It's Pronounced Eh'teeee

“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to so it anymore. I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this:” (Vonnegut. Pg. 22) There is a balance in the world that is our minds, between forgetting and remembering. It is easier to forget, ignore, and avoid, or to dwell in the past, than to stay in between. I do not want to become one of "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Santayana. 1905) or a the type of veteran who forgives and forgets. If I ever get the opportunity to forgive those who changed my life for the bad, I shall, for I would remember them in forging a new future for myself, a better one. Furthermore, now that it’s all over, a part of me is thankful that they showed me the wrong way so that I may find the right one. In a way, they showed me the true path.

Once, when I was younger, I longed to play the violin. After taking a few lessons from a professional concert soloist from Russia, I hated the instrument. The fault was not mine nor the instrument’s requisites themselves, but the teacher’s. The inability to communicate took a toll on my love for the stringed instrument, along with the effect of Miami’s moisture and temperature on the teacher’s (Eddie(pronounced EH´TEEEE)) perspiration glands and his lack of deodorant. I had recently moved to the US, and thus, had very limited mastery on the English language. And so did he. Now that I look back, I thank my teacher in such sense that he showed me what commitment was required to study such a complex instrument. It could not be taken on simple whim, but rather supreme dedication and love. I could have not regained my will to play the instrument were it not for my ability to forget my previous experience upon first learning to play it. Were I to obsess on the set of events, I would never have gained the confidence and willpower to take it up once more. I had to forgive and forget. However, if I had altogether, I would have received lessons once more for the wrong reasons, and thus, I would not be as dedicated as the study of the violin requires. Whim is not an option."Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Santayana. 1905).

A Reader In Progress

When analyzing the possibilities of the Divine Comedy's future, we must consider the metamorphosis that Dante the character and Dante the writer undergo in the journey to the divine. Such journey was his way to enlightenment, not solely intellectual, but spiritual and physical as well.

When we speak about commonly accepted philosophical ideas, I'm sure we can include the fact that everything has its counterpart: Actions have repercussions, courage repels fear, and love contrasts hatred, among others. In the beginning of Dante's Inferno, Dante the writer confesses that "... to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw" in an effort to make his recount seem more plausible by including all the gory details. Of such events, included, is that of Dante's moment of angst, when his monologue reveals that, "Then I was more afraid of death than ever; that fear would have been quite enough to kill me, had I not seen how he was held by chains." (Inferno. Canto 31. 109-111) Not only can we see here that Dante explains how a life lived with brave is a full life, and how, the absence of courage brings takes brings with it the absence of life. Fear is death. Fear bonds the links to the chain of desperation and insanity. Here, Dante the writer realizes that this was the point where he began to lose his freedom to fear.

I believe that in the future of the Divine Comedy, Dante's narrator will change, as well as the lessons he learns and the type of people he meets. Dante has very high expectations for the things his readers think of his work, which is why he addresses us prior to the scene of the man-serpent transformation in Canto 25. "If, reader, you are slow now to believe what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder, for I who saw it can hardly accept it." (Inferno. Canto 25. 46-48) Here, he befriends the reader, by gaining his confidence in telling him to worry not. He lets us know that he expects us to believe him, but if we don't, that it's not too bad. Here he employs one of the rhetoric techniques called sympathy. He says that its all right to not be up to speed, that he himself wouldn't be up to speed either if he were in our place. It makes us feel assured and confident in the subconscious level.

I believe that in the future of the Divine Comedy, Dante will become less egotistic than he was in Inferno, as we can see when he boasts about his description of the snake-human transformation, one he claims incomparably magnificent. He diminishes other poets' work and glorifies his own by claiming that "if his verse has made of one a serpent, one a fountain,

I do not envy him; he never did transmute two natures, face to face, so that both forms were ready to exchange their matter." (Inferno. Canto 25. 98-102). He alleges his superior writing skills above those of other poets of the like including Lucan and Ovid. In this quotation, Dante the writes attempts to manipulate the reader into thinking that his writing skills are the best, not something uncommon another work I have studied: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes, written in the early 17th century.

I believe that since the trip made by Dante is a journey of knowledge and change, that he will become less egotistic in the following chapters of his voyage of the waters of Paradiso and Purgatorio. Furthermore, I believe he will also learn to completely overcome his fears and live a full life. This means that the path of enlightenment that the rest of humanity must take is a way to learning to cope with oneself, and be at peace with God and all others.

A Triumphant Battle Cry

Our victory has finally arrived.

The fountain of tranquility is ours

to share and feast our life that has revived.

Until no longer can we see the stars,

we shall enjoy ourselves harmoniously.

Now shall we sing for destiny some bars.

So live of simple truth and honesty.

Alas an era has begun for us,

to go pursue a life lived merrily.

Now pave the glorious way without a fuss,

for time is quick along our path of truth.

We will, we shall, today, for all, we must.

A Thinning Border-Line

I have taken notice of poetic justice or irony in the episode Two of The Twilight Zone. After the woman in the show betrayed the guy's friendship and ceasefire silent truce, she got exactly what she wanted: She got loneliness. Her melancholy and repent are reflected on her body language: When she is in the dilapidated edifice, her jumpy mood shows how she is repented (probably because the fact that she is pondering her choices and is in an internal conflict between her duty and her emotions make her separated from her surroundings). She hugs herself while attempting to fall asleep, all the while holding on to her rifle with a grasp as for the safety and assurance she would have had would she have been allied to the man. She feels unprotected, stupid, and confused, trying to cope with the fact that she chose her long-achieved duty over freedom. Poetic justice in this case would also involve her hypothetical alienation by anyone she meets, what happened to the man.

The following comic strips depict Garfield involved in an event that implies poetic justice.

The first describes poetic justice, while the second shows irony, I believe. The line that separates irony with poetic justice and Karma is thin.

Imagine That

Peter: Hey. How is everything, Cole?

Cole: Everything is great, Peter. How are things with you?

Peter: Great. Are you still in San Francisco?

Cole: Yeah. I'm here with some friends in Lombard St. How about you?

Peter: I'm in Central Park having a drink and talking about our trip to Fiji.

Cole: It was hella fun right?

Peter: Yeah. It certainly was.

Bye.

Bye.

The Blog Of Blogs

Why are we so eager to know everything the moment it happens? Our unethical hunger towards gossip requires media that has the capacity to satiate our need for information. What better method to achieve this than blogs? Blogs travel quickly, they are uncensored and unedited (thus making them all the more enjoyable by people), and they are decorated with methods to "bring down [a] big-time politician or journalist", as Sarah Boxer from the New York Review of Books put it. This is all so people can be heard, so people can consider themselves famous. I agree with Boxer, the author of "Blogs": People who make fanatic remarks and crazy allegations are "link-whores". They need to know that someone has heard what they have said, and I believe that this is a modern common disorder. This is because the tolerance of the general public has declined. Blogs are commonly opinions about what people have to say about current events. Today, people have to make an extra effort to coexist with people who don't agree with them. They believe that if more people read their blogs, they are either right or they are famous (extreme bloggers often go for both). What I believe that the author of this blog is trying to say is that people will make anything up in order to make themselves be heard among the crowds... so that they are no longer just another opinion. People want their opinions to be heard among the crowds so that they can be sure that other people believe in the same thing, and what easier way to spread a fanatic opinion than to stretch truths beyond recognition. It is simply a matter of interest that is a hunger that grows exponentially, never being satiated, and always craving more information, in less amount of time. Hence, we have the blog.   

I have recently come across a pro-israeli blog condemning the anti-israeli propaganda. We will never be sure if these photographs were actually altered, or if the author has shown the "original copies" and the "altered copies" after he himself has staged them in an attempt to further condemn the anti-israeli effort. The blog link is http://jewishmayhem.com/?p=635. Blogs have the power of not only anonymity, but freedom, which people take advantage of by giving their radical opinions and backing them up with radical and often unproven evidence to manipulate the crowds. According to the blog, there are four main types of manipulation of photographs for propaganda's sake: "

	1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
	2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
	3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
	4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

" People believe that everything that is taken a picture of must be true, so, hence, we have the power of the blog to condemn this.