I always have little spurts of inspiration for blog post ideas. I can never find a way to flesh them out to a whole story, and have no way to string them together coherently, so I've decided to cheat. Here are a few mini-blogs.
Sin and The Scarlet Letter
I'm reading The Scarlet Letter for my themes class. It's really getting to me. Hawthorne does this whole examination of sin exercise, and I find myself feeling for Reverend Dimmesdale. He committed adultery, but that's the just the first step of his descent. His guilt gets greater and greater until he despises himself, and that's what finally throws him overboard. Is everything I do just another floor down the elevator of Hell? Am I fooling myself? I think that, and then I end up despising religion for making me feel that way. And then I think that maybe me despising religion is the whole point of sin in the first place. And on it goes.
I go to CYM at my church for a variety of reasons. I don't see myself as a Christian, or anything else, but I like to go there because the people want to do good. Also, I like listening to speakers and discussions as a skeptic. With a "Okay, let's see what you can do to change my mind" mentality. It's interesting. My mind is still unchanged. I'll probably always be gravitating to one side or the other. I can't think of anything that anyone could say to have me sold either way. Whether that's open mindedness or eternal damnation, I won't know until I die.
The Generation Gap
Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll attest to how much I love Roger Ebert's writing. He's an inspiration to me. I read his blog, movie reviews, and books regularly. So imagine my surprise last week, when I went to his blog, and saw that he mentioned me. Roger-fucking-Ebert. I was ecstatic. I'll post the link, in case you want to look. Anyways, I needed to show someone. Maybe I'd let my mom in on a tiny piece of my life, because sometimes I feel bad for pretty much shutting her out from everything. I showed her, not knowing what she would say.
This is almost verbatim.
"Wow!" Silence-reading the paragraph, and excerpt- "Well.... what you wrote is pretty scary. Do you need to talk to me about something? That's cool, though."
Really? I come to show her, obviously excited, and the first thing she does is ostracize me for writing a paragraph about me having a thought process? I'm not sure what to say about that. I don't have a point. I was just downtrodden about it. Do people lose their curiosity after they hit 40? If so, then my worst fears have been confirmed.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/09/the_blogs_of_my_blog.html
Link to Ebert's blog (it's got my picture and everything!)
Writing on a happy day
I'm not nearly as good at writing when I'm in a good mood, like today. I don't have the same fervor or vividness that I have when I'm pissed off or sad. So what does that mean? I don't think I want to know.
I have to start writing this newspaper story soon. I'm working on a communist newspaper. The only way they'll put something I write in is if it makes my school look like some world-class institution. They always have to be the number one something in the state. Now I'm rambling. Then again, this entire thing is me rambling. Here's a quote from a song that I'm addicted to:
"And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies
And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life" -Neutral Milk Hotel
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Found my way here from Ebert's entry, in fact. I admire how introspective a lot of your entries are. And I have to agree with a lot of the replies on that journal entry of his. It really is encouraging just when you think nobody is reading, not that we should be writing for other people. I think people don't write as well when they're in a good mood because writing about our experiences often is more like a catharsis. Whereas, when you're in a good mood, you want to share that with people. And you can't share with people if you're unsure if people are even reading. I know I'm blogging a lot lately because, honestly, it's unbearable to have a thought and to not put it down somewhere.
ReplyDeleteLike Hawthorne with "The Scarlet Letter," Martin Scorsese seems to be fascinated with guilt-ridden characters in his movies.
ReplyDeleteWhich, interestingly enough Nick, is my favorite director of all time!
ReplyDeleteDid you get a chance to read the e-mail I sent you last night?
ReplyDeletedon't judge me
ReplyDeletebut i fucking hated the scarlet letter.
i have my reasons
but i almost always hate victorian literature
and
neutral milk hotel
ha.
just had to throw that out there.
haha yeah thank you for Neutral Milk Hotel... and I can understand that. I think I like the message of it much more than actually reading it.
ReplyDeleteScarlet Letter... eh, that's same crap, different day. People making bad decisions, then letting guilt drag them further down. Religion can move people to do tremendous good. But it's often a tool of conformity. Frak that. Think before you act, but when you make mistakes, make your apologies, learn your lessons, make your changes, and move forward. And for the love of whatever you find holy, stay out of other people's lives when it doesn't concern you, eh?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say people lose their curiosity at 40, rather that it's overwhelmed by fear when they have children. Look how many of your peers do monumentally stupid things. Maybe it hurts them socially, or academically. Sometimes it even kills them. Put that together with the common teen habit of not telling their parents everything, and any reasonable parent thinks, "That could be my kid." Follow that road a bit, and you come to "Do you need to talk to me about something?"
Consider your own past... concerns you had when you were younger, things that were a BIG DEAL when you were 6 or 8 or 10, you laugh off as trivial now. You got through it, you learned from it, you've moved on to bigger things since then. Same thing applies to parents. They're not totally sure how to handle your adolescence, because you've never been through it before. It'll look like nothing to worry about once you leave for college.
But then... oh God... COLLEGE! What could happen THERE! What won't they know in the DAYS, even WEEKS they won't see you! And we start all over again...
(And we've got plenty of cheerleader newspapers here in the West. The political heirs of Marx and Lenin didn't have a monopoly on that.)
I can sympathize with writing better when you're not happy. I feel like I don't have the patience to write when I'm happy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, props on the Neutral Milk Hotel lyric.
I found your blog from Roger-fucking-Ebert's link. I was pretty suprised to see it there too. But not for the reasons you might expect.
ReplyDeleteI'm a junior at Michigan State University, but I grew up in Little Rock. I graduated from Central in 07.
Your blurb stuck out on Ebert's post because your picture was on it, and you are clearly younger than everyone else on that list. I read the stuff by your picture and my interest was picqued. Then I clicked the link and - holy shit - this guy is from Little Rock! I used to live in Little Rock! I wonder if I know anyone who knows him?
I also blog about stuff that might make my mom uncomfortable to read. So I feel like we've got a lot in common.
My blog is at www.nbashaw.tumblr.com