Stream of consciousness

I find it funny and ironic that I tend to be very much a stream of consciousness writer, and following "Mrs. Dalloway" has been next to impossible for me. It reads more like a journal and less like a novel. Fascinating, but nearly impenetrable. This is one of those books I see myself returning to once a year to re-investigate and hopefully come to terms with somewhere down the line.

Reacting to "The Dead"

Reading about Gabriel in "The Dead" made me examine how I live day to day - do I live safely or do I live genuinely? Are my words and actions shaped to appease and please others, or do I seize each day and each opportunity? My life is geared 100% toward school, so it works in my favor to live safely. Seeking the approval of my peers, parents, and professors. Is there a way to balance the favor with the seizure?

Modernists

I've been sort of dreading Modernism for the entire semester. As a sophomore I took a Western culture class and remember that the teacher telling us that this period was full of depressed, hopeless alcoholics who believed the world was spinning itself into destruction by its own industry. On a good day, I think it creates a lot of critical thinking in my mind on the direction of the world; on a day like today, for some reason, it depresses me. And poets like Eliot only frustrate me, since I can't make heads or tails of his writing. Try again tomorrow.

Hoping to wrap up my reading of "Great Expecations" over Spring Break. If that doesn't happen, I'll keep reading until I do finish - I'm really enjoying this book and I've gotten too attached to the characters not to.

Memorable characters

I've read in various biographies that Charles Dickens was known for writing unforgettable characters. I've decided as I go along reading "Great Expectations" that that's exactly why I'm loving this book, and why I loved "David Copperfield." The character absolutely come to life. And yet none are overly caricatured or unbelievable, even when their traits are extraordinary. We all can think of someone in our lives (whether we like them there or not) who crosses the boundaries of "normality" or even "decency." These are the kinds of characters worth writing about, and certainly worth reading about.

Finally, I will have the opportunity to read a book I've wanted to read for several years, but never had the time. "Great Expectations" has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while. I've picked it up during the last couple summer vacations but for some reason or another never finished. In high school I read "David Copperfield" and it's a favorite. Charles Dickens writes with a dryly descriptive, sympathetic, and untarnished honesty I easily connect with and have attempted to emulate in my own creative writing. He has a way of writing about the struggles of adversity without drudging out any sort of martyrdom, and with hope and strength. It's a refreshing perspective in Victorian literature, or any literature for that matter. These days, it seems that any hopeful sort of writing oozes in saccharine or shallow phrasing. Dickens writes from his time, and yet it has proven to be absolutely timeless (i.e. one film adaptation of "Great Expectations" - the film that actually introduced me to this novel, is set in the 20th century. Hopefully I will complete "Great Expectations" this time around. It's a long book, and I have so little time! As busy as I found myself in the last few years, I think I might have had a better chance of reading it then than I do now!

When karma smacks you upside the head...

Following my recent theme of, "How did I screw up this week?" ....

Academically, all is blessedly smooth as can be expected. The workload seems insurmountable at moments, but I just keep on keepin' on, doing as much as I can, the best that I can, when I can...which is all I can do.

I'm studying and practicing to be a teacher, and, darn it, I want to be a better teacher than I sometimes think I'm capable of being. Now, as far as "pretend" lesson plans and reflective essays go...I probably don't give 100%, I'll admit it. Maybe that's where I'm failing. But I work with children every weekday, and this week, despite my best efforts, I was responsible for a few tough make-or-break moments. Two children (at different times) very nearly suffered serious injury because of either my momentary neglect or inexcusable ignorance. All is as well as can be and no one was seriously hurt or traumatized, and I KNOW I learned some very valuable lessons. It's those lessons that I'm trying desperately right now to focus on and draw out of this week from Teacher Hell. Most call them rookie mistakes; I call it the mark of inexperience.

I also learned a thing or two about karma. In the case of one of those poor children, the crisis was a head injury that required emergency care. (I had my back turned to the swing set and therefore missed out on an apparently cut-throat game of "Don't get kicked in the face!") Last night, a friend and I both changed direction too quickly without looking, and both got a face-full of each other, smack in the middle of our foreheads. We both quickly developed bumps eerily similar to the one that had earlier appeared on that child's head after having a run-in with a metal pole. Before I even thought to say "Ow!" I was cursing my own bad karma. It still hurts today, reminding me just how responsible I am for those kids.

I take my responsibility for these children seriously. It only took a moment for me to not have my eyes scanning the entire playground, and someone got hurt in a game that should never have started, and would have quickly ended had I allowed myself to be aware of it. In the Victorian era, men were still totally responsible for the women in their life. But what were the consequences if they didn't take that responsibility seriously? Somehow, the responsibility for women that men somewhere in history translated into "control" lost its original, Biblically inspired definition, and became a trust, an ownership over property. In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the duke apparently grew so annoyed by his wife that he arranged her death, and was currently attempting to court a new wife. How is it that certain individuals treat those that have been entrusted into their care with such frivolity and passivity? Why is there no concern for consequences?

I sure hope karma got him like it got me.

This week went considerably more smoothly than last week academically. I successfully managed to stay on top of my responsibilities, and I don't intend to fall behind again.

Even with the added stresses/bonuses (depending on how you look at things) of a Kappa Delta Pi ceremony, Valentine's Day, and the usual homework, I stayed on top, and I'm trying to stay there.

So, fortunately, I guess, it's been a fairly quiet week this time around and not much to report. We're beginning the Victorian era in English Lit and I'm curious about that. I don't believe I've read much if any Victorian literature; nothing that I've retained, anyway. I'm looking forward to jumping in and discovering the heartbeat of that era - what Victorians were thinking and feeling, what drove them to write what and how they did. Hopefully more to report on that soon.

What a week this has been. I had anxieties about taking an online class, knowing how easy it can be to miss information or misunderstand expectations - but I didn't anticipate missing an entire essay! I pride myself on my organization and discipline, so when I discovered that the class had turned in an essay that I was still waiting to be assigned, I panicked. I actually started contemplating the consequences of dropping the class, or the entire semester's classes, as I was beginning to face similar stress elsewhere and my initial, rash decision was to flee. Fight or flight, the age old decision of survival.

However, one merciful professor and a good night's rest later, I regathered myself and faced the week's onslaught valiantly. My weekend has been dedicated to playing catch-up and get-ahead, and I have a positive vibe about the course of the coming week.

When I'm not glued to the computer constructing essays, teacher work samples, lesson plans, and the like, I've taken refuge in the pages of Frankenstein. To take "refuge" in such a story is odd; but perhaps I'm empathizing with Victor's sense of failure and resulting hysteria, haha. But in all seriousness, I am noticing within myself that I'm perceiving symbolism and nether-meanings within the text on my own; whereas in the past, I waited for the teacher to point such things out and then I had that "ah-ha" moment and could deduce significance from the text.

The big lesson this week has been the necessity to pace my responsibilities, and fulfill them in a timely and measured manner. While this week has been extraordinarily hectic, I realized that much of that craziness would have avoided if I'd contacted the professor about the essay I foolishly decided to await word on. There were also times I had available the week prior to get some work done early, but told myself, "Why worry about it now? Enjoy the peace while you can." Well, hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

Already, Frankenstein is creating such contrasting images in my mind from what I had developed based on cultural stereotypes alone. And I expected this, so no surprise there. Really, how often is it that American stereotypes accurately mirror art, literature, or even other cultures?

I'm still shallowly into Shelley's masterpiece at this point (slow beginnings make for slow, pained reading for me) but the further in I get, the more intrigued and interested I find myself. So, I have no inclination that one of the themes of this novel is cultural diversity (or resistance to it). But that is a theme that has meandered through my thoughts on the novel. And that is a simple reflection of the fact that I'm an elem. ed major - but as I learned prior to my last post, literature's meaning IS in the eye of the beholder.

It's not so much that I see cultural diversity within the context of Frankenstein. The bias around this image we've developed about the title character's creation (I believe I recently described him as a "tall, hulking green, rectangular mouth-breather, who grunts and walks around as though he's experiencing beginning stages of rigor mortise") reminded me of our culture's - our country's - preconceptions about the world around us. We have a very limited, boxed-set, color-by-number visual of various cultures in this world, not limited to ethnic/religious/national cultures. We've segmented our world to suit our comfort-zone bound scope, to separate ourselves from them, and them from us. We want to see this waffled map of a world, and shudder to think of this place as the melting pot that it is, and is fast becoming.

Seeing myself through poetry

Recently on the Moodle website, Dr. H, a few classmates, and I discussed how much of poetry is interpreted based on the reader's experiences and how much can only be interpreted based on the author's experiences. Tonight, I realized that quite a bit of meaning is gleaned through the reader.

I read Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" only this evening, and as I wrote up my response, realized that my vision of the speaker's situation almost mirrored my mental pH, so to speak. I'm in no way a dark, gloomy person, but since my early teen years, if not earlier, I have spent a lot of time mulling death and the afterlife. Most of this is due to my religious beliefs and curiosities - when I spend time reading Scripture, I am very interested in what God has to say about our eternal future - my eternal future.

Sometimes I take in the day's events around the world and feel claustrophobic. I mourn the fact that I am stuck in a world that experiences such pain and suffering. I get bogged down in fear and depression - I want out. I feel like I'm trapped in a very tight, very volatile box with a bunch of dangerous criminals and blood-thirsty radicals, and I want to run, flee, get away from it. Of course, I can't, so I get to feeling the way I thought Keats sounded - sad, gloomy, hopeless, and just ready to give up and let death swallow us.

But according to my God, I was not appointed to this fate ("Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!"). According to my God, I have a higher calling. I am NOT hopeless in this world, and I am certainly NOT helpless. I will not accept the fate that it sounds as if Keats was ready to accept, not willingly. I will be like the nightingale, "Still wouldst thou sing....Singest of summer in full-throated ease."

These past couple of weeks regarding British Lit have been very productive for me. It's always been a goal of mine to be a regular reader. I bought all sorts of books I wanted to read, but during the school year it usually occurs to me that if I'm going to read, I'd better read out of my textbooks first. By the time I can read for pleasure, I'm drained. The monotony of textbooks makes me sick of reading, and I flop in front of the TV. So I was excited about taking a literature class, since several of my favorite books that I HAVE somehow managed to read were written by British authors - David Copperfield, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice, and multiple writings by C.S. Lewis.

I have read more in the last two or three weeks than I think I ever have, and I've actually been enjoying (most) of the selections. (It was really a chore to make it through "The Mariner.") Most have that characteristic descriptive, lyrical tone I love so much about British literature. Honest, open, vulnerable, and beautiful.