The Observer

I wish

Dear Reader,

I wish I could write like I beg you to.  I wish I could think like I encourage all of the people around me to.  I can’t.  Not always.  I don’t claim to be all knowing or a step ahead anyone else.  I only claim to be conscious of the fact that my mind needs cultivation.  It needs an environment in which it can grow.  It needs practice and care, and the scary part is how specific your outcomes may be depending on the kind of practice or the kind of care that you give your mind.  It’s shapable, moldable, impressionable, and yet you have the power to be the biggest impression of all, to black out the outside forces, the minds that attempt to magnetize, to find similarities in their own minds, only to lead yours astray.  Don’t fall for it, and check your thoughts daily.  Make sure they’re your own.  Question yourself.  Doubt.  Only through trial may you find truth.

The Observer

Reader response of “Traveling Through the Dark.”

         This is my reader response to the poem featured in the link below.  It was for Literary Criticism class.  I thought the poem was beautiful, so I decided to share.

   http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem185.html   

               William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark,” is a complex poem open for interpretation by its readers.  It is clear that the poem itself is not simply about a pregnant deer on the side of the road.  In order to grasp the meaning, one must look deeper, applying the words of the poem in reasonable comparisons to everyday life.

                The part of the poem that truly gives away its deeper meaning is not in the initial metaphor.  It is not in the description of the “Fawn…never to be born,” or the stiffened body, “almost cold.”  The part that gives away the deeper complexity of the writing is contained within one line, “I thought hard for us all.”  In this simple line, the poet compares this scene to humanity.  It gives away the metaphor and instantly makes the poem heavier, with more meaning than before, while making it more understandable.

                In saying that he “thought hard for all of us,” the narrator applies the thinking process of pushing a pregnant animal over a cliff to the thinking process of humans in the death of their own race.  When the narrator comes across the deer, he feels badly, as most would.  He felt for the unborn faun, shown in his hesitation to push the body over the edge.  This feeling is comparable to human beings.  We feel badly when we hear of others who have died, yet we simply push the thought out of our minds after stating how sad it is that so many people had to die.  Our complacency consumes us as we turn our heads from the riots and killings strewn over news channels, and as the narrator of “Travelling Through the Dark” pushes the deer over the edge of a cliff, we forget about the countless who have died, never changing our mindset or allowing it to affect our daily lives.

                For instance, in theory, there are those who think that abortion is wrong.  Yet, when faced with the problem of a girlfriend who has become pregnant, when faced with the problem of the possibility of a child coming into the world with the potential of ruining their lives, how many people would push that child over the edge?  Of course, they would remember their “beliefs,” knowing that they’ve stated before that abortion is wrong, but when faced with it themselves, their only hesitation would be a momentary one, their “only swerving” being a slight guilt felt from their broken morality.

                “The wilderness listen[s]” and yet does nothing.  The wilderness hears the killing of new life and simply listens on.  The world listens to the killings of human beings in civil wars and political uprisings and yet it does nothing.  The world is silent as nature is silent, for each person attends to his or her own needs, ignorant (save for their momentary feeling of self serving guilt) of starving children, of dying mothers, and of deer being pushed over a cliff, fat with child.

dearest reader

If you are like me, you may see yourself in dark times of mental instability, an outcast.  You may see yourself as the Steppenwolf, who separates himself from the others, those humans, those beings who move and talk as you, but remain only shadows to your mind.  I apologize for my recent absence.  My lack of writing is affected by some circumstances you may be familiar with.  I can feel my mind at times slipping away from me.  Perhaps not my mind, but least of all, my insight, my ability to explain my feelings, my inspiration.  For upon being surrounded by my superiors, there is little room for study of my own, study of passion, of literature that brings an enthralling sense of ecstasy into my entire being, of observation of the natural world.  I am surrounded by studies, of language, of literature, and yet, I am forced to look at them through the blurry lens of a professor, a more learned person who sacrifices creativity for mere analytical thought, who fails to understand an author’s work as a collaborative effort between the author and the reader in order to construe meaning.  In this oppressive state of mind, I find myself giving into sloth inconsistency, lack of motivation where the overbearing thought that resides in my head is one that whispers the damnable,”Your words mean nothing.”  I entreat you not to fall for the view of another.  Refuse to look through the close minded lens of a superior.  There is a way to complete their studies while remaining individual in your response.  Give into your passions and follow them, for human passion, the entrance of emotion, is a catalyst to productivity.  Your thoughts are unique, and they are your own.  This alone gives you great power in that no one else can know your discoveries.  No one else can read a passage of literature or observe the world around them, and come to the exact same conclusions as you have.  For this simple fact, we are valuable.

The Observer

Dearest Reader,

The Ant.

I’m interested in the ant who strays a bit too far from the hill of safety.  The one who doesn’t seem to follow the line of scent in which the others conform.  His black, alien body travels over blades of grass and the cracked dirt, product of the scorching sun, in search of…

Of what?  Perhaps this nomad ant is not in search of something in particular, for if he was in search of food, would not he follow the many legs of his brothers, rejoicing with them in the long, dead body of a green insect bent in prayer?  Would not he pick pieces off the sacrificed animal as his brethren climb aboard as a wave of flailing limbs and fangs wash over the crumbling statue of a forgotten god?

The lone ant, instead, explores on his own accord, perhaps in an overambitious attempt to discover a magical source of food; a potato chip dropped and crushed into glass like slivers, stale with forgotten salt; a drip of pink ice cream, melted and falling off the sticky fingers of a human child like the raining down of manna from the heavens.

The ant will search and return with nothing, his head held high, and at the disappointment of his queen, the sneering of his identical brothers, he will attempt to explain his search for more.  The Queen, chomping on the dead, severed hands of the fallen mantis, spits in his face and tells him there is nothing more than acquiring food, than increasing the size of the hill.  She challenges him with teasing eyes, her anger rising to a screech that sends his brethren scurrying to their holes.  She asks him what more does he intend to find.  He answers her in the only way he can, explaining to her as he backs away that he will be content to know what lies behind the hill under which he had turned back at the end of the day. 

The queen scoffs, her bulbous body pulsating with contempt for the small worker ant who lacks work, saying, “How wilt thou discover what lies behind the hill if once you discover its worthlessness, you will not be content until traversing over the hill beyond that?”  The queen is lost in mocking, menacing laughter, and as the unit takes his leave, he repeats to himself that which he has known and which his brethren cannot understand: that contentedness is not the destination of his mind.  It is the question that’s the thing.  It is the search for something more.  It is the journey itself that makes a life.

So, brethren, let us be as the ant who strays from the path of brainwashed workers.  Let us explore.  Let us resist the scent of conformity laid down for us by those who know not our character.  One cannot lead without knowledge of his subjects, and you cannot know yourself without exploring your own mind without the “helping” hand of your contemporaries.

Apology

The Apology of Socrates

            “Apology” is an example of Plato’s method of talking through the character of Socrates.  In the essay itself, he examines what philosophy is, attempting to define it through abstract means, parables spoken by Socrates, and appeals made to the people of Athens.  His claims of philosophy are made to the Athenians, defending it against their seemingly one-track minds.  Socrates must please the crowd and those voting upon his punishment by defending his position, his actions, and his entire mindset, but instead of doing what most would advise him to do and promising to stop his offensive actions, he makes a case for philosophy itself and defends his actions as being a mission from god.

            In this essay, we see Plato’s idea of philosophy, the backbone of his entire teachings and writings on truth.  It is interesting to notice that he presents his own philosophies through Socrates, and it is uncertain whether this particular trial of Socrates ever existed or happened in such a way as Plato depicts.  Socrates speaks for Plato’s way of thinking, his philosophy, by claiming the ignorance of man.  .

            The idea that man is nothing compared to the higher, divine truth is something that Plato is known for advocating as his character of Socrates does.  In this vision that Socrates dictates to his fellow Athenians, Plato’s view that the material is short from truth is clearly evident and important to the argument.  Socrates claims to test the wisdom of man, doing so as an agent of god.  In this way, god represents the Intelligible Realm, believed by Plato to contain all truth.  Socrates realizes why the people of Athena are angry at him, for he has denounced their views that they are wise, and claimed himself to be the wisest of all.  The Athenians don’t understand the position of Socrates as a metaphor for a higher understanding given to him by the absolute.  The absolute is truth, and therefore, truth is not known to man.

            Of all the sorts of people that Socrates interviews, they all rely on their senses in order to explain their wisdom.  He first interviews a politician who is acclaimed for being a very wise man, and finds him to be, in fact, unwise.  The reason why this politician is unwise is the mere idea that he thinks himself to be wise.  Socrates openly chastises the man for believing he is wise, stating the idea that man does not contain the knowledge that this man claims to have.  He states his revolutionary finding: that those who think themselves wise are unwise, and those that are ignorant are wise.

            Socrates examines poets as well, and it seems as though they get closer to containing wisdom, because clearly their poetical works are the works of wisdom.  However, as soon as the poets and the people around them speak, Socrates realizes his mistake.  The poets, he claims, are not wise in themselves, but perhaps they contain an inspiration that is not of themselves.  Whenever Socrates comes upon a man or group of men who think themselves to be wise, he claims that they are not so.

            In the last interview, Socrates gets closer to the meaning of wisdom, and the definition of philosophy in accordance with the teachings of Plato, his pupil.  He interviews the artisans as he does the poets, and finds them to be unwise, but in this instance, he reveals the truth of wisdom and the reason why none of the men he has interviewed thus far can rightfully claim wisdom.  Socrates claims that the people that he has interviewed have thought themselves to be wise only because they are wise in what they do specifically.  This, to both Plato and his characterization of Socrates, is against philosophy: philosophy and wisdom being the very realization that man is not wise and that all wisdom and truth is contained in an intelligible realm of the absolute.

            Unfortunately, Plato’s view of the empirical realm is an underestimation of the wisdom that it can and does contain.  Through observations of the senses, we know that men have gained wisdom of not only empirical nature, but explained some things that Plato would have viewed as residing in the absolute realm.  Through senses and resources gained upon this Earth, man has explained what makes a body move, what makes the Earth spin, what makes stars shine bright in the sky, and what causes the sun to warm our skin.  Man has discovered all of this through the empirical realm of observation.

            Granted, there are certain things that are contained in an absolute realm.  These are those things which cannot be known to man, and may never be known.  The questions of religion, of man’s origin, of the unexplained can barely be guessed upon through anything but the logic we already know, through philosophy or physics, through simple guesses and discussions involving the product of elimination coupled with scientific comparisons with truths known to us. 

            However, the existence of a realm that men do not fully understand does not support the assumption of Plato that everything empirical is simply a copy of the absolute realm.  Why can the absolute realm not exist within the empirical?  Although not visible to man, the absolute realm breathes in the wind that shakes the leaves of trees; it makes itself known through the forces of nature, those explained to us by science, but of unknown origin.  The realm that we cannot understand is all around us, therefore, that which we perceive with our senses is, for the most part, trustworthy and reliable as known truth.  For if the empirical articles we encounter in our everyday lives originate from the Intelligible Realm, who is to rightly say that our senses lie to us?  What originates from truth is not merely a copy of the truth, but a product of the truth.  Therefore, the wisdom that man comes upon through his own experiences, his own field of study, and his own observations through his God given senses are the truth, backed up by the divine realm in which they originated.