Maps To Anywhere Blog Post 1

Maps To Anywhere Blog Post 1

Brandon Lazovic

                For Creative Writing this week we had to read the first half of Maps To Anywhere by Bernard Cooper, which is a compilation of essays. The first essay is “Beacon’s Burning Down.” This essay details the perspective of a person that I feel is looking through a scrap book regarding their life. It details the name Bernard being uncommon as the narrator recants tales of his childhood looking at the complexity of names, trying to find underlying meaning in them and possibly his through extension. It moves on as he looks into his fathers scrapbook regarding various court cases that he had as a lawyer. It keeps some characterization to his father, detailing his sexual exploits while married to his mother. The essay goes into some religious context regarding Lazarus the chicken as well as religion being fake in his eyes in the sense of a TV show he used to watch as a kid, the host being a charlatan. The end of the essay focuses on his attempts to write a story. The line “Your eyes are like beacons burning down!” Might be regarding the guilt he feels about pushing off the story.

                Another essay, Capiche, is short, but interesting. It describes a setting in Italy and draws the reader in, believing every word written on the page. It turns out, however, that it was all a modulated lie and the narrator never actually went to Italy. I found it interesting that they would tell us this and makes the reader think/have some skepticism beyond that point. It destroyed the immersion of the story purposely and for that I find that direction that was taken to be interesting. On the Air is interesting as the past should be left behind and a pure, unadulterated future without limitations should be embraced.

                How to Draw follows a narrator and his path in art. I consider it interesting as he goes into detail regarding simplistic art as opposed to its complex counterpart. The essay, despite having a focus on simplicity, paints a picture in the mind of the reader regarding the setting and the drawings that the narrator creates or has seen. Maps to Anywhere is interesting as well (the essay, that is) as it follows Mr. Stone and Mrs. Mazel as they meet (Mr. Stone buying a globe from her). Regarding Mrs. Mazel she’s lost in her own world, with her own geography set in her mind while Mr. Stone watches on as she doesn’t notice him. Her view seems expanded and broad, while Mr. Stone describes the world shrinking around him when he loses his keys. They take two opposite approaches, Mrs. Mazel taken solace and excitement in the world being so large, while Mr. Stone feels alone because of the depth and size of the world, or that’s how I portray it.

                Lastly, The Wind Did It follows a father and son. It gives a good amount of character description, giving the characters essence and some connection. The narrator’s father seems as though he’s trying to escape his past, possibly as a stage of life (not wanting to look back on his mistakes or memories that burden him) but as the narrator and him are driving he keeps recanting tales and memories of the past. He might possibly be coming to terms with his age or that you can’t escape from your past. The story might actually be a continuation of “Beacon’s Burning Down” considering the narrator is Bernard, his father is divorced, is eighty years old, their relationship was tepid, and the father is rich (possibly from an attorney position, he was put in the newspaper as well). He’s also overweight and the doctor is ordering him to lose weight, which might have connection to the heart issues of the father in Beacon’s Burning Down. I enjoyed the story though as it portrays a growing connection between father and son. It also hints at familial problems between father and mother as they both wanted to move away and the father would go away on ‘business’ several times. Something must have happened in the past to separate father and son and it wasn’t until Bernard turned 35 that he got the chance to rekindle their relationship (as he states several times that he doesn’t want to do anything to put a dent in their newfound relationship). I also just realized that the author’s name is Bernard Cooper, so the Bernard in the essay might actually be him recanting events that he had witnessed/lived through.

Essay Blog Response

Brandon Lazovic

11/13/13

                For class this week we had to read a series of essays in a packet. There are a few essays in the packet, so I’ll discuss most of them. Two of the essays were “Sunday” and “Mint Snowball.” Both use colorful language to describe things, particularly food. “Sunday” is about a black family and how the cook and that’s where the imagery lies; in the food. “Snowball,” on the other hand, is about a family who worked at a soda fountain, particularly a great grandfather who’s secret recipe was mint vanilla ice cream. He sold the recipe, however, and no one could replicate the recipe after that. The essay takes a turn at the end as the narrator describes a disconnectedness with his or her personality, linking it to the mint recipe. Not sure the correlation, although the dessert was described as being like winter, so there might be a possible analogy or reference that I’m missing.

                The next essay, “Essay on the Sublimation of Dying” is really interesting. It bounces between two passages and it seems as though it’s drawing parallels and differences between the two. At first I thought that it was only talking about certain things with no correlation between each ‘Synthesis’ (the strings of passages) but as I continued to read it seemed as though each passage was either just a stream of consciousness for the writer or the writer wrote about the things that she saw in her day to day life. The first passage out of the Synthesis may not necessarily correlate, but I feel as though the second passages do (Synthesis 1, 3, and 5 correlate while Synthesis 2, 4, and 6 correlate). For 2, 4, and 6, they are titled ‘Distraction’ and the narrator breaks off into deep thought about the previous passage. Lastly there are excerpts or possibly poems at the bottom of each passage, which might give more context to each passage.

                The final essay, “Total Eclipse” is about a man named Gary and his wife going on a trip to see a Total Eclipse. The essay is pretty straight forward, being very descriptive about the scenery and the imagery is very noticeable. The narrator comments about how the whole things seems wrong because of the abnormality of the sun being missing during the eclipse and how everything is profoundly affected as a result. After the event the narrator seems frightened by the experience and even becomes a little nihilistic. “The sun was too small, and too cold, and too far away, to keep the world alive. The white ring is not enough. It was feeble and worthless.” She says she had been dead and gone and grieving. A boy described the sight as akin to a Life Saver, which snapped her out of her mind sight and ‘woke her up.’ At the end of it life continued to go on and everyone returned to their cars after the incidentto go about their daily lives again. 

Faith Short Story

Faith

Brandon Lazovic

                Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. The church bell rocked back and forth in the church tower, uttering an almost melancholy sound as it marked the time. He looked down, glancing at his watch. 5 o’clock. He looked around and noticed that the streets were vacant, which was abnormal. Usually they were bustling with crowds of people, but not today. It was almost perturbing as he could hear his footsteps echo off the buildings before being whisked away by the slight groan of the wind. He continued on casually, with his hands in the black overcoat which he wore. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the sky filled with dark clouds ready to discharge the water that was held. Some trickled out, creating small splotches in the street. The air was humid, warm, with a scent that only rain water can deliver.

                He finally made it to the doors of the church. His hand hesitated at the door handle before clasping it and pushing the door inward. Just like the street he could hear his steps rebound off the walls and pillars, but it wasn’t as discomforting. In fact, it was almost peaceful. His fingertips caressed the tops of the pews as he walked past them, his mind in a distant place as this brought back memories of the past. A past untainted. Ambitious. Hopeful, optimistic, and, lest of all, ignorant. That was until the cataclysm changed the world. Whispering snapped his attention back to the front of the church, but nothing appeared before his sight. It gradually grew louder and in larger number, raising the hairs on the nape of his neck. A shudder escaped from his spine, but his outward demeanor portrayed a calm, collected man. The candles slowly blew out, one by one, until the chandelier was his only source of protection. He stood underneath it as the shadows charged forward, being repealed by its opposite.

                The voices combined in a cacophony of noise, surging ever forward until… they stopped just as quickly as they had risen. The quiet whispering took its place, the darkness seemingly muffling the sound. While there was still time he reached into the pocket of his overcoat, withdrawing a bottle of holy water, a bag of pinch salt and a golden cross. The cross glistened from the light overhead and the bottle reflected the ember hue of flame. He began to recite psalms, all the while drawing a circle with the salt and splashing it with the holy water. The cross moved up, down, left, and right several times before finally being moved down to his side. All he had to do now was wait.

                He sat down, crossed-legged in the center of the circle, eyes closed and cross folded between both hands. The voices cried in anguish and fury; the chandelier rocked in place, swinging wildly. After several moments it stopped moving, returning to its normal position. He continued on praying in his trance. Finally the voices returned to whispers again and with their combined effort blew out the candle light, enveloping the room with darkness. They screamed into the abyss. 

Fiction Packet 11/6/13

Fiction Packet #3

Brandon Lazovic

                So we had a few packets to read for our creative writing class this week. The first set of stories was from the book The Singing Fish by Peter Markos. My interpretation of the stories would have to be a mixed response. It feels like tribal myths, the way it is written, the elements, the way things happen and are all explained are a lead example of this. The last story that was written could also justify how children age and grow up, learning and how they try and explain things in life. The word ‘mud’ is used in large amounts throughout the stories, which could allude to that tribal age of misunderstanding about the world, or possibly refer to skin color and African culture. It would make sense because of the way the stories are written in an unlearned dialectic, but it’s just a shot in the dark.

                The next story is called The Falling Girl by Dino Buzzati. The story begins with a girl falling down a skyscraper. The story itself, I feel, alludes to life. At the top of the skyscraper you are young, and when most people are young they try to grow up as quick as possible, passing by all the imagery of life (evident as this girl moves quickly from all the people she passes as she falls). There is a sense of freedom and independence that young people tend to have. It isn’t until the age begins to creep on someone that they realize that they aren’t alone and there are people out there with better things than them, better looks, better material objects, better lives. This stage is similar to a mid-life crisis, and this girl experiences that as she sees other women dressed in better clothes falling just like she is. Then the story alludes to only seeing old women fall to their deaths at the bottom of the skyscraper, which reinforces the transitional stages of life as they make their descent. They tend to hear thumps at the bottom, which I feel represent someone’s worth in life. In this circumstance, however, they don’t hear anything as this girl hits the cement.

                The story August 25^th, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges is about a man finding himself in his hotel room, aged. I feel as though the man is a representation of himself, the younger of the two being the optimist and the older one being the pessimist. A reference to the stoics was made, adding to a philosophical aspect to the story that might support the split personalities of the narrator. The pessimistic side died the night in the story, but it took a piece of the optimist with him. In this sense maybe the pessimist won out in a duel of the personalities, influencing the other half more than the other half influenced it.

                Lastly, The Fifth Story by Clarice Lespector is actually quite interesting. It describes various scenarios in which to kill cockroaches. However, with each story the thought process into killing them gets more intensive as the narrator puts more thought into their actions. It likens the cockroaches to Pompei as the volcano buried the town alive. This story might actually be explaining the human psyche and how we think into things so heavily. Everything is intrinsic, the pathways into thought every branching away as every action that we take has a reaction and another action. It kind of makes me think of Nietsche where nothing matters, having a nihilistic attitude. There’s also a theory that for every action somewhere in another parallel world you perform the opposite choice, so nothing you do technically matters. Not sure if this correlates with this story, but it makes me think of those two things.