Old Underdog: New Tricks

Most of the people who follow this page know that I've been stressed out bonkers lately because I'm applying to Ph.D. programs in L.A., and I'm proud to say that I finished uploading my application to USC and DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT ANYMORE! It's really been frying my brain. Now I can let it go -- and see if I can get my bundle of papers off to any other local schools before their deadlines. I really only want to go to USC. (Blythe won't like that, but I think even she recognizes that it's a pretty good fit.) I'm under no grand disillusionment; I know they probably won't have me. Yet I'm trying to hope just a little bit that the underdog thing is pulling for me as much as it's hurting my chances of getting accepted.

I know the previous post was WHINY. I haven't been praying or meditating as much as I need to lately, and it's showing in my inability to deal with criticism, and my uncontrollable emotions. It's hard to stay centered when you are trying to promote yourself. Now that the process is over I can let it go and focus on my classes again.

I'm disappointed that I will most likely get a B in that English Lit class -- but I'm moving on. There has been some dyslexic thing hovering over me as I sit in that class. I don't know what it is. I'm a shoe-in for As in Shakespeare, African-American Lit, and Women's Studies. I'll probably get a B in Natural Disasters. Three As and two Bs ain't bad. Next semester is going to be a monster. I may have to use an organizer -- scary stuff.

I won't get any real rest this weekend, as I have projects due and about a hundred (or more?) pages to read. Now that I don't have to worry about the USC app I can take things down a notch. I want to work on Melville and Moby Dick over the break, but what with the stress of applications and finals and final papers, well, I may have to get massages and sleep and meditate for a week before I return to normal. My head actually always hurts now. Some rest will do me good.

And there are tons of good movies I need to go see. Slumdog Millionaire, anyone?

The Paradox of Feeling While Thinking

A student of literature speaks and hears of paradox often while studying poetry. It seems we can't get enough of the heartbreak of joy, or the sublime nature of true happiness. The closer you get to a real experience, it seems the more that experience will be indescribable, and conflict with labels meant to categorize it.

While this feeling (or non-feeling, depending on how you look at it) tends to be associated with high moments, I went through an experience just yesterday that came close to pushing me into the realms of purest humanity. For some reason or other, I took my British Lit midterm a couple of weeks ago without comprehending the directions. When the instructions said to pick two excerpts, I did all of them; when the directions said to choose one topic out of the two provided, I did both. I was as puzzled at my inability to comprehend the directions as the next person, and I tried to chalk it up to brain exhaustion -- I had two other midterms that week that had indeed asked me to write two essays, and British Lit comes at the end of my three class day -- I'm exhausted anyway. I don't tend to do as well in British Lit as I do in any other Literature class, although the reason for that is less discernable than why I did poorly on the test.

Here's the thing. This midterm was worth 15 point total. In spite of taking only a little over half the time allotted for the essay portion (the other half wasted on the second essay) I got a 6 out of the 7 points assigned to that portion. I got all of the "fill in the blanks" correct -- another 3 points. The only thing left was to get the five points for the identification portion. As I stated earlier, I identified three instead of two. In chronological order, the second identification I attempted was wrong. The third one however, was correct. Yet, without explanation, the instructor gave me only half the credit for the portion. Since there were no explanations for this on the paper, I concluded that she marked me off for not following directions. This gave me a C on the paper instead of an B+ or A-. The more I thought about it, the idea came to me that she might have just made a mistake on the identification portion...teachers can get tired brains, too right? In hopes that just maybe this was the case, I went to her office to check. My professor spoke nicely with me, a little patronizing maybe, and looked at my paper. She read aloud the excerpt that I had gotten wrong with great emphasis, and declared to me the correct author, and slightly mocked the guess I had confusedly scrawled out. I told her that I knew I had guessed wrong, but the final one was correct...? She replied, "Oh I didn't even look at that one. The directions were to respond to two; I only graded the top two. You alerted me to the fact that you had accidentally written two essays, but you said nothing of this portion." I agreed that this was true, and commented on how apparently scatterbrained I must have been to have overlooked the directions. She looked squarely at me and said, "Well, that is why they say to read directions three times. That is the advice given to graduate students." I thanked her for her clarification and told her I would see her later in class.

I knew that I hadn't followed directions, but apparently some small but ridiculously hopeful part of me wished that she could have been feeling generous toward probably the sole person in the class who had accidentally gone way above and beyond the call of duty and fulfilled ALL of the demands of the test in 75 minutes, with only one wrong answer. I know there is no reward for failing to follow directions; my mind knows this. I know I should not even imagine that I should receive any kind of special treatment for being smart or studious. Than what? Why did I leave her office and have to shake off tears? I suppose I'm a little fragile right now. With major universities breathing down my neck for grade point averages, and the cat near death...I don't know. Perhaps because I have had such wonderful people in my life who care, not just whether or not I can be perfect, but are concerned about my success, I am a little disgruntled by people who coldly remind me that I'm not really good enough. I suppose I must look for approval elsewhere in life, and stop leaving it up to instructors to reassure me that what I have to say is worthwhile.

It is a paradox, this thinking and knowing that what she did was fair and justifiable and this feeling hurt. It's difficult to know that I set myself up for this kind of inner conflict.

Little stars...

I was either fifteen or fourteen the first time I read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I had about two years before I would see Baz Luhrmann's film with my then boyfriend, who didn't quite understand why I was so distraught by the film, especially since I was no DiCaprio swooner. The fact of the matter was that just months before I saw the film, I had been through some pretty perilous breakups, and the ideas of romantic suicide, families that hate each other, and even the idea of being star-crossed, all appealed to me and reached the inner, dusky corners of my mind and heart. Rereading the play almost fifteen years later has given me a different vantage point, and I identify more with Mercutio, and Friar Laurence, than say, Romeo or Juliet, but somehow their young love and fierce passion still move me, even to tears.

I have been, probably to the detriment of my learning experience, watching the film as I read, pausing to read the lines that the film skips or delivers out of character or scene. This film is still pretty darn good. Mercutio is expertly played by Harold Perrineau, now of Lost fame, and I really love Clare Danes' portrayal of Juliet. She embodies her as I interpret her from the text; she is witty, and the cleverer of the two young lovers. Her innocence and virginity, so often brought up in the text by her blushing cheek, is balanced by a strong sense of who she is and being true to who she loves, even at the cost of losing her family. Her father's tirade at her, and her mother's dismissal, is crushing in the text, and Danes' is so good at teenage angst that she takes Juliet's despair to very strong, but very realistic level. When she pulls the small pistol from her purse and screams at the Friar that he better hurry up and tell her an answer, because she "longs to die," my heart just breaks for this young girl who seems to see no other way out, and has been spurned by the people she should trust with her life.

Shakespeare seems to have a penchant for rage between father and daughters over marriage. Hero's father, in Much Ado About Nothing, tells her that if she has been sleeping around, and is ineligable to marry Claudio that he would like to kill her, and calls her all sorts of slurs. Capulet similarly yells at his daughter that if she doesn't do as he says and marry Paris, that he would watch her starving, begging in the streets with a blind and callus eye. He calls her a harlot, and tells her never to speak to him again. There is some sort of strange connection between these future sons in law and fathers in law. They are marrying off their only daughters, but they have more of a connection with these idiots than their own valuable daughters; Hero and Juliet are far wiser than their years and experience alone.

At any rate, Shakespeare repeats themes and patterns and even names, in his excellent plays. I don't think the film could move me without his direct dialogue; while it's a pretty movie, it it firmly rooted in Shakespearian sound, and tone. I have yet to watch the church scene, with the glowing blue crosses. It makes me weep. Perhaps it is good to read this play at around the ages the main characters are supposed to be. It is good for depressed young people to know they are not alone, nor have they been alone for hundreds of years. In mourning Romeo and Juliet, perhaps they put off mourning themselves.

Joseph Conrad: A Man Without a Country Knows Best

We are supposed to be reading Heart of Darkness this weekend in Brit Lit, which means we made it through the Victorian period and are on our way into the modernists. Yay, Virginia Wolf! Yay, T.S. Eliot! Okay, Joyce, you can come in, but don't stay long. I don't want to get caught up in a syntactical logic-warp. It's too late for that kind of thing. To kick off our time with the modernists, we have read some of Hardy's poetry -- you have to love this man's cynacism, just don't fall in love with a cynic because they will be skeptical that you love them -- and I have to say, I just love a man who admits that no matter how cheery things seem, there is something wan in even the most colorful of experiences. He's so good as an equalizer and as a response to the Victorian sense that everything that is perfect is right around the corner. Not in this life, Hardy says, and even goes on to say, probably never. Oh, and did you know that we don't actually talk about Naturalism in British Lit? Why is that?

Conrad's work is a whole other ball of wax. Even amidst all the doom and failure of imperialism there is this sense that there are people who are in positions of power who do not accept the traditions that are handed down to them. Well, I'm not sure you would call Marlowe a man in a position of power, but if you look at capitalist societies and view the working class as a group heavy with the possibility of having the most power, then you could see him as representative of a powerful group that rejects the ideals of imperialism, and maybe even look at the superficial end of colonization in this particular manner -- this manner of striking a flag in the ground and declaring this land in the name of whatever (hmmm, freeedom, anyone? democracy, anyone?), and capturing all the inhabitants of a region as chattel. What I mean is the face of imperialism has changed, with possibly less suffering, or different suffering, because people like Marlowe could see that the ends didn't justify the means, by looking at the means. Marlowe sees imperialism in action, and from day one can hardly stomach it.

Yet Conrad is...not British? Oh, right. He's Polish, Swiss, and eventually, British. When you hear this, you smack yourself on the head and go, of course he could write about the evils of imperialism -- he is an alien, a foreigner, an observer. It's so much harder to look at your own country, your own environment, and describe with such clarity and understanding its moral weaknesses and fractured manifestos. The great thing is that Marlowe tends not to cast too much judgement when witnessing injustice. When his aunt declares him practically a saint for taking Western Civilization to Africa, he calls it so much blather and nonsense. He knows he is there to make money, and won't take stock in any of this "civilizing" talk. Then, when the doctor wants to measure his head, he lets him, but he doesn't really think there is anything to it. When he sees the men on the canoe for the first time at sea, he describes them as looking so natural, emphasizing how unnatural his ship and crew are as they motor down the coast. Through the text he speaks the internal questions and reactions that tend to stay hidden. In this way Conrad vocalizes Western guilt and shame. Shame seems to be a dominant theme of the novella.

I know this piece is short, but I wish we were taking more time in discussing it. It is one of the more brilliant things to come out of England. Or Poland. Or the West.