She slept with the guy who killed her Granny.

Who is the wolf, hunting the red coated girl? The beast who prowls the forest in search of innocence, hunting down the scent of virginity is man. The rosy cheeked girl wondering around in the woods with her basket containing the single defensive tool she had, is woman. The world that we live in is ran by wolves, and we must navigate it to our best abilities to come out on top.

All that all we have over the wolves, is our innocence. If we allow them to take our identities passive-aggressively, we will never be able to break through Granny’s front door alive. The innocence is not the sole objection of men. He seeks to put you in a bind, tying down any limb that may want to break away and seed into a new human being. Taking away your virtue, ability to change whenever you choose, and your overall sense of independence limits a woman when trying to reach her fullest potential.

Although I’m a married woman, who loves everything about her husband, my spouse is not a wolf, not all men are. But the only wolves that actually get the chance to feed their unquenchable thirsts are deceiving, charming, and smart. Of course, they’re only as smart as YOU think they are. The red wearing girl in Angela Lansbury’s story “In the Company of Wolves”, was taught exactly what to do when the wolf has tricked you.

Although she made the fatal mistake of allowing the wolf’s personality to influence her, and gave him the only thing that she could have used to defend herself. But when it came down to eat or be eaten, she trick the wolf at his own game. Red realized that when she became calm, and used her sexuality to rule over the wolf, she could continue to live.

It begs the question of how far is too far concerning the use of our feminine sexuality on wolves? We can either harness our powers, or exploit them. By strategically using our powers over the wolves we can control them, bending them just enough that they don’t know that we actually have the upper hand.

Before the girl in the story willingly gave her basket to the wolf, she was not afraid or anything. Without her knife to keep her safe, she had no defenses against the wolf. When we keep our innocence, we keep our knives and are able to defend ourselves against the wolf’s advances. Without a defense, we become much to compliant to the wolves in the woods. Although it may seem that without a defense life is over, but if we can contain our fear and not let the wolf believe that he has power over us, we can use his own game to survive and succeed.  

Creative Science

The ideas that inspire artists to place paint to canvas, writers to bind their thoughts into books, and composers to tirelessly link music notes together, are the same ideas that inspire scientists to connect observations and facts to make a theory.

Facts alone do not make science. Science also takes a deliberate mashing of observation, experience, and even imagination. To connect all of those aspects takes a different set of mind. A scientist must be able to see through the natural disorder in the world and make an idea of unity. If you could possibly learn every fact that there was and never made the effort to connect them, you wouldn’t really know anything. It is not without being able to make sense of how two seemingly unrelated facts could fuse together that you truly have knowledge and the ability to form a theory. (The SATs contain a great deal of reasoning!)

In class we did a quick write on what we felt the definition of inspiration was. I did not define it because I simply couldn’t. Inspiration is a fleeting, mysterious thing. It comes in an unexpected way, and goes if it is left unattended to. If I sat down waiting to be inspired, I would be sitting down for a long time. When out in the world noticing the little quirks of life around you; that is the discovery. You make connections to memories of the past and predict how things might be in the future, and that is when inspiration sweeps in.   

 Today we mostly think of creativity and inspiration in terms of the arts. But beginning with the earliest scientists we see that science involves the special amount of creativity. Their mediums are physics, medicine, biology, psychology, chemical etc., and their vision is break through and history altering.                  

Jacob Bronowski’s essay ”The Nature of Scientific Reasoning”, lends light to the process that scientists go through to form theories. He hints that’s scientist are no more different than artists, writers, composers or any other creative being. I believe that creativity and science are eternally linked. Facts are not stand alone means to a theory in science, it takes being able to place yourself in an impressionable state of mind. Bronowksi tells the story of Newton in this essay, and how when he saw an apple fall from a tree his theory of gravity was born.

Newton took the fact of general gravity that drew the apple to the tree and through his creativity and experience to connect that apple falling from the tree to the moon and earth falling together in a gravitational pull. It was that process which has shaped scientific theories in the years to come.

Research Plan

              For our group’s research project, we are exploring native Alaskan religion, more specifically the effects of Christianity on the native Alaskan culture. We had a difficult time even creating the words that will ultimately be our heading on Wikipedia. A very difficult time. Actually we might even change it after this is finally posted on my blog. But the main idea that we are trying to express in our page is the effects that western religion had on the native Alaskan people.

                The effects of Christianity on the native Alaskans could be positive or negative. Our research will bring to into light the argument of both possibilities. The video shown in Thursdays class, “The Land Is Ours,” (I think that was the title… :S) showed Christianity as having a negative impact. The missionaries that came to Alaska told the natives that their religion was evil and that even speaking their own language was “wicked”. I connected those facts with that Lance said to us about the native languages dwindling, and in some cases dying out completely. So it poses the question as to what else died out with the introduction of western religions.

                I believe this topic to be important to the investigation of the wests impact on native Alaskans. This correlates directly to the diminishing native culture. By taking on the religion of another culture, they lost their own. I hope our audience to be Alaskans, native or adopted, who are hoping to get a better sense of the people of Alaska and their rich history.

                The work that I will be contributing to the Wiki page is focusing on the Christian missionaries and their impact on native Alaskans. In doing so, I plan on interviewing an Alaskan native woman who is a pastor in her own church. I will ask her what her earliest memories of religion were as well as if Christianity had changed the stories that had been passed down through her people. And other questions that I am frankly too tired to think of right now. Haha….

                I plan on meeting with Ida this week, and our group has been meeting on Sundays. Following the deadlines on the syllabus we will plan and work together to insure our Wiki page is the best it can be by its due date April, 24th.    

For the Reader

                A blank screen, absent of words or thoughts. A blank mind is never truly blank but definitely void of words. But how does one put thoughts as feelings or emotions in to words? A blank screen. When I write, mostly poetry, I cannot do so without strong emotion. With strong emotion I find my fingers, my hands motionless. Numb hands. I stare into the blank screen tired long, until I give up. This over-whelming feeling to empty my head, swimming in desire to share with this blank screen.

                 I cannot think in words in regards to my work, only in emotion and feelings. I wish I could draw or paint, colors and shapes are more what occupies my mind. The dark blues of sadness and regret, the vivid reds of anger and hurt, can more than fuel a blank screen. Alas writing is my medium, and I forge ahead.

                I want to be a good writer. My wish is not to be a wealthy, well recognized public figure. I want to be able to share my mind, my soul, in hopes that my writing can reach even one other person on a deep level. I value the human connection and only seek to strengthen that connection by making myself vulnerable allowing myself to been seen on an equal y deep level as that one person who will read and connect to my piece.

                Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?” is about more than the idea of ideas. It is about the elements that make up the writing process. Poetry seems to be simply the most complicated form of writing. The base of writing is to share a story with the reader. Immerse the audiences mind in imagination, inviting them to link their own to the authors. In order to do so, writers must use more than the fanciful world of words. Writers must create images from their jumbled minds, Le Guin writes, “the power and authenticity of the images may surpass that of most actual experiences, since in the imagination we can share a capacity for experience and an understanding of truth far greater than our own. The great writers share their souls with us- “literally.””   

                The writer has many motivations for writing, mine began as an outlet to feelings I could not give voice to. I can see my work develop as I thumb through the pages from beginning to end, and can tell exactly when I really, truly began to write. When I decided that I wanted an audience, some souls to touch, is when my writing took on a new mission. I began to pen my emotions in ways that could be interpreted by someone in means of stirring their own emotions. Great writing is written for the reader, involving the reader, moving and inspiring the reader.

With the act of creating something so personal for others to read and critique comes a level of risk. Perhaps the reason I carry my leather journal in my purse and have a great difficulty sharing the contents. Some have remained only my emotions lying there naked and exposed on the pages for my own critique. It is not until I can share with others my work, can it truly take life and live up to the purpose it was laid to rest for from the tip of a pen onto a blank page.  As Ursula K. Le Guin put it, “the reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”

The Cove

       

                When I was around the age of 12 or 13, I went on a Taekwon Do trip to a tournament in Anchorage with a group of fellow martial artists. The fellow travelers were all young, but still 5-6 years older than I was. After the tournament one night we went out to a local pizza joint (where I got a nasty case of food poisoning!) and was being teased by two of the older boys. While we drove around and checked out a shopping center, I was feeling very upset and hurt by the things the boys said to me. The one other girl that was traveling with us broke off from the group for a while and returned with a gift for me. It was a silver necklace with two dolphins as a charm. I still have that necklace and it brings the fond memory of the friendship that I had with the girl.     

The cove was an eye opening and very emotionally moving documentary. When we first started watching the film, I had very little knowledge of what was happening to the dolphins in Taiji other than that fact that it was awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary. I did not even know much about dolphins in general. The combination of the personification of dolphins and the brutality of the imagery provided in this film made it very convincing and eye-opening.

At times the anticipation and anxiety that the movie evoked made it feel as if I was watching an action movie. It created a good-guy/ bad-guy bearing between those who were attempting to expose the slaughtering that dolphins and those committing the slaughtering. The evidence of the objections and investigations by the Japanese solidifies the fact that they obviously had something to hide. The footage from the streets of the larger cities in Japan showed that the dolphin killing was not a cultural aspect, furthering the argument that what they were doing was cruel and unfair (not to mention illegal on some level).

The use of the Japanese people’s aesthetics of all the happy and anime-ish whales and dolphins frustrated me. I also think this is what the New York Times reviewer meant when he described this film as a “Trojan Horse”. It is a metaphor for the films use of the Japanese contradictions involving the “love” and care for dolphins and ultimately ocean life.

                I found my reaction to the film shocking. I am by nature an emotional person, but I pride myself on being able to distance myself enough from the one-sidedness of arguments like those presented in this film. But I could not help the anger and frustration that it made me feel. I had to keep telling myself that what was going on in Taiji was unknown to the general population, that it was not all Japanese people who had a part in the killing of 23,000 dolphins a year. I told everyone that would listen after seeing this film about what I had learned, and felt an emence powerless that I couldn’t just fly to Japan and single handily end it. And I know that I am not alone in the idea. The Japanese people should feel an objection to this film due to the emotions and anger that it can cause viewers to feel towards the Japanese people and culture. Instead of objecting and critisizing this film of some kind of slander, they should do something about the dolphin industry in Japan.

Parts 1-3

Time to ditch the almost,

confirm the constant.

You’re alone and your life becomes

an act in three parts.

First the curtain drops

killing the lead. How the play continues

is nothing short of a miracle.

Props are the key, and wires and string.

They string you up and out

make your stage death something to write about.

   

Part two wasn’t too horrific,

it was mostly a war.

Them against you,

in a kind of trench warfare.

You had no gun, no armor.

Instead you started to write

a peace treaty.

The receiver yourself.

You continue to write

a sort of agreement.

To end the fighting, to seize the moment,

You sign it sincerely,

best of luck.

Because the war isn’t truly over

if one side just gives up.

Act three ties up any loose ends,

smoothing jagged metal, making it bend.

The setting is dark, except for a dim light,

it crawls along the floor, it smolders on your face.

The cast, she takes her place.

Alone but not afraid, radiating

the peace she has made.

The light appearing to come from within,

content in her chair, with purpose again.

Alone never more, as the curtain drops to the floor.  

Broken Wing

From an old battered leather bound journal...

When a bird breaks its wing,

It sings.

A song of rescue, a song of regret

never second guessing the distance

between its self and the ground.

Upon its broken wing an answer is found.

As thick as these pages are

these words are going to bleed through.

Staining the pages it proceeds,

you flip back from the end the see

exactly when it broke.

Reliving it all again and again.

You never thought in all your years

you would still be scared, have all these fears.

Never seeing the sun through the clouds.

Paralyzed in your crippled state,

you begin to decide that you’re too tired

to stay awake.

Then you hear the song

of a fallen bird.