Futurism is Nowism

The Maps to Anywhere is fascinating in the way that its constructed, a reflection from memory. This makes the entire novel seem connected to real life experiences. Weather the action is happening currently or perviously, is not really addressed. In the exert from Auld Lang Syne, Futurism, this concept of time, and memory is shown to its fullest.

The beginning of this piece starts off with a quote from Fillipo Marinettii, the quote address the concept of speed and beauty and how they are related in some way. The reason this was so interesting to me is how quickly the author jumps into his own life experiences. He explains how RVs have names like Road rocket and dynamo. This in itself is interesting because RVs are not particularly fast. The author is try to point out how humans are so worried about the future and whats going to happen that we won't notice the now. He even states in the text that we miss out on some of the most important things in life because of the fascination of the the future.Like many of the other passages from this book Bernard Cooper really uses real life concepts to address his ideas. The RVs were a nice touch to symbolize speed and movement. That normally isn't something you would think of as being a means to a distraction. However, I think when he was writing this part of the text he became distracted physically by the RV making the RV and idea of distraction.

This essay was one hat really hit home to me and it should to most of todays generation. Life is to short to be lived in the fast lane. We should soak up every experience like its our last. Maybe even drive a little slower to work and glance around at the sky or trees. You might just see one of those historic landmarks.

Philosophy of Language

What do words really mean? What is the concept of language and how did we, the entire world, come to understand such context? This is not really a question of, what is a word, but a question of the idea of a word and how we relate to their meanings. If you stop and analysis the above sentences for a long enough period you'll come to question what the words are and how they received their meaning. Language is one of the most majestic forms of our existence today and in the past. If you think about it, language is the reason we have a past, language is the way we communicate ideas to the future. This is how we understand cavemen, or ancient Egyptians. To use, they are figures drawn on a wall but to them it was like opening up up book. How can that be language? Pictures depicted on a wall doesn't sound like a well crafted sentence. This is what I believe Bernard Cooper is trying to address in the passage Rain Rambling through Japan.

In this short excerpt from the Maps to Anywhere novel Bernard address the above issues in a fascinating way. There is a girl, the main focal point, who attends a writing composition class. In this class the girl decides to use her own words in essays, words she came up with. The girl is of course ridiculed because most teachers are right brained, unlike Professor Darling, that however is beside the point.Back to the story, even thought the girl was criticized for using words she made, the teacher, at the end of the essay actually uses one of those words in a sentence.

This is fascinating to me, mainly because language fascinating. If you are an avid believer of evolution then this concept should be easy to grasp. Like the human evolution process there is a language evolution were words get added to our everyday use. Typically this process would take years but in the novel it seems almost like it takes hours, mainly because the story is a page long. Regardless, the word is added to the vocabulary of the teacher making the word have power. But really the word wouldn't mean anything without the other words that surround it. Words that some time ago went through this same process of evolution.

The take away from this is that words don't give meaning we give words meaning. If this statement is true than anything that comes out of a humans mouth is essentially a word. A new born baby that mumbles and yells nonsense is creating its own language to understand life. Just like the girl in the essay, she creates her own set of language to make sense of the items and experiences that surround her. She is at first considered crazy but then considered a visionary. It sure is a good thing that there are a lot of crazy people in the word because without them we would probably never have new words.

Why Lenses?

When looking through the lens what do you see? Why is this object something so widely used in the human race? We have lenses on prescription glasses, cameras, and telescopes, we would go throughout an entire day and use at least one object the makes use of a lens. A lens is made up of many pieces of glass that bend light in such a way that it magnifies or establishes an object through a viewfinder. This is a great piece of technology that allows the focused eye see detail we once knew not to exist.

The essay Lenses takes that idea and makes an interesting composition with very precise details. The author did a great job in describing many events that happened throughout the story. The view from under the microscope was is one of those events. In this particular section of the essay there is talk of a 12 year old looking through a microscope at pond specimens. It sounds like a rather dull subject but when use the microscope as a language device, allowing to mention smaller details in the story. Its almost like the story has nothing to do with looking through a lens a objects. Its more about what you see when you do such a task. Details in any essay, short story, or poem are what make the story great. adding a device in the story that magnifies objects allows the author to use more precise details to tell the story to the audience.

This observation of focusing the story by using a fictional object was something that was missed in the first couple reads. I was originally more focused on the fact that the author describes in great detail looking through a microscope, and i was greatly interested in that. The author then tells you the story is not about that but of a swan. I thought it was interesting how the author felt they need to tell the audience what the story was about. Its almost like the author is the lens to the reader, focusing our attention in such a way that we only see, read, what the author wants. It's a full circle effect and that is why i decided to write about this particular essay. It was more that just a read, it was an experience.

Accepted Prostitution

What would be the limits you would set in order to care for your child? Most people will say that there are no limits, they will do anything for that child. Anything including, taking up an extra job, giving them that extra piece of toast even though your still starving, or giving them an extra blanket when their cold. Small but noticed sacrifices that the sacrifice feels great about doing. This is what most people think about when they say they will do anything for their children. They don't think about killing someone in order to keep their kids safe, or offering their body up for paid sexual favors. These are sacrifices that are extreme in nature and it'd be interesting to see if the same statement, "id do anything for my child," still stands knowing those extreme reproductions.

In the short story Night Women, there is woman that dose just that for her son, she prostitutes her body for money. In viewing prostitution in this light and makes this degrading act seem almost romantic. In the context of the story the woman seems to be doing this by choice, which typically isn't the case in prostitution. In doing so the prostitute isn't viewed as a prostitute but as a mother caring for her child. This sounds relatively straight forward in terms of comprehension but in fact the story is very confusing and unclear in its mood toward the mother. The author isn't sure if the mother should be painted in a just light or if in fact she is breaking the law for all the wrong reasons. It's even said at the beginning of the story that the husband of her son was one of her "husbands". This offers a very contradicting message in, that the mother was involved in prostitution far beyond the scope of having a child, that's how she had the child. In understanding this, it's no longer the act of caring for the child but the act of an obsession.  The woman cold be using her now child to justify her addiction to sex, saying it is now a means for supporting her family rather than pure pleasure.

That is just one of the supporting examples of the just, unjust act of prostitution in this narrative. I think it stands to viewed in just that way. Prostitution has been around for the longest time and in some countries/states its a legal profession. However, in most states and countries its a violent illegal use of a woman's body. This, I believe is what the author is trying to address and contradict, the legal act of prostitution verse the illegal one and the emotions that are evoked from this comparison. Even in the story there is no act of physical violence or struggle but yet we still see this act as being shady. In any case, regardless of illegality, it takes away from the true meaning of making love by putting a price on it and turning it into a capitalistic crime.

The Falling Girl, Is She Really Falling?

This short story encompasses the very essence of life and death. On the surface the author reveals a female character jumping off of a 150 story building. If you have any concept of gravity you know she will be falling very fast and will not survive the fatal impact of face meeting concrete. It will be a sad tragic death of aerial suicide. This would be the first layer of death being portrayed in the essay. the easy concept to comprehend.

If you dive deeper into the story you get a sense of class and society murdering the female and she is in fact a victim from the bi-product of that society. Making her death no longer a suicide but a crafty way to get away with murder. What's most interesting about the story is that the act of free falling is physically a fast process. If a person sees any object falling from the air it is most likely gone when you open your eyes from a blink. How is it that this woman was able to see and interact with people on different floors as she free falls? Also, how is it that she starts at the top as a young girl and by the time she reaches the bottom she becomes very old? This really has no logical explanation because the activity of fall is figurative language in this essay. It is meant to symbolize speed.

In group discussion we came up with the interpretation that no one in this short story is actually falling but rather moving through life to fast, taking short cuts and not caring about the consequences. One comparison that was brought up was the devastating fascination with being skinny and the quickness of weight loss that comes with it. Many females have died or became very close to dying because society says they need to be skinny to fit in. While being skinny isn't bad, it can actually be healthy, giving the fact that you don't go to far. It is actually the rate of speed that people lose the weight that is deadly. An almost identical approach to the falling girl trying to reach the party.

It's a very powerful story, one that really connects with society and its issues. Not just by expressing a suicide but by the strong language that makes you feel what the girl feels and think what she thinks. Each paragraph is carefully crafted to raise now questions but to provide previous answers. As a reader your constantly interpreting the langue to put together the puzzle that makes the most sense in your mind. A quality that makes a good story great.

The Dear in Ungulated

In the short Ungulated there is a woman who is hell bent to keep this deer from eating her vegetables. She sets up fences and barbed wire, It's almost like she creates a small scale Fort Knox. On the surface this story didn't interest me at all, it sounds almost like a simplistic version of a farmers life. In reality it could be that, but after further analysis and group discussions another idea came to me.

The story as a whole paints vivid images of vegetables in great description and has an almost artistic feel to it. This idea led me to the concept that maybe the story isn't about a physical place or time, but a painting that is being described, as someone looks at it. The issue with this however is that there are still references to real life events making that idea a stretch. It was then brought to my attention that this is a real life experience and that experience is being portrayed as artwork being destroyed by a deer. The vegetables being the artwork that is.

This idea opened up many doors of interpretation, the deer could be represented as a continues struggle, not just in eating the plants but as an emotion as well. If the story is viewed in this light then it tells an uplifting plot. Even though the deer is destroying the farmers plants, the farmer doesn't give up. She continues to fight, trying to overcome the deer. Displaying a message of never giving up, even if your most precious art work is being destroyed.

Specifics in Writing

In writing there are good writers and bad ones, really there is no in-between. The writer can either take an idea and explain it on paper with the fullest amount of clarity or the writer can misinterpret the ideas meaning on paper. Two scenarios every writer faces, there is virtually no human being that always gets an idea transferred to paper with success. Everyone in their  lifetime will at some point leave some detail out in a sentence and that sentence will then become a boring ambiguous concept that drowns in the weight of a line. It sounds pretty terrible, no one wants to see a good story go down that road and thats why Natalie Goldbergs chapter in Writing Down the Bones, Be Specific, caught my eye.

It's a chapter basically explaining to the audience that the power of specifics can take a story a long way. She states in her opening paragraph that the writer should not tell you what the object is but to show you that object through excessive detail. She explains the example of a fruit, don't just say the piece of fruit on the table. Say, the gorgeously red gala apple is resting on the brown mahogany end table. A much more in depth sentence that can paint a far greater picture in the readers head. Natalie states a good way to accomplish a more descriptive story as a writer is to research plants, animals, food and so one. The more educated a writer is, the more descriptive details they can produce.

This article hit home with me because it's an idea I have struggled with sense I can remember. I can't stress enough how often I used "it" when I wrote, for example I can't find it. I look at that phrase now and I think, man, how could anyone understand what I could be talking about. I most likely couldn't even remember. The good thing is, I understand the power of excessive detail as an evolving writer. The word "it" is now extinct in my vocabulary. I constantly use a thesaurus to seek out an abundance of ways to express thoughts onto paper. Research is a writers best friend. If expressing ideas on paper isn't hard enough, as a writer, you might as well add as many words to your arsenal so that idea can be displayed in a correct fashion and it can transform from an idea into a vibrant portrait.