Home Sweet Home Our Six Sense

At first I had no idea what the theme "home sweet home" would have to do with an English class. But now, now I get it...we made the comment in the capstone class on Monday, and possibly in Emergent Lit, (everything is running together at this point in time) but the comment was.."all roads lead to Rome." Well that's all nice and whatnot, but Rome is not my center, Home is my center and all roads can and do eventually lead to Home-Sweet-Sweet-Home. I threw an extra sweet in there because my home is real sweet.

We all have homes, some are closer than others, and the journey back is never the same. When we are lost, home is that saving grace that keeps us moving on. In sailing cultures home was mapped out in the skies. Often times 'true home' is associated in the sky, where we came from. Home is where our heart is, along with belongings from the past times at Ridgemont High, or in my case Crescenta Valley High. Home smells of warm grilled cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread, with a side of green grapes, and a glass of black cherry kool-aid. Home, the word is comforting when feeling lonely making it feel just a stones throw away when in fact it's 18oo miles, way to far for me to throw a stone.

But can home change? I believe it can't. Eventually everyone moves on, and the house that was made a home for one family turns into a home for another family. But home remains the same, it has to, if it didn't how would we know where to go? Home is inside of us, it can literally be a building with home decour throughout it, or it can be the place inside where we as individuals go to feel comfort. I head home down Lincoln after school Monday-Friday, but am I truly headed home? I'm convinced that home here now, at computer 217 on the second floor of the library. I'm convinced that when I get up, home will be on the stairs headed down to the lobby of the library, and so on an so forth. Home is where I make it. Sometimes life does get messy and home is not a concern during these times, well at least not a conscious concern. In order to reach home we must reach within and find it there.

My group has been blessed with the theme "Dulce Domum." Our search to find home and bring it to class seemed daunting at the beginng of the sememster. But now, how I can't wait to return home. We all have a six sense, and it's not the ability to see dead people. (that's a 7th sense for all that can). But our six sense is direction, some might also call this faith. In the movie Homeward Bound a trio of house pets: Chance, Sassy, and Shadow find themselves on an epic journey leading them over the Sierra Nevada Mountain and eventually into the arms of their young owners at their home. Shadow's "six sense" drives the old golden retreiver to head up and over the 10,000+ high peaks on his journey home. His desire to return to where he started lies within his duty as a dog to be loyal to his master--Peter a young boy.

Chance, a younger pitbull, doesn't have the loyalty based drive because of his time spend in lockup aka the pound. His master Jamie, the youngest of the pet owners, and him have yet to make the enternal bond between man and dog. It takes hundreds of miles, and weeks of separation to bring these two young souls together.

Sassy is owned and loved by Hope, a fitting name for a character in a story about the hope to return home. Her despise for Chance and pride in being a feline eventually catches up with her sending her over a waterfall and what seems like her untimely death, only to be rescued by a nice mountain man, eventually reconnecting with her two canine counterparts.

On this journey all the animals learn something about themselves and their relationship with one another. They learn that the journey is not just time spend searching for home, but that it is part of home.

You're never to old to find the way Home.

~L.

Suffocated by The Alchemist's Motivation

The Alchemist makes me think of cheesy one liners that are said to inspire and create a drive in a person who is set on giving up. Yeah it's a great story, who doesn't like treasures and far of exotic lands? This is what makes it so popular.  While reading it I found myself involved and yet very critical of how upbeat and mushy this book is. I mean if there is any book that a parent should give to their child that is about to graduate from high school this one is up on the list. Follow your dreams, never give up, don't settle for average, push yourself! It makes me think back to my days of soccer when my coach would yell motivational phrases at us trying to get us to win. "If you have nothing, remember you have your heart! Your heart will succeed if you let it!" shit like that always pissed me off, and it obviously still does. This book is just too motivational for me, but none the less a great story. And it has been in the hands of so many people that I too feel inspired to search for my 'Personal Legend.' 

And then I got to thinking of the Personal Legend thing, and it made me feel like a failure, because all my life I was going to be a soccer super star, that was my dream, and I let it go. I simply said no more, I don't wanna be injured 365 days of the year and be pissed off if I lose. It didn't seem like a goal I needed to reach, and yet now I think, hummm did I give up on my Personal Legend? Have I fallen into the masses of failed attempts and given up dreams? I mean soccer is fun and all, but how much money could I truly have made playing soccer? Maybe it wasn't supposed to be my life after all! 

So now I'm excited, maybe.  I'm graduating and my Personal Legend might actually is still there and I haven't opened my eyes wide enough since that day I quit soccer to see that my dream is still alive and waiting for me to discover it again. Maybe all along my Personal Legend has been over shadowed by my ability to play soccer at higher levels and my focus was on something that, though I was exceptional good at, wasn't my (pardon the repetition) Personal Legend. 

Ahhh so maybe there is hope for me after all, and maybe there is hope for this book to actually not make me want to vomit from the over exaggerated motivational speeches in every paragraph.  I guess this book does have a lot of failed attempts to reach a dream, and this is somewhat pleasing to me. (How demented.)

~L.

tell your mother to read

My mother is an English teacher at a high school in California and is retiring at the end of this year--I feel bad for all the incoming freshmen for missing out. Anywho, so my mom  being a lover of books, asks me every semester to send her my list of readings that I acquire from all the different English and other classes I am taking that semester. And so when we were talking in class about what books to tell our mothers to read, I giggled to myself because my mom literally reads them all, and has or is going to. The great thing about this is that my mom has her masters in History and Education, not English and she really doesn't know much about the Theorists and background of the authors, but my father has a double masters in Math and English and he knows all the Theorists and backgrounds and all that jazz that we talk about, but would rather not read any of the books on the list I send. He picks around sometimes and if I demand him to read a book he usually does, but you know it's an interesting thought to think that one day more than likely I'll be my father and not my mother. Because I have never enjoyed reading that much, and I have never really been completely obsessed with the subject of Literature. I love it and I think that I have learned a great amount of knowledge from the classes that I have taken. But honestly I can see myself in fifty years from now, getting a list from my kids telling me of books to read, and me staring off into space remembering all the books I had read and thinking, 'na I'd rather watch a hummingbird war.' Yeah a terrifying thought for a soon to be English graduate, but hey I still enjoy what I do in class and the interactions that are made through literature, I just don't think I can be as devoted to the subject as my mother, who never tried nor wanted to be an English guru.

In fact she told me to read The Alchemist a few years back, as well as To the Lighthouse and it's funny my dad told me to read, I'm not joking, Three Novels by Samuel Beckett. What a great couple of parents I got, I love the dark and the light because of them. And how would they know they were preparing me for my final semester of undergraduate work in a state over 1000 miles away from them and a place they will never visit unless it is in the warm season or for my graduation?! Gotta love to power of parenting. 

~L.

The Game of Chess

The game of Chess is classic. Though I do not know all of the rules and stratgies used to win, I still win--sometimes. The object of the game is to trap the other player's King piece--the most important piece of the game. The use of the other chess pieces are to either protect your King or take the other players pieces. The most powerful piece on the board is the Queen. Ladies this is a good thing, we are sot after and despised all at the same time. The King though is "more important" than any other piece, he has many restrictions to his movement and can only "castle" once. This leaves the King subjected to all other players and quite frankly weak and a burden upon the other pieces of the game.

Now the fact that the Queen is the most powerful player on the board could account for the fact that behind every great man there is an even greater, more humble, subdue, gracious, beautiful and quite charming woman. In order for the King to survive and you to win the game the Queen must make hasty decisions that could intern take her from the game. Now the next most important player in the game is the pon. Yeah you might ask why not the Knight! but oh no, the knight though gallant and oh so awesome because of his "L" shaped movement cannot bring back players to the game. The pons on the other hand if noble and sly enough to make it across the board to the other teams last row can choose which previously taken piece will come back to the game. So if your beautiful and deadly Queen is abruptly taken a tiny pon may bring her back!

Now what's the point of all this, I don't know, except Chess is a very classy game, and a very ancient game. It is a game of strategy, a game of intuition, and a game for the quick minded. Now I might not have any of these qualities, but I can play Chess, and in fact many of my opponients will not play against me because I am merciless, I take no chances in risking my Queen, unless I know a pon is there to help her back on her feet.
http://www.chessvariants.com/d.chess/chess.html

The Matrix, I want to Believe.

It's been a while for Emergent blogging, but hey sometime the inspired can't always be inspired.
I've never seen The Matrix and you know, I'm not upset with that, I'm actually very ok with that. And watching a few clips here and there of it was ok, but I don't need to go add it to my netflix list in order to be enlightened or have my epiphanic moment.

What is the Matrix? In order for me to answer this question do I need to see the entire movie? I hope not, because the only time I ever want to see Keanu acting like an idiot is in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and be reminded of why San Demis High School Rules. But what I got from "the matrix" and what everyone was saying in class is that it's the real world. And if it is the real world, how do we know we are in the real world and not a dream? And if we are in a dream we cannot control what is going on around us. But if we are in reality can we then control our surroundings? Well I would say to an extent of course we can control that which surrounds us, but that goes for dreaming too. In Lucid Dreams there is the ability to control what happens. In fact there are actually eye pads that go over the sleepers eye and help you to control what is actually going on in your state of unconscious. To control lucid dreams is to control your own personal reality. For dreams are just an extension of our lives outside of "dreams."

If it is true that we are all asleep and in order for us to understand "the matrix" we must wake up, then why sleep in the first place? Why am I tired? Why do I feel the need to take naps, if I already am sleeping? I understand that yeah I'm asleep to the truth of the world, and that I cannot comprehend all that is happening because I am only using 1-10% of my brain, but it all sounds like a joke to me. Maybe it's Keanu's make surfer boys cool accent that gets me so angry and uninspired by the whole idea of "the Matrix" or maybe it's the fact that I really am asleep and Krishna is trying to pinch me to wake me up. But it seems as though if we are able to hold a conversation such as the ones we are having in class and on these real, yet not real blogs then we are actually in reality and we are aware of the what the matrix actually is.

You know when I think of topics like "the matrix," dreams, reality, being asleep, waking up, etc. I always remember the poster hanging in Fox Mulder's office in the show X-Files:
I want to believe that I'm asleep and that if I can just wake myself up, I will be enlightened and yet wish I had never woken up in the first place. But it is hard, am I resiting truth? Because like another great X-Files reference:
And yeah the truth is out there, we just need to find it. And if the truth is the Matrix well then I guess I have to believe, not want to believe. But what is truth? Isn't truth just everything that isn't false? And what is false?--is it the fact that we are talking about intangible things, and merely thoughts and theories that makes up the concept of false and truth? If the truth is out there, where is there? and what is out if we don't have an in? And if I want to believe don't I have to be a disbeliever is something as well? But what would that something be? Oh Mulder and Scully save me from the the non-believers, and the believers, the true and the false of life.

~L.