Most of my friends know about my Weezer obsession. Some people have Jesus, I have Weezer.

I was riding the bus today, listening to their 1996 album Pinkerton. As I am wont to do, I started analyzing the song “Falling For You”- one of my favorite hobbies. I have been dissecting this song and applying meaning to it for the last ten years. Usually the meanings I find are only applicable within the context of my own life but today was different.

Today this song made me think of Albertine and the Narrator. When I first started writing about it, I thought it was a bit of a stretch.  I texted my friend and fellow Weezer nerd, who has been kindly listening to me nerd out over Proust this whole quarter, and said: “Okay. I’ve gone full mental. I’m writing about how “Falling For You” could be interpreted as a line for line retelling of a major relationship in In Search of Lost Time”

Friend: “Haha, and that’s true? It’s gonna work?”

“I thought it was a stretch at first but I’ve been going through it and it totally works”

It totally works!! And so I present (as though you care) a line by line guide to the Proustian themes in Weezer’s “Falling For You”. The lyrics are in bold, with my commentary beneath.

Holy cow, I think I’ve got one here
Now just what am I supposed to do?
Reminiscent of the narrator’s obsession with women as an adolescent and the terror of obtaining someone he thought unattainable.
I’ve got a number of irrational fears
That I’d like to share with you.
By the time the Narrator and Albertine get together we are well aware of his many neuroses.
First there’s rules about old goats like me
Hangin’ round with chicks like you
The Narrator found any member of the Band of Girls unattainable and, yet, ended up with Albertine, which would have been unthinkable to him when he originally encountered them.
But I do like you and another one
Oh? Another one? Like maybe Andree?
You say “like” too much
This makes me think of the tendency of men-in-love in In Search of Lost Time have towards feeling fondly for women “despite” their common or uncouth tendencies.

But I’m shakin’ at your touch
I like you way too much
My baby I’m afraid I’m falling for you
This hearkens again to the Narrator’s obsession with sex and love. What do we do when we actually find it? Is it ever as good as we imagine? Is it ruined if it’s not what we imagined it to be?
I’d do about anything to get the hell out alive
We know at least one of them doesn’t make it out alive.
Or maybe I would rather settle down with you
Remember when he kept changing his mind over whether or not he should marry Albertine?

Holy moly baby wouldn’t you know it
Just as I was bustin’ loose
Around the time the Narrator and Albertine met the Narrator had started to recover slightly from his adolescent awkwardness.
I gotta go turn in my rock star card
Get fat and old with you
Though the Narrator had friends, he had begun to meet people that were important, both aristocratically and in his eyes and would have profound influence in his life, such as the Princesse de Guermantes, St. Loup and Elstir.
Cause I’m a burning candle, you’re a gentle mutt
Teaching me to lick a little bit kinder
Again, he loves women “despite” their flaws, but he begins to recognize what Albertine can, at times, offer him.
And I do like you, you’re the lucky one-
No, I’m the lucky one
As he goes between loving Albertine and being convinced that he is not in love with her he struggles with which of them is luckier to have the other.

Holy sweet goddamn, you left your cello in the basement
In The Captive they essentially seclude themselves, abandoning their hobbies for their obsessive relationship. Also the use of extra words when less would be necessary is an interesting comparison.
I admired the glowing stars and tried to play a tune
The narrator tries to continue working to become a writer.
I can’t believe how bad I suck, it’s true
But he doubts himself and it isn’t until much later in the novel that he realizes the full extent of his gift of observation.
What could you possibly see in little old three chord me?
How could anyone love such a hack? If only he knew he’d later be published in Le Figaro.
But I do like you, and you like me too
I’m ready, let’s do it baby.
Does he acquiesce and marry her? Or does he try harder to get to a place he’d rather be?

I texted my friend again. “It totally works. And now I’m forming this whole new theory about what Pinkerton is themed after”.

During our presentations, Rachel spoke about how reading novels as a teen somewhat reshaped her life because she thought the author’s interpretation of who the author portrayed the characters to be was how people her age should act and carry on. As a teen I very much had the same experience, but through music. Funny, because I remember parents, and conservative groups rising up against musicians, bands, and rap groups in those times. I never thought the music they were putting out was anything more than entertainment, and that only weak minded sheeple would actually get so deep into this that they could possibly live it out. Then later in life, maybe mid 20’s , I realized that a lot of the decisions I made were perhaps influenced by music I was listening to at the time. This was a revelation I didn’t know how to take since I was currently serving in the military to give these artists and authors their freedom of speech. Now I look around at today’s youth, and I see it more and more. Violence, and other petty crime being propagated by artist, the media especially, and authors as well. I still fight to defend our freedom of speech, I feel it would be a breath of fresh air if some would care enough to see exactly what their art is doing to our nation, and maybe learn to sensor themselves a little to benefit our youth.

I am six years old. I am leaving my last day of class. I am in kindergarten. I am leaving kindergarten. I am becoming older, but I don’t want to. Walking down the hallway at Brown’s Point Elementary near the first grade wing of the school I see my friend Nate walking in his class line opposite mine. We always leave school in our class lines and separate once we get out to the parking lot. I look at Nate’s first grade class and how cool and tall they look and wonder how tall I will be when I’m a first grader. I take the blue school bus home most days. The bus isn’t actually blue but has a laminated paper with the word BLUE on it in blue print. I always wanted to take the orange bus home because that was my favorite color but that would take me up the hill towards Federal Way and the Aquatic center where I took swimming lessons. So I took the Blue School bus with my friend Matt. He lives several houses down from mine in Brown’s Point, WA. Matt is my best friend and, in the sport of being six, I often tell him fables (lies) about my life before coming to kindergarten, somehow convince that I anyone that the five years of my life prior to kindergarten are the most eventful years anyone has ever experienced.

I was born in Hawaii and lived there until I was four years old. I use this to tell all the kids in my class (mostly Matt) that I am interesting and that they should be my friends. I tell them that I am thousands of years old and am a pirate who washed up on the shore of Brown’s Point. I use a fake shipwreck sculpture that a house down the road from my parent’s house has in their front yard to solidify my story. To everybody I meet, that boat is what I took to get to Washington in August of 1998. To me at times, that boat is what I took to get to Washington in August of 1998.

I get off of the school bus at the bus stop in front of my house and walk with Matt up to the front door. He stays for dinner but only eats part of the bun of his hamburger and barely touches his corn. We play Bomberman 2 on the Super Nintendo that my father had hooked up in my room earlier that year. We jump up and down in frantic spurts, unaware of how to play this video game but loving it all the same. Matt walks down the street to his house and I eat his leftover hamburger (without the top bun with a bit mark in it of course).

My mom asks me how my last day of school was. I enjoyed it even though the other kid named Matt in my class kicked the teacher for some unknown reason and had to go to the principal’s office. I tell my mom that I don’t want to be in first grade in the fall and that I would rather stay in Ms. Nelson’s kindergarten class forever. I tell her that I want to be six years old forever. I tell her that I want to be a 3000-year-old pirate from Hawaii that sailed here on the boat at that house by the park. I cry and my mother is quiet. She tells me of a time when I was two, when she was putting away laundry and watching the old black and white version of the movie titanic on silent. She tells me of how I cry out when the men on the titanic begin to jump into the water. I yell, “Don’t jump in the water! It’s too cold! The daddies are jumping in the water and it’s too cold!”

My mother tells me about how she believes that I might have been one of those men on the titanic before I was born as Austin. At the start of first grade, I begin to tell my friends that before I was Austin, I was a 3000-year-old pirate who sailed around the Pacific Ocean, eventually landing in Brown’s Point and founding the town. The kids that I tell my story to are not like Matt. They don’t play games like Bomberman 2 or like The Land Before Time (The Land Before Time is a great film and I cannot believe that any child did not love it as much as I did it is ridiculous). The kids that I tell my story to don’t know how to react so they laugh. Not at me I think but at my story, as though I was telling a funny joke. For the rest of first grade I pretend to be the class clown. For the rest of first grade the kids keep telling me to stop making sound effect noises and star wars jokes.

When Stacey showed us Dance at le Moulin de la Galette, and said it was one of the more famous/popular paintings shown that day, I didn’t truly understand why. Then as she was explaining that it was believed the majority of the women pictured were prostitutes, I began to look a little harder. There appears to be may other faces painted into the highlights on the clothing worn by several of the people in the painting. This caused me to read into the painting with greater detail. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find anything of significance although I do find the painting more intriguing now and have started to appreciate why it is so popular.

Wesley Anderson, professionally referred to as Wes Anderson, has been writing and directing films since his early childhood and has been known by the public since the late 1990’s. He has won several awards for his screenplays of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and is well known for his quirky narrative style that emphasizes on uncomfortable truths in both plot structure and movement. For example, if a character in one of Wes Anderson’s films has to run down a long hallway it will take an uncomfortably long amount of time to do so.

Wes Anderson is well known among the public eye, even more so now due to the mass success of The Grand Budapest Hotel, mainly for his unique way of filming but also for his very common recasting of actors who have been in his previous films. For example, the actor Owen Wilson, whom Anderson met while attending college, has been cast in a whopping six out of Anderson’s eight full-length films while the actor Bill Murray has appeared in an even more impressive seven out of eight of Anderson’s works. Other commonly recast actors include: Adrien Brody (3 films), Willem Dafoe (3 films), Jeff Goldblum (2 films), Anjelica Houston (3 films), Harvey Kietel (2 films), Edward Norton (2 films), Jason Schwartzman (5 films), Tilda Swinton (2 films) and Luke Wilson (3 films).

Wes Andersons films are also widely known to be comically in a witty and, at times, very dry sense relying on over dramatization and bluntness to deliver most of the laughter. This style of writing is far out of the norm for a “popular” film maker and can definitely shy people away from his films at first but it is indeed worthwhile to get used to the formula as it has worked on so many occasions.

Recently, Anderson has been working on a multitude of short films after the release of The Grand Budapest Hotel but is rumored to be starting on another feature in the not too distant future. Regardless of what the film maker creates next, it is certain to be well attended by the public is if follows his recent success pattern as it should be.

After Life and La Captive, the two films that I watched in class over the past two weeks seem to me to be very similar, both in subject matter and in execution. At a first glance these two films don’t seem to have all that much in common. With After Life focusing on how precious our memories are and what memory, when one were forced to do so, stands out among the rest as your most important, and La Captive spending it’s narrative following the crumbling relationship of a young couple who are enabling each other to live an unhealthy life there doesn’t seem to be any one thing that stands out like a beacon to the viewer to point to them being similar. But as we saw them both during our ten week quarter on the writings of Marcel Proust and the topic of memory I find myself inclined to believe that there are, in fact, many connections between the two films and, most likely, similar connections between every film and extra text that we have been assigned to view and read during this spring quarter.

One of the most present connections that I found linking After Life and La Captive together is that of the human placement and understanding of value and what things mean to us. In After Life  the whole goal of the two week long session is for each recently deceased person to place the most value on one specific memory and this placement of value varies in many ways. For some of the residents, the most valuable memory was when they felt the happiest, often when they were in the presence of a loved one but for others, mostly those who fail the initial memory selection process and stay on as caretakers, the value is harder to place. There is talk amongst these people of their life possibly lacking value or that picking one specific memory does a disservice to other, equally valuable aspects of their life. Eventually, the placement of value comes back to happiness, though containment may be a more appropriate term, when the protagonist chooses his one memory to be the memory of him looking at the people that were most important to him, the other caretakers. He felt happiest there and to the protagonist, true happiness lies in remembering the people that you shared your happiness with.

This connection can be seen in a very different light in La Captive where the couple, a paranoid man and a secretive woman, place the value of their lives in aspects separate from happiness, like control and escape but these placements of value are proven to be false and their true placement of value is revealed to also be that of happiness, or, even more appropriately, contentment.  The relationship, as toxic as it may seem, has worked for this couple so far because they have accepted the oddities of the other, albeit more the woman accepting that mans oddities, in order to lead a content life of knowing that things are unhealthy but feeling comfortable in the environment that they have built together. Unfortunately this too is a false placement of value on the couples part, specifically seen when the man decides that he can longer trust his partner and breaks it off and later when the woman, after getting back together with the man, swims out to sea and drowns. Both of them realize that the relationship is bad and both of them get to a breaking point in the personalities and lifestyles that just can’t allow them to continue the facade that they have created for themselves. It appears to me that both the man and the woman, though again more so the man, strive for comfort but only comfort for themselves and have little care of the other, though they often deny this fact. When it becomes to much the act out in an attempt to keep what comfort they have but because their sense of value has been lost due to the steady decline of their relationship they act out very irrationally and this sadly leads to the death of the woman.

What I am trying to explain is that both of these films put forth the idea that the most valuable thing in life, more so than happiness, comfort or success is who you spend your time with and how you spend that time with them. Whether we like it or not we are defined by those around us, unless we are alone and even then we may begin to draw definitions of ourselves and because of this it is incredibly important to be aware of who you spend your time with and how. La Captive shows that this couple doomed themselves by not accepting the fact that they were a bad combination to spend time together and After Life shows the bittersweet nature of the protagonist only finding the people he truly cared for after he had already died, and that because he didn’t spend enough time truly being where he was and with who he was in life, he was unable to choose the memory that best represented these feelings for him.

These connections may be widely inaccurate but I found it interesting to discuss nevertheless.

This is the hardest class that I have taken at Evergreen and I couldn’t be happier to say that. I will miss this class a lot. To be completely honest I probably shouldn’t have taken this class because of the amount of work it required which was bound to clash with my work schedule and my scattered attempts at creating an independent lifestyle but I’m glad that I did because, while I’m exhausted after the ten weeks of this program, I feel like I have grown immensely and have a better grasp on how to plan my priorities.

My favorite thing about this class was the seminar time that we had on Monday and Wednesday. I felt like seminar was crucial to my understanding of Proust and I even started reading Proust out loud during the last two volumes because it seemed to help so much in seminar. I also really agree with what Stacey said on the last day of class about how this is an incredibly diverse program and I think that can really be seen in our seminar groups. I have been in seminar style classes a lot in the past five years and never before have I had a seminar that was both this diverse and this interesting. Usually if a group is too different things are too quiet or too chaotic but I feel like our seminar had a perfect balance of agreement and disagreement.

I plan on beginning a full read of In Search of Lost Time, hopefully getting through a full volume every 3-6 months (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it took a full year for each volume). I really enjoy Proust’s writing and I think it’s a great addition to the other authors (Sartre, Beckett, Hemingway, Woolf, Plath, etc.) that I plan on reading more of in the near future. I think I would have passed up on Proust if it wasn’t for this class, seeing the 4,000 pages of text and feeling like there just wouldn’t be enough time, but if I can get through nearly 2,000 pages in ten intense weeks I can definitely get through the full read in several years, if not less. I feel like I’ve learned more in this class than I am aware of, and I look forward to figuring out just what I have learned from this program.

6/1/15

I am struggling a lot with my paper right now, I feel overwhelmed with information it feels like my brain is going to explode. I have all the pieces to create a great narrative and I know that but somehow it is still not coming together the way I want it too. I think Sam’s suggestions on formatting the paper by generation is a great idea that I plan to pursue, and it will be the main theme while revising my paper but there is still a lot missing. I think I will put more observations in; I have a bunch of little notes on things I observed during the interview but decided they weren’t relevant enough to put in the paper. I am now completely rethinking that idea; perhaps my observations and some context around the interview will give it more of a natural flow.

I am pretty disappointed in myself over all this quarter; my lack of enthusiasm with the subject matter was apparent and invasive. It is so difficult to stay engaged in class when I keep missing random days because of the ridicules amount of germs on this campus. I felt detached and like I wasn’t putting my best effort forward and even when I attempted to turn it around I would get sick again, loose track of what we were doing, and not take the initiative to makeup the work. I think that it has been difficult for me to adjust from being sick for two months and doing nothing, to be in class everyday. But no matter how this quarter turns out for me over all I have still learned so much and thought about things I would never have on my own.

Proust has made such an impression on me, I was not expecting for his writing to speak to me in anyway. But as we got further into the novels I found myself feeling Proust emotions as he felt them and relating to his complex imperfect characters. They are all so human; Proust gives layers to characters, showing them throughout the novel in different lights. I have never read a book with that kind of character development, it is so intricately tied to the themes of the book that an unobservant reader would hardly even notice as this two dimensional character placed before them becomes real and takes on a life of their own. It was somewhat magical and I realized it takes an incredible amount of understanding about the human condition to create characters so unapologetically human.

Celia Avitia

05/29/2015

Spring Quarter

While I was attending Pierce College last year I got a phone call from a relative in Alaska. It was the week before finals week, and they asked me if I could pick up my cousin who wasn’t in a good place. She was only 13 and was already dealing with adult issues, so I jumped on the plane the next day. That was on a Tuesday. The ferry down from Ketchikan only leaves on Wednesdays so time was limited. As soon as I got her down here I opened a custody case, which turned into a criminal case against me. I managed to finish that quarter on Deans list and I walked that quarter.

After I earned my associates I took the next quarter off so I can face the judge for my custodial interference charge in Alaska. That charge started off as a felony but was dropped down to a misdemeanor. My grandmother took care of my cousin since she was born, but I didn’t know she didn’t have custody until I got her to Washington. While I was in Alaska I got the news that my biological father was dying of cancer in Arizona. So after my 3-week trip to Alaska was over I then had to drop my toddlers off with their father who I separated from while I was in Alaska and jump on the plane a week later to say good-bye to my father.

By now we were well into fall quarter however I didn’t enroll in a four-year college yet because I didn’t want to have to leave for court. By now I have 2 cases going on. While I was in Arizona my sister and I decided to open another case in the immigration court so my father can become legal for medical purposes. After that case was opened I returned to Washington to only find out my toddlers dad left the state with them. I then opened my fourth case involving my children. That took a big toll on me. So by the time winter quarter started I was overwhelmed with life. By December the Alaska DA said if I opened another custody case in Alaska involving my cousin they would drop all charges. By now my children were returned to me and I started my shared custody with my Ex. I took another trip to Alaska to close my criminal case only to open another custody case.

By the time March came along I decided I was going to enroll in school. If I didn’t enroll now I would of put it off again. I originally enrolled in Central Washington University’s satellite campus at Pierce College. The only thing I didn’t like was that they didn’t offer any classes I was interested in. So after I enrolled I decided I wanted to go to Evergreen. Before I could enroll at Evergreen life happened again. My brother-in-law wasn’t in a good place and needed a sitter; so thinking I would only have the 6-month-old baby over night I took her.

Two days passed by and I didn’t hear anything from her father, and her mother was in Alaska. So I was stuck with the baby along with my 5 kids. Again I was thinking about putting school off. I looked on Evergreens website and noticed I had one day to enroll. I ended up enrolling on the Friday before school started. Not knowing if I could even attend since I didn’t have a sitter for the baby. Luckily her father was released from jail.

Since I was late signing up for classes I was very limited with my selection. I entered this class as a last resort. My 1^st few weeks were hard trying to keep up with the reading because Proust is a hard man to follow. I was diagnosed with PTSD four years ago. When I was in high school I could never figure out why I had such a hard time focusing, it was hard to understand anything I read. I ended up dropping out. After I got diagnosed and got help I finally had an answer for why school was hard for me. Once I had a documented illness I was able to get extra help while I attended Pierce College. They showed me a few techniques to reading and understanding what I was reading. Before I would forget everything I read and have to reread it. Once I got the extra help and learned the techniques my grades changed drastically. I made Deans list for at least half the time I was at pierce. I don’t regret taking this class at all.

I also had a timing problem with my interview with Diane Formoso. I also cut her right out of my paper, fortunately I was finally able to interview her. I am so glad I did because I got an amazing interview from her and her family. I got the real feel for the organization. Something I wouldn’t be able to make up.

Getting anything done at home was near impossible. There were a few times when my daughter Myra had to get on my about my work and point out how they had to have their work down before they did anything. Since my daughters insisted on watching my toddlers I was able to get some work done. My first quarter at Evergreen was a struggle but I’m glad I got my foot in the door. I’m also glad I was able to dabble in Proust’s world. The volumes are full of such dynamic culture that I would of never been able to touch on if it wasn’t for this class.

Traveling has always been an activity which has run through the veins for many of us. The absolute thrill of adventure and the sensations the undiscovered delivers second by second is a fascinating reward. In particular a recent experience occurred in Wyoming while surveying a Paleo-Indian archaeological site (which with the help from Proust) has radicalized my perceptions of not only myself, but also my heritage and above all, time.
Like Proust, the romance which the past infiltrates is very present in our profession as handlers of material culture. I keep finding myself going back to the Madeleine and also to the early passages of the Journey to Balbec and can’t help but transport myself with those very same emotions to places I’ve been where the expectations exceed the reality of the destination. What was idiosyncratic about this particular experience among the others was the adjacency of our early-entry point site next to the path of the Oregon trail and the wagon ruts they left as well as their names which enculturated my senses as my maternal ancestors were early trail blazers.
I wonder if I walked in the same steps as they, and now as a result I cannot help but think I was as close to living multiple lives through three different periods in time at once. In retrospect (a re-occurring ponder within the last few weeks) something has me perplexed in a multitude of emotions that can only be explained as anomie. An issue with being occupied with the accretion of history is the confusion the present brings to us. This alienation ( and the fear that the future can seem to bring) helps me emphasize with Marcel while also raising some serious questions and concerns.
The romance of time and history is quickly dissipated by the fulfillment that cynism brings by the appropriation the present has on it.

Almost like a reverse Madeleine affect, and just as quickly as I had entered this state of historical equilibrium walking among the spirits of my mothers ancestors, I was transported back out to the familiar artifacts of the worthless we will leave to following excavators. I felt a landslide of sadness that had no home until now. This sadness wasn’t for the litter, or for the assimilation of history (that is the nature of our being after all), but rather for the destruction of what time has brought, and the cruel reality many of us face of living too early, or perhaps too late in its continuum.Proust believes we must separate beauty and happiness apart in order to truly appreciate its meaning as its given to us. I believe romance and adventure applies to the same principle. The combination of the two manifests a depressing recollection of conjured, imaginary memories which are homeless to any part in our mind when they’re evicted by the notions of reality.