Carpe Diem

My fondest memory of my Junior year of High School was watching The Dead Poets Society.  I was enthralled by the characters' love for literature, and I found myself in a similar situation, although I was alone in that aspect.  But the most recognizable line from that film is simply: Carpe Diem.  Seize the day.

I find it interesting that someone who presumably loves writing as much as I do identified instead with a relatively passive phrase.  Bernard Cooper's short essay, "Que Sera Sera," attempts to take an objective view on the aspect of waiting for something.  He uses Cinderella and Rip Van Winkle as several examples from literature, but there is no argument presented.  He simply poses a dilemma, which causes the reader to wonder which is more important.  Do we wait, or do we live in the now?

Interestingly enough, we aren't actually given an answer.  Cooper doesn't even try to convince us one way or another.  It's as if he attempted to remove all bias completely, leaving little else in the short essay.  I would argue that the greatest works of literature are essentially arguments.  We can look toward Tolkien's famous trilogy, Sauron is evil because...  The small will become great...  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.   When we compare that to this, we end up wanting.  We don't find ourselves having a fulfilled answer by the end of the writing.  Perhaps that was Cooper's point, although in a more traditional essay, if one is going to ask a question, one should supply an answer.

I Name Thee...

Names have significance.  Names define things.  Long ago ships would be given names, giving them character.  The same with swords.

Why are we obsessed with names?

I don't have the answer for that.  Truthfully, I would very much love to investigate that question, but I don't have the motivation or the time.

Not so long ago, I researched my own name, and I found that it fit me perfectly.  Why does this happen?  Do we grow into them, or do they grow into us?

Again, I don't have an answer.  I don't think Bernard Cooper does either, given that his essay, By Any Other Name, didn't end up going anywhere other than the surface fascination of names.  It was a wonderful piece of work, like the kind I would actually enjoy reading off of my Facebook homepage.  It was thoughtful, but it only seemed to be a lot of thinking and one or two memories to springboard the brain.

To be perfectly honest, I have little to no experience with creative non-fiction.  There was one memoir a while back...  So I will comment only on the focus.  The focus of these creative "essays" seems to be purely thought, speculation, and reflection, whereas poetry was emotion, and stories were development.

Putting it short, it's a essentially a Facebook rant, albeit an intelligent one.

Self-Help For Writers

I suppose my biggest disappointment in the entirety of the Goldberg packet is the fact that there are so many opportunities to explore about the aspect of writing in large groups that we never did.  I would enjoy, especially, "Writing Marathons" as Goldberg describes them.  Writing and then sharing sounds like something that would be fascinating for me.  We learn by hearing ourselves, hearing others, and talking about it.

Improvement by practice is, from personal experience, the best way to attain better skills as a writer.  Reading self-help confidence-boosting blurbs comes out to about the bottom of the list.  Sorry Goldberg, but I don't need to "claim my writing."  I get it; it's mine: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The "everybody is a winner" speech doesn't really strike me as helpful.  I can write shitty; I realize that.  But that's where getting constructive criticism comes in.  With educated help, shit can be turned into gold.

And that is exactly what I want.  I don't need a confidence booster.  Artists typically have absolute and utter disdain for their work, and that's even after they're professional.  It's normal.  I shouldn't have to feign advice to prevent self-hatred.  Okay, so you don't like your stuff.  Get over it.  Somebody will love it, seriously.  But me?  I want to get better.  Improving my writing is my top priority.

Time Flies. People Fall.

Finality.  Such a fearsome word.  The end is the only certainty; this too shall pass.  Us.  Life.  We dream up various caricatures of death or the avoiding of it.  Be it the lumbering undead or immortal beings, death is an obsession, an addiction, and we're afraid of it.

Take all that you are, everything that mattered to you, and everything that forged your personal character.  Take it away.  We're afraid death will remove us from memory, from existence.  Will people remember us when we're gone?

The metaphor of this entirety of our cultures obsession with death is no better exemplified by "The Falling Girl" by Dino Buzzati.  Marta, at nineteen years of age, leaps off the edge of a skyscraper.  On the way down, time seems to slow.  People ask her where she's going, why she's headed to her destination.  As she progresses further down, she begins to notice others falling with her, as well as her finding of her own insecurity; she compared herself to the others.  Near the end, she becomes aware of her age, which progressed with the drop in altitude.  Before she even hits the ground, she becomes nothing more than dust.

Buzzati miraculously juxtaposes the thought of suicide and living one's life.  People always restless, moving, and trying to make it somewhere have already killed who they are.  They just haven't hit the ground yet.  Marta always said she was going somewhere, and was hopeful about it, and she looked back during her fall to see the skyscraper, which was once beautiful, sweet.  It became sinister and cold as it stared back.  "You could have done differently," it may as well have whispered back at her.  During the descent, Marta became increasingly unsatisfied with herself.  Regretful is a choice word.

Does leaving a legacy behind truly matter?  What is the point of being alive if living is a secondary goal?  I would argue that Buzzati is trying to tell us this very thing.  Falling is irreversible once we jump.  Why take the plunge before we're ready?