Fleshy goodness....

"A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh."

- Leonard Cohen.



A scar is with us for eternity, it is burned into our skin with a brand so iron hot that even if the flesh could forget, the mind never will. A single word having the effect of thousands seems almost unthinkable, however things like "hope" "faith" "remember" and "forget" are words that bring thousands to mind.

Language used to "bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses" (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) is often used in fictional writing to cover the skeleton of the story. Skeleton's are rough, scary, uncomfortable, and unseen in normal everyday life, as are the intended meanings of fictional writing. Writers as a general unspoken rule do not leave their writing in bear-bones-format. They cover it up.

Adjectives, sensory verbs and nouns, among other things are the "flesh" of most stories. It fills in the gaps left by the harsh surface of the skeleton and helps the reader view the story in a more socially acceptable light. Writers in the post-modern era liked to get down to business, if you will. The idea for them was not to cloud their ideas with useless facts and words that would be inconsequential to their argument either way. Whereas pre-modern writers found it more enlightening to generalize their works with pretty words that would get them remembered.


If the mind was taught to think in one way for it's entire existence then what would make it necessary to switch gears. To be able to feel your writing was the goal of pre-modern writers, but to be able to sympathize with it was the idea of the post-modern technique. We have all had those moments while reading a quote, a book, or even a magazine where we sat back and thought "Oh My God.....that is soo true." Which way of thinking does that for you...to feel...or to be?

MAX ERNST

Max Ernst painted this Two Children Are Threatened By A Nightingale in 1924 using oil on wood and adding wooden figures to the picture and the frame itself. Interestingly the colors of the sky do not blend, rather they are staggered giving the viewer a realization of the looming darkness and how fast it is moving. The entire painting is surreal in feeling. The girl with the butcher knife, the fainted girl, and the man with the baby are all painted in black and white seeming to be from another time; they belong in this painting by character only not by appearance. Though the colors of the building, fence, and background are in contrast they also compliment each other in that they are faded to pastel. There is great definition in foreground and background which adds to the surreal effect of the painting .

Ernst has a very unique quality of design in this piece. Not only is he very blunt about what is real and what is not (aka. the foreground "real" objects and the background "imagined" objects) but he also gives a very blunt assessment of fantasy and reality to the viewer. Having the fence, the house, and the knob as actual physical objects outside of the painting and physically hanging off the frame gives this perception of moving out of a dream and being able to feel what is around you. The way the painting is organized can make the viewer read it in one of two ways. It can be read from the open fence gate through the yard and the background to the house and the man who is running away. Or, the painting can be read from the dark sky down, fading from the darkness of night into the light of dusk and the imaginary scene below only adding to the surreal effect of the image.

After researching Max Ernst and Two Children Are Threatened By A Nightingale I interpreted the meaning of this painting to be that of a nightmare. This piece was painted after Ernst' sister's death in 1897. After the tragic loss Ernst had hallucinations of an eye, a nose, a bird's head, a spinning top, and a menacing nightingale. All of his hallucinations can be found in separate works created by Ernst and collectively they weave the tale of the traumatic time he had after his sisters' death. I believe that in this painting Ernst was trying to tell the story of a nightingale that frightened a family of sisters and as one tries to fend off the nightingale with a butchers knife he gets away with the youngest of the group, a baby, while the middle child lay unconscious on the ground. I believe that having the objects gives depth, reality and fantasy to this piece.

Information taken from website of The Museum of Modern Art

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A5%7CG%3AHO%3AE%3A1&page_number=39&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Repetitive Cities Unmasked

I look at a violin and see wood and strings. I take a peek again and see how smooth the wood is, how tight the strings are pulled, and I try to imagine what it must mean to the person it belongs to. Every object, person, and building on this earth looks different at second glance. How then, one might ask while reading Invisible Cities, could anyone possibly know that Marco Polo is not simply traveling around the same city and describing it from several different perspectives.

Could Marco Polo just be acting lazy by only traveling to one city? Is he just trying to boost Kublai Kahn's ego by telling all of the elaborate details. Marco Polo seems to be trying to ease Kahn's fears about his "destructed" kingdom. By telling the ruler about how well his cities look he is boosting his moral and easing his way into the end of his empire.

It is strange however that Marco Polo never mentions the people of these cities that he supposedly visits. Perhaps it is because the people are no longer in favor of their ruler. Perhaps it is because the faces of the inhabitants portray a more bleak nature than Polo is willing to share. Perhaps it is because Polo wants to preserve the natural beauty that Kahn would have seen in his younger age.

I wonder what could have possibly possessed Italo Calvino to write about these cities in such a way, however, as always, I have a theory.

I believe, as many others have already studied, that Calvino wrote about these cities in such an order that it shows the repetition of Polo's views on said cities. For example Dorthea, a real human woman's name, is one of those cities that Polo ventures to. He divides the city into several views; Memories and Desire are two of those sections. Going back and describing those cities in sections is representative of Marco Polo reviewing the cities that he visits.

Though I am not thrilled with reading the novel, I am learning so much from it. The writing style is phenomenally convoluted which fits in perfectly with the nature of Italian Culture. It is a blend of intuitive and underhanded writing techniques.

Below is a YouTube Video entitled Italian Art and Architecture, a little something I have left you to think about. Try to look and relook at the buildings and surroundings and see if you can notice something that you didn't before. Become Marco Polo.

A little demonstration that even Virginia Woolf would be proud of...The freedom of movement in the most public of ways.

Trapped...

To be trapped inside your own mind must put dante's inferno to shame. To grow up in a place that cannot accept the fact that your mind contains to many thoughts for you to sort out must be a new kind of hell.

The main character of Girl Interrupted was not crazy by any means. She was confused. She was trapped inside her own mind with thoughts buzzing about and that did not make her insane, it made her understandably confused. Her headaches, her need to write...sometimes people like her are diagnosed with bipolar disorder or multiple personality disorder because no one can comprehend that they dont know how to sort their thoughts.
She had swarms of thoughts buzzing around in her head and she could not handle them becausee she was so young. It's true that writing helps get those thoughts out in the open, thats why her warden told her to write them down or talk to someone. If her parents had cared enough to listen they would have found that things like talking, writing, finding some sort of an outlet would have served her far better than a mental institution ever would.

Those thoughts that buzz around inside her head could have swallowed her whole. They would have taken over every part of her only to use her body as an avenue to get them out. They say that crazy people say crazy things. I have seen crazy people. Some are dead silent. Others cannot stop talking. Their thoughts have either corrupted their mind to the poing of them retreating into their minds or they have exploded and cannot stop spitting their thoughts out no matter how conveluted those thoughts might be. Nevermind making any sort of sense.

The lead character was not crazy, but her condition was not handled well. She teaches a briliant lesson in the end. She tells viewers, using her actions, that when other people mess up you have the power to make it right. She went to her treatments, she told her story, she found an outlet for her thoughts. She made it better, she made herself better and that is all that matters.

To Find Room....

Judith Shakespeare is an interesting character. To further Woolfe's arguement and to simplify the situation, she is a woman with talent that was passed up by overbearing parental authorities and was trapped inside a room of her own. Woolfe strengthens her arguement by giving life to this fictional woman. She goes inside and scopes out her inner musings, in a way being a psychiatrist to this unseen character. She shows sympathy to this trapped character because she herself was trapped. The irony of Women In Fiction and Woolfe's fictional character was not lost but rather added to her already growing list of iconic writing.

Woolfe discusses the idea of writers, such as the college ones she was speaking to, having to write in the confines of a shared sitting room. She makes the very valid point of saying that the distraction of having a crowded room may have influenced their decisions to become novelists instead of poets. With that number of people surrounding me and telling me why being a novelist is so much better and more fulfulling than being a poet, day in and day out I would change my mind too. That also brings the subject back to needing a room of one's own. It's not just a place to think, it's a place to develop yourself. Without a little peace, as you would find in a deserted room, no one would ever have a coherent self-image. A room is just as necessary for Judith to figure out who she is as it is for all writers to find who they are. We need space.