Translation is about this girl who realizes she is part of something bigger in this world than most would think. She notices how things she has grown used to has changed and she knows it was possibly for the best. One could tell she is African American by the way she describes she is part of a tribe. Proportion Surviving this girl is addicted to "juice" which could possibly mean past memories. She clings on to these greatly. She always wants it because it helps her live her life and write her stories. The juice also effected her love life, by finding new loves and also losing them.
No Through Street is a story about a girl who lives her life traveling on trains in search of her sister. On the train she basically sees how life is to most people. When she looks out the window things go by to fast to follow. This is true in life for the times when you focus your mind on one thing, that you miss everything else going on around you. She seems to only be an observer and never actually participate in life because she sees love and loss all the time, yet she never experiences it herself. The sister the narrator is in search of, I believe is not really her sister but somebody she noticed before and admired greatly. If it were her sister, she would have been able to get in touch with her some way, at least that's what I believe because this sister seems to be famous and never acknowledges the narrator.
First Sleep seemed to be a confusing tale of sleep. The narrator describes how she enters into different levels of sleep (third, sixth, ninth, tenth...). She is usually awaken by a phone ringing. She also describes how sleeping helps clear the minds of other people. Mrs. Gladman is one of the elderly women in the story and she disappears, but the narrator seems to have had a premonition of her disappearance yet she cannot remember it. The neighborhood always seems to go into the streets over some commotion going on in the town.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
10/16/13
In class this day, we went over the 2nd fiction packet. The 1st story is about this crazy person who thinks he is sane and trying to do test on other people that never appear in the story. It makes you wonder how an actual person with schizophrenia, if that's what he has, acts and if they see the world around as crazy and they are the only sane ones. The 2nd story in the packet we discussed was about this girl who was seeing a doctor for her problems, but she always complained how she was going to end the sessions because she could help herself. Another story where the crazy person feels she is totally sane and can help fix her own problems. What I found interesting about this story is that it's name A therefore I, and that every other paragraph starts with A and then followed by I. In this girl's mind she spoke in 1st and 3rd person, showing there was something odd with her.
The book 'Juice' seems to be confusing at some parts, while other parts seem a little more clear and easier to follow. I really enjoyed how it began with describing how one will come across a place and live there so long they end up falling in love with it, and once it is gone you will miss it but it will always be with you in your heart and mind. I find this quite true with places I've been to. Obviously the narrator is African American by the way she describes her color and how she is part of this tribe. She describes her past a lot in the book. The second chapter I found rather odd on how she constantly discussed about her juice that she always wanted and loved. How this juice affected her love life and how it caused her to write more poems that were passionate with meaning.
In Lamott's story Polaroids I enjoy the meaning how you don't fully know something at first glance, but that the more you view and think about it, the clearer the image and story is to you. I noticed that with pictures I have taken and looked at so many times that I slowly start noticing different things in the background that didn't stand out to me before. In her chapter about characters she explains how you have to give them meaning. How they live, view things, what their personality is, their appearance is, do they represent the author in any way. You have to make them as realistic as possible by making them to be their own individual, a human being. These characters will eventually come across problems in their life because let's face it, nobody has a perfect life, there is always a problem somewhere. This is the plot of the story then. Also, a good story needs good dialogue. Nothing that is plain out boring and drags on and on, but something with rhythm and flows easily and gets the point across. Dialogue is necessary so the rest of the characters in a book knows what is going on and everyone has to think about it. It's like in real life, we have to communicate with others to know what is going on and people's thoughts on it. We couldn't get anywhere in life if everyone sat around mute and not even trying to make nonverbal communications.
The book 'Juice' seems to be confusing at some parts, while other parts seem a little more clear and easier to follow. I really enjoyed how it began with describing how one will come across a place and live there so long they end up falling in love with it, and once it is gone you will miss it but it will always be with you in your heart and mind. I find this quite true with places I've been to. Obviously the narrator is African American by the way she describes her color and how she is part of this tribe. She describes her past a lot in the book. The second chapter I found rather odd on how she constantly discussed about her juice that she always wanted and loved. How this juice affected her love life and how it caused her to write more poems that were passionate with meaning.
In Lamott's story Polaroids I enjoy the meaning how you don't fully know something at first glance, but that the more you view and think about it, the clearer the image and story is to you. I noticed that with pictures I have taken and looked at so many times that I slowly start noticing different things in the background that didn't stand out to me before. In her chapter about characters she explains how you have to give them meaning. How they live, view things, what their personality is, their appearance is, do they represent the author in any way. You have to make them as realistic as possible by making them to be their own individual, a human being. These characters will eventually come across problems in their life because let's face it, nobody has a perfect life, there is always a problem somewhere. This is the plot of the story then. Also, a good story needs good dialogue. Nothing that is plain out boring and drags on and on, but something with rhythm and flows easily and gets the point across. Dialogue is necessary so the rest of the characters in a book knows what is going on and everyone has to think about it. It's like in real life, we have to communicate with others to know what is going on and people's thoughts on it. We couldn't get anywhere in life if everyone sat around mute and not even trying to make nonverbal communications.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
10/9/13
In class, we discussed the fiction packet. One story that we went over was "Wallet." It was kind of confusing to know whether the guy actually stole the socks or not. Truthfully, I feel like he didn't, but that he drops just to bend over and pick them up while drawing attention to his wallet to be stolen again. He's trying to test pickpockets to fool them with his wallet, which consists of no valuables.
One of my favorites was "The Letter From Home." This story is separated into three paragraphs and is kind of told in the three stages of life: Young girl, Mother, Older woman. At the beginning it discusses things she did growing up and uses past tense. In the middle, she talks about having kids and she starts thinking more in depth ideas about life and death. Towards the end she encounters a man in a shroud that beckons her to come to him. This person I think of as Death telling her it is her time to go into the afterlife, but she avoids it like nothing happened.
In the second packet of fiction stories, "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" reminded me a lot of "The Grapes of Wrath." It describes the difficulties people had to deal with in their lives, in the past. A woman suffered with her baby dying and having to throw it in the water. She also had to deal with her difficult children by tying them down. Ras comes home in some pretty bad shape, that he is all mutated in a way. Ras enjoys around the place on horses, but always gets into trouble by showing off his stuff to every girl in town. For this he was cut by a dirty knife and ended getting gangrene and dying from it.
One of my favorites was "The Letter From Home." This story is separated into three paragraphs and is kind of told in the three stages of life: Young girl, Mother, Older woman. At the beginning it discusses things she did growing up and uses past tense. In the middle, she talks about having kids and she starts thinking more in depth ideas about life and death. Towards the end she encounters a man in a shroud that beckons her to come to him. This person I think of as Death telling her it is her time to go into the afterlife, but she avoids it like nothing happened.
In the second packet of fiction stories, "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water" reminded me a lot of "The Grapes of Wrath." It describes the difficulties people had to deal with in their lives, in the past. A woman suffered with her baby dying and having to throw it in the water. She also had to deal with her difficult children by tying them down. Ras comes home in some pretty bad shape, that he is all mutated in a way. Ras enjoys around the place on horses, but always gets into trouble by showing off his stuff to every girl in town. For this he was cut by a dirty knife and ended getting gangrene and dying from it.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
10/2/13
For this day we didn't really do much in the class. We had to have two poems to turn in and have graded. Also, we had to bring in extra poems into class to read in groups. We analyzed each other's poems. The only problem with this was trying to read each other's handwriting.
Discussing the fiction packet, it wasn't the easiest thing to follow. The first story, Survivors, is about a gay couple that are basically on their death beds. They seem to suffer from some disease, possibly AIDS. The one wants to die before his boyfriend because he doesn't want to deal with his partner's parents and his parrot. He knows that his boyfriend's family would blame him for the death of their gay son, for giving him the disease in the first place. He doesn't want to be the one to then set the parrot free because then he would be completely alone. With this he wants to be the one to die first and not end up being the horrible survivor.
Mystery Stories is a bunch of short paragraphs that have confusing messages. They seem to all have some setting, but they don't all make sense. The stories tend to sound like something coming from a dream. An example of this is in the first one, where the narrator meets and shakes hands with the cat and the woman become jealous of him. They last two sentences of each paragraph give it away to being something not real as if in a dream state.
Discussing the fiction packet, it wasn't the easiest thing to follow. The first story, Survivors, is about a gay couple that are basically on their death beds. They seem to suffer from some disease, possibly AIDS. The one wants to die before his boyfriend because he doesn't want to deal with his partner's parents and his parrot. He knows that his boyfriend's family would blame him for the death of their gay son, for giving him the disease in the first place. He doesn't want to be the one to then set the parrot free because then he would be completely alone. With this he wants to be the one to die first and not end up being the horrible survivor.
Mystery Stories is a bunch of short paragraphs that have confusing messages. They seem to all have some setting, but they don't all make sense. The stories tend to sound like something coming from a dream. An example of this is in the first one, where the narrator meets and shakes hands with the cat and the woman become jealous of him. They last two sentences of each paragraph give it away to being something not real as if in a dream state.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
City Eclogue
To start out, I didn't like the book at all. Most of the poems in the book sound like scattered thoughts about city life and other things. It seemed too confusing to follow along with. I couldn't really tell if there was even a possible pattern in the poems. Of course this doesn't help the fact that I'm not that good at understanding what poems really mean, unless the language is really easy to follow.
In class, my group had to discuss about the "Beauty's Standing" section. The poems really aren't about beauty. The title is more of a contradiction to the poems in the section. The first poem in the section on page 41 seems to talk about environmentalism, so reading this makes you think the rest will be similar; however, that would be wrong. On page 48, it randomly mentions politics and how the leaders are hypocrites. The rest of the section is about city life and the problems with it.
Later it discusses that there are things people see and hear everyday in the city, but don't give a second thought to it without continuing their normal day path, this is seen on page 50. They're things that are normal for city people. The people ignore the horrors in life to try and see the beauty in their lives. It's as if we see the bad, but blink to erase the memory to see the good things in life. On page 56, the poem tends to be very violent, "he woke in a fight for his life in that he went at the alarm clock as if to kill before that something about waking killed him." Also, that poem shows corruption by, "the city subcontracts with the mob." There is attempt at suicide if not succeeding on page 58. On page 49, has a somewhat similar message that most people are associated with, which is turning a blind eye. What I like to think about these poems is that people see negative things all the time, but we don't do anything to help it, we just look down upon it to make our lives seem better.
In class, my group had to discuss about the "Beauty's Standing" section. The poems really aren't about beauty. The title is more of a contradiction to the poems in the section. The first poem in the section on page 41 seems to talk about environmentalism, so reading this makes you think the rest will be similar; however, that would be wrong. On page 48, it randomly mentions politics and how the leaders are hypocrites. The rest of the section is about city life and the problems with it.
Later it discusses that there are things people see and hear everyday in the city, but don't give a second thought to it without continuing their normal day path, this is seen on page 50. They're things that are normal for city people. The people ignore the horrors in life to try and see the beauty in their lives. It's as if we see the bad, but blink to erase the memory to see the good things in life. On page 56, the poem tends to be very violent, "he woke in a fight for his life in that he went at the alarm clock as if to kill before that something about waking killed him." Also, that poem shows corruption by, "the city subcontracts with the mob." There is attempt at suicide if not succeeding on page 58. On page 49, has a somewhat similar message that most people are associated with, which is turning a blind eye. What I like to think about these poems is that people see negative things all the time, but we don't do anything to help it, we just look down upon it to make our lives seem better.
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