Futile

I hate feeling like I make no difference.  Feeling useless, stupid, and superflous.

I hate feeling like I can't do what I want to do.

I miss you.

I miss you all.  I miss feeling close to you, I miss thinking I could help you, I miss conversations and coaxing talks and hearts so full they could burst.

I miss you, and you have no idea.

Meh

I wish it was warmer outside.  This storm is pretty fantastic, and I'd love to play in it.  

Too cold.  Ugh....

Epiphany

Today's been one of those weird, whirlwindy days for me.  Maybe it's because it's a holiday of sorts and thus incapable of going smoothly.  I don't know.  

Silversteining (yeah...I made that a verb...) it up in the car earlier made me feel so mixed up and weird.  I found that band about five years ago, and there's a chance I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them.  And that kind of struck me earlier.  The idea that one band, one album, one song, could save a life.  And the idea that they have no clue that they had that sort of an impact on another human being.  

I've had people tell me that I saved them scars, cuts, and burns.  And it's horrible to admit, but I feel almost desensitized to this concept.  I've been working with the same people over and over again with TWLOHA.  It's always the same people.  Some of them genuinely need help, and I've come to love them as if I knew them face to face.  But some of them are on an ego trip, and so their gratitude and three page letters on Facebook about how me staying up til 3am talking to them kept them from cutting themselves feels a bit....falsified.  Like it doesn't compare to the people I feel like I'm really helping.

But I don't want to be desensitized.  I don't want to be the person on the phone listening to someone spill their life's story and their suicidal thoughts while I causally peruse Facebook, or nonchalantly go about some other mundane daily chore.  I want to feel.  I want to sympathize, empathize and care.  I want to be able to tell these people that I'm always here for them, and mean it.  

I hate that it can't be simple.

Why not?

Since this blog is already established because of my English 112 class, I figure I may as well keep it going.  I've always kinda liked blogging back in the prehistoric days of Xanga and all that.  

So, there you have it.  I doubt anyone reads this thing, honestly.  But I don't think I write for anyone by myself anyways, so what does it really matter?

Controversial Blog Post

            I think that the theme of travel in both “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name” and “You Shall Know Our Velocity” are fairly similar.  In Northern Lights, Clarissa is running from her loveless relationship to the hope and possibility that she’ll find her family and her lineage.  In YSKOV, Will is running from the death of his friend and the subsequent beating he endured to the possibility that he can give away the money and his baggage at the same time. 

            In both books, the main character is running from something.  The reason they have left their home-countries (if that even works), is to ultimately get away.  Neither character left with a specific destination in mind, and neither one cared where they ended up in the long run.  All they cared about was getting out and away from where they were. 

            Aside from that similarity, I feel that the main characters in and of themselves are fairly similar.  Although the two authors have distinctly different writing styles overall, the two main characters almost seem as if they could have come from the same family, or were meant for one another romantically or something.  Clarissa is a confused, headstrong, impulsive character and Will is quiet, jumble-minded (not a word, true, but I feel it gets the idea across.), and has a bit of impulsiveness in him too despite his tendency to mentally overanalyze everything that happens.  Clarissa doesn’t want anyone to know about her past, and keeps everything related to it from the family she settles down with at the end of the novel.  Will is completely ashamed of his face and how battered it is, and doesn’t want anyone to really look at him because he fears their judgment. 

            Overall, it is human nature to try and avoid something that causes discomfort, pain, and stress.  Clarissa flies to Lapland to avoid the betrayal of her fiancée and her father, while Will plans an around-the-world jaunt to avoid the haunting dreams and thoughts about his friends death.  

I. Am. Overwhelmed.

Not gonna lie, I'm def about 90 pages behind in this book right now.  

The reason for this being the gimongous Italian exam I have tomorrow that's threatening my veryexistence, the huuuuugeeeee 200something point Journalism project due at fricking 8am tomorrow (and...yeah, still gotta find one more person to interview for that, plus 2 nonhuman sources to scout out....), and my stupid math thing due Friday.

Pillar show Saturday, though.

Saturday promises to be glorious.  My boyfriend and I in Cincy for the day, a fantastic show in the evening, and, above all, the day free and clear of the Ox-Box.  

If only I can survive til then.....

Falling Behind

I've been slacking on this blog.  It's to the point where I don't even remember what the posts I'm missing are supposed to be written about.  

I made my mix CD yesterday, and I think that I'm going to find that this paper will be a bit more difficult than I want it to be.  Because I tend to pick music for mixes based on the way the music feels to me.  So my travel mix isnt so much made up of travel-themed songs as it is songs that I would want to listen to when speeding down a highway at 70mph.  So I have a feeling that saying "I just feel like this would be a good song to hear," isn't going to cut it for this paper.  But I'll figure something out.  I usually do.

Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Throughout the novel Let the Northern Lights Erase your Name by Vendela Vida, the theme of abandonment is solidly established.  Chronologically through the book, it begins when Clarissa abandons her fiancée and the life they had together in the United States.  However, throughout the timeframe of Clarissa’s life, the abandonment, as far as the reader knows, begins when Clarissa’s mother leaves her stranded in a shopping mall at the age of fourteen.  Abandonment, in general, is a very prevalent topic throughout the novel.  Not only has abandonment been the framework for Clarissa’s life, it has become her security blanket as well.

          Olivia Iverton abandoned her daughter in a shopping mall and disappeared into thin air when Clarissa was fourteen.  Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Clarissa had chosen to vanish from someone’s life.  She also abandoned her first husband, Eero Valkeapaä and their life together in Lapland when Clarissa was just a baby.  All of Olivia’s life, once Clarissa was conceived, was focused towards running away from the memory of her rape.  She couldn’t come to terms with what had happened, but couldn’t stand the idea of people pitying her for it either.  She left Eero because he was trying too hard to take care of her.  She felt as if she was being treated as a victim, so she left to get away from her shame.  Running away didn’t fix Olivia’s life.  However, she desired a new start free from people who knew about her past.  Unfortunately, this only meant that she would later abandon Clarissa, the product of the rape. 

            It’s difficult to tell whether or not Olivia’s abandonment of Clarissa led her to, in turn, abandon so many people.  Potentially, Clarissa was using her mother’s abandonment as an excuse to leave a situation in which she wasn’t happy.  However, it is also possible that Clarissa found it easy to leave her mentally challenged younger brother and Pankaj behind in America because her mother had abandoned her so long before.  Yet, it was made clear that Clarissa and Pankaj’s relationship had long since burned out.  “The stagnation in our separate and joined lives prompted Pankaj to propose…Somewhere around the twenty-fourth floor, Pankaj got down on both knees.  I thought he had fallen.” (32)  It is possible that Clarissa saw Pankaj as an expendable portion of her life, and thus easy to leave behind.  Either way, Clarissa leaves Pankaj with nothing more than an unheard whisper in his ear before she races off to Lapland. 

            Clarissa’s younger brother, afflicted with Down’s Syndrome from birth, is nothing but a minor character within this story.  However, Jeremy is far more needy than most of the characters.  It’s unknown as to whether or not he felt the loss of his mother when Olivia disappeared.  Clarissa took care of Jeremy from a young age, where Olivia did not.  Other than Clarissa’s rage-fueled telephone call to Jeremy in his home, he hears nothing from her once she is gone.  Jeremy is, unfortunately, abandoned twice within the pages of this book.  Clarissa seems completely unconcerned by the idea of leaving her mentally challenged younger brother to fend for himself in a home.  Perhaps she felt liberated from her responsibilities once she no longer had to take care of him.  From a younger age, Clarissa was saddled with the responsibility of caring for her brother.  Once she is gone, however, it is as if her brother does not exist.  Clarissa marries, has her child, and begins a new life without looking back at her brother even once.  It is as if the angry phone call was her final goodbye to him.  It will, however, remain a mystery as to what Jeremy thinks about his own abandonment throughout his life.

          Let the Northern Lights Erase your Name is littered with abandonment and loneliness, due to the decisions made by Olivia and Clarissa.  Both characters decide to leave those closest to them in favor of starting a new life full of anonymity and peace.  They are, for the most part, unconcerned for those that were left in their wake.  Both characters are only concerned with running from their dark pasts and finding a way to live in ignorance of their shame.  In the novel Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson, the main character, for whom Clarissa Iverton was named, desires only to live alone in peace.  Strangely enough, this is the life that Olivia achieves in her lonely hut up in Lapland.  It seems as if Olivia and Clarissa Iverton, so similar and regretful, want nothing more than to be ignorant and happy, no matter what the cost.

            

And now we're back on track...

            Alright, let’s get this ball rolling.  Overall, this book has been pretty intense.  I think we can pick and prod it apart as much as we want, but I feel like it’s one of those books where we still might not get the entire story.  It’s like the author has a masters in psychobabble and we’re all just throwing darts at a tiny target trying to guess the intricacies of Clarissa’s mentality.  I feel like we don’t see enough of Clarissa’s mind to know what’s really going through it.  Which is a strange thing to say, I guess.  But I get this weird, detached feeling.  As if Clarissa is shut off from even the readers of the book.  I’m pretty sure that’s not intentional by the author.  I think I’m going to chalk that one up to the author being slightly off-kilter and having a really unique writing style.  But I guess that’s why I feel like we’re never going to be able to really get Clarissa.

            Over and over, we keep saying that we don’t approve of Clarissa’s need to leave and run away at the drop of a hat.  Yet we understand it, because her mother left.  But, personally, I feel like that’s no real excuse in every matter.  It was easy for Clarissa to leave Pankaj like she did because they don’t love each other and her father was dead.  Period.  To quote the amazing book The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse.”  (By the way, if you have not read this book, you need to.  I strongly believe that everyone should read this story before they die.)  I’m a firm believer that life is what you make it.  It’s like the story of two men whose father was an alcoholic.  One man grew up to be 100% sober, having never touched alcohol in his life.  He said he never wanted to be like his father, so he abstained from drinking.  The other man grew up to be dirt poor, slobbering drunk, proclaiming that he learned to drink on his fathers knee.  Or something to that effect.  You can either let your home life define you, or you can define yourself in spite of your home life.  There comes a time when human beings hold the ability to think reasonably and make their own decisions.  When you’re 8, sure, you do whatever mommy and daddy are doing.  That’s only to be expected and, sometimes, oh so adorable.  But when you’re 28, it’s a pretty pitiful excuse to say that you’re doing something because of your parents from way back in the day.  But I’m not a psych student, so I’m not pretending to be an expert on the way people think.

            As far as this whole paper thing goes, I’m sad to say that I’m at a loss so far.  I’ve been trying to swim through my other homework and throw together an anthropology paper on the evils of binding women’s feet in China or some crap.  So I’ve only just this moment begun to wonder what the heck I’m going to do for this paper.  I think that analyzing books is something I’m pretty good at, thanks to my English teacher from high school.  So I think what I’ll probably end up doing is picking a motif from the book.  I think I’d like to get inside of Clarissa’s mothers head a little better.  She’s got a really intense story, yet she’s such a cold ice queen about everything.  So maybe I’ll pick apart her character for my paper.

             But, overall, I think I’m going to wait until after class on Tuesday to peg down my topic for sure.  Shameful, I know.  But it’s 1am right now, and I have more homework to do before Tuesday than I reasonably have time for.  

The post that got away....

This is my initial second blog.  I realize that it’s late, but I was kind of at a loss for what to write about this book at the time.  Honestly, I still feel a little blocked as far as mulling over this text and whatnot. 

            Okay, so…honesty time.  I finished the entire book before the reading was ever even assigned.  No, I’m not a dorky overachiever.  I was bored at the beginning of the semester and started reading it thinking it would be a boring book and I’d need to get a head start just to keep on task when the reading assignments were flying my way.  And I ended up finishing it.  So, I’m at that awkward point where I know most of the class hasn’t finished it, so I can’t write spoilers.  Yet, the book as a whole changes any way of analyzing just pieces.  It’s like having to just analyze Mona Lisa’s smile by itself, without taking the eyes and the rest of the painting into consideration.

            And I babble on.  So what I’m going to do now, to make up for this overdue entry, is attempt to piece together an opinion without telling the end of the story.  At the beginning of the book, I feel like I was right with the average reader.  I was scorning Clarissa for all her choices and hoping beyond hope that she would see the error of her ways and return to the arms of Pankaj.  Or something to that effect.  But, as the book goes on, I find that I really don’t want her to go back.  Being in a dead relationship like that for no real reason is pretty bad.  I feel like neither one of them are in love anymore, and they’re only together because, well, why not?  So, as things progress, I’m rooting for Clarissa to find her father, figure herself out, and start a new life somewhere in Lapland. 

            I think I have decided, however, that Clarissa’s mother is kind of a cold, icy character, and it’s pretty befitting of her to end up in Lapland working for an Ice Hotel.  She’s one of those women who tend to draw a crowd of followers who love her, yet fear her judgment.  In a “Mean Girls” sort of style, really.  I hate people like that.  The idea of wanting so bad to make someone love you, or even just look your way for a second is a very depressing concept.  Love from a mother is, in all of its idealism, supposed to be unconditional.  Poor Clarissa gets left in a shopping mall because she took too long.

            Overall, this book has some pretty intense character development routes.  I like it, and I can’t wait for the class to finish the thing so I don’t have to watch what I say in class anymore.

Texts, and all that entails.

Reading is one of those strange things that every single person seems to do differently. To be able to actually absorb what I’m reading, and understand what’s going on, I can’t have silence whatsoever. I have a habit of playing music while I read, for the sake of background noise. If it’s silent, I find that I easily find myself just staring off into space rather than focusing on my book.
I absolutely love to read, and I have loved it since I was young and I learned how. However, I’m one of those picky readers who can’t just pull out a book and read at the drop of a hat. I have to be in the right sort of environment, or, like I said earlier, I become easily distracted. As strange as this sounds, I read best in the car. With music on, and other people making small talk in the back seat, it’s absolutely perfect. I’m pretty horrible at reading in groups, overall. I like to discuss books with other people to see what their opinions were, and to talk about all the things that went on within the story. But I’ve always hated the whole concept of going around the class with everyone reading a paragraph. I was always the kid who would get bored by how slowly others were reading, skip ahead and read it on my own, then miss my turn when it came and need to be shouted at.
I feel like my approach to reading has changed quite a bit through high school, but has stayed fairly consistent into college. I had this fantastic English teacher for two different years in high school, and she taught me everything I feel I would ever need to learn about reading and understanding texts. She taught me how to search for symbolism and recognize how that could relate to the author or to humanity in general. She taught me how to recognize motifs and every other kind of writing convention under the sun. She was one of those teachers who could make you see a sentence in a book five different ways, through interpreting it differently. Coming into college after having that kind of teacher has been fairly easy. For me, as well, the lines between college and high school were blurred a little because I spent the majority of my senior year taking college courses at our branch of OSU. I took a basic English 101 class there, and it transferred here as English 111. This makes it a little difficult to say how things have changed between high school and Miami University, since this is my first English class on this particular campus. But from high school to my PSEO class, to here, things haven’t changed much, as far as I can tell.
As far as the broad topic of “texts”, and the different things we defined it as, I would have to say my favorite medium is music. Music has always held this sort of allure to me. I’ve always admired people who could write songs that held such amazing meaning, yet still flowed seamlessly with the melody. It’s difficult to put together coherent thoughts and have them sound beautiful. Let alone trying to set them to music. Besides that, music is just one of those things that really hit you where it matters. Reading is great, but a lot of times that can become mundane. Listening to music, however, never gets old.