an open letter to my iphone

Dearest iPhone, 

I have a problem. And it's not that I can't iMessage my best friends, message them on Facebook, or tweet at them. It's not that I can't call up my best friend to gossip. It's not that I can't snapchat bizarre faces to my equally bizarre comrades or instagram my beautiful pictures. It's not that I can't use the wonderfully fast LTE network to surf the web, check my email, or find out the latest news, not that I can't check the weather about the incoming winter blast or see the forecast for the next week, that I can't use Wikipedia to remember a fact I can't remember. Not that I can't use maps to find directions back home, check movie times on Yahoo, not that I can't ask Siri how to factor (x^3 - y^3), not that I can't talk to Siri like she's a friend. Not that I can't kill time with Tiny Wings, Temple Run, or Angry Birds. Not that I can't challenge my friends to a game of Ruzzle or Words with Friends. Not that I can't listen to my favorite music on Pandora or Spotify. Not that I can't look up funny cat videos on YouTube, check my grades on Infinite Campus, pin a picture onto Pinterest. Not that I can't do all of things. No, that's not the problem. 

The problem is that I can do all those things. #sleepdeprivediphoneaddictedteenager

Jessie

reckless lovin'

Beloved is, in many ways, a case study of love and all its implications. The story centers around a mother's uncompromisable and reckless love for her children, a kind of emotional attachment so strong that it has twisted her sense of logic and rationality to the point where she would kill her children rather than allow them to suffer.

As the romantic I am, the notion of love is magical and enchanting, a kind of unforced bond formed regardless of intention. A mother is certainly inclined to love her children. Children are certainly inclined to love their mother. This is not intentional. In Sethe's case, loving in that way is dangerous and unhealthy, a love that is "too thick." But it is not intentional, and that fact renders her love uncontrollable. Reckless, yes. But controllable-- not likely. Even the desire to control such emotions would likely only be a fruitless quest.

Sethe is a dramatic and extreme example. But how much far removed is she really from real life? Human beings are inherently inclined to love and inherently inclined to desire meaningful love. The inevitable and uncompromisable desire to find it and have it-- that is what, at the simplest level, is unhealthy in itself. It is not intentional, and certainly impossible to control.

letters!

There are many wonderful things in this world. But there aren't many things much better than a nice, handwritten letter. 

Well... that may have been a slight exaggeration. But there is hardly another gift as heartwarming to me as a lengthy letter written in the familiar handwriting of a wonderful friend. Nothing says "I care about you" like the time dedicated to putting thoughts to paper-- not just blankly typing but truly writing, with meaning and consideration. 

I truly do relish the pleasure of reading words thought out for me in a font of personality, not the typefont of computerized images. I keep letters sent to me in a drawer, for another wonderful part of handwritten letters is the ability to take them out time and time again to experience the enjoyment all over again. 

I know how much I enjoy letters and long, written-out birthday cards. And that is why I am a passionate birthday-card-writer (all of my birthday cards are novels. No empty space. None.) The birthday cards I write to my friends are the fruits of my labor as an author of heartfelt words, and it is through my handwritten masterpiece that I can share the joy of handwritten glory with a friend. 

So why are handwritten letters important? Because they can make people happy, people like me. 

thoughts from all-state

Maestro asks the orchestra a simple question-- one of those questions that every person opens his mouth to answer but hesitates because of its unsuspected complexity.

What is music? Some violist raises his bow and says, "organized sound." Interesting thought.

But what is music? We spend so much time in our lives listening to it, playing it on instruments, being surrounded by it. Even so, the word "music" seems to have no single definition because a single definition would be unable to do it justice. All that music encompasses seems impossible to constrict into the limitations of a few words or phrases.

What is music? Sure, it's organized sound. But can organized sound really be enough to make you feel boundless joy, deep sadness, irrepressible anger that music can induce? Can it be a medium for self-expression as a unique art form? Can it be as beautiful as music can be? Is music really just organized sound?

But maybe that's what the entire purpose of art forms is--to mean something different to every individual. My definition of music is surely not the same as any other individual's definition. My definition of any form of expression would unlikely to be the same.

on grief

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." -Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Grief is an intangible thing for those who remain untouched by it. But it is inevitable, something I have realized upon turning the last page of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of a widowed author attempting to make sense of her husband's sudden death. One particular thought of hers really struck me-- the fact that "everything evens out in the end," that bad things will happen to all of us. It is a part of the human inclination to live happily that we are disillusioned into living as if we were immortal. Taking things for granted, not paying attention to the things and the people around us-- we live as if we were to live forever. 

This is a discovery Didion describes, stringing the reader along in her desolate journey through her year of magical thinking. She sits down to dinner one night to have her husband collapse from a catastrophic cardiac event. The normalcy of it all is what is shocking. Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The fact that bad things are so imminently possible is sobering. We are told to not take things for granted. But how many of us actually do not? It is the first step to moving past the grief. Having little regrets. 

what happens next

The endings of books are nearly always dissatisfying. The sad fact is that as readers, we become attached to these characters that we have followed and come to care about. And then we must say goodbye to them, never knowing how their lives turn out-- what ever happens to them next. They disappear into the depths of the literary limbo where no book character is able to escape. No one ever knows what happens to them there. 

What happens next? What happens to the little boy, the beautiful being born to an ugly darkness? I'd love to think a happy story for him. He joins the family. The world miraculously returns into the lush atmosphere bursting with life. He thrives amongst a bond of love and friendship without the constant suffering and hunger. He lives a fulfilling, satisfying life, perhaps finding a wife in some beautiful maiden who sweeps into his life. He fathers delightful children who too bask in the light of happiness, love, and fulfillment. 

But that's probably not what would happen. In the best of situations, the boy joins the family who accepts him as their own. It is difficult to imagine the boy moving on from his father's death. And if he does, he is perhaps able to entrust in his new family the kind of dependence and love he once reserved only for his father. I cannot see a future for this boy that is any brighter than it was throughout the novel because the reality is plain: there is nothing in this ruined world for him. Nothing for anyone. 

But maybe that is the beauty of book endings. I can imagine anything I want. Who cares if it doesn't make sense. I can pluck that little boy from literary limbo and place him in the happiest world I can dream up. I can do it all in my head. 

the very long road

Cormac McCarthy's The Road has been a poignant, painful journey to say the least. As an avid reader often inclined to get too involved inside a story, I have a tendency to fall headlong into the book as I were as much a part of the story as any character. Every time I open the book, I am the man or the boy. I suffer along with them, despair in the ruined world, hopeless. 

An infant impaled on a stick, roasting over a fire. A scene I had never expected. Words with an effect on me that no other words have ever had. I didn't want to read on. I wanted to close the book and never read the horrible words again. I wanted to cry. (Perhaps too dramatic-sounding, this is all unfortunately 100% true). 

From this I derive my final feelings of the novel. I see the literary worth. The writing is impeccable, moving, poignant, effective, and beautiful. The story is haunting, painful, incredible. It is the story of human nature when there is nothing else. The stripped down version of human vices and virtues. The core of all of us. I see the literary worth. 

But this is not to say I have enjoyed reading this novel. At no point have I experienced enjoyment or pleasure. I'd like to think there is always some kind of hope, some kind of notion, something that can foster happiness, something to live for. McCarthy's story is crushing.