Alright, onward with the examination of the websites.  A question from Nikole's journal that I think about a lot: Why study literature?  In being an English Education major, I have found that everything I do must have a reason behind it because God forbid that I flood my students' minds with Byron's autonomy and Keroauc's rebellion.  Teachers can no longer give students a novel like The Outsiders without correlating it to one of an endless list of state and national standards.  I'd love to just throw conventions out the windo and just revel in the language.  We study the literature because we're like the Lorax and we speak for the trees.  Well maybe not for the trees but we can speak for something.  I like having big people like Wordsworth, Emerson, Eliot, Stein, Hemingway, and Chaucer on my side.  This literature gives me something to say!  I know I study literature not just because I want to but because I HAVE to.  REading makes me happy and it makes me whole.  It makes me think about things that I never would have thought about before.  And that's why we study literature.

"I am the Lorax.  I speak for the trees.  I speak for the tree, for the trees have no tongues." -The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss

There's this one part of Beethoven's Ghost Trio (also formally known as Piano Trio No. 4 in D Major, Op. 70 No.1) that I love.  It drives me to ecstasy because it is so beautiful.  No words can make me feel like that.  The part is in the middle; I'm not quite sure where but when the violin and cello lay in tandem.  I have no words to describe how heart-breakingly beautiful this music is.  It gives me goosebumps and makes me feel warm at the same time. You can feel the agony Beethoven must have felt when he wrote it.  (Damn, there I go again, figuring that the author gives the meaning behind the creation)  I feel sad and joyous because the song is crying, wailing, keening but the harmony is so gorgeous, full, and melodious.  It's like a choereographed death scene, the death of a beautiful woman dancing, a graceful accident, all wonderful and horrible at the same time.  It's "Ode to a Nightingale."  True melancholy.  I feel myself being torn apart each time I listen to it because I feel so heart-broken listening and all I can think when its over is "God, that was wonderful.  Play it again."  And many times I do.  Over and over just to get that feeling.  It's awful in all senses of the word.

This is a picture of Yo Yo Ma's cello.  He's the cello in my version of Beethoven's Ghost Trio.  A gorgeous picture to accompany a beautiful song.

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Keep Going, You'll Find the Answer Eventually

Alright.  I finally made it to the Desert Island topic.  If I was alone on a desert island, forced there by rabid and angry pirates who had captured me while I was sailing from New York to France on a quest to find the "real" writings of Foucault, I would request a copy of Finnegan's Wake or The Complete Works of Heidigger.  I think if I had to be completely alone on a desert island (condmened to never view the rest of the world, much like the Lady of Shalott: See Alfred, Lord Tennyson) I could probably find some meaning in the insane convolutions of Heidegger or the radical every-story of James Joyce.  I hate answering this question because I've never been kidnapped by blood-thirsty, lusty pirates and probably never will be in a situation that required me to sail or be forced onto a desert island.  [I also highly doubt that a crowd of rowdy scallwags would have a copy of either of these books but it's my fantasy so that's beside the point.]  I might want a dictionary too in order to learn all the words in the current vernacular.  Then I can talk to myself using very big words.  :)