Man Lept Nur Einmal

Carpe frickin Diem. Words you hear over and over again, words that have been put into many different forms over the ages. Carpe Diem, live in the moment, live for now, man lept nur einmal!, stop and smell the roses, you only live once. But they all mean the same thing; the only time you possess is now. The only thing you can control is now. Today is a blank canvas in front of you, the future is a blank canvas in another room, paint on the canvas in front of you. It has often been said that even the best-laid plans go awry, and that is because one cant entirely depend on planning, we must live in each and every moment. We cannot affect what happens in the future, we can only affect what happens, when it happens. We must find our salvation now, in this life, because we cannot find salvation in waiting for it to come in the future. If you plan to eat a chocolate cake tomorrow, why not eat it today? It still has as many calories, it is still incredibly awesome, you still experience the same amount of Euphoria in eating that cake. If you can find god now, why wait until you die to find the answer to The Great Question, why wait until you die to experience the embrace of enlightenment.

            Kabir, an old Indian mystic, a man who lived long before Drake, wrote (or rather spoke, he was illiterate) a poem on this. Friend, Hope for The Guest While You Are Alive is about finding salvation before death. That you cannot find salvation in death, you find it in living, in being alive. And he also says that you cannot control the future, that the only thing you control is now. Surprisingly enough, Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda teaches this same lesson to us. “look at this tree Shifu, I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [but I can control when the fruit will fall, where the seed will be planted] yes, but no matter what you do, that seed will grow into a peach tree, you may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will still get a peach”(Aibel/Berger). You can only alter things when they are upon you. You can determine when the peach will fall, when it falls. You can control where and when the seed is set, but that all would have happened eventually. Yes you may control ‘when’ things happen, but that is not altering the fate of things. You can control ‘when’ you attain enlightenment. So why not sooner rather than later? The Buddha didn’t plan to attain enlightenment; he made it happen.

            Kabir says that just because you are dead, does not mean you will achieve salvation- ‘the idea that the body will join the ecstatic/ just because the body is rotten-/ that is all just a fantasy"(Kabir 9-11) 

When he says 'the ecstatic' he means finding  "The Guest". The Guest could be anything, it could be God, it could be a diety of your understanding, it could be happiness, it could be enlightenment. Everyone has a Guest, except maybe nihilists, because they aren't looking for anything or striving. Many will not find The Guest in their lives, they will live a life of mediocre bliss, just subsisting on their daily occasional entertainment. Those people will end up with "an apartment in the valley of death"- kabir, they will not reach the place of eternal enlightenment. They will live mediocre forever, because that is what they did in life, so they will continue in death. If one finds The Guest in life, they will live in the afterlife eternally knowing that they have fulfilled their one goal on this earth. 

          In the process of scrutinizing over every aspect of this poem, I have found that it is much easier to

understand a piece of work with extra information. It is good to research the author first, to find out

their religious beliefs, activities, lifestyle, childhood. This way, you can relate their experiences and

 such to the way that they write and the interpretations of lines in accordance with their faith. It is also a 

good idea to interview someone else whilst analyzing the poem. They might think of it differently than 

you do. They might offer a totally new spectrum of thought on a topic you had already closed. My dad 

(whom i interviewed) offered to me a look into his brain and the way it works and showed me his side 

of things, and I am grateful for this. He gave me the idea of maybe the poem being pantheistic, that god

is all around us in the world.

          This poem has taught me a lot. it teaches me that god is in and around us, he can be found simply 

by looking around, right now, in this moment. And that we shouldn't try to control time, but control 

what happens now. "if you make love with the divine now, in the next life / you will have the face of 

satisfied desire"(Kabir 16-17) So live in the moment, live for now, you only live once, you have but 

one life to give for your salvation.

Tomorrow is a mystery, yesterday is history, but today is a gift, thats why it is called the present 

Scotterview

He sat down after getting his glasses. Wayne Scott was being interviewed by his son Ian today, and he needed to see the poem he was interpreting. "are you ready?" Ian said."sure" Wayne confirmed. "alright" Ian said, Preparing his mac recorder. "Ok, so what do you think of it?"
"I think it sounds familiar."
"Familiar?
"Yes, it sounds familiar, it sounds like new age philosophy"
"Well what does that mean?"Ian said, puzzled.
"That you shouldn't live for the future, you should live for now, that if you believe in god you should find god now, that god is around you, its almost pantheistic"
"okay" Ian said, "And what stands out to you?"
"well there is a lot of intensity, its very enthusiastic. its almost like he's preaching"
"well he was a mystic and this was probably originally a spoken poem, because he was illiterate"Ian Explained.
"well it reads like that, it reads like he's preaching to a large group of people."
"okay, so are you confused by anything?"
"no, like i said its similar to things I've read in the past, like Eckhart Tolle"
"And who is that?"
"hes a contemporary philosopher who believes in living in the moment, living in the now.
"okay, and who do you think The Guest is?"
"I think the guest is probably like i said, it could be a god of your understaning, a god of your religion or it could be you, your soul."
"is there anything else you want to elaborate on"
"no but again, the way it speaks to me is to know where you are, and where your at today and not constantly looking to the future, the future being your salvation after death"
"have you found The Guest?" Ian asked
"I think i have, yes"
"do you think I have?"
Wayne stated quite firmly, but not in an angry way "no"
"neither do I... okay so explain the guest in your life."
"whats in front of you is opportunity and how you live your life is opportunity for nirvana because you shouldn't look to the future for salvation because you don't have the future."
Ian thanked Wayne for his interview, pausing the recorder on his macbook. They both chuckled at the post interview awkwardness. "is that what you wanted?" Wayne asked.
"yeah that's fine"
"do you want to record it again?"
"oh no its good, raw"
they chuckled again and Ian resumed his biology homework.

Hope for the Guest

Kabir was a mystic poet and saint in india. He is most remembered for his religious community called 'the path of Kabir', Whose members number about 9,600,000 and are dispersed throughout central and north india. Much of his history is of legend, but it is known that he was raised among muslim weavers. He was raised totally illiterate and could only write the word 'Rama', referring to the seventh avatar of vishnu. According to legend, he lived to be 120 years old. A Famous legend states that after his death, his hindu and muslim followers fought over the rites. They then lifted the veil over his body and he had turned into flowers, which they split up, muslims burying them, hindi cremating them. his religious beliefs are a culmination of hinduism and islam. He accepts the idea of reincarnation and is a monotheist at the same time.

The poem I chose, Friend, Hope for The Guest While You Are Alive, basically covers the idea that you should live and experience earth while you are alive. You should find salvation before you die otherwise in the next life you will regret it. The word Guest could be interpreted to mean different things. The dictionary definition of a guest is something that takes a host in some form or another. Guest could mean happiness and liveliness, taking host in the soul. Or it could mean a god of some sort. but the general idea of the poem is clear. Live in the moment, it is the only time you own.

"Do you realize? That everyone you know, someday, will die. And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast, its hard to make the good things last, you realize the sun don't go down, its just an illusion caused by the world spinning round"-The Flaming Lips

bib

Works Cited

"Bill Moyers Talks with Poet Robert Bly." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08312007/transcript1.html>.

Kabir, The Biography of. "The Biography of Kabir." Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.

"Kabir." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 May 2014.

The Navajo Blanket

Everybody wants to be perfect. We don’t realize the secret. We don’t realize that what they have been seeking is already achieved. The world, in all of its complexity, is totally perfect the way it is. Yes, the world suffers from flaws like hatred, greed, and other things that are totally bad. But the fact that we know the difference between good and bad is good in itself. One cannot know perfection if he does not know imperfection. So we take the bad with the good, cherishing the good and surviving the bad. Because we know while there are terribly unfair things in the world, there are still wonderfully beautiful, awesome things at the same time. Everything, good and bad, fair or unfair, in  in perfect balance. The balance being perfect means that the world is perfect. Perfectly balanced. Siddhartha figures this out towards the end of his life; he learns it from the river. He figures out that for his son to be able to find happiness and enlightenment, he must go through the same trial and error as he did. One cannot know enlightenment if one does not know bewilderment. He realizes that he himself went through the struggles that young Siddhartha will have to go through to get to this point in his life. Everything breaks even, everything comes around eventually, and that is the perfection of the world.

            Siddhartha, on his quest to enlightenment, experiences karma. Karma being the belief that everything comes back around in the end. Good deeds will merit good deeds upon you. The show My Name Is Earl is entirely based off of karma. In the show a redneck wins the lottery, loses the ticket and gets hit by a car. He finds out from Carson daily about karma and he makes a list of all the bad things he did in an effort to gain forgiveness. Siddhartha goes through the process of being an ascetic, and he wasn’t satisfied with it. So he took the opposite route, gambling and living for money. In return, he wasn’t happy with himself, he felt empty, trapped by possessions. “The world had caught him; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also that vice that he had always despised and scorned as the most foolish- acquisitiveness. Property, possessions, and riches had also finally trapped him.”(Hesse 78-79) He had fallen to materialism and in return he received guilt and unhappiness. He then goes back to the woods, trying to find enlightenment. Where he finds the ferryman, as foreshadowed earlier in the story. “’I did not expect any payment or gift from you. You will give it to me some other time.’ ’do you think so?’...’Certainly, I have learned that from the river too; everything comes back. You too, Samana, will come back’”(Hesse 49). The ferryman, who is already enlightened, knows the effects of karma and that things have their own way of figuring themselves out. So he lets Siddhartha go, knowing that someday he will repay him in some way or another. Karma will solve everything in the end. Because that is how the world works. Although there are unpleasant things or bad occurrences, there is always some way that the situation stabilizes itself.

            The world is visually perfect too, not just in the way that it balances itself out. Sometimes we, as humans, take for-granted what time has done to this planet. Earth is gorgeous, and much of the time, in our efforts to find perfection and achieve perfection ourselves, we forget that perfection is all around us. Years, uncountable, have made the world into the crazy beautiful thing that it is today. Siddhartha has little epiphanies where he feels the intensity of the world around him and how he came to be there and wondering about the things he had done. “He looked up and was surprised to see the trees and the sky above him. He remembered where he was and how he came to be there. He felt a desire to remain there for a long time.”(Hesse 90) He stops and looks around, and when he does, he gets a glimpse of enlightenment. He isn’t quite enlightened yet, but he gets a feeling here and there. He kind of sees that the world, in that second is living, dying, and birthing, all at the same time. Each species functioning entirely off the rest of the ecosystem. The world is one big machine, with each cog in perfect synchronicity. “He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand it” (Hesse 102) No one can explain it, so many things happening at once. It is crazy that the world can function separately but in unison, in total perfection.

            The world has many lessons to teach us. We should learn from it, because after all it has much more experience with life than we do. Some people fight the teachings of nature; they try to tame the world. They think of society as nothing but a tactical game to be played emotionless and without passion. Humans don’t understand  humanity, morality, and the instinctual gut feelings of humans. But no one can truly understand, no one can truly understand why humans like a specific sequence of noises called music. No one can truly understand why we find a picture or a painting beautiful, we only know that they are beautiful. “’I have taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river is nothing but a hindrance on their journey. They have travelled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages; the river has been in their way… However amongst the thousands there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle’”(Hesse 106) People need to live in the moment rather than planning so much ahead. It is always good to think ahead, but don’t get so caught up in what is going to happen in your life that you don’t see what’s going on around you. Appreciate the world you own rather than waiting on the future. There is no way to make the world better or worse. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, you don’t own the future.

            The world is perfect. It is perfect because it is imperfect. We love it because it appears to us the way it is now, not because it will be perfect later. “The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people- eternal life”(Hesse 144). There are faults in everything, propriety in everything too, and they balance each other out. This balance is the perfection in the world, and the reason there is happiness.

Poem Rewrite

Friend, Hope for The Guest While You Are Alive

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time
before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten-
that is all a fantasy.
What is now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment
in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
believe in the great sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being search for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the guest
that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity


Kabir

Beautiful Sadness

At the end of Siddhartha, Siddhartha is an old, possibly dying man. Govinda goes down to the ferry because the ferryman was rumored to be a sage. He later finds out that it is Siddhartha that is the ferryman. they talk together and Siddhartha explains that he is enlightened. The way I interpreted it was that he said The world is imperfect and but it isn't constantly striving to achieve perfection. It is perfect in its imperfections. The fact that the world is a balanced place with flaws makes you know realize the better parts of it. Butters, from South Park gives us some insight on this after a breakup- "Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness."(Parker/Stone S7E14). This Beautiful sadness is necessary in life, Siddhartha feels the beautiful sadness after Young Siddhartha runs away. It makes him sad, but he later comes to realize that his son leading his own life and making his own mistakes is good. The bird must leave the nest in order to fly.

Siddhartha becomes enlightened, he realizes the ultimate question he set out to find. He achieves the ultimate enlightenment. The answer cannot be accurately put into words. Even siddhartha says that he distrusts words, he distrusts teachers. He knows that he can learn from the whole world. Holy or unholy, animate or inanimate, he understands that he can take the same lessons from the average joe as he can take from the buddha. The world is the teacher, and our soul is the student, taking bits from each and every teacher. Which makes the soul an individual of itself and yet, the whole world at the same time.

Find yourself, I'm not going to help you

Siddhartha is a book about a man who has a similar story to that of the buddha, he leaves hinduism to pursue asceticism and meditate all the time. He begins to look for the answer to the one question, the big, important question that can't be taught from teachers. He wants to find himself. He goes to the buddha at first for guidance, but he finds that the buddha can't tell him because the only way Siddhartha can find what he is looking for, is to look to himself. He is trying to find the self. He says that each with their own way, they finds escape from the self. The drunk escapes from himself in drinking, the ascetic in meditation, etc.

Also on his journey, Siddhartha learns to live without possessions. For three years he lived with nothing but a loincloth, and he didn't even realize it until the merchant asks him how he can live without possessions- "'I have never thought about it, sir. I have been without possessions for nearly three years and I have never thought on what I should live"(Hesse 64). I am way too bloody sentimental about things to be like that. It would be cool, traveling the land with nothing but what I can carry, but I'm very attached to possessions. Minimalism is a good practice but is very difficult for many people. I don't see how Siddhartha does it so easily.

Ihr Leben ist Mir Wurst

The Modernist era took place from the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. It was an era of total war, depression, and work. There were so little limits in the workplace that people believed that they would simply work themselves to death. Life expectancy was short, around age forty. Vampires were rampant. Not necessarily the blood sucking, pale, seductive type of vampire, but a subtle vampire. These types of vampires exist in real life; they work much slower, and can appear in any form. These are the vampires of empathy. They seek out a young, hardworking individual who cares about anothers well being, and they feed. This Vampirism is exemplified in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The Story takes place in modernist Prague, where Gregor, the main character as prey, turns into a bug. As a bug he becomes useless to his family, the vampires, and he becomes a burden to them. Gregor has worked to pay off his parent’s debt for five or six years and he reckons it will be about five or six years more before it’s paid off. He has dedicated most of his adult life to working for his parent’s livelihood, and even more he wants to pay for his sister’s education at a school where she can play the violin. Gregor is the young, empathetic individual, and the parents are the Vampires.

Gregor’s father is an evil prick. If anyone in the story were the most vampiric, it would be him. He is the cause of Gregor’s work dilemma, he is lazy, and he hurts Gregor multiple times when he is in his bug state. His father, although capable of work, doesn’t do anything to help Gregor in his situation. In fact, he just sits around on his gluttonous butt and reads newspapers. “For his father breakfast was the most important meal time in the day, which he prolonged for hours by reading various newspapers”(Kafka 7). Anyone who spends hours reading newspapers and eating breakfast has a problem. Mr. Samsa, as demonstrated later in the book, can work. What a normal, empathetic person would do is work as hard as they can to fix their debt and maybe, maybe accept some financial help from their son. Mr. Samsa is just feasting on Gregor until his imminent demise. Gregor doesn’t even have time for a social life, he can’t meet a lady. He framed a magazine cutout of a lady. When he finally is forced to work for subsistence, Mr. Samsa sits in the armchair ‘exhausted’ from working all day, too lazy to even take off his uniform. “With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servants uniform even at home, and while keeping his sleeping gown unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place[the armchair], as if he was always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of his superior.”(Kafka 19) Gregor has been doing this for years, Mr. Samsa starts working for a couple weeks and suddenly he’s so exhausted and dramatic. He is so used to being a vampire to Gregor that he has gotten too lazy for work.

On the other hand, the rest of the family also takes advantage of Gregor, just in a quieter manner. To thank Gregor for his lifetime of hard work, they shut him in a room for the last year of his life. Even worse, they keep him out of their meals. When people dine together, there is something of a special relationship between them. In rugby, the home team has big picnics after matches with their opponents to show that they respect them.  “in the real world, breaking bread together is an act of sharing and peace, since if your breaking bread you’re not breaking heads” (Foster 8) A communion is the intimate sharing of thoughts or feelings. Foster says that whenever people eat together, its communion. Communion doesn’t only happen in churches with small pieces of bread and teaspoonfuls of wine. Communion is the gathering of a people and a sharing of something in mutual respect. When Gregor’s family leaves him out of their meals, they show that they have lost their respect for Gregor’s character, and yet Gregor still loves them. He would still come back and work for them had he not been a bug. Gregor’s meals are instead spent in his room, sucking on cheese or what have you, where his thoughts and feelings are left to fester in his head. His family is so distant from him that Kafka refers to them as ‘The Father’ and ‘The Sister’. “With his left hand, his father grabbed a large newspaper from the table and, stamping his feet on the floor, he set out to drive Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and the newspaper.”(Kafka 8) Gregor’s father is so distant from his son that he can’t even herd him back into his room with his hands. He has to grab utensils to separate him and Gregor.

            Existentialism is the idea that existence overrules essence. People exist as an individual and no matter how much society shoves them into a slot; they’ll never fit into it. Gregor spends most of his life being jostled into a slot by his family, his job, and the modernist era. When he turns into a bug, he is liberated in some way, he doesn’t have to provide for his family anymore, even if he would like to. “Was he really eager to let the warm room… be turned into a cavern in which he could, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance”(Kafka 15)

Gregor feels like it is wrong to live outside the generic rules that he had lived by all of his life, but his existence wants to take over and do what he wants to do rather than what he thinks he needs to do. Gregor wants to be just what his parents want him to be, which is what the era teaches him to do. To be a manufactured product suited for the workplace and only for the workplace. And Gregor has been so affected by this ‘Modern’ era that his first reaction when he realizes he is a bug is to get to work. When his manager comes to see what the problem with him is, Gregor keeps lying to try to cover up his quite serious medical condition. “’I’m opening the door immediately, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me form getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But I’m quite refreshed once again.’” (Kafka 5) yet the manager doesn’t seem to care that Gregor is even sick, he later goes on to accuse Gregor of selfishness. That was his first missed day of work ever.

            Modernism, existentialism, communion, and vampirism are all factors in The Metamorphosis’s plot. Kafka cleverly paints a portrait of society during that era. That idea of subsistence till death affected everyone in that era. Thus people strived to exist in their own being. And although it is a very depressing thought, some people think their only liberation is death. “He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. In front of the window he witnessed the beginning of the outside growing generally lighter”(Kafka 25) Kafka describes the atmosphere around Gregor to be lighter and more peaceful. Gregor is liberated in death.

I Just Want My Pancakes

Communion is the intimate sharing of thoughts and ideas, especially spiritual thoughts or ideas. Communion is made popular by the christian church. But it has since taken a broader meaning

“whenever people eat or drink together, its communion”(Foster 8). When there is a description of a meal in a piece of literature or a scene in a movie or show, its always more than that. For example, in Breaking Bad, the hit TV show, it is highly disputed why Walt, Skyler, and Walt Jr. eat breakfast all the time. I think Gilligan, the producer, uses the breakfast to gauge the gravity of the situation. If Walt Jr. turns down breakfast, tension is at an all time high, the boy loves his breakfast. If Skyler only pours cereal, (hopefully not the dreaded non crunchy raisin bran), she and walt are at odds once again. And if Walt makes an extravagant feast of a breakfast, he is either distracting Walt Jr. from something or he is rubbing it in Skyler's face that he is living in the house again. If the whites are eating together, it is shown that they have settled things, as much as they can be on Breaking Bad. Meals, although sometimes they are just meals, often mean more than that. Dining together can be a symbol of peace and friendship, as Foster so eloquently describes “in the real world, breaking bread together is an act of sharing and peace, since if your breaking bread you’re not breaking heads” (Foster 8) Rarely is it that one kills a guest at their table, they only did it to Rasputin because he was impossible to kill.

Foster, in his third chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor , explains that not all vampires are blood sucking. some, much like Gregor's father in The Metamorphosis, are merely older men preying on the little innocent thing, sucking all life, nourishment, and money from them until they die. “it’s [vampirism] also about things other than literal vampirism: selfishness, exploitation, as refusal to respect the autonomy of other people, just for starters”(Foster 16) Foster explains that vampires can be anyone. There is a particular formula for vampires that apply to most of them correctly. that formula includes an older being, too lazy or unwilling to find their own nourishment; a young being, willing to work and seriously compassionate, and they always see laziness as disability; and the older being must take advantage of the younger.  “the essentials of the vampire story, as we discussed earlier: an older figure representing corrupt, outworn values; a yound, preferably virginal female; astripping away of her youth, energy, virtue; a continuance of the life force of the old male; the death or destruction of the young woman” (Foster 19) Foster says that the vampires rampant greed and lust will eventually lead to the downfall of the young being. This directly applies to Gregor's story, he is young, he provides, he dies.

Non-Conformist Beliefs

Gregor dies in the end. His father kills him, just like he has been hurting him for the past month that Gregor has been alive. Gregor has been shut up in that one room. the only four corners he can exist in. When he attempts to escape, his father pushes him back it, violently, as if he isn't their son anymore. This could be interpreted to be like the way Gregor would only be at work or home, never enjoying comforts, while his parent's debt pushes him in to the 'room' of work. This could be connected to existentialism because existentialists, the way I interpret it, believe in the existence of the individual over the essence of life. The individual can't fit into a generic slot like society and others try to make them. Gregor turning into a bug is showing that, however much he wants to, he can't fit into the mold that his family, his job, and the world wants him to fit in. Gregor is an independent thinker and nothing should hold him down.

Its not that Gregor doesn't want to work and provide for his family. He is very empathetic, which is the human thing about Gregor. I would argue that, although he is a bug, Gregor is the most human character in the story. The rest of the family, the manager, and the lodgers don't show any empathy, except for grete in some cases. The manager shows no concern for Gregor's life or well being, he just sees him as a broken machine. The lodgers see Gregor and exclaim that everything about their house and family sucked, even though they get above and beyond service. The father sees Gregor as vermin that only stays around for the shred of hope that it might turn back into human.

Lone Breadwinner

Gregor's family is incredibly rude and insensitive. Their son has been turned into a massive bug and all they do about it is keep him in a small room and barely feed him. His father, the most evil of all, went as far as to throw stuff at him and hurt him. “Gregor stood still in fright. Further running away was useless, for his father had decided to bombard him[With Fruit]” (Kafka 18) merely because Gregor  prevented them from taking a picture he wanted to keep, his father chased him around a living room throwing apples at him, and injured him with one lodged in his back. Kafka cleverly refers to his family as 'the father' and 'the mother' and so on for most of the essay in a very impersonal tone. The only time he uses proper nouns such as 'Grete' and 'Mr. Samsa' are when Gregor was dead or when Grete is being somewhat nice to Gregor. It just exemplifies that his family is rude and takes Gregor seriously for granted. “For his father breakfast was the most important meal time in the day, which he prolonged for hours by reading various newspapers”(Kafka 7),The father is so uncaring that even though his poor son is being kind enough to pay off his debt from his failed business, he does absolutely nothing and spends hours reading the news and eating breakfast. Gregor being the only breadwinner, his father gets out of practice in work and sleeping schedule. So when Gregor becomes indisposed, "With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servants uniform even at home, and while keeping his sleeping gown unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place[the armchair],”(Kafka 19) He is so dramatic about it too, he lets the mother and Grete coddle him and flatter him for half an hour in order to get him to go to bed. Like a toddler.

           The time setting plays a huge part in the story as well. The Metamorphosis takes place in the same era that Kafka lived, around WWI and the Great depression. This 'modernist' era is one where unlimited capitalism is rampant and, for the average citizen, work is all there is. People would live short lives in which they worked only to subsist. Gregor, surprisingly optimistic, has to pay off his parents debt on top of his living expenses. Even when he is turned into a bug, he feels the urge to work, “Anyway, I haven’t completely given up that hope yet. Once I've got together the money to pay off my parents debt to him--- that should take another five or six years- ill do it for sure. Then Ill make the big break[quitting his job]. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock”(Kafka 1). Five or six years is one eighth of the average life in that time period,  Gregor spends most of his life paying off his parents debt. And he is forced to work in an awful job with awful hours with a family that takes him for granted, yet he is still optimistic. He hasn't taken a sick day or a day off in all the years he has worked, and yet when he is an hour late to work the manager comes to his house and says “However, now I see your unimaginable pig headedness, and I am totally losing desire to speak up for you in the slightest. And your position is not at all the most secure” (Kafka 5). He threatens a minor traveling salesman with his job because he has turned into a bug and can get out of bed. With no laws protecting working conditions and hours, companies can expect extreme things from employees. And yet, Gregor takes every bit of it without objecting in the slightest. “’I’m opening the door immediately, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me form getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But I’m quite refreshed once again.’” (Kafka 5) He makes excuses for himself and apologizes intensely rather that simply telling the manager that he is a bug. Because he know that his family, friends, and coworkers would be upset and embarrassed that he had been turned into a bug. If you are worried your friends will be embarrassed that they know you, because you've been turned into a bug, there is something wrong with society. A mere sickness or indisposition causing shame is sad.

Samsa Stark

Gregor Samsa is an insect, while he is typically a human, so getting to work in the morning will be different for him in the morning. The Metamorphosis takes place in Prague in the late nineteenth century or early twentieth. In this era, work was the main part of everyones life. Going to a job almost every day of the week simply to live. Although looking back it was a period of innovation and industry, workers led short, uneventful lives. Kafka uses Gregor to show the state of mind the people are always in in this era. “ Once ive got together the money to pay off my parents debt to him[Gregor's boss]- that should take another five or six years- I'll do it for sure. Then I'll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock”(Kafka 1) He shows that Gregor cares much more about paying off his parents debt than his own well being. His parents don't even work while he pays off their debt.

Gregor hasn't taken a sick day in his life and yet the manager comes in and calls him a selfish pig head. This shows how the upper levels of society treated the everyday worker, like they were merely an asset and if they neglect their job, they are faulty. “However, now I [The manager] see your unimaginable pig headedness, and I am totally losing desire to speak up for you in the slightest. And your position is not at all the most secure” (Kafka 5) The manager decides that greg is just being selfish in not coming out of his room. He does this whilst knowing greg's typical personality and hardworking mentality. But this logic isn't running through his brain. The manager only sees a cog that isn't turning, in his head, the only options are to force it to turn, or remove it. the cog doesn't get a day off.

Kafkaesque

Franz Kafka was born in prague, which was then the capital of bohemia. He was the firstborn of six children, none of whom survived to old age, his two brothers died as babes, and his three sisters were murdered in the holocaust. He went to german schools as a kid and went to Charles-Ferdinand University for college. He entered college as a chemistry major, but that soon changed to law.













Kafka began working at an italian insurance company in 1907. He hated the job and left to work for a worker's accident insurance institute for bohemia, which suited him much better. He then came down with tuberculosis in 1917 and had to retire in 1922. He fell in love with one Dora Dymant who followed him into death













Kafka influenced many facets of literature. He wrote much about existentialism, alienation, brutality, and many other things. The term 'Kafkaesque' has been coined to describe his work and works or events, that have a similar feel to his writing. His work is still studied throughout the globe. he has influenced the literature world greatly with his work.













Kafka Died of tuberculosis on June 3rd of 1924. His last words were "kill me, or else you are a murderer" he was begging the doctors to euthanize him with an overdose of morphine. Just earlier that year, even in a near death state, he finished A Hunger Artist. And After his death, Brod, his friend and literary executor, ignored Kafkas instructions to destroy unfinished manuscripts and published The Trial, The Castle, Amerika, and The Great Wall Of China.












bib:

"Franz Kafka Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

"Franz Kafka." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

"Franz Kafka's Last Words." Franz Kafka's Last Words. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. <http://quotes.yourdictionary.com/articles/franz-kafka-last-words.html>.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Franz Kafka: Childhood & Early Career." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

What Nightmares May Come

What Dreams May Come is pretty similar to Dante's Inferno. What Dreams May Come follows a man as he journeys through hell to find his wife, Inferno follows a man as he tries to find his mistress. The difference is that Chris Nielsen (What Dreams May Come) Only Goes down to the seventh level of hell while Dante goes through hell, purgatory, and heaven. The movie has some inclusion of the book in it in the other circles of hell. One difference in punishment is that Chris's wife, a suicide, had a punishment based on her imagination. Inferno gave everyone the same punishment, suicides were trees being picked at by harpies. 

Note that this boat in heaven has a similar look to the one 

Annie was sailing when she met Chris (Red Triangular sails)

Some similarities are that Chris and Dante both had Guides, Virgil and The Tracker. They also both had similar reasons that they traveled through hell, to find their women. Also, they both came out of hell alive, which is pretty rare biblically. there is significant symbolism in colors and other things in What Dreams May Come water plays a big part in the movie. They meet in a lake, riding boats, and Then chris's heaven has that same lake where he can walk on water, breath underwater, and the he eventually travels to hell on a boat. what i think this could symbolize is that although blood is thicker than water, water can help us reconnect with our blood and be just as important to us. The tracker, who was really Doc, supported Chris through his journey to hell to find his wife, Chris also thought that Ian was Doc by his appearance. And he Treated doc like family, so water can be just as important as blood.

This part made me really sad for some reason, 

Just the fact that his name is Ian and my worst fear is 

having a bad relationship with my dad.

I got 99 problems, but a sin ain't one

Another week of dante presentations. They were pretty interesting this week, my favorites were the 9th circle of hell and the eight circle. In the eighth circle, there are many pits and ditches in which different sinners are placed, one is for flatterers. Their punishment is to live in a river of human waste. The contrapasso in this is that everything they said in their mortal life is a load of crap, they told people bullcrap for their own gain. I think that they are pretty deserving of the punishment. I believe in working toward what you want, not achieving it through easy manipulation.

In the 9th circle are the traitors. They are frozen in the river in the deepest circle of hell with satan. I don't think the treasonous deserve to be the lowest of the lowest. Sometimes there needs to be defiance against the government, otherwise we would become a totalitarian society, where no freedoms are permitted. A good example is Edward Snowden. The government says he committed treason, but he has opened the eyes of the american people to the governments infringements on our rights.

Disco Inferno

Presentations begin. Inferno cantos I-IVII have presented so far. Overall I think that the presentations are turning out pretty well. The visuals are going good, very interesting interpretations of each canto. Mine was pretty cool as well, I did a video that, I thought, gives one the same emotion that one would feel whilst reading the canto. I included pictures from My Dad, Misha Gordon, Sally Mann, and Giger airbrush artwork.

some Giger art

I felt like the video  point got across really good. the pictures flashed with enough time for emotion to come but left before one could process the images themselves. Which is key in trying to get into someones emotional side. and they all played to a creepy tune by Abearica with a girl muttering in the background. The pictures were interrupted by me reading an ominous verse from the canto in darkness.

Set Fire to the Rain

This week we are going to do a massive project in Inferno, by Dante Alighieri. I got canto XVI which describes Dante going through the third ring of the seventh circle of hell. Where the sodomites are. people who are violent towards nature. Which I suppose includes homosexuality and beastiality. Which are, of course, highly disputed topics. dante describes their punishment as fiery flakes raining down on hot sand where sodomites were forced to walk lest they be punished.

Dante first recognizes three florentines, all three of them renowned for their skill in battle. They had their hands joined to form a wheel. Dante wanted to go down with them and embrace them. But he didn't for fear of the pain and heat of the boiling hot sand and flakes.

Your Own Personal Satan

        My personal hell would be a place of deep suffering. I would be hung upside down by my ankles and punched in the testicles repeatedly endlessly. It never becomes monotonous, each punch feels just as bad as the last. All the while listening to a Nicki minaj song featuring lil wayne. People admitted into this hell are people who have committed adultery, intentional murder, incest, and other unforgivable sins. Hell is designed for the sickest of the sick. Therefore the punishments will be the sickest of the sick.
        In order to get into hell one must commit a sin of massive proportions. This can be intentional murder, theft, adultery, incest, gluttony, rape, greed, fraud, and other major sins. These sins are unforgivable and deserve the punishment of hell. Minor sins may be partially forgiven. With some time, minor sinners may repent and finally reach heaven. But the Major sinners are never forgiven.
        The punishments are more psychological than painful. Although physical pain is present. Hell will look into your mind and find your psychological weakness, and use it as a tool for your misery. Whether you are afraid of heights, insects, snakes, spiders, tight spaces, or loneliness. Hell is infinite and inescapable. It is the ultimate, and final punishment.
        Hell's environment adapts to each persons punishment. It could be a steamy hot jungle filled with insects and vicious creatures. No life supporting resources, so you feel pain of hunger and thirst, yet you cannot die. It could be being forced to crawl through a cement pipe, with barely enough room to crawl. Nothing to bandage your hands and knees which are constantly torn open from the crawl. Hell adapts to each individual.

        No one may escape. Hell is for the ones who have committed sin to the point of no return. For the ones who can never be forgiven. Someone who deserves hell deserves the eternal torment. Those who has the heart to do something that would put them in hell deserve their heart to be broken down in pain and tortured

        A symbol to represent my hell would be a hydra. Because of the multiple different types of pain coming at you at once. A hydra's number of heads vary from 5 to 100, depending on who you are reading. The hydra represents multiple threats converging on one target. which is a good analogy to the multiple levels of pain and torment in hell.

        

         The evilest of the evil are in my hell. Vicious people who have no desire other than to watch the world burn. People who think the best way to perfection is the mass murder of a people. People like Hitler and Pol Pot. People whose views are so corrupted that they think killing is the way to utopia. People whose "happiness" involves taking others's happiness away.

reservoir doge

This past week we worked on our tragic hero posters, ours featured a gun taking up the top and left part of the poster. The rest we filled with blood, pictures and duct tape. The overall process of making the poster was pretty good and efficient, we all brought supplies and did our part. And the end result, I thought, was good.
The movie, Reservoir Dogs was a pretty good fit for the tragic hero format, Mr. Orange starts in a place of semi-status, he's an undercover cop that's very cocky. His Hamartia is his pride. His reversal of fortune is when he gets shot by a civilian. His reversal of intention is then when he shoots that civilian dead. The entire flipping movie is a scene of suffering. Catastrophe occurs after everyone shoots each other in a mexican standoff

Shoot me in a dream, you'd better wake up and apologize

This week we are starting our group posters. I finally watched my movie, Reservoir Dogs, I thought it was really good. It takes place in the aftermath of a diamond heist in an abandoned warehouse, where a character lies dying of a bullet wound. One gangster goes insane and tortures a cop to Stuck in The Middle With You, and four kill each other at once in a rather climactic ending. Overall, it was a good movie, I thought it was going to be a more macabre movie than it was, but I'm okay without much gore.

The Tragic hero we chose was Mr. Orange (they had been given color names so as to not give up their identity). He was an undercover cop who ratted out the heist, but his plan went sour when a civilian shot him in the gut during a hijack. He spent the third quarter of the movie unconscious and having flashbacks to his undercover training. and finally in his dying moments he confesses to Mr. White, his only sympathizer, that he is in fact a cop.

WARNING: Video contains severed ears, poor dancing, and spoilers

Groupies

This is the week we start the group project for the Aristotilian Tragedy. I have to say, I really don't like group projects. They just never turn out the way I want to and they're never a real representation of me. There's also the workload situation, work is distributed unevenly. And also you have to jam all of the work into class time. If you want to get anything extra done, you have to do it outside of school, which means doing it by yourself or organizing a meeting. I don't want to see anybody outside of school, i don't want to be there and neither do they, its uncomfortable.

I like individual projects because the product is entirely my brainchild. I also don't have to socialize and interact, which confuses me whilst thinking, I'm not a big multitasker. It also leaves me to complete the project when I please, (or procrastinate as I please). Individual projects are just a lot more comfortable for me.

May they all perish in our present fate or one more hateful still...

Let the depressing part of the year begin. This semester in LA we are going to read Oedipus rex and Dante's Inferno. I can't say I'm very excited, I've never been crazy about sad stories. I like to not be depressed all the time. However, I know that they are supposed to be great works of writing and that makes me somewhat intrigued to find out how they are.
I also do like greek mythology. I find all of the gods and journeys and such pretty interesting. Which is why I'm a little bit more into Oedipus Rex than I normally would be. I also liked the Odyssey last year. But this, of course, is much different than the Odyssey.

Swollen Feet, The King

a.     Oedipus the Man

-Oedipus was a overly proud and determined man. He was determined to find the killer of the Previous king laius and that led to him finding out it was himself. In that and finding out he was married to his mother, he loses his pride.

b.     Oedipus the Myth

-Oedipus was born to Lauis and Jocasta of Thebes. His parents find out that their son will kill the father and marry the mother in the future. So Oedipus is ordered to be killed. However the shepherd doesn’t kill the baby, instead he gives it to the king and queen of Corinth. Which results in the chain of events in the play

c.      Oedipus the Play

-The play of Oedipus the king takes place after he kills his father and has four kids with his mother. He is still ignorant of the fact that they are his mother and father. The play was written by Sophocles in around 430 B.C.

d.     Tragedy-

-Tragedy is the situation in which a hero performs an action that has serious consequences while being presented in an attractive fashion. Aristotilian tragedies must be whole, no cliffhangers or “episodic” endings. They also must be complex and fairly lengthy.

e.     Hubris-Hubris is an excessive pride. It often causes a hero to ignore a moral warning. Ignoring the moral warning eventually leads to the tragic hero’s demise.

f.      Dramatic irony

- Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows a detail that the characters do not. In the play Oedipus Rex, everyone knows the myth of Oedipus marrying his mother, but the Oedipus himself, in the story, does not know that. This effect really draws audiences in because they know the result but they can’t look away.

g.     Sophocles

-The second of 3 great greek tragedy writers, Sophocles was most famous for his work on oedipus rex. He won many awards for his writing in competitions and he also bested Aeschylus in a dramatic competition

h.     Teiresias

- Teiresias was a Famous prophet of Thebes. He walked in on Athena bathing, so she blinded him, however, she also gave him the gift of prophecy in his blindness. So he was used in many greek myths as a prophet.

i.       Fate

-In greek mythology, fate is always inevitable. Heroes hear a prophecy and they want to deny it and try to go against it, which results in bad consequences for the hero. Fate is common in the structure of all greek literature.

j.       Greek theater

- Greek theater was thought to originate around 700s B.C.. Greek theater only included male actors who portrayed comedic or tragic myths on stage according to a playwright. There were three famous tragic playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.