There are no whales in Brooklyn

In the winter anyway

Benches are empty

They stand idly

In fornt of

          red

              brick

                   buildings

AMERICAN FLAG

on the           walls

in the            windows

on the           bus

NYPD officers eat cookies

Through barbed wire

Our playgrounds protected

A lock on every gate

We hide our garbage

And give children candy

 But Children want beer

and cheap cigarettes

With the right lotto ticket

They might buy a plane

A high social status

Or limited joy

They settle for cough syrop

A warm winter jacket

And some education

Thee is no luck.

This movie made quite an impression on me. Most of the time it was playing, i completely forgot that i was in a classroom, i felt like I was right there in the middle of all the violence. The movie seems very realistic, life in poverty, desire for wealth, could indeed lead to criminal activity. That seems to be the most popular root. ‘m just wondering why we are learning this story from someone who wasn’t among all the violence, from someone who is more of a spectator then a participant… Could it be because he is different because of his non violent ways?

I have finished the book in about 6 hours. 3 before bed, and 3 during art history…I loved it. Such a captivating book. There is an interesting mix of realistic events and ficiton. It makes me wonder wa sthe narrator insane before his imprisonment?

The characters are so well developed taht by the end of the book I felt like I personally knew them. I would say that despite their flaws both narrators are sympathetic characters. And boy do they have flaws…The female is selfish beyond believe, while the male seems like her mere shadow. He is dependant on his love towards her, and in the end it basically costs him his life.

It is dirty. Especially compared to the stations in Russia, which look like a museum. Russian subway doesn’t work 24 hours a day though, and the draw bridges open, and since the city is a couple different islands, you are pretty much fucked if you missed the last train. But is risking your life taking the MTA at night, worth staying out late in the city? It’s a better choice to wait it out till like 5 am, when some people start going to work, and take the train then….There is always a 24 hour Starbucks or McDonalds…..

So over the weekend I watched the Real Housewives of New York. I was sick, and there was nothing else to watch…but i d have to admit, the show is quite fascinating. It is hard to believe that these women live in the same city as me. I mean, i know that there is the uper class people, with higher income and better real estate, but i never realized that these people have a completely different mentality. The social interaction is all about “meeting the right people, and moving up the society ladder.” And even though compared to the characters of the show, I felt broke, I still felt privileged, just because my social life is sincere. 

                                Mrs. Dalloway is a hard read. The narration goes in and out of Mrs. Dalloway’s current reality. As she travels through the city, and conducts her regular business, she thinks of her past, and the people she has touched in it. In the beginning of the book she realizes that “…Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew…” This realization hit home with me. I know exactly how it feels to do things, only after calculating what other people will think of the action, and therefore restricting myself from being at all impulsive. Does not feel good…Sure there are fewer regrets of a bad choice, but there is a different kind of regret, the regret of being quite, of not letting people know how you feel…Possibly ruining more then one relationship…Another character in the book proves this true as well. Rezia, the wife of Septimus (a World War I veteran suffering from mental illness caused by his combat action) is also experiencing the discomfort, because of what she assumes other people might think of her husband. He seems lost a lot of time, he talks to himself, stares into space, and attempts suicide once in a while. She is so tired of this, so strained, so embarrassed that she wishes he was dead. It is an interesting contrast between Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith, where her thoughts rotate around the party, flowers, and her personal relationships, his are forever occupied with the horrors of war.

       Mrs. Dalloway keeps thinking back to her past affair with Peter. He has proposed, but she said no, afraid for her independence. Her independence is shown in the first sentence of the book, when she declares she’ll get the flowers herself. So yeah, she analyzes her decision more then once within the book, and comes to a conclusion that she was right to deny his proposal every time. Her relationship with her husband Richard, leaves plenty of room for freedom, half the time they don’t even know where the other one is, but Mrs. Dalloway isn’t completely satisfied with this either. She seems torn, not as torn as Helga from Quicksand, but still not quite satisfied with her role in the society, and in her own family.

    Her whole day goes around the preparation to the party. As Peter once said she’d make a great hostess. I am not sure if he meant it as an insult or a compliment…Wolf later mentions that he sees himself as sort of a rebel to the society. He also reexamines the proposal scene, and I believe he reaches the same conclusion as Clarissa, they just weren’t meant to be together. I am not sure about this though, because as I said The book was hard read for me.

      It is interesting how many thoughts and memories go through a person’s head in one day. I thought the trick she did with hopping from one character to another was great, it reminded me of a movie, but the language, and the phrasing made it less then enjoyable to read.

   I left the class so angry on Wednesday. It was not until I reached my car that I realized the source of my emotions. The ending of “Do the Right Thing” really messed with my head. The climax of the movie comes when the racial tension erupts into a violent attack on an Italian owned pizzeria in a black neighborhood. Through out the movie, you get the views of bothsides, the white Italians, and the black residents, and even the Asian grocery owners.

  The unnecessary violence depicted in the end, is not only caused by black vs. white. In a poor neighborhood, where half the people don’t have a job, there is going to be resentment against people who have some source of income. If these people are white, then the resentment is even greater, since the white man has always been the oppressor to black folks.

 Every character in the black community was depicting a stereotype. Young man not taking care of a baby, older men sitting around in chairs, complaining that life is unfair all day, young people who walk around in groups, disrespecting the elderly, and the alcoholic. These are very realistic probably every community has a package of people like that.  Spike Lee also has an Italian pizzeria and a Korean grocery, so stereotypical, yet so true. A well developed, complicated character is a young lady who has a job, and seems well educated, inevitably the white man is attracted to her. However if she was to date him, her race would consider it a betrayal. The fact that intellectual compatibility matters more hen racial, is irrelevant to them. In the movie they allow the white man to have a business in their neighborhood, but giving the money, even in exchange for food, to a white man, is too much to take. So one day they force him out, in a most violent of ways, they burn his place. Who will feed them now?? It was probably intended to be an allegory to slavery. Well, perhaps the black people need to force the white man out, to learn how to build a functional community on their own…

  Quicksand and Do the Right Thing are similar in that the characters of both works choose to self destruct. The pizzeria owner was warned by his sons of the danger, yet he chose to stay. The whole neighborhood is rotting with poverty, yet they choose to rebel against their food source. Helga didn’t even want kids, she looked down on religion, yet she chose to move away to the middle of nowhere with a pastor, and have 5 children….People generally don’t notice what they are doing to themselves, the choices that seem great at the moment, might be bad in the long run, so before doing something radical, it might be a good idea to plan an escape route.

The first half of the movie that we watched in class monday was hypnotizing. It seems like there is no real plot so far, just an overview of a neighborhood..It’s like a painted portrait. Every shot is perfect in composition, and some of the camera angles used are really unusual.

Daily Post.

My dog bit my dad…my house is ….not a fun place to be at right now…

Shit…..I’m going to the Met tommorow. The Met is a famous NYC museum….this is bull….I can’t write a post now..I’ll be back tommorow.