Blogging Around

So I read Stephanie Smelyanski's blog about her short story. Rather than simply writing the process of what happened, she wrote about her thought process, also known as Metacognition. She talks about how stressed he was about making the deadline that she overthought the entire process and stressed out. But later when she was relaxed and playing  song she came up with a idea that she was proud of. The following is my comment on her blog:

"I totally agree with you. I always get so stressed out before any of my assignments that I forget about how much fun it s to learn through writing. I've realized over time that when I'm relaxed I can come up with better ideas. When I was coming up with the idea for my story I was actually pulling my hair out and threw my laptop out of stress (don't judge me, it had been a long day). But when I sat down and watched The "X-Factor" I got my idea. It's the paradox of stress, school's think that stress "Roots out the boys from the men" but actually it creates low quality products. The Characters in our story are always in our subconciousness so it might explain the whole Uke thing. But yes, when you forget about making everything perfect your creativity flows and allows the things you want to happen, but not in the ways you expect them, like with stress on your characters."

I also read Jordin Arrigo's big on the idea of "Darkness" within the book Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad and how it could relate to the real world as well as how it changed her perspective on things. The following are my thoughts on her blog:

"So true, the extent to which our actions affect each other are often times unknown. Our Darkness could simply refer to a bad and confusing event or our ignorance and its consequences. these clashes of ignorance are brought to life within the book. I love how the author continually tries to emphasize the darkness as it brings to light his true message. Form is content and he made it so that half of the time we didn't know what he was talking about and that we could only see one perspective. It was giving the reader the full sense of what it's like to live in a world of ignorance. We still live in one today, there is still plenty of darkness left over, maybe even to a greater extent. Maybe the author was referring to something beyond simple cultural clashes, maybe it referred to ideas as well! I wonder what all of our darkness's are as 21st century."

That's it for today! Good luck on your AP exams!

Dialectics: Modernism and Postmodernism

In English class, we recently watched The Matrix. For a long time it was a childhood favorite of mine, not to say that it isn't anymore, but back then to me it was simply an action packed, enjoyable, simple movie, that had no purpose other than to entertain its viewers. Trust me I've continuously re-watched the movie like a Harry Potter fan watching re-runs of the film a year after the series ended. For me a movie has always been a relaxing form of entertainment, I give the same definition to a nice, long book; but this time it wasn't just a movie, it was an expression of ideas dying to be heard and to be thought further about. What made watching this movie different from all the other times I had done so before? Was it because I had a postmodernism versus modernism sheet in front of me? Was it because of the books I have read in English class throughout the year, or was it simply because we were watching a good movie in English class? I don’t know, but today I will show you the meaning that I took out of the movie this time around.

This time it was the concept of postmodernism and modernism which came to me. Modernism, though a loaded word, centrally means that memory is within humans. Postmodernism on the other hand claims that humans are within memory, it is also a very loaded word. These conflicting themes are continuously seen throughout the film which is a "postmodern film in a modern frame," according to English teacher, John E. Allen.

The Matrix is essentially the essence of postmodernism, it claims that we are "within memory". Neo, the main character, has the ability to go anywhere within the matrix whenever he plugs in. This includes any time in our human understanding of "history". In other terms, this implies that several times exist at the same time (confusing I know), similar to the book Orlando by Virginia Woolf in which Orlando has many versions of herself (as a boy, as a man, as a woman, etc.) existing at once within herself. This relates back to postmodernism because if we are all entrenched within circles of memory, then that would require that we would be able to commence any memory as it is around us. This shows the idea of pastiche in which all voices, past and present coexist.

This links back to modernism. The individual has memory "within them" in the term modernism. In terms of the individual, modernism has the meaning that "The individual must turn ins to find meaning." this similar to when the boy tells Neo that n order to bend the spoons, he mop doubt himself and must "Look inwards". The movie tells the idea of postmodernism through a modernistic individual.

Not only that, but in coincides on a multitude of topics other than the individual as well; these include but are not limited to: World view, art, truth, memory, etc.


They combine together to make an amazing movie about a world which is ruled by artificial intelligence in which human's brains are limited to a realm that is unreal and cannot conceive what the entire world is and the possibilities it has to offer. Also, the robots use human energy as batteries, so our very creation is using us.

There is a way in which these two topics are related though. If you think about it, memory makes the individual, yet in a postmodern sense there are several circles of memory that we share with others. Not everyone lives the same lives, not everyone has been to every of the matrix. The different parts of the matrix you go to (the different circles of memory you share with others). So basically in terms  of memory, one is layered complacently which makes you believe that it is what makes you because you share it with a few of them with others. The other is true in which memory a person, because the same two people cannot have the same shared circles of memory, and your past circles determine how you will react and remember these memories.

The difference between the two are the assumed connotations that come with a loaded word. Mainly being that there is no way to get out of the system that rules then a post-modernitstic sense,  and that the individual can find the escape within themselves. Like Plato's Cave Allegory in which these ideas came to each other way before their time, the world society imposes things upon you (The prison chains looking at the pictures and sounds projected in the cave). And because of those things, the majority of people will become homogenous zombies living in a world of deception, yet it takes the individual to