The War Book, or the War Book?

If someone was going to tell me to read a book, I certainly was not going to pick up a book about some gruesome war. But hypothetically, say I had, twice; then which one would I say was better? The first, which goes by the name of The Things They Carried (by Tim O'Brien) , won a Pulitzer Prize for its "captivating account of the experiences of an infantry company in Vietnam...Evocative and haunting, the raw force of [a] confession" (says the Wall Street Journal). The second, called Mrs.Dalloway (by Virginia Woolf), "locates the enourmous within the everyday" (Michael Cunningham) and describes the homefront of an ending war.

However, Dalloway doesn't get praises for its exceedingly strong...war stories. Hidden within the thinly veiled quotes, Virginia Woolf threads "ideas" of the war into her tale with uses of words such as "boomed" (Woolf 5) and implications about a war veteran, Septimus, being diagnosed with PTSD. To put it frankly, this book is more about how time is paradoxical, being a crucial yet trivial part of our daily lives.

O'Brien, on the other hand, writes this story for the sole purpose of conveying the emotions from war to his audience. In fact, the major part of his story deals with the soldiers themselves, both in the war and after the war. For those who claim this story doesn't meld with the homefront as much as Mrs.Dalloway must reflect on how obvious the signals in Mrs.Dalloway are. O'Brien tells the reader upfront; this is exactly what they felt. It hits us with a frustrating anguish. However, Dalloway focuses on how the past influences the present, how little details from the war still exist in people's everyday lives. If not for the avid analysis, the message of war in Woolf's book could be belittled to a man who just has hallucinations caused by the disasters he has seen in the war.

So in the end, if I was actually going to pick up a war story just for the fun of it, I'd want to pick up one that told me upfront about the people who actually suffered, not the people who got the gentle after effects of those who had suffered.

Voices, Colors, Surreal

(Note to viewers: The following blog does not represent proper english grammar or syntax and is a reflection of a style of writing called stream of consciousness)

I'm sitting on my bed typing. The sound of the heater whirs. The keys are clacking. I'm really bored, stressed, frustrated. Silently, I curse the working minds behind the ACT, forcing me to push to no end to receive a score that I don't need but colleges do. It's that monster of a college, swallowing fun and happiness and spitting out wide-eyed sleep-deprived juniors. Pushing, shoving, losing sleep. Pushing and shoving some more. Losing humanity. Losing life. "The leaden circles [of life] dissolve into the air" (Woolf) and we never see it go by. The heart weighs heavily. Am I gaining weight? Am I seeing colors? I should exercise. I don't know, I hate exercise. I'll lose this weight eventually. Maybe we're all stuck in this eternal cycle of gaining weight, losing weight, stressing out, and experiencing the after effects. We're all experiencing PTSD. That's what this is. No, we're just juniors. PTSD is for war veterans. But I just looked this up. We've got a minute level of it of course. It's actually just a reaction to a traumatic event. School can be traumatic right? It's not fun and I'm pretty sure that by the time I get out of here I'll have a severe case of back ache that will traumatize me in the future. Stupid heavy backpacks. Stupid 3-floored high school. Can't even use the elevators to lift the load. Anyways, PTSD.

Sometimes I want to know the inner workings of a sociopath. What do they see, think; why do they see what they see and think what they think? And other people who have brain alterations. Septimus from, Virgina Woolf's book, Mrs.Dalloway? Quite strange I think. He's mentally depressed and hallucinates. He's probably schizophrenic. I just read that PTSD is related to schizophrenia. He sees strange people and colors. He thinks that everything is a symbol. I mean, what would I do if I looked up into the air and saw an airplane and just automatically assumed that the advertisement it was looping into the sky was a message to me? And if I could just catch every subliminal message that social media and modern culture throws at me, then I would be certifiably insane. Poor guy. Wait no, he's kind of a jerk. His poor wife. I can just imagine the random colors floating around his head, kind of like those psychedelic movies when people are high on some drug like LSD that makes them see random signs and mutter weird things.

I think, slowly, life will just take everybody to some stage of psychedelic induced images and voices. Of course, not as bad as him. He's just got no feelings and is completely trapped inside his own crazy mind. But maybe, slowly, slowly, us high schoolers are getting there. Maybe reading Mrs.Dalloway is subliminally messaging us to go insane (I'm just kidding). But high school definitely is.

I'm hungry. I think I'll go get lunch.

Insignificance is Significant

The ecosystem works in a smallest to largest fashion. That is, even the tiniest of organisms contribute to the survival of those who make a considerable difference. And with each little item adding to its own power by simply surviving, the world appears to be a beautiful place.

Here's a video to prove it:

In any case, even a small being's struggle is significant, as the beauty of it (not saying that something dying is beautiful) can be embodied in the tender balance between life and death.

For example, Virginia Woolf brings the anecdotal story, "The Death of The Moth", to life by recounting her experience of watching a moth experience its short lifetime and fall away into death. She continuously juxtaposes its "hybrid...pathetic" nature with the "pleasant" environment to show its insignificance, yet praises it by calling it a "tiny bead of pure light". Thus, she connects this being with humanity and presents it as a beacon of each individual's own life.  She claims that even its own search for more than just a "third corner and... a fourth" in his life applies to our own to find something more than the insignificance of our own lives. However, she implies that despite any figure's insignificance, or even significance, we all end up with the same fate, the inability to escape death. Then, who can prove that what is insignificant is truly insignificant at all?

A Shield of Humor

To mask pain, the human race will attempt a great amount of techniques. One, for example, is the soothing ritual of loosing oneself in music. However, a universal stress reliever is one we all know: humor. Humor has psychological effects, says Psych Central, and "laughter has been shown to reduce stress, boost the immune system and enhance brain chemistry through the release of serotonin and endorphins" (http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/03/02/the-hidden-power-of-humor/)

Although it may provide some relief, humor can, unfortunately, also act like a double edged sword. Many times people will act satirical or use dark humor to cover up their own faults or repress painful feelings. Take for example, a child who is being teased by his or her friends. To show them that the degrading comments don't affect him or her, they may proceed to laugh it off, or even make fun of themselves. This behavior may lead to a bitter mentality, where the individual could become self-degrading or misanthropic. 

A plethora of writers, including Sherman Alexie use cynical humor to mask pain from their childhood memories. For example, Alexie mocks his birth by calling himself a "mixed drink" born out of his "father's whiskey sperm" and "mother's vodka egg". While this alcohol reference provides an almost ridiculous humor to the situation, Alexie is using to cover up the drunkenness and disillusion of his parent's marriage and how they created him out of an act of stupidity rather than love. 

"Oh, are you disabled?"..."Not really...I'm just more Enabled than you are."

The other day, I heard a story from someone I know that made me very upset at the health care professionals in America today.

A man was sitting in the doctors office for his checkup and suddenly experienced a bout of severe pain.

This man, who rarely showed signs of pain despite it being there, screamed for help. When the nurses came to attend to him, they acted calmly and told him to "be quiet" and "stop disturbing the other patients". And as he was losing consciousness, one even proceeded to tell him "to stop being a drama queen". Later, as he recounted the tale, he sympathized for those nurses, who had spent their day working a long 12 hour shift in the hospital. But when I heard it? I had no sympathy. From what I had learned, accepting a job like that meant that one should be willing to work twelve, thirteen hour shifts and still remain respectful towards their patients. This just skims the insanity of the the mistreatment of struggling people in America. As if they aren't going through enough internally, the society we live in makes it a point to further their issues to feel better about their own.

But really, the only way to alter the way society considers the handicapped is that the definition of disability should be changed as a whole. Disability should really refer to any person with a hardship in their life. That's everybody, right? This hardship is not what defines the person; in fact, it only lasts for a period of time. For any average human, a disability in their everyday life can be resolved with a matter of perseverance and hope. And for handicapped people, whether it be psychological or physiological, the same rules apply. Even though their condition may persist for their entire life, if they persist in their efforts to overcome it, they can choose to set it aside and move on with their life.

People with disabilities have one fairly large claim: they are not defined by their disability. As famous author Nancy Mairs states, "I'm not, for example, Ms. MS, a walking, talking, embodiment of a chronic incurable degenerative disease". And this is true. The way society perceives these people is completely our own fault. We digress in the news about our previous errors: mistreatment of African Americans, Native Americans, gays, lesbians, transsexuals. But one that rarely comes up are the people who have quietly suffered, the disabled.

So when they observe the media, they might be slightly offended at their oblivious behavior. However, one good aspect does come out of not monopolizing their disabilities on the internet. As The Disabled World states, they become more aware of themselves and their " disability helps to define their values".

For more information: http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/social-aspects.php

You are never Beneath A Dream

Representative Heuristics, making judgements based off of preexisting prototypes and stereotypes, can be a hindrance when considering my dreams. Perhaps when one realizes that "being a female doctor is not yet accepted by society" (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/mar/21/women-workplace-everyday-sexism), she might give up her dreams entirely. And on top of that, money is a huge problem. Consider the ever increasing costs of college, and then think of all the rash decisions your family may have made to increase their chances on the economical leave l. For example, you might have a brother who is convinced that a liquor store is the way to go, or a dad who wants to invest in a new business venture that you are 99% positive is going to be risky and unstable. Many men, not all but many, in our ever existing society believe that their dreams are better than ours. With all the feminism rights protests, one would think that they might find our dreams equally as important, but I have found that our dreams are inferior to theirs, which I find as illogical and impractical."I always thought [being a doctor] was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know –" (A raisin in the sun), so I couldnt understand why my dreams to become something concrete were being obstructed by someone with abstract and complicated ones.

 Suddenly, I was plagued with this terrible feeling that the world was truly not worth saving anyways. If all I my dreams consisted of trying to increase the health of someone who wanted to obstruct my dreams, then the world was truly a twisted place. I was ready to give up my dreams,  when I was doused with a refreshing change. Doctoring, I learned, is something bold and beautiful and its a challenge that will prove quite fruitful. If us women never truly can prove to the world that what we do is worth its time, then society will forever be stuck in a unjust cycle of inequality.

" '[Life] isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!' " (A Raisin in the Sun)
To succeed, women should look beyond the circle of reality.

Pink Elephants + Elephants in the room= A whole mess

Today, society avoids the elephants in the room by a various means of escape. Silence, aversion, and distraction can be used to beat around the bush, but the one elephant we can't ignore is the "pink elephant". Pink elephants, according to Meriam Webster, are visual hallucinations that occur from a state of psychological and physical drunkenness. This inner battle of mental disillusion can let the elephant out of its cage,  or the "cat" out of the bag. As proven in F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, A Diamond as Big as the Ritz, drunkenness doesn't just refer to a state of alcoholism, but also to a greed or obsession with something, in this case money, that can impair one's judgement. The main character, John T. Unger, falls under the spell of a very rich family, failing to recognize their empty rhetoric as anything other than luxurious and eloquent. As the story progresses, the audience realizes, this "fairytale" doesn't really begin with a "Once upon a time"; unfortunately, it was more like "back in hell, an evil man with an obsession for money was born...". Braddock Washington, the man in the family (and from hell), uses a series of cruel lies to cover up his paradoxical treasure: a diamond so big that its useless to the economical market. Clearly, he thought he was Moses, because he tries so hard to become a "God" using his "princelike" status (if you know anything about Moses, that would ultimately summarize him: a prince turned God). At the end of the story, the real "Moses", or "God", pays his retribution towards Washington, ultimately turning him back into the place he was born and destined to be. And now, everyone can agree that the "pink elephants" that release an elephant into the room can definitely lead to a karmatic disaster.

Now look at the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan Diamond. Not so attractive anymore is it?