Metacognition: Jane Eyre Writing Assignment

The collaborative Jane Eyre project we just completed was a success for our group (Meghana, Nirali, and I). However, we fully intended to get the entire thing done in a few hours at a sleepover we had on Friday night, but that turned out to be a total failure. I thought that if we put our minds to it, we could accomplish everything in that one night and get it all out of the way so we could just relax for the rest of the week. This was a very poorly thought out plan, as we were so tired and distracted by things most teenage girls get distracted by, that we only got a few paragraphs written before we decided to call it quits for the night.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I thought this writing assignment would be easy, something I wouldn't have to work on very hard. Treating it this way for the first couple of nights meant I wasn't able to express what I wanted to say and I had no idea why. It took a shift of my thinking toward really focusing and thinking reflectively about the book to help me finish writing my section of the project. It turned out, I had to be much more analytical than I was prepared to be initially.

So though it all came together in the end (and with about twenty minutes to spare), my group finished in the same almost every other group finished: on Wednesday night, with a lot of frantic writing to get it done before the time ran out. And these circumstances ended up bringing out some writing I was decently proud of, which is all I can ask for in a project. I just have to remember to be realistic next time and not try to sacrifice my weekends in the hope of lightening my week work load. It's just never going to happen without the integrity of something being sacrificed.

Metacognition: Jane Eyre

Having just finished reading Charlotte Bronte's classic Jane Eyre, I've noticed that I read it in a slightly different way than I read books like Heart of Darkness and Sophie's World, which were both on our curriculum earlier in the year. Whether a good or bad change, I read Jane Eyre with a highly reduced attention to detail.

Now this can be dangerous with books like the two previously mentioned, but in Jane Eyre, I found myself zoning out of the lengthy descriptions of an orchard or a dress, for example, and still getting full credit on all my reading quizzes and being able to follow along in all class discussions. And I genuinely can't tell if this is something that will come back and take revenge on me in the post-reading assignments, or if it really is a book that has a storyline which stands without all the fluffy extra bits.

Because after all, the book was written in a time when people didn't have TVs and iPods and cell phones or even cars to take them places for entertainment, so their books could be long and the details were the only interesting images they had access to. But in our society, we have millions of images flashed across our faces in picture format, 24/7. We don't need the three-page long descriptions of someone's hair to keep us interested; we can just check google images to see exactly what auburn curls look like. If anything, lengthy descriptions just cause our increasingly shortened attention spans to wander away from what we're trying to focus on.

Therefore, I was surprised and glad to find that Jane Eyre remains a decent story, even when I only skimmed the parts that bored me, and that I didn't seem to be missing anything major. I won't lie, the entire beginning of the book seemed to be a combination of Cinderella and Harry Potter when I skated through the details, but it got more interesting and suspenseful as it went on, and my attention to detail probably responded accordingly.

My main goal is to avoid falling into the trap of applying this "strategy" of sorts to everything I read, just because of this one success. If I were to have skipped over details in Heart of Darkness, I would have failed every quiz and not understood anything that happened in the story because the entire book is based around complex imagery. But as long as I can regard this as an isolated instance of success in "functional laziness" (as Mr. Williams calls it), I can guarantee that I'll never have to see a negative side to this process of thought.

360 Degrees: Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra; Mvt. 2, allegro guisto

Okay, so I know this blog is a little bit of a self-indulgence, but bear with me. My favorite cello concerto (and yes, I have a favorite cello concerto) is the one whose name is typed out in the title, and whose name I do not wish to have to retype ever again. This piece, in my opinion, is one of the best and most under appreciated concertos I know. So I'm actually very excited to dissect it, which I've never tried before.

The entire movement is about ten minutes long, which is a very average length for a concerto movement. I also know that Prokofiev wrote two versions of this concerto; one was a bit simpler than the other for less talented musicians. Fortunately, the one I heard live was the more complex version.

The opening starts with some simple but dissonant short notes from the winds, and then BAM! The cello breaks loose and all goes silent, save for the soloist breaking into a chromatic scale, then gliding across the strings as violently as conceivable and hitting as many notes in one beat as can possibly be fathomed. After a while, it simplifies into a beautiful and haunting melody, but retaining its power. Then it basically continues on its power trip from the beginning, with some lighter sections thrown in for dynamic means. But my absolute favorite part is about six and a half minutes when the orchestra drops away completely and the soloist attacks the cello, completely exposed, harmonic stretches and all. For that minute and a half of time, my mind just marvels at the skill of the player and most importantly, the composer's bravado for including this section. Believe it or not, this piece makes me think about the way people approach life.

Think about it: many of us go into our adult lives as sharks in a fish tank, attacking everything we see in order to gain the best advantage at success we can. I know I have every intention of being tough and cutthroat when I get out into the "real world". But I wonder if Prokofiev is unconsciously portraying a message that we can interpret as, "the one who attacks life goes at it as a soloist, with no accompaniment to hide their mistakes".

And then I wonder, is that really what I should want? All success and no wiggle room for slip ups, and also no people who I've become connected to in order to get to where I've gotten? I know it's a somewhat cliche thought, the meditation on love versus respect. But Prokofiev's piece brings it up in a surprising new way for me. Because in his time, this was probably not an issue. So then I wonder, is my mind just trying to tell me something? Because obviously he did not mean to make this statement in his work... Is this all like current dream theory, which states that they have no meaning beyond what we infer from them?

To be honest, what I'd really like to know is what other people think about everything I've mentioned. I'd like to think that I won't go through life as a soloist, but I really won't know which path in life is right for me to take until it's way to late to turn back and switch. Who knew Prokofiev could make us think so much? I certainly didn't.

Here's a link to the best YouTube performance of this movement I could find. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyTkvFMvPnc&feature=related

An Inconvenient Truth: Political Correctness

Every time I hear my grandmother spout out some dated, politically "incorrect" phrase to describe a group of people or even an individual we encounter, I cringe a little bit on the inside. But when I think about it here, there's nothing that bothers me more than people freaking out about being so "correct" in their speech that they censor their thoughts to comply with the mass opinion of cultural sensitivity. Now I would NEVER dream of using the n-word or something so pejorative to describe someone, but on a simpler level, I don't see a difference in calling a person "black" or "African-American", for example. In fact, most of the time, "black" more accurately defines the person's race, and I've heard that many black people don't even feel a tie to their African roots, and don't feel the desire to be addressed as such.

Now this is just one example of what bothers me, but there are many more cases, especially when you get into descriptions of people with a physical or mental handicap (and even now, I'm censoring to be politically correct). The basis of my annoyance at peoples' obsession with not offending everyone is that it causes a loss of communicative abilities when you tiptoe around what you want to say in order to spare someone's feelings. Do you think famous revolutionary authors censored their writing to comply with societies' rules? I certainly don't; I think they said things as they were in the simplest terms possible. And if that happened to offend people, well, they could just get over themselves and learn to be less sensitive.

I mean seriously, when I overhear someone blatantly throwing in the newest politically correct term with a sarcastic overtone, it causes me to lose respect for what they're trying to say. It also can actually make what they're saying seem more offensive, just because they're going out of their way to remain sensitive to someone that they, in truth, hold themselves apart from.

I know that offending people is never a good idea in this interconnected world, but I also think people need to toughen up a little bit and know that just because someone doesn't use a term that has been deemed the most sensitive doesn't mean they're mocking or attempting to invoke animosity with their statement. And perhaps it will take a slip up on my part, a mistake that offends someone seriously and jeopardizes something I care about for me to start subscribing to this politically correct fad, but until then, I think I'll choose not to censor my thoughts to spare someone's feelings.

Dialectics: Love and Reality (Once)

Even as I am just beginning this blog post, I know I've made a major implication, just in the title: that love and reality are mutually exclusive. And I believe they are, but mostly in an inorganic portrayal; that is, in movies and television shows and popular books. I've found that these mediums used to express strong physical and emotional love rarely approach it in a realistic way.

For example, the lovely and intellectually-written Twilight novels... What Stephanie Meyer accomplishes with these books is effectively injecting Bella and Edward with every single fantasy she's ever had about love, most of which obviously would never come true. They're unrealistic, not just in the fact that a human and vampire are dating, but in the way their love is so overwhelming to their lives that they literally cannot function without each other. Now I'm not saying that this amount of passion and devotion doesn't exist, but rather asserting that it doesn't exist very often in the real world. It just seems silly and gratuitous to me. Maybe it's just my taste, but I'd like to be refreshed with something actually feasible once in a while. I hope that's not TOO much to ask.

Now when we look at love in real life, we find that it is rough and obscene and very unlike you see in the movies. Most people fail many times at trying to find love, and then we have the people who were paired up by computer programs (match.com, anyone?), and then it all ends with more than half of all marriages failing. Where do we find this in big Blockbuster love stories?

My proposed solution to all this actually already exists. Once, the movie starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, which was released a few years ago, is probably to most mature and realistic approach to love in a movie that I've ever seen. It doesn't sugar coat love by putting in on fairies' wings to lightly sail across the eyes of movie theater audiences everywhere. It shows love in the abrupt and imperfect way it really is: with a Hoover vacuum trailing faithfully behind. I know it's another Hollywood creation, just like Valentine's Day or Dear John, but this movie is so unlike those that it can make you open your eyes to the corniness surrounding you. Sure, chick flicks have their place in our lives, and they always will. But a realistic portrayal of love like Once is something to admire.

Blogging Around

This is in response to Alex's post about the use of the "-thing"s in the short story, Cathedral.

I'm with you on this one, Alex. The one thing I took away from Cathedral was the importance of the idea that epiphany doesn't have to be a grand spectacle that uproots someone's life. And you've showed me that his simple word choice in his descriptions emphasized the normality of his experiences. I also never realized how much I use the word "chose" in french class. But it's true; French is a foreign language to me (no pun intended) in the same way the language of epiphany is foreign to the narrator. Well said, Alex. xD


This is in response to Chelsea's post about the lack of intimacy in Cathedral.

This is interesting, Chelsea, but I'm not sure I agree with your interpretation. There's no doubt that the couple in the story has no intimacy: that much is very blatantly outlined. But I think relationships in real life don't need profound displays of intimacy to be quantified. And your choice to look for a lack of intimacy, in my opinion, is a little "glass half empty".
I think you may be having trouble finding intimacy in relationships because you're seeing high school relationships, which last an average of two months and consist of a lot of texting and not much else. I think once you move into a bigger world as you transition to college and your adult life, your views may change.

Best of Week: Epiphany

This week, I was very fond of the themes brought up during the discussion of the short story, "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver. My mind was particularly stimulated by the question about the nature of epiphany. In the story, the narrator experiences somewhat of an epiphany while drawing a cathedral to show the blind man, Robert, what the majestic building looks like. In the end, he doesn't have to open his eyes to know that he created mastery and expressed himself, and he keeps his eyes shut when he tells Robert that the drawing is "really something". This anticlimactic ending to the story would disappoint most, but it says a lot about the way people experience abrupt changes of mind.

I keep thinking about how epiphany doesn't happen like it does on the TV show House. People don't stop mid-sentence with a look of mind-blowing comprehension on their face, then drop what they're doing to go implement their epiphany, like Dr. House is known to do. What more often happens is that someone has a minor "aha!" moment in their head and keeps it there, continuing to do whatever they were doing in the way they were doing it. But that little "aha!" causes bigger changes in their life when faced with similar situations in the future. After all, an epiphany is a change of mind or worldview, and in the narrator's case, it was in the way he views the blind and the way he expresses himself.

Therefore, I believe that it is a fallacy that an epiphany is this huge and monumental moment in your life when everything changes forever. People can experience many epiphanies which shape the way they interact with their surroundings. And they don't even have to be positive realizations; I recently had the epiphany that I'm often needlessly stubborn and probably won't ever change. But now at least I realize this, because sometimes knowing something bad about yourself is better than not knowing anything about yourself.

From this, I have decided that I like the way "Cathedral" ended. As a reader, I knew that the narrator had experienced an epiphany, even if his last statement was in his typical underwhelmed style. And I know that if the story were to continue, we would see the implementation of this epiphany in his life, hopefully for the better. I think we should all learn a lesson from the narrator and be more aware of the little epiphanies in out life.