Christmas break doesn’t necessary mean you have all the money, because in the first place, you are not in school and so you don’t have the usual allowance for your day-today expenses. Same situation where I’m in now – when I usually spent an ordinary day surfing the net, reading and watching TV in the house, surviving on a few crackers and mom’s cooking.  I don’t fancy going out either because I don’t have the money, so it’s enough for me to surf the net and look out what’s happening in the outside world.  Then again, (come to think of it) I’ve got lots to do over the holiday season which has nothing to do with Christmas and New Year celebrations, but something to do with academics and school.

Okay, as usual I’m making lists again.  Here’s one, my must-do’s over the Christmas Break:

1.  Read Jarhead by Anthony Swofford – As what Enterntainment Weekly claimed, it’s “… a brutally honest memoir…” and I agreed to that statement by the time I’ve read the first few pages.  Anyway I’m reading this memoir for my Creative Nonfiction class where I’m going to present a sort-of book report for the class.  I highly recommend this book, very searing and funny at times.  This one rocks.

2.  Write preface for my creative thesis – Probably the most important thing to do over the break – confront my thesis.  Well, the creative preface would mean sharing my writing experiences and the writing process, the process of revision and my take on the whole literature.  Not to forget, the thematic concept, the unifying principle for my stories.   Mind you, it’s not that easy, and to tell you the truth, I’m still groping on what to write and how to write this one.

3. Read The Odyssey – not necessarily required, but why not read the next reading material in advance?

4.  Write reaction paper about a paper about Rizal – totally complicated the way I put it but just to sum things up, it’s like that.

5.  Write a reflection paper about kinds of thinking species for my philosophy class

6. Make a report about Thailand – this one’s for my Southeast Asian literature class.

So I think that’s it.  Anyway, that’s what I remember as of the moment.

Wishing you happy holidays!

Whew! Christmas! This is why I love the season very much. I get to received some stuff.

So these are the things that I got this Christmas:

1. a new pair of jeans from sister

2. a thick blue green jacket from brother (forced him to give the jacket)

3. 2 pink hello kitty hair clips from sister

4. a usb mouse from myself

5. The Odyssey study guide book from mom

Cute things. But the gifts made me happy because I was not expecting them.

Happy holidays!

“[Achilles] will kill me, unprotected as I am /

my gear laid, defenseless as a woman.”  Hector to Andromache

Different types of women are represented in the epic poem The Iliad: strong-willed and shrewd women, damsel-in-distress types, wicked and vengeful women, or even women who cause the downfall of the protagonist male hero.  Moreover, there are also women depicted as possessions (war prizes) or women who have little or no control over her destiny.  The epic poem, generally regarded as “a male-dominated world” focuses centrally on the rage between men but it also happen that most of the time this rage is affected, initiated, and inspired by a woman.

Take for example the case of women characters such as Chryseis and Briseis, considered in the epic poem as “war prizes” – captured maidens and spoils of war, with little control over their destinies.  But in Book 1, the major conflict was fueled due to some concerns about these two women – since Chryseis (Agamemnon’s war prize) needs to be returned to his father to stop the plague sent by Apollo, Agamemnon demands in exchange Achilles’ war prize Briseis which angered the warrior Achilles.  Thus Achilles after the incident withdraws the battle, leaving the Achaean army futile against the Trojans’ assaults.

There are also women who are the stereotyped mothers, like Thetis (Achilles’ mother) and Queen Hecuba, who in the course of the epic poem are seen to be either weeping or troubled with the affairs of their sons.

Some women in the epic poem serve as the “partner” of the male hero, like Helen of Troy to Paris and Andromache to Hector.  Although they don’t have the power to dominate over their lovers, these characters are sometimes used by Homer to portray a more human side to the male characters – Paris is vulnerable with Helen, Hector is both a sympathetic husband to Andromache and a heroic father to their son.  These women does not wholly affect the male characters (even Andromache fails to convince Hector not to fight Achilles) but with their presence, the male character assumes a multidimensional persona (Paris, a coward who indulges on pleasures than fighting in the war).

Another set of women characters in the poem are the women gods – the wicked, shrewd, vengeful, or the women who has too much control over the mortals and over other gods.  Hera in the epic is seen as a strong, dominant character and at some point she even tricked Zeus through her forceful and cunning attitude.  Athena is endowed with wisdom and skill, capable of inspiring Achaean warriors.  Aphrodite rescues Paris and sends Helen to his arms in Book III, sending the conflict to a higher notch.  These women are considered to be the powerful forces of the book – their decisions and their control over mortal affairs sometimes change a course of plot, conflict and action.

But the most celebrated woman figure in the poem is probably Helen of Troy – her illicit love affair with Paris is one of the most distinct events of the poem unforgettable.  People around her sees her as the cause of the war (Antenor suggested that Helen should be returned to Menelaus to end the war) with exception of King Priam who welcomes her like his own daughter.  But even Helen knows that she is the reason for the downfall for the male heroes, and considered herself as a wanton (“that man is Agamemnon…brother to the husband of a wanton.”).

Whether it is a dominant, powerful kind of woman in the form of gods, or submissive, damsel-in-distress types in the mortal world, the concept of a woman is explored very much in the epic.  There is a clear-cut definition between the two sexes but at times there are certain ambiguities that cloud over these distinctions.  Even though the deeds of men dominate in the work and mortal women are protected from the wickedness of the world by these heroic men, women in the Iliad serve a much greater role in humanizing the male characters, advancing the course of plot, and sometimes they play pivotal roles in inciting men into action, without them knowing it.

This was my flash fiction finger exercise when I was in my sophomore year.  We were tasked to pick a line from a list of famous first lines in the book Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway ([Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., 2003, p.282] then finish the rest of the story to fit in a postcard.

***

Once upon a time I was dissatisfied with how I used my brains and with how Sam used his. “That is not the way how to castrate a rabbit,” he said. “You have to cut the skin above the scrotum, see?” he said, pointing the area with a scalpel. I nodded. “You should remove the testicles this way before you tie it with the spermatic cord. Can you pass the tissue glue please?” he continued. I just observed what my science partner did. After a few minutes, he said that I should give the rabbits some analgesics.

I kept the materials back at the cabinet. Then I went back to sit beside Sam, who was already recording our castration experiment. I overheard my classmate discussing about what she saw in the Discovery channel. “You know, the difference between you and the person sitting beside you is just 0.1 percent. That means that all humans share 99.9 percent similarities in their DNA compositions, whether that’s the color of your skins, the length of your hairs, or even how your brains work.”

I looked at Sam who was now stroking the rabbit gently. Somehow, I couldn’t believe that the difference between us is just 0.1 percent. [204 words]

***

To view how my other classmates wrote their postcard flash fictions, visit our our blog A Mad Desk.  They also came up with interesting ones – Kring-Kring, Alpha, Maureen, Edwin, and April.  As far as I remember, we enjoyed the activity much.  It was an exercise to practice how to make a story so condensed with limited words but effective, jam-packed plot.  That was a very challenging writing exercise in preparation for writing the standard flash fiction, which is 300-1000 words.  Hence, we called that postcard flash fiction.

What happened in the Maguindanao Massacre is a gruesome murder of civilians, women and journalists, a result of the state of lawlessness in Maguindanao and the danger of private armies of powerful clans and families in the place. The massacre indeed earned feelings of sympathy for the victims and incurred hatred from all over journalists and media people not only in the country, but also throughout the whole world. With this incident, the country is put in a bad light, and labeled as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.

While the forum held in AVR is meant to share with us the different angles of the issue, I still feel repulsive of the whole idea of massacre and I wanted so much for the perpetrators to pay for the crimes that they did. I think that what happened there in Maguindanao is purely cultural – sending women and journalists to file the COCs in the hope that these people (the murderers) wouldn’t hurt them. But apparently this idea drastically miscalculated the violent capabilities of the murderers to kill them. I couldn’t believe it myself that these murderers could be capable of doing gruesome things like shooting skulls, bodies crushed and buried, and women raped. Wasn’t there any hint of goodness and hesitation in the murderers’ part? From the state of the victims uncovered in the crime scenes, I don’t think so.

We are still groping for a shed of light and justice for what happened in the Maguindanao massacre. I hope that the government will disband these private armies before they became another group of people to hold long-running insurgencies against the government – so as not to repeat such hideous murder. Although I can’t help myself to feel cynical about the government’s plans to sort this out, I want to believe that there’s still hope in preventing further brutal killings such as this.

So I’ve been busy over the weekend with my thesis, which is of course, really difficult as you may think. Also lately, I’ve been reading a lot of books as supplementary readings for my classes, which includes philosophy and a whole lot of essays. I’d say I am really looking forward for Christmas break; not because I wanted to just drop everything and have fun, but i wanted to take things slowly.

Still, a week more left to go before the Christmas vacation.  I have lots of plans to do. lots of books left unread and more stories to revise.   But Christmas is still Christmas, and like any other tradition, it’s something to look forward to.

One of the main reasons why people are hesitant to study philosophy is because of the idea that it treats the problematical that these people may deem as not practical at all.  There is a seeming vagueness and continuous controversy brewing always in philosophy and because of this nature, sme people are easily disappointed and ends up in fields of study that are more practical and profitable – where these people are most of the time in no position to dispute, question, or contrast primary information about things.

But to those people who truly understands the value of philosophy, the excitement and anticipation to seek fuller explanations to vague key concepts is just the start of pursuit of philosophy.  Philosophy demands so much from people who seek for it – those who study it should free their minds from the prejudices and convictions imposed by society.  But in return, those who truly seek philosophy rewards themselves with a sense of woner, a wider perspective on things, and a chance for philosophical contemplation (the latter gives satisfaction as a result of enlargement of the Self).  Philosophy, according to Bertrand Russell, has only values for people who study it and to those who need it.  It is not studied for the sake of any definite answer, as philosophy in nature is grounded in its uncertainties.  Instead, it enriches intellectual imaginations, gives Man a sense of free intellect will and puts a higher premium on the ability of the mind to be one with the universe.

Once we came across with certainties and definite answers that are usually found in fields of science, we find that the knowledge that we derived from them is momentarily satisfying.  It is the next dispute, the uncertainty, the argument, and the ‘unsure’ that really interest us.  These uncertainties we fid in philosophy, designed in the mastery of a particular subject and the acquisition of intellectual virtues as we study it along the way.  There are no practical considerations, only a keen sense of interest for knowledge and anticipation of the pleasure of such possibilities that will enlarge our thoughts, such that we can view the world impartially.

Iliad

Reading Michael Silk’s interpretation and critical analysis about Homer’s epic Iliad, I find that some points he actually emphasizes deserve to be given a considerable time to ponder on.  He starts his discussion about the epic by giving us the feel of the milieu of the ancient times, from which he first raises a significant observation that Homer is not made of a singular entity, but Homer is presented as a ‘multiple author’ with ‘different voices’.  One of the characteristics of an epic includes the fact that it came from oral tradition, and so Silk emphasizes in his analysis that because of this the oral transmission must have changed overtime, and when it was finally written down there might have been some changes. The oral-improvisory technique is possible for these alterations.

Another relevant remark that Silk lays out is the fact that Iliad is not a tight, organic structure in Aristotelian terms, or organically whole like Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.  The actions do not follow a causal logic, but the epic is organized into a circular structure referred as ‘ringform’ – “it begins with a ransom and argument and ends with a comparable sequence in reverse” (the A-B-A shape).  It’s a full circle, sort of.  Also, there are sections in the narrative where there’s a tendency towards autonomy, that defiled the Aristotelian concept of ‘organic whole.’

The epic poem also embraces the structural technique which the critic calls as ‘illusionist’, where readers are given a kind of illusion of the length of time.  With regards to style, the poem employs extended simile, but the use of metaphor, according to Silk, is largely absent in the Iliad.

In terms of themes and heroic ideology, the character Achilles is presented as the embodiment of the ‘poet’s theme’, the warrior who fights for glory.  In a section that discusses about the character Achilles, Silk highlights that Achilles is the only character that can be considered as a ‘round’ character (with depth) in a modern sense.  Other characters are only defined through stock epithets and were differentiated in their own capabilities, but generally not considered as ‘men with multiplicity of traits and interest’, and therefore considered as static.  These characters show no capacity for development and are not affected by any subsequent experience. They are contrasted with the character of Achilles, which becomes the focus of interest in the poem mainly because even though there have been times when divine interventions affect him, there are also times when he had the chance to reveal himself – his true qualities without the external pressures (like war and divine intervention).

Silk observes that for all the battle scenes, heroic deaths and defeat, the epic poem’s emotional flavors are restrained due to the author’s style.  Homer wrote objectively, and so in terms of emotions, the readers may feel distant.  Homer’s characters does not expressed their feelings explicitly but conveys them either through the observations of other people or through detailed descriptions in things.  The latter can be associated with Eliot’s objective-correlative technique, which is a modern day concept.

Lastly, the critic states that the epic is primarily celebratory, not exploratory.  It presents to us the experience of certain types of people, and lacks the in-depth emotional exploration (with exception to Achilles) of some characters.  Silk likens reading the Iliad as watching sports, him (and the readers) as an spectator.

To further explore more about the Iliad, read Michael Silk, on The Iliad.

Regina Spektor

I finally got myself a copy of Regina Spektor’s Far album, which I considered as excellent as her Begin to Hope album. Totally unique. It’s kind of amusing that I can’t get enough of her songs even though I play it all over again in my player.

The song The Calculation first appealed to my senses, probably one of the top five favorite Regina Spektor songs in the album. Eet showcases the signature Regina Spektor’s style, that distinct vocal style of hers that’s totally unique. Blue Lips is kind of ambiguous, but there is beauty in that ambiguity that renders the song really appealing. Folding Chair is sweet and romantic, a lighthearted song with a narrative thread, and the distinct vocal style of Regina in the so-called ‘dolphin’s song’. Machine probably renders the darkest mood in the album, the chorus reverberates all throughout the song. I find Laughing With very witty, maybe because of the lyrics, and this instantly became my favorite song. Human of the Year is another gloomy and looming song with searing lyrics. Two Birds where there’s birds images as metaphors, equally works like a poem. Dance Anthem of the 80’s is the probably the lightest song, between jive and dance, the melody carries the beauty of the song. The narrative exploration in the song Genius Next Door is clearly presented, it works like a short story. Wallet is a simple song with a simple narrative of the speaker’s experience of finding a wallet, but it was a powerful song for me. I love One More Time With Feeling, the melody, the message and the feeling that it stirs in me about holding on to love. Man of a Thousand Faces is the last song in the album, another song with a story that’s filled with concrete images, making the song another hit.

It was hard for me to choose favorites among these songs because I like them all. Moreover, they appeal to me in a different way. I love the songs. I love Regina Spektor.

AAA

Inuyasha the Final Act Ending Theme

I’ll take you to the higher stage

Now you got blazin’

namida wo kakushita tsuyogari na kimi no egao

kata wo daku koto sae sunao ni wa dekinakute

yoake no mukou ni donna mirai ga atte mo

shinjiru koto de shika kaerarenai

miushinatte ita kokoro no KAKERA

futari de sagashi ateta shunkan kitto

kowashite

oikakete kiri hiraita ano sora de

Seeking my way

hitosuji no hikari ni naru with you

naraku no soko naa deguchi wa DOKO?

kimi ni terashidasu houkou igai ni wa kyoumi wa No

koukou to kagayaku kongou no gotoku kabe wo kudakeba kimi ni todoku?

tashikana mono nara kitto nai kara, semete sou shinjite Go on

nanika wo sutereba unmei wa yuru sareru no?

taisetsuna mono hodo ude wo suri nukete yuku

kagami ni utsutta genjitsu to kozou no kabe

nigeteru dake ja sou koerarenai

ichido wa akiramekaketeta mirai

futari de kaete miseru hanarazu kitto

hatenaku

dokomademo deguchi no nai meikyuu de

Seeking my way

ima yatto tadoritsuita with you

Oh Yes, I just wanna see our future baby

ima kimi wo hanasete touge wo koeteku

tama no kakera wo motte furueru sono te wo totte

kowaku wa nai sa kimi to boku to de susu mou ze hikari yubisu kata e

tatoe mata itsuka tooku hanarete mo

kimi dake wo mitsuke daseru kara

kowashite

oikakete kiri hiraita ano sora de

Seeking my way

hitosuji no hikari ni naru

hatenaku

dokomademo deguchi no nai meikyuu de

Seeking my way

ima yatto tadoritsuita with you

I’ll take you to the higher stage

Anyway ride me baby

I’ll take you to the higher stage

At last I find you