Looking In For 5 Minutes

As she walked, she pondered about her life.

The meaning of it all, the peace the strife.

She, stopped for a second, looked east and west

In case any driver was not the best.

Knocking on the door, fixing her hair

Smelling smoke of cigarette in the air.

Making sure her skirt was not too high,

Just around the middle of her thigh.

Checking off her makeup, her clothes, clean smile

Crosses her fingers in hope it’s in style.

“How pathetic” she thinks and questions herself

“I should’ve just worn what I’d put on the shelf.”

The door is answered, two people walk out

She walks in – pause- expected fadeout.

“Did you see that?” ecstatic she texted her friend,

So grateful that someone invented BBM.

“Saw what?” was replied and with further explanation

“I’ll watch it, later, on Youtube” (added tension)

“While you’re at it watch this cover,

Rate it, knowing you, you’ll love her.

Anyway, brb my mom needs help”

“Actually, I’m doing hmwk… ttyl ”

So she lied to her friend, if you hadn’t noticed

For she has in mind survival of the fittest.

Nothing about loyalty, friendship or trust

Simply a boy for her is a must.

But this boy is special, what’d you expect?

He is someone else’s, whom he neglects.

They send to each other kisses and winks

It's like with this technology nobody thinks

About any consequences or repercussions

No “true love” or possible discussions.

Looking over this conversation,

The technology used in most nations,

The language created, plethora of emoticons

Yes, people have turned into robotic human-trons.

Re-consider Re-reading

To tell the truth, most every time that the importance of re-reading has been mentioned to me time and time again, I almost always without hesitation think "yeah, sure that's gonna happen... psh". And here we go again, some teacher’s blog about her experience and her undergoing an epiphany about how importance it really is. It feels like every time people want to give you advice based on their experiences, it’s about the actual importance of something; like until it happened to them it was less important or something.

Anyways, I got to reading about other authors re-reading to keep in mental shape so-to-speak. And well apparently, I contradicted myself. I got to thinking and evidently realized that I do re read – a lot. Sure the length of what I re-read influences how much of it I re-read but for example today while doing the read now,  I re-read the piece about 4 or 5 times before I actually got any abstract meaning from it. So I guess I relate to this woman, being that I’m in high school and all, and well I probably didn’t fully understand this book (given she probably hasn’t understood it to the full extent herself) but I give her credit for the amount of analysis she achieved.

Something specific that caught my eye was the section focused on the characters and their personalities. In my understanding of it, I too noticed importance in the characters and their characteristics. Somehow, they seemed very organic to me. They just possessed real qualities. Uncertainty, contradiction that appears coherent … I don’t really know how to express it. It’s kind of like when you look at a person and really see the human. Something particular, an essence… an image.

End

Explain the end of the human kind. Simple. Being that I'm in the tone of SAT practicing and taking tests, I'll put it this way. Happy : Ecstatic as The Road : Apocalypse.

Funny, this topic is played around with a lot especially with the Mayan calendar thing, global warming, and 2012 coming up. We have rendered so many versions of what “the end of the world” might come to be -- most seem plausible. Many, like the movie 2012, express an image of panic and chaos and uncertainty. Another clear example of this is R.E.M’s hit “The end of the world as we know it”, the way it’s worded, like an incoherent rant sets the mental panorama of chaos. Scientists disagree on what will happen, some say el Niño effect some say la Niña… some say both.

What all of these have failed to express are the survivors, the after, the post-apocalyptic life. The Road, its narration, conveys a sense of loneliness a grey life, fear, true life struggle. Upon reading, I found myself hooked on the very brief yet profound hints of description provided: however extensive they seem .

“In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their

clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like

ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their

eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like

migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling

issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the

class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time.

But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.” (pg. 14 Pdf file)

To tell the truth, I had to read it over a couple of times to truly understand it. He describes empty, hopeless/faithless, rotting people hollowed out leaving only a crust of their former selves desperately looking for the land of solution. The frailty of the situation is what got me first. He’s talking about how fragile life really is and how old problems simply fade into the darkness because they no longer matter. The last instance, of life I imagine, takes class with it, the essence? That death simply takes it all away. When he asks you (indirectly the reader) to look around, the grey detail of what used to be, he tries to pick up the mood suggesting that they have a long time left, they have for ever. However, the reality of the situation is that ever is in fact “no time at all”. That in the end, or should I say the end, darkness -- death, is very near.

Manipulation : Love as Society : ...

Yes, for sure, The Canterbury tales are definitely a satire mocking society. The further I read into the tales, the more I associate them with real life. First, I’d like to point out that Chaucer was very clever to name the tale The Wife Of Baths, for what is this woman? Simply a wife, wife to one and all. I was surprised that Chaucer leads you further and further away from the original, the first, Knights tale. The one I would suppose would set the tone for the novel, but I was evidently wrong. I think the reason for Chaucer to set it as the first tale makes the reader juxtapose all latter tales to the noble, fairytale-like one.

To complement my previous blog, I further emphasize the satirical position of the collection. The real, basic woman empowerment before voting rights and revolutions: seduction, is Chaucer’s most recent way (or at least most recent for me) of portraying love in society. How women manipulate and place false expectations to their emotional partners. This was their way of having a voice, apparently a tip passed from generations as explained by the wife. “I bar hym on honde he hadde enchanted me -- My dame taughte me that soutiltee –“ (575-576) And thus we understand more Alisoun, from the Miller’s tale (friend of the wife).

So what is chaucher trying to say of society as a whole?

The Serious Joke

Unexpected; would be the word that defines the Millers Tale. This Miller, boy does he have a mouth on him very crude that man. He is the anti-Disney morale so-to-speak. The sole details, that at one point I could simply describe as gruesome, of farts and hairy rear ends, made a complete contradictory path when juxtaposed to the Knight’s tale. However disappointing this might sound or this actually was, it was closer to reality, or so I think.

We, these newer generations, have Disney movies or any of its competitions’ which give us a sense of right from wrong. Back in the day, they were the same tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red riding Hood etc. that were collected by the Grimm brothers. Nonetheless, these were a little different that they are now, bloodier and somehow more realistic. Aware of how blunt and ordinary the tale is Chauser apologizes beforehand because he " moot reherce, hir tale alle, be thay bettre or werse" (lines 3173-3174) Why does he have to tell us the tales? A question that evidently can’t be answered thus far and I plan on trying to answer throughout the reading of the book.

As long as I’m on the topic of the prologue, the end of it caught my eye, which for simplicity’s sake I’ll put in modern English. “ Think about this, and don't blame me; And also people should not take a joke too seriously” (3185-3186) We have established the first part, that Chauser is not to be held responsible for the tale; however, I found the second part terribly confusing at first. Now, after reading the entire piece, I think that Chauser is mocking the drama of life, love, and society. By stating that you shouldn't take a joke too seriously, followed by an almost bizzare story which could be plausible suggests to the reader a certain level of mockery. In fact I think that the whole Canterbury Tales is in fact a satire. A satire by which Chauser  uses hyperbolic real life situations to mock us, society, and our way of living in it.