A Multiracial Identity Crisis

I was reading the New York Times online today and I came across an interesting article concerning the new issues people are having in identifying themselves as multiracial. Many people who are of multiple races feel the need to choose which race to identify themselves with for personal reasons concerning their own sense of identity. I just thought this article was interesting and worth reading. It reminded me of what WEB du Bois was saying about trying to fit in with the culture around him, about trying to be both American and Black. It also reminded me of Obama's speech on race that we watched on Friday where he asserted that he was just as much a white man as he was a black man although politics and the media advertise otherwise.

check out the article here.

Oh, Freud

Sigmond Freud talks all about civilization and life and living in Civilization and It's Discontents. He likes to approach the idea of life and living in an extremely objective way, to distance himself as much as he can personally from the subject. One thing I noticed was how he likes to refer to living as a sort of art, something that can be approached from many different angles but still produce the same conclusive feeling. A concrete example of this is on page 32 where he is talking about fate he says, "And how could one possible forget, of all others, this technique in the art of living?" I have never thought about life as something in need of proper technique or skill. It seems to contradict the very essence that is life, something nobody can predict or control fully. Freud does establish that he does not know the proper way to go through life either. I actually kind of agree with him when he suggests that such ideologies like fate, religion or lack thereof are just ways people choose to deal with life, to help themselves get through it. It's just interesting to think of your own life in that way because everyone thinks that their way of living is the right way to live, the best that can be done. But in reality there are all sorts of "techniques" to approach this "art of living," I guess I just hope my technique works out ok.

In the End "I Smelled Nothing"

The last paragraph of Age of Iron reads as such a relief after reading through all the stress, pain and ranting by Mrs. Curren. She describes the scene as getting into bed with Vercueil and holding him. I think this is the scene where she finally feels free enough and comfortable enough to die. She says, "I smelled nothing," "the breath went out of me in a rush," "there was no warmth to be had" (198). After a long book, long letter, of deeply describing smells and emotions, feelings and experiences with so much detail they feel almost too real, these last few statements stand out as a momentous event. Vercueil was right next to her and she did not describe his sweaty, dirty, alcoholic smell. She made no reference of her opinions on the situation, the environment. No, this paragraph is strikingly opposite from the rest of the book, further enforcing my feeling that Mrs Curren indeed has passed on.

Parenting

Mrs. Curren makes some pretty bold statements about parenting on page 73. She asserts that "The comfort, the love should flow forward, not backward. That is a rule, another of the iron rules" (72). She is so stubborn and proud of her daughter for leaving South Africa and having her own life, that she will not admit that she really needs her daughter's support and care. As a parent she has in her mind to love unconditionally, and to be constantly giving to her children, expecting little in return. She says this is an iron rule, one instilled into many of her generation.

Mrs. Curren says her daughter is "like iron" and that she would never come back to South Africa even for her own mother. It's so sad. Mrs. Curren is in such pain and need of proper company and she feels like she cannot even ask her daughter to visit her. Vercueil makes his rebuttal by saying she is like iron too, to which she replies "If i were made of iron, surely I would not break so easily" (75). She feels like she has given all her own strength to her daughter and left none for herself. It seems almost like she is disappointed with herself for not being strong enough. She doesn't want her daughter to find out how weak/needy she really is. I find it interesting that she thinks she is so easily broken when she is so solid and stubborn (iron like) in her mindset.

I feel bad for her here that she has made herself feel so abandoned. The passage made me think of my own family, and I wonder about giving back to my own parents. Sometimes I get so caught up in moving forward in my life, in growing up, that I forget how much my parents have done for me. As a little kid you always look at your mom and dad with such awe. They seem so accomplished, strong and smart. As you get older you realize how human they are, and they can be just as needy and emotional as you. Even now, I cannot picture my parents as vulnerable people and I still want to believe they'll always know what to do. But I do think about my mother worrying and trying to help my grandfather, she is past my stage and has accepted her duty of giving back to her parents. My grandpa, like Mrs. Curren, is exceptionally stubborn and refuses to admit he needs any assistance or company. But of course my mother sees through this and she helps him and welcomes him anyway, but I cannot help to think that he may be under his own sort of "iron rule." Neither Mrs. Curren nor my grandfather are comfortable admitting their own vulnerability or mortality.

Crash and Contrast

The vivid imagery Coetzee uses during the bicycle crash in Age of Iron is unlike any other i have read. it is truly disgusting down to every last adjective. But what I found interesting was the comparison Mrs. Curren makes between the crash and a time when her daughter cut her finger in the bread machine. The whole scene with the crash mentions blood so many times that I almost want to stop reading and skip ahead to less gory sections. Her memory of her daughter is so calm and contained compared to the event happening around her in the present time. All this chaos about carnage, and blood and emergency, then a little relief of sorts with her flashback to her wrapping her daughter's finger with pointed maternal care (61-63).

It's interesting how motherly she sounds when she talks about taking care of her daughter. She reassures her daughter by sweetly whispering to her, calmly in the waiting room. The only description we have of her daughter's finger is a "slice." No fountains of blood or butcher chops or any other gross, gory imagery. Just a little, mendable slice.

I feel like this sort of contrast illustrates the urgency Mrs. Curren feels in her life right now. She cannot view anything as simple and calm. Every event seems to be huge, important and complicated. Maybe she chooses to look at it this way because she knows that death will bring no such variety or excitement, but I don't know. I think her sense of urgency definitely stems from her issues dealing with her imminent death. Nothing can be taken for granted and everything must be lived to it's fullest extent. All sounds, visions, smells accounted for. She doesn't want to just write something off as a small happening and dismiss it with few sentences, she doesn't have time for that. That was for her earlier, younger days when she had life ahead of her still, like the memory with her daughter. Now she squeezes every ounce of sensory experience out of life and lives every moment like one big climax. She has to make it interesting, even if it is just a bike crash, it might (probably will) be her last.

How Easy it is to Die

Mrs. Curren is absolutely obsessed with her mortality and her terminal state. I found the passage about William and the chicken farm to have an interesting undertone. First she describes in detail the workings of the chicken farm and the slaughtering of the chickens. She realizes that "some of the bodies I had stuffed with bread crumbs and egg yolk and sage and rubbed with oil and garlic had been held, at the last, between the legs of this man, the father of Florence's children" (42). The whole couple of pages are really beautifully written, but I found this sentence to just pop out at me. We never really associate our food with the living animal source. We never really think about the great control we have over the lives of these animals, constantly monitoring them from the moment the chicks hatch all the way past death, until they are shrink wrapped and placed in the supermarket fridge.

Mrs. Curren is just as fascinated by the concept, she exclaims "So hard and yet so easy, killing, dying" (42). It takes careful planning to raise and kill chickens, there is technique involved. But ultimately it's easy, humans have so much control. In one motion the chicken is dead, and it's over. I think She considers her own mortality for a moment here. All of her life has been done in careful planning, raising her daughter, keeping the house orderly, adhering to her own list of societal standards. While in the end, it's just death waiting. She realizes how easy it is to die, to kill, be killed. It's hard to comprehend the idea of the dead as once living. We never realize how much control nature has over our own lives,

Is Higher Ed for Everyone?

I was a little disappointed in our class discussion today about higher education. Many people were talking about how important a liberal arts education is and how it should be a priority if not a reality for every young person just out of high school. I know this means not everyone has to go to an expensive school like Richmond, and the sort of options such as community colleges and free state schools were mentioned. But not everyone has this opportunity on any level. I think we, as a class, could have been a bit more sensitive to that. Not everyone is capable of making the grades, having the drive, the money, the athletic talent, or super-supportive parents. Some kids never imagine this sort of future for themselves. Even just a community college is more than some can get too without outside help and time. Some people may need to start a full time job right after high school, there just might not be another choice. There is a world beyond the bubble of the higher edu track, and sometimes even I forget that, but I am trying not to, and asking you to do the same.

Web Du Bois says himself that higher edu is not for everyone. I know he lives in a different time and now different types of critical thinking are more relevant, but I think the "underlying theme" is still true. For some it is much more practical to bypass a traditional higher education and make some early decisions for a career and then go for it. live it. On the other end of our spectrum we do have kids who come out of high school, either by graduating or dropping out who immediately have to support themselves. Sometimes they have been kicked out of the house, they may be young mothers, or even get a solid job opportunity which they feel compelled to take advantage of. These kids don't have time to spend in a community college even, they need the skills and the money now.

I just don't think we are looking equally enough at both sides of the situation. Of course it would be nice for everyone to be able to experience higher education, but that is in no way near reality. Just keep that in mind.

The Meaning of Freedom

I found following sequence of quotes sadly very true..

"Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries"

"At last it came,--suddenly, fearfully, like a dream."

"Years have passed away since then,--ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life...and the nation was not yet found peace from it's sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land." (7)

For decades before the emancipation act slaves could think of little else but trying to earn their freedom, or to somehow make it north. Freedom in their minds was the ticket to a comfortable life, the American dream. And who could blame them? anyone or anything that is trapped wishes freedom above all else. It's instinctive. But then, once all the slaves are freed and the civil war over, the benefits and success that most thought freedom would bring did not come. The nation was still rooted to it's prejudices, still today even. We form stereotypes and create irrational reasons to segregate ourselves. It's sad. America is definitely the land of the free but in what sense? We can never be truly free of our ingrained search for belonging and acceptance, our tendency to disassociate from people who are different.

Web du Bois mentions the "deep disappointment" of the African American people and their new lifestyles. This freedom was not much of a freedom at all in all meaning of the word. They had choices, but very little rights, very little room to exercise their newfound choice. Gains during the civil rights movement eased some of this unequal freedom, but still, today not everyone is free, not everyone has an equal opportunity , education and hard work can help, but it's sadly not going to work every time. There is always something else in the way. And it may not be race or gender or anything like that. It cold be family, money, laws even and bad luck in general.

So what is freedom? Even in the less extreme example of the emancipation...are people really free? or do they just transfer themselves from one cage to the next. It can be literal or mental. Everything provides a wall. Government laws, societal pressure, our backgrounds and family values, our own minds. I just think it's interesting to contemplate the meaning of freedom for a while. It seems like the more I think about it, the less free I feel. It reminds me of Nietzsche and his ideas about trapping the mind and how society keeps us in a cage. It seems like there is always something to be escaping from. Whether it's something major like literal slavery or something minor like escaping the pressure we feel to dress a certain way or maintain a certain composure.