Just an Idea....

I just had another thought. There is a Shel SilverStein poem/book called falling up. This is how the poem goes:

I tripped on my shoelace

And I fell up-

Up to the roof tops

Up past the tree tops

Up over the mountians

Up where the colors

Blend into the sounds

But it go me so dizzy

When I looked around

I got sick to my stomach

And I threw down

Falling up is a religious saying that talks about the faults of humanity and the ability of religion to save. I was thinking of this saying and this poem in contrast to the hilltops in the Alchemist. If authors write epiphanies on the top of mountains or staircases then their characters must be, in a writer's since, falling up. I don't want to get into the religious aspect. The saying can make sense in a purely technical way. A character standing on top of a mountain top is role playing. They are playing the part of the divine, this is the reason for the revelation, ect. But because they are ultimately human, and therefore, have human faults, they can never be in a place of true divinity. I would say they are falling up. A character, in an author's eye, is flawed. Even with these moments of divinity they are continuously falling. So when Santiago is on the top of the stone wall, he is having a moment of up. The Shel SilverStein poem is written for children, but as I have argued, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. It is a lighthearted poem with a grand idea (or maybe it's just a lighthearted poem). Eliot says, or rather steals, "the way up is the way down." Even in our moments of "up" people must always come down, or fall. Eliot stealing, the way up is the way down, knows that no matter how high we climb and how epiphinised we get, there is always the fall which we must anticipate. It's like the Shel SilverStein cover picture. There is a moment where we are suspended in space, waiting to either float upwards some more or catch ourselves on the way down. A character, even when experiencing an epiphany on the top of a mountain, will always stay in the flawed state. It's not that they become the divine, they simply experience the divine in a form that keeps their perpetual humanity.

Metaphors, Epiphanies, and the Alchemist

Metaphor for epiphanies are loaded in the Alchemist. We learned that in our capstone class that there are certain metaphors that authors use to represent a revelation or an epiphany. There is the ladder, lighthouse, tower, mountaintop, and staircase. In the Alchemist the character Santiago has a number of revelations on each leg of his journey. First Santiago climbs the stone wall after he meets the king. He must decide whether to sell his sheep and pursue his personal legend or stay as a Shepard. Santiago must climb the stone wall in order to make his decision. At the top of the wall he overlooks Africa (pg 26). This causes him to make a decision and continue on his personal legend. Without climbing the wall Santiago would have never had his revelation. Next there is the crystal merchant at the top of the hill. After Santiago has had all of his money stolen he walks to around trying to find work. He spots the crystal shop that is vacant and asked the man if he can polish his crystal for food. This initial job ends up being key to Santiago accomplishing his dream. He had to hit bottom in order to walk up the hill and rise up. It took walking up the hill that lead to his new beginning. Without his work at the crystal shop he would have never earned the money and learned the lessons from the merchant that lead to his continuation toward his personal legend. Again the hill represented a new epiphany for Santiago. Lastly, there is the dunes. Santiago finally crosses the desert after years of struggle and he has to cross it during a time of war. This war is just another test he must pass to continue his dream. In the end of his journey Santiago is tired and weary and he climbs this last dune that overlooks the pyramids. Here he has his last revelation. On the top of the dune he gets beaten down, but is told by the thief the true location of his treasure. If Santiago had not gone on that dune he would have never realized his need to go home.

I noticed that every metaphor deals with height. Whether it's a ladder, a mountain, staircase (you get my point) they all deal with climbing up. The Greeks didn't put their heaven on top of Mt. Olympus for no reason. The tower of Babylon was built in order to reach the Christian's heaven. These are all significant in the image of epiphanies. Santiago needed to climb in order to have his revelations. I believe this is due to two reasons. First, everything worth anything takes hard work. The reason the view at the top of a mountain is better is because it took hard work. The act of climbing is an accomplishment when you make it to the top. Usually when a person climbs they become tired and out of breath, reaching the top is empowering. Not only do you experience a beautiful view, but you worked hard and accomplished a goal by making it to the top. Also, I believe that the act of climbing is divine. When at the top of a mountain you feel weightless. The pull of gravity seems to work less. If the majority of the world believes heaven to be in the sky or just up then it makes since that we have epiphanies when we are higher up. Being in a position to overlook the rest of the world, or the continent of Africa, makes one feel powerful, it also gives a person a small feeling of divinity. The Christian God or the Greek's gods were said to look down on their people. It's the same when Santiago climbed the stone wall he looked over Africa, or when he climbed the dunes he looked over the pyramids. This gave him a since of divinity, power, and revelation.

My Arguement For Lowbrow

Today in class, Friday, I found myself disagreeing with Dr. Sexson. This doesn't happen often, and I don't mean to question our cult leaders' beliefs, but I suppose it was Dr. Sexson who said not to drink the cool-aid. So, here I am, trying out some Lipton ice tea and realizing that it's better than cool-aid (except for grape). Call me childish, but what I didn't agree with was that Dr. Sexson said that with age we, as readers, should move on from lowbrow and graduate to highbrow. I don't believe this is true. I think that lowbrow as well as highbrow has a place in our world. Such as the example with his granddaughter. It was okay for her to read Harry Potter, but not for the older man. I think that everyone needs some lowbrow in their life. The contrast between the two needs to exist and everyone needs some nice lowbrow every once in awhile. For myself, I very much enjoy my lowbrow. Whether it is Harry Potter or the Alchemist, I think it's necessary when you are taking a break from your job or school to have an easy read at your side. Just like dreams, lowbrow/fantasy books have the ability to make their reader escape from reality. A single page doesn't take an hour to understand, the reader is able to flow through there book and simply enjoy themselves. It doesn't matter if it's a 13 year old girl or a 70 year old man, they both should have the luxury of appreciating the lowbrow. I hope that when I'm older I can pick up a fun children's book and sit down and pretend. Without our ability to enter the dream world we are just left with the tangible. I, for one, like a little mystery. I don't believe everything is white and black or right and wrong, there is always a little bit of mystery hidden in the truth. It's more in the lowbrow's ability to take their reader to an alternate reality. This alternate reality should carry over into our everyday life. It's up to the Harry Potter's in our world to remind us of the mysteries in our everyday.

A little bit about myself...

I was listening to the talk on the Alchemist story and realized how similar it was to my own. I grew up in a town that I felt that I had nothing in common with. For years I had a need to move away, I thoroughly disliked my hometown. I will never tell my family or friends this because it would hurt there feelings. Like people, places also have a likeliness towards them. It tends to offend people who have a connection to a place when another person, such as myself, dislike their hometown. Anyways, since I graduated I moved to Minnesota. I found how much alike Minnesota was to South Dakota, so within a year I moved again to Bozeman. Just like Santiago, I feel that I'm some what of a wanderer. I have never had a connection to a town and have never felt reluctant to move. When I moved away from South Dakota, I thought I would hardly ever go back. However, I find myself going home every chance I get. In a place I thought I hated when I was younger, I now visit for spring break, or during the summer. This change, I realized, is due to a sort of treasure I discovered. My middle sister has had two children, a daughter and a son. I love hanging out with my niece and nephew and no matter where they lived I would visit them as much as possible. It just so happens that they live in a place that I felt had nothing for me. Now that they've been born, I feel that there is something there for me. Just as the story goes, I had to leave in order to realize what I missed.

When you grow old

Dr. Sexson said if we have a favorite poem then we should memorize it. This was in the first week of class. I took his advise and memorized a peom (that is not 4 quartets), that I think, but am not for sure, is my favorite. I also bring this up because we were talking of poems that encompass the whole universe. I would like to think that my favorite can do that. However, I think in this instance I am biased. Here is the poem and you can judge yourself:

When you grow old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowely read. And dream of that soft look, your eyes once had, and of their shadows deep. How many loved your moments of glad grace. And loved you beauty, whether love was false or true, but one man loved the pilgram sole in you. And the lines on your changing face. Bending low by those burning bars. Murmer, alittle sadely how love fled. And placed upon the mountains overhead, and hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

This is a peom by W.B. Yeats called "When You Grow Old." Although, this could be argued, I think it might be better advise on how to live and what to do. None the less it is beyond the point. This poem for me can encompass the entire world because it has seen life through the eyes of an old poet. It speaks of love and death and life's memories. I think Zach of the Saving Bells will like this post because I remember him pointing this poem out to me in Brit. Lit. 1. Maybe he will agree with me on this all encompassing poem, or maybe not.

In both the capstone and emergent lit. class we have been talking about Giambattista Vico. Vico talks of New Science or metaphysics. There is the age of gods, heroes, and men (a sort of class system). Our emergent lit. group has been assigned to think of ways to represent the actions and speach of gods and heroes. It is impossible to know how the class systems above you think. As for the age of gods, I would ask, would they talk about greek mythology? Then answer, no, men wrote greek mythology, the gods were only actors. They probably don't care about their stories. Then I asked, would they say anything? If all is understood, what's the use of language. Maybe, but that wouldn't be a fun presentation. Today in class, I had an "ah" epiphany. Prospero, dear Prospero, he is our metaphor for gods. If Prospero has been around since the beginning of time, (since he is the Shamen in the cave) then he is the closest thing to god-like that I, being a human, can understand. Also, how about heroes? Heroes are easier because they are closer to the age of men. I was thinking today of Samuel Beckett's character who kills off characters. As an author you have the power to decide your character's fate. This ability gives heroes a divine capability. The power to have a power over something else reminded me of what Taylor said in class about To the Lighthouse. How bending over a tide pool and shadowing the light is an act of power. The action of a hero is to depict human behavior in some small way. Fully understanding the divine is impossible. Fully understanding a hero is closer to possible, but difficult. One must breach the invisible curtain from humanity to heroism. Here's the epiphany. Instead of racking my brain to understand the impossible, I need symbols. I need a character that symbolizes the divine, Prospero, and the hero, Becket. By having symbols, I can better comprehend what actions and speach a god or hero might make.

Advise from Sexson

Hey everyone, I e-mailed Dr. Sexson asking him ways to improve my blogs. He gave me some good advise that might be useful to others who were wondering the same question. Also, if you have anymore thoughts let me know. Here's what he wrote back.

Brianne: the best way to improve your blog is by reading the blogs of others and thinking through what makes them work (or not work). Clearly, in the Capstone there are some who are raising the bar very high. What are they doing to raise the bar, to engage the material so compellingly? the more you ask yourself these questions, the more your own blog will begin to mirror not what they say, but the manner and energy with which it is said. Given all that, successful blogs in my experience are ones that engage the texts and themes and issues of the class and bring to bear on this engagement the full energy and thoughtfulness that comes with having had previous classes and engagements with previous texts. Then there is the undefinable---the moment of insight expressed just right---rare even for the most exemplary of bloggers. You are on the right track when you bring to us those great pictures of Frye's "epiphany places" and title your blogs "Between two waves" and "Us Then." That's insight expressed just right. You are wandering down the wrong road when you ask what else can be said about eclipses-----when you know that we could have spent our whole class on the subject and not exhausted it. So----in a nutshell, get in conversation with a blogger in each class whose entries you admire----and try to figure out what's at the source of this admiration. It would be nice too if you could let them know of your admiration. Another thought is to bring this email exchange between us to your blog so that others can get in on the conversation and add some advise to you that I inevitably would miss. The whole idea of blog is interactive communication among peers. Let me know what you think.----MS

Illusions

We were on a boat, it was bright orange and looked like the kind of boat people take whale watching or one of those boats on the side of a huge cruise ship that is blown up with air and will supposedly save you if the cruise ship that weighs like 225000 gross tons, and yet somehow floats on water (I don't even know how to float on water), sinks. However, it had a motor, one that ran pretty fast. We were jumping the waves speeding out to sea, about 20 feet from us two sharks go swimming by. My heart jumps. "Don't worry," she said," they could never catch this boat, we will be long gone." We keep speeding out towards the high seas jumping higher and higher off the waves. I certainly didn't feel comfortable, my hands were hurting from holding on and the most important person on the boat was flying up and down about ready to fall off. "Hang on" I yell. The woman in charge is blond and tall, she's wearing some kind of Patagonia clothing, either way it looks expensive and somehow very appropriate for what we are doing. The waves settle and I see an ice burg about 30 yards ahead. I assume we are going to dock ourselves on the left side of the ice burg which looks flat and less rocky. The sharks by now are far back, "even if they saw us," I thought, "they could never catch up." The boat slowed down and was making its way around the ice burg. "We will have to set up here if we want to examine their culture." I looked up the ice burg and closer to its tip there were small very hairy animals laying out in the sun. I couldn't quite tell what they were, but they didn't take notice of us. I was worried they would spy us and ruin what we came all the way to accomplish. In order to dock the boat we all had to jump out and swim to shore. The others climbed the ice burg and went right leaving us so they could arrange camp further up the ice burg. The blond haired leader and I pulled the boat onto the ice burg to dock it. All the sudden I heard the loud growling of another engine. I grab the leaders arm and pull her into a crevice in order to hide us from whoever was coming around the corner. The boat edged slowly around the ice burg, obviously looking for someone. The driver of the new boat looked directly in our path and made a sort of face, as if he saw something, but wasn't quite sure. The motor stopped and the driver got out, still peering in our direction. I thought for sure he had seen us, but then he turned. I was amazed, how could he have missed us? On his way back to his boat he spots the bright orange boat which we used to get to the ice burg. He reached in his pocket and took out his knife and sliced the boat, leaving us with no transportation out. "I won't let you get close again," the driver said to the blond leader. As he said this he looked back in our direction. After destroying our boat he put the knife back into his pocket, hopped back into his still running boat, and sped away. I was devastated, it was late afternoon and I was cold.

I woke up. It was morning and it was sunny.

This blog is stranger than faction and more complicated than the Bachelor:

In the movie we watched today I noticed the similarities of the Proffesor to Jacques Derrida. According to Wiki, Derrida believes, "The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force which differentiates elements from one another and, in so doing, engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies which underpin meaning itself."
Harold Crick can only know what his character is by knowing what it is not. He realized at first that his life was not a comedy because of how depressing he was, he then realized he was definately not in a romance because the woman in the movie, Pascal, started out hating him. After finding out what character Harold was not, they realized he was in a tragedy. This can be true in Kenosis where the author takes out everything and leaves the reader with nothing left. The author, such as Samuel Becket, gives you all of what the novel isn't. This is why Molone Dies and Molloy are such frustrating novels. As a reader you want to be left with a good fealing. An author can either give you the answer right away, or hint at what it is until the end, or can give you the opposite until the reader finally (or never) understands. Samuel Becket takes everything out of the novel, similiar to how Derrida's theory works.