Summer II

 

Argggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…OK.. I am better.  Wow, French for Graduate Reading has been intense to say the least.  The professor is very funny and even though my brain is fried after 2 hours, I don’t catch myself looking at the clock (most of the time..jajaj).  I would recommend Blake Carpenter for any French class since he seems to have “a way” with teaching and the way summer school is set up, it is really mind boggling the amount of grammar we see every day.  Thank goodness, we do not have to produce any French or I would be dead.  But, mierrrrrrrcoles…..I am spending 4 hours every night translating sentences and articles from French to English with my little trusty online dictionary.  This is the first time in my LIFE that I have studied French in any way, shape, or form and it has been very intense.  I am sooooooooooo thankful for my Spanish background which has helped tremendously.  Although, I see so many words like “y” (and think and) or I try to pronounce every letter that I see written in French which is a NO NO.  I feel sorry for the people in the class who do not have any foreign language background.  Although,  I wonder why others are in the class because they seem to know more French than what one would need for a pass/fail graduate readings class when they rattle off French words and ask questions that I can’t even follow. 

 

Honestly, I wanted to take Portuguese simply because it would have been more compatible with my Ph D plans and my base in Spanish.  However, I can’t fit intensive Portuguese into my schedule since I’m a GTA in the fall with 12 hours.  I am praying that the final translation is easy enough for me to pass with the dictionary allowed.  Wish me luck!

Summer Happenings

 

 I found this song recently on You Tube and it makes me cry when I think of my ex in Bolivia.   Hope you can relate to it….great message

 Not that anyone is actually still reading these blogs from Dr. Conway’s MODL but I decided to keep up on mine as much as possible.  Wow, since the end of school in May so much has happened and I can’t believe we just finished July 4!  I finally finished the school year with DISD in May and am so thankful not to have to drive to Dallas every morning and return in the evenings in that horrible traffic.  I officially resigned to take a graduate assistantship in the Spanish department at UTA.  I am so less stressed now.

For Memorial Day weekend in Maryland, I visited my Salvadoran friend Luis who you see in my blog below.  I had a blast with him and we talked about so many things involving relationships and life.  At the end, though, I got deathly sick with a fever…..he wouldnt leave me the last night before I returned back to Texas which was super sweet.  I almost missed my flight because he had to drop off his aunt, etc. etc. I ended up having to dump my Bath and Body Works lotion that I had just bought, toothpaste, my new bottle of Avon shampoo, because I was too late to check my luggage but I made the flight.  The girl at the gate was like, “You must be John Stutler”

  I made it home in a feverish state…….it was horrible but finally my fever broke that night in bed and that was even more gross as you know with a wet bed, etc.

Then came my haphazard decision to take LING 5300, An Intro to Linguistics class for Summer I.  I didnt even realize it was an elective for MODL because I had decided (for the billionth time like a freshman) to change my MA dual major to MODL and TESOL.  I will talk more about this later.  I LOVED that class.  Dr. Burquest was so cool (even though I was sort of pissed about the 1 hr. exam time limit in which I was not able to finishe the first exam and got an 89)  I punched it on the second one on phonology with a 100..hell yeah.  And the final exam, I know I did well because I studied all night.  I learned so much in that class about linguistics and it helped me to decide that I definitely wanted to go into TESOL along with my MODL degree.  It was a great fit.  I will go into this more in another blog!!!

In the middle of this class, I had THE SURGERY…….I just got braces in January and my ortho said I need to have all 4 wisdom teeth removed.  AND I had one baby tooth removed (at 36 yrs old!) and three other teeth “exposed” that had not come in……the oral surgeon was very good and to make a long story short, I did not swell, I had no pain after the first day, and I am healing perfectly.  They attached a gold chain to one tooth and my brackets but I had tears in my eyes when the ortho actually PULLED the string chain to to my braces a week after the surgery.  What was cool about all this though is my dad and stepmom came down to take care of me.  They arrived and stayed in my UTA apartment all week with me.  My dad loved UTA and my apartment.   My surgery was on Wednesday so on Tuesday, we took a tour of the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Irving.

 After that, I started watching a ton of movies from the interlibrary loan that I found on World Cat and that Dr. Alicia Rueda-Acedo had told me about.  Many of them are Pedro Almodovar but a few are not.  I am still watching them…I have like 30-40 all summer to watch. Some of them like La Ley de Deseo made me cry (which is not difficult in a movie) to see what love can do.  Here are my favorites along with their internet descriptions.  For me the 3 most powerful/passionate so far:

1. La ley del deseo

Película protagonizada por Eusebio Poncela, que interpreta a Pablo, un director de cine y de teatro (¿alter ego del propio Almodóvar?). Junto a él está su hermana Tina (Carmen Maura), una mujer algo inestable y con un pasado turbulento, pero que le adora. Pablo ama al guapo Juan (Miguel Molina), pero éste parece no saber darle todo lo que necesita, así que decide marcharse a trabajar a un chiringuito en la playa. Sin embargo, aunque estén separados, siguen en contacto por carta. Por último, cierra el triángulo Antonio (Antonio Banderas), un joven de familia acomodada, que está obsesionado con Pablo. Tanto, que está dispuesto a hacer cualquier cosa por conseguir su amor.

Excepcional película de nuestro director más universal, Pedro Almodóvar, que presenta en “La Ley del Deseo” una historia de pasión e intriga, en la que está omnipresente el tema gay. Contiene algunas de las escenas de sexo entre hombres más interesantes de los años 80. Es indispensable en toda video/dvdteca de cualquier aficionado al mejor cine.

2. Amor de hombre

Esperanza (Loles León) decide celebrar su 40 cumpleaños rodeada de sus mejores amigos, todos ellos gays. Junto a su mejor amigo, Ramón (Andrea Occhipinti), intentará encontrar al hombre de su vida. Sin embargo, será Ramón quien encuentre al suyo. Esperanza se pondrá celosa y esto hará tambalear la relación entre los dos amigos.

3. Y tu mama tambien  

The film talks about the search for identity by two adolescents.  Basically a road movie, the film sees two teenage friends convince a Spanish woman to spend a few days travelling with them. On the road, the woman teaches the teenagers about sex and growing up.

WE MADE IT AT LAST! Term Project, Reflections, Final Thoughts of the Year that Was………….

Richard Rodriguez

Well, here we are.  Another school year down for the record.  It seems just like yesterday when I was attending my first grad class at UTA on Monday night last semester with Dr. Rings on Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages.  I was a little anxious about what would be expected, yet secure in my ability to take on a graduate degree and work full time in DISD.  The class was full of other grad students wondering what would happen on that humid fall evening.  I remember Dr. Rings was worried about her mother in the hospital and she told us that if her cell phone went off, that’s why she had to answer it.  Even though we did get out early that first night, I remember thinking how different the class was going to be…and it was!  We ended the semester with a mini conference presentation of our group projects and a holiday chow down with all kinds of food and I felt a closer “spirit” with the people in that class than I have felt with fellow students since my undergrad years. It was weird but there was a mix that just worked for me and we were in contact with each other in groups and such. 

It was last semester in Dr. Seminet’s US Latino Lit class that I unknowingly read a novel and more than that, read the honest, blunt, strightforward writings of someone who truly captivated me because his early life seemed to have so many connections for me to mine.  We did not even read the entire book as a class but as I read the parts assigned to us, I thought, “Wait a minute.  There’s something else going on here under the surface with this guy.  He is not just writing about how hard it was growing up Hispanic and losing his Spanish to English and being called pocho.  I felt him surging inside of me…his writing was coming across so clear undernneath the surface.  I was identifying with so many scenes in his life.  I guess I had that extra sense that this guy was expressing something more.   I honestly had no idea until the next class when Dr. Seminet said, Oh, by the way Richard Rodriguez is gay.”  I said,”I knew it.” 

From then on I became totally enthralled by his way of writing and why he chose to NOT come out point blank in this particular book.  I wrote a mini paper on him then but then this semester after devouring Reinaldo Arenas in less than a week and toying with that prospect for my MODL project and graduate symposium paper, I thought, “I already have a great topic for my paper…..I want to know more about Richard Rodriguez and still WHY he didn’t come out then and what led him to that point later.  I knew what I wanted to do, so I went for it.”  I found so much interesting research, critiques (that pissed me off for being so anti-gay written by straight critics who have no idea……..It’s like a man writing a story from a lady’s point of view…..sure, he can do it, but he doesnt truly know the inner most being and “ser” of a woman because he is a man…the same with those critics..) anyhow……..interviews, etc that my MODL paper came out to be 12 pages and I had to go back and glean out 8 pages so I could read that part for the symposium. 

Luis, mi amigo salvadoreno

The main gist of my paper came out to be that in Rodriguez’s life, he achieved sexual identity through literature itself…his own development as a writer over the years and how that parallels his coming out.  One of the critics cites Rodriguez using race as a crutch to hide his sexual orientation even though in an interview with Rodriguez directly I find that is the furthest thing from the truth.  It is interesting to note also how Rodriguez shows language as a tool of destruction and creation—-destruction in how groups today try to make it as simple reductionism but that it can be creation in what language has done for him.  Rodriguez has been severely criticized for not coming out in Hunger of Memory and for not coming out loudly enough afterwards.  However, I show that this is a mute point in relation to what Rodriguez has truly achieved over a lifetime of writing, reading, and being the “scholarship boy” that he so aptly calls himself.  Come to the symposium on Friday, May 4 to hear the rest!

 

Luis, de nuevo

Luis y su hermana en una quinceanera

Ronald, mi ex en Bolivia 

Well, I guess this is it.  In relation to my plans for next year, I decided against a dual major in English also (it’s a good thing because my petition for a graduate assistantship was denied—- am I THAT bad? lol) and opted for a dual one in Humanities with a gender/multicultural focus with a thesis option.  I am still hoping the powers that be allow me to go full time in the fall and take a Humanities foundation course, an anthropology course in the cultures of Latin America, a gay/lesbian lit. course from the English dept., and Dr. Seminet’s class while doing an assistantship as a GTA I in the Spanish department AND a little work study. Hopefully, all this will be good preparation for a doctoral program in the future.  WISH ME LUCK!!!!  I will keep this blog up since Dr. Conway has got me hooked on blogs.  I am not for sure what it will turn into but anyone interested enough in my exciting, fun-filled life can keep up. 

Social Realism, Marxism and Bertolt Brecht

Well, Monday’s class was “a la Lana Rings” which is always an active, participatory class.  Apart from the dynamic class structure, I noticed the shear differences in people’s perspectives of Marxism, socialism, etc.  It seemed everyone (including Brecht himself) has added their own little twist to what we really do not even know was Karl Marx’s original intention.  I was very intrigued by Brecht’s idea of using epic theater and learning plays.  As to the comment I made in class and I stick to this, it is obvious that a theatre full of Nazis is not going to be conducive to participatory dialogue and discussion.  As I failed to find in time on Monday night, the article we read states that the plays were only “viable in contexts where there were political groups who could perform them and an audience who could relate them to revolutionary practice.”  Well, there goes the local high school learning play out the window.  However, I do feel that Brecht is right on course with his epic plays in which he focused on how people react to each other in historically specific ways.  How a German would be viewed by a Frenchman in 1946 as opposed to 2007 would be obviously different in light of historical events and environment. 

I was more than surprised that Korsch was expelled from the communist movement in 1926 after being one of its greatest supporters.  It almost seems that he was being used.  He was right in critiquing the Stalinization of the Soviet Union and the German Communist Party…..the only thing they accomplished was making another level of government equivalent to bourgeois society.  The power of the people and the worker and other basic tenets to him were compromised and even though both policies ended up failing, I admire him for standing up for what he believed in. 

Here are some portraits of socialism and even one by Frida Kahlo- Marxism gives healing to the sick.  Take note of all the medical images.  The bottom one is a socialist depiction showing how admirable hard work is. 

 

Finally, I enjoyed the addition of music to the class to show how literature and music can be combined with lyrics and the cacophony to show discordance and theme in the music.  Like some people in class, “Abortion is Illegal” caught my attention more, not because of the subject per se but how I thought it was going to be dealt with in one way and how it comes off in another way.  It is such a strongly satirical song about how even life itself is reduced to the pleasure of government and politics and that nothing else matters.  The accompaniment and musical score reinforced this with the doctor’s talking down to the lady…not the type of relationship one would expect between a doctor (supposedly a professional) and his patient.

The Cubs and The New Novel in Latin America

I started work on The Cubs by wondering if I have the entire novel in 44 pages or if there was something I was missing with such a “short” work.  Then I started doing some pre-reading searching on the author and found out he spent part of his early childhood in my querido Bolivia (Cochabamba) and then I ran into a recent Evo Morales (we all love you Evo) article saying that he was mad at Mario Vargas Llosa..REALLY MAD!!  Come on now Evo, there’s nothing we can’t discuss calmly like civilians over a little coca leaf tea.  Evo states the PERUVIAN (ewww… a Peruvian?  all they do is come to Bolivia to rob, steal, and lead gangs) international author called him a perpetrator of a new form of RACISM- Indians against Whites!! So Evo is mad at Vargas Llosa for calling him that?? 3/4 of the department of Santa Cruz has been doing that for a long time now, Evo.  Wake up!  Evo and company (who has changed hands more times than I can count) continue to make reference to the Indigenas past plight and how it is now time to to take advantage of an Indigena president.  Hello??  What is your definition of “indigena” Evo?  How would you like your white served to you on a platter?  slightly brown, crispy, or well done?  Anyhow, I will get off this rabbit chase but it helped me to see where the author is coming from at least in his political views of Bolivia. 

 Evo Morales molesto con Mario Vargas Llosa

LA PAZ, Bolivia. Ago. 10, 2006.- El presidente Evo Morales exteriorizó en declaraciones publicadas su enfado con el escritor peruano Mario Vargas Llosa, por haberlo llamado “racista, vivo como una ardilla, trepador y latero”, en un artículo publicado hace algunos meses. “Quiero aprovechar esta oportunidad para expresar mi dolor, mi protesta sobre un escritor internacional, Vargas Llosa. Por poco no dice que soy salvaje, retrógrada, populista, que qué saben los indígenas sobre la realidad económica, social y política”, dijo MoralesAunque la columna fue publicada en enero en el diario argentino La Nación, Morales recordó el incidente en la víspera, en oportunidad de inaugurar la feria del libro de La Paz, siete meses después.En la nota, Vargas Llosa había señalado que Morales, su colega venezolano Hugo Chávez, a quien el boliviano llama “comandante”, y el ex candidato presidencial peruano, Ollanta Humala, practicaban “un nuevo racismo” supuestamente de “indios contra blancos”.“Plantear el problema latinoamericano en términos raciales, como hacen aquellos demagogos, es una irresponsabilidad insensata”, dijo el novelista y ensayista peruano.Morales, de origen aymara, aprovechó también la oportunidad para reiterar versiones de un libro del escritor indigenista boliviano Fausto Reinaga, lo ha mencionado en innumerables oportunidades, donde dice que supuestamente a los primeros indígenas de este país que aprendieron a leer “los blancos sacaron el ojo, cortaron la mano”.La versión, sin embargo, ha sido calificada como falsa por el escritor y analista político boliviano Manfredo Kempff, quien sostuvo recientemente en una columna publicada en el diario paceño La Razón, que ni Reinaga, ni Morales han presentado pruebas sobre sus dichos, y que no hay literatura historiográfica seria que los corrobore.En el artículo que motivó la indignación de Morales, Vargas Llosa señaló que “Evo es el emblemático criollo latinoamericano, vivo como una ardilla, trepador y latero, y con una vasta experiencia de manipulador de hombres y mujeres, adquirida en su larga trayectoria de dirigente cocalero y miembro de la aristocracia sindical”.

After finishing The Cubs, I must say I was extremely intrigued by many facets of the author’s work.  First and foremost, I declare that MVL is making a strong commentary in the late 1950’s on the MASCULINITY of Hispanic men.  I say Hispanic but refer to Latin America so Latin American men may be a better word.  What is masculinity to a LA man?  MVL tells us loud and clear in this account.  I say masculinity because I would argue that MVL is more focused on that than SEXUALITY.  Even though in the end, PP starts hanging out with queers and with younger teenage boys (surfing with them, showing them how to drive his car, etc.) and his friends THINK that there is no other explanation apart from his being a “faggot” (that horrible use of the word in the gay community in English is like saying the dreaded “maricon de mierda” against the people in the Spanish speaking ambiente).  Hanging out with gay people does not make one gay contrary to popular belief.  However, while reading the story in its entirety I never got the feeling it was about PP’s sexuality.  Masculinity and sexuality are not to be confused in this story.  There are definite codes and hints in the end but I would strongly argue against it being at issue here.Cuellar or PP (who got the name after the incident with the Great Dane) is so typical of upper class kids in Latin America after the accident.  He has his parents in his back pocket, his teachers treat him with white gloves, and his friends are his friends through thick and thin.  They cheat for each other in school, visit him in the hospital, try to help him in every way they can, and when he rejects them and treats them like shit, they come back for more after his apologizing.  There is no question in my mind that PP’s friends want what is best for him.  I honestly believe they try to get PP to fall into the mold of what a real “man” should be and what he should do.  Before finishing with my comments on masculinty in The Cubs, I must refer to 2 stylistic characteristics that MVL uses.  Honestly, they got on my nerves a bit but thinking about one of them and his reason for using it helped me to understand his purpose.  First, the unclear narrator throughout.  Who is telling the story?  I saw a lot of “we” and “they” so I assumed one of the guys was telling the story and the “they” referred to the girls.  However, when I got to the end, I was left a little stumped……well, not a little—- a LOT.  “They were mature and settled men by now and we all had a wife, car, children … and they were building themselves a little summerhouse  in Ancon … and we began to get fat and to have gray hair … and age spots already showed up on their skin as well as certain wrinkles.” Now, how can “they” refer to the friends (men) and then “we” also refer to them in the same sentence?  The “we” is obviously no longer the girls.  Somebody help!  He has got me on this one.  The other technique of dialogue is clearer.  It’s not that MVL doesn’t know how or doesn’t have the “………,” said Manny keys on his typewriter.  It is extremely difficult to get used to at first and I had to really slow down to see who was talking and when the speaker had changed.  However, have you ever heard a bunch of teenagers talking?  It is CRAZY!!  They do not wait on each other to finish a sentence, they are constantly running over each other’s sentences and thoughts, and you never know who is talking!  It is so funny to see MVL utilize this truth in having a total lack of clarity in dialogue when the guys and girls are together talking.  It is so true!

What is masculinity?  We are bombarded daily with images of “what should be” and what should not be “manly”.  Depending on our culture, the degree varies.  In The Cubs Cuellar thinks his masculinity is tied to a body part.  To him and to many in the LA culture, your cojones, balls, (whatever you want to call it) is tied to a body part.  That is why I say MVL is NOT making this out as a sexuality commentary of gay vs. hetero.  In like manner, many people in the gay ambiente see this same body part as an integral part of being in love, having a relationship, etc.  MVL clearly shows PP as a heterosexual who has lost what he (and the suffocating machista culture he grows up in) considers his manlihood.  Doing all the crazy things to attract attention to himself, PP considers himself worthless and expendable.  He does the whole stupid spectrum of “hey look at me” acts in order to distract attention from his real problem.  He could never have been accepted the way he needed to be in that environment.  I loved this story because MVL has done a superb job in showing us a (because there are many more) truth behind masculinity/femininity.

  This all reminds me of a story in my Post Franco Lit class.  I am presenting Terenci Moix and his use of “camp” in his  works.  One of them, Amami,. Alfredo! : polvo de estrellas, talks about Roberto, a physically ugly gay man who falls in love with Mark, an attractive hetero who will not give Roberto the time of day for multiple reasons..one being he is not gay.  To simplify it all, in the end, Mark is in a car accident and completely disfigured- he is blind, no legs, no arms, abandoned by everyone………except Roberto…..At this point, Roberto mutilates himself in order to dedicate himself to be the eternal partner and caregiver for Mark.  Obviously, Mark will never satisfy Roberto in a sexual way but there is something more.  Mark has lost his “manliness” but is still loved by someone.  His sexual organs do not define him in Roberto’s eyes.  In the end, when he realizes what Roberto has done, the heterosexual Mark has tears in his eyes.  That, people, is called true love and has nothing to do with body parts, racing cars, playing soccer, or dressing in a certain way.  Too bad the world has yet to figure this out.

Postcolonialism and Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Upon finishing the Notebook, I can’t say it is one of my favorite works of poetry; however, many of Cesaire’s points and stylistic techniques are very commendable and out of the ordinary which causes it to stand out in many positive ways.  One of the most obvious characteristics is how the tone of the poem changes drastically from beginning to end.  Cesaire begins in a very saddened, melancholistic manner which he makes even more impactful in the middle of it all by describing his memories of a joyous Christmas.  By repeating the phrase, “at the end of daybreak,” he constructs a rhythmic pattern that gives even more emphasis to the destruction of his Martinique, by nature (the volcano) and man (white conquistadors and his own cowardice).  He gives starkingly detailed accounts of slavery (suicidal swallowing of tongues and drownings) and island conditions of corruption, disrepair, and literally shit in the street.  He describes how his family works endlessly to provide for him, “pedals for our hunger day and night” but how they are imprisoned by white bars.

 

In all of this, he uses unconventional mixing of poetry and prose and utilizes incongruous lines and punctuation that does not follow any “rules.”  One line of his reminds me of Beckett: “Who and what are we?  A most worthy question!” in that he declares the lack of rational thinking (“2 and 2 are 5″) in the situation in Martinique.  He continues to give Beckettesque type thinking about mankind:

What can I do?

One must begin somewhere.

Begin what?

The only thing in the world worth beginning:

The End of the world of course.

Wow, that’s some stong stuff.  He goes on to tell that the only game he plays is the Great Fear which according to the Notes in the back of the book referred to the millennium fear of foreboding with the year 1000 A.D.  sort of like Y2K with a typical Medieval “we are really doomed” spin.  In light of the horrible issues surrounding Martinique’s postcolonial status, Cesaire starts to change the tone in his poem.  On pg. 26, he uses sarcasm:

“Oh yes the Whites are great warriors

hosannah to the master and to the nigger-gelder!

Victory! Victory, I tell you: the defeated are content! (as if the slaves were happy to be in chains)

Joyous stenches and songs of mud! 

He has such an incredible talent for playing with words.  Stenches are hardly ever “joyous” and songs are usually not written about something as mundane as mud.

He then begins taking off the shackles of slavery and the weight of shame when he sees a fellow Martinique sitting on a bench…poverty had taken over the man’s life and Cesaire came to a self-realization that he was not really a hero but a coward. 

“My heroism, what a farce! 

This town fits me to a t. 

And my soul is lying down.  Lying down like this town in its refuse and mud.

This town, my face of mud.”

 

My favorite part of the poem is when he uses a celebratory tone for his “negritude” and that as neither tower nor cathedral, he is able to see the white world cracking from the weight of slavery and actually gives “pity for our omniscient and naive conquerors.”  He asks to be made into a man of “germination” for the movement but what I think is his best line is, “But in doing so, my heart, preserve me from all hatred do not make me into that man of hatred for whom I feel only hatred….”  How easy it is to hate those who hate (or have hated, oppressed us).  However, I believe Aime Cesaire shows his true worth and character in asking to not show that same hate back to the ones who have shown this to him.  He asks to be given the power to “resist any vanity” and “to become a hoer of this unique race.” 

I believe one of the reasons his work is such a well-received piece is because it ends on such a celebratory fashion.  He has evolved from a base level of dejection and despair, to self-realization, and to “suddenly now strength and life assail me like a bull…” He celebrates his country and unique race by asserting in the end that in

“…the great black hole where a moon ago I wanted to drown it is there I will now fish the malevolent tongue of the night in its motionless veerition!”

Honestly, I was very uncomfortable reading his use of the word “nigger” but then I read in the Notes in the back that this was the translator’s attempt to come close to the meaning Cesaire had for the word in the original French.  I noticed the translation was in 2001.  After this past year’s episodes in the entertainment business with Kramer and the subsequent push by the African American community to simply do away with the word even in rap, everday conversation, etc. , I don’t know if this translation of the word would have been used by Eshleman and Smith in 2007.  This is a totally different dialogue that I am not going to get into now though. 

The “New Novel” in Latin America and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo

I must be honest and say I did not quite expect such a powerful novel with a title like Pedro Paramo.  Needless to say, I am extremely ignorant of Mexican history and culture (and I feel even more ignorant now that I am living in Texas).  Knowing a little more about the revolution and its effects on the pueblos would have helped me to go into the novel a little more prepared.  

However, reading this novel brought me strong connections to the Spanish novel The Yellow Rain which takes place in rural Spain as people were migrating to the cities to find jobs and only one man is eventually left in the village after his wife hangs herself.  He faces his memories and ghosts as he not only retells the events leading up to his death but what happens after his death when the men from the closest village come to bury him. 

Rulfo brings so much more to the table in my opinion than Llamazares…. not to take anything away from the Spanish novel, The Yellow Rain intertwines history, memory, and symbolism out the yahoo.  However, Rulfo played so many tricks on me (the reader) that I appreciated his style a little more.  I found myself saying aloud as I read, “wow, that was him?” or “but she was not alive?”  I think Rulfo’s intentional murking of the character waters so to speak and his play on time without clear set definitions (no chapters) allows the reader more flexibility as he or she reads…..flexibility to form ideas and opinions of characters who later turn out to be totally different (or dead). 

I know we do not have time in class, but I saw where there was a movie of Pedro Paramo.  That would have been awesome to see I think.  I would LOVE to see how Father Renteria reacts in the confessional when the line of ladies is there and he begins to hallucinate and just storms out telling those who are without sin can take communion anyhow. The Father himself could not even get the neighboring priest to bless him.  That to me was the last straw for Father Renteria.

Rulfo skillfully brings the living to the dead and mixes them together.  The main character in the beginning, Juan Preciado, comes to Comala looking for his father.  He is alive but soon realizes that the people he is talking to are dead.  Later, he feels himself die and then Rulfo shows us Juan’s conversing underground with another buried corpse, Dorotea, and even eavesdropping on others…….. making for another “world” underground.  Of course, what comes out is some messed up scene from Night of the Living Dead on top of them as people continue to wander. As this picture suggests, there is a fluidity among the living, the dead, and those who are in “limbo”.  Refugio, Abundio’s wife, has died and Abundio comes to town to ask for liquor to get drunk.  Dona Ines, the mother of the store’s owner, implores Abundio to ask his wife (who is now dead) to “pray to God for me…”  So there is this cross so to speak of communication between the living, the dead, and the living with the dead. 

In addition to strong commentaries on the helplessness of religion in the face of death(Father Renteria) and the commentaries on revolution in Mexico and the prevalent anti-government/upper class attitudes, Rulfo brings out something that puzzles me.  In spite of his pure treachery, revengeful wickedness, and heartless womanizing, Pedro Paramo in the very end becomes a picture of care and concern for his wife.  Rulfo sets him up throughout the novel as this lying, cheating, bad family man who has concern for only himself and his lands/money.  Why does Rulfo in the end try to portray him as sooooooooooooo concerned about Susana, his mad (as in crazy) wife??  As a reader, I actually started feeling sorry for the guy and that made me feel guilty. 

 

Yeah, Pedro Paramo had Susana’s father “disappear” under questionable circumstances so he (Pedro) could “look after her” but in the end, why have Dorotea tell Juan while they are talking underground concerning Pedro and Susana:”He loved her.  I’m here to tell you that he never loved a woman like he loved that one…..He loved her so much that after she died he spent the rest of his days slumped in a chair, staring down the road where they’d carried her to holy ground.  He lost interest in everything…” Later, we see Pedro staying up all night keeping vigil over her as she convulses and writhes in demonic dreams and pain.  Notwithstanding his framed murder on poor Abundio, Pedro Paramo seems pretty pitiful in the end..not much of a man falling to the ground with a thud, “collapsed like a pile of rocks”. 

Existentialism and Endgame by Samuel Beckett

OK, call me traditionalist, old-fashioned, or just plain existentialistically challenged, but man, this week’s reading has been painful and so dreadfully difficult to bear.  It brought back horror stories of my undergrad reading of Waiting for Godot (is there a reason I actually remember that over other less dreadful pieces?? …….interesting)

 Anyhow, give me a break- I went from reading Reinaldo Arenas to Samuel Beckett…..bad idea……but I enjoyed my trip to the dentist today more than reading the first 30 pages of Endgame.  Moving a ladder to one spot and then returning to the first place to realize you had left your ladder in the other place????  OK, I needed to get past that and I did….sort of. 

 

Then I ran into two people rising out of garbage bins and talking about sharing a biscuit.  Hmmmmm………I needed to rethink my strategy.

 Just as Arenas spoke volumes to me this past week and impacted my life to take action more than any other piece of literature that I have read in my entire professional career, what could I expect from Beckett??  The same?  No, but I did step back before barreling through—one doesn’t “barrel through” Beckett by the way.  To be fair, I stepped back to try and figure out what was exactly going on. 

 

What I ended up understanding from the work was actually very depressing.  To see death all around him (mother and father dead in trash bins) and close to death himself, Hamm trivializes so much about things that really do not matter (ie. is he in exactly the middle of the floor, a working alarm clock, and other babblings that do not form any coherency whatsoever at first appearance).  However, as I pay attention to certain lines and phrases throughout the work and to the ending, it becomes clearer and thus more depressing.  From my understanding, it seems Hamm has taken Clove in and is like a father to Clov.  Clov has taken care of Hamm since then waiting  on him hand and foot and in the end, Clov finally leaves (after threatening to leave throughout the act)and Hamm dies….alone with just his hanky. That’s sad.  It forces us to look at what life really is……..”Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap“  It seems that the existentialists are saying that we go through life doing XYZ and then in the end, we are left as we are…..a human that dies and must face death alone.

Life is full of the same questions (and the same answers) and God is not even available when Nagg begins reciting the Lords Prayer and Hamm tells him to do it silently (for manners) and they become discouraged and abandon their attitudes of prayer.  There is no order to the universe as Clov tries to pick things up.  Clov says that order is his dream and he envisions a world where “all would be silent and still and each thing in its last place, under the last dust”. 

However, what speaks so clearly to me in what I believe Beckett is trying to do is in the very beginning and then at the end.  Ironically, the first spoken lines of the poem by Clov refer to stages of finality,” Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished” which is then followed by his comment that he can’t be punished any more.  After being limited to his 10 X 10 X 10 kitchen and waiting on a dying man throughout, Clov in the end states that this is what’s called making an exit and he leaves without even putting the sheet over the dying Hamm.  Has he shirked his duties to Hamm as mentioned in the beginning?  I don’t think so.  Hamm predicts a similar fate for Clov one day.  I think Beckett is showing us that we each face death on our own no matter what type of person we have been in life (being served as Hamm was or being the servant as Clov was).  In the end, it really doesn’t matter.  With all the trivialities of life portrayed throughout the play, in the end Hamm (we) are left on our own.  What have we accomplished in life?  Move something from A to B and back again?  Bring something from A and leave it at B as we go to C and then go back to A forgetting we left it at B?  What absurdity is there if our lives are diminshed to this?  

In the end, maybe Arenas and Beckett are not so far apart after all in one sense.  Whether the glass explodes on the table signifying the end of a protected life, or in Hamm’s case, realizing “we have come to the end,” we are alone and meet death on our terms.  What we have done in our life won’t change that fact. Nevertheless, our reactions to responsibilities during the course of a lifetime should not be trivialities and absurdities that reduce us to nothing.  They should inspire, educate, and lead others to find their place of existence.

Latin American Modernism and Jose Marti

 

Momotombo

The train was rolling on its rail tracks.

Those were the days of my golden spring

and it was in my Nicaragua natal.

Suddenly, among the cups of the trees, I saw a Giant cone,

 

 ”bald and naked”,  and full of old triumphant pride……

 

Oh Momtombo raucous and sonorous! 

I love you, because at your evocation come to me again,

obeying to a personal claim,

perfumes of my infancy, breezes of my childhood

                                                                                                                     Rubén Darío

As one of the Modernists, Dario helped to change the language of the day so to speak with his emphasis on the poet as a divine creator of beauty.  This beauty that he created in his poems like the one above is meant to slow down the rapid change that he witnessed in the time period.   As I read the article on LA Modernism, I was surprised that Modernism was basically a backlash on the literary heritage of the colonizing Spaniards…..more so than just their highly ethnocentric lenses of using only perfect Castilian Spanish.   I knew the Spaniards treated the New World inhabitants with a better than thou attitude but I never knew that the New World poets looked to France for their example and at one point their only readers. 

 

It was also interesting to note that Jose Marti went a step further and said, “Hey people, stop patronizing and mimicking everything European…let’s do this our way….we have a rich cultural tradition here also.”  It seems weird (but not unbelievable) that up until then, the New World writers had not thought or went “out of the box.” Even though Marti had his own take on many Modernist positions, he also hated the contemporary, bourgeois society that had spilled over from Europe (and the USA) to Latin America. 

As the article states, Ruben Dario was more symbolic of the movement in favor of ”artistic socialism” with the poet standing as a white tower or beacon overshadowing everyone (greater than humanity and just under God)

 

Whereas Dario states that “I am not a poet of the masses,” Marti seems to take his words to action…to the people….to a more practical hands-on approach.  Being fair to Dario, I must say he follows this comment with the fact he must “inevitably go to them” (the masses).   I compare Dario’s protest of Yankee imperialism which is “written upon the wings of immaculate swans, as illustrious as Jupiter”

and Marti’s stance that the problem can be resolved “by appropriate study, and by tacit and immediate unity in the continental spirit.”  Hmmm, I don’t know about you, but Marti’s idea of a united Latin American spirit seems like a better option for results than on the wings of a graceful bird…and I guess history proves him correct in 1898 with the “National Disaster” as the Spaniards refer to the year….for some reason, I don’t think the Latin American spirit that Marti championed looks at 1898 as a disaster……..

Marti gives some awesome advice and thoughts in Our America…..writings that I found so practical to today actually. 

I will mention just a couple for the sake of time and space.  I love how he tells the LA people to stop looking at French or American answers to all their problems and “stand up and greet one another.”  In other words, he is saying, “We have the answers right here among ourselves.  Stop imitating the solutions that work in France or the USA and start applying our own knowledge that works right here.”  It is so embarrassing how today the USA continues to try and Big Brother LA and get them to “do what’s right” no matter what the issue.  Did you know that the coca plant is not just for COCAINE??  Having Bolivian soldiers terrorize and kill their own countrymen because the campesino is trying to feed his family with a prohibited crop (over the USA approved number of hectares) is wrong.

 

Marti also makes a super point to a modern-day problem.  “The goverment must originate in the country.  The spirit of the government must be that of the country.  Its structure must conform to rules appropriate to the country.  Good government is nothing more than the balance of the country’s natural elements.” Wow, that is some good stuff.  I have one word for you to ponder in light of Marti’s conviction here: IRAQ.  Are we following Marti’s claim or are we trying to be another Spain, Portugal, France, England, etc.?  Is the democratically elected government that we helped set up in Iraq following these principles??

According to Marti, to govern well, the governor must “know the elements that compose his own country, and how to bring them together, using methods and institutions originating within the country…”  I looked at Marti before as a guy from the 1800’s who we can put up on a shelf and take down when we want to study that time period but wow, if you can’t connect his ideas to what we are doing all wrong today, then maybe I am just crazy.  As the occupying force in Iraq, do we (USA)  know how to bring all these elements together using methods and institutions (Islamic clergy, Kurds, etc.) originating within the country?? For some reason, I don’t think bombing the hell out of a country and sending more troops to “control the situtation better” (ie. kill more of “them”) is using Marti’s philosophy too well.  What would Marti say today about our policy?  Well, he would first have to survive the shock of meeting these illustrious people who influence just a tiny portion of Latin America (ie. Bolivia- (speaking only of them since I know first hand the mess and total LACK of unity among Latin American nations that they have caused there). Marti would def be busy writing today.

I will end with some commentary on “The Poem of Niagara” which Marti uses to basically say how the “contemporary” poets of his day have cut and polished poetry to the point that it has lost its effectiveness.  The poet is no longer creating eagles from his breast…he is strangling them……I can’t agree with him more. 

 

He wisely comments that a poem’s merit does not “lie in the polishing, but rather in its having come into being already winged and singing”  Tell that to the hundreds of English teachers nationwide who bang this part of the “writing process” over their students’ heads (sheepishly I include myself in this past practice) of polishing or coming back to a poem after it has “grown cold”to fix it until it’s right  (whatever)—- it loses its virginal charm according to Marti and I am 100% in agreement..

Another comment of his that resonates with me is that “ideas take shape in the plaza where they are taught, going from hand to hand and from foot to foot.”  Again, being from a Eurocentric cultural upbringing, this would have been foreign to me or at least less likely to happen.  However, Marti’s stance caught on and is alive today in Latin America.  Whenever I used to visit friends in Cochabamba, I could ALWAYS find someone giving a speech or presenting some ideas to the people who passed by in the central plaza.  Sometimes people listened and there were great crowds.  At other times, hardly anyone paid them any attention. 

I am not talking about protests of the kind in which the police end up throwing tear gas or store windows are broken by some “palomillos.” 

I am talking about Marti’s idea of free speech in which “listening is not heresy, it is a pleasure and a habit, and FASHIONABLE” Hmmmmmm…the last time I looked, people in the USA may tolerate free speech in central areas, but FASHIONABLE?  UH, I don’t think so.  We have lost the culture that Marti champions……When will we come down from our high and mighty castles in the sky to just LISTEN?………listen to other countries, other oppressed people in the nation, and to all people who have a voice.  As Marti so bluntly but wisely put it, may we realize that “talking is not a sin, but a privilege” Others deserve our respect to allow them to talk while we listen sometimes.   

Misc. Catch Up and Candide/Enlightenment (late but see my note below)

 Well, first of all, I want to say sorry to everyone for missing a week and not landing on anyone else’s blog pages.  I have been very sick with the flu this past week and a half and am finally able to sit down and coherently produce sentences and responses.  I also found out that after May of this year I will be having a career/life change, so it has been a little crazy to say the least. I will catch up with another entry for this week again and I will land on your blogs.

However, I am feeling much better about everything…..and in actuality pretty psyched about my plans to go ahead with my dual M.A. petition in the English department and my application to be a GTA in the English department this fall. That means I will be a full-time student without any responsibilities non-university related and I will be able to focus on getting into all aspects of the university in relation to teaching, studying, and the overall ambience.  Wow, is it possible I will actually be able to read, write, and (heaven forbid) REVISE and RETHINK a draft or drafts before they are due??  I don’t know about many of you, but as a full time teacher in secondary, I don’t find any time to really think, rethink, rewrite, start over, etc.  We just read, think (a little) and then write.  Will I read a book that is related to my major but not assigned by the professor?  THE HORROR!  And PLEASE forget seminars, conferences, lectures, and presentations that happen during the day on a university campus.  Grad school and working full time in a public school(just like my first time through)has been too rushed and now that I can afford it, I am going to change that.  It will be cool.

 

My Spanish prof from last semester told me this past week that if I want to get my Ph D and work in a university one day that most places put very little emphasis in how much secondary education teaching experience I have.  Rather, they look at my university experience which sits at 0 right now at age 36 (that’s embarrassing to me….the lack of university experience not my age haha).   It really opened my eyes and I appreciate her being the first person who has honestly told me how it is without sugar coating it.  Thanks Dr. Seminet.  Speaking with the grad advisor in the English department, I found out that they also have real strength and depth in gender and sexuality studies, so life is definitely looking better now.  I can still do interdepartmental studies between Spanish and English to bring out the strengths of the faculty in the areas I want to study from both departments and be better prepared for doctoral studies.

 

Speaking of life and how one ends up in different predicaments, I must comment on Candide and the original connections I made to the reading.  First, I haven’t laughed aloud in a LONG time as much as I did with this book (the people in the lunchroom at work thought I was just a tad crazy).   Voltaire’s overall style of writing something horrendously crazy or funny like cutting off butt cheeks in order to live is awesome.  However, the impact in this novel that he makes is not related to the 101 craziest lines or actions that occur.  Rather, it is the tongue in cheek style that he uses to put these seemingly ludicrous ideas out there. Then, BOOM, he moves on so effortlessly, so painlessly that as a reader, you do not even realize he has moved on until BOOM another one hits you. 

 

There were many one liners and multiple sections of the book that referred to the conditions of France and the world at this time in view of the Englightenment.  (I butchered a couple of them in the response paper last week as I hallucinated on codeine).  However, upon reviewing the entire work, the following lines hit me so hard that I honestly could have just read them, closed the book, and been totally satisfied with what Voltaire was saying.  In my book on page 110 after the group has already settled and started farming, they reflect (as they do throughout) on what they believe, etc.  As Martin gave his pessimistic bored to death or living in the bowels of hell philosophy, Candide does not agree but since he is pictured throughout the novel as relying on what someone else says, he “affirmed nothing.”  In other words, he doesn’t have an original thought on the matter (as usual).  However, the part that sticks with me now and for the rest of my life is what is written about Pangloss:  “Pangloss admitted that he had always suffered horribly, but, having maintained that all was for the best, he still maintained it, without believing it.”  Wow, that’s some strong stuff!  Are we (I am including myself as an accomplice violator of this) so strong-willed, so pig-headed that deep inside, we KNOW that we have been wrong about XYZ and yet, we never change, never admit that we were wrong, or that we have come to our own enlightenment???  (It doesn’t matter what XYZ is…you can fill it in with your own situation)  Pangloss knew he had been shit on, he knew that his theory was rubbish, but because “that’s the way I have always believed or that’s the way we have always done it,”  he stays with his original theory (knowing inside himself that it is crap).  What have we come to when we doggedly and dogmatically cling to ideologies, religions, and philosphies of life when we know that they are not truly correct or the best for us?

 In essence, Voltaire is reflecting the Englightenment concept of THINK FOR YOURSELF…don’t allow people and others to fill your mind with conventions, traditions, beliefs, and habits that turn you into a Pangloss who knew better but “stayed the course” (no political degradation intended) simply because well…………. that’s what he had always believed…………

 

…………and while you are at it make sure you know the world is actually flat, God can only speak to you in King James English and won’t respond if you use any reference apart from masculine He or Him, everyone who looks Mexican in Texas speaks fluent Spanish and are illegal immigrants although they won’t admit it, all lesbians drive pick-up trucks, cut their hair short, and refuse to wear make-up while all gays convert to sex-maniacs and/or drag queens by night, the USA is the only country that can “save” the world from destruction, and of course, all that happens in life is REALLY for the best………you get the point.