Petty Pyromaniac

I am so incredibly sick of the topic of materialism. I do not want to discuss it any longer, but yet, we have one more blog that has  to relate to Fitzgerald's stories before we can move on as a class. So, rather than writing a spin-off of one of my older, depressing blogs about how location is whack and my memories are haunting me, lets take a second to look at Fitzgerald's thoughts... Let me just start off by saying this man was royally messed up. While refusing to write my essay on materialism, and instead using the theme of 'love', I just wanted to travel back in time to ask him..who hurt you! Daisy and Tom constantly mentally abuse each other, as they are both obviously immensely jealous people, but continue to devote their lives to showy infidelity. They apparently still share some emotional connection, but weirdly love the pain that comes along with their relationship. Daisy only engages in an affair to regain her husbands interest, and her husband only ...

Alright. I'd hate to have to write what everyone else seems to be writing about but... Honestly, I can't help myself. To start off, it might help to explain that I find great meaning in the past. Around the walls of my room, I have hundreds of photographs surrounding my bed. Every little photo is more than just one moment, it symbolizes how I felt at that specific moment in time. Right now, I find myself staring at a photo of my best friend and me at the Rochester Lights last December. The picture oozes jealousy, selfishness, and oblivion. But there's also an underlying happiness to it. A picture of my friends and I at Starbucks, that same month, elicits painful memories. Staring at our hands making one big heart, I am reminded of my support system, but also the ecstasy-filled beginnings of a time in my life that eventually crashed and burned. It's sort of like dramatic irony. The photographs, all sorted in chronological order, play out like one extraordinarily lo...

I am 15 hours and 30 minutes away from one of the places I'd love to call home. Living here, within the bitter, sharp air, rain or snow or the occasional beams of sunlight, grass yellow and temperatures jumping, I know I was not born to live in Troy, Michigan. My mother knew it before me, even, telling me at a young age that she saw me moving away as soon as I was done with my education. Of course, me being only seven, I denied it. I never saw myself claiming any other area as home, living apart from everyone I had ever met. As I grew up, however, I slowly began to realize how right she was. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby , location has the potential to both derive me of life, and also deliver the utmost amount of happiness to me--simply due to its environment. Nick describes eating in the Yale Club as "the gloomiest event of [his] day," while loving New York for its "racy, adventurous feel." At every turn of his life, Nick is constantly naming locations, all...

Guitar may be crazy, but he sort of had a point. "Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?" Looking at this quote, there's obviously a lot of room for some middle-ground. What does it even mean to save someone's life, seeing as there can be many different circumstances that would result in numerous levels of sacrifice? I mean, anyone would pull a stranger out of the path of a swerving car. But not everyone would jump in front of the car itself, to prevent that person from being harmed. It all depends on how much you care about that person, or even what your morals are, or how much you value yourself. On the other hand, taking someone's life isn't even really a question. If you hate someone that  much, you're still not going to kill them, just so you don't have to deal with their behavior.. unless you're seriously unhinged. But that's besides the point. To save someone...

The definition of truth is, according to Merriam Webster, :the body of real things, events, and facts: actuality :the state of being the case: fact ...but I don't agree. To compare the truth with a singular fact is to imply that there can only be one truth. Realistically, I see it as important that we realize there can be multiple, true versions of the truth. Different people have different biases, feelings, and beliefs, that can unintentionally distort stories to make it their own. It doesn't necessarily make them liars, per say, but rather makes them human.  I think we can all agree that reading Song of Solomon this week was quite the rollercoaster. However, it revealed to us the importance of recognizing that there are two sides to every story. Admit it: when it was first revealed that Dad-Macon saw Ruth "laying next to [her father], naked as a yard dog, kissing him...his fingers in her mouth," we all immediately jumped to the conclusion that Ruth i...

There's a video series currently trending on the Internet right now that discusses how people can be manipulated. Essentially, regardless of how bad the situation looks for a person, they are able to spin it around only by playing the "pity card," making others feel bad for them. Their guilt surrounding how bad the manipulator may be hurting eventually outweighs the anger that stemmed from the situation itself. While I was laying in bed, I was stuck wondering how many of us are able to forgive and forget the sketchy details of a situation due to mere pity. I've come to the conclusion, however, that it is because as humans, we simply hold too much hope in innate goodness. I know, I know... here I go again, writing something pessimistic and slightly cynical. Can you really deny this, though? Imagine: if we were able to anticipate every ulterior motive a person may have, if we were able to realize that a person may only be offering forgiveness not because they are actu...

Two weeks ago, my troubles started yet again. Call me a drama queen, but after I left the trainer's room knowing I had to stop running again, I cried. Being injured has become a part of who I am. I've had my patella drift out of place during 7th grade track season, I've sprained my foot running a 5k, I've had shin splints, (two?) femoral stress fractures, arch issues, ankle issues, IT band issues, groin muscle issues, pulled hamstrings, and the list goes on.  "I just don't think running is for you," my mom once said to me. "But," I told her. "I'm addicted and I literally refuse! I wouldn't even dream  of quitting running." So, I guess what I'm trying to get at, is that I am also both literally and metaphorically stuck on the stationary bike. Vladek and I are trapped in our own cycles, impossible to get out of regardless of effort. Injury-free to injury-ridden, over and over... Every single time I sit on the bike, I ...

We already talked about the plentiful advantages of when words and pictures are combined--basically how pictures support words in order to bring out a new meaning to them. Sure, having a lengthy amount of text and a picture is nice, as it allows your mind to relax on the whole having-to-imagine-a-picture shebang. For example, in Maus , we can grasp the meaning of the pictures "representing the unrepresentable" (Jim Powell), as the characters are portrayed by mice and cats. Pretty interesting, and it all allows us to understand the argument behind how comics can be for the intellectual. Taking it to a different level, out of literary context though...what happens when we choose to represent our own lives with photos, with only small captions to back up our "posts?" What a perfect time to bring this up, with homecoming season upon us...  We all post the same pictures. Us smiling, laughing, hugging our friends and significant other of the month, saying we had ...

Societal standards are just not my cup of tea.  My mom's side of the family is 100% Chinese, but my dad's side of the family is 100% European.  While my mother always subliminally felt as though she was the least favorite child of three, due to being the only daughter, my father was raised by feminists. Naturally, after experiencing the cultural difference between their two families, I can relate to Maxine Hong Kingston's negative experience surrounding Chinese culture. Whenever I visit my dad's mother, she'll spill to me about how men suck,  and how much she adores my independence. I'll come home from the visit only for my mother to yell at me, weeks later, for not being lady-like enough.  I hate it. As much as I'd want for the Chinese stereotypes to be wrong, they've always rang true in my experiences. Last night, even, my Chinese aunt yelled at me for not determining a major yet. To be a surgeon, she told me, I need to unofficially declare my m...

 (Is there any better way to kick off a blog post than with the famous words of Thomas Paine?) "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."  If you didn't pick up on Paine's message, the sunshine patriot is one who says they'd do anything for their country. Well, only if it's convenient for them to support such a statement. The summer soldier isn't actually willing to die for America, but would love to wear the uniform in hopes of communicating a sense of power. Although the sun has such a positive connotation, Paine uses it nearly synonymously with the word 'fake'. So, with this in mind, what is a sunshine friend? Admittedly, I have no clue where to even start on this subject. Over the past two years, so many different people have walked right in, then wal...

In my mere sixteen years of living, I can already personally confirm the fact that human memory is surprisingly fragile. According to neuroscience, information that our mind decides is "emotionally important" is sorted into our long-term memory. However, the hippocampus is also sensitive to adrenaline and cortisol, and long term exposures in these hormones can occasionally result in such memories becoming repressed. When we were told to think back to last year's Fourth of July in class, I realized I couldn't really remember the night of my Fourth. I only knew I got into a particularly horrible fight with my parents. Despite what little I remember, there's an undeniable amount of irony that can be found from the situation. What's truly missing has to be given some existence, in order to be classified as "gone," like Allyson Booth explains in Postcards from the Trenches .  In regards to missing soldiers, she states that "the commemoration of abs...