| FEBRUARY 12, 2002 "Fecundity," Annie Dillard The beginning of the passage was quite hilarious. I don't know how anyone can say that reproduction is ugly that a thousand fish eggs all at once hatch and allow the offspring to encounter the world for the first time, how can that be ugly. Her horrible dream of this encounter was, of course, a bit scary because it was happening in her own bed! That would be the only scary part of the dream, is that it was happening in some far fetched place such as a bed but the fact that she kept on and kept on about how the whole process was ugly and disgusting, made my opinions and feelings of the passage come out as anger. Perhaps I didn't understand her point for if I didn't this journal entry is one hundred percent incorrect, but this is how I perceived her dream. A nightmare is what she called the act of fecundity. The ability or power to reproduce abundantly, fertile or fruitful is a dictionaries definition of this word. It amazes me how different words on a paper are from the actual act of fecundity. On some occasions when I am bored at home and really have nothing else better to do I turn on the television. If I am lucky I will see a national geographic channel showing the life cycle of a small insect that I never knew existed. The documentation always begins with birth and how the two insects mate. I really believe that it's the maturity level of the person watching a show like that to be really interested or not so interested on a rare insect that has really no significance to the person's life. But on this day I was sitting there watching the beginning of this insect's life. I was amazed that this very act brings life that the few seconds these insects spent which each other in turn brings life to many other insects. Fecundity is nature's gift of life. The author's argument is that life is cheap that all it takes is this little time for two moths to create life. LIFE. The biggest broadest term in today's dictionary is life. Because I am not an insect and I can not speak for a moth I believe that humans mate because of love. I believe that we have to have a feeling before we mate and create life. Of course there are the few stupid people in our society that are, well, stupid when it comes to mating. If two humans choose to mate the value of life becomes worth so much more. I can go on and on about the value of a person's life but that can take forever. |
| "The Tiger is God," Stephen Harrigan I began writing my journal entry on God's power to destroy mankind can be compared to the Tiger's power to destroy mankind. But then I started thinking out loud about how all people would be fearful of him instead of loving him. Occurrences such as Miguel the tiger taking Mr. Juarez's life should bring fear. It should also get a person thinking about the way today's zoos display the animals they have captivated and start asking themselves if there is any other way to do so without making a captive tiger go crazy! Miguel's living conditions sounded awful! Being caged at night and then released in the morning into an observatory with fake boulders and little bushes in front of a painted mosaic on the concrete wall of "my home" is not what I would want to see daily. I would be driven insane as well. The fact that Miguel was driven to do what he did should speak for the treatment and living conditions that the zoo has grown accustomed to. I believe there is a God; I also believe that he has given us this gift of life and ability to interact with nature to calm our emotional overloads. I believe that God's power can never be put into words but using a passage such as this to describe a tiger's power of taking away life can trigger thought of God's own power of taking away our lives. "The Tyger," William Blake /"The Lamb," William Blake Both passages are beautiful, they give the history of life, before parents, before their existence even. God is proclaimed to have given both these animals life. Blake writes of a lamb first because he gives both aspects of nature. There is a nice fluffy non-harmful lamb that is described to have a "soft wooly coat" and a "tender voice." The wonderful beauties of nature the things that make us unafraid of nature is what Blake wants to portray. Then he goes on and describes the tiger. The tiger has "fire in thine eyes" be afraid of the tiger is what Blake wants to come of this passage. He accomplishes the contrast of beautiful nice versus harsh and harmful in nature. He wants all to know that nature was created to have both good and evil. The lamb is good having all soft qualities as for the tiger has been described as being scary and a creature of the dark. God is responsible for both of these creatures. He has made such beauty and such fright. Nature possesses so many characteristics but the basis is always good and evil. Another example of this is one nice sunny day in Pleasantville and the next winds up to 110miles and hour destroying everything in its path. We see again the basis of good and evil in nature. I believe everything has its counterpart. Everything has a nemesis. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, everything that we have studied to explain our existence has been from some conflict with good and evil. God's way of balancing our world's conflicts is presenting us this equation. Good versus evil. As we think of the evil of the world this then brings up the idea of fear. The very definition of fear is based on the definition of evil. Fear and evil are hand in hand. |
| FEBRUARY 14, 2002 Jones, Life on Waller Creek Jones has specified a need for the creek to live happily. Because he is retired at this age, the only thing he has found really pleasing for him is to spend time down in this creek and discovery new things and most importantly level out his life with the necessary intake of beauty each day to balance out the "terrorism with which our world is infested," (Jones,164.) I admire that Jones can be so in love with a particular place in this city; he mentions that this place keeps him young. But is that true? Can a little old creek do that to a person? I believe it can. It's as if I was a child again. There was this one place in my house that I love to escape to and that was the closet. Okay, okay, it was not as beautiful and fresh as Waller Creek but I could get away from my mother, my brothers and LIFE. I wanted time to think to myself and do so without any distractions. That is how I think, though.there are people that need fresh air and new discoveries to be able to think of their life. This thinking process differs with everyone. I certainly admire Jones for having this creek as his own getaway. He says he fell in love with the creek. To be able to fall in love with this creek portrays Jones' hunger for beauty. Spending so much time feeding the birds and fish almost daily and noticing the minute differences of the creek from one day to the next truly speaks of his love. There were a few lines in this passage that described the amount and what type of litter the creek was accumulating. I can't believe that we, as students, can sometimes care more about having a good time with beer, or what not, and not think about where we are throwing the trash. Did we ever stop to think that perhaps the throwing of that bottle into the creek altered the living of some species? Did we ever stop to think that if we continue to dump our waste into this creek that we would be polluting and speeding up the disintegration of one of the few non-industrialized areas we have in Austinand we should preserve this area only in hopes to see it flourish? After all of these years Jones has noticed change around Waller creekmore populated, more buildings being built, expansion of the school and new businesses opening up and down the creek's side. But I will second his notion that all of us need a place to run away to. I think we can all help to preserve this amazing natural beauty. We need a place to recollect, we need to be able to become children every now and then. Release the holds that society has on us in school life study, study and more study. Taking some time to sit near the creek, just sit there and observe its life compared to ours. I would become jealous. Since we can never become that free why not just admire its life? |