Blurry Interviews: Literary Liz

Hi Liz, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for a Wandering in a Blur interview! As you know, we're all about art, literature, science, history, and all that great stuff. Let's start with something easy: What is your favorite piece of literature, and why?

Favorite piece of literature... I would say it's a tie between A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Watership Down by Richard Adams. The two are very different, but both are well-constructed stories with extremely lovable characters - and extremely hateable characters, for that matter.

Ooh, what are some of the hateable characters?

Miss Minchin in A Little Princess - she's the woman who runs the school  in which Sara Crewe, the main character, lives - and in Watership Down, General Woundwort, the tyrannical (not to mention violent) dictator of Efrafa, another warren.

I'm familiar with Miss Minchin. I've seen the movie, and also Sierra Bogress was in the musical a while back! I really like when we get to see literature in many different forms—I think of Pride and Prejudice based on our *cough* previous discussion. Do you like seeing literature brought to life in other ways, and do you have any examples?

I always find musical adaptations of literature fascinating, though it doesn't happen very often - a few years ago I saw a musical version of Sense and Sensibility and liked it a lot. Apart from that... I'm mostly disappointed by movie adaptations, unfortunately. And of course I'm always up for seeing live/filmed performances of Shakespeare and other plays, if that can be counted as literature!

Yeah, movie adaptions are a little tricky, for all of us. But if the AP Board says that Shakespearean plays are okay on the test, I feel like we can count it as literature, too! Switching gears a little bit, let's talk about art. Define art.

Art. Oh, goodness. That's really, really tricky. See, I recently took a class on art and music and basically the end argument was that art is whatever you say it is. For example, there's a piece called Fountain - created by Marcel Duchamp, a Dada artist - which is literally a urinal laid on its side. That's it. I think it was supposed to be a political statement. On the other hand, you can have something that's purely created for aesthetic appeal or whatnot, like many of the commissioned pieces from before the 1800s. That being said... I suppose I have to agree. Though I personally like art better when it's created for aesthetic reasons, or at least romantic ones (looking at you, Fuseli) art is, at its core, whatever we plop down and say is art.

As Guinan might say, it's in the eye of the beholder. How do you incorporate art into your daily life?

Short answer is, I don't - not intentionally. At least I think I don't. The closest I can get would be that I tend to notice things about the world around me that could be called artistic, whether it be the symmetry of a flower or a weirdly shaped roof or the drawing technique in a Calvin and Hobbes comic. Other than that - I don't think I incorporate it much.

It's funny, because whenever I come to your house I feel like it's always so much more artsy than mine. Your brothers are musical and inventive, and there's always books and rich discussion hanging around, so it's funny that we should have a different perspective of your life. All right, one last question. Wandering in a Blur is about life and the blurry messiness we all experience as we live. What is a question you have that is part of your blur? 

Blurry messiness, huh? I guess the primary question (always in my face when I'm at college) is "What are you going to do with your life?" Sometimes I think I know, and sometimes I think I have no earthly clue.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Thanks so much for doing this interview with me!

Liz is a Colorado humanities student, which means she studies all things awesome and having to do with how great humans are at their humanness. In her free time—and even in the time that isn't free—she reads obsessively and terrorizes her residence hall as the "crazy book girl." She can usually be found wrapped in a comforter, recovering from her latest book hangover. You can find her at her soon-to-be-blog, Literary Liz!

Laughter

19

Hi. I’m still alive, although it’s been three weeks since my grandma died.

It was the week the rain started—the week that began the huge downpour that has flooded my basement and also my life. I knew better than to walk home in the rain (although that’s another story), so I borrowed a phone to call home.

Dad picked up. Dad has a nine to five job—it was two. I think that’s when I knew, but he didn’t say anything. Mom didn’t say anything when she picked me up, either. Maybe I’m wrong, I thought.

I put my stuff down, and that’s when Dad told me. “I’m home early, because Grandma Twila died this morning.”

“When?” I asked.

“Around ten this morning.”

I nodded, and kept putting my things away. “Okay.” Maybe it seems heartless, not to burst into tears, or to start crying, or anything—but for me, it felt like I had lost my grandma a long time ago, and this was just the end of a long time coming.

“Are you making grilled cheese sandwiches?” I asked, noticing the griddle.

“Yes. Do you want one?”

My mom does most of the cooking at my house, but you don’t say no to a grilled cheese sandwich from my dad. You just don’t. The bread was the crispy butter brown that Dad has seemed to master, complete with pepperoni, ham, and the gooey white goat cheese that knows my heart so well.

So we sat together, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches—I don’t remember what we were talking about, probably things to do (there are a lot of things to do when someone dies) or telling my sisters, but I remember that my friend Emma came up as I told my parents her story.

Last night, she was in her room and saw an enormous spider—and then she lost track of it. Like any sane person, she ran up to her parents’ room and said, “We need to burn my room down, there’s a spider!” (My parents laughed here.) Her mom, half-asleep and hardly paying attention, put her head up and said, “Thou shalt not kill.” Even funnier to my parents was that she couldn’t remember the episode the next morning.

Today the sun came out again. I live in a place proclaiming 300 days of sun a year, and I was starting to worry—rain used to be beautiful because it was so rare, but after twenty days of stifling wet weather, early mornings vacuuming up water in the basement, and legs frozen by the weather, it’s become more of a nuisance.

But today the sun came out. Life goes on. You sometimes have to do the things you don’t want to do, and sometimes that means writing this blog post, or preparing to get back to editing a novel I’ve lost track of again.

And sometimes it means laughing over grilled cheese sandwiches with my parents, and knowing that a woman who was with us isn’t here anymore. And that it’s okay. And that there are still chances to smile in the rain.

Somewhere Only I Know

It's a Saturday night, and I sit on a sofa with a laptop and two books. Music is playing, and I am trying to listen and hum along to songs in vain.

It's a problem I have increasingly encountered. I want to read, but the temptation of the laptop is overbearing. And I idly visit websites - Quora, my email, Reddit. Ultimately, I get bored and move to Spotify, that great bastion of music. It's the greatest thing since the Internet, I do believe. Being able to stream nearly every song you want in mere seconds - I do not take this for granted.

So I sit, and listen to Keane's "Bend and Break," and almost immediately, want to listen to a certain song lyric by The Kinks. So I listen to "A Well-Respected Man," which invariably reminds me of Collective Soul's "A Smashing Young Man," so I start listening to that. Then after, the awesome epic guitar riffs remind me of Nirvana and Bush, and off I go looking for my grunge playlist...

This is ADD made manifest. Something has happened to me. It has crept up on me, slowly, quite carefully. Consider. Once upon a time I would carry a book around with me everywhere, looking for every opportunity to read. I recall the beginning of seventh grade, when I discovered Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I borrowed the book from my teacher's library, and took it home and began to read. My uncle came, and took my grandmother and I out to lunch, and I brought the book with me. Afterwards, I went with my dad to the Home Depot, and guess what I brought with me?

This was five years ago, I recall. Today, in this year of grace, 2015, I sit with And Then There Were None mere inches away from this keyboard which I use to type this message. I have picked it up occasionally this evening, glancing through a few pages, remembering the great mystery surrounding Indian Island, the shocking murders, the unbelievable ending which to this day never fails to fill me with amazement and awe at Agatha Christie and her clever mind.

I cannot fully read the novel, though. This is not such a surprise, however. I have only ever reread one book without jumping around and skipping parts. And that's okay. The pleasure of rereading is to enjoy a book without all the introns and parts one may consider dull. One can go to a beloved chapter and reread it, word for word, and ignore the rest.

The discerning reader of this piece can't have failed to note that I mentioned there are two books on the sofa next to me. The second is a curious work that goes by the name of Titus Groan, by the most interesting of authors: Mervyn Peake. Peake's a most interesting person: a painter by trade, he wrote his most famous works, the Gormenghast trilogy, over a period of ten years. Peake was born in China to missionary parents before the Great War, and the memories and reminiscences of Chinese culture would stay with him. During the Second World War, Peake worked on propaganda posters for the British government to earn his bread and butter. Sadly, Peake died of Parkinson's (or Lewy Body dementia? the details are unclear) and suffered a great deal in his last years. His writing and artistic abilities largely disappeared, as he underwent electroconvulsive therapy. He died in 1968 at the age of 57.

I bring Peake up as the perfect metaphor. An artist, especially one such as Peake, is cautious, delicate. He creates a world so vast, so carefully and methodically, that it sneaks up on one. It is much like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or else Susanna Collins' amazing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, or the vertiginous, hilarious The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. However, what they all have in common is that they require time. They require patience and many hours spent in a room, preferably with rosewood chairs and a pot of warm jasmine tea. Nothing less will suffice. I have not gotten past the first 10 pages of Titus Groan, because I understand this. I need time. The dilemma? I actually do have time.

I have a busy schedule, now more so than ever: an issue of the school newspaper I work on came out yesterday. AP exams begin Monday, and I am taking four this year. Several teachers have given nothing but tests in preparation, and I have been dutifully studying. (This, by the way, is my rather pathetic excuse for abandoning this blog for the past few months. Heather has been the very picture of grace, maintaining this blog and continuing the spirit of the Blur.) But for every night that I have spent up working on academics, extracurriculars and life in general, I have had an hour or so to myself, which I have largely frittered away on listening to Spotify and rechecking my email. School is the same way: during lunchtime, I could easily spend time reading. My lifestyle has created a false sense in me, the false idea that I do not have time to read.

But I will change. Two weeks hence, I will be done with all exams. I will still have work to do, but it will not be as much. And seven weeks hence, I will be done with school. And I will read. I must. You see, despite my aversion to reading that has started of late, I still want to read. There is this excitement, the idea of reading my way through a large stack of novels. Mervyn Peake may have devolved into a tragic insanity, but I will recover from my own tragic insanity.

Reader, you may have experienced this yourself. I encourage you to follow my lead, and disconnect yourself. Nothing is as important as time spent thinking and improving yourself. I have always been a fan of self-improvement and self-education, and reading is nothing less than that. A stack of novels, sitting on my desk and elsewhere, await. I will read my way through them.

I must.

Khodafez
-R.R.

Death

16

I was a little nervous when we went down into the cadaver lab. I’ve seen dead people before, of course—I’ve been to funerals, and I’ve seen bodies on TV. It’s just that at funerals they aren’t naked with their parts on the table, and on TV there’s a screen—even so, bodies are also liable to get dismembered or turned into zombies or something horrible like that.

But, as I learned… It was okay. Looking back, I’d actually say visiting a cadaver lab was one of the best field trips I’ve ever gone on. Getting to hold all of the organs and see how organs look in a real human body was kind of amazing. A textbook is a great way to learn, but I’ve got to say… nothing beats holding a human heart in your hands.

That’s not to say that sometimes experiencing the dissection wasn’t a little disgusting sometimes, but I got used to it. I really appreciated that our teacher would always warn us before doing something. She’d say something like, “Okay, now I’m going to turn her leg upside down and inside out,” and that was a good enough cue to prepare me for what came next.

We passed around the brain, a kidney, the heart, lungs, tongue, stomach, bladder, entire arm, of the woman—more, even. I got to touch and examine.

Man, I love to touch and examine. If you have drawers or cabinets, I will open the drawers or cabinets. That’s just a rule.

I got to open the human body. It’s interesting, because we often associate life with goodness, and death with badness—but that isn’t the feeling I got from the cadaver lab. This woman was in her 90’s when she died. It sounded like she had lived a pretty decent life before. She had a family. She had a name. And when her time was done, she gave her body to us to explore.

Against all odds, it turns out death is a beautiful thing as well.

Although, I have to say—during our halftime break, a little melody came over the intercom. Our teacher said they play that every time a baby is born inside the hospital.

Death can be beautiful, but there’s still something to be said about being born, too. Go figure.

Becoming the Audience

Flickr Credit: Brett Sayer

There is something about being in an audience that I love.

Maybe I’m watching Les Misérables, and falling in love with the story all over again. Maybe I’m watching my high school’s production of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Maybe I’m sitting next to my dad at “The Importance of Being Earnest” and enjoying my time with him.

Here is the tally.

5 Musicals: Wicked (twice), Les Mis, The Addams Family, Jekyll and Hyde, and Evita

1 Play: “The Importance of Being Earnest”

5 High School Productions: Annie, “Strange Boarders,” Legally Blonde, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Pirates of Penzance

1 College Production: My Fair Lady

And I’ve been in many other situations where I’m in the audience. Recitals, concerts, talent shows, church, classrooms, an interactive mystery performance, movie theaters. From them I’ve learned one thing.

Being in a live audience is AWESOME.

For the sake of brevity, we’ll use two of my favorites: The Addams Family and “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

Flickr Credit: Eva Rinaldi

What is awesome about The Addams Family is that the audience gets so involved. They put in jokes that everyone laughs at, and you are compelled to laugh along. You’re part of a bigger body. Whether you’re a pair of sisters out for an afternoon or a pair of strangers in Hawaiian shirts and cowboy hats (we played I Spy, and yes, three rows apart just below us, it actually happened) there are parts of the musical that almost bind you to the cast.

My favorite part, though, is at the beginning and the end, when they play the Addams Theme: dun-dun-dun-dun—SNAP SNAP! Everyone joins in. Like, everyone is helping add to the music. And if you’ve never snapped with a couple hundred other people at a musical, it is great fun.

Flickr Credit: Kurt Magoon

“Earnest” was a little different, because rather than the theater downtown it was the cultural center in the city over. You could see everyone’s face in the crowd, and because the theater was so small we strangers were more tightly bound. Again, Wilde’s attempt was to make us laugh, and the actors can milk that. They did.

And my favorite part was when Gwen’s mom forgot her lines and we just kept on going, because we were up-close-and-personal.

At Wicked we all said, “Oooooh,” during the cat fight, and laughed.

During Legally Blonde, the sexy UPS guy drew cheers from the audience as he looked on and smiled.

Even when we got stuck in line during the break at Les Mis, I found myself being part of a larger audience as I listened to opinions and ideas of productions that came before.

When you’re in an audience, you are one with the people around you. Their reactions incite your reactions, and their tears become yours. You act as a functional unit, almost, and even though you will never learn another person’s name and may very well go on oblivious to their existences, you are sharing emotions, thoughts, and feelings with these people as one, and that creates a greater connection, even if for a single moment, than any fangirling experience could give you on the Internet.

Yes, being in an audience is wonderful. It’s great to go with friends and to experience it as a group. And admittedly, one has to dream of a currently nonexistent boyfriend who might enjoy The Lion King or Fiddler on the Roof or “Othello” in equal measure.

But despite the familiarity, it is the parts that make the whole that make the audience special and unique.

What has been your favorite audience experience? (And, what productions would you love to see someday?)

The Cyclical Nature of Things

Recently, I was forced to lie abed for almost a week. I had a cold, which developed into pneumonia. It was horrible, and uncomfortable, and all the adjectives that you can use to describe the condition of having your lungs fill with fluid.

I'm much better now, but one of the (very) few benefits that came out of being ill was that I got to spend some time reading. And one of the books I came to read was my favorite one, Cloud Atlas. I've read Cloud Atlas a good four times by now, cover-to-cover. And one of the things that always strikes me is the cyclical nature of the book. It ends where the story begins. (It's actually far more complicated than that, but let's just say that for now.) This idea of a "symmetrical" and "cyclical" narrative is not new. It's actually used by a lot of authors and singers and creative types. We seem to be so drawn to the idea that everything is a cycle, that everything's connected.

One of my favorite games is Six Degrees of Separation. I usually play it with myself, in regards to my thoughts. I'll be thinking about something, and try to relate it to another topic as quickly and relevantly as I can. The idea of everything being connected fascinates me.

*      *      *

We tend to think of time and space as linear. As Walter Bishop will tell you, that is wrong. It is an illusion. Of course, it's quite easy to imagine why we tend to think of time as linear. Our lives are, for the most part, linear. Everything happens in succession to the thing before it. 2014 turns into 2015, summer turns into autumn, morning turns into night.

Many religions and culture actually viewed time as cyclical, however. You'll remember the infamous 2012 doomsday predictions, said to have come from the Mayans' calendar ending. Their calendar did end...in a way. For them, 2012 was but the beginning of a new age. The world would not turn around, at least I don't think so. (That idea of a serpent eating the sun whole is a bit excessive, in my not-so-humble opinion.) For the Mayans, it would be like following the year 2012 with the year 0 or 1. For them, the universe was cyclical, and everything would repeat itself, slightly different from before.

Surprisingly, many cultures follow this idea, that time is a mutable "boomerang" that can repeat itself. It can manifest itself in different ways: Buddhism and Hinduism have the idea of reincarnation, that one can be reborn into a new life and live several lifetimes. For them, an individual does not die, but rather go on to a new life. There is no clear end date. Time simply marches forward, in cycles.

But even more interesting is a theory that has manifested itself in a book by an author named Thomas Cahill. Cahill submits that Judaism, and later, Christianity, are actually responsible for our view of time being a "straight arrow", from the Creation of the universe to the end times. Judaism and the religions that derive from it, as you'll remember from world history, have been very influential and so radically different from the rest of the world's ideas of traditional religion, with only one god, no death sacrifices (that I know of), and much more. We can chalk the idea of linear time to them as well, according to Cahill. Interesting theory, isn't it? I'm not a new-ager or someone that readily submits to new religious ideas at the drop of a hat (or at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, ha ha) but it's something to think about.

*      *      *

Back to books and lucre (which, incidentally, is a quote from Cloud Atlas. Talk about returning to the beginning!) There's not much else for me to mention, except that as a modern society, we're returning to this idea of a cyclical wheel of time. We love the idea so much, it's found in our movies and books and creative consumptions. Cloud Atlas, as I mentioned above, topped the bestseller lists ten years ago. Movies like Inception challenge our ideas of what is happening, and when, and in what pattern. The Harry Potter series has several instances, most notably with Hermione Granger's Time-Turner. Overall, time-travel and time mutability has become commonplace in our culture.
 

Before this ends, I leave you with two final quotes to think about.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools and states, you find indelible truths at one’s core. Rome’ll decline and fall again. Cortés’ll lay Tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian’ll be blown to pieces again, you and I’ll sleep under Corsican stars again, I’ll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you’ll read this letter again, the sun’ll grow cold again. Nietzsche’s gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities. Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger let me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we’ll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I’ll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.   ~Robert Frobisher, Cloud Atlas

And the second quote is, "Recently, I was forced to lie abed for almost a week. I had a cold, which developed into pneumonia..."

Everything ends where it began. :)

Khodafez.
-R.R.

The Problem with Literary Ladies

I am not quite a literature junkie. I’ll read it for school, and maybe even pick up a recommended novel, but literature is a tricky thing to read, especially when you want to read about girls.

I usually read regular old not-literature novels—and in terms of female characters, I’m a lot happier with the spread I read. I get girls who are fighters and diplomats and complex and dynamic in positions of respect and power.

I struggle with literature because more often than not, this is not the case.

As I just said, I’m not a literature junkie, but I’ve done a little research and dug out a few titles to support my point. They're either ones I've either read or recognize—and I am by no means an expert, which means you are welcome to challenge me. But in what I've read, I notice a few things.

Flickr Credit: r8r

Women face SO MUCH OPPRESION (socially… economically… politically… religiously…)

The Awakening—Edna Pontellier cannot self-actualize or be with the man she loves because societal standards say she must stay at home and be there for her husband and kids.

A Handmaid’s Tale—Offred is the possession of others and is basically an object kept for her reproduction value alone.

Pride and Prejudice—some idiot based his financial security and retirement on having a son, which didn’t happen, which means that in order to guarantee future security the Bennett sisters must marry because they are inadequate economic heirs.

The Scarlet Letter—Hester is publicly humiliated and despised because of her adultery and her baby daddy’s anonymity, and faces the threat of having her daughter taken away from her, and is only ever remembered as an adulterous instead of a really good seamstress and decent human being.

Jane Eyre—Jane longs for liberty and morality at the same time but by nature of those things the way she wants her life to work out doesn’t always; also, many people like her aunt and school and boyfriends try to take away her liberty, which is also a problem.

(Okay, I still love Jane Eyre, and it’s a decent struggle. But if we look at the group, it’s still a pattern.)

Flickr Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões

Or their own story is overshadowed

To Kill a Mockingbird—to be fair, there are some other ladies in this book, but the real story is about Atticus and Tom Robinson and Boo Radley; Scout isn’t exactly her own protagonist.

Flickr Credit: janwillemsen

Women sometimes don’t even feature in literature, or their presence wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test.

Lord of the Rings—Gladriel, Arwen, and Éowyn are the main female characters (not that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins doesn’t count) and none of them ever meet; it’s a story almost exclusively about guys.

Lord of the Flies—a group of boys on an island; no girls exist.

Of Mice and Men—if I recall correctly, there is only one female character, Curley’s wife (she doesn’t even get a name), who “exists as a symbol of temptation to Lennie.” She dies.

The Name of the Rose—takes place in a medieval monastery, the only girl is also nameless and the love interest of the narrator. In the movie the cracks against women made me want to punch the screen. Ugh.

Flickr Credit: Boston Public Library

Even if they do pass the Bechdel test it doesn’t indicate that the women are particularly well-written or complex.

Catcher in the Rye—there’s a conversation between Phoebe and her mom that allows this book to pass the test; all the same, the fact that it’s the only example of female bonding (even though Holden goes to a boy’s school and spends a lot of time alone, blah, blah, blah) doesn’t exactly redeem the story.

The Invisible Man—there were a few women in the story, I guess, it’s just that they didn’t get much attention. Just homemakers, proprietors of rooms to rent, plot devices. There’s nothing memorable about them.

Flickr Credit: Adam Mulligan

I haven’t read any of the following books, nor looked them up—but I can tell you what I know of their reputations. 

Moby-Dick—the actions of a vengeful [male] captain (Quigley? I can’t remember if that’s from Sherman’s Lagoon or not) result in a dead white [male] whale .

Don Quixote—a would-be [male] knight and his short and useful [male] friend go about trying to be chivalrous in Spain.

Frankenstein—a [male] doctor creates a [male] monster with his [male] henchman, Fritz or Igor or something. BUT I do recall that Dr. Frankenstein has a fiancé, who I think dies.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—I’ve seen the musical, and there are like three girls (not counting other prostitutes) that don’t pass the Bechdel test (I think?) BUT in terms of what I know about the book another [male] doctor tries to mess with the forces of good and evil and makes another [male] monster that kills many people. Most of them are male.

The Old Man and the Sea—well, there’s a male old man. I seem to recall he gets baptized or is a Christ figure, some kind of religious significance. And possibly there is a male boy.

~*~*~

DO YOU KNOW HOW DEPRESSING THIS LIST MAKES ME? Sure, they have literary merit. Sure, they say a lot about the human condition. And sure, they’re probably not the books that everyone is going to pick up.

It’s just that they do have reputation and respect, and if the question in literature is “should we write women who bond under the chains of repression or women who do nothing at all?” THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION.

And that is my problem with literature.

To compare, these are the books that sit on my Favorite Bookshelf, the majority of which are MG/YA novels. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of books in a series that I own.

This is the key:

* Female Protagonist
* Plot-significant female secondary characters
* Passes the Bechdel Test
* 3+ Female Characters
* Female Bonding Present

And these are the stats:

The Grisha Trilogy (2) *****
Artemis Fowl (10) ****
Ranger’s Apprentice (12) ****
The Scarlet Trilogy (2) *****
The Princess Bride **
The Pandora Series (3) *****
The Outsiders *
The Odyssey **
To Kill a Mockingbird *****
The Ever-Expanding Universe Trilogy (2) *****
The Lunar Chronicles (2) *****
The Twilight Saga (5) *****
The Things They Carried *
The Unwind Dystology (4) *****
Earthfall **
The H.I.V.E. Series (10) ****
The Importance of Being Earnest ****

Basically, literature has a lot to answer for. Maybe they want to describe what it’s like, and showcase what life is for women, but I think what is nice about novels is that they describe the way it should be.

And guys should not be the only ones who get to screw up big time in literature.

Flickr credit: Laura

What do you think? Do women receive enough attention in literature? Or, do you have any examples to show that there's a better side of literature I haven't found yet?

As The Year Turns

As of right now it is 5:00 p.m. on December 31st, 2014. 2015 is almost upon us (well, me, anyway. You might live in Europe or Oceania or Asia or anywhere else on the globe where the year has become new.)

As the year comes to a close, we often find ourselves faced with the same difficult, important questions we do every year. Mine tend to be along the lines of: How will I change and develop (physically, mentally, &c.) over the year? What will be different?

I also look back on the year. This year was really rather light, as years go. I didn't do anything too big. I didn't explore new places, like when I visited Hawai'i and Mexico for the first time. I didn't experience new, different settings that changed my thinking (like when I entered high school). I learned a lot more about myself and the world I live in, to be sure. (Everyone learns something new-humankind cannot be inactive and dormant, no matter how hard we try.) We always learn something new, our brains bubble and attempt to discover. But overall, I don't feel I changed quite a lot from 12:01 a.m. on January 1st, 2014 to right now.

We've passed halfway through the decade. 2010-2014 have come and gone, and I know a lot has happened. I've passed through middle and most of high school, I've learned so much more and developed many more skills, I've travelled to places I have only dreamed of.

2015 is a median, right in the middle of the decade. It's a magical year - it will only happen once. But think of it as a median for your life. Have you changed considerably since 2010? Have you tried new things, had new experiences? If your life is rather routine, try to change it. Read new books - goodness knows, there's thousands out there. Travel, or if you can't, read extensively about things through the Internet.

A year from now, I'll likely be wondering about the special moments which made 2015 amazing or substandard. A good idea is to keep a journal. I have tried and variously succeeded this year, for the first time since elementary school. But it's become a chore. The trick is to make it different. Write from someone else's personality, for example. Or write a journal entry as a letter. A letter to your future self. Ask them about your goals and whether you've succeeded. If you do, and you read this letter, you will feel endless satisfaction. If not, then you'll be so haunted by the ghosts of your past that you'll try, full of regret. And you will likely succeed. That's how I view it.

Have an excellent 2015, from us here at Wandering in a Blur. To be sure, we'll have much more discussions and conversations to have with you. It will be an amazing year.

Khodafez.
-R.R.

Knowing My Audience

Flickr Credit: Neal Fowler

My mom buys an off-brand of band-aids, which is in the bathroom, since that’s a great place to bleed. On it is a group of smiling children.

I don’t know if you have ever needed a band-aid, but I have had paper cuts and scrapes and bike accidents and tears and let me tell you this: when I need a band-aid I am usually not smiling.

I have concluded that perhaps this off-brand needs to reconsider its audience.

All right, I get it. We don’t like buying products that have crying people on them. Boo-hoo, blood and infections and crap. Just perks up your day, I’m sure.

But it’s funny, because I’ve never given a lot of thought to my audience before. It strikes me now that I’m in an actual editing phase of working with a novel; the first draft results in incredibly liberal writing, as perhaps you yourself know. When you write, you write for you and the story and the fifteen minutes you have before Dad insists it’s time to go to bed you have school in the morning.

It’s the later drafts when you realize, “Hey, somebody might read this.”

The band-aid box really isn’t looking for smiling people. The reason that company makes money is because people have accidents and pain in their life. If I’m completely honest, I don’t believe that a simple band-aid does much to create smiles either—what they do is fill a need.

If you have a band-aid, you’re protecting a wound from infection, you’re providing an environment for it to heal, and you’re potentially preventing the spread of disease as bacteria pass from your wound to the environment around you. Also, for some reason band-aids make me feel better. It’s a comfort item.

That is why people buy band-aids.

This begs the question: why would someone read my story?

There’s not as much a need for my story to be told. You will not get an infection if you do not read my book, nor is it likely that its pages will prevent the spread of S. aureus.

Why would someone read my story? And what do I want them to know coming away from it?

I’m not sure I have all the answers right now. I know that I do have a message I’ve been toying with—you can bargain with destiny. It’s not a popular message, either, and probably not a big motivator.

Why would someone read my story?

And if they would, who would that person be?

Band-aids look to the bleeding to make their money. I have to look to the reading to discover where I might make mine. There is sentiment, and storytelling, lessons learned and passions unexplored. There’s dreams. There’s pain.

But why would someone read my story?

And, if they would, will I ever find them?

Surprize & Discovery in 1807 England

Today's topic was inspired by two truly marvelous stories: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and the 2003 movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Both are set in roughly the same era: the latter in 1805 and the former begins in 1807. All three deal with England during the Napoleonic Wars (hence the title).

England during this time was in the middle of a very feisty and contentious war with France. It was also an exciting time in History: there was America's Ograbme, impressments, Ali Pasha taking over Egypt, the international slave trade ending...It was definitely a time of great change, excitement, surprize (I use the archaic spelling) and, of course, most importantly - discovery.

Russell Crowe as Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey.
Photo Credit: weebly.com

For the unaware, Master and Commander is, put quite simply, the story of a British ship, the Surprize, trying to destroy its French enemy, the Acheron. But it is so much more than that! It is a wonderful movie, especially if you appreciate the time period and context in which it takes place. There is no Jane Austen and her Mr. Darcy here - rather, a rough, but playful, exciting, but sobering account of war and discovery on the high seas.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, on the other hand, is slightly different. By slightly, I mean alternate-history slightly. In an alternate England, magic was alive and well until the 1600s - when the Raven King and the Aureate magicians disappeared. Everyone knew the history of magic - but none knew how to conjure it - until Mr Norrell, and later, his wayward disciple, Jonathan Strange come along during the Napoleonic Wars, and bring magic back to Britain.

Both of these have a main element of discovery among them - but also showcase its effects quite well: the benefits, the joy, and the dangers resulting from curiosity.

*      *       *

Discovery, of any kind, is always exciting and slightly shocking, by definition. To look upon or learn something that was never seen or known before is humbling, and yet there is a certain thrill about it. From discovering a new element, to naming a new species, to reading a previously unknown letter by someone famous, to unearthing a new artefact, to proving a new theorem - all provide a great sense of either hope or terror. Because, for every cure for polio or smallpox, there was also the discovery of Ebola and how to create an atomic bomb. For every discovery of America, there was also a great genocide and mass murder of countless innocent people. For as humans, we have been entrusted with the greatest gift of all: curiosity. But as humans, we also have a sadly notorious proclivity for using that curiosity for horrifying things. Keep this in mind.

*      *      *

Mr. Norrell, the
greatest magician of the Age.
Photo Credit: fantasybookreview.co.uk

In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the peaceful naivete of Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange, bravely trying to use Magic for good, is upturned when Strange is interested in the darker, more dangerous arts, and tries to use magic for these. For me, this is like to nuclear power. The possibilities of nuclear power, when first discovered, are endless, and amazing - virtually limitless power from a few radioactive metals and fission! But then came the atomic bomb. Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. Today, we live in a nuclear age. The days when schoolchildren were taught how to hide from an A-bomb are thankfully gone, but the spectre of attack still lies heavy over our heads. Such is human nature. But don't think I'm entirely cynical...

*      *      *

One of the most telling scenes in Master and Commander takes place when the Surprise first arrives at the Galapagos Islands, between young Lord Blakeney and Dr. Maturin:

Maturin: Here's an insect that's taken on the shape of a thorn to save itself from the birds.
Blakeney: Did God make them change?   
Maturin: Does God make them change? Yes, certainly. But do they also change themselves?  Now that is a question, isn't it?

There is a perfect reconciliation of science and faith here. Often these two are at bitter odds - which is correct? Which explains Life, the Universe, and Everything? As for me, I maintain that they are two different ways to explain the same thing - for me, God is equivalent to the Universe, Creation is the Big Bang, science is equal to faith, and a rosary is equivalent to a microscope. They are all one and the same.

*      *      *

Mr Norrell is a most secretive person. He is narcissistic, in a way - he wants to be known as the only magician in England, and while he and Jonathan Strange become good friends, they eventually become opposing magicians. This is partly due to Mr Norrell himself - the old "hero creates his enemy" prophecy-trope.
You see, Mr Norrell owns every single book of magic in England. When magic was unknown he was able to purchase every one rather quietly and on the down-low, but when magic became respectable and fashionable, everyone was on the lookout. However, Mr Norrell was able to get to every single one - spending up to 2100 guineas on one rare book. He did this to hide information - in short, to ensure he was in control of knowledge. (Shades of 1984 here...) This is partly why Jonathan Strange went his own way, away from Mr Norrell - unable to read the great books of magic which Norrell hid, he felt there was more to knowledge and set out to discover more. Strange is in the right here, partly. To me, Norrell represents the old, traditional order - trying to keep stability and a semblance of right and wrong which has stayed in place for centuries. But Strange is the young discoverer - the pioneer, as it were. He represents discovery, science, and progress. He is to bring the world forward in terms of Magic - but, of course, there are many dangers in wait for him. (Does he succeed? Well...you'll have to read the novel to find out.)

*      *      *

Part of the main plot of Master and Commander is the promise Captain Aubrey makes to Dr. Maturin - to spend time to explore the Galapagos Islands and make naturalistic discoveries, particularly that of a flightless cormorant. However, Maturin's hopes are dashed three times - all due to the Acheron being nearby. At one point, Aubrey is all set to sail away and capture the Acheron, but Maturin wants to stay behind, studying all the new animals.

To discover new species! It must be so exciting and tremendous, the act of being the first human to look upon a certain animal, or at least to name it and study its evolutionary traits. Maturin surely felt this way, and I'm sure the other great naturalists - Darwin on the Beagle, Linnaeus and his taxonomic organization - felt this way. However, again - progress and stability clash again when Maturin petitions Aubrey to stay behind.

Dr. Maturin: Jack, have you forgotten your promise?

Capt. Aubrey: Subject to the requirements of the service. I cannot delay for the sake of an iguana or a giant peccary. Fascinating, no doubt, but of no immediate application.
Dr. Maturin: There is, I think, an opportunity here to serve both our purposes...I could make discoveries that could advance our knowledge of natural history.
Capt. Aubrey: If wind and tide had been against us, I should have said yes. They're not. I'm obliged to say no.
Dr. Maturin: Oh, I see. So after all this time in your service, I must simply content myself to...hurry past wonders, bent on destruction. I say nothing of the corruption of power...

Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe as
Dr. Stephen Maturin and Captain Aubrey.
Photo Credit: weebly.com

Capt. Aubrey: You forget yourself, Doctor.
Dr. Maturin: No, Jack, no. You've forgotten yourself. For my part, I look upon a promise as binding. The promise was conditional.
Capt. Aubrey: We do not have time for your damned hobbies, sir!

Bear in mind, Aubrey and Maturin are friends. However, sadly, this is what happens when progress and stability - the stability of the Empire - takes place. I might be reading too much into this, but in a way it's the same argument betwixt Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

*      *      *

I hope you'll apologize for the strange way this blogpost was written - a series of vignettes, all slightly disconnected, is hardly the best way to go about writing. It's a bad habit I have gotten in. But I hope this was helpful. If anything, it's a polemic on human nature & discovery - and the outcomes they create when combined. Dwell on that, won't you?

Khodafez.
-R.R.

Cloud Cover

The moon was gone. That was the first sign. Light always travels faster than sound, it is said. Last night, this axiomatic truth was tweaked, slightly. The absence of light travelled faster than sound, and I noticed.

It was 2:00 a.m. I had retired to sleep early, around 9, the previous evening. Trick-or-treating, while fun and exciting (when else does one get to don a masquerade outfit and rob strangers of sucrose-laden treats?) had exhausted me. Otherwise, I should have stayed up until midnight, watching gruesome horror movies or reading Lovecraft or Poe.

But I digress. I could not sleep now, at this late hour. What could I do? Read? Listen to music? But then, as if in answer to my unspoken question -- the rain began to fall. First in small, light patters - then in large, grandiose torrents. I smiled. And so I lay there, just listening, just taking it in, just being happy.

*            *            *

I live in Southern California. Southern California is unlike any other place you might imagine, partly due to the weather. (Yes, there's Hollywood, and excessive traffic, but today is on the weather.)

SoCal is the kind of place where 60 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) is considered freezing. That is the norm. People don scarves and heavy coats for anything in the 50s, and woe betide the Angeleno caught in 40 degree weather! He'd probably go missing that night, found frozen to death in an ice block two miles away.

I say this partly in jest, but it's true: we are used to our hot weather. It's November now, and last week we had temperatures between 92 and 96 degrees, towards the end of October. Even in December, while the rest of the country (except Hawaii and the Southwest) is freezing in snowy, wintry weather, we go to the beach. We hold barbeques. Clearly we're dealing with completely radical weather.

My personal favorite type of weather is rainy, gloomy weather. Think Washington state, Oregon, that sort of thing. I really do love that weather. Last year, I went up to Monterey and the Bay Area (see my former blog for details), and I LOVED IT. I felt right at home, in 65 degree fog and drizzle. I love the rain. There is something poetic about it. I work best under rain. The rain stimulates me, somehow. Do you know how some people need white noise, or music, or some other auditory stimulus to sleep or to work or whatever? For me, rain is that key. I have written some of my best works under rain.

This probably says more about me and my personality than anything (oh! curse you, Freud!) but there is this inexplicable finesse and intricacy about it. It carries the idea that there is more to it than it appears. This doesn't make much sense right now, but let me elucidate.

*            *            *

Room X-8 is a bungalow, just like the other 10 that comprise the X-buildings at my high school. Inside, rows of desks are lined up, orderly. Motivational posters and mathematical formulas, and a portrait of Isaac Newton cover the walls. Two desks suffice to serve the teacher - one, in the corner with a computer and printer, for his grades, and the other, in the front of the room, with document camera and a legal pad and pen. This is where the mathematical master shows his craft to the young acolytes, eager (mostly) to learn. I had once numbered among them, but time and failure had worn down my mathematical curiosity to barely more than apathy. This was not the Master's fault. Rather, it was mine - things that others grasped easily, I struggled. Was it not true? Many late nights had I spent, working to memorize formulas and apply them - and yet, abject and utter failure.

It was December. Like always, it had been a rather hot, sunny season - but this day was different. The sky was dark and cloudy. As I trumped into X-8, it began - a light droplet to the forehead. I looked up, and saw clouds from afar coming to encompass the school. Others were now looking up, quizzically. Did you feel that? Look at the sky. Oh no, it's going to rain. Damn, I don't have a ride home...These betrayed my classmates' feelings towards the rain, and it showed their personality toward this most basic of natural processes. Trivial human worries, feelings, and qualms surrounded me as I walked into the room. Everyone was mostly disappointed.

I sat down at my seat, next to the window. My math teacher began the lesson, teaching about trigonometric formulas, its relation to calculus - which we would be learning in a few short months, and how important it was and how we needed to commit these to memory. I sighed. Math had - and still isn't - my strong suit. Particularly this section - half angle formulas and the like. I really had not understood this chapter, and I'd asked for help, looked up videos and practice problems, but nothing would stick. I tried listening to the lecture, but nothing stuck. There would be a test next week. I had failed the previous one, miserably. Would I fail this one, too?

The lesson finished. Twenty minutes left in class. As I began to work (and inevitably struggle) on my homework, it came down hard. Large, thick droplets fell from the heavens. I had been told as a small, five-year-old child by my grandmother that rain meant God was sad, and crying. I wondered vaguely at this. If so, He isn't the only one who's crying, I figured, looking at my homework. Why, oh why, couldn't I get it?

Suddenly, it all began to make sense. The formula just requires some tweaking, in this case! You don't need to add 2....now take the cosine of pi over 8...The rain was my conductor, I the simple instrument through which the sweet music of mathematical success came through. I don't know how I did it. Either way, I was floored. I looked out at the rain. Its subtle rhythms seemed to contain a hidden secret. This filled me with so much hope and promise for the future, that I could do anything and discover everything. And it does make sense. We are all raindrops, in a way, falling from the cloud of childhood through the atmosphere of Life.

The rain continued late, late into the evening that day. I do believe it was one of my most productive days. 

I passed the test with flying colours the following week, by the way. 

*            *            *

Many do not like the rain. Many despise it, groan about how the 405 or the 60 will be so heavy with traffic, and how outdoor dinner plans will be cancelled, and how inclement weather schedules are going to take place in school, and how miserable it all is, and how all you can do is stay inside.

I laugh at these comments. Because, really, the rain is probably the greatest of all weathers. It brings success, and joy, to me at least. It is true, what they say, about how one man's loss is another's gain. All it requires is a little rain. :)

J'aime la pluie, c'est ma vie et mon âme.

-R. R.

Henry V

I want you to understand that I have had a very busy weekend.

I spent Saturday getting through quite a bit of homework, not to mention other writerly duties and editing my application for the biggest scholarship in Colorado. I drank tea Saturday night and ate chocolate chips whilst I developed a new system of classifying villains I simply cannot wait to unveil in a few weeks.

Sunday was spent at church, and other than homework, editing two novels, planning another one, and writing other blog posts, I spent an hour and a half (or 30 Christmas songs, if you prefer), developing a Hogwarts castle and promptly filling it with dinosaurs.

Clearly, I am a busy girl.

For that, I have decided to humbly present a stimulating video produced by my favorite comedy show, so that you might learn a little bit about Henry V.

I expect your full forgiveness. Expect a better post next week!

As it Were

Flickr Credit: Lee Coursey

If you’ve heard at all about the recent controversy regarding the AP U.S. History censorship issues in

Colorado, let’s just say I’ve seen some of the stuff going on.

If you haven’t heard you can Google your own articles, but the principle of the matters it that the conservative school board is considering a review of the APUSH curriculum, and most people are considering this an attack on history and an attempt by the school board to try and control the amount of liberal material students will receive.

There’s a lot of things to be said about the issues, and I’m not going to pretend I have everything figured out. Do I think APUSH should remain uncensored? Absolutely. Does that instantly make the school board evil? No.

But I still know what is going on. A board member named Julie Williams has said she wants a curriculum that “present positive aspects of the United States,” “promote patriotism” and “should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” (source)

Is that necessarily a bad sentiment? I don’t think so. Patriotism is a noble goal.

My argument is against the second part of that sentence.

You cannot promote patriotism without explicitly delving into events that involve “civil disorder, social strife, and disregard of the law.”

We don’t have to condone it.

Slavery is a black stain on the American flag. Atrocities committed during the Civil Rights Movement, presidential assassinations, Jim Crow, abortion, Hiroshima, legal actions during the Great Depression, denial of the freedom to marry, pollution and our mistreatment of the environment, our actions in Vietnam, management and mistreatment of the mentally ill, Prohibition, messy embargoes, concentration camps and anti-Semitism (yes, I’m still talking about the US of A), blatant crimes against Native Americans, the Salem Witch Trials, prominent drug use, McCarthyism, the World Wars—these are things that mar my country’s history.

Americans have killed. They have been unfair. They have supported injustice and even gone against the very principles brave men and women founded this country upon.

I don’t feel guilty about it, because I’m not responsible for wars that took place fifty years before I was born. I had nothing to do with that.

But I do feel sadness—whether I was born or not, these events changed the people who lived during those times, which changed their children, which eventually changed the people who have raised me. Now I am who I am in part because of this. It is part of my heritage. It is part of my culture.

I am not proud that America has caused so much strife.

I am proud to learn that many of those obstacles we have overcome.

And I am ready to have faith that if history is to repeat itself, those telltale stains which still blot our everyday lives will continue to fade as we fight for justice and equality and freedom.

This is my pride as an American. This is what I hope students in Colorado will still have the right to learn, whatever the school board does or doesn’t intend, and I wish it just as much for every other student in America.

We are a great nation with a great many sins. We must not take pride in our sins, but still know them, because no matter what the future brings, the people who are alive (regardless of what country to which they belong) have a responsibility to all the other people who are alive, a greater responsibility to those who have died to get us here, and the greatest responsibility to those who will next be born.

What is that responsibility?

I’m sure everyone has a different opinion. All I know is this—we’re not going to solve today’s problems by sweeping yesterday’s problems under the rug.

So show me my American sins. I am not afraid.