December 1th, 2014
Nathaniel Rich
“Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret to Immortality?”
Throughout this article, Nathaniel Rich introduces his reader to the wonders of rejuvenation of the immortal jellyfish, as well as in depth knowledge into the scientist’s (Shin Kubota) research of the species in regard to the future of human beings.
If it became possible to rejuvenate (as this jellyfish), what happens to the self that has been created through memory and experience, would we be starting again with or without it?
Who would want to live forever? Would it give ease to people that have this possibility? Would it not drive a painful line in society over who can afford to live forever, or who choses to do so or doesn’t?
“As Peterson told me: “If I studied cancer, the last thing I would study is cancer, if you take my point. I would not be studying thyroid tumors in mice. I’d be working on hydra.””
“Kubota sees it differently. “The immortal medusa is the most miraculous species in the entire animal kingdom,” he said. “I believe it will be easy to solve the mystery of immortality and apply ultimate life to human beings.””
“Kubota’s songs have been featured on national television, are available on karaoke machines across Japan and have made him a minor Japanese celebrity — the Japanese equivalent of Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
It was very surprising to find that people are not only considering the possibility of immortality but actually working on achieving it. Although the concept sounds interesting, it seems like something that belongs more in myth than in real life. The sorcerer’s stone and the fountain of youth are attractive as stories, as concepts and ideas for reflection, but not as a reality of medicine and human kind. More than anything it makes we wonder what it is that has driven humanity to the egocentric assumption that there is and should not be anything above us, especially in the context that the World has existed for so many years without us and will do so again after we are done. It is not ethical or natural to deny the life that we already have in that way. It seems almost like a profound rejection of life we have to want to extend it. Would it not simply be better to embrace the time that we already have? Having a longer life does not necessarily make it better…
November 17th, 2014
Nick Bilton
“Computer-Brain Interferences Making Big Leaps”
This article for the New York Times explains the recent scientific discoveries that could lead to the emotional manipulation of memories in order to re-trace paths of the brain, creating something similar to the ideas of “The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind”.
To what ethical extent can this be permitted?
Would the availability of this technology not only lead to a much greater and devastating socio-economic division?
“The researchers weren’t able to create entirely new thoughts, but they applied good or bad feelings to memories that already existed.”
“It looks like mending that broken heart, through manipulation of our memories, might be here closer than we think.”
The thought above all else while reading this article was: “Scary. Are we becoming more and more like machines? Is anything natural anymore?” It is paralyzing to think that we have become so dependent on technology that people are no longer able to even deal with their own emotions. Although I sympathize with the victims of post-traumatic stress, wouldn’t it be better to put our energy and effort into preventing/solving what caused the PTSD in the first place? It seems illogical to want to manipulate the brain to “erase” or “ease” the pain of memory, it is simply discrediting everything that is perceived as right or wrong. If this became possible and available it would also make war, or torture, or rape okay because then no one has to carry the weight of the consequences, live through the pain and evil of the act itself, it’s simply gone as if it had never exited in the first place. Even in a less severe scale, no one would have to deal with their emotions, with their mistakes, how would we learn? Who would we be without our memories? Wouldn’t this make us eternally immature? It is simply another way of escapism, of denying our existence.
November 17th, 2014
Nicholas Carr
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
Throughout, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions the very essence and repercussions of Internet intelligence on human thought processes.
Why did Carr decide to write an article, and this long, when one of his main points is that people do not longer read in depth or articles of length?
Is it possible that today’s obsession with pop culture as a form of escapism is a side effect to to the change in our process of thought through the Internet that Carr talks about?
“They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.”
“Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
“How people find information and extract meaning from it… What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.”
“It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized.”
“That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
The debate that Carr makes throughout this article is profoundly valid and interesting. Although at first I was highly skeptical of his theory, and even a bit confused as to why someone would “suddenly” not be able to read War and Peace, there are several aspects that are terrifyingly true. As I got deeper into the reading I thought it was rather far fetched to state that people cannot longer read long and in-depth texts, and if Carr believes it is, then why write a four-page Internet article on it? It was quite conflicting to sit in front of the screen reading something that said that people do not read the same way as they used to (not in quantity but in quality). As an avid reader who has indeed had the perseverance to finish several volumes of Russian Literature, I was very offended by his insinuation. To some degree it made me want to read more thoroughly to prove him wrong. It was not only the last part of the article where Carr opens up to some flexibility by stating “Yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism”, that I began to sympathize a bit some with his theory. However, more than that it was Socrates words on the written language that got me the most, “They would be filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom”. He was right, as Carr might be right in this case as well. However, they were also wrong. The Internet is an outstanding tool, and as helpful as it can be harmful, it is just a matter of consciousness, of awareness, and of maintaining a level of skepticism instead of blindly following into anything that comes our way.
November 11th, 2014
Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red
In the beautifully poetically composed verse of, Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson de-contextualizes the ancient Greek myth of Geryon by adapting him to the modern world, “so that he is suddenly not just a monster but a moody, artsy, gay teenage boy navigating the difficulties of sex and love and identity.”
Why did Carson choose this particular setting/context to adapt the myth?
What is the purpose of her stylistic choices?
“In those days the police were weak Family was strong Hand in hand the first day Geryon’s mother took him to School She neatened his little red wings and pushed him In through the door”
“The doctors put her together again with a big silver pin. Then she and her pin had to lie still in Geryon’s room for many months. So began Geryon’s nightlife.”
After reading a few lines of Carson’s perfectly composed verse and getting the hold of it, I very much enjoyed this adaptation. The radical shift in both perspective and context bring an entirely new life to the myth, and make it incredibly relevant to the modern world and its pressing social issues. She brilliantly translates the perception that people had about monsters during the time of ancient Greece into the one-sighted vision may people have today about both homosexuals and emotionally confused teenagers. Carson’s piece is proof that every story has multiple perspectives, and is all about interpretation. I was very inspired by the parallels she drew between concepts relevant (in different forms) in both past and present. I will pursue something similar with The Little Mermaid and the much criticized idea that women must change in order to be liked. However I want to explore contemporary body issues such as eating disorders and plastic surgery, and how these distort even further our self-acceptance and esteem.
November 11th, 2014
Joyce Carol Oates
“Blue-bearded Lover”
In her adaptation of “Blue-bearded Lover”, Joyce Carol Oates re-examines submission and explores female power and wit through creating the main character as a heroin that outsmarts the murderous Bluebeard.
Was the original tale ever challenged by the women of the time? Or, was it easily accepted?
How has Oates’ adaptation created controversy?
“And he declared with great passion that I was now truly his wife; and that he loved me above all women.”
“A man’s passion is his triumph, I have learned. And to be the receptacle of a man’s passion is a woman’s triumph.”
This adaptation of the original fairy tale strongly questions the changing of time in parallel to the role of women in society. The unexpected shift in control is rather refreshing and empowering, however, the female heroin remains trapped in a life and relationship of lovelesness and manipulation. When Bluebeard declares “with great passion” that she “was now truly his wife” it is both a triumph and a condemnation. A triumph because she won at his own game and will live, but at the cost of a life of unhappiness and her liberty. It is a rather controversial twist to the story in the sense that it appears to a celebration of female intelligence and challenges the idea that women are both intellectually inferior and submissive. However, it also uncovers the raw and unpleasant reality that, although women are smart and empowered, they are still in today’s world, imprisoned in abusive relationships by the fear of men such as Bluebeard (who consider themselves superior, and therefore, feel their monstrous actions are justified). Oates is highly critical of this, and the idea that, “A man’s passion is his triumph…and to be the receptacle of a man’s passion is a woman’s triumph.” She both fights and exposes the terrible truth of women as “the second sex” (Simone De Beauvoir), and the still existent repression with which they struggle in the face of “male dominance”.
November 4th, 2014
Jonah Lehrer
“Proust Was a Neuroscientist”
Throughout, “Proust Was a Neuroscientist”, Johan Lehrer proves in detail how Proust exemplified and exposed the fiction and un-predictability of memory before, and better, than science ever has.
How would a scientist take both Proust’s literature and Lehrer’s article?
Has Proust had any other recognition besides the merit and importance of his novels?
“It was there, in his own memory, that he would live forever. His past would become a masterpiece.”
“It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself.”
“The memory is altered in the absence of the original stimulus, becoming less about what you remember and more about you. So the purely objective memory, the one “true” to the original taste of the madeleine, is the one memory you will never know. The moment you remember the cookie’s taste is the same moment you forget what it really tasted like.”
“If you prevent the memory from changing, it ceases to exist.”
After reading Lehrer’s thorough and brilliantly constructed arguments about Proust as a visionary on the theories of memory and its functions, all I want to do is read one of his novels as soon as possible. I was captivated by the profoundness of his introspection, and how he was able to portray so well the interconnectedness of the mind and the world. The simple thought, and confirmation, that art can be so much more powerful than science in communicating and creating understanding, is the very reason I was attracted to art in the first place. As he said, and I firmly believe, “we can only understand ourselves through intuition, a process that requires lots of introspection, lazy days contemplating our inner connections.” I find few, if any, things to be as true as the power of introspection, because they only way in which we can really know the world, is through ourselves. Moreover. I was further blown away by the appeal to reality with which he wrote and lived. “Proust’s fiction, which is mostly non-fiction”, is not adorned with the series of stories that we make up for ourselves for the purpose of aesthetics and comfort. Unlike the fictionalized memories with which most novels are written, Proust adds reality to fiction, and completely breaks down the myths that we falsely live under. By realizing that “every memory is full of errors”, he liberates the reader from the confusion and frustration that there must be only a single story. It allows us to begin the process of acceptance that the past can only be seen from the present, and the present changes, therefore, our memories change as well.
October 28, 2014
Leila Ahmed
“On Becoming An Arab”
Throughout the recounting of her personal experiences and thoughts, along with a deep analysis of historical background, Leila Ahmed creates a vivid and exiting piece representative of the weight of cultural identity upon the self.
“What Miss Nabih was doing to me in class was what the government was doing to us through the media.”
“The Europeans were defining us and we, falling in with their ideas, agreed to define themselves ourselves as Arabs in the dictionary sense…Arabs being by definition being people of lesser humanity…”
“…it entered corrosively, changing it from within, as if the European meaning were a kind of virus eating up inside the word “Arab”, replacing it with itself- leaving it unchanged on the outside.”
When was this written?
Has Ahmed then favored the individual’s identity? Or how has she chosen to relate to Egypt and the Arab world?
I do not think I have enough words to describe how much I enjoyed reading this. Ahmed touched upon so many topics that have occupied an important part of my mind for some time now. Not only have I reflected in similar ways about what is means to be Mexican, but I have also been thoroughly intrigued by the same example she uses of the negative connotations that have been created surrounding the word African. It was during my own cultural identity crisis that I was drawn into this topic because of the sole reason that is was easier for me to question and observe its history and situation from a more objective point of view. To think about my own relationship to Mexico was at first, simply too complicated, had too many complex emotional implications for me to be able to think about it in a clear way. My explorations and discoveries of Africa opened up an entire new world for me, a world of interconnectedness that went beyond anything I had ever imagined. It made me question history, and it made me terrified of the power of the media, and of people’s motifs and intention. Ahmed exemplifies how it was due to conflict that “Arabness” was created, how it had the purpose to unite people but only for political manipulation. When I think about it, it is mind-blowing that all these places are so far away yet they share such a closely related struggle to find an identity, how we are all so desperately trying to define whom we are by where we grew up. Maybe, just maybe, it is possible that even though we have every-day things in common with the people in the country which we grew up in, the most important things, we share with people that might be around the globe, people who think outside of the immediate, outside of the media. I personally felt far more identified with Ahmed’s words than to most Mexicans I have ever met. In a strange way this is just like Octavio Paz’s, The Labyrinth of Solitude, which makes me think that we are all just trying to find out who we are, the only difference is that so many people do not look beyond what is directly given or shown to them, they are not willing or interested in realizing that everything comes from something, everything has consequences, has a purpose.
October 28, 2014
Patrick Symmes
“Thirty Days a Cuban”
Through his article, “Thirty Days a Cuban”, Patrick Symmes recounts his experience of living with the Cuban ration system for a month as an exploration of the country’s way of life.
“Everything is fine now,” I told him, delirious with low blood sugar. “Even the prostitutes are giving me money.”
“They all have to rob the system to survive. That’s the tolerated corruption of survival.”
Did he ever write a follow-through article about how this experience impacted him once integrated back in his normal life?Did he even enjoy or like Cuba? What are his thoughts on the country beyond his own hunger?
“Thirty Days a Cuban” seemed to me as a pitiful excuse for the “exploration of a country and its people”. It was in all truth, much more like an ode to American consumerism and self-involvement. Although I highly agree that there are grave flaws in the Cuban ration and political systems, they way in which Symmes portrays them is one-sighted and superficial. One would think that by living such an experience he would have done a deeper and more thorough reflection of the people and country he was in instead of focusing on himself. I was further disappointed by the fact that he did not actually follow through completely in his experiment. I am very sure that the average Cuban does not have American friends visiting that buy them meal, or wives who send them tea biscuits. Although there were several moment of hope in the article which I thought were going to be used as a based for reflection, this never happened. For example, when Oswaldo tries to give him 10 pesos and tells him, “Every Cuban would do this for you”, he does not even hesitate to talk about the generosity of these people, it all ends up going back to him and what HE is consuming. What Symmes achieved to do in this article was definitely not to change nationality, because he in no level truly understood, or expressed understanding what it is like to be a Cuban. What Symmes did was starve himself and complain about it.
October 21, 2014
Azar Nafisi
Reading Lolita in Tehran
In this excerpt from her novel, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi introduces her reader to a world of imagined identities, of life, and escape of tyranny and oppression through the mind and literature.
What would have been the punishment for the discovery of the liberal ideas that were being discussed in this class?
How have the times in Iran changed since this was written? I know there is still serious repression, but has it loosened or gotten worse?
“This, then, is the story of Lolita in Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran, and how Tehran helped redefine Nabakov’s novel, turning it into this Lolita, our Lolita”.
“This was one reason why art and literature became so essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity”.
“…We had become the figment of someone else’s dreams.”
“Their absences persist, like an acute pain that seems to have no physical source…this is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences.”
As a Nabakov fan and Lolita lover, I had trouble at first attempting to decipher how it has anything at all to do with Tehran and the lives of the women described. As I got deeper and deeper into Nafisi’s brilliantly formed words and imagery, I discovered that it has noting to do with pedophilia, but with challenging our pre-established notions of what is right or wrong. Reading Lolita is a journey into Humbert’s mind, making it in the end, more of a heartbreaking story of love and betrayal than a creeper’s tale. It is, in a way, rather similar to what Nafisi describes as, “ we had become a figment of someone else’s dreams.” It is a portrayal of the power of the mind, of ideals, and of how perspective forms identity. Lolita, the light of Humbert’s life, was a mere idealization. The innocent, and lovely Lolita of his imagination was in fact nothing like the real her; she was, in a way, formed purely by his adoring thoughts, existed only in his mind. The women in Tehran lived in the same way as Lolita, as the false reflection of someone else’s ideal of what they should be. They had to behave a certain way that was “appropriate”, pretend they did not do or like certain things, cover themselves in black scarves, and more terrifyingly, hide their true identity in order to live up to someone else’s wish.
October 21, 2014
Ai Wei Wei
“Ai Wei Wei’s Blog”
In his blog, Ai Wei Wei opens up a personal, yet massively viewed space for reflection about various themes of history, memory and humanity. Although it has a base focus on China and oppression, he is able to further his explorations into a worldview of questions and essential concerns that must, or at least should be confronted by everyone.
What would Ai Wei Wei say is the most threatening thing to this potential? What could it be that allows it, or not, to become more than just potential?
What would be the healthiest way to go about a national reflection? In what ways could it happen?
“The extermination of a nation’s collective memory and its ability for self-reflection is like a living organism’s rejection of its own immune system. The main difference is that a nation won’t die, it will only lose its sense of reason.”
“Here, both the crimes and their execution come via the creators of history; those who suffer are also those who inflict the pain”.
“What happened? What caused the hurt? Where is the source of the shock? These are eternally avoided questions, eternally sealed mouths, eyes that can never close wounds that refuse to heal, and ghosts that will never disperse.”
“Humanity has been through thousands of years of hardship and glory, and after a spiritual and material culture, after eliminating the obstacles from one realm of necessity to another, we have finally a state of nothingness, are surrounded by emptiness, and exist only in our potential.”
In what he calls “writings and digital rants”, Ai Wei Wei explores and exposes various urgent themes about the “state of nothingness” of humanity. He reflects upon how history or the lack of collective memory of it, have led to emptiness, to a loss of reason in every level, beginning with the individual. Yet, in his reflection there is hope. Not hope in the sense of faith in destiny or cosmic good, but hope in the potential that lies within nothingness.
These “rants”, are an individual’s deeper questioning and reflection, a confrontation of facts and evaluation that should be happing in a national/collective level but it not. As Ai Wei Wei says, “it is like a living organism’s rejection of its own immune system. The main difference is that a nation won’t die, it will only lose its sense of reason.”
The profoundness of his writing excellently parallels both his political activism and art, making for the perfect relation between life and art, as well as the connection between artist and his surroundings/worldview.
October 11, 2014
Oliver Sacks
“The Mind’s Eye”
Throughout this mind-blowing article, “The Mind’s Eye”, Oliver Sacks speaks about his interest, and development in theories of how people who lose their sight cope with the concept of visualization.
Is it possible that sight blinds us from reality more than it allows us to see it?
Might it be that sight and awareness could have nothing to do with each other?
“Too often people with sight don’t see anything.”
“Sighted people spent too much time observing these empty things.”
“The very concepts of “sight” or “blindness” soon cease to have meaning, and there is no sense of losing the world of vision, only of living fully in a world constructed by the other senses.”
“Both men have “used” blindness (if one can employ such a term for processes which are deeply mysterious, and far below, or above, the level of consciousness and voluntary control) to release their own creative capacities and emotional selves, and both have achieved a rich and full realization of their own individual worlds.”
I was blown away by Sack’s article. It completely changed my perception of what sight is and what it implies. This happened in ways that I cannot fully grasp and comprehend right now, but ever since I read it I have been coming back to it in my mind, trying to become more aware of my surroundings. It reminded me of what I wrote in my memoir, when I said that we have a series of discourses (or stories we tell ourselves) in order to deal with complex things in simple ways. I used my father as an example, of how when he had to shave his hair off due to that he had a brain tumor I did not look at him with eyes of pity, or as if he was vulnerable. I questioned if it is that we are taught to see bald people as victims, because as far as I remember, it was not in my nature to do so at the age o seven. Exactly the same thing was evoked within me as I got deeper into Sack’s article. I had never thought about what it would be to be blind except of the simplicity of “how terrible” or “what a shame” when addressing an incident of someone who lost their sight. I simplified it to a point of unawareness, that it is indeed possible that losing your sight would not entirely be a tragedy. In a way, as Sack’s presents it, sight might actually be preventing us from being fully aware. Not only in the way that we are overwhelmed by the amount of visuals that surrounds us, but that this might actually be prevents us from being conscious of the things that are actually important. It is true that, “too often people with sight don’t see anything” as well as that we “spend too much time observing these empty things”.
October 11, 2014
Lera Boroditsky
“How Language Shapes Thought”
“How Language Shapes Thought” by Lera Boroditsky is an extremely well constructed essay of investigation that connects the roots and building of different languages to the way thought is shaped, and thus, how this affects a person’s perception and awareness of the world.
Might the example below (John broke the vase vs. the vase broke itself) have serious impact on whether or not people are willing to take responsibility or their own lives versus placing blame in external occurrences/people? To what degree?
How would one go about attempting to reverse or modify these processes of language and thought (for the better)?
“English speakers tend to phrase things in terms of people doing things, preferring transitive constructions like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Japanese or Spanish, in contrast, are less likely to mention the agent when describing an accidental event. In Spanish one might say “Se rompió el florero,” which translates to “the vase broke” or “the vase broke itself.””
“Each provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture. Each contains a way of perceiving, categorizing and making meaning in the world, an invaluable guidebook developed and honed by our ancestors.”
I was very intrigued and interested by Boroditsky’s investigation, and although it had never occurred to me, it does make sense. Looking at it from an angle of personal experience, I grew up speaking both Spanish and English, yet there are things that I cannot properly express in either one or the other (depends what it is). For example, when it comes to writing about emotions English is by far easier than Spanish given to that it is more concise, and it helps simplify the complexity of emotions. However, it will never sound nearly as beautiful, or poetic, or be as accurately descriptive as it is in Spanish. I understand that language molds the way we experience the world to a certain degree, but where does the rest come from? What are the other main factors than come into play? And, is it possible to make small modifications in our everyday language in order to help us experience the world differently (for the best)?
October 9, 2014
Pico Iyer
Where Worlds Collide
Throughout, Where Worlds Collide, Pico Iyer explores the cultural and social impact of movement and globalization using his observations in Los Angeles airport (LAX) as an almost metaphorical micro cosmos setting for the grander scheme of his anthropological conclusions.
What was Iyer’s own experience with immigration (with more particulars)?
What made him want to live off crackers and snacks while completing his observations?
“It is almost too easy to say that LAX is a perfect metaphor for LA…a flat, spaced-out desert kind of place, highly automotive, not deeply hospitable, with little reading matter and no organizing principle.”
“… places where everyone is ruled by the clock, but all the clocks show different times. These days, after all, we fly not only into yesterday or this morning when we go across the world but into different decades, often, of the world’s life and our own: in ten or fifteen hours, we are taken back into the twelfth century or into worlds we haven’t seen since childhood.”
Through a beautiful construction of juxtaposed imagery, Pico Iyer emerges his reader into the deeper meanings of what we now consider mundane. In a fast-paced world of continuous movement and ideas, there is no better setting for an inter-cultural exploration than LAX. By vividly describing his observations on people’s interactions with others, as well as with material objects and the place itself, the author manages to uncover hidden layers of globalization. He says that, “airports are in a way like miniature cities”, through this, creating a relatable point of reflection as opposed to the overwhelming uncovering of interactions within a city itself. He evokes emotions of insecurity and uncertainty, contrasted by those of re-encounter, excitement, and comfort. Iyer does not leave it up to chance; he submerges his reader into the space and time he describes by involving them into his observations, plating the possibility that one of those people he is observing could be them, or they could even be the observer. Thus, presenting a scenery that is alive not only in his words, not only in LAX or any other airport, but in our everyday lives in this globalized, uncertain world of possibility.
October 9, 2014
Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities
In this his brilliantly imaginative book, Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino takes his reader on a journey through vivid descriptions of the cities along Marco Polo’s travels as he recounts them to his host, Kublai Khan.
Why did Calvino choose to write this book through the use of historical characters, specifically Marco Polo and Kublai Khan?
Are these imagined cities inspired on particular existent cities, or is it just a recollection and a mixture with imagination?
“The traveler’s past changes according to the path he has traveled.”
“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, bit in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
Calvino describes several cities through conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Marco Polo talks passionately about his travels, and takes his listener into a world of imagination and wonder. It is as if he experienced each place as if it was his lover, each destination as the embodiment of a different woman, with a different personality, and thus, a different spiritual souvenir for himself. He tells Kublai Khan that, “you take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” Polo recounts the tales of cities, of his memory, but above all, a tale of exploration about oneself in relation to the changing walls and spirit that surround him through his path.
October 2, 2014
Aleida Rodríguez
“My Mother in Two Photographs, Among Other Things”
Throughout poetic descriptions of photographs, Aleida Rodríguez, gives the viewer a sense of her family’s separation, and the life-defining consequences that came along with it.
Why might it have been that the family was expatriated from Cuba?
What was that moment of reunification like, apart from the “emptiness in her Mother’s arms”?
Although written in a very beautiful and poetic style, I personally had a bit of trouble following the storyline. I understand that the author wants her writing to mimic the idea of the photographs she describes. Her words come about as snapshots that do not show the whole story or the whole truth, just like a picture. However, regardless of the beauty of style and concept, it is rather confusing at times, and it leaves one wanting to know more, or at least hear what happened in a clearer voice. It does not have that same quality that photographs do, the fact that for an image it is okay to make up the story behind it, something that would seem unconceivable to do with such a personal memory. Regardless of my own confusion with the work, I still admire her style, and the integration of the description and title into her style of description. It comes across in a very powerful way, which of course, is the reason why I still want to know more.
October 2, 2014
Paul Auster
The Invention of Solitude
In this exert from, The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster reminisces about his Father’s life of absence and detachment through a series of detailed memories about his character and particular manner. Also, including his own emotions and interpretations of events that followed his unexpected death.
What might have his Father thought of this description of himself?
Was his Father unhappy, or simply unaware of his absence in his own life?
Brilliantly written, and intensely insightful, this piece really takes the reader through an emotional journey of reminiscence and an estranged Father-Son relationship. The metaphor of Auster’s Father’s abandoned belongings as, “tangible ghosts, condemned to survive in a world they no longer belong to”, perfectly parallels the man that he portrays throughout the piece; A man who “denied himself intimate contact with the shapes and textures of the world”, a man who wore clothes that “seemed to be an expression of solitude”, and a man who “finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself”. It is simply by Auster’s insight and views on his Father’s life that one can infer the specifics of their relationship, Auster on the one hand, a poet, keen to detail and to absorbing the world, as opposed to a Father, who as stated before, chose to live on the surface, and was “naturally satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others”. This, as well as the metaphor for objects, is further exemplified by the realization that, “It only had to do with him. Like everything else in his life he saw me (Auster) only through the mists of his solitude”. It is beautiful, yet tragic, and the tragedy, sadly, is not his death, but his life.
Ondaatje’s “Running in the Family”
Toni Frissell, “Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida”, 1947
Michel Ondaatje’s, “Running in the Family”, is a spectacularly descriptive piece that combines the author’s memories with fiction in order to achieve an exquisite experience of magical realism. The detail of his phrases immerse the reader into the pathways of the author’s mind. One finds him/herself in the shoes of the main character, walking through the corridors of the jungle-like African mansion, listening to the stories being told and re-told in warm afternoons. However, this piece transcends the vivid physical experience that the author presents. Through the introduction of surreal elements, Ondaatje not only takes the reader along to a reminiscence of facts, but through the actual alterations and magnifications done to them by his nostalgic emotions.
Toni Frissell’s photograph (above), “Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida”, portrays the same feeling of longing that Ondaatje does in “Running in the Family”. The image seems light, yet heavy at the same time. Only a small part of her face is touching the water, which in a way could parallel this idea of reminiscence, of being in the present yet in the past at the same time. Frissell also plays with her viewer through magical realism. By flipping the image, she introduces a dream-like element (that represents the lightness of the scene), but at the same time, by having the water and shadow above her, it seems like she is being weighed down. This photograph is, in my opinion, the perfect parallel to the mood Ondaaje evokes in his memoir, it is somewhat nostalgic, somewhat longing, heavy, however, light and playful at the same time.
