of Belville. Blue Velvet honestly reminds me Of Mice and Men combined with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I actually dissected Clash of the Titans for those "literary allusions" that we seem to endlessly search for. What I found is that Medusa could easily be related to Harry Potter's basilisk. The Triplets of Belville was this amazing pseudo-silent film with that old-school animation we all miss. It was reminiscent of the '20s and was so clever I couldn't help but laugh. Where does that leave me for literary connections?

So I do declare that this week's lit blog is about absurdist literature. We are reading Albert Camus's The Stranger in French class. According to Wiki, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent meaning in life and the human inability to find any. For example, in The Stranger, the main character's mother dies. He feels nothing, not sorrow or even relief (haha). He floats around complaining about the price of train tickets to his mother's funeral and wondering what his boss will think about his leave of absence. He watches a neighbor kick his dog daily and doesn't think it a slightly bit odd. I have a feeling that by the end of this novel nothing will have happened and that I will go on my merry way thinking how useless the world is. At least that will leave me some connection, unlike Shakespeare, which leaves me no thoughts at all.

Guessing I'm just tired and hoping writer's block will go away so that I can write about Madame Bovary--hopefully Invisible Man will speak to me this week.

Dali's Mustache

Yesterday was free Fulton County day at the High Museum of Art. And for those who have not seen the Dali exhibit, I seriously recommend that you do--I think this is the most engaging exhibit they have ever had. Not another, "This was the basin Marie Antoinette washed her feet in" or "Here's my naked wife on a beach, in the woods, and under a tree." There was development and absurdity. What's more, after I saw the exhibit I attended a lecture where friends of Dali remarked on their experiences. It was the strangest thing I have ever heard.

"Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health.
However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?"
Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches."--Salvador Dali

 I learned so much this weekend I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it all. You know when those college essays ask you for some fictional character or artist that has influenced you the most? Well I think I have found that artist. Maybe in college I will get the chance to study him further. 

Anyways, Dali's favorite thing to do was draw rhinoceros horns. When Dali sat down to make his own version of Vermeer's Lacemaker he worked for a few hours. The only thing he had drawn was a few rhino horns. He was fascinated by them--the shape and the texture. Mostly I guess he was drawn to natural patterns, you've heard of the golden ratio I'm sure, as was he drawn to logarithmic functions. Thus the rhinoceros horns.

What is great about Dali is how you can look at a piece of his work for hours and still never decipher every detail. His work is so...daedalean. The High did a fantastic job at really showcasing his development. In this painting to the left is a picture of The Virgin Mary and Jesus in her womb. Taking time period into account, this was done around 1945 after the atomic bombs. You see Dali taking his lack of faith (he is a fallen Catholic, like myself) and trying to rebuild it. Except he is torn between science and religion. And he also has a fascination with babies in the womb, even saying that he could remember his own first 9 months. He was also fascinated with the idea that some birds hatch from an egg with no help from their mothers. So you see an egg at the top of the painting. You also see a floating ball, which is, I presume, a representation of an atom. In this he is generally confused. In his later paintings (I wish I could find them online) The Virgin Mary is no longer cracked. The baby has the ball in his right hand and The Bible in his left. Various other things also, including a rhino, a cracked atom, and a blade of wheat (he really liked wheat also).

The lecture was incredibly interesting. When I walked in, I sat down among artists, one with a shoe for a hat. It was surprising when the first presenter walked to the stage--he was wearing a molecule structure that covered his face. Actually, I really wasn't that surprised. Anyways, he talked about how he worked with Dali as his unofficial apprentice. He began telling us a story. "One day I found this remote-control car and thought, 'wow, we can turn this into an egg.' Well, I went to the Ritz and presented my idea to Dali, who looked at me and said, 'One egg? We can turn this into thirty eggs!' So Dali approached the first woman who walked by. She was holding a white plastic bag. He seized her bag, and she protested. They fought for a second or two; he just looked at her and screamed, 'I can make this bag into a masterpiece and you can't! So the bag's mine.' He ripped it from her hands and lipsticks and brushes flew on to the floor and rolled around. We went back to the hotel room and began cutting ovals out of the bag and pasted yellow cores on to them and then attached a wire to it. We went back downstairs and into the conference room. They were shooting some television show with some young actress. I feel bad for her because it was her debut, and we jumped on stage and paraded our new invention. After that we left and walked down fifth avenue. Crowds of people followed us, walking their dogs. Dali said, 'Some people walk their dogs. Well, I walk my eggs.'"

The second presenter was a woman who Dali had relations with. She must have been sixty or so, but she was certainly stuck in the past, retelling stories of how she modeled for Dali and how he had a taste for the erotic. It was a weird presentation. Just plain strange. The third presenter was a fellow artist who had worked with Dali, and her artwork was a reaction to some of his stuff. What I remember most, well next to the Pistol-Phallus (which I will find a better time and place aside from a lit blog to retell) is the Mickey-Angelo. She was a feminist at the time of the work (the above is just a sketch of it), and she discussed how it was an accurate representation of man. How Mickey Mouse was sort of the first launch into a new era (or consumerism, atomic bombs, pop-culture) just as Adam was. Furthermore, as you can recall, the painting done of Adam has a leaf over his...uh parts. When the Pope had seen the original, he told Michelangelo to make it smaller, and smaller, and then even smaller. The presenter remarked, "Well, it certainly isn't the size of a peanut. So I found the dollar sign quite fitting--as the mark of man is defined by money in our culture." It was all very funny.

She also said she had a lobster phone just like this one. She was willing to pull it out if it rang.

The Salvador Dali exhibit was extremely engaging. What a fun weekend. Just one last quote, "I often wonder where Dali would be if he hadn't met his wife. And his watch hadn't melted." --Andy Warhol

Good Dogs Always Eat

            Yes, everyone has the ability to donate their blood. The only requirements are that you must carry a reasonable weight, or even better, carry twice as much weight as any normal person should; cannot have AIDs or test HIV-positive; cannot have traveled to any third-world countries in the last six months; cannot have or have had any cancer of the blood; and finally, have at least a hemoglobin rating of 12.5.

            The donors sat in the gym, clumped onto a group of bleachers.  One boy in back held a white box up to his chin. He was spooning beef into his mouth. Surely he must have been hungry, but I knew what was really on his mind: beef is very high in iron. Reminds me of that calculus test I crammed for.

            One girl decided to give me her life’s rant, “I just hope my iron level is okay. They didn’t let me donate last time. I’ve been eating red meat and beans every day. Vitamins twice a day. I hope it’s okay. Do you think it’s okay? Yeah it will be okay. I’m sure.” Pill popper…

            Another girl, “I drank eight glasses of water last night! I am so ready for this. No way am I going to faint.”

I flashed back to my night—it included a carton of cookie dough and Marlon Brando, “I coulda’ been a contenda’!”

           

“Number 22!”

That was me. I was transported to another line. Why must everything be accompanied by a countdown? This was some sick game of musical chairs. One down, 4 to go. I was getting closer.

            I looked to my left. One guy, who looked strikingly like a leprechaun version of Leonardo DiCaprio, teased a girl, “What if the needle rips open your arm and sends all of your blood flailing through the air? What if you pass out and never wake up? You know I heard they sometimes keep stabbing you until your arm turns blue.” What if the needle cracks in half, one part stuck in my vein, keeping the blood fresh and pulsating across the floor?

3 to go.

There are those who can handle large amounts of stress, and there are those who buckle under pressure. Sure we like to think of ourselves as soldiers, as warriors in an abysmal world, but the reality is that we are no stronger than the person sitting at our elbows. People seek differences on full moons—whether or not there are more babies born, more accidents, more Bigfoot sightings. I, personally, would like to know the statistics on April Fool’s Day. That one day people are allowed to be jerks and get away with it—and the people who are not jerks are the victims of jerks. Moreover, they are Victims of a Social Order. Yes, April 1^st is the date young adults receive verdicts from colleges. I would like to see the suicide rate for the month of April.

“Someone watch her!” A girl slumped over in a chair at the other side of the room, where the donors went after their blood-drawing. Her body slid down and she lay sprawled on her back.

2 to go.

            The girl who sat to the right of me hated the sight of blood. “Is that wire over there filled with  blood, or is it just red?” The wire was connected to an anaphorisis machine, the one responsible for separating blood platelets and recycling the leftovers back to the donor. It was bright orange.

I recalled meeting this girl at a recent party – the only reason I remembered her name was because it was the same as the feral child who was notorious for being locked in a closet for 14 years. The only difference was that the girl who sat next to me knew more than just the words, “stop” and “no.”

It was my turn. A nurse took me to an isolated cubicle for the typical donor questions.

 Her voice was practiced and casual on the border of condescending.

“Do you exercise and eat plenty of red meats?”

Let me think--Extra-curricular Activities:

Cross country, orchestra, Jr. Civitan, Jr. Beta, National Honors Society, Chamber for Charities, summer internship, Save the Whales Club

 Oh wait. That’s not what she means. Red meats? “Yeah, I ate a hamburger last week.”

“Okay, I’m going to test your hemoglobin level now. This will just be a prick.”

That uncomfortable splinter feeling spread through the tip of my finger.

“Wait here while I take this to the lab.”

I sat still and waited. The girl I talked to on the bleachers walked by, the pill popper.

“My iron levels were too low…”

I don’t stand a chance.

The nurse apparated with a form in her hands. “You see here, you need at least a 12.1 to be considered within the normal hemoglobin range, a 12.5 to be accepted into the program.”

 Wait, do you want that weighted or non-weighted?

 “If we try another finger there is a chance that the score might go up. Care to play again?”

“Okay. Try this finger. It’s the only one that I don’t use to play the violin.”

“All right now, let me see that hand. Don’t be nervous. You play violin? I used to play violin ages ago. What was it--A—G--D--?”

 “GDAE”

Good Dogs Always Eat

“Oh that’s right. Yeah. Good times.” 

Great times.

“Let me just take this to the lab. Be right back, don’t go anywhere.”

 So when taking the derivative of e^2x, you first take the derivative of 2x, being 2, and multiply it by e^2x. 2e^2x. When taking the integral by the udu method, u=2xdx, du=2, therefore you get ½ the integral e^u,which gives you…

 “Sorry, your results didn't quite qualify you as a donor. Close but no cigar. Let me just print out this deferral sheet...have you thought about community college?”

So this is what it has come to.

“So why didn’t you get into UPenn?”

            -“Oh, I’m anemic. I didn’t even try.”

            -“They told me my veins were too small.”

I read my deferral sheet. Iron deficiency.

Maybe this disability will make it easier for me to get into Tech. I have a friend who is deaf in one ear…

            I looked around. Bodies sat perched in dentist chairs, feet in the air, blood rushing to their heads. They sat with smug smiles and lofty wires streaming from their arms, the nurses inspecting their pale, arrogant faces. Afterwards they would proudly display the remaining of their broken capillaries and brag about the nurse’s inability to locate a vein. They were the chosen ones.

Taking Conciseness a Step Back

I guess other blogs have inspired me speak tell more of my history of poetry (just goes to show that I am a follower shhh). I always remember writing--mostly about my cats and dogs (they're just so darn cuddly!). My earliest documented poem was probably in the third grade when I still wore socks up to my knees. It went something like this:

What if the world turned upside down
Then all of the trees will fall out of the ground.

What if the color of our world turned black and white
Then all the penguins would fit in just right.

What if all the music disappeared
The we will all turn into mimes or live without ears

What if kids ruled
Now that would be cool

(I must admit, I did edit this a little, just a tiny bit! Ha I can't let nonsense stand) After that I explored in middle school, mostly writing grotesque poems about botulism and violins (which just sounded like sex, not surprisingly--Foster is right, we are all obsessed). My poems tended towards free-verse, as they still do. Until one day in Mr. Blackwell's class when I wrote this masterpiece:

Gary the Canary was a small flightless bird
Gary the Canary was a miner-superb

Okay so maybe that isn't all my poetry has come to (Hint: check the litmag from a couple of years ago). Since then I have dropped poetry all together in favor of prose. Maybe David Sedaris convinced me. (Hint: check the litmag site, wait does that still exist?)

So now I mostly write satires and loop music over the sounds of my washing machine. It's a beautiful thing.

On Conciseness

Writing college application essays is a pain in the...neck. Not only do I have to sum up some important aspect of my life, but I also have to do so in under 800 words (or so is the higher end of college essay length). Might as well submit an epic poem; it would make life easier. Actually, I will just steal lines from The Iliad. I'm sure they won't notice.

Today Madame Rollot mentioned mushroom clouds in connection with Sisyphus (not to be confused with syphilis, got ya!) and the nature of man. The conversation was going the way of Le Petit Prince who insists that the Baobobs represent an undercurrent of evil (the illustration resembling a mushroom cloud). For those of you who don't know, a Baobob is a really ugly tree:

The Little Prince makes it his job to dig up the seeds before they grow, so we must pay attention or else--KaBoom! And so Madame Rollot tied in the discussion of Sisyphus (yay mythology!) who constantly tries to roll a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down and hit him in the head. So we see this through wars over and over again. And why? Well, this is the introduction to a poem I found that I rather liked. Since we are beginning our sejourn with poetry, might as well start posting about it. Anyways, that was my personal connection with the poem. See if you can find one.

In trust we steal

That innocuous pleasure

When given, only received

By a half-wit

Who recognizes

That none are looking

And seizes only little

Of the lot

Could risk further

But is yet only

Half-gutsy

And half-banal

And upon returning

Eyes find only

What they remember

And rest left forgotten

So the half-wit

Is trust with

More and

More

Anonymous

For those of you who read Madame Bovary

I guess the books on file project was good for something--I've gotten to revisit one of my favorite books. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and liked it so-so; I also read A Streetcar Named Desire and thought it amazing. But when I read Madame Bovary I thought, "wow, is Flaubert making fun of me?" It appealed to my sense of irony, that an author could build up a character such as Emma Bovary only to ridicule her. And also that he included those subtle references to sex that Foster mentions in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. You have to understand, Madame Bovary was marked as pornography and banned in France in the 1850's. It's just funny. Flaubert describes the first time Leon and Emma have "encounters," is this not amazing? --"bourgeois stared in wonder at this thing unheard of in the provinces: a cab with all blinds drawn that reappeared incessantly, more tightly sealed than a tomb and tossed around like a ship on the waves." I think it's clever. I think Flaubert is clever and most interesting. One of those guys who dropped law practice to write and also decided he was too good for life, so he instead became a steadfast observer.

It is refreshing to see an author reject Romanticism in favor of Realism, especially concerning a novel of a romantic nature (I am really tired of "long sighs" and "gasps for breath"). Funny how Flaubert succeeds in taking out the passion and instead inserting disdain--you begin to realize that Madame Bovary is neither a drama nor an analysis, it is more of a social experiment with Emma as the subject--all in effort to poke fun at the banality of middle-class life. On a lighter note, Fascination (the French version of Twilight) is picking up. Really, learning is a great excuse to do something you don't want people to know that you have wanted to do. Defining vocab is addicting. So is Edward.

This week's theme for my mythology directed study was love stories. I read a really riveting one about the marriage between psyche and cupid. Love and soul. It had to do with fidelity more than anything, and then a trip to the Underworld. Good stuff.

And this week I realized that Weird Science was based off of Pygmalean. I'm sorry Ms. Marcy, I love movies! Forgive me XD

"Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ~Gustave Flaubert

Because I'm tired of Humpty Dumpty

Two Sisters of Persephone

Two girls there are : within the house
One sits; the other, without.
Daylong a duet of shade and light
Plays between these.

In her dark wainscoted room
The first works problems on
A mathematical machine.
Dry ticks mark time

As she calculates each sum.
At this barren enterprise
Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame.

Bronzed as earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks blown gold
Like pollen on bright air. Lulled
Near a bed of poppies,

She sees how their red silk flare
Of petaled blood
Burns open to the sun's blade.
On that green alter

Freely become sun's bride, the latter
Grows quick with seed.
Grass-couched in her labor's pride,
She bears a king. Turned bitter

And sallow as any lemon,
The other, wry virgin to the last,
Goes graveward with flesh laid waste,
Worm-husbanded, yet no woman.

Sylvia Plath

We were given that project on allusions, so I might as well write about a poem with some inkling of allusion (sorry if this ruins someone’s project, but I doubt it will). Everyone knows the story of Persephone—that she was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld, that her mother Demeter caused the weather to go insane with her worry, that Hades tricked Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds, that Persephone then must forever spend six months in the Underworld and six months with Demeter, thus the seasons—so I’m just going to pick this poem apart.

To Start: Persephone had no sisters. If you can disprove me, go ahead.

Facts about Plath: Extremely bi-polar, death by carbon-monoxide poisoning after sticking her head in an oven

The first thing I noticed about the poem was the most basic play between light and dark, “Daylong between a duet of shade and light.” At first I assumed this poem was about seasonal weather patterns, but then I soon realized that is not it at all. One sister “works problems on A mathematical machine,” an abacus perhaps? She is keeping track of time, dry ticks of time, she is wasting away slowly…death seems imminent. The second hears the same ticks “blown gold.” Life bursts into color, “like pollen on bright air.” Spring is here at last! “She sees how their red silk flare/Of petaled blood/
Burns open to the sun's blade./On that green alter” This is a rather elegant innuendo…

That same innuendo is confirmed when you read further, “Freely become sun's bride, the latter/Grows quick with seed./Grass-couched in her labor's pride,/She bears a king.” So we see spring and birth and happiness. Then back to the other sister who becomes, “worm-husbanded.” Yes, yes, this screams Persephone because of the weather. But that isn’t what Plath is saying at all; weathermen write about the weather, not poets. I think what Plath did here was use a basic metaphor for seasons to convey her own conflicting viewpoints on life, maybe due to her insanity. Part of her wastes away until the other part comes out to play, and the cycle starts again. the allusion to Persephone must have been to Persephone's two personalities--the one taken to the Underworld and the one that returns home again. I can only conclude that Plath suffered from that same double lifestyle.