Rico Penguin

  It is a crime indeed that this course is being canceled at my college after this quarter but I was blessed with the +1 to hit rolls as well as the chance to take the course. Here are the final two questions to be turned in when we take the final exam (not looking forward to that in particular but I hate exams in general) likewise my answers to the questions.

  I cannot stress enough that anyone here should see these movies, if nothing else Il Postino is an amazing movie that is easy to enjoy.

  Question 1: About Pablo Neruda and the film Il Postino – The Postman.

  Neruda writes about anguish and solitude. “We live in an absurd world, with no sense of society. In such a world a man/woman loses the prime qualities of life and heads toward nothingness.” Are these themes detectable in the movie? What is important in life according to Il Postino? What is the meaning of life?

  As I watched the movie I felt that it was not a case that we are inevitably heading towards nothingness but that instead we can if we do not change our ways. The postman had no sense of natural beauty around him, he had no sense of just what he desired most in the world. To him it was more a case of getting out of the land he called home. He didn’t feel understood nor did he understand the importance of the smaller things. He was overlooking the joys of a sunset and merely noticing the unfortunate workload of a fisherman. Essentially spotting a Rose and calling it a weed.

  What I established as the important factors in life were the collection of various unique traits his island had. The breeze that traveled along the land and danced within the bushes. The night sky and its endless swath of stars. The dancing of the sea against the shore. The sad fishers nets reaching boat wards to escape the frigged waters. The ring of the church bell crawling across the air and all the other things that inspired him. Of course when everything was said and done there was also the beauty of Beatrice Russo, while easily overlooked it was her passion and grace that lead the postman to desire Poetry as well and to finally see the world for all its graces. As I understood it from the movie, the meaning of life is to live. I don’t recall any exact quote to that point but I’m almost sure I heard them. I think it was ironic that we were examining this movie considering one of its staple characters said the following:

Man has no business with the simplicity or complexity of things. – Pablo Neruda

Question 2: About Akira Kurosawa’s film “Dreams.”

1. Select two dreams and analyze their psychological meaning.
2. Address why Kurosawa thinks “man is a genius when he is dreaming?”
3. Why does Kurosawa stress humankind’s need to harmonize with nature?

    The humorous nature of psycho analysis is that there is really no relevance in the end. Each person can quite easily examine something and see a truly different meaning and still be entirely correct. However considering that I’d much rather acquire a good grade on this I’ll take a stab.

  The first dream that I would examine would be the dream of the soldier entering the tunnel. It seemed to me to embody the inner turmoil that every properly functioning human being befalls when coming back from a war. To watch your own friends and family members dying, sometimes in your very arms, is an experience that nobody should wish upon anyone else. Yet it is a common event that happens every single day all over the world. The commander (I forget his actual position) seemed to be facing his own demons, the dog to me representing the primal responses that follow us after such a grave event ready to explode at a moments notice (if you noticed the 6 pack of hand grenades strapped to it).

  It’s a torture that few escape in the midst of war, a permanent scar upon our minds that lasts until the very last breath. Survival guilt absorbing the few small glimmers of joy that should have been gained from surviving the widespread murder all around us.

  The second dream I would examine would be the blizzard. It seems to reveal the personification of our world as we get closer to death. That blizzard that just seems to grow in force until the bitter last moments when the final euphoric thoughts hit our fading minds. The cold beautiful death that blankets the man seems to be the ultimate visual of that, the seemingly ultimate form of compassion releasing him from the difficult reality that surrounds him. Yet even with Death’s embrace all around him he decided to push on. The real question I wondered by the end of it was whether that tent was their salvation and the continuation of life or merely the final mirage as they walked off into the final stretches of death.

  In our dreams we are not bound by natural law, we are allowed to flow freely, to think outside the boundaries of our fears. While we may have nightmares even they are wildly hyperbolic providing us with the pure essence of our thoughts, of our many shortcomings. It is in our dreams that we discover ourselves to see what we truly are and not what we want others to think we are. For those that fully accept their dreams they are given an infinitely large canvas to paint a beautiful scenery upon even if only for a few fleeting hours till they awake and return to the reality of constraints. Albeit with the proper mind I believe that the genius of the dreaming man can easily transcend the world of the waking.

  There are roughly 36,000,000 miles between us and the next reasonable choice for habitation if our own planet were to die. Even that would require amazing levels of technology and overhauling and thusly could not be done as a last ditch effort. For every decade that we try harder to establish dominance over nature we strike another century off the habitable time we have left. For every species that dies off because of poisons or massive (and genuinely unnecessary) expansion we lose even more because of the chain that is broken.

  It may seem somewhat exaggerative to say that we are killing the single place in the vast universe that currently can provide us with the vital components of life but it is truly mind boggling. If you were provided with a single source of water I imagine nobody would be crapping in it and yet that is essentially what we do now. We have a single planet, who’s two closest neighbors have been wrought with destruction. Venus has an atmosphere so thick that the surface of the planet can cook a frozen pizza in seconds and Mars a planet that once had water is entirely barren on the surface. Either route could be a likely outcome for us if we do not take a moment to step back and think about our actions.

  There is only so far any variable can be stretched before the equation falls apart, indeed even gravity has a tipping point at which nearly nothing can escape. Once we hit that point on this planet there will be nothing we can do but watch everything around us die, and really what will we have gained up until that point? There is no greater fear than to be nothing and it is almost ironic that our actions are quite possibly going to lead to the entirety of human history being lost forever.

I dream
of dreaming
sleeping
Seeing
feeling fantasy
overtake me

I dream
of resting
watching worlds
whose beauty
best me

So why now
do I find
my wake
taking hold
of me

I dream
of dreaming
of 8 hours
of ivory towers
of frailty
turned to majesty
oh how I miss
utter bliss
of dreaming

Dogs Dream of Silver Seamed
Bones buried beneath
Mounds of magnificent Earth
Indeed everything
With mind wide enough
Finds the worlds of night
Dancing delightedly
Within their heads
Eyes closed upon hope
Hope
that darkness brings sweets
Nighttime Nectar
Left with the sunrise

Dreams build bridges
between streams
unseemly boundaries
raging waters
of failure and fixation
upon misfortune
Dreams conquer
the weakened state
that is life
below the sun

Someday maybe
build a thing
a contraption of sorts
cogs twisting within the clouds
smiles churning like ice cream
pouring into bowls of diamond
crystal clear shining stars
billions battling
Galactic Gallery
then we’d see
that dogs dream

  I know technically I should say “human” or “person” or something but frankly women on average already live 7 years longer than men, I’d say since I’m likely to die almost a decade sooner than a lady that I should be at least given the joy of popping my gender into the title. There will be at a time someday when its ironic.

  There are so many reasons that the human life is just sadistically short. The wonderfully bright radioactive mass bursting brightly at the center of our universe lives for an estimated 10 billion years. That means that at best I’ll survive likely 1 hundred millionth the span of our sun. In the history of our universe a human life vanishes so quickly that its not even a blink, it’s hardly a trillionth of a blink if that. We take up something like two square feet of area when the very planet we are standing on takes 5 in a half quadrillion square feet…we are the tiniest of tiny ants upon a small rock in the middle of a vast expanse.

  Some people talk about heaven, an afterlife, but I’m not satisfied. I don’t want an afterlife, I want this one. If I were to paint my own heaven ala, what dreams may come (good movie), it would merely be our current reality but with me immortal (and likely invulnerable). But all in all it would be the same thing. I love reading about this world, watching it, seeing it evolve, I want to watch the continents change and move. For new land masses to split and for others to crash into one another.

  To see the first massive space ship begin its trek across space warping space and surviving the impact of hyper fast matter with nothing more than the shields wrapped around it like saran wrap. I would love to colonize my own planet, terraform it, and begin my own civilization. I want to watch a star die at the absolute smallest safe distance I can possibly imagine.

  I want to see a time when we come to a point where we no longer are discovering the universe but making our own. I think in the end I just want to see a point in which the life of man doesn’t vanish into nothingness, to see a point where the irresponsible nature of a half dozen fanatics cannot nearly obliterate everything.

  It is truly a frail and meek existence we life in, I hope to see a point in which life ends on our terms.

  Today’s post will be more personal than usual. Partially because I had to walk from my home to the college today (which is a very tiring operation).

  I am certain I know what Job I’d like to do. I want to be a teacher and eventually a professor. But why?! You might ask…oh its quite simple!

  Well first we look at the schedule. I realize that teachers work extra hours before and after the average school day, likewise I realize that ‘short days’ are not short for teachers. However anytime I think to myself “what days am I working next week?” The answer will be pretty simple “Oh right! Monday through Friday!”

  I like that sort of consistency, it provides me with a very manageable life schedule which will make my writing a plausible activity (seeing as I need consistent time frames to keep my mind in check). Likewise I love helping people and I can see few better ways to help people than to help them learn the most that they possibly can. The consistent breaks each year would also be very pleasant. I know most of my professors go to other countries to enjoy things related (and not so related) to their studies.

  The pay might not be the greatest in the world but that’s not necessarily a terrible thing. The US is an amazingly interesting place if only for the fact that across our country there are millionaire CEO’s that have more money than they can even figure out what to do with, yet they’ll die in obscurity just like all the people around them. Short of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (two people who are more famous for what they invented than their finances) I can think of no CEO’s name. However I can name most of my favorite teachers and professors.

  The almost entrancing freedom it would give me in terms of my writing also excites me greatly. So I think I’m set. As for what I’ll teach that’s up in the air, but just about anything interests me. Which might be another thing to chock up on the list.

  So I suppose that’s it for today. I apologize for the succinctness as well as the somewhat random nature of this post, but my face feels like its swallowing itself (I’m … really … tired) and I don’t think I could manage something much better tonight.

  I think for the sake of future sight, there is a great chance you’ll see an article about Determinism on here tomorrow. Mostly because I think it’s an interesting topic…and I hope you will to.