Amie's Portfolio
E603, Fall 2004
Journals
Journal #1: Unity: the New Reading and Writing
As a young girl, I learned that in order to understand the significance
of depth perception, I had to first experience a two dimensional
existence. In order to so, I was told to place my hand over one eye, so
that I could only see out of the other, uncovered eye.
I was to stare at an arrangement of objects, a human face, or some other
three-dimensional entity. I chose my kitchen table, which was set for
dinner, with a bowlful of apples as a centerpiece. Strangely, though I
had seen the table set in such a way hundreds of times before, it seemed
that I was looking at a photograph of my dining room. The arrangement
was there, as usual, but it seemed so… flat. After studying the
arrangement for a while, I removed my hand from my eye. When I did so,
the table almost seemed to breathe, filling its lungs and pushing its
gut toward me, flaunting the plates atop it and wriggling almost
imperceptibly with air under its wings. At once I could tell that the
apples had substance, the plates, volume, and the linen placemats,
thickness. Even the red color of the apples seemed more vibrant. From
that time on, I have understood that my two eyes, spaced only
centimeters apart, enable me to absorb the world around me – not just in
height or width, but with depth. In my observing an object, I can sense
its volume and scope merely by looking at it. I can, in a sense,
interact with an object by observing it.
Similarly, ideas, people, and objects are interwoven. However, our
educators do not frequently call us to this concept. We shuffle from one
classroom to another, spending fifty minutes talking about one subject
before shutting the textbook and rushing to another class. By denying
the interconnectedness of all forces and entities, by searching out the
polarity of relationships while ignoring the “dependency” and
“simultaneous presence” of interacting categories, we flatten
three-dimensional entities into two-dimensional representations of their
original essence (862). To deny the “larger whole” of which men imagine
themselves as fragments is to discount the continuous exchange of
influences among parts of the universe. But even in stating this idea, I
fall short, because I have been trained to think of myself as a “part of
a universe,” just as my fellow humans have been taught to “agree about
inches” as twelfths of a foot, or about a twenty-five cent piece as part
of the price of a car, or about a day as a fraction of my life (869).
We, as humans, find comfort in the manageability of portions, units, and
labels. There is something frightening about the reality that there is
no actual time, or weight, or color. There is something even more
terrifying about realizing that we spend our lives in slavery to these
artificial dictators. One wonders, then, how to escape these boundaries.
Literature and poetry seem to captivate us because they dictate time’s
behavior: the epic expands a moment of chronological time until seconds
hardly shift; poetry condenses lifetimes and generations of emotion and
experience until a few words are sufficiently powerful to elate or
cripple a reader (see Dr. Louise Cowan’s essay on The Epic as
Cosmopoesis). Hypertext and the new media, then, might augment that
potency, by melding the right-brain creativity with the left-brain
logic. Until the two are wed, literature and poetry remain trapped in a
two-dimensional canvas: they are presently unimaginably powerful vessels
of emotion and beauty encased in black and white, orderly, logical
typeface. Expanding the creative potential of our written language,
then, might yield unforeseen accomplishment in the union of the two
hemispheres.
But first, a change in our perception must occur. We must allow
ourselves to fall into the realization that we are not the end, nor the
authors, of all things. Neither are we separate from each other. Our
education, then, is not the apprehension of knowledge, but the
realization of existence.
Journal #2: Discovery Learning
“We murder to dissect… The butterfly was greater than the sum of its
parts.”
–Professor Bump
I have been taught to trap the butterfly, to dull its senses with
acetone, and to dry it as a specimen, complete with documentation of the
natural habitat from which I stole it. During my freshman year of high
school, my Biology teacher assigned the task of constructing an “insect
collection,” to be graded with regard to the careful preservation,
classification, and display of the specimens. My best friend laughed
each afternoon as she watched butterflies flop helplessly in fumigated
jars, and my male classmates held beetle fights during our lunch period.
When I wasn’t shuddering at the though of touching cockroaches, I
wondered how it benefited anything at all to remove the life from a
class of organisms, slap Latin names on them, and show them to the
teacher. Looking back on the experience, I can recognize Mrs. Sadler’s
desire to develop our scientific thinking as she pointed out the
family-specific head shape of a preying mantis. However, I can’t help
but think there must have been a way for the class to interact with the
insects, to learn their nature, rather than memorizing what they looked
like after their truest essence left them.
Evan S. Dobelle, former president of Trinity College, once commented
that the goal of education is to foster students’ “conversation with the
world,” which will in turn result in what educational vanguard John
Henry Newman praised as “liberal knowledge:” “A habit of mind … which
lasts through life,” notable for “freedom, equitableness, calmness,
moderation, and wisdom. It is an acquired illumination … a habit … and
the formation of a character … It is … permanent” (193,191C). In a
conversation, it has been my experience, concrete facts bridge the
conversants to abstraction and awareness of a truth much greater than
the literal meaning intrinsic to the words themselves. With the
awakening of the intellect to concrete truth comes the soul’s ability to
transcend established ideas to a greater absorption of and interaction
with ultimate realities, those governing truths which cause and are
caused by the finite minutia that continuously collide and connect with
their earthly roots and products.
Victorian poet Matthew Arnold noted that the confrontation of new ideas
and truths “tends necessarily to make men dissatisfied” with their
current, mechanical station in life (196). This is certainly a noble and
worthy result of an education, for if Walter Pater’s exhortation to
gather “all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch” is
rightly founded on the idea that in doing so one captures moments of
waking in the “short day of frost and sun” that is our lifetime, then
there is no other worthy purpose which man may serve but to make some
deliberate use of his fleeting existence – our lives are but an
intermission, sandwiched by two acts of either eternity or obsolescence,
and we are left with no other entity at which to grasp than one which
will provide some solidarity to our station (204).
My own introduction to discovery learning began long ago, then, when I
first felt the need to know truth intimately and in a manner that would
change me. I was never taught to teach myself; I simply understood that
the gnawing transience within me had to be silenced, for a time, in some
way or other. We are born aware of our own ineptitude, and by our
respective methods we search for the significance lent us by what
teachers our experience may provide.
Journal #3: Jude Parts 1&2
“It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on,
to cling to; for some place which he could call admirable; should he
find that place [Christminster] if he could get there? Would it be a
spot which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could
watch and wait and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men
of old of whom he had heard? … ‘It is a city of light,’ he said to
himself … ‘The tree of knowledge grows there … It is a place that
teachers of men spring from, and go to … It is what you may call a
castle, manned by scholarship and religion … It would just suit me.’ ”
(19)
Jude’s journey, like that of nearly every man or woman, is his
pilgrimage to find his “place.” Long unwanted and mistreated, Jude’s
obsession with academia begins with his adoration of his schoolteacher,
Mr Phillotson. After the teacher shares his dream of graduating with a
degree from Christminster, Jude adopts the fantasy as his own.
Throughout the first two sections, Jude searches for constancy, a sense
of achievement and worth, and a cause worth his devotion. Whether in
women, as with Abby and Sue, or in his studies, Jude wholeheartedly
devotes himself to causes which he presumes will satisfy his desire for
certainty and fulfillment; his highest points of elation are the moments
in which he senses that he has “at last found anchorage for his
thoughts” with will thus nurture the “social and spiritual” quest that
drives him onward (86). In the process of pursuing his dashed dreams,
however, Jude’s perception of Christminster as the center of “infinite
motion” fades into a realization that the “real Christminster life”
pulses within the common, “struggling men and women” who fill the bars
with their rawness – their authenticity – while the “students and
teachers … the floating population, … [are] not Christminster in a local
sense at all” (106, 111). The ideal that has for so long been Jude’s
anchor and guide is now the untamed sail that tosses him wildly in his
sea. The only truly permanent emblem in Jude’s experience is the
milestone from which he used to gaze at his idyllic city, dreaming of
the life he had carved into stone so long ago (117). Jude finds that
there is no constancy, there is no certainty, except that after which he
journeys. Sadly, whatever entity Jude pursues loses its appeal upon its
apprehension (One calls to mind Pliny the Younger’s maxim, “An object in
possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.”). Time
and again Jude tastes the first juices of victory, or love, or
accomplishment, or constancy, yet time and again he is denied the
enjoyment of these rewards.
I find myself on a similar pilgrimage: I long for something real,
something trustworthy, something worth serving. In short, I’d like to
know that something much larger than me is worth my efforts and my
passions. That “something” must be more than a college degree, a
husband, or even a feeling of safety and belonging. That something must
be greater than what I am, what I know, and what I alone am capable of
doing.
It seems to me that a human needs to feel needed, but moreover, we need
to feel that we fit into something large, something which overarches our
insignificant lives, something which validates our existence. One part
of that “something” into which I fit might be the unity of all things,
for when I cease to think of myself as a fragment, I am forced to
realize myself as a whole, in relationship with the whole. Another part
of that “something” may be the experience of and intellectual
acquiescence to God. This will take some work on my part.
Judging from parts 1 & 2 of Jude, though, it would seem that my hopes of
finding such a “something” are really the greatest end I could find.
Thus far, Jude’s aspirations fulfill him more than the achievement of
those desires. His wishes, carved into the milestone, are the only
constancy afforded him. Thus far, my search has led me onward, but I
hope to find more solidarity as a result of my questions than Jude has.
Journal #4
Both Jude and Zuleika have provoked me to think in different terms about
how I create my sense of place here at UT, and what role my background
will play in this present setting. For the past few years, I always
assumed that when I went to college, I would attend an out-of-state
university far from my family, my close-knit community, and all my
friends. Since my brother had left Dallas to attend school in Maryland,
it seemed natural that I would make my escape in a similar matter. No
longer would I be stuck in the midst of my parents’ messy divorce
proceedings (now almost in their fourth year), no longer would I be
confined to the singular school of thought in which I had been
indoctrinated since my birth. With my freedom would come a new passion
and drive to dream and achieve, as well as the emotional availability to
pursue new and noble endeavors.
In a sense, I saw myself as a sort of Jude, before his entanglement with
Arabella: I had planned to find a passion for my own Christminster, and
to live, work, and breathe entirely for that purpose. I respect and even
envy Jude’s dedication to his dream: choosing to become a stonemason
solely on the premise that such an occupation would support him in the
city of his dreams, Jude personifies that rare and ineffable quality
which drives great men to do great things. Zuleika, too, evidences this
trait: “She seemed to be thinking of herself, or of something she
desired, or of someone she had never met” (9). Both Jude and Zuleika
have a goal, regardless of their community’s opinion of that purpose. I
desired that same quality, and I had planned to pursue it with a
singularity of mind as soon as I reached the university.
But I have discovered, as Sue did, that “things seem so different in the
cold light of morning” (148). I’m here in Austin now, removed from my
family. I have my freedom, a world of ideas at my fingertips, and every
imaginable opportunity to do things I’d never even conceived of doing.
Yet in the past few weeks I have been more acutely aware of my family’s
presence within me than I ever have before. Even my attempts to escape
and individuate are incited by my experience with my family – I cannot
escape my past. Just as Jude finds himself entangled by his adolescent
affections with Arabella and distraught over his love for Sue, just as
Zuleika turns Oxford on its head, I now realize that I cannot pursue any
goal with a singleness of mind or heart. I am a composite of my
experiences and my potential, and no matter how feverishly I pursue a
goal, my interests will be divided.
My place at UT, then, is not just a place here. Because I am a result of
what I have experienced and all the various influences that have
combined to create “me,” I ought not to seek out one place anywhere. The
maxim embroidered on pillows and sold at Hobby Lobby reading “Home is
where the heart is” possesses more truth than one might think. I am a
product of the past and present, and all the truths and pains and ideas
that play into them. I can no more claim a “place” than I can reclaim
portions of my heart. I have loved people who are now far away, felt
pains that have no current causes, and experienced joy because of ideas
which will never be housed in a man-made artifice. Parts of my heart are
here, others are with my family (whether I like it or not), others are
with my friends at all their respective colleges. Some of my dreams have
been dashed, while others remain, not yet tarnished. But can I take back
the love that I’ve given? Can I ignore the imprint each thought has left
on my mind? Will I forget the dreams I have treasured? Certainly not! My
heart, though divided and in some places battered, is still within me. I
alone possess my treasury of experience. My “place,” then, is not a dorm
room, a social circle, or the self-assuring pursuit of a goal, for one
fragmented location or relationship is only a part of a much greater
whole. My place, I now understand, is the world I carry within me.
Journal #5
When I visited China last July, I was overwhelmed by its culture and vast history. Walking among ancient landmarks such as Beijing’s Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall, I got chills whenever I pondered China’s vast domain and venerability.
Standing on the Great Wall of China, I was captivated by the immensity of the landscape spread before me. Yet I couldn’t draw my attention away from a small guard’s shack, topped with gargoyles. Where there once had been four, now there were three. I didn’t understand the creatures, or why they should be atop a wall created for the military defense of the empire, so I snapped my picture and walked on.
I remember my thoughts the next day at the Temple of Heaven. Waiting for my friend Lindsay to take a picture, I wished she would hurry up so that we could leave, when I noticed before me a white marble post, no more than a foot high and eight inches in diameter. The post was so ornately decorated with carvings and cariactures that I was captivated – I didn’t even hear my friends calling to me when they were ready to move on to the city’s next attraction. Seeing that one post in the midst of a perhaps 300 acre campus of massive stone buildings and utterly magnificent buildings, crammed full of tourists and pilgrims, children and the aged, immediately grounded me into my place in existence.
Looking at that post, I became its craftsman. I at once lived the hours spent perfecting its textures, the felt the blistered fingers, and suffered the aching back of the artisan charged with implimenting the identity of an empire into a piece of marble. That solitary post, erect in a couryard probably 150 yards wide and 500 yards long, had been touched by the unclean hands of a peasant. It had been placed in the holy temple where the fathers of the Ming and Quing dynasties annually petitioned the gods for bumper crops. It had witnessed the pageantry of an empire proceeding before and behind and beneath its icon, the emperor. It had witnessed the reverence of a nation for the stability and honor of that leader, and yet it had seen countless emperors in their processions.
In more ways than I wished to believe, I understood that post. And that post spoke to me. It had been crafted, and it was beautiful. Its designs told a story I was not equipped to understand. It had held its place for centures, “wounded, broken, sloghing off [its] outter shape in the deadly struggle against years, weather, and man,” just as Blackwood notes Hardy describing the carvings at St. Mary’s in Oxford (844). Though that post was one of the most minute implements of the temple, it was more constant than even the emperors, who shone and faded with the generations. I saw myself as something even less than that post, standing in the same place thousands of people had stood before. I was as changeable as the emperors – and certainly less powerful.
These things, these carvings, this art – what purpose do they serve? I still wonder about their origin and their practicality, but I cannot deny their ability to change people. I was taught and changed by a seemingly insignificant post in China, and I certainly hope to be changed by art again.