Journal #44

Well, I'm not really sure which movie to choose. There are a lot of movies that fall into the post-modernism category, and I'm really bad at making decisions. However, I think I am going to choose Inception because it seems most relatable to post-modernism.

I think the biggest aspect of Post-Modernism found in Inception is the aspect of multiple worlds. As the movie title says, the plot is about Inception of the mind. I'm sure you've seen this movie and know what I am talking about? A dream within a dream... within a dream? All those dreams are separate dimensions, or worlds. The whole movie revolves around different dreams that take place in different worlds. This leads me into my next aspect, which is crossing fiction with nonfiction. Obviously, this movie is fiction. People going into dreams can not happen. The situations and characters could be real, though. Leonardo DiCaprio may actually have two children that he has been forbidden to see. That nice Asian man who bought that whole airplane line could be real, too, but once they start delving into dreams, it is fairly obvious that the movie is fictional.

The next big aspect of Post-Modernism in Inception is fear. Throughout the entire movie there is a constant fear because once you enter someone else's dream, you immediately become a target for the people in the dream, or the figments of their mind. So basically, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page run around with a constant fear that they are going to be caught by the imaginary persons in the dream, then killed (but not really). This lasts for the whole movie since they are always in a dream.

Assimilation is also used in Inception. The imaginary people in the dream are all the same, and when real people enter the dream, they try to kill them because they are different. The imaginary persons want everything to be balanced.

Inception is a great example of a contemporary movie with Post-Modernism aspects.

"A Word Is Dead"

"A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day."

I think that she is trying to say a number of things. She is trying to
say that while some people think that words do not last any longer
than the length of time is takes to say them. They think that words
are dead things that can not mean anything and can not make a lasting
impression on anyone. Dickinson, on the other hand, completely
disagrees. She thinks that words can last for a long time. She thinks
that words can last forever, and that can definitely make a lasting
impact on a lot of people. She says that words, such as those used in
speeches or famous letters, can make people do a number of things, and
they can also make people believe a number of things, whether or not
they are true. Words are very powerful, which Emily Dickinson knew
very well. She understood their importance, and she saw them as living
things that last forever, no matter what anyone else around her
thought. She knew that words could make a huge impact, no matter how
small the word is, because of people's interpretations of the word and
the situation. Words could also mean a number of other things, because
they could be interchanged with quite a few things that other people
do not consider important, but she believes to be so. They could be
synonymous with things such as plants or animals, which Dickinson
spent much of her time studying and writing about. She could see the
power and importance in every situation, while many people could not,
because they did not spend as much of their time sitting out studying
nature and the things that are in it. Dickinson saw quite a few things
that other people did not, and she saw the good, beauty, and
importance in every situation.

"The Way I Read a Letter's This"

Emily Dickinson was a unique poet that does not fit well into any
specific literary category. She wrote many, many poems, that all
became incredibly popular after her death. She wrote about any number
of things, and her poems are very diverse. Some of them are incredibly
literal and have nothing hidden in their meaning, but there are also
some that are completely loaded with hidden meaning and other
interpretations, so it is often hard to figure out what one will be
getting in any given poem. I read a poem by Emily Dickinson that was
called "The way I read a letter's this:". This poem basically talks
about the speaker reading a letter from their lover. It talks about
how the person wants to hide in the very back of their room and open
the letter very secretively, so no one else can see the beauty of it
or can feel how intimate it is. She is trying to show how meaningful
and heartfelt that kind of thing can be, and how important they are to
the person that receives them. Emily Dickinson talks all about how she
checks every step of the way that no one is following her or sneaking
in to see the letter. She talks about how she constantly feels for the
letter, and makes sure that there is no way that she could drop it
anywhere along the way. She talks about hiding in the corner so that
she will be the only one to see how sacred and pure and amazing it is.
She wants to make sure that she feels the full effect of the letter
and all of the emotions that go along with it, so she makes sure to go
into a private room that may well be a sanctuary for her. She talks
about how she feels after reading the letter and soaking up all of the
goodness that it can give to her. She talks about how much she wants
her lover and how being with her lover would be heaven to her. Not the
conventional heaven, but her heaven. This poem is very literal and it
would be hard to take it different ways. It does not relate to
Christianity, because this letter is more between lovers than it would
be between a father and a son. It might be mildly awkward for people
in those positions to have those feelings for each other, so it is
difficult to think about. There is no hidden meaning that Christ wrote
letters or received letters from lovers, so Christianity does not fit.
There is not a hidden meaning, because only lovers should have these
feelings for each other, because it would be awkward for family
members to feel this way about each other. Friends might be able to
feel this way about each other, but they might want something more
with the other person if they feel this way. This poem is pretty
simplistic, but it is still very meaningful and shows a lot of depth
and emotion.

Dickinson, Emily. "24. “The Way I Read a Letter’s This.” Part Three:
Love. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." Bartleby.com: Great
Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More.
Web. 25 April. 2011.

"Érudit | Romanticism on the Net N38-39 2005 : Mayer | Finding Herself
Alone: Emily Dickinson, Victorian Women Novelists, and the Female
Subject." Érudit. Web. 25 April. 2011.

Journal #42

There is a lot of controversy over who people prefer to read, Walt
Whitman or Emily Dickinson. Personally I would prefer to read Emily
Dickinson because she makes a lot more sense to me than Walt Whitman
does. Walt Whitman was a very complicated poet, and he made every poem
that he wrote have multiple meanings. Personally I prefer to sometimes
have poems that I can take at face value and that are very literal, so
it is a lot better for me to read Emily Dickinson. I prefer to read
some of the complicated poems every once in a while, but quite often I
prefer to read the poems that are simple and easy to follow. Walt
Whitman tried to talk about very complex things in every single poem
that he wrote, because he tried to write about Self, the every man,
God, Christianity, or America in every single poem that he ever wrote.
It may not have always been about all of those things, but almost
every time he writes about more than one of those themes. He also
writes things in a very complicated way that is quite often very hard
to follow. He is very egotistical in his poems, because he says
everything is him and about him and he is God and everyone else is God
as well, and I do not agree with that. I do not like Whitman from what
I have seen from him, and he kind of makes me mad. I much prefer Emily
Dickinson, because she is a lot more simple with what she is trying to
say. It is also easier, because even if she is trying to be complex,
she is still a lot easier to understand than Whitman ever was. Whitman
and Dickinson were not popular during their lifetimes, because many
people did not agree with them or did not have their poetry. Whitman
and Dickinson were both extremely popular poets after their deaths,
and many people continue to read them even today.

Journal #43

This Jazz music is very soothing. I do not usually visualize music with imagery unless the music comes with a music video. If that is the case, then whenever I hear the song I think of the music video. This Jazz song- which may or may not be pronounced Yazz, it could be a soft J- does not have a music video. There is just a picture of an African American man in deep thought, his finger resting peacefully on his upper lip. So now, whenever I hear this song, I think of this thoughtful black man playing multiple Jazz instruments all at once. Usually I just think of him playing a saxophone, though, since that is the generic Jazz instrument.

This music also reminds me of Fantasia 2000. Specifically, it reminds me of the beginning of the movie when "Rhapsody in Blue" is playing, and the black man is rushing off to his job at a construction sight. I think of just him, not the other characters in the story. It makes me think of him at the end of the movie, when he attends "Harlem Jazz Night" in the underground subway. He finally gets to play his Jazz music, and I am visualizing that friendly black man playing this Jazz song.

This song really just makes me think of African Americans in the Harlem Renaissance playing Jazz instruments. There is nothing else that I really visualize when I hear this song. I just imagine people playing the song on a stage in cute little suits with tails. They all have white cuff links and huge foreheads, and I am being completely serious. That is exactly what I see.

I suppose it also makes me visualize an elevator in a hotel. I imagine a large group of people all crowded into an elevator. As they stand awkwardly in a group, Jazz music is playing in the background. No one is speaking, people are just listening to the soothing tones of whoever wrote this Jazz song. The song plays on repeat, allowing everyone who rides in that elevator that day to hear this delightful Jazz song.

Realism and Modernism

Realism and Modernism are two literary genres that are very important
and influential. There were many things that happened historically to
spark the change to each genre. There are many differences, but also
similarities in these two literary genres. A theme relating to the
wars of the time is found in both of these styles of writing, but the
actual style of writing is very different.

The transition from Romanticism to Realism was very large. While
Romanticism focused on nature and wishful situations, Realism, like
its name suggests, reflected more believable, common situations. For
the first time authors were depicting a setting and the story as how
it would be in the real world, rather than what they wanted it to be.
This was caused by the increase in scientific and rationalist thoughts
after the Civil War. The style became less about nature and heroes and
shifted more to a more simple telling of the story. The common middle
class man became the hero of most Realist works.

Historically there were many events that caused the shift to
Modernism. There was the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, The
Great War, and many other changes in culture. Black culture was also
on the rise with new African American artists and musicians surfacing
in the popular culture of the nation. This is what is commonly
refereed to as the Harlem Renaissance. It was these cultural changes
that caused the change to modernist literature from the previous
realism.

One major difference in the literary genres is the actual style in
which the stories and poems are written in. Oftentimes there is a
connection to the characters in a modernist work and the author that
wrote it. The writing style is obviously different because Modernist
writers wanted to avoid simple writing, which is used in most Realist
works, and instead used very deep words with significant meanings

One characteristic that the two genres share is the depressing nature
of some of the works. This comes from the time period that each genre
occurred during. Realism began shortly after the Civil War, and the
war was a topic of many works. There was a lot of reflection on what
the soldiers went through, and also about the feelings of a country
that had been divided. Modernism on the other had began during the
Great War. This was a very depressing time, as people had never really
seen such a war before. There was a lot of violence and this caused
there to be the same depressing theme appear in some works of
Modernism. This is not to say that all modernist works were like this
because with the great cultural expansion of the country, there were
more happy topics to write about.

Both of these genres are similar and different in many ways. What was
going on during the time that they started had a drastic impact on the
principals of each respective genre. The common factor of a war going
on makes some characteristics of the genres very similar, but the
writing style still remains very differed from each literary group.
These are obviously two of the most important and influential genres
in American literature.

Job Shadowing Journal

I job shadowed a Veterinary Office last Thursday, and I'm not gonna lie, I
was expecting a little bit more of a high class facility, or at least
as high class as a Petersburg Clinic can get. From the outside, the
building scared me. It looked sort of like a run down house. The
inside was no better, with it's unfinished floors, small operating
room, and cheap-looking waiting area. The people, however, were
relatively nice. There was one woman, I wish I could remember her
name- I feel like it was JT or something odd like that, and she was so
nice. She was extremely friendly, and she was the one who gave Katie
and I a tour of the (small) vet office. She didn't have a filter
though, that woman cursed like a sailor. One of the three actual
Veterinarians who work there,- Dr. Cline?- was so nice! He was cheery
and he seemed to know what he was doing. Katie and I watched him
operate on a dog who had been hit by a car, and he definitely knew
what he was doing. The other vet, Dr. Stoh, or something like that,
wasn't as nice as Dr. Cline... She was a little snippy, acting like I
was a 4 year old who couldn't read. I do not appreciate being treated
like an unintelligent child, All of the other workers were fine
though, and they even go to lunch together! How cute is that!?

The clinic itself was having a slow day on Thursday. They did not
have very many appointments, so I do not think I really got the full
experience of a busy vet's office. I did get to see how they put an
animal down, though (poor Cow Dog had severe liver failure). I also
got to observe Dr. cline operating on a dog names Leah who was hit by
a car and had a hernia. Her spleen somehow got split into two, but
she had no broken bones! The operation did not bother me, even though
her intestines were falling out of her abdominal cavity. I guess
that's a plus! I also got to stand in on a few appointments. Those
were relatively normal, just what I would expect from a vet. However,
I did learn that, one, people name their animals some freaky things
(Poop Face?), and two, people will bring in their animal for obscure
reasons (Ate the head of a snake?!). Even though business was slow,
at least I got a taste of almost everything that happens inside a
vet's office- putting an animal to sleep, operations, and
appointments.

After job shadowing at the Petersburg Veterinary Clinic, I think I am
still undecided on whether or not I would like to be a vet. I handled
all the situations well, even putting an animal to sleep, so that's a
good thing! I wasn't really feeling passionate about it, though. The
appointments and operations interested me, but I am not sure that this
is the job that I would want to be doing every day. Coming home
covered in cat hair and smelling like wet dog didn't really help
either. I really do love animals and working with animals, but now
that I've seen into the life of a vet, I don't think it is the job for
me.

Also, they are in fact building a new veterinary office- it will have
heated floors! So even though the office they have right now looks
pretty shady, the new one being built right now is going to be
fantastic!