Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Wednesday before Thanksgiving - November 26, 2008

-Allegory of the Cave and Metaphore of the Shadow.... revisited after His Dark Materials....what is dust?


Presentations

Taylor
-All The Skins of Life: Erotic connections between Animals, Humans, and other forms of Life.
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Monday, November 24, 2008

Raquel's Recital!

December 6th
Howard Hall
7:30 pm

She'll be playing the cello and it'll just be her! Let's get as many to go and support her as possible.

Our Class Today - Monday before Thanksgiving

-Can 12 year olds feel the emotions of an adult and does this change the impact of the end of the book?

Well, we've heard from some that the emotional response is not the same when you think that the book is about young kids who would end up breaking up anyway.

-"My friend doesn't like that Pullman wrote about Atheism and killing God," and what can we say about that. It is good that the Fake God killed at the end of the book is killed because he represents everything that the Christian God is not, i.e. stuborness, idology, greed, and other sin-type actions among other things.

-Original sin is required, not only to live a fulfilled life, but a life of knowledge, scholarly and complete.

-"His Dark Materials...ends like a lamentation of a loss... loss of childhood." Sadie. (I need to talk to her about my term paper in this class! Get who she was talking from here.)

-"Listen with a double ear, one that hears what he's saying, and one that hear's what could be said." -MS (correct me here if this is not correct)

-Sutter is full of interesting observations in his blog, we talked today about what Dust could be. Perhaps a connection with remembrance, experience, children. Lyra and Pan had decided that they never actually figured out if it is bad or not (by the end of the book).

- River Letha = bad ~ River Mnemosity = good

-Sam said, "How do you like dem apples?" (but she says that she never said this). And even though she never said this, it's true because it's the better response. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty. And that's all that matters.......? ;)

-Relations between Alice, Lyra, and Dorothy. The word "curious" is infinitely connected to "care". Curious-Curator-Museum-Muse-Mnemosity/Cure-Healed-Paying Precious Attention to Things

-Why no L.A.D (otherwise boy, comes from Lyra, Alice, and Dorothy) in the stories we focus on? "Because they don't read." -MS :) It is the women doing the curious things. Eve and the Forbidden Fruit, Alice, Lyra, Dorothy, and all the Old Fairy Tales. Histories written by men, and men like writing about women. :) (That's my thought)

-All wars have been fought by those who want us to know and those who want to keep us in tame, obedient nature. "Brothers Karimov" (AHHH, I can't spell!) ****Need to look up why the speech one brother gives to the other about being obedient.****

-MS does not believe that there is a certain age for certain materials. "Nonsense, you know what you should give them at the age of three? Shakespeare!" "Do not condescend to children" -Pullman. Give them good stuff from the very beginning. They may grow up a little bit odd, but odd is good in this world of Irony and Chaos (any child growing on Shakespeare should not be worried about falling into the realms of Chaotic speech, saying things like, "LIKE TOTALLY AWESOME DUDE!" Maybe this is our way to pull our society back from these depths!)

-Acrostics make very good poem beginnings. ;) (I need to check for the words used by Sutter that MS spoke. What were those words from?)

-pg. 864, The Page in which the dead are starting to come out of an opening made by the subtle knife. Mary gets out of her world into other worlds, and develops through out this journey. She was the one who could make the Amber Spyglass because of this transformation. Mary had never seen so much joy. ***Mary was not a child, but still became transformed.*** Mary said, "Tell them stories, they need the truth."

-Truth can only come through stories. "Whether it's the Bozeman Chronicle or the Bible, they are all stories. They all come through humans, they are put in human language, and they are all literature." -MS

-*Poems of T.S. Elliot, look at my past posts for my "Term Paper Topic" if you want the entire passage from the Four Quartets, Little Gidding, pt. 5 that he read in class. These lines speak many truths.

-Dame Francis Yeats, she is the one who introduced us to the Alethiometer. "To set out to do consiously what you can only do by intuition."

-You can travel by imagination. It is not making up or pretending, but just another form of seeing. This is much harder than pretend. pg. 912 in His Dark Materials. **Good for Apolopgy!**

-Shakespeare's Tempest - He soaks the books in the end. Magician loses his powers.

**Big thought - You must put away these tools that get you where you are, and look around at where you are and what you must do now. That magic doesn't last forever!**

YOU NEED TO DO IT WITHOUT THE FEATHER, BECAUSE THEN THE BURDEN IS PUT ON YOU TO BE WHERE YOU ARE, AND LIVE WHERE YOU ARE.

Blake says this, "Be here now."

The only paradise you'll ever know is going out that door, going into the November weather and walking across MSU. Love it, for it is what you have. The world is what you make it. This is why they lose their pieces in the end. This is why Pullman must end the book the way he does.

Friday, November 21, 2008

What dream am I?

There are some amazing quizes on Quizilla, and it would be interestin to see how people determined the outcome to these (because they are people made). I took one that was "What Dream Are You" and it gave me this:

a soft hand caresses your face. The one you love holds you to their breast. passion flows through your veins, warming you, lifting you high above this world. hate is unknown in this world of pure love. Adoration shows on your loved one's face as they look into your eyes. Calm, beauty surround you. Everything blends into soft hues vibrating with beautiful emotion...


I could definitely live with that feeling every night. ;)
I don't like horses very much... but I'd like to be a Centaur!

What Fantasy Creature Are You?

I'm a centaur!
If you like horses more than most people, it's probably because your inner fantasy creature is half horse. (The other half is human, if you're wondering.) According to ancient myths, centaurs are noble, brave, and intelligent, but at times, they can also be savage and wild. Some stories suggest that centaurs can predict the future, so you might have a sixth sense about when good or bad things are headed your way. You're part horse, part human, and part psychic! Judging by the picture on your badge, it's a pretty hot combination.

My Real Life Daemon....Tug!

My Daemon.... The Results from Quizilla

EAGLE or HAWK - your daemon may be some kind of bird of prey. Yours is a strong spirit, and a fierce sense of liberty. You cannot be confined. You may be shrewdly observant, and like to be aware of everything that goes on around you. You will fight fiercely for the things that are most important to you, and you are definitely a force to be reckoned with. Still, you are not vicious by nature and would prefer to be left in peace. You probably value your solitude very highly - not that you don't enjoy company, but sometimes you just need to be alone - otherwise you begin to feel caged in and confined. You might want to take a drive on your own, just to feel the road beneath you, or to sit alone on your balcony, watching the world go by.


I think it fit me nicely....not 100%, but nicely.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

My Interesting Enough Dream...Snippets/Snapshots/Remembrances


*I performed on stage singing, they loved it, then these girls rocked hard and the crowd went even crazier for them (they were girls from the MSU English Department).

*. It was in an open air stage. Hundreds of people from MSU, my hometown of Fairfield, MT, and my family were there, in the middle of Hawaii. But there were still lots of peope all around. The alcohol table at the back was out of plastic cups.

*Some old woman, from my hometown, that I didn't know, came up and said I must have been so hot when I graduated from High School. I looked back at her, amazed, and said, "Why not now, it was only four years ago?" She was old, wearing a red football jersey, and I was supposed to know her. She seemed drunk.

*My granparents were there. They walked from the Big Hawaiian stage to some master bedroom in the back of the stage. I followed them and their dog. (In real life, they don't have a dog, but this was real for me then, so maybe they do have a dog).

*At first, their dog looked a little fuzzy, and grey. But as we traveled to this hidden bedroom, he had somehow changed into a rare armadillo dog. My granparents and I talk about how professionals said they've evolved out of full ball ability, but as they were talking about it I watched the little mut curl into a ball. They missed it completely.

*I somehow returned to the stage, but it was no longer in Hawaii. It had become a giant stadium full of even more people than before. It was colossul. 

* I remember the music of Elvis Costello and Johnny cash floating around me.

*My mom, dad, and I had to leave before everyone else got out. There were so many people!

*Felt rushed! But my father and I were carrying balloons, too many! We were taken away by the balloons, past giant collums that held up the roof of the huge stadium and luckily my dad had the genius idea of popping the balloons with his cocktail sword. He popped some of mine and I floated down slowly, but lost sight of my father on the way.

*Mom was never seen again in the dream, but I did not acknowledge this, because it was dad and I in trouble.

*I got to the ground and saw that my dad had somehow beat me down to land before me. I saw that he had tears in his eyes (must have popped one too many balloons) but he would not admit being in pain or misery.

*We got to the exit of the stadium, but it was not normal exit. It looked as if we were leaving the walls of an ancient castle, about to pass over the moat into the world beyond, and two gaurds in garbs of old were gaurding our way. We had to take them out!

*My dad once again used the cocktail sword. He stuck the first one in the chest, then the other tried to save him, and we stuck him in the neck.

*My dad took one into the ancient bathroom to dispose of him and his weapon. he came out and said that one had been taken care of in the best way possible. 

*So, passing into the thick castle-like walls, I went into the bathroom with the gaurd whose disposal was my task, and saw that the bathroom was simply a small room with a hole in the ground, metal grate covering it. The hole was walled with stones, and there was some type of metal pan a little ways down.

*I could see the axe of my dad's man just below the metal pan.

*I saw a hatchet by the hole in the ground.

*I dropped the man down through the grate without even thinking about it, he was just gone. Then i took time to chop up his axe with my hatchet. and helped my father's man's axe be hidden better from sight.

*I took too long! Someone outside had opened the castle gates and was now trying to break down the door. I saw that the little hangin hook, that so many bathroom doors have, to lock it was dangling free. I quickly tried to latch it while the door was being fiercely pounded against, and I woke up.



This dream left me with terribly mixed feelings. I was neither sad nor happy, I was just there. I was surely thankful that I was laying in my bed when I woke up, but that world was interesting enough to go back to again someday. Maybe. It was not my favorite place, but it was interesting enough.


Saturday, November 8, 2008

Proofe that The Dreamer is The Artist

"The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."

-James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum


In the English Capstone class this semester, we have begun talking about our term paper ideas. Mine stems from "Women beware Women", where a powerful scene takes place involving a rape running parallel with a chess game. Stick with me here, I do have a point to all this.

In Thomas Middleton's "Women Beware Women", a scene is played out where Livia has constructed a plot to allow the Duke to "have" Bianca, and Livia distracts Bianca's Mother downstairs with a game of chess. This game and Livia's lines during it turn out to make a sort of "softening" of the actual horrors occuring upstairs between the Duke and Bianca (even though some could argue it is not rape). Livia says things like, " Here's a duke will strike a sure stroke for the game anon; Your pawn can not come back to relieve itself." Whilst Mother thinks that Livia is talking only of the game at hand, she is actually using the game as a metaphor to speak of her triumph in the upstairs events as well. Quite intelligent writing by Middleton if I do say so myself.

Now, "Where is he getting with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?" you might ask yourself. Well, I think that this "game" motif fits in perfectly when speaking of the conversation between the Tweedle's and Alice. If, by some chance, the Red King is the dreaming "creator" of Alice and all things around her in Wonderland, then he would only be the one "real" thing in Wonderland.

But if the Red King is the one "real" thing there, that would mean that all things that Alice knows in Wonderland are only "pawns" to his imagination. You see, just like when you are in a dream and know you're there, you can manipulate the things around you because they're not real. And like the pieces of a chess game, all of the characters in the dream have their purposes and roles that they carry out, some can only move ahead two spaces, some only move in L's, and some (the queen) can move as far in one direction as they want, but she's still restrained by the confines of the board itself (the dream) and the mover of the pieces (the dreamer).

I think Carroll is touching on a notion of us all being within the confines of an "ultimate" dreamer. He's attempting to understand and at least spark the notions of something "out there" that has control of us all in the big game of life. Alice's tears are only as real as reality really is. In someone else's reality her tears are nothing but a figment of their imagination. Perhaps tweedle dee and tweedle dum knew they were within the story being written, and knew that Alice's tears were only as real as someone reading about them would find them to be. If so, wouldn't that make some of these two bafflingly bouncy boys some of the most intelligent characters within the book? Does the Caterpiller know of these things as well? Can questions ever really lead to real answers?

Is someone reading YOUR book?

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

A good song from Bob Dylan. I've missed the two last periods because of illness, but by reading all our blogs I'm trying to keep up as best I can. If I remember right, he wrote this around the time of the 2001 presidential elections because of the fact that he thought that Bush and Gore were so closely alike, they became a sort of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. He didn't want to vote in that election for this reason. Connecting this with the current race, it surely would be interesting to see if he voted for Obama this time, the man of "change". Although I find the song to have little relevance to the actual work that we have been reading, this is quite wonderful when you look at it from a politcal view and where we are now in 2008 :

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum


Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They're throwing knives into the tree
Two big bags of dead man's bones
Got their noses to the grindstones

Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin' their fate to the Hands of God
They pass by so silently
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

Well, they're going to the country, they're gonna retire
They're taking a streetcar named Desire
Looking in the window at the pecan pie
Lot of things they'd like they would never buy

Neither one gonna turn and run
They're making a voyage to the sun
"His Master's voice is calling me,"
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

Tweedle-dee Dee and Tweedle-dee Dum
All that and more and then some
They walk among the stately trees
They know the secrets of the breeze

Tweedle-dee Dum said to Tweedle-dee Dee
"Your presence is obnoxious to me."
They're like babies sittin' on a woman's knee
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

Well, the rain beating down on my windowpane
I got love for you and it's all in vain
Brains in the pot, they're beginning to boil
They're dripping with garlic and olive oil

Tweedle-dee Dee - he's on his hands and his knees
Saying, "Throw me somethin', Mister, please."
"What's good for you is good for me,"
Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

Well, they're living in a happy harmony
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They're one day older and a dollar short
They've got a parade permit and a police escort

They're lying low and they're makin' hay
They seem determined to go all the way
They run a brick and tile company
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee

Well a childish dream is a deathless need
And a noble truth is a sacred creed
My pretty baby, she's lookin' around
She's wearin' a multi-thousand dollar gown

Tweedle-dee Dee is a lowdown, sorry old man
Tweedle-dee Dum, he'll stab you where you stand
"I've had too much of your company,"
Says, Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Curiouser & Curiouser - Connections On Top of Connections

View my other post at operoper.blogspot.com to get a better explanation of what's going on here. To say the least, this is a defense written by Percy Shelley (quite beautiful if you've never read it before) that we went over in English 300 that just happened to have a big connection to this class. Can you find it? (Hint: Can you hear it?)

Alice Videos

The quality of these is not the best, but here you'll get a taste of what the Dreamchild experience is like, plus get to see the classic "White Rabbit" sung at the greatest rock fest of all time! Let me know what you think.

Dreamchild - (1985) Alice at Tea

Dreamchild - (1985) Alice and The Caterpillar

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit Live at Woodstock!