little rowling

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 22:17:01 -0400

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written to other people, ideas or activities that have taken place over the course of the last few days of uploading in both the public realm and in my personal life. What exactly is an open letter? An open letter is a letter which is often critical in nature that is addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication or to be read by a large group of people. In this case, that is you, the reader.

Each open letter will discuss a different topic, in varying degrees of depth. From politics to personal issues, the Open Letter series aims to provide clarity on issues, create ideas or inspiration, or, in my case, to become a place of stress and thought relief. Nothing is safe from receiving an open letter, not shows or book characters, a class lesson or a provoking idea.

This week is the grand finale of all open letters… it’s been a good run and to be honest, I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Our last edition is going to be responding to the first thing I wrote in this course: What is Writing? Here we go, enjoy.

An open letter to writing:

Dear writing,

On the first day of writer’s craft, we were asked what is in our opinion My response was very dry, which, upon reading it again, makes me cringe (granted, reading all my writing again makes me cringe… I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about that). I said things along the lines of “Writing is fun” and moving on to talk about fiction. I continue by saying “Writing is complex” and “writing is embarrassing, there’s no way I’m reading this again.” And for me, that is true.

Writing is now for me, a mode of escape. I have never felt truly as free when I write for myself, knowing that no one else is going to read what I write. I used to write for others to read, but now I read for myself. How did this happen?

I’ve never really had the opportunity to write for myself, except for in writer’s craft. We had a notebook that was split into two parts: part one was for my wonderful and creative teacher to read, all those assignments were for him to read. The second part was for myself, and sometimes I used my side for calendars, but when I realised that this section was truly for myself, I vented. When your voice gets annoying, your paper never judges your words. So I wrote (and ran through three pens while doing it.)

Writing for yourself is liberating. And I feel like that’s something that’s so underappreciated about writing. When it comes to people who want to be writers, there’s this idea that you have to be incredibly good once you begin and doing so is an instant method to success. I think, and this is just me saying this, that we need to start writing for ourselves. For some reason, there’s something surreal about seeing the way that you’re thinking laid out for you on a page or in a document. They’re suddenly not just thoughts, but a tangible item that you can read at without judgement.

So, that’s what writing is to me. In the course of a few short months writing has changed from ‘embarrassing’ to freedom, but I think that what I’ve assigned to writing has become different. I write for myself now, not to get what I write online or to have it seen by others. I have so many documents on my laptop that are full of words that will never be read by anyone else, and I am more than fine with that. Writing destresses me now, it allows me to develop ideas and put my thoughts out on a page and I try to organize them. Writing has become my way of understanding myself, and all it takes is exposure.

I’ll post a photo of my original response to this question, for your enjoyment. Who knew that one could change in only four months?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an incredibly strong writer. Words don’t just come to me the way that they do others, but I’ve begun to understand what I am comfortable with writing. I like to create, but I don’t like fluff, which means my ability to write successful fiction may not be as great as it could be. I like fact and telling other people about what I’ve learned and discovered (such as my investigative report). Poems are fun, but not my medium of choice. 55 word fictions are too short for me, same with short stories with word limits. I need a good middle ground. Who knows, I may publish a novella one day. I’ve began to enjoy dabbling in script writing, because then I don’t have to go into detail with what I want things to look like and say “okay so here’s the mood, let’s get things that relate to that.”

I think I’m going to grow as a writer. I may not be a Rowling (that’s for sure), but at least I’ll be myself. After all, if the world needed another Rowling, you can just read the Divergent series (that is both a roast and a YA book suggestion that I’m only partially serious about. Try John Green’s Will Grayson will grayson if you want to have some real fun.

Best,

Johanna

It is worth noting that the author of this article is a...

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:40:57 -0400

It is worth noting that the author of this article is a socialist-leaning voter and so the following article is more of a reflection of interviews conducted from May to June 2017.

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart.” John Adams reportedly said this back in the late 1700s, just after the American revolution.

Now, more than 200 years later, many young people still adhere to the same principles. Fighting with older ‘conservative’ adults or parents is incredibly common currently, with people getting more and more political at younger ages than ever before. Most young people, by the time they hit college (a whopping 60% ) are democratic or liberal leaning, 23% are unsure of their political alignment and 17% of students are republican/conservative, a 2017 Harvard Politics study finds.

The majority of college professors, too, are more liberal than conservative. According to a 2012 study, the liberal to conservative ratio of college professors is 5:1 across North America (Canada, Mexico and the US included).

Students being Liberal “make a lot of sense”, according to Janice, a 21-year- old Torontonian Ryerson student who I spoke to about being a political college student:

“ “We’re all more or less looking for a better future, right? So we have to get together and band together against the things we don’t like seeing.” Janice tells me, saying that now more than ever her politics is focused more on just what she believes, but mobilizing others to agree with her.

“Do you see yourself in the future with politics?”

“I’m a psychology major, so not really.” She says, laughing.

Across the pond – lake, really – at the University of Michigan, Jonas, a 19-year-old engineering student from Montgomery, Alabama, was raised conservative, and never really got out of it.

“I don’t feel like I need to defend myself and my beliefs in front of people, but I’m often asked to. A lot of people stop talking to me or calling me racist or an a**hole because I tell them that I’m conservative.”

What’s become more of an issue for students like Jonas is that they’re supposed have such an space around them that’s been designed by other students, but because of their political views, they feel like an outsider in a lot of cases.

“To me, it’s like I because I disagree with some of the views that they have, I’m not allowed to be safe as I learn. I didn’t come to college for my views to be challenged, I came here to become a doctor and then help some people.” Says Alessandra McNamara, who allowed me to use her full name for the record. “I’m female, I’m young, and for some reason those two things don’t allow me to be political the way I “should be”. In college, you’re supposed to have a voice… and I guess, yeah, like, you do but… You have a voice in college, but now it has to be the right one- your voice needs to be saying the same thing as everyone else or you’ll be isolated.”

"I’ve had beers thrown at my head, and I’ve been kicked out of parties and forced out of classrooms, especially last November.” She remarks, remembering when she said that she voted for Trump last year she was ignored by most of most of the people she thought of as friends on campus.

“If you align yourself with someone who wants to put me in harm’s way and single me out because of who I am, I don’t want to be around you.” biology major and 24-year-old Allyssia says from Pace University in New York. “It makes sense to me.”

Back in Canada, the political spectrum are less extreme, but expression is not. Most young Canadians are liberal-leaning, and shape their political understanding around the American two- sided spectrum. The difference is, Canadians tend to be more open-minded" “It’s their opinion and what they believe, doesn’t mean what they believe in is always right, though. It’s important to see both sides of the argument.” says Lyn, an 18 year-old from Toronto, Canada.

In Canada, being conservative is very different from being conservative i the US. "I feel like Canada has a soft form of conservatism, we’re less left-and-right the way the ‘States are, y'know?“ That’s from Lisa, a 20-year-old UTSC student of biology.

And she’s correct. In Canada, being conservative is far more laid back than it is in the United States. Both American and Canadian conservatives support the independence of their own nations, the idea of a free press and media and being progressive while maintaining 'traditional’ values for the greater good. Canadian politics are not as black and white as American politics are. "In the States, the Democrats and the Republicans are total opposites, they disagree on everything. In Canada, for the most part, both parties see things differently and approach the things they agree on differently too.” says Adam, a York University political sciences student.

In the United States, as Adam mentioned, not being able to see both sides of the political spectrum and where your opposition is coming from is common, as Jonas notes : “Everyone does it: professors and dude-bros alike. There’s no escaping them. Someone’s gonna judge your opinion and then tell you that you’re wrong for believing in what you believe in and spend a ten-minute yelling session telling you that you need to re-align yourself- sometimes in front of the whole class.”

Being conservative is a challenge because maintaining your political views throughout all of your years of getting your degree in American colleges is not an easy feat. “A lot of my conservative friends went to the other side to fit in.” Alessandra says. “You feel really isolated, not just because everyone is telling you that you are wrong about the things you believe in but because no body is willing to listen to where you come from. I think they’re afraid of us, especially the profs. Which is really weird, when you think about it.”

But when you ask the more democratic- leaning kids on campus what they think about the republican students, most of the reaction sounds a lot like this:

“I feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. They have power, but they choose not to use to the help other people out. They use their politics to put other people down, to make themselves feel superior. They voted for a president that thought that way, and you can tell they don’t have a problem with the idea of a guy like Trump leading the country, or they would have voted for literally anyone else.” 22 year-old Jacob tells me. He also goes to the University of Michigan.

“I agree that we should listen to them more, but when it comes to voicing your opinions, especially at a place like the University of Michigan” (which prompts a ‘whoot whoot’ from his roommate, Chris) “When you’re talking politics, you use your voice to talk about, like, things that make sense to people. Cheaper education, better access to health care. Like, we’re young; we gotta start worrying about things that we have to deal with in the future.”

I ask him if he thinks that if he talks politics that people are going to listen to him and might even change some conservative minds.

“Yeah, I think so anyway. You need to make sure that you’re thinking about yourself when you vote. A lot of the con kids on campus are raised that way. They come from towns in the Midwest that are totally red. Of course they’re gonna be conservative. They gotta realise that they’re voting for themselves and that their parents aren’t watching them anymore. If I tell them what’s happening with their vote, and I’ve done this before, maybe they’ll change their minds. Sometimes it works, too.”

I asked Alessandra the same thing, and she said something pretty different.

“All of the democratic kids are yelling over each other, saying the same thing. They look really stupid while they do that, too. I try to listen to what they’re saying, but their opinions and ideas for the country are a little too up in the air for me. I believe in a free labour market in which people have to take the opportunities that they’re given. If they don’t take it, then that’s too bad and they’ve missed out on their opportunities. It’s a hard world and people aren’t going to make it any easier for you by getting criminals in the White House. Democrats think they will though.”

I asked her what her opinion was on people who think that young republicans are being brainwashed.

“It’s a load of crap, honestly. This is how I think, and I’m thinking realistically and for myself.”

I asked some who I interviewed what they want the future of politics to look like. They all said relatively the same thing, which I think was summed up best in Jacob’s answer:

“Pretty much the same, but also really different… let me explain.”

““Right now, the world doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think we all want politicians who will get up and do something good, not just for our nation, but to make the world a better place. And that’s really challenging; you can’t get people like that anymore. I want for everyone to see eye to eye when it comes to where our country is going. I agree with the two party system, but maybe one where the views aren’t so different. We should all be supporting one another, but just not through politics, through others means, too.”

So what can we do?

“We just have to listen to each other.” Jonas says, shrugging a little, because he knows what backlash he can get by saying that. “It’s the irony of the open-minded conservative. People don’t think you exist.”

“Respect the democratic process, and allow people to express themselves. If you truly believe in something, you won’t have to defend it.” Suggests Alessandra.

Jacob looked at this whole situation, from both perspectives (he also got a look at what the other

interviewees said), and told me the following:

“We need to start to understand people beyond their ideas. Your political views do not summarize your entire identity, and we need to remember that about other people. You may not agree with the things other people say, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to listen. Political views only become violent when people become violent.”

Lisa and Adam agreed, saying that listening to others allows for your thoughts to be challenged, and that because everyone is in the process of changing, it is important that we understand that our political ideas change, too. Allow yourself to be challenged. Your views aren’t forever, and it’s certainly not your job, as either a student, a professor or anyone else to change the political views of another person, except for when it is directly harmful, “then maybe try to convince them out of it.” Adam says, in a joking but serious expression.

I think it was Janice, who really sent it home: “Sure, people are going to disagree with you. That’s how people are. That’s democracy. This is proof the process is working. Some people take it too far and lash out if you disagree with them. That’s not democracy, and regardless where you come from, it’s not getting you anywhere.”

Politics are complicated, and having your opinion being heard and understood is a challenge. Learning to listen to the other side, as much as that may go against everything you believe in is how one can discover what they truly believe in

and who they support. Politics is thinking about yourself and what you want the world to look like, but remembering the needs of others as well. Being conservative - the minority - especially in places where all mindsets are to be considered equal, can be especially challenging for some students. So, no matter what side of the political spectrum you come from, step outside your echo chamber, listen to your opponent sand challenge your ideas. This is development, this is democracy, this is the future.

family portrait 10.06.2017

Sat, 10 Jun 2017 23:51:07 -0400

family portrait 10.06.2017

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 03 Jun 2017 20:10:48 -0400

So we’ll be finishing this week with what I was doing when I was incredibly bored for two days (medical emergency) and decided to transcribe the history of Japan. It took me two hours of pausing and stopping. Link at the bottom of this portion of the transcription.

♫♪ It’s time for World War I ♪♫

The world is about to have a war. Because it’s the 1900s, and weapons are getting crazy, and all these empires are excited to try them out on each other. Meanwhile, Japan has been enjoying conquering stuff and wants mooreeee and the next thing on their list is this part of China (Qingdao) and lots of tiny islands.

All that stuff belongs to Germany, which just had war declared on by Britain, because Britain was friends with Belgium, who was being trespassed by Germany in order to get to France to kick France’s ass because France was friends with Russia who was getting ready to kick Austria’s ass because Austria was getting ready to kick Serbia’s ass because someone from Serbia shot the leader of Austria’s ass. Err, actually, he shot him in the head. And Britain is currently friends with Japan. So you know what that means, duhhh.

♫♪ Japan should take the islands. ♪♫ Which they wanted to do anyway. So they sort of called Britain on the tele(gram) to sort of let them know, and then they did it! And they also helped Britain here and there with some errands and stuff. *bell rings*

Now the war is over, and congratulations Japan, you technically fought in the war which means you get to sit at the negotiating table (Paris Peace Conference), with the big dudes, where they decided who owns what. And yes, Japan gets to keep all that shit they stole from Germany. And you also get to join the post-war mega alliance ♫♪ the League of Nations ♪♫ whose mission statement is to try not to take over the world.

The Great Depression is bad, and Japan’s economy is now crappy. But the military is doing just fine, and it invades Manchuria. And the League of Nations is like ♪"No don’t do that if you’re in the League of Nations you’re not supposed to try to take over the world.“♪

And Japan said, ♫♪ How bout I do, anyway? ♪♫ And Japan invaded more and more and more of China, and was planning to invade the entire East.

Then Japan gets mail.

It’s from Germany, the new leader of Germany, he has a cool mustache and is trying to take over the world and needs friends. This also got forwarded to Italy. They all decided to be friends because they had so much in common.

♫♪ It’s time for World War II ♪♫

Germany is invading the neighbors, then they invade the neighbors’ neighbors, then, the neighbor’s neighbors’ neighbors, who happen to be Britain, said "Holy shiiit” and the United States started helping Britain because they are ♫♪ good friends ♪♫ and started not helping Japan because ♫♪" Their friends and our friends are not friends. Plus they’re planning on invaaading the entire ocean.“♪♫

The United States is also working on a large, very huge bomb. Bigger than any other bomb, ever. Just in case (Germany). But they still haven’t joined the war, war looks bad on TV, and the United States is really starting to care about their image.

But then Japan spits on them, in Hawai'i, and challenges them to war. And they say yes! And then Germany, as a symbol of friendship, declares war on the United States also. And they help the gang chase Germany back into Germany. And they also chase Japan back into Japan. And they haven’t used the bomb yet, and are curious to see if it works, so they drop it on Japan.

They actually drop two.

The United States installed a new government, inspired by the United States government, with just the right ingredients for a ♫♪ post-war economic miracle ♪♫ and Japan starts making TVs, VCRs, automobiles, and camcorders as fast as they can. And also better than everybody else. They get rich, and the economy goes wild. But then the miracle wears off, but everything’s still pretty cool I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o

THAI INDEED 3081 KINGSTON...

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400

THAI INDEED

3081 KINGSTON RD
$9-$20
THAIINDEED.CA

What’s better than going to class on a rainy day? Not going to class and going to lunch with your class on said rainy day. In the middle of May, a trip was made to Cliffside’s Thai Indeed, and it was well worth the bus ticket.

The company, including the class, was wonderful. We arrived earlier than our reservation, so they were still setting up their restaurant for the day; they apologized and asked us to wait while they set up. Very clean and organised, the colour scheme of Thai Indeed was complimentary blacks and oranges which were quite nice on the eyes. Let’s get to the food.

I’ve always had a great appreciation for Asian cuisine, which might make me partially biased in my stellar review of my chicken fried rice that came off the Thursday lunch special. I was incredibly impressed at more than just the price (which is constantly a topic of concern for students), but at the amount of food available by ordering this one menu item. For $8.95, you are presented with either the soup or salad of the day (more on the soup later), two spring rolls (pure currency) and a plate full of warm, wonderful fried rice.

The soup, called lemongrass soup, which is both sweet, slightly spicy (coming from a person with a high spice tolerance) and tasted really healthy, as soups should be. The spring rolls were vegetable and cooked really well, to the extent that the vegetables weren’t soggy or anything like that. And they tasted great with the provided plum sauce.

The highlight of the meal, of course, was the rice. You can’t really make stir fry rice properly in a white household, so I was very happy with this.

not stir fry, because it was gone faster than i could remind myself to take a photo of it

The rice was lightly cooked with soy sauce and the smallest amount of oil, mixed with corn, peas and carrots and of course, chicken. I ordered mine with shredded chicken pieces, which means that they were fantastically incorporated into the dish. Eating it was great fun, combining . If eating healthy Thai food was your goal on a Thursday, get yourself the chicken fried rice.

My experience today was overall a very positive one. I’ve never been to Thailand, but the food today makes me want to. It was my first Thai food experience, and it was a great one. The class company was quite wonderful and the waitstaff didn’t make us feel rushed at all. We waited only a little while for our food, which was worth it because of its great taste accompanied by a great restaurant overall. If you find yourself with cravings in the middle of Scarborough, stop by Thai Indeed; the food is Thai, indeed.

30052017

Tue, 30 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

30052017

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 27 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

So we’ll be continuing with what I was doing when I was incredibly bored for two days (medical emergency) and decided to transcribe the history of Japan. It took me two hours of pausing and stopping. Link at the bottom of this portion of the transcription.

Knock knock, it’s Europe. No, they’re not here to take over, they just wanna sell some shit. Like clocks, and guns, and ♫♪ Jesus ♪♫. So that’s cool. But everyone’s still fighting each other for control. Now with guns! And wouldn’t it be nice to control the capital, which right now is puppets, with no one controlling them? This clan (Imagawa) is ready to make a run for it, but first they have to trample this smaller clan (Oda) which is in the way. Surprise, smaller clan wins! And the leader of that clan (Oda Nobunaga) steals the idea of invading the capital, and invades the capital. And it goes very well.

He’s about halfway through conquering Japan when someone who works for him kills him, then someone else who works for him (Toyotomi Hideyoshi) kills them, and that guy finishes conquering Japan. And then he confiscated everybody’s swords. And he made some rules.

“Ąnd͟ n͟ow I'̛m̶ goińg̡ to ͘inva͞d̨e ͝Kor͟e͡a,̵ an͝d͢ ̶the̴n h͜op̷ef̕ull͏y ̵Chin͢a̛,” he said, and failed, and also died.

But before he died, he told these five guys to take care of his five year old son until he’s old enough to be the next ruler of Japan. And the five guys said yeah right, it’s not gonna be this kid, it’s gonna be one of us. ‘Cause we’re grownups. And it’s probably gonna be this guy (Tokugawa Ieyasu) who happens to be way more rich and powerful than the others.

A lot of people support him, but a lot of people (Ishida Mitsunari) support not supporting him. They have a fight, and he wins. And starts a new government, right here. ♫♪ Edo ♫♪ And he still lets the emperor dress like an emperor, and have very nice things. But don’t get confused, this (Tokugawa family) is the new government. And they are very strict, so strict they close the country. No one can leave, and no one can come in. Except for the Dutch, if they wanna buy and sell shit, but they have to do it right here (Dejima).

Now that the entire country was not at war with itself, the population increased a lot. Business increased, schools were built, roads were built, everyone learned to read, books were published. There was poetry (haiku), plays (kabuki), sexytimes, puppet shows (bunraku), and Dutch studies. People started to study European science from books they bought from the Dutch. We’re talking geography, skeletons, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and maybe even electricity.

Over time, the economic and cultural prosperity began to gradually slow do-

*impending doom music*

Knock knock. It’s the United States. With huge boats. With guns. Gunboats.

“O͜pe͡ņ,̨ t͡he͏ ͘c̷o̷ưntry. ͠S̛t͜o̡p̛,̵ ҉ha͠v̀in͜g̷ i͝t̀ ͝be̴ ́clo͞sed.̢” said the United States.

*music ends*

There was really nothing they could do, so they signed a contract that lets United States, Britain, and Russia visit Japan anytime they want.

Chōshu and Satsuma hated this. “That sucks!” they said. “This sucks!!!”

And with almost very little outside help, (from Britain) they overthrew the shogunate. And somehow made the emperor the emperor again, and moved him to Edo, which they renamed eastern capital (Tokyo). They made a new government, which was a lot more Western. And they made a new constitution, which was.. pretty Western. And a military that was… pretty Western (large).

And do you know what else is Western? That’s right, it’s conquering stuff. So what can we conquer? Korea! They conquer Korea, taking it from its previous owner, China, and then go a little bit further (Liaodong Peninsula).

And Russia rushes in out of nowhere and says, “Stop no you can’t do that we were gonna build a railroad through here to try to get some warm water.” And Russia builds their railroad, supervised by a shitton of soldiers. Then, when the railroad was done, they downgraded to a fuckton. Did I say downgrade? I meant upgrade.

And Japan says, “Can you maybe chill?”

And Russia says, “How 'bout maybe you chill?”

Japan is kind of scared of Russia. You’ll never guess who’s also kind of scared of Russia. Great Britain! So Japan and Great Britain make an alliance together so they can be a little less scared of Russia. Feeling confident, Japan goes to war against Russia, but just for a moment, and then they both get tired and stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o

Lion (2016)Cast: Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David...

Tue, 23 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Lion (2016)

Cast: Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Nicole Kidman

Director: Garth Davis

Synopsis: A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometres from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia. 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

“You just can’t make this stuff up”

-Mr. J d’Aquila, 2017

Lion.

A story about a boy in search of his parents, a brother he lost so many years ago and a life that was taken away from him because he got tired one day on a train in the middle of India as he disappears into the unforeseen future ahead of him.

What’s fascinating about Lion is the idea that a story can be so simple, but when taken from different point of views with flashbacks and not being certain if you can trust the main character’s “flashbacks”, it makes such a storyline that much more enthralling.

While on a train trip looking for work, Saroo and his older brother, Guddu, are separated and Saroo ends up on a train that carries him 1,000 miles from home. The first half of Lion is full of two attempts at changing Saroo’s life forever. This occurs while he’s alone on the streets, escaping kidnapping with a half dozen other children, followed by a couple who would do God knows what to Saroo until he’s finally brought to an orphanage. From there he’s sent to Tasmania, Australia and adopted by a childless white couple. A year later, Mantosh, Saroo’s new brother, arrives a year or so later, and Saroo’s past in India begins to fade as his new life in Tasmania forges on.

The movie is a look at technological developments, the social aspects around being part of a mixed racial, adoptive family and mental health, all wrapped up nicely in two hours. He uses Google Earth and maths to figure out where he travelled from, what train he was on and more by using train speeds and track distances. For a moment, you forget all the technology rhetoric that you hear in media and think how tech is helping orphans find their families after falling asleep on trains in India 25 years ago.

Lion is moving. It allows you to experience the life of someone else while sitting in your seat, which is an incredible feat that many movies fail to do. Moments never feel cliché, just real. Nothing, no moment or line or action felt falsified or inaccurate to the setting (but then again, how much can I say as a white, non-adopted Canadian about the accuracy of the life of a brown, adopted Indian-born Australian, as depicted by a movie?)

This movie puts a lot of things into perspective: that the world is merciless, that life is random and every little action creates massive change. Getting lost on a train, running away from people who you feel might do you harm, the endless search for the family you thought you’d never see again; it’s all life changing, it’s all incredible.

I’d like to take a moment to appreciate Dev Patel in this movie and just comment on how hair and makeup did such a great job; commenting on how the third time I watched this movie I cried a little when the wind moved his hair. I’m just so fond of this guy… wow. Kirsty McGregor (Lion’s casting director) did amazing work with this film. The relationship between Saroo and the rest of his family (both biological and otherwise) seem so genuine. One can relate to the anger and frustration, as well as feel the care of Saroo’s parents as the movie lets us become its characters while watching. Director Garth Davis deserves credit for his ability to make us feel- truly feel what these characters are feeling, without having them explain their feelings in the traditional form of narrative. Hell, every person on Lion’s IMDB page deserves more than a sentence of praise, going all the way down to the person who probably walked Dev Patel from scene to scene (Tim Hodgson, per IMDB. He got to run everywhere. Great job, Tim!)

On a final, considerably more serious note, this movie was amazing. Like, I-could-talk-about-it-for-hours-and-give-the-whole-plot-away-and-not-feel-bad-about-it amazing. In all honesty, the film is an incredible depiction of life. It examines people discovering themselves in relation to everyone else, finding themselves and their place in the world, and uncovering the truths about themselves and learning that who you are is more than where you’re from or what your name is, but who you surround yourself with and how you treat those people.

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 20 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

I was incredibly bored for two days (medical emergency) and decided to transcribe the history of Japan. It took me two hours of pausing and stopping. Link at the bottom of this portion of the transcription.

Japan is an island by the sea filled with volcanoes and it’s ♪♫ beautiful ♫♪.

In the year negative a billion, Japan might not have been here. In the year negative forty thousand, it was here, and you could walk to it, and some people walked to it. Then it got warmer, some icebergs melted, it became an island, and now there’s lots of ♫ trees ♫. Because it’s warmer.

So now there’s people on the island; they’re basically sort of hanging out in between the mountains eating nuts off trees and using the latest technology. Like stones, and bowls.

Ding dong, it’s the outside world, and they have technology from the future. Like really good metal, and ♪ crazy rice farms ♪. Now you can make a lot of rice really really quickly. That means if you own the farm, then you own a lot of food, which is something everybody needs to survvvvive. So that makes you king.

Rice farming and rice kingdoms spread all across the land, all the way to here. The most important kingdoms were here (Hi), here (Chikushi), here (Izumo), here (Kibi), here (Yamato), here (Koshi), and here (Kenu). But this one (Yamato) was the most most important, ruled by a heavenly superperson, or emperor for short.

Knock knock, get the door, it’s religion. The new prince wants everyone to try this hot new religion) from Baekje.

“Please try this religion,” he said.

“No,” said everybody.

“Try iiiiit,” he said.

“no,” said everybody again, quieter this time.

And so the religion was put into place and all the rules that came with it.

Then, the government was taken over by another clique (Taika). And they made some reforms , like making the government govern more, and making the government more like China’s government, which is a government that governs more.

“Hi China,” they said.

“Hi dipshit (wa, dwarf),” said China.

“Can you call us something else, other than dipshit?” said Japan.

“Like what?” said China.

♫♪"How about sunrise laaand?“♪♫ said Japan.

And they stole China’s alphabet and wrote a book. About themselves! And then they made lots of poetry and art and another book about themselves.

Then they stopped moving the capital every time the emperor died and kept it in one place for a while, right here (Kyoto, Heian Palace). And they conquered the north finally, get that squared away.

A rich hipster named Kūkai is bored with modern Buddhism and visits China, learns a better version which is more ♫♪ spiritual ♪♫, comes back, reinvents the alphabet, and causes art and literature to be ♫♪ great ♪♫ for a long time. And the royal palace turned into such a dreamworld of art that they really didn’t give a shit about running the country.

So if you live outside the palace, how are you supposed to protect your shit, from criminals? ♫♪ Hire a samurai. ♪♫ Everyone started hiring samurai. Rich important people hired samurai. Poor people who could not afford to hire samurai did not hire samurai. The samurai became organized and powerful, more powerful than the government. So they made their own military government, right here. They let the emperor still be emperor, but the shogun was actually in control.

Breaking news, the Mongols have invaded China.

So the Mongols came over, ready for war, and died in a typhoon. But they tried again, and had a nice time fighting with the Japanese, but then died in a typhoon.

Then the emperor overthrows the shogunate, then the shogunate overthrows him back and moves to Kyoto, and makes a new shogunate. And the emperor can still dress like an emperor if he wants, that’s fine.

♫♪ Now there’s more art. ♪♫

Like painting with less colors, collaborative poetry, plays, monkey fun, tea parties, gardening, architecture, flowers.

It’s time for who’s going to be the next shogun. Usually it’s the shogun’s kid, but the shogun doesn’t have a kid. So he tries to get his brother to quit being a monk and be the next shogun. He says okay. But then the shogun has a kid. So now who’s it gonna be? Vote now on your phones. And everyone voted so hard that the palace caught on fire and burned down. The shogun actually didn’t care, he was off somewhere doing poetry. And the whole country broke into pieces. Everyone is fighting with each other for local power, and it’s anybody’s game.

see next week for more

(here’s the link for this video that i decided to transcribe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o)

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 13 May 2017 19:27:17 -0400

This week, we’re going back to regular-scheduled programming to talk about one of my newest favourite things: Jane The Virgin.

An open letter to Jane the Virgin,

Dear Jane The Virgin. I love you so much. Or, should I say Mucho. (No I shouldn’t)

I’m usually not big on watching mainstream shows like Game of Thrones or whatever, and technically this show is now considered mainstream but it’s gotten to the point that I have such a need to watch a quality show, regardless of how big a fan base it has. I’m not really a fan of show reviews, but based on how I watched three seasons in five days while doing school and homework, it would be an understatement to say that I’m only slightly addicted to this show.

If you’ve never watched Jane the Virgin, the premise is simple. A Mexican american woman named Jane is accidentally inseminated and now has to deal with the idea that she’s pregnant and she didn’t have anything to say about it. The plot becomes more complex from there, if you want. At the start of the season, all the relationships look like this:

The nurse who accidentally inseminated Jane is the sister of the man whose baby Jane is having. This man, Rafael, is married to this woman named Petra, who is having an affair with his best friend. Why is that important? Because the man Jane is engaged to is named Michael and he’s a cop who’s investigating the man that Petra is having an affair with because he’s linked to some deep crime stuff that’s happening in California.

And that’s basically it. This show deals with so much stuff. There’s baby drama and an arrestment of hormones and how much your catholic identity should impact the way you treat others and parental influence and the idea of turning into your parents and discovering your identity in relation to other people and more. Jane The Virgin looks at the social stigma around single parents, raising a child when you know your child may not have a stable set of parents, as well as what it’s like being Mexican-American and being raised with Catholic values and how many things we don’t have control over in life.

More than that, it’s funny. Like actual laughing-and-you-know-I’m-laughing-because-the-joke-was-over-five-munites-ago-and-my-face-still-hurts.

So if you’re bored and need background noise in your life or a bunch of really good looking people on your TV screen (look at pictures of Justin Baldoni and then get back to me) as well as the voice in your head changing from whoever it was before to a low-voiced enthusiastic man with a Spanish accent, watch Jane The Virgin, a tellanovella designed for english-speakers.

Enjoy. All seasons are on Netflix.

Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson © 2014

Sun, 07 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 06 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Narration is something that English teachers get hung up on for classes upon classes in high school, talking about how there’s narration types that deal with knowing everything or where everyone knows nothing or when the narrator thinks they know everything when that really isn’t the case and so every English teacher in the history of the universe decided to call this person an “unreliable narrator”.

The Grand Budapest Hotel has one of these types of narrators, but at the same time, doesn’t. Hotel offers many questions and many ideas that you have to draw to as the watcher of the film. It’s up to you to decide who’s good and who’s bad (with a little bit of help from the music), but you are free to hate whomever you please in the movie, whether that’s Mr. Gustave or Zero or Madam D or whomever. But the story is perspective into perspective into perspective: it’s frame narration at its most successful (unlike Wuthering Heights in which Emily Bronte was clearly not told that nothing in literature is obvious, especially not when you’re switching from POV to POV, thinking your reader is going to catch on [they’re not]).

Hotel talks about the life of Mr. Zero Moustafa, through his eyes as he describes it to The Author in the Past (here called Past Author), and then we see that through the Present (well, 1985 version of The Author) Author (here called Present Author). The film’s narration begins with a girl who walks into a cemetery holding a book that was written by The Author. Present Author is then showed through a cool transition that brings us into 1985 in which Present Author explains that writing is hard and sometimes stories come to you, as opposed to you coming to stories, once the public knows that you’re an author (the opening introduction/ monologue that Present Author does is often overlooked by reviewers of the movie) and explains that he was told this story that you (the viewer/reader) are about to hear. Then, we transition into the 1960s and we see Past Narrator and he begins to talk to an old guy who we begin to know is Mr. Zero, and he (as Old Zero [hereby called Old Zero]) tells the story of his past (past zero is going to be called Young Zero), with particular emphasis on the story of Young Zero’s hero and idol, as well as Old Zero’s benefactor, Mr. Gustave. Frame narration after frame narration, it’s frame narration-ception.

Which is why I find this movie so fascinating. You have to dig level after level into this movie and figure out for yourself what the truth is. Do you trust all the words of Mr. Gustave? Is Zero as funny as he is made out to be? These are questions that literature-centred people (and those who watch this movie too many times) ask themselves. What is the film really trying to say? What is it trying to tell us? This is what narration does, and after watching the movie for the twenty-second whole time yesterday, I can come up with the following answer:

The Grand Budapest Hotel is Zero Moustafa’s life as seen through the eyes of so many different people. It deals with the idea that everything will come to an end: you, me, everything we have, the movie, all of it. This life, Zero’s life, is a life of pain, but for just a fleeting moment of time, he was happy. Our lives are a story. When it comes to particular story, like all stories, it’s not about the ending. In a lot of ways, it’s about reliving the middle as often as you can.This is what Grand Budapest wants you to learn, in the most Wes Anderson way possible.

Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson © 2014

Sun, 30 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Music in film, or a film’s score, is often set to the visuals to provide an intense experience for the watcher, or convey tones and ideas that have to be helped along by music.

Other times, music can be iconic, the movie and the music are made for each other, specifically in the cases of big mainstream movie series like Harry Potter or Star Wars. Without a doubt, if you’re filmatically (we’re inventing words here, people) cultured, and have seen the Grand Budapest Hotel could easily identify the track Mr. Moustafa because of how unique of a sound it is.

Grand Budapest uses its score for both aesthetic and (this is the real kicker) musical purposes. Let me explain.

In score and movie music composing, there’s this thing called temp music, which basically when there’s a movie that exists that has a song that worked really well with the audience, so when another director comes along with a movie with a very similar scene, the director tells the music producer or film’s composer “hey, we filmed this scene, could you make music that fits this scene and make it sound like this song from this movie from this scene.” Suddenly, the music director or composer’s job is gone: the head director is doing the job for them.

Temp music is basically a fancy way to say original work or a work that has been copied and modified to fit the needs of the movie. It’s basically this meme:

Got me?

If you don’t believe that this is actually a thing, here’s the soundtrack from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ©2009 “Einstein’s Wrong”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIw_YcLnsew and compare it to Thor © 2011 “Hammer Found”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOXGunV_orE

Same song? Pretty much, yeah.

A lot of mainstream directors do this, they take a song that is ‘safe’ with the audience, and allows you to focus on what’s happening on screen, versus what’s happening with the rest of the movie.

This is one of many reasons why Wes Anderson did so well with this movie: he made the music such a priority that it became something that someone wants to listen to, on its own.

The soundtrack (The Grand Budapest Hotel: Original Soundtrack) was written and directed by one of the greats, Alexandre Displat, and it sounds like something you’d hear if you were walking into a little shop in a small European country. It’s got yodelling (because you can’t set a movie in a place called Nebelsbad in the Republic of Zubrowka without there being yodelling) and cello and balalaikas (think Russian triangle acoustic guitars) and violin plucking and the whole shebang. The organ in Last Will and Testament makes you feel fear. The pops of the triangle in Night Train To Nebelsbad make you physically laugh, the light piano keys at the start of Up The Stairs / Down The Hall provide actual confusion

The movie, like a lot of what Wes Anderson does, was directed and spaced out so that the music fits seamlessly into the movie. It fits together so well, Wes probably wrote the script with Alexandre in the room and they would throw ideas back and forth to each other; the music was not a ‘cute additive’ in this case.

It has come to the point that I time how long it takes me to do homework based on what song I’m on in the Hotel soundtrack. It’s 32 tracks long, I can name them all in order and I could probably attempt-sing them all if I was forced to.

Tune in next week, where we discuss the uniqueness in the Narration and why the film’s novel-like format works wonders for this movie.

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 18:42:57 -0400

The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I talk about this movie a lot for a person who watches at least one a week. It’s my go-to, the name rolls off my tongue, you can’t say grand or Budapest or hotel around me without my brain thinking about that movie.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with some friends about movies. “Watch The Lobster” or “Inglorious Bastards” they would try to convince my one friend who missed out on movies for years of her life. “Watch Grand Budapest” I told her, and all my friends groaned.

There’s always been something about the movie, when I first saw it in 2014, that captivated and enthralled me in ways that never made much sense to me. There’s an allure about it, a kind of curiosity that exists for the sole purpose of you wanting more from it, asking yourself “that’s it?” when you watch it after your first try.

In fact, my first try at watching this movie resulted in me getting bored within the first half hour and I stopped watching it. I closed Netflix and went to bed, leaving the movie alone for about a week until I started to get curious again.

It wasn’t because I had read reviews or people had been telling me “oh, it’s such a great movie” (really, that’s what I tell people now), but it was just this one frame that stuck out in my head for such a long time: the one of M. Gustav sitting in an elevator with Madam D., Zero and the elevator boy (who is nameless throughout the movie), with Tilda Swinton as Madam D. looking absolutely horrified at the idea and knowledge of her own impeding death, with Ralph Fiennes as M. Gustav looking happily at her as he recites to her poetry he made in attempt to soothe her.

She dies anyway, about thirty seconds later, so no spoiler.

With Grand Budapest, I was trying to figure out what type of genre the movie was. I think this plays into – and says a lot about – my need to have everything fit into a narrative or I lose interest. This movie is nothing like any other movie I had ever seen before. It wasn’t funny or action-filled or dramatic or romantic or sexy or anything- it was Grand Budapest-y. T

I could honestly talk about the movie scene by scene, frame by frame, telling you how Wes Anderson used colour not just to convey emotion or associate colour with character (which he didn’t do, not in this one), or how the use of centre-framing his scenes reflects who Wes Anderson is as a person or why the lack of dialogue makes the movie that much more interesting.

And I will.

If you’ve wasted your time going through the rest of this blog, you might have remembered that I’ve already done an open letter to Wes Anderson once before, but that was more of a rush generalization of everything that Wes has ever done, with specific reference to Grand Budapest as a point of reflection. These next few open letters will be directed to Grand Budapest, talking about frame usage, dialogue, why colour isn’t all it’s mocked up to be, why this movie is a film (and the difference between a movie and a film), and why Grand Budapest is a movie that you have seen over and over again, but never truly watched (and I don’t just mean in the sense that you’ve seen it over and over again the way that I have.) Bear with me throughout the next few weeks as we analyze the hell out of this movie. If you’ve never seen it before, go onto Netflix and plug in “grand Budapest”; it’s the first result with Ralph Fiennes’ face staring happily at you. You’re in for a ride.

Until next week.

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

So, once again, back at it again with The Open Letter Series.

An open letter to chocolate cake.

Dear chocolate cake,

I can honestly say that I haven’t had a bad piece of chocolate cake in a while.

The history of chocolate cake goes back to 1764, when Dr. James Baker discovered how to make chocolate by grinding cocoa beans between two massive circular millstones. Choco rose cake In 1828, Conrad Van Houten of the Netherlands developed a mechanical extraction method for extracting the fat from cacao liquor resulting in cacao butter and the partly defatted cacao, a compacted mass of solids that could be sold as it was “rock cacao” or ground into powder. The processes transformed chocolate from an exclusive luxury to an inexpensive daily snack. A process for making silkier and smoother chocolate called conching was developed in 1879 by Rodolphe Lindt and made it easier to bake with chocolate, as it amalgamates smoothly and completely with cake batters. Until 1890 to 1900, chocolate recipes were mostly for chocolate drinks, and its presence in cakes was only in fillings and glazes. In 1886, American cooks began adding chocolate to the cake batter, to make the first chocolate cakes in the US. The Duff Company of Pittsburgh, a molasses manufacturer, introduced Devil’s food chocolate cake mixes in the mid-1930s, but introduction was put on hold during World War II. Duncan Hines introduced a “Three Star Special” (so called because a white, yellow or chocolate cake could be made from the same mix) was introduced three years after cake mixes from General Mills and Duncan Hines, and took over 48 percent of the market. In the U.S., “chocolate decadence” cakes were popular in the 1980s; in the 1990s, single-serving molten chocolate cakes with liquid chocolate centers and infused chocolates with exotic flavors such as tea, curry, red pepper, passion fruit, and champagne were popular. Chocolate lounges and artisanal chocolate makers were popular in the 2000s. Rich, flourless, all-but-flourless chocolate cakes are “now standard in the modern pâtisserie,” per The New Taste of Chocolate in 2001.

Fascinating.

I find that chocolate cake is so easy to get wrong. It has the main elements of standard cake, flour, milk, sugar, etc., but it’s the cocoa that can permanently screw up the rest of the cake if you add too much or too little.

Here’s what makes a great chocolate cake:

-Fluffy: It’s amazing if you can see the air holes as you look at your piece of cake

-Not-too-sweet icing: The best, most complementary icing for chocolate cake is chocolate icing. It’s simple (especially when fluffy, like whipped icing on top) and totally amazing.

This post has no actual value at all, I’ve been craving chocolate cake recently and have been unable to obtain any, much to my displeasure.

Frig man, I just really want chocolate cake.

Best wishes,

Johanna

The Open Letter Series is a collection of open letters written...

Sat, 08 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

So here we are, back at it again with The Open Letter Series

An open letter to perspective,

Dear perspective,

I’ve been watching this Netflix show called 13 reasons why over the last few week, and though it’s only thirteen episodes long, it’s been taking me longer than normal to watch this show, for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to me, but that’s not the purpose of this open letter (the open letter on the fear of things inevitably ending is currently in writing, to be posted… maybe).

In the show (originally, the book) thirteen reasons why, there’s a girl named Hannah Baker who kills herself in year 11, and the main character of the book, Clay, receives a shoe box full of tapes, illustrating in detail the reasons why she killed herself (and get this, there’s 13 of them, each reason is a person who the tapes get sent to. Wow).

Often, in the show, Hannah is accused of lying or making up some part of her story or relationship to someone (her reasons) listening to the tapes, and Clay often lashes out on those people who accuse her of lying (until, of course, he listens to his own tape, and realises that Hannah often overexaggerated what happened between them, in a nostalgic, romanticized type of way).

Clay then realised that he was acting out of anger on a one-sided story that he was listening to. He never once questioned the validity of what Hannah was saying in her tapes (which was sprinkled with falsehoods but was mostly rooted in truth) in a kind of respect-for-the-dead-girl-who-I-greatly-loved way.

The story, like all stories, is about perspective. How one behaves, expresses oneself and treats the world is heavily, almost entirely rooted in how they perceive life (the world, other people, themselves).

Actions motivated by anger, fear, sadness, happiness, love, they’re all perspective. How other people perceive us plays a roll in how we perceive them. If they hate us, we hate them too (often vice versa, spare some occasions).

We let our perspective of the world control us.

As much as we’ve been taught that we shouldn’t let our emotions get in the way and that nothing should control us, what we often forget is that our perception of reality is essentially who we are. We are taught to be ourselves, so if how we perceive the world is who we are…

I’ve realised that it’s important to think about our actions in relation to how they will be interpreted by other people. Use your knowledge of how you understand people and how you understand yourself as a source of logic and understanding, knowing that everyone is trying to figure out the world around them through their own perspective, making it important that you not only do the same, but help them along, as best you can.

Or at least, that’s how I see it.

Best wishes,

Johanna

We will always be physically stuck in the future, in a time...

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 11:49:37 -0400

We will always be physically stuck in the future, in a time disguised as now. As much as we reminisce in the past and long for moments that once were, our understanding of time makes us believe in the concepts of simple past, present and future. As people, we often look to the past and recall regrets, shameful moments of our personal histories that plague our minds into oblivion, especially in the strangest and most obscene of times. We learn about time in school and devote our class time to discovering the actions of the past and see how far we’ve come since the moments laid out before us in textbooks. This is your past, but most importantly, this is our past. The lives and times of humans before us, etched, written, spoken of, for decades or centuries after their occurrence. These are the stories we tell, and we can never escape them.

We remind ourselves of these pasts daily. They line our streets, highlight our cities, create our timelines and take up the most space on our phones. But the truest recalling and the best understanding of the human past is not found in these places or through these stories. History, like the present, is best understood through the grasping of context, understanding the ins and outs of the moments we live in. We search for the past as we look to the future. Going to a place of learning is easy, it is the understanding which becomes complicated.

You go anyway.

Walking into the place, a spring in your step. It’s summer again in Vienna. Its history pounded deep into the roads and sidewalks, the city hides none of its history from the eyes of the public. Memorials, shrines, tours, artwork all sprinkle themselves across her grounds, serving as constant reminders of the events of the past, and how one never can escape them.

This place, in particular, holds more value than any newly instituted building or statue ever could. Sneaker-clad shoes rest themselves for but a moment on the open, round foyer that is the grand entrance of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (art history museum), eyes scanning the vast, open concept, rounded ceiling area for something, anything, to read. Statues frozen in time for millennia. The collection dates itself back to the 1640s, the plaque says. Out of every museum in Vienna, Austria, or hell, any museum in all of Europe, you decided to come to this one, the old museum of Vienna. Or were you called to it?

The ceramic, cold floor holds the ancient statues in their places. The sunlight cascades down from the windows above, blinding when looked at, often causing people to wonder what the museum looks like when it rains. Walking left, the ceramic changes to designed marble, the room multiplies in size with large, gothic arches that hold up the cieling, black with hits of what looks like cascading gold. Even more impressive than the foyers, the walls are intricately designed with cherubs holding golden vines across doorways. The mastery takes you aback, but this area is merely a seating area which others have claimed their own. Making the way through, still looking up at the moulding along arches that lead to other rooms, the one on the right has things in cases. Interesting.

That is what museums are for, of course. This feature highlights Lutheran-era artifacts. Printed books, tools, weapons and busts of figures, each with a date that seems so long ago. The Protestant reform of the 1500s which developed the church of Luther. Moving on dark wooden floors with more captivating, detailed ceilings. Babylonian artifacts, artwork, romanticized stories, all from 4000 years ago. Battles and portraits line darker rooms with cozier sofas, describing events that have now become myth and legend. Things that are officially documented as “the past”. Far too distant for any clear transcript of what happened, deemed as “things to learn from” or, in the case of the Holocaust exhibit with black and white photographs and personal accounts, “things that will never happen again”.

That’s what we are to believe, what we have been tricked into thinking. History has become fictionalized. Artifacts are to be marvelled at, but never understood. Fossils of cultures henceforth past are prizes to be discovered, as objects to be taken. History was never alive, as much as museums would like to change that. We condense peoples lives into sentences, hundreds of years of history taking minutes to explain.

And we wonder why understanding the past is so complex.

Walking through a museum, we are filled with awe, excitement, wonder. We have history boxed into buildings, stamped on plaques, never really understanding why events occurred, how people mobilized and who was involved in creating these moments we call history. This is what makes the past so fascinating. We tell ourselves that things from the past like wars, slavery, castles and myths are aspects of the past, things that no longer exist, and if they do, they are not our wars, slaves, castles and myths. What we experience, the way we live, is all there is and all there will ever be.

That’s what the people of Greece, Babylon and Rome thought.

Then they became history.

Every moment, we make history. Not in ways that will be remembered for hundreds of years down the road, but because every moment of the past is so much closer than we could ever imagine it to be. The European discovery of North America by Leif Erickson in 1020 CE was 200 years after the officiality of Italy and Germany as nations. People were still being executed in France for treason when the first Star Wars film was being shot. Our understanding of history has become so skewed that we fail to realize how close it truly is to where we are now, how we as people distance ourselves from the past and put it into history textbooks that read like fairy tales.

The past is no fairy tale. We yearn for simplicity in times when everything seems so complicated, in a world where we can truly not understand the truths that are presented to us, or truly know if what we are seeing is the truth. We seek knowledge from the past, clinging onto what remains of the ‘ancient’ world by putting things away in big rooms for guests to understand for themselves. We constantly look to a past that we want to avoid, but can never escape.

There’s a ward of the Kunsthistorisches Museum that is an open-air room that is said to help you clear your mind. Its doors are always open, and the grounds are cleaned regularly to promote its use. On the outskirts of the remains of chaos, the ward serves as a moment of calm, surrounding those who visit it to look at the natural world that exists beyond human control. Our time is short, the ward instructs. Learn from the past, then make your own future.

Or, at least, that is what the photos say.

The open letter series will be a collection of open letters...

Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0400

The open letter series will be a collection of open letters written to other people, ideas or activities that have taken place over the course of the last few days of uploading in both the public realm and in my personal life. What exactly is an open letter? An open letter is a letter which is often critical in nature that is addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication or to be read by a large group of people. In this case, that is you, the reader.

Each open letter will discuss a different topic, in varying degrees of depth. From politics to personal issues, the Open Letter series aims to provide clarity on issues, create ideas or inspiration, or, in my case, to become a place of stress and thought relief. Nothing is safe from receiving an open letter, not telly shows or book characters, a class lesson or a provoking idea.

And so it continues: The Open Letter Series

An open letter to Norwegian,

Dear Norwegian,

You’re a handful.

Not in a “I’m too lazy to learn grammar” type of way. I’m never too lazy to learn the grammar of any language, to be honest. If you’re older than 12 and understand what grammar is, I’d recommend that’s how you start.

The thing about Norwegian is that you’re not pronouncing half of the words that you write. Take “unnskyld” for example. It means “sorry”, pronounced like “un-shill-ni” and doesn’t sound at all like the German word for “sorry” (enschuldingung, pronounced “ent-shul-deh-gung”), the language that Norwegian is supposedly based on.

I understand that hundreds of years of separation on an island that is not connected to Germany might mean that the language would change from speaker to speaker, constantly undergoing alterations and things like until it’s shaped into the confusing cluster-fuck that is the modern Norwegian language.

I shouldn’t be complaining. English is complicated; English meme culture is difficult to understand and there are so many ways that English can be warped to the extent that you’re saying the exact same thing but they mean different things depending on context. Sounds are inconsistent, they depend entirely on surrounding letters, it’s far too complicated for its own good.

Take this poem which has made its rounds on the internet:

“Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind…”

And it’s all true. Native English speakers who are constantly exposed to this strangeness become used to sounds not sounding the same, for things to be constantly changing and never having to think about what they should say next.

Kudos to Norwegian though, because of your European roots, you allow for more creative and contemplative thought, you say more with less words and allow your speakers to express their feelings using a variety of different words. In English it’s hard to express oneself the way that you really want to directly.

English speakers must use analogies and similes and things like that in order to express their emotions. In Norwegian, you can å være sint with whoever you want to, without describing how angry you are using ‘as a’ or ‘like a’, because Norwegians get it. You’re angry. Oops.

So, Norwegian, it’ll take some getting used to, but I promise I will be able to read and understand you entirely by the time I turn 25.

Maybe.

I’ll work on my spelling and pronunciation; you work on your simplicity.

And English….

We’ll get to you later.

Best wishes,

Johanna

The open letter series will be a collection of open letters...

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 18:44:08 -0400

Each open letter will discuss a different topic, in varying degrees of depth. From politics to personal issues, the Open Letter series aims to provide clarity on issues, create ideas or inspiration, or, in my case, to become a place of stress and thought relief. Nothing is safe from receiving an open letter, not telly shows or book characters, a class lesson or a provoking idea.

And so it continues: The Open Letter Series

An open letter to symbols and allusion in literature,

Dear symbols and allusion,

I hate you. When I’m reading literature, I don’t care if Shakespeare was referring to Genesis in King Lear or if Emily Bronte was referring to Hercules in Wuthering Heights.

Let’s establish the fact that I’m coming at this with the standpoint of an annoyed English student. I am very experienced with going through Shakespeare’s plays scene-by-scene, line-by-line, hyper analyzing the shit out of every single word and the symbolic meaning of Macbeth’s dreams. Having a teacher drone on about how the use of colour in some Edgar Allen Poe story reflects the passing of life or whatever does absolutely nothing for me.

I’m not the first to say that I read for pleasure. I have never taken a book and said “by jove, I think I will take this literary masterpiece and look for its symbolic, figurative diction and examine its purpose and use of allusion and the role of omnominompia in the text! (and of course such a person who would do such a thing would exhibit such a vocabulary). I will read and re read my favourite books, novels recommended by friends, bestsellers from goodreads or ones with good back sleeve plot summaries. I have absolutely no intention of ever looking at a book for its academic literary purpose.

That’s why, symbolic intent, I consider you to be an absolute waste of time. You’re a fabrication of English teacher’s imaginations when they realized that they could only teach how to write essays so many time or that all the kids in their classes already spoke and wrote English with proper grammar. You were invented for the purpose of torturing students, which means that I resent you even more as a student myself. Your purpose is to make units longer, for hands to cramp because of note writing and to be a source of paper-wasting. Truly, symbolic intent doesn’t actually matter. An author isn’t any smarter for referencing or name dropping historical people, it just makes them a big freaking nerd.

Now is usually the time where I say “symbolic intent may not be that bad, it expands kid’s imaginations”, but I’m not saying that. I could not care less about symbolic intent. The chance of a writer using symbols without being entirely happenstantial is, in my experience (which is understandably limited) highly unlikely. The only reason I can fathom as to why an author would put so much effort into symbols in literature would be in response to a poor plot or character development, giving the book an aura of prestige because those who catch onto symbolic meaning without it being explicitly stated in the text are those who are considered to be part of the literate upper class, those who read for the sake of finding symbolic or allusionary value in work.

But why are they all here? Why are there so many symbols that have been found in stories and movies?

It’s the idea of looking for something hard enough and finding it. In literature, you have to take big reaches sometimes to give things symbolic meaning. You can spin what you read in literature to how you read it, emphasising certain words and thinking that something means something else. Literature allows you that freedom and gives you opportunities to connect things to each other that don’t really make much sense at first glance (or at second glance, or third glance).

Symbolic intent, you’re entirely redundant. The fact that I need to write five page essays about you is an entire waste of time. Just think, there’s actually good literature out there, but we’re stuck reading the same novels because of its “timeless symbolism”. And English teachers wonder why so many students don’t read material.

Best wishes,

Johanna