What I know now and why it matters

I'm going to start with the myriad of references to subjects unknown to me before taking this class:

Nestings
Kubla Khan
Concentric Circles
Möbius Strips
Blogging...
Klein Bottles
Alice
The edibility of youth
a Tale
Frames
"The farther in you go, the bigger it gets"
Chaos and Divinity are close
Fate

The list could go on quite a bit further, but I believe it has served it's purpose.  We have covered more subjects than I can stand to outline here, and I am grateful for every one of them!  What I have learned most in this semester is to never take anything at face value.  There is a deeper meaning behind almost everything, even if the author did not intend such a discovery to be made.  When Professor Sexson talks about John Crowley's interview about Little, Big he even admits that many of the questions he does not know the answers to, and was not thinking of them when he wrote it.  But the reader has the power to interpret the work in anyway they see fit and find meaning in it.

Everything is connected to everything else and there are no coincidences.  From Ashley's parents living on Edgewood, to Sydney taking on the role of Sylvie, everything is connected and inferences can be made between all observations.  I think it was Jennifer's project that really identified my new way of thinking; I feel initiated.  It was enforced when I had the surreal experience after Synecdoche, NY and Remember: Be Here Now.  I am going to remember this experience for the rest of my life and continue my search for fairies and deeper meaning in what I read and see.

That why this class was important to me, because it has truly made an impression on the manner in which I analyze what I read.  Learning about Tales and destinies and stories that save your life and concentric circles makes me see links between a story told almost 1,001 years ago, to a book about a 9-sided house written in 1981.  Such insight will allow me to keep a fresh point of view while I grow as a reader.  This class has also been important to me by opening up my eyes to a lot of other works i should investigate suggested by other students.

Basically I feel more connected to my surroundings and it makes me grateful to have taken this class and had this experience with all of the insightful and beautiful people who surrounded me this whole semester.  Thank you!

Remember

My experience after leaving our little showing of Synecdoche NY was one of the most surreal experiences of my entire life.  There was no specific incident that made my evening more interesting or intriguing than any other.  Accept I couldn’t help but continue to look over my shoulder.  Was someone following me, dictating what I do, and telling me I’m doing it incorrectly, even though it’s who I am?  Is someone whispering directions in my ear that I am not consciously hearing, but am nonetheless carrying out?

I felt apart of everything around me.  While I felt it could all be fake, I couldn’t help but appreciate my surroundings.  Even if they were completely staged by some unknown architect/playwright, they are my reality and all I have ever known.  My life is absolutely real to me, even if somebody else has scripted it.

If my surreal over the shoulder wanderings after Friday were not strange enough, THEN I went to Hastings the next day with my friend and she said she wanted to buy a book.  I immediately recommend Little, Big and they have one copy left.  She picks it up and we walk around a little bit more.  She’s an architecture student and so I thought the house in this book would be particularly interesting to her.  I offered her my copy but she said it sounded so interesting she wanted a copy for herself.

Whilst wandering around the New Age section I RANDOMLY picked up a book called Remember: Be Here Now.  It was a sideways book where the spine was at the top and you flipped the pages up, not to the left.  It was filled with dark brown papyrus and extraordinarily large nonlinear text and illustrations.  The description Amazon gives it is:  Describes one man's transformation upon his acceptance of the principles of Yoga and gives a modern restatement of the importance of the spiritual side of man's nature. Illustrated. What a worthless description…

As I randomly flipped through the pages, I felt I was reading a book about our class.  It never said “nestings” or “alice” or “recursive structure,” but it encompassed EVERYTHING we’ve ever talked about, and everything we could ever talk about:

While I feel this is a PERFECT example, this situation is not unique to this book; I think anything I read from now on will make me feel at least a twinge of what I felt when I randomly picked that book off the shelf.  Will it ever end? Sometimes I hope so, but I my initiation is complete and that my way of thinking has been utterly changed for the rest of my life.  Dammit.

Choice

I wanted to expand upon something I inadvertently said during my presentation.  Let's hope I can remember it correctly because it was quite insightful, and quite by accident:

"You gain some choice about your destiny when you accept the fact that you have no choice."

Or something along those lines.  What I was getting at was that it seems the characters who accept their fate, seem to have some semblance of control over it.  When Fadil Sanaan (Arabian Nights and Days) decided to follow his conscience and turn himself in, he accepted his fate, and therefore was able to make the choice.   Whereas Alphonse (Manuscript) had absolutely no idea what his fate was, or what the intentions of those around him were, he had absolutely no control over the situation.  He simply followed the path laid out in front of him.

My most poignant example comes from Little, Big when Daily Alice finally realizes her destiny, accepts it, and then asks for more time with her family, which is granted to her:

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“As she went up the Hill, she felt huge duties calling to her…The feeling was intense, as though she were being drawn in or swept away; she sat motionless in its grip, marveling and a little frightened, expecting it to pass in a moment… But it didn’t pass…She felt that she was dissolving helplessly into what she beheld, and at the same time had grown imperious enough to command it in every part…awed, yet for some reason not surprised as she came to know what was being asked of her, what she was summoned to… ‘No,’ she said in reply; ‘no’ she said, softly… ‘Turn away,’ she said, and the day did… ‘Not yet, not yet,’ she said, as the day turned away; ‘not yet, there’s too much to do still; please, not yet.’” (p. 285-286)

 It is my belief that Alice was able to push back the timeline of her purpose in life because she understand the ending was inevitable.  She understand and accepted her duties and understood she really had no choice in the matter.  By understanding this, she took some power away from destiny and was allowed a voice in the matter.

This mindset in real life would dictate that we have to accept we have no control over our lives in order to realize even the semblance of choice.  So which is better?  Accepting no control to have some control, or pretending you have full control when you have zero control?  Is ignorance bliss?