I wish I were Romantic

When we hear the term Romantic, we think: cheesy be my valentine hard candy, Romeo and Juliet and a terrible Ballad that has been popular on the billboard charts. But no. 

The Romantics: a new movement in the arts, literature and thinking in Britain. A movement where the values, ideas and dreams of the modern world were born. 

John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley transformed the way we perceived the world, inspiring us with visions of eternity.

I sounded just like the awkward chubby guy that was narrating the video. But it is true what he said. These guys gave a sense of living, experiencing, feeling. All of those things humans have always feared. Finding pleasure in what we dread, leading our lives by emotions, and things that give us pleasure and creating from those new sensations. 

It is interesting how these things led to the definition of the imagination, how when these poets permitted their feelings to define their existence the imagination was triggered, helping perceive what seems inconceivable. 

Just like Samuel Taylor Coleridge conceived the idea of the unconscious by simply using opium. They transcended through simple things that gave meaning to a world that was facing a phase where God no longer existed. A period new discoveries: human ability to feel, to understand how unique we are, and how each of our experiences build up on ourselves. 

In a way our world is defined by their legacy, but maybe if we all saw the world as they saw it, simply permitting ourselves to feel, cherish, cry, dread, and not depressing ourselves in our search for happiness. 

It is interesting how these poets revolutionized how we perceive our world,how they started experimenting with the future. Leaving an era of repression based on faith. They focused on our potential, on everything that no one dared to explain. A bit of egocentrism, since it was a way of writing on the world from a personal perspective only taking into account the poets situation or feelings but also a way of showing our individuality. 

How I wish I could be honest with myself, be true to my feelings, a true romantic. Perhaps that is why they are called romantic, they ornate feelings, portray them as beautiful and transform simplicity into a something complex that creates. 

How I wish my lover instead of simply saying the cliché phrase: "it's not you its me" could have simply told me: "I am united to another. You are no longer my wife. Perhaps I have done you injury but surely most innocently and unintentionally in having commenced any connection with you". Simple. To the point. The honest truth of a simple phrase: "I am dumping you" but with ornate language, and transcending in the feeling.

They probably influenced our modern world, but we have forgotten the essence of their writing. The meaning of a true Romantic. 

Sucking

"Mr. Howard? I did not know you were such an amazing teacher. Seriously, I never enjoyed literature since I had your class. Please do tell us what is your secret." Said Minnie.

Mr. Howard at the end of the day logs on to Standard Score and changes Minnie's grade to a 4.

Yeah Minnie is a total *#ss sucker. And sadly that is how our world works. A constant need to lower our standards saying what people want to hear. Why? recognition? trying to get what we want? but let's be honest we simply look like retards trying to please someone, going against our principles and against what we truly are. Like a play, pretending to be someone we are definitely not.

The nameless protagonist asks Dr. Bledsoe: "Have you seen all the campus sir?"

"Yes, I think so. I was one of the original founders, you know" Dr. Blodsoe said.

"Gee! I didn't know that, sir. Then I'll try some of the roads".

"Of course I knew he was the founder, but I knew also that it was advantageous to flatter rich white folks.  Perhaps he'd give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year" (Pg. 38)

Yes, he totally licked his *#ss. It is interesting how it seems as if he were doing something totally natural, sucking *#ss for a personal benefit. But is it really that? what lies within those nice words?

Inferiority, exposing oneself as dependent from the person. Treating the person as superior, in this case Dr. Blodsoe,  as someone that is better, respectable, worthy of admiration.  Underestimating who we are, feeding a person's ego for something that we pretend to achieve.

Perhaps Ellison wanted to expose that difference in races, present segregation that even if it was not evident in the moment it was still present. The inability to treat each others as equals, the need for admiration to be recognized, in a way the dependency of the black race to the white race to exist, to be able to obtain what they want. The inability to stand by themselves.

The saddest thing is that when we sometimes lower ourselves for nothing. Ask Mr. Tangen, it does not work with him.

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free by Adele Sandino

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

Inferiority.

Superiority and inferiority, both feelings that haunt the human race. Feelings that define the meaning of segregation, and our a direct cause for it. 

When trying to understand what was going on in chapter three, I came to read something very ironic. The school boy said: "with his eyes closed he seemed more threatening than with his eyes open" (86). 

STOP

Who?

Mr. Norton

Who said it?

The nameless protagonist. 

Mr. Norton is white. The protagonist was working for him, taking care of him and holding himself responsible for him. Seems reasonable that he felt threatened by him. But why when he was close to him he felt a "a shudder of nameless horror"? (86).  He is "only a man". But a white man. And that makes a complete difference. When the protagonist felt as it were "a white death which had been there all the time and which how now revealed itself in the madness of the Golden Day". 

Seems like the protagonist is scared of Mr. Norton's death holding himself responsible for it. This reveals how dependent the protagonist, who speaks for the african american community, where of whites. To the point that there dead presence creates death itself. A sense of fear, inferiority that itself positions whites as a better race, and gives a reason for segregation. 

Ellison represents this scene to portray how segregation is present even when it does not seem like it. Mr. Norton was dead, but still caused something indescribable to the protagonist. Slavery was over, but segregation was still present. Even today, after the civil rights, we see how men tend to find ways to underestimate others, justifying their superiority. 

I am not invisible.

I am writing this, am I not? You can read it, can you not? I exist. Don't I?

Doubt. The most dreadful feeling. Especially when it comes to doubting one's existence. But it is interesting how the nameless protagonist of the story, does not doubt his existence, rather doubts that others see him exist.

We can relate this to the historical context, the feeling of invisibility because of  color, a contradiction to the term since one assumes that being invisible is to be transparent, with no color, unseen. And that is not the case of the color black. On the contrary it is visible. I can go unnoticed, I am white as a vampire. But black people can't. Scientifically the color black is the absorption of all the colors in the spectrum, is that considered invisible? What an antithesis.

Just wanted to point that out.

 I was talking about doubt, and how the concept of invisibility goes beyond just race, or color. Ralph Ellison's phrase of "to be unaware of one's form is to live a death" (7), helped me read within the lines. In this sentence doubt comes to play.

When I read this I thought how this could be a perfect epitaph for a future paper. But obviously I was not close reading it. Everyone determines there existence by others, that is why the nameless protagonist thought he was invisible. We do too. We feel no one sees us simply because we are not asked to prom, we are not popular, we are not recognized. We underestimate who we are determining ourselves by others. That is how society works. Creating doubt on our existence. Ellison agrees with this, but what he expresses through what the protagonist said, is that our existence is our form.

But what is form? Our essence? what we think of ourselves? who we are? Wait. The protagonist says he is invisible, isn't that what he is?

He is invisible. He is aware of his invisibility, "I myself after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered by invisibility" (7). He discovered that others saw him invisible, and assumes that to be true. But he has a form. He knows of his existence, and knows it cannot be determined by the invisible spectrum people assume he is. I guess what I am trying to say is that he is seen as invisible, but his form is visible. At least to himself. If one does not know what his/her form is, one does not exist. He is invisible but he exists. If our form becomes invisible then we "live a death", the doubt of existence becomes a reality.

Form is certainty of existence.

Side note: the fact that Ellison does not give a name to the protagonist, alludes to the whole concept of invisibility. No name, seems as if it did not exist, but the words and what he says are the form, the proof of existence.

Heroic Behavior

"Sometimes I am tempted to think that Mrs. Pontellier is capricious" a housewife that swims against the current.

I always think that when one criticizes someone it is because you feel either jealous  or superior in some way. In the case of Madame Lebrun, she perhaps thinks of Mrs. Pontellier as a changing being because her way of acting differs from the conventional personalities she is accustomed to . A bizarre change in the typical behavior of a house wife.

Who would dare to swim in the "vast expanse of water, meeting and melting in the moonlit sky"(62)?  Edna Pontellier did it. And because of it she was simply considered different. As if it were a crime to simply walk away to rejoice triumph alone. When one stands out, simply breaks what society expects one is criticized.

Edna's behavior was seen as heroic, but the way she coped with it was seen was different, weird, moody. Society wants to be a part of everything a controlling freak that when one little thing escapes the judgmental moster inside it comes out to display its prejudice.

Waiting in Vain

I know we are suppose to be writing on feminism or simply close reading. But I simply do not feel like it. Why?  No reason, I simply do not want to.

Just some hours ago my friend was a bit down because he felt that life was changing. When he described his feeling I pictured, "the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore" (55). A bit emo, I know, but it was an illustrative manner to portray my relation to his feeling.

We feel alone, desolate and misunderstood when we are facing change, when we feel that our friends are not there for us, that fade away in the distance once we receive our high school diploma. But that is life.

Why when we feel like that we "wait for the material pictures which we think would gather"(56)?
Pictures of solitude, and despairing feelings.

It is because we expect change to be painful. And it is. It hurts. Life is ephemeral, a cycle of never ending changes that transforms us and others as we go along. And simply because, it is painful to leave those moments of pleasure, of enjoyment, what makes us reach that so called happiness. As if picturing pain would surpass that feeling of loosing something or even someone, making us feel victims of our own conscious feeling.

We feel deceived by life itself when our greatest moments become memories, and wait for them to come again. But, "we wait in vain"(56).

There are, "no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or despair. But the very passions themselves" (56). The passion of enjoying what we have, without picturing it as a future pain because we lost it.

The passion of embracing what we know will not last long.