Blog.

Hello, the very small, at least I’d like to think its small, audience to my very own little entity within the internet, my blog. This blog has been assigned to me as an assignment for my AP English Literature class in school; an assignment that has been dubbed as a practice of exercising and expressing one’s true genius, or brilliance if you will. Often times this is not the case, actually most of the time this is not the case even a little bit. I sit in front of my computer with nothing to write about, and the first thing that comes to my mind is often the things that seem to irritate me in my day-to-day affairs, which obviously would mean nothing to an audience of people that doesn’t even know who I am. I actually get a break once a week luckily because we have to talk about something we are doing in English at that very time, as you may have noticed. This makes it easy, I just talk about things I like or don’t like, or don’t understand, or simply things that just seem to peak interest. The other days, however, are very mediocre. On a majority of the days, it seems that I just start typing random things and eventually an idea vests itself into something my peers can actually enjoy, although I view it as my worst writing ever. So, as a message to my audience, however many of you there are out there, bear with me; I am well aware my writing is mediocre, thank you for sticking around this long.

Could this be?

Oh joy, it is time for another Shakespeare play; read the first three scenes, with analysis by Monday, great. The writer that every high school student curses from freshman to senior year strikes again; How do you do oh malicious and conniving one? Well, Might as well cancel all my plans for the weekend, because this might take a while. Wait, maybe I can push it off for a while, its only Modern English right? Oh well, I guess it is inevitable, might as well get this over with. Opening the front cover slowly, and already dreading every second of this assignment. Bracing myself for the worst, for I know exactly how much work it is going to take to even achieve a basic understanding of Hamlet, the play that everyone says is Shakespeare’s hardest play to decipher. Reading every word as if it were the first time, but something feels different about Shakespeare on this occasion. Suddenly the words don’t seem like a complete alien language, impossible to decipher and the sentences are actually coming together like, well, sentences. Could this be, this actually makes sense? Gaining confidence as we progress through the scenes; Hamlet now has a mother who is also his aunt less than two months after his father dies, a monkey could figure that out. Hamlet’s father makes an appearance and tries to speak to Horatio, simple stuff; is my mind playing tricks on me just as Horatio believes he is experiencing? Do I actually understand this, or is it just fools luck and it will seem like a complete abstraction, just as it did, tomorrow? Hopefully not, because reading Shakespeare when you can actually understand is far more enticing than any movie ever made and even any book for that matter.

Happiness

Happiness in the 21^st Century is a beautiful, and yet somehow deceptive, abstraction. One may appear happy, but this may just be a façade, a means of hiding from the world as to let it discover you, in order to cover the impotence of that given individual. On the other hand, a person can appear to have hate and anger weaved into their heart and soul, but can be the happiest person to ever walk god’s green earth, because they have somehow achieved bliss, and bliss comes first on the road to happiness. So you might ask; what is the definition of true happiness? The Denotative meaning is to experience good fortune, pleasure, contentment, or joy; but what is the connotative meaning of the word (I figured these words would be to the liking of my English teacher)? This is where the deception that is happiness comes into play, in that it is such an abstraction, there is no possible way for it to be generalized in such a way as our society is constantly doing.

Ultimately, happiness reflects the personality of the individual, coupled the reactions of the personality to real life experiences, not just the happy ones. Too often in our society we see people that have a great job, make good money, have a great family, and no life problems, and yet they are still unhappy. But a person who it would seem that would be less happy; living pay check to pay check, sometimes working long hours, a family that clashes on occasions, and has experienced tragedies, can be the happiest man in the world. How could this be? There is one simple explanation for this: They love what they do for a living, as the ancient philosopher Confucius once said “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”. They also have love for their family and are willing to do whatever it takes to ease the bickering, and have made peace with the tragedies of their lives. So in a short answer, in order to achieve true happiness, one must first achieve absolute bliss. 

Euphonious cacophony

Music is often a deceptive art that drives us as humanoids to think that just because the music is beautiful and is “pleasurable” to the ear, the lyrics to the given song must be just a beautiful. The irony is that, we are completely wrong in making this assumption. Today, in English class we had the fortune, not necessarily a good fortune, of listening to “Sweet child of mine” by Guns and Roses as an example of this assumption, of course. What was realized is that when the music was taken away and one was able to simply read the lyrics in a flat, monotone style of reading, the lyrics were actually pointedly foolish. Not as in the lyrics represented the definition of onomatopoeia either, just absolutely foolish. We then broke off into groups and traded our own songs with a partner, where I had to read the classic Eagles song “Hotel California”. What I noticed about reading it without the tune behind it instead of simply listening to it; reading it brings an entirely different meaning to the peace or even a meaning deciphered for the very first time. Often times the meaning of a song is drowned out by the melody occurring in the background; so how could it be possible to discover a hidden meaning or some kind of hidden imagery? That was the point of the lesson; not all music can be characterized as poetry, and not all poetry in good poetry is good poetry in its overall structure and meaning. This was the plan at least, providing a smooth transition into iambic pentameter and Shakespearean sonnets: stay tuned…  

Young Ones

Patience is a virtue, a virtue as to which I do not have the good fortune of being gifted with by god, by any means. Life has a way of coming in at intermittent points and testing the weak points of a person, so patience is tested daily on my side of the world. Particularly on A days, in second period, when I am an aide in the level one welding class at our school. Great class, with access to all the tools necessary, the denotative and connotative meaning of the word, to leave high school and become successful in any of the many fields within the welding and fabrication industry. With a very patient, great teacher who is willing to actually teach his students, there seems to be no reason for failure; that is, if you apply yourself. Oh wait, there is the problem.

For most of these kids that have been placed in this class, this is the second year where I am available to them as an aide. One of the most important things that go into teaching, however, is to have a group of students that are willing and eager to learn. Now, I am not saying they are all bad, there is a minority of very gifted students, ironically those who happen to be interested in moonbuggy. But, for the rest, it does not seem to matter how I explain, I just end up explaining it again the next class. You might ask, why do you keep trying then? The answer is simple: passion; when one is so deeply passionate about what they do, they will go through leaps and bounds to help others to possibly achieve that same passion.

Insert Title Here

Poetry. Poetry. How hard could it be, right? It’s not like it is one of Shakespeare’s famous plays, and prose certainly possesses greater length. So may I ask of you, poetry, why must you bring frustration to the minds of innocent high school students all over the world, throughout history?

I sit there, slowly but surely progressing through a poem, the climax being just as confusing as the first word. I ask myself, “Am I missing something?” or “Why am I not getting this?” looking at it as if it were the Davinci code. Progressing a little further, nothings clicking, frustration growing, this is completely hopeless. Reaching the end, I achieve a short sense of satisfaction, and then realize I still have to answer questions to test my understanding of the work as a whole. Muttering, I curse my inability to understand this so called “beautiful piece”, diction being heard similar to what can be heard on George Carlin’s 1972 special “Seven words you can never say on television”, which I suggest you refrain your children from watching.

I search the page, scanning for some kind of aide when it shines bright, the answer to this one blasphemous piece of writing was right at the top of the page all along: the title. It all seems so clear now, the speaker is a mirror; no wonder he speaks of himself as a four-cornered god. If I had read the title first, this homework could have been done an hour ago! Feeling accomplished and rather dumb at the same time, I close my book feeling confident, at least until I walked into English the following day.

SIDE NOTE: When reading poetry, don’t be lazy, read the title first! It saves so much time. 

My world

Well-written Novels are worth reading because they are able to establish some kind of connection to its readers. Over the summer, I had the good fortune of reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller for my AP English Literature class, where I experienced a connection unlike any other novel. Catch-22 is the story of Yossarian, who drives himself to the brink of insanity, because he is the only one that sees that everywhere, people he doesn't even know are trying to kill him. When I was a young boy, I met a swami of the Buddhist religion through my grandparents, who did me the honor of reading my “soul” or personality, if you will. What he found is that I have a very “old soul” which gifted me with the uncanny ability to be “wise beyond my years” through the course of my very existence. Luckily, this comes with an ability to be very humble in all situations, instead of a thought that I am some kind of elite. But what I've learned in my very short seventeen years of life is that, I seem to look at things from a different perspective than my peers. Often, it is almost like I know something that they don’t know which is a dead-end if one intends to maintain a level head of human existence. This can only end in a habitual feeling of solitude or desolation, as if one is alone against the world. This never had any kind of effect in ventures or even personality, I did not realize that this was a reality in full until I read Catch-22; it is unexplainable in fact, reading the frustration that Yossarian endured in trying to convince people of something that seems so obvious and see those people simply defer and call him insane, sparked a certain realization in my own experiences. Although unexplainable, it also created a new sense of confidence, even if it is misjudged, in riding through life as I see it. This is clear evidence that a novel can enlighten us in ways that we could never imagine, even change a portion of a person’s outlook on life.

What is Poetry?

It is Thursday, August 29th, and I am sitting in Mr. Burge's first period class. I am trying to hide the amusement on my face, per usual, as he delivers one of his school-wide famous lectures on poetry. It has always been very odd to me how people say he yells during his lectures; what they call yelling, I call passion, a passion that invites the class to learn in a casual, intellectual environment. As our teacher asks the class what poetry is, listens to each student’s rebuttal, knowing full well that there is no one right answer, and the topic could be argued from dawn-to-dusk. Seeing no end, the class quickly transitions to a broader discussion, particularly about whether or not poetry is necessary to human existence. A few students answer, Danny presents his clever argument that “we need food and water to survive, poetry is not essential”, or something along those lines. Then it hits me, a non-pessimistic answer to a subject which I have cursed since before I could talk. It seems so obvious now, how could it be that it has seemed as a foreign language all these years? To answer the question that was in discussion, poetry can be seen as essential to human existence, if one looks at it from the right perspective. It is instinct for people to want to express themselves, speaking our mind is just what we as humans do. If we don’t express ourselves, we spend too much time “inside our own head” if you will, driving us to insanity; any fact on suicide can prove this. So it is normal for humans to express themselves, and throughout history, poetry has emerged as one of the most popular ways of doing so. So it can be argued that poetry is essential, because it is a primary mode of expression, and above all else, it makes people feel good. Now, to go back to the beginning; what is poetry? The simplest answer can often be the right one; poetry is a language that people of all backgrounds can understand, which can tell a story of love, war, despair, happiness, beauty, tragedy and many other things, that brings emotion to the audience.