apple juice party

I thought it was kind of funny when Prof. Sexton mentioned an apple juice drinking party in class today, because I've had one before. It wasn't directly after dinner but one night, my friends and I bought three or four bottles of sparkling cider and a loaf of french bread and went to an elementary school playground to hang out and talk. We were pretty psyched about something (I don't remember what)and we danced around on the grass and did the merry go round thing for a while, eating bread, but we held off on the cider for awhile because we forgot the bottle opener. Sparkling cider is a big thing for my group in I.F.; we have it a lot when we hang out, (though once or twice, we've had plain apple juice)and one friend decided we weren't going to wait until next time (which would have been tomorrow) to drink our cider so he went to the door to the school and tried prying the cap off with the handle. I didn't think it was really going to work, but then the top of the bottle exploded, showering the door with fizzy apple juice and kind of like how the Greeks would pour wine out to the gods, we wasted most of the bottle's contents on the elementary school. Maybe we had to do that to appease the great Ethel Boyes school for using it as a bottle opener or something. I don't know. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't doubt it, because all of the other caps came off without a hitch. By bottle number three, we were using the "bus lane only" sign, but it worked just as well. But anyway, we all shared the bottles, running around and spinning until we were too tired to do much else but sit on the merry go around and sip the last bits of apple cider down.

The terrible bright side to tragedy

A coworker from my hometown bought her tween aged son a puppy a few months back. The kid had been going through a rough time recovering from surgery and his mom thought a puppy would help him cope. The boy had never had a dog before and he loved rolling around with the tiny puppy. But one day, while they were rolling around, the dog's paw got caught on the boy's carpenter looop in his jeans and when the boy flipped his body over, the puppy went flying in the air. At this point in the story, when his mom was telling me this, I felt like busting out laughing. I could just imagine the little beagle's ears flopping in the wind as he was launched from the boy's pant loop. But just as a smile started to twitch on my lips, the coworker finished saying, ". . .flew right into the wall and broke his neck." I felt so terrible right then; the kid just had skin grafts because of an accident causing third degree burns and now, he killed his own puppy. Laughing seemed to be like kicking the guy while he was down. But, as shameful as it is, the thought of that puppy flying through the air still brings a smile to my face. It's just ridiculous and slightly ironic and I can't help it.
I didn't laugh when my best friend's dog passed away when we were sixteen; I didn't think it was funny when my dog died on the day after Christmas; I did smile a little when my cat kicked the bucket, but it was my birthday and my mom and I ended up spending most of it trying to find the vet to put hateful old Heartly down after she had been hit by a car. We had the hardest time because I think they had moved locations and when we finally made it to the right side of town, we ended up circling the place for two or three hours before we actually found it. I did think that was kind of funny.
I don't know; maybe I'm just a little morbid, but death can be funny sometimes, I think. I think it's always sad too, but sometimes a situation is just too ridiculous and you've just got to laugh. The Reduced Shakespeare Company, when they do all of Shakespeare's plays in 90 minutes or whatever, play out most of the tragedies but condense all of his comedies into one, 3 minute thing. They do this because the "tragedies are just more fun," I belive is what they say. I don't think I'd agree with all of that, but when I think about how much tragic events in our lives suck, I'm kind of glad for those situations (which still suck) I can laugh about.

sleepy thoughts

"it is best never to have been born at all, next best to die young, and that old age is the worst to befall man." How depressing. I have heard people here and there in my lifetime complain about mankind's failings and woes, about how the human race is killing the earth and how nature would be better off without us. I have heard people say how death would be easier to bear than living in the crappo world we dwell in today. But they are so full of it. (except for the death being easier part. . .I don't really know what it will be like to be dead so I won't really say decisively how it will compare to living). Everyone, despite any bravado, clings to life; they may only show it by a tear in their eyes, or a tiny shudder briefly running through their bodies. It may be an ache in their heart, a weakness in the knees, but people like to live. The hardest part about living is the anticipation of dying; suffering from emotional and physical troubles and watching others suffer are painful and scary to us- the slow drain on the body and the tragedies and sorrow the soul has to endure again and again for a whole lifetime.
Antigone's troubles sometimes do feel to me to be beyond endurance. To have so much death and sorrow by the time she's about late teens/twenties; I'm not positive about the age. I can see how death would be desirable to her, but what bothers me about her is how willingly she abandons life. I know martyrs die to make a point, but usually, they also look forward towards a life after death; a reward or something for their sacrifice. But Antigone doesn't want any life at all; death is her only aim. The only people she honors are the dead; the only god she she seems to truly reverence is Hades. Death is the oblivion she wants from the horrors she has experienced in life, even though most of those horrors were committed by the same dead people she loves so much. She wants approval from the people whose actions stimulated the misery she felt in life? How is that a reward? I just don't get that. She cares nothing for Ismene, which I can understand a little because she is pretty much a pansy ass robot who did not support her cause, but just as much a blood relative as her brothers who killed each other. And she doesn't consider Haemon's feelings, and what's sad is that Haemon was a pretty decent guy. He looked at the situation from both sides and came up with a logical solution. He didn't get anywhere with his dad argument wise, but the guy was basically fighting for the unwritten laws of the gods that Antigone promoted with her civil disobedience. Maybe she just didn't trust him or something, maybe they just weren't that close, but it just bugs me that she didn't even think about how her death would affect him. She was in self-pity mode about not having a wedding and doing all the marriage stuff, but he was caring about her (it seemed).
I know depressing stuff happens to people every day and I understand how much weight misfortune and sorrow can put on the heart. Everyone goes through that; but if life were easy, I don't think it would be as worthwhile, and although tragedy and drama can be draining and can produce suicidal thoughts, it can be kind of funny too -maybe not at the time, but later on, reflection brings out some laughs. I mean, that's basically high school in a nutshell. Often times, people say it was the most terrible experience of their life, but they love to talk about it. With every bad moment that happens in our lives, there's an equally wonderful, good moment that occurs. Dwelling soley in one or the other, I think, isn't that healthy. Antigone had a lot of bad to dwell in, but she chose to stay there and I hate that about her. If she had waited in her cave like two or three more hours, she could've lived and lived happily if she had wanted to, but because she believed so deeply in her fate and because she wanted death so badly she died, starting the domino effect that happens so often in tragedies. I know it couldn't have gone any other way, and I do like the play, but I still just find that frustrating that they're are people like that-- passionate and smart-- who choose to snuff out their lives when there is so much potential. I've mentioned James Dean before whom I think had to die so young, (and although James Dean did die in a car accident, the lifestyle he led would have resulted in an early death anyway) but just like Antigone (who died before her time) it all seems such a waste of what they had to offer. It just feels frustrating.

The bonds that tie

I have never really cared for the character Antigone. I have already read the play twice for different classes, and each time, Antigone has annoyed me. Although she has passion and strength, I thought she was too rash and assuming, too much of a Byronic hero. Instead of looking for different solutions, she picked the extreme route, setting off a key point in a suckish, death resulting chain of events. I found her too irrational and unreasonable.
However, I've never read Woodruff's introduction before, and now, having read it today, I can say I find Antigone's character to be annoyingly Byronic, but I can also see why. Now while Creon hasn't ever been my favorite either, I could understand where he was coming from with the whole running the country thing; but now I think he went beyond choosing the state over family. I think by refusing Polyneices burial, he was essentially severing his connection with the entirety of the family. Although he viewed the former prince as a traitor, by leaving his body unburied, he disgraces not only him, but also his sisters. It was really unclassy and contradictory of Creon, to basically tell Antigone that he hasn't any respect for her family, but he wants her to marry his son just to keep up good public appearance.
I still don't like Antigone very much, but I don't blame her for what she does. Maybe if something like that happened to me, I'd do the same thing, (if I had that suicidal courage).

crossroads video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A&feature=related

It sounds really pretty, but I'm not really sure what he's saying at all.

Recipe for a bad day

I decided actually having a bad day was too hard to plan out, but luckily, I had a bad day just last week. It didn't start out with a terrible misfortune, but just a feeling of unease. Usually I wake up with a sense of what I need to do and how I should do it. It feels good to be organized and in control of everything, but on that day, I just felt tired. I had my schedule worked out in my head, but it didn't feel right. Going through my day, little things I normally wouldn't care about started to glom onto that feeling: I was late for breakfast, my boyfriend didn't show up for our usual rendevous between classes, I forgot to make a lunch so I was hungry, I didn't remember to do a reading assignment, I zoned out of class, zoned back in and tried to participate in the discussion and ended up sounding really stupid (or I thought I sounded really stupid) and so on. I almost cried twice in class which annoyed me a lot, and I really wanted to be alone somewhere, but I knew my roommate was in our dormroom, and anywhere else on campus would have loads of people everywhere. The day improved later on when I ate something and watched Scrubs, but it was a sucky day and the worst part about it was that there was no really big reason as to why. Those things happen every now and then, but for whatever reason, it just affected me worse that day.

The Muse

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy."

I have always imagined the Muses as a source of inspiration; the spirit from which the story comes from, but somehow, I didn't make the connection that the Muse is not only the source of the story, but also the speaker who tells it. "Speak through me. . ." When Prof. Sexton mentioned the fact in class today, it was a simultaneous "aha" and "no duh" moment for me. A part of me was still stuck on how I've heard it used in t.v. and movies like "Shakespeare in Love." "Will you be my Muse, Rosaline," says the Shakespeare character. It makes me think she's just going to be his source of inspiration not a source for the story itself.
While reading about the Romantics in another class, I saw how many of the Romantics called upon Nature to flow through them to create poetry. "Make me thy lyre" says Shelley to the Western Wind. I think the idea of beauty and power coming down upon us to work through us really neat and kind of beautiful. It's like in religion how some call upon the Lord to work through them; they're just calling upon the poetic spirit in the sky to swoop down and help us conceive a verse full of truth and its by-product, beauty. I just like it.

"The only greatness for a man is immortality"

James Dean is one of my favorite actors of all time. Talented, sexy, and with a Hermes-like quality in his bad ass attitude, he lived the life of a tragic hero. Creating three movies all in the space of a year, his career was skyrocketing until, right at the peak of his driving success, a Ford smooshed his life right out of him. Just like Achilles, just like Hector, just like Heath Ledger, James Dean didn't achieve his full potential-- instead, he went beyond it.
Steiner talks about the conflict between the young and old, and I thought it meant just a fight/misunderstanding between the child and the elder, but now I see it differently. On page 243, Steiner quotes from Oedipus at Colonus, "it is best to have never been born at all, next best to die young, and that old age is the worst to befall man." This makes me think the conflict is internal. When we fight old age or youth, we're really fighting within ourselves, especially as we age. He seems to say glory will die out when one gets older, because one can only talk about what they used to be able to do while, someone young and strong is surpassing the records and making greater achievements. It will also be easier to fall into disgrace as one ages because of deteriorating disease in the mind: Alzheimers, dementia, etc. They will be the ones to be pitied, because they will live long enough to see their fame and strength fade. Old age is fighting within to be young but at the same is fighting against the young because of jealousy or pride. Or it could be reversed. The young long to be old to gain the respect and distinction that comes with age.
In the cases of the men I mentioned above, I think its the former; I think they were fighting the aging process and because of that, I think James Dean and all of those others had to die young; each one of them put everything they had into what they did to achieve glory and fame. They all wanted to be remembered forever and though I'm not saying they wanted to die when they did, by dying young, they have reached a state of immortality. They will never age; their talents will never diminish. James Dean will always be the hot, young, sexy rebel whom I can only dream about.