Tuesday, May 22, 2007

"Near the windows of La Virgen de Toledo Federation, next to the shrine for the Madonna, there is a Jimi Hendrix video game machine."

This is the modern ironic picture of the mexican tight rope. They are conflicted on whether to join modern american culture or stay with their culture. Their religious standards and ethics are represented by the shrine, while the Jimi Hendrix video game is representative of the change.

"A martial art technique that numbs your opponent's sense of color awareness.
-Hispa-ratee!"

This whole poem pokes fun at stereotypes, how it is perceived mexicans do everything differently, but when you look closer at the answer it's the same thing with 'Hispa' in the beginnning.

Monday, May 21, 2007

"The machine waits for you too, the tubing, the ancestral mezzo mump transformer interpreter translator of your self in birth form."
This quote is how people lose their personality in society, and just become part of the machine. The machine of capitalism of manufacturing, producing, selling, and buying. It calls everyone, and silently directs them to become part of the machine.

"We run parallel lives, someone says.
Parallels of exile
Parallels of desire boiling underwater."

This quote is about how people live their lives without showing their feelings with others or without interacting with others. People live in solitude, deeply wanting to feel but too involved with completeing their lives working towards success priorities are now in success in stead of interaction and people live in exile.

Friday, May 18, 2007

106-130 Chile Verde

"For years, in that wild shadow, she smoked and kissed a stray that crossed our window"
After he husband has died she has lost everything stable, and for the years that she lived in the memory of him she was free through the darkness she kissed a stray and smoked. She did the unheard of after her husband died now she was free in the, "sweet darkness."

"sometimes from a small envelope
she pulls out his broken bones," pg, 142

This is representing how his death comes back to haunt her. Through everday activites years later she still can't let go.

106-130 Chile Verde

"For years, in that wild shadow, she smoked and kissed a stray that crossed our window"
After he husband has died she has lost everything stable, and for the years that she lived in the memory of him she was free through the darkness she kissed a stray and smoked. She did the unheard of after her husband died now she was free in the, "sweet darkness."

"sometimes from a small envelope
she pulls out his broken bones," pg, 142

This is representing how his death comes back to haunt her. Through everday activites years later she still can't let go.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Chile verde smuggler #3

"A $twenty at the foot of the Budddha." pg. 73

This is ironic because money is so against the core of buddhist beliefs. And that someone would find that putting a twenty dollar bill as respect is ridiculous. There are many things that can be interpreted, that either society is so ignorant and decides to show respect when they know nothing of the beliefs. Or that they are so caught up in money, they question how could a twenty not be respectful?

"I noticed she gazed over the sink into the yard, I didnt know if she was watching for Tex, the mixed dog, to eat the laundery or if she was going higher up, over hte houses, the moving sky, torn clouds going west away from all the chavitos with peanut butter on their faces, far from the clap of dust, trastes, pink erasers, a kitchen table, beaten with hours, with pencils."pg.66

This quote symbolizes what he sees as he watches a woman, she could be just looking for the dog, or could be looking at more. The one moment she gets away from the daily slum of her life by looking out, daydreaming, enjoying the far away from the daily life of her kitchen. Away from somethign she cannot escape.

Monday, May 14, 2007

chile verde smuggler #2

"When he can identify footsteps by gender.
When the words are actually connected to him."

These two lines are associated with when a man becomes a woman. Most of the lines seem to show that as a man matures and becomes more mature he becomes closer to a woman. Both in work and home a man notices things like whether the footsteps are a man or a woman, and speaks his actual feeelings. Women tend to notice things more and speak their feelings and the poem is about how men mature to be more like a woman.

"Years later, Guajardo got shot in the face. So did Hall."

The poem is about his elementary school kids, their faces, and personalities, the bullies and the bullied. But in the end it has a harsh result. This marks the blunt end to an average elementary school. The tough bullies reach their early death.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Chile Verde Smuggler

"Your papi's brand new gillette. It's not brand new, Mama. 'S OK, the hot water and salt will burn the germs. You ready, Juan?"

I find this quote particularly moving because it shows his strength and his rough childhood in the first few lines of the book without even having to tell his struggle. His mom is trying to make the situation better by saying it's brand new, when it is not, also showing they are probobly not very economically stable. And her cutting off his finger with nothing but a razor blade and a bucket of water, shows his rough childhood. Without saying so his strength shines through the lines of a simple story that does not even explain the pain of cutting off his finger, you just know.

"I see you looking at yourself putting letters on paper.' You said. All my illusions of being a poet shrank."

The one thing to avoid as a poet is the act of writing. everything is supposed to come from the heart, but when you watch yourself write, its coming from the brain. Everything is supposed to be true and sincere, but if your not completely caught up in the words instead of the action you are not a true poet as he feels in that moment.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

CCC Interview TREE-SITTERS

Email of person I am interviewing, shunka_wakan@northcoastearthfirst.org

10 questions.

How long have you been an enviromental activist, and what got you started?

When sitting in the trees, do you depend entirely on others to bring food, if so, do you ever go hungry?

What are some of/all the items you bring with you while tree sitting?

Do you feel that what you are doing is not only helping the redwoods, but making a statement that is important for american culture to address?

Are there times when you just want to give up?

Has anyone ever tried to remove you or anyone you know from a tree, if so, how did you or them react?

How long did you spend tree-sitting, and are you still?

What is the longest you have ever stayed in one tree?

How do you find American Culture reacts to what you do, interested, confused, shocked, supportive?

Is there a general community of tree-sitters?

Monday, May 7, 2007

Sandra Cisneros, "The House on Mango Street."

"This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket, and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed." pg747
This shows the american dream of always working your way up in the world striving for that better house. With a private lawn, and multible bathrooms. As the father buys arbitrary lottery tickets that will inevitably be nothing but the pursuit of a dream, and the mother dreams as she tells her children of a better home, they are indeed just going to stay on their path, moving from house to house one sometimes a little nicer than the last.

"Temporarily, says Papa. But I know how those things go." pg. 748
She has been falsely encouraged her whole life, that things will get better their lives will get better. Until she knows not to believe any of the comfort her parent's words used to give her. They will continue to move from one low-income house to another, and she has more acceptance than her parents. Her parents are almost trying to convince themselves as they encourage the family. But the young girl quietly accepts this routine.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

MORE Seeing By Anne Dillard (first part, sorry tom switch them)

pg. 1
"But if you cultivate a healthy poverty amd simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days."
I like this quote because it portrays how if you live simply every gift will make your day. Every penny and simple thing that the world has rejected as under them will be the equivilant to gold to the person. If we live like beggers every simple thing life throws at us will make every day a gift. The impoverished are the ones who know the true meaning of appreciation, so says the author.

pg. 7

"When I walk witha camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see the second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer."

I liked this quote because I never thought of it this way until reading this, but it is true that when I have a camera in my hand there are a myriad of things I don't notice that I would have without. I walk trying to get a good group picture, or a monument, or a steriotypical facebook album. I look for smiles, poses, picturesque flowers in rows. Without my camera I note peoples expressions, the rolling candy wrapper that brings on a thought process of responsibility. A couple with their first date expressions, confused parents who are too young to have children. With my camera I see only what I should, or what I can share with others with my camera, pictures of my family and friends smiling or playing, but there is so much more to be seen than the smiles.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Seeing by Annie Dillard

"While he was blind he was indifferent to objects unless they were edible; now, "a sifting of values in...his thoughts and wishes mightily stirred and some gew of the patients are thereby led into dissimulation, envy, theft and fraud." pg. 702
This quote fascinated me, because it is interesting how many values are lost in appearance. What people see, the first impression, became very important to a newly sighted person who used to care for nothing material except food. And that is the way it should be. And yet we get so carried away with the colors and beauty and richness of our appearances that it becomes a competitve unspoken game to have the nicest furnishings and the best High-Definition TV. One would wonder if it was human nature to be this competitve and mark your status, or it was just our sight and appearance awareness. And this quote proves that to this man sight changed his whole view not only on the world but on himself.

"But shadows spread, and deepened, and stayed. After thousands of years we're still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp wiht out arms crossed over our chests."pg. 697
This quote was my favorite because I am afraid of the dark and question why every night. In biology we learned that there is believed to be a trigger in everyone that either triggered by a small experience and stays for the rest of your life or is never triggered, and certain genes hold fears to be triggered like that of the dark or spiders etc. Is it still that thousands of years ago humans found the dark less apt for survival and therefor we shall forever be strangers to the dark? Or is it the lack of something we become so dependent on, seeing, that frightens us. I have found that over the years it has become harder for me to constantly close my eyes or walk in the dark. Is it because a gene has been triggered? Or because I have become so dependent on my sight that I am terrified to function without it. Or perhaps as she puts it, it is a simple human nature that humans use their sight as survival and to the darkness we are aliens, strangers in a new land. Fearful of something unknown to us.