Tonight, One Quote

  "He lives just to die. It is like feeding just to eat. I do not want to do it like that. I want to feed, not just to eat, but ultimately, to savor."

Thoughts: "In A Grove" by Akutagawa Ryunosuke

So who done it?

Tajomaru, Masago, or the murdered man?

A man is killed. A criminal is caught. A woman is put to live in dishonor. Akutagawa Ryunosuke's short story "In A Grove" provides seven accounted testimonies of people to a high police commisioner about a said murder that happened in a grove in the mountains. The woodcutter said he, while cutting his daily quota of cedars in the forest, found the dead body in the morning, all dried up of blood. The traveling buddhist priest said he saw the man, together with the woman on horseback, along the road; he is at loss of words to adequately express his sympathy to the fate of the man. The policeman said he caught and arrested the criminal himself, of which he must say is the murderer. The old woman said she is the mother of the spirited woman and is aghast of what has become of her daughter. Tajomaru, the criminal, said he killed the man but not the woman, who had escaped from him. Masago, the woman, has come to a temple and said she killed the man, and that the criminal violated her. The man, the murdered man, through a sort of medium, said he killed the man, he killed himself.

It is said that truth is a fragmented one, and that there exists no truth that is actually absolute. For whatever human reason and for however these people involved in the story have twisted, covered up, extended, dramatized, lied, or, however defeating may this appeal, told the reality of the actual story of the murder that had happened, one thing here is tried to be buried in the mound yet is quite clear: "truth", and that it is a matter of positioning. Where one must stand to wholly see where truth stands is an unknown space. One must not rest on only one particular account of the truth; yet as what the short story likely is portraying, seven accounts of some truth are not even enough still. Truth is a fragmented one, and the fragments are unknown as to how many pieces. Twisting, covering up, extending, dramatizing, or lying are not the ones that are the matter in the story, but is the manner of how truth is perceived. Some say, one perceives truth in a manner one does for reasons like: immense probability that it might actually be real true, or personal want or desire for it to be actually true; these, among many others. Those who said those might be saying of the truth, but then again, they might not be as well.

A quote by a man named Harvey Sacks can be and is now raised: "Everybody has to lie because not all can handle the truth." Yes, this might true, but then again, it might not be, too. Or maybe, just maybe, not all can actually know what is truth.    


Read more about "In A Grove" by Akutagawa Ryunosuke through a complete digital storytelling here!

The woodcutter, the buddhist priest, the policeman, and the old woman

  

Thoughts: "Under The Microscope" by John Updike

The "The Early Stories"
is a book collection
of his short stories and
his other early works.

A story about an experience of a cyclops at a party set in an untypical pond, one that is not his kind of pond. Many organisms accompany him during the going of the party, most especially the party hostess daphnia, a rotifer, and an odd water mite. Observations, of the vivid and of the disturbing ones, on the nature and on the complex interconnections of the party and its partygoers slowly unfold in front of the cyclops's only eye. He eats, then he gets eaten, then what's eaten gets eaten. Then the story ends.

Having read the short story, it quite felt that the tone of the narrator was a little bit unexcited about the story itself. No sound of thrill seemed to have escaped the narrator's very vivid and very scientific use of words. As it described the pond as "slightly acidic", it felt as though a minute sting of acid actually came into contact to the senses.

In the story, it is quite apparent that the cyclops felt a bit indifferent to his new surroundings. Again, putting emphasis on the story's opening line "it was not his kind of pond", it can be really said that the cyclops is the foreign entity at the party. The party-organisms, mentioned and named by names very scientifically, could have felt the same way towards the cyclops, but was never explicitly stated. They were as though completely different from one another. But then one might ask, "what is the cyclops supposed to be doing at the party then?" Perhaps, what is being tried to point out here in the story is the un-obvious yet seemingly factual coexistence of polar characteristics and personalities in one place. That it is not something unusual or out of the ordinary, but is something that is normal and actually happening and is true. 

The story, with its overbearing, and perhaps explicitly overstating, title "Under the Microscope" is simply trying to bring us to a whole different, and apparently invisible, new world to all of us that is its readers. It is trying to open our naked eyes to a world that is equally true and existing, too. As much alike as what one can experience when trying to look at an ordinary sample of water using a microscope, where, at first look by the naked eyes, is truly and clearly just an ordinary sample of water -- clear, liquid, and reflects specks of light -- but yet upon looking through the magnifying lens of the microscope, one is brought to this other spectrum of seeing where he or she can now actually perceive what else comes along with this ordinary sample of water. There, one can see what cannot be seen at first. There, the un-perceivable can now be perceived, and the unknown is rising to the surface to be known.

It can be put into belief that John Updike was perhaps trying to present, through this short story of his, an unapparent yet concrete example of the point he was subtly trying to make. He made use an immense number of discouraging, purely scientific terms to compose and tell his story of nothing else but ordinary and very common life thought. Somehow, it poses a challenge and test to its readers, and to their persistence as well, into actually reading and understanding this simple short story. How foreheads wrinkled upon the first sight of those almost incomprehensible scientific terms that clothed Updike's story, which actually rendered and ended so insignificantly to the real story itself, seems a bit of a big hint already of what John really was trying to tell us, right?

If you are interested, here is a copy of the short story "Under the Microscope" by John Updike:
For a copy of the whole book collection, click here!

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Something Fun.

So it was a cold afternoon in the library. After I have finished reading the rest of the chapters of the Book of Genesis due for my lit class, I reached for my music player and started listening to some songs. I had no earphones at that time, so I had to turn the volume of my music player really really really low (because I was inside the library) and I just put it directly over my ear just like what we all do when making or receiving a call. 

I had a pencil at reach. This one I use to scribble some notes or comments on the margins of the pages of the book that I was reading and just finished, so I grabbed it like a drumstick, then I eventually went beating the back of my book with it like a learned musician. I scribbled some things from track to track, from time to time. 

Try to check these scribbles out: 

                                                              may you pass
                                                              me the sound
                                                              of your feet
                                                         upon the ground

                                               stomping my
                                                   foot, then my
                                                      other foot, to One Foot.

                                                     yes i know
                                                      it hurts at
                                                     first, but it
                                                     gets better

                                                               I just stand
                                                               in Brooklyn, waiting
                                                               for something to
                                                               happen


                                                         There's a lot
                                                   in my head
                                                   the one that
                                                   feels it's pulling
                                                   your hair

                                                                                   Stuuu-uh-uh-uff!

                                                        Mother --
                                                            The one who fix
                                                                me when I am wrong

                                            And there are
                                            people who are
                                                not she that
                                                  are coming to
                                                                           me

                                                           I'as sitting in front of two
                                                           stranger girls inside the library.
                                                           I'as listening to music, good music.

                                                                    Yeah, it's all
                                                                    alright yeah, it's 
                                                                    all alright
                                                                    I got nothing
                                                                     left, they're out
                                                                     of my chest
                                                                     but it's all
                                                                     alright

                                                             I drank a
                                                                        lot, I don't
                                                                know if it's
                                                     new; and everyday
                                                           i wake up of
                                                                 a night forgotten,
                                                                  wishing it were
                                                                      not true

Thanks, this was fun.

Literature is What?

I like to read, and I really like it when what I'm reading is literature. I feel good when I do.

Here are some of my thoughts on literature and its what-whats:

Literature is important. I believe it is one's ticket to real personal growth. In some sense, reading literature is growing in the inside. It helps form one's worldview in life. Unlike in the early ages, one's views of the world were usually dictated or described forcibly by the society he, especially she, belongs to. 

Literature is power. It is not just because of the bundles and bundles of knowledge and ideas found in its stories. It is more because of the way these stories, printed in pages amounting to thousands and thousands, seem to come to life, transcending generations and generations of different nations of different races. It compels you to wonder, and even sometimes, it excites you to wander. It is its extraordinary nature, its pure wit, or its estrangement to common language that most of the time, if not always, appeal personally to its readers, making the reader's experience with literature very special. It is how these things seem to penetrate and alter its readers' normal universes perpetually, thus making literature unrecognizably dangerous yet fascinatingly attractive to read, to have, and to experience.

Literature is magic. It is magic how it can affect its reader's life after awhile – how it can suddenly materialize its reader's all-time bucketlist, or dramatically realize his pursuit in life, or unknowingly reform his prejudiced mind. It is magic.

Yep. You know, you should try it sometime.