Her Last Smile...Continues Forever

 

It's the simple things in life that you should always remember to never stop smiling about!...Like this penguin hoodie and sock set that my best friend gave me for Christmas, or a baby cousin, or a snowman that's taller than you are! These little things should never fail to make one happy and smile!

               

My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning, is the portrayal of a disturbed and demented mind. It is written in the form of a dramatic monologue from the perspective of a Duke who killed his first wife and is now showing a painting of his first wife to an envoy who has been sent to arrange the Duke's second marriage. The Duke's first wife was always smiling, and even in her painting she continues to smile. She was easily impressed by trivial things, for they were "cause enough for calling up that spot of joy" and were things the Duke thought she shouldn't smile about. He was an arrogant, proud man who viewed his wife as a possession, much like he viewed the sculpture of a seahorse. When we first read this poem and discussed how the woman was always smiling, it reminded me of myself, for I am often told at work and with my friends that I am always smiling. The summer that Diary Queen was opening up to incorporate Orange Julius into its building, the owners came over to eat lunch at Wendy's as their building was still under construction and not open for business yet. I was on front cash at the time and took their order and the pair commented on my smile, saying how gorgeous it was and that I looked so happy. They offered me a job at Diary Queen and Orange Julius if I wanted, just because I was friendly and had a nice smile! And then, just recently, while I was at work, a coworker was introducing a new staff member to everyone working and when she got to me, she introduced me as the one who never stops smiling!

Ulysses

My Great Auntie Marie blowing out the candles on her 90th birthday cake.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" in his dramatic monolgue, Ulysses, which tells the story of Ulysses after he is back at home in Ithaca, and is bored with staying at home all the time ruling, when all he really wants to do is go on adventures and learn new things.  My Great Auntie Marie went back to high school so she could graduate at the age of ninety!  To me, she is the epitamy of Tennyson's message to people to keep trying new things and "to follow knowledge".  My Auntie Marie had never finished high school when she was younger as women back then got married and started families at quite a young age, but she always wanted to go back, and so she did!  And she didn't just go back and write the tests and exams, she actually attended classes with the high school students and studied alongside teenagers, which I think is extrememly amazing!  I think Ulysses would be proud and impressed with what my Auntie Marie accomplished in her life, even into her elderly years!

Apostrophe to the Blog

The theme of Apostrophe to the Ocean, by Childe Harold, is that man is powerless compared to the ocean, man's influence is "like a drop of rain" in the ocean.  While reading this poem, I thought of the song Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas, when she sings, "You think you own whatever land you land on / The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim / But I know every rock and tree and creature / Has a life, has a spirit, has a name," and "You can own the Earth and still / All you'll own is Earth until / You can paint with all the colors of the wind."  The message this song gives is similar to the one in Apostrophe to the Ocean, because, even if you think you own part of the Earth, you really don't, as nature - the ocean especially - is still greater and more powerful than you are, and you think you are better than it and can just claim it as your own, but really it can just as easily claim and devour you, such as during a tsunami.

Ode to the West Blog

Percy Shelley's Ode to the West Wind describes how the wind is both a "destroyer" and a "preserver", and about social change: how an old idea must be destroyed so a new one can take its place.  Shelley used his ability as a poet to change things and inspire people, just like I want to one day use my ability as a writer to uncover injustices and change things.  I was reminded of a movie we watched in Social Justice this year called The Killing Fields, where it depicts the story of a journalist and photographer, Sydney, in Cambodia during Pol Pot's bloody cleansing campaign which claimed the lives of about three million civilians.  Sydney receives Journalist of the Year award at a banquet in 1976 for helping to release the story of the events occuring in Cambodia.  This connects to Ode to the West Wind as both Pol Pot with his campaign and Sydney with his journalism could be described as the wind.  Pol Pot is the "destroyer", while Sydney could be like the "preserver", as one is wrecking the environment and the people, and the other is trying to protect and save them all from destruction.

The Rime of the Ancient Blog

A few days after we read the lyrical ballad, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a woman and two men came in to Wendy's while I was working on front cash taking orders, and, although I missed the start of their conversation as I was preparing their order, I heard the woman say to one of the men, "It's like the albatross around your neck," which I found very ironic and hilarious that we had JUST read this in class a few days before, which I told her, and we laughed together.  English Lit has made me so much more knowledgeable than I was before I took this class, and I'm glad I took it, if even just so that when people refer to different poems, such as the lady in Wendy's referred to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I'll know what they are talking about.  While reading "The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' Quoth she, and whistles thrice," I was reminded of in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, when Will challenges Davy Jones to a game of Liar's Dice.  Will offers up his soul, an eternity of servitude aboard the Flying Dutchman, if Davy Jones gives him the key to the chest containing his heart, and then Will's father, Bootstrap Bill, matches Will's wager, to Will's dismay.  Bootstrap ends up losing, while Will is free to leave, but without the key.  Coleridge's poem reminded me of this scene in Pirates of the Caribbean as Death and Life-in-Death have a bet going: Death gets the crew, and Life-in-Death gets the mariner.

My Heart Leaps Up

"My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky" are the opening lines in My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold by William Wordsworth, in which he depicts the excitement of childhood and how you should never let that excitement die, and also to always worship nature.  This short little lyric made me remember Relay for Life last year when we played with a giant parachute part way through the night, or this year when we played tug o' war and had potato sack races.  Around the time we read this poem, I went walking down by Skaha beach with a friend and we sat on the swings and had swinging contests, just like when we were children.  Even now that I am a young woman heading off to university next fall, whenever I see a rainbow, especially a double rainbow, or a cute puppy, I get excited, just as I did in my childhood!

Blog of Experience

In a poem from Songs of Experience, The Tiger, by William Blake, the topic of  the experienced versus the innocent is explored.  The Tiger, in the end, symbolizes the destructive forces and presence of evil in the world, as well as experience, unlike in The Lamb, which symbolizes innocence and naive hope.  The Tiger (and The Lamb) reminded me of playing Ultimate Frisbee with my brother, Chris, over the last couple of summers.  Chris has been playing Ultimate for many years, whereas I've only played a couple times, and so he was extrememly good and experienced, whereas I am still figuring out the ways of the sport and am inexperienced still.  Also, while reading this poem, as it asks the question, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" I thought of all the terrible, murderous, abusive people in our world, such as Robert Pickton, Adolf Hitler, Michael Vick, and many others.  In the poem, William Blake wonders if it was the same person who made the gentle lamb as the one who made the horrible tiger, which makes me think, as well.  How did abusive, murderous people come to be?  Were they simply created by a God or higher power to be evil so that others could really appreciate the good in the world after seeing the horrors?  Or was it events in the world that made them somehow lose their minds and become evil, shedding their innocence, to do wrong?

Blog of Innocence

For my English 12 independent novel study, I choose to read The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.  In this novel, the main character, David, and some of his friends and his little sister can communicate through their thoughts, but only over a short distance.  They are novice and quite innocent and inexperienced at the "think-together" ways, when compared with the "Sealand people", who all can communicate with their thoughts, whereas David and his friends are shunned for having this "deviation".  The "Sealand people" are more skilled and educated in the ways of thinking-together, and so while reading this novel and a Songs of Innocence poem, The Lamb, by William Blake, I made a connection.  In The Lamb, it describes, in simple language as it is from a child's perspective, the naive hopes and fears that riddle children's lives and trace their transformation as the child grows into an adult.  In The Chrysalids, David and his friend's innocence and naivete is followed throughout the beginning of the story, but then, as they grow older, they realize the adults' hatred of "deviation" and finally understand why they must flee for their lives when their ability to think-together is learned of.  The Lamb starts off with a question from the children to the lamb, asking "Little Lamb who made thee?" but then later the child answers his own question, making it a rhetorical one, but he manages to make it profound at the same time as naive.  The answer is simple about where the lamb came from, but it also taps into the timeless question that most humans have about the nature of creation, their own origins, and the possibility of a God.  David and his friends are said to not be in the "true image" of God by their own small town of people, but, further away in the world, it is said that those who cannot think-together are not part of the "true image".  And so the question is raised, kind of like in The Lamb, about one's origins, and how does one define who is the "true image" and who is not?

To Change the World

I volunteer weekly at the Penticton Regional Hospital as a Candy Striper, as well as raised pledge money for the Relay for Life. These two activities made me connect to Robert Burns' poem, "To a Mouse", as I have used my time to help others, rather than going to the mall with friends or going to watch a movie at the theatre. "In proving foresight may be vain: / The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley," are lines from this poem which mean that even the best laid plans often go awry, and rings true with my volunteering at the hospital and for Relay for Life. The patients at the hospital who I visited did not choose to get sick and those who have gotten cancer did not choose to have this disease, and yet they do! They may have lived very healthy lifestyles, always eating right and exercising, but their plans to live long, healthy lives went askew when they found out they had cancer, or needed surgery, or were sick in some way. I volunteered my time, when I could've been doing other things, to raise money to help these victims of cancer or those who have been admitted to the hospital for some illness or the other.

Times Gone By

 

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine made me a DVD as a Christmas present with pictures of us and our group of friends over the past few months.  She also added in videos of us doing silly things and set it all to the songs Time of Your Life by Green Day and Photograph by Nickelback.  This reminds me of Auld Lang Syne by Robet Burns as both capture the remembrance of past times and friendships.  "Auld lang syne" itself means 'times gone by', and Burns' words "And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, and gie's a hand o' thine" is meaning 'and there is a hand, my trusty friend, and give us a hand of yours'.  I really like the meaning in these two quotes and in the whole poem, which is often played at New Year's, because, although times have passed you and things may have changed, there's always that trusted friend to count on, the one who you would help with anything, and, in return, would lend a hand to you, no matter what! 

Blog Written in a Modern Graveyard

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies, / Some pious drops the closing eye requires" are two very important lines from Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which describe how people, no matter who they are, want to be mourned when they die and they want to be remembered, somehow.  This reminds me of a ribbon I received at my great-grandma's funeral back in 2002 which says GRANDMOTHER on it, to always remind me of her.  And since then, every time I see it, I remember her and our family get-togethers and her wonderful Ukrainian cooking, and I remember all the good times we used to have, and I miss her!

Blog Written in an Urban Home

A little while before we took our class field trip to the graveyard, I had actually gone to take pictures in both that cemetary and the cemetary near the PENTICTON sign for my blog post about Holy Sonnet 6, so I had already recently experienced many of the same emotions I felt when we went to the graveyard as a class to read Thomas Gray's poem, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.  It was very sad seeing all the graves, especially the ones of the young children, or the men who died at war, and all those who had unfulfilled potentials.  Seeing the tombstone of the "Infant Daughter" who died at six months old I found extrememly sad because, one, she didn't even have a name yet, or, if she did, I wondered why her parents choose not to write it on her tombstone? And, two, because I just connected to that poor young couple who lost their daughter so soon after she was born back in 1916.  Just like in Gray's poem, everyone wants to be mourned and wants to be remembered when they die, but for how long was this little girl remembered?  Did her parents have other children before her and she was just an "accident"? Or, maybe she was their first child and after she passed away they never had another child? Maybe after she passed away her parents had a dozen more children and she was never thought of again? I wonder what she died from and, if in different circumstances, she would've lived and would've grown up to become a potential world-changer! I don't know whether her family was rich or poor, but, just as Gray wrote, "The path of glory lead but to the grave," meaning that everyone, even if you are rich, ends up the same: dead.  The thought that Death comes to everyone is a depressing thought, but also reassuring, in a way, for people who are not as fortunate or are unhappy with their lives for they know, one day, they will move on from this life.  Gray wrote about those who have unrealized potential, and I just hope that I will not die before I have achieved something of significance, something meaningful, showing how I fulfilled my potential!

A Modest Blog Post

Whenever I drive to Vancouver and we accidently take the long way through the city to get to the UBC campus, it sickens and saddens me to see all the homeless and drug-addicted people on East Hastings.  We read Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, which addresses the topic of the starving people and the overpopulation in Ireland during the eighteenth century, which connects to cities in Canada and other countries these days, in a way.  Swift writes on the experience of when one "walk[s] through [a] great town or travel[s] in the country, [and] they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars."  Although he is reffering to Ireland in the eighteenth century, on East Hastings in Vancouver, the streets are covered in masses of people who probably haven't showered, eaten, or seen a clean needle in days or months!  They might not neccessarily have the problem of having an overpopulation of children, like in A Modest Proposal, but there is an overpopulation of homeless people.  The high rate of homeless people is due to many things, but just a few really stand out to me.  The fact that there are very few jobs for the uneducated, is one.  People would argue that people should then get an education so they can aquire a well-paying job, but I would argue that going to university, or even just college, is extrememly expensive and hard to pay for, especially if you do not have a job to earn money in the first place.  Being faced with trying to earn enough money to pay for my own university education for next year and the following years is quite stressful and difficult, and I come from a decently well-off family! I cannot imagine trying to go to college while being homeless and jobless! And then there's the reason that houses, or even apartments, are just too expensive these days.  I was watching a story on the news and a young couple living in Vancouver were being interviewed and they said that they wanted to start a family but couldn't afford a house in the area and the only apartment they could afford would be too small for children and they both had respected, well-paying jobs! I find it so shocking how scary-expensive things have gotten these days! And another reason for the high rate of homeless people, I think, is because of the easily accessible drugs.  Although drugs are illegal, people still easily get ahold of them, which I find disgusting and unneccessary.  Unless used for medicinal purposes, I don't see any reason for drugs to be in this world.  I feel that people can have a good time without them, and if you can't be happy or have fun without them, then something is very wrong with the world!