Macomber

Looking back over the stories we read this semester, my hands down favorite is “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” I’ve always admired Hemingway for portraying his characters in a very realistic way, but this time he certainly mixed it up. While his other stories tend to be focused on dramatic things like abortion, rape, and questioning one’s sexuality, the character’s actions in dealing with these things are relatively normal. There are no huge fits of rage, passionate declarations, or anything like that. The American man and girl in “Hills Like White Elephants” hardly speak about it, much less have a screaming match. No one ends up weeping or leaving.

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” begins with that similar pattern. There is a big problem the couple must overcome (in this case it is infidelity) and they go about it in a reasonable way until the end, which is when she shoots him! That action is exponentially more dramatic than any other one seen in Hemingway’s stories. The story begins with subtle (and explicit) cattiness and passive aggressiveness, like the way she calls him “darling” even after saying something terrible. I was shocked that Hemingway chose such an ending when all the other stories ended rather quietly.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the way Hemingway portrayed Mrs. Macomber. She was such a witch! It was as though she reveled in kicking her husband when he was down. I, personally, had a lot of sympathy for Francis. He seemed like he wanted to work things out, which made me hate Mrs. Macomber all the more.

Overall, the character development of Mrs. Macomber and her husband was fascinating. I enjoyed seeing them reverse roles as he took back control in the relationship, causing her to be the scared one. 

Kids? Probs Not.

I’ve come to somewhat terrifying realization: I may not want kids.

            I was at my sister’s house yesterday and my two-year old niece, Kylie, was sick. We were attempting to give her medicine and it was World War 3. My sister held Kylie while I tried to give her the liquid poison. Kylie’s entire body was tensed and she was stiff like a board. She screamed at the top of her lungs. I would hold her mouth open and put some medicine in, only to have it literally spit into my face. I finally stood up and declared, “I hate kids. I’m not doing this” and walked off.

            I went home sobbing because that wasn’t me being dramatic, (except for the hate part) that was me being honest. I’ve never liked kids. I’ve never been drawn to them, even when they are being adorable, like when Kylie sings “Jesus Loves Me.” I’m indifferent to children if not annoyed by them and have no desire to have one of my own, and that scared me. Most girls and women love children and are ecstatic about the thought of one day having their own. I felt like something was missing and that I was less of a woman for not having that same desire that bonds most women.

            However, this doesn’t mean I don’t plan on having a family. Once I decided kids may not be a part of my future, I immediately thought of other options. I do picture myself sitting down at dinner with my husband and kids. Lots of kids actually. So I’ve been thinking about the possibility of being a foster parent for older kids, or even adopting older kids. I know I’m still really young and have years to think about it, but it’s been an important discovery nonetheless. I may change my mind but it’s crucial that I understand this about myself: I don’t see myself having the stereotypical family with a husband and several biological children.

I still worry that if I tell people about my realization they will look at me like a freak of nature, or maybe guys wont want to date me because of it. But it’s quickly becoming a new part of my identity and one that I’m choosing to embrace. 

One Pup's Love

I’m sitting here staring at my dog. She is a solid white, one-eyed, shed machine, also known as a husky. For three years, she has been my baby, but all that is about to change. I have to find her a new home by May 8^th because I’m leaving for a three week long trip and then moving into a house that doesn’t allow pets. So for the next week, I’ll be reminiscing. I will start with a blog:

I bought her when she was just a puppy at eight weeks old. Basically she was an attempt to replace a lost love. My dad had passed away a month earlier, and I desperately needed something to love, that would love me back and distract me. They say the best way to move on from an old affection is to replace it with a new one. And she was an adorable affection. She looked like a kangaroo because her tail was too big for her body. It was the first time I had been allowed to get a puppy since I was five. I had searched the AKC website for four weeks, trying to find the perfect breeder and the perfect puppy.

When she finally came, I was so overjoyed. She hardly left my side for weeks. Luckily it was summer so we almost never had to be apart. If a friend was having a party or I was going to visit my grandparents, I would take her with me. We were a package deal. She slept in bed with me and for the first few weeks, I happily woke up every night at 3am to let her out. Trips to the dog park, the lake, and Petsmart were regular occurrences. If she got sick, I would stay up all night with

I think some dogs have intuitive knowledge of how you’re feeling, and Tori was definitely one of them. She would nuzzle up to my face when I would cry about my dad. She wasn’t intrusive, licking me excitedly. She wasn’t asleep and ignoring me. I could tell she trying to be close and loving. She can still tell when I’m upset. Normally she is a high energy pup, but when I’m upset she’ll just walk over and set her head on my leg, just like in the movies.

I will surely miss her. 

Sailing

Well class,

I was sick with food poisoning today so in case you wanted to hear my brilliant remarks on Billy Collins's poems I have posted them here:

Consolation (47-48)

            Traveling is an activity that almost every person places in high regard. In college, people tell me that if I don’t travel abroad, I will regret it for the rest of my life. While I agree that it is important to see other cultures at some point, I agree with Collins premise that getting to truly know your home can be even more important. I was pleased with the idea of “grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard” (47). Fort Worth may not have “crumbling frescoes or famous domes,” but it is my home, and in many ways, that is enough for me.

Piano Lessons  (76-77)

            When I was younger, I was obsessed with the piano. For years I wanted to take lessons, but my family couldn’t afford the piano itself. Finally, our church gave me a piano and I began taking lessons. Piano Lessons shows how beautiful the piano is through its words. I loved the imager of each key being a different room that the player, a blind man, must learn to walk through. When Collins describes his fingers as climbing down the ladder of notes and coming back down without turning around, I remembered the days when I practiced my scales as well. It all made me very nostalgic. Collins also made a very clever point about the left hand and how difficult it can be. “I have to drag him into the music like a difficult and neglected child. This is the revenge of the one who never gets to hold the pen or wave good-bye, and now, who never gets to play the melody. He is drawing my attention to something so obvious, but that I’ve never really thought about before.

Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House (3)

            I immediately started laughing at this poem because recently there has been a bird that has made its perch underneath my window. Everyday he begins chirping between 7am and 8am. Most days, I’m not too annoyed because I’m waking up around that time regardless, but on Saturdays and Sundays, I feel like shooting him. Many times I have thrown rocks at him and I have even requested my mother bring me a BB gun so that I might shoot him. I currently have the black BB gun sitting by my bedside, waiting for the morning when his incessant chirping gives me enough courage to do what I am currently too much of a pansy to do.

Forgetfulness (29)

            I might be too young to be complaining about forgetfulness but I will anyways. The first stanza immediately caught my attention because Collins was speaking about forgetting about a book you’ve read. One of my biggest frustrations in life is not remembering the amazing books I read. I remember I loved A Tale of Two Cities. It was easily my favorite book, but now, I have a hard time recalling it completely, which is upsetting. I read The Bell Jar several years ago and can now hardly remember the plot. I used to know the quadratic equation and the order of the planets, but not anymore. It was all very relatable. I especially loved how he wrote, “whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall.” That is such a common problem: knowing the first letter of something you are trying to remember but not being able to grasp the full word or thought.

Nostalgia (42-43)

            As I move on to a new phase in my life, I can’t help but be nostalgic for the old one. I could see myself editing Collin’s stanzas to fit my life. It almost made me sad, remembering. However, the end woke me up a little, because he hardly mentions the present, and when he does, it seems negative. It helped remind me that sometimes too much time is spend longing for the past and dreaming of the future and not enough time it spent enjoying the present moments.

Budapest (69)

            I LOVE the imagery in this poem. Looking at a pen as the snout of an animal, rooting around, just makes me smile. What I imagined was adorable; like an ant eater for a pen.

           

            

PREGNANT girl singing GERMAN OPERA while serving APPLE STRUDEL

Cross Country Snow seems like a typical Hemingway story. I don’t mean that in a negative way though. I’m not bored of his stories. I actually quite enjoy them. I love how he always hints at the nature of men and women. In Cross Country Snow, he portrays two men enjoying a physical activity together and having little to no conversation. This seems so typical of guys. I can just picture two friends out skiing or fishing or hunting, going about their day in almost total silence, but content nonetheless. After I read the story, I thought to myself what it would be like had Hemingway wrote a more strong female character into the story. I can imagine all the talking she would be doing, trying to stir up conversations about how great the skiing was. I can picture George saying that skiing is “too swell to talk about” and her just continuing on anyways.

I will take a moment here to say that I’m not a fan of these reading quizzes. I feel like they are so specific that at this point I’m not even reading the story, I’m merely jotting down details. I focus so much on the fact that they at APPLE strudel and the waitress was singing GERMAN OPERA that I sometimes miss the big picture. I’m less focused on the meaning of the story and more focused on looking up the definition for funicular and undulation. I understand the need for reading closely but the quizzes cause me to focus on minor details sometimes so the point of the story escapes me. Typically reading the story a second time around right before class solves this, but nonetheless, I felt like my blog was the perfect place to air this small grievance.

And I want to take this moment to tell whoever is reading this to go youtube Rusted Root’s On My Way for old time’s sake.

Moving on to Ten Indians. I absolutely loved the jesting that the boys were doing in the beginning. Once again, Hemingway wrote about a situation that is so true to boys’ nature. It is sometimes shocking how easily I can see my friends in that same situation; one guy giving his friend a hard time about the girl he is dating and then getting shut up because he can’t get a girl to start with. It’s sad when he discovers she’s doing whatever it is that she’s doing with another guy. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this story (probably because I’m brain dead) so I’m going to wait and read it again tomorrow.

Holidays in America

Today was all about holidays. I’m really excited that I finally found a way to maintain steady conversation and teach her about American culture at the same time. It was so strange to think that not everyone celebrates Easter or Halloween or Thanksgiving. But it was fun explaining it to her!

        We started with Mardi Gras. I asked her if she did anything for Mardi Gras and she just gave me this puzzled look and repeated the phrase. I got out my laptop and tried to begin explaining what this big festival was all about. I showed her a map of the United States and pointed out Louisiana and New Orleans, telling her that this is where the main festival is held. We then googled pictures of the Mardi Gras floats which she found endlessly fascinating. I showed her the Mardi Gras beads and she had an “ah hah!” moment. She had seen people around campus wearing beads but was clueless to their meaning.

        After giving her some information about Mardi Gras, I thought it might be helpful for her to know about Ash Wednesday. I went to a private Christian high school with almost no practicing Catholics, so when I came to TCU, I was shocked by this practice. I remember walking through the BLUU last year on Ash Wednesday and seeing so many people with the ash on their foreheads. So I wanted to fill her in on the practice. I began telling her about the black on people’s foreheads and she immediately starting smiling and nodding and patting my arm. She kept repeating, “I thought it mistake!” I told her that it was intentional and that throughout the day she will see increasingly more people with the ash on their forehead. Once again, google images proved to be a wonderful tool.

I’m not sure how much of my explanation she understood. She had no idea what a Catholic was so I tried my best to tell her about different types of Christianity and why Catholics were different from what she believed. She is a Christian but more specifically, attends a Bible Church and had no idea there were other sects of Christianity. It’s really hard to explain the idea of the Pope to someone who doesn’t speak English and knows nothing about Catholicism. I was pretty shocked that she didn’t know who the Pope was. I always knew that Asia had it’s own religious beliefs but I didn’t realize it was so far removed from the West that they didn’t even study it.

Eventually we moved to talking about Easter. I explained to her that kids have an Easter egg hunt completely with baskets and candy. We were both sad that we are too old to participate. ☹

After Easter came Thanksgiving. She was in the United States for Thanksgiving this year and from what she told me it sounded traditional. She said they ate lots of food and had a turkey. It was nice bringing this up because I forget sometimes that America is the only country that celebrates Thanksgiving!

Lastly was Halloween. We looked on google at a huge selection of costumes and she was really excited. We laughed at the different costumes people put their dogs in and smiled at baby costumes. It was interesting seeing what characters she recognized, like Scream. We ended our day looking at my facebook pictures from my Halloween.

This was probably my favorite meeting with Shinhye. For the first time, there were no awkward pauses and we even shared a lot of laughs. It also wasn’t artificial conversation, but instead flowed naturally. I feel like I actually bonded with her. This time it was less of homework and more like just hanging out with a friend, and that’s a big deal for me. My main complaint about this assignment is that if I’m going to devote an hour of my week every week to have a conversation with someone, there are so many people I’d love to do it with. At this point, I talk to Shinhye more than I talk to some of my closest friends, and that has always bothered me. But with this last meeting, I didn’t feel that, so things must be on track.

Old Times

            After LITERALLY forty minutes of searching, I have found an extremely old copy of Time Magazine. The library data system is so bad at telling you where things are. I searched the basement of the library for a solid half hour before I gave up. It was only once I was on my way through the main floor that I started to see the bound periodicals that I had been looking for. I still can’t find Vogue and Vanity Fair only goes back to the 1990’s so I guess I wont be writing anything about fashion as I had hoped. Oh well. So a helpful tip for anyone who manages to read my blog before starting on their own, stay on the main floor, quiet section!

            I managed to find a Time Magazine published on my exact birthday, although obviously not the same year. The Time I’m reading was published August 29, 1932. I’m a little confused already because there doesn’t appear to be a cover. I’m not sure if maybe that’s how they did things back in the 30’s or if there is a page missing. The most obvious difference between this Time and Times that are more current would be color. It is strange seeing everything in black and white. It makes it feel much more like a newspaper instead of a magazine.

The first three pages are solid advertisements. They are extremely strange though because they come off as actually articles in the magazine. They are set up with a few pictures and an informative story about the product underneath. It is nothing like the full-page picture advertisements we see today.  In addition to the unusual set-up, the ads are for unusual things as well. There was an ad for Tomato juice (Heinz of course), gas heating equipment, and life insurance. The life insurance ad might not seem too out of place except that it is a picture of several men pulling what one can assume is a dead body out of a car while two other people comfort a crying woman. You certainly wouldn’t see that depicted today. 

The articles are almost solid text, which bores me. It’s so much like an actual newspaper that I’m really just shocked right now. They have these extremely concrete categories that I’m not used to seeing like “Education, National Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Science.” The advertisements look like modern day magazine articles and the articles look like modern day newspaper articles. It’s crazy!

The use of language was very entertaining. One sentence began with “For nine days last fortnight…” It is just interesting to see the old-fashioned words like fortnight being used in the popular press. I also got a kick out of a quote used in the one ad that read. “I never owned, hired, or saw a truck so good.” I can’t help put laugh at that grammar.

Ultimately, I don’t think I would be a fan of going through old magazines. Maybe I would’ve found the Vogue more interesting, who knows? I just hated the layout: It was so bland and boring. One day I’ll come back and make the librarian take me to the Vogue section. I honestly would really enjoy seeing those fashion ads!