Fire!

Two days ago my roommate, Jon, and I were sitting at our house, watching TV. It was about 10 p.m. when we saw several police cars race down our street. We both got up; asking each other what was going on and walked to the door. The unmistakable smell hit both of us as soon as the door opened, “fire,” Jon said. We could not see the fire from our front steps so we decided to walk down and see where it was. After only a block and a half we could see it; a large two level house, surrounded by emergency vehicles and completely wreathed in flames. The flames were so hot that a neighbor’s car parked at the next house had ignited and its headlights began popping and exploding with sparks just as we walked up.
I had never seen a house burn down and I found it an interesting site as I sat on the curb smoking cigarettes and watching the flames slowly engulf the house. I thought that I should feel sorry for whoever lived in the house, but I could see them standing with police and they all seemed fine. No one else looking at the fire seemed to feeling particularly sorry for them either. It seemed that since everyone could see that the owners of the house were fine, it allowed them to enjoy the spectacle of the house’s conflagration. And it was enjoyable; it was beautiful and awesome at the same time. Eventually the fire department showed up and quickly extinguished the fire and Jon and I returned to our house after carefully stubbing out our cigarettes.

Everyone is Special

A recent trend has emerged in modern society, which I feel is doing everyone a great disservice. It is the idea that everyone is special. I do not know when this societal view first came about but it was certainly in full swing by the time I started school. I understand and recognize that it is an idea with good intentions, helping to boost the self-esteem of young children. I agree that children with low self-esteem, is not good thing. However, it is equally as dangerous to build a child’s self-esteem on nothing concrete.
Children who are told that they are special from day one are not going to have the same drive towards improving and advancing themselves because, according to their parents and teachers, they are already special and unique. I also feel that this societal attitude is contributing to the abundance of trash reality TV. On every channel there are reality shows like The Kardashians, or the Real Housewives of New Jersey. These are people that despite having no discernable talent or skill still feel that they are so special that a TV series should be focused on their lives. Basically they feel that they deserve to be celebrities even though they can’t act, sing, or do any of the things that would traditionally bring fame. I can almost guarantee that these reality stars all had parents telling them they were special their whole lives.
The societal assertion that a child is great and special from birth is a dangerous message. Rather children should be constantly reminded of their potential to be special. We should encourage the idea that praise and esteem is something that is earned, and not something that is given to everyone. Because after all, if everyone is special then isn’t no one special.

Dismissing The Immortal Soul

During our discussion about Lydia Millet’s essay I was surprised to hear how many people disagreed with the line, “if I played a Mekons album for a friend and it met with indifference… I would be forced to dismiss not only the musical tastes of the friend in question, but, in all likelihood, the immortal soul…” Some people in the class felt that this came off as snobbish, as if Millet was suggesting that if a person did not like the Mekons then they were stupid or had poor taste. However, I think that what Millet feels is a sense of pity for people who cannot hear The Mekons like she does. I feel that everyone has something that they enjoy immensely but can’t interest others in.
I identified with Millet’s feeling of pity; accept instead of a band it is a TV show called Arrested Development. I find Arrested Development to be an insanely clever and funny show, but growing up I would constantly try to show it to my family and would be met with blank stares. Neither my parents nor my brother and sister could find anything remotely funny about the show. This totally perplexed me, I consider everyone in my family to be intelligent and have good taste, but time after time I would watch episodes with them, both individually and as a group, and I would see the jokes just bounce off their heads like tennis balls. Eventually, I just accepted that Arrested Development was something that my family did not find funny and I genuinely pity them for not being able to enjoy it like I do.

Car

Unlike a lot of people the most significant car in my life didn’t even belong to me. It was a black, 2002 Lincoln MKZ that belonged to my friend Max, and beyond it being one of the nicer cars that my friends owned I never gave it a second thought. I rode in that car many times through my fours years in high school but my last ride is the only one that left an impression.
We were leaving a party, I think to go to another party, and Max offered me a ride. I accepted and seeing that my buddy Ray occupied the front seat, I climbed into the back. Max pulled the car on to Oxford road and began heading towards town at a speed that was probably too fast for the narrow country road. It wasn’t until we were in town that Ray and I simultaneously remembered that our destination was in the opposite direction. Ray and I informed Max that he needed to turn around and that he was a retard. Max didn’t respond he simply floored the gas, yanked up his parking break, and cranked the wheel hard left sending us into a 180-degree spin that ended with us facing the direction of our destination. Max then laughed, floored the gas again, and shot down the road like an action movie chase. That was the last thing I remember.
When I awoke in the hospital a nurse told me that the car had flipped and that I had crushed a vertebrae in my neck. She also told me that I was in Baltimore and that I had to be airlifted from the crash site. I didn’t have much of a reaction to this news being that I couldn’t remember any crash or any car, or even my name or the year. When I was more lucid the doctors told me that if my broken vertebrate had just been a centimeter over into my spinal chord, I’d be dead or paralyzed, but I feel like doctors always say that. Instead I was in neck brace for a couple of months and I have some scars that will never go away.
Everyone asks me how I felt after the accident, if it made me really want to change my life. I’d like to say “yes,” I’d like to tell people that it gave me new lease on life or it really helped me find my faith. But the truthful and somewhat lame answer is that I didn’t feel anything after the accident, I didn’t feel blessed or that a higher power had intervened, I just saw myself as lucky.

Newspaper article of accident

The three gardens

Roland Barthes’ description of the three gardens that we read in class illustrates how important the gardens were in Barthes’ past. Barthes describes the gardens as the “tripartition of social desire,” suggesting that each garden symbolizes a plane of existence. The “worldly” garden is the first garden that Barthes describes, “You crossed the first garden to reach the house; this was the “worldly” garden, down which, taking tiny steps, pausing often, you accompanied the ladies of Bayonne to the gate itself.” The second garden described is the contrast of the first. The second garden represents the domestic aspect of life. Barthes’ description of canvas chairs and mosquito netting paints the second garden as a comfortable place as opposed to the “worldly” garden, which seems like a place that a person would enjoy walking through but never be at rest in. The third garden is a representation of the wild and unknown. “The third garden… was undefined, sometimes fallow, sometimes planted with vegetables that needed no tending; you didn’t go there much, and only down the center path.” Barthes’ account of the third garden gives the impression that it was a place to be feared as opposed to the other gardens.
In the final paragraph of Barthes’ account of the three gardens he states “It is anything but surprising that I turn from this Bayonnaise garden to the fictive, utopian spaces of Jules Verne and Fourier.” Barthes is saying that because these three gardens were so perfect in their representations of the worldly, the domestic, and the wild that science fiction stories were his only escape into something new and unknown.