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.

Words&Meanings

I believe the breakdown of words and meanings lies in an inadequate system of language. Language can be easily distorted and even render itself meaningless when certain words are abused or overused. We dicussed in class how when describing an object we ultimatly are reduced to using the word "thing" to describe it. I believe this just shows the limit that our language creates and we can no longer describe something in words once we reach the point of just calling it a thing. But fortunatly language is not the only way in which we communicate what objects are and what they do. Humans can also do this through action. We use actions and expressions and art to describe things that cannot be verbalized. Many emotions and meanings are often depicted through music because language can not do them justice. In this way I do not believe that it is an inadequate understanding of reality from which the breakdown of words and meaning lies but simply that we as humans have not created a language that can fully embrace the whole of reality. As finite beings we of course will never fully understand reality because there are so many lessons, one person cannot possibly learn them all throughout there whole lifetime. But the understanding of reality that we do have and experience I think is expressed best when no words are used at all.

Hyperreality

One form of hyperreality that affects American culture is the idea of reality TV. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard once described a reality show as "a media illusion of live reality". Media tries to blend together different perceptions of reality in order to produce a show that it thinks the public will be responsive towards and entertained by. People see shows such as Laguna Beach, Survivor, Making the Band, etc and recieve their own interpretations from them that can effect there daily lives and their actual 'reality'. Baudrillard said that hyperreality “postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing”.People can get so wrapped up in these TV shows that call themselves 'reality' but yet are only media-produced counterfeits. Reality TV gives us a false idea of how people should look, what they should talk like, how they should love and what they should live for and often, faithful viewers of the shows wind up dissappointed when their own lives do not reflect the same satisfaction that TV show characters seem to be recieving. Hyperreality is seeping in way to deep to every aspect of TV, commercials and everyday life and blurring the distinction between pure television entertainment and the lives of actual humans beings.





http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/related_news/2007_Mar_07_baudrillard_dead

What Christians need to do about the crisis of Postmodernity.

As Christians we have to try to effect people and show Gods love even admists the crisis of a postmodern world. We're living in an era where nothing is final, nothing is true, people almost have no value and everything is relative and different for each person. According to Postmodernism, each person is shaped by their community. Which in a way is true but as Christians we have a responsibility to overcome and be an example of something different. We have to show that there are absolute truths and we know what they are and we can verify them. We have to show that each person as an individual is valuable, not only to the world and there place in it, but also to God as their father. We have to show that things do have consequences and life does have a purpose. To deal with the crisis of Postmodernism Christians must show a love that so many people believe does not exist. We must do our best to be educated about the postmodern lifestyle and beliefs and we must be educated about our own Biblical worldview. Most Posdmodernists will probably reject what we have to say because Christianity might be true for us but not true for them but we have to keep trying to reach out with the message of Christ. We have to keep reaching out for the sake of those people who will listen and will find the truth that they've been searching for all along. For the sake of those who know there has to be something more.

Happy Endings

The last chunk of F in"Happy Endings" is an example of metafiction because the author stops writting the story and directly addresses the reader. They discuss beginnings and endings and how not much can be said for a plot. The author makes a statement about the fiction they're writting within the fiction. The metafiction lets the author addresses the reader and it explains the point of why they wrote it and the reason for the way they wrote the story. It shortly sums up their view on how there is a need to stop focusing on the what of the plot, what happens next, but why and how it happens. How it's important to know the cause behind something, why it happened in the first place. This kind of ties into our ants project, instead of just passing people by and excepting what they are why not stop and try and find out how they got like that and why. Both the author of Happy Endings and our ants project forces us to find out whats behind everything and to engage in the real reason for things, not just to focus on whats given to us or whats on the surface.

Captain Jack Sparrow

Captain Jack Sparrow is postmodern in how he views life and the way it should be lived. He has a carefree attitude and often lets things slide. Anything that benefits him is good and worth pursuing but rarely does he, unless it is a spur of the moment good natured act, do anything that does not result in his favor instead he ignores or deems it as useless. Whatever is right for him is ok, just as whatever is right for those around him is ok too, unless of course it puts him at risk. He has no problem indulging in immoral pleasures and lives his life on the edge because he literally doesn't know if he's going to live to see the next day. His actions, escapes and successes are often based on chance and he barely ever plans out what his next step is. He is subject to his fate and doesn't really seem to care. He embraces the uncertainty he lives in and enjoys ever moment of it.

side note

oh and side note...my Grandma is really good at not being an ant. She talks to everyone all the time no matter where she is. I guess that shows the difference between generations. I want to be more like my Grandma. She cares.

continued

anyway back to what I was saying. I mentioned that she seemed rushed and like she didn't really want to talk, so after I was done returning my book I justs said thank you and told her to have a good evening. I guess it just made me realize that people don't take enough time to just open there eyes and break out of there comfort zone. I mean, she was working I know, but it didn't seem like she even really noticed that I was talking to her. And that made me think of how many times I've just brushed people off or not taken the time to talk to someone sitting right next to me. Human beings are so wrapped around whats going on in there own little world that we struggle to take the time to realize thats theres more going on. And the people that we pass in the street have stories and a past and are...real I guess. I wanna be more aware of that. Be more aware of people. Be more aware that they're real. Obviously I knew they were real before but really try to care. To not be such an Ant I guess.

ANTS

I did have my ants moment. It was at borders this evening right before the game started. I decided to go there and read for a little bit in my spare time, I also had a book to return. When I got up to the counter to return my book I decided to start a conversation with the lady behind the cash register instead of just returning my book, smiling and walking away as if I didn't interact with a living human being. I started asking her if she liked working here and about jobs, about applying there actually and things along that line. She seemed kinda of rushed even though there wasn't anyone in line behind me. I'm going to finish writting the important things in this blog tomorrow because I'm very tired right now. So more to come...

ECHOS?

At this point in the movie I really don't know what the echos mean. Everytime it echos its because either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern yelled at the other and I think there talking about stuff they don't want anyone to hear, so the echo might give away there conversation maybe? The echos might also just be a way to reassure the audience that they are in fact living and apart of the play and had everyday lives that, in a way, could be heard but not really seen or important enough to be cared about. Because R&G are such one dementional characters, during Hamlet the book, we almost forget about them and its almost like there not real.

R&G

I don't really fully understand the difference between disapproval and approval on this. I think like does Horatio agree or disagree with what Hamlets saying is what it means? I think Horatio is agreeing or approving because when he say "go to it" it seems like he's just brushing R&G aside. Like this is just another task that they are sent out to complete, it just happens to be their death. Their no longer useful to the story, so he's just dissmissing them from the play.