ultimate Boon

I consider my own personal “knowledge” to be less about indestructible life after death. Instead, it’s more oriented towards what I view as truths of life. But note that that’s not at all to say that I like believing how I feel. I feel as though life is a cyclical sequence of pains. Life isn’t there to be your friend; it’s usually there to kick you when you’re down. Granted, there are extraordinarily beautiful things out there to see and experience. However those beautiful things like falling in love will probably turn out more sour than you’d like. Thinking about it, the song that comes to my mind is the Garth Brooks classic “The Dance.” It’s the ever-consuming dilemma one may ask the self “If I could go back and undo it all and forego the pain of loss, would I? Could I?” Best not to dwell on such thoughts too long I suppose. I have a lonely way of looking at the world. I usually don’t share my outlooks with others because, like Ella Wilcox says in her poem “Solitude”, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.” So with my friends I suppose I live the Fool archetype and try to enjoy and be enjoyed instead of mope and be cast aside. Alone- I wonder if I might ever find the peace attained by Gotama and Vasudeva in Siddhartha.

The poem I found to best reflect my views is “I Sit and Look Out” by Walt Whitman. Whitman lays down reason after reason to feel sorry for the world in general. He illustrates the pains and atrocities of the world; each takes place time and time again and it seems that a gentle reassuring touch is nowhere to be found. As in real life, every second someone is being hurt by another human; whether physically or mentally, pain and suffering is ongoing and inevitable.

backtracking a bit- apotheosis

Apotheosis elucidates an important truth within a hero. The journey invokes introspection and reflection, finally enabling the hero to suddenly see what is truly important. The hero often discovers what his life and actions truly mean in terms of happiness and fulfillment. It is with this knowledge that the hero confidently sets out on the last leg of his journey.

One of my favorite moments of apotheosis in my life occurred late one night several years ago while vacationing in Ocean City, Md. I went for an extremely late night walk on the beach well after all the usual night time beach love-makers had packed up and left. I sat down just before the reach of incoming waves and pondered the wonders of life while staring at the horizon. I watched as new constellations appeared to rise up out of the Atlantic’s depths and into the night sky. I could hear and see and even feel the power of the ocean with each thundering crash of the never-ending waves. It was daunting to think of all the power possessed by such an intense force of nature. I pictured myself from a third person perspective, sitting at the water’s edge and considered how absurdly tiny I was in size and power compared to the thousands of square miles of fierce ocean before me. It struck me that our world- what we see and deal with each day is so minute; we control so little compared to nature. We seem to mean nearly nothing compared to the world and planets and galaxies and space that stretches on well beyond anything our imagination could possibly fathom. And yet as a population, the human race affects absolutely everything it touches or even nears. We see and hear of damage we’ve done to the earth on a daily basis. We find that our little industrial revolution some time ago probably caused irreparable damage to our atmosphere, many of our waterways, and so much more.

Walt Whitman’s poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider” seems to reflect this theme. He speaks of his own disconnected desolate soul and contrasts it with the spider’s web and connection to everything. “Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space” echoes the feeling of miniscule size I began to feel compared to the size of the tremendous bodies of matter that surround us, on and on, forever. Whitman goes on to discuss the spider’s webbed attachment to everything. Weather we can see it and realize it or not, despite our size as individuals, as a population we are webbed together affecting everything across this planet and even beyond.

quiz 11/20

I would write bildungsroman describing my journey in the format of an epic poem and call it “War”. I think that one’s life better deserves carefully chosen poetic verse to serve justice to one’s life and invoke interpretation. The protagonist of my story would be myself since we are each the hero of our own story. My travelling companion thus far in my life would largely be my younger brother, Nick. He has always been there looking up to me as a role model and I know I can count on him in any pinch. My parents have always been important to me as well, but since leaving for college I have grown closer to them too. My familiar I enjoy more than anything else is my cat. I hardly consider him to be a cat because he follows me around like a dog when I’m at home, hangs out, and never fails to make me feel relaxed. My main conflict is overcoming the hurdles I set before myself. I stress out too much and basically overanalyze everything and much of what I do is never good enough for my own unrealistic standards. The basic plot is finding the way the world and I fit together through creating, destroying, and seeking. I’d like to emulate Alice Walker’s writings for their original and personal perspective.

quiz

Hanks uses personification to project human characteristics onto his obviously nonliving volleyball in Castaway. The volleyball acts as Hanks’ familiar after the crash and offers solace and support to him while he endures hardship after hardship. He talks to it, and though it never actually speaks back to him, it helps him think of ways to help himself. Once Hanks has left on his dangerous magical flight from the island, a whale acts as a sort of supernatural aid. It wakes him after a horrible storm and later wakes him so that he can flag down a passing freight ship, which can act as his rescuer from without. Without the whale to wake him after the storm, he never could have seen Wilson for the last time as he floated beyond his reach. Also without the whale’s help to show Hanks’ the presence of a passing boat so that he might attract its attention, there’s no way of knowing if it might just pass right by him.

magic flight bloggage

For some reason, when I thought about a magic flight example just now, the first thing that came to my mind was Gone in 60 Seconds with Nicholas Cage. The part of Cage’s piston-driven mission that I’m applying to the monomyth’s magic flight is when he climbs into his “unicorn” Fastback Mustang and flees from police. The absolute most applicable scene in particular during his flight is when police think they’ve trapped Memphis (Cage’s character) on a traffic-blocked bridge. However, to continue his mission to save his younger brother, Memphis cruises up a tow-truck ramp in the Mustang at some ungodly speed and flies over the traffic block, successfully leaving police in his dust. Memphis is then able to continue his delivery of the very last heist car and stop his brother from being killed.

 

magic flight

 

Growing to again see home’s bliss;

Our empty house and rooms;

Our cats;

Quietly, patiently waiting.

Wondering if they’re lonely.

Betrayed?

 

The drive home goes much more quickly

Than the long drive before.

Wond’ring;

Will Johnstown seem more beautiful-

Or less since we’re bliss-spoiled?

Bye beach.

Class Group Notes

In Class Group NOTES

Feminism in Frankenstein:

Author trying to be equally creative as men. Writing completely from the imagination. Frankenstein may be female representation of man in general. Ugly, zombie-like. Man as monster. Female author. Addresses stereotypes of women; females portrayed as weak

 

The Refusal of the Return:

Hero becomes content with and connected to current environment. Returning appears like a laborious task of questionable worth. Perhaps the refusal of the return is the exact same idea as refusal of the call. Also, the “call” to return may be thought of as more than just slightly analogous to the beginning of another (new) journey in itself; after all, the journey is cyclic such that as one ends another begins.

Feminist Literature:

 Written with female perspective in mind. Made to criticize and condemn traditional perspectives. Written in manner different from typical male writing- often lacking traditional “chapter” divisions. Writings may be in form of phonetically accurate vernacular instead of appropriately spelled language- once again, to offer something different.

quiz10-19

Siddhartha and Vasudeva both reach similar enlightenment because they both find their answers through the river. And at the same time siddhartha’s is also different from Vasudeva’s enlightenment because Siddhartha first learns all about the banes of materialistic living. Govinda also comes upon the same enlightenment when he seeks the wise enlightened ferryman which turns out to be his old friend Siddhartha. However, his enlightenment is slightly different since he takes on his boon through the form of kissing Siddhartha on the forehead. Gotama’s enlightenment is different since it follows Buddhism and the eightfold path, embracing all, nirvana.

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limen

Limen is the point at which one “stands” mentally and/or physically where a stage or journey ends or is eclipsed by a new adventure/journey. It can be thought of as akin to reaching the first crest on a roller coaster; a hell of a ride awaits just fractions of a second into your future.

 

In the Odyssey, Odysseus stumbles upon limen each time he prepares to embark on another trip or when his attempts at finding his way home are thwarted or delayed by god, goddess, or creature.

 

 In Watership Down, an example of a conscious threshold that the rabbits reach is when Hazel and several loyal friends head off towards Efrafa on their doe-retrieval mission. Holly accompanies them “as far as the end of the wood” and then detaches from the group to go back to their safe home, leaving Hazel’s squad to their dangerous mission. At this point, as they continued south with their frightening militaristic Efrafan destination settled in their mind, each began to realize all the dangers that would almost certainly be encountered at some point.

 

In The Matrix an example of limen is the point in the movie at which Neo is given the option of choosing either the red pill or the blue pill. As neo downs the red pill he is choosing to take that step into “wonderland… [to see] …how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

Blog entry # 6 Supernatural Aid

       After some time of considering when I might have experienced supernatural aid, I remembered a time when I was fifteen years old and came close to putting myself in the hospital. Years ago, a friend of mine, Scott, and I frequently spent summer weekends hitting trails in Johnstown and Marienville, PA on dirt bikes. Most often, however, we would simply enter the woods behind my house in Johnstown and do a “Top-of-the-World” ride. It took a few hours and brought us to a strip-mined perch near Seward that offered a hell of a view (hence “top of the world”). Since we knew the trails so well, it was all too easy to go faster than we probably should have. One day, I was leading the way on an earlier (and kinder) portion of a TOTW ride (a spot we usually raced but luckily not this time), and, rounding a gentle bend at 50-60mph, something told me to slow down so I laid off the gas. An instant later I saw that laying off the gas wasn’t going to do it since there was a fallen hemlock completely crossing the trail. With less than 30 yards between me and the tree, I locked up my back tire and started into a sideways slide toward the tree. Though I wasn’t able to completely stop, I did slow down enough that the impact only left me with scratches, a couple bruised ribs, and some anger at nature. I’m still not sure why I thought I should slow down at that spot on that day after so many rides through there. If something didn’t make me think to slow down I know that ride would’ve ended a lot worse.

       This makes me think about Fiver’s hunch of impending doom on the Threarah’s warren. Though he had no reason to firmly believe that his feeling of uneasiness regarding the warren’s future should be anything to act upon, he took action anyway. Sure enough, humans later killed off nearly every last rabbit that remained. He didn’t know why he wanted and needed to get out, but he left anyway and later found that his decision saved the lives of those who accompanied him.

       In The Odyssey there are constant references to supernatural aid. One such reference was when Odysseus sets sail from Calypso’s island, is caught in a great squall formed by Poseidon, then receives a charm (a veil in this case) against drowning from the goddess Leucothea after he falls in the drink.

 

       A cinematic representation of supernatural aid can be found in the movie Boondock Saints.During a great lightning storm the two brothers simultaneously experience the same dream about justice and the moral wrongdoing that takes place by watching crime take place and taking no action to stop it. This gives the brothers reason to believe that God was sending a message that they should take it upon themselves to begin ridding their city of mafia and mob trash who always manage to evade prosecution.