So Much Beauty, So Little Time

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  Does that mean a blind man can never appreciate beauty? No, because beauty is so much more than superficial appearnces.  I think sometimes we focus so much on the visual aspect of beauty that we often miss the simpler aspects.  A good classical music concert, the light in a child's smile, a really tasty plate of spaghetti; real beauty comes with simplicity and being aware of your surroundings.  There is so much to appreciate, if only we slow down our fast-tracked lives and look.

Mr. Brock, Can I Use The Restroom? ZZzzzZzzz

Oh Mr. Brock. The stories you tell are quite entertaining, if slightly unbelievable.  And the comments you make will give us memories to cherish from our senior year.

Alexis: "Mr. Brock can I use the bathroom?"

Mr. Brock: "ZZZZZzzzzzzz..."

Alexis: "Ok, then, I'm going."

Priceless.  And we'll never forget how many times we have to repeat ourselves so you can hear us.  On average, you almost understand the fourth time, if we havent't given up already.  All in all, I genuinely hope we entertain you as much as you entertain us.

Wading Through the Madness

I was really proud of myself for finishing part one of Crime and Punishment.  And now I can't get through part two! It's so easy to get bogged down in the details. I've re-read the first four pages of part two over four times, but when I try to pick up where I left off, I can't remember what happened.  It's going to take a lot of patience and un-interrupted reading to finish this book. 

Sketchy Stuff in Bedford

Eccentricity has nothing on Flannery O'Connor.  First of all, I know the kids don't pick their own names, but Flannery? What is a Flannery? And in the biography of Ms. O'Connor, her works are described as presenting "complex experiences that cannot be tidily summarized".  That was the highly-phrased statement of the textbook.  Secondly, what villain is called 'The Misfit'?  It sounds like an unknown toy Santa named the Island of Misfit Toys after.  Strangely though, I liked "A Good Man Is Hard To Find".  It was a little obvious from the attention the grandmother gave the criminal that later in the story there would be an encounter, and the circumstances that brought the family and the gang together were very mundane, but once the car crashed, I watched the action unfold in a black-and-white-Hitchcock-scene in my mind's eye.  The attention to detail is magnificent.  I was highly impressed with how well O'Connor carried the creepy tone throughout the story, even before the criminals were present.

Over the River and Through the Woods, To Owen's Family Quarry We Go

This isn't an outside reading book, but I was browsing Mrs. Ramirez's bookshelf and came across A Prayer for Owen Meany.  After two pages I was hooked.  How Johnny describes his childhood amuses me- he never can sequentially tell his story.  He starts relatively at the beginning, but circles around a few years before continuing with the narration.  Every connection is explained and inside information made privy as the author explores his true purpose of the book: to figure out who the people in his childhood (including himself) really were.  Even with the round-a-bout approach, the book is very entertaining.

Crime and Punishment

I don't know about, you, but I really like Crime and Punishment.  Yes, it's difficult to read with the incredible details and plethora of Russian names that are hard to keep straight, but the plot is awesome! I'm usually into happy stories with happy endings, but how Dostoevsky explores the psyche intrigues me.  Raskolnikov is an ordinary young man struggling to make it on his own in the world.  Like many people, he views himself superior to others, even if he doesn't flaunt it; he is plagued by the injustice and imbalance in the world, and tries to make it right himself (by killing Ivanovna); he is indecisive in his actions as he executes his plan.  I know it sounds bad, but I connected to Raskilnikov (not because I plan on killing an old lady, or anyone) because Dostoevsky made him a universal character.  The protaganist has wants, needs, biases, weaknesses, self-doubt, and love.  The book is also very intense- Raskilnikov's dream sequence and the murder of the sisters was gruesome, but not over the top.  All in all, I'm fascinated to know how it ends!

Oh The Sports Analogies

This week in class, I feel like we've run a marathon.  Practice AP tests and essays all week? NOOOOOO!!! But it reminded me of being in offseason sports: when you're not actually competing, you have to run extra distance, put in lots of hours at the weight room, and work on your core strength to build for the coming season.  It's the exact same for English class.  Our competition is the AP test, and it's tough.  So we put in the hard work now: the analytical essays, the ridiculous passages no one understands, and the questions designed to trip us up.  Thinking about this helped me realize Mrs. Ramirez is preparing us to beat the heck out of this test, and personally, I say thank you!  It also made the work more bearable, since we'll be used to it by spring. 

On a different note, I felt rather odd writing this.  I'm blaming all the analyzing practice this week; I can't help but evaluate it, but through a track runner's eyes instead of a literary stand-point.

Better Late Than Never?

My thoughts about the class last week didn't seem especially brilliant, so I'm posting a poem I wrote this week.  It's flowery and whimsical because I'm a teenage girl, not because I have especially deep thoughts. So here goes...

Shining knights and lovely maidens 

fill my dreams today.

Day creeps on, the dreams are fadin';

Why must they go away?

If only love were always honest

and the same for life as well;

would all else be so purely flawless?

If you know, I beg, pray tell.

The simplicity in my mind

rejects reality.

I forever look and never find

perfection's rarity.

And the only thing that's left now-

the one way I can cope:

To believe with all my heart now,

To never give up hope.

Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off

Senior year. Oh how I underestimated you.  I was so excited for my last year of high school: the activities, the bragging rights, the excitement for college. And then reality kicked in.  There is hardly any breathing room between sports, orchestra, AP classes, church activities, college preparations, and (if I have an extra milli-second) friends.  Granted, I'm learning how to manage my time better and am finally enjoying everything, but for the first three weeks I was highly disappointed in the 'senior' label. Sometimes I feel like a cross between a chicken with its head cut off and the bad joke about ADD kids:

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Wanna ride a bike?

Pessimistic? No, it's just logic...

Pragmatist
  by Edmund Conti

Apocalypse soon
Coming our way
Ground zero at noon
Halve a nice day

The title of this poem strikes me as oddly funny- it claims to be logical, but there is a distinctly doomed tone to it.  The speaker seems nonchalant on the surface, as if he's commenting on the weather or state of the economy.  All in all he seems bored- total destruction is comingm he claims, but what can you do? It's not as if anyone can prevent it- so 'halve' a nice day, since he most likely took the full enjoyment out of the day.

This Week in Bedford....

I absolutely loved the short story Clothes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about a young Indian woman moving to America because of her arranged marriage.  The story started out apprehensivley as Sumita prepared to meet her prospective husband and their marriage.  At first I was extremely frustrated- I didn't want another emotionally draining story about the abusive conditions arranged marriages brought on.  Thankfully, Somesh (her husband) is a loving, hard-working man with big dreams for not only his business, but for Mita as well.  It was refreshing to see a happy story in Bedford, since most of the other stories have either severly depressed me (Soldier's Home) or really ticked me off (Saving Sourdi).Even though the ending of the story is sad, the bittersweet conclusion is full of hope; I liked the idea of a young woman living her entire life surrounded by family and finally getting the chance to live for herself.  I'm the youngest in my family and have watched two siblings succeed through college, and now as my senior year unfolds I connected Mita's yearning for something new and entirely her own.  I guess that's how everyone feels at some point: the need for something completely individual.

Senior year's adventures (continued)

Well, I guess since the whole point of a blog is to share with everyone and their dog (mainly my English class) what my thoughts are about the litereature we've been reading,  I'll start with the massive amount of questions we had to answer about The Poisonwood Bible.  I really liked this book; it was well-writtten, engaging, bittersweet, and unlike any book I have previoulsy read.  While I was reading it, I could feel myself battling out in the back of my mind how I felt about the underlying messages about missionaries, duty, and all-encompassing guilt.  I didn't push the envelope; if a thought became too messy I would leave it alone.  And then we were assigned thirty-three questions about the book. These questions probed deeper than I had been willing to go earlier, and when I tried to make concise, neat anwers to get through the assignmnet, I found that I couldn't.  There were no neat answers in the book, and that frustrated me.  Even simple questions about who the protagonist was were difficult because there were five narrators throughout the book.  Everything depended on my perspective and experiences.  As I became used to figuring out what I believed, I found I could answer the questions easier.  Just my thoughts...

Storytelling

Storytelling is vital to our culture. Wheher we think we can tell a story or not, we share our experiences with others constantly. As people we can't hold in our tales. We have to share them, through spoken art.