Screw Intelllectual Titles Life Sucks

No one to my knowledge reads what I write anymore and the fact I have not been writing does not aid in that, but given I want to vent somewhere I figured here is as good of place as any. This is the summer of my senior year. I should be having a jovial time making memories with my friends that I shall soon be departing from to go off to college. I should be having what is made out to be in every teen movie ever, the best summer of my life. That is far from how things have been going…Instead in late June I was in a car accident, now I know I have done more than my fair share of whining over it thus far, but as selfish as it sounds I don’t care. I managed to walk away from being rear-ended at about fifty-five miles an hour by a pickup truck whilst in my four door sedan unscathed save a bruise and some scratches on my wrist. Internally however, a lot of the soft tissue in my back and neck was shredded as well as I got several partially herniated discs, as the doctor currently believes test results are pending, and finally most of the muscles seized in my back, neck and head putting me in some extreme pain. That is not what is getting to me, I have been dealing with pain for years so that is just a new kind of it to add to the repertoire. What really is getting to me is this isolation. For two years now I have been essentially able to travel where I wanted when I wanted both because of the need to not pay for gas and the free time I have accrued. Now I am rather barred from the world and thus my friends as they are mostly younger and thus cannot either drive or drive another person and so I have been getting progressively more depressed as I go through the same insipid monotony each day. I feel terrible in general because of my inability for exercise which does not aid the situation because until just recently I was told to avoid it totally which is something that is difficult for me as I have always had a problem with self appearances. It also does not help that I react adversely to medication so the medication, valium, that I am currently on instead of relaxing me actually extenuates my tension as well as makes me exponentially more irritable which is not hard to do given that quite usually the only times I have been out of the house in the last weeks are either for doctor appointments where he tells me there is nothing more to do but rest and physical therapy where a large Austrian man with a build similar to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger pounds relentlessly on my back and puts me in more pain than previously in the attempted “physical therapy”. I have been feeling so totally useless because everyone has been going through something of the other in the past weeks and I have always been the one to bring them baked goods and comfort them and help them through whatever the problem is, but now I am left grasping at straws trying to make some impact while dealing with my own situation. It also does not help a lot of my friends are “paired off” as you will so when they do find time to escape their lives they invariably choose their other and so that brings me full circle to where I am progressively feeling worse not only physically, but everything going on now is driving me mad in a very literal sense. It also doesn’t help that if there is some social gathering that I am indeed invited to, there are a series of three people that have very much hurt me in the past that I have trouble being around now as foolish as it may sound, but they each put me through a rather bad point in my life, but the problem in lies that my friends are in large part friends with those three people so if I do manage to set everything up and attend a social event I feel largely awkward not only because as previously stated most of my friends are paired off leaving me as usually a proverbial seventh wheel, but also highly uncomfortable to be around those three people. I have 33 days until I have move in day for college, my question now is with how things have gone thus far…will anyone give a care that I am gone and will I be able to make it another 33 days? Honestly I don’t know. I will write one way or another if things improve or decline.

Upcoming Education

First off for anyone curious Lehr und Kunst is the motto of WPI and it means “Theory and Practice”. A lovely notion to not only explore the theories of the world, but to also but them to a practical use, though even when something is put into practice, it will always remain, in part, a theory. Well at any rate, speaking of college in my last post, I thought it would be appropriate to update my gallery of digital realities. Lately it seems all of my work has been college oriented. This is, I suppose, my official announcement of going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute next year…though I have known about it since November. It feels strange that everyone is getting ready to depart, all of my senior friends all have different colleges that they plan to attend and now it seems to finalized that in reality we have something like a 121 days until it will become a rare occasion to see each other. That being said, I cannot rightfully say I am not looking forward to my departure to WPI as I am so very sick of high school and its little dramas, I am hoping college will be a bit different. Right now I am feeling a bit like Prufrock, I am extremely worried about moving on, but at the same time I am so bored with these societal expectations and routines that a person is put through everyday whilst in school. It will be nice to have a chance to start fresh, a single chance “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”.

Tedious Testing

Well I did not think I would have time this week to be able to finally update this blog, but turns out I was wrong. What has been keeping me so busy these past days (weeks) is the zero hour of AP testing. Given that last year I have already taken two of these tests, the procedure is not new to me, but what I have been thinking about is how absolutely insipid these tests are.

Essentially it is taking everything learned in one year and compiling it into a single test, if the selected questions are not of your strongest suit then I suppose that means you fail at just the entire course, or at least that is how the test works…This standardization of knowledge is not standard by definition, by trying to rate the comprehension of material based upon three passages (AP Literature and Composition) or four free response essay questions (AP Government and Politics) does not truly prove someone knows the material. Essentially these exams come down to luck and excessive preparation.

It does not make sense to try and teach a class based upon a test, then the information is truncated and topical contingent upon what “can be covered on the test”. That is the sad part of all this, the removal of any human component from the system. Beginning education is not fueled by passion or desire to learn, or even just grade motivation within the school. Now everything is global a world wide competition to get the best score and now it is all about the test, to succeed on some insipid test at the end of the year for a number to show up on some document to some university…I suppose to some degree we are all just a number on a piece of paper.

Deadly Monotony

These past few days have been a torrent of busy work and stress. It does not help that I have been far from the best of mentalities this past week, and all together that equals one person kept away from their blog. I figured it would be best to keep with tradition and post this week’s piece which I am quite happy with, being the first fractal I have made in several months, and also quite fitting for how dull and set life seems to be right now. That being said I am quite pleased to announce that shadows in the dark has received visitors from all viable continents (darn Antarctica). After the next week passes and then the week after next, I shall find myself with infinitely more time than I currently have so I will be able to further pen my musings. That all aside I would like to bring attention to a blog of very scattered and yet specific topics, covering everything from the Buddha-like nature of Jose Arcadio Buendia to satirical comments on life and literature, and musings on time until we go, as The Earl of Essentially would say “To our big fancy universities”…Well I hope everyone will give Popsicle Stand a gander. I hope to write more in the near future and I hope everyone enjoys this digital reality.

Magical Normality

In Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the line between reality and fantasy habitually blurs. Each character is born into a sense of reality, but through the generational bestowal of repetitive names, the personality or physical appearance of the characters transcends into the realm of fantasy through the continual use not only of magic reality, but also of hyperbole in the flaws or strengths of his characters.

The first instance of fantasy in the novel is paramount to the novel, if José Arcadio Buendia never killed Prudencio Aguilar and was then haunted by his ghost, Macondo he would never have ended his life in the previous community to found the town of Macondo. After the parentage of José Arcadio Buendia and Ursula each child takes on a defining weakness and strength, over time the magical element of the Buendia separates into two distinct male lineages, those bestowed with the name Aureliano and those with José Arcadio.

Those that have the name Aureliano are able to see the spirit of Melquiades and are consumed with the deciphering of the parchments left in the ancient alchemist’s lab. They experience a sense of nonlinear time, but in a linear sense. Time within the room itself at points seems to stand still as nothing ages and time does not encroach upon the items left within, but through the continual work and obsession of the Aurelianos time still passes as they age with their methodical and endless work, be it the making of gold fishes or deciphering scrolls. These obsessive personalities developed over time for each of the Aurelianos, being just recluse or quiet in the beginning of life and through the eventual disillusionment with the state of Macondo and the world turn towards a way of self-exile from the rest of society, but the circumstances to which each of them escape the world transcends normality. This is quite the opposite from their brothers who overly indulge themselves throughout their lives.

José Arcadios on the other hand tend to be exaggerated or magical in physical sense. Besides the first José Arcadio, José Arcadio Segundo made his living throughout the novel through a decadent lifestyle. There was a direct correlation between the wealth he obtained through the means of his seemingly impossible rate of his animals’ reproduction. This was directly linked with his frequent copulation with Petra Cotes and over time this wealth and decadence led him to the “tourneys of capacity” which caused him to eventually become not only wealthy, but again physically large in stature.

The females of the Buendia family take on a much different sort of magical component to their lives. Remedios the Beauty has an insatiable allure to men to a point where she becomes a paradox between love and death. She not only inspires awe by the other inhabitants of Macondo, but also causes magic to infuse within them a part of her forever. When a man on the roof watches her bathe herself and then falls through the tiles to his death he no longer bleeds as normal, but instead from the cracks flow a perfumed oil showing that she forever marks those who are cursed by seeing her. Ursula is the last prominent example of the synergy between magic and reality in the novel. Over time she develops heightened senses and a seemingly infinite memory to compensate for her blindness, but also lives for over one hundred years able to watch the transformation of the world around her as she attempts to bridge the fatal flaws that have arisen in the family lineage.

Temporal Struggles

The unreality of it all in somewhat dumbfounding to me…I just received an email from WPI (my future place of residence and establishment of higher education) talking about course selection coming up in the near future…It seems so long ago at this point from the first day sitting back in the auditorium lost in, what is now understood to be, a highly logical maze of uniform monotony…Now as time draws to a close I am unsure how I really feel about it…I cannot say I have either completely despised these past four years or enjoyed them greatly. It has been a true epitome to show things change…Nothing is really constant, people I have once been best friends with are now my worst enemies and people I never thought I would truly speak to are becoming my friends. I cannot say every event has its own partial meaning, because that is giving too much credit to life…but all in all I think I shall miss this place, but at the same time I am urging the next step to arrive.

In high school people are type cast, and when that notion has stuck in the heads of the masses it is virtually impossible to dissuade them from their previous notion…Not that this does not also happen in college, but it is a chance for a new start…It feels kind of like Kafka’s parable…Caught between past and future endlessly struggling with the person caught in the moment…With the addition of modern technology loosing touch with people is not likely, but all the while new people, places, and experiences beckon…I think I should go answer…

Designed Entropy

Lately life has been a series of insipid dramas that have decided to test my patience daily, and as such have left me little desire to write for fear that this will turn into a place solely for venting which is not what I want. Thus far even during the lulls in my posting this blog is being found daily through searches for digital art, The Stranger and Self-Injury…talk about lacking correlation, but that being said this piece is just something I made earlier in the week whilst being bored and rather liked the look because it has been quite some time since I have had the desire or time to do something abstract. Comments and critiques are always encouraged, and hopefully everyone enjoys as I attempt to return to some semblance of a normal routine.

Ironic Theories

There is a certain irony I see in the essays by Baudrillard compiled in Simulacra and Simulations…The point of some of the essays detail how the reproduction of an object causes it to lose its meaning over time.

In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation.
–Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulations, 4)

That brings to question yet again the originality of anything, if the very theory which asserts that to copy something is to rob the object of its original meaning, can anything ever again have any meaning or are people condemned to live in a world where the same insipid monotony is presented endlessly under minutely different pretexts essentially creating nothing but a monumental droste of the world.

Lapsing Betterment

Much to my surprise I have yet to discuss Hundred Years of Solitude here thus far which I think needs to be changed immediately given even My Antonia warranted some discussion…One aspect of the novel that is extremely interesting to me is the reversal of common perception seen in the perceptions of the world by the residents of Macondo…Magic is seen to be a common or accepted occurrence, such as the residents riding on magic carpets brought forth by the gypsies or the interspersed appearance of ghosts. These events would normally be deemed as extraordinary in the real world, but in the novel instead of taking these events as strange, the residents take issue of modern technology, or technology that seems modern to them because of the isolated circumstances to which they initially live…Little shock is seen from Jose Arcadio Buendia when a magic carpet flies past the window of his alchemy shop, but becomes zealously obsessed with the simplest invention of science such as that of ice, magnification lenses, or the camera.

These events are potentially allegorical to modern society and its comparative madness…Once Jose Arcadio Buendia figures out the workings of a mechanical device he essentially becomes insane, which is comparable to the obsession in modern society to the technology which people have hereto become consumed with…People find a thrill through the notion of technological superiority to the human psyche, and as such continually fuel the desire to push further with advancement, but doing so comes at the cost of society itself. As in Macondo during the comparable peace and harmony associated with the simplicity of life before technology people were both able and comparably more peaceful due to the scale of ability. Now in modern society people are given the ability to cause mass destruction through the press of a button that can kill millions instead of previously where wars were on much smaller scales and thus the risk mostly was in inferior medical capabilities than the capability for mass destruction. People also lose touch with skills held by those of prior generations. Now because of technologies ingrained effect in society today people would be most likely unable to survive the ways ancestors previously had due to the loss of knowledge over time.

The village of Macondo is the quintessential way for Marquez to portray the impact of technology on an otherwise isolated group of citizens and the negative repercussions associated with the “betterment” of the human species.

Lacking Volition

I am sorry for my hiatus and neglect for this blog. I know I have been quite slacking as of late, but things have been so busy as of late and things have not been the most preferable of circumstances which when combined creates a very difficult circumstance to take the time to sit back and blog because these past few days I have been feeling rather verbose. Well I think I shall have plenty of time of sit back and hammer out some new postings on life and various musings I have recently been having. I am quite pleased to see that even with the hiatus, this blog has still been receiving daily visitors. Well with that being said back to an old tradition, the weekly digital reality.
This is a piece I have wanted to do for quite some time, but I never could quite get the desired look for the pills. For anyone who did not know, this is representative of the scene in The Matrix which Neo is presented the pills by Morpheus… This scene has always been quite interesting to me for a myriad of reasons, the notion of choice, the identification with reality and hyperreality (even if this movie made a mockery of Baudrillard’s theory)…Regardless the pills themselves are very indicative of modern society, the red pill being disillusionment which many people regret taking when they see what the world has really become in modern time, or the blue pill…The pill that lets people live in their delusional states of contentment, blind to atrocities and grim realities that are never corrected because of the replacement of anything of true merit with symbols and false senses of contentment…Welcome to “The Desert of The Real”(Baudrillard, 1)
–Mr. Cynic