Why is Reading Boring?

Until I reached college, every literature class was the same. Read a text, analyze a text, find a meaning, find the symbolism, who is the author? Maybe I'm a kill joy and I don't mean to be. But all of this is irrelevant to me unless I take something away from the text. I can tell you all about the Scarlet Letter and that it means nothing to me. When it comes to texts, I have no connection with them unless a teacher tells me to make a connection, which they normally don't do in High School. "We're preparing you for college because this is how it's done there." What about the audience? Do they not matter? What about how we feel about it? We might have an idea of what the author was trying to say but unless the teacher sees it that way, we're wrong. The interactions in The Dead remind me of the dead themselves. It was a lot of talking... A lot of story telling. Parties, dancing... Talking, talking, talking... But what I can take away from it is exactly what the author meant. There is death in these every day conversations despite the life happening around Gabriel. I still cannot confidently say I have taken anything from The Dead but I understand what we are supposed to take from it.

Seeking Passage

What makes a good book, according to Jasenda League, is a book that has symbolism. It doesn't matter what you write about or what sort of conflict happens, as long as there is symbolism, a story can be made well.

But sometimes, symbolism isn't always easily found. Whether symbolism is part of a "hidden meaning," symbolism is necessary. For example, communion is an important symbol for he book The Awakening. Instead of saying Edna Pontellier was having issues with her husband she said instead that her husband would leave before he would finish his food. To me, that constitutes symbolism but it isn't invisible. It's only hidden if there is no thought put into the passages.

Seeing the text is not the same as reading into a text. Books shouldn't have to be pulled apart to find meaning. Meaning is here but it requires a little more thought. 

Hidden meanings aren't bad. But perhaps calling them "hidden meanings" is just not suitable. Essentially, it's he same as asking "For what purpose did the author write this book?"

Invasive Thoughts Are Welcome

In high school, my best friend was convinced she had an issue with her mind because she had these reoccurring thoughts that she had no control over. She would have scary thoughts or ideas. Sometimes they were just different in nature but her issues with her thoughts were became so out-of-control that she diagnosed her with a type of OCD and acquired medication to stop the crowding thoughts.

Since I had known my best friend for a while, I felt like there was something wrong with the idea that she self-medicated herself because of ideas she was having. They were never too serious but just things that would come and go and sometimes surprise her. Have you ever had a thought go through your head that surprised you? Maybe you were at a store and you thought "This would be so easy to steal" or you thought "I could just drive this car into a tree". While the most of us would never commit these acts of theft and suicide, the mere thought that we had the ability to frightened us. These thoughts are called invasive thoughts and they are part of human nature.

When Gleick talks about the nature of thoughts, he acknowledges their lack of origin. Perhaps that's why invasive thoughts are so jarring. No one knows where they come from and to think that thoughts of theft could go through are head makes it seem as though our thoughts can control our character. I don't think my best friend ever knew that invasive thoughts were natural and that they really had no precedence over who we are or who we may become.

I remember once that, while cleaning my fish bowl, I looked at my beta Fiero and just thought, "He's so tiny. It would be so easy to just squeeze him." It's a horrible thought and of course I didn't squeeze my fish to death because I loved him, but the idea originated from the thought that his body was small and my body was big. I was the one in control of Fiero's life and I didn't even realize it. I think it's through these invasive thoughts that we can easily see into human nature. It isn't that we are bad but that we recognize that we can do bad. It all depends on what we do with the ideas our thoughts create.

逆来顺受

When I took my first Chinese class, it was very strange to find me on a level I hadn't been on in 20 years. Not only was I learning very basic Chinese, but I was learning different linguistics. My teacher Chen Laoshi was an old woman and every other minute she would talk to us about "in ancient times". She would explain each character. There were some stand alones like 火 (fire), 口 (mouth), 人 (person), 心 (heart), and 山 (mountain). These characters on there own are simple enough. But when paired with another character, they create words. 水满则溢. This proverb says that "water surges only to overflow". 人 (ren or person) is until a house and suggested alone. This symbol means "only". Fire paired with heart means passion and a mountain with a house over it stands for limitation. Being use to how latin/germanic languages work made learning intermediate Chinese even harder and I noticed that even though I am older, it didn't mean my intelligence was above language. There are things that a child understands that I have never even heard of.While being a tutor for KSA, I noticed that sometimes they would have a hard time translating a specific phrase or saying and it wasn't because they didn't know enough english but because there was no words in the English language to translate it to. It baffled me to think that there are more words in the world that I don't even know about and that I may not ever understand since I wasn't attuned to that specific language first.