Vertical Horizons (Response to Borges)

            Borges is extremely unique, but not in a way that is distasteful to my mind. From what we have experienced in class discussions, I’ve gathered that most scholars don’t appreciate his timely, untimely fashion.  His style reminded me of Paramore’s song “Brick by Boring Brick”. So one day he found her crying, coiled up on the dirty ground. “Her prince finally came to save her, and the rest you can figure out. But it was a trick, and the clock struck twelve. Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick or the wolf's gonna blow it down. Keep your feet on the ground, when your head's in the clouds.” Borges tricks you with his timing. I got lost in his stories but my subconscious kept me looking for the magical realism.

 I agree that “The Garden of Forking Paths” was ridiculously difficult to follow, and that piece of work I did not care for. However, I found “The Gospel According to Mark” was very intriguing! This man goes from this life without conflict, to living on a ranch where the aides don’t seem to understand him.  Their ignorance ended up crucifying him. I see this everyday in different settings. My biological mother didn’t finish high school.  There are things that I think would be common sense that she doesn’t understand because she didn’t receive the education. Her lack of refinement, for lack of a better term, has prevented her from being able to make more than what is barely necessary financially in life.

 Ignorance is not bliss.  The band, Jellyfish, can tell Princess Toadstool all day that her fear would only be more excessive if she knew why she existed, but if someone is oblivious to what possibilities life has in store, then they can’t properly prepare for these obstacles. (“Ignorance is Bliss” by Jellyfish)

I went through a lot of traumatic experiences as a child. Ignorance is not a luxury I had about the world, however, imagination is.  Emma Zune is a character I can easily relate to. The instance of her father’s suicide caused her to take drastic measures against the man she felt was responsible. In the end she created her own reality of what happened, in order to make herself feel better. Granted, my situations never brought me to the point of murdering anyone, but I can understand how replacing the truth with something less harrowing is done. I never forgot what happened, but I don’t think of it in the way it happened. The nightmares these unspecified situations bring on make alternate realities easy to create, just to get away from actuality.  Sometimes some of us just need to escape….

“Honestly, can you believe

We crossed the world while it's asleep?

I'd never trade it in

'Cause I've always wanted this and

It's not a dream anymore, no

It's not a dream anymore

It's worth fighting for”

- Paramore “Looking Up”

Breathe in, Breathe out (Reflection of stories by Márquez)

     When reading stories by Márquez, it seemed to me like a child’s story that you were supposed to find the deeper meaning of the character’s actions and learn some lesson from them.  In both “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, one’s fantasy of what is acceptable in society takes over. The citizens take one's appearance and turn it into what they have been brainwashed by the commonwealth to believe those attributes signify. For instance, the American society has a bountiful amount of jokes about blondes being dumb. This prejudice eventually leaves an impression on one that blondes are dumb. Being blonde, people in America automatically assume I am dumb, which I argue against of course.
    The angel in the first story is bald and ugly with wings that are tattered and full of mites. He didn’t speak the “language of the gods” or perform helpful miracles. The villagers reject him as a holy being because he doesn’t fit the description handed down from the church. Instead the family who found him uses him as a sideshow to collect money. They house him in a chicken coop because, of course, since he and the chickens have wings, they must be near the same species… Then the spider girl came along and the money quit flowing in. The angel flew away in the end…I wasn’t sure about the metaphorical point of the story. I didn’t particularly like the “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. I found it dull and, quite frankly, uninteresting.  Most likely this is because of my lack of understanding.

     The drowned man in the second story amused me greatly. I loved this story! The women fantasize about the dead man and who he must’ve been, how impressive his size was… everywhere… how inadequate their men now seem, and what his life must’ve been like. Their fables played in their heads as they loved, lost, and moved on in life. The fact that it was published in Playboy just made it even better. It shows that fantasy isn’t reality. None of these women knew Esteban, as they came to call him, yet the site of him set them on an emotional rollercoaster, just as the airbrushed, digitally-enhanced women in the magazine do to men in today’s world. Márquez is a genius for his punctuation in this story as well. The way the marks make you pause, continue, and expel so many lines in the same breath, mimics breathing during intimacy.

     

Works by Julio Cortázar

            While reading things by Cortázar, I would try to watch for the twist, and avoid the trickery. Alas, he always sucked me in.  I became the reader in the chair, the wake crasher, and the axolotl. The story about the wake was my least favorite. I found it humorous, as it was intended, but also offensive. Funerals and wakes are a sacred time for many people. I understand that it was supposed to mock the hypocritical mourners, but for those who are truly anguished, the crashers are just prolonging their grieving process. My favorite mind twisting adventure was the first one we read by Cortázar. The Continuity of Parks brought me to a point where I was looking over my shoulder at the end of the story, and double-checking my chair to make sure it wasn’t green velvet. I enjoyed the story about Axolotls but it just left me with the impression that the guy was crazy and needed to get a life in his new location. Supposedly he felt a connection with the Axolotls but honestly he could have looked for a human who felt the same imprisoning feeling of displacement.  One thing I have learned in my many life experiences is that there is always someone, somewhere who feels the same. You are never the only one… Unless you are Tigger. 

Popol Vuh: the Dawn of Life

My initial reaction to this piece of literature was astonishment, mixed with an arbitrary understanding that most religions are similar in context. I grew up in a strictly Christian home and attended mostly Christian schools. In these environments, they taught that other societies branched their religious writings from the Bible, but that the Bible was the "original" source, and "the only true" view of creation. The astonishment I experienced, was a product of the violence that the gods in the Popol Vuh demonstrated towards each other, as well as their creations. The destruction of Vucub-Caquix, in chapter 5 of the Popol Vuh, could be compared to the Bible's depiction of the casting out of Lucifer from Heaven. Differences being it is more gory that Lucifer's demise. Personally, I think it was gracious of the Mayans to kill Vucub-Caquix instead of having him sentenced to eternal damnation. According to Christian belief, Lucifer is suffering unendingly in Hell. Overall, it has become evident to me that, in more than just the religion of Christianity, it is ill advised for one to become vain, greedy, and proud. I enjoy these different worldviews since I have been sheltered from them for most of my academic life. I’m also very excited about what other eye-opening pieces this quarter will bring.