riverrun

riverrun

riverrun

Final Exam Notes

Final exam, worth 50 points. 30 minutes and will be graded in class.

Ideas for the test:

1) Inky poo
Sam's discovery in FW about feces.
The High and the Low are the same

2) Fundamental reality
understand the meaning of the word fundamental
Beckett
Fundament
Eternal Return Groups

3) the soul is pure, wipe off the mud from humanity
mysterious mental maneuver

4) Where's that word again?
now

5) Wizard of Oz
Dorthy's realization
Theosophy
Gnosticism
All the knowledge that you ever need you already have, you're simply unaware.
Good teachers ask questions.

6) Quinta Essentia
Viewpoint of everything all at once

7) The world is a never-ending cross-reference
Following Story

My Final Blog

Well everyone, it's here. The summer break. I'm always both relieved and saddened by this finale. I'm relieved because it means I have another one under my belt. That this is yet another tally mark saying that I've put more distance between myself now and my past-life of, well, I didn't like myself very much we'll say, and every mark makes me want to go harder and do better in my college experience. I'm like an exercise junkie with a runner's high.



Of course we will be here again, but we'll be different, we'll be ready to see what we are currently missing. We'll never be exactly the same and here again.

I loved all the presentations. As it is with every Sexson class the end of the semester is full of amazing presentations from engaged people. You all rock and you should pat yourselves on the back! The two presentations that really captivated me were the stories by the Sarah's. I love a good story and those were both phenomenal! The runners up would have to be Zach, Brianne and Lisa. Zach, I love your music, it's always a treat to see your final presentation. Hope you're in Mythologies next semester! Brianne and Lisa, you two put yourselves out of your comfort zones and I really respect that! Your presentations were a lot of fun!

I've done this three times now, having this bittersweet ending to a semester because of the experiences in Dr. Sexson's class. I have come to love you all and to feel that we're a sort of family, or therapy group, or kool-aid cult. However you slice it, I will miss you all as you go on to do whatever your lives take you on to do. Just remember, someday we may meet again and have forgotten each other; after some conversation we'll see recognize something and it will dawn on us; "Oh, you were in his class too!"


So, just because this third time around I finally did it. I read every single blog posted this semester. The blogs that really hit me as insightful were Christina's, Bizz's, and Jon Orsi's. without you three I'm sure I would not have gotten anywhere clost to the scale of understanding that I did. I related to Orsi's blog very well, sometimes it was like he was posting blogs that I would have written before I had a chance to think them up. Bizz's blog was insightful and extremely helpful for connecting pieces together. Christina, your connections and intellect are stunning. I think that out of the blogs, yours would be considered the closest to high brow, hopefully a compliment at this point. Of course everyone had individual blogs that moved me but those three were the ones that I really looked forward to reading and sinking my teeth into.

Well... I suppose that wraps it up. As usual I always feel like I should have done more, but at this point, I couldn't have. Maybe next time.

Ciao,
Rio

My Final Paper

Rio Gonzalez

Dr. Sexson

Emergent Literature

April 23, 2010

What I Gno now that I knew before but had forgotten,

And seeing my beginning for the first time.

This semester has taught me so many lessons that I had no idea where to begin. I thought I would write on the Eternal Recurrence and make it an umbrella over the other themes. I would discuss how The Myth of the Eternal Return or Eternal Recurrence were larger versions of the Twenty Minute Lifetime, Dolce Domum and Déjà Vu. I would rhetorically discuss the World as Myth and Dream, and Life as Fiction and say how they were really just an abstract way of looking at Eternal Recurrence, or a method of coming to terms with the fact that we don’t get anything right the first time around. I realized that I was burned out and over clocked. My brain was soup and I needed some time to re-gelatinize and be able to function normally again. Then I watched Troy and it hit me, the phalanx. This semester was so tightly interwoven that I could not tease apart the fabric created. Everything was interlaced to a point of equilibrium. There was so much overlap that I could not seem to find any meaty chunks to build a paper out of. I feel as if I have learned a lot but there is no place to begin but at the beginning and to overlap, myself, until I arrive back at this moment.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories read like a children’s book but sent me pondering into the corner of my room. There was the eleven-minute attention span, which stems from it being eleven o’clock when Haroun’s mother leaves. We made connections between Haroun, and the Wizard of Oz, where the characters were personified by more than one entity in the story. Then seeing this explained as a tool for the main character to connect their experiences in their twenty-minute lifetime to their “Waking Life.” This was one of the many moments in class that our readings connected directly to us, bringing the books to life and making the stories personal through the connection from Oz to B-“Oz”-eman. We then moved on to The Following Story.

The Following Story was probably my favorite of the lowbrow books. There is a lot to discover in this book, and I am certain that I am nowhere near to finding all the little lessons and meanings in store. The obvious was the Eternal Recurrence with the book ending in a way that suggests that it is to be reread. Then there is the way in which it ends, the way in which the entire book is written, talking directly to someone. I thought it was to the reader, and I still believe it is so, but also talking to the one helping him transition. I think we are the same, the lady d’India and the reader. She guides him to death and we keep him alive. We are two parts of the same action of continuance. The story is more an actual narration than the narrations we see in most novels, as if the story is being read to us, or rather, to our station as assistants in transitioning in an almost interactive way. You feel involved with this story. I love how very Beckettesque this read is, with the breaking of the story through that narrative voice to make you realize that you are reading something. That the story is a story, it’s about you and it’s about nothing and about the same things over and over again; you have learned this before but forgotten and maybe, just maybe you will remember this time, or not.

Finnegans Wake was my induction into highbrow literature; like being baptized by being tossed into the river and eventually washing up on the delta with Anna Livia. I discovered through this text not only that I loved high brew literature, but also that the real enjoyment came from deciphering the Matrix and “coming to being” with a new understanding. This book was really where I began to understand that there is more to books than ink and pages. Though I have always had a love for the smell of paper and the feel of a pen, or a typewriter, or a computer, I never thought that the works produced could be so deliciously cryptic as to take twelve years to read six hundred and twenty-five pages. I am not a fast reader by any means but that is really just ridiculous, glorious and ridiculous, the masterpiece of plerosis.

The Skin of Our Teeth was a nice reprieve from the high brow. The knock off from Finnegans Wake held several ideas that I feel were really just the processed imitations of the pure insanity and genius that was Joyce’s work. It was an easy read that, without beating you over the head, brought to light the same ideas that we discussed in class: The Eternal Recurrence, yet again, the Twenty Minute Lifetime, The World as Myth and Dream and Life as Fiction. The Twenty Minute Lifetime is displayed through the way that eons are to have passed over the course of the play. Eternal Recurrence is in this play because, though you walk in to the theatre and sit down, when you are done with the play you are returning to yourself, still in your chair, after traveling on this lovely adventure and learning about mischief, redemption and forgiveness. You have also traveled through the centuries and have met Cain, Mary Magdalene, Eve and Adam as well as Anna Livia Plurabelle, H.C.E. and the conglomerate of Shem and Sham.

Three Novels by Samuel Beckett was, by far, my favorite book of the semester. The deterioration through both the individual novellas and the whole book is a cathartic work of kenosis. The Gnostics must love Beckett’s work for its simplicity. Beckett seems to empathetically dump on the characters and then make them wipe it off their eyelids and keep on with their habits as if nothing had changed, as if nothing were wrong with their situation. I felt incredibly connected to the characters that Beckett wrote. Their pains were my pains and they had it worse than I did but they were oblivious. They did not mope or question, simply continued on with an attitude that conveyed, “this is just the way it is.”

The Tempest was probably my least favorite book of the semester. I had a difficult time with the Old English and missed some of the plotline. This is definitely going to be a book I will reread as I have discovered that the more difficult a book is to read, the greater the lessons are that can be gleaned from it. I did discover that it was Shakespeare’s finale and that Prospero was his character self; that Miranda’s attendants reflected the Muses, that the concept of marriage was a formal contract between two men, that all marriage is rape but that rape is not necessarily sexual but also holds the meanings of abduction and destruction.

The Alchemist is a book I have recommended to many people since reading. I say The Following Story is my favorite lowbrow book of the semester but that is only because this book is not a book. It was a riddle that was written about me and I had all the keys to unlock its lessons. I say The Following Story but that is only because The Alchemist is so much a literary version of my personal story that I feel it is more of a totem than a text. I have learned more from the other books but this book helped me to see, and to put into words, the life I have been living and how I have been living it. It has given me justification for my beliefs that life is good to you when you do what you love, and that people are happiest when they are following their hearts desires. The idea of alchemy being the purification of self is one I had no trouble grasping; turning, from one state of being into another.

The Four Quartets was probably the most difficult book I read this semester. I read it several times and found myself drawing a blank when I tried to think about the contents of what I had just read. Perhaps it is just a mental block that I will work past eventually but this small book of poetry I believe to be the densest thing we read even surpassing Finnegans Wake. My defense for this is not that it has more in it than Finnegans Wake but that the compacted ideas within this small book are so dense that the deciphering is not from portmanteaus or metathesis but simply because of Eliot’s incredible ability to choose only the pluperfect words to distill his point to something pure, and thusly difficult to read. This will be yet another book that I spend countless hours with, teasing meanings out of and enhancing my ability to absorb this density of information more easily. I do feel as though a large portion of what we learned is embodied in this work. The twenty-minute lifetime, eternal recurrence, dolce domum, the world as myth and dream and life as fiction are all present in this small work in a way that deeply displays the folly of taking things seriously. This may be a profound book but it is also light hearted and playful. It shows us where our troubles lie and then reminds us that we are silly and should embrace ourselves as we are while continuing our journey to better ourselves.

The Following Story revisited at the end of the semester brought us full circle “to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” It was a good visit that allowed me to really connect with the themes and lessons we’d gone over in class. Herman Mussert’s two second transition from living under the rose to living under the yew-tree and the cyclical beginning of a new life in the same manner of the traverse of Helios drawn on the board by Dr. Lubner in reference to Finnegans Wake.

I truly would have liked to have written a paper dedicated to some insightful connection but I have had so many connections that I could pick no one individually. The weave is too tight and the phalanx is too unitary to be able to pierce through or have an apocalypse. I have become so much a different person from the beginning of the semester through practice of the things that we discussed that they are reflexive as opposed to theoretical. It is more difficult, I believe, to discuss the things you use inherently than things you consciously study. To quote; “The more you gno, the more you gno.” Perhaps it is also, the more you do, the more you do.

And here I am now. I have gone on a journey that none would believe and have learned of literary theories, practices and applications that have all been tested and certified Grade A Sexson approved. I have a savory flavor on my tongue and a lyrical resonance in my mind that will take me through the summer and the rest of my life.

Group 3's Video

So cool! All these presentations are a blast! I gotta say I like the videos best because I get to relive the experience. My memory is swiss cheese so the skits are only with me for a little while. It's really a tragedy since I enjoy them so much!

The Dream and Blogging about Group Presentations

Blogging about the Group Presentations.

Well, we all remember this one. The Dream. Raising the bar much? Good for you!

I don't have much to say about it though. Everything was pretty well explained or obvious to me. Thanks for the show! It was a blast!


I really enjoyed the skit as well! Got lots of good photos and I can't wait to see them! What a story, a nice conglomerate of tales mixed together.


I think it's funny that so many presentations have had Dr. Sexson in them in one way or another. Zach and his face on a stick, Group 1 with the gas to gas and the wig, Dr. Sexson peeking in on Group 3 in the movie. I don't have much to question from any of the presentations actually. It is both fun and depressing to think about how the only people who can "get" our presentations are us. The people who have been in this class. If we showed these skits to our friends they would probably miss the majority of what was going on and be left confused.

Speaking of confused. I'm having a hard time making myself make sense. It's been a crazy last few weeks and I'm fried. See you all Monday!

Smartpen Recording for 4/12

04.12.2010 11:06:49 AM
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My Final Paper

Yep, I'm still struggling. Today I plan on writing about class, stream of consciousness style, until some basic theme or focus comes about from all my rantings and when that happens I will have found my focus. Here it is. Drum roll please. The manifestation of my imagination and memory entwined together in the form of words on your monitor. Do not read on. My thoughts will most likely flow in a Joycean fashion.

themes. 20 minute lifetime, dulce domum, the myth or the eternal return/eternal recurrence, the world as myth and dream, life as fiction and language.

eternal recurrence is my favorite I think, being as how the 20 minute lifetime could be like a déjà vu of recurrence, or a parenthetically lived lifetime, or version of Plato's anamnesis. the eternal recurrence umbrellas the dulce domum as well seeing as how nearly every story and every life exists "to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" otherwise we would never learn anything and, by a certain philosophy, never make it around the circle of time, through the underworld of night and back to the daytime to begin again and fin again repeatedly knowing everything as if it were new even though we've been here before. As Dr. Sexson says, you've all been here before, you're the same class I taught last year, and the year before and twenty years ago and we still haven't gotten it. But maybe we did but we're revisiting the place for the first time to say goodbye and move on, it's a loop from a singular point in all directions like a solar flare from the time line that Dr. Sexson is on. From his perspective we are a whir of the same people in the same events learning the same lessons over and over again, but perhaps we were gone for a long time and are just coming back to know it for the first time from a different perspective and that his time line is not the same as ours. Where he taught us all last semester we have lived out our entire lives, died, and have come back again to see the same thing from a new perspective. Like a reincarnation where the time line of the actual world is really only two seconds wherein our beloved professor is passing between worlds and we are his dream and through his dream are learning everything he can teach us in the best way possible to us. And since we have learned it once, we can die and be reborn the instant after we are born to live along side ourselves, and with ourselves but unrecognizable to ourselves because we are so different from being a lifetime ahead of the place we were. We could share the same classroom, even sit next to ourselves and be none the wiser since we are so far, a lifetime, or thirty lifetimes, ahead of our initial self. Learning again, the same things we were taught from a different perspective. But this is really all happening in a second. In another second when Alice wakes up and we are all snuffed out, where can we go to learn again but back to Alice in her new world and await for her to dream again.

Ah! "Dies" to switch tracks since I've concluded that stream. I will write more and blog after I have read this and turned it from a memory into an experience. Perhaps after analysis I can find another wormhole to slide down that parallels this one, but elaborates on it and enriches it.

For now, lunch.

Smartpen recording of the Dave Walker Band

Smartpen recording of The Dave Walker Band. No relevance to class, unless you find one, but these cats are a blast! Hope you enjoy it!

04.09.2010 03:18:07 PM
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4/7 Smartpen

04.07.2010 11:06:01 AM
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Questions

1) Name the Four Quartets
- Burnt Norton
- East Coker
- Dry Salvages
- Little Gidding
2) When I wake I cry to _____ again.
- dream
3) Memorize verbatim "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all exploring..." Last page of Little Gidding
4) I only want to ______ you.
- Please
5) The last words of The Following Story?
- The Following Story
6) What river do they end up on in The Following Story?
- Amazon
7) What is the name of Neo's booksafe?
- Simulacra and Simulation
8) Symbols of life and death from Four Quartets?
- Rose and yew tree
9) What river related symbol represents Anna Livia Plurabell?
- The Delta
10) What's the Arabic word from the Alchemist that means it is written?
- Maktub
11) In Little Gidding, what does simplicity cost?
- Everything
12) Where does the main character in the Alchemist find the treasure?
- Under the tree
13) According to the Gnostics what did Jesus bring to mankind?
- Knowledge
14) What does Prospero say to Miranda to stimulate her memory?
- "What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?"
15) What is the essence of Alchemy according to Christina?
- The process of purification.
16) What little animal is in the garden in Burnt Norton?
- A bird.
17) What famous philosopher is Herman Mussert compared to?
- Socrates
18) Santiago de Compostela is what?
- Pilgrimage route in Spain.
19) What is the glitch in the Matrix
- Deja vu
20) Mysterious mental maneuver?
- Vladimir Nabokov
21) According to Maggie, Shakespeare is to Prospero as Beckett is to____.
- Molloy
22) The hot babe in the desert in The Alchemist is whom?
- Fatima
23) Emerald Tablet, Elixir of Life, Philosopher's Stone (potentially the Emerald City)
24) Who else is on the boat with Mussert? (Which one of the people is missing from the list)
- pilot
- priest
- child
- teacher
- journalist
- academic
25) What language was the Alchemist originally written in?
- Portuguese
26) What is the Anima Mundi
- the Soul of the World
27) What two colors of the rose symbolize Alchemy?
- red
- white
28) What word in the Tempest is repeated more than any other?
- now
29) What game does Miranda and Ferdinand play at the end of the Tempest?
- Chess
30) What profession was Herbert Mussert?
- Classics Professor
31)According to Dr. Sexson, who do Miranda's nine attendants represent?
- The Muses
32) What Latin word does Mussert translate into time?
- dies
33) Exceptions to the rule of popular books being associated with low brow?
- Shakespeare
- The Bible
34) How long is the Following Story?
- two seconds
35) Who is in the leaves/apple tree in the Four Quartets?
- children
36) Phaethon drives fathers chariot.
- Enacted by Mussert
37) Mussert says "the world is a never ending ________"?
- cross reference
38) Release me from these bands with the help of your good hands.
- applause

Apologies & Class Notes!

My smartpen died in class. I forgot to charge it, my apologies.

Wednesday, Jenny Lynn will be taking blackboard notes for the Friday test. Bring questions!

Next week we will be beginning the group presentations!

By Monday blog your thesis statement for your personal paper for class, written on any theme from class or "what I know now that I didn't know before and the difference it makes."

The Following Story pages to view:
1) P. 39 Beetles and rat
2) P. 48-9 Metamorphosis
3) P. 53 Ditto
4) P. 55
5) P. 64 Memory
6) P. 89 Crito/Socrates
7) P. 106
8) P. ? Santiago de Compostela (pilgrimage from The Alchemist as well)
9) P. 98 "The World is a never ending cross reference."

Two parts of The following Story:
Part 1: Dying
Part 2: I'm on a Boat! (couldn't help myself.)

The link from class to The Following Story Blog again.

Memorize passage from The Following Story, the passage that goes; "This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver need to pass from one state of being to another.
Easy, you know, does it, son."

Sarah - Mirrors and memory. (Sorry I missed the page)

Douglas, p. 50 tracking tense. "We are a cluster of composite..." (Memorize) The only time that I is used is when the reader is being addressed.

Thomas - Self-loathing, Beckettesque. Nooteboom was actually influenced by Beckett.

The lifetime in a moment, as promised by Dr. Sexson that the 20 minute lifetime would actually be an instant lifetime.

Lisa - silence and storytelling or dream. P. 106 "I know now that I didn't know then"

Experiences are only events until you reflect on them.

P. 89 - Death of Socrates.

Socrates - "Ones life is complete at every moment, therefore don't wait until sunset to take the hemlock, take it now. What do you have to gain?" Similar to Henry V, the death of Fallstaff.

"I owe a cock to Aesculapius."

The Following Story Link!

A link from The Doctor.
The Following Story Blog!

3/31 Smartpen

03.31.2010 11:03:58 AM
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From Class

Science Fiction Forbidden Planet and Shakespeare's The Tempest

Science Fiction Forbidden Planet and Shakespeare s the Tempest

The Following Story

Yet again I love this book. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten though. It is amazingly dense for a 113 page story. There were notes I took but I would like to follow Sam's lead and blog about something I did not take notes on. So this morning I read without my pen. It took me a while to become alright with it but once I was it was amazingly liberating. Another version of the mysterious mental maneuver, or eternal recurrence, etc... I had to learn how to read again. How to get lost in a story and soar along the pages as if I were being carried by a phoenix over a landscape unfamiliar to me. Safely separate but very close to the story. I read instead of analyzed and it was liberating.

The Following Story, yet again tugged at my heart and stretched my mind. The Myth of the Eternal Return, or Eternal Recurrence theme is painted throughout, several scenes he relives as he is dying throughout the book, the entirety of the novel teaching him how to die and that he will return. His story is not complete, his body through metamorphoses and his soul through continuance, remembrance and forgetfulness. It is the most vibrant part of life, death, as fiction and literature. It is Dolce Domum, as he, by Plato's theory of anamnesis, returns home to "heaven." It is, being only 113 pages long, a 20 minute lifetime. And as we discussed in class, the secret of Immortality is to read, we have had a lifetime in the reading of this book. And finally, The World as Myth and Dream, Socrates had simply dreamt his life. He was so sure there was no afterlife, or immortality of the soul, as he discusses with Lisa d'India, his Creto, on page 91, but in the end he is awakened to his error and moves on to the next world. Poetry.

Today In Class

Here are the links for things from class and the Smartpen recording.

Rosicrucianism

Gnosticism

Emerald Tablet

Anima mundi (spirit)

Shirt of Nessus

Ereshkigal

The Dead by James Joyce

Rose in Alchemy

Wallace Stevens - The Idea of Order at Key West

and the image of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth

and the class smartpen recording.

03.29.2010 11:01:34 AM
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I am also going to post here, while my smartpen uploads, that the blog that truly acted as my stimuli, stimulus, and stimulation was Jon Orsi's. It seemed that at very specific times throughout the semester when I was reaching a sort of mental burnout or idle, seeing as how so many things are cyclical, life and death, high and low brow, and now over-stimulation and idleness both causing a sort of pause in the mental workings, Jon Orsi's blog would slap me in the face, make me laugh out loud and absolutely kick start the cogs in my head. I would have to blog, there just weren't any other options. Of course, there aren't any other options, because the past is the past, but it is present, and foreseeable in the future as well.

Now to work on a paper thesis, we've covered so much that I'm actually having troubles coming up with anything, or maybe it's that I can't remember what it was like, what I was like, at the beginning of the semester. Either way I can't seem to focus in again. Jon? Any blogs of brilliance to set me on my way? Anyone else?

And a Post Script.
Thanks for the endorsement Christina! It's nice to hear that you enjoy what we're doing! If any of you were wondering why Dr. Sexson addressed this quote so pointedly to me, it's because I am interviewing for the McNair Scholarship on Wednesday and am pitching what we do in the classroom as my research project for the scholarship.

And a Post Post Script.
Congratulations Erin! I never thought two people in the class would make it through Finnegans Wake! And thanks for finding me, it was scary being lost down the rabbit hole of all those pages!

Sucking Stones

Present for you!

Finnegan's Wake p. 88 Annotated

Qwill

Qwill decided to sit on my back while I did morning chores, made it a little awkward but the purring made it worth it. :)

3/26 Smartpen and The Wizard of Oz Clip from class.

Ha ha! They had all kinds of downloading restrictions on this but I PREVAILED! I'm feeling very victorious. 'twas vexing this vicissitude to vanguard or vault the videos, so with a vengeance I vehemently ventured a variable vent and, from vantage, vanquished the vain and vamoosed with my vainglory. In other words, it's not often I am thwarted on my first attempt at stealing something from the internet, but I won. :)



And here's the Smartpen recording from today 3/26:

03.26.2010 11:01:19 AM
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Vishnu Lotus/Navel

Qwill

Yay! My cat JUST came home. Life is good again. Love.

The Alchemist Pt. II

So, I wanted to elaborate slightly on why I liked the Alchemist but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to put much effort into it. My cat has been missing for about 16 hours and I'm a little stressed. Regardless I wanted to offer this:

Santiago had to leave. Regardless of how stereotypical the plot is. He had to go. If he'd stayed he would not have found the treasure at home, and the real story is right, his wanderlust is what would have ruined his potential future with the merchant's daughter. If he didn't have wanderlust, a yearning for adventure, then he wouldn't have left.

Still, putting that logic aside, had he not left he would not have been able to return to the same field he started in and known it for the first time. He learned something new about it from when he'd left. He also learned that he truly did not want to be there. And that he truly did not want to be with the woman he had intentionally fawned over.

Here's the real kicker about this book. I'm generalizing so I know there will be those of you who didn't have this experience but, my experience was this. We came into this class to discover something about high brow and low brow literature, some of us with knowledge of highbrow and some without. We all learned a thing or two and some of us converted to a great appreciation of highbrow works. The Alchemist was painful for me initially for similar reasons, and in retrospect I'm laughing, it was TOO LOWBROW! I had returned to where i had started and had to get to know the place for the first time. I had to teach myself, using a similar mysterious mental maneuver to learning to enjoy highbrow literature and the bible, to enjoy lowbrow literature again!

Bah, I'm burning my dinner...

3/24 Smartpen

03.24.2010 10:13:03 AM
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Link to Vishnu

Just click here for the Vishnu page used in class!

A Zed and Two Noughts

The Alchemist

Alright, new favorite book. I loved The Alchemist! Of course I guess that's about par for the course.

p. 3 "He told himself that he would have to start reading thicker books: they lasted longer, and made more comfortable pillows." I clicked with this, right off the bat I'm being shown that my lust for more books and "thicker" (meaning denser, or high brow for me) books.

p.4 recognizing that he might not have accustomed himself to the sheep's schedule but that he might have accustomed himself to theirs. Cool perspective!

p.7 Sexson/Socrates knows "how to find the best pastures in Andalusia," and as long as he does, we will be his friends. Or rather, we will be his students.

p. 12 "recurrent dream" Wake up Neo.

p.15 "I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them." Dr. Sexson is trying to teach us all to be wise.

p.16 Maybe it's just me but I had a moment of Beckettesque deja vous. I spotted a place where I fell out of the narrative. "If he ever wrote a book, he thought, he would present one person at a time, so that the reader wouldn't have to worry about memorizing a lot of names." Which is exactly how The Alchemist is written.

p. 18 Personal Legends? Which story are we in again? What story am I in? Aw jees...

p. 24 Think like a child. Remember Dr. Sexson said something about this at the beginning of the semester? Every day i wish I'd been in one of his Oral Traditions classes so that I would have tricks for remembering things better.

p. 30 Urim and Thummim, I wonder if Alecia remembers these little guys from Bible as Literature class and has any more info on them?

I love the little story between 30 and 32. What a great parable.

p. 43 "There must be a language that doesn't depend on words." Indeed. This is elaborated on on p. 62

p. 64 "He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn't really his dream." Sometimes the path is the treasure, not the goal's realization.

p. 74 "Maktub" Plato's anamnesis, or Jung's Collective Unconscious?

p.75 The realization that the book the boy got from the library was Finnegan's Wake. "... the boy had developed a superstition that each time he opened the book he would learn something important,"

p.77 and 78 Is research or action more important? This is a struggle I've had with myself for a long time. I have a deep and powerful wanderlust which sometimes drives me to simply pack a backpack and walk across the US for a month or so. Right now I've exhausted it after several years of travel and I'm enjoying having a home base and a purpose while I'm rooted. We'll see how long it takes to kick back up but when it does, will I go? Will I listen to my heart and heed my Personal Legend? Or will I stay and attempt to put off the travel until I accomplish my goals of obtaining my bachelors and moving on for a Doctorate of English Lit? I suppose only time and my heart will tell. "The Englishman said, 'I'd better pay more attention to the caravan.' 'And I'd better read your books,' said the boy." p. 79

p. 84 and 85 live in the now. It is so easy to say and so hard to do.

p.88 A Thousand and One Nights, I really have to read this...

p. 115 A favorite quote: "'It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil,' said the alchemist. 'It's what comes out of their mouths that is.'"

p. 127 - 131 The language of the heart. I love these pages. Hmm :)

p.134 "stimulus"

The names of the wind: "sirocco" p. 146, "levanter" p. 146, "simum" p. 148.

p. 156 This is something I used to say, better worded but the same concept! "Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."

I actually have almost as much highlighting in The Alchemist as I do in Finnegans Wake!

3/22 Smartpen

03.22.2010 10:15:02 AM
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3/10 & 3/12 Smartpen

03.10.2010 11:09:48 AM
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03.12.2010 11:11:51 AM
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Chess

The 4 Conflicts

Reading Rachel's Blog I was inspired to recall the conflicts she was talking about.

According to George Steiner the 4 conflicts are:
1) Age and youth
2) Individual and State
3) Gods and mortals
4) The living and the dead

If you're interested in reading a large excerpt from George Steiner's Antigone's I uploaded them to my blog for Classical Foundations back in 09 and they're still up, just click here to begin!

PS Rachel I love the fish on your blog!

Thomas

Personal response to Thomas' blog.

I am not a Cyper, but I do agree with Thomas for the most part. Here's my logic.

I believe that neither the dream world or the real world make much of a difference. That's not the point for me. Whether I'm "stuck in a dream world, Neo" or being welcomed to the "desert of the real." isn't the exciting thing. The difference between a bowl of snot and a steak is what? From Cypher's perspective it's ignorance being bliss so that he can forget his hardships and simply enjoy life's little luxuries. My problem is that I believe that all knowledge is worth having and that the more worth knowledge has, the heavier a burden it is to carry. I know what it's like to be in sove hard places and so I can truly commiserate and connect with people in those places. This may not seem like a good thing but it is a connection that can run deep and lead to the greatest of bonds. More than that I'll learn from the people I commiserate with and they'll be better off for their lightened burden, even if it's just having someone to talk to. Helping people seems to be a calling of mine and I find very little that makes me feel as alive. Also, like Dr. Sexson said "the more you know, the more you know." My reasoning for agreeing with Thomas is this: Life needs to be lived, not sat through and viewed as it passes. It's a ride with no safety net and the people that sit behind the window and view those of us who live life are only getting a half life.They're reading about the life I'm living every time I step through the door, whether I'm late or not. The trick is to live life and to study it simultaneously to suck the very most out of your stones, turn and turn about.

Ketchup Blog

I've been having a rough time with the Tempest. It seems too all encompassing. I suppose I just need to grab a single thread and follow it for a while. The connections are all over it to many of our other readings but they have either been discussed more fully than I could have already or are a stretch or are too obvious and not really of any great intrigue. Of course, like Dr. Sexson said at the beginning of the semester, sometimes we need to state the obvious. Since I have little recent blog activity other than smartpen posts I'll have to do just that.

The Tempest:

1) Connecting The Tempest to Finnegans Wake

a) Both are magical, the Tempest has illusion written into it and Finnegans Wake is basically a spell book which shows you whatever you're looking for.

b) Both are bound by water, Finnegans Wake has a river which cuts through it and keeps our attentions fixed and the Tempest is a fixed focal point because it's an island adventure.

c) The characters are template characters for all the potential characters that could have been in their position. Prospero is the All-Father kind of persona and HCE is the everyman.

2) Stranger than Fiction and Beckett

a) Kind of a weak link but both Molloy and Harold are in bad shape and either don't know it, or ignore it and continue onward regardless.

b) Molloy is in the process of living his life, following his every desire so long as it holds his attentions then dropping it and moving on to the next thing with no real recollections, simply now and Harold spends the beginning of the movie preparing to live his life and begins doing so only at the end.

3) Life as Fiction and Beckett

a) This one's pretty obvious. Beckett keeps showing the machinery behind his work in an attempt to show us that life is fiction. We are blinded by our "daily lives" and need to wake up and live.

4) What is the Matrix?

a) Monotony. Getting in a rut of living every day like Harold Crick. We need to break free from the bondage of a 9-5 and become people again. As broken as Molloy was, he (obviously my favorite character of Becketts) lived in the now, or in the real, even when he was retrospect. That fictional character was somehow more alive than some of the fictional characters I know as flesh and blood instead of paper and ink. People dead to their lives as they run through without joy and simply process the life that is fed to them like some prescribed formula which will eventually lead them to a goal which will set them free. What goal? Now is when you're free, if you just take the red pill and dive down the rabbit hole, eat a Bavarian sugar cookie or suck on a stone. Free your mind and join the window washer who gets to jam out on his music and feel the wind on his face from a dozen stories off the ground suspended from a few cables while you get-a-talkin-to for being 5 minutes late Mr. Anderson.

Alright, off my soapbox now. See you all tomorrow.

3/8 Smartpen

03.08.2010 11:09:53 AM
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Clips

Muses

Calliope was the muse of epic poetry.

Clio was the muse of history.

Erato was the muse of love poetry.

Euterpe was the muse of music.

Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.

Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry.

Terpsichore was the muse of dance.

Thalia was the muse of comedy.

Urania was the muse of astronomy.

3/5 Smartpen

03.05.2010 11:04:47 AM
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3/3 Smartpen

03.03.2010 11:09:44 AM
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Site and Pic from Today

Simulacra and Simulations

Christina may be working on a better image for us. Thanks if you do Christina!

Stranger Than Fiction

Our Life As Fiction and Stranger Than Fiction.
He's a fictional character in real life. So are we. Professor Hilbert is tries to get Harold Crick to figure out what kind of story he's in and Dr. Sexson wants us to do the same. We're all part of a story, characters in each others lives.

Stranger Than Fiction and Beckett.
The number of characters killed was striking to me. Eight by Karen Eiffel and the same by Beckett. The idea that Stranger Than Fiction summons up is that our lives are stories. The movie is all about breaking through stories. If it was a normal movie about Harold Crick going through his life and then dying, or living, it would be a normal movie. But continually throughout, the character tries to break through to the narrator, author or real world. He is real to himself but to Karen he is just a character. The same way that you're all real to me but if you told me a story about one of your friends they're just a character in a story. One day they might break through from the story into the real world for me but until I meet them they're stuck in a that tale I was told. Beckett continually tries to break through his stories to show us the machinery behind it as well. We see the writers tricks he uses but have we yet thought about how we are really all stories until we are physically present to the people who've heard about us? Like being an urban legend where people tell stories about you that spread like wildfire but only a very few people actually know you. Now it's not what story are you in from the grand scheme of your life but what stories are you in in your every day life. What novellas or shorts? What poems, riddles, bedtime stories or warning parables are you in? What is your life as fiction?

3/1 Smartpen

03.01.2010 11:07:25 AM
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The Tempest

Well, I found Joyce and Beckett in The Tempest. Line 165:

Our revels now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which is inert, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Maybe I'm just seeing things but I couldn't stop myself from breaking out my highlighter again while reading. All these references to the play within itself breaking the story line. The mention of the Globe. Damned if it doesn't scream Beckett at me. Our little life being rounded with sleep. This all Joyce. It's Finnegans Wake. Or I'm completely off my rocker, either way, it doesn't matter because I like it!

2/24 Smartpen

02.24.2010 11:07:15 AM
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2/22 Smartpen

02.22.2010 11:06:54 AM
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The Bro

Warning: Not suitable for all audiences.

The Count

I was thinking; "What would be a fun blog to post tonight, what could I write about that would send me into an inspirational tangent?" Well, I didn't come up with anything truly inspirational but I did think of something funny. Perhaps this is even more suitable considering the Beckett overload people are experiencing. How about some humor? Alright. To precede the video I figured I'd show my train of thought.

Step 1) What to blog?
Step 2) Stair counting?
Step 3) Thomas mentioned something about Sesame Street to Dr. Sexson...
Step 4) Sesame Street... Counting...
Step 5) Revelation! The Count!

For your viewing pleasure:




P.S. If I remember correctly I mentioned that someone once said "we laugh to keep from crying." I believe I remembered who said it. Henry David Thoreau. Correct me if I'm wrong though please!

Don't forget to bring questions for the quiz! (If you're at a loss I have a bunch, just ask.)

My Own Work.

Hello everyone. I was inspired to publish some of my own personal work on here because of the poem that has so consumed Adam Benson.

From the Gates to the Gardens- A Tale of Perfection

Asperger's Connections

Dr. Sexson said something that piqued my interests. He briefly mentioned that Asperger's children often speak in an extremely formal manner, this was in reference to Beckett's character Moran. Having just watched Dead Man, I made a connection between this aspect of Asperger's syndrome and Crispin Glover who plays a brief roll in the movie. If any of you have seen Willard, he plays the perfect socially inept character before it all goes crazy with the rats and such. Well, he maintains his carefully formal, highly enunciated speech patterns in Dead Man. Maybe it's not as cool as I thought it was but, well, I thought it was.

Beckett's Breaks

Well, there's the opening page which seems full of potential to break the story, but as it's the opening page and the only story the reader has thus far is what they knew before opening the book and reading I'll ignore that. P. 7 has Bizz's lines: "A little dog followed him..." and then on P. 9was where I had fun falling in and out of the plot.

And. once again I am I will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say, I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don't know what that means but It's the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least, no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

I read that and felt like a small dog, a Pomeranian maybe, worrying a rope being shaken by my master to get me off it. I, of course, looking for that fall, relented willingly to the drop from the narrative and into the mechanical workings below it. This happens quite often and I love it!

Counting Stairs

After reading Shelby's Blog on counting stairs I figured I should post some of the stuff of a stair-counter's nightmares. I've never wondered about counting the floor as my first step or not. I believed, from the beginning of my relationship with stairs, that the first step was the first elevation above the floor and at the top I counted my first footfall as I was only half on the landing but none after, say, if there should be a second set of stairs to continue up. If that were the case I would begin the process again as many times as it took to reach my destination floor and then add the sums together. Similarly on decent I counted the first footfall below the plane of the floor and then every in succession including the first footstep upon a landing, as I would only be half on the landing still. Should there be multiple landings I would continue in this fashion until arriving at my destination level and add the sums together for a total number of stairs.

2/19 Notes

Again, my apologies for having forgotten my smartpen. I know that these recordings are a poor substitute for the smartpen recordings but i do what I can.


1:3


2:3


3:3


Bike Horn

Page(s) 22
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Notes.

Have a good weekend!

Searching Beckett

Ha ha! Patrick Stewart (Picard/Xavier) and Ian McKellen (Magneto) took "Waiting for Godot" to the theatre over the last year. The headline was "Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart to boldly Godot" and here's a link to their website. Along with their trailer:

Now how perfect that?

Chanting "Orsi, Orsi, Orsi!"

Jon Orsi has yet another inspiring blog which brings upon an apocalypse for me. He says;

I've told people about this and they've read some and i feel they get the impression I am a really dark person, which is funny to me because quite the opposite, and i think that may be why I enjoy this so much because these things are void from my life, and though it is a novel of emptying out, it is an essential and equally important part of the movments to become full once again.

This got me thinking.

My life, has only in the last few years become void of the wretched unfairnesses that haunt Beckett's works. I had a relatively rough start in life and, honestly, reveled in it like a kid in the mud. It was hard, but I was born reflective and could see that I was made out of tougher stuff than the people around me, including most adults. I could see that the things I'd gone through added depth and strength to my character through the praises I got for "being so brave" and persevering. I likened myself to a mangy stray dog, tough as nails and willing to get a little dirty to get things done. My mettle has been tested and I came through my twisted youth as a blade of damascus. Well, I also find the humor in Beckett. I don't know if it's so much that not having Beckettesque things happen to you that gives you the ability to laugh so much as knowing the perspective it takes to laugh. Like the insane giggles of a person being tortured. It is funny. Have you ever shinned yourself on a coffee table and rolled around on the floor giggling "ow, ow, ow!" at the absurdity of it? There's Beckett in that. As for the emptying out and filling up? Yes! There is an ebb and flow of pain, pleasure, and the grace to deal throughout life. It's a pattern unique to each individual but it is there. Beckett's work is a brilliant outlet for catharsis for those who have been wounded as well as those who haven't. It would work like sending a dollar to a Haitian. Do they really care? Probably not. I'd probably think; "fuck your dollar, send me something useful, like a bag of simcon or a skid steer." But does it make you feel better? If so then reading Beckett will be cathartic in a similar way.

Alright, my train of thought just got derailed... See you all in a few hours!

Qwill's FW

First you get beat your head against it.

Then you love it.

Then you get (h)ate it!

Finally you love it again.

Fin... again.

2/17 Smartpen Recordings

02.17.2010 11:03:13 AM
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Molloy I and II

I loved this story! I laughed at so many parts I couldn't even keep track. All the little oddities of Molloy, especially the ones that reflect the personality quirks of "normal" people. Brilliant!

Beckett is a genius! He writes the first part about Molloy in a sort of stream of consciousness style, fading out of one thought and into another only to return with a snap to where he'd begun and elaborate. It's a grip of little eternal recurrences in a single novel!

The second part, in the head of Moran, was also very interesting. It's crazy how Beckett got into the mind of an Asperger so well! All the choices, decisions and outbursts are the mathematical reactions to the equations of his social interactions. Unfortunately since Moran can't really connect with and understand social interactions he always reacts inappropriately. He comes across as monstrous but by the end of the book he is simply pathetic and gives up on society to become a kind of hermit. He became what he already was, accepted it, he returned from the way in which he was not to become himself.

My new personal favorite author! Let's see how long he lasts with all the brilliant reads Dr. Sexson keeps exposing me to!

Molloy

Well, I accidentally read the first part of Molloy. "I began at the beginning, like an old ballocks, can you imagine that?" (p.4) Well, this line probably should have been a clue. I feel as if I should have known better and am slightly embarrassed considering all our talks about beginning now and going from there, wherever now happens to be can be of whomever's choosing. Well, since I read it, I suppose I'll blog a teeny bit on it. I loved this story! I thought it was hilarious! I've told friends about it and made references to those friends about how well it ties in with Finnegans Wake. It's a 2 paragraph, 85 page stream of consciousness story told in a way that makes the story forget itself over and over again. You fade gently from one topic to the next without realizing you never finished the first only to be brought back around to it later once you've surely forgotten where you started. Only now, you remember, and everything seems to fall into place. Leaving questions? Perhaps but they are either addressed and explained or addressed very briefly, almost curtly and then left behind in a single sentence, bowled over by the powerful waves of his style of textual jabbermouthing. I actually giggled when he went on a rant about his sucking stoned and their respective pockets and rotations for 5 pages (the bottom of page 63 to the top of page 69).

More to read and people to sell things to. Must retire from this blog for now. Damn work... I just want to read!

2/12 Recordings

So I forgot my smartpen today but I did get a recording and some notes because I'm creative like that, just separate this time instead of all nice and neat like normal. I'm just that good. ;)







Sorry to publish in 3 sections but it's a size limitation.

Here are the notes as well.

Page(s) 18 19
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2/10 Smartpen

02.10.2010 11:01:27 AM
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