Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Anecdote

When I was only four years old, my parents decided that I was going to move to Miami. Living there wasn't so hard due to the fact that nearly 57% of Miami Dade's population is hispanic. This made living there much much easier. It was pretty easy to communicate knowing little english and life honestly wasn't so different than in Bogotá. Life was quite chillin if it hadn't been for one small thing...

Whenever we had any type of governmental hearing to either get our residency cards or our visas checked or whatever, my mother and father would always pray to lord baby Jesus that we would not have some douchebag latin guy have to care for us. Although this may sound surprising, it was always the Colombian immigration worker that would put on his little fancy immigration badge and think he was the shit making us wait for hours. It was always the Bolivian or Venezuelan agent that would feel that his position at the US Immigration Agency gave him some type of permission to treat us like drug-dealing thieves. We would spend hours sitting in those uncomfortable waiting room chairs just waiting for the pedantic and hotheaded latino agents to finally realize that we weren't bad people. They, being latino and all, felt that they were something superior. They felt that for some reason the fact that they had been able to become official US government agents made them special and gave them permission to treat us, their true countrymen, like crap.

Anyways, this reminds me in Song of Solomon of the part where they talk about how Macon Dead tells Mrs. Bains that she needed to pay her rent or else she and her sons would end up living on the street. When asked by her sons what Macon Dead said, Mrs. Bains replies, "A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see" (Morrison 22). At first when I read this I said to myself like, "Yo, what the hell, this poor guy is only doing his job. Why does she have to be such a mean lady and say that about the poor man." But then I remembered those snobbish assholes in their uniforms and honestly, I feel for this lady...

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I Believe I Can Touch the Sky


OK so here I am in my house reading this new book we got called Song of Solomon and I think to myself, "What should I blog about?" After reading a few pages, I get to the part where they talk about Mr. Smith the insurance agent and his suicide and thats when I began to think about the whole notion of flying and believing that you could actually fly...

Our class is centered around traveling (hence "Literature in Motion") and I think that there is probably some connection between this guy deciding that he could actually fly and the whole idea that when you travel and come out of your comfort zone and quotidian routine, then you're able to learn more about yourself as a person.

The narrator of the novel tells us that "None of them (the people of the city) had suspected he (Mr. Smith) had it in him" (Morrison 9). According to this, Mr. Smith had no crazy habits and never really did anything out of the ordinary and because of this, no one had expected that he would suddenly pull some crazy stunt. As I think about Mr. Smith and his belief that he could fly, I asked myself, "what would Mr. Smith gain by flying?" Perhaps he was tired of his life and wanted to free himself from his responsibilities. Maybe he had somewhere to go, someone to meet... Maybe he was trying to get to know himself or he might have even felt that by flying he could change himself.

Its interesting that Morrison would begin her novel this way, with something so complicated and curious as a suicide (specially this one with its bizarre qualities). Maybe some of the characters in the novel will have to face the same obstacles that Mr. Smith may have had to face? Or maybe they might even ask themselves the same questions that led Mr. Smith to believe he could fly? I look forward to seeing how Morrison is going to play with this idea of flying.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Exploitation

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that would be able to reflect the paradigms of a generation. The White Man's Burden is a poem that talks about how it is the duty of a "white man" to civilize and tame people from conquered lands. This poem demonstrates the clear way that "white" society justified their oppressive and cruel actions.

In A Heart of Darkness, there is a part where the narrator is talking about how once he had "a visit to the doctor" (Conrad 74) and there, "two woman knitted black wool feverishly" (Conrad 74). The narrator explains how this pair of women are made up of a "young one" and an "old one" (Conrad 74). I believe that these two women represent white generations and how both manipulate the indigenous people of Africa (the same way as the women work and give shape to the wool). Conrad writes later on page 74, "I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness . . . one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes." This excerpt's purpose is to clearly show the readers how the narrator is going into a job where the important thing is to manipulate and exploit. Both of the women are "guarding the door of Darkness." Darkness here may mean Africa itself. Also, the fact that they are doing their task with "unconcerned old eyes" shows how the women (representative of white oppression) don't show any type of consideration or care.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Our Corroded Nature


In A Heart of Darkness, we are exposed to a view of human nature. Some people think that innately we are "good" creatures, others think that we are nothing but savage beasts. Joseph Conrad uses his novel in order to show his view of humans.

Personally, I have thought about this and I would like to dedicate this blog to what I think regarding our nature as human beings.

Human nature has been lost. Our instinctive drive has been pulverized to the point where we are merely the reflections of the machines that we ourselves have created. We spend our time on earth focusing on producing and on achieving fixed tasks. Menial tasks that will mean nothing to us in the future. We will eventually die and our time and effort will be forgotten alongside our bodies and names. I believe that civilization, along with the existence of a "free will" and "moral choice," have destroyed what we used to be, what we were meant to be. The balance that comes with nature has clearly ceased to exist in our society. Because of these oppressive forces, humans nowadays live in a state of despair and anguish trying to search for some truth. People everywhere live their lives looking for something which might be able to fill this gap. Although this bleak judgement may seem condemning, we find joy in the small things in life which fill us with hope and energy to continue on the journey that is life itself. Be it a small flower, the kiss of a lover, a beautiful sunset. These things for some reason allow us to, at least momentarily, find joy in our lives.

I am exited and look forward to continue reading A Heart of Darkness and read about the views of Conrad.

In Loving Memory


I'm standing on a tomb, my palms are sweaty, and I'm out of breath. I look around and try to find a clue that might give me the reason why I am standing here in the middle of a scary-ass Villa de Leyva cemetery. While my left hand has a tight hold of the rosary that hangs around my neck, my right hand hangs freely by my side. I continue to walk around the churchyard when suddenly I feel my right pinky shoot up with pain. I check my pinky and notice a prickle protruding from the tip and a plump red drop forming where this foreign object is now tightly fastened. At first I feel a mix of anger and pain but then I look down at the ground and see the cause of my pain, a beautiful yellow rose. This rose captivates me. I look around and notice a plenty of similar roses growing randomly around the field. For some reason I feel more calm, not so scared now. I begin to think about all the people that had been buried in this cemetery. What was their childhood like? Were they good husbands? Wives? Brothers? Friends? Standing in this city of the dead, I thought to myself, "Could it be possible that my life will end up summed up on some tomb stone? Everything that makes me me, gone forever..."

Reading A Heart of Darkness I was taken back to this moment in my life. On page 68 Joseph Conrad writes, "We live in a flicker." While these words ring in my head, I think about the burden that lies within them. We are all destined to be ashes. We are destined to be nothing but a memory and a grave. Life as we know it is nothing but a flash of ephemeral brilliance. To Conrad, our lives are only a flicker in what is the storm of history.