Thursday, May 15

Emerson's Self-Reliance

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1841. 2008 <http://www.youmeworks.com/selfreliance.html>.

Reflection,
Copying people is doing harm to yourself, but expressing your own radical opinions in dangerous. Hmm. The transcendentalist has to be brave to actually express his opinions to the public such as Emerson does.
If someone does manage to gather up the courage and be a lone wolf, he can discover the power that he has within himself and because he is not relying on other at all, will know that whatever revalations pop up came from his head. They are his individual thoughts and they are to be revered by him.

By a Transcendentalist,
Journal,
I chose this to be my final reading before I seclude myself tomorrow. Out of all of the texts, this one speaks the most loudly to me, even though it seems to be a contradiction (assuming the subject matter).
I know that self-revelations are not a new phenomenon. Ever since man learned to think, "I think, therefore I am" has been wired into his brain. Whenever a child thinks this for the first time, however, it is still as special as when Adam has the same pinnacle of conciousness because it came from deep within the child and not from an outside influence. Anyone who tells the child this before he is ready is trying to deprive the child of self-discovery and is taking away his future ability to discover.
Returning to the subject, I will return from my own journey of self-discovery and proudly display my findings. I shant be ashamed for nature can bring only the truth.
-John

Emerson's Nature

The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature". 1836. April 2008 <
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/nature.html>.

Reflection,
The world is beautiful! There are very few people who can find beauty in anything in the world, mostly because we are all too pessimistic and dark. This paragraph says that if light shone strongly enough, anything can be wonderful. That light naturally comes from very few people, but these people are easy to spot. They are the ones that change the lives of everyone around them for the better.

This excerpt is saying that that potential is in everyone. Everyone's eye is capable of seeing the beauty in everything, everyone is capable of being that one influential figure. Nobody will honestly open his eyes though and see the beauty that is nature.

By a Fellow Transcendentalist,

Journal,
Before setting out on my own journey of self-discovery, I have taken it upon myself to read the journals of Emerson, one of my long-time idols and fellow transcendentalists. He seems to be able to express the thoughts that run through my subconscious mind and the mind of all who can see nature as it should be seen.
My eye is ready to be fully opened, world. One more week and I will fully immerse myself in the woods with nobody but myself. My senses will be hightened and I will live for the first time.
-John

Wednesday, May 14

Mexican Immigration / Antonia Mimic

Chapter XIII

April brought with it Spring Break, in which all of the schools in San Diego were released for one week of freedom. During that time my sister, Angie, and I watched the throngs of people in beachwear strolling along the streets, the sun breaking free of its wintertime haze and warming the waters and spirits again.
On a particularly nice morning, Carlos was brought to our house by his mother, who, after complaining about gas prices, went to work commenting on how my sister and I were lazing around instead of stimulating the economy so that she could afford to feed her family. According to her, everything that is wrong in America can somehow be fixed by two teenage girls. She says that if she were a legal immigrant, we would be working under her as she would be a CEO.
She was an egotistical, idealistic old thing and even though she fed on taxpayer money, she still felt that she should tell us off. I could not feel pity for their situation sometimes because, simply, of her attitude. This emotion was with me for the rest of the visit, even as Carlos told me that he feared that his two elder brothers had gotten involved with MS13, one of the deadliest gangs in America.
“They have been coming home late at night wearing not the same things that they left the house in. They smell strange and they are more and more not going to work at the junkyard with me for pay so the family suffers. Sometimes they will bring back dark purses and threaten us if we ask them.”
“Yeah, selling drugs and killing people is a sure-fire way to having people accept you in this country.”
His face flushed and he muttered something, but Carlos was not one for confrontation, having been raised in a very unstable and turbulent family. “…They did not want to come. Where we were, there was much fighting and after Father has been shot, we flee to America for safety.”
“Well you sure aren’t going to find it in MS13!”
“I am sorry that we are not accepted here and must find people who do! I am sorry that such a rich country can not help us in hard luck and instead call us wetbacks go back! I am sorry that my mother has dreams!” His voice had changed to the hiss of a rattlesnake poised to strike and I became very aware of my facial expressions.
Carlos was very defensive of his family, even if he did know their flaws. It was all that he had known for his fourteen years of life and it was his only support in America because, as he had said, illegal Mexicans aren’t readily welcomed here.
As they left after lunch in the old, beat-up car, my younger sister asked me why Carlos and I had been fighting earlier and I responded that it’s adult problems she wouldn’t understand. She went inside in a huff and the incident was soon glazed over by the sun.
That weekend, the sun gave way to torrential rain which left us inside. Mom decided because we had been ‘dirtying up the house’ for the last week, that we should clean it over the weekend. Angie, my little sister, can not clean for her life, so even with her effort, I was forced to pretty much clean each foot of the 2500 square-foot house. The kitchen was first. As soon as I finished with the house, Angie told me that she has spilled orange juice in the kitchen and I had to go back and do the floors all over again. That was a tiring, unnatural sort of day.

Thursday, May 1

Interviews of American Dream

Mother’s Interview reflection (audio file)
She didn’t have a lot of time to think about how to answer me, but I think that she has thought of some interpretation of my questions before. She has to go to work and comes home exhausted and with no extra money, but still hopes to be cared for by me, the plastic surgeon (she hopes), when she is an old person. I joke with her and say that I’m going to put her in the worst nursing home possible, but she wants to live with me…We’ll see how that plays out.
I don’t know if she is truly happy, but she’s healthy and she’s working on it.