Meet My Best Friend

"This is my spot in the fort, my corner....my spy deck!"

We saw Gnomeo and Juliet in 3-D, so of course she popped* out the lenses and now wears the frames as if they were her prescription glasses. Gotta love her.

*I accidentally typed "pooped" instead of popped....Freudian slip?

Pretentiousness

Is it terrible that I'm kind of annoyed by my AP lit teacher's inability to pronounce words and names?

She teaches the same books every  year. She teaches the same vocabulary every year. You would think that after seven years she'd at the very least learn how to pronounce Svidrigailov, Roskalnikov, ribald, Ludavico, Gratiano, capacious, Achebe, Okonkwo, pusillanimous. etc.

I have a lot of respect for Kidle's approach towards teaching AP lit. Teaching different books every schoolyear? Nice--I can admire that.  She takes the opportunity to not only expand her students' exposure to literature but hers as well. If I were to teach AP lit, I would totally do it that way. I find myself comparing Coomer's approach towards Kidle's and being dissatisfied with it.

My gosh, this is terribly pretentious of me. I need to stop, like, now. Gahhh. I just can't seem to help it though. Fail.

Let Me Show You How It's Done

I just saw this "list of most beautiful actresses" and was appalled.
Um, no.
Any list that is lacking Vivien Leigh is automatically incomplete. Didn't you get the memo?

Hands down it's Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Natalie Portman. Emma Watson is really close to being on that list. Her pixie cut? Perfect for her face-shape.

While we're on the subject of good looking people....um, can you say Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Daniel Craig, Mel Ferrer, Paul Newman, and Hugh Jackman? Yeah, OK, that's what I thought.

Because this was clearly pertinent to your life.
Kthanksbye.

She lay her head on the pillow, the weight of the thoughts streaming through her mind pressing down upon its inviting reprieve.

We read this passage today from Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. I don't think I blogged about that book, but for the record: I love it. It makes me want to cry, it's so beautiful. It's like looking at Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, it's that poetically beautiful. I read it, and I felt as if Hurston was speaking to my soul.

Anywho.

There was a part where Janie "starched and ironed her face" then sent it to her late husband's funeral while her mind went "frolicking through the fields of spring" or something along those lines.
There's a veil in my mind. A very delicate veil that I work very hard to leave alone. It creates a division, a division between aspects of my life I'm trying to marry in some type of union that won't be damaging to either side. Whenever I think I'm succeeding, I give into the temptation and lift the veil up, ever so slightly for just a bit of a reminiscence, and get a glimpse of what's on the other side. Or sometimes I do it entirely by accident or out of sheer forgetfulness, and suddenly I find myself on the wrong side, the painful side, the side I'm trying to forget and ignore because a union seems almost impossible. Why do I succumb, why can't I just remember to leave the veil alone?

But how can I ignore it? I can't just replace a huge part of my life with something else. Rather the lack has created this vacuous hole in my life and I'm frantically trying to salvage any remnant of its existence. The two sides of that inadequate veil don't seem to get along, and I'm frequently trying to play the compromiser, the peace maker, the advocate.

People mention things, very casually and innocently, and I internalize it; I take their comments--which are always harmless and blameless--and dwell on them, letting them sit and fester in my brain. There's a passage in the Bible where it says "And Mary took these things and pondered them in her heart." Sometimes I feel consumed by my thoughts, wherein they no longer inhabit only my mind but my being, that it becomes my state of consciousness. And then I have to pull out of it, turn distinctly away from the thin veil of my mind, and focus on my present, my now, my today, for it does naught but harm to dwell on yesterday, that what was, the past.

I want to distance myself from it, but I can't. I feel like my life is in limbo, an Inceptionesque state of consciousness in which my life is frozen in a world not entirely composed of elements of reality or what I wish were reality. Then when I start to succeed, getting farther and farther away from that veil, I question my actions. Do I really want to be the one rowing the boat? Or do I want to drift in a lazy fashion, letting the tide of my thoughts, thereby influencing my actions, flow in any direction they please?

For now, I shall have to do as Janie and "starch and iron my face," leaving my true thoughts and feelings dwell within. I can't come out of this shell. I'm not stable enough, I'm not confident enough. There's too many unknowns, and I've never been able to venture out into the ambiguous. To put it simply, I'm frightened.

My constant companion is my Thoughts, a place I know I'm safe and secure, a friend I know is reliant and accepting, a safety vault for my innermost yearnings and ponderings. And since, right now, that's what I need more than anything, she'll have to suffice.

In Which I Type Up My Essay For You All To Read

So, I kinda sorta got another nine on a paper in AP lit. I must say, as I was writing this paper, I knew it was good. I could feel it. And it was great. Yay!
I decided to share the nine awesomeness with you guys. Yes, I love this essay that much. It's actually one of my favorites that I've ever written. The beginning is terrible; just get past the stinky intro and into the good stuff. It gets better.
The passage was from Tillie Olsen's short story "I Stand Here Ironing" and the prompt was to "write an essay in which you analyze the narrative techniques and other resources of language Olsen uses to characterize the mother and the mother's attitude toward her daughter."

--
After all a mother can do, her child will have to develop their independence. Mothers won't always be there to provide a safety net; they can only hope they have prepared their children for life's difficulties. In Tillie Olsen's story "I Stand Here Ironing," the struggles of motherhood are vividly portrayed, and a mother's dearest desires for her daughter are felt through the author's imagery, tone, and reflection.

As the mother looks back into her past, her thoughts move "tormented back and forth with the iron." She sees her daughter "poring over her baby pictures, making [her] tell her over and over how beautiful she had been-and would be-" in a time when she lacked self-confidence and a realization of her inner beauty. Her daughter was a "miracle" to her amidst times when she endured poverty, abandonment, and a fight for survival. A keen sense of regret and blame is felt as a weary mother reflects upon a time when none helped her and she felt hopeless toward her own daughter. Olsen's use of remembering a difficult past allows for a deeper understanding of a mother's struggle.

The first image of the iron, trudging back and forth, back and forth, causes one to realize that this is not the mother's first time going over her past. The image of her child's cries causing her to tremble, her "breasts [aching] with swollenness" rouse a picture of a strong, but tired, and loving mother. A hint of a smile seems to play around the corners of the mother's mouth as she remembers her daughter blowing "bubbles of sound" and her love for simple things such as motion, light, "color and music and textures." But then her husband left, and she begins to frown as a sad look crosses her eyes. She recalls her daughter's failure to match the societal standards for beauty; she recalls the inability to provide for "her [daughter] the soil of easy growth." Olsen's vivid imagery, ranging from joyous to depressing, allows for a glimpse into the mother's inner conflict. She seems disappointed as she has "been dredging the past."

The tone in Olsen's piece is so poignant it's almost tangible. She hesitates to reflect on the hardships of the past, fearing she'll "become engulfed with all she did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped." As she explains her history, she seems to be asking her daughter for forgiveness, hoping she'll comprehend her mother's shortcomings. Olsen's imagery illustrates an every day struggle, creating a tone that is weary yet loving. She ends the story echoing the beginning with the image of an iron. But a gleam of hope shimmers in this final image as the mother desires for her daughter to know "that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron." This image sees the mother wishing her daughter a better, easier tomorrow. The stark difference between the two images of the iron, one weary and the other hopeful, grants a well-rounded and versatile tone to the narrative, allowing for a more holistic attitude of the mother towards herself and her daughter.

Olsen's piece gives a complete view of a single mother's daily struggle she experienced to provide for and raise her daughter. Vivid imagery, bittersweet reflection, and a tangible tone help to characterize the weary mother and her conflicted feelings toward her child.

January

In the past, more specifically the recent past, January has the distinction of being the worst month of the year. I'm happy to report that January still maintains this position, although February and August provide some serious competition. Thank goodness it's over.

It's like a Monday: one, gigantic, perpetual Monday that happens to be 744 hours* long.
Ew.

*I will have you know, that I multiplied 31 times 24 all by myself. Like, I wrote out the multiplication on a piece of scrap paper and multiplied it using my brain and mad math skills. I really hope it's not an incorrect figure, because I'm too lazy to get out of the chair, find a calculator, and calculate the figure. I'm also too lazy to multiply it using Google or the calculator on the desktop. But apparently I'm not too lazy to work out the figure myself, which I'm pretty sure involves more energy than all of the alternatives. You know, sometimes I just don't make sense--even to myself.

Um, yeah.
I'm trying to get in touch with my inner Audrey Hepburn.