Let me just start with a few words

Let me just start with a few words about last week's assignment. I love, love, love my darling commenters even when some of the comments were above and beyond the post itself ah, anyway, Thank you Izzy, Audrey, Sammy, The Futtermans (collectively Annie) and Max. And I might just have to write a paragraph about you each to make up for your wonderful blogs I have so not not been commenting on. Love- Pia

Dedicated to Audrey, Annie and

As Busy as James Franco by Anne Futterman 


During grueling 15 minutes of battle between me and the control key I hung my head in defeat, as I toggled between tabs, angrily re-typing my links in to the boxes, I had time to think about one blog post and one in particular My favorite thing about Annie's posts is that they are so creative and she is not afraid to write about non-fiction or put what ever she is thinking into her blog. This particular one was my favorite because she started talking about James Franco of all celebrities and all he has (or is trying to) accomplish. But then she moves into much more weighty and thoughtful writing towards the end about how we perceive famous people as more accomplished and interesting because they are good-looking and well known, it's preposterous that we allow them to parade around acting like they own everything is sight and there are countless more unrecognized and downplayed heros of the working class, who suffer through everyday life and a whole lot more. She makes thought provoking statements about our society all with sharp wit, a threateningly expansive vocabulary and a knack for rants and thought pools of all kinds.

All Hail Oskar Schell, Daddy Come Home by Audrey Bachman 


It's really a shame that I don't comment Audrey's blogs enough. One of my favorite things about her writing is what a great voice she has. She expressed deep, deep thoughts and emotions in the post about Extremely loud and Incredibly Close as if she had experienced them herself. Talking about Oskar searching for more than the a lock to fit the mysterious key, but a new father to love him more than the adults in his life who always tip-toe around him. She has vivid description and small fragments of her personal life a lot of the time to bring us in to the story. Audrey writes passionately and you can tell each and every blog post is real, most of the real and vivid blog posts I have come across are almost painful, rambling on about plastic spoons or other strange fixations. But in Audrey's writing we can take refuge and really explore the meaning or the books she blogs about or the beauty of reading out-loud, she really has the gift of story telling. Her blog posts are neat and crisp each paragraph perfectly formatted each sentence deeply analyzed, she often writes about childhood and analyzes personalities. What I also love is she always keeps the mood light but she goes into such detail and complexity of a story or a person that you feel not just up lifted or wistful, but nostalgic. And it's that earnest writing that I have been longing for the thought provoking innocent blog posts always leave me with a sense of wonder and i always look forward to reading them great job Audrey and thank you.


Omnivoracious- Daphne Kalotay reviews Stalina 



One of the things I liked about this blog post was optimistic. It was bright engaging and cheery which isn't always what I specifically look for in a blog post but for the story it fit well. Stalina, the book is about a russian-jewish girl who immigrates to the United States during the nineties and her assimilation into the new culture with both spunk and grace. The author again had a very nice voice, and the sentences were fluid, which really makes a good blog post. One of my favorite things about it was it was such a personal blog post Daphne Kalotay's vocabulary was perfect her history sharp but in the end it was the author's personality which showed through, her casual praise and recounting the novel with just a little bit of re-tell. It was lovely and I would love to get my hands on a copy of the book.

Death and Life by Gustav Klimt

Lift up your heads
nestle in the comfort of each others
not for very long now
slip out from under your covers

After your days, to wither and fray
while cold fevered fingers beckon away
the rosy peak of spring ripens on a breeze
your bodies buckle in my arms like old willow trees

You moan you weep in despair
about the magnitude of your last great affair
I grasp as if to console
the fear and the sorrow brooding in your soul

Lift up your heads

nestle in the comfort of each others

not for very long now

slip out from under your covers

When I come for the small the loved and the old 

All sin and greatness dissipates

none are bold

I Shall Imagine Beauty

i shall imagine life
by e e cummings


i shall imagine life
is not worth dying,if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose,roses(you feel
certain)will only smile


When I read this title in our old faded e e cummings collected works book, I thought great, another dull, saturated poem about life and death. It turned out, that most of the poem is about the ever changing conflicts and opinions of beauty. The poem deals mainly with mankind's perception of beauty. Each individual is entitled to their own opinion of creatures and things. But they are only judged to be beautiful if the public eye considers them beautiful. 


In the very opinionated first two lines he seems to be saying that he will only say that life is only worth dying when the real beauties say that their beauty is meaningless, or 'in vain'. Because life's not worth dying, life is worth living, and the struggles and disappointments are all part of one brilliant experience. The idea that life isn't worth dying makes sense to me but only because of the way we treat and accept the concept of death. Life is just too meaningful to make such a fuss about.

In the next two stanzas e e cummings refers to roses as a personification of all the beauties of the world and describes them as scared that once they have wilted, that they won't be beautiful. But he almost assures us and the beauties that if you're are truly a beauty that we will know in our heart of hearts and that the real beauties will only smile. Since, after all, that's the beautiful thing to do. If our minds are convinced that all weeds are roses then let them. because physical beauty can die but not the beauty of the clear cut soul.


Sadly, I don't see much in the world to support this optimism. The world has nearly succeeded in persuading us that every weed is a rose. So the "real" beauties will die in silent. How long before they and we proclaim that beauty is in vain? To not be afraid for when they are old and dying and or hopefully sometime before they will realize that we are beautiful and we are not. That beauty should hold sway over no one and people need to all accept their themselves, their lives, their fates and other. All in a perfect world.

A Life on facebook

A wonderful video about our social need for the Internet,wonderfully filmed and directed by Maxim Lumiere. PG-13

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.