Metaphor and Saying it Right

I thought the chapter on meaning a metaphor was really quite helpful one of my favorite lines from it is on page 132 at the top in the paragraph, which is talking about purple finches.  The line “a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice” is such a great metaphor.  Not only does the reader get this crystal clear image of what the writer is talking about but its funny as heck too.  I really thought the exercise on the same page 132 was a kind of neat thing you could come up with some really interesting metaphors that way.  I also thought the last lesson learning to finish in chapter nine was pretty important.  I can see that though my own work because every time I think I’m done with something I figure out ways to go back and add to it or change it or such.  Some of what I feel to be my best work has come about as a result of completely changing the focus on one of the pieces that I felt was already finished but in fact wasn’t.

An everyday observation-On driving

My recent everyday observation is that more and more people seem to be driving like assholes particularly on the Northway.  Maybe I’m just noticing it more because I have to drive home closer to rush hour traffic but I’ve driven home during rush hour traffic in prior semesters but it’s never seemed as bad as it is right now.  Between the cars that decide they are going to sit under the traffic light blocking the roadway rather then wait till the light changes again to go though, the cars behind me trying to pass my on the exit ramp, and the idiots who are going to make a 4 lane change in rush our traffic 50ft before their exit I’m surprised to get back and forth to Albany all in one piece some days.  I won’t claim to be the best driver in the world because I know I’m not but I do know at least I slow down to let cars in front of me get on the Northway during rush hour traffic rather then shoot right on by them forcing them to come to a dead stop at the end of the entrance ramps lane.  And what ever happened to common curtesy in driving, such as when you have to stop for a stoplight anyway not blocking side roads that other cars need to use or stopping to let that SUV out of the dunkin doughnuts parking lot instead of insisting on being a whole car length ahead?  More and more I just hate having to drive anywhere because it’s like playing a game show called what moronic things are other drivers going to do today.  I suppose this is rather inspiring observation but it’s just one that strikes me the most of all the observations I could choose from.  

Stunt Pilot

I thought that Dillard’s Piece Stunt Pilot was interesting in the way it described the scenery. For example “…the chrome sea twirling over Rahm’s head like a baton p187 or a lee shore where yellow sandstone ledges slid into the sea p187.  However, there were several things that I thought detracted from the essay in major ways.  The first thing I thought detracted from the essay was on page 183 where Dillard breaks the essay up with a paragraph about a “stunt swallow”.  I’m not really sure what the point of this paragraph was so I went back a second time and read it again.  Then I went back a third time and read it completely ignoring the whole “swallow” paragraph.  I actually liked the way the essay read better that third time when I skipped the “swallow paragraph” it just seemed to flow better to me.  The other main thing that I felt detracted from the essay was Dillard’s instance on sating that Rahm’s flying was art at what seemed like every other sentence sometimes.  This just really started to bug me especially when she got to the point of saying comparing the stunt flying to Mozart’s music on page 190.  By that point I understood that she thinks his flying is really artistic from what I previously had read of her essay.  I just feel like she’s trying to capitalize on the fame of old dead worshiped people, does she really think Rahm’s stunt flying should be compared to Mozart’s music on an equal level?  I’m not so sure she does and this comparison rings out with a sense of falsity to me.  I feel like she just made the comparison to make her essay sound good.

Life Like

Life Like is now my favorite essay of all the essays we’ve read so far this semester.  To begin with just the idea of Taxidermy seems like such and odd random thing to write about.  I’m sure it caught many other people up in the essay right away simply because they had the same thought as me of “Hmmm taxidermy what’s this about?”  This essay was really festinating because it took a topic I had never really thought about it and just gave tons of interesting facts and stories about it.  I think the line “that there is a taxidermy championship at all is something of an astonishment…” not only to the people who are not interested in the subject but too the taxidermists as well.  What really brought me into this piece though was the constant humor that was mixed in “heads up buffalo coming though” being shouted across a hotel lobby is just such a great image.  My favorite passage of all though was of the man who was baking clear acrylic toilet plunger handles on a cookie sheet in the oven while telling the reader “My wife was pretty worried, but I did it on a nonstick cookie sheet.”  The mixture of humor and facts and stories in the piece really made it come alive for me.

Yarn

After reading the essay yarn I have to say that I thought it was an interesting essay.  I have to wonder if Kyoko Mori intended parts of her essay to be metaphors of ways to live life.  She keeps going back to the idea that yarn as opposed to string is softer and more comfortable but less durable, or that yarn unlike string allows one to make mistakes, or the fact that every body can knit but it takes much practice to sew.  Is Mori trying to point out to the reader that they should be prepared to take risks and make mistakes in their lives; mistakes which they must accept and learn from rather then beat themselves up over like a failed sewer might?  Is she saying that rather then redo our entire work of life we should just go back and try to fix our mistakes and then get on with it?  I really thing that she is but she never goes out and directly states these things she gets the reader to infer them from her text which I think is really neat.  I really love the line “The folk lore among knitters is that everything handmade should have at least on mistake so an evil spirit will not become trapped in the maze of perfect stitches.

            Besides the above I also really though the way Mori blends the history of weaving into her piece in a way that seems to flow with her main ideas.  It really makes the piece more interesting and gives a life and depth to what we as the reader think of when we thing about yarn. 

Brian Doyle-Joyas Voladoras

Of the four pieces of writing we had to read I Joyas Voladoras was the piece I liked the most.  I liked the way the sentences seemed more like statements of facts strung together to form the writers vision.  Sentences like “Each one visits a thousand flowers a day.” Followed by “They can dive at sixty miles an hour.”. In the beginning they all seem like just that statements of fact but as you read on you begin to see where the sentences are leading you too.  Not only that but the author starts each new idea/paragraph in the same way starting with facts statement after fact statement but making all those facts lead the reader down a certain road to a certain conclusion.  I just thought this was a really original way to write.

            Another thing I liked about it was even though the author was writing about animals that the reader made know nothing about the way the author described the animals’ characteristics made up for that.  For example when they are writing about the tragic seeming death of the humming bird they write “…racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs, and violet-capped wood nymphs, crimson, topazes and purple crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst wood stars, rainbow-bearded thorn bills and glittering-bellied star-frontlets…” Even though I didn’t have any idea what these birds should look like just by those short two word descriptions I could picture them in my mind.

            I liked the way they began the essay speaking about animal hearts and built up or ended the essay speaking about the human heart.  That they started with the tragedy of the death and sadness of a humming birds death as the birds heart stops.  Then they finally tied it in with the idea that the human heard is just as fragile and can be broken just as easily. 

Proofs and a little bit of Growing Up Game

After reading the three essays’ I have to say that I liked Proofs and growing up game a more then I liked Cyclops.  Cyclops was also a great essay but I just like the issues that Proofs and Growing up game addressed more.  I loved the opening lines in Proofs “You are wearing two shirts, two pants, two underpants.  That’s just such a great way to express living between two different cultures.  And the images from Proofs of the families and men constantly running across the border to or from America trying to belong to both was really great too.  “Mexico was not the past, People went back and forth”.  I also liked the way the author’s of both text showed the idea of allegiance and belonging more to both cultures but having a tie to one that was more significant then the other.  In Proof the line “The city will win the city will give the children all the village could not-VCRs, hair styles drum beats.  The city sings mean songs dirty songs.  But the city will sing the children a great Protestant hymn.  “You can be anything you want to be.”  There’s just so much in that line that says things about having an allegiance and respect to America but at the same time laments the lose of Mexican tradition and thought.  The same thing is true of the line “Why should it be that the purchase of meat at a butcher shop is somehow more righteous then eating something from the wild” from Growing up game.  If the main character ever said they were perfectly happy eating game the “Civilized American side” would be in shock so they live hiding their culture and traditions and wondering why there culture isn’t just as acceptable

Book Marks Responce

This is the first reading that we have done so far that I really disliked.  There was just to much going on in the essay that annoyed me and made me want to stop reading.  The woman in the essay is essential using this book of poems to analyze and look at her own life but she keeps insisting that she is looking at the life of another.  I can understand this plot or idea that this is what she’s doing.  What annoys is not that she doesn’t see this but rather that she feels he can deduce a persons entire life from what they underlined or wrote in the margins of a book of poems.  I also disliked the transition between the library book of poems and what was going on in her life but I guess that’s because I just don’t think in the way necessary to see that transition as fitting together.

            I did enjoy parts of the reading though such as the paragraph at the bottom of 109 about having your reading interrupted when you are totally engrossed in it.  “You won’t be able to put it down.  Booksellers claim as they ring up your purchase.  But of course you do, you must.”  I thought this was a really good line because it describes the annoyance of having to put down a book your interested in so well.  I also liked the line “The world lifted her veil and showed her whole self”.  I really liked the imagery here and the metaphor for awakening to the world and what’s going on as whole as well as the casting off of depression.  Over all though I just didn’t really like this reading.  Blue machinery and some of the other readings were much more appealing to me.

Cracked Open

 Line to be cracked:  When we arrived each of us opened our respective doors and climbed out of the Volkswagen.

 The great grey beast that was my friends Volkswagen carried us up my driveway.  As it climbed the back ebony passage that was my tar-covered driveway the headlights of the beast projected sickly yellow light though the front picture windows of my home. As the beast came to a halt at the top of my driveway four-car doors opened almost in unison and then slammed shut with four distinct sounds; thud, crash, bam, wham.  My four friends and I stood in my drive way for a moment before I told them to “Follow me” and walked around the side of the grey colonial.  

First Lines

The Wheel of time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.-The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

I like this line because it seems both timeless and deep.  If I didn’t know the context that it originated from I might guess that it is from old mythology because it has that timelessness to it that seems to be present in myths.  It also seems to be kind of a thought provoking line as people in general tend to think of time as a liner entity rather then a circular one.

It was an odd looking vine.-Wizards first rule (Sword of Truth series) by Terry Good Kind

I’ve just always loved works of literature that start off with a completely random thought, phrase or idea.  It makes the reader just mentally go “what the heck?” and from there you just have to play attention because your mind demands an explanation for the seemingly randomness of the line.

Stories of old have made it known to us that there was once an Duke called Theseus, Ruler of Athens, Lord and Governor, An in his time so great a conqueror There was none mightier beneath the sun-Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

This line works because right away it’s going into the story, introducing a character, and stating facts about them.  It has that BAM in your face approach where the story seems to have started without the reader and the reader must hurry to catch up; while at the same time trying to make sense of the who, what, when, where and why information that is both present in the text and being formulated in their mind as they read.

It was about the Beginning of September 1664, that I among the rest of my Neighbors, heard in ordinary Discourse, that the plague was returned again in Holland…Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

I just love lines that seem to pass off huge events as if they were commonplace.  If it weren’t for the context and seriousness of the piece of literature and the historic background I have of the time this came from I’d have to accuse Defoe of having a morbid sense of sarcastic humor.  He’s basically saying I was out the other day and I heard the plague was in Holland again; such an event that seems catastrophic to use he just shrugging off as everyday conversation.

One of the few redeeming facets of instructors, I thought is that occasionally they can be fooled.-Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin

This line is great not only because of the humor involved in reading it for the first time but because we all know it’s true in a sense.  We can all identify with it.  After all we all have or have had those days where we haven’t done our work or have totally Bsed an answer to a question and gotten away with it.