One Quesiton and a lot of Advice

This weekend was filled with holiday excitement. We had the annual Christmas party on my mom's side on Saturday night, and then all of my dad's family at our house earlier today. It was wonderful to see so much of my family; Some I had seen as late as this Thanksgiving, but for others, the last time we saw each other was last Christmas. Of course the only thing anybody seemed to ask me was "where are you going to college?". If I had a dollar for every time I was asked that question, I think I might have enough money to afford an application fees. At one point I considered just gathering everyone together, allowing me to only give the college speech just once. Right now I have no idea where I'm going, in fact, I haven't even submitted all of my applications yet! I found it even hard to come up with an answer to the question, " well what's your top choice?". I don't know. I really like a lot of the places I've applied to and that's why I've applied to them.

But through my many conversations with adults who have gone through the whole college thing and older cousins currently in college, I came away with a lot of advice. Everybody I talked to had to add their two cents from their college experience. Although some of the tips were rather trivial, I did leave the parties with some really sound advice. The first pointer was that there are no bad decisions. Every place I could get into is a great school, and I will most likely be happy at any of them. The other, more important piece of advice came from my older cousin who is currently a sophomore at RIT. He told me the most important thing is to pick classes and only do things that are interesting to you. He said from personal experience that he has taken some classes just because they were supposed to be easy. Unfortunately, they turned out to be pretty demanding, and overall, were just not fun.  Although I did get pretty tired of talking about my college plans, it was really great to talk to so many people who went through the same thing I am going through right now. 

Two Weeks

     In exactly two weeks time, I will be sitting around the living room with my family with the tree fully illuminated, watching Christmas classics as we do every Christmas eve. I always look forward to the holiday season and everything that comes with it. Although getting into "the Christmas spirit", is merely a saying, the season really does have a physical and emotional effect on our society. However, with only two weeks left until the big day itself, I have found it difficult to get into the spirit. There are a number of reasons that contribute to my lack of holiday cheer.

     The first is the weather. It does not feel nor look like the classic New England Christmas that I have come to expect. For me, it still feels like October and November, and I still see people raking leaves. For the past couple weeks the average temperature has been around 50 degrees. I haven't even bothered taking out my winter coat yet. Another big problem with the weather is the lack of snow. Now obviously I wish we had snow for other reasons, (SKIING!), but for me, Christmas needs snow. It is so strange to drive around and see Christmas decorations and lights with no snow around them. I hate driving past houses with elaborate cheerful holiday decorations, only to be ruined by the barren, and quite frankly, dead lawn. I know it's pretty cliché, but I am really hoping for "a white Christmas".

     The other big reason I'm not in the holiday spirit is simply, college applications. I've doing a lot of the same for the past month and a half now, and I can honestly say, I'm pretty sick of it. The monotony of writing essays, sending scores, doing this and that over and over is starting to get to me. Last weekend we put up and decorated our tree, a great holiday tradition right? In our house it is typically a fun thing that we take the time to enjoy together. This year is was about a 30 minute break in between doing things for college. Luckily I am almost done with everything, so I can get back to enjoying the "most wonderful time of the year"!.       

FIFA

There are many shocking events that occur so frequently in our society that when we hear about them, we aren't as nearly surprised as we should be. This week, 16 more FIFA officials were criminal charged. This is part of a now 92 count indictment, including charges of racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud, and corruption. And we're not talking about a slipping a couple of ones under the table kind of bribes, these bribes add up to hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars! Now you think that this sort of thing should be incredibly shocking right, the only thing is that this has happened before! Last May, the FBI lead a raid on the FIFA headquarters, obtained serious evidence, and arrest a number of high ranking officials. It was one of those things that everybody knew, and it was only a matter of time until someone put this corrupt organization in its place. At this point, they are a comically transparent organization. A "non-profit" with over $ 1,000,000,000 in the bank. Even their selections for future world cup destinations are ridiculous. The only logical explanation for the 2022 World Cup being in Qatar is bribery, because while else would anyone actually want to play soccer in desserts where civilization barely exists at the moments. There are stadium that are scheduled to be built in places that don’t even exist yet. If anyone hasn't seen the John Oliver segment on how ridiculous FIFA really is, I would highly encourage it. He perfectly exposes all the crap that FIFA tries to pull. My personal favorite was how he called out Jack Warner, the former FIFA VP of CONCACAF. Warner publically came out saying that it was the US that was corrupt not FIFA. To prove his point, he presented an article that claimed the US forced FIFA to give them a special 2015 World Cup. Sounds crazy, right? Warner, remember a very high ranking FIFA official, was quoting an article directly from "The Onion". This is just one of many outrageous things that have happened within FIFA over the last year or so. I can't wait to see what they try next.

Thanksgiving Traditions

     Every family seems to have special traditions for Thanksgiving. I'm not sure what it is about this holiday in particular but every family seems to put their own spin on the special occasion. Since there is only a week until Thanksgiving, I decided to talk about my own family Thanksgiving tradition.

     Interestingly enough, my favorite tradition doesn't even take place on Thanksgiving! The day after Thanksgiving, a large portion of my extended family go bird feeding at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. You might think that sounds incredibly boring, but it has actually become something I very much look forward to every year. It always start with meeting together in the parking lot and waiting for everyone to arrive as we throw around a football. Some of us were always together just yesterday for Thanksgiving, but for many of us who didn't spend the holiday together, it’s the first time we've seen each other since the summer. Once everyone is there, we all head of into the woods; kids, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all equipped with a bag of bird seed.

     When we were younger, it was always a competition to see who could get the most birds. I can't be sure but I'm pretty sure my record was in the upper three hundreds one year.  The parents also loved the experience because they always told us the only way to get a bird to land on our hand was to be perfectly silent and still. As you can imagine every kid stood perfectly quiet. As the years have gone on, it has become less about the actually feeding of birds, and more about just taking a nice walk in the woods with the family. Of course it is still a rush when a bird lands on your hand, but that is only a small part of the adventure. There are specific spots where we all stop to take pictures, such as the bridge or the big tree. Even when the walk is over, the tradition is not. We always go back to my grandparents house to enjoy a great combination of pizza and Thanksgiving leftovers.

      This year is especially important because it is the first year that my older cousin will be bringing her little kids to the family tradition. This will mark the first of the newest generation of Dieselman to participate in the tradition. Although it might not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, it has become an important part of our Thanksgiving traditions and something that I really enjoy every year.

Halfway to History

      As the first quarter at Reading Memorial High School comes to a close, so does the first half of the NFL season. Although I have always enjoyed sports and especially Boston sports, I tend not to get excessively invested.

      This is year is the one exception.

      The Patriots are a perfect 8-0 half way through the season! But anybody who lives in New England and hasn't been living under a rock for the last 9 months know that this season is not just about football. The problem is the Patriots are just too good. Patriots fans always say "They hate us cuz they aint us". Patriot haters will always say it's because the Patriots cheat, but the only reason they make a big deal of it is because the Patriots are so good. Other teams cheat too; last year the Atlanta Falcons were caught pumping artificial sound into their stadium to make it hard for visiting teams to call plays. Nobody talks about that anymore and you know why? Because the Falcons aren't that great. So when it was discovered that the Patriots maybe deflated footballs, the league came down hard. Not just the NFL, but the media, other owners, and basically anybody not from New England. They punished the team itself and then Roger Goodell tried to take down the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady. The NFL spent 5 months and millions of dollars on an investigation that concluded it was "more probable than not" that Tom Brady was "generally aware" of the deflated footballs.  I could have told you that the day after the game. The NFL is a hilarious joke of an organization. Goodell suspended Brady for four games, which was the same amount of games that Greg Hardy ended up serving for domestic violence charges! But I'm getting off topic.

      The NFL tried to take down the great Tom Brady, but instead Tom showed them up in federal court and beat them down. Now every week when the Patriots step onto the field, not only are they playing against their opponent, they're playing against the entire NFL. Tom Brady and the Patriots are pissed off, and their playing with one goal in mind, show up the NFL one more time. More so now than ever, Patriots Nation has an "us against the world" mentality, and I love it!

      8-0 is an impressive start, and I would love to see the Patriots complete the perfect season. But more importantly, on February 7th, I want to see Roger Goodell stand up on the podium, look Robert Kraft, Tom Brady, and all of Patriots Nation in the eye, and congratulate them on winning their 5th Super bowl Title! 

Loosing Sucks

                  First off, I know this is a couple of days late. I forgot about it on Thursday because the only thing we've been doing all week is working on our essays. I told myself I would just write it the next day after our soccer game. Unfortunately, we lost and now our season is over. Like everybody else on my team, I was pretty upset and I was in no mood to try and write a blog post.  

                A few days have gone by and although I'm still pretty upset, I figured I should probably write this post anyway. Our soccer team had a really great regular season, so we really thought we would have a good chance to make it far in the tournament. None of us expected to be out in the first round. Although Freud probably wouldn’t classify this event as the type of trauma that causes our subconscious to use defense mechanisms, I've able to identify some of the behavior that I saw from my team and myself over the last few days.

                There was certainly a lot of displacement, especially right after the game. Cleats and shin pad were slammed onto the turf, and many locker doors in the locker room were shut with an irregularly high amount of force. As I was unloading my car when I got home, a soccer ball fell out of the trunk and I struck it hard into the open garage. For the rest of that night, I suppose you could say that I sublimated a lot of my anger onto the soccer video game FIFA. I didn't bother to change the difficulty at all, so a spent the night dangling and running scores up to the high teens; I showed no mercy.

                As that unfortunate day continues to go further into the past, I'm beginning to realize that that the only defense mechanism left is going to be acceptance. This is hard because growing up, we are always told not to accept defeat and use it to motivate us going forward. Unfortunately there is nothing left going forward for me and Reading Soccer. I'm sure I speak for all the seniors when I say that it sucked to accept that that was the last time we would play for Reading. Loosing sucks, but we have to just accept it and move on.            

There's No Escaping Winesburg

                 The final story is a fitting end to the story of Winesburg, Ohio. It is appropriately named Departure because George Willard has decided to leave Winesburg. His departure takes place in the month of April. This of course is not a coincidence because the month of April is generally thought of as  the month of spring and rebirth. By leaving Winesburg, George himself is going to be reborn and go off into the rest of the world for the first time. Another interesting thing that happens in this story is that all of the towns people come by George to wish him farewell.  This is very similar to the very beginning of the story in The Book of the Grotesque, where the old author, who we know is George Willard himself, sees these images of people passing in front of his person. This idea that the beginning is similar to the end of the story, does a nice job of tying the book together and giving it a completed sense.

                One small detail that I overlooked while first reading Departure was the quote about George and his father. It said "The son had become taller than the father"(Anderson 245). At first, I only thought of this detail in the physical sense; George had simply grown taller than his father, that often happens. But what’s more important here is the deeper meaning of this quote. George may be physically taller than his father, but more importantly, George is above his father in more than one way because unlike his father, George is going to leave Winesburg and potentially be more successful than his own father. Things didn't exactly go the way his father anticipated; however he is still, and forever will be, trapped in Winesburg.

                Finally, even though George has left Winesburg, we know that he hasn't completely been separated from the town. The final lines of the book read "the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood"(Anderson 247). Although George is no longer physically in Winesburg, we know that his memories and experiences from the town and its very interesting people will heavily influence the rest of his life. This shows that nobody can truly escape the town of Winesburg, Ohio.

The Biblical Allusions and Ironic Truth of "Godliness"

              In many of the stories from Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson turns many of the town's characters into grotesques that all experience truths which lead to their downfall. I found the story of "Godliness" to be particularly interesting due to its strong connections to several biblical stories and also its heavily ironic truth it revealed about the main character Jesse.

            Jesse Bentley believes that he is destined by God to fulfill the biblical tale of Jesse. He believes he is destined to achieve greatness, and pass on his farming empire to his son David. Jesse's life is surrounded by the defense mechanism of distortion where Jesse's delusional thinking of fulfilling biblical prophesies control his entire life. However, things do not always go the way Jesse intends. Jesse is not a benevolent leader of his farming empire; He demands his workers to work extremely hard and has become feared by his many of his employees. His wife also works tirelessly on the farm which results in death during childbirth. Unfortunately for him, his only child is a daughter, which means he cannot name is child David to parallel the biblical story.   Also because of the death of her mother, Louise suffers from an incomplete Electra complex and by Freud's definition, is unable to be a fully functioning adult. She however does give birth to a son, and Jesse seizes the opportunity to regain control of his delusional biblical fulfillment.

            The son, who he names David, is taken up by Jesse and lives with him on the farm. But Jesse is now beyond crazy and one day takes David into the woods to sacrifice him to God, much like the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. And in yet another biblical illusion, David takes down Jesse by hitting him in the head with a rock. This is a parallel to the story of David and Goliath. After that David runs away and leaves Winesburg forever.

            Although this story is jam packed with biblical illusions, the part that most interested me was the stark irony of the truth that the story revealed. In his mind, Jesse believes that he is a pious and pure follower of God, but in reality everything that he did in his life was for selfish and greedy reasons. In his effort to fulfill his "destiny", he destroyed the lives of everybody that was close to him including his wife, daughter, and grandson. Moreover, in his grand plan to fulfill this biblical story, Jesse's farming empire will now be destined to die with him.    

The Power of Language in Winesburg, Ohio

The book  Winesburg, Ohio is full of modernist attributes, obviously of course; it is a modernist novel. It has many interesting attributes such as the search for ontological understanding and tightening of the form. But what has really stood out to me is the level of detail and meaning that is packed into seemingly meaningless places. As a modernist attribute, this is referred to as "language is not transparent".   Just as the title "hills like white elephants" was meticulously crafted to provided deep insight into the story, there are many examples of this attribute being put to use throughout the stories we have read in Winesburg, Ohio.

                In the story "Paper Pills" an ordinary scene at the doctor's office turns out to have deep and symbolic meaning. When the woman walks into the office, there is a woman in a white dress getting teeth pulled. This at first does not appear strange or unusual seeing as that is something that doctors do perform on a routine basis. However, this scene is crafted to deeply describe the emotional state of the woman. There are blood stains on the white dress which represent the impurity of the woman as she us no longer pure virginally. Also it is important that the teeth are being pulled because that indicates great personal change, which in the woman's case, represents her recent pregnancy.

                Another important example of this specific word choice is incredibly important is during the story, "Mother". In the story, Elizabeth decides to murder her husband, Tom, with scissors. A little strange, but at this point I've easily realized that nobody is completely normal in this town anyways. Anderson could've chose any weapon of choice- gun, machete, ninja turtles- but he decided to go for scissors specifically; and it wasn’t because it was the first idea that popped into his head. Elizabeth is experiencing a metaphorical reverse oedipal complex in which she wants her son's affection and sees the dad as a rival. Therefore the death by scissors represents the castration anxiety that is associated with the oedipal complex.

                I'll be honest, many times these deep symbolic meanings go right over my head. I read over the word scissors and did not bat an eye. But I guess that while reading any book, especially modernism, it is imperative to be mindful that each and every word could have a deep meaning. Sometimes, when these ideas are presented in class, I think to myself that it might be a little farfetched or just flat out crazy. But when reading modernism, you have to express those crazy ideas and consider the fact that they might actually be true.

                

Thoughts on Phsychoanalysis

                Of course I had heard of Sigmund Freud before, but I had no idea what he had created. In the past week we have learned much about Freud's ideas and concepts of the workings of the human mind. While learning about it, I felt a strange sense of calmness and familiarity towards the subject. I think this is due to the fact that in the past 100 years or so since Freud's ideas came to fruition, society has widely accepted his teachings and they have become a part of our culture. I imagine Freud's ideas, the subconscious and how trapped memories and emotions could have a profound impact on our lives, must have been viewed as crazy at the time.  But learning about these ideas now, in today's society, they don't seem so strange and crazy.

                One of the more interesting topics of psychoanalysis was the defense mechanisms and classifications. There were many mechanisms that I was aware of but perhaps not familiar with the correct terminology. One that I hadn't heard of that I thought was very interesting was dissociation. This is a defense mechanism is very interesting because it allows the person to split of into different people at different times. However, the two or multiple personalities do not know of the existence of the other.  This is fascinating to me because I know that I have never experienced this before, but it is very strange to think that there are people that live like this; and since it is a stage three(neurotic) defense mechanism, a person who does this can still be a function member-or members-  of society.

                Learning about these defense mechanisms has also made me think more closely about how I might use them in my own life. For example, I've  noticed recently that when I watch patriot games on TV, I sometimes bite my nails without even thinking about it. I'm not sure what's going on subconsciously in my brain, but now I suspect that it could be one of those mature mechanism that we learned about, perhaps sublimation. 

Reflection on Inception

The first time I watched  the film Inception was a couple of years ago; all I can remember from that experience was that I was just really confused.  Since it was so long ago, I figured that I would be just as confused watching it a second time.  But as Nabokov said, the best readers will reread and reread a story many times to understand its full meaning. Even though I did not fully understand the movie the second time through( quite frankly I don’t think anybody does completely understand it), I did grasp some of its deeper meaning as well as the many modernist attributes in the movie.

                One idea that really confused me while watching the movie the first time was why Mal locked her top inside the limbo of her mind. After watching it for a second time, and learning about modernist attributes, I realize now that this is symbolic of Mal's disillusionment.  Mal decided to accept that her dream was reality so she locked up her one reminder of reality and convinced herself that she could live in her dream forever.

                Cobb was forced to kick Mal back to reality by running her over with a train, telling her that death is the only escape from this dream. Unfortunately this idea grows in Mal's head and she is lead to further disillusionment. She believes that reality itself is not real. This leads her to take her own life, believing that she will wake up from another dream.

                My favorite part, which was another modernist attribute , was the very last scene. This final scene was an ambiguous ending and also included that symbolic top. As described throughout the movie, in a dream the top will spin forever whereas in reality, it will eventually fall over. After Cobb leaves the frame to see his kids for the first time in years, the focus turns back to the spinning top. Right before the scene cuts out, the top wavers but does not yet fall; then everything goes black.  This left me with in a highly confused and wondrous state at the end of the movie. Is it actually reality or not? We will never know…

Nabokov and Jury Nullification

                In his lecture, "Good Readers and Good Writers, Vladimir Nabokov expresses his many views on how works of literature should be approached and analyzed. Apart from a disturbing amount of "fondling", Nabokov also says that the "best temperament for a reader to have, or to develop, is a combination of artistic and scientific one".   He means that if a book is read artistically that the reader will be too subjective in his attitude towards the book. However, if the reader reads too scientifically or logically, then  he will not understand the book in its entirety. This surprised me because I always had thought of reading as a solely emotional and artistic endeavor. It just had never occurred to me that a work of fiction could also be viewed in a logical and analytical manner.  Coincidentally, this same sort of realization  occurred in another class this week, Law.

                This week in Law we studied the juries, and the role that they played within courts and trails. Everybody knows what a jury is; it is a group of people who listen to both arguments of a court case, consider the evidence, and deliver a verdict. Most people believe that juries are expected to act completely objectively towards the case. I myself thought that as a juror, your job was to ignore subjective opinion and base the decision on evidence alone. However, as I learned this week, there are  instances in which the case can be view in a more subjective manner to make a verdict.

                This is called jury nullification. Although a judge will never tell a jury about it, it is right that belongs to every juror. Sometimes this right can be abused; like when racial or ethnic prejudice can affect a jury's verdict. However, in the past decades this power has been used to look pass the law because the law did not fairly treat the accused. The case of Leroy Reid is a perfect example of jury nullification. Reid was charged with possession of an illegal firearms. Although there was no doubt that he did in fact posses  this weapon, the jury acquitted Reid because they felt that the law did not fairly apply to him; given his immature mental state, his almost retardant neurological condition the jury decided that he was most likely unaware that he was not allowed to purchase a gun. Also the jury decided that because Reid apparently purchased the gun with good intentions, and complied with the rest of the law- handing in the gun, complying with officers and officials, etc- that this law should not apply to harmless people such as Reid. Personally, I don't agree with the not guilty verdict, and I was shocked that a jury could LEGALLY acquit a person who had clearly committed the offense.

                It is strange how these two ideas, the Nabokov  theory of literature and the idea of jury nullification, both changed my perception on how their subject could be viewed. And in the same week no less! I had thought that literature and fiction was only supposed to be analyzed artistically and subjectively. However, Nabokov says it can, and should be approached logically as well. Likewise, I previously thought that a jury was only allowed to act objectively and logically towards a case, but jury nullification says that it is legal to view cases somewhat subjectively as well.