Never Believe It's Not So

            This week, we read Nikki Giovanni’s prose-poem “Sanctuary: for Harry Potter the Movie”. In it, she praises Harry for “living” through unimaginable tragedy and having his “blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.” But she is angered that people—enchanted by their magical setting—think the Harry Potter books more of a pleasurable escape than literature with a weighty theme applicable to the suffering of marginalized minorities.

            And she is absolutely right. Perhaps all of the magic in books and films is distracting us from their actual meaning.

            Take all of the mind-blowing, crazy-impossible, bullet-dodging stunts out of The Matrix and perhaps the masses would see that it was intended to be a deep, philosophical allegory of religion. Take all of the elves and Santa’s workshop out of Elf and we would see the heart and soul of the movie: how a man discovered that time is the greatest gift you can give a child. Take all of the mythical creatures out of The Hobbit and you’d find a simple tale on the importance of taking risks.

            But then again, perhaps the magic is vital.

            Without the “techno-slammin’ visuals” (as the DVD jacket calls them), The Matrix would never call upon us to question the limits of our reality and view technology as both a kind aid and accursed slave-driver. Without Santa’s magic, Elf would never be able to show us that a little love and Christmas cheer are all the world really needs. And without fantasy magic, The Hobbit would have… well… no hobbits…

            Magic has a home in literature. That’s for sure. But don’t ever believe that it has a life sentence, barred from ever seeing the light of the real world.

            There is magic all around us. Magic in the minds of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, who moved the world when they found that the integral was the inverse of the derivative. Magic in the chords of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite: Finale,” as they lift us to a luminous, unattainable, intangible glory upon an ethereal cloud. Magic in the heart of Pope John Paul II who channeled God’s love to forgive the man who tried to put a bullet through it. Magic in the little girl who beat cancer, as she skips from the hospital arm-in-arm with her parents—beaming, radiant, renewed, the sun setting her newly growing peach fuzz ablaze.

            I guess what I’m trying to say is that—though I’m kind of sick of that David Foster Wallace speech we read—we need to get away from our “default setting.” We’re inclined to view magical literature as a wondrous escape and real life as a slew of harsh realities—and that’s great. But it’s also important that we see that the darkest truths of humanity lurk within even the most imaginative tales, and that glorious, miraculous spells are cast on even the darkest streets of our cities. As Giovanni and the band Pilot say of magic, “Never believe, it’s not so.” As I say of it in real life, “Never believe it’s not so.”

Confessions of a Grammar Nazi

            I’m almost glad our class was wrong about what our positions in the punctuation debate were supposed to be. Almost. Because if Ms. Valentino were actually insinuating that we should argue for the complete and utter abolishment of punctuation, I’d probably go into the corner and cry.

            Yes, I am a self-proclaimed Grammar Nazi. Take me to the Comma-burg Trials if you must. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to take the staunch, haughty position that punctuation is “as constant as the Northern star,” never to deviate from the exact manner in which it was used in 1736. Instead, like a wise parent would say to a kid who’s messed up—much to his annoyance— I say, “There’s a time and place for everything.”

            I think that using punctuation in unconventional ways is brilliant if it gives the piece voice. If punctuating fragments instead of actual sentences and using capitalization incorrectly helps make your rhetoric more powerful, go for it! Many examples of modern literature, praised for their scathing insight into the pratfalls of human nature, have done so.

For example, in that Sherman Alexie piece we read earlier this year, he writes “’Indians, indians, indians.’ She said it without capitalization” (173).  Though spellcheck probably fought vigorously to censor Alexie’s art, he pushed back brilliantly, using incorrect capitalization to show his teacher’s utter disrespect for his people, and putting a period after a tiny fragment to give it emphasis.

            And if we want to use unconventional punctuation to bedeck our social media pages with personality, by all means we should. “OH. MY. GOD. I. CAN’T. BELIEVE. IT,” and “ohmygodicantbelieveit” convey a completely different tone; the former creates one of utter shock and not being able to take it all in, while the latter creates one of harried, ecstatic excitement.

            But there is some unconventional punctuation that I absolutely cannot stand:

“Errmahgerrd goin#ham at dat #partayytonite yaw #yoloswag955schoolyear”         The person who writes something like this expresses no voice other than the voice of a moronic ape who has nothing better to do with his life than watch Jersey Shore and post idiotic tweets like the one above. He is not worth the paper that the Holt McDougal American Literature textbook’s grammar pages are printed on. In fact, he is not worth the paper that the online version’s grammar pages are printed on (which is no paper). Imagine if our government wrote out laws like this (though I wouldn’t put it too far from them...)

            So here’s the long and short of it: the effects of using new-fangled punctuation to create art are wondrous. But it’s effects on government documents and meaningless social media posts? Not so hot.

            #Peaceout.

Kisses and Clouds

            Well. I was going to write some super dry, overly cliché thing about how we are all Reverend Dimmesdale. But alas! Hawthorne’s warnings against conformity and the impending knowledge of Ms. Valentino’s hatred for predictable blog posts have inspired me otherwise! I’ve decided to write about something much more complex: Pearl.

            Pearl. That gorgeous, impish child, with the “waywardness of an April breeze,” representative of the beauty and piercing wisdom of Nature is a character that has baffled minds more brilliant than my own. But I think I may have solved the mystery this weekend by observing my family.

            Friday night, after a mass for my grandfather, my whole family—including Amelia, my cousin’s two-year-old daughter—stopped by my aunt’s house for dinner.

            Amelia is the most adorable baby in the world, with big chocolate eyes, porcelain-pink skin, and a boundless energy that causes her to glide gracefully from one thing to another when the first causes her boredom. Now that I think about it, she kind of reminds me of Pearl.

            For the last two years, it has been my personal goal—my search for the Grail—to make Amelia love me. Sometimes my antics have made her laugh; sometimes they’ve annoyed her to the point of tears.

But this Friday, something changed.

I don’t know if it was the fact that I played this game for an hour with her where she threw her teddy bear down the stairs and I caught it, or if it was the fact that I sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” twenty times upon her asking, but she gave me a kiss on the cheek! Of her own free will! Twice!

 I felt that my compassion for the little one who had no other playmate was finally being recognized! When I had to go, and she saw me off with a deeply disheartened “Bye-bye Kach-ohh,” (my Polish name is actually pronounced KAH-shah), I realized that all of her reactions to me—from the loving ones to the angry ones—had some truth to them.

When I don’t feel like being kind to others but am anyways, I deserve to be treated with love and happiness. When I’m sleep-deprived, stressed, or jealous, I can be a real jerk and deserve to be treated accordingly. I realize that the actions of Pearl, Amelia, and nature—though they seem erratic and inconsistent—make perfect sense because they are reactions to the inconsistency in our behavior and attitudes.

You have sunny days, and sunny feelings. Cloudy days, and cloudy feelings. The sun never shines on Hester and Dimmesdale because they are sinners and jerks, and Pearl laughs at them for it. But on the scaffold before Dimmesdale’s untimely demise, when he and Hester decide to face their sins and not run away to Europe like cowards, the sun beams joyfully upon them and Pearl even gives Dimmesdale a kiss. Well, Amelia gave me a kiss. And just as clouds eventually come after sunshine, I’m sure Amelia will eventually find a reason to be angry with me.

From A to Zacchaeus: Connecting The Scarlet Letter to the Bible

**I apologize in advance if the content of this blog post is too overtly religious for a public school teacher’s liking; I just felt that the gospel I heard in church this weekend, and its allegorical significance in our daily lives had way too much to do with The Scarlet Letter for me not to talk about it. **

So, what I heard in church was basically this:

Everyone in Jericho despises Zacchaeus, a devious little tax collector whose personality and stature are not unlike those of a leprechaun. Like all of his kind, he takes about twice the money the Roman Empire demands and keeps half for himself. When Jesus comes to Jericho, Zacchaeus watches for Him in the crowd just as any worthy citizen would.

 And what Jesus does then is remarkable: He calls Zacchaeus by name—a name that any self-respecting Jew would sneer at with disgust—and asks to visit his house for dinner that evening.

After dining with Jesus, Zacchaeus forsakes his old ways of greed and corruption and walks as a child of the light.

As it turns out, the name “Zacchaeus” means “just”—something he definitely wasn’t before his encounter with Jesus. But when the warm blanket of unfailing love and forgiveness envelops Zacchaeus, he becomes his truest self—the man that his self, his God, and his parents who named him want him to be.

But unfortunately, no such warm blanket gives relief from the frigid New England winters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Society makes it so.

The Puritans’ interpretation of the Bible is so grossly distorted that Jesus’ original message of compassion and mercy is nowhere to be found. Society is so unforgiving that Hester Prynne observes Reverend Dimmesdale reduced to half the man he once was, prominent women hiding their inner guilt only to become more cruel to those below them, and herself with “her truest life… evaporated” (Hawthorne 162).

Without mercy and love, how can this society ever hope to transform greedy little Zacchaeuses into pure, godly ones?

So much for America being the City on a Hill…