For the Love of Doughnuts

As society focuses more on the developments and advancements of science and technology, religion becomes outdated and futile in continuing the course of survival for the human race. Each day, religious officials lose their purpose and standing in society. Religion is dying, along with the journey to moral righteousness and enlightenment. 

Philip Larkin’s “Church Going” describes the idle curiosity of the speaker for a church he comes across while out for a bike ride. The speaker wants to be sure there is nothing in the way of a church service going on. He demonstrates awkward reverence removing his hat and cuff clips. Apparently he has stopped at a number of churches. He describes this one as “Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books, sprawlings of flowers, cut for Sunday, brownish now.”

He seems uninterested in the denomination of the church. He questions his curious habit of stopping at churches. Once they have become totally useless, will officials keep open some cathedrals and leave the smaller churches to rain and sheep? Will cathedrals become tourist traps and these smaller churches become attractions for ruin seekers, antique hounds, and mothers perpetuating superstitions and seeking simples (medicinal plants) to cure cancer? 

Churches were built for the once large numbers of believers who attended every Sunday, but those numbers are rapidly reducing themselves. Marriages are gradually shifting to legal events performed by lay people if indeed people do merely choose to live together without ceremony. As time goes on, the Church is playing a role of less importance in society, politics, and world events. However, Larkin cannot totally reject the human religious movement that dominated history until the twentieth century. Religion is decaying as time grows on, but religion remains prominent with those who still believe in hope. 

http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm

Fishies

Fame and maintaining one’s stature on the hierarchy deludes one’s vision of reality. Our impairment allows our illusions to appear realistic, a mirage in a hostile sauna. The poem is in free verse, however the stanzas increase in fluidity (the number of syllables per line), until the fifth stanza when the climax of the poem is over and the fluidity begins to decrease. 

In “On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High” by DC Berry, the poem mirrors the fluidity of water, in which the inspiration that flows in and out of the room. One can immerse themselves in water, just as they can immerse themselves into the "depths of poetry." If one simply looks at the ocean, they cannot fully grasp the wonders that lie below the surface. However, even looking below the surface does not even give one the true experience of the ocean-one must become part of the ocean. The gills represent the disguised ability the students have to comprehend and analyze poetry. 

"Together we swam around the room" manifests the way in which the students and the speaker immersed themselves in the language of poetry, thereby exploring a new world. People simply resemble fish, to a figurative classroom where the reader seems to be more comfortable. While the students may have been immersed in the poetry temporarily, the speaker believes that the students are still ruled by the ringing of the bell, and the "real" world outside of the written word. The speaker even admits to being ruled by responsibility. He alludes about society's obsession with status and fame, which has distracted many people from the written word. 

Frozen Popsicles

Many people undergo life through a series of predestined steps, sustaining stability and order. Each day, people strictly adhere to a planned schedule, incessantly enveloped in their own realities. However, in “The Love Story of Alfred Prufrock,” the poet admonishes the mechanical livelihoods people indulge themselves in. He notices the futility of mankind to pursue love and happiness when death is the inevitable force that terminates what was gained in life. To him, falling in love is like dying and as a result, dying becomes an inevitable force just like love, impossible to avoid. In a sense, he enforces the meaningless of life when one knows that death is as imminent as the next breath one takes. Loving is like pinning ourselves to a wall, shackling ourselves to a reality that is fruitless to avoid no matter how much we try.

Throughout “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the poet sees the potentials in life, but is unable to act on his desires. He does this by pointing out the meaningless world of “tea and cakes and ices” and the pretentious and superficial chatter of women, coming and going and thinking of Michelangelo. He provokes the meaning of life. Is there a point to life at all, when everything we do is already pre-planned for us? The majority of people don’t live spontaneously. They live in small deliberate increments. “Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?” Today, no one is able to experience the validity of life. We believe that adolescents who are at the prime of their lives are meant to live life brilliantly, to venture on a whim. Students in high school don’t go out and experience life as is. Instead, they are trapped in their white-walled rooms with textbooks stacked stories high, faces full of paragraphs and words that we can only try to comprehend. We are blinded by the surrealism professed from our textbooks and yet we know nothing. We don’t know how it feels to actually love, to actually fight in a war or to actually fly. We are paralyzed.

The time that we use to measure out our lives is wasteful, but people spend their entire lives making choices – as if it matters at all. “And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the streets rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that your feet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that life and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea.” From this quote, the poet exemplifies the fact that we all live in a fog, simply trudging through the day-to-day situations of our reality. We’re all trapped in our own selfish little bubbles, only concerned about what we desire immediate gratification. We fail to notice anything outside of that very bubble, out in the world out there. We are decapitated by restrictions and entrapment, shackled by false dreams. Our inability to escape social routines proves our inferior forms.

Throughout his poem, Prufrock’s voice denotes sarcasm, when he says “there will be time, there will be time...” There is never enough time. Time is always fleeting. It is fleeting like our lives. Incessantly, Prufrock condemns society’s materialistic values and its placement in people’s lives. He jeers at the continual waste of time in performing his daily routines. “I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach?” What is the reason of pursuing anything when we will one day crumble to dust? We are born. We grow. We live. We die. We have all these plans and dreams and things, but we never are able to attain all of them. So then why do we have so many aspirations in the first place? Why bother when we are bound to perish in the end? Many times over, he wonders if there is a point in trying in the first place. Living seems to be a waste. “Do I dare disturb the universe?” He feels not only his life, but life in general is hollow. To him, we are just live corpses left to walk a written path for us.

“I have no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.” Here, the poet symbolizes the “flickering of my greatness” as a man with a “dying soul.” Our lives will wind up and wind down, but in the end all of our fates are the same. There is no escape – because death is always waiting for us, with its wide arms and black eyes and mocking smile, just waiting to swallow us whole.

In the end, the poet denotes the liberty professed by these majestic creatures of the sea. “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me . . . we have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us, and we drown.” The mermaids are in a way like the "Kurtz" of the world. They are the transcendence of humanity. They exhibit the very brilliance in which everyone seeks to possess. They never even acknowledge someone like Prufrock. The mermaids symbolize freedom and youth. They symbolize the small moments that everyone has in their lives, when we are not bogged down by the stress of our future. The mermaids are the days of summer when we are the happiest, when we are the greatest and the days that, unbounded by the thought of death (or the future), we shine the brightest. Mermaids have the will to explore and know all. They are not conscious of their eventual fate, but more subdued to opportunities of this unbound world. In that, Prufrock and all the men in the world have envied and lusted.

 The security of the familiar routines of everyday life is not only comforting and easy to accept, but is also stifling and debilitating to the soul. Prufrock admits he would like to “murder and create” and to “disturb the universe,” but the safety of the comfortable routines is too hard to break free from.

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

Pharmaceutical pen

Death is an everlasting curse, an inevitable fate, a path in which we can never divert from. Each day we age and we must undergo this painful gradual process of depletion. 

In “Till It Finishes What It Does” by Brenda Hillman, the speaker describes the excruciating route to death. “Where is the meaning, the old man asked. The night nurse had put on his little frowning socks; he lays on his lifebed, in the dusk, holding the tail of comet.” The ill man is near death yet he still struggles to live and continues to persevere. 

“The tiny valve of the pig beat inside our father’s heart…like meaning & its tributaries, nothingness & art…” 

It is portrayed that he has had a heart transplant. However, meaning lies not in the fact that her father now has a pig’s heart, but in the blood, the life force going through him. He still is strong and valiant in his pursuit of survival. 

“The animal…is not the decoration you sought; its beauty runs without your will. It drives the mystical heart.” 

In the following, “I’m writing this with a pharmaceutical pen,” executes the growing dependency on nutrients provided through drugs and pills in order to assist a slowly dying individual. Hillman abnormally reveals the depressing course of life. Death. 

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2011/10/31/111031po_poem_hillman

Sinking House

"Sinking House"

Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties. 

Nowadays, we never understand the feelings of others until we ourselves have experienced it. We are self-absorbed and selfish. 

In the “Sinking House,” Meg and Muriel are at opposite ends of their respective lives. While one is young and has a young husband and at the prime of her life, looking forward to life, the other is much older and is on the last leg of her life. With her husband is gone, she dwells on her memories. Oddly, Muriel becomes obsessed with turning her sprinklers and hose on all day, in which the excessive water floods into the neighbor’s home as if sinking the house. The water in the house is Muriel’s grief over her own life and the life of her husband. The only thing that makes her happy is the running water. It is as if the entire house is grieving with her. Until the police show up at Muriel’s home, Meg learns the power of empathy. She and her husband are more concerned about their own selfish needs that they fail to empathize the suffering of the widow. 

“And then it came to her. She’d turn them on –the sprinklers- just for a minute, to see what it felt like. She wouldn’t leave them on long- it could threaten the whole foundation of her house. That must she understood.” 

These houses represent the foundation in which we all live in- these lives measured by coffee spoons. This destruction of these homes comes to describe the epiphanies and struggles in which we all must undergo in order to pursue of rite of passage.  

Nothing

We have an impression of rituality in our lives. 

From this adherence to societal conventions, we slowly become paralyzed, bringing an individual to a stop or prevent it from functioning effectively— soulless and mute. 

In "Going Home," by Leonard Cohen, the overall structure of the poem is disjointed and there is incessant repetition like a song. The chorus consists of the lines: 

“I love to speak with Leonard,

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd,

He’s a lazy bastard, Living in a suit.” 

This portrays the remorseful fact of life, in which we degenerate ourselves in order to conform to culture. We live in a suit and live lives measured in coffee spoons. We compel ourselves to be disillusioned with what the “man” believes is correct and we despairingly obey without question. 

"He will never have the freedom, To refuse, 

He will speak these words of wisdom,

Like a sage, a man of vision,

Though he knows he’s really nothing…

That he only has permission to do my instant bidding.” 

This willingness to submit demonstrates how hollow and stuffed we really are. We are but superficial beings. However, “Going home, Sometime tomorrow, To where it’s better, Than before.” From this phrase “going home,” the speakers knows that he will one day be freed somehow from this condition, as implied in the lines in which he claims that he will be able to "go home" to a more peaceful place, and this, perhaps, contributes to the sense of comfort that, according to my interpretation, the speaker feels. 

We are unthinking inhabitants of a waste land. We construct ourselves a desolate world. The hollow men represent all humankind with a tragic existence—to comply.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html

Minotaurs and Labyrinth

The more people we associate with, the further we dive into the labyrinth of the world. We live in a world in which madness is build upon the madness of others. We thrive on this madness in order to maintain stability. We utilize these twists and turns to our advantage, to our lives. 

In Roberto Bolano’s “Labyrinth,” he vitalizes the people within a photograph, giving them dimension to their characters. Each character is involved with one another either directly or indirectly. He captures the confusion and contortion of the lives of this group of intellectuals. This form of contortion mirrors the very lives we delve in. Life filled with complicated routes that is always under construction or buried in colorful foliage. However, we learn, or imagine what we can learn, about their marital and extramarital relationships. We utilize these twists and turns to our advantage, to our lives. Our "messyness" defines and stabilizes us.  

Here is the link to this wonderfully delightful piece of work.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2012/01/23/120123fi_fiction_bolano

Dear Blog: Freedumb!

So, one of the things I want to do besides stating things that interest me is documenting events occurring around my life. Were I lose my memory, I can return to this for reference and what not.

Let me see: This morning I had cake and milk because who doesn't.

LAWLS! Just kidding like I'm actually going to write down that.

I am just excited that I'm returning to Georgia for college in let's say less than two weeks and sir, I have never missed independence so much.

I am an only child and Asian. Two things that prove everything about my life. My parents over-nourish me with love and FBI protection. If I step out of the house, I feel like they know because their spidey senses are tingling. Something like that. I understand their worry for me. Heck, I'm probably going to do the same thing with my kids because admit it, we are going to end up in some way or form like our parents, which may be a good thing or bad thing. (Pray that the reader of my blog is not a serial killer right meow).

But since I still want to be a kid a little longer before I "grow up," I have the right to anguish for independence. My parents sending me to an out-of-state college has given me the sweet taste of independence, but I don't want to go back to my high school days of being buried in work and no contact with my so-called friends.

When we go to college, I often imagine students being homesick and what not, but for me, I am oddly okay with that. I guess this is the only-child syndrome, where independence is like our heroin. Strangely, independence from my parents was more of like a "woah" moment. It did not scare me the slightest bit.

Maybe, I languish for independence because I lack friends in New York and I have more "friends" in Georgia. But, I have always doubted what the real definition of friendship was. [That will be my future blog] My high school friends were more of a person who I see daily and ask them for work when I was absent for a day. I go home and never see them until the next morning. But, in college, I actually get to see them daily, eat with them daily, study with them daily, volunteer with them daily, work out with them daily. I feel more connected to them. However, for some reason, there is still this sense of doubt. Are they really my friends? Are they using me? Or, am I using them? I don't want to be a user. That's not cool. Then again, what is cool.. smoking and lung cancer? I think not.

Welp, I am drifting from the main topic, so I will end it here. My blog on friends is on my "to be continued list." So for meow, I'm ending the night with bowties are cool.

Twelve

12

is spelled quite humorously. It slightly looks like "two elves," which is the total opposite of what the number tells us. What if these two elves could multiply themselves like amoebas or Tribbles into several alter egos of themselves. In these towns, they raise havoc and endless torment to the commoners. But, one day their devious actions took their toll when an old farmer challenged their abilities. He said that they would never reach 100 versions of themselves and return to their original forms in under a minute. Angered by the farmer's doubt of their abilities and knowing that they have never multiplied more than four of themselves, these two elves multiplied so much that they magically got stuck with only twelve versions of themselves. Hence forth, twelve was born from the names of these mischievous creatures.

The END

Now that I have putrefied and tarnished your imagination with my irrational fantasy. I will be fair and provide you the conventionally accepted truth of twelve. According to Wikipedia, 

(Sorry to those who perceive Wikipedia as an unreliable source, but to me everything I read may be unreliable because who deemed such things as unreliable. Are doctors and "professionals" really primary sources? No....Are all these things considered reliable? Perhaps not...Are they really reliable or do people just say such things to delude the common people?)

Twelve is a Germanic word, meaning two-leftover. How creative of them. I applaud humanity's ability to count. *claps in slow motion to emphasize sarcastic overtone*

Let's venture what is really cool about Twelve and the primary reason why I have decided to talk about a random topic on a two-digit number.

In music, twelve tone technique is possibly the most fascinating part of wondrously changing music to a new extent (Made by my long-nosed friend Arnold Schoenberg). It primarily using all 12 notes of a chromatic scale, ensurin that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any through the use of tone rows. Basically, the music avoids being in key and it sounds wonk, but is actually filled with more awesome-sauce than you think it is.

Watch this: She is lovely. [She may make more sense than me. Actually, everyone makes more sense than me.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794

Anyways, let's look at twelve theatrically. If I'm thinking it, you may or may not be thinking it as well: the Twelfth Night. Oh William Shakespeare. Your works never cease to grabth my attentionth. If you have failed to read it, you should indulge in this marvelously piece of satire. If you feel compelled to disgrace the literary culture and the years that these authors have written to impacted the world as it is today, then Sparknote it. 

If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die.

That strain again, it had a dying fall.

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour.

Enough, no more,

’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou

That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,

Of what validity and pitch so e’er,

But falls into abatement and low price

Even in a minute!

So full of shapes is fancy

That it alone is high fantastical.      
(I.i.1–15)

Ah, the Twelth Night. Even Shakespeare noted that love is a painful path. It is like walking across a black-sanded beach.... with no shoes on. Ouch. However, without love, there is little reason to walk at all. Why bother even moving from the spot you are at now? You are a vegetable anyways. But in above quote, Shakespeare questions whether love originates from realistic matters or the idealistic imaginations of one's inner desire. 

Twelfth Doctor 2013

There are more things to share about twelve that are sexy, but my attention span is shorter than a Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyiodes (Southeastern pachygastrine soldier fly). Let us end my temperate night with the fact that my most valued BBC show Doctor Who has announced Peter Capaldi as the TWELFTH doctor. I am filled with oodles of joy for the new actor and bids his well on his future endeavors as the Doctor, but as a dedicated Whovian, I must undergo the first stage of denial and skepticism, where I am purely scrutinizing the incoming actor. Regardless, he has fantastic shoes to fill and proud of the selection. When I say shoes, I mean Converse sneakers.

Anyhoozenberg, may the twelve be ever in your favor. I have no idea what I wrote, but it sounded great in my head. I will depart you with a fantastical song that has been stuck in my head that has no relation to 12 in any way what so ever, but a friend of mine got it stuck in my head. EARWORM!

Save the World