A work that has changed the way that I look at the world is Ulysses by James Joyce.  Ulysses gave me a new perspective of literature.  Literature isn't just the classics; literature becomes something new and life-like everyday.  Ulysses changed the way I think and understand other things (especially other works of literature).  For example, before this work my thoughts resembled an inner monologue.  "I have to go eat after this class otherwise I won't get to eat before work."  After Ulysses, my thoughts sounded a little more like this: "Interrupted.  Abrupt interruption, ah nothing like a donut apple to make the morning breakfast most important meal but dinner is better except in the Schwag then dinner is worse mmm...got milk?"  It's like realizing the potential kinetic energy of a spoon sitting on a table if that makes any sense at all.  I see things that I never would've noticed before - like soap and music of conversation, the anatomy of statues, but more importantly human feelings, the emotions and experiences that make our lives unique.  Everyday may seem to fly by and be ordinary but I know now that everday can be an eternity and one never knows what can and will happen in a day.

Forgetfulness is something that comes easily to me.  Maybe it is because I write everything down, like Plato admonished.  But amybe the act of writing is another tool for remembering.  I remember things much better if I write them down rather than just say them to myself.  Interesting things come from writing.  Like Beckett's mistake in Ulysses, the one that I can't remember right now.  Every reading is a misreading.  I like this notion because everyone can make whatever he or she wants out of a piece of literature.  And I know that this is exactly why Plato argues against poetry and for memory and dialectic because he believes in one truth.  One truth doesn't make sense in this rapidly deconstructing melting pot of a society.  One truth makes sense in a Nazi/Hitlerish world but not today.  Everything here feeds on opposition and diversity.  What new ideas can come out of one truth?  "Without contraries is no progression" to quote Blake.  Writing to me is a way to create new ideas.  Yes, obviously you can't have a text talk back to you, but if you stop and write down your counter-argument, a conversation begins and ideas in the world just might change.

Back to Literary Criticism FUN!

Okay so I finally found the piece of literature that makes me cry.  It took me a long time to find it because I could never remember anything that I've read that had been so beautiful that it made me cry.  I was at church on Sunday (apt place to be on a Sunday) and I remembered a verse that makes me cry everytime I hear it.  It's not because I'm extremely religious that I'm attracted to this line.  It reminds me of my grandmother and what love should be about.  In a way this is something sublime because it represents grand human emotions.  Okay here goes. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all the mysteries and all the knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  Love is patient and kind.  Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge it will pass away.  For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect, but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away." I want to talk on this more but I'm running out of room so it'll be on the next page.

ODE to a Bed She slept beyond the covers of the bed The blankets never folded 'bove toe nor head 'Neath a body, heavy body, snoring In oblivious sleep; and yet with minimal motion Made constant sigh, alarm caused constantly a sigh That was not ours although we understood Human from the varigated covers The blanket was not a mask.  No more wore she. The sigh and alarm were not medleyed sound Even if what she sighed was because of what she heard, Since why she sighed was muttered four letter word by four letter word It may be because from her bed she stirred The twisting covers with a gaping yawn But it was the alarm and not the bed we heard For she was the setter of the alarm she heard The ever-hooted, trilled and generated beep Was merely a sound by which she waked from sleep Whose bed is this?  We said, because we knew That we should ask this often as Plato said More coming later....on the Ode to a Bed

Please Move On to Page Three