only a fadograph of a yestern scene

It is great that we're reading James Joyces's Araby since it illustrates perfectly how awful it is to think that every story must have some easily digestible message. There are so many things going on in this story that to squeeze it into a one statement summation would be tragic, not to mention difficult.
The description seems like what must be echos of Joyce's own memories of early 20th century Ireland. Lighting is huge in early memories, and the way he pays attention to it in the short story Araby is something. Almost like the way Alyosha Karamazov recalls the slanting rays of the setting sun in his beloved early memory of his mother.When the boys are playing in the street "light from the kitchen windows filled the areas". The way Mangan's sister is described and how she is lit accentuates her pale neck and purity. There also are undercurrents of sex (Mangan's sister's white border of her petticoat), money (Mrs. Mercer and the mentions of coins), and religion (the priest who died, and the garden of eden).

I like how Joyce thought commonplace occurrences, like a schoolboy crush, are what bring about epiphanies. First crushes can be exciting, and seem to be a good reason to be alive if not for anything else. For a brief shining moment not everything is as bland as the boy's surroundings. But when his quest to bring something back from the street bazaar to her is spoiled by something as unromantic as being too late, he seems to lose all idyllic romantic notions entirely.

Female Archetypes

So I googled feminine archetypes, and I found this archetype-based tool called The Enneagram Theory of Personality.
It "organizes personal types around spiritual, cognitive and emotional behaviors and tendencies".

One = The Perfectionist

Two = The Caregiver

Three = The Performer

Four = The Tragic Romantic

Five = The Observer

Six = The Devil’s Advocate

Seven = The Epicure

Eight = The Boss, and

Nine = The Mediator.


The female mythic types are:

Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and Moon—Competitor and Sister

Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Crafts—Strategist and Father’s Daughter

Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Temple—Wise Woman and Maiden Aunt

Hera, Goddess of Marriage—Commitment Maker and Wife

Demeter, Goddess of Grain—Nurturer and Mother

Persephone, The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld—Receptive Woman and

Mother’s Daughter

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty—Creative Woman and Lover.


The set of female archetypes include:

The Boss

The Spunky Kid

The Crusader

The Waif

The Librarian

The Nurturer

The Seductress

The Free Spirit

Eternal Recurrence

I had never heard the term until Sexson went over it in class. Then I realized how many films and stories retell this idea. There's Groundhog Day, of course, because Bill Murray has to relive February 2nd countless times until finally he wakes up and it's a new day. Not before he discovers he can exploit the fact, like killing himself, stealing, drinking or eating as much as he wants without the consequences. Ussually the character must have an epiphany of some sort before the cycle can finally end.

Also in the film Memento eternal recurrence is definitely the plot device, which works almost in the reverse as Groundhog Day. The hero has no short-term memory, due to a head injury. Everyone around him remembers what has occurred, but he must figure it out constantly. He can remember who he his and everything up until the accident, but after that, anything that occurred about fifteen minutes ago is forgotten. Tattoos adorn his body, information gathered to help him solve his wife's murder. Across his chest reads, "John G. raped and murdered my wife". He collects evidence and has to build up trust with everyone over and over again.

Even this movie that recently came out called "Moon", seems to contain elements of eternal recurrance. It is about a guy who works alone on the moon in a space station, and has two weeks left of his 3 year shift. Major plot spoilers follow, etc. One day he goes out in his rover and has a crash and dies. The next shot shows him getting suited up, going out again and finding the overturned rover. It turns out that he has been cloned every three years instead of being returned home. When he finds the cargo hold where the bodies are stored, the room stretches out beyond what the eye can see. That he figured it out now, after countless times repeating this cycle, brings to mind many questions. One almost wonders if he can remember his past as the previous clones, as if they aren't completely a different minds. Like the Jungian concept of a collective unconscious.

Which is why the Misfit looks familiar to the Grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find", and not only because it dawns on her that the Misfit's her son. And why Arnold Friend tells Connie "Sure you saw me before, you just don't remember."

It is like the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the you watch the ape messing around in a pile of bones. He stops and stares at one, scrutinizing it for a fragile moment, then scoots toward it. There has been generations of his species and he is the one who picks up the bone and starts whacking it triumphantly on the ground.

Groundhog Day

9:30 woke up. Didn't remember that I was supposed to be extra observant today until I walked in to the bathroom. The radio cheerfully said "....happy Groundhog Day!" as I got into the shower. It then played "I Got Friends in Low Places". I thought about Gannon weddings, where this would ussually be one of the last song of the evening. At this point, the overweight brother would be wasted and dancing his ass off.
10:30 Went down for breakfast.
11:00 Crossed the street towards the duck pond, and I wasn't paying too much attention but it seemed that two cars narrowly missed me.
11:15 Walked into math
left the room and sat down at the couch by the window in wilson hall. Liz walked down the stairs, saw me and said what's up. Told her I was waiting for my anthropology class.
12:10 Switched couches and a girl sat down across from me, and said "Doing the reading for class? Me too."
Minutes passed, and I asked how far she was. She stared at me for a second as if she originally expected me to be inanimate or something, then said "oh, halfway through the second chapter."
Stared at two guys on their cell phones outside. One was leaned against a pillar, the other was doing slow deliberate steps back and forth on the sidewalk. Only under the guise of intense conversation, could one do that without looking really odd, I thought.
12:40 walked into class and sat next to a girl who talked to me once
watched a powerpoint about the professor's trip to the Congo in 1985
1:40 entered the shwag. Jesus/Charlie sat down next to me.
2:00 got to my dorm and had to pour out my backpack to find my key. Have no idea why I put in there instead of my pocket.
Walked in and threw down my stuff, then crashed on my bed. Layed there for a while thinking, and irrational worries swirled around my head settling in my stomach.
3:00 read some cinderella stories. Alex came in and we talked a bit, then I played bass
4:00 -5:00 Played more bass
5:30 Went to dinner then attempted to work on my blog in the south hedges computer lab. Jessica came in and pulled up a chair next to me.
6:00 Went and got coffee with her
7:30 Jessica persuaded me to stay in the 1st floor lobby for the free self-defense class.
8:30 Managed to slip away
9:30 My brother called and we had a hilarious conversation
10:15 Went on my roommate's computer. Looked around wikipedia, and read Roger Ebert's new movie reviews. Talked to CJ on facebook.
11:00 Read the first two chapters of The Brother's Karamazov
1:30 Went to bed

Earliest Memory

The earliest memory I have is being in Oklahoma for some trip. I was three. We we were outside a bar, and it was very bare country around us. My dad was pulling my hand towards the car and on the concerete lot in front of the bar, I saw a turtle. To me at the time, it was the size of a dinner plate. I shreiked "Turtle!" and it took a while for my dad to actually turn and acknowledge my excited tugging. A young-ish couple were outside, and the guy picked it up, turned it over and let me stroke its shell.

I had this dream when I was four or five. I think I must have been wondering if I remembered being born. In the dream I was born and I got off the steel table thing and started walking around. I was wearing a diaper. The doctor was wearing a ponytail. I walked down the hall, and sitting on a chair was a woman with curly black hair and a green coat. She was holding a ziplock baggie with chocolate chip cookies. She smiled, gave me one and I woke up.

I was stung by a bee on the eyebrow when I was four. We were running up the steps to my aunt Elaine's house in Great Falls and there was this bush with a perpetual droning of bees. Because of this, it was customary to run as fast as possible into the house and this time I was last and happened to get stung. I erupted in tears, and my cousin Lannie got me in the house and put this white goop from an orange container on my eyebrow. I remember having to walk around County Market this way. The next day i woke up to watch cartoons and noticed that my eye had swelled shut. So the whole day I ran around pretending I was a pirate.

I remember one day staring at the piano and thinking about how two years ago, the year was 1994

I remember this one baby sitter when I was four. Her name was Vida and I really disliked her. She cooked this lunch (if you can call it such) that was a mixture of hamburger, corn and ugh. There was muffins for dessert and she told me I could have one, but I couldn't have two unless I cleaned my plate. I tried to tough it out, but I soon gave up. She gave me a muffin, and when I finished it, I chewed on the wrapper so greedily, she said "that's disgusting" and ended up giving me another one.

On the first day of kindergarten I remember wondering why we all had name tags when none of us could read...