More poetic creations!

I've been so incredibly stressed out lately. First of all, I apparently have to apply to 18 colleges to "diversify my college selections" and "to get the best offers on college deals". I feel like a trained dog jumping through a hoop of fire, but multiply that by 18. And I've been helping a few of my mom's clients with Chinese translations, which takes a minimum 6 hours for their documents, and its not exactly the easiest thing to do in the world. But I'm making a hefty 200$ at the end of this. So basically, 10 hours of work is equivalent to two shirts from abercrombie. I truly hate consumerism. Anyways, before I started ranting, I wrote a poem earlier on in the week to help me cope with some stress.
This poem deserves some explanation. First, I'm not especially romantic. I mean, I hate girls who sit around waiting for men to come and save them, like a Disney movie. Its not empowering, and trust me, its most likely never going to happen. And secondly, for some reason I have harbored this concept about romantic love as asserting women's subordination. Its all about wooing the woman, right? Like playing a serenade to her, or a rose, or whatever you want to imagine. But after you "impress" her, then she's star struck and will go with whatever you say. That's just the imagery that keeps in my mind. But, even though I'm not romantic, I've come to accept the fact that there really is love out there. Just, not Disney love. Anyways, hopefully you'll understand where I'm coming from.

What will it take to let you know just how much you mean to me
Time has no meaning when I'm with you
Regardless of who you are out on the outside
Your not what you seem with me
Time is a face on the water
Will you spend forever with me?

Take my hand
Don't let me be
Forever Lost without you
We could be..
All we ever dreamed
There's no where (left/else) to go...

Be with me
Now you bleed with me
and if you just, believe
We'll be all we ever dreamed, together


I never thought it would end this way
The meaningless end to two love struck renegades
By the sound of their barrels, to the beat of your heart,
I count them in bullets from start
I love you in so many ways
There's no running now love we end this today

They surround
We're pinned down
and we won't go easy
our actions speak louder than words

Here comes the end for us all
Holding my hand as we both fall
Riddled with bullets, you open your eyes
Bleeding together, our star-crossed demise, but you
I only see you....
and me

Please believe,
We decease
Go!

I didn't really intend for the ending to be so dramatic. But, as I was writing this, it just seemed to fit really well. Plus poetry and literature is always more dramatic than life. That's why we read it, atleast, for that escape from the ordinary. Anyways, that's just my two cents for the week.
-Carson

Oh, sonnets. How I love thee.

So I decided to write a few sonnets for this blog post. Please, hold your applause until the end. No they're actually all really bad. I just remembered we talked briefly this week on sonnets, so I figured, "Hey, why not?"
Love is the story of two young teens,
entwined in fate, whose passion is but sound
and fury to all those that read between
the lines but fail to find the common ground.
Love is the story of love's ghost, once strong
in pow'r and wit, which now, time's fool, grows old,
yet still glows in closing days, along
with need of care, and lives in tales once told.
Love is man's greatest gift and prickl'st bur;
An irony which takes the lives of some
yet leaves them teaching that when love occurs,
'tis best to love, despite what they've become.
Love is the anger, passion, fury, bliss.
And yet, most often love just simply is.

The secret paints everything in colors
that only we can see. Such colors that
we, only we, can marvel at. It wuthers,
in time, fades, till it flourishes right back.
In some alternate place your gone, dead. I
still shudder at the thought. So selfish, you
still are and were, with no reason to die
and yet the will to. Life's empty without you.
Yet God, or fate, or luck, or all, has brought
you to a second life, you lost the first,
and now, embark to find what you first thought
a curse, as just such gift. To live and thirst
for more. So live, and do, and love, and hope,
and leave those fears out on that brittle rope.

He laughs. He knows all that he's done
is to his master's very whim.
He laughs despite the taste of blood
and gentle lick of nearby flame.
In fact what better way to go
than with all he ever had
in flames, engulfing him as he
had once engulfed it in all his
bitter scorning and empty lies.
It is poetic, so he thinks.
But that is neither here no there.
What lies beyond the very scene
of this scorned man engulfed in the
flames of a world which he once loved
and so he scorched on the dark whim
of an interloping promiser,
is that which he, the man I've said,
has come to represent within
the world which he so lusts in ruins.
The man has come to be the real
messenger of a new order
of men who would see chaos reign
in placement of all they never had
and all they felt that they deserved,
and simply laugh as they and the
world which they so loved duly burn,
because even they, too late to change,
can see the irony in
the burning of just such possessions.
This man is not the end of such
a selfish kind. He is merely,
with fear I say, the beginning.

So that's all I have for this week.
P.s. - I'm still vividly angry about my summer reading grade because I actually took time to read all 4 books! Ughhhhhh. Not fair.

Candide and Office Space? Connection? Yes.

So earlier in class this week we were discussing how reading literature "like a professor" (a pretentious one at that) was nearly an infectious disease, and it will spread to all areas of entertainment for AP LIT students. Well, I would have to concur with Mrs. Clinch and co. on this one. As I was driving over to windward parkway to stuff food down my gullet, I made a stark realization about the connections between two of the greatest works of art from the past 500 years. Obviously, as you might have already guessed, these two works are Candide and Office Space. Although the connections might no seem altogether plausible, or even there at all, I can guarantee you that there are, indeed, innate similarities between the two. Two characters find solace in the realistic, pragmatic ideals of physical labor - which give them a sense of purpose at their story's conclusion. In Candide, as we all know, his escapism leads to Candide starting a garden, and to run from the optimism that he has embodied for the previous parts of the story. This is similar, again, to Office Space. Think about it - in the movie Peter is plagued by the bureaucratic, corporate "philosophies" of "having a case of the mondays" and the inspirational banners that line the office. Although Candide is supportive of the philosophies in his story, they lead to continual negative effects. This is also illustrated in Office Space - the company's philosophy completely destroys the individuals at Initech. Office Space also deals with the debate over deontology vs. utilitarianism, while opting for deontology by supporting the individual and not the whole, but thats a story for another time.
Additionally, the female roles in both stories are also similar in various ways. In Candide Cunegonde, Candide's love interest, is thought to have been killed along with her family in the first few chapters. In actuality, she was only raped while her family died, however she still believed this preserved her virtue, and actually strengthened it. Well, in Office Space Peter's love interest, who he has seeked for a very long time, actually has slept with his much hated boss - thus losing her virtue in his eyes. I mean, she does not proclaim this strengthened her virtue, but she blamed Peter for having judgement towards her. Neither of these female characters were able to accept any sort of accountability for their sexual lives (although Cunegonde was raped, she never accepted that she wasn't really a virgin - which is just silly).
The scene that truly inspired this list was one of the most striking elements of Candide. If you can recall, when Pangloss inquired why man is made to suffer, and what they all ought to do about it, the dervish responded by asking, without missing a beat, why Pangloss is concerned about the matters pertaining to "evil and good". The dervish then describes human beings as mice on a ship sent by a king to Egypt; their comfort does not matter to the king. This is quite possibliy the whole driving plot of Office Space that corporations are not driven by their need and passion to provide goods and services to the community. Corporations do not innately care for their employees. Employees of large corporations are merely the mice on the ship to Egypt - and the movie Office Space is the rebellion of a man who could no longer take it.