Sunday, October 25, 2015

How does Naipaul use autobiography in "Reading and Writing" to create a literary event?


 In all autobiographies in order to make them relatable and understandable authors take literary writing techniques. In this sense in “Reading and Writing”, Naipaul uses some of these methods. First of all the way he presents his dad seems like he is creating a character, choosing some special characteristics that can help us see him as he does as we don’t share every experience he has had with him. Also he describes his surroundings, a collection of random objects, he takes those which seems most important to him to create something we, as readers, can understand and relate to. He does this when describing the place. Also as one does an autobiography it’s very important to keep in mind that no two persons have the same interpretation of the same event.
The details that Naipaul have recorded in his memory about things like his father and his classroom when he was young are not the same that some other people present in this situation. Also when one is remembering things that happened a long time ago physiologist theorize that we do not remember that specific moment, but actually the last time that we thought about it. So elements of fiction are added every time that we revisit a memory from our past. Also as persons we like to exaggerate things when telling them to other people. So if Naipaul has narrated the story that he writes to other people before it can be possible that there are certain elements that are added.  Also to make it more appealing to the reader he probably selected some specific situation and changed the order in which some characteristic of the memory may have been presented a the time in which it actually occurred. So in this way Naipaul and everyone that writes an autobiography incorporates literary techniques.  

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Journey journal reflection




At the beginning of witting my journey journal I thought that when the moment came to give it in I would be trilled, but now that moment is here this isn’t the case. Those where my initial thoughts because when I was in high school my English teacher assigned a diary too, so for years I hated it and wasn’t too happy to do this once again. I find this to be ironic because writing is something that I really enjoy and do in my free time, although not in English. Now I know that my experience with this journal was totally different because I am now a different person and taking some free time to write, sometimes is just what I need. In addition the rules of the game were different because here I wasn’t just writing what I did on my day and thinking about it, here I could just let go of everything that I’ve been thought and let loose. When this process started it was very hard to let go and there was a lot of overthinking on what to write on my part. I was thinking so much of how difficult it was just to disconnect logical reasoning from my witting process that this became my main obstacle, it was a vicious cycle.

I don’t remember exactly what day it was, but one time I was so mad and had so much stress that I began writing and the ten minutes had passed so quickly that I almost didn’t remember what I wrote, when I read this entry was that I noticed that for the first time I had finally went for the jugular and had been writing unconstrained. So after this things got a lot easier and I was able to find out a lot about myself. For example now that I look back to my life compass numbers and what was written, everything was happier and more inspiring when I did it on the tranquility of my home and specially when there was music present. This makes a lot of sense to me because one of my biggest passions in life is creating rhythms so when I was surrounded by them my overall mood, physical wellbeing and even my spirituality was higher. The darkest entries and lowest numbers on my life compass where when either I had a lot of stress about my future, mainly because I’m graduating soon and the uncertainty is something which I don’t like, or when I was remembering some of the people that I’ve lost in the last few years.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Life is a Trip, Searching for Forgiveness in Vietnam


 Vietnam
In the last few classes we have been discussing Judith Fein's, Life is a Trip. This book is a collection of essays in which the author portrays how traveling can transform your life. Today I would like to talk about the third chapter, Searching for forgiveness in Vietnam. Fein went to Vietnam seeking answers about how the Vietnamese people feel about Americans after such a brutal war. To her it was a big surprised how forgiving this people were, they did not like to reminisce about their dark past and would rather enjoy the present a worry about a future. As the author does, I feel very astonished how this people do no have any resentment against the Americans after such atrocities were committed, after the use of chemical warfare which still has lingering effects on thousand of newborns. Here in Puerto Rico, at Vieques, we had an American military presence and they only did practice and for a lot of Puerto Ricans, including myself this is not easily forgiven. I find this essay very interesting because I think that we in the occident have a lot to learn from people all over the world. Sometimes we are so immersed in our life and way of thinking that it’s not easy to remember that this is not the only one.
I would like to travel to places like Vietnam so I too can change my way of thinking to a more forgiving one. I feel this is possible because good ways of thinking, in my opinion are contagious. If we, as the human race, could learn to take the best elements from other cultures and internalize them the world would be a very different place.   I wonder what makes the Vietnamese so forgiving while other countries are still fighting over thousand year old ideologies. I guess each country creates it’s own identity based on their context and history and we can learn about this present attitude by learning about theirs past, the war took a lot from them, but it did gave them the ability to forgive which is no little accomplishment.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Carl Jung


Pueblo Indian

Carl Jung  was a psychiatrist  and psychotherapist from Swiss born in 1875. He wrote a great number of Works, most of them published after his death, that where influential in fields so varied as literature, anthropology and archeology. He is best known for the studies of the human psyche, analysis of dreams and the collective unconscious.  His two main interests when he was young were medicine and spiritual phenomena, which led him to the field of psychiatry. One of his Works is titled Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a text, which we analyzed in a series of exercise in class. Being such a prolific writer Carl Jung probably had many journals on which he could base this autobiography, so it could be said that as far as autobiographies go it’s pretty truthful and descriptive. But as we know human memory, unfortunately, is not a perfect mechanism so many of the things contained on this book may be hyperbolized or created thoughts. Mainly what we analyzed in class is Jung’s point of view as a traveler and the subtext of this work. It’s evident that he has an Eurocentric view on a lot of aspects, although he is trying to evaluate European’s from an outside standing point, in the subtext of what he writes it’s simple to see that sometimes he recurs to a judgmental opinion on the natives he encounter on his travels. He sometimes even feels superior as we can observe from what he describes in his visit to the Pueblo Indians. In some parts of his text he describes how he feels that his European reasoning is superior to the Indians. I would recommend this work to anyone who wishes to see the world from an intelligent, white, Europeans man viewpoint.  Also as far as traveling topics and subtext analysis goes this work is rich in examples and very interesting so anyone can digest it.  

Sur Moi


My name is Julio J. Vélez Rivera and I was born in 1994, too early for the 21st century and too late for the 20th. I coursed my elementary education on a Montessori school called Creativo witch I hold very dear to my heart, then I went to a high school called Santa Rosa Superior a place that I don’t recommend to anyone.  Currently I study Biology in the University of Puerto Rico. My biggest academic interest are on the fields of Microbiology, Inmunobiology and Neurobiology, I currently work on the university’s microbiology laboratory as a technician, tutor and investigator. Im the vice-president of the student chapter of microbiology.

 I love to travel and fortunately have gone to places like: New York, Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Turkey, but I would like to go to almost every place on this marvelous planet. For me there’s no better way to learn than to go to a different place and being immersed in their culture and traditions, meeting people, taking in the scenery and the food. As for my future I still haven’t decided if I want to do graduate studies or go to medical school. I enjoy writing, rapping, producing music with my friends and do some amateur sound engineering. I am a very big fans of movies and series, some of my favorites being Sherlock, Braking Bad, House of Cards, Gotham, Hemlock Grove and much more. Also when and if I have some free time I also love to read, mostly in Spanish my favorite authors are Jorge Luis Borges and Bertolt Brecht. Currently I live in Rio Piedras Puerto Rico, but my dream is to live in Spain because of their calmed lifestyle. I have two sisters one witch lives in Mexico and the other in Spain and a great mother who’s a linguistic professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamón.