Bedroom Checklist

The first thing I hear in the morning is "What I Got" by Sublime. I set it as my alarm, before it goes off in the morning, I sometimes wake up once, like in my dream, I hear the song in my head, but don't open my eyes, next I really hear it, then I really wake up. The groovin' beat of the drums make a great compliment to the easy flowing acoustic guitar riff, backed by a thumpin' bass line. Now I'm awake. I look up and see a large deep green, rich blue, and vivid purple tapestry with for identical depictions of a an ariabin looking man on the back of a camel with what looks like a gypsy woman, in each corner surrounding a large eight pointed shape with a background of multicolored leaves growing next to each other. I reach over to turn off the alarm just as the phone stops singing. I see posters of Bob Marley, Joan Jett, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, The Ramones, Weezer, Green Day, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix through the glimmer of the street lights that peer through the window. I get up to turn on the light and pass by a PA system, a Casio keyboard, a Ibanez bass, a Fender Strat, a t.v., and my computer sitting in front of a rack of Cd's. I see two closest one stuffed full of yarn to be crocheted into hats, and middle to upper level english text books I hope to read again someday, the other has boxes stuffed on the top shelf above my extra clothes. It's not much, but its home.

First Following Story

After just having read The Following Story I began to reflect on its characteristics in light of the first class theme, the eternal return. The whole concept of waking and not waking up I find very intriguing. One might argue that we never in fact wake up, or is it that we never fall asleep. Regardless I think there is nothing more important than the now, right here. The narrator's many personalities, Socrates, Dr. Strabo, and Herman Mussert seem to be fighting for a sign of recognition of existance. And through it all I found it very interesting that the narrator kept insisting that he loved Maria Zeinstra. I'm now reminded of a Sublime lyric, "Life is too short, So love the one you got." Maybe that's all that matters right, love. Now I sound like a hippie, but I think its true. We can try to define ourselves throughout life, picking which personality suits us. But that is all internalized isn't it. A person's life is not defined by the connections between selves, rather it is defined by the connections to others.

Finnegans Page

On random I opened my book up to page number 197 and decided this would be my page to become the expert on. After reading it over several times, underlining important passages, I got a sense of what it was talking about. The page starts of discussing the various actions and characteristics of a person named Reeve Drughad. It goes it to his other names and then begins to talk about a woman, perhaps his wife. After this it discusses man's tragic fall and how women also bring happiness. After some discussion of a man named Don Dom Dombdomb it then shifts to talk about tales and how they are sold. To the best of my abilities this is what happens on this page and the following are the few sentences I've chosen to memorize. "Who blocksmitt her saft anvil or yelled lep to her pail? Was her banns never loosened in Adam and Eve's or were him and her but captain spliced? For mine ether duck I thee drake. And by my wildgaze I thee gander."

Haroun and Emergent Lit

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, no doubt has a kind of children's book feel to it with all its fantasy elements and wild imaginative characters and situations. I feel it has much to do with our class. First, its a story about stories much like Finnegans Wake, it tries to tell the readers where stories come from and how they are made. On page 73 Rushdie writes, "What Haroun was experiencing, though he didn't know it was Princess Rescue Story Number S/1001/ZHT/420/41(r)xi;" I think Rushdie was hitting on something important here the question of how many stories can really exist in the world. It can't be infinite, right, at some point all stories will meld and mix together. I think in this light we need to change how we view stories. We need to understand that it all exists already, we just need to give the world our own little twist. As far as the first theme of the class is concerned Haroun in a sense never really returns to his world because one could say he never really left. He projects elements and characters of his life into what he experiences with the water genie. This to me means that as we go about our lives we never really experience new things we merely learn new way to experience them. This is to say everything should already be familiar to us in a sense and we simply need to find new ways to make this life and this world exciting.

Like the Water Genie Said

Yesterday a fellow English Lit major friend of mine approached me with one of his papers for an upper level literature class, and asked me if i would revise it for him. I said, sure thing man, no problem, what are friends for right, and I read the paper. It was really no good, rubbish, I should have told him to throw it away. He wrote just like he talked, as if he'd recorded his voice and typed it out word for word, he used words such as like, so, then, well. I told him he had to seriously revise it, read it over, talk it out loud, give it the old in and out real savage. So he did. He gave me the revised copy, a little better, I said, slightly less stupid, a bit more tolerable. He turned it in, and received a zero, a goose egg, nada, zip, zilch, he should have listened to me.

Laugh At Beckett

Starting at page 92 I immediately was familiar with the material I was reading, Beckett. Much like the dialogue in Waiting for Godot there seemed to be nothing said in the first page of text. Full of contradictions and repetitiveness I was annoyed but kept reading. I laughed out loud, or snickered if you will at the part about being lazy. It is often the claim of the laziest of men to say that he is not in fact lazy, when truly he is. I thought about my personal feelings on being lazy, in my opinion it takes a strong commitment to be lazy you really have to be devoted to nothing, sounds like too much work, not for me.

Haroun and Socrates in Wonderland

After having just finished reading both The Following Story and Haroun and the Sea of Stories I'm interested to see what we will discuss in Friday's class. The theme of the eternal return was constantly on my mind as I read through the novels. I felt both books made an interesting commentary on the epistemology of existence. Socrates and Haroun both had to decide for themselves what was real and controllable and what was not. I believe I would be more like Haroun if I was thrown into a similar situation, I would ask less questions and live more in the moment, unlike Socrates. I would try to embrace my existence and not try to figure out what it means, because as I've learned many times even the biggest questions in life will always be unanswered, life's a garden so dig it man.