The Excellent Adventures of Brian in Rome

Rome Program

7914-11-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

I will be in Rome for winter quarter. I will miss everyone here in Seattle quite a bit.

"Sono nella tua citta uccidando i tuoi uomini."
-Natasha

Now, decode this secret message:
afjhgaudflhahnasdg;hald

2007-03-08T04:54:00.000-08:00

Final Paper - Mercy’s Pirates

Dull thuds of booted footfalls alternated with hollow clicks of a wooden peg as a large, bearded man paced the deck in front of his ragged crew. The hot sun beat down on sweaty brows and tricornered felt. The peg-legged man, a pirate captain ironically known as Captain Mercy, squinted up into the sun to see the Jolly Roger luffing high above, its fiendish sneer mimicking his scarred face. Mercy’s pride, his 41-gun schooner the Lady Knife, was riding the swell a league east of Barbados. Many called this passage the blood sea, due to the sanguine hue it retained after the sounds of cannon fire were carried away on the evening’s breeze. Situated directly on the trade wind corridor, many a fat merchantman would here be forced to run the gambit between pirates, privateers, and treacherous waters.

Mercy knew his crew was restless. None had been ashore to carouse with women or brawl in the bars for almost two months, and there had been no plunder for the last three weeks. The men were hungry for blood and loot, and Mercy could smell that some were beginning to develop an appetite for mutiny too. The water barrels were running low, but, for the captain, returning to port without a prize was as good as signing his own death warrant. Mercy paused a moment and thought. He heard pieces of a muttered conversation; the tone did not sound happy. The muttering had an airy, rasping quality to it, issuing as it did from the gaps in mouths missing teeth. Apparently these bastard ingrates had forgotten their personal chests of little pieces of gold and finery that they had plundered as part of Mercy’s crew; they had forgotten how good it was to be one of Mercy’s Pirates. He would make them remember, he had before. All he needed was just a little luck.

Mercy thought back to his earlier life, remembering the luck that had gotten him to where he was. What was life but luck? At the age of fifteen, he had stabbed and killed one of his mother’s lovers and run away from his mother and younger brother, a stowaway outbound from Portsmouth on the good ship HMS Justice. The whole voyage he remained undiscovered with his only friend, his knife, the instrument of his first kill. It began to speak to him as the days wore into weeks, and the weeks wore on into months. The knife told him how strong and righteous he was, and how he deserved so much from life.

He sat staring at its cool, silver-black blade for hours; he remembered asking it question after question. He asked it, often to obsession, why his mother’s lovers had given him all the bruises and black eyes. It seemed like every day he had done something so wrong that he was brutally or whipped as beaten as punishment. It was the only constant thing in his young life. He asked the knife why he had always been forced to sit, hungrily, as he watched the father figures in his life eat the last of the food in the house and drink themselves to a slovenly, snoring sleep, or else go chase after his screaming, pleading mother. The knife had reassured him in the softest tones that all would be well. All he had to do was take what was rightfully his.

Mercy reached his arm around behind him and unconsciously felt the scars that crisscrossed his back like red snakes of pure hatred. It seemed to him that these scars, more wounds inflicted by his mother’s boyfriends, were the product of pure sadism. Some thought Mercy was a sadist as well; the sailors he routinely robbed, tortured, and killed for profit certainly must. But, to Mercy, the scars he bore on his back were an ever present reminder that cruelty, for cruelty’s sake alone, was the meaning of true evil. He was merely taking what was his, as the knife had told him to do, and was comfortable in the knowledge that his way of making a living was no more brutal or exploitative than many legitimate businessmen’s. Indeed, a pirate’s work was far more humane that that of, for example, that of a textile mill owner. Mercy’s prey at least had a chance to flee or, if cornered, fight. The strong would survive. The poor men and women whose lives were ground away in the mills, however, had no such hope of a fighting chance.

Mercy recalled the end of his time as a stowaway and the start of his new life. After the Justice made landfall and Mercy escaped from the confines of its hold, he found himself in a marketplace, assailed by strange sights and sounds. His clearest recollection from his first arrival in the Caribbean was the corpse of a man, all the evidence of a rough life and rougher death redolent on his body, lying neglected on the sandy beach. He smiled as he remembered how he checked the corpse’s pockets for money. Finding none, he had noticed how unusually thick the soles of the dead man’s boots were and pried them apart. There he found a considerable trove of gold pieces; there was enough to keep him fed for a year, at least.

Mercy was not a God-fearing man, and so he assumed that God must fear him because of his miraculous and never-ending font of good fortune. When he was eighteen, he inherited a brace of ornate silver-embossed pistols from a man he killed. Many years, and many dead men, later he found himself in command of his very own vessel, which he had named for his protector, his knife. He didn’t care how many died. Mercy was going to get what he wanted, and the way to do that was to be the most black-hearted pirate ever to prowl the seas.

Mercy’s life had been hard ever since he had been left on his own when he was fifteen. His luck always saw him through in the end, but there were times when he didn’t know if he was going to make it. He started pacing the deck again. Click, thump, click, thump. Mercy tried never to rub his peg leg against the wooden deck of his ship. Whenever he did, it caused the most horrible nails on a chalk board sensation to run up the stump of his leg, through his spine, and into his brain, giving him an instant and horrible headache. Often, during the heat of battle, he would accidentally scrape his peg on the deck and, on account of his headache, become a hundred times more vicious. Even Captain Mercy was afraid of Captain Mercy with a headache.

Once, many years previously, Captain Mercy and his crew had been in a fierce battle with an English frigate. Her Majesty’s ship-of-the-line had almost overwhelmed the Lady Knife; indeed, the pirate crew was heavily outgunned. Mercy was standing on the main deck, bellowing orders and running around the ship on two sturdy legs. “This isn’t the first and won’t be the last frigate we sink. God damnit, lads, put your backs into it!” Just then the English crew had loaded chain shot. The withering volley cost many of Mercy’s crew their lives; it only cost him a leg.

Eventually, after the battle was won and the English sailors were visiting Davy Jones, Mercy had the rest of his leg amputated. Only his own knife was good enough to touch his flesh, she would be gentle with him. As the ship’s surgeon, formerly a barber and petty thief, began to use the knife to saw through flesh, through muscle, through tendon, and through bone, Mercy’s eyes watered and his face transformed into a likeness of the Devil himself. His mouth foamed around the piece of spar that had been placed between his teeth to prevent him from biting his own tongue off. After a while, Mercy began to relish in the pain. He let it wash over him and forge him into a new man. The Mercy that emerged from the crucible hobbled and clicked, but the new Mercy has never since engaged an English ship-of-the-line. The new Mercy was smarter and even more focused. He was going to make up for his leg being taken from him by taking more from others. It was only fair.

He would never let on to anyone for fear of his crew thinking he’d gone soft, but the sheer brutality and inhumanity of chain shot disgusted Mercy. It reminded him too much of the whip his mother’s boyfriends had given him the horrible welts with. Chain shot hurt much worse physically but, emotionally, there was no comparison: the whip was a thousand times worse. For Mercy, both the chain shot and the lashings he had suffered crossed the line from necessary to sadistic. Mercy still remembered the worst pain he had ever felt in his youth. It had not been a physical pain. The cries and pleas his little brother let out when the sadistic bastards beat him had been worse than any physical wound Captain Mercy had ever received. His little brother’s pain cut right to his soul like the sharpest of all daggers. It flayed him within an inch of his life and left him defenseless. One night, he could bear those tortured cries no longer, and so he had stabbed the man beating his brother. That was the real reason for his first murder, though he’d told many a pirate over a mug of grog that his first was solely for the love of killing. Mercy still remembered it clearly. The blood running down the blade of the knife and slowly dripping onto his hand branded him with the red mark of a murderer. It was the most drastically life-changing event Mercy had ever known. That was the night when he had run away into the comforting black of a midnight Portsmouth and set out on his path to piracy.

The watchman’s voice sounded from the crow’s nest, breaking his reverie. A merchantman was in sight. Flying English colors, she was low in the water. Mercy sprang into action; this was it, lads, the long-awaited booty. He shouted orders to his crew, and with the promise of plunder, they all set about in a rhythmic motion, looking more like a well-oiled machine than a crew of drunk, toothless, illiterate brutes. Soon the excitement of the chase took over and, unintentionally scraping his peg leg on the deck, Captain Mercy became more of a raging beast than a man. The ship on the horizon became the Golden Fleece, and Captain Mercy commanded his Argonauts to prime the cannons, load powder charges, break out the swords and muskets, adjust the sails for maximum speed, and prepare to engage if the merchant crew attempted to put up a fight. As the two ships drew nearer over the span of agonizingly long minutes and it became clear that the Lady Knife would soon overtake the merchantman, a wave of despair overtook the latter crew; they were unarmed.

After the other ship’s cargo was plundered, Mercy’s crew took her captain aboard the Lady Knife and put him into a kneeling position at their captain’s feet like some kind of trophy. The man kept his eyes lowered to the deck in shame, anger, and rage. Mercy had witnessed this scene before him a hundred times, and, in his moment of absolute triumph, Mercy felt like God himself, wrathful and omnipotent. Moments like these were what he had been working toward his whole life. He was respected, feared, and in command. He put his knife to the other captain’s chin and raised his head with the blade. Mercy had his speech ready to go; he had rehearsed it in his head a thousand times. He was looking forward to humiliating this man and then feeding him to the sharks that always lingered about the Lady Knife. Mercy had never considered himself a cultured man, but this elaborate, primal, ritual of displaying absolute dominance over another man was a form of theater in which he indulged. It was also one he felt was particularly valuable for his crew to witness.

As he raised the man’s eyes to meet his own, however, he felt a shock like a dagger of ice penetrating his heart. It was the same dagger that had cut him all those years ago, when he had been listening to the sadistic men beating his poor, defenseless, little brother. The eyes he was staring into were his own. They were his eyes—his brother’s eyes. The cold hand of panic grabbed hold of his stomach and he staggered backwards a few steps. Then he remembered his audience. Mercy turned and glanced at his crew. Many countenances were stupefied, some looked suspicious; all expected Mercy to be his usual merciless self. Mercy fished for words. His speech, full of vitriol and invective, was entirely forgotten. Throughout countless years of bloodshed, the life of the man kneeling before him was one that his knife told him he could not take.

But no! Such hesitation would be the end of him, as his crew would take him as weak and immediately become mutinous. The pirates now seemed to Mercy like the sharks that dogged the Lady Knife, and their captain’s paralysis was a spreading red stain of blood in the water. Though Mercy knew this, he was overcome by the moment, unable to act. His arm, a lead weight, steadfastly refused to draw a weapon and his remaining good leg refused to kick the man contemptuously to the deck. The man’s eyes staring back at him silently pleaded for mercy, just as they had done with the sadistic torturers from his childhood. Reflected in those eyes, Mercy saw not himself, but rather a red-skinned devil of pure malice. The men from his childhood had appeared to him in the same manner; he saw them not as men at all, but rather incarnations of anathema. And now he was one of them. As Mercy gazed at the horrible devil reflected in the man’s eyes, he knew that he could not, no matter how hard he tried, bring himself to do harm to his brother.

Rage bubbled up inside of him. He was Captain Mercy, the greatest pirate captain of all time. He refused to believe that he was a sadistic torturer; Davy Jones wasn’t tapping him on the shoulder. He planned on living forever. There had to be a way out of this situation. If fate were going to be so cruel, he would fight fate. If God were going to give him a choice between his life and his brother’s, he would fight God. All he needed was just a little bit of luck—

And then there was agonizing blackness for Mercy, as the new captain of the Lady Knife smashed open his skull with a large wooden plank and watched Mercy’s broken form crumple to the ground. Mercy would have done the same thing, were he in the other pirate’s position. After all, he was just doing what he needed to in order to make sure he was going to get his in life. Any pirate would kill for a captaincy. Mercy’s dying thoughts were of his brother; there were no regrets, except for the fact that he hadn’t been able to think of a way out fast enough.

CW9 Reading Journal

2007-03-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

Reading Journal: Averno

In which time period is Louise Gluck’s Averno set? What is the tone of this book? Describe the narrator(s) and what is of value to them? What kind of relationship does the Persephone narrator have with the earth in Gluck’s work? Cite at least one passage to back up your argument. To what does the final verse on page 16 refer? Cite a passage in the text where the narrator second guesses her own voice by reconsidering the way in which to describe something. Why would an author show such a thing? What are some key differences between Part I and II of the book; how is Persephone the Wander figured differently in each? How do you understand the ancient myth differently after reading Gluck’s interpretation?

Averno seems to be set in the present. The overall tone of the book seems to be introspective: one woman’s analysis of her life, how she got there, and what is next. There are several narrators in the book; all seem to be aspects of the author, perhaps her self imagined at different ages or points in her life. Another thought I had was that the narrators represent the author in different stages of innocence. I identified two main narrators in the piece. The first was the author, a modern woman, and the other was an absolute innocent, a young girl who is referred to in the retelling of the Persephone myth. Her narration is used to tell the author’s young life, and the book, on the large scale, seems to be about the loss of innocence with the Persephone myth as the catalyst to discuss the idea. The Persephone narrator’s relationship to the earth is a metaphorical parallel of the relationship in the myth. The earth is like a mother figure in this book as evidenced by the passage, “From our kitchen garden/ you could see the mountains/ snow covered, even in summer/ I remember peace of a kind/ I never knew again” (29). The author talks about herself as a child here. The motherly embrace of nature parallels the Persephone myth, lending support to my argument. The last verse on page 16 refers to Hawthorne’s version of the Persephone myth where she eats pomegranate seeds in Hades and must spend half the year there because of that. The top of page 17 shows the technique of the author second-guessing herself over the word “home.” I think the author does this to give the text more of an introspective feel. A key difference between parts one and two that I noticed is how part one seems to describe the past and part two describes the future. Persephone: The Wanderer in part one was interpreted through the eyes of someone who had never known motherhood, whereas part two was seen from the eyes of a mother. Part one talks about rationality and scholarship whereas part two is more an emotional excursus. This book has made me see the Persephone story as a tale of the loss of innocence. Not only that, but, also, it gave Persephone a voice. Before the story was “an argument between the mother and the lover—/ the daughter is just meat.”

2007-03-01T02:03:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

CW 8 - Loss

At times one’s trust can falter

In dire doubts and danger

There are those who seek to crucify

Rather than to come together

Three words, when spoken freely

Are better than three million under duress

For when free speech is ended

Then comes a state akin to death

A great and terrible paralysis

The rigor mortis of the soul

If they can keep you from thinking

There is no hope for us all to grow

But I am sure they’ll never win

When all they have is deceit and lies

There is, I think, still an interest

In whether democracy lives or dies

I will always remember it. In the summer sunshine the park looked beautiful. The shafts of light coming down through the trees’ obscuring foliage, for me, hinted at the general state of darkness that seemed to have fallen over world politics. Deep shadows of distrust loomed large on the landscape. I saw my numerous books and editorials as little gusts of wind that blew the foliage aside and helped people see that there was really still bright sunshine out there. Though the administration may be trying to silence those who believe that invading Iraq is not the right way to disarm Saddam Hussein, assuming he really does have weapons, I intend to keep writing. People deserve to hear all sides of the story, though President Bush seems to have his heart set on war from the huge run-up he has been giving it.

Ever since the horrible events of September 11, 2001, people had been locking up not only their houses, but also their compassion and understanding of fellow humans. I tend to think that’s why we were so eager to see war as the solution to our problem. Suddenly, when the old Lebanese widower from the apartment next door comes over to break the loneliness of his monotonous life with a conversation about how bad our football team is, or how he thinks the administrations tax policy is favoring the rich too much, he’s not just the old man down the hall anymore. He is a Muslim, isn’t he? Who are his terrorist contacts, the ones who he’s surely passing information to? We were so eager to find enemies that we forgot the value of friends.

It seems to me that, as the administration’s rhetoric was getting increasingly more urgent and fiery in its call to action, it was only appropriate that my own writing should likewise escalate. The week before, I had published my most incisive article yet. It was angry—even hostile—and it made a point. The New York Times refused to run it, though they had never refused me before. Sad times are those when the propaganda machine has done such a complete and effective job that media censorship becomes internalized and freedom is speech is willingly curtailed.

I have never been much on conspiracy theories, but the whole September 11 thing seemed like an inside job to me. I will probably be branded as crazy for even suggesting it, I know, but there are so many bizarre incongruities that I feel just can’t be accounted for under the accepted explanation. I had been consumed by the task of trying to find out why the twin towers had been hit and why so many innocents had perished—among them my treasured wife, Helen. My writings had been suggesting my own deeper feelings for some time, but never had I come out and actually endorsed a conspiracy theory. I valued my reputation with publishers too much; I valued my comfort.

After Helen died, I didn’t know what to do, but, recently, things were really starting to look up for me again in life. Right after it happened, I was completely devastated, and threw myself even more into my work to try to ease the grief. We were planning on kids, a nice place up in Maine for the summers, and everything else. But I hadn’t been doing badly for myself these last few years since she died, at least in terms of money. I had even been considering getting the Maine place, just as a memento or something.

On that gorgeous summer day in the park I was thinking about finally moving on and maybe trying to meet another woman. The sun was helping my spirits. Then it happened. A black car with tinted windows pulled up and three suited men got out. They walked over to me and asked me, by my full name, to come with them because they wanted to ask me some questions. I remember that at that moment, my throat tightened with the most horrible fear I had ever felt. What if these men were from one of the alphabet soup organizations and all the conspiracy theories were true? What if they were going to take me away for what I’d written or said? My worst fears were confirmed as I realized I wasn’t being asked to accompany them, I was being told. The knot in my throat tightened to an intolerably degree. I must have turned the most deathly shade of pale as I walked to the car with them and got in.

During the drive, I was too dazed to say anything for a very long time. Finally, I managed to whisper, “I want to exercise my rights.”

“Sir, you have no rights,” came the chilling response. “You do not exist at the moment.” I said nothing more for the duration of the trip. How could I have gone from a full-fledged human being with rights and liberties to utter non-existence in just the blink of an eye? As the car pulled into the parking garage of a nondescript building, my fear gradually subsided and was replaced by a sort of unbelieving numbness. I did not exist. The thing that scared me most about it was not the fact that someone who did not exist could be held forever or beaten or tortured or killed, but rather that someone who did not exist could not speak. My life was communication, and when communication was taken away from me, I could not be sure I was still alive.

The three suited men escorted me upstairs into the nondescript building. They sat me in a small room, hooked me up to a polygraph machine, and began to ask me questions. I said absolutely nothing. This was not a battle I would let them win. If they would seek to take away my communication, then I would be obligingly silent.

“Why won’t you answer any questions?” asked one of the men. “You have nothing to gain from non-cooperation.”

“You have nothing,” said another. “Tell us what we want to know. Have you ever been involved with terrorist organizations working against the United States government?”

“We can hit you if we want,” said the third. “You know that don’t you? We can hurt you. You don’t exist. This never happened; you can’t prove it did. Tell us what we want to know, or this could become painful for you.” I closed my eyes, signaling without words my stolid refusal to cooperate.

The rest of the story doesn’t matter. I can’t prove it. How do you know that I’m not making it all up? Even if you don’t believe me, though, I think that you can take something from it. I only seek to make the point that, after the disgusting and tragic events of September 11, 2001, the world fell apart when it could have come together. People turned against other people; my countrymen turned against me just as I turned my writings against them. In closing, you must speak. Free speech promotes the broadest, most meaningful understanding.

Writing Journal:

In designing a fictional piece around real events, I found that I was given great leeway to express my own views through the character’s thoughts and actions. Any number of modern and ancient authors use and have used this technique; the form is especially suited to satirical writing. I’m not sure if readers really can determine how factual a personal account is; instead I think it’s better to judge personal accounts by how moving or powerful they are. The goal of someone reading a personal account should not be to obtain an exact history, but rather to gather a certain source’s interpretation of the events and integrate that source’s point of view into his or her own modes of thinking. Personal accounts are necessarily biased because they cannot, by nature, present all points of view equally. A history written with a plurality of views is more reliable for learning the nature of actual events, but personal accounts can be thought of as adding necessary “texture.” The writing on the walls of the German SS headquarters reminded me of the necessity of hope in dark places, and I think that theme plays a big part in this piece. I chose my subject of writing for this piece because it allowed me write about issues that I find very important.

CW8 Readig Journal

2007-02-25T15:52:00.001-08:00

Brian Spenser

Reading Journal 8

The poem in the beginning served not only to set the tone for the piece as one that deals with the very serious subject of estrangement and dehumanization, but also to provide a “warning” to readers who fail to take it seriously. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d quote the old maxim. “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” The narrator in the text seems to have little direction in his life. The author leaves it open for the reader to think that, in other circumstances or in other times, this young man would have had a great chance in life. There is no hypothesizing, though. I think it was intentional that the narrator didn’t talk about what he may have done, were it not for the war. It seems to lend the piece an air of immediacy, or perhaps it suggests the rigid dehumanization of the death camps. There is no speculation, no hope in places like those. Another aspect of the narrator was that he seemed to be something of an innocent. The passage, “How could he hit a man without anger?” Summed up well the complete and utter conceptual disconnect between him, his mindset, and that of the fascists or Nazis. Some particularly powerful passages for me were, before the deportation, when the mothers hung their children’s laundry on the barbed wire of the fence that kept them caged. The visual nature of this passage forced me to think about the idea portrayed here, the humanity coming through though the people are being treated as animals. Not only did it impress this upon me, but also it made the point that there was still room for love in the climate of hate; a mother could still love her son though, by the hatred of others, they would both be dead the next day. Another powerful passage was, near the end, where the old Jews in the camp laugh at the new arrivals when they ask how long they would be there for. This poignantly shows, not tells, the hopelessness of the situation.

CW 7 and Reading Journal

2007-02-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

CW 7 Dialogue

Please note: This piece may be offensive to people of faith, especially Christians. I would ask the reader to read it at their own discretion, and to remember that it is a fictionalization. Also, please keep in mind that I am not necessarily attempting to express my own views in this piece, and I do not mean for offense to be taken from it.

The Recanting - An interpretation of Caravaggio’s “The Flagellation of Christ”

The four men walked through the forum. Their leader, a pale, bearded man of about thirty walked quickly and the other three hurried to keep up.

“Jesus, slow down,” the muscular man with the heavy brow called from behind. The nagging insistence and dependence redolent in the man’s voice made him angry. “Jesus, what should we do now? Please tell us! You are our prophet.”

Something snapped in Jesus. He stopped walking, turned to the man and said, his tone was heavy with anger. “I’ve told you already. You should leave me alone. I really mean it this time. I don’t want any more of this. I’ve already shown you how I did those damn tricks that you call miracles. They’re not difficult. Why are you still following me around?”

“My soul is an empty vacuum without your guidance!” said another of the three, a robust, balding man with the glint of zeal in his eye. “Please give us a prophecy or a miracle, or I shall be unable to continue in this life.”

“Indeed, without you, Jethuth”—the final man’s inadvertent lisping on his name was more unbearable than ever to Jesus—“how are we to save our immortal souls and reach the heavenly seat of your father, the one true God?”

“You three are pathetic!” said Jesus. His complete exasperation was evident in his tone. “You are exactly like the sheep my father—who is not in any way a god of any sort—herded. How is it that you can believe something so blindly? I already told you a thousand times that you should leave me be. This little cult was never supposed to evolve past an organizing body for the anti-Roman movement, anyway. I thought you knew that! Here’s a question I have for you. Have you lost the capacity for rational, independent thought over time, or were you simply born without it?”

The robust man replied immediately and with absolute conviction. “What use do we have for our own thoughts when God’s ideas are perfect, and we could have those instead? We have been blinded to worldly ideas. A great, holy light came to all of us in visions exactly like the ones you described having. The only thing that matters to us is your divinely-inspired guidance and the Great Hereafter.”

“I don’t see why you’re going on about thinking,” the muscular man added. “Just talk to God, your father, and he will tell you what to do, saving you all the thinking. That’s the advice you’ve always given us when we did not know what to do. Remember all the dangerous nights when we would go out on secret ambushes against the Romans together? I told you that I didn’t know if my conscience would allow me to kill a Roman in cold blood, and you told me to talk to God. I did, and he gave me the courage to do what needed to be done. Why do you forget your own advice now?”

“Baaaaaaaaaaaa,” said Jesus, mimicking the human sheep before him. “You were used. Get over it.”

“Jethuth, please,” begged the lisper. “We have thought for ourselves, and we have decided that your path of light is the only correct one. All you have to do is tell us God’s will. Give us a prophecy!”

After these last, lisping, pleading words had been said there was silence for a moment as three pairs of eyes, wide with hero worship, stared into Jesus’ expectantly.

“Alright,” said Jesus. “You want a prophecy? I will give you one, and, mark my words, this is the truest thing I’ve ever told you morons. Are you ready? I made it all up—god, heaven, hell—everything. I don’t believe in god and if you had any sense you wouldn’t either. Please stop following me now, I would like to go get on with my life.”

These words hit the three men dogging Jesus like the sharp stones they threw at adulterers and non-believers during public stonings. The balding man began to say something, but couldn’t find any words and closed his mouth, dumbfounded. The muscular man, so moved by the words, was visibly sobbing. His face contorted, his brows had become black steel razor blades slanting down above his eyes. Hoping that his words had achieved their desired goal, Jesus turned and began walking away again. He noticed, to his satisfaction, that the three men were to stricken to follow him. Finally, he could enjoy a little peace and quiet.

At last, the curly-haired lisper found his tongue. He turned to his two comrades and said, “What if Jethuth is possessed by the Devil?”

“At any other time, I would kill you for even suggesting that,” the balding man said after a pause. “But right now, having heard what he just said, that seems to be the only explanation.” The glint of zeal in his eye sparked into a full-fledged bonfire. “Jesus is obviously not himself. We must convince him to return to his senses.”

“Yes, we must,” the razor-browed man interjected, shaking with rage. “We must by any means necessary. We will punish this demon until Jesus returns to us. You,” he said, pointing to the lisper. “Go fetch the thorny branches of that bush there. And you,” he indicated the robust man. “Re-tie your tunic about your waist so as you will not need that length of rope you use as a belt. I have devised a punishment sure to drive this demon away.”

The lisper and the robust man both set about their tasks, and razor-brow seized a brick lying on the ground. He threw it as hard as he could at the Jesus’ back, and hit him in the back of the head. Jesus went limp and fell to the ground.

“Quick, let’s bind the demon to this column before he regains consciousness,” said razor-brow. His two colleagues complied. They dragged Jesus’ limp form over to one of the columns in the forum’s colonnade and sat him leaning against it. The set to work with the length of rope and, soon, Jesus’ arms were bound firmly behind his back.

“Start making scourges with those thorny branches,” commanded razor-brow. “We’ll beat the devil out of him!” The curly-haired lisper knelt and started to make whips out of the cruelly barbed sticks. “Give me some of those branches, too,” said the balding man. The lisper handed him some of the branches and he fashioned a wicked-looking a crown of thorns from them. He pressed it down firmly onto the Jesus’ brow and Jesus stirred, the pain bringing him back to consciousness. As Jesus’ senses came back to him, he discovered that his arms were bound and even the dim torchlight gave him a splitting headache. His brow burned with a horrible pain and he didn’t know why. Through his fog of pain and confusion he heard the voice of the razor-browed man.

“Demon, are you ready to leave the body of Jesus?” it asked.

Jesus managed to form words, though his head throbbed with the effort required to say them. “What do you do in the name of religion? I am no prophet, and I am no devil. I don’t care if there is or isn’t a god. Leave me alone.”

He lost consciousness again as the balding man and razor-brow flanked him and raised him to his feet. Razor-brow gripped his scourge in one hand and Jesus’ hair in the other with a murderous, hateful look on his face.

Writing Journal:

What is the reason you chose the option (a, b, or c) you did? What is challenging about writing dialogue, especially when you are reliant on it for character development? Do visual works add to or detract from your ability to be imaginative in your writing and why? What are some of the most notable differences between the cities of Rome and Naples; do you think place has an effect on how you write? If yes, how so, and if not, why do you think it is irrelevant?

I didn’t choose one of the options; I chose the Caravaggio because an idea for a story instantly popped into my mind when I looked at it. It is challenging to show, not tell, with dialogue. In this case, looking at a visual work added to my ability to be imaginative in writing. I’ve always believed that all forms of art are tied together somehow. I’ve read passages of literature that have inspired me to write music, and now I’ve looked at a painting that inspired me to write a story. Differences I noticed between Rome and Naples were mostly of color, in both the literal and figurative meanings of the word. Naples seemed cleaner, brighter, and its people seemed more affable. This affability apparently did not inspire me, however, because this story is one of my darkest (and certainly the most offensive) yet. I don’t think it’s irrelevant, though. I believe that the mood or qualities of a place can inspire. Once one is inspired, writing (or other art) is only natural.

CW7 Reading Jorunal

2007-02-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

Reading Journal 7

Read the selection of Juvenal’s satires in your reader (satires 1, 5, 7, 8). You should answer the following questions in your reading journal: How is the concept of wealth developed in Juvenal’s satires? How is this different or similar to that of Twain’s development of the same subject in Innocents Abroad? What role does hypocrisy play in relation to these concepts of wealth in both authors’ satirical works? How are the themes of sedition and free speech in Juvenal similar/different to those in Twain’s satire? How are artists, poets, and patrons of the arts depicted similarly/differently by the two authors? What is “noble” according to Juvenal’s narrator? Cite a passage from each of the four satires by Juvenal which amused you and say why. What literary mechanisms or rhetorical devices did Juvenal use for each?

Juvenal treats wealth as, basically, the root of all evil. To him, it perverts and replaces noble cornerstones of his society such as peace, victory, honor, and virtue. Twain satirizes more the injustices in the distribution of money (e.g. the Catholic Church keeping the money from the poor or the Italian government using all of its money to build palatial railroad stations). I couldn’t detect specific instances in which Juvenal was using pointing out hypocrisies. Maybe this is due to the cultural and temporal distance between author and reader. One almost hypocrisy that I noticed was when Juvenal addressed the perception of historians as lazy by slandering the laziness of lawyers. Except it wasn’t really hypocrisy because Juvenal didn’t state that lawyers are the ones that mock historians as lazy. Maybe there was a rivalry in Juvenal’s time between lawyers and historians. I don’t know. I am missing so much of this piece because I lack cultural context. On free speech, I got the impression that Juvenal thinks How to Teach Speaking, apparently a preparatory manual on oratory, only teaches conformity, and that a real free thinker should tear up his copy. This is similar of the treatment of sedition and free speech in Twain’s work, where he positions the poor against the Catholic Church (“they should storm their churches”) in that, in both authors’ work, the ordinary man is set against a big institution. In Twain, it is the Church. In Juvenal, it’s the established academy of oration. Artists, poets, and patrons are depicted similarly, it seems to me, in both Twain and Juvenal. Both authors highlight the fact that the artists are “selling out” to wealthy, self-interested patrons. Juvenal’s narrator often correlates virtue (in its standard meaning) with being “noble.” I quote from the eighth satire, “True nobility lies in more than a name and a title” (102).

Passages that amused me:

1) “Trying to ease your gut’s distending burden of peacock.” I took this one as an irony, because the rich guy chose to eat the peacock, and so I hardly see how it’s a burden. Again, I’m not really sure how to take this passage because I’m not familiar with the times. I think it was normal for the rich to eat peacocks in ancient Rome, but if it wasn’t, then that adds to the meaning as well.

5) “Your noble patron, this Virro.” This is ironic because Juvenal clearly doesn’t think this man is an example of nobility.

7) “Your genuine poet—I’m sorry I can’t show you one, I am only sure he exists.” This is an example of hyperbole. Saying that there are no genuine poets at all in the world highlights the decline of the members of that profession into a bunch of louts who only seek their next payday by pleasing patrons (in Juvenal’s eyes).

8) “You gentry, Trojan-descended, give yourselves license for acts that the working classes would blush at.” I’m not sure if this is a specific rhetorical device, but I think it hammers home the point of the preceding paragraphs very well. I think it’s an example of strong writing. I also liked the “Trojan-descended” part of it. It mocks ancient traditions and shows that Juvenal clearly thought himself part of “modernity.”

CW 6 - Satire

2007-02-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

CW 6 Satire

His mouth was dry with nervousness and adrenaline pumped through his system as his helicopter touched down in the Middle Eastern desert. A marine pulled open the door and a gust of hot, sandy wind buffeted his face. He felt his throat tighten with the urgency of the situation. He knew that he would be putting it all on the line when he got out of this helicopter. He imagined the bullets whizzing by and shells exploding, but, in all those classic war movies, the heroes never think, they just “Go, go go!” He had to do the same; he had to throw himself into the maw of a war where danger was the only certainty.

Calling upon his inexhaustible font of courage, he leapt out of the chopper, as if it were still in the air and he were really one of those illustrious war heroes. As he landed his daring, two-foot leap, the flashes around him were not those of explosions as one may expect, but rather they were those of cameras. He noticed, to his abject horror, that the helicopter’s rotor had already stopped spinning and that the machine was completely at rest. Worse still, all of his asides had already gotten out and were waiting for him on the tarmac! He began to despair over how terrible this situation would look to the press. The Commander in Chief should always try to the first out of a helicopter in a warzone (when the damn liberal press is around).

In the interest of honesty, while not properly in a warzone, the President was, to his credit, near one. The First Lady and their grown, twin daughters waved at him from the idyllic, sandy beach, twenty feet away, where they were enjoying the water and gorgeous Kuwaiti sunshine. The President’s itinerary called for a few days vacation before he would make his first official visit to the Iraqi warzone. The President’s bravery was unquestioned—that is, after all, why he had let his strategist propose this Iraq visit as a list ditch effort to save his approval ratings—but he couldn’t stop himself from worrying about the extreme level of exposure he would face in Iraq. His bunker would only be 500 feet underground, and its undisclosed location in the middle of one of the larger deserts of the world may be a bit too obvious. Still, he was willing to put himself on the line in such a manner, if only for the noble men and women of the armed services. Though their lately slacking morale worried the President, he was sure that he would make a personal connection with each and every soldier from his underground bunker, and that morale would improve a million times over.

A column of soldiers and advisers closed in around the President and escorted him to an undisclosed room in an undisclosed hallway on the largest undisclosed American military base on the coast of Kuwait. It was a nice base, with all the amenities of home. The newly erected buildings, low and squat, were in the latest military fashion and shone like treasure chests filled with the misappropriated riches of the American taxpayer. As the sound of the President’s family splashing while they swam in the azure water died away and he entered the air-conditioned building, other little splashes come to mind for an observer of the scene. These are the little splashes that average Americans make as they fall into Lake Poverty because of the President’s war and program of tax cuts for the rich. It wasn’t that this president was hard-hearted, far from it! He simply didn’t believe that the poor should have a chance in life.

As he and his entourage walked down the hallway, the President asked for his briefing. His advisers handed him a piece of paper with the latest, painstakingly assembled facts and analysis. The Commander in Chief gave it a summary glance; he was, after all, on vacation. He was a very positive man, and so he always interpreted the news he received in the best light possible. If there was no way to do so, he skipped over the most negative parts. No point in feeling down about it all day! Recorded below is the Commander in Chief’s understanding of the briefing.

Our troops once again advanced to the rear today outside Baghdad. Many of them were killed; this was a good thing because it showed the enemy that we are numerous and determined. Our forces were defeated at—blah blah blah. Another helicopter was shot do—skipped. One of our bombs hit a hospita—pointless negativity!

The President grimaced. The rest of the paper was just more of the same. He was a firm subscriber to the school of thought that said “no news is good news,” or rather, “the less news he had to deal with the better.” Maybe he should stop getting news briefs.

The President surveyed his Marine Honor Guard. They were uniformly six-feet-five-inches tall, and, as they stood shoulder to shoulder in a line, their rectangular heads formed crenellations on the stone wall that was their bodies. Each was probably entirely capable of thinking and making rational decisions for himself, but none seemed to feel such drastic action was necessary. Hence, here they were in the military, and their tendency away from that vile trademark of the weak that is rational, independent thought had helped them rise to the most prestigious of positions, the President’s Honor Guard. How lucky one of them would be to take a bullet for the divine President!

Satisfied with his security forces and conscious of the tough week ahead of him, the President decided to take a nap. At that exact instant, many miles away, another car bomb exploded in Baghdad. One hundred innocent Iraqi civilians in its blast radius, eager to emulate their savior, President Bush, in every way, dropped everything and lay down to take a nap as well.

Writing Journal:

I chose my character because of his position. I wanted to satirize the President and his policies, and so I chose him as a character to take advantage of some of the ironies that arise from interpreting events through his eyes. I don’t think I can pick one “most challenging part” of writing a satirical piece. All elements must be in balance or else it either loses its ability to make meaningful critical criticisms or loses its veil and becomes merely a stream of invective. I think mine struck this balance, though it was written in a somewhat bitter tone. I think my characterization of Bush is “round.” I mean to say that I let the reader know many things about him, and there is also a lot of meaning to be inferred about the character from the ironic devices I employ when relating Bush’s thoughts. I think I do a lot of showing, not telling, and never really “directly” develop the character. This makes the reader have to think more to understand the character. I did not refer back to Twain while I was writing, but I assimilated elements of his style and tone into my own.

CW 6 Reading Journal

2007-02-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

Reading Journal Mark Twain

Italian Central Government - Overly and stupidly lavish on certain spending projects, such as railway system, undisciplined, broke, impetuous, young

Catholic Church - An economic endeavor, a corporation, little concern for salvation or the poor and starving masses in its lavish decoration and excess

The Medici - Cruel tyrants, trivial, forgotten, impious, decadent

“Old Masters” - Whoring themselves out to make a buck, lacking integrity

Dominicans - Simple, in error, kind of like trustworthy and likeable dogs

Civitavecchia Inhabitants - Stinky, indolent, dirty, uncivilized,

Romans - Slothful, superstitious, ignorant, illiterate,

St. Peter’s Cathedral - Ridiculously grandiose, a repository of silly and antiquated ideas

Inquisition - No more enlightened than the pagans who persecuted the Christians of antiquity

Coliseum - High theater, killing as socially acceptable, not that different from modern theater

Literary Critics - Know-it-alls who assume to criticize Shakespeare, or in the Twain example critics who seem to know how a broadsword should be handled better than a gladiator.

Tour Guides - Parrotish, dim, lacking a real purpose in life, humorless

Rev. Neligan - unquestioning, undoubting, simple, religious

“When they are done washing, they sit in the alleys and nurse their cubs” (194). The word “cubs” sticks out because it creates humor by dehumanizing the inhabitants of the city.

“In that country, the preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars—they have two or three suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes (199). The humor comes from the contrast between what Americans and Italians of Twain’s day found normal.

“She put them in this pleasant inquisition” (203). The inquisition is not pleasant, but in this context it was humorous to say so.

“The whole will conclude with a chaste and elegant general slaughter” (208). The last thing that should be called chaste and elegant is a general slaughter, but in Twain’s likening of gladiatorial combats to theater, it was a well place humorous analogy.

“This makes the roof and the front of the mansion” (214). The mansion to which Twain refers was actually a ramshackle hut.

“The Christians sometimes burrowed to escape persecution” (220). To say that they “burrowed” seems to suggest a feral state, as if these early Christian were in some way pre-human. The humor arises from highlighting the differences between the cultural norms of the different groups.

CW5 Writing Journal

2007-02-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

Why did you choose the character you did for your piece? What are some of the challenges you found in creating a convincing, complex character? When designing your character, did you attempt to offer the reader something familiar, unsettling/unusual, or a combination of the two? Why did you make this choice and what mechanisms did you employ to achieve this goal?

I chose the character for my piece because I like pirates, but also because I think it's interesting to have a character that has had a singular goal and has been entirely unambiguous his whole life suddenly find a complex situation awakens opposing feelings within him. The challenges I found in creating a character were mainly characterized by difficulties in trying to remember to show not tell, especially without dialog. I attempted to offer my reader something very familiar, almost a Jungian archetype. My character was a mean, black hearted, pirate, and one who had no qualms about killing. I find that this made his inner confrontation at the end all the more interesting. I used action, mainly, to advance the story. I also used flashbacks and my character's memories to give the reader insight into his mind and advance the story.

CW5 Character Development

2007-02-05T01:00:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser

Mercy's Pirates

Dull thuds of booted footfalls alternated with hollow clicks of a wooden peg as the pirate captain paced the deck in front of his ragged crew. The hot sun beat down on sweaty brows and tricornered felt. The peg-legged man, ironically known as Captain Mercy, squinted up into the sun to see the Jolly Roger luffing high above, its fiendish sneer mimicking his scarred face. Mercy’s pride and only love, his 41-gun schooner the Lady Knife, was riding the swell a league east of Barbados. Many called this passage the blood sea, due to the sanguine hue it retains after the sounds of cannon fire have been carried away on the evening’s breeze. Situated directly on the trade wind corridor, many a fat merchantman would here be forced to run the gambit between pirates, privateers, and treacherous waters.

Mercy knew that his crew was restless. None had been ashore to carouse with women or brawl in the bars for almost two months, and there had been no plunder for the last three weeks. The men were hungry for blood and loot, and Mercy could smell that some were beginning to develop an appetite for mutiny, too. The water barrels were running low, but, for the captain, returning to port without a prize was as good as signing his own death warrant. Mercy paused a moment and thought. The crew needed a display of how good it was to be one of Mercy’s Pirates. Now all he needed was a little luck.

Mercy thought back to his earlier life, remembering the luck that had gotten him to where he was. What was life but luck? At the age of fifteen, he had stabbed one of his mother’s lovers and run away from his mother and younger brother, a stowaway outbound from Portsmouth on the good ship HMS Justice. The whole voyage he remained undiscovered, his only friend his knife, the instrument of his first kill. It began to speak to him as the days wore into weeks, and the weeks wore on into months. The knife told him strong and righteous he was, and how he deserved so much form life. He sat staring at its cool, silver-black blade for hours; he remembered asking it question after question, asking it why his mother’s lovers had beat him, why he never had enough to eat, why he always had to run, and on and on forever. The knife reassured him in the softest tones that all would be well. All he had to do was take what was rightfully his. And so he did.

After the Justice made landfall and Mercy escaped from the confines of its hold, he found himself in a marketplace, assailed by strange sights and sounds. His clearest recollection from his first arrival in the Caribbean was the corpse of a man, all the evidence of a rough life and rougher death redolent on his body, lying neglected on the sandy beach. He smiled as he remembered how he checked the corpse’s pockets for money. Finding none, he had noticed how unusually thick the soles of the dead man’s boots were and pried them apart. There he found a considerable trove of gold pieces; there was enough to keep him fed for a year, at least.

Mercy was not a God-fearing man, and so he assumed that God must fear him because of his miraculous and never-ending font of good fortune. When he was eighteen, he inherited a brace of ornate silver-embossed pistols from a man he killed. After that, and many dead men later, he found himself in command of his very own vessel, which he had named for his protector, his knife. He didn’t care how many died, Mercy was going to get what he wanted, and he wanted to be the most black-hearted pirate ever to prowl the seas.

Her captain knelt at Mercy’s feet, his eyes lowered to the deck. In his moment of absolute triumph, Mercy felt like God himself, wrathful and omnipotent. Moments like these were what he had been working toward his whole life. He put his knife to the other captain’s chin and raised his head with the blade. Mercy had his speech ready to go; he had rehearsed it in his head a thousand times. He was looking forward to humiliating this man and then feeding him to the sharks that always hovered about the Lady Knife. Mercy had never considered himself a cultured man, but this was a form of theater in which he indulged.

As he raised the man’s eyes to meet his own, however, he felt a shock like a bolt of ice to heart. The eyes he was staring into were his own. But no mirror had been raised between the two men; no trick was played by the light. They were his eyes—his brother’s eyes. The cold hand of panic grabbed hold of his stomach and he staggered backwards a few steps. Then he remembered his audience. Mercy turned and glanced at his crew. Many countenances were stupefied, some looked suspicious; all expected Mercy to be his usual merciless self.

Mercy fished for words. His speech, full of vitriol and invective, was enirely forgotten. Never had he been so affected in his life. Throughout countless years of bloodshed, the life of the man kneeling before him was one that his knife told him he could not take. His arm, a lead weight, steadfastly refused to draw a weapon and his remaining good leg refused to kick the man contemptuously to the deck.

But no! Such hesitation would be the end of him, as his crew would take him as weak and immediately become mutinous. The crew of pirates now paralleled the sharks that dogged the Lady Knife, and their captain’s paralysis was a spreading red stain of blood in the water. Though Mercy knew this, he was overcome by the moment. He had killed that lover of his mother’s all those years ago because the man had beaten his brother almost to death. On a small island of which only Captain Mercy knew the location there was a stash of gold from years spent at a pirate’s work that he intended to one day share with his brother, this beaten man before him.

Suddenly, Mercy felt something grip his shoulder. He spun around, but there was nobody there. It happened again, and Mercy spun again and drew his pistol. Yet, again, there was nobody in front of him. Horror spread across his face as the sheen of blood coats the floor beneath the victim of a stabbing. He kept turning one way and the other, trying to confront the specter of Davy Jones that was so instantly taunting him. If fate were going to be so cruel, he would fight fate. If God were going to give him a choice between his life and his brother’s, he would fight God. And then there was just blackness for Mercy, as the new captain of the Lady Knife smashed open his skull with a large wooden plank and watched Mercy’s broken body crumple to the ground. Luck of the draw. The crew then turned their attention to Mercy’s brother.

Minor Presentation Notes

2007-02-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

Small Presentation Write-Up: The Laocoon and the Belvedere Apollo

The Laocoon and Belvedere Apollo are both marble statues that now reside in the Vatican Museums, but more importantly, they both provided paragons of art, meaning pieces by which to measure others. They fulfilled this very important role due to the nature of Renaissance thought, in which everything modern was judged by, and often attempted to conform to, the standards of the ancients.

The Laocoon was rediscovered for the last time on January 14, 1506 in a farmer’s field on the Esquiline Hill near Santa Maria Magiore. The discovery sent shockwaves through Rome because the figure and its high quality of workmanship were immediately recognizable. Pliny the Elder’s account of the mammoth statue ties it to classical Rome, and he identifies its sculptors are the three Rhodesian masters of the Hellenistic era Hagesandros, Polydoros, and Athenodoros. Further, the statue was unearthed with the only major missing pieces being the right arms of the three figures. Its condition was, therefore, considered almost pristine.

Its size, historical legacy, and condition are not its only features. The subject matter, the Trojan prophet Laocoon’s divine punishment for the famous warning against Greeks with gifts, is especially enthralling. J.J. Winckelmann, often cited as the father of the field of art history, said that especially riveting is “the inevitable mental conflict that arises when one admires the beauty of the Laocoon, but is at the same time painfully aware that the sculpture portrays the final, painful moments of a man who has failed to save his own life and that of his own children.”

This helps to explain the Laocoon’s broad influence on artists from Venetian master painter Titian, in his Crowning with Thorns in the sixteenth century, to Theodore Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa in the nineteenth century, and beyond. These two merely provide several concrete examples. It would not be ridiculous to make the audacious claim that Laocoon has influenced a larger body of work than any other single piece of art in history.

The Laocoon’s form, however, has not been a constant since its sixteenth-century rediscovery. There has been long debate over the correct form for the main figure’s right arm. The Renaissance culture that rediscovered the Laocoon felt the need not only to emulate classical forms in their art, but also to “fix” rediscovered classical pieces. This attitude is the origin of not only a multitude of Renaissance marble noses affixed to ancient busts, but also the outstretched arm that the Laocoon bore until the mid twentieth century. This outstretched arm, ironically, was the form that influenced all the artists, but most experts now agree that a recently discovered arm, fully bent back behind the head in a traditional pose of defeat, death or sleep, is that which the figure originally possessed.

The Belvedere Apollo was a “paragon” in the Renaissance art world because it was considered by many experts of the time to epitomize of the ideals of classical antiquity that the Renaissance wanted to recall and emulate. It was a Roman copy of the fourth century BC Greek original, most likely a bronze by Leochares. It was discovered in the quattrocento (fifteenth century) and came to Belvedere Courtyard, from which it takes its name, in 1511. Pope Julius II had it relocated to the Vatican as part of his personal collection.

In his right hand there was initially a laurel bough, symbolizing his healing powers and in his left there was his golden bow. It is in motion, contrary to static, medieval portraiture. It influenced many other works of art including Michelangelo's David and Creation of Adam.

It also shows an interesting trend in the history of Christianity and its relation to art. In the early Middle Ages, pagan images were seen as demonic. For example, the African Christian theologian Arnobius (writing during Diocletian’s reign in the late third century AD) contended that giving human form to stone, metal, other “base” materials is heretical; also, he said that evil inhabits pagan statues. By the reign of Pope Julius II, known as “The Warrior Pope,” the papacy tended to be more concerned with secular power plays than the great hereafter.

Ancient art came to be appreciated purely as “art,” and the common people came to be awed by its beauty rather than to despise it as pagan propaganda. Also, by the time of Julius II, it was being used to aggrandize the papacy by giving it a strong connection to Roman history. The Papacy preserved the art “for the people,” which was to be taken as an act of generosity. This is why the Apollo is a part of Julius II’s Belvedere Courtyard; at the time it was no longer seen as demonic and it served to enhance the prestige of the papacy and aggrandize Julius II.

CW 5 Reading Journal

2007-02-01T04:09:00.000-08:00

CW 5 Reading Journal

Dorothea: Dutiful, overwhelmed, religious, rebel, confused

“Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither” (183).

Dorothea feels trapped in her marriage; she feels as if her expectations for her life with her husband are shattered.

Mr. Casaubon: Ruminant, unchangeable, inaccessible, encyclopedic, embalmment

“He had not found marriage a rapturous state, but he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachable husband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she deserved to be” (187).

Mr. Casaubon does not have enough devotion in him for both his studies and his wife; rather, in life outside his studies, he is inoffensive to the point of inducing nausea in those around him.

Will Ladislaw: Hesitant, sunny, uncertain, agreeable, broad.

“Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation” (198).

Will had a talent for engaging people in agreeable conversation.

In “On Realism,” Eliot says that some of the author’s most important responsibilities are to be realistic (to write things as they are and allow the reader to draw his own conclusions) and to portray the way that characters would truly act. Nobody is perfect. She thinks that novels can be set in a mundane locale or situation, because the real story is in the interactions and emotions of the characters. Also, human feeling and emotion should play large roles in the story, because Eliot says beauty lies in emotion. I think she does practice what she preaches in Middlemarch, because the characters all have flaws and incongruities, and none of them represent a paragon of humanity by any stretch of the imagination. They all interact with each other and the story is created without the introduction of an outside dilemma or conflict, such as the popular motif of setting a story in a war so that characters may react to it and move the story forward externally. I find that, often, in the absence of a clearly delineated plot with external elements that characters must react to, I tire of a novel quickly. This seems to be a danger redolent in this “realist” style of writing.

CW4 Writing Journal

2007-01-28T08:46:00.001-08:00

What did you learn from writing this piece?

I actually can’t think of anything I learned from this assignment. It was essentially the same as the last assignment, and the use of first person voice was not challenging. If I were a perfect writer, I would find some way to challenge myself and keep it interesting. As it stands, though, I am not a perfect writer, and I found this assignment as uninteresting as it was easy to write.

CW4 First Person Fable

2007-01-28T08:45:00.001-08:00

The Bug Problem

The days were definitely getting shorter. There was no arguing with it at this point. I found myself wondering where my summer had gone. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the tail end of it, either, with those last few long, warm days. I was going to have to do something about that colony of termites that had moved in and apparently thought it was their God-given duty to demolish my front steps. I had just discovered the little pests the previous day, and I was eager to get rid of them before the did some serious damage to my already-rickety steps.

Never having dealt with a bug problem before, I decided that I should call someone who had. I picked up the phone and called my dad, who I remembered distantly had gotten rid of an infestation of ants in the basement of the house we were living in when I was young. Upon my explaining what the matter was, he said he’d come right over and show me what to do.

It was not long before my dad’s silver Prius pulled up to the curb outside my house. He got out carrying, surprisingly enough, a full bottle of red wine vinegar. I was a little bit surprised, considering that I’d heard that termites feed on a substance chemically similar to vinegar that comes from decaying plant matter. I asked my dad if he really knew what he was doing, but he told me not to worry, and that bugs hate vinegar more than anything. Before I had a chance to protest further, he began to douse my steps with vinegar. When he was done, he told me confidently that those little buggers shouldn’t be bothering me for too much longer. As the Prius drove off, I remained incredulous.

It turned out that I was incredulous with good reason. Several days later, there were more termites than ever, and, worse, I couldn’t seem to get the cloying smell of vinegar out of my front steps. The termites were still there, I didn’t have the cash to blow on a professional, and so I’d have to do it myself.

Termites prefer softer foods than wood, if they can get them, and so I soaked some cardboard boxes in water and put them near my front steps. It seemed to be working great, for a while, and the termites began to gravitate toward the cardboard. But over the course of the next few days, I realized that my efforts were actually entirely counterproductive. Indeed, the extra food I’d put out just served to increase their population, and many remained working on my front steps. With these increased populations, my problem was worse than ever. I’d have to figure out something else to do, and fast!

Just then, Isaac, one of my housemates, came back and noticed me paying such attention to the front steps. When I told him about the termite problem, he immediately had an answer. Termites will do anything to avoid intense heat, and so all I had to do was make it too hot for them under the front steps of my house. We went and got the BBQ grill, pushed it into the tiny crawlspace under the front steps, and lit it up. The termites appeared agitated, but didn’t flee en masse as I’d hoped.

Just then, I heard a loud crack and was startled to find that the heat had cracked the wood of the steps. With that, the steps and the termites attached to them fell to their fiery demise in the lit BBQ grill. Many thoughts crossed my mind; I had committed genocide against a termite civilization. I didn’t feel as morally reprehensible as I should have, though—there was no time to lament for my worthy, insectoid foes. I was going to need some new front steps. My predicament after this third attempt to remove the termites was the worst of all. The termites were gone, but so were the steps I was initially trying to preserve. A whiff of vinegar drifted tauntingly to my nostrils as my steps burned.

Isaac turned to me and said, simply, “oops.” I agreed.

“Let’s go build some stairs,” I said.

CW4 Reading Journal

2007-01-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

CW4 Reading Journal

How do the two authors portray themselves differently in their autobiographical works? Which one is more conscious of the reader’s presence (wants to make a particular impression on audience)? Why do you say this? Which author is more convincing or believable? Why?

Both authors reflect on their early lives in the passages we read, but Aciman seems to want his voice to come through to a much greater extent, whereas Cellini seems focused on simply relaying his interpretation of past events. This is party due to the distance in time that separates the two, but also due to the differing goals of the pieces. Both authors are conscious of the reader’s presence, I think, because Cellini’s goal is portray his history in a noble light and Aciman’s is to create a powerful and personal piece of travel writing. I think that Aciman is more conscious of the reader’s presence, though, because he seeks to evoke certain feelings and sympathies from his readers. For example, he wants his reader to be in the moment with his disappointment when he cannot live in the rich apartment. I think that Aciman’s tone was more believable, because Cellini was concerned with leaving a legacy, and maybe he was therefore more prone to exaggeration.

CW3 - Writing Journal

2007-01-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

What process did you use to select and narrow down anecdotes to use in your piece? Is your Resolution positive or negative? What is the Moral? Do you think your Reversal comes off successfully; does it “surprise” the reader? Why or why not? Did you return to Machiavelli’s fable as an example and point of reference while you constructed your piece? What was the most challenging part of the assignment? Do you feel better prepared to construct your next story after having done this assignment? Why or why not?

I did not really use a process, the anecdotes came to me as "natural" developments in the plot. I think it helped me, on that front, be have already decided that my fable was going to be constructed with a "surfer" theme. My resolution is positive; it's a "happy ending." There are a few morals in my piece. The explicit moral is that you should surf till you die--or, rather, interpreted more loosely, that you should do whatever you're passionate about. There is also another aspect to the moral in that the main character had to discover his truth for himself, and he wouldn't have believed it if someone had told him. I do think my reversal(s) come off successfully, and I think they surprise the reader. I think this happens because, the way the interactions are set up in my story, one does not necessarily expect the sudden violence, and violence is the most shocking form of interaction. I believe that it grabs the reader's attention. I did not return to Machiavelli's fable while I was writing because I can't stand to be interrupted when I write, but I did bear key elements from it in mind during my creative process. The most challenging part of the assignment was replicating two fully fleshed-out repetitions of the fable format in three pages; indeed, this was so challenging that I failed to observe the page limit. I felt that it was impossible to construct an interesting and complete story, while still following the stipulations of the fable format, in just three pages. I don't necessarily feel better prepared to construct my next story after doing this assignment. I do, however, feel more comfortable writing to a set format, and I suppose this skill will be important in future writing assignments.

Major Presentation Paper

2007-01-20T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Ara Pacis Augustae

By the late first century B.C., Augustus and the ruling Roman elite were intensely conscious of Rome’s position as heir and administrator of the Greek legacy in all its cultural, political, and economic ramifications. But they were also committed to the belief that the Roman state could meet the imperial challenge only by renewing and revitalizing popular belief in the national mores and institutions which had been progressively eroded by the decades of military and political strife, social unrest, and cultural confrontation endemic to the Late Republic (Castriota 3).

In general terms, precisely this harkening back to a golden age of peace and plenty is the cultural story that was both perpetuated by and gave rise to the Ara Pacis Augustae. It is a perfect example of, as dictated by the fashion of the time, the use of traditionally Greek forms to promulgate a new distinctly Roman ethos, specifically one legitimizing the position of the new emperor (Castriota 4). The original site of the Ara Pacis Augustae was consecrated on July 4, 13 B.C., shortly after Augustus’ return to Rome after successful campaigns in Gaul and Spain, and the completed monument itself was finally dedicated on his wife’s birthday, January 30, in the year 9 B.C. (Conlin 3). Because the leitmotif of his reign was peace, Augustus often chose to have his image and his monuments associated with peacetime scenes of myth and life, and such is the case with the Ara Pacis. Thus, the Ara Pacis, though it may have nothing to do with war, conflict, or the traditional form in which we may envision “propaganda,” is still a deliberate piece of propaganda in that it represents a bold statement of the sweeping reinvigoration of Roman society that Augustus hoped to accomplish with his reign. As a final introductory caveat, the Ara Pacis we know today was reconstructed in 1938, but the original was “probably identical”¹ with the richly carved Augustan altar that bears its name today” (Janson 143).

Architecturally, the Ara Pacis is in keeping with more general, traditional Greek altar design, of which first century BC Romans saw themselves as caretakers and inheritors. However, the only known structure closely resembling it is the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, a Hellenic-period Greek kingdom near the coast of modern-day Turkey (Janson 144). In this manner it was somewhat nontraditional. There were differences in the construction of the building and the size of the altar, but “none of these disparities affects the fundamental typological identity of both monuments” (Castriota 35), and thus the monument was in keeping with the Greek tradition, though it has no parallel in Greece proper.

Above: Altar of Zeus – Pergamon (now in Berlin) Below: Ara Pacis Augustae - Rome

The Ara Pacis is about 6.1 meters tall, and 11.63 by 10.52 meters at its base (ARA PACIS). It is constructed entirely of gorgeous white marble, and enhancing its beauty are the intricate friezes about its surfaces. “The Ara Pacis consist of two main components: the altar proper, which rests on a high, U-shaped base approached by four marble steps on the west face; and a precinct wall that surrounds the altar” (Conlin 4). It currently stands in Rome, on the spot to which Mussolini relocated it as part of his “Roman theme park,” under the shelter of a controversial new building by American architect Richard Meier. The controversy arises both from the building’s post-modern design and from a faction of Italians that believe a project of such import to Italian history and heritage should be given to an Italian architect (Seabrook 56). Interestingly, when the Ara Pacis originally stood on the edge of the Campus Martius, the altar was oriented so that the individual making the sacrifice had to turn his back to the Campus Martius—and, by implication, the God presiding over that field—thus dedicating his full attention to pursuits of peace (Freibergs 7). However, more important than the monument’s physical characteristics is the meaning of the carvings.

The Ara Pacis has two main friezes on its outer precinct walls and four smaller ones on the smaller corner wall surfaces, as labeled below, as well as intricate

adornment on the altar itself and inside the precinct walls.

The Tellus relief provides an interesting place to start, as its meaning has long been in contention in scholarly circles. In the frieze, there is a representation of an Earth Mother figure surrounded by images of abundance, such as stalks of wheat, fruit, a cow, a sheep and poppies. This figure’s identification has proven to be difficult due to a glut of symbols in the relief that are traditionally associated with various goddesses. The figure has been tagged not only as a broad range of Greco-Roman fertility goddesses including Tellus, Venus, or Ceres, but also as peace herself: Pax (Castriota 66). There are also two infants on the figure’s lap. Instantly, Romulus and Remus spring to mind, though they have no characteristics that make certain identification possible. There are also two wind deities, velificantes, representing the land and sea winds that breathe life into the farmland of the Roman Empire (Casstriota 70). Regardless of ambiguities, the Tellus frieze sends a powerful message forecasting the peace and plenty that Roman citizens will enjoy in the Pax Augustae.

There is, however, further meaning in the difficulty scholars have had in determining the exact identity of the Tellus figure. Castriota writes that the “mixed iconography could reflect the religious syncretism” (71), indicating that the frieze is meant to show the concordance of the major earth goddesses. He goes on to argue that this agreement among these goddesses is, elsewhere in Greco-Roman art, an indication of peace—indeed, without the goddesses in agreement no peace is possible. With this intentional ambiguity in the identification of the Tellus figure, the observer is called upon to see all of the goddesses in harmony, and to make the conclusion that they, cooperatively, endorse Augustus’ reign and mean to reign their blessings down upon it.

Diagonally across the monument from the Tellus frieze is the Romulus and Remus relief. In this scene, the god Mars watches over his offspring, Romulus and Remus, as they are being suckled by the she-wolf. This depiction of the Roman foundation myth serves to remind the viewer of a return to the roots of Roman society, and especially a revival of morality that Augustus is trying to accomplish. Furthermore, the scene is propagandistic in that “contemporaries… would have been reminded that Augustus renewed the Lupercalia” (Freibergs 9). The Lupercalia was the Roman festival of fertility on the date of the modern Valentine’s Day, and so revitalizing its celebration would have been seen as a step in the trend toward rediscovering a glorious past.

Looking to one’s right facing the front of the monument, one finds the frieze traditionally credited as Aeneas. The identification of this frieze has recently been challenged in scholarly circles. The new theory states that the frieze may actually have been meant to be taken as a representation of Numa Pompilius and not Aeneas. If this is the case, then there is a great deal of added propagandistic significance in the frieze. If we are to assume that this frieze represents Aeneas, then several incongruities with other portrayals of the scene arise. He appears bizarrely barefoot, middle-aged, wearing an archaic-era Italian toga, with a full beard and long, free hair, offering a sacrifice. The customary depiction of Aeneas, though, is a young, armored man full of valor, most often beardless. Further, in the Aeneid myth, Aeneas offered sacrifice when he arrived in Italy to fulfill the terms of a prophecy, yet this figure is obviously later in life than the traditional representation of Aeneas at his arrival (Rehak 196).

Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, was known for the era of peace, order, and law his subjects enjoyed under his reign. The figure’s barefoot state and his garment suggest the sculptors aimed to portray a simpler age than the early first century A.D., and the sacrificial content of the scene has relevance in that Numa is said to have offered sacrifice to Mars to avert war with the Sabines in the Campus Martius, the original site of the Ara Pacis (Rehak 196). This interpretation provides a strong link between the Ara Pacis’ purpose (to commemorate Augustus as a Prince of Peace) and the contention that the panel represents Numa, not Aeneas. Furthermore, the depiction of Numa in such a “fatherly” light suggests that the mantle and responsibility of a preserving peace in Rome was being “handed down” from Numa to Augustus (Rehak 197).

Another interpretation of this frieze is that the Numa/Aeneas figure is portrayed ambiguously on purpose, with the intention of conjuring up in the mind of the viewer the virtuous qualities of both men. This explains several incongruities in the interpretation of the scene as Numa, as opposed to Aeneas. For example, it explains the appearance of the Penates, a shrine to the Trojan household gods that Aeneas purportedly saved from the sack of Troy, in the frieze. It also explains why another figure in the frieze bears many visual cues characteristic of depictions of Aeneas’ son, Ascanius. This interpretation of the frieze as intentionally ambiguous seems to allow the viewer the best of both worlds—both the visage of Aeneas, with its message of the infusion of dignity and morality from the Trojan tradition and the image of Numa, with his mantle of peace.

If the Numa/Aeneas panel represents responsibility being handed down to Augustus, then the grand procession frieze on both sides of the building that depicts the Emperor Augustus taking up that mantle and leading the Roman people into a new era of peace. Though only 308 of 611 figures in the procession scene can be attributed to the original Ara Pacis due to reworking of the marble both before and after the procession friezes were discovered in the sixteenth century (Conlin 46), there is no disagreement in the scholarship that the original scene bore a resemblance to one we see today. Fortunately for the purposes of this paper, the changes to the scene do not undermine the propagandistic nature of the procession panels.

In order to understand the procession panels of the Ara Pacis, a review of the Augustan agenda is first necessary. This paper has already discussed Augustus’ wish to be portrayed in a peaceful setting and his harkening back to a “golden age” of morality, but there is also another key aspect of Augustus’ social program, his focus on strengthening the Roman (especially middle-class and patrician) family. “In particular, it was necessary to encourage marriage among the upper classes to check a falling birth rate” (Brunt 46). Thus arose the Leges Juliae de maritandis ordinibus and De Adulteriis, “Julian Laws on the Marriage of the Orders” and “On Adultery.” These laws created economic incentives for married couples, especially those with three or more children and punished those who were unmarried and adulterers (Brunt 47).

It is fitting, then, for this focus to be reflected in Augustus’ propaganda, and indeed it is. One notices in the processional friezes of the Ara Pacis the abundance of depictions of children. In contrast, statues and carvings featuring children are noticeably rare elsewhere in Late Republican and Early Imperial art; yet on these friezes, they accompany their elders to the sacrifice in great numbers. This sends a clear message that Augustus’ new regime values children and wants the Roman citizenry to use the new age of Augustan peace to reproduce and spread Roman culture and morality.

Another interesting thing about the procession panels is that they provide an example of a theme in this paper: the appropriation of Hellenic forms and their synthesis into subtly new Roman ones. Though the portraiture shows influence from the Hellenic style, there is a key difference from the traditional Greek form. Whereas the Greeks always portrayed mythical scenes as allegorical representations of real events (Janson 142), the Roman figures in the procession are clearly meant to be recognizable individuals. Augustus himself, in the dress of a sacrificial priest and his chief general, Agrippa, are a few of those identifiable (Janson 143).

Diagonally across the Ara Pacis from the Aeneas/Numa frieze one finds the depiction of Roma. Though the frieze is mostly missing from the Ara Pacis, scholars know what the scene would have looked like from a copy of the Ara Pacis elsewhere in the Empire. The figure in depicted is a female warrior at rest atop her armor, which bears the crest of Rome. This has led scholars to believe that the figure is an embodiment of the city of Rome herself. She is at rest—enjoying the Pax Augustae—but also vigilant and watchful (Freibergs 11).

A particularly interesting part of the Ara Pacis’ sculpture is the under-discussed “floral friezes.” These have been neglected by many scholars, and even at times dismissed as mere decoration, but this is certainly not the case. The strangeness of the floral friezes lies in the fact that they are full of traditional Greek Dionysian symbols, such as six large grape vines and no fewer than ten sprigs of ivy, though Augustus’ divine patron was Apollo all throughout his career (Castriota 88).

It is especially fascinating that Augustus would adorn his Ara Pacis with such a plethora of Dionysian symbols in light of the fact that his goal of establishing a new Roman Empire under his stewardship came under threat so many time from men claiming Dionysus as their patron and from Dionysian propaganda. For example, at the end of the era of the Second Triumvirate, when Augustus (still Octavian at the time) fought Antony for control of the Roman domain, Antony had associated himself strongly with Dionysus, calling the God his “special protector” (Castriota 88). Further, if the historical record is to believed, Antony was himself Dionysian in character, and Octavian’s propaganda sought to make him, and his Hellenic ethics look morally bankrupt—an easy task when contrasted with Octavian’s staunch, Roman conception of order and his association with Apollo, a God of moderation (Castriota 89). Therefore, Octavian’s famous victory at Actium was meant to be seen as “a moral and cultural victory in which a new order founded on Western, Italian excellence triumphed over the decadent, Hellenic east” (Castriota 89).

The appealing image of Dionysus was also used against Rome by many other parties, including Mithridates VI, the charismatic New Dionysos King of Pontos in the early first century B.C., who sought to break Rome’s power in the east. Further, during the Social War in late Republican times, a coalition of Italian states allied against the Roman hegemon attempted to use the broad plebeian appeal of Dionysian, utopian propaganda to incite riots and uprising among Roman citizens (Castriota 90-1).

Given this history of Dionysian elements in society being so antithetical to Augusts’ vision for his ordered, Italic empire, why was Augustus so eager to adorn his monument with the traditional Greek symbols of Dionysus? The answer is that, by integrating Dionysus into the art of the new regime, Augusts sent the message that the God was a supporter of the new power structure, effectively dismantling and subverting his opponent’s propaganda. By appropriating the symbols of Rome’s enemies, Augustus was essentially engaging in a brilliant campaign of counter-propaganda. This fits with the theme of the assimilation of traditional Greek symbols into a new Roman ethos. The Dionysian symbols may have been Greek in form, but in light of the times they were quintessentially Roman.

The Ara Pacis represents a seminal work in the history of Augustan propaganda; this paper has discussed the friezes and how they each support and legitimize Augustus and the Pax Augustae. A central theme of this discussion has been Augustus’ attempt to cast his regime as the revitalization of Roman order, culture, and morality. The ways by which he accomplished this were numerous; this paper has discussed several. He synthesized accepted, traditional Greek art and architectural forms into a subtly distinct Roman style for his new regime, and this gave it a special legitimacy through an invocation of the weight of history. Further, he portrayed himself as the bringer of peace and plenty to a Roman citizenry accustomed to war and conflict. Finally, he assimilated the propaganda of Rome’s enemies, thereby turning it to his own utility. In all, the Ara Pacis is an essential piece of the legacy left by one of history’s first propagandists.

Bibliography.

“ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE.” NZACT, Classics New Zeland. http://www.clas.canterbury.ac.nz/nzact/arapacis.htm. 12/2/2006

Brunt, P.A. and J. M. Moore (editors). Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievments of the Divine Augustus. Oxford University Press, 1967.

Castriota, David. The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1995.

Conlin, Diane Atnally. The Artists of the Ara Pacis: The Process of Hellenization in Roman Relief Sculpture. The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Janson, H. W. History of Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Ney York, 1971.

Freibergs, G. et al. “Indo-European Tripartition and the Ara Pacis Augustae: An Excursus in Ideological Archaeology.” Numen 1986, Vol. 33, pp. 3-32.

Rehak, Paul. “Aeneas or Numa? Rethinking the Meaning of the Ara Pacis Augustae.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 2. (Jun., 2001), pp. 190-208.

Seabrook, John. “Roman renovation.” The New Yorker 2005, Vol. 81, no. 11, 2 May, pp. 56-63.

Notes:

1. “Identical…” Sic: later sources disprove this contention, eg. Conlin 46, see but the gist of the text—that the original Ara Pacis probably looked very similar—is certainly true and supported elsewhere in the literature.

CW3 - Fable

2007-01-20T05:06:00.001-08:00

CW 3 - Fable

The Tale of Greg

Once upon a time, there was a surfer dude named Greg. Greg liked to catch the sweetest waves that washed upon the sandy, chick-adorned beaches of San Diego, California. Day in and day out, Greg would rally his noble band of Dudes at the local surf shop and meander on down to the beach to begin a valiant day of surfing in the azure waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Idyllic as such a life may seem, Greg had something of a cerebral bent and, in his mid twenties, began to wonder if surfing was really all that life held. At first he dismissed these thoughts, reassuring himself that surfing with the Dudes and sometimes getting with the fine chicks that populated the beaches was surely his purpose in life. But as the years wore on, he began to wonder ever increasingly if there could possibly be something more to it.
Thusly, he consulted with his Dudes. One Dude said to him that, “Dude, you, like, have to go for it, man. If there’s this weird and special thing called life, dude, you have to just grab it, you know, or it could, like, get away, and you would, like, never notice it was gone, man.” Another Dude, speaking from experience, said that Greg must surf forever, until he is, like, dead.
Then the wisest of all the Dudes raised his voice above the hubbub of seagulls and said unto Greg, “Dude, let me lay something out there, okay? So, the only way that you’re, like, going to find yourself, man, is if you go out from amongst us Dudes and, like, discover the meaning of life. It won’t be easy, dude. There might be some, like, totally not rad stuff along the way, but in the end, I think you will discover what you seek, and what it means to be, like, one of the surfer Dudes.” After these words were said, each Dude lowered his head and let his sandy blond curls hang down as he contemplated the utter beauty and truth in the soliloquy. After a pause, each Dude agreed that the advice was most rad, and that Greg should be sent on an excellent adventure to discover the meaning of life.
And so Greg put on his Birkenstocks and set out from the beach to discover the truest of all truths. He had not journeyed far when suddenly he found the opportunity he was looking for. A respectable-looking Man in a business suit stepped out of his expensive Mercedes-Benz, and Greg hastened to ask him the meaning of life. For surely, if anyone knew it, this Man who had made so much money and was so successful would. And so, Greg asked The Man, trying to stem the tide of “dudes” and “rads” that flowed so readily from his lips in his normal discourse.
When Greg was finished, the suit-bedecked Man thought to himself that perhaps this dirty hippy was attempting to get a job. After all, one’s life is only worth the money one can make in it. Therefore, as cunning entrepreneur, the Man said unto Greg that, given the proper suit, there may be a job suited to Greg in the Man’s suite of suit-suited sycophants (also known as a law firm). Thusly, Greg donned a suit and began to work as a clerk, who would never shirk, for a jerk who wouldn’t let him wear his Birk (enstocks) at work.
After five hours and seventeen minutes of his first day on the job, Greg knew that working as a clerk for a jerk was totally not rad. He quit, took off the suit, and left. Out on the street again and once more wearing his trusty Birkenstocks, Greg soon came upon another opportunity to discover the truth in life. He came upon a man sitting, smiling beamingly, on a park bench. This man was surely the happiest man in the world, and as such, Greg assumed that he knew the meaning of life and wasted no time in asking him what it was. The man paused and then said unto Greg that he burned down buildings, and that’s why he was so happy. This took Greg rather aback, but if the meaning of life was to burn down buildings, then Greg was willing to give it a try. The man on the park bench then gave Greg a lighter and told him to go have fun.
So Greg wandered off, looking for something to burn down. He soon came upon an abandoned building and, using his new lighter, set fire to it. It burned brightly for a very long time, but Greg did not feel fulfilled or happy, though the fire was pretty and warm. He was about to leave and report his disagreement to the dude in the park, when police cars came in from all sides. It donned on him that he had committed arson, so he should probably run away. The police did not catch Greg, but they managed to get a good look at the lighter he had used to burn down the building.
As Greg ran, he came across a person who looked like a Dude. He was confused by the fact that this Dude wasn’t at the beach catching sweet waves; after all, the Dude did have long, curly, blond hair, and was wearing Birkenstocks. Then, in a flash of insight, Greg thought to himself that this must be a Dude who left the beaches. As such, he must have discovered the meaning of life. Greg became ecstatically excited and stopped running to talk to this Dude; this was his best chance yet to discover the Truth of truths!
Greg said unto the Dude, “Dude, I’m looking for the meaning of, like, life, and I thought you might know.” The Dude looked at Greg rather vacantly and then spoke. He told Greg that his name was Dave, and that he had left the beaches and his noble band of Dudes to become a Stoner. It wasn’t really working out for Dave, though. He was addicted to, like, six different kinds of drugs and had no money and no friends. Such being the case, he informed Greg that he would be knocking him out and robbing him, which he did with such a surprising alacrity that Greg was unable to react. Dave stole all forty-three of Greg’s surfing dollars, his lucky key chain, his toe ring, and the lighter that the man on the park bench had given him. Greg was left unconscious next to a rather stinky dumpster. The last words Greg heard before he lost consciousness were “you should have just kept surfing, dude.”
Dave then walked off, trying to decide what drug he should spend his new-found money on. Suddenly, the police, who were already looking for him, descended from all sides and caught him. They then offered him a deal in which he could go free if he ratted out three dealers from whom he had bought drugs. This pleased Dave immensely and he agreed.
Dave led the police immediately to the house of a small-time dealer he had bought drugs from, for it was not far away. The police found drugs in the house and arrested the man without much trouble. Next, Dave ratted out a bigger dealer. This man was responsible for dealing drugs to a whole neighborhood of San Diego. The police surrounded his house and, luckily, took him unawares and nobody was injured during his arrest. Finally, Dave was going to lead them to the house of the biggest dealer in all of San Diego. He had some doubts about this, for if this last dealer ever knew it was Dave that had ratted him out, Dave would surely be done for. But the police said that Dave couldn’t go free unless he gave them the biggest dealer in all of San Diego, so he once more agreed. The police gave Dave a funny fake moustache and a pair of sunglasses, so as to make him unrecognizable, and they set off to the house of the biggest drug dealer in San Diego.
When they arrived, the big dealer, who was very cautious, noticed the police sneaking up around his house and tried to escape in his car. A car chase that can only be described as totally rad ensued. Eventually, the police apprehended the big dealer and Dave, glad for his disguise, identified the man positively as The Big Dealer. Once this was accomplished, Dave had earned his freedom. He felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders. Little did these silly pigs know that he was just going to go back to lifestyle using drugs and spitting contemptuously on public buildings.
Just as the gates to freedom opened before Dave, a police man asked him to turn out his pockets to make sure he was clean of drugs. Dave of course obliged, knowing that he had nothing incriminating on him, and so out came the forty-three dollars, the lucky key chain, the toe ring, and the lighter. When the police man saw the lighter, a puzzled expression came over his face, which then turned into a frown of disgust. He called his partner over and they conferred for a moment, coming to the decision that this lighter was certainly the very same one that had been used to commit arson earlier that very same day! And thus, Dave, a very unhappy rat, was hauled off to the slammer on the charge of arson.
Meanwhile, Greg awoke with a terrible headache and the last words he had heard, “you should have just kept surfing, dude,” burning in his head. He decided that, though Dave had robbed him, he was probably right about the meaning of life. And so, Greg got back to his feet and returned to the beach where he encountered his noble Dudes once again. When they asked him how his quest to discover the meaning of life had gone, he paused, licked his lips, and spoke.
”Let’s, like, go surfing, dudes, and scope out some fine chicks.”
Greg looked over at the wisest of all the Dudes, who nodded slowly, knowing that Greg had discovered the Truth of all truths in life. It was necessary for Greg to have gone out into the world and discovered it for himself his truth, for he would have been unwilling to accept it if someone had told him. He was going to keep surfing until he was, like, dead. Thus, the Dudes all went surfing together and scoped out the hot chicks as they had always done. Thus, Greg found his truth.

CW3 Reading Journal

2007-01-18T01:51:00.000-08:00

Belfagor, The Devil that Took a Wife

The context is set in the fable as a Renaissance Florence where the norms in the fable are dictated by the norms of the time in Florence. This is my understanding of context; I am not sure of what the standard European “three context elements” are, and the handout did not explain it. Obviously, the “context three” must come before Belfagor’s flight from the city because that is the turning point of the story. That is assuming, of course, that every fable can be pressed into this structure that was certainly constructed after the fables themselves were. The sentence that begins the turning point is, “Rodrigo, on the other hand, seeing a way out of his dilemma and knowing that his infernal powers were limited by his agreement, decided to flee at all costs.” The actions are the possessions that Belfagor commits. I didn’t actually find an explicit moral, stated outright, in the story. I did, however, find a moral right at the very end that Gianmatteo, who knew about moderation in money and women, was a happy man. The reversal of the story is when Belfagor turns against Gianmatteo at the exorcism of the King’s daughter. I thought there was only one reversal. The resolution is when Belfagor goes back down to hell, scared off by Gianmeatteo. The thing I liked most about Machiavelli’s piece was the author’s use of language to convey many complete ideas without being wordy.

CW2 Writing Journal

2007-01-14T06:11:00.000-08:00

Why did you choose the characters you did for your myth? Did you find the employment of metaphor in your piece challenging or natural? How did your choice of point of view from which you told the myth impact the telling of it and what response do you expect your readers to have because of it? Why did you chose to or not to include dialogue between the characters in your piece? What was the most challenging part of this assignment?

I chose the characters for my myth based upon their mythical attributes. My piece didn’t really use metaphor to a great extent. Rather, I chose to use their experiences in modern society to highlight its impersonal and objectifying nature. What metaphor there was, however, came fairly naturally. I’m a very intuitive writer. When I over-think is when I have the most trouble. I chose to write my myth in the third person because it fit with the theme in my story of the characters being more observers than actors. Also, writing in the first person seems to me as if it would trivialize the thoughts expressed by my characters because it would make them one character’s opinion as opposed to a fact stated by an outside narrator. I would hope that writing from a third person point of view might make the reader take the story more seriously and think about the sentiments my characters express. I chose to use dialogue sparingly. The main character, Helen, has the attributes of an observer in my story, and I thought it was more fitting not to have her speak. The assignment, actually, wasn’t “challenging,” per se. Once I picked my characters a storyline fell together in my mind. The portion I spent the most time with was picking the characters, though, so I’d say making a good selection of characters was the most challenging part.

Creative Writing Assignment 2 - Myth

2007-01-14T06:07:00.000-08:00

Brian Spenser
CW 2 - Modern Myth
Characters: Helen of Troy and Jove

Helen handed the customer his bag of groceries. So far, she had been able to hold onto this job—meager though it was—because she had learned to appreciate the work. This appreciation derived not from some Marxian or teleological desire to define herself by her labor, but rather from little idiosyncrasies she noticed made her feel smarter than everyone else. She had never seen anyone buy so much sour cream as the man that just checked out. It was on the order of gallons. The voice in the back of her mind told her to check the clock for the thousandth time. Ten minutes until shift change. No one will notice. Would she care if they did?
Once outside, she lit up a cigarette and started walking back to her shitty little apartment. A dilapidated old car drove by and a guy whistled at her from inside. She got that a lot. She didn’t mind it; that’s just the way the world works. Feeling momentarily philosophical, she let her thoughts wander. She thought about sex, drugs, and the rock’n’roll lifestyle—her life. It’s like a dream to her. She enjoys it passively, as an observer. It’s the kind of dream that she’s glad is just a dream; she would be horrified were she to one day find out that real life is… real. She’s looking forward to waking up one day and proving to herself that the types of things she remembers doing in her dream life could never actually occur on terra firma. Walking home. Somnambulation.
She decided to walk along the old train tracks. A slightly more circuitous route, to be sure, but sometimes there are interesting vagrants or squatters around the tracks to talk to. She felt like making a new friend. What was there to rush home to anyway? She found it a far more worthy endeavor to trade life stories with a stranger. Luckily, there was one such stranger huddled against a telephone pole, grasping a bottle of liquor as if it were the last thing dear to him left in the world.
The man before her would have been classically beautiful in his younger years. He had a strong physique with a prominent nose and stern eyebrows. Even in apparent old age, his face—now brandishing an untidy and forlorn-looking grey-white beard—looks as if it were chiseled out of marble. He hadn’t noticed her yet. She waited, silent, until he raised his head to take a swig of his 40. He did not startle. Rather, they exchanged greetings like old friends. Why should they not? It’s just a dream anyway.
“Do you want to trade life stories?” she asked him.
“Okay.”
So began a beautiful friendship. He began his story first, and started it the way a drugged-out, washed-up rock star would do so.
“My name is Jove,” he slurred. “I was a God once, babe. A real fuckin’ God. You think I’m kidding, but I sat on fuckin’ Mount Olympus hurling thunderbolts.” He paused for effect, miming the motion of casting bolts of electric wrath from the heavens with one drunken arm. “What am I now? I’m drunk and homeless in the middle of fuckin’ Detroit.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, puzzled not by his being a God but rather by his current plight.
“We Gods are only so much as the sum of those who believe in us,” he answered. “I’m down on my luck, I guess. No one who sees me even recognizes me, and I’m the King of all the Gods.” To demonstrate, he wiped his long white hair from his brow and brandished his face at Helen. “See? This face used to mean something. Now he’s got his and you’ve got yours and nobody at all needs me.”
He seemed done for the moment, and so she began her story. Somewhere near the beginning, there was a rather bland Midwestern childhood. She did well if school only to drop out of college, filled with a sense of ennui. A man she dated once told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She already knew this; it was empirically verifiable. Yet what did that matter? Despite all of her various boyfriends, liaisons, acquaintances, etc. she has never been truly loved. And so the face that would have launched a thousand ships in a different time and place, Helen’s face, became just another face among billions, though certainly a remarkably beautiful one.
“There’s just no room for us, is there, babe?” asked Jove. “No room in this fuckin’ horrible, impersonal modern world.”

CW 2 - Journal

2007-01-10T14:04:00.001-08:00

CW 2 - Journal

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the transformations are mainly physical in nature, or from one state to another. For example, Orpheus’ killers are transformed into trees as punishment. In contrast, Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the theme of transformation is expressed not by physical change, but by emphasis of differing parts of a unitary whole. For example, throughout Calvino’s text, the city in question remains Venice, and yet its different aspects give rise to more than fifty entirely different themes, each expressed in a city.
The first similarity I noticed is that both works had strong thematic elements that seemed to turn the stories into teaching tools; perhaps there was a sense of foundation in teaching morality common amongst them. There are also more mundane similarities between the two. For example, they are both written in a poetic voice.

In Ovid’s work, the Gods and humans seem to be at odds much of the time as is characteristic of many other mythological works of the time. For example, when the humans entered the “iron age” and their virtues were forgotten, the Gods flooded the earth and eradicated all but two humans. Despite this, the humans still revere the Gods, showing a theme of piety common in works of the time.

In Ovid’s creation myth, I noticed startling similarities to Judeo-Christian mythology. The images of bringing light out of darkness and order out of chaos are, in fact, common to all early cultures’ myths I’ve heard.

Ovid’s tone is one of a scholar and metropolitan thinker, obviously one who has good standing with the government of Rome in his time. For example, he was writing during the age of Augustus, and in his story about Julius Caesar, he continuously praised the feats of Augustus. This indicates to me that he was trying to curry favor from and remain in the good favor of the powers that be.

The differences in the Demeter and Persephone versions of the myth were subtle. The constructions of the versions were certainly different; one was a more traditional poetic form, whereas the other was more prose. This makes sense in light of the great distance in time and space that separates the two works. It seems to me that Hawthorne’s version of the myth was adapted as a sort of young girls’ primer for the 19th century audience; at least, it was reinterpreted through a thick 19th century morality. In the opening verses of the Homeric version, Persephone was playing in a field and then fell to Hades, whereas in the Hawthorne’s version, her mother, Ceres, admonishes the girl against playing out of her sight. This reflects my point about the reinterpretation of the myth through 19th century sensibilities.

Reflection

2007-01-08T03:34:00.000-08:00

The easiest theme to write about for me was "Organic" because it was a very visual thing. It was easier for me to write to a theme because I work best form a concrete outline. The most difficult part of the assignment was posting it on time. Calvino's use of language, or rather his translator's, did not appeal to me because I prefer to coherent, plot-driven writing. I borrowed from him a ton. The flowery style of writing was interesting to try. Rome does not seem invisible to me. I am able to see it from my window. There are however many aspects to Roman life. If I were to write about Rome, I would choose the theme of food.

CW 1. cities

2007-01-08T01:49:00.001-08:00

My Own Invisible Cities

(1) Theme: Organic
One does not choose to arrive at the city of Vivonia; rather, she draws her chosen visitors in. She is a city of tall stalks curling up towards the sun, their foliage rigid and metallic. She absorbs her nutrients and oxygen through the manhole covers of her sewers, working as the pores, while she exhales the gaseous excess from the smokestacks of her foundry. She meets her lovers as she entices the armies of conquerors onto her soil. Over the years, she calms their passions and ambitions and the conquerors hearts are taken by the charms of the city, where they remain until she tires of them and entices a new, passionate love to ravish her.
But the people of Vivonia know little of their city’s private life. The bulk of the population lives out their lives in robotic monotony. Each morning they lurch and rumble into the city to do their repetitive, automatic work and each evening they leave and return home to ingest some sustenance and make love to their wives. But from even from this there is derived no joy; day in, day out, week upon week life grinds on for the robots of Vivonia, and she feels sorry for them, those who have not the capacity to think, nor love, nor excite, nor see the forest for the trees.
She loves her inhabitants none the less, and tries to make life more interesting for them; indeed sometimes she entices a power transformer station to explode or a fire to char her flesh so as to cause a stir and break the monotony of life for her poor, poor citizens. When they bustle about trying to address the wrongs she feels as if she has made them truly happy. Some call Vivonia a cursed place of foul luck and disasters, but they don’t realize how lucky her citizens really are. Indeed, instead of his usual robotic obligation, the firefighter makes true, passionate love to his wife after the fires are put out.

(2) Theme: City as theater
Act 1. GOLDEN AGE
I visited Swayspeare once in my youth and never had I seen before such a rich, prosperous, and truly just city. The tall, gleaming towers all bore the royal standard with its depiction in white on midnight blue of the Lady Justice—a sight that makes a man proud to reside within the walls of this paradise. The citizenry was content in the knowledge that theirs was a charmed city, where every man, woman, and child were assured of getting what they deserved from life.
Act 2. ENTER USURPER
Not long after the happy time I spent in Swayspeare, the beloved King fell ill—though many whisper of poisoning—and an ill-natured, evil, brute of a man insinuated himself into the machinery of government as a toxic gas might permeate a sealed room. He was an exiled son of the king who had long ago challenged his father’s authority. Now embittered, he returned from across the sea to wreak his idea of justice on Swayspeare. In just a year of his reign, the sacred aura of justice evaporated from the city, leaving the citizens to cheat and be cheated, to take advantage and be taken advantage of, to die. The wealth of the city also took to its heel and fled as traders no longer wanted to come into port at the once gleaning docks of Swayspeare, their banners of Lady Justice tattered and ironic. Meanwhile, the usurper king grew in wealth; never was there enough for his tastes.
Act 3: RESOLUTION
As the year drew to a close, another son of the old king came forward from the people and demanded his brother’s abdication of the throne and exile. In a stunning soliloquy delivered before the city, he moved his brother’s heart and the usurper realized the error of his ways, handing the throne to his brother and leaving the city for good, head bowed in shame. From then on, justice reigned supreme in the city.
Whether these events are real or the dramatic context applied by an observer of a truly conventional economic collapse and rebirth matters little. Each city I have discovered in my travels has a story. Each story has all the elements of a drama. Each drama has only to be transcribed and preformed.

(3) Theme: Timelessness
The city of Allora is happening now. Commerce is taking place in it now. The old are dying and the young are growing right now. This is the way it has always been; Allora is the city without a past or future. Its citizens may make plans for the weeks or years ahead, and they may remember the sights and sounds of yesterday, but what really exists outside of what exists now?
Allora has never stopped, and will never stop. It is impossible to conceive of its proud skyscrapers crumbling, or of a time when its prominent hills weren’t covered in the mansions of the rich. The city that exists now also exists now. And now. And now. There are limitless instances in which the city exists, exactly unchanged.
Its citizens don’t really believe that this is the case, however, their minds cannot grasp the concept of eternity, refuse to believe that when they are dead and gone, it will still be “now,” and that their city lives on, unchanged.

(4) My theme: memory
In the city of Memoria, one finds all those who have lost their way. If a man wanders into the wilderness, he will end up in Memoria. It is not so much an actual city; rather a community of scattered wanderers, hermits, and fugitives united only by their common lack of mission. Though one inhabitant may spend a lifetime wandering through the city and not encounter another citizen, this is only fitting. Memoria is, after all, the city of the lost.
As such, it is the biggest city in the world, stretching to all points in space and time. Its suburbs and ghettos are endless. Here, a community for the dead, there one for the damned, there one for the morally bankrupt. They are all, however, held in Memoria; those who are lost remain in Memoria.
There are no customs agents at its borders. These are all in other words, acting as unknowing immigration officials. The pastor who said the sermon for the dead man—nothing to declare for him. The wife who waved goodbye to the adventurer lost in the mountains. The goldfish in whose tank the cat accidentally drowned herself.
Those who pass by these customs officials have quite the sight waiting for them. In the city of Memoria, they cross the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge, perhaps see a game at the Kigdome. Many go to see the World Trade Center, and marvel how it looks even taller in Memoria. It is the city of the lost.

CW 1

2007-01-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

Name - Calvino’s Description - Theme

Diomira - Golden cock that crows each morning - Finery; timelessness
Isidora - He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city - Ideal
Dorothea - ‘Paths opened before me’ - More than meets the eye
Zaira - The leap of the adulterer - Scandal
Anastasia - the treacherous city - loss of a goal
Tamara - the streets as if they were written pages - false recognition
Zora - forced to remain motionless - inevitable change
Despina - border between two deserts - grass is always greener of the other side
Zirma - redundant - artifice
Isaura - everything that moves… is driven by the lapping wave - dependence
Maurilia - the metropolis cannot compensate for a certain lost grace - connectedness to the past
Fedora - museum - possibilities
Zoe - indivisible existence - inseparability of the fundamental truths in life
Zenobia - happy vision of life (?) - experience shapes desire
Euphemia - not only the exchange of wares - connection
Zobeide - identical dream - fading passions
Hypatia - free - interpretation is everything
Armilla - abandoned, not deserted - natural reclamation of human construction
Chloe - voluptuous vibration in the most chaste of cities - Sexuality; repression
Valdrada - mirrors of the wardrobes - reflection
Olivia - falsehood - negativity
Sophronia - vacant lots - circus
Eutropia - shifting - radical egalitarianism
Zemrude - the mood of the beholder - vertical
Aglaura - An array of proverbial virtues - memory overrides reality
Octavia - A net which serves as passage and support - abstract realism
Ersilia - strings - permanence of relationships even over cities
Baucis - stilts - a human place in nature
Leandra - city’s soul - anthropomorphizing a city’s feel
Melania - Melania’s population renews itself - The city as theater
Esmeralda - land and water - locomotion
Phyllis - Surprises to the eyes - beauty in unexpected places
Pyrrha - cities I have never seen - names replace reality
Adelma - assailed by unexpected faces - the city of the dead
Eudoxia - carpe corresponds to the city - microcosm representations
Moriana - it has no thickness - façade; dichotomy
Clarice - decadences and burgeonings - cyclical rebirth
Eusapia - necropolis - morbidity
Beersheba - two projections of itself - relativism in virtue
Leonia - squeezed tubes of toothpaste - waste, growth, and opulence
Irene - the fires of civil war - a city observed from a distance
Argia - clay packs the rooms - metaphysical inhabitants
Thekla - cranes hoisting up other cranes - delaying the inevitable
Trude - yet another Trude - monotony
Olinda - all of the Olindas that have blossomed - organic
Laudomia - eggplant-colored barracans - defining an infinite time
Perinthia - the city of monsters - perfection
Procopia - an expanse of faces - growth
Raissa - windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes - forgetting to enjoy life
Andria - painstakingly regimented - broadmindedness
Cecilia - rows of identical houses - subversion of the natural
Marozia - mold over all heads - prophecy
Penthesilea - soupy city - never-ending expanse
Theodora - great cemetery of the animal kingdom - invasions
Berenice - just and unjust - non-physical description; city as morality

The narrator was the famous Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo. The historical significance is that, because Polo is Venetian, he provides the perfect character for the author to present all of the different faces of Venice in his book. Marco Polo describes the cities as if they are his own experience, but in the very end of the book it switches to the third person. I think this is because the passage deals with large philosophical issues and it brings closure to the book. Further, Kublai Khan has made important realizations about the ephemeral nature of his empire. The characters no longer seem relevant, per se, because the issues are resolved. It therefore seems fitting that the person of the writing changes.

Looking forward...

2007-01-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

By bizarre twists of fate, I am not yet in Rome. As such is the case, I am most looking forward to actually arriving in Rome at some point in the future. I would hope that my parents' dog does not eat my new, expedited, $250 passport as well. I am looking forward to times; good times, bad times, however they may be. These experiences will be with me for the rest of my life, and I think that I may be fortunate enough to face my life and times in the company of friends. Laura and Tony flew today--and by all regards I should be with them--trying to turn two carry-ons into one due to hair brained airlines and the ridiculousness of circumstances. I wish them the best of luck for a safe and happy arrival, and I wish I were there too, experiencing the good and bad; everything in moderation, I suppose. I would also very much like to pickpocket a gypsy in Rome. It would have a certain sort of Karmic justice to it.

The thing I'm dreading most is the sky falling, though if it never happened to Chief Vercongetorix, I suppose I'm safe.

2006-11-20T12:38:00.000-08:00

I wish there were webdings.

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