How Everything in My Life Somehow Ties Together

So I'm just sitting here reading for RLST and it's ALL about pilgrimages and where we may find the sacred (or the profane?). Which is what we have talked about Colloquium. And then I go to SOC and we discuss social psychology and how we perceive ourselves. Which is what my last blog was about. And then I go to BIO and we discuss genetics and evolution and some of the patterns of travel of human beings. Which Mandeville soooort of alluded to with all those animal and human (and monster) observations. And then of course he wrote about China and Spain and the Camino. Which I am totally interested in. Not sure the point of this post, but it is 8am and I am suddenly struck by the strange ways things can fall into place these days.

Considering Mandeville

I am sorry for being a little late on the blog. There just are not enough hours in the day.

Where to begin? I feel like I have SO much to say about this text! There are a lot of potential areas for discussion.

There are a couple of areas I would like to address...

Some of the girls mentioned their frustrations in class, which I can definitely sympathize with. There were a couple instances where I just wanted to put the book down because I was getting too caught up in all the minutiae. I thought we were supposed to be getting to the Holy Land at some point? At times I also questioned Mandeville's (that is, if he was even a real person) intentions besides that of telling us how to find the Holy Land. I suppose that, for pleasure, he also wants to discuss diversity (or at least appear that way?) And, well, he certainly accomplished that! There were so many places he told us about that I thought my head was going to explode among the thousands of elephants, women who cut off their, erm... yeah, snakes with feet, and cannibals.

BUT. As a travel writer recording all of these things, a central theme to remember here would be the pilgrimages concept. Do not get too annoyed with me because I keep bringing up studying abroad, but I am so enthralled with all kinds of pilgrimages, both local and international. Some of you might already be familiar with this, but I constantly remember the Camino de Santiago, the Chemin de St-Jacques, or the Way of Saint James, which is the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. The only actual remains of one of Jesus' apostle Saint James are supposed to rest there. Mandeville even mentions Saint James on page 125. How cool is that? (I did not actually make it to the exact Cathedral, but just being near part of the pilgrimage was AWESOME). I find that fascinating beyond belief, and I love to remember that I have been to a number of "stops" on the pilgrimage route, due to the fact that my uncle lives very conveniently located to it. In fact, when I visited him after leaving Spain, I saw a lot of pilgrims on the road by his house, backpacks and walking sticks and all. Very cool!

A shot I took of the arch in Montesquiou, a teeny weeny little town where my uncle busily chatted up some pilgrims we found. I, speaking zero French, amused myself by wandering around taking pictures and watching a sleeping kitty I saw sitting on a windowsill.

What does all this have to do with Mandeville? Well, it kind of brings me to my next point: the traveller's perspective. Okay, now I have a lot of ideas in my head so I hope I can get them out with at least some remaining shred of coherence. Like I said, I studied abroad, right? So, I could have kept a travel blog myself, like this blog I have now, but rather I think I would make it a daily account of the people, places, things, ideas, sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and everything I saw while I was travelling. I did not, actually, but I did take several thousand pictures (yes, thousands), some of which are on my Picasa. My dad got me an incredible new camera and so that is how I went about documenting everything. Travel writing can be done for personal, economic, and devotional reasons. But then, I wonder why exactly Mandeville did this, which ties into those two reasons I gave in the beginning, about the purpose of his book. Similarly, the perspective of the author is very important, because we have to consider things such as who he was writing this book for, and if he had any other motivations behind it besides those two we discussed previously.

That brings me to my next point, as far as author's perspective (and, due to this concept's universal nature, I think think it can be applied to a lot of different situations): I thought I would mention something fascinating I discovered in Social Psychology a week or two ago. This might be stretching it, but I really hope it's not too terribly irrelevant because trust me, this stuff is über fascinating and I think it has a lot to do with how Mandeville decided to present his information. There is this concept about self-presentation and social perception.

• There is a certain way we want to present ourselves - what I want you to think.
• We, as humans, think and/or worry about how we present ourselves to others.
• We perceive ourselves in a certain way to begin with, and if we think that others around us perceive us in some different way (maybe not necessarily negative, but oftentimes is), then that in turn would affect us negatively.
• Therefore, my self esteem is equal to how I think you evaluated me reflected back on myself.
  

In case you were still a little confused on this idea of social perception, follow this link to access a Wikipedia page where social perception in the field of social psychology is explained a little more in-depth.

Does that make sense to you? I hope so, because I think that this social-psychological study has a lot to do with the mindset we have discovered while learning about the Renaissance, with all of that "who am I" sort of feelings. I think travel writing really banks on that, and once again, I cannot help but wonder what went through Mandeville's head and how he was actually thinking about his readers (if he was, even). Would he care about his social perception or his self-presentation? I would assume that he would care about how well his book was received, but if some people were angry about it, did he perhaps not care? So many questions!

All in all, the book was pretty good. I signed up for it knowing nothing about it besides a title with the word "Travels" in it (and because I think I "live under the moon," which I find hilarious). Yes, it was pretty boring most of the time, and yes, I got sick of his repetitive strange worldviews and cultural encounters with an almost disrespect for the reader at times. But I also think that I should take it with a grain of salt because I do not presume to know his motives for certain within this new strain of travel writing.

[:

Living Under the Moon

... more to follow.

Poetry in Two Parts. Part II: My Sonnet

I thought I might write about my old passion, a passion which I hope may be resurrected at some point in my life. If you consider the exact words I chose, I remember how hard it was for me to get up the courage to do it sometimes; If you know me well you know I have little to no self-confidence.

If I may here is a video of Für Elise, the very first Beethoven piece I ever learned to play. I remember tearing up because I wondered how such a beautiful melody could ever have come from my own hands. Do not laugh at me! I was a little kid!

---
Overwhelmingly it gleams before me
As I set my hands upon the famed keys
The hidden melodies desire appease
What part do I meet with difficulty?

Supposedly everything seems ideal
With no one at home and I there alone
This stranger, I think, should become my own
Suddenly my courage becomes crucial


Convoluted notes become less cryptic
Wrists fly and fingers delicately dance
This sensation, it is quite euphoric


This wooden giant I came across by chance
Upon which melodies flow, as magic
Any mind, should this not serve to entrance?
---


Well, there you have it. It's not very good and it was hard to write, but honestly it really took me back. Maybe I will be inspired to take it up again, hopefully sometime soon...

PS - A Petrarchan sonnet, it follows this rhyme scheme:

ABBA

ABBA

CDC
DCD

Petrarch invented this sonnet sequence, which is why we refer to it as a "petrarchan sonnet." A sonnet is basically like a little song, in which there are usually 14 lines that follow a strict rhyme scheme (like the one listed above) and a certain structure. Oftentimes they employ the use of iambic pentameter, meaning that each line has a meter with every other syllable stressed, so 5 of the 10 syllables of that line (this is very hard to accomplish!). Shakespeare used the iambic pentameter as well. We also encounter that nagging translation problem again when attempting to take Petrarch's sonnets and translate them from the vernacular Italian into English. The lines may not always match up, but they must still maintain the theme (and the meter and the rhyme).

This link will take you to a cool website I found that includes a couple of examples of Petrarchan sonnets. I particularly like the second one, because as the website states, it is a memorial poem to that woman, Laura, that Petrarch loved (and, honestly, obsessed over) from afar. That is the cool thing about sonnets: they really allow a great range of freedom to express the writer's emotions; in Petrarch's case, I imagine ecstasy, joy, sadness, soul love (NOT courtly love), etc. He expresses a great knowledge of self in his writings. He seems to explore his "self" (vs. the medieval investment in).

Like Dante, he was exiled from Florence, and also like Dante, he is interested in the ideal. However, when Dante writes, the split between the pilgrim and the poet is very hard to see, whereas with Petrarch, it is much more explicit, as seen in his My Secret and his various sonnets. I find that Petrarch is very sincere and at times, is also very hard on himself (hmm... sounds familiar).

Poetry in Two Parts. Part I: ANGST

Alright internet.

You present a challenging case. A sonnet you say? But I am not much for poetry! I don't like it, I don't understand it, and I certainly can't write it. LIE. I wrote my very first poem ever in the fourth grade. It was four delicate little lines of pure, unadulterated, adorable childhood thought processes. LIE. It's not that adorable.

Here we are: you know, it just occurred to me that this little gem never got a title. Sad!

Ahem.

I added in this picture because I think it is really pretty and I thought it might be a nice complement to the spirit of my little poem. I took it in Howth, Ireland, on a particularly sunny day, while we were walking along the cliffs by the Irish Sea. I am not kidding when I tell you that these flowers smelled like warm cinnamon and vanilla. I wondered where that delicious scent was coming from and sure enough, it was from the millions of flowers growing wildly and naturally along the cliffs. Amazing, right? How lucky am I?

~

"Oh, the beautiful sunshine,

melts through the trees,

and pours on to flowers,

not disturbing the bees."

~

Do you enjoy the clever color coding? It also occurred to me that this might be a run-on sentence. But that shouldn't matter, because poetry shouldn't be constrained to the conventional rules of daily speaking and writing. So there. Poetry.

Now that I am older (and possibly wiser, although fourth grade me was a real trip), we shall see what sort of sonnet I can come up with. More to come soon (as in a couple of hours, depending on how brilliant I become), so stay tuned.

My first post.

Hello Internet!

This marks the moment of where I begin my very first blog post... ever! I mean, I have a Facebook, but I've never managed my own blog before. There is a good chance I may become addicted. I love personalizing things and making something look really cool (and I've dabbled in HTML editing before, teehee) so this could be a good thing for me. Because I'm sure that if this weren't for class that EVERYONE would otherwise really want to know what I think. [:

As for Petrarch, whom we refer to as the "father of Humanism," I wonder whether or not he would have had a blog had his generation been blessed (cursed?) with the existence of computers and the world wide web. Plumb mentioned his love of travelling. I cannot recall exactly where I read it but sometimes we could consider him the first tourist. How cool is that?! Seems like my kinda guy.

Having spent a year in Spain I was very fortunate to do a lot of travelling... almost every weekend was filled with exploring some exotic new locale. I sure love to travel! Don't you enjoy hearing a new language fill your ears? Sampling new foods? Seeing incredible architecture that you just can't find in South Bend? I bet that if Petrarch could have he would have kept such a travel blog, like the idea I mentioned about it in class. (I also bet that the elusive Laura would have been number one on his list of followers).

I didn't have one personally (although I did have a Picasa, the link for which you might see at the right column there, under "Clickables"), but lots of other kids did, and it was really fun to read them! I never realized how creative and personal you can get with a blog! You can post pictures, videos, links, music, you name it!

I would have LOVED to read Petrarch's travel blog. Now that would have been a good read, amid all the imaginative dialogues with Saint Augustine. I think, perhaps, that he might have had more than one, for each different persona that he seems to adopt. At one point he is obsessing over his Laura; at another he is writing My Secret, somewhat full of melancholy and depression, obsessing over death, expressing an understanding of the self, others, and the Divine, but also remaining very self-critical (because it takes a lot to realize one's own flaws). If he begins with a conflict of these 2 selves, I wonder if he joins them together in the end.

Petrarch is temperamental and he seems to have some extreme personalities (all of which contribute to his glorification of the individual, part of being a Renaissance man), but I don't think he goes overboard with the Renaissance cliches. There is a certain delicacy in invoking these characteristics, don't you think? He sort of mixes a new Renaissance humanism (he is, after all, the "Father of Humanism") with some old values.

I hope that fares well as my first blog post! Enjoy! (and don't forget to check back weekly for more of my clever clever musings.*)

*note the sarcasm.