A Sense of Normalcy and Perfecting Our Image

What if we didn't have such big egos, could we stop killing, end world hunger or find social acceptance? Maybe not yet but we certainly can start to relax a little bit.

In Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz we are lead into the long novel by our main character, Jasper, and for about the next 600 or so pages we are submerged in his incredibly serious and skeptical yet hilariously witty and satiric voice. He recounts his distorted childhood raised by his cynical and hopelessly rambling father. The book is so raw and captivating that you have look up from the page and take some deep breaths and remind yourself to laugh and that there is light in the world still, even though Jasper's father's twisted philosophies and life lessons reveal a pitiful and melancholy soul who has just plainly given up.

Especially as teenagers we take ourselves so seriously. We are all looking for something and if it's not "fun times" drugs and rock 'n roll. Then it's to perfect our ever changing image of masculinity, beauty, tough-ness, depth, brains or just being cool. As humans we are always seeking someone else's approval, where as the muddled philosophy lessons instilled by Jasper's father strongly advise against agreeing with anyone or following anything at all, we are all so desperately and pitifully concerned with ourselves, it makes me sick but as much as I or anyone else tries to deny it, we feel the painful sting of inadequacy sometimes whether it's an extra ten pounds of a failed job interview.

Only fifteen pages into my novel of the week and already I am presented with an interesting idea unfolding in the book. People take their actions, personas and percive the world so seriously that if they stop to laugh at the world or "smell the roses" as it were we might just find a bit of peace. We can stop killing over ipods and shoes, people will have the courage to accept themselves and other people's problems and identities. We will be unstoppable there will still be mistakes and stupid choices with stupid consequences but there will be a whole lot less of them.

So even though Jasper's lessons and father have torched his social skills and sense of normalcy (but hey who ever feels normal anyway) the premise [to not follow anyone else, make your own choices and don't stoop to other people levels or their ideas]  may not be such bad ideas after all

On the love of Hobbits

Hobbits, are curious creatures with tough hairy feet, child-like proportions, a love of the soil of their home, the Shire and the houses, the vegetables and the Hobbits that thrive on it. They aren't merely simple creatures, for they are brave and pure-of-heart and their love of simple pleasures and a simple lifestyle only adds to their earnesty and their likable qualities.

Frodo Baggins is one such hobbit he is well-liked and hopeful. Frodo is, always helpful and compassionate for the smallest of creatures. Barely out of childhood himself, Frodo and the Shire as a whole seems untouched by the spoils of war and evil, a well known Hobbit quote describes the philosophy of the people "Keep your nose of of trouble and trouble will never come to you." Frodo is one of the characters that I admire the most in this epic series. If not for his perseverance and bravery but for his purity and empathy

But as he accepts the daunting, almost impossible task of destroying the ring, life for Frodo starts to drag on, it becomes difficult to keep going, to keep up his wits, his strength, his sanity. For the ring is such a burden, a temptation. It toys with your mind, your body with it's relentless whispering and the steady assault on your mind.

Of hope, with the ring there is no hope every emotion is magnified every doubt, fear and thought. And so is the fear and doubt around Frodo, even his best friend Sam with such strong, unbreakable spirit, seems to have cracked and withered through the malicious eyes of the ring. So that even Sam seems lost, Frodo is left as one so small carrying the fate of Middle Earth and it's people. The task seems hopeless and impossible but it must be or there is no survival.

Which is a lot of the appeal of the book itself, the idea that such a small unthinkable person could carry on against terrible odds and win. Frodo is so self-less giving up so much of himself physically and mentally he is under tremendous pressure and strain and still expected to get by.

I think that we see bits of  Frodo in ourselves, whether it's a mountain of credit card debt of an unfinished science project we see Frodo, scraping by on what ever he's got left of himself and we get inspired, excited we connect with him, we face battles alongside Frodo, as equals. even though we aren't the saviors of Middle-Earth we could sure do with some hope and inspiration when all else has deserted us.

Because hey, who doesn't like to see themselves as a resilient, brave three-foot five Hobbit battling the lands purest evil... and winning.

Still Hope for Humanity

Walking through the Holocaust museum in Washington DC you come to narrow black door at the end of a narrow black hallway. You open it and stand on a round platform, there is a small square of light maybe one hundred feet up in the ceiling the sunlight is so distant so haunting like the last ember of a fading fire. You stand in awe and wonder was there ever a small child in a concentration camp gazing up at the sliver of light in the sky holding on to barley anything at all, or a mother letting the light carry her away from all of the horrifying, barbaric cruelty in the world for just a moment of hope.

Its presence makes our fight for survival, our strength and ourselves. Hope can be religion or security but most of the time its you. Your perseverance inspires other people and yourself to keep moving, keep living, keep hoping and to carry on in the most awful times. Humans can be barbaric, monstrous and there is weakness but there is courage and love and strength also. There is good left in people and in the world, to hold on to, there has to be.

In Sarah's Key, a overlooked, under-written about aspect of a compelling and important time in history is brought to light. In 1942, war is brewing in Paris and police round up 13,000 french jews in the night that are held in the Velodrome d'Hiver stadium. Its's a little bit like the Hurricane Katrina survivors in the Superdome but much more awful. They are held for six days with no food and water before being forced out to Auschwitz and gassed to death.

We follow two stories, Sarah, a little girl in Paris who is rounded up with the other people held in the stadium, and Julia, a journalist  in "that dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-mans land of sag, oncoming wrinkle and stealthily approaching menopause." Julia's plot was rather whiny and dull like a low budget chick-flick about a strangely miserable yet content middle aged woman trapped in a marriage. Sarah's plot-line however was so much more weighty, real and poignant. As the police come for her family she locks her little brother in a secret cupboard promising and believing that she will come and get him shortly. She keeps the key as a reminder of both her brother and the old life Sarah so longs for for she would never be coming back.

Through much of her story, Sarah is in physical pain and mental desperation. The long marches, the filth, the pungent death she witnesses it all and bears burdens that no child or person should have to bear. So Sarah is left  taking care of her ghostly mother and father always away trying to take matters into his own hands, she is always giving more than she has to offer of herself. Who is there to take care of Sarah, the helplessness, the solitude even among dozens of other faces it get to us, it gets to her; She is losing her innocence and her childhood is slipping away, left in the dust while she carries her family physically and mentally on the long march to Auschwitz. So what is there to hold on to when all the joy has faded at the edge of sanity, the key.

Sarah always carries the key and when the road is long and her feet grow weary she pulls it out imagines she is holding her little brother, his smiling face. Its difficult to remember what he looks like now, when life is so miserable. She doesn't know if her brother got out or if he is wasting away iet he darkness of the cupboard all she has is her earnest hope and blind fate.The key is her brother, her family, the bustle of Paris, life before the round up and most importantly a way out of the suffering. Even if Sarah never gets out, the key will always unlock a door to her old life in her mind and is the sliver of hope she need to carry her family and herself to the end.

The key will stay with Sarah when all else is dead and gone until her last dying day even through she makes it to freedom, she escapes the events in the Vel d'Hiv roundup will haunt her forever.

No Identity Without Control

After being in a mental asylum, help captive for sixty years, you begin to question everything. So much is taken away from you, your days, the meals the bathing, the activities, the therapy, everything is planned and decided for you. You are left powerless living an empty and soulless life. For we are just vessels that identities passes through every fad, trend hairstyle, we change and grow with the days, and who would have identity without control.

In The Disappearance of Esme Lennox, we watch Esme come out of the Couldestone asylum and begin to establish who she is as a person, much like a child maturing and discovering itself. Every human being is so uniquely different and that difference gives us our identity. It all comes back to your choices for even as we hurt and love and live in the same ways the little choices and mistakes we experience make and break us, as humans and individuals. 

Making a choice may seem as difficult and confusing as ever but having no choice whatsoever is entirely more maddening and difficult. We wonder what has become of the sunken old man in the retirement home who screams whenever the blanket at the foot of his bed is moved. Or the woman who must have her food arranged in a certain way or she won’t eat. It is the little bits of control they have left being exercising in desperate attempts to finally have a say in their lives.

 Living in a bold and shameless world we forget what the passing jeans trend means to the structured and butchered lives of those on the brink of sanity. Control itself hasn’t been mastered by many and in Esme’s case and many others she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Wandering about the house, the beach she learns what the grass feels like on bare feet or the sting of frost on your cheeks. These little details are meaningless to some but for Esme they are the dawning of a new era of innocence and bliss.

So take the time to decide whether to run or to walk take your shoes off and climb the trees because when you are old and your time is all but spent, you will scream when someone moves you blanket or clip your hair off, all to preserve the bits of yourself that you carry with you. Because there is no identity without control.

On Voldemort, Villainy and Vanquishing Death

We as people and devout Harry Potter fanatics, often discuss what makes a hero. The specific qualities and characteristics are scattered and it's often hard to differentiate between them. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, bravery, humble people, heroes always surprise us, blossoming where you will never expect them. However, what I thought a lot about was what makes a villain? Are we bound for corruption or are we just born, bad eggs? 

The most striking examples of villainy are in Voldemort and his followers, the dreaded Death Eaters. Throughout the entire series I had conflicted feelings toward him. Hatred for his lack of remorse, blind and cold-blooded murders and ruthless manipulation. Voldemort killed, tortured and maimed members of the Order of the Phoenix, innocent wizards, muggles. Voldemort was eerily in-human, he went the furthest and caused the most chaos. He destroyed anyone in his path and silencing the rest, using fear as his weapon in his rise to power as the greatest dark wizard of all time.

His sociopathic lack of remorse and mechanical qualities were the most disturbing and memorable, but not surprising due to his exceedingly dark childhood. Alone and mentally imprisoned in an orphanage he took his anger and malice out on animals and the other orphans. Voldemort can't be blamed for his childhood but plenty of other people have had horrendous childhoods and are decent human beings today. Which leaves us with the notion that his mind was corrupt from the start. The lack of regard for life is Voldemort's and the Death Eater's defining quality, that defines all except one.


Draco Malfoy has been called weak and disgraceful by many. What I think is that this weakness is skittish-ness most of the time, but a few instances it is Draco's redeeming qualities shining through, the shred of empathy and human emotion in him. It's the disguised heroism which he resents so much, the incapability to kill Dumbledore, to fully become one of the Death Eaters. Draco can't come to terms with his empathy and attachment to life and living things. Voldemort cannot come to terms with death. He resents the unknown like undoubtedly most of the human race. Death is the last enemy to be vanquished, Voldemort knows he cannot defeat death, only hold it at bay with the horcruxes, he is afraid. 

That is what separates not only Draco but Harry, Hermione, Ron all of the people fighting the evil in the world, from Voldemort and the ruthless Death Eaters. The manipulation, destruction and in-human control. Harry worries thought the series whether he is becoming like Voldemort, they do have an incredibly strong and dangerous connection. But Harry doesn't have to worry after all ... Voldemort is one bad egg.

How The One Ring Will Get You Through High School Applications And Just About Anything

I might seem, naive or cliched but we all have those moments. That get you through the horrendous NYC high school application process or just, generally life. I am talking about ones that make you feel alive, important or even enchanted.


"(What time you have) is not for you to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” -Gandalf the Fellowship of The Ring


My moment was crouching on the floor of my parents bedroom in the dark, a laptop scorching my thighs, watching the Lord of The Rings.


I know, I know the epitome of geek-dom. A vortex of self destructive obsession. Nevertheless I sat one lazy fifth grade weekend at one fifteen on a Saturday night. My father a fellow fan, forced me to read the books before I started on the movies, we all know how that turns out.


Of course I loved them devouring the books and masquerading for days as an elf or a savior of the last kingdom of men, rising up against Sauron.


So there I was in the middle of the second disk of six in the boxed set. The Fellowship Of The Ring, the fellowship had made it across the bridge of Khazad-Dum but Gandalf turned and faced the Balrog. Raising up his sword and staff together he cried, "You  Shall  Not  Pass!" He pulled the weapons down together. Then the Balrog fell through the crumbling bridge into the darkness and Gandalf with it.


Click Here For A Brief Clip Of Gandalf From The Movie


I almost stopped breathing entirely, our main character Frodo though had much more of a reason. Gandalf, a mentor and father to Frodo, left him with despair and a daunting task ahead; while I had to take a pudding break due to my excessive blubbering and sobbing. It gave me a little bit of time to think.


How could Gandalf die, he was so immortal, so powerful, so gracefull. It made my head spin. Gandalf was wise and kind he had all of the answers, without him how can we go on, it was like a kick in the ribs, hard to breathe even harder to move. We saw the grief in Merry and Pipin's tears, in Gimli's despair and Boramir's pain. It was so unbelievable, how could Frodo carry the ring on into Mordor.


But he would have to, for Frodo as we all, must carry on.

And for me that daunting task might just be getting into my top-choice High School. If you have any thoughts or comments about how a story or a song helped you carry on or about the story itself, please post a comment below.

The Raw Power of Knowlege

    You might wonder as you read Crimson Petal and the White after a disorienting gritty and real reading experience, how such a wickedly earnest, beautiful and harsh book ended up in your hands in the first place. Deep in the underbelly of London we find the raw un-glorified population of church lane in a poor area of London. Our character Caroline is witty and child-like when she hasn't slipped into the almost mechanical persona she uses to struggle through life.

    You see, to get around church lane, you need your wits a sharp blade and a way to merge with the pulsating activity of the street, to blend in and most of all to slip away into the shadows.

    Prostitution.

    I won't tiptoe around it,  I'll put it blatantly.

    Generally we don't associate prostitutes with being powerful creatures. Many prostitutes are brutally forced into the trade and sold as sex slaves all across the world. The less extreme is of course the choice of the profession and life itself.  But Caroline (we all know now that she is in fact a prostitute) has a dainty, graceful lady-like charm and slovenly appeal to her. Not only does she use this to reel in her prospective customers but she dances daintily across their lives, planting ideas influencing the old, the rich and the powerful men without even realizing the power she is wielding.

    The tables turn almost every time Caroline is with a man, the degrading filthy work gives way to conversation and jokes. A lot of the time she sees more into their lives, past present and feelings than their wives and children do in a lifetime.

    The most surprising aspect of the power is not her potential to wield it but what comes from knowing someone wholly, some of their most intimate details only heard by someone looking for them. Her job was to please the men, to know them, Caroline held the key to her customers lives and their secrets and their emotions even when she was too naive to know how tightly she could reign them in.

Calamity Topics in Special Physics

Where do we begin with Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. When I first opened the book I quickly became confused and discouraged it was a trainwreck of literary devices, overworked with quirky details, description and references to both Nabokov and pop-culture. It was slightly aggravating trying to get through the first two hundred pages limping along with a some what self-obsessed, intellectual main character and an almost dead plot-line.

Later on in the book I got used to Pessl's writing style. I eased along post-iting descriptions and meaningful sentences i liked. And from then on my reading was gentle and sloped.

Blue Van Meer our nomad narrator moves from town to town around the country after her mother dies, with her academic political-science genius father, finally settling at a prestigious private school. Blue is accepted into an exclusive group of friends, where everyone else is simply exoteric. A fixture of the group is Hannah, the beautiful, mysterious and bland film teacher who brings the group home on weekeneds.

She is very mysterious and would rather discuss pop culture and third world economies than her only life. I was incredibly intrigued, why were the kids so enchanted by Hannah if she couldn't even hold my attention. She averts questions and basic details about her own life and when she isn't teaching at the school she hides away in her patchwork home.

Her selective students slowly put together theories and ideas about Hannah's identity or if he has one at all. What else I can say about Hannah, Blue or our eccentric Marisha Pessl's writing; only time will tell

The Great Perhaps

            In a world of scandal, revenge and media crazes, there are fewer and fewer things we can do as humans to make ourselves stand out. We accept most news even the genocide in Darfur or the hundreds killed every month in Afghanistan. These events have the mundane impact of scrubbing a counter. The world is shrouded in a veil of media that glorifies violence, death and sex to a point where we not only accept it but we barely see it. We are so caught up in our own self interest, that rarely now can we tell the difference between what should cause genuine shock and cheap thrills.

            One book broke through the veil for me. I have now finished Looking for Alaska by John Greene. A book that not only turns our plain, existentialistic lives on their heads but parades around with such bold, brilliant philosophy and meaning that you can't help but ask such deep poignant questions as why are we alive, what is there to live for and most importantly "how do we get out of this labyrinth."

            Its not often that a book makes such a mockery of society but can be so incredibly thought-provoking at the same time. We experience life at the rural Alabama boarding school through Pudge, our awkward, resilient main character with a passion for last words. Along with group of quirky, extraneous friends he sets out to experience humanity and seek "The Great Perhaps".

            An ornate fixture of the novel is the character, Alaska. She is gorgeous, brilliant, passionate, temperamental and incredibly philosophical. Alaska leads the group with boldness and brings out love in those lucky enough to cross her path, yet an air of mystery surrounds Alaska that continues into the compelling ending of the book and even the interpretive reader struggles to understand.
**Spoiler Alert**
           After an eventful evening of pranks and romance Alaska suddenly makes an entrance full of anger, despair and guilt. She then takes her car and drives of campus over eighty miles an hour crashing into a jack knifed truck and dies instantly, when she had more than enough time to swerve off the road safely. Both the reader and Alaska's friends struggle onward in an eternity of bewildered, hair-pulling, head-crushing angst.  We are left with an almost selfish parting gift from Alaska. Pondering and unwrapping her death was a morbid treat and in the end we arrive with desperate, self-indulgent suicide or an accidental attempt to barrel her way out of the labyrinth.


            While living with media, cheap thrills and a mundane blur of a world. You can only ask yourself, who wouldn't want to create your own identity, to stand apart, or make your short-lived existence mean something even in the most deep, morbid and passionate, confusing way you can. And so I commend you Alaska Young

Chaos at the Counter

Segregated Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's is a long way from modern-day Brooklyn. When I started the book "The Help" by Katheryn Stockett. It was nearly impossible to picture a town with such resilience and cataclysmic change. The Help is a story narrated by three completely different women, two african american maids and a white farmers daughter living in an disheveled Jackson, Mississippi at the height of its social chaos. 


One of the more striking scenes was where three of the colored maids are describing the famous lunch counter sit ins all across the south in horror. On the local news they show six young african-american men sitting at the counter while white teenagers and grown white men smearing ketchup and salt and french fries in their hair and dumping food all over their heads. They sat there in peaceful protest for hours, ignored by the staff and picked apart by the media until closing.


So where are the lines drawn. When you sit there and don't turn around don't talk only sit showing immense courage, while the people behind you the bullies and tormentors are the real cowards. Cowering behind the old southern standards afraid of the change and those who are open to change are too afraid to speak out or voice their opinions because of everyone else around them. 


We usually associate bravery and courage with boldness and blind valiance. But is is often the bravest people who are silent, who take the abuse and refrain from fighting back out of a combination of strength and wit. The peaceful but self restrained ones should be commended and not beaten down. The lines are drawn.

Loved the song lyrics assignment from last week, so I decided to continue with the same theme.

Heart In A Cage- The Strokes

Well I don't feel better
When I'm fucking around
And I don't rise better
When I'm stuck in the ground
So don't teach me a lesson
Cause I've already learned
Yeah the sun will be shining
And my children will burn

Oh the heart beats in its cage
I don't want what you want
I don't feel what you feel
See I'm stuck in a city
But I belong in a field

Yeah we got (laugh7x)

Now it's three in the morning and
You're eating alone

Oh the heart beats in its cage
All our friends they're laughing at us
All of those you loved, you mistrust
Help me, I'm just not quite myself
Look around there's no one else left

I went to the concert and I fought through the crowd
Guess I got too excited when I thought you were around

Oh, we gotta (laugh7x),

I'm sorry you were thinking I would steal your fire

Oh the heart beats in its cage
Yes the heart beats in its cage
Alright
And the heart beats in its cage


Pain, too strong to rip out of feeble flesh and serve on a platter, too strong to grasp, too strong to consummate, too strong to bear. The song is angry, remorseful, sad and alive. I love the way it switches subtly between anger and remorse/hopelessness. while there are several different meanings intertwined the imagery and symbolism of "the heart beats in its cage" carried through he entire piece

By saying the heart instead of my heart shows how distant and severed his emotions have become because of this other destructive character. Because she made him wait for her and hurt him he has become bitter and resentful. He knows how much damage she has caused and wants nothing to do with her as he is watching everything decay.

Although there are a lot of these angry and hurt emotions there is a sliver of hope at the end. As with many relationships it seems that even though he is constantly hurt and left feeling sorry for himself he still goes back to her in the end, in a vicious cycle. He is battered and bruised emotionally and continues to endure this pain and trapped feeling which is why his "heart is in a cage"; trapped in a cycle trapped with her, and he cant break away. Its he who has trapped himself which is where a lot of the pain comes from.

A Stroke of Thought

Reptilia: The Strokes

He seemed impressed by the way you came in.
"Tell us a story
I know you're not boring"

I was afraid that you would not insist.
"You sound so sleepy
just take this, now leave me"

I said please don't slow me down
If I'm going too fast
You're in a strange part of our town...

Yeah, the night's not over
You're not trying hard enough,
Our lives are changing lanes
You ran me off the road,
The wait is over
I'm now taking over,
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough.

Now every time that I look at myself
"I thought I told you
this world is not for you"

The room is on fire as she's fixing her hair
"you sound so angry
just calm down, you found me"

I said please don't slow me down
If I'm going too fast
You're in a strange part of our town...

Yeah, the night's not over
You're not trying hard enough,
Our lives are changing lanes
You ran me off the road,
The wait is over
I'm now taking over,
You're no longer laughing
I'm not drowning fast enough.

There's always someone right? The clingy friend, the obsessive girlfriend, the possessive boyfriend. Who you used to like maybe even love, but now that affection has grown cold bitter and hateful. You could have spent two weeks with the person, or you could have spent fifteen years with them. But now every breath every syllable every flaw every quality is everything you despise. You see death and torture and pain in their face as cycles of regret, pain, longing and hate unravel. That one beloved or well liked person is now nothing but anger and despair. How does this happen? The look they give you, a seemingly sweet gesture that strikes a sour note. When this impermeable hate takes hold of you how do you let go?

In Reptilla by the Strokes there are a lot of hidden meanings and details to dig out in the song, there are many lines and phrases to interpret as well as having a good instrumental portion, which I really like about it, that is has another dimension besides it being a good song.

I printed out the lyrics and drew connections and took apart each sentence which really helped to understand the meaning of the song. In this song even though there are a lot of contrasting lines and sharp changes in both music and the feel of the words the song is very tastefully spewing and also withholding that unwanted and the painful feeling of getting beaten down again and again. The song is basically about the narrator who is sick and tired of the seemingly clingy and egocentric girlfriend who wont let go of him.

The almost dodgy, obscure and contradicting stanzas. I think that four of my favorite lines are “The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair.” And “Yeah the nights not over you’re not trying hard enough” I think that these lines both convey a lot of the same message in different ways. “The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair.” Is really showing how oblivious this person is to how much damage they are really causing to the people around her. “Yeah the nights not over, you’re not trying hard enough” Is a bit of a confusing line because of two meanings. I think it means that the tables have turned a little bit and now, the main guy is outwitting the woman like a child telling her that there is still time to make apologies is one meaning, but it contradicts the rest of the song because of the unwanted and fed up with her, complex feelings in the beginning.

A little sceptical about the premise of this post but here it is (in honor of our poetry unit)

i carry your heart with me- e.e cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now I can break down the poem. First of all I love e.e cummings. I think he was a brilliant and thought provoking man who wrote brilliant and thought provoking poems. The poem is for a love of cummings'.

The line "whatever is done by only me is your doing my darling", I love that line. I think that cummings is implying that this love of his is so important and such an influence of his life because of his love for them affects every choice he makes which is a very powerful statement.

"i fear no fate for you are my fate my sweet" Also another great line. I think that Cummings is saying that with his undying love for this person he is unafraid of pain, death or the unknown. With this person, who he knows he will be with forever, he implies that they will be with each other in the end so he fears and worries about nothing.

"i want no world for beautiful you are my world, my true" By this line I think that cummings implies that he is very happy and in love, and he wants nothing but the person he is writing about they mean everything to him and because he is in love his life is revolving around them.

When e.e cummings compares the person to the sun and the moon, he is not only describing two opposite sides of the person, he also relates the two descriptions and intertwines them into a very meaningful and beautiful sentence

The last few lines are like a conclusion but at the same time reveal a lot of the meaning and purpose in the poem. The deepest secret that nobody knows I think is very hidden and subtle but it still is there. I think that the meaning and secret in the poem is just how much he loves that person. With all of the similar-structured lines earlier in the poem and the statement showing such beautiful language and deep meaning this is definitely one of my favourites.

I Capture the Essence of the Castle

I step onto the worn and rugged yellow bricks, my ruby red slippers claking the munchkins smile waving banners and lollipops. I am obligated to keep going down the road, must stick to the path, I mutter, to get to emerald city. Another painfully slow step and another the grinding noise of slipper against brick makes my stomach churn toto whines impatiently the munchkins fall silent "I-t-think imma gointo bes-sick" "Keep going dear!" Glinda squeaks. I gasp then throw up all over the crowd soiling my braids and the entire front of my dress. "Eww," "Oh god she puked!" "This wasn't supposed to happen" shouted the munchkins "Well!" Glinda huffed, "You had better make it to Emerald City, hmmph what a mess!" "S-sorry" I whispered turning my back to the bewildered and enraged crowd. "Oh Toto these people are so rude we are definitely not in Kansas anymore!"I whimpered- Pia's strange rendition of the Wizard of Oz.

In I Capture the Castle, Narrator and main character Cassandra lives with her family in an old run down castle converted into a home. Although the castle is an inanimate object it is very much alive to Cassandra, who grew up in it, her mother died in it and loves the house very dearly.

I thought a lot about home while reading this beautiful book by Dodie Smith. Being in a divorced household like me means you have pairs of most things at each house: Textbooks, stuffed animals, a room and toiletries. You learn to deal with switching from house to house and you should feel welcome content and comfortable but some times you get angry, sad or upset and you feel stranded like you don't belong in either home. But this is not a problem for Cassie she has a different problem.

Cassandra's family is very poor her mother is dead, her father is emotionally withdrawn and has put up many walls to get away from people. He used to be wealthy and wrote many books but now he is drowning in all of his problems and emotions. Cassandra's father remarried a year or two after the death of his wife. This new stepmother gave up her modeling career in London and live with three teenage children in poverty while the house is crumbling around them, she keeps her feelings to herself and it is quite difficult to know what she is thinking about anything, let alone her house. Cassandra's sister, Rose is very picky and is very frustrasted that they live in an old caslte sharing a room with her sister in a life where there is no money no dresses and hardly any food, and the family's main source of income is selling all the furniture in the house.

Despite all of these problems Cassandra loves the old crumbling castle despite the hideous fake wood molding tacky wallpaper what jumbled furniture they have left. I really admire two things about the castle in this book, Cassandra's willignness to look past the revolting remodeling done in the Victorian Era and love the castle and embrace it. I think that for a brilliant young writer like Cassandra a castle is a wonderful place to grow up. I really admire how Dodie Smith portrays the castle as an essence or an entity using a whole lot of personification, she makes me very happy. Thanks for listening, Pia

I just started KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseini, a book about two young boys growing up in Afghanistan together. They are from different ancestry and Hassan and his father are in servitude

under the main character and narrator, twelve year old Amir and his rich father (or Baba). Set in pre-war Afghanistan with the bustling markets in town and clear blue mountain lakes they live in a paradise with lush green rolling hills and great poplar trees these boys are as brothers with a bond deeper than their clashing identities.

I noticed early in the book how Amir desperately strived for his father's approval bending over backwards to get his attention. Amir asks his father in one scene if he can sit with him for a while even though he is with his gentlemen friends "Go on now." Baba says, "This is grown-ups time." and closes the door leaving Amir wondering why it is always grown up time.

Amir and Hassan are away climbing the secluded poplar tree near Amir's Baba's mansion. They sit in the branches, Amir reads to an illiterate Hassan who is fascinated by the stories that the leather bound paper holds. Amir and Hassan are of different social classes and each have very different relationships with Amir's father. Whenever Baba is going to buy something for Amir he buys an identical present for Hassan, no matter how expensive. It is often very frustrating for Amir to have your father treat his servants almost better than his own son. Amir often plays little pranks on Hassan but is never violent or spiteful towards his loyal and best of friends.

One night when there were gunshots and loud booming in the night Hassan's father Ali held Hassan telling him it would be ok while Amir looked on thinking about his father who was out of town. He spent the entire night telling himself not to be envious even as jealousy enveloped his heart. Amir always tiptoes around his father but is still eager to please and impress and yearns for attention. He has suspicions that his father hates him because his mother was killed giving birth to him. She was the love of his father's life.

With all of this combined I can't wait to read more, pIa <3