Sexsonisms 1/27/2010

'In many of these stories the realization has some sort of dark element to it because you see something about yourself that is often not very pretty' - M.S.

'Has anyone ever had a trivial conversation with someone else? Don't answer that.' - M.S.

The Grandeur of God

This is my three-year-old, paint program interpretation of God's Grandeur.
Hope you like it. :)

Sexsonisms 1/25/2010

'Our brains are organized in such a way that we don't pay attention to all things. If we did [...] we would be dysfunctional' - M.S.

'One of his issues was that he was mentally unbalanced, but this poet gave us the motto for this institution; Mountains and Minds!' - M.S.

'Isn't it great that the motto for this institution was given to us by a mentally unbalanced, British poet?' - M.S.

Love Epiphany

Has anyone ever experienced love? Not the love of a 'loved one', but the love of a 'lover'? James Joyce talks about the overwhelming experience of falling in love (or falling in lust). More importantly, he talks about one of the most painful kinds of 'epiphany' a person can have; the realization of unrequited love. In definition, unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections. 'Araby' in James Joyce's 'Dubliners' discusses this theme at length (or not so much, as the story is only 5 pages long). Still, his portrayal of the narrators love for Mangans sister is heart breaking in a way. For the narrator, his life in Ireland is frustrating. The mundane 'comings' and 'goings' seem impossibly boring, until he has an epiphanic moment in which he experiences the feelings of infatuation and admiration. His unreciprocated love affair with a woman he barely knows, much less talks to, is an incredibly common theme in literature, art, poetry, and real life alike.
He comes into this experience thinking a love has actually blossomed between him and the woman, and at the end of the story is angered and embarrassed by his own vanity (at least I think that's what Joyce is trying to tell me).
I don't know if anyone else has ever experienced unrequited love before, but quote frankly, it is AWFUL. A character in one of the most adorable (not prominent, but adorable) movies ever made once said, '[What could be] worse than the total agony of being in love?'. I think this question is quite appropriate. The only thing worse than the total agony of being in love is the total agony of unrequited love. The narrator finds himself staring at her longingly from windows, memorizing small things about her, and thinking about her every second of his day. It consumes him totally. At once, the narrator in Joyce's story finds himself in this state:
'I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to be child's play, ugly monotonous child's play'
(17).
Some other quotes from Joyce's work highlights the narrators agony and ecstasy.

'I had never spoken to her, except a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood' (16).

'I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires' (16).

Love seriously scorches the senses. Often times, when someone has such a moment of epiphany and realizes they are in love (or what they think is love), the person can literally lose all realm of intelligent, logical thought. People in love can be amorous idiots... I can say so because I have been there myself. In my opinion, a 'love epiphany' is unlike any other, though probably one of the most agonizing of the experiences a person can have. Don't misunderstand me... I believe in love. And I love to believe in love. And I love the IDEA of being in love, but unrequited love is just painful. I guess, however painful they are, I have to love the agonizing aspects of it is well, because where would love be without heartbreak?

Sexsonisms 1/22/2010

'Remember, Wikipedia is NOT there to educate you.' - M.S.

'To stand in awe of someting is to experience two things at once; that which is positive and that which is negative.' - M.S.

'It's a Googleable word. I never thought I'd use that word. GOOGLEABLE. It's a Googleable phrase.' - M.S.

Fruition, Fulfillment, Security, Affection, A Good Dinner...

Let me just say, I agree very much with Abby about 'FOOD' epiphanies. She explained in class about how a meal literally changed the way she felt about what she wanted in her future, and I feel the very same way! I have an Italian father who absolutely lives for good food and great wine, and one of my absolute favorite pasttimes is going to eat with dad... to see him get excited about food reminds me of growing up and makes me happy. Over the holidays, my parents collaborated and put together three evenings with a very specific menu and beer and wine to boot. The food was utterly some of the best food I have ever had and our relationship to food and wine and having a good dinner with friends has always bonded all of us. I know in my life I simply have to have those things; good food, good wine,and people to share that experience with. Is there anything in the world more important than that? I don't think so.

Today Dr. Sexson said that when you're trying to talk about the best things, words fail you, and I couldn't stop thinking about it after class. Why IS it that words fail you just when you need them the most? Hmm... obnoxious! I have been talking to other people about these subjects and my friend Melissa said this:
'When you're talking and you can't think of words or the right words or the words you're looking for it's likely because your brain is overactive (or underactive) and can't focus in on one idea'...I had to laugh because that's just so very mathematical of her.
Also this:
'An epiphany may (in theory) occur when your brain "stops" and takes a breath and realizes an idea that you have been scratching the surface of but haven't been able to "focus" on'
I find it very interesting to talk to non-English majors about their ideas of the word 'epiphany' and if they have had any experience with it. They often times seem confused as to why we would obsess about what an 'epiphany' is. There is a definition for it in the dictionary and that's what it is and why would we give it another moment's thought? Makes me laugh!
I was thinking today about the possibility of explaining an epiphany to someone who hasn't expierence it and it reminded me of this T.S Eliot quote:

'It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.'

Is this the same for the idea of epiphany? When we feel like we have had a profound experience and are at a 'loss for words', is it really worth explaining to someone else if they have never experienced it? Would they understand? And if they did understand, would they draw the same feeling from it that you have? All things to think about, I guess...

Sexsonisms 1/20/2010

'Epiphanies tend to be, in their final moments, a showing of experiences and not the telling of those experiences.' - M.S.

'There is no reason we can't have an epiphany when we think really highly of ourselves for knowing something!' - M.S.

'We all need to hear the music. The hidden music.' - M.S.

'Chapter 7 in the Wind in the Willows is one of the great chapters of literature. Who says so? I say so! Why? Because I have the authority to do that!' - M.S.

'Oh Oh Oh!' & 'Ah Ah Ah!'

Dr. Sexson said in class today that epiphanies don't necessarily have to do with things of passion, and there are two types of epiphanies the 'Oh!' (smaller epiphany) and the 'ah!' kind (larger, more realized epiphany). For the most part, I would say I have experienced many little 'oh' epiphanies, but I do recall as an English major having a big 'AH!' experience, which led me down the path I am still on today.
I have dropped out of college...twice. For some reason I thought it would be more convenient for me to have more freedom and not be under the strict, watchful eye of my parents (the ones helping me pay for college, rent, etc.). I came to realize being out of school and on my own was not as glamorous as I had hoped. I had no direction; I felt completely lost and like I would never find a path. Anyway, after much thought on my own and the encouragement of my parents, I decided to re-enter school, but I hated being there. I thought all my teachers were mindless and the fact that they actually wanted me to think and work made me want to do less, be lazy. I used to joke about spending tons of money to be a part of the 'MSU Book Club'. I was completely closed off and had a terrible, terrible frame of mind. Last semester, Dr. Sexson told me that no situation can be boring; only people are boring. I was right there, being boring because I was too close minded to find something special in anything. Until I met Kimberly Myers. She came into class and literally blew me away with her passion for teaching and passion for the material she was teaching. We were only in a 200 level class, but she expected the best out of us made me want to be passionate about something again. She made me realize how wonderful the melancholy poets were and I had a newfound respect for poetry, literature, and educators. She was just wonderful! She spent a lot of time teaching us about T.S. Eliot, which is why I was so excited to begin this class with Eliot. I actually have a tattoo on my forearm of three lines from Eliot's 'The Wasteland'. DATTA. DAYADHVAM. DAMYATA. Give. Have compassion. Have self control. It was what the thunder said. I got the lines tattooed so I would always remember the way she made me feel and the things she taught me. I also like the meaning of the words; it's a constant daily reminder to try to live by those guidelines. The self control part is always interesting, but I think I do pretty well with the other two :). Halfway through the semester with Kimberly Myers I had this huge epiphany that I wanted to be an educator like her; I wanted to give to students what she had given to me. She was also my advisor and when I went to her office for my advising appointment, I was so overwhelmed by emotion that I actually broke down in tears in her office. After feeling so lost for about three years, I finally felt some stability in my life again. She gave that to me through her words and the words of the poets she adored.
Epiphanies can be:
1) Said or Heard
2) Done of Performed
3) Seen
My epiphany with Kimberly Myers was seen and felt. I realized all that I had lost and let myself lose before I came back to college and realized all that I wanted to gain. I truly wanted to turn my life around. This passage from Chapter 7 of the 'Wind in the Willows' reminds me of this experience:
'As they started blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze,dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed aspens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces, and with its soft touch came instant oblivion.'
Maybe Kimberly Myers was my 'capricious little breeze'. Perhaps I will be an educator like her. I am currently applying for a teaching position in Guam and am hoping for the best. No matter the outcome, I know I'm so far from where I used to be, and I owe that in part to my professor. In some ways, she brought me back to life.

Michael Sexson-isms

I will probably be posting a Michael Sexson-ism for each blog I write from now until the end of class :).

SEXSON-ISM 15 Jan 2010

'An 18-year-old male can't handle anything of overwhelming complexity or beauty. Have any of you ever MET an 18-year-old male?' - Dr. Michael Sexson

'All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude' - Theodore Roethke

Last class period, I was given a personal assignment by Dr. Sexson to explore and analyze another poem by Theodore Roethke, 'The Far Field'. Should anyone care to read the poem, I will include the poem in its entirety at the end of this blog. The poem reminded me of an experience I had when I was very young and seemingly incapable of understanding anything with any sort of depth.
I can't remember how old I was, but I know I was still in the phase of 'Sesame Street'. My Grandpa James passed away (my mother's father), and I remember my mom trying to explain the concept of death. I was always a persistant child and would ask question after question if I didn't understand what was going on around me. When I finally came to the realization that my Grandpa was gone and never coming back, I was absolutely hysterical. I remember my mother trying to console me as I hugged a big pillow with the 'Sesame Street' characters smiling at me from the fabric. In that moment, I began to understand that in life there is death, in death there is peace, but no one actually knows what happens after death. Once a person passes away, they never return, and the world keeps going on without them. Big questions kept racing through my mind; what would happen to the world eventually? Would I still exist in another realm or just be a small void on the planet? Would there come a time when the earth wouldn't exist? And then what? What comes after? Does anything come after? This was all incredibly overwhelming for me and I stayed in my room most of the day crying and trying to find some solace in my newfound reality. The next day, of course, I had forgotten all about it and was back to the 'usual'.
You're probably wondering why this has anything to do with the Roethke poem, and I will try to explain as best I can. In 'The Far Field', Roethke describes a man coming to understand things around him as he hadn't before, and understanding death in a different way. He recognizes moving from a state of innocence ('once i was something like this, mindless') to a state of absolute understanding. The man in the poem finds comfort in the idea of death. Would it be better to continue living knowing the unknown will always exist, or would death be more peaceful?
Roethke states that 'all finite things reveal infinitude', which is something I realized as a small child trying to come to terms with death. Death is a finite concept but the idea of infinitude after death absolutely overwhelms my senses (it did then and it still does now). I try not to let my mind wander in that direction too much because my mind works in overdrive and I feel like I'm suffocating.
In his poem, Roethke describes the beauty of this feeling, of knowing that in every thing and concept exists something that isn't absolute; something that continues beyond that thing or concept. The author feels renewed by the thought of death because he knows death is not the end. Something exists after death; but only in death can we ever know what that something is.
The poem is wonderful... everyone should read it. It really applies to the idea of 'epiphany' and, I'm sure, other ideas we will be kicking around this semester. Hope you guys enjoy it (and thank you, Dr. Sexson, for introducing me to it).

THE FAR FIELD

I

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III

The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV

The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.

The Epiphany, The Lotus, and Me

To me, the word 'epiphany' or anything attached to it has always come to mind as a state of realization; a frame of mind associated with a previous frame of mind but understood on an elevated level.
According to our syllabus, a religious understanding of the term stresses the sudden manifestation of a divine being, while it exists within a literary context as the sudden showing forth of the essential nature of something through aesthetic means. Have I ever had an epiphany? I cannot be sure. I have certainly had moments in my life where I believe to understand the essential nature of a person or thing on an elevated level, but I do not believe I have ever had an experience of the 'Divine'. I think my mind is often tricked into believing it is having a Divine experience, especially when listening to music. My brain seems to operate on a different level, real life starts to fade away, and I feel like I am able to understand absolutely everything on an enlightened plane when the right music is playing. I'm sure everyone in the class has felt that way at some point or another. The right song can give anyone the sense of having a significant revelation, right?

Just like song has a profound affect, poetry does the same, which is why I am so thrilled to be starting the class with an Eliot poem. The description in the poem of a lotus rising out of the pool pinpoints where the epiphany occurs, fitting because of the background of the flower itself. The legend of the Lotus flower can be traced back to ancient Egypt. The flower itself was considered sacred because of it's origin, birth, and blossom. The flower grows usually from the depths of muddy swamps and emerges into a beautiful white or pink blossom, the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously. At night, the flower closes and sinks underwater and rises and opens again at daybreak, believed to be a symbol of the sun, creation, and rebirth. The lotus flower is seemingly a perfect symbol for the religious definition of 'epiphany', or sudden manifestation of the divine.

My own experience with literature has been ongiong ever since I was a child. Starting with 'The Boxcar Children' and poems by Shel Silverstein, I have moved through the works of Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck in High School to William Blake and Harold Bloom in college (along with several artists around and in between). I have actually been pursuing this particular degree for some time now, at one point thinking I wasn't interested in a college education and then coming to the dramatic realization that I didn't know what else I would do without one. Is that an epiphany? I have taken or attempted almost every English class offered at MSU, as well as a few in Dillon, MT and one or two in Missoula (I seem to move around a bit). Taking British Literature II from Kimberly Myers a few years ago was one of the best experiences of my life. She taught me how to view literature in a completely different way and also taught me about beauty of the melancholy poets, for which I feel indebted to her. I felt like I was on an enlightened plane for the entirety of that semester because of Kimberly Myers and her appreciation, respect, and exhiliration for the poets and artists she was introducing us to.
On a break from MSU, I visted a place called Vadar, Washington, and the home of Sharon and Leroy. Leroy was a retired English professor and had this incredible writing studio, a little cottage behind the home he occupied with Sharon. In it, there was a desk with a small lamp and all the essentials for a writer, though incredibly out of date (something I thought was charming). Anyway, above the desk hung a poem by Theodore Roethke and at that point in my life, the words resonated so loudly with me. I felt like I was having an out of body experience being in that atmosphere with those words giving me some sort of direction. Did I experience an epiphany? I can't be sure. In fact, I can't be sure I have ever experienced an actual epiphany in my college career, but I suppose the contents of this class and Dr. Sexson will help me figure that out. This was the poem hanging on the wall in Vadar...it remains one of my favorites.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke
The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.