The Loss of the Creature

In the beginning Percy is talking about how people see beauty and how most people overlook what they're actually looking at. Percy is exclaiming that places, objects, and what have you lose their gusto but only becuase people don't take everything in.

Is he trying to say that you don't fully enjoy a place unless you're the first one to discover it or no one else can be there? And if the place has been found then you have to experience it in exclusion from everyone else. I understand his point, because it is true you don't get the same emotion or state of aw when someone else is there trying to experience the same thing you're trying to experience.

I don't understad why he uses so many parenthacies, doesn't seem like ther is really a use for them, it should just be a part of the paragraph.

This essay reminds me of the essay Ways of Seeing, they go hand and hand. It talks about how people see things, like experts and laymen or how people are at a certain place changes your view.

Grief and a Headhunter's Rage (Edit)

Rosaldo's writing it easy to follow, clear and straight to the point and definitly with some passion. I can't imagine leaving everything behind and studying a culture and "to a point" living the culture that you're trying to study.

I like when he's talking about the emotion of death, the emotion that he got when Michelle Rosaldo died, ". . . she lost her footing and fell to her death some 65 feet down a sheer precipine into a swollen river below. Immediately on finding her body I became enraged. How could she abandon me? How could she have been so stupid as to fall? I tried to cry. I sobbed, but rage blocked the tears." This is amazing because I think people are like this all the time when a loved one is taken. Not only is he experiencing rage it's also selfishness. He describes it when he says "how could you abandon me?" Ultimately though, the reason why we western civilization become enraged is only based on selfish movtives. We are taught at an early age that death happens and the person dying or who is dead has gone to a better place. Unlike the Ilongot's who belief they need to release spirits by taking the head of someone, which is what they were taught through their culture.

Rosaldo experiencing rage gives a great reason as to why the Ilongot's do what they do, it's the rage inside them but based on cultural differences we deal with death in different ways. Death is a cultural issue, depending apon what you've been taught in your early childhood and have wittnesses you'll most likely practice in your adulthood.

Arts of the Contact Zone

Pratss boy learned about power and arbitrariness of money the same way I did, collecting sports cards, mine were hockey but the exact same thing. My phonics came with collecting that aswell trying to sound out the names. That was also the way I interacted with adults through playing the game and being a decent player but also from collecting the cards, I had something to talk about with them.

The Incas had no system of writing, how do you establish something from nothing? I think some of the great writers I guess would be the people who invented writing itself.

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

This essay Nietzsche writing reminds me of a philosophy textbook, deep and metaphorical.

I think he's talking about conditioning, when you're a child and one says this color is red and not blue you think that or if shown a picture then the meaning would be the same as the generations before you.

His philosophical education comes out in this essay, all it really is. Kind of sounds like he thinks the average "man" is an idiot, not sure though. It is confusing and hard to read.

Haunted America

Limerick's writing is very straightforward, there isn't too much emotion. It seems like her writing is of a textbook. I do like the part where she brings to point the reversal role of Native Americans and the Anglo-American. How at first you could look at the situation and give us the aggressor role, the non caring, vindictive, cruel person. Then with the many groups of Indians and how they dealt with they on coming white people and the cruelty they used they then were looked at as the aggressor.

Limerick likes looong sentences, she doesn't break them up with periods but uses a lot of commas and semicolons just like a lot of the other writers.

It's interesting how the American volunteers took both sides of the Indians. Some fought with the army some fought to help with the unfairness towards the Indians. Like now a-days some with the war some against our war involvement.

The comparison of the Vietnam wars is great. I heard a tactic the Vietnamese used against the American armies in terms of guerrilla warfare; an American military party would be progressing in some tall grass and the Vietnamese would throw a rock on the other side of them causing the Americans to react to the sound firing their clips and while reloading the Vietnamese would pop up on the other side. This is also the reason why they changed American weapons, instead of fully automatic, they made switches to change them from single shot to three burst to fully auto.

She gives a great point why she can't express emotion when talking about the cruelty of the Indian/American history on the top of pg 430.

Black Hawk as rebuffed in his expressions of surrender like Japan in WWII with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I guess you can see Limericks standpoint at the end of the the essay, I liked it a lot, very interesting. Most movies you see of that time now they give the Indians the cruel depiction.

States

The essay describes how he can't go to places anymore because of the violence and restrictions placed upon him and people of his ethnic background. How the community has changed and worsened in the passing years. The worsening is kind of like the projects here. They use to be grand and nice places to reside but now they're run down and overcome with violence.

He was kicked out like others as if they lost their identity but only to a point, it's like the old saying "you can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl." I know that's crass and demeaning but it makes the same point.

It's kind of interesting how someone's ideas can supercide any others and how some of the most inhumane acts and take place from them. Being kicked out of your country/town and not being able to talk about who you are or where you can from is inhumane only due to the fact that it does take away someone's histroy, their tryumphs, their stroy. If I'm not mistaken America at one point or does have a law (not sure) that you can't speak any wrongs about the government while in war. Maybe that was a blue law or in the past but same similarity.

Panopticism

Some of the sentences that Foucault say seem like runons for instance page 223 first sentence of the bottom paragraph, "in which, in which, in which" enough with it, I feel like I need a break in there.

I kind of wondering what time period he's talking about in the beginning, guess like he says it's the eighteenth century and about the plague but he kind of jumps back and forth little hard to follow.

I'm questioning his intent/views of his essay, is he a man wanting power such as this, to discipline people or just describing what discipline there is. Is he jealous of other who have the had this power?

What is with the use of number in this essay, why make a list?

He talks about discipline when and in my mind I think discipline as physical. Take Saddam Hussein, he actually killed people, friends, and loved ones just to discipline and to prove a point, and to make everyone else scared of him.

In terms of the American disciplinary system of breaking the law take American History X for example, he did three years for two accounts of man slaughter, and only did three years because his brother didn't testify against him. Is this possible or is it just Hollywood?

Utopia Achieved

I'm guessing the reason why she is trying to convince us that America is a "Utopia" is because it's not like any other country. We don't have a past or the hardships that other countries have endured, we don't have a culture or any tyrants trying to take our world over.

She is saying that everyone came over here to America because it is a new start for everyone, they were all just trying to escape their country's history like Octavio Paz said it.

I don't understand how we can be considered to be an elegant Third World. I don't understand the metaphor.

There is a huge comparison between us and in most other countries, probably all of them. We don't have secrecy in our public affairs especially when those issues deal with people of power and/or celebrities. We publicize it within our cinema and music while other countries conceal their faults and failures.

After reading her essay I can see the point of America being a "Utopia" but what is her standpoint. She stands on both sides saying at times they, meaning America, while a sentence later she'll say we, meaning in America. Whether or not she is trying to prove a point she does point out some good facts. I think the greatest one is the fact that everyone came her to start a new life, America is still very young, there is no culture, the only culture that was here, Native Americans, we killed off or are now on reservations. I guess that is what you do when you find a place were you can start completely over.

Beauty (Re) discovers the male blody (Edit)

The idea behind Bordo's protryal of men in advertisments is unique because she is discussing the same ideas that Berger was getting at. Granted the topics they are both talking about are, I think, at polar opposites (you can't compare classic art and advertisements) but the main idea of how we see things is changing.

After seeing the first two pics/ads all I feel is inadequate. Guess I'm just feeling what women have been feeling forever now.

I really overall didn't like this essay only because of how Bordo wrote it, changing the context of how somethings are said or using some of Berger's writing but only to benefit her own. She tried to bring out the same ideas but she took it from one extreme to the other; when she told us to substitue black and white in the sentence. I also feel that she put way too much of herself in the essay, I really don't care how some ad made her feel inside, seems like at parts it was written by a hormonal, adolencent girl which should have been printed in Cosmo. But maybe the idea behind her essay was to get us to look a ad's differently, maybe she wanted us feel like times are changing and we just need to get use to the idea that men are now looked as sex symbols we just need to discern what can and should be shown to the public.

It was an interesting read especially after reading Berger because I can see some of the same points but overall I discredit Bordo for putting herself into the essay way too much, she definitly made it personal.

Our Secrets

I don't understand yet why she brakes off and talks about biology and military weapons. It doesn't feel like I'm getting any emotion in Griffins writing, very bland and neutral, just documenturing.

In the second full paragraph on pg 317 Griffin talks about the on-going debate of nature vs. nurture. i don't think nature has anything to do with the genetic make up of someone. Everyone makes a choice, what they do or don't do, but your experiences in life influuence you one way or another. I like how she also brings up the fact that we change who we are based on other people, like they saying, "everyone wears a mask."

She talks about her childhood, I'm wondernig if she is trying to compare the strict rules of her childhood to himmler's. Himmler was obviously conditioned in his childhood to judge people by their social class, not by who they are as people. She says reading his diary she has a hard time finding a balance in his opinion, I'm thinking that he would go back and forth because at times he was expressing himself and the other times he must have felt his father over his shoulder and he's write what his father wanted but it might have also been his because of the influences in his childhood had conditioned him to think that way.

I'm now starting to see the passion in her writing, now it's personable as well pg335. This is a very morbid essay, esspecially when she is talking about sadoism (or is masticism), maybe though I only think that way because to do those things is out of the norm. I like her psychological statement that she says, basically she is saying that if you're born into a family with an alcoholic then more than likely you'll be one along with being an abuser; verbally or physically.

pg 340 she talks about being Jewish blood and belonging to the jewish faith. i don't understand how someone can be of Jewish blood if Jewdasim is a religion and Jerusiliam is a city. I can't say I'm part English German and New Jersian, I don't understand.

The compassion he has for the executors is sickening and it's only because he saw them "in action," he had a different picture as to how people would die.

There are so many stories in this essay and so many psychological philosophies and questions behind alll of them its overwhelming. i was still trying to extract all the info and understand Himmler that I can't even concentrate on Leo and his sexuality and his secrets.

When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision, Sources

pg 539 "Much, Much more is yet to be done; and university curricula have of course changed very little as a result of all this." With a college community being so liberal comparatively, I don't understand why this writing is still suppressed.

I like how she says, "For one thing, it's a lot easier and less dangerous to talk about other women writers." I've been told this before and you can see it in daily life when you're having a conversation with people. For most people it's always easier to talk about someone else instead of yourself because you're not the one who people are focusing on or judging or whatever it may be.

"Because I was also determined to prove that as a woman poet I could also have what was then defined as a 'full' woman's life, I plunged in my early twenties into marriage and had three children before I was thirty." It's kind of funny how she attests woman's place in writing but she still adapts to the social norm of a woman's role, to me that's kind of hypocritical but maybe she also did what the home-maker life.

"I felt that I had either to consider myself a failed woman and a failed poet," funny because she got such praise from everyone who read her poems but didn't feel adequate, guess even back then you are your worst critic.

When she starts writing again in notebooks, just blurbs, phrases she said, "a part of myself I had felt I was losing," I think that a lot of people feel this way after some point in there lives. I guess for men of an older age you would call it a mid-life crisis.

On pg 549 I couldn't agree more when she says, "that the word 'love' is itself in need of re-vision." With the times that we live in now and 3 out of 5 marriages end in divorce, I don't think love really exists anymore, that's why you're suppose to get married, you love the person through thick and thin.

I really liked her writing, she was very passionate about what she had to say but she also had a worried tone at the end, "as women, we have our work cut out for us." I think that writing is just like art, you're not great or the work you did isn't great until years upon years later, one requirement is you have to be deceased.

The Ways of Seeing (Edit)

This essay after re-reading it definitly depicted and showed me how we see and interpret are and photography in our modern day life.

"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe." This is very ture because we everyone sees something differently than someone else does based on the filters they have. Filters meaning; married or not, have kids or don't, gone to war or you haven't. With these experiences in our lives they can change our perception of what we see.

"When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate." I don't really understand where this fits into his essay but it is a great quote, I don't think we really understand sex now-a-days anyways, brings everything back to square one.

"We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves." This kind of brings it back to the first quote that Berger says but when we look at art we're diving into the past, we're looking out how we've changed and how we're different than our ancestors were.

Berger talks about how suttle things can also change our perception of what we see, his example bassed on Van Gough's Crows in a Wheatfield and how just changing the title of it can change how you look at the painting. But major things can change the meaning aswell such as the invention of the still camera and the motion camera. He exclaims that the spectator use to visit the art but now with those inventions the art is visiting them, now everyone can experience the majestic aw of classical art, but if one were to physically see one there comes a deeper meaning of it. Overall at first it seems like Berger is complaining about how art has changed but in the very last paragraph he seems content with the idea of art losing it's meaning based on mass production/advertising, camers, video camers, because he'd rather everyone experience it than just a select few.

Woman in Bed

He explains how it's night time in the painting of Hendrickje but you could also see it as the morning. You can look at as if it's a painting of the morning, instead of him approaching he's waking for the day. Hendrickje opens the curtains of the bed to see him leave as she is just about to get up. That is the difference with art, I'm probably completely wrong but we all see things differently.

The Calling of St. Matthew

It's interesting that somethings you do show who you are, Caravaggio showed his fears in his paintings. I don't know how the window can be threatening, I think he just wanted on seers to look at what we really going on in the painting, the looks exchanged, the fear that was felt, the greed in the room.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The story is a really heart wrenching, but it also makes me proud because of the determination some of them had. The story of Ben and how he failed the first time of escaping by getting caught and nearly failing the second time because of being ill.

I was expecting everything based on her life, not her family or the way trading worked. Feels like it is just dragging on and on.

I don't understand why the masters, who are married, also took slaves to their bed. I guess because of the time being a male dominated society and the slave were property and they could do what they want with them. And the wives couldn't do anything because they were women and didn't have a "voice." Why did they tolerate that?

pg 394 She asks the question, "did you ever hate?" I have and I do hate, obviously not in the same context though. Its about a loved one as well.

"Dr. Flint continued his visits, to look after my health; and he did not fail to remind me that my child was an addition to his stock of slaves." Why did or people think this way? I just don't understand how so much heartache, pain, violence came form the color of skin.

I like Jacobs writing when she is literally speaking to the "reader." I like how she asks question to us to think within ourselves. I don't like how it just ended. I wanted to know what happened , how'd she get out? Where did she go?

Houdini's Box

I like the idea of the comparison of the little girl and Houdini. Houdini disappeared for a living, for entertaining and the little girl just wants to disappear for her life, her comfort.

Identification Free Write

I internalize identification through the way in which people talk; tone of voice, usage of words, what they're talking about. Also their appearance has something to do with it. For myself I would say my apperence, smelling something, or . . . . I don't really know.

Tradition of Silence Free Write

Edit; 9/14/07 12:23pm

Um, I would say that I like to be detailed, I like trying to paint a picture for the reader. I did notice that I tend to repeat myself over and over, the catch is I word each sentence differently so it's kind of hard to notice. I think I do it b/c I can't get what I want to say on paper due to my vocabulary, but in away it's good, I accidentally rewrite the sentence with different words and if I do catch it I collaborate them. I do really think though I'm a plain John writer.

I don't really have a "tradition of silence" like Anzaldua says she has. I really can't comment on anything that like that. I just I just have a regular writing style like everyone else does.

Experience Free Write

Edit: 9/14/07 11:48am

The guy who took us was working for the time we were in Bombay/Mumbi so my pastor and I were on our own. The 1st day we were there we (pastor and myself) took a walk around the hotel we were staying in just taking everything in that we could. A "holy man" (he is considered a holy man b/c of what he does but not a true one b/c he expects money for it) came up to me, did this ritual; tied a yarn around my wrist, dotted my forehead, and gave me these white pebbles to eat, no I didn't eat them but my pastor Tom did, kind of ironic. Then after asked for 20 AMERICAN DOLLARS, I just passed the buck on to my pastor saying he had all of my money.

The 2nd day we were there we took a city tour, which lasted 8.5 hours and it was only suppose to be 5hrs; it was worth it though. We say so many temples and monuments and tombstones I can't remember what they were all for. We got to go to the market place, nothing like ours, no beef b/c cows are sacred part of their religion they rome free. The chickens were live and pigs not pre-packaged like here. People were walking around balancing big trays on their head filled with fruits and veggies. Mostly farmers selling their produce and grains then all of a sudden we would see a little Americanized store about 7ft by 7ft with glass case displaying everything in it like at a movie theater. There was Butterfinger, Snickers, Crest toothpaste, Oldspice deodorant, all American items, just didn't seem right to be there. We also say were everyone would wash their cloths, in this 3ft by 3ft concrete basin, it wasn't just one they spread out about 7 across and 50 down with everyone being used, hand washing, just sitting there spending hours, to me, wasting time but they can't help it.

Driving was unreal, it was as if lanes, road signs, stop lights and signs, speed limits didn't exist. Our driver would weave into the other lane even with on coming traffic to pass a car, person, cyclist, or rickshaw. And everyone gives crap to teenagers when they 1st get their licence, I don't' think you need one there.

I look back now, thinking of myself and how I was, I would love to admit that I wasn't selfish but I was. I wish I had learned more and appreciated more from that trip at that time. I do now but it shouldn't have taken me 7 years.

I have traveled in my life but not to the extent that I would like to. I
was an army brat the 1st five years of my life and after that didn't travel much
do to my family not having much disposeable income. Then the summer after my
sophomore year in high school a youth leader in our Church that I was attending
took the pastor and myself to India and Nepal which was an experience I'm trying
not to forget. I look back now wishing that I hadn't been so immature and
selfish when I went, that I had taken more pictures and video while I was there.
There are sites, sounds, smells, and tastes that I can never forget like they
way the cremate their loved ones, nothing in the way that we do it. The naked
kids coming up to the window holding out their hand. Homeless adults taking food
away from some kids that just found it on the street, or walking on the Taj
Mahal. It is a place that I'd love to go back to, with the experiences, views
and ideas that I have now.

In Search of Our Mothers' Garden

I don't understand why some words are capitalized; Creators, pg 678, Art pg 678, who and what is she referring to?

It seems like Alice really respects her mother for what she had to go through and what she did day in and day out for her family. I think she also wishes that it wouldn't have been like that, she wanted her mom to do something for herself, "there was never a moment for her to sit down, undisturbed, to unravel her own thoughts; never a time free from interruption. . ."

I like the metaphor of the Garden to a woman's ability to be creative.

The Achievemnet of Desire

So far one of my favorite essay's. The way it was written reminded me a little of Henry Adams because Richard referred to himself in third person on a couple of occasions. The idea of the essay was great because I can relate, to the opposite side. I was never much of a reader until two months ago and now I love it. I get the same feeling that he got, ". . . anything to fill the hollow within me and make me feel educated." I do feel like that but not to his point of obsession. I wish that I had read more, and I feel like I'm starting to do that. It is quite funny though that his parents didn't really support his reading but I do like the fact the he says, "He is the great mimic; a collector of thoughts, not a thinker; the very last person in class who ever feels obliged to have an opinon of his own." This reminds me of the movie Good Will Hunting, there is a certain part in the movie that encompasses this quote from the essay:

[Sean (Robing Williams) speaking to Will (Matt Damon)]
"So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, 'once more unto the breach dear friends.' But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. You're an orphan right?
You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?"

I think this is how Richard felt in some of his years of reading so much and just being that "mimic" and not having a fresh idea or any time to think on his own. He does later realize it though.

Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight

Rather interesting how at first they were invisible to everyone but once they took part in the activities people took to them and recognized them. The essay seemed like he wanted to talk about the betting and how it worked more that the tradition and culture of why cockfighting took place. Betting is really the same everywhere and what ever the activity is, I don't think there was a need for so much of the betting.

"The slaughter in the cock ring is not a depiction of how things literally are among men, but, what is almost worse, of how, from a particular angle, they imaginatively are." It works as a comparison because life is chaotic, aggressive, and intense.

Stranger in the Village

This was a 180 degree turn from what I thought it might be. Usually you read essays like this (blacks professing their hatred towards whites) but James Baldwin took both sides of the story. he made the obvious points of the black point of view but he naturally made points of the white point of view. I usually get a little upset when I read this subject but James was very objective and didn't anger me at all. It was like he didn't take a side which is what most do when writing about this topic.

How to Tame a Wild Tounge

I was expecting something completely different when I was reading this essay. I was expecting something more along the lines of slang and cursing, not depicting which dialect to use depending on the social atmosphere that she was in. In the end it seemed like she was just trying to justify why she could or would speak so many dialects. It almost seemed like she was a little ashamed of it.

Entering into the Serpent

This is a very intriguing essay. I love the changes in writing from informative to story telling to poetry. I've never come across anything like this. I think it was a fun read and the metaphors behind sexuality and the serpent or nothing that I've ever heard before but I guess people interpret things differently. I never would use a metophor of a serpents mouth to a vagina with edged, pointed, or tooth-shaped projections.

Introduction

The introduction was overwhelming with information as well as completely boring. It just kept going on and on, I feel Ike it would have been shortened. They shouldn't have used so many examples of the essay's of analogies and metaphors is should been straight forward information. I do appreciate what they did say about no one being able to remember everything that they read. I'm the worst at reading something (that doesn't spark an interest) and realizing a paragraph later that I have no idea what I just read. So I do understand the reason behind the second readings and rereading something is always a helper. You come across things that you didn't in the first place, just like watching a movie for the second time.

Education of Henry Adams

I found the essay a hard read only due to the fact that I really didn't find it interesting. Trying to pay attention and reading everything was definitly a struggle. Some of the concepts and theories were amazing because I have thought that way myself.

". . . he felt no sensation but one of unqualified joy that this experience was ended. Never before or afterwords in his life did he close a period so long as four years without some sensation of loss-some sentiment of habit-but school was what in after life he commonly heard his friends denounce as an intolerable bore."

I can remember when I felt like this but I hadn't been attending college for four years. I think I felt like this because I was young and imature. Now a-days I have a different attitude only because I know where I will be if I don't go to school.

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