Author: abdul0157

Barbed Shields

abdul0157 20-1 A, Personal Response, Response to Literature , , , , 0 Comment
Barbed Shields

The Child Before a Mirror of Strangers, by Wole Soyinka

The title of this poem alone is enough to hint at the purpose behind it – that being the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In so naming the poem,  Soyinka rather brazenly undermines the tenets of the 1989 treaty. A child, after all, will suffer more detriment than any other, should they find themselves ‘before a mirror of strangers’.

Children, young as they are, have the greatest need of the comfort that is familiarity; the presence of strangers leaves them without protection against the pressures of the world, for children are, in their youthfulness, fluid of disposition, having yet to form beliefs that would soon set in stone their mindsets. They’re easily warped, consequently, by everything they come to perceive.

The poem’s title serves to preface Soyinka’s mention of once-innocents in the poem – as if to say that this first displacement ‘before strangers’ was and always will be the instigator of a loss of innocence. Without familiarity, there is no certainty; if unsure of what will grant one safety, will not they turn to the first point thought safe?

Will not such a shift guarantee the loss of the uniqueness with which a child is born? Uniqueness serves the purpose of creating for oneself a niche – in its absence, there remains nothing but a stagnant, most empty decline. The opposite, as stated by Soyinka in the poem’s earlier stanzas, is the wonder present in a life of innocence; innocence, after all, will remain only so long as the unknown remains wholly unknown. With a true introduction to these previous sources of wonderment, the uncertainty found therein will be enough to redirect one’s trajectory, and make moot any past wonders.

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He was young, he knew. Not 25 years of age; even so, many things were lost to him in his supposed youth. Hence his weariness. It was inexorable, in hindsight, given his earlier innocence.

My struggles against jadedness are as nothing, for we’re all as muscles, aren’t we? All bound to feel strain, and, eventually, tears. Attached to each of us are joints – the truths that give reason to move. Therein lies the system’s fallacy; pure, innocent calcium can do naught but crumble before the weight of the world’s experiences.

All reasons lose their potency to time, and what then? A forced, sudden scramble with two outcomes. The tearing of muscles, or the forming of unnatural, impure joints that can stand to match a world that has moved far beyond nature’s limits. To which of the two, I wonder, do I turn… no… the die’s been cast long since. To which of the two have I turned? 

How aptly paralleled, he thought, the cynical cast of his mind clear, resounding as only statements of finality could. And still his thoughts flew on, unabated in their flow.

Impurity – both product of and armor against an impure world. It is the joint pushed to grow; the shield held aloft. The joint, alas, is deformed; the shield riddled with barbs that can but puncture the very skin that holds it high. Flock, all you children, to safety – it hurts, does it not? The world’s ceaseless pound against your defenseless selves; pulsating, growing ever stronger. Find in impurity an abrupt, indeed desperate, shelter, and watch once more as its walls close in – crushing to dust the little that remained of your once-innocent bones and joints and ligaments and muscles.

Watch, children, for you can do naught but. 

Cathedral Steps

abdul0157 20-1 A, Response to Literature, Writing , , , , 0 Comment
Cathedral Steps

The Cathedral appeared to be, with my first, unfocused glance, a book without substance – mere fluff, as of so many pillows. Words, words, and words, and, behind them, no meaning to be teased out. It remained much the same in my mind as I read on, looking upon the author’s narrow, inflexible views; the last page, however, changed my stance.  

A cathedral was built with blindness, for in the absence of sight – so unlike the presence thereof – there are no edges; no constraints. He’d made for his wife and himself a home; a home born of the stagnant money of the stagnant career of a stagnant man with open, fluid eyes that limit him. A contradiction, this – are not eyes the means of growth, not the opposite?  

They are, I’d say, but, as evinced by The Cathedral, every point at which one grows – every recollection of the narrator with his wife’s sending of tapes – fixes in one’s mind the very walls that impede said change. The cathedral’s gradual construction by Robert and ‘Bub’ – our unchanging narrator – is the incremental motion away from these walls; steps, built ever upward, towards understanding, and, from it, an absence of limitations.  

Raymond Carver, with this depiction of cathedrals, contradicts the conventional view of epiphanies, implying that they gradually come to be with exposure to contrary ideas. The reflection that inevitably occurs in the wake of this cements the epiphany, making seen the flaws in one’s past state – dissolving, if you will, the trappings of a house. 

 The Cathedral’s plot parallels this process; from the unformed exposure that is the narrator’s initial encounter with Robert, to the reflection that is the time spent watching television by ‘Bub’ and ‘the blind man’, to the eventual, solid epiphany in seeing the freedom that comes of blindness.  

The narrator’s exposure is in his first meeting with Robert, for he’s yet to understand how thoroughly Robert’s way of ‘blindness’ contradicts his own manner of living; he, consequently, cannot reflect, for there’s, at that point, no flaw in his present self. After sharing a meal with the blind man, ‘Bub’ goes on to do what he always does after a meal, and smokes a joint. As his wife falls asleep, Bub and Robert come to speak of cathedrals, with Robert, given his blindness, asking to know of the buildings. Bub, at first, seeks to define them – until, at last, he comes to see that he can’t do so fully, and that the ideas born of his sight do nothing but limit his ability to do so.  

This is his reflection, and is evinced by him saying that cathedrals aren’t of any particular value to him – a leaving behind of prior notions that’d typically define cathedrals as something or another, and an acknowledgement that there are, within them, failings. This point, more than any other, leads Bub to work with Robert in the drawing of the cathedral, for he, if only vaguely, sees the merit of blindness. The cathedral is then drawn, Robert’s hand guiding Bub all the while; the unseeing granting the seeing the means of accomplishing something. This last event leaves the narrator with the realization that through blindness alone – in lieu of his previous bigotry and other conceits – can he act without trappings. This is the realization that cements Bub’s reflections, and makes of them an epiphany – the final piece in the building of his cathedral.  

 

Sentiment’s Impediments

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Sentiment’s Impediments

Those who encounter adversity can push past it only with change. This does not occur exclusively to some; to every distinct identity there are inverses capable of barring them, and what, if not distinct, is humanity?

Adversity is as much a part of existence as the pursuits against which it stands. Human beings are ever growing, ever accruing sense with which to ascertain what fits them best. As a result of this, people, one and all, are unique; adversity, consequently, is a given in the lives of all.

It is a roadblock, if you will – one that is only considered as such for its own unique nature, existing in a manner such that it is posed directly against the ideas that form one’s individuality. This obstruction can be rebuffed only by altering the things of which one makes use – changing the means with which the now-impeded goal is pursued.

One’s means are as keys to the locked doors that present themselves. In this event, it’s not so simple an action of changing tack by selecting a new key, for it is one in which no key suffices for the task.

One must, as though starting anew, melt to liquid their original keys, and from them fashion more apt tools. This, more than anything, is the adversity – not the application of one’s skills, nor the realization of the fact that they’re, in the face of the trials given, lacking. So taxing is the sheer difficulty in dissolving one’s means – in dissolving, by extension, one’s uniqueness – that it bears a name wholly different from one’s typical trial or tribulation, set aside as adversity.

 

This thesis statement would, if not for recent events, be without relevance to me. I, of course, have faced adversity, yet never before in such a manner as I described above – I’d known only challenges. The distinction between challenge and adversity lies in the semantics; the one acts as a bar to all that encounter it, whilst the other is of a more selective sort, and all the more difficult for it.

My adversity, incidentally, was in the writing of this very thesis statement, and the blog post of which it is part. This was an adversity in the stead of a mere challenge for the nature of the tools that were proven to no longer suffice. These tools were, as is to be expected when speaking of writing, my words, and the manner in which I utilized them. Within human beings are sentiments – shaped by each of these is one’s identity. Of said sentiments, some are common to all, serving as the piece betokening one’s humanity.

Others differ between beings, and in these exist uniqueness – the inexorable result of which is adversity. Such sentiments are, in all their distinguishment, begotten of distinct views; these can be in turn attributed to the influences of proximity, the limiter of what can and can’t alter one’s identity. Proximity sets a range of sorts, and within this range of mine were books – thus making words all the more important in my life, all in a manner unique to the things by which I was influenced, and their complements with one another.

Hence the adversity – as stated in my thesis statement – to be found in seeing a need to change my ‘tools’, and make alterations to that which differentiates me. Such alteration, however, is necessary if one is to overcome adversity, for only then will it be less of a personal impediment, and instead a mere hurdle.

 

All that stands solidly before one is overcome by destabilizing its solid points, and fashioning one’s own openings through the substantial wall presented by adversity. From my thesis statement, and my experiences both, I can draw one extrapolation: the greater the extent of the change one creates, the simpler it is to overcome adversity. The result is an adversity less specific to one’s identity; an adversity more easily conquered.

Does this take from one’s identity its uniqueness?

No.

Keys are reforged to fit locks, yet with every reforging appear grooves that mark the fact. The overcoming of adversity is but one experience; one that shall then form unique sentiments, birthing in turn the adversities to come. Resiliency is built in this very manner, for with its presence – the knowledge that adversity is indicative not of a loss of distinction, but the accruement thereof – one knows adversity to be something not wholly detrimental, and can more readily accept the change it entails.