Author: nacjes25
Journal Entry 4/25/15
Trying to read With in a budding grove, so that I am ahead, but this grave shift is so boring that every time I start to read I fall asleep. I think I will work on my close reading, I will have to print it out tomorrow. I really enjoyed the interaction with the narrator and Elstir. It reminds me of a big brother showing his little brother the way, I don’t know why it just does. Elstir is not at all the same person as the painter was portrayed to be in fact I don’t think many people realize at first who Elstir is, I know I didn’t. The painter was a whiny, rude and opinionated follower. He was young and impressionable. Elstir has obviously grown up, he is more mature. I think that he realizes that a lot of what he did in his youth was wrong, like painting the picture of Odette, which he hides when his wife comes in to the room. I am so nervous to read on Monday, I know I will be tired.
Journal Entry for 4/15/15 and Follow up 4/24/15
We started watching the Sorrow and the Pity today. I am pretty sure I don’t like it. The movie is made in 1969, less than twenty years after Hitler and not one of these men ever says you know what why did this happen? Why did one man have the ability to turn a country against people? Maybe I just am naive, maybe I just don’t get it, but never the less it is still disgusting. The man with the cigar at his daughters wedding just annoyed me. He seemed to be so pompous, so irritating. I took his attitude to be like, Yeah I killed people so what I was told to. I know that during war it happens, but to to almost eradicate a group of people is barbaric. The memories of all the people interviewed (with the exception of the school teachers) were so vivid, many of the men interview in the small village and the gentleman with his family, seemed to really want to talk about what happened. What the women in the barber shop said was so powerful, the emotion was raw. When she said that she spent 15 years in jail for something she didn’t do, I was appalled. There were so many people doing things that should have put them in jail, but they didn’t see any time. This movie was sad, and informative, I feel that it gave me more to think about in terms of war, and standing up for what is right. Most of the people interviewed seemed to be remorseful, with the exception of the gentleman with the cigar, he didn’t seemed to care he answered questions evasively
Journal Entry 4/10/15
Dora Bruder was a fast read. There was a lot of questions that were not answered. For me it seemed that the writer was obsessed with the idea of finding information about Dora. What is interesting is while were are reading this book we are also reading A Swanns Way, where the main character is also obsessed with a women, however each man is obsessed in different. Well as I write this I am surprised that actually they have more similarities that I realized. Both want answers to what happen, or has happened and both want to know about the future. We see some of each mans past. Patrick Modiano was like searching for answers he would never find.
Journal Entry 4/8/15
There is a part in Swanns Way (pg. 202-206) where the narrator writes about burying memories. Swann has gone to visit Odette but she tell him she does’t feel well and that he should leave. He think Odette is keeping something from him. He starts to obsess in his head. What is she doing, was someone hiding in Odettes house while he was there? Swann decides to go and knock on her window like he did when they were first in love. He thinks he hears a mans voice. It ends up being the wrong window, and then leaves. ” He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself. But now and then his thought in their wondering course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down in to consciousness and leave him aching with a sharp far rooted pain. I have felt this pain, the pain of a memory, that you have successfully blocked away, but out of no where it will resurface and leave you immobilized in pain. I think the memories of being hurt by a spouse or lover is harder to get over. It took me two years to just stop thinking about what I went through. I was extremely obsessed with certain people, what information they could give me, I pushed away friends, family and I just was an overall mess. Swann was so obsessed with Odette that he could not function completely. It is obvious in the way the narrator tells the story that he wants the reader to get the impression that Swann is going crazy with obsession. Being wronged by someone you love or just getting that feeling that something is not right. Hurt not only the heart, but also the memory and ones capacity to function.
Jessie Nace
In Search of Lost Time
April 25, 2015
Close Reading: Within a Budding Grove page. 604-606
Week 5
“It was along this train of thought silently ruminated over by Elstir’s side as I accompanied him to his door, that I was being led by the discovery that I had Just made of the identity of his model, when this first discovery caused me to make a second, more disturbing still, concerning the identity of the artist”. He had painted the portrait of Odette de Crecy. Could it be possibly that this man of genius, this sage, this recluse, this philosopher with his marvelous flow of conversation, who towered over everyone and everything, was the ridiculous depraved painter who had at one time been adopted by the Verduins? I asked him if he had known them, and whether by any chance it was he that they used to call M. Biche. He answered me in the affirmative, with no trace of embarrassment, as if my question referred to a period in his life that was already somewhat remote and he had no suspicion of the extraordinary disillusionment he was causing me. But looking up, he read it on my face. His own assumed an expression of annoyance. And, as we were now almost to the gate of his house, a man of less distinction of heart and mind might simply have said good-bye to me a trifle dryly and taken care to avoid seeing me again. This however was not Elstir’s way with me; like the master that he was-and it was, perhaps, from the point of view of pure creativity, his one fault that he was a master in that sense of the word, for an artist, if he alone, and not squander his ego, even upon disciples-from every circumstance, whether involving himself or other people, he sought to extract, for the better edification of the young, the element of truth that it contained. He chose therefore, instead of the words that might have avenged the injury to his pride, those that could prove instructive to me”. Pg. 604-605
The narrator has figured out that Elstir is the painter from the Verduins, the painter who Swann had at one point not to anyone but to himself, in one of his many long mental arguments that he had with himself about his love for Odette and also her virtue. He had accused Odette of sleeping with. The narrator who had only been told stories of the painter, and we can assume from his astonished reaction that these stories were not positive. What the narrator is also surprised about is how Elstir reacts to his recognition of him. Instead of being embarrassed or ashamed Elstir embraces his past, he sees the contempt and judgment on the narrators face and instead of being angry he is just mildly annoyed, and doesn’t send him away, he chooses to eloquently explain what his past is for him.
“There is not man,” he began, “however wise who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man-so far as it is possible for any of to be wise-unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnation by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young people, the sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose master have instilled in them the nobility of mind and moral refinement from their schooldays. They may perhaps have nothing to retract from their past lives; they could publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendant of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you , have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have been sprung from very different beginning, having been influenced by everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studio, of artistic groups-assuming one painter-extracted something that transcends them”. Pg. 605-606
Elstir explains to the narrator that while his past is questionable, it made him who he is. The choices of all men are shaped not by just their upbringing but by their experiences. Elstir is saying that even the best men who are raised right, by society’s standards, make choices in their youth that can be distasteful. Once made, one must learn from them and move on and use these choices as life lessons. I also believe that Elstir is helping the narrator see that as an artist he was able to use all of his experiences in his youth to be a better painter. To find yourself and who you are is a journey you cannot learn in a classroom, or by your parents, the path is for you alone. How you use the wisdom you gain will define the person you become.
Jessie Nace
Journal Entry 2
The vivid description of the Hawthorne fields that the narrator gives us, almost puts the reader in the field. It reminded me of a trip I took when I was around 6-7-8. We went to their grandparent’s farm. They had raspberries, blueberry, strawberries, the smell of all of them were so delicious and it trapped itself in my mind that whenever I smell homemade jam I am taken back to that summer in shorts, clothes on the line and my friend running free in the fields. What we hold in our memories from our childhood is amazing. Sometimes I can’t remember why I came into the kitchen, but I can truly remember the smell of those strawberries when I was 7 years old.
Jessie Nace
April 2, 2015
Journal Entry 1
While watching Boyhood so many emotions went through my body love, hate, anger, and forgiveness. I know what it’s like to be a young mother trying desperately to provide for her children. Unlike Olivia I did have my husband for support. However my husband and I were both young when my son was born, and learning how to discipline, give up bad habits and focus on what needed to be done was harder for my husband to do. This made our relationship stressful, and on many occasions in the first few years I thought about just calling it quits. I feel that I can relate to Olivia in many ways, struggling for many years to get her degree, being real with her kids, not sugar coating life. In the scene where Olivia gets home and Mason Senior is hanging out with the kids, and nothing has been done she gets upset. I have been there, coming home to nothing being done, when my husband had been home longer than me. Routine is so important and time sneaks up on us and by the time homework, chores, dinner, bath and bed for the kids is doing its ten o’clock at night and you yourself have homework. I Sometimes in the past, I have felt alone, like I was doing it all by myself. I also feel that I think too much, like at night when go to bed my brain doesn’t stop. Do I have everything ready for tomorrow, did I lock the door, are the light all turned off. My husband goes to bed and fall asleep in five minutes. In the scene at the end where Mason Jr. is leaving, Olivia starts to cry, and thinking about the future. Her whole life has been her kid and they are all gone now. I haven’t had any kids leave the nest yet, my son is 21 so it’s not far away, but time has gone by so fast, and as I get older I am thinking more about when they were little. The movie Boyhood left me thinking about my future how fast my kids have grown up, I am sad and excited all at the same time.
Jessie Nace
In search of lost time
Spring 2015
Turning Point Essay
In 1983 I was eight years old, my parents had been separated on and off for about a year, however, my dad would come around and spend time with us. My mother, me, my baby sister and my 2 brothers lived in a three bedroom rambler right behind my grandmother. We were so close that we could take a path and be on her cul-de-sac. We had a big back yard where my brothers and I would spend hours digging to China. In first grade I had been diagnosed with dyslexia, and been transferred to a special school, for in those days not all elementary schools had special education staff.
My dad was a man that found disabilities a waste of time, he felt that if you worked hard enough you could overcome anything. So at this particular visit, he made it his mission to cure me of my dyslexia. I don’t really remember exactly why he chose to focus on spelling, however, this is where he thought he would start. So he got my spelling list from the school, talked to my teacher, whom I remember he said that he didn’t like. I remember I didn’t much like her either. She always seemed unhappy, like she didn’t want to be where she was.
So my dad has the list, we are seated at the dining room table with a new spiral notebook, several yellow office notebooks, new sharpened pencils, a timer and me an excited eight year old, who when I look back I think it had a lot to do with the attention from my dad. Spelling words like elephant, telephone, and saxophone, they were called phonics, and at this point I didn’t get them. So my dad started out by asking me to spell the word, “spell elephant”, dad said. “E-L-A-F-A-N-T”, “no, try again” “E-L-E-F-A-N-T” “no, let’s try this” He took the notebook and wrote E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T, then said write this fifteen times. Then he walked away. So I took my pencil and wrote the word, fifteen time. He came back and looked at the paper, then looked at me and then at the paper. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong, but I could tell by his furrowed brow, and pursed lips that something clearly was not right. “Jessica, what is this”? He asked with a slight annoyance to his voice. I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, maybe I had not written it large enough, or not clearly enough. “Daddy, I copied what you wrote”. “No you didn’t, the E, P and N are all backward, if you copied it exactly then they wouldn’t be”. Why are they all backward? “I am sorry daddy, I don’t know why I do that”.
So we spend the next three hours writing out the letters until they were no longer backward. Then I practiced writing the words. “Jessica spell elephant”, my dad said later, after my hand hurt, and I could barley see the paper. “E-l-E-P-H-A-N-T” I replied, slowly spelling out each letter. “Good, now spell telephone, my dad said, trying to catch me off guard. “T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E”, I spelled with a smile on my face. It wasn’t just the words, it was the idea that I had gotten my dad’s help. That he spends much time helping me, yeah, it was exhausting, but he was hardly ever around so this was to my eight year old self a win. There were other words, on the list, however the only two that stood out in my mind were elephants and telephone.
Later, when I had been in bed for a while, I saw someone come into my room with a sheet over their head like a ghost, they whispered “Jessica spell elephant, half asleep I replied “E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T”. He was so excited that he threw the sheet up over his head, hit the glass light bulb cover and broke it with his back. My mom heard the commotion and came into the room. My dad was bleeding, my mom was saying “Bill you’re bleeding, he didn’t seem to care, because he listened to me spell elephant over and over again.
I never spelled elephant wrong again and with hard work I eventually didn’t have dyslexia. (Except for maybe when I am getting somewhere, direction is sometimes a challenge, but hey, that’s what google maps are for) The turning point was that no matter what roadblocks got in my way I could overcome them with hard work no matter what it was I wanted to accomplish. I remember how to spell elephant whenever I feel like giving up.