Knowledge Lately

     So far this class has definitely had the greatest impact on my every day life. I find myself hearing stories, or reading texts, or even watching TV and pondering the story that it originated from or what the moral is or if it would qualify as a romance or not. To me this is the best thing I could ever ask for. I love when things from my classes transfer over into my life outside academics, like the validation of what I learned coming into play from just one class makes all the rest of my classes worth while. Last night I was watching one of my favorite shows, Chelsea Lately, Chelsea Handler is a raunchy comedian who has no censor for what comes out of her mouth and I love that. One of her many topics of discussion last night was about fairy tales and how parents today are not letting their children read or hear the traditional fairy tales because they send the wrong moral message and are too dark. She noted that one parents reasoning for not letting their child hear the story of Rapunzel because it is about kidnapping. I could not control my laughter at this. While I can agree that not all of Grimm's fairy tales or even those of Hans Christian Anderson are ideal for little kids because they may scare them, but for the blatant misinterpretation of Rapunzel as a story about kidnapping?? I was stunned. Nothing in any of those fairy tales is anything worse than what kids are exposed to in the news or anything related to pop culture and media.
      I couldn't help but enjoy this segment of the show and to anyone who has not watched her show I would highly recommend it, if for nothing more than a good chuckle. The perspective that this class has given me on stories is something that will stick with me indefinitely and will always factor into my approach to stories.

A Dime Piece and a Doughnut

            So there was this guy that was pretty good looking and wanted to wife a girl up, but she had to be a perfect 10. And not a fake one, but a real dime piece. He went to every bar, every night for months trying to find a worthy counterpart to his devastatingly good looks, he even went to different cities in search of this allusive woman he had his mind dead set on. He met a lot of women but none of them had the total package, something was always off, he absolutely could not find a girl to fit into the mold he had created for his ideal wife. A lot of girls were fake and had caked on facades that were easy to see through. Finally he got so fed up wading through the unworthy girls, he accepted the defeat and conceded that he may have had too high of standards and that no woman could ever meet them.

            He returned to his parents’ house very disheartened, and to top it off mother nature had decided to send a huge storm over so he was sequestered to stay inside and stew about his frustration at the lack of decent women in the world. An unexpected doorbell ring gave the guy a perfect excuse to escape the torture of the romantic comedy movie his parents had decided to watch.

            To his shock, it wasn’t some annoying salesperson but a much disheveled looking woman. She looked awful, her mascara was halfway down her face and she smelt like a wet dog. Why she was out in the storm he couldn’t figure out and she looked horrendous, but taking pity on her he invited her inside. She claimed to be a super model but with the way she was looking this present night there was no chance that she could be telling the truth.

            His mom was equally suspicious of her being a real super model, so she set up a test that would prove if she was telling the truth. His keen mother put a doughnut on the nightstand in the girl’s room, knowing that a real model would never eat refined sugar, and empty calories for fear of ruining her figure.

            In the morning the mother peered into the room and sure enough there the doughnut sat, untouched, just where she had placed it the night before.

            No one but a real super model would have left such a delicious and tempting treat untouched. So the guy then knew that this was the woman he had been seeking, for in the morning she proved that she both looked and acted like a real super model.

Romantic Comedy?

      Lucius or the Ass definitely made me laugh, which was not something I expected when I sat down and started reading out of Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature. Now as I am trying to think of a blog topic for this particular story I can't help but feel this may have been one of the first romantic comedies. Lucius starts out with the motive of wanting to see the witch perform magic, who ironically ends up being the wife of the host he is lodging with. That reason then leads him to a girl, Palestra, with whom he engages in sex with in order to get her to show him the mistress's magic, but I speculate that he did started to developed some sentimental feelings towards Palestra. In a Hollywood rendition he definitely would have fallen in love with her. So Lucius as a result of Palestra's oversight gets turned into an ass, instead of the bird he desired to morph into. After a succession of brutal attempts on his donkey life, Lucius finds fame in being a smart and well trained donkey, finally living the good life in his donkey form. Somehow or another a girl falls madly in love with his donkey form, a few bizarre events later and Lucius finally finds some roses to munch on and turns himself back into his glorious human self. 

      He is finally out of his donkey prison and free to do manly things once again. So of course his first order of business is to seek out the girl who loved him as a donkey and enjoy her love for him in his new man form. The part where this story diverges from romantic comedy and into some other weird genre that may be more similar to scifi than romance, is when the girl refuses him because he is no longer a donkey. Now full disclosure, I am chuckling to myself as I am writing this because I find is so funny, that she completely shoots his confidence down in a matter of sentences, while the entire story has been centered around his quest to be a glorious man once again. 

    After pondering this story I actually think it could make a great movie, no one would expect the ending because it is so different from what we have become accustomed to seeing at the end of a romantic comedy. 

Ekphrasis: Gerard & Longus

 Daphnis and Chloe

François Gérard

    After perusing both my art history books and google image I have settled up this tantalizing oil painting by the Neoclassical painter Francois Gerard. This painting is considered a history painting because of the story it is retelling, the story of Daphnis and Chloe that we have all grown familiar with. To me Gerard does an excellent job of capturing both the innocence and the lust, which the young blossoming relationship encapsulates. This painting does nothing to enlighten readers on the actual story, but it non the less transfixed me, most likely because I already know the story and this gave me the imagery I was craving . It is as though Gerard took the mental storyboard I had created and gave me a few scenes of it in just one painting.

   "Because absolutely no one has escaped Love, and no one will escape him as long as there is beauty and as long as there are eyes to see with" (pg 137, Daphnis and Chloe). 

     This quote struck me for a few reasons, one is that Love is masculine, which is odd only because it is normally given feminine qualities. In this painting I feel that Gerard may have been reflecting on this line, by giving Daphnis a red cloak draping over his naked body. red is a very sensual and lustful color and it is definitely where the viewers eye is first drawn to. A second reason I feel this quote and this painting go together is because of Chloe's closed eyes. She is clearly in love with Daphnis at this point and even though her eyes are painted closed it is as though she is in a dream or trance where she is thinking of herself with Daphnis. She also looks very at peace and she is not at all at unrest, Daphnis provides her the blanket of love that she can rest comfortably in. As far as the story goes, neither one o f the young lovers can escape their feelings, Chloe is struck first by Daphnis's beauty and he not long after, the painting makes it hard to discern if this is at the point when they both have realized their love or when just Chloe does, but in the end it doesn't really matter because neither can escape Love. 

    This painting is a history painting by definition of genre, but it does seem to be lacking some sheep or goats, nymphs or Pan. Still even with this narrative omission, I cannot help to see the beauty of the romantic love story that Gerard is depicting. His Neoclassical style makes the classical painting of Daphnis's body fit Longus's description of how Chloe first realized her feelings, when she sees him naked bathing in the cave. This may be shortly after that first sighting, as she is helping him dry off. That may be another reason why I like this painting and think it fits the story so well, because I can see it fitting into many different points of the story. Just like the story there are many different levels and elements that make it appealing to me, Gerard has created a painting that has many levels and phases that make it equally appealing and pleasing to me.     

To His Coy Mistress

    I have read Marvell's poem before and honestly I didn't get it the first time, then I put on my literary eyes and read for more meaning and it was like a completely different poem. I really can see Marevell's argument though, coyness and flirting is great if you have the luxury of time to engage in it. Being a metaphysical poem, the physical and the spiritual are brought up and time being a physical and earthly drain is the central motivation for why they should not wait to be together and that time will only bring age and dwindle her beauty.
   One of my favorite lines of the poem is when Marvel compares the man's love to vegetable love and says that "My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires". In Marevell's time vegetable love meant the lowest kind of love, like love between peasants. His saying that it will start there, on the most basic level and grow to be vaster than empires seems to imply that he will love her from the bottom of the spectrum to the top of it and everywhere in-between. This is actually a sweet sentiment, as is much of the poem, Marvell is expressing love on every level from lust to true romance. Time is a main conceit of this poem, and that if he has eternity he would admire the young beauty for hundreds and thousands of years, but alas they are only human and that means mortality will unfortunately come between that lofty desire. It is the lingering question that still faces us today, you only have one life to live so why wait? 
    Many metaphysical poems address the issues of time and how mortality is the real hindrance at life achievement but that there is an entirely different spiritual world in which people can operate and be better that they were in their current life. No other metaphysical pots, in my opinion however, does such a persuasive job as Marvell in the presentations of his regiments for why the young girl should just give into him. Through metaphor, and jarring imagery Marvell complies a series of valid arguments that leave me wondering did it work on the girl he was seducing? And to me a good piece of literature always leaves me with a few lingering questions. 

K.A.R.M.A

    Karma...most of us say it, refers to it, threaten with it, but what is it? To me the golden rule of doing unto others as you want other to do unto you, and Karma have always gone hand in hand. Karma is what will come and reap revenge on someone who wronged you, without you having to dirty your hands by doing it yourself. Karma provides that blind faith that everyone will get whats coming to them.
   The story of Abu Kasem's Slippers brings up karma in that he took someone else's slippers and then never escaped the downward spiral that came as repercussion for his action. In this way the narrator tells readers that "not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny...This is the law of Karma" (23). I have recently been thinking a lot about how the decision I am making now will be the ones that can wield a huge effect on the rest of my life. I have been told repeatedly that I am young and there is time for me to change or reverse the decisions I make now later on. But I cannot get over that the reality that they will still change my future. If I do not generate enough good Karma now will I become the victim of bad Karma in the future as Abu Kasem suffered?  "...shows how finely woven is the net of Karma, and how tough its delicate threads" (23). Sure you may be able to change your luck, but is Karma as easily swayed? That time when I was four and I took my brothers Halloween candy, is that going to somehow come forth now and stop me from succeeding at a current endeavor? Or have I already paid that Karmatic dept? This is the fickle nature that Karma Law seems to correspond with. The narrator of Abu Kasem's Slippers also shares that "involuntarily and lovingly we have patched together the shoes that carry us through life; and we shall remain subject, in the end, to their uncontrollable compulsion" (21). This in the end is what we have to realize, that if I live my life the way I want and can fully support my actions then all I can do is put on my shoes one foot at a time and step out and onward in the world.

   My mom sent me a card at the beginning of this semester as I was about to embark on my senior and final volleyball season and the card read:
   "Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world" - Bette Midler
On the inside she wrote "I wonder if Bette had ever thought that volleyball shoes would be the shoes that can conquer----"
   In the end it all becomes a mentality, Abu was too zealous to look for his own shoes and that woefully hindered his life path. For me, volleyball shoes have served as my way of navigating life, and thus far they have taken me to a place I cannot complain about.