#8 Remembering Dreams

As I made sure to do the right things in order to successfully remember my dreams once I woke up, I started by following one of the comments from my Professor’s blog in which it suggested to put my notebook and pen under my alarm clock, so I did it. Once I woke up, I took my phone, which is my alarm clock, turned it off and immediately started writing about what I could remember. Once I started writing, I remembered only some details about my dreams, like the place I was or the people I was with while dreaming, but I didn’t remember most of my dreams. As I wrote about the things I could remember, my mind started pouring out all the details that I dreamed about and I quickly could remember many, if not all, of the details from my dreams, including other dreams I had the same night, which I started writing down as soon as I remembered the detail from the other dreams I had the same night, and went back to them when I finished writing about the dream I was currently remembering.

I can say this activity had an impact on me because I usually don’t remember all my dreams, and by doing this exercise it made me remember things that normally I don’t remember from my dreams. This also impacted me because once I know what I dream about, I can relate it to the things that are happening to me at the moment, and I found out that they’re HUGELY RELATED! They are not only related, but also they may seem as to have some solutions to the problems or the dilemmas I am having this current week and if I wouldn’t have wrote about them maybe I wouldn’t remember my mind had set out the solutions to them already.

            Something not completely related to the activity, but that I often do, is the fact that when I dream of something really odd I tend to look for the symbolism behind it through the internet or from a book I have at home called “The Book of Dreams” which has many kinds of meanings to the things you dream about. For example the other day I dreamt about being stuck in an elevator between floors, I could get out but the elevator was still stuck. I looked for the meaning of this and it said: “To dream that the elevator is out of order or that it is not letting you off symbolizes that your emotions have gotten out of control.” And as a matter of fact, this week my emotions have been REALLY OUT OF CONTROL!

Here is the link from where I mostly get the symbolisms in my dreams on the Internet: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/

#7 A Small Place - Kincaid's Identity on Ch. 1 & 2

Upon reading the first two chapters from A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, I can say that even though Kincaid was born and partly raised in Antigua, she does not consider her identity to be Antiguan. This is partly because of the tone that she portrays throughout the first two chapters in which she comments on Antigua’s past and present, seen through the eyes of a tourist and through her own eyes, a past resident of Antigua. Kincaid talks about the things that happened to Antigua that led it to be what it is now, she uses the example of the Barclays Brothers and how they went from being successful slave traders to becoming rich and powerful bankers, and explains the feeling of retribution she gets whenever she thinks about the bad deeds and bad thoughts that the Barclay Brothers and many others, had put upon the Antiguans while being slave traders or bankers. 

Throughout the second chapter, Kincaid not only talks about the fact that the island was for some time part of England but also, about the rich English men that came to Antigua. She explains to us that not even the fact that the English had more money than the Antiguans, made them better people than the Antiguans. I say this mainly because even though the island was part of England none of the residents, as said by Kincaid, felt inferior. It was actually the other way around, the Antiguans felt superior, since they were better behaved and full of grace, and the English, says Kincaid, were badly behaved and empty of grace, even though after saying this she adds that she now knows that good behavioris the posture of the weak, of children, this phrase or fragment really got to me.

In her second chapter, it seems as if Kincaid is letting us know that she doesn’t consider herself part of any land, that she has no identity, no motherland. The author says that she feels as one of those many people that were made orphans by the English with:

 “no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all no tongue.”

This can be interpreted as a sense of rebellion against the English since they left her with the language with which she is writing this book, English, but also as a rebellion to the Antiguans who supported and kept doing throughout the years the types of activities the English did to make Kincaid feel neither English nor Antiguan.

#6 A Small Place - Personal Reaction on Ch. 1 & 2

Before starting to read the book I chose to look for some background information about the author, Jamaica Kincaid. From the many interesting accomplishments she’s made throughout her life, the most memorable and most related to the book is the fact that even though she was born in Antigua, she decided to change her name from Elaine Potter Richardson to Jamaica Kincaid, partly so that the people of Antigua wouldn't know she was writing. I find this interesting given the fact that on the first two chapters of a “A Small Place”, Kincaid speaks so cynically about Antigua, and explains everything with detail, even though she now lives and teaches in Vermont, USA.

The perspective Kincaid writes about in the book, related to the ideas you get when you visit a place that you’ve never before seen, are true at least for me. When we arrive to any place in the world that we paid some of our hard earned money and we see that the place is worse than where you live, we tend to start pointing out the things that are wrong or out of place and we don’t look at the “why” and “how” that got to be how it is. An example of this is seen when Kincaid talks about how you, a tourist, react to the fact that the driver that will take you from the airport to the hotel you chose, has a better car than the one you have back at home, just by being a taxi driver. She also says that what you don’t ask yourself is that if besides the nice car, does the driver have a nice house to go after his shift, or does he, as it happens to be, goes to a house that is far beneath the status of the car. This example can also go the other way around in which we go, for example, to Orlando and we see all these sophisticated highways and improvements and we tend to ask ourselves, how it would be like if we had that back in Puerto Rico, or we say how good is this compared to the rubbish we have in the island. This reaction may be related to the identity each and everyone has, since we are comparing the identity of the country we are visiting and comparing it to our own identity from whichever country we consider ourselves to be.

Below is the link from where I found the interesting facts about Kincaid's life! Enjoy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/kincaid_life.shtml

#5 Identity - Peter Roberts (Sense of Home)

            No matter what part of the world you are currently in, the word identity may have a similar definition. Based on what Peter Roberts writes about, my identity is completely Puerto Rican; and no matter what part of the world I am it will not change, for the time being. I feel as if my sense of home is where I’ve grown up and still live in, which could be said is my habitat. If I were to define my sense of home it would be mainly based on the place I am more attached to emotionally and physically and by where my heart is, as Roberts says. I am more attached to Puerto Rico because most of my good memories come from spending time in the island with family and friends and by visiting places that are two-hour drive or less away from my house.

My main language is Spanish and I can also speak fluent English but no matter where you are in the world my Spanish and my English will differ from everyone else’s, creating a sense of identity. This barrier of languages is what Roberts says that as a factor of place, it distinguishes an outsider form an insider through accent, idiom, structure and word, he also mentions that identity may come from the sense of sameness we tend to build up. I may relate to this given the fact that no matter what are the differences between Puerto Ricans, we all share some similar characteristics that make us relate to one another no matter where we go, it is these similarities that make people from outside the island see Puerto Rico in a way that makes them generalize. It can be generalized through crime, past events in politics or many other factors. These characteristics may come from our food, our festivities, or even from the expressions we make as we speak Spanish or English or maybe any other language that we propose ourselves to learn. In my case I hope one day to learn to speak fluent Portuguese given the fact that one of the countries that may change the sense of home I have for Puerto Rico could be Portugal.  I say it may change the sense of home I have because as I mentioned already my sense of home is the place I am more attached to, and who knows if I could eventually get attached to another country if given the opportunity to live for a couple of years in Portugal for example.

Not only I say that my sense of home can change, but also I want to mention that my cultural identity will remain the same even though I change my residence. This is because as Roberts mentions, cultural identity results from a coalescence over time of highly variable factors, in other words even though my sense of home may change my cultural identity will not because it is something that has been built up over time and it involves allot more factors than sense of home does in determining a possible new identity other than being Puerto Rican.

#4 Dead Poets Society - Neil & Mr. Keating

We can say that of the two characters in Dead Poet’s Society who were psychologically analyzed the most, one of them was Neil. Throughout the first scenes we see that Neil has some personal issues with his father and the things he has planned for him. His external journey can be said to be the fact that his father has his whole life planned for him, he wants him to finish high school, go to Harvard, and last but not least finish Medical School, and has never even asked Neil if that’s what he wants.

When Neil hears this his only response to his father was: “That’s almost ten more years”. I understand his response to his father because when you have certain internal journeys of your own interests in life, like acting was for Neil, having to spend ten of your most precious years doing something that you don’t want to be doing can be really tough because you will always know that you could have done more. These interests Neil has acquired may be considered part of his internal journey in finding his true identity, an identity that is not based on his father’s choices, which is considered his external journey.

If we take the second of the most psychologically analyzed characters, we end up with Mr. Keating, who has an external journey with the school’s faculty and the students’ parents. Mr. Keating has to deal with the fact that he is teaching at an all male school in which most of the faculty consists of older men that have certain methods which they consider to be the correct ones but Mr. Keating has other unorthodox teaching methods. The external journey Keating has with the students’ parents is the fact that along with his unorthodox teaching methods he is inciting the kids to think outside the box their parents have assembled for them. An example for this is Neil’s case, in which he incites him on achieving his dream of acting and on telling his father what he really thinks he should do in life. The advice that Keating gives Neil about confronting his father and telling him the things he really wants to do in life may be Keating’s internal journey given the fact that it is because of his advice that Neil doesn’t have the guts to confront his father but instead decides to use his father’s gun to kill himself, putting Mr. Keating in a tight spot because of what he has put on the children’s mind since he first told them to seize the day.