My final presentation.

Throughout the semester Dr. Sexton has offered us many fine sayings like “How do you know what you think till you read what you write?” and “There are no boring books only boring people,” but it was his desire for us to develop a “Tragic Sense of Life” that most captivated me. I feel it is this key phrase that pulls the ties together to make this class a complete experience. It is more than just another lesson to be taught and forgot among the crumpled notes of yesteryear. It is the center piece that combines everything we have learned and helps us to understand what it is to be human. What this class has taught me over the semester is that we all go through exceptional hardships in our lives but it is this common tragedy that encompasses all of us and causes us to relate to each other despite our differences. This has helped to make me a much more interesting person and accepting person.
What does it mean to have a tragic sense of life? Well we have all experienced tragedy at some point in our lives whether it was your little brother stealing the last slice of pizza at dinner or your significant other deciding she’s happier with someone else. The point is that it’s universal and inescapable. Even if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth you are destined to die with everything else. Tragedy is a tricky and sometimes dangerous subject though. It is easy to get caught up in feeling sorry for yourself and pondering the “Why me?” of the situation but it is much more difficult to accept the change in your life and move on. Many times I have lain awake and wondered what I did to deserve some of the things that have been done to me. I have run through scenarios a thousand times over in my head after I’ve experienced them, questioning, “What I could have done different?” Once you are stuck in this mindset that the world is a terrible place you can become trapped and it can be incredibly difficult to work out. The point is not to dwell on these tragedies but to grow from them. It is only after we have risen from the ashes of failure that we can get a good view of the world again.
It may seem contradictory to have this perspective and still be full of love and admiration for life but there are people that excel at it. Alyosha is a prime example; he has come to terms with the tragedies of life and has become a better person because of it. He is surrounded by the atrocious sins of his family and yet still he finds love for every one of them. Despite the blame that could be laid on his father for his own mother’s grief stricken death, Alyosha tries to save him. Even when Dmitri threatens Old man Karamazov’s life Alyosha empathizes with the sadness and torment in his brother’s soul. The young boy that bites Alyosha’s finger gets no violent or angry retort but merely a confused and gentle inquiry as to his motives. It seems nobody can surprise or upset Alyosha because he was born into a tragedy. His earliest memory is being torn from his mother by a nurse while she was hysterically sobbing and offering him to the Mother of God. He remembers being clutched so hard by his mother that it hurt and the look on her face as “frenzied but beautiful.” These words betray a profound sense of understanding in his character. He knows that no one on this earth suffers alone. He knows this and decides to make it his mission to alleviate just a little of the suffering of others. While Alyosha does this by joining a monastery others find more creative ways.
I cannot claim to have such a complete understanding of this lesson as Alyosha does but I know I am capable if I just continue to open myself up to other people. Instead of immediately shutting out someone because of judgments I’ve passed on their lives I can learn from them. I am willing to hear out tales of incredible sadness because it gives me a more defining view of the person before me. Everyone has a story to tell and some are worse than others but we all have an equal responsibility to listen and learn. It is the tragedies in our lives that give way to the opportunities to become heroes. Without them we would have a much harder time of growing, changing, or learning. This class has helped me to recognize that and I am thankful. This year has been especially hard on me and I have been at a loss for how I feel about the world. I explained in a blog entry about my ex leaving me but I left out many details. I left out the fact that I encouraged her to spend time with the guy because I was being suffocated as her only friend. I could not describe the plethora of emotions I felt the day she told me she wanted to “go on a break” or the subsequent week of hell that followed as she drifted further and further into someone else’s arms. She was a girl I had moved thousands of miles and devoted almost three years of my life for and it all amounted to nothing. The easy days were the angry and sad ones because I could just talk about them with someone and feel better. The real tragedy lay in the days full of confusion or apathy. What do you say when you just don’t know? How do you explain just wanting to give up? I was and still am quite lost but things are getting better. I have found solace in the comfort of The Brothers Karamazov and in writing about how I feel. Honestly, what has helped more than anything though is to tell myself that I am not the only person this has happened too. I find comfort in knowing that throughout time my story has been experienced over and over and over again. I am not the only person to feel this pain and confusion. I won’t be the last.
So, all in all, I am confident in my growing development of a tragic sense of life. We all possess this ability because it is built into the human condition and it is one of the few things that sets us apart from other animals. We are all born to lives of tragedy but it is up to us to understand what that means. It is only with this understanding that we can truly come to love and respect all that life is.

My thesis statement.

I have been putting a lot of thought into what I wish to write about for my final presentation. Part of me wants to just treat it like any other assignment and BS it. Another part of me though wants to "go big" as they say. I can't think of any assignment where I've actually "Gone Big" though so its hard to reference though. I find my biggest trouble when writing a paper is narrowing down a topic or worse choosing a topic too small to expand three pages for. I have a natural tendency to take the easy way out and an even worse habit of procrastinating. I am leaning towards the "general" topic of "What have you learned in the class that you did not know before and how has it helped you?" for the very reason that it is so general. I feel it gives me more freedom to incorporate the Brother's K as well as incorporate everything the class has taught me overall.
So without much further ado, "What this class has taught me over the semester is that we all go through exceptional hardships in our lives but it is this common tragedy that encompasses all of us and causes us to relate to each other despite our differences. This has helped to make me a much more interesting person and accepting person."

Where I am in the Brother's K

I mentioned before that I am only on pg. 255 of the Brother's Karamazov and probably will not finish it before the end of the school year. I will however continue to read on into the summer. I have enjoyed the story immensely so far with the love triangle between Dmitri, Katarina, and Ivan. Or is it a love square with Grueshenka? Who knows. I have also come to really appreciate Alyosha's love, kindness, and respect towards everybody. His fervent belief in all human beings in astounding and almost warrants complete disregard as an idealistic literary element. He reminds me a lot of an Anime character by the name of Vash the Stampede from the show Trigun. While the stories are drastically different the characters are quite close. Vash is a framed outlaw on a desert planet with an incredible bounty on his head. Throughout the show many people are hurt around him (usually in the act of trying to hurt him or those he loves) Vash never kills and he always appeals to mercy, sympathy, and love. I can't help but compare his love of all mankind to Alyosha's. What really interests me about both of these stories though is how it is not the main character or hero of the story that changes but every other character that is growing and learning. Throughout both Trigun and Brother's K our heroes are surrounded by adversity and sadness yet they both manage to hold on to their beliefs tenaciously. It is this act of impermeability that solidifies my love for Alyosha and Vash. That even when it is their life on the line they will not falter. They are heroes not in the classical sense of the word, with swords and shields rescuing maidens and all that, but heroes because they stand tall and bright in a world of darkness. Their everlasting ideals inspire those around them to do good and to love as they love. In my mind that is what it means to be a great hero.

My feelings on the teacher's ideas.

I feel that, for the most part, the professor's statement of "there are no boring books there are only boring people" is true. I blame myself for not putting the extra effort into finishing the Brother's Karamazov. It is halfway through the last week in the year and I am only on page 255. It is not that I haven't enjoyed the story or that I could not relate to the characters because the truth is quite contrary. I have found I empathize greatly with each of the characters especially Father Karamazov. Instead it is because I chose to spend my time indulging in activities that do not make me more interesting. I let myself get caught up in this tragic sense of life and lost sight of where I was heading. I've dropped classes, skipped others, and haven't read much at all this semester and its because I chose to disengage from the world. My biggest regret is not participating more in this class. I love creative writing and feel I really missed an opportunity here to become better at it.

This semester has had me rethinking a lot about the way I go about things. I have always thought of my true self as the little voice in my head that creates ideas and speaks aloud but the statement "How do I know what I think till I see what I say?" has really bugged me. At first I brushed it off as nonsense and tried to put it out of my head but it persisted. I thought it was ridiculous that the words my mind was deciding to put on paper could be different from what I was thinking. I began actually looking back at my sentences and words as if I had not written them and it wasn't until that moment that I'd realized what an incomplete idea of myself I had had all these years. Unfortunately this realization has come much too late for me to take advantage of in this class.

Bad Day

My bad day would have to be the day my girlfriend told me she was leaving me for her rock climbing partner. This wouldn't have been so terrible had I not moved from Florida to Montana for her. It was also no plus that I introduced them to each other in the first place. The teacher once asked the class something along the lines of, "wouldn't the world be better if men quested and traveled great distances to to prove their love for women?" And I argue no. No it would not. I would have agreed once but after this experience I don't think men should be forced to devote any more time, money, or feelings into a relationship then women. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading tales of harrowing romance but I have come to understand there is no such thing as a happy ending in real life.

Love Sonnet

I sit and think about the poems I write.
This one is meant to be about my love.
I don't think I can get this love quite right.
So I place all my hope and faith above.

To me love is too hard to handle.
I just can't seem to learn from those before.
I have heard love burns almost like a candle.
To me it feels more like an open sore.

Try my best but they don't seem to notice.
The lengths of which I always try to go.
Each love repeats the same as last I know this.
And yet I don't attempt to change the flow.

Although this poem contains much doubt.
It is still love I wish to figure out.

I found A Street.

Not A Through Street.
A street not through,
not, not, not, a street.
Street through.
A street.
Not a street,
not a street,
not through.
A street not,
not a street.

Earliest Memories

I have several earliest memories and because they are all around the same age I cannot figure out which one is earliest. So instead of one I will share them all. In Florida, I lived in a trailer park until the age of five. Our trailer was held up on concrete blocks about 3 feet off the ground. As soon as I'd learned to crawl I began to explore this area beneath our home. I remember being surrounded by all sorts of dangerous things like broken glass, stray animals, and even have a distinct memory of coming across a spider the size of my face at one point. We had around twenty stray cats in our neighborhood and I remember talking to them while we roamed the crawlspace. One day I couldn't talk to them anymore and it finally occurred to me that that place was terrifying and I stopped adventuring under there.

My next memory is of these kids in my neighborhood convincing me to distract a rattlesnake while they captured it. I was three and they were about seven or eight when we were lifting cinder blocks to look for slugs to squish. Underneath one block was a baby rattlesnake and it immediately began striking at each of us. My friends needed to run home to get something to trap the snake with so it was up to me to make sure it didn't get away. They handed me a stick and I stood there dutifully stabbing and swaying while this snake struck randomly about. After they got back I had to keep the snakes attention some more while they positioned themselves behind it and pinned its head to the ground with a stick. They placed it into a glass terrarium and brought it over a couple times. I was never allowed to tell my parents that I had helped catch it. After about two weeks they killed it because it wouldn't stop trying to bite people.

These next memories feel earlier than the last two but I cannot be sure. I must have been two or three and I was sitting on our couch with my little brother James. He would have been one or two. We were watching Sesame street and I remember it suddenly cut off and one of those old rainbow error technical difficulties messages came on. I assured my brother that it would come back on eventually and then I was suddenly hit with a wave of vertigo. I was too little for my feet to touch the ground while sitting on the couch and I remember having to assure myself that the ground was nearby or I would feel dizzy. Then I remember imagining the couch being hundreds of feet in the air and the corresponding dizziness that came along with it. At that point I think I began to realize, even if it wasn't consciously, how my thoughts shaped my reality. I don't remember if Sesame Street ever came back on or not.

These are the most distinct memories of my early childhood. The next few are just glimpses. My mom asked me to get the garden hose and I picked up a green snake instead thinking it was the hose. I freaked out and my dog came running and chased the snake away and saved me.

I hit a full fish tank with a hammer and had to help my mom put the fish into bowls of water.

Playing in puddles and the awful case of ringworm that followed.

A random lunch at TGIF's with an Aunt.

Finding bowls and pots to place under the leaks in our trailer's roof and hoping fish would hatch from the tiny eggs that might have been picked up when the water evaporated.

Being up early on a Saturday morning to watch Double Dragon. Wiggling through the couch cushions and finding a penny to suck on while I watched.

Sneaking up to my parent's partly open door to watch Tale's from the Crypt on their TV while they thought I slept.

The hot shaky feeling I got the first time I stuck a spoon into the electric socket and it melted. The scream my dad let out when it shut off the hot water heater and his warm shower suddenly went cold. And then his concern when he found out why.

All of these memories are between the ages of two and five and are only a fraction of what I actually remember. After writing all of this out I realize I don't have enough time to go any further. I will however leave one final memory. I guess it is the first instance I have of actually experiencing memory. The first day I woke up and realized that there had been day before and that I had lived in it. I had watched an episode of Mr. Roger's neighborhood and it had taught me how to build a kite. I asked my mom if it was us that had built the kite and she told me no that it was Mr. Rogers. I remember thinking it was strange phenomenon. A weird experience. That all the days before yesterday were blank.

Day 3

So, after flipping through the pages of our book I came across many interesting scenes. But, no matter how far I got, the Cinderella stories seemed to draw my attention. I was intrigued by the differences in the original brother's Grimm tale and the Disney version. I had heard that the Brother's Grimm were a bit more gory but I hadn't had the chance to see firsthand until now. People slicing parts of their feet off in order to become queens. Birds pecking out people's eyes! Sometimes I marvel at the ingenuity of lucrative business men. Making a fortune out of retelling horror stories into children's tales. I only wish I could see the day, a hundred years from now, when Disney gets ahold of the Saw series and waters it down into "Jig Saw" the lovable old Riddler that saved people's lives with limerick.

Day 2

Class was quite interesting. Professor Sexson amazed us with his memory by rattling off everybody's name in class. He then went on to recite stories and pages from books all from memory as well. We learned many things like "why you should never tell the whole story"-to keep people coming back. "The truth comes at you at a slant"-be wise in how you phrase your thoughts. Why people should not have to "Get a life"-we tend to overlook them. And finally even when children cheat at scrabble we should never "Let them have it". I can only hope class stays this much fun throughout the year. Maybe I'll invite my other professors to sit in and learn a thing or two about captivating a class.

Day 1

It was the first day of class and I can't help but feel apprehensive about the coming semester. I never know what to say in these things and I am hoping future classes will provide enough inspiration to keep me posting. Roll call was interesting enough. Pictures are always terrible. At least the prospect of a good book lies ahead.