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!