Tree

Well, theres this tree on a hill thats up the road from my house. It looks over this highway that was just built that leads into downtown Kent and when you sit up by the tree you get a really good view of the kent valley and at night it looks beyond gorgeous. I usually listen to music when I'm up there but for this assignment we had to have complete silence. It's of course not completly silent because of the cars that are driving on the highway, but its from these cars that my train of thought first started. I was wondering where they are all going. I think this a lot whenever I see random people or I'll just wonder it about someone driving by. Where are they going? What are they going through? Did something amazing just happen to them and they're going to tell a friend? Are they going to work? Are they struggling through a really tough time and just decided to drive to clear their head? I forgot to mention that this tree is close to one of the exits off the highway and when I sit there sometimes I get looks from people getting off the exit and I wonder if they think the same thing about me. If they ask themselves why the heck a random girl is just sitting there in silence. And then I wonder if they have every tried just sitting and thinking without any distractions ever...in their life. I don't think people realize how benefical it is, and, at least to me, how essential it is. It opens up the mind, it lets you wander and imagine, it lets you think over your stresses and your joys and it helps you get your priorities straight. Silence is one of the many things I think we can be thankful to God for because it allows us those things. It lets us remember who we are if we've forgotten because we simply are alone with ourselves, God and our reflections. Silence really can be very loud when its filled with your thoughts. So yeah, that was my day at the tree.

White Noise & Happy Endings

Babettes story can relate to Margret Atwoods "Happy Endings" in how Babette and Jack we're living a normal, happy life, at least Jack thought they were. But then there was "option B" that invovled Babette having this secret life that her husband knows nothing about. The life Jack and Babette were leading is not what it seemed to be and there were many more layers than those we knew about. In "White Noise" we see the main purpose of Atwoods "happy endings" too. Atwood determined that plots need to focus more on the why and how instead of a what and a what and in "White Noise" we see Babettes purpose behind what she did. We see more to Babette and why she did what she did. If we hadn't recieved her whys then her situation would have looked like she was just cheating on Jack, but there was far more to it when we looked deeper.

Girlscouts?

I'm not really sure what girlscouts selling cookies is molding them to be in society or how to be in the future. The only thing I can think of is maybe its teaching them business skills at an early age or maybe how to be manipulative to get things sold. I'm not really sure. I really don't think it has that great of an impact on them anyway because I have a friend who was a girlscout when she was younger and she was so happy when it was over. Selling cookies didn't seem to really affect how she grew up or her place in society at all. But maybe shes just an odd case...idk.

Heinrich!

Yesterday I did my deconstruction assignment with my mom. We were talking about time and how the clocks are set forward an hour at midnight and I started by saying, What is time really? And then I went off randomly and tried to use some of the arguments Heinrich used in the book, except I changed them a little to fit into context. Like I said what if what one person thinks is time, another person completly disagrees. And why is time different for everyone around the world, why doesn't the moon determine our day and the sun determine the night. What if time isn't what we are experiencing at all and our senses are wrong and there really is no sun or moon. She was really confused and asked me why I was asking questions like this. She didn't really no how to respond, it was actually kind of funny. In the end I told her it was an english assignment and she was just like what the heck.

Writers.....

I don't think the characters of a story or a TV show nessacarily represent what the writers believe. At times, yes, maybe they do. But I think writers aim towards pleasing the audience and the audience is going to be made up of a variety of people. There are aspects of many beliefs and values in TV shows. Writers pull from all types of sources to create something new and original. I believe they will occationally include their own beliefs but we have no way of determining which beliefs those are out of the vast amount represented in TV shows. To be a writer you have to depict situations and elements of life that maybe you do not agree with but you think should be included in the script your writing. Writers know not everyone gunna like it and not everyones gunna dislike it, there will always be controversy. They can only hope that somewhere it spoke to someone, made someone laugh, made someone cry, made someone think, etc.

Who decides what art is???

Well I think culturally, the public decides what art is. The general opinion decides what to put in museums, what to hang around cities, etc. But I don't think anyone person or group or people can call something art and only then does it begin to be art. I think art is personal to each person especially to the artist themself. An artist can create something that the general public might find completly hideous and resfuse to call it art, but despite that opinion that artist still had meaning behind their work and it means something very personal to them and that is what makes it art. Now I'm not saying that just anyone can throw paint on a canvas and call it art. I believe when someone is creating something they should have a connection with it. When a person chooses to make a living off of creating their art because they put their life and their emotion into a peice and they don't do it for any financial or societal status, it is then I think they are an artist. They don't do their work to profit or to recieve any gain but because there is so much more worth in the emotion and the meaning in the artwork. But I don't think there can really be a right answer to this question. Art will always be debatable and controversial, enlightening and offensive, also ever-changing. The most beautiful things in life are those which cause people to awaken and to question and to debate. Some will consider certain things art and other things no where near their definition of art. But thats what makes the concept of art so incredible, it can't be defined. And I don't think it really ever will be, that would take away the mystery that lies within it.

Forgetfullness

There is a great amount of disorder shown in the poem "Forgetfullness" by Billy Collins. The poem is focused around the effects of aging and shows a dehuminized subject. He writes, "one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemishpere of your brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones." This line not only shows the loss of memory but it also mocks the retirment of people as they age and move away to warm southern climates. The poem continues to describe more aspects of memory loss and the person of old age becomes more and more dehumanized as they are characterized only by there memory loss. Billy Collins poem also shows disorder in the pattern that its written. For example the first stanza has 7 lines and the second has 3 and the third has 2. His poem has no specfic order in which its written and is scattered to maybe portray his message more effectivly. The scattered writting represents the scattered memory of the old.