Realationships

I read This Blessed House by Jhumpa Lahiri on Saturday let it sink in on Sunday then came back and went through it again today and the more I think of it and the realism of the relationship in the story the more I really enjoy it. I love the descriptions of each of the religious relics that they find in the house and the impact that it makes on Twinkle who is the main girl. The way that she is lit up and intrigued by the story behind each of the different items she finds and turning her house from a house to a home through the use of adventure. The contrast between her and Sanjeev as him being a man of things needing to be set out and in order and her as a carefree live as you go person is a great story build.

The biggest reason that this story was so good for me is because I could easily visualize the situation that the both of them were in. As I read I got captivated by the tension and the care that was between the two characters. The addition of each Christian item in a household that is now a Hindu household is great in a symbolic way of showing conversion in someone's life. How you start with something small that you find to be an interesting thing and you go throughout life searching for more and you slowly find things that are better and better. Just like life when we begin a relationship with Christ and as we live our lives searching for the different facets that make up the God we believe in and find the different aspects that make up the God we believe in. I absolutely loved this story and to those who see this other than my professor I reccommend you look into it.

Darkness

The interesting thing I noticed in the writing of Professor Corrigan was about the relationship between hope and despair that was actually stated by Cornel West. "Despair and hope are inseparable." That means that neither of the two can exist without the other. That hope relies on despair to do its job and despair relies on hope to be its solution. Then as I contemplated heaven and the fact that there will be no sadness or mourning the thought of hope is also gone as well. Then I thought of other dependent things like darkness depends on light to not be able to reach. Hate depends on love to be misconstrued and fractured. Anger depends on joy to lose its memory. Yet each of these three will be in heaven, light, joy, and love. So that then made me think why is hope so dependent on despair and the other three are fine. Its because hope is a reaction and not an action. Love, joy and light are all things that remain and their opposites are there only as an outcome of the lack of action. Hope is reacting to a circumstance or merely fighting off the inevitable in the mental scape. I believe hope is a remedy and not a solution. The only solution is something that is an action, something that instead of being merely as a defensive tool is an offensive tool and helps to gain ground. I understand that sometimes the road is complicated when we choose to shine a light or display love or even exude joy. But when we do we unconsciously cause their opponents hate, anger and darkness to lose ground in other persons lives by them jumping a little at us to cause destruction. So by taking action we unwittingly free others and build a resistance inside ourselves. Don't let hope be your last resort but merely your wake up call.

Lubby Dubby

This whole story on what love really is and the venture the man takes to try and define exactly what love is and understand how love operates reminded me of a time in my younger years when i set out to define love. I searched for nearly six months devouring the Bible and searching online for different texts that could encompass all that love is and bring about a definition that could be simplified and understood by the mind of a sixteen year old boy. As I searched I found that God was love. That was the simple definition that was found. God is love. That being too easy I found three different forms of love that together made an all encompassing love. Eros was the first part of that love and that is the physical shallow form of love that is applied to the outer aspects of a person and is purely for the feelings that one gets back. Eros is defined as intimate love and that is where you get your erotica books from. Philos is a deeper form of love that can be described as brotherly love which is the direct meaning of philos being brother. Hence Philadelphia being the city of love. The greatest form of love is Agape love which is shown in how a mother loves a child. That love never leaves and it is specifically in a mother loving a child and also in God in the way he has done so much for us. Agape is unconditional and neverending.

It wasn't until the reading of this story that a thought dawned on me. Love is contained in three parts just as God is. Jesus can be closely related to a brotherly love yet at the same time displays all three because He came to earth as our friend yet He was God. God the father can be seen as having Agape love yet being God is love and encompasses all three but when most people think of God he is thought of as unconditionally loving. The Holy Spirit is the pure form of Eros love in the respect that He is the most intimate of the three and He dwells within us giving us a love language to speak to our father above and our best friend proclaiming our love for them and at the same time the Spirit still encompasses all three forms of love. This story was great and I thoroughly enjoy the revelation that I have obtained from reading it.

Reading How to Read...

I actually remember learning about active reading last semester when we read that one book that I ended up forgetting the name of. In it it spoke of how to write but at the same time it taught how to read in order to properly respond to someone else's writings. It spoke of the same things like preliminary reading which is usually reading around what you are about to read and reading your text through a few times first. Then there is annotation where you tale different types of notes on your selected material and that involves writing sentences highlighting sentences and writing in the margins. This is the way that I have learned to actively read. Personally it is hard for me to actively read something when it is not something I am interested in. I usually read for a reason and once I have gotten what I need or if I am unable to find what I am looking for I stop.

So no I am unable to relate to that because I rarely ever read that way and I actually prefer it that way. The only time I read actively is when I read through a screenplay and that only comes once in a while. There is the occasional time when I read for fun ( but that is once in a very very very small while) and then I don't worry about reading actively because I am engaged in the story so I have no need to take notes of any kind. I never ever ever read the preliminary reading of anything because I never see a need. I read what I need to get out what I need and move on. No need to read anything else because I have already read through the parts I needed to and there is never a need for the stories I read (which usually have pictures) to have preliminary reading unless I am getting backstory.

Literature Has a Beginning?

My earliest memories of anything remotely related to literature were when I was around the age of two or three and my mom decided that then was a good time to get me to learn how to read and she would start with books from Dr. Seuss and the earliest I remember is the tongue twister book by the good Dr. and that used to be my favorite until I found cool dinosaur books and the good Dr. wasn't good enough. I never had nursery rhymes and those were the bedtime stories that my mom read and then would force me to read them to her. The most significant text I have read so far was an article on humor and religion and it was amazing. It was called Humor and Religion: Estranged Bedfellows. It was a great article and it was very informative on the way the church treats humor and the reasons why there is such a huge distrust of it.

Initial thoughts of this class are the same as the thoughts I had before, I still wonder if there is something wrong with Professor Corrigan and I can't place if its a good wrong or he is just crazy about English. I already know I will enjoy the class because the teaching method that was explained in his essay Literature Is a Thing You Do as Part of Life and the visual diagram that went with it (which is what made more sense to me visually) were exactly how I thought about how teachers teach now and how they should teach. This is a non traditional class and I am looking forward to it. Mainly because we get to take field trips in college and one of those field trips is to go eat at the restaurant on campus and I am not opposed to that in any way. I am ready to learn new things this year and this is a good class to start learning things in.