Eight Belated Days a Week

Alas, I am late again. So this week's song seemed rather appropriate.



Haha.

(It was my dad's idea. He's cleverer than I am.)

Good Grief, Melissa

So I've got this Bible.

I, of course, love the Bible because it's the Word of God. Duh. But I have a particular affinity for this one Bible. It's maroon bonded leather with my name in gold letters on the front cover, it's got a marvelous concordance, and best of all, it has these fantastically wide margins. I can write a whole paragraph next to a verse if I so desire (provided I write small... but you know me. I DO write paragraphs. Frequently). It's BEAUTIFUL. I love this Bible.

However, my lovely Bible is currently being repaired on the other side of the country because its binding broke.

SIGH.

I'm stuck with this old Bible I've had since about the fifth grade. The first page of Jeremiah is ripping out, and it has none of my notes in it. I've complained about it more than once in the last month.

And that makes me a rotten, terrible person.

Do you know how lucky I am to live in a day and age where the ENTIRE BIBLE is available all together? I can't imagine what the early church would have given for a bound book full of every inspired writing ever. Not only that, I can buy this book for five bucks at Walmart!! EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW TO GET TO HEAVEN!! FOR FIVE DOLLARS!!

I'm ridiculous. Thank you, Lord, for giving me access to Your Word so easily. It's a blessing I take for granted way too often.

...But if I can get my beautiful one back soon, that'd be cool. :)

Eight Days a Week-- "Got to Get You Into My Life"

I'm just feeling this one this week. Sorry, no literary geekouts.

From Emily

I beg your pardon, Modern World,
‘Twas never your design
To rip the writings of a Girl--
Line from heartfelt line;
I wrote them only for Myself!
You’re never meant to see!
So criticize me not, dear World,
Though Death has stopped for-- me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Yes, I am in school. But I am also in Creative Writing, and we're supposed to work on a fun writing project if we're done with actual assignments. Which means I can blog. Yay!)

One of my biggest English pet peeves is people who criticize Emily Dickinson. She's not my favorite poet by any stretch of the imagination, but the thing about her is she was never published in her lifetime. She didn't WANT her poems published. Every time I read a Dickinson poem I feel like I'm intruding on the private life that she never intended anyone to see. And I don't feel like anybody has the right to criticize that. She wasn't writing for you, stupid English critic. She was writing for her.

So. I channeled her and got her opinion on it. Hahaha. I tried to mirror her rhythms and her random capitalization and punctuation. It's not the best poem I've ever written, but I enjoy it. :)

Eight Days a Week... Literature Style

(I know what you're thinking. Eight Days a Week was yesterday. I forgot. My apologies.)

Sometimes I have a good explanation for the song of the week. This is one of those times.

I'm in AP English and we just started studying Shakespeare's King Lear. In the first act of the play you realize really quickly that King Lear is extremely vain (or insecure... maybe a little of both); he is constantly looking for approval and overbearing admiration from those around him. At one point, he brings in his three daughters (Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, if you want to know) and expects them to express their love for him in words-- whoever pleases him the most with their "love" will get the most land. The whole point is basically that he tries to put a numerical value on honor and affection and love.

So this is what I think of.



Hahaha.

Logophilia

I realized a few days ago that I don't love writing.

Well, rewind and rephrase. I do love writing. But all my life I thought that was the end all be all, and I just came to the conclusion that my core love is not of writing.

I LOVE WORDS.

I realized that nearly all of my earthly passions can be traced back to words. I love to spin words together into sentences when I write. I love reading the words that other people have written, whether they be poetry or prose. I love listening to music with lyrics that I identify with. I love quoting the words of people greater and wiser than me. I don't even care if the words are in English. I love Latin. Because it gives me better understanding of words.

So while I definitely love writing with every fiber of my being, that's just a symptom.

Don't you love it when you have this great realizations about the big picture of your life? Yeah. Me too.

Eight Days a Week-- "Eleanor Rigby"

This is one of my favorite Beatles songs. It's one of their most polished tracks, and the lyrics are just beautiful. I'd put in the Top 20 Greatest Songs of All Time EASY. :)



My favorite line is the one about "wearing a face that she keeps in the jar by the door." Lonely people always put on a brave face. I don't know, I just really like that.

ALSO-- There is a statue of Eleanor Rigby in Liverpool, England. It's "Dedicated to all the Lonely People." I shall visit it someday. When I go see Abbey Road. :)

Frosty Ambiguity

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I enjoy this poem. Robert Frost is easily one of my very favorite poets. He's incredibly simplistic, but when you dig there's so many levels to his poetry. The thing I love about this particular poem is that people don't realize there are two interpretations.

Most people I talk to think "The Road Not Taken" is about nonconformity. The speaker, though daunted by the challenge of blazing a new trail, chooses to take the less traveled road rather than follow the crowd. And that's totally valid. I'm not saying anybody's wrong. However, I've always kind of thought it was about regret.

First I look at the title: "The Road Not Taken." Does that mean the road not taken by the rest of the people? Or the road not taken by the speaker? If he's talking about the road HE didn't take, it's interesting that he chooses to use that as the title of the poem. He's preoccupied with the option he didn't choose.
(I'm really happy this isn't an essay and I don't have to have answers because this next paragraph is totally aimless and inconclusive speculation.)

I really think it's interesting that despite the second-to-last line, the speaker says TWICE that the roads are pretty much the same. Twice. He says "the passing there/ Had worn them really about the same" (9-10) and "both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black" (11-12). I don't really know what to think about that. My best theory is that you don't really know which road is going to be the best road, or which road everybody else is going to take. From the fork in the road they both look the same and you can't have a good gauge of which one's better in the long run. I mean, he even looks down the first road as far as he can TRYING to gauge it, but it's "bent in the undergrowth." He literally can't see what's around the corner.

The next line that catches my eye is 13-- "Oh, I kept the first for another day!" That "oh" seems important to me. Frost's lines are usually incredibly fluid, but the "oh" and the comma put a break there that bothers me when I read it out loud. It has to be significant. To me it's mournful, like "Oh how I wish I hadn't done that." He doesn't think the first road is undesirable-- he's planning to get back to it later, but he doesn't get the chance. That sounds regretful to me.

That last stanza is really the kicker for me, though. What kind of a sigh is he telling this story with later? A sigh of relief? A sigh of regret? I lean toward regret, but it could just as easily be the other. Either way, the choice "has made all the difference" (20) in his life. For good? For ill? I don't know.

Normally I would back up my opinion entirely and not point out the evidence for the other side of the argument the whole time, but this poem is EXTREMELY ambiguous, and I think it's so for a reason. The speaker didn't know which one to choose. We as readers don't know for sure exactly what he means by any of this. I really did start this post thinking it was about regret, but I think I've changed my mind. I think the whole point is that we oftentimes have no way to know what the future's going to hold, what decisions lie ahead, or what choices will ultimately affect the rest of our lives. Life is full of ambiguity. And that's why this poem is so ambiguous.

Ah literature. I love thee so.