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Subpoint 2: Timshel

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I don’t believe healing comes from isolated moments. I detest the romanticized portrayals of hollywood; the star crossed lovers reconciling in the rain, the heroes who stand triumphant over their slayed demons- they endings that feel fabricated, plasticated. I’ll admit, at one point they tugged at my heart strings with their powerful allure, but as I’ve grown to face reality I’ve seen the futility in hoping for snap-of-the-fingers change. Healing is a horribly long, drawn out process. In bleak contrast to the abruptness of its start, my reconciliation with the events of my junior year lay on a slope of progress almost intangible. In literature, years of struggle can become condensed into hours of your own perception; it’s easy to gloss over time as an influence in the story- some writers choose to give it the back hand entirely- as you read. One’s own perception drives the feel of it; while the character may be supposed to be enduring months or years of hardship, it hardly feels a
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I Don't Have a Walk-Up Song

I don’t. I’ve tried, but I’ve never been able to make it work. In situations where other people might find the excess stimulation useful- to get the blood flowing properly to the brain- I find it can send me into a state of overstimulation and unrestrained, chaotic thinking. In short- it's a distraction. Listening to music has always been a way for me to facilitate the ruminating thoughts I have. Music, a conduit through which I can handle the bombardment of my minds ideas. When I am sitting down to take, placing my fingers on the keys to perform, or stepping onto the block to swim, I need my mind quiet more than anything; I know that the rumination will appear at some point or another, however the less activity I go into a task with, the less activity I endure through it. If I were to listen to any music- much less music purposefully designed to stimulate me- I’d be flooded with distractions. Every lyric, phrase, or dissonant chord is another distracting picture or fantasy taking
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Cumulative Essay: On Forced Maturity

To me, music is a world of fascination because of the infinitely complex stories a single piece can tell. As I sit down to write this blog, I listen to the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2. This piece has been with me for years. It has seen me through everything from the worst of grief to the greatest of joys. Today, I choose to listen to it because its opening- the slow, ominous progression of chords building to a cataclysm of orchestral intensity- models perfectly how I view and experience what I am writing about today. In my experience, life has struck me blindsided. Junior year hit with blow square to my throat- first a breakup, then the suicides, then a seemingly endless minefield of social ostracism and isolation. I was caught at my most vulnerable point; all my preceding life I had somehow remained unmarred by the depression, anxiety, self-harm, and family issues that plagued my peers. Now I was swallowed whole, with no experience to help me. That's whe
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Cumulative Essay: Brainstorming

I will also be referring to myself as the “main character” of this essay, although I will brainstorm that in more detail later. I really like Mrs. Leclaires idea of the contrast between forced v. chosen ____. I think it could work really well for my prompt and the idea of maturity and innocence. Just without looking I know that a lot of the texts I reference have a cycle of sorts; a character endures an event (forced, out of their control) and are thrown into turmoil of some sort, and then gradually through the rest of the text they must navigate the preceding path (chosen, in their control) to find some sort of closure or growth out of it. East of Eden is centered around this concept- and even has a motif dedicated to it, timshel. Among the many “forced” events are Charles attempted murder of Adam, Cyrus’ death, Cathy (from her first encounters with the Trasks to her assault on Adam and the whole whorehouse ordeal), Samuel Hamilton’s death, the birth of the twins, and more. These were
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Cumulative Essay- Book List and Prompt

Many characters begin their literary journeys sheltered/distanced from the bleak, cruel, and often brutal realities of the world around them; however many encounter an event- a life experience of some sort- that served as their entrance into maturity. Write about one such time where the veil was stripped away, and analyze how it impacted the development of the character and the meaning of the work as a whole. You may want to use the following artistic references: East of Eden The Grapes of Wrath The Tortilla Curtain All the Light We Cannot See Avatar: The Last Airbender The Pillars of the Earth The Book Thief Meditations- Marcus Aurelius Dark Poet- Antonin Artaud Green Book Whiplash Saving Private Ryan Piano Concerto No.2- Rachmaninoff Ante El Escorial- Lecuona Transcendental Etudes- No. 9, 11, 12- Liszt Ballade No.2 in G minor- Chopin Reverie- Debussy
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Beloved: On the Shadows that Haunt Us

This book has been hard. Morrison manages to fill every word with so much intention and detail that one can easily get swept away and overwhelmed by trying to uncover every hidden message. The content is brutal. Slavery. Murder. Infanticide. Rape. Try to digest it all at once and it will become lodged in your throat, cutting off your airway, disorientating you at best, shutting you down at worst. Beloved has an intended audience, I believe, but not those of African American descent- the legacies of the tortured slaves that Morrison focuses on. I believe Morrison wrote this book to spear the veil of our imaginations and preconceptions of slavery; our education shows us the objective facts of slavery, heres how many, heres how they lived, heres what rights they were stripped of. But a textbook cannot teach the story, and that is where Beloved rises to take its place. For most people, this is the meaning they will take from the novel, and I commend them for it. However, I believe there is
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The Master Puppeteer

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been particularly fond of Shakespeare. For the most part, I find my mind overworking to rearrange the convoluted language into something somewhat comprehensible, and end up mindlessly drifting away from the subject matter hidden within. I have no doubt that so much of our understanding of the play comes the actual performance; the emotions, gestures, tone and phrasing the actors put into their lines all serve to provide clues to what the words are actually saying. The grief stricken wails and the maniacal laughter suddenly integrate with the characters heartfelt or diabolical monologues to create the performance. When we began reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I was fretting about how in the world I would be able to dissect the text thoroughly enough to come to the “better understanding” needed for this blog. I wasn’t looking to it, but having carefully gone through each act as a class and seeing some of them in film, I’ve found a remarkable contrast in the
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