Response to: Michael O' Keefe - US Military Bases & Anti-Americanism

         "In 1997 Richard Haas described the US as a 'reluctant sheriff' who’s military was simultaneously viewed as the world's policemen as well as an imperial force." Why is the United States military viewed in such a negative way? It's as if anti-Americanism spread like an infectious virus, and the most powerful country in the world is now viewed as a contagious disease. "Stay away" outsiders of the US say, you can hear them clamor. They don't want to catch whatever it is we're spreading around. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd want to either.
            My brother and I thrive on conspiracy theory movies. I do not always believe them - but they are interesting nonetheless. I was brought up in an American-Brazilian household, which was based upon both cultures. My mother is very conservative, and my father is also conservative, but slightly more liberal. Neither will watch them with us, but we do for a reason. We don't want to be blinded by the corruption existing in this world; we want to open our eyes, when the United States government wishes so strongly we'd shut them. What is there to hide? Why haven't all of the government's activities been exposed? Don't the people of this country have a right to know?
              There was a polygamous group living in Waco, Texas an extremely conservative town in the south. Interracial relationships were forming, and the community was growing. They were a religious group of people called the "Branch Davidians: Students of the Seven Seals". There was has never been any knowledge of any wrongdoing, or that the group was harmful in any way. So why, did the military act in such a violent way? They said it was an accident; they even tried to change their story, but they couldn't. I watched as a branch of the United States military shot and killed innocent civilians - consisting not only of adults, but the worst kind of slaughter, children. Why did they do this? They committed this unfathomable sin because they did not agree with the way these people were living their life. The US Military appears to do anything when it comes down to the sacrifice of the way they think life in this country should be lived.
                The country in which we live is complex; one is not able to comprehend its monstrous power by taking but a fleeting glimpse; one cannot digest the benefits of life here, as well as the downfalls of life as a citizen of the United States of America. Our military force is one of the strongest in the world. We are one of the biggest threats to other countries. We not only have the power to destroy what they know and love in times of war, but we also have the power to try and change the way they carry out their lives. What if your life is not seen as proper or acceptable in the eyes of our government? What happens then?

Response to : Natalia Ginzburg - He and I

            "If I remind him of that walk along the Via Nazionale he says he remembers it, but I know he is lying and that he remembers nothing; and I sometimes ask myself if it was us, these two people, almost twenty years ago on the Via Nazionale, two people who conversed so politely, so urbanely, as the sun was setting; who chatted a little about everything perhaps and about nothing; two friends talking, two young intellectuals out for a walk; so young, so educated, so uninvolved, so ready to judge one another with kind impartiality; so ready to say goodbye to one another for ever, as the sun set, at the corner of the street."
             How it must feel, for one to love another so unconditionally, yet to have grown in different directions. The seeds fell, different and beautiful, and began to bud around the same time. They grew in the same garden, and when matured, their stems intertwined. Their soft plush petals pushed against each other, and together, they were radiant and ethereal. The soil began to dry up though, and the rain didn't come for some time. The sun wasn't as strong as usual, and the efflorescence felt they couldn't thrive synchronically. One, pointed up to the sky, the other, down to the earth, not knowing if their method of survival would work. It worked, but they would never be harmonious again. Something that was true but that could not be said. Remnants that would be hidden among the shrubs, in which you must dig aimlessly to discover.
            Most people are worried they will never find their true love. They search day by day, night by night, trying to stumble upon the one person on this planet who understand them completely and love them wholly, without omission. Do we ever worry, once he have found our true love, if found at all, that we will only have them for some time? That this is not forever, and that all must come to an end? Even if we feel confident in our relationships, do we ever ponder thoughts of quandary, hoping our significant other doesn't rise from bed one day, feeling different? Is it true that once you finally get the one thing you want most, you realize it really isn't what you wanted at all?
             Everything is a wish, and this life is but a dream. It appears sometimes vivid and all colors and all things in this word seem right and just. Other times it's arid and unwelcoming, the cup always seems to by half empty, and the clock on the wall ticks just a little too loudly. Everything is unpredictable, especially love, the most unnerving thing over all. We must take those walks, those journeys into someone else's universe, and explore them. We must risk all for that which is felt in matters of the heart. And love, if only fleeting - if only there for a moment, we must tend it forever, in hopes it will return to us someday. We may be able to watch it grow and blossom, into an entity so large that even the sun and earth cannot deflect the feeling.

Response to: Reagan's Recession

            History. It's what defines us as a people. From the earliest walks of life, we've had a history. A history of doing well in means to survive. A history of working our way from the bottom to the top. We're an intellectual species, that has created the world we know and live in today. We have moved mountains, and built institutions, in order to further our knowledge of this life. Yet, our history is not always beneficial. Sometimes, we don't learn from our past, and our future gets lost among the ruins. It's been said, that history has a way of repeating itself.
             Our economy entered the recession we are currently in during December 2008. Unemployment rates skyrocketed, and the people that were hit hardest were the middle class. People were not only worried about unemployment increasing more severely, but also rising budget deficits. A recession also occurred during Ronald Reagan's reign of presidency in the 1980's. So many circumstances surrounding the two crisis’s have quite shocking similarities. Why wasn't a change made - a detour taken - or a road block set up, in order to avoid such a large pile of confusion and distress?
               Had we opened our eyes wider, had we thoroughly examined the steps that led us blindly down the path of no return, would we be in a different situation right now? Had we tediously analyzed the exploits of our past, our history, we could have changed our position in the global economy today. What had we been more invested in? What was more important that our security, financially speaking. Could most people in this country be enjoying family vacations, and well-deserved leisure time, instead of scraping at the bottom of their purses for a few spare coins in order to purchase food?
               Universally asserting, we make mistakes as a whole. We also make mistakes individually. When did we forget that the key to evade making those faults again, was to learn from them? For such a perceptive species, we have lost the old pages of our book, because we are too busy writing new ones. The pages have been untouched for so long, that the words begin to fade away, and lose their meaning. Their edges are beginning to crumple, and become soiled in shades of yellow and brown. We need to save them, not rewrite them. We can't bury our past, we must cultivate it. It is what allows our future to thrive.

Response to : Erion - South Park & The Open Society

            "Perhaps extremists receive such unflattering portrayals on South Park because of the threat that they can sometimes pose to the very free expression that makes the show possible." p. 296, Erion, G.J., Curtis, D.V. Why do such extreme personalities and opinions cause such a fear in us all? Are we not only afraid of change, but domination? Do we recognize this fear without recognizing we are part of the severely opinionated?
              It has always been said that our ideas and our beliefs shape the world around us. Sometimes they cradle us, like a womb, and other times they destroy us, like a knife against virgin flesh. Other times, we sit untainted in the gray, avoiding the sovereigns of black and white. When we don't necessarily agree with an idea, opinion, or belief, we may come to the realization of anxiety. What if this sentiment is widely accepted? What if change occurs, and it does not support my own personal morals and values?
             Many people are scared of change. After all, we face change every day, all day, throughout our lives. Some change isn't so bad - the sun rises, the sun sets. Although, some change is devastating - the loss of a loved one. Change is inevitable. Everything is constantly moving, people are constantly thinking, and new ideas and viewpoints are born. Change can be beneficial or harmful to not only one, but many. Change can be such a scary thing to some, because we are never sure in which way it will occur, and when. It can strike at any moment, like a viscous bolt of lightning, unpredictable. And the most difficult segment of change is that you cannot always tell if it's deadly or not. You just have to wait and see. The hardest part of change is that you may not always have control.
             Some people find South Park offensive for its put-downs and crude humor. Yet, I agree with Erion and Curtis. I feel there is a democratic political philosophy buried in it all. In South Park, the characters express their constitutional right to freedom of speech, something that has made this country flourish the way it so rapidly has, with ever changing ideas. I don't mean to say The United States is the best example of a working society or economy, I mean to say I feel the attributes of The United States have proven effective when applied appropriately. We face diversity in a multitude of ways, and the fact that we have such diversity, is a beautiful thing.

Response to: This American Life - The Giant Pool of Money

             "I was really happy to see there were no major suicides, people weren't jumping off bridges, and there weren't a lot of personal disasters." said a attendee at an NPR gathering in 2008, when the mortgage subprime crisis began to deeply settle in. The laconic, fresh, verdant green dollars we earn or inherit decide more than happiness or a luxurious way of life, they also determine survival. Simplistic rectangular cut pieces of paper, derived from a tree, dyed and printed. How bovine.
              Listening to this podcast made my head spin, and by no means do I hope to sound dense. "Global pool of money...Seventy trillion dollars...Nervous armies of Investment Managers... Alan Greenspan...” is fading in and out, dimly. The sound of the conversation drilling and repetitive like the sound of water slipping down a rusty drain, hitting the furnish, instituting a headache in my brain. Is it possible only the world's geniuses can understand such psychobabble? Not to sound harsh, but you must have to obtain an IQ nothing lower than 140 to comprehend such communication. It feels like I'm listening to the African San Bushmen tribe, unable to decode their "clicking" language.
              It makes me a little nervous, marveling my confused mind around the amount of money existent in the world today. All of the cerebrates, making their calculations, counting their pennies and dimes, flicking effortlessly through their stacks of green, with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Benjamin Franklin, and countless other late President's staring back at them in awe. The distant sound of a safe locking, and the chilling echo it makes as it spins shut. Such an intricate instrument the market bestows. We now face Charles Darwin's theory "Survival of the fittest" in a new manner. Disregarding physical attributes, we now yearn for financial stability in order to survive.
           What happened to common courtesy? It must be buried somewhere along the ruins of Mt. Vesuvius. People, losing their humanity, not caring about the Marine who needed the money originally intended for his son's college fund. Only caring about the next Black-tie event, being able to afford the Armani suits usually seen on GQ models, and sipping elegantly on Clos Du Mesnil champagne. What about the family who is going hungry? The elderly couple who is losing their home, unable to pay for their mortgage? What becomes of them? Aren't they more than just mortality numbers? All of the devastation circulates far away, and stays like a the naughty child in the corner with the cone hat, such a nuisance to the elite. How do we change this? I'm left dumbfounded and inept...

Response to: This American Life - The Fix Is In

           Is the fix in as we speak? Are we being decided for by some higher power or authority? In this episode of This American Life, we are told the true story of the fix being used in the worldwide liquor market. Men, sitting around a table, controlling the financial market of their sales, and doing it in such a simple manner. As if they held the smile of a friendly milkman, but were really robbers in disguise. They were going to control the market and steadily keep upping their prices as a unit, without anyone's knowledge of their corruption.
          This makes me question if the fix has always been in. The story of Mark Whitacre uncovering his own discrepancies, and the discrepancies of the company he worked for, was one of the few that anyone has ever known. What other fix's are we blind to? Are they existant in our everyday life? Is there anything we can really do about them, or is this fate that has taken charge? We must ponder that the fix may not always be in financial terms, but maybe in other situations too. It may just be the things we think happen by chance, really don't happen that way at all.
          A movie called "The Adjustment Bureau" has just recently premiered in theaters. Although I have yet to see it, I have some inkling of what the movie is about, just by reading it's title. Supposedly, there is a group of men who control the events of the world. Imagine, if everything is set for the human race, even in our own individual lives. Who you marry, how far you accel successfully, and every other factor of your life is determined for you. As if the human race is a colony of ants, with children, dictating them. The children tease the ants with food, stomping on a few here and there, taking them from their mortal life. Helpless and unarmored, even defenseless and fateful, the ant's don't even have prayers to save them.
         Will it always be a wonder if the fix is in? Or will we discover more and more what has been decided for us? Do we really even want to know, or are we content with nonchalantly taking things as they come? Like someone backpacking through Europe savouring every experience and not questioning how they came to be, loving them and cherishing them whether they are beneficial or deteriorating to their sense of self. I feel we must pry at what we find occult, until our knuckles bleed and the skin under our nails comes one with the bones that are it's structure. We are so unique, and deserve a say in what happens to us, we can never allow the fix to be in.

Personal Essay Assignment: The Enigma of Dreaming

The Enigma of Dreaming

Everyone obtains dreams throughout the process of dreaming. The act is so common, yet majestic against any other. As if divulging into an unparalleled universe, the dreamer gets to experience another world, another bursting surreal life, in which there are no limits or expectations. Dreams allow us to be free from our everyday slavery, our rules and regulations. By dreaming, awake or asleep, we can escape into our own personal desires, and hold onto our childhood imaginative sense we all so desperately need and crave.

“There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams.”  Wrote Stoddard King, Jr. Multidirectional, our dreams grow and twist like an Oak tree. The branches of the tree serve as the asexual parent of dreams, giving birth to numerous amounts of branches until the tree is in full bloom. Like this plant, a young, innocent little girl dreams of becoming an artist. She sits, by her new easel, smelling the woodwork, breathing in the Cedar. She begins to fantasize about what she will do with her art. She imagines she will imprint her mark into the beams of the sun, the soil below her feet, and everything in between. She will be the heartbeat of the planets. Even known in the heavens, and the angels and cherubs will whisper about her. Her dreams are forever spiraling and growing like the branches on the Oak tree, and there’s always rain and sunlight, feeding their photosynthesis.

When we dream, we let our spirit flow. Our dreaming is so jejune, and at the same moment, so unexplainably natural. It’s as if we are one with everything, and the daily dilemmas of time and love are silenced by an anonymous entity. Whether we are distracted while awake, and slip effortlessly into our unconscious mind, or we are asleep and forcefully jump from the brink of the two airy atmospheres –the known and the unknown– we disappear from what is cemented to what is malleable. Like putty in our hands, we form organic means.

Renowned Psychoanalyst and Neuroscientist, Sigmund Freud, wrote in his work Interpretation of Dreams that, “Some writers flatly assert that dreams know nothing of moral obligations; others as decidedly declare that the moral nature of man persists even in his dream-life.” This leads me to question if the two worlds we exist in are simultaneous. Do take with us our morals, values, and life-learned lessons into our undiscovered world? As if we put all of our beliefs and cognitive emotion in a box, and float through the skies until we reach our unnamable dreaming nirvana. The clouds create a fog and the course is ever changing.

When I doze off into this unchartered territory, this unexplored horizon, I don’t know what to expect. It is as if I am deity of the art world, Salvador Dali, waiting for my work to paint itself. Sometimes I dream of things that inhabited my thoughts during the day. I dream of the bonds expanding even thicker in my blood, between those I was derived from, my family. Their souls so ultimately connected to mine, they exist where I exist. Yet, other times I dream of non-relatable things, people and stories I don’t know in my waking life. Strange things, dreams that make my skin rise in small circles, and make my knees shake. My mind may wrap around them for hours on end.

I sit here, feeling peculiar. I imagine a hand, doused with pure glimmering skin, emerging from a starry night sky. The hand is open, inviting. I want to grab it, but I’m not sure how. I now create a hand, birthed from my forehead like Greek Goddess Athena was birthed from Zeus. Full grown, and armored with my inherent qualities, the hand is sure of itself. It knows no boundaries, only desires. However, existing still in consciousness I am unsure of this unknown voyage. Will the connection of daily occurrences and nightly dreaming ever be more than tedious analyzing? Was Edgar Allan Poe right when he wrote, “Everything you see or seem is but a dream within a dream”?

It has been said for centuries, maybe even eons that those who dream, succeed. Although, what is success? Leaving out a societal standpoint, I believe it is achieving that in which we want most. What is the formula for this dream, what is its genetic makeup? How does one have a dream that creates something life changing, something not normative? Some say that truth and time tell all, but where does this fit into our complex state of dreaming? How can we find the validity and accuracy in something almost paranormal?

Whether awake or asleep, we dream. These images and visions come to us, either randomly, or fatefully. Sometimes, our dreams are like meeting a stranger, forever mysterious and enticing. In other instances, they’re like passing a familiar face on the street. You stop and stare in both scenarios, dumbfounded. We may pry with our fingernails at the “Pandora’s Box” of our alter dream world, trying to let out the secret of our dreams, the good and the bad.          

I believe the box is buried deep in a tomb, sealed shut. Only the wind, the earth, and the stars know the true being it bestows, and they keep their secret safe, inhumed in the depths of the galaxy, that holds the key that can unlock all of the confusion and perplexity of dreaming. The question is will this this inspiring key, ever be found? Or will the universe swallow it whole, before we have the chance?