Blogging Around

I read Daniel's blog entry about how King Lear connected with his grandma and her situation. Reading his entry brought so much perspective to the whole book. I thought he did an amazing job at connecting his life with a problem that would have worried people hundreds of years ago.
Daniel-
I think you found the precise reason why King Lear is so powerful to some, and why it (along with all other Shakespeare plays) is so universal... crossing time, genders, ages, and cultures. Your view on the situation brought a more personal level to the play (for me at least). Thinking about it in a more straightforward and practical way, as one would if they were caught in this situation, was illuminating. I sympathize more than ever for King Lear in his insanity, but also for Goneril and Regan, the misunderstood family. Even though, like you said, there may have been some not so honorable intentions mixed in, I believe there always is... its human nature. I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, and I hope your family can, or has, found an alternative that works for everyone involved.
Thanks,
Tessa

In Mitchell's blog, he talked about the question of whether something can come from nothing (Best of Week). I agreed and disagreed with it, but it definitely made me think and place my stance, because we never really had a real discussion about it in class.
Mitchell,
Although I agree with much of what you said, I have to disagree that the total answer to the question can something come from nothing is no. Can't human 'somethings' come from nothing? Something doesn't have to be something tangible, like matter... or quarks. Like a friendship. A friendship, or any relationship, cannot be measured in how many atoms it's made up of, or how much 'stuff' it contains, but it is still something isn't it? When you meet a person there was nothing there, nothing connecting the two of you, nothing. But, the second you meet them, something starts. It could be a very little something, but its there isn't it? It's not something you can grab onto and hold, but it stays. I'll agree with you that according to the laws of physics no physical something can come out of nothing, it was always something before. The question though, is not can something you can touch come from nothing? That would be (as far as we know) a resounding no. 'Something', is a gray area. None the less, I really liked your blog entry, it made me think.
Thanks,
Tessa

Metacognition: Poem

While working on the poem, or any kind of writing, I have to get into a certain sense of mind... where the ideas flow. It helps to be a little tired or just relaxed because then the ideas come easier. It seems strange how random my thoughts are... at least for this poem. The stanzas or lines that I was really happy with seemed to come from nowhere and there were still a couple things that I wanted to change but could not decide how to. Sometimes I guess thats how my brain works. Not necissarily with or against me, just there. Usually my mind is pretty effective, especially during writing; ideas and words just coming so that I am writing almost constantly. The night I was writing my poem was a bit strange though, but I'll just blame that on being distracted. I like my thinking while writing (usually) because its not difficult, confusing, or hard. Writing is hard work, but I do not have to think too hard to write. Writing is calming, but if I can't get into it, if my thougths have no time to start culminating and coming together, it becomes an unwanted task, homework. In Sophie's World, Sophie is taught that insight comes from the inside, and that true learning must come from the inside as well. Writing is like that (at least for me). Whatever it is that produces those moments of insight in class or in life; the same place must produce my thoughts. Wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow bolt open that door in our mind all the time, to have sudden and instantanious insight about... everything all the time? That would be too easy though, wouldn't it...

Best of Week: Revolutions

The whole theme of revolutions this week was what sparked the most interest with me. The ever moving world and circular time reminded me of the poem on the poem test (Juggler). The metaphor of the world and the universe (in Juggler) also moved in a circle or rotation. What goes up must come down, fate's wheel, it will get worse before it gets better, reincarnation, and the eternal cycle... there are so many different allusions to this circular idea. I think its a way for people to have hope that their circumstances will change. That even though they are facing down and in the mud right now, the wheel will turn and they will soon feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. A circle is a symbol of power, something unbreakable. When that circle can move though, the unbreakable stations can switch, changing and always moving as things in this world are oft to do. It reminds me that the more you have weighting you down, the harder it is to get to the top... not impossible, but difficult. All that weight will just as easily swing you back down to the bottom. I believe in a relatively active participation in ones fate... but the wheel still fits. Even if you are the one turning the wheel instead of some god, or if the things are changed by the environment and others around you, the wheel still turns. We still move from top to bottom... switching weight for flight... sun for mud.

Connection: King Lear and Power

In King Lear the decisions of the characters are fueled by their greed for power. We see that even the love between family can be torn apart by the need for power. These power struggles can be seen even today, and in King Lear you get a glimpse at what feelings might be behind the war and politics of these dealings today. What caught me the most is how much the people we (the audience) see as being bad believe in their eternal rightness; disregarding the obvious signs of wrongness and hurt. Goneril and Regan are so focused on seizing power that they refuse to see that they are torturing their own ailing father into madness (until it's too late). Edmund is a different case. He sees and knows what he is doing to the people that once were very close to him, people that he shares blood with, yet he still continues. He believes his quest is righteous because he deserves power. He thinks it was stolen from him, that fate played a cruel trick. In his reasoning he wrongly puts the blame on his family instead of on years of social norms. Shakespeare inspired a whole slew of different plot themes that are utilized by many writers today. The Chronicles of Narnia, Goose Girl, Fall of a Kingdom, Abarat, the Looking Glass Wars... to name a few. In King Lear, Shakespeare presents the ultimatum in these feelings because you finally understand why power was so important, and you understand why these people felt justified in their actions. The end justifies the means. Shakespeare dealt in different worlds, but he used subjects that spanned generations and cultures... it is one of the reasons he was a king of his craft. He makes us feel what the 'bad-guy' feels... which has been much lost in literature today. His characters have depth and feelings and come alive... and therefore we see a mind in their madness.

TED Presentations

Watching the presentations was very educational... I learned a lot, El Sistema and Innovative Ideas for a Sustainable future were my favorite presentation groups. I think that we learned a lot, but we only saw a third of the presentations... which is good and bad at the same time. It was nice having a smaller audience because it was less stressful and you could connect with the audience a lot easier; but, it felt anticlimactic, because most people put a lot of work into the project and then only a third of the target audience heard it (or had the opportunity to hear it).
The project still needs to be refined and fixed a lot, although the format was better than last year (so at least we're improving). I think the best thing to do would probably be to keep it in the seperate classrooms until all the wrinkles are ironed out (which will probably take a couple more years). I know that the whole point of the project is to get the academy classes together, but it usually just creates a whole lot of anger between the classes (the freshman aren't doing any work, the seniors are slacking, ect.). I don't think that people didn't know how to collaborate, it was that a few chose not to, or were unable to for many different reasons. I think a lot of the project was blown out of proportion, and then other parts weren't focused on enough. Also, many people only learned about there tasks and never bothered to read anyone else's work (so how can they learn anything from the rest of the presentation).
I like to think that all of these ideas to save the world are there because we need to use all of them to get anywhere... make some kind of master plan to save the world accounting for all these innovative ideas. Saying that, we learned about these ideas, and we really haven't done anything about them. We are more aware, but nothing has changed.

Captured Thought: A Story

Over the summer (not exactly recent, but close enough) I had this whole day where I had this amazing idea for a story (I'd like to think it was amazing) and I just wrote and wrote and thought and wrote. At the time it seemed spontaneous, like I had just woken up that day with the idea somehow in my head, plopped down there by my own little muse. Whenever I have an idea about something to write I write it down on the closest available item (napkin, post it, my friend's arm) and put it into a box (after the necessary transferring of words from friend's arm to piece of paper) so that I can look at my ideas later when I want to write. Recently, I was going through my box of ideas and I found a lot of similarities between some of the ideas in the box and the story I had started over the summer. Almost all the parts of the story were in that box, just as separate ideas. Epiphanies seem to come to many people this way. So many important things have been discovered by people who just connected things that everyone knew, but no one saw as connected. I think we all have the ability to connect things that already exist and solve problems that at present seem unsolvable. Even though my little story is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, its comforting to know that the way to fix anything, big or small, is probably laying around somewhere. We just have to be tricky to find it.

iMedia: You are the Moon (The Hush Sound)

You Are the Moon is a song about the insecurities of the moon, the darkness of the night, and seeing yourself without burden, as beautiful. In the beginning the song talks about how the moon is all alone, except for gravity and stone. The moon can only see itself, its light and beauty, in lakes and seas. The moon's image of herself is skewed because all that she sees it those broken images. The first time I heard this song it reminded me instantly of a friend of mine who cannot see herself as beautiful (which doesn't seem to be that uncommon among teenage girls). The song has a very sad tune and it makes you empathize for the moon, or the person the moon represents. The last verse is what I wish I could do for my friend. So that the moon may see herself truly, a mirror is put in place of the sea. If I could do this for my friend she would see how beautiful she is, and be happy. I wish it were the easy. A truthful mirror would get inside your head and toss out a couple insecurities so that acceptance could have some room.

Lyrics
Song

Blogging Around: Leanne and Crystal

In Crystal's blog (360: Post-Secret Post-It), she talked about the blog post-secret, and how letting go of your secrets can help no only yourself but others. She also talked about how these secrets changed peoples live and how by letting them go they took their fate into their own hands.

I couldn't agree more with you Crystal, the secrets of others are strangely comforting. Whether they be uplifting, fanciful, life changing, wishes, or funny little anecdotes, they reinforce the fact that you are not the only person to have problems or secrets. The simple ones are usually most comforting, bringing hope and showing that your not the only one to possess hope (even though it feels like that sometimes).
Taking control of your fate is making sure that the things you want to happen have a good chance of happening. Your heart goes out to the person going to the post office because of their determination be happy, and it motivates you to do the same. Even though we may have pretty cushy lives compared to most, we have secrets that contribute to who we are. Even when they are not heard. I think what spurs a person to release their secret is weariness. It's possible to keep a secret locked up for you whole life, but its takes a toll. It's difficult. Sending your secret (or even just saying it) is taking it out of its cage and letting it free... even if no one knows it was your little secret, its out in the open. By freeing our secrets, we become free as well.



In Leanne's Blog (360, Love and other words), she talks about the overuse of the word love. She wonders what we could replace it with though, and how it affects our society in the ways that we use it. She also talks about the non-existence of age barriers for love. She also talks about swears and how they are confusing in their categories. She ends with use words with caution, which I think is a fitting statement.

Leanne, I thought your blog post was well written and brought up some very good points. Even though I agree with you fully about the love thing, I find myself falling into saying it too much because everyone else does. I say it almost without thinking and thats probably a bad thing. I really wish we had different words for different kinds of love. It would be more confusing to learn and understand, but it would make clarification unnecessary and we wouldn't fall into the problem of using love almost as a filler word. I also agreed on the point of how ageless love is. I think there are plenty of adults who don't know what love is, and plenty of children that never will know. Even though these people don't understand love doesn't mean that they don't feel it. You don't need to understand something to have it happen to you, thats why they say that love is unexplainable. You can truly and purely love something for your whole life but never understand exactly how or why.
At first I thought it a bit strange to put swears along with the word love, but it makes sense. The power of a word. I like your categories of nice and mean, it makes so much more sense. Why should we hush away those words, they are just another part of life, even if they aren't socially as nice to talk about as other things. I think the whole point you were trying to get across was that you should be careful what you say or write, think about it before it comes out. I really wish more people did that, or did that more often. Think about what they say will affect themselves and others and if it makes the point they are trying to make. Use words with caution. Its a good rule to live by.

360 Degrees: Afterlife

I know its a dangerous place to tread, but why not talk about the afterlife? Whats more controversial than something that can't be proven? Whats more diverse and questionable than something thats founded on belief alone? There is a wide number of people that believe in some kind of afterlife. A heaven, hell, purgatory, palace of the Gods, or something along those lines. These people put their belief in the promise of near immortality and live happy lives knowing that something waits for them after the not-so final end. Should you spend your whole life waiting for something that isn't guaranteed? Then there are those that don't believe in anything after death, that death is final, and all consuming. Wouldn't that be liberating in some ways? Knowing (or believing) that the time you had on earth was all you would have ever to experience all the things that you wanted, that there were no second chances. You would have to live life to its fullest because there was no guarantee that there would be anything else. It would be a balancing act though, because that belief brings fear of a final end, and avoidance of the inevitable. Could reincarnation be the right path? The horse to put my money on? Having past lives would be comforting in some ways, knowing that you had done this before, and gotten through it more or less intact. But to repeat a life over and over... is that the life (lives) you want? Maybe we're not meant to know, maybe we shouldn't think anything. Doesn't it affect our lives in positive and negative ways no matter what we think? But then again, maybe we become the earth, the sky, the air when we are gone. We could whisper our secrets to the next generations in the wind. Maybe we are destined to wander around our previous lives and see it as a ghostly presence. Never changing, only observing. Maybe we start a new life on another planet. A new species, new memories, new life, new world. Maybe we have to relive our lives, again never changing, but seeing all that we did wrong... and remembering what we did right. Perhaps though, when we die, each one of us goes to do what is needed of us... or what we ourselfs need... maybe some of us disappear forever. Does that mean that it all didn't matter? If death really is the end? Is life fruitless if eventually it does end in every way?

MetaCognition: Kite Runner

While pondering the Kite Runner and formulating my thesis for the paper, I noticed that my thoughts were like water. They trickle everywhere and are soon lost if they aren't caught and held onto. They go everywhere and all at the same time, so its hard to follow and pretty confusing... enough to give me a headaches. I usually have one or two clean main ideas, and everything else just flows out in never ending storms. A lot is lost though, trampled and pushed out of the way by everything else that demands attention. Sometimes, when I reach something that I actually want to remember the rain of ideas stops for just a minute, but thats just enough time to remember it, to write it down, to expand on it.
Its probably not the most effective way to use my brain, but I can't remember or imagine it any other way. When I was little, I always asked too many questions, usually before someone had finished explaining the last one, but that was the way my brain worked. How are you supposed to learn a different way to think? Couldn't everyone's brain think and work in completely different ways without scientists, and a great number of people, not knowing? I like my thinking though, because it works for me... I don't think any one else could survive very long with my brain... but I doubt I could survive very long with anyone else's. I wouldn't change a think about the way I think... some of my opinions could probably due with some changing, but the way I think is me, and works for me. If I tried to change my process of thought, wouldn't that just be another thought always present in my mind? Another raindrop? Just one more piece of the puzzle that is a brain, for anyone? Keep your thought process I say, but develop the thoughts being processed.

Best of Week: Kite Runner

During class Friday, it was mentioned that Amir should have taken control of his situation instead of sitting around and waiting for someone to hand him a solution on a platter. That got me thinking, shouldn't we all do that? Get off our cushy chairs and go grab our fate by the hair and tell it we won't be ruled by it's decisions anymore? Or maybe we should just stop waiting around for something to happen to us, and live life like we were going to die tomorrow? Stop waiting and start doing. Not to aspire to perfection... but to do things how we think they should be done, even if they turn out wrong. But if we had just let life slip by and not done what we thought was right, but wasn't, wouldn't that be better? To not make mistakes? To be perfect? Can that qualify as perfection, the avoidance of taking a chance?
I don't think Amir would have gotten out of his safe existence of guilt and regret and moved onto apologies and forgiveness without a push (or a very large shove) in the right direction. Sometimes, I think we all need that extra push from fate or God or whatever moves this world. But we can't just wait around for that shove to come from a questionable aly, we have to find how to stumble our way through life without help, because freedom is taking a horrible situation and making it a tad more bearable. In history, its hard to say whether the times create the man or the man creates the time. I say both. The truly great person accepts what they have been given as their piece of clay, and take fate into their own hands. There is only a certain amount of clay, and if you push it to hard the art with break and the masterpiece will be ruined. But with that clay, and determination, you can make something beautiful.
Even if you aren't written in history books, if you have had a hand in your fate, you have truly been great. Taking your life into your own hands is difficult, Amir couldn't do it without a lot of time and help, but maybe someone else could. Waiting around for the times to be good won't work, you have to bend the times to your own ideas... but also have to ability to be flexible when the times change. A situation can be molded, a mistake is never the end.

Change of Mind: Kite Runner

After a couple years, Soraya and Amir's marriage seems to be humdrum and almost boring. It has become altogether normal and stereotypical; thoroughly becoming what all couples aspire not to be and what almost all achieve. There is still love, but no fire, no hope. They hide their feelings from each other although they secretly know what the other feels, but still refuse to acknowledge it. Refuse to acknowledge failure. Refusal to acknowledge that their dreams are gone and forgotten. Suppressed under too many layers of fear that they will never see the light of day. Obligation, monotony, and near-utter perception drives their marriage, all of the components of really late night TV. I don't want to become the living clone of a TV show no one watches unless they have no choice. We laugh at their not so funny jokes and hope that something more entertaining is coming on soon; the regularity of their lives not phasing us because we know that will never be us. If it doesn't happen to us, who are those TV shows written for, who are they inspired by? Never us, never me, we say. My life will be exciting, every day something new! But we forget these wide-eyed dreams soon enough and settle into our boring and safe lives. Maybe we'll realize one day we should have done something different, but what can we do now that we are old and gray? Is there some special formula, some secret ingredient for living life well? Living life right? No, there couldn't be, because someone would have written that recipe. In the end we hope for a better lock, a special key to keep those wide-eyed dreams locked safe in the shackles we keep in the prison of our hearts. But somehow they escape, flying off to infect some new soul's heart. If only we'd stretch up, right before they were out of reach, and catch a just a few back. We could set those dreams free in our hearts and minds, and contemplate whether we were strong enough to break out of the mold we so easily fell into, and achieve a few.