Top 10 2k10

1. Best Coast - Crazy for You
2. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
3. Mountain Man - Made the Harbor
4. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
5. Harlem - Hippies
6. Woods - At Echo Lake
7. Wavves - King of the Beach
8. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
9. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
10. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

Crevecoeur's Letters From an American Farmer

Even though traditional American farms have nearly disappeared in our society, there is a continuous desire to revert back to the simplicity that the farm portrays, and while doing so somehow gain some sort of deeper knowledge of the world.

It's that paper prospectus time of the semester...

Oh, hello blog.

I almost didn't see you there. Apparently there are a few unfortunate souls that have been perusing my blog via Google via college essays on things like Ben Jonson that apparently nobody else but me publishes to the Internet. That's encouraging and exciting! Perhaps I shall BLOG ON throughout this mess, but until then I'll get back to my graduate school homework. I'm caught up in Creveceour right now and can't believe how current it is! Back to basics. On that note, perhaps I'll just keep writing in my journal.

Hidden Literary Allusion in Fun Home

Throughout the graphic memoir Fun Home, Alison Bechdel uses literary allusion to highlight specific details, and make comments upon her life. She begins the work with mention of the Icarus and Daedalus myth, that is there forward laced within her narrative. Joyce becomes an important part of Bechdel’s story, as does Proust, Fitzgerald, and Camus, seeing as their lives and works stand eerily parallel to hers at times. Still, underneath this given layer of literary allusion, Bechdel presents another layer that lies within her ornately illustrated frames, not outside of them like most of her lengthy meditation on other works. Books lie about the pages and are often being read by characters in a fashion that is easily glazed over. If the reader has not read the books that Bechdel throws into these frames without mentioning them, then a little part of the story is left unsaid. Regardless, Bechdel’s talented use of the graphic memoir genre is showcased by these little asides, as they tell a narrative within themselves, and Fun Home becomes much deeper than a traditional comic book.

On the first page of Bechdel’s narrative, the text Anna Karenina by Tolstoy lies on the intricate old fashioned rug beneath her and her father. The placement of this text immediately foreshadows the dysfunctional familial structure in Fun Home. In Anna Karenina, the Oblonsky family is torn apart by an adulterous father. The family is forced to stay together through all of their troubles, just to keep up appearances. The father refuses a divorce and makes the family stay together. Alison says the same of her father Bruce where she writes, “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not. He appeared to be an ideal husband and father, for example. It’s tempting to suggest, in retrospect, that our family was a sham. That our house was not a real home at all but the simulacrum of one, a museum” (16-7). These lines almost uncannily parallel the main plot of Anna Karenina, and the fact that Bruce has his house decorated in the fashion of the period when this novel was written even makes the connection stronger. Also, in Tolstoy’s novel the father gets caught because he is not only having an affair, but he is having it with the governess. While the governess may be a woman in Tolstoy’s work, it is extremely similar to Fun Home in that Bruce is not only having affairs with young men, but with the family babysitters who he specifically picks out from his classes to do the job. By simply placing Tolstoy’s novel on the rug next to Bruce on the first page of Fun Home, Bechdel is quickly exposing her father and his sins, but only to a select audience. Surely only a fraction of the memoir’s readership would be familiar enough with Anna Karenina to be able to figure out the rest of Fun Home’s plot.

Standing in immediate juxtaposition to the dense text of Anna Karenina, Alison’s father is shown in leisure on page 7, while reading a copy of Architectural Digest in front of his twelfth-grade English class. While the class looks incredibly disinterested, Bruce appears to not only be in concentration with the text, but in a state of leisure as well, with his foot propped up on a desk. Contrary to the dense works Bruce is often reading at home in his spare time, Architectural Digest seems to be much lighter reading. The magazine may also be a sort of wall between him as his classmates, because there is not too much you can assume of Bruce upon his reading of this text, other than he is interested in architecture, which is a very masculine field. He may want to appear as intelligent in front of his class, but at the same time he does not want to give anything away about his personal life. Even in restoring his home, we see Bruce’s femininity coming out, such as on the same page where he is pictured putting new wallpaper up in Alison’s room. Alison says, “This is the wallpaper for my room? But I hate pink! I hate pink flowers!” Meanwhile her father replies, “Tough titty.” Where it seems like Bruce is more feminine than his own daughter, the following frame where he is reading Architectural Digest suggests, just as Anna Karenina previously did, that he is simply keeping up appearances in front of the small town in risk of being caught as a homosexual man who specifically likes his young students.

Amidst a strong narrative moment on page 15 of the text, Bechdel stands at a young age playing war as her father lies on a chaise lounge concentrating heavily on The Nude by Kenneth Clark. This text also makes a sly appearance on page 99, as if it has remained one of her father’s favorites over the years that have passed between the two of these frames. Clark’s work meditates on the beauty and perfection of the nude human body, using a feminist perspective in paradox with the male Westernized view of the nude. On page 15, Alison is shown at a young age as a complete opposite of the ancient artistic perfection of the nude womanly body, as she looks like a little boy in her army helmet with short hair, holding the gun as a sort of ironic phallic symbol. On page 99, the same dichotomy lies within the illustrated frame. The Nude rests on a shelf while Alison, wearing the same clothes as her father and still sporting a very short haircut, reads and comments upon Esquire magazine. Alison says, “You should get a suit with a vest,” while her father observes the seemingly perfect picture of the male form and replies, “Nice. I should.” The parallel between the two pages where The Nude is a seemingly unimportant fixture in a frame, grows even stronger within Alison’s prose. She writes, “Between us lay a slender demilitarized zone—our shared reverence for masculine beauty. But I wanted the muscles and tweed like my father wanted the velvet and pearls—subjectively, for myself. The objects of our desire were quite different” (99). It is ironic that she describes the distance between her and her fathers relationship as a “demilitarized zone,” because of the stance she is in as a young child playing war on page 15. While Bruce wishes that Alison become more of an idealized womanly beauty, such as portrayed in The Nude, his concentration on the picture in Esquire, as well as his seemingly perfect Polaroid of the family babysitter Roy that looks eerily similar to the one in Esquire, shows his general obsession of the perfection of the human form. This obsession surely translates over to his house, as shown in his reading of Architectural Digest, and the fact that he wants to keep his family looking ideal, such as in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

As the narrative progresses and the oddity of the father/daughter relationship becomes more and more apparent, a scene on page 19 where he is laying in bed reading a pristine copy of The Stones of Venice by Ruskin only strengthens Bechdel’s prose. The Stones of Venice is a three volume work highlighting Ruskin’s obsession of Venetian architecture. Just as Bruce tries to replicate these old architectural styles and designs within his own home, his very being is taking on similar traits. Venetian architecture is large, beautiful, and made out of perfectly carved stones, whereas Bruce behaves like a stone, in such a cold manner that his own young daughter cannot even properly say goodnight to him. Where Bruce has worked so hard on perfecting every minute nook and cranny of the exterior persona of his family, just as the buildings in Venice were constructed, he has not worked at all on the interior. What remains is a mere framework and foundation of a family, perfectly molded out of cold, hard stone, but nothing else. There is no emotion or personality trait that is ever very readable within Bruce or his wife. The buildings in Venice are also separated by waterways and bridges, so that it is more difficult to get from one place to another, but there is still beauty in the water and gondolas regardless of the almost useless structure of the city. This beauty is much similar to that which Bruce creates by being fixated on elaborate chairs and chandeliers, but not the actual structure of his family. His children have to maneuver in odd and uncomfortable ways to reach him. This also gives an ironic twist to the way Alison’s father died; crossing the street. In fact, Alison’s gesture towards her father where she is only capable of kissing his fingers seems to be what Bruce may have been going for. He is merely an untouchable figure of royalty because of his ability to build this aesthetically perfect house, but he is not a father. The Stones of Venice, just like the other texts that Bruce reads throughout Fun Home, strengthens the character traits that Alison gives us and creates an even deeper understanding of the dysfunctional territory that she grew up in.

Upon a seemingly hysterical image of Bechdel’s father drinking a small glass of sherry on page 116, he is also reading a copy of The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison, that shows the layers of metaphor that lie beneath this page. The Worm Ouroboros is a fantasy novel focusing deeply on old mythology. The meaning of the worm, or snake is that it swallows its own tail and therefore has no beginning or end, such as the story does not. Just like Alison’s use of The Stones of Venice, within this frame where Bruce is reading The Worm Ouroboros, Alison is awkwardly trying to tell him “Good night,” and this shows how many of the issues within Bechdel’s narrative are coming full-circle, just like the image of the snake. Whereas she never mentions The Worm Ouroboros, she writes in the next frame, “And in a way, you could say that my father’s end was my beginning. Or more precisely, that the end of his life coincided with the beginning of my truth” (117), obviously alluding to the work. The snake in The Worm Ouroboros is just like the one Bruce supposedly sees that makes him jump back into the road and meet his fate, just as it is similar to the one Alison saw on her camping trip that seemed to mark a turning point in her life. The snake is also an ironic metaphor in terms of Bechdel’s narrative because, as she says, “It’s obviously a phallus, yet a more ancient and universal symbol of the feminine principle would be hard to come by” (116). Not only does Bruce seem to be living in a fantasy world such as the one that exists within The Worm Ouroboros, but details within his life seem to function similarly as well, if portrayed correctly by Alison. Everything seems to move cyclically.

In one of the most intimate scenes between Bechdel and her mother, on page 185, her mother is reading a copy of Margaret Drabble’s The Waterfall as she is informed of Bechdel starting her period. The Waterfall is a novel about a recent mother that is left by her husband and starts having an affair with a married man. Other than commenting upon her mother’s unmentioned dilemma of both maternal and sexual love, this text seems to yet again comment on her father’s affairs, while also commenting on the overall topic of menstruation. While a waterfall is both clean and a source of life, menstruation is the latter, but obviously not seen as the former, especially within contemporary society. Even the way Alison and her mother discuss the subject shows that menstruation is approached in an awkward and uncleanly way. Her mother’s hands start shaking and she has to start smoking to get rid of the stressful situation. This relates to a similar moment in the narrative where her mother decides to start sitting in on Alison’s bath time to try to start some sort of relationship, but still has her head buried in a book while doing so. Where Fun Home seems to be more of a meditation on the uncanny parallels and paradoxes between Alison and her father, these rare interactions between Alison and her mother shows an even stranger relationship between the two of them than Alison and he father. Quickly following the frame where Alison’s mother is reading The Waterfall, the conversation moves and is shown in speech bubbles outside of the house, on page 186. This shows the utter disconnect between Alison and her mother, that may even be worse that that between her and her father. Their interaction is so rare that when doing so it is almost outside themselves, and outside the walls of the house. It is otherwordly. On the contrary, through Alison and Bruce’s later letters and conversations, it seems like they have a lot in common, whereas her mother is rarely even in the picture. Perhaps this is because rather than taking time to realize that her own daughter is going through the tough time of puberty, her head is literally stuck in her own affairs, just as it is in the book in front of her.

Even though Bechdel uses literary allusion on the surface of her narrative, moving quickly from Greek mythology to Modernism, if Fun Home were anything else than a graphic memoir, it would be impossible for her to do what she does with these given texts. Anna Karenina, Architectural Digest, The Nude, The Stones of Venice, The Worm Ouroboros, and The Waterfall all relate heavily to the meaning and depth of Fun Home, but merely lie within the illustrated frame and remain only slyly alluded to, if at all, outside of it. Whereas The Worm Ouroboros is indirectly described in Bechdel’s prose surrounding the frame that it lies within, all of the other texts remain left to the reader to either assume something of or read. This sets Fun Home on a different plane than other graphic memoirs, as it urges other texts to be read and then multiple readings within itself. If it is not the magnum opus of the genre, it certainly is Bechdel’s as it not only bends the concept of literary allusion and genre, but that of the novel as we have previously understood it.

新しい音楽、と。。。

Here are some new(ish) records I like, and you should listen to (in no particular order):

WHY? - Eskimo Snow
The xx - xx
Sleep Whale - Houseboat
Sea Wolf - White Water, White Bloom
Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem
Lightning Dust - Infinite Light
Valleys - Sometimes Water Kills People

Note: this is not participation in NaBloPoMo...

I'm just procrastinating (only time I blog). But here's what I'm working on:

Reading my final book of the school year! That being, Garbage: A Poem by A.R. Ammons. Some parts blow my mind, some parts seem kind of poorly written. I guess I'll have more of an idea how I feel about it after I finish it.

Working (poorly) on two major essays/finals. The first is a little 10-15 pager on nature imagery and character formation in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. The second is a 20-25 page thing on Moby-Dick and the canon/sociology of literature.

Yes, I chose these topics. I should have just dug myself into a hole.

And of course I've been working at the falafel hut trying to make mad tipz.

That's it, until next time.

秋学期

So last time I was around here I had intentions of blogging soon after, but yet again months have passed. Alas, I've started graduate school in the CLE and have been living on my own (with 3 crazy art students) in the Heights. So the summer was good and the last few weeks have promised a busy fall semester as I'm still working a bunch with a heavy load of reading piled on.

In saying that, my two classes are pretty crazy polar opposites. My first class is absolutely wonderful and exhibits all of the qualities of the English classes I had Junior year when I decided to switch my major. The teacher is great, the reading list is great, and the two hours fly by. My second class is a sheer torturous two hours of boredom wherein two people raise their hands and ask a simple stupid question about a placement of a comma or an editors word choice and our entire class then is made up of talking about just that. Killlll me. I miss Japanese and a lot of my friends from Kansai are taking over the old Nihon right now in the Jet Programme and torturing me about it via their pictures and such on Facebook. I'd kill just to walk through Shinsaibashi and Namba and eat a good, cheap bowl of katsudon.

But other than that I've been spending too much time at Aladdin's thinking about how I need a job that gives me some sort of teaching/tutoring experience, so today I'm working on my resume and a cover letter. Get me out of that nepotist environment. Someone! PLZ!

And that's just about all I got after two months of no blogging. I read some good books over the summer, the early of which I wrote about HERE, and I even have winter break reading lined up (Zeitoun!). My Birthday was great and I'm officially old (22) and have been called ma'am a handful of times since. The weather is cooling down, my tomatoes are still growing, and Ryan & I have been gearing up for the winter by making some delish brunchy's and dinny's from market & garden food. My grilled cheeses with tomato and basil were amazing and I could live off of Ohio City Pasta and the Souper Market. So good.

In a couple weeks we're jaunting off to Montreal so maybe I'll have pictures for once. After that, Cedar Point, then hibernation.

新しいのライフ

Summer <3 Mix '09

1. Passion Pit - Smile Upon Me
2. Deerhoof - Snoopy Waves
3. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm
4. Cotton Candy - A Sentimental Song
5. Belle & Sebastian - Simple Things
6. Shugo Tokumaru - Green Rain
7. Bob Nanna - Blueprint
8. Chad VanGaalen - Clinically Dead
9. Yes Please - Love Probe
10. Asobi Seksu - Blind Little Rain

If you want one, let me know. I'm in The Heights now and I'm writing on my new iMac, but these things are for a different post at a later date. Perhaps not too much later.

。。。

Last night I saw Tokyo! at the Cleveland Film Festival. It was pretty much the Paris, Je T'aime of Japan: three short films by three different directors. It was alright, and I was constantly saying 'Hey! I understood that!' in my head, and was also in shock of the rapid Americanization of the language. Words I have learned in the past few years from my outdated text are now just the katakana equivalent of the English. I imagine that in 100 years, Japanese will strictly be a katakana language, but still an entirely different language than English, i.e. "Where is the Seminar House?" in English, and "Wairu isu sa Seminaa Housu?", or ”ワイルイスサセミナーホウス？” in Japanese. Still unable to be regularly understood by one another. Katakana is ugly, nearly runic, and will surely rid Japan of it's culture of cute. I'm absolutely convinced of this.

In other recent events, I've hit an all-time procrastination low (hence the meaningless blog entry), and haven't been reading much at all, let alone spending time on homework. I knew this time would come! I'm just ready to be done with this last semester so I can send my transcript along to Cleveland State and register for graduate courses! Yeah, that's right, I'm staying in Cleveland. But I think this is a good thing (assuming you're already questioning my decision). It will get me into the city for the first time in my suburban life, and will keep me near the things I love (Ryan, family, friends, Vine & Bean biscuits and gravy), and can't get rid of (Aladdin's, Nighttown, Coventry). Plus, Cleveland is probably the best city of the schools I applied to, as well as the cheapest, and most hood. I should be moving (to the Heights/Yuppyville?) as well as having a big graduation party at home in June. If all goes well, the summer months will only burn a couple tanks of gas for me, rather than 1/week. My Wolfsburg will love me back, and I don't imagine I'll be missing driving over an hour every day just to go to school and work. I'm over it. I'll also be ending my four years of work study in the Admissions office (!!!!), and four years as a DJ and Music Director at WJCU. I'm sad about the latter, but it's time to move on, take a break, and hopefully get involved at WCSB, or find something else to waste my time. Last week I tore some posters off the walls of WJCU (Gwen Stefani & really awful pop/punk groups from years ago), and replaced them with the new (Bonnie Prince Billy, M. Ward, Dan Auerbach). As for the Admissions office, they've treated me well, but it's just time.

Totally unrelated, I would like to mention a funny little Irish lady named Eileen who was one of my managers at Aladdin's for well over a year. As a longtime member of the Sunday opening crew, nearly against my will, I spent many sleepy and jealously beautiful Sunday mornings in the confines of those dank, falafel stinking walls talking with Eileen and sharing fattening cakes and cookies at the expense of Mr. Aladdin himself. She had the guts to teach at innercity schools and tell anyone exactly what was on her mind. She was an awesome and genuine person that will be missed.

The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
-Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning

一番二千八！

I have a little bit of downtime tonight since I finished a project for my Chaucer class early (Editions of The Canterbury Tales), so I figured I would post something I've been meaning to post for the last 2 months... My top 10 albums of 2008! At the same time, I'll catch up quickly with what has been going on as of late.

Top 10 (I mean, 15) of 2008:

1. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
2. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
3. Passion Pit - Chunk of Change
4. Dr. Dog - Fate
5. Pwrfl Power - Pwrfl Power
6. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
7. Lykke Li - Youth Novels
8. Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane
   
9. Foals - Antidotes
10. Lightspeed Champion - Falling off the Lavender Bridge
11. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
12. Magnetic Fields - Distortion
13. M83 - Saturdays=Youth
14. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing (Guilty pleasure alert!)
15. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie

2008 promised a lot more than 2009 has offered so far, but I will remain confident that some good stuff will come around later on. So far I've been digging the new Appleseed Cast and Matt and Kim, but not much else. My Music Director stuff at WJCU has been going well as I've been talking to most of my new contacts at aam, Pirate, Planetary, and a few other promotion companies. My replacement is studying abroad in China right now and will be taking over at the end of the semester when I graduate. As much as I'll miss the free stuff, I won't miss the hassle and mass quantities of voice mails and e-mails that I would never be able to respond to even if it were my only job.

I've also been working at the admissions office doing loads of data entry and filing, as well as Fady's falafel palace where it's been pretty slow and people have been cheap. Ah, the economy...

I've been reading a lot for my classes (ligitamately) for the first time in four years, and have also been regularly working out for the first time ever at the local YMCA's. Here's a list of the most recent things I've been reading:

• The Canterbury Tales: I'm taking a Chaucer course and we're reading most of the Tales along with some other poems and things.
• TS Eliot - The Complete Poems, selected prose, & his biography by Peter Ackroyd: I'm taking a course on Eliot and it's a little much. I love some of his stuff but I hate most of it. My professor just likes reading it aloud. We'll see how it pans out.
• A.S. Byatt - Angels & Insects: I couldn't take all of the rants about ants or the incest.
• Kazuo Ishiguro - Remains of the Day: Better than the latter but pretty lackluster. I would rather never read another novel about a butler again unless it's raunchy.
• Plato - Symposium: Changed my life.
• Foucault - The History of Sexuality: What the Foucault?

Other than that, add a little Japanese and then I've got nothing. I've just been waiting for replies from graduate schools to try to stake out my future after May, (EDIT: I was just accepted into Cleveland State!) and have been doing things with Ryan. He recently did a great presentation at Pecha Kucha night called Cleveland 3.1, we hit up the Tremont Taphouse for dinner on Valentine's day, and have been way too addicted to 30 Rock...

And on that note, it's Thursday night so I need to go watch 30 Rock after I down the rest of my White Russian.

Until a few months from now...

福助ぽん

I was in a bad mood from all of this schoolwork...

And then I found this!!

So. Cute. Speechless. It gave me the ability to write on! 11 pages done, 7 to go...

本、店、し、クリスマス！

Basically everything at The McSweeney's Store is half off. I got some Christmas shopping done the other day and of course bought some things for myself. This is a problem. Why?

Books I have bought/received as gifts and I haven't yet had the time to read:

• Michael Chabon - Maps and Legends
• Charles Burns - Black Hole
• The Book of Other People - Zadie Smith
• Dave Eggers - What is the What
• The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith
• The Children's Hospital - Chris Adrian
• The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets
• Alison Bechdel - Fun Home

Plus I get the New Yorker every week and barely get to open it. PLUS I've asked for tons of books for Christmas. What am I to do? I guess I'll read a book a day on Christmas break. That's my only solution.

Here are a couple of places where I'll be Christmas shopping online and you should too.

• Lush Cosmetics- All natural, vegan, awesome, handmade soaps and such
• Buy Olympia- Mugs made out of corn, paper goods made out of recycled paper, books from independent publishers. $10 T-shirt sale!
• Fred Flare- Store cute! Japanese imports, and lots of cute junk like these!
• And McSweeney's, of course

And here's a poem I wrote this week. It had to be in this specific form, which I'm not too keen on. It needs a little work but I think it's pretty alright. Right? I hope so.

*

50 Harley Salute

The black Lincoln
entered the gates
and into those
familiar, smooth, linear
aisle ways. 5mph
for the sake
of hitting whom?

After circling (rectangling) along
the guzzler was awarded
its resting place. I
stepped out onto the
lush, manicured, lively landscape.
Dressed up for whom?

Until I finally made it over
to the deep hole and
whimpered not for him, but
for the spectacle made in
his name. 21? More like

50 Harley salute.

Each one of those bikes was
accompanied with an accessory wearing its
most rebellious uniform. But what can
be more conforming—living by
a label or dying by one?

But of course I looked so plain
and boring by trying to be respectful.
They saw one thing about him and
attributed all those 65 years to
it. A patch on a vest.

Because when he was 21, not 50, he
sat in a lawn chair on the back
porch with my grandpa. Drinking cocktails, smoking packs,
shootin’ the shit. Never once did he wonder
if his funeral would be a fashion show
loud enough to make his life a cliché.

*

Yay bulleted lists!

PWRFL POWER!

In case you haven't heard of him, I'll give you the info.

A while back I got 2 EP's in at WJCU entitled Electrified Fruits and Extra Ball. Homemade looking things are usually terrible so I wasn't expecting much when I popped the first one in. The first song "It's Okay" came on and I was immediately hooked. Using Google all I could find on Kaz was that he had recently won a contest in Seattle that got him a starring role in an Esurance commercial. Strange. That was it, so I added him on Myspace. Last month I caught him at a CMJ showcase at Crash Mansion along with about 5 other people, and he played a lot of new songs. He was possibly the only person I saw at CMJ that didn't have a computer on stage doing half the work for him. It was kind of refreshing. Oh yeah, plus sometimes he sings in Japanese. But just a little bit.

So, I hope you check Pwrfl Power out. Here's his Myspace, and make sure to check out his top friends. You'll see my face!

Oh, and of course, here's the Esurance commercial:



♪♪♪

NaBloPoMo?

Yes, that's right. It's National Blog Posting Month once again. This will probably be my only post for the whole month, but that's okay right? This is my one evening of effort. But actually, it's not much effort since I'm just going to copy and paste some stuff below. Poetry, that is. So, I guess I should start off with what I've been up to as of late.

I took the GRE last weekend. It was effing terrible. 'Nuff said. I've been working on my graduate school applications off and on. I've got 4 going right now and just have to work out some stuff with my "statement" and such so I can get my recommendations rolling. My goal is before Thanksgiving break. That's next Wednesday. The writing sample I am going to use is a paper due next Monday for my 19th Century American Literature class. It's a 10-12 page/7 sources paper on Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Nathaniel Hawthorne's crazy short story "Wakefield." It's all about how the men in both texts think they're in control of the women, but they're so obsessed them that they're actually the ones being controlled. It's the only thing I've actually cared to work on for a while. Everything else has been pretty awful. My Philosophy of Music and Philosophy & The Holocaust classes have been taking all of the life out of me. They're just plain awful and both ridiculously writing/reading intensive.

A former John Carroll student is doing the JET programme right now (luckyyy) and hooked all of the advanced Japanese students (5 of us) up with high school pen pals. Mine is Manami and she's seventeen and has been taking English for her whole life. She wrote me a few weeks ago and I sent her a letter back last week. She writes in English with a P.S. in Japanese and I write in Japanese with a P.S. in English. It's good that she wrote first because then I knew how much decorating I had to do on mine. A lot.

Since my poetry midterm portfolio I haven't spent any time writing poems. I got a little burned out and because the entire class is absent just about every day and never does anything I just follow suit. But I (finally) got the portfolio back today (a month later?) along with a big A- so I figured I would post a couple of the poems from it. Once again, I'm not a poet. Don't hold this against me.

*

The Seesaw

My great-great Grandfather was a lumberjack
In the hills of West Virginia.
Those were the days of plaid shirts,
Pipes filled to the brim with tobacco,
Moonshine, and two-man saws.

His suspenders kept his pants up,
And his mouth kept on puffing,
But it was his hands and arms that worked
One end of the jagged and curved beast.

Its teeth stuck out for inches
And prided themselves for their sharpness.
Each one placed specifically and designed
To rid the earth of Mother Nature.

The wooden handles left blisters, then calluses
while the man on the other end was so in rhythm
With him that they had the same heartbeat,
As they sang the same song.

But now the saw hangs above my fireplace
Above pictures of me in wooden frames. Made in China.
Not only decoration, or dare I say antique
But the end of America, or what it once was.

Rock and Bite

The day he retired he drove his car
Into the woods and proclaimed, “I will never
Drive again!” He took the rocking chair
Out of the house and onto the porch.

He sat there for years, eating candy bars
And sharing them with my Pops if he was good.
He rocked and talked while looking at the trees,
And breathing in the fresh West Virginia air.

But what did he do for all of those years?
Eat chocolate, rock, and just enjoy the same scenery?
Wood creaking with every rock,
Blood sugar rising with every bite.

Until his stroke, and my grandfather
To follow in his footsteps, and that rocking
Chair rocking slowly in the front if my fireplace
In the wrong neck of the woods.

*

So, before I go- 1 more thing. Or 2. Check out Nomenclature and KateSpace who are actually participating in NaBloPoMo. And also, hello, is there anybody out there?

しのクラス

Writing fifteen pages of poems for a midterm is an overall bad idea. I can't really work on just one or two and I'm desperately looking around trying to find an idea. I'm excited for this to just be over...
But I figured I would take a break and post one here. Mind you, I'm not a writer and especially not a poet. I'm just taking this class as an elective/for fun. I thought it would be easier than it has turned out to be. Boo! But I'm pretty sure with all of the major loser Freshman in there with me what I've got the highest grade. Anyways, enough of my disclaimer. Here's mah shi:

*

The Extraction

Jaws filled to the brim with gauze,
And dried tears down my blowfish
Cheeks, I walked into a holding room
Where bright lights cued the pain.

The foreign objects (evolution gone wrong)
Were no longer a part of me.
Like little babies cut from the womb
Unable to make their proper exit route,
They now lay inanimate and covered
In after birth. Roots all twisty and turny,
Curled around as if they had been little feet
Dancing
Within my face.

What a party! I was only invited to it
The morning after when all that remained
Were empty sockets and a hangover
Strong enough to last a good two weeks.

*

So that's it. Wonderful, right? I'm being sarcastic. Now I'm off to finish the rest of this junk. Wish me luck, Tuesday I will be in NYC trying to forget about all of this.

Note: The word for poetry in Japanese is "shi" and it's one letter- し. Cute?

CMJ 2008

Here's what I'm up to next week. I'll be in NYC from Tuesday through Sunday. Maybe I'll even take some pictures for once. Here's what's on the game plan so far:







See you there.

Letterboxing?

What?

Well, while perusing Lake View Cemetery today I saw something blue peeking out from a pile of rocks at the bottom of a tree stump. I asked Ryan to open this thing up afraid of what would pop out. I figured it was drugs or condoms but then seeing a notebook figured it might be a diary or secret notes (!!!). What it ended up being was a little notebook that had been there for 2 years and was completely filled with stamps and writing from tons of different people. On the inside of the lid it said to go to Letterboxing.org if found accidentally and to please put it back in its original spot. How odd.

Anyways, I don't really know what to think of this. It's quite strange that I saw the box within the tree/rocks to begin with especially after reading the long instructions on how to find this specific box on the website. It's like a little time capsule I found. Worst of all the notebook was full. Should I go put a new one in the box? Am I getting sucked into this weird cult? THIS is the page for the specific letterbox. Maybe I'll "contact the placer." Regardless, I'm off to a hockey game and will have to continue these thoughts later...

ぞうさん、ぞうさん

ぞうさん、ぞうさん
おはなが長いのね
そうよ母さんも
ながいのよ

ぞうさん、ぞうさん
だれが好きなの
あのね母さんが
好きなのよ。

We've been singing children's songs in my Advanced Japanese class. This is a traditional song about an elephant. Roughly translated:

Mr.Elephant, Mr.Elephant
Your nose is long, you know?
That's right, my mom's is
long too.

Mr.Elephant, Mr.Elephant,
Who do you love?
Ah, it's my mother
That I love!

I'm guessing his mother got killed for her tusks. Or am I just thinking too deep into it? And in case you wonder, here's a 1989 creepy kids show with the song. Embedding is disabled so here's the link: clicky.

Misc.

1. Bicycles are time machines,
As he rides he appears to be
From any era.

, or, my poetry class is ridiculous. 'nuff said.

2. なんでやね？！ Learning Japanese isn't the same without learning Kansai-ben simultaneously. There's no phrase that can live up to "Chauchau chau n chau?" or, "It isn't a Chow Chow dog isn't it?"

3. Rachel Ray's Carbonara recipe! Gives you can excuse to drink the rest of the bottle of wine used for cooking and possibly even some more.

The Teenagers

Okay, so this may be a little outdated... I'm alright with that though.

Homecoming:

ポエム

At first I was bummed that I had to stay home tonight and miss a promising show at the grog shop as well as my other half, but then I came upon reading this. After reading some shitty Hawthorne short story as well as some old wordy Arendt Totalitarianism junk earlier today this was like a breath of fresh air. Ahhhh... Enjoy.

Variation on the Word "Sleep"

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

-Margaret Atwood
Courtesy of this website

うん、ううん、うん、ううん。。。 あの。。。

School starts Tuesday. One of my professors shot me an e-mail in June with a list of 8 books to buy and 1 to read before the class started. So of course 2 months later I'm trying to plow through it. Here we go again procrastination. This is what I'm up against this semester:

EN 301 - Intro Poetry Writing Workshop.
EN 371 - 19th Century American Literature.
EN 488 - History of the English Language.
JP 301 - Advanced Japanese.
PL 398 - Philosophy of Music.
PL 450 - Seminar: Philosophy & the Holocaust.

So the summer is ending although I've been pretty much over it for a while now. I quit my job of a year and a half at Aladdin's but will soon be back to my poorly paying work study job and my non-paying job at WJCU.

Books I've read over the summer? Not as many as I had lined up. Kafka on the Shore and After Dark by Haruki Murakami, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Currently: War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust by Doris Bergen.

Flipping through my old Genki book I found a column where I appropriately wrote "wtf!". There are 6 words for wife in Japanese. I've forgotten what little I have learned.

But this is it for now. I'm sure I will have nothing interesting to blog about but I will do it anyway as opposed to the last few months of silence. You can suffer through my boring blog or just not read it? Yes. Now I will leave you with a few of my favorite back to school material goods.

-Moleskine 18 month planner. Like a Bible.
-Cardigans! Sloppy yet smart.
-Eco-friendly pencils. My cat likes these. I only have 4 left.

スカンクツロニクス

(Update: iTunes updated yet again and all of my problems are gone. I must have not been the only one.)

Thanks to the iTunes update I'm now incapable of plugging in my iPod or putting a CD in without my computer freezing. This led me to my old CD cases and the millions of burned discs with pink bubbly teenage letters all over them. I feel like I'll be telling my grandkids one day, "One time there was this thing called Napster and you could get whatever you wanted on the Internets for free and then we put the stuff on CD and called it burning!" Because of all of the free time I had back then (oh, those teenage years) and all of the crappy punk rock I listened to (everything imaginable), I have about 5 versions of every song ever written by bands such as, Yellowcard, Thursday, The Early November, and of course Blink-182. I'm super weird about demos and usually like them tons more than the real thing. Lo-fi non-polished music is just a lot easier for my ears to adore.

Anyways, along this nostalgic journey I ran across some local stuff from when I was in middle school and early high school. It's hard for me to even fathom all of those bands and let alone shows that were around the area back then. So I put the CD's into my record player and listened to a lot of shitty stuff but stuff that makes you want to smile, dance and get rowdy. Rubber Cement, Howaboutno, Imperfect, Katty Whompus... Anyways, to make a long story short I ended up listening to the whole Skanktronics album and then remembering their video for Circuit to the Sun. Low and behold, I find the thing on youtube. It's a real masterpiece, let me tell you. So here it is:

夢の日本

So I usually try not to post ridiculous things which actually results in me not posting at all, but I had this amazingly weird dream last night which I feel needs mentioning even though it's all over the place.

So I was back in Japan, or so I figure it was because I was traveling with this dance team. We were performing this huge routine on a frozen lake and I was having problems with my tap routine because I kept slipping on the ice. Anyway, our team was famous because we made the biggest human pyramid ever. I was on the bottom holding this thing together and there were millions of people on top of me. We were right by a pier where people were watching us.

Anyways, I was pissed we had to stay up really late doing activities with the team because I had just seen an ad in a magazine that they had okonomiyaki at Arby's in Okayama. Apparently Okayama is a prefecture above Shikoku which I really wanted to visit at one time but also am reading craziness about in Kafka on the Shore right now. Anyways, it didn't even look like okonomiyaki. It was just waffle fries wrapped up in pita. I have no idea.

So to make a long story short, I ended up going to some place that I have had dreams about before. It's a big fancy hall type place with dark wooden walls and furniture that caters specifically for American's staying in Japan. So I was with Drew and we ate and talked to an old man who ended up having to pay for us because we didn't have any cash in our pockets. I wanted to become a server in this place. This money problem resulted in me having to search to find a Post Office ATM. This of course made us end up in the underground maze of malls which is Namba in Osaka. Eventually I found one and returned to this amazing food place with 2,000 Yen for the old man.

♪The above picture was taken yesterday on a walk in 90 degree heat. The cottonwood trees decided to go nuts which resulted in it snowing in Ohio in summertime. That's my annoying dog Gomez.

夏のミックステープ

I made a mix for summer but the Internet refuses to let me put it up. I think this all stems back to how much Metallica sucks, right? Well, here's the track list anyways because it was good stuff.

Tracks:
1. Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper
2. Animal Collective - Water Curses
3. Foals - Cassius
4. M83 - Kim & Jessie
5. French Kicks - Over The World
6. Los Campesinos! - Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s)
7. Flowers Forever - Wet Diamonds
8. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Modern Mystery
9. New Bloods - The Cycle Song

どうして？

The end is near and I'm about to write my last paper for Late 18th Century Literature. I just read the prompt and realized that out of all of my classes this semester I might just miss it the most. Okay, maybe not miss but it may have been the most memorable. Note that there is a choice between these two prompts but they are exactly the same.

Prompt:

Choice one: A la Tristram Shandy: You are to write a personal response to a writer or work that we have taken in this course. The response, however, being personal, requires you to explain yourself to the reader. You should account for why this particular writer or work is the one you chose rather than any of the others that you could have chosen, and this leads you to other topics, never allowing you to return to the original topic, though you are aware that the assignment requires you to discuss the chosen topic. In other words, you are to create an essay in which the digression from the topic becomes the essay. 5-7 pages.

Choice two: A la Tristram Shandy: you are to start writing an essay on any writer we have taken for this course, but the writing or the writer reminds you of something else, the something else being something that you have been meaning to discuss. In other words, your writing divers from its topic, but the diversion becomes the essay. 5-7 pages.

So, my professor has been teaching at John Carroll for 40 years and he's taking a sabbatical next semester to ride his bike in South America. He obviously does not want to waste his time reading boring scholarly papers. I'm alright with that.

女と男!

In my Feminist Philosophies class I dream of having 8 children while others raise their hands and preach that marriage and even love are social constructs. By 8 I mean 10 or 12. I'd live on a farm and when my hubby and I were not fulfilling our normal roles as mother and father (and surely female and male), we would also be the family teachers, doctors, chefs and artists.

The girls and I would cook wonderful food all day and sew and dance in between meals whether it be inside with all of the windows open or outside in the pure sunlight with our armpits naturally smelling awful (but happy nonetheless). The older girls would be playing instruments in the kitchen with the cats resting on top of the refrigerator batting their paws at the loud noises and nonchalantly grabbing our sleeves as we walk by. Or maybe they would be reading Descartes or Hemingway out on the porch in my great-great grandfathers rocker that earlier they had decided to Mod Podge with old newspapers. I would be teaching the younger ones how to make food from all of the goodies we gathered out of the garden earlier in the day. Practical Chemistry and Mathematics. A couple would make juice or run out to milk the cow. They would knead dough, churn butter and throw food at each other. I, too would be learning from this whole experience with a fist-full of flour flying out of my hand. Domesticity, love, freshly sewn skimpy dresses, womanhood! The dog would lick up our messes and we'd give him ponytails.

Dad would be fulfilling his manly roles, of course. These would consist of little chores around the house early in the day with the boys and maybe a trip out to the woods to do some reading and writing in the late afternoon before supper. They would make mud pies and talk about flowers and trees while learning all of their proper names. Maybe they would be reading the Wonders of the East or the Vercelli Homilies in Old English. Loud and proud. They would carve their names into trees using katakana and possibly take some acrylics out there with them and paint simple yet lovely things on rocks and leaves. I'd send the enormous, shaggy, dirty but lovable dog out to gather up the men whenever the girls and I were finished setting the house up for dinner. We would do an extremely quick cleaning job while listening to music from my youth and letting the birds fly around the living room and eat freshly picked strawberries. Cleaning up old messes and creating new but not caring a bit.

After dinner some of us would read aloud, some would run off to finish making the wine we have been working on for a while. If it was cold we would use the kotatsu and fall asleep under it with all of the cats in the middle by our feet. The others would be playing with the new kittens that were just born out in the hayloft. Maybe the boys would mix a few things up and blow up a wall or spend the night up in their tree house. We'd dance and play the omnichord. Always something new, always something to learn from one another. Always fulfilling the roles of onna and otoko and loving every minute of our sexualities and "oppressions."

Identity Through the Drink

Throughout Jack London’s John Barleycorn and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the authors use alcohol consumption to construct multiple identities within their characters. In John Barleycorn, Jack London has an identity of his sober self, which stands alone from who he becomes when he is consumed with the drink. London’s use of the name John Barleycorn shows that when he is drunk he is literally changing into a different person. In The Sun Also Rises, the characters sober identities are continuously juxtaposing their alcoholic identities but in a much more subtle way than in John Barleycorn. Rather than having a distinct transformation into a drunken identity as London does, Jake Barnes and the other characters in The Sun Also Rises constantly blend sobriety and drunkenness together with a quick stop in a café or swig out of a special leather wine bottle. Although both London and Hemingway utilize the drink to create identities in their characters, it is important to look at the differences between the strict separation of London’s sober and drunken selves and the problems that arise between characters in The Sun Also Rises with the assimilation of sobriety and drunkenness.

Jack London begins John Barleycorn, or his ‘Alcoholic Memoirs,’ by defining the character that is John Barleycorn. He says to his wife, “I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend. He is the kind of liars. He is the frankest truth-sayer. He is the august companion with whom one walks with the gods. He is also in league with the Noseless One” (2). John Barleycorn’s character is paradoxical to that of Jack London. He is physically and mentally unstable and so sinful that he is on par with the Noseless One, or the Devil. London thinks that he and his alcoholic self can be friends but constantly realizes that his sober self could never be friends with Barleycorn even through he continues to try. This battle between London’s two identities is strong and shows that even though he constantly tries to connect the two selves, he can never succeed in doing so because what he becomes when he is consumed with the drink is everything London does not want to be.

At the beginning of The Sun Also Rises, the normality of extreme alcohol consumption immediately becomes clear. Robert Cohn appears at Jake Barnes office because he is obviously upset. He says, “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it” (18). They quickly precede downstairs to the café whereupon they begin drinking whiskey and soda and Jake plans on quickly leaving Robert but he reiterates again, “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it” (19)? Jakes response of “What the hell” (19) shows that he is almost offended by this question. He thinks that Robert is being foolish for wanting a change of scenery and attributes it only to the book he just read. Jake seems jaded and almost depressed in saying that nothing could possibly change the way his life is going. He says, “I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing you could do anything about, because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too” (20). In saying it is not a thing you could do anything about, Jake is accepting that there is a problem in the way they are living their lives but he simply seems hopeless in finding anything to fix it. Instead, he waits to get off work and drown these thoughts away with another drink, or an aperitif, a before dinner cocktail. Throughout the workday and whilst in a conversation meant to be serious, these characters are constantly subject to a constant fluctuation of identities because of their consumption of alcohol.

Towards the beginning of London’s John Barleycorn, it seems simple for London to keep his alcoholic identity separate and out of his life because of his sheer hatred for the taste of alcohol. He thought that since he did not like the taste of alcohol he would be able to have the easy way out by not succumbing to it. Once London figures out that male bonding, pride and friendships all arise in bars and that treating one another to a drink can strengthen this, London quickly transforms into Barleycorn and finds his identity quickly being transformed. He says, “Either I must throw overboard all my old values of money and look upon it as something to be flung about wastefully, or I must throw overboard my comradeship with those men whose peculiar quirks made them care for strong drink” (50). At this point London realizes his identity struggle. Giving into the taste of alcohol, buying a few drinks for others and of course accepting the drinks others buy for him is what he realizes he must do if he is really going to become friends with these men. What he is not coming to terms with is what he defined the drink as in the beginning of the novel. Completely shifting one’s identity from sobriety to drunkenness is also shifting it from godliness to devilishness, and creating an inner struggle between essentially two opposite identities.

On Jack Barnes arrival to Spain, he has a revelation about his identity after he decides to enter a cathedral at the end of the street where he and his friends are staying. He says, among much other rambling, “…as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time…” (103). Jake’s struggle with religion, Catholicism in this case, crosses over to the struggle between him and the drink. His hopelessness in religion and the fact that he believes he can never do anything translates to the same problems he has with alcohol. He can never seem to escape drinking because it is simply what he and his friends do. A day does not pass that they do not make an exit from reality by sitting in a café and drinking alcohol or even absinthe at times. In the struggle between Jake’s sober identity and alcoholic identity, the alcoholic identity is often what is shown because of these trips into cafes, but in this small instance in the church we are able to see that Jake wishes there was something he could do about not drinking, but the alcoholic identity is so strong he feels like he can never shake it.

When Jack London finally breaks away from the identity of John Barleycorn, he explains that if alcohol were banned in prohibition he would have never been able to have a taste and therefore never would have taken on the alcoholic identity that is John Barleycorn. He says, “The White Logic now lies decently buried alongside the Long Sickness. Neither will afflict me again. It is many a year since I laid the Long Sickness away; his sleep is sound. And just as sound is the sleep of the White Logic” (207-208). Again London personifies the drink as a separate identity to that of his sobriety. He has finally buried this identity and with it, all of the problems it brought him with the White Logic. Now that John Barleycorn is nevermore, his identity is now that of Jack London, rather than his alcoholic identity. He describes his alcoholism as a Long Sickness, capitalizing it gives it a sense of dominance over him, that of which he has done away with. Jack London really feels as if he has lost a part of his identity, but in reality what he has lost is the separate identity that is John Barleycorn.

At the end of The Sun Also Rises, Brett and Jack reflect upon their lives and what could have been if not for the alcohol. They struggle between wanting wine and not wanting it as they try to have a serious conversation. Brett says, “Don’t get drunk, Jake don’t get drunk” (250), and follows up by saying, “we could have had such a damned good time together” (251). Both Brett and Jack wish that they could have been together but their histories with alcohol make this idea seem unreal. Their relationship struggled just as Brett struggled with her alcoholic identity in which she continuously drank with various men. Perhaps such as London, if prohibition would have happened in England and Brett would have never been able to have the first drink of liquor which led to her alcoholism, maybe she would have had a different identity in which she could have been with Jack. Also, Jake’s depression and hopelessness stems from the drink and gives him an overall sense of failure and despair towards life. Jake and Brett could have had a good time together if the alcohol would not have made them into completely different people. The fact that Brett is begging Jake not to get drunk but yet wants a drink herself and agrees to him buying two bottles of wine suggests how comfortable she has gotten with her alcoholic identity. Even though she wishes she could change things, the drink has given her a sense of hopelessness and failure towards life. They both feel as if they will never be able to change things.

It is clear to see that in John Barleycorn, Jack London always identified his sober self and drunken self as two separate entities almost like split personalities. In the end he was able to properly bury his other self so that he could return to the identity of Jack London. In The Sun Also Rises, the characters are aware of the identity in which alcohol is giving them but unlike Jack London, their sense of despair and failure towards life renders them incapable of burying their alcoholic identities. Also, because the alcoholic identities of the characters in The Sun Also Rises seem to encompass every aspect of their lives, even at work, they always seem to be drinking or making a quick stop into a café. It is hard to tell at any point in the novel if the characters might be just a little tight. The merging of alcoholism and sobriety in these characters makes it almost impossible for them to be able to fully separate both identities and bury one such as London did. Only small glimpses of reality show in the characters such as Jack’s praying experience, but even still they remain hopeless and quickly make a mental escape into a café. Whether London’s definition of John Barleycorn stands true or not, it is easy to see how sobriety and drunkenness have the ability to create different and opposing identities within one person. As London says, “I am. I was. I am not. I never am” (2). The identity confusion such as that in Brett and Jake only verifies the paradoxical sober and drunken identities of that of Jack London and John Barleycorn.

♪A little paper for my Alcohol & American Literature class. Rough around the edges.

雪！

Derbyshire:

My car:


Bundles:

On My First Daughter vs. On My First Son

Ben Jonson wrote two poems, or epitaphs, mourning the death of two of his children. On My First Daughter was written after the death of Jonson’s six-month-old daughter Mary, and On My First Son was written after the death of his seven-year-old son who is referred to as the child of his right hand; the translation of Benjamin in Hebrew. These two twelve line poems are similar in style and subject matter but their tone and portrayal of the loss of his two children is very different. Although Jonson’s word usage and imagery can be contrasted so that it appears as if he favors one child over the other, it is instead Mary and Benjamin’s ages and sexes that distort Jonson’s state of fatherhood by turning it into a matter that is heavenly in one respect and earthly in the other.

On My First Daughter begins with a sense of grief only to be juxtaposed to the sense of calmness as Jonson realizes he should rid himself from his regrets because his daughter is in heaven. Jonson states,

Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,
It makes the father less to rue.
(ll. 1-4)

An immediate sense of fatherly detachment is apparent because Jonson is not addressing his daughter directly. Here Lies is a broad statement usually written on a gravestone, not said by someone mourning. Still, this speaker acknowledges in the first two lines that the parents are feeling grief, or ruth, and also that with the loss of Mary they are losing a little of themselves. Since Mary was the daughter of their youth, what they are losing is a part of what made them who they are now, their youth, or their most innocent and special years. Transitioning from the grief and loss of the first two lines, Jonson feels this regret replaced by reassurance that his daughter, a gift from heaven, is returning right to where she came from. Jonson loved his daughter and grieves for her but at the same time his relationship with her allows him to know and be content with the simple fact that she is in heaven.

In contrast to the beginning of On My First Daughter, On My First Son begins with a defined sense of grief and loss for Jonson’s son Benjamin. He says, “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;/ My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy:” (ll. 1-2) Jonson begins the poem with the direct address farewell, thou child that shows his closeness and outward relationship with his son. This address also shows that the poem is serving as a personal goodbye or farewell from Jonson to his son. Rather than immediately stating the child’s name like that of Mary in On My First Daughter, he first names his son the child of my right hand, and joy, which is the translation of Benjamin in Hebrew. This unique naming allows Jonson to explain his strong connection to his son rather than simply using his name. His right hand is his dominant and is used for his passion that is writing; therefore with the loss of his son he is losing a part of himself, his creative and powerful right hand he uses to write poetry. And then he simply loses his joy and happiness. Jonson feels as if he had all of his hope invested in the idea of his son living a great life and now that he is gone he now feels like this was a sin. Although both poems begin with grief and loss, a strong juxtaposition arises between the loss of youth he feels with the death of his daughter Mary and the loss of his right hand that comes with the loss of his son Benjamin.

In On My First Daughter, Jonson uses his daughter’s young age of six months along with her name Mary as a symbol of innocence, virginity, and purity, which makes Jonson become even more distant from the poem and the death. He says,

At six months’ end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train
(ll. 5-9)

Mary’s death at an extremely young age allows Jonson to become comfortable with the fact that she will remain protected and kept safe and innocent enough to make a quick return to heaven. Her mere name, Mary, or heaven’s queen seems to create an even stronger link between her and heaven rather than her and Jonson, but it seems as these reasons are why he feels connected to her. Although her mother’s tears are comforting her in heaven, her father is also grieving her death but just in another way. He may not have held such pride and hope for her as he did for his son because he did not have a chance in the six months to do so. It is instead a connection through the understanding of her young innocence and virgin-train to heaven that Jonson grieves for his daughter.

Jonson intensifies his loss by claiming that his fate is to never again be a father. He claims that the seven years of his son’s life were merely lent to him for a short period of time and then taken away against his will. He says,

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy,
(ll. 3-6)

For lending the seven years of his son’s life, Jonson now must pay with the pain and grief he is feeling, but also with the loss of the title father. He says that it is his fate to never again be a father because he would be cheating his next child out of the vast love he had for Benjamin. The state of fatherhood Jonson held in regards to his son Benjamin grew throughout the seven years of his life and did not have time to grow this same way between he and the six months of his daughter Mary’s life. Because of this vast difference in Jonson’s role as a father he now is lamenting holding this title.

On My First Daughter ends with the lowering of Mary’s body into the ground. He says, “Where, while that severed doth remain,/ This grave partakes the fleshy birth;/ Which cover lightly, gentle earth!” (ll. 9-12) Jonson again uses his daughters name Mary and its connection to purity, innocence and fragility to show his love for her. He wishes that the earth cover her gently so her body remains in its same innocent and virgin state within this grave so that her soul is free to make its journey to heaven where it came from. The grave is but for the flesh, her body and whatever else is connected to her materialistically through earth, whereas heaven will be home to her pure, innocent soul. Jonson is content with this at such an early point in mourning because of Mary’s young death. Rather than feeling emotionally and physically invested as he felt with the raising of his son Benjamin, he knows that in Mary’s young death he can be certain that she is safe.

Jonson concludes On My First Son by grieving the loss of his son at such a young age and reiterating the fact that his son was his best creation. He then makes the shocking vow to never love anything too much because of the pain and suffering it will cause once it is gone. He says,

To have so soon ‘scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
(ll. 7-12)

Even with the world being filled with rage and misery, Jonson wishes his son could have lived long enough to fully experience it. Jonson’s hope and love for his son molded him into being his best piece of poetry that quickly escaped out of this world. Since he has lost this best piece, he no longer has any motivation to create anything else. Lastly, Jonson’s vow is to never enjoy loving another as much as he loved his son because it now is too much of a loss because he is gone. He may have still held the hope of being a father after the death of Mary because he never got to fully take on the title within the short six months. Granted another chance with Benjamin he cherishes the title and puts his heart and soul into fatherhood just to have it taken a way just has he gave it a chance.

Throughout these two poems it is easy to see the paradoxes in tone, symbolism and word usage that may support the claim that Jonson favors his son Banjamin over his daughter Mary. Although Jonson addresses Benjamin directly and with personal connections between his loss of Benjamin and the loss of his right hand, his address to Mary also portrays a sense of loss. Jonson mourns Mary’s young death but in a different way. With her mere six months of life, he was never intrigued with the sense of fatherhood that built throughout the seven years of his son’s life. Rather than the personal growth of a father/child connection that builds over the years, Jonson held more of a spiritual or heavenly connection with his daughter. In his eyes she had just made her arrival on earth from heaven just to return again whereas Benjamin lived not long enough to experience the wrath of the earth but long enough to become a person and develop the father/child relationship. Through On My First Son and On My First Daughter, Jonson loses both his youth and his right hand resulting in a vow to take what he loves and never like too much.

♪An iffy paper for Renaissance Lit.

春ブレク？

On spring break I went bowling, spent hours in bookstores and bought nothing, saw a French film and another that was good but a little mediocre, ate a brat, read an extremely little amount of a big book, slept and snuggled, licked cannoli filling off my hands, and pushed my boyfriend into the snow. And now it's almost over just in time for me to work three days and have a paper to write for Monday. What a joke this is John Carroll! Reschedule this for next year, please.

In other news, voting is next week and I still have no idea what I'm going to do. I figure the decision will be made at the very moment I go to pull the lever or whatever you do nowadays. I have absolutely nothing interesting to say anymore. I blame it on this snow and it's ability to wrap a cardigan around me and force girl scout cookies in my mouth which in turn weigh me down to this bed.

ヌズ

It's Radiothon, and yes, that is Sean Penn and Dennis Kucinich. They just happened to stop by the WJCU metal benefit concert last Friday night at the Beachland Ballroom. What? Yes, metal. Why? I have absolutely no idea, but there's the picture to prove it!

In other WJCU news, I returned from my week hiatus and now have both a backpack and a mail crate full of CD's. I hung fresh posters in the studio on Monday covering up old things like Linkin Park with new things like Polysics. And last but not least, tomorrow is the Radiothon show where me and my co-host Mark will be begging for money after every song. 8-10pm.

So I'm alive. Sore and flushing with saltwater. Five pounds lighter. Crazy in love. Next week: Spring Break in beautiful 20 degree Cleveland. I will return with a tan.