One Word Changes ALL

Testicles. Yes, early Friday morning, that word changed my morning. Well... for that little moment anyway... minding my own business, writing assignments down or whatnot... I heard it. In my Writ 101 class, a guy next to me was talking to a girl sitting next to him. I don't remember how their conversation started, because I wasn't listening as usual. That was, until I heard the word TESTICLES. Yes, I know, think what you want... but it only caught my ear cause it's not every day that the opposite sex uses proper anatomical terms unless they're in Anatomy or Biology where the act is sort of required. So anyway, apparently there is a poster or billaboard or cork-board-display-thing with the words "Know Your Testicles" (the emphasis was apparently on testicles, because it was in the biggest letters), in one of the wings of the Johnstone Center that's about testicular cancer, and how to check,and what to do, and facts about the disease... things of that nature. How about that? What a way to start my morning. Drinking my chai tea, minding my business, and hearing a 21 yr old army guy telling a 20 something worman about what he observed that morning. Needless to say... class started, and my ears were saved.

So Mr. Sexson, my hat goes off to you. If I would only listen, and try harder, I would hear interesting things. Even though I'm not as talented as Garrett as to brighten other people's day by telling white lie fibs, I can see how one could go about doing so. And hence making the entire world (or maybe just campus) a little more interesting. So, kudos to you.

Dreams-Not a Place I Wanted To Be

I went home to Frenchtown this weekend, and I got to reunite with my beloved grey mare (though I'm positive she didn't miss me much.. but I could tell that she missed me a bit by being patient, and calm. Anyhoo...) For 2 nights in a row i dreamed about bringing my horse to college. At least I think it was 2 nights.. it might have been twice in one night. Ok, all I know is that I dreamed the same dream twice. Once last night, and once another time, who knows when. Of course, there were tangents of the dream to other parts of another dream, but i don't remember those. I remember gaps of time in the main dream. I do remember my mom and I driving my silver 4 Star trailer, with black and red pinstripes on the side, to the place. It was no place in particular, but you know that sensation where you never said something aloud in your dream, but know it happened and it's true anyway?? Anyway, we were in Bozeman, but not in Bozeman at all, but that's what the place was. I felt like I was in Kalispell though, or Washington somewhere, or a mixture of both that my mind decided to concoct and call Bozeman. Who knows...

The grass was very long, and green, and lush, like it gets in both places of my imagination. The kind of grass I know my mare, and any other normal horse, would love to eat. It was an overcast day, but not like it was going to rain. The air was slightly muggy, but cool. A jeans-and-tshirt kind of day. There were horse pens set up on a hill. There were no trees. The horse pens were not plentiful, and definately not enough. They were made of temporary pannels, the bars being a brown color that is common with those pannels. They were made very small, long enough for a horse to fit lengthwise, but not much more, and only 3-4 feet wide. I thought in my mind "STANDING ROOM ONLY". I thought they were temporary stalls till the officials (whoever they were) told us which barn to go to. I found out (or knew because my mind had told me so) that this was not true. They were MEANT to be temporary, but no longer were. This was where we were supposed to be. There were other horses in the stalls, all filled. I recognized a few of them, but many were just horses. I recognized many people from my pony club days, and their moms. I remember I was surprised that they had come to college (or wherever this place was.) They had already set up camp next to their trailers and their ponies. They hadn't been there very long, but were going to be and knew more than I did since I had just arrived. There was no place to put my horse, though somehow I found a spot. I remember a chestnut horse with a flaxen mane. His coat was a little unkempt, unlike the other horses, and he was a little undermuscled, though not in a completely bad way. His stall had golden straw in it. These things pointed out to me that he belonged to a little girl who didnt know how to groom yet, and parents who were novices at horse owning. (Though, now thinking about it, why was a novice horse with a college group?? It must be my mind mixing up stories and details in one dream.) He was laying down, and I remember pondering how he managed to do it. I put my horse next to him, though I don't remember seeing my horse in my dream, or handling it. I also know that the horse in my dream wasn't my mare from real life, but either way it was my horse. I needed water for him, because I noticed other people had filled theirs. But I couldn't find the faucet, and there was a fountain made of metal horse troughs, but there was no way to fill up a 5-gallon bucket in it. The sky was still over-cast, the grass still long.

There wasn't really and ending to the dream, cause I don't think your mind ever ends them like a story. It just keeps coming up with details to stuff into your already full head. In the dream, there were only reoccuring images and thoughts. That place isn't where i wanted myself or my horse to be. She didn't deserve it. I had taken her with me, but I had screwed up somehow, and though she didn't really know better, I wasn't satisfied at all. I knew I had failed as her mom.

Trying to Listen...

Ever since we got the assignment to eavesdrop on people, anywhere on campus, I tried, and tried, ad tried. And I'll keep trying, but... I honestly don't find people's conversations interesting. I lose interest whenever I try to listen. All of the ones I've tried listening into are either mundane, immature, or a very good mixture of both. By the end of 30 seconds I'm left with either a feeling of awe (and not in a good way), or boredom. People really talk about these things??? All I hear is homework due, silly conversations such as "Give me back my pen!!" (and sincerely, this girl across the hall was freaking out about it, instead of just grabbing another pen...). My reaction?? "Wow.." I said to myself. "Really?" I guess I spend so much time trying to tune other people out, either by music, or homework, or the TV, that it's hard to get back into it. I REALLY don't like listening to people. And it's not that I think myself better than other people, it's just... I don't like meaningless conversation. Though I guess one could argue that no conversation is completely meaningless. I guess one could say.. I dont like... petty conversation. Irrelevent conversation. Mundane small talk. I even try to listen in on talk in the dining halls, especially Harrison, and nope! cant do it. I just get mad and frustrated from the amount of talk and I usually end up leaving still hungry ;-P. I don't know why I've developed this attitude towards other people, maybe it's just my history with petty girls who can talk about nothing else but partying and boys. . Ya.. that might be it. And it's not like I don't like talking to people, or showing my views, and giving my opinions, and getting to really know someone.. I guess you could say I'm just.. Picky. And have little patience for people I might think are a waste of my time.

In Just - e.e cummings, & Death - Emily Dickinson

In e.e cummings poem In Just, I was reminded yet again of the never ending and constantly retold story of the bad guy (in this case the lame and old baloonMan). The baloonMan, I think anyway, is luring in playing youngsters (the word INNOCENT comes to mind here yet again...), by whistling "far and wee". It seems... odd... that a baloonMan would do that, though I myself find balloon people and clowns extremely scary and weird thanks to the movie "It" when I was five yrs. old... And yet in the end, the baloonMan's "goat-footed"-ness is revealed to us. Again! Here is reference to Pan, or satyres, or even Satan himself, in the guise of a baloonman. This is just another story of the Pied Piper, and of Connie and her experiences, and the Demon Lover.

In Dickinson's poem Death, I was instantly reminded of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, at least Iwas reminded of Persephone's point of view. With Hades (aka Death) dragging her down to the underworld to be his queen. Though, in Dickinson's poem, it sounds as if Death is taking her permanently, as if she is dying, and not just going for a trip, that this woman being taken is human. So, in that mind, it could also be a retelling of the Demon Lover, though all of these stories are related to one-another one way or the other, like a lover's triangle.

Why so many retellings???Is it just people's imaginations being inspired by the tales and stories from their youth? I mean, in the end, you can only beat the details and fragments out of something till it's dead.. and then it's done. But is this always true?? Sometimes there seems to be new life w/ every retelling of a story.. and .. in the end.. I think this is the whole reason of the class. To not only to recognize stories for what theyare, but also to understand that these stories, or at least their basework, can be old as dirt itself, and there still seems to be life in them yet, with every version a new author puts out. And with each new version, though very similar to others of the same genre, each story is meant to be interpreted completely differently, and for different reason, just as each was, in a way, written for different reasons. So even though reading all these damsel-in-distress stories may seem redundant, I know deep down that they're all different. . somehow. .

What Stuck... Scanning, reading, and flipping pages

Wow... I read SO many stories that weren't assigned, I'm thinking I lost a little bit of time to actually DO the assignments... Oh well. I read and scanned through the Odyssey segments ( cause i really loved that poem in high school), and read an excerpt from the speech of one of Penelope's suitors after Odysseus comes home. I also read Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which I have read before and didnt like in context to the real Odyssey, but I decided to give it another go... and ya.. I still don't like it. It doesn't personify the entire feeling of longing for home that the Odyssey did, instead it had Odysseus wanting to see the world more, even though he was now old.. Anyway.. i wont get into an argument about that. That's for another time. I also read some of the Little Red Riding Hood stories, which included the original Little Red Cap by The Brothers Grimm. I didn't finish all of them however, once i realized how many other stories realted to that topic there were. After more scanning, I came across Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie. (Finding Neverland, Disney's version of Peter Pan, and Hook happen to be a few of my favorite movies of all time..) I haven't read the original play version in the text yet, I'm saving that till i have more time, but I did read and exerpt from The Little White Bird, which goes on to explain why Peter Pan could no longer go home to his mother.. it gave great insight as to why Peter had to stay in Neverland with his band of Lost Boys.

I also read a number of random poems, though the one that sticks in my mind the most, and maybe hit me the deepest (maybe because I'm a woman), is a poem of the same name by Nikki Giovanni. It just struck me as a very liberating poem, one of a woman finding freedom from a seemingly suffocating relationship. Or maybe it touched me because I myself can relate to it, as so can many other women in teh world. I love the ending, it says: she decided to become/a woman/and though he still refused/ to be a man/ she decided it was all/ right.

Catching Tigers in Red Weather/ Dissillusionment at 10 o'clock

I read the poem with the rest of the class, and low and behold... I loved it. I love the feeling it portrays, which isn't much of a feeling rather than a strangeness and an acute ability to leave the reader going "huh...???". When I read it, I understood that the poem wasn't supposed to have a big meaning behind it, other than the imagination is a strange and wonderful and fearful place.

So, as ordered or asked, whichever you would prefer, I googled the ending of the poem "...catches tigers in red weather.", and here's what I got: The ending is no more than just that.. an ending. It basically describes what the drunken sailor is dreaming about, the red weather probably refering to a day he experienced, when the sky and the weather within it were red from the setting (or rising) sun, depending on the weather at hand. And yet, it follows the strange feeling of the poem, that at first glance, it makes no sense at all until one is willing to sit down and at least make some sense of the poem.

And while searching the ending, I came across Wikepedia's description of the poem. Basically it described teh poem as that of a poem that was written and meant for the reader to linger on the strangeness, the possibility of colors w/in one's own imagination, and unusual dreams that we are all accustomed to having. I mean, need there be a REAL meaning behind a poem other than pondering the meaning of the poem??? According to wiki, the poem shows that imagination takes it's own course, form, and order, especially in dreams, and it matters not that it makes sense. "thus following one of the main facts necessary for modernist literature to function: taht the object or idea being represented exists in and for itself, and only for itself." The reading suggests taht the "haunted house" with the white nightgowns represents life without imagination, and maybe showing the mind of the owner as being barren, and desolate, and hopeless, filled with cobbwebs and dust, due to the lack of imagination and color of a life.

Where are you going, where have you been?

So I just read the Connie story.... wow. The sense of innocent fear runs rampent throughout the text,and yet, you know deep down that this is how 15 yr. old girls are... innocent, but they dont want to be. They think they have control over their lives, when they really have no idea. While reading the story, you just keep crying out to yourself "CALL THE COPS!!" or "LOCK THE DOOR! DO SOMETHING!!" but with her mind so full of shock and fear, you can tell that she has no idea to do, or how to do it.
You begin to feel sorry for Connie, because she is the representation of every girl on the news you have seen go missing, or found dead, or raped, or assaulted. To come to the realization that monsters like Arnold Friend are alive and , for lack of a better word, well in the world.. is horrific. And they will always be there... lurking. Hunting. Searching. And they will always find what they are looking for, cuz their prey never changes, and is alwasy abundand.
Im thinking this reading hit me a little hard cause I just went and watched "The Lovely Bones", which is a story of a 14 yr old girl who is murdered... and its hard to get over stories like that that you see all the time... so ya. Blogging to say my thoughts on the subject matter. I have more thoughts in my head, but ill save them for another blog time...

So... first time I've gotten this thing figured out. I still haven't figured out how to add people onto this so they can read it... Im working on that. So far... I like this class.. it makes me think. The professor REALLY has you analyze what he's saying, or talking about, and I like that. I hate teachers who spell things out for you and really treat you how they THINK about you (i.e, College algebra class professor, genuinely thinks people are stupid in that class, I'm certain of it...). I haven't looked at the text yet, so when I get to that I'll blog more. As for now... I'll end it here for the first entry. So long for now..