What time is it? It's Valentimes!

On this day of loves and stuff, I thought I would share one of my favorite lovey poems. There have been papers written on this poem talking about how a man dominated society makes women dependent on them for identity. Some see it as a beautiful depiction of appropriate marital passion.


Personally, I just find this poem extremely sexy in a not trashy way.
THE CINNAMON PEELER by Michael Ondaatje

---

If I were a cinnamon peeler
 I would ride your bed
 and leave the yellow bark dust
 on your pillow.

 Your breasts and shoulders would reek
 you could never walk through markets
 without the profession of my fingers
 floating over you.  The blind would
 stumble certain of whom they approached
 though you might bathe
 under the rain gutters, monsoon.

 Here on the upper thigh
 at this smooth pasture
 neighbour to your hair
 or the crease
 that cuts your back.  This ankle.
 You will be known among strangers
 as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 I could hardly glance at you
 before marriage
 never touch you
 - your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
 I buried my hands
 in saffron, disguised them
 over smoking tar,
 helped the honey gatherers...

 When we swam once
 I touched you in the water
 and our bodies remained free,
 you could hold me and be blind of smell.
 You climbed the bank and said

          this is how you touch other women
 the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
 And you searched your arms
 for the missing perfume

                      and knew

            what good is it
 to be the lime burner's daughter
 left with no trace
 as if not spoken to in the act of love
 as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 You touched
 your belly to my hands
 in the dry air and said
 I am the cinnamon
 peeler's wife.  Smell me.

The best story ever

I have the funniest brother in the world. I found in my documents that PJ had written and saved this story on my computer two summers ago. Enjoy:


The wind was on my side as I swept away from the fatty menace which is Nick
“GIVE ME YOUR SNACK PACK!!!” The beast cried out, running as fast as his piggy legs could go, trying not to trip over one of his multiple chins.

We were at school, and Nick was hungry; and when Nick is hungry, which he is almost all the time, he needs food. Fast. Nick’s mom owns a Dairy Queen. Figures. To give you a ballpark estimate, I’d say Nick is about 999,999,999,999 LBS… … …

… … … Per square inch.
As I sped away from what looked like a, wait , scratch that. As I sped away from what WAS a fat anti-social geek, I turned around, only to see the skyscraper a couple of miles away, drool dripping down his shirt and sweat under his flabby arms.

I had more than enough time sit back, relax, and indulge on my chocolate-vanilla swirl snack pack while I watched Nick run on his stuffed legs, making earthquakes each step, taking hours on end to get to me, the target.

For a gleaming, fatless moment, victory was at my fingertips. But what was this? Had the pig resorted to a secret weapon? He had started rolling! It is typical. I bet someone that round could just roll his way into the Olympics! That is, of course, if he could fit between the white lines on the track. Fatty.

The time had come. He had rolled over, crushed, and even engulfed people in his navel as he made his way toward me. And now he just within a few yards of me!!! Oh my gosh. This was it. I would soon be crushed under the tons of pure body fat known as Nick! The Boulder had seemingly finally reached his goal.


Then Nick had a sudden heart attack and died before reaching me


THE END.

Random Average Paper Time

This was for Bible as Lit class. I should have worked harder in that class.

Emerald Guildner
Professor Walker
English 350
10/5/09
The Lord God Himself

The ever famous creation story has been retold in many ways in all different cultures. Genesis chapters one and two seem to be two different versions of the same event. The translation of Genesis to the King James Version is what I have found to give the most insight when held up against the translation in the Pearl of Great Price. The translations of these passages are important in understanding a people’s interpretation of the creation. In the King James Version, there is a third person narrator whose name we do not know. In the Pearl of Great Price we can see one of the most interesting revelations about the creation. We know from chapter one that the account is revealed to and taken down by Moses himself. This builds trust in the reader and gives the account more credibility. Chapters two through four of Moses is written in the first person, with God as the speaker. The fall of Adam and Eve becomes much more emotional and profound to the reader in Moses because this narration switches to the usual outsider quoting God as soon as they leave the Garden of Eden.

The background given in the Pearl of Great Price helps the reader contextualize why we have the creation story in the first place, and who has written it down. Chapter two begins “And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Moses saying: Behold, I reveal unto you concerning this heaven, and this earth” (2:1). This preface does not exist in Genesis. It dives right into “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The Pearl of Great Price provides more background, but this does more than simply provide extra information. It enhances the effectiveness of the story to make a person trust and believe the narrative. Even if a reader understands that Genesis is a book of Moses, the King James version is more distant because it does not include the same kind of introduction as the book of Moses from the Pearl of Great Price.

The most important difference between the two narratives is the use of God’s own voice in the Pearl of Great Price. The story begins: And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God. (Moses 2:2). This much more personal account not only draws the reader into the story in the first place, but establishes authority in the writer and in God himself. God is able to speak with Moses, and God is able to tell his own story. He does tell his own story because man could not possibly understand completely enough to find words himself for it. The reader is more invested when reading that “I, God, saw the light; and that light was good”, than “God saw the light, that it was good”. God not only did the creating, but he created his story as well. This also makes Moses sound more respectful of God’s creations. In giving God a voice, he is also giving god authority and reverence. The constant repetition of “I, the Lord God” in Moses is also helping the reader remember God and his position in the heavens and in the creation of mankind.

The nearness of God to Adam and Eve is enhanced by the use of God’s first person voice. The fall of Adam and Eve is made more intense by the change to third person when they are banished from God’s presence. This change happens in Moses chapter five. Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. God continues on with his story saying “after I, the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth…as I the Lord had commanded him” (Moses 5:1). This is the last time the narrative is written with “I the Lord”. Adam and Eve no longer were able to communicate with God in the same way, walking and talking in person with him. The reader more fully feels what they felt while reading the story from the book of Moses because the reader also becomes cut off. God is no longer personally narrating his story. The next time we see God in the story is in verse four: And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, an they heard the voice of the Lord from the way toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them, and they saw him not; for they were shut out from his presence”. To be cut off from the Lord is the worst state to be in. This version not only shows the reader that Adam and Eve were cut off, but that mankind is cut off, no longer able to have the story given to them in God’s own voice.

The version of the creation given in Moses is one of the only places in scripture, besides the Doctrine and Covenants, that we see the Lord speaking to us in the first person in scripture. On a spiritual level, this emphasizes that all of mankind is in a fallen state. It makes us yearn for the direct voice of the Lord. It makes us more acutely aware of the fact that we do not dwell in the presence on the Lord. However, it also gives us hope because it gives us a taste of the Lord’s voice. It shows us that we used to be in God’s presence and that our current state is not a permanent one. It gives the reader a goal, to work towards having the Lord’s first person voice in their life eventually back again.

You can't always get what you wa-hant

I have been thinking about this all day:

"He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes."

Out of context this quote is a very good way to put the famous quote of "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have".

In context it just makes me sad. A man feels unfulfilled in his relationship with his lover. It goes on to say: "When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose".

This made me think of part of a paper I wrote last year about Keat's Odes.
Line 15-18 "Ode to Psyche":

They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,

Cupid and psyche are embracing, but not actually kissing or doing anything. This is supposed to be good because fulfillment of desire is apparently what dissipates desire. If you do not actually perform the act, then the act cannot disappoint you or be over. In the next life, that passion will be perfected and will not be lost if you defer it for the present. I think that this idea ignores the possibility of the ability to desire something even when you have it and the ability of something to be even better than what you expected it to be.

I also think that some things make you happy whether you want them to or not. I particularly love that fact.

The "eternal mistake that men make" is a very sad one and causes a lot of heartache.
My lack of further expansion on these things is not laziness this time. I don't want to explain it all. It just makes me very sad.

I am not Russian, but still

When I read a book for leisure I have found that my annotations are really really stupid. You would think that someone who loves to annotate and find insight in novels would do so even when it isn't an assignment. I even thought I did at one point. But in reality I let my emotions freak out when I read for fun. I just underline things and write things like "Me too!" "I hate that" "I know!" and "Ew" in the margins. I am sorry.

Besides this, during my reading I have found myself identifying with many characters and statements in the story. I think that this happens with most all good books, you feel like they put your feelings and situations into words that you could never find.

"Every one, knowing intimately all the complexities of his own circumstances, involuntarily assumes that these complexities and the difficulty of clearing them up are peculiar to his own personal condition, and never thinks that others are surrounded by similar complexities."

I guess that is why .

Want

" 'The aim of civilization is to enable us to get enjoyment out of everything.'
'Well, if that is its aim, I'd rather be a savage.' "

I will elaborate on what I think about this later, it is late. For now, I will say that I agree with the second statement.

What a Start

My new adventure this week will be reading Anna Karenina.
It begins:
"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I'm only on page 12, so I don't have much to say about the read yet. But, I do believe this statement. Happy families, or groups, or couples, or just people resemble one another. Not that they have the same personalities; quiet reserved happy families can be just as happy as the quirky loud happy families.

Some people think that the house with too many kids and a messy kitchen could not be happy that way. Some people feel bad for the single child with very strict parents and one of those living rooms that has couches you aren't supposed to sit on. To me, it isn't about that. In the end it is about whether or not the people who have to live in that house everyday want to be there. That is how happy families resemble one another. You walk into their house and can just feel that the people who live there WANT to be there.

As for the second half of the statement, I think there are just more ways to be unhappy than to be happy and that leads to families being unhappy in so many different ways. I just mean more diverse ways, not more opportunities. It is easy to stumble on a way to be unhappy because of this. In all directions you turn, there is a way to be unhappy. The anxiety in an unhappy family comes from the constant turning and searching for a way out. But, this also means that when you do figure out how to be one of those happy families or people, it will be easier to keep in sight because all you have to do then is stop turning.

I went to a smart thing.

I'm just going to put things I learn about and think about in this bloggy and have it serve as a good way to document my notes and such.

So, I went to a lecture on Jane Austen, put on by the English Society of course. The professor, whose name I do not know because I am that lame, had a thesis that I actually liked. He said that there is a stable notion developing about Jane Austen, and that perhaps it is not healthy. The notion is that of Austen being reduced down to "chick flick" material alone, and being seen as "lightweight" reading in the literature department. He said that it is not good that Austen is being used as the "old school Twilight" these days. I am not the biggest Austen fan myself, but I agree that it is a misreading of her works to degrade it down to Twilight.

Jane Austen's novels explore three main kinds of "love" or "relationships" in courtship and marriage. The first is that of monetary/aristocracy. This is of course marrying for the pedigree, the name, the money, the politics. Like signing a treaty, or making a bank transaction, marriage's role is to better the status of the families involved. This is the type of relationship that gets changed first in all the movie adaptations of her novels, as it is the one that makes us most uncomfortable today.

The second "love" is the Mentor relationship. Society is pretty creeped out by some grown man raising his neighbor's eleven year old daughter, then declaring love for her at the age of eighteen. But, it is more accepted because at least there is "real affection and feeling", whether or not that is the type of love marriage should be made of. Film adaptations tend to close in the age gap a bit, while leaving the "mentor" part of it intact. Yes, lots of Freud stuff that can be said, but that is not the point this time.

The last is the one that we all adore so much. The Companionate Relationship. This is the equal, loving, soul mate type that transfers to film so readily. The problem is that all of Jane Austen's stories have been reduced to the Companionate Relationship. She is really exploring them all, and not always ending with her characters in a Companionate marriage. This movement to reduce her novels in pop culture has made a whole lot of money.

I don't mind the explosion of chick flicks from Jane, really. The problem is how the English department has let itself be so affected by the movement. Jane Austen has become the soft read. Yes, she can be read for entertainment, but to hold the study of her work as easy work is mislead. She pushed forth the idea of "the novel", and not just as a woman, but as a writer. It is only recently (last twenty or so years) that her works have been seen as lightweight. I do not think that we are suddenly above studying such an influential writer just because movies have put her in a different light. If we start making a cartoon series about Althusser I hope that his writings do not become light reading alone. Ack.

Ok, that is all for now. That was mainly a regurgitation of someone else's ideas. I'll try to put some actual thought into the next one.

I don't know I guess

I don't really know what I want this to be yet, hence the deleting and stuff. I promise I will figure it out.