Replacing Emptiness: 9/2007

It has taken six painstaking years to come to a realization that what has happened has happened, and the distinct loss of everything I once encompassed that has made my life quite unbearable, will continue to resonate with each undying breath I take. Still, I sit in what was once my element, my sanctuary, and as the utter sadness of time passed wraps itself around my aching corpse, I close my eyes and drift away to that moment when my life came tumbling down once and for all. I see through the blinds of the shattered window of what was once my broken home. I see him walk into my room on that sweet summer day, a few days before the 12th year my reign as the supreme outcast began. I sat upon my bed, composed and fearful, as he sat down beside me, and gently moved aside my blue three-ring binder and a pack of blue Bic pens. As "Stand By Me" by Mr. King played on my Cd player and the tears began to stream down my tarnished face, My father, the man who had helped bring me into this world withholding a heart full of compassion and a piece of mind which had been fueled by an abusive past, decided to take the spirit within my soul, which he had tried to slay repeatedly throughout the years, and bestow upon it a fond farewell. My beautiful crazy shine, My father, My life, decided it was time to ditch the wife who made his life utter hell, and leave the product of his sperm donation to fend for herself, in this cold, cruel world. The next day, I began my senior year of high school, and came home that afternoon to a single mother for the 5th time in my life, only this time the heartache was undeniably going to linger beside me. Six years later, it may have been quite a disappointment, but I have come to cope with the notion that I will never be blessed with the spirit that was once my sweet father. It is the pain of missing him immensely, regardless of what he had done to instill such ambivalence within me. It is and will always be the fact that he once loved me, even if it may not hold true anymore for him. It is fighting back the cancer of my soul, in hopes of one day seeing the man I once had known to be my father...and it is fighting the truth, that there is no hope, and I will never see the real him again. I struggle each day to come to terms with a loss that has defined me day after day, counseling session after session, anti-depressant after anti-depressant, and yet the thing is I may have spent my life, up to this moment, yearning, yearning to kiss a childhood pain, a lingering moment that has yet to subside, a resonating goodbye, but the older I have become since that moment of truth that led me to believe that love leaves, I comprehend that my father had his reasons, and both my parents had their faults. Even though my father took his own disappointment in life, which was not having a father, out on me, I’d still give the world to be wrapped up in his tumultuous tempest and all its sheer wonder just one last time.

A Life of Love and Deception

Raindrops, intertwined with Serena’s tears, hit the pavement outside the therapist’s office on this sullen November morning. She trails far behind, listening to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” on the green iPod her father had given to her for her 16th birthday that September. Her mother, Kelly, and her flavor of the month, John, walk hand in hand, whispering into each other’s ears just a few steps ahead.
“Mom, this is utterly ridiculous! I don’t see any sense in this.”
Kelly sighs under the Chanel umbrella keeping her and John dry, and turns to look at Serena soaking wet,
“Rena, please cooperate with me! I’m not going to deal with your rebellion and unkindness towards me any longer! I’ve done nothing but been a good mother to you! If I can’t get you to treat me with respect, then maybe having you see a shrink will give you an attitude adjustment and open your eyes a bit.”
Serena looks at her mother in disgust. How could a woman who has committed such an act, be in such denial of it all? How can she be compelled to imply that her own daughter is the one who needs psychiatric help?
As they enter the Center for Family Counseling, John opens the door, smiling as Kelly enters. She blows him a kiss in return, and as Serena walks in, John notices her sigh deeply in what seems to be a look of nausea.
In the therapist’s office, the walls are covered with beautiful portraits of young children. As Serena makes her way to a brown rustic armchair, the painting above strikes her fancy. It is of a little girl with beautiful Native American hair, like her own, putting on ballet slippers, and suddenly Serena’s mind slips back into the days when her parents encouraged her to follow her dreams of becoming a Ballerina. She quickly wipes her tears away before her mother catches her letting her guard down. As her mother and John make their way to the red “loveseat” besides her, Dr. Anderson locks the office door, and plops her snobby rear end unto her white recliner.
“So Kelly and John, who is this lovely young woman you have brought in to see me today?”
Serena sighs and rolls her eyes at her mother. Her mother smiles back at her. “This is my beautiful daughter, Serena.”
“Hi Serena, Well, how can I help you today?
“Honestly, this isn’t for me, it’s for my Mother and her home wrecker boyfriend, husband, I don’t know—whatever the hell he is.”
Kelly looks at her, ashamed. “You see Doctor, she has become the absolute opposite of what I raised her to be. She has no respect, none for me, John, or anyone else for that matter.”
As Serena begins to cry, Dr. Anderson hands her a green box of tissues with a picture of a fall harvest drawn upon it. Thanksgiving, the year before, was the last time she saw her parents in a passionate embrace. “Tell me Serena, I understand you’re upset, but why? No one is here to judge, not even your mother.”
Serena looks out the window and wonders if the dark clouds are due to the sky having a heart full of pain. “You want to know what’s going on with me mother. You want to know why I’ve been acting this way. Huh?", Serena feels agitated by her mother’s long silence, slouches as she uncrosses her legs and stomps both feet down, "Well? Do you!!!!!!"
Kelly begins to worry by her daughter’s fit of implicit anger. “Yes, Yes baby, tell me, please.”
Serena sits up straight. “You see Dr. Anderson, I have nothing against my Mother or John; in fact I love John immensely, but not for becoming my mother’s lover.”
“Serena if you’re upset with me, fine, but don’t disrespect John.”
“You’re right Mom. Dr. Anderson, John is a perfect match for my Mother, a grungy musician, and a long-legged Blonde starlet, quite a blissful match. In fact better than his best friend, my father, ever was for her. Will that suffice Mother?”
Kelly looks at her daughter stunned, while the tears roll down Serena’s eyes, and her lips start to quiver, Kelly kindly responds, “Baby, Go on. Speak your piece.”
“I’m … I’m angry and caught up in the mess my mother could have prevented, if only she realized what her and my father really had. She allowed herself to fall out of love, or whatever her reasoning was, but I just don’t understand why? And if it was so necessary, why did she have to cheat with my father’s best friend?” Serena sobs silently, “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
Dr. Anderson hands her a bottle of water, and smiles with empathy for the sweet brokenhearted girl. “I understand that it is not easy to endure hardships like this in one’s life, but your mother may have had a cause unknown to you as to why she decided to act the way she has.”
Serena chuckles, and rolls her eyes. “Dr. Anderson, you do not understand. My life has not been perfect, but it has been more than I could have ever imagined. My parents busted their butts to allow my brother, my little sister and myself to live comfortably with all the finer things in life. They sent us to the best schools, and with my brother getting accepted to USC, they’re willing to pay for his tuition too but he doesn’t want them to, due to everything they’ve done for us. Now tell me, what other kid wouldn’t take Mommy and Daddy’s money whenever it was offered? My parents, my mom and “real” father belong together. The way my mother changed my father for the better, you would never believe she’d leave him in the end.”
Dr. Anderson looks at Kelly, then Serena, and smiles. “Do you love your mother?”
“Of course I do, she was an angel to all of us.”
“How did she change your father’s ways?”
“My father was a straight up narcotic fiend, a crazy addict. She pulled him out of it, never left his side through all his withdrawals and gave him a reason to live, and strive to become the musician he always aspired to be.” Serena looks at John with a look of contempt in her eyes. “If there ever was anything my Papa would give his life for, it was my mother and Johnny. “
Serena gets up and looks out of the window, and Kelly walks up and puts her arms around her and whispers in her ear, “Your father didn’t want me anymore.”
Serena turns around and slaps her mother across the face, and as John runs up to Kelly’s aid, Dr. Anderson looks at Serena with disappointment. “That was uncalled for young lady.”
Serena looks at the three of them. “She has left my father alone, and when he finds someone new the truth is, she won’t compliment him the way my mother did. Whatever my thoughts are on my mother’s relations with John, I’m entitled to them. He is not my stepfather, and never will he be anything of that sort to me. I am my father’s family; his daughter and only his.” Serena reaches into her pocket and feels the vibration of her cell phone. She glances at the screen, and can’t wait to answer it. She looks at Kelly and John, and looks down at their hands locked together. “As far as I am concerned, you both are as dead to me as you are to him.” She looks at Dr. Anderson and shakes her hand, “Well this has been quite enjoyable," she moves on to shake her mother’s hand, " Thank you, for the bullshit ending to a life I valued so very much, Kelly.”
As Serena slams the office door, she answers her father’s call. “Hi Papa.”
Anthony hears the hurt in his angel’s voice, and his voice trembles in wonder of what could have happened. “Rena, what happened? Why do you sound like you’re about to cry?”
Serena gets into the elevator, and standing against the metal railing, lays her head against the cold metal, slowly moving her body into the fetal position, as she sobs.
“Nothing, Papa, It’s just Mom, and John. They felt like playing a game of house, and took me to therapy.”
“You told her you wanted to go?”
“No, she’s just shocked by my intense behavior towards her and her sorry excuse for a boyfriend, and can’t for the life of her understand why. I’m so upset and angry, and I feel so ambivalent towards her for fucking up our family.” Serena grabs a hold of the metal railing, and pounds on the floor with her left fist, continuing to sob violently.
Anthony, driving home from his studio session, stops at a stop sign and pulls over on his way to pick up his little Lacey from Kindergarten. “Baby, please stop. I hate hearing you cry. You have a family, you’ve got Tony, Lace and I, and you know that no matter what happens between your mother and I, she loves you immensely and she always will. She never meant to hurt you.”
As the elevator doors open, Serena walks out of the building and sits on a bench in the pouring rain. “Can I see you, or are you at work?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the plaza down the street from Lacey’s school.”
“I was on my way to pick her up, but I’ll be there in five minutes. Wait for me.”
The thought of her father asking her to wait leaves her with a sense of protection. Serena wipes her tears away, with a clear understanding that as long as her father is there to save her from harms way, then nothing else matters. “Thank you, Papa.”



As Anthony starts up the car, and makes a left at the stop sign, heading down to the plaza, Kelly calls him on his cell.
“Where is she, Anthony? What did you tell her to have her act like an ungrateful little bitch?”
“Excuse me??? First off, your daughter walking out on you has nothing to do with me, and how dare you call her an ungrateful little bitch. I won’t disrespect you, and stoop to your level, but-”, he drives up to Serena, waiting at the curb, and lets her in.
“Hi baby”, as he reaches over to kiss her forehead, Kelly gets frustrated on the line.
“What is she doing with you?”
“Excuse me, she’s my kid, and that’s all I’m going to say to you.
“Let me talk to her.”
“Rena, your mom wants to talk to you.”
Serena looks at him, “I don’t want to see her, or speak to her.”
Anthony holds his daughter’s hand, “ Baby, you know I’m on your side no matter what, but she’s your mother.” Serena looks at him, and shakes her head, as her frown manifests into tears, as Kelly becomes impatient over the phone, and angry with him for stealing Serena’s love away from her.
“Anthony, don’t brainwash my kid into hating me.”
Anthony becomes irate, and tries to keep his cool in front of Serena, but finds it difficult. “Kelly, one thing I do not do is point fingers, and push people to hate one another. Rena is upset and tired. This whole situation is killing our kids, so before you judge, please take a minute and re-evaluate the situation, and see who it is that has prompted Rena to act this way.”
Kelly stops silent, as her and John walk to the underground parking lot. John opens the car door for her, and waits till she gets in, and closes the door for her. On the other end, beyond his love for her, Anthony still feels betrayed and extremely broken hearted. “Why baby, why would you do this to me?”
John kisses Kelly on the forehead, and whispers to her that everything will be just fine. “I don’t know, Anthony.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know! Damn it Kelly! I can’t believe you and that asshole! I’m done Kelly; you did yourself in this time. It’s completely over and I’m prepared to fight.”
Serena puts her headphones on hoping to drown out the sounds of her sorrow.
Kelly opens the car window a little and lights up a cigarette. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you threatening me?”
“No. How quickly you forget. I was the one who loved you and would’ve died for you. Now, how could I ever wish to hurt you, when all I knew was how to protect you? I’m just making sure you know what the deal is.”
Kelly exhales a puff of smoke, as cloudy as the love she once shared with her husband has become, and lets out a laugh fueled with sarcasm, “Which is what?” She turns her speakerphone on so John can hear the conversation.
“Tony is going off to college, so I’m not worried about my boy, but there’s no way in hell that my girls will ever, (his voice begins to shake) ever, live in a house with that asshole you left me for.”
Serena looks over at Anthony, and senses his upset with Kelly.
“Papa, just hang up on her!!!! Please. It kills me to see how she keeps on hurting you. Fuck. I can’t take it anymore!” Serena throws her ipod at the windshield, and buries her head in her hands.
Anthony lifts Serena’s head up, and looks at her, “You are my life, and I don’t want you to hurt when I hurt. I’m going to handle this. I promise that Tony, Lace, You and I will be okay, and I won’t rest until we are. You got me?”
Serena bites her lip, and takes a deep breath in, “Papa, don’t leave me with her.”
“It would be the biggest mistake anyone can ever make, leaving my little girl alone. You have my word, no matter what, your coming with me.” Anthony kisses her head, and hears Kelly harping on the phone, again.
“ Listen Anthony", kelly pauses laughing hysterically "you actually think you’re going to take my girls away from John and I?”
Anthony begins to cry, and simultaneously give in to a fit of rage. “JOHN AND YOU! John and you??? You’ve obviously lost your mind. I’m filing for divorce, and Serena and Lace are coming with me!”
Serena turns on the speakerphone switch button on the sun visor to hear what her mother is saying…
“Over my dead body; after all, Lacey’s begun to call John, daddy.”
The feeling of eternal silence fills Anthony’s soul, as if someone had ripped his heart right out of him, and left it to be trampled upon. Her mouth slightly drops, and she looks at her father’s tears nearly drowning him, as he lies in a comatose state. Serena tugs on her father’s arm, hoping he’d come out of it and talk to her. She takes the phone and hangs up on her mother.
“Papa, she’s trying to get to you. Lacey never calls John anything of that sort. Everyone knows who her papa is, especially her. She calls you daddy, and only you.”

As Kelly looks down at her phone, she sees that he has hung up. She wanders off to the days when Anthony and her first got together 19 years ago, in her mind. The one thing that stays constant is the notion that he was her first love, and he always will be.
John pulls her bangs away from her eyes, and looks at her sincerely, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
She takes out her compact and fixes her mascara. “Yeah baby. It’s over and done with.”
“Are you okay with that?”
She reaches for John’s right hand and holds it tightly, “He was the only man I ever fell for. I gave him my youth, my dreams, a family, and all the love I held in my heart. These truths make it hard for me to deal with.”
John replies sadly, “Do you still want to be with him?”
“Oh no", she kisses his hand, "Johnny, my love", she states lifting his chin up "I did what I did and I will face the consequences. I love you, and I know Lacey loves you, and that’s all that matters. We’ll be happy, with our own little family. You, me and your real daughter.”
John moves in for the kill, and kisses her unlike she has ever been kissed before. “If you only knew how much I love you." As they share an embrace, Kelly lays her head against his chest and listens to his heartbeat.
“I already know.” Kelly brushes her hand gently down his chest, and stops before she gets carried away. “Come on baby, Let’s go get your little girl from school.”

Broken

Never have I broken a bone in my body, though there remains the time where a fracture upon my 4ft frame occurred, crowning it as the only exception. Where I fell off the monkey bars and my collar bone broke my fall, leaving me bruised upon a glass bottle of whatever the ice tea craze was at the time, but as an adult I guess I have yet to be introduced to my pain tolerance for anything shy of a complete skeleton to the touch, unlike my pops.
Bubbly and vital; my frail bones never felt so alive. I was six-years-old, driving through the valley with my old man on that sullen, rain-reigned Saturday morning. I was fidgeting with the radio, hoping that perhaps Mc Hammer would come on and serenade me on the way to Ashley and Nicole’s house, but after a few moments, every station had declined my internal request. Silence between him and I was never spoken, I was laughing up a storm talking about Nadia and her dire need to overshadow Hammer’s running man at school yesterday, and just then, the unthinkable managed to overshadow the unthinkable. It was like being trapped inside something concaved where the blue sky waited for a sign to lift me vertically up and away, away from the day that I seemed to have loved. One minute is all it took, an intangible minute of silence, one that has lasted far longer than any minute has ever anticipated.
My old man, I break a smile at the heavenly thought of the handsome cold-hearted spirit in question. I drive through that intersection daily, you know, the one with the split in the road. That same telephone poll, harboring the 18-year-old scar, still struggles to stay intact. The echoes of paradise still chime loudly in my ears, and the lady, whose house my father absentmindedly decide to partially wipe out, still lives hazily in my memory. Like the few slight pleasures I have attained by living, seemingly lasting only countless seconds, the despair never seems to exhaust itself, that cataclysmic sound of death reverberates motionless, prolifically loud in my ears. I remember vaguely, the traces of blood upon my black and purple flannel. As a frightened child, my quiet composure still whole, I froze in wonder, silently for a moment.
I looked over to my left. My father undeniably lies comatose, with his sweet bald scalp, my crystal ball for as long as I can remember, sheltered by the clear glass of what was left of the windshield. A pale face, like one who had just conversed with a ghost of sorts, came running towards my contestably narcoleptic father and I. Her significant other, trying to keep cool, calls an ambulance. Bless her heart; she tries urgently to open my door, and yet another chance at living fearful is upon me.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asked with this sweet look of worry, worry that would compel anyone to save someone.
“Maxine.” I responded, from what my remembrance supplies me, fairly teary eyed.
She grabbed my hand and escorted my tiny frame, to which everyone referred to me as Skinny Bone Jones, my moniker back then.

The sidewalk welcomed a chockfull of uninvited guests, standing silent and chaotic in their massively abundant movement of gawking at a child’s misfortunate ordeal. I’ll call her Antonia, since her name has escaped me. Sweet Antonia, my redeemer for that hour, led me into her yellow, sunlit kitchen, and pulled out a chair at the breakfast nook in the corner, and asked me to take a seat. As I sat down, she began to wipe off the blood from my torn black Levi’s.
“Do you feel alright, my dear?” she sympathetically questioned.
“I, I, I think so.” I stuttered. She brought me a plate of Oreo cookies and I thought to myself, my mother would have never done this, as she placed a glass of milk in front of me.
“Everything will be alright. Your daddy’s going to be just fine.”
I smiled kindly, and I sat fondly of that charming woman, waiting, wishing, and wondering what would become of my short existence later on that afternoon.
My description of lovely Antonia has embarked on to breed dimly into the land of anonymous beings, the place in which the significant ones, who once affected your life, grow fainter into years later. Sometimes, if I find myself on Lassen Avenue, I drive by just hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but who knows if she still calls that humble abode home. If I close my eyes, I can still catch my mother running to his aide on the stretcher, as I stood aside with Antonia, deeply wishing she were my mother.
If only my recollection would serve me better. Did I truly struggle with any tears? I wonder; could I have known then that this would still impale my daily endeavors, 18 years into the future? Was this to mark the end of the eternal neglect and ruling of the iron fist, which paradoxically, I still loved wholeheartedly? If these things, this flash of my youthful remembrance, have played a part in my chronic illness, why then can I not bid them a tender parting? Perhaps by allowing justice to the past be served, then it would mean no longer would the warmth of yearning for a goodbye, radiate above me, keeping me ill yet tenderly sheltered in this cruel world, sunlight hours in and calendar days out, as I hunger for something more, more than what my eyes have seen, more than this, more than all of this.

A Burning Dystopia: Response to Fahrenheit 451

Levi, Neda
English 312
November 6, 2008

A Burning Dystopia:
Response to Fahrenheit 451

Why would anyone want to reflect upon the ways of their certain society without any restrictions, if they were truly happy? Why would anyone advocate for a universal sense of individualism being practiced along with the freedoms of expressing themselves, if they lived in a society where everyone was created and treated as an equal? In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and its film depiction, the notions of control, knowledge or the lack there of, and power relations are all concepts that were a intricate part in his portrayal of what a 24th century society might entail and one can argue that these ideas definitely hold true in relation to the contemporary society in America, during the 21st century.

The government controls the citizens of Fahrenheit 451 by burning books and erasing any sense of an educated mind that one can possibly gain and positively pass on to another. Books offer conflicting points of view and to the government of Fahrenheit 451, books imply that a possibility of superiority, amongst those who may not understand the information that is gained from them in general, may arise. Why then should a society be divided by something, regardless of how current societies view books within the never-ending realm of powerful possibility, that may leave half of its people feeling incompetent and not worthy of existence?
The premise of the novel revolves around a fireman named Montag who instead of putting out fires starts them with his fellow, what I like to call “Arson-causing, Knowledge-fearing” firefighters. Montag goes about his daily endeavors without any qualms until he realizes that his life is based upon emptiness, therefore he has this dire need to find significance and comprehension into it by reading the information branded upon these books, though his occupation is to rid his society of them. Unlike his wife Mildred who with her suicide attempt, whether or not she was aware of having attempted it, needs psychiatric help and has become so obsessed with the figures upon the television screen, the powers that be, who make her feel bright and worthy of existence. Michel Foucault, philosopher and writer of Discipline & Punish, once stated, “In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence - the source of human freedom - is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us. We have to rise up against all forms of power - but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power. Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good” (Foucault). Knowledge is power and it has been for centuries. Montag wants to break free from the sense of ignorance that his boss, Beatty who is one of the gifted ones having known all along the good that books can offer people, does not encounter. In choosing to keep the intellectual power to himself, he is unkindly able to point the finger, critique and rule over those who are lacking in knowledge. Beatty sees books as weapons, and yet as the great philosopher Plato did to denigrate poetry by using poetic devices, he uses the immeasurable amount of knowledge that he has accumulated throughout his reading of books to manipulate Montag further.

In the 21st century, technological advances and the media have made the pleasure of reading and gaining intellectual, emotional, and physical insight into the history of the world, a lesson that most would rather be enlightened by via the television or movie screen. Nowadays, everything has turned into something that technology, be it television, computers, the internet, ipods, or cell phones, can bring to the consumer a lot quicker than the era of the old-fashioned typewriter, pen and paper, and books used to. In America, our society seems to be too dependent on the knowledge one can gain within the blink of an eye. Demolish books and all of history is eradicated along with them. If technology is hindered by something in the future, everyone would have to crack open a book, which seems laborious to some, but it’s the way people before us gained their knowledge. Did Michel Foucault strike utter intellectual and philosophical genius by way of the Internet? Did anyone who paved the way for those who are attached to technology at the hip, use the Internet?
Bradbury’s novel seems to mirror very clearly what is happening in our society, let alone what might happen in the 24th century of American society. As a culture, a lot of our people no longer feel stimulated by a good book, or even a bad book in fact. We are dumbing down as a society, and allowing technology to run everything. Adorno states in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, “Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in” (Adorno). In Fahrenheit 451, regardless of his own epiphanies, Montag began to find meaning within the books and realized that he must resist burning them, but in a society that is founded upon the notion that happiness is equated with equality, what else can one do through their need to rebel but go with the norm in order to survive, however wrong the conditions may seem.
Nothing is original anymore, a writer may not be able to spark or evoke the kind of intellectual emotion and passion from his/her reader like the writers of times past had been able to. Our children today are raised on stupid Nickelodeon television as opposed to the books that young adults can remember reading fondly. Instead of learning with Sesame Street and its respective children’s literature, our kids are playing with handheld computer games, even if it teaches them lessons, it still robs them the joy of reading and walking away with something that may not be colorful and exciting to play with, but colorful in words and lessons that will make a world of difference years down the road for them. Walter Benjamin’s article entitled, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, questions the idea of books becoming out of date and technology controlling completely supreme sooner or later. Our Libraries attest to this. You walk into a university library or any library for that matter, and see people pacing back and forth waiting for a computer. You never see people pacing back and forth, frantic because someone took the only copy of Fahrenheit 451. This society has become quite a dystopia. This invention of technology and its influence harboring over the existence of the essential way to gain awareness is nothing more or less than utterly sad.




Work Cited

Adorno, Theodor. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" WebCT. CSUN.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" WebCT.CSUN.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey, 1978.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House, 1975.

Please, Don't Get It Twisted.

You are definitely living in a realm only belonging to yourself. No one else lives the way you do. You immigrated, oh about 19 years ago, and fell into a rich man's arms, so what? Why do you get to live without reservations, while your uncle's wife still suffers, with dishpan hands scrubbing away at the baked-on falafel grease that your barbaric family caked unto her finest iron skillet more than a decade ago?
"Don't put the dish in the sink; put it beside the sink so Nina can wash it." You kindly tell me; in what you think is your kindest voice, in the middle of your Calabasas courtyard, on this fine October night, as I wish for a meteor to come crashing down into the epicenter of your Israeli palace from the night's sky.
"Oh right, for Nina… that's right." I respond with the roll of my eyes, as your eyes seem to negatively regress back into the care free days of a childhood, unfortunately not your own, but mine. You bring out a silver tray of pineapples, papayas, strawberries and cream, while your mother trails behind with a tray of 10 tea glasses and cinnamon rugelach for us to nosh on. Someone brings up the past and you and your brother mention my fascination with the color purple and how annoying I sounded when I was a child, and my facial expression depicts the notion that I am wondering where you people get off?
"What Leila, it's our childhood we're talking about here, come on now, we're all grownups just looking back on a time where things were simple." you state with this narcissistic naivety about you, that lives, unfortunately, unbeknownst by you.

I drift off and think profoundly of how I'd like to take you out with a 45 and a shovel.How on earth do you know what kind of life is simple? My parents cooked and clean after you, my father divorced my mother because of his brother, your fucked up excuse for a father, and his incessant triumphs at brainwashing him into paying more attention to all of your family rather than my mother! Please Maya, do not get any of this shit twisted.
Your younger sister's fiancé compels me to snap out of it as I hear his voice echoing, "What was it like immigrating to America back in the 80's?"

You answer him with such pride and lust towards yourself, I think to myself, looks like someone needs a cold shower. Please Maya, don't get it twisted.
"I was a senior in high school and listen Tal, I was attractive. I mean I had the looks and Americans in 89' didn't have the fashion that we had overseas, so of course I was just getting hit on by all the boys left and right, and for someone who didn't know the language, it was pretty degrading. I mean they all just wanted to do me." You rant nonchalantly making yourself seem like the victim, and I'm still thinking of that sweet 45 as the thought of your daughter's pail and shovel turns on the light bulb above my head, a figment of my imagination.
I have held you and your family like one holds the concept of taste aversion in hindsight. I refer briefly to how I drive daily past the intersection of Mayall and Mason in blustery pleasure of my days before you dictators overthrew my mother and took over her thrown and the attention of her King, and again I am starred down upon, by your brother and you, both probably wondering what a nutcase I am.
"What did you say?" you ask me in shock and before I can reiterate my gleeful moment of mesmerizing memory, your dumbass interrupts, "Oh my gosh, how could you miss that place, and that house??" you question, obviously looking for an answer, yet I just sit waiting for you to ramble on again, "Every time I find myself anywhere on Lassen, my body cringes. God, that was a horrible time for us."
Your sister's fiancé asks why, and I try to hold in my tears thanks to the bitch that you obviously are as your husband answers him,"It was just a tough time for Maya, her siblings, and her parents, for all of them."
Up until that moment, for the past ten years I wondered what your husband saw in you and your horrible terrorist-like family, and amidst his monetary wealth, I saw him as a the epitome of a male St. Theresa, but my respect for him has sunk at an all time low, and who knows if it'll ever regain its stamina.

I laugh within, thinking of how to mend the pieces of my subsistence back together in hopes of robbing you all of your undeserved wealth, prosperity and happiness. What about my mother? You remember her don't you? The woman whose 84' Chevrolet, which was lent out in mint condition, your damned brother return totaled to her? What have you done to deserve everything the man in the clouds has blessed you with? My father opened his heart and his home to you, and appointed my mother, his queen, as a servant for all of you to wrongly use and neglect showing any respect towards, and this is how you repay her, by brainwashing the only human being in your family, your husband, into thinking that she ruined your lives? It's quite amusing; you came from nothing into everything. My mother was born into everything till the day your uncle lied to her, and chose his brother over her. My mother stayed home instead of furthering her Cosmetology career to feed you motherfuckers, and all your ass did was open your legs to the next rich man who came your way, and sure enough it has given you a life that many would kill for. Some say, you were the source of my mother's disease, and I say you always will be. My mother is sick and has no insurance to tend to the Carpel Tunnel Syndrome that your family caused her to endure, but you; you've got the means to purchase insurance for her and everyone else whose life suffered tremendously because of you.

You may call me spiteful and merely upset at my own life and therefore I choose to take it out on you, and by all means, you may do so, but I know it's not true. There's something called Karma that you unkind Israelis think will never come to haunt you, but that's where your wrong. There's something called an Education and it goes along with Self-sufficiency, and that's what you lack.


You see, someday, I will give myself the life that only your husband can give you.
Someday, I will give my mother the life you robbed her of.


So tell me, what can you give anybody? And by you, I mean YOU, and not your husband.

Rehabilitation and the Federal Prison System: Web Ct Post 10/8/08

Our federal prison systems today are too cluttered with criminals, and what it comes down to are criminals being released even if they aren’t rehabilitated. Our world is entirely corrupted along with our society and to agree with Christian, what purpose would Cops serve if Gang activity were to be kept under control and stopped? I just don’t agree with the notion of Prison systems today failing miserably in an attempt to rehabilitate its felons. I agree with Christian in that I know that our prison systems are immensely crowded and that people are let out to make room for more criminals and therefore allowing the cycle of injustice to continue, but who knows what is true or not, and if the guards and policemen in these systems help in any way to bring these criminals to full rehabilitation. Watching Clockwork Orange for the first time, I was surely surprised and quite uncomfortable at the horrible acts that Alex and his band of brothers committed to these women, and in reading my classmates posts, I am reminded of the movie The Shawshank Redemption, and I can say that I am sure that there are many beings who have been imprisoned that resonate with Morgan Freeman’s character, therefore whose to say that those incarcerated individuals are in any way failed miserably by the system? Some of them perhaps do not wish to be rehabilitated for the simple fear of when the time comes and they are eligible for parole, they might fear what has become of life on the outside, at least within those bars they have a purpose and a place to exist within the confines of whatever individual stature they have earned and accepted. There’s a scene in the movie when Freeman’s character meets with the parole board and they ask him, after having served 40 years of his life sentence, if he feels ready to rejoin society, and he simply answers profoundly,
“What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did? There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time, because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit. “
They grant him the seal of having been rehabilitated and then send him packing. I am sure that few, if any, experience epiphanies like this in prison, and so I truly believe that besides all the bad that our corrupt system and its leaders afflict on to the lives of those already corrupted by the powers that be, there has to be a few who actually give a damn, and wish to help those in dire need of some positive direction, outside of the prison cell, and amongst the cruel class of the social order.

What serves a function within a crazy society?

Web Ct Post #1

Message no. 37

Author: Neda Levi

Date: Thursday, September 4, 2008 12:33am

I look at the time on the corner of my laptop's screen: 11:57 p.m.
I look at how many journal entries have been posted: 32/33.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that I must lend my thoughts about what we
have covered in English 312 thus far, and allow it to find its place amongst the inspiring
and intellectual thoughts of my fine classmates.
Walking into class on the first day last week, I was utterly baffled by the notion that I had
to define Dystopian Literature and Film to Professor Wexler's asking. Dystopian, I
pondered. Utopian, I remembered...They must have something to do with one another, I
thought to myself.
I have never been a fan of Dystopian based Films, though I could say my life has many
Dystopian related dysfunctionality within it.
In reading Foucault, and watching Officer Krupke call those poor boys "Juvenile
Delinquents", though they have only been unfairly victimized by the wrath of what I see
Society as being: immensely ugly and undeniably crazy, I realized that I was simply
confused by the Panopticon and how someone off the streets is found a function within
that Society.
I mean, Who is to say what constitutes being crazy, or insane?
I guess, perhaps, I took our discussion in class very much to the heart.
I have no shame, and therefore that is why I was straightforward in class, and said that I
do not understand where this amazing philosopher Foucault was going with the concept of
Panopticism.
I comprehend the whole notion that if one knew that they were being watched then they
would be more likely to stay on their best behavior, within and outside of any prison cell,
but I guess my only question dealt with the concept of individualizing, and the system of
Judicial, Psychological, Criminology and Sociology, that a person without a function in
Society must be put through. These four systems all have a way of institutionalizing
someone, and for example, when a Psychologist treats an insane person, or someone
labeled as "insane" due to the mere fact that they may, perhaps , walk the streets
aimlessly, without a job or a home, and labels them as Schizophrenic, Bi-Polar, or
Clinically Depressed, does that really become their function within this world?
I know I am reading way too much into this, and Foucault probably had no intention of
writing with the thought that perhaps one day, an English major with an emphasis in
Creative Writing will read his work and completely veer away from his essential stance
upon such an intelligent theory, but please bear with me. I struggle everyday with
Clinical Depression and I wonder now, is being diagnosed as such, something someone
could label as my function within this demented, cruel and blind world that we live in?