Mrs. Dalloway

So, I wanted to hate this book. I began "trying" to read it before the class started, but decided to put it away and wait until I HAD to read it. The stream of conciousness was hard to wade through and seemed pointless. I didn't understand why she couldn't just tell the story and entertain me. I guess I understand why now, but it still didn't make reading the book any easier. We do really think that way. My thoughts are always tangled up and shoot off in random directions and I even realize that I constantly contradict myself. Human beings are very complicated and sometimes we don't actually want to know our true selves. I don't think Clarissa really wanted to understand herself. She took the safe way out by not marrying Peter, or going the way of lesbian love. I can't say that I blame her though. There was no guarantee that she would have lived a comfortable life if she had made other choices. What it comes down to is that comfort was really more important to her than romance.

My Life Feels Like a Waste Land Right Now

Today I am drained. I completely forgot that I needed to post on my blog and now I am struggling to think of something to talk about. What about Elliot's "The Waste Land?" That was a crazy poem. There was no single plot or narrative. Just when you thought you were beginning to figure it out, it would switch to something completely different and you were thrown off again. I don't know how many of you have read any of William S. Burroughs' work, but it really reminded me of Naked Lunch. Both contained gritty, raw content that shocks the reader out of their confort zones, while also making a social commentary about the state of things.

Anyway, my mind isn't really wanting to focus today. I wish I could talk more about the poems we read this past week. I just finished my web page today and it took it all out of me. Now I have several tests to study for in other classes. Yuck!!

Forbidden Fruit

If you haven't read Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti, you should check it out. It is a pretty quick read and very good. There is a lot of hidden meaning in this work and it was fun trying to pull it all out. I actually wanted to eat that fruit. The goblins make it sound so sweet and tempting. I mean, who can resist "Plump unpecked cherries" or "Wild free-born cranberries." I don't even like cherries, but if you describe them as plump I want to eat them all up. I didn't even know there were that many different kinds of fruit. I thought of the fruit as being a symbol for forbidden sin, or a temptation away from the path of the pure. When Laura gives into the goblins and dines on the fruit, it is like a metaphorical loosing of her virginity. She quickly becomes an old maid who is obsessed with getting another taste. I was really more interested in the temptation part than the redemption part, but if you were wondering she gets saved by her heroine sister.

Read it!

The magical merpeople cult

You don't often read stories about mermen, do you? I really liked the poem "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold. It made me think about what he was saying about religion and imagination. I understood it to mean that you can't have imagination if you want to have religion. That sounds crazy. My only guess is that the church only wanted you to believe what THEY were telling you and there was no room for anything else, like fairy tales and magic. I can see how this idea is still true today. Think about how a lot of Christians have rejected Harry Potter books because of the magical elements, witches, and wizards. Talk about hypocrits. If you want to read something that needs a lot of imagination to believe, you can just open the pages of the Bible itself; people coming back from the dead, walking on water, parting the seas, healing people with just your hands, etc. I'm sorry, but without a little imagination that all sounds a little far fetched to me.

I mentioned in my post that the church sounds like a cult that tries to keep its parishoners cut off from any other type of thought. I had a funny dream once that my dad and I accidentally joined a cult. We thought that aliens had selected us for our superior intelligence to move to a new planet and start a new race of people. My mom and sister were too smart to fall for this though and went out shopping instead. My dad bought a school bus to transport us to this new planet and told me that he planned on picking up "chicks" in it. We ended up driving to El Reno, which is when I realized that we hadn't been chosen by aliens as the smartest people on earth, but were just the most impressionable and had inadvertently joined a cult. It was a sad realization. I'm sorry, that had nothing to do with my original post.

Frankenstein

So, I really enjoyed reading Frankenstien. I have actually always wanted to read it, but I guess I was a little scared of what it would be like. I knew it was nothing like how Hollywood has depicted it. I do think it is interesting that pop culture has named the monster Frankenstein, even though Shelley never gave it a name other than monster or creature or the like. It does make sense though. Usually when someone invents something, it gets named after the creator or discoverer. Frankenstein did give life to it also, so like a father and son it would inherit his name.

It was sad to read about Mary Shelley's life. It must have been so hard to have so many children die. I think she had 5 pregnancies and only one child who survived. She came close to death herself once during a miscarriage. She seemed surrounded by death. Percy Shelley's wife and Mary's step-sister both committed suicide, Mary's mother died after giving birth to her, her sister Clara's daughter died in a boarding school, and then her husband drowns at sea. It is no wonder she would write a horror novel. I liked the interpretations of Frankenstein based on Shelley's pregnancies and lost children. I think it makes a lot of sense. I can understand the fear of bringing a new life into the world and the fear of rejection or that you will reject your own child. What if it comes out deformed? What if it doesn't love you? What if something goes wrong and your dreams are smashed? I have suffered a miscarriage myself and can understand feeling disconnected from a new pregnancy until you know for sure everything will turn out alright. And then what if it doesn't? How will you deal with it? I guess one way would be to write a book!

SICK!!!

I know that I am required to post by the end of the week. I am afraid that this post is not really going to cut it. I am falling so far behind. Not because I can't keep up, but because I have been sick as a dog this week. Last week was a lot easier to get through because the readings were short poems. The readings are getting a lot longer this week and I have this mental block against them right now with how bad I feel. I meant to begin posting yesterday and I didn't because I felt so bad. It didn't even occur to me again until right now that I have homework I need to be doing. I guess this is at least something. I need to buckle down and force myself to read. I have to tell myself "It isn't that bad...It isn't that bad...It isn't that bad." Being sick wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't pregnant and can't take anything for my aches and pains. Okay, I guess I have whined enough. I will find my book and get SOMETHING read by the end of the day. I think I will begin with Keats "Ode to a Nightingale." I remember reading "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and liking it, so maybe I will like this one as well. We will see...

Horror Movies

I am not a fan of horror movies. There was a small glimpse of time where I could handle them, but it was very brief. Movies like Ghost Ship, Resident Evil, and House of 1000 Corpses have ruined me completely. I'm not saying that these were particularly good or scary, but they contained elements that I have determined I do not like. I have very specific reasons and they are as follows:

Reason #1. People being sliced in half-I am not talking about limbs being chopped off. I am talking about the countless scenes in horror movies nowadays where a cable, a glass wall, or lasers slice someone in half. The most horrific part of this for me is that they show you the persons’ eyes as they watch their body slide apart. They are still living long enough to realize what has happened to them and watch it happen. Then there is the inevitable squishy slurping type noise that accompanies the sliding body part. Just gross!

Reason #2. Jerky movements from ghosts and possessed people-This must be an effect they do in editing; maybe they take every other frame out so their movement isn’t fluid. There is just something creepy about it that I don’t like. If the person were floating or moving at a normal pace, or even running I would be okay with it. But when they appear to be moving convulsively, that is where I draw the line.

Reason #3. If it seems too real- If I see a movie that I think, 'you know, that could happen to me,' I can’t watch it. There are too many real psychos out there that don’t need to be getting any more ideas. Seeing stories on the news of husbands hacking up their pregnant wives or people kidnapping helpless children is already more than I can handle.

When I was a kid, the two scariest movies to me were The Neverending Story and Pinocchio. Yes, I know…Pinocchio isn’t a scary movie. It is a Disney cartoon. But to tell a little girl that if she ever plays pool, smokes a cigar, or drinks beer she is going to turn into a donkey is very scary and just not right. Almost every part of The Neverending Story frightened me. I didn’t like when the horse sank into the mud, or the statues that shot lasers out of their eyes, but I did like the flying dragon.