When I fall, you call it flying with style

My wings unfurl in an impressive display

Of privilege, of power, of perfection

Muscles trimmed to an angular array

Ideal for flight in any direction

You assume I can soar

Go above and beyond this door

Out the window into the sky

Beyond the clouds, where the heavens lie

You think I'm some celestial Seraphim

Since I hold myself confident and trim

A book with a pretty cover and empty pages

Born in beauty, lacking substance for ages

A sham, a fake

No fish, a lake

A con with fidence

A mis with guidance

You think I'm the Tooth Fairy

And Santa with a beard so hairy

Like some epic hero with perfect flaws

Not a half-assed demon with unsharp claws

When I step off the ledge and spread my wings

You think I'll fly

But really I die

Plucking my feathers of potential

I fall

colors of nature / part 1 response

After reading the introduction to this book, I had a vague expectation of what the contents would be like. Well– technically I guess my understanding of the introduction was influenced by “earthbound” and “Tarsenna’s Defiance Garden” because I read those first. In any case, I felt like the introduction should serve as my key (like key on a map) for the rest of the book– like the main components and ideas covered were all presented in this intro and that as I went along with the reading I would recognize themes that were hinted at and now expanded upon. Don’t know if this makes sense. I have a weird headache right now. Basically I read the intro and it made me think this anthology (is that what this is? Is that the right word?) was all about certain things. But after finishing Part 1, it seems like it’s about a lot of things, more than just the difference between white and non-white people’s relationship with nature, or respect for the earth, or seeing nature as either one with or separate from oneself, or the way [white] people colonize everything and give names and narratives to things that already have names and narratives in order to feel comfortable and secure in their surroundings. Basically I now see that there are going to be some common themes in a few of these stories but that those themes do not necessarily define every piece in the collection. So far the one that has stuck out to me as being “different” in this way is the Fred Arroyo piece. The descriptions of hard labor and the rest and contentment that accompanied it resonated with my own experiences, which surprised me because I had not been expecting to be able to relate to these stories because I am white and as the introduction suggests, the purpose of this volume is to document specifically non-white experience. “Working in a region of lost names” reminded me of the two summers I worked at the Kroger by my mom’s house, where I spent most of my time sweating in the parking lot tending to flowers and customers and pallets and 40lb. bags of soil that I surely would never have attempted to lift or become good at lifting if I had not worked at Kroger those two summers. These were my first two college summers and I appreciated not being in school more than I ever had during high school summers. Unlike the school year, during which I felt like a prisoner to coursework that goes on and on, you go to class and then you go home and you have to do work there too, you can’t fall behind or else you’re screwed, semesters are cumulative and even if you had a good streak of doing all the readings for a few weeks it can all be negated by getting mono or just not caring anymore. I hate that school becomes my life. Work, on the other hand, is in this way at least, separate from life– you go to work, and do your work, and then you come home and not only do you not have to do more work, you don’t even have to THINK about work! I realize this isn’t the case with all professions, or any profession, because this was simply a job, Kroger Floral clerk, and that’s why I loved it. My work was all physical labor, and at the end of the day I was satisfyingly exhausted. I never felt like my mind was idle or atrophying from lack of stimulation. On the contrary, being bored was the greatest thing ever! It led me to what actually interested me and most importantly was the complete opposite of what I did during the school year. Anyway, I am now off topic and am just talking about myself. Signing off–

Floating...

I have so many ideas floating around my head, bouncing off the walls, hiding in corners, disappearing and reappearing. I have been struggling with finding the actual content of my book with so many possibilities that could become a reality--What story do I want to tell my audience? What do I want them to leave with? What do I want them to learn/understand from having "read" my book?

This semester I have been feeling myself floating in a sense as well. My mind, body and soul expanding in a way. All my classes, my relationships with friends and my mindset on life have shifted since a few months ago, in a good way. Last semester I felt as if I was in a constant fight, battle, struggle with myself; it was between the me I was showing to the world, and the me I truly was inside. Winter break was a sort of rebirth for me. I had acknowledged the change that needed to take place, felt the pain of that awareness, and this semester I began putting into action the things I needed to do in order to change...

It's just like when you have a tight shoulder. It's all locked up and tense, and has been that way for so long that you don't realize it is locked at all. Then the day comes when someone massages that shoulder. Painful. Oh so painful. Your body doesn't want to let go of the tension because it has been there for so long it feels like it belongs there. Then you are aware that it is there and you can't ignore it. It hurts every day and you just want the pain to go away. You have two options: A. ignore the pain until the shoulder locks up again a bit tighter. Or B. address the pain and move through it until the shoulder releases the tension. Option A will always be easier to do in the short term, but option B will always be better in the long term. Ignored tension only get greater and more difficult to deal with when shoved away and locked in a box.

So, I chose option B, and have never regretted it for a second. There were those sad and painful times of releasing that "tension" bit by bit, of course, but I feel like a phoenix reborn from my own ashes. I needed to light myself on fire in order for the rebirth to begin.

The reason I write about this (my life) is because I think that the content of my book may be living within the circumstances and struggles I have had to endure through this past year. Writers always say: "write about what you know," so perhaps the reason I am having trouble finding my content is because I am so close to it that I somehow can't see it. It's "right under my nose" so to speak.

The lessons that I have learned this past year (the books that I have read, in a sense) exist on many levels: literal, spiritual, inward, outward, thinking, action, ect. If I can find a way to condense these levels into a story to tell, then I think I may have my book...

Class Input on Nature Writing

Here are some of the ideas we had in class today on nature writing and race:

"It's about trees and stuff...not just trees. Flowers and grass too...anything can be interpreted as interpreted as nature."

"Anything natural."

"Nature has to be defined for the purpose of having a book called Colors of Nature. As we distinguish it, nature has to be outside."

"Don't we all have encounters with nature? Should everyone be allowed to write about nature."

"It's useful as a genre."

"It's at the discretion of the editor of the book."

"It depends on the type of anthology you are creating."

"There was a gap in the genre of nature writing that was created because of political or other external reasons, so for whatever reason the editors found it large enough that an anthology should be published to fill in the hole."

"It makes me wonder about the definitions of nature writing and what that says about race in the US."

"There's something to be said about the title itself...nature writing isn't just a white topic. It's a topic that anyone can write about."

"I would ask for anonymous submissions and only know the writer's name after the fact so that it would be unbiased."

"I don't want to go as far to say that cookbooks should be written by people that aren't cooks."

"When you look at a particular part of our culture, the values of our culture at large are likely to be represented there."

"[Creating an anthology to create equality] is not a particularly producitve way to change race relations...it's something that will change over time."

"The civil rights movement was 50 years ago, and I think we've come a long way from there...I think our generation is the pivot generation."

"Before you know it, there is not as much distinction anymore. The more mixed couples there are, the more their children will be accepting."

"[After Birth Right] I've had a much deeper connection to the culture...when you're in Israel, you realize how connected everyone is and how important certain traditions are to people."

"3/4 of white Americans thought the aid was sufficent, but not black Americans...the response was racialized and the response was different based on race"

"I like how there's interest in naming the storms differently now. Hurricanes were all women."

"Do you think stating race makes the distinction and racial segregation stronger or does it make it less important?"

"On moving the books into the black section...more likely people are looking for a particular experience. In some ways it seems potentially annoying to go home and realize the book is not anything like what I thought it would be about. They'd probably think they got swindled."

"A lot of the reason genres exist is to help to find the things that I want."

"Black writers should be able to write on any subject without it becoming Black Literature."

"Couldn't a white writer write Black Literature?"

Soul Mate, The One....Or So I thought.......

Last week I wrote about how love can be so many things.  How our Soul Mate or The One doesn't have to be a person who we are emotionally and sexually involved with and attracted too.  When you think you have found The One wether it's a man, woman, or friend what do you do if it doesn't work out the way you pictured?  What if down the road you fall out of love, you get hurt, you are not treated as you should be, and you become unhappy?  Many people come to this crossroad in every kind of relationship.
What makes these crossroads so difficult it the decision to stay or to leave.  Some stay for many reasons.  If your in a relationship or marriage you may stay because you have low self--esteem, are afraid of being alone, feeling not wanted, or afraid of being on your own and independent.  With a friendship it may be afraid to not be a part of a crowd, or being alone and on your own, or fear of not being accepted by your peers.   So some people stay and are not happy, but are to afraid to break away and move on and be independent.  Afraid to start over or begin again.  And what happens when you stay and it's too late and you waste a life of potentially happiness?  This is more prone and in relationships and marriage.  All the time we see people staying in relationships and marriage where they are treated badly or unhappy and they stay.   Whether it's for kids or whether they feel like they are too old to get a divorce and find someone new.
The same can also been true with a friend.  Why stay friends with someone who is not a good friend? whether they are not trustworthy or truthful or loving.  Why have them in your life?

why waste time surrounding yourself with people who you know are not worth it and you deserve better?

Some people have the will and courage to get out.  To get out of hurtful relationships and marriages and to rid themselves of worthless friends, and focus on the people who are true, moral, trustworthy, and loving.  These people are not afraid of life and the obstacles it brings, they overcome them.

As I've gotten older,  I have learned to be a little less trusting when it comes to friendships.  I have been betrayed by many people who were supposedly friends.  My mother would say "As you get older, the less friends you have." And it's true, but it is also not a bad thing, it's a good thing.  Lately I've learned to rid the people in my life who are just not worth my time.  I've already got friends who I love and love me as well.  With relationships I am slowly learning hahaha.  I have never been in love, but I've certainly entered into relationships and settled for much less than I deserved and have gotten hurt.  I'm learning to be smart and know what I deserve and holding out for that.  Never settle in any relationship.

There are good people in this world--good friends, good lovers.  We just have to carefully find them and identify them, but they are out there.  All kinds of Love is out there, we just have to be patient and let it come to us and we will be rewarded in the end.

Hey guys, this is a link to the wikipedia write-up on transcendentalism, which informed my first sincere experience of nature inside myself, and awakening to what it means to experience this existence.

Woot!
(also, this is maybe derived from in some ways, but not at all the same as transcendental meditation in buddhist practices.)

Transcendentalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 19th-century American movement. For other uses, see Transcendence (disambiguation).

Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of theUnitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

The major figures in the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott. Other prominent transcendentalists included Louisa May Alcott, Charles Timothy Brooks, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing,William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Walt Whitman, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis,William Henry Furness, Frederic Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George Ripley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Emily Dickinson and Jones Very.^[1]

Contents   [hide]  1 History 2 Origins 3 Criticisms 4 Influence on other movements 5 Other meanings 5.1 Transcendental idealism 5.1.1 Transcendental theology 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit]History

The publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote in his speech "The American Scholar": "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; Divine Soul which also inspires all men." Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the brand new idealist philosophy:

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ...Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

In the same year, transcendentalism became a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam (1807–78; the Unitarian minister inRoxbury),^[2] Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Henry Hedge, all of them from the same native town.^{[citation needed]} From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues. Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as a pejorative term by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.^[3]

The transcendentalists varied in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some among the group linked it with utopian social change;Brownson connected it with early socialism, while others considered it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter. In his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist", Emerson suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice:

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. ...Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. "All that can be said", Emerson wrote, "is, that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation".^[4] There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.^[5] Notably, the transgression of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet's prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers—all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. ^[6]

[edit]Origins

Transcendentalism was in many aspects the first notable American intellectual movement. It certainly was the first to inspire succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as a number of literary monuments.^[7] Rooted in the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealism more generally), it developed as a reaction against 18th Century rationalism, John Locke's philosophy ofSensualism, and the predestinationism of New England Calvinism. Its fundamental a variety of diverse sources such as: Vedic thought, various religions, and German idealism.^[8]

The transcendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles: principles not based on, or falsifiable by, physical experience, but deriving from the inner spiritual or mental essence of the human. Immanuel Kant had called "all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects."^[9] The transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original, and relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Staël, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. In contrast, they were intimately familiar with the English Romantics, and the transcendental movement may be partially described as a slightly later American outgrowth of Romanticism. Another major influence was the mystical spiritualism of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Thoreau in Walden spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Vedic thought directly.

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest ofBrahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.^[10]

[edit]Criticisms

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852), satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principles.^[11] Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", in which he embedded elements of deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling its followers "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common.^[12] The narrator ridiculed their writings by calling them "metaphor-run" lapsing into "mysticism for mysticism's sake".^[13] and called it a "disease." The story specifically mentions the movement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had any specific targets.^[14]

In Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" he offers criticism denouncing "the excess of the suggested meaning... which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists."^[15]

[edit]Influence on other movements

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Further information: History of New Thought

Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of the individual and divine messages. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics.

The movement directly influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences" of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the New Thought movement. New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father.^[16] Emma Curtis Hopkins "the teacher of teachers", Ernest Holmes, founder ofReligious Science, the Fillmores, founders of Unity, and Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, the founders of Divine Science, were all greatly influenced by Transcendentalism.^[17]

[edit]Other meanings

[edit]Transcendental idealism

The term "transcendentalism" sometimes serves as shorthand for transcendental idealism, which is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and later Kantian and German Idealist philosophers.

[edit]Transcendental theology

Further information: Transcendence (religion)

Another alternative meaning for "transcendentalism" is the classical philosophy that God transcends the manifest world. As John Scotus Erigena put it to Frankish king Charles the Bald in the year 840 AD, "We know not what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.".

[edit]See also

Novels portal

• Counterculture of the 1960s
• Dark romanticism
• Deism
• Nontheistic religions
• Piano Sonata No. 2 (Ives)
• Transcendental Generation

[edit]References

1. ^ Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7–8. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
2. ^ "George Putnam", Heralds, Harvard square library.
3. ^ Loving, Jerome (1999), Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself, University of California Press, p. 185, ISBN 0-520-22687-9.
4. ^ Rose, Anne C (1981), Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 208, ISBN 0-300-02587-4.
5. ^ Gura, Philip F (2007), American Transcendentalism: A History, New York: Hill and Wang, p. 8, ISBN 0-8090-3477-8.
6. ^ Stevenson,Martin K. "Empirical Analysis of the American Transcendental movement". New York, NY: Penguin, 2012:303.
7. ^ Coviello, Peter. "Transcendentalism" The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Web. 23 Oct. 2011
8. ^ "Transcendentalism".The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart ed.Oxford University Press, 1995. Oxford Reference Online. Web. 24 Oct.2011
9. ^ Kant, Immanual. Critique of practical reason. Trans. T.K. Abbott. Amherst, N.Y:Prometheus, 1996, p.25.Print.
10. ^ Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Ticknor&Fields, 1854.p.279. Print.
11. ^ McFarland, Philip (2004), Hawthorne in Concord, New York: Grove Press, p. 149, ISBN 0-8021-1776-7.
12. ^ Royot, Daniel (2002), "Poe's humor", in Hayes, Kevin J, The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–2, ISBN 0-521-79727-6.
13. ^ Ljunquist, Kent (2002), "The poet as critic", in Hayes, Kevin J, The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, p. 15, ISBN 0-521-79727-6
14. ^ Sova, Dawn B (2001), Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z, New York: Checkmark Books, p. 170, ISBN 0-8160-4161-X.
15. ^ Baym, Nina, ed. (2007), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, B (6th ed.), New York: Norton.
16. ^ "New Thought", MSN Encarta, Microsoft, retrieved Nov. 16, 2007.
17. ^ INTA New Thought History Chart, Websyte.

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