emlocke

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  • Disturb My Universe

    Organizing my bookcase is a comfort thing. Sometimes I switch up the categories: by genre, by author, by period, by connection to my life. Today I even set some books free, passing them on to my brother’s girlfriend. But Beloved (both copies,) always stays on the top shelf, one signed by Toni Morrison, a treasured gift from Chelsea, and one highlighted to the binding. Tucking the pair in between my RHS graduation cap and The Great Gatsby, I remembered the paper I wrote on Beloved for Children’s Literature in the fall, inspired by a line from The Chocolate War and an article by Madeline L’Engle. This is what Beloved meant to me:

    Emily L. White
    Professor A. Pearce
    Literature for Children
    11 November 2004

    “Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?” – Both Sides of Beloved

    In high school, Toni Morrison’s Beloved struck me deeply and in a way that no other book had before. The contrast between the dark content and the artistic poetry of Morrison’s writing mesmerized me. Her beautiful characters and the intensity of their stories thrilled me. As Madeline L’Engle would say, Beloved in a “both/and” novel; it is both frightening and poetic, violent and passionate, disturbing and tender, physical and emotional (L’Engle 217). The story’s beauty is not connected to peace, warmth, or even happy endings. It sobered me, but I found the beauty in its furious passion and realistic truth.

    Sethe is a character who disturbs her own universe again and again. She shakes up every world she enters; enchanting men on the plantation, escaping slavery, and finally shocking Cincinnati when she kills her baby daughter to protect her from life on a southern plantation. By the time the reader is introduced to her, Sethe seems to have resigned herself to a life where nothing but loss and loneliness can be counted on. But she has maintained her fire through it all, remaining a beautiful character for her undying courage. Though Sethe’s spark seems latent at first, Morrison’s language and writing style awakens the reader, and by the second chapter, Sethe has come alive again, ignited by Paul D.’s presence. I found beauty in the electric poetry of Morrison’s writing and Sethe’s raw emotion. Alongside the pain, fear and death, I found so much life in her story. L’Engle writes, “To be alive hurts. It is dangerous,” but it is real and that is where the story’s magnificence lies.

    As an author, Toni Morrison was challenged about Beloved and its controversial plot. But critics who understood the story’s significance would agree with L’Engle’s belief that “a story has its own life” (220). Morrison’s story is frightening, but readers can find value in her writing’s vibrant truth and intensity. She gives Beloved and its characters life beyond the disturbing themes and events.

    Most of my classmates revealed that they were more disturbed than touched by the book. Beloved repelled them with some of the same intense elements that attracted me. Most were especially bothered when Sethe murdered her own child. Morrison’s passion had ignited enough of a passion in me that I took it upon myself to disturb the class further; I defended Sethe as a character and argued the value of the story. I never advocated infant homicide, but I proposed that Sethe’s actions were inspired by fear and love so powerful that I felt them myself as I read. To me, her emotions were so deeply sincere and honest that they deserved a reader’s respect.

    Even I was shocked, at first, to find that I could appreciate the beauty within Sethe’s character, but I could not deny her courage, and I challenged my classmates to see that side of Beloved. And the novel truly has two sides. It is the emotion, passion and truth that make it both frightening and beautiful, disturbing readers’ universes with its intensity.

  • Looking Through a Lady’s Purse

    There’s a scene in the plush performance classic The Muppets Take Manhattan where Miss Piggy chases a purse snatcher through Central Park, eventually apprehending him and kicking his petty thieving butt. I would watch this scene over and over, not to marvel at the endurance and speed of the lady pig in the satin lavender heels, but to hear this random sound byte probably created by an unheralded genius in the sound effects lab.

    The snatcher is rummaging through Piggy’s bag, looking for cash but finding only tubes of Clinique lipstick, a pressed powder compact and a miniature blow-dryer, and the sound of all of her accouterments clicking together like a little percussion band of girly-ness was music to my ears. If handbags had a mating call, this one would have attracted every masculine luggage accessory in the park, it was so delightfully feminine.

    I heard the same sound in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last week when Clementine picks through her tote bag on the train. Her purse emits the same clackety-clackety clatter of clutter. Clem may not be as girly as Miss Piggy, but she is her own kind of feminine, from the way she hides her vulnerabilities under her floral sunshine quilt down to her black thong and the bruise on her butt.

  • Storms

    Someone pressed ‘play’ on the thunder audio effects tonight and let it run like a soundtrack for more than half an hour. The strobe lightening was running, too, making everyone in house look like they were moving with a slow-motion stutter as they hurried to shut off computers and air conditioners. I opened the window and tried to make a movie.

    Today, New York released thousands of first hand stories from emergency officials who were on duty in the city on September 11th. Fears, heroics, serendipities, calamities. In the past four years, I’ve heard people from scattered geographical locations tactfully, and not so tactfully, argue with one another about who September 11th affected the most. I have even wondered whether I would have been as scared and shaken as I was on that day if I had grown up in another part of the country, some place where I didn’t feel so close to New York that I expected to see blazing smoke rising over my own backyard. It is clear today that the men and women who told these stories, who are all a part of these stories, lived a September 11th that no one else will ever know. They are the survivors. But now, under a file number and a name, we can read and remember and reach for understanding.

  • In The Park

    Just this week I have had a picnic in the park and celebrated my half-birthday and won a word game via snail mail. Still time for summer whimsy.

  • iPledge

    In honor of Peter Jennings, who scored 100% on his American citizenship exam, reported for a 12-hour marathon on September 11th, 2001, and carried a miniature copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket, so can you. Little white earbuds are the new stars & stripes lapel pin.

  • Revenge Could Never Be As Sweet As My Dog

    To Maggie,

    At the very end of our walks, I am usually far more forgiving about your incessant need to stop and individually sniff every blade of grass that may have been tread upon by another canine because I know you’re getting in ‘last sniffs’ before we get home. But yesterday, when you paused at the corner, I yanked your leash. Even as I did it I felt terrible because as we were strolling along, I had let myself ruminate on a person who has betrayed me and that yank was exerted with the force of my wishful retaliation. If I had punctuated that sudden jerk of your leash with a word, it would have been this person’s name and it would have sounded like I was growling it while punching this person in the stomach.

    But even though I interrupted your sniffing, you followed so obediently and looked at me with woeful eyes that said, “I’m sorry, you’re right, let’s hurry back home where I will share my liver treats with you and protect you from any friend who turns on you ever again.” And ten seconds later, when I stopped to shake a pebble out of my shoe, you sat patiently, gazing back over your shoulder as if to say, “take your time, I’m ready when you are,” even though I really would have deserved it if you had kept right on walking, pulling me over as I tried to balance on one foot with the other sneaker in my hand.

  • I’m Allowed to Laugh at Myself, You Are Not

    My mind wandered while I fixed lunch today and for absolutely no reason at all, I remembered one of the ever numerous faux pas I committed as a younger girl attempting to win the affections of her crush-of-the-minute. As I arranged baby spinach inside my whole grain wrap, I giggled to myself with that wryly amused sort of laugh that consists of one backward gasp (exhaled, not inhaled) through the nose. I proceeded to grin for approximately eleven seconds before the usual former-crush-cringe poked a chilly finger right between my shoulder blades. That’s eleven seconds longer than I have ever chuckled at such a recollection before.

    Proud of my immense growth of character, I immediately began waving my proverbial “I’m Blogging This” flag. But by the time I reached this “Create Post” window, all courage was gone. Today I learned that the day when you can finally remember the social mortifications of early teendom and begin to laugh at yourself is not the same day you can hop online and describe the well-intentioned romantic advances of your youth on the internet, no matter how many people read or do not read your blog.

    Still, it is progress that those memories are becoming more amusing and less melodramatic. I wonder how much time will have to come between me and the shameless attempts at flirtation before I will no longer avoid the grocery store on Saturday afternoons (I never fail to run into the mother of some poor unsuspecting boy of whom I was terrifically fond when we were in school together). It seems to me that it will be a milestone similar to the day when I am finally grown and mature enough not to be embarrassed if I try to walk in the ‘out’ door or push when it clearly states ‘pull.’ I just hope it doesn’t take quite that long.

  • I Don’t Like Carrots

    If you can judge how someone loves you based on whether or not they know how you like your eggs, then I say the same goes for fruit and vegetable consumption habits. For a certain someone, I am willing to go to any lengths to prepare a fruit or veggie so that it satisfies even the most particular eaters.

    To me, the bundles of cream colored seeds that sprinkle themselves everywhere when you cut open a bell pepper are pretty harmless. I run the pepper under the tap, filling it like a cup and then pouring it out (I have yet to attempt drinking the pepper water), washing most of the seeds down the drain. The ones that cling to the striated walls inside don’t bother me. But my mom will rinse each individual slice of pepper clean of seeds before she’ll eat it.

    And it was as if the boys I took care of last Spring had never seen a whole apple in a dining context. They recognized the traditional contents of a Thanksgiving cornucopia. The teacher’s desk on the first day of school motif was also familiar. But they liked their apples sliced as thin as crackers and left untouched any pieces without a smooth crescent whittled away from the core.

    Strawberries, too, were inedible in their natural state. Though Brian was always impressed by abnormally large or mutant specimens, it was off with their heads before he would indulge. It seemed a little sad to cut away every tuft of leaves, nature’s version of a popsicle stick.

    I don’t think I’m picky, but a banana is that much more appetizing when the bitter strings are pulled away, and I’ve never met a carrot I was crazy about. As for my eggs, I prefer french toast.

  • I Get Hits for Things I’ve Never Seen

    This is getting ridiculous. An estimated 90% of the search hits here are people looking for images of a certain display of atmospheric magnetism in the night sky, which shall go unnamed here for fear of attracting even more irrelevant searchers. What do they think when they realize that the one time I wrote about the aur*ra b*realis, it was more than a year ago, and the whole point of the mention was that I wanted to see them, not that I ever actually did, nor have I seen them since!

    Let’s just see who’s interested in, “Wouldn’t it have been cool to see the aurora australis,” otherwise known as the southern lights, “while I was living in New Zealand?”

    But the snail’s pace crawl of my hit counter leads me to believe that the general public may be interested in some new content. For instance, Rachel McAdams has yet another movie coming out – a psychological horror story; could she be the new Diane Lane? And, did you hear about the space shuttle that NASA launched without any use of perl programming or any flight plan competition from American Airlines? Yes, the launch was successful, as was the after party, where Green Day and Jesse McCartney performed right on the launch pad.

    I spent way too much time hotlinking that last paragraph, but I think I owe myself a prank on the internet.

  • Hot Pink, I Think

    I went through a toile phase. I wanted to do preppy grosgrain trimmed curtains in lavender toile, but it’s not easy to find a pattern that isn’t navy, black, crimson, or the once-in-a-while mocha. I finally did come across a lilac shade, but the scene was all men with fishing poles when I really had my heart set on ladies wearing hats and riding those spindly bicycles with the one giant wheel.

    I was able to forgive toile for overlooking purple when I saw this bag at fredflare.com. I think hot pink is a laudable substitute for purple.

    This defines classy prepster with a splash of color.