Comic Book Central

Okay so I know I totally dropped the ball on the whole posting thing last week and I apologize even though I'm about 98% positive nobody else actually reads this. Anywho, I actually thought this was pretty cool, not only because it was the book I used to kill my very first fly (which had been flying around my apartment for days) but the last like two or three pages completely changed my entire perspective on the entire story, which I appreciate after I got over the anger that always overcomes me when I realized I've been tricked. I think one of the cooler things about this was the whole finding out the old man was walking in a pattern, like he was transforming this already mapped out space into something completely different and unique, if only just to himself. But I thought that manipulation was really interesting. It reminded me of the idea of "lived" space we talked about last week, and how it's something in between perceived space and conceived space. Like, the city he's walking around in, you can physically see it from above or from the ground, and it's the path the people who live in the city follow. But by the old man, Peter I think his name was, creating his own map based on these hallucinations or beliefs, it's like he's pushing the boundaries of this already created space, manipulating it into something personal, something of his own. In class we talked about how "lived" space was kind of like an imaginary map put over perceived space, and that was all I could think of when I saw those letter maps. Like it took this already mapped out version of the city and threw over this fantasy map created in his own head. I thought it was an interesting idea.

Bullet Shaped Paradise

So, I was incredibly intrigued by the description of the Convent in the "Grace" chapter. How it starts off, saying "Fright, not triumph, spoke in every foot of the embezzler's mansion" kind of reminded me of my completely off-topic rant from earlier in the week about the emotions that go along with places. But the physical set-up was just so odd I had to re-read the paragraph to fully grasp that a house was seriously built like that. So it says "shaped like a live cartridge" so naturally I googled a live cartridge, not because I don't know what a bullet looks like but blogs are just so boring without pictures. So: what do you know, here's one now. So at the pointed top, that's where all the windows are, and at the back where the kitchen and "play room" there are no windows at all. And since there's no electricity, I can imagine how gloomy and dark those rooms must be, I guess contributing to the "fright" of the place. Then it talks about a veranda wrapping around the windowed part of the house. The more I thought about that, the more I thought that this one house probably looked one hundred percent different on one side than the other, as well as in the day as opposed to in the dark, which depending on the kind of person you are I suppose could be a triumph, but the way I'm imagining it isn't very aesthetically pleasing by any means. And it almost appears that the designer was planning on holding up for a long time, when it describes the "cellar of storerooms that occupied as much space as the first floor" (this is all pg 71 by the way). I know this is a stretch, but it seemed like the house was designed for the people who inhabited it, since it doesn't appear to be a house that would function completely intact. Because of the strange structure of the place, it seems fit that only people equally at odds with society should live in it, such as the embezzler and the women who take over after, who further dismantle the things they find "inappropriate" allowing their own activities to run ramped along with the house. It may sound crazy but I think the design compliments the people who live in it, and almost becomes a character itself by having the same odd attributes as the human characters in the novel.

Scary Spaces?

When reading the first two chapter thingys in Toni Morrison's Paradise, I felt like there was a particular emphasis on the feelings associated with the different places, specifically scary places. Like, what the hell makes a particular hallway scarier than another one? Risking the chance at someone throwing this horribly embarrassing story back in my face at some point in the future, sometimes when I'm at home and it's late at night and all the other lights are off, for god know what reason, I freak out and run like a baby into my room and shut the door. For whatever reason, going down that long hallway in the dark scares the shit out of me, and I'm twenty one years old. In the first "chapter" (Ruby) it's more of a fear of unknown space, I think it refers at one point to "out there" talking about the unknown. This is a little more understandable, and I realize usually when this is referred to it's talking not specifically about space, but about the situations, conversations, people, and everything else that's different than the place you're at. But I felt like the people in this town, the only black town or whatever the hell it is that makes it so exclusive, they people in it were actually afraid of the other places, afraid of the spaces that didn't fit into their tiny town, including the Convent. And granted we (annoyingly enough) haven't figured out what the hell is going on in there, the fact is, the Convent falls under the "other space" category, making it an immediately enemy, maybe even turning it into a "scary" place, to them at least. I felt like the landscape almost was alive, became a character of it's own. In the next pseudo-chapter (Mavis), when she's driving before she reaches this mysterious convent, she's driving down all these roads searching for California. She's not scared of the unknown, she's going because she needed to get the hell out of that shitty life she had before. Which brings me to my next comment, how people think physically moving can wipe away all your problems. I mean, let's face it, for almost all people, the problems in their life are because of the decisions they've made, or at least have some direct consequences directly related to themselves. Why does it occur to everyone that moving to a brand new place and starting over (the premise of every D-list horror movie that's come out in the past 10 years by the way) would fix that? I mean, I guess I get that you wouldn't have to deal with everyone knowing about whatever terrible thing you're running away from, but you still have to deal with all that shit, and new shutters on a new house really aren't going to help with that. It's like the idea that a person is the only thing with memories, which isn't true. Go to any house that's being sold, you'll see marks from their kids growth spurts, or nicks in the table from countless dinners eating together by another family. Houses, and places, have memories and pasts, and I feel like that is completely overlooked when people have this grand idea to move across the country and "start over." Short of building a new house from scratch, all you have is leftovers.

Kafkaaaaaa

So when reading the first four chapters, I was actually really disoriented, and I can't figure out if it's only because I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, or if it was that combined with the fact that not only could I not place K. in a situation I could identify with, (like a judicial scene) but I physically couldn't place him in any place he was at. I was completely perplexed with the layouts of all of the places and I had such a hard time visualizing it that it distracted me and I had to re-read like six or seven pages over the course of the chapters because I would zone out trying to figure out how the hell K was physically walking through this maze. It seemed like the place he lived in was just a room, which connected to the two rooms on either side, but for whatever reason I couldn't get the layout of The Apartment out of my head, so I guess that's my own fault. But when he went to the hearing, I was so completely confused I felt like I was watching Alice in Wonderland, where rooms and proportions are fluid instead of concrete. At first I pictures this huge apartment building, and when K. first went to his "trial" (I use trial very loosely because seriously, what the hell was that?) he had to go up and down the different apartments trying to find out where his trial was. And when he did there was apparently like a huge group of people in this one apartment split down the middle judging him? Then, the thing that really set me into a tizzy was when he went upstairs into the attic and it was a long maze of hallways with doors, with no lights, but not completely dark. It seemed more like a basement but it was actually in an attic. I guess I almost pictured it like this:
only with all dark wooden panels (I couldn't actually find a picture of what I was thinking of). This disorientation kind of reminded me of something I talked about a little in a past blog, the idea that without being able to pin down something, or directly relate it to something you already know, you feel confused and uneasy. I had a really hard time imagining the configurations of the first chapters, and so I felt weird and had a hard time concentrating on the simple plot because I had to scene to place the character in. Maybe it's just me, and I personally need to visualize what I'm reading, but then again maybe not. And at the end when K. gets physically dizzy and then steps out of the rabbit hole, as I like to call it, he instantly regains his energy and balance, and leaps off back into the real world. I feel like it was a kind of alice in wonderland meets willy wonka kind of thing, like beyond any persons reasonable imagination, but instead of fighting it, you just have to accept it, and maybe that's why I had such a hard time with it. I guess we'll see in the next chapters if I can manage that.

Office and Space, but not together

So, I know Thompson's article was a lot about male sexuality, but I found a couple things that I thought were pretty interesting talking about the office as a space. The first was when Thompson was talking about how the office was used as a means of surveillance. He talks about that scene, where the narrator chooses to place Bartleby behind a screen to "preserve privacy," except for the fact that the narrator can break that barrier by talking, and Bartleby can get up and enter without knocking. I think the whole idea of taking a space and designating certain areas for things is something we as humans do. Look at this picture, I googled "house layout" and hundred of pictures, just like this one, showed up. There's a designated room for the kitchen, for the bedroom, for the car, even to lounge in, as if you weren't allowed to do any of these things in any other rooms. When Thompson first said space "cannot be marked by screens or doors" I thought it was a weird statement, because that is actually how we separate spaces. This space is one house, that space is another. But the idea of fluidity, that everything is continuous, is actually the case. In The Apartment, the main character (who I can't remember his name, sorry!) can't separate his work life from his home life, and honestly that's probably the case with most people for one reason or another. Either you bring work home to finish up, or your work friends are or become your social friends, or even as simple as you talking about your work and the people there in your home life. The fact is, you can't designate these areas of space and expect things to stay put. In Bartleby, the Scrivener, because Bartleby has no home, it brings to light and crashes down this horrific idea (to the narrator). By Bartleby living and working literally in the same place, it brings to light this flaw in the system, that you can't separate the two, and work defines a person's life far more than it should.

Houyhnhnms and other unpronouncable names

I think after reading this entire book, the idea of finding a home was a prevalent theme throughout the entire novel. I know Bachalard has all these warm fuzzy conceptions of home as this kind and nurturing place, somewhat similar to this picture (unfortunately you can't see the basement though) but that's obviously not the case since Gulliver chose to leave it over and over again. Granted, his tainted reaction at the end of the book isn't an accurate depiction of why, but there had to be some reason for him to constantly be leaving his family for long voyages, especially after continuously being lost and almost killed by all these different cultures. It got my thinking about the idea of home and what makes one feel as home and I feel like it has more to do with the space you settle in, or the place on the map. Gulliver settled in all these places, for a while at least, but none of them really felt like home because he wasn't ever fully accepted, nor did he fully except the inhabitants. I think the closest he came was in the land of the Houyhnhnms, but they rejected him because he was too similar to the things they considered inferior, the Yahoos. I think to consider something a home, you have to be accepted by the community, but that got me to thinking, what exactly defines a community? Is it just a group of people based on some social rules, or based around the area they live in? Is one group of people different than another if they live ten feet away but have a different area code? I think this idea of community has very real ties to the places and space the people inhabit, which is pretty interesting I think.

La Vida Laputa!

Okay so I know this is from last time with the Brobdingnag but I was at the Logan Airport and there was this HUGE coffee cup and like a nerd I took a picture of it with my phone...

Anyways, the two passages I thought were interesting from Laputa was when they first introduced the food, and it was all geometrical, and but then when they were talking about the houses how they were bevyed, which I'm pretty sure is build at an angle. It just struck me how the food, things that are traditionally allowed to be crazy and unchecked, and the houses which are suppose to be geometrical were switched, like the qualities that define the objects were switched.

And just because I thought it would be cool I googled pictures of geometric food:



The second thing I thought was really cool was when they were talking about how the King kept the other towns in check by physically moving over them and eclipsing them from the natural elements. It's like he was physically replacing them by taking away the rain and the sun, and leaving them in a sort of limbo, unable to survive or
leave.

Also, apparently there is some sort of Anime movie called Laputa, Castle in the Sky in case you wanted to watch that here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaLsRVDGCs4

Anddd I found this picture and thought it was a cool interpretation of Laputa, I'm not sure if it's from the movie or not: