Sup guys. Long time no see, eh?
I may have failed in updating this particular blog every day in August, but I HAVE been blogging every day in August, over at the ning. I've also kept up my end of the aforementioned collab blog (shameless self-promotion is shameless!). Really. I'm not a complete failure, I promise.
In today's FUN-FILLED Looking for Alaska-esque blog, we're going to talk about the title character: Alaska.
Even the name glistens with intrigue. Unlike Dakota or the fictional surname Montana, Alaska doesn't make me think of dry, monotonous flatland. (Sorry, Dakotas and Montana. I know you have more personality than that - but stereotypes sometimes hold my subconscious in a powerful grip...) Even my mental image of the state of Alaska is more of the icing on a cake - or the snowflakes on the ground, if you will - than a prime focus. It's certainly a tribute to John Green's writing that when I hear Alaska, my mind skips to the undefinable girl first and the northern state second...
It's also worth nothing that despite my passionate hatred (is that too harsh? Alright- very intense dislike) for Sarah Palin, I haven't thought of her in context with the book until, well, this very sentence. It's comforting to know that, unlike King Midas, she doesn't contaminate everything she touches.
I picture a tiny Alaska skittering her dust-filled fingernails over the yellowing paper surface of those slightly outdated globes as she twirls it 'round and 'round on its stand. In my mind, she's laughing as the countries speed by until they're nothing but an endless string of land, all the cultures and people toppling into one another. They're in their ethnic garb, like the kind the paper people wear on those made-for-elementary-school cartoon Earths. The girls with the braided ringlets and the raven-haired exotic dancers collapse and giggle, collapse and giggle until the bark colored furry coat wearers emerge victorious, stumbling in figure-eights as they laugh and smile and celebrate their major victory in their tiny world. And they're celebrating with Alaska: they're giving her their wide smiles and their mutual respect for each other and now they're giving her their name, her name.
I imagine as she gets older, after her own mother freezes but not from the cold, she forgets those little paper people. She fills their places with the memories of those trapped in the labyrinth, with hundreds of thousands of pages of books that she never finishes reading. I wonder how many of those hundreds of thousands of words would have told her that straight and fast is no way to get out of the labyrinth at all; that the muddle, the confusion is greatly preferable to the pain of busting out through the hedges. The pain of those she left behind, those who don't want to follow her lead and escape the labyrinth, those who would rather tangle through life until they finally, finally reach their peaceful exit.
Alaska, never content with anything less than the unexpected, doesn't freeze her own life. She pours gasoline on it and drops the match without looking back. She doesn't look where she drops the match, though, preferring to let fate decide for her. Maybe she never finds out if the match lit the blaze or if it was snuffed out by a bucket of water because she didn't stay around long enough to check. Maybe there was a moment in the car where the flames filled her eyes. I wonder if she was happy about it. I don't think she was. I don't think she was capable of being truly, completely happy. I don't think Alaska liked the fire, wanted the fire; I think she just couldn't bear the thought of being frozen, trapped in herself, like her mother. Those were the only elements she could remember: ice and fire. She forgot about the earth element, about Pudge and the Colonel and Jake. The split-decision making - her essence was her downfall, but was it really a downfall at all? She didn't make it out alive, obviously, but she died like she lived, as they say. Straight and fast.
She was only sixteen, wasn't she? Who would she have been had she survived? Would she have grown up to be a teacher? Does it matter, or is it enough to celebrate Alaska, not for what she did but for who she was - flawed, like all of us?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
First Impressions
First impressions are silly little things. You can't possibly know a person after meeting them one time. You know that. I know that. It doesn't stop your brain from filing away the supposed personality of said person FOR ALL TIME, though.
Brains cause us nothing but pain and suffering. Why we even use them is a mystery to me...
Anyway, we open Looking for Alaska and are immediately sucked into the high-thrills life of Miles Halter: the curious teenager who accepts the dismal turnout to his going-away party without wanting to kill the no-show invitees. As he says, he's not disappointed because his low expectations are met. Still, don't you find it strange that he doesn't seem to care one bit? Proof that nobody cares about you enough to wish you goodbye?
Then again, you'd have a heart attack if you were perpetually surprised by your lack of friends.
Which leads us to the question of why - why doesn't he have any friends in Florida? He seems like your average nerdy kid. Cynics may say it's for the greater good of the plot. I think it's for the sole reason that his Floridian public school isn't his "Great Perhaps" - there's nothing there for him; how can he be invested in a place of absolutely no personal importance? When you make friends, you're giving a part of yourself away. You're saying, "Here I am! You can take this little piece of me and do with it what you want!" And if they're school friends, they're going to take that little piece of you and bury it in the fibers of that school whether you like it or not.
Once Miles arrives at Culver Creek, he wastes no time in embodying my thoughts before most social outings: planning the ideal outcome of the forthcoming event out in your head. O Miles, how truly thou doth speak. Like the trailer for most summer movies, the anticipation is so much better than the real thing.
Then, because he is hot, (wordplay wordplay hahaha!), he takes a shower, like all cool kids . [That was entirely too many commas for one sentence.]
Cool. I am cool. I am MILES [expletive] HALTER and I do what I want, goddammit!
In sashays Chip Martin (henceforth "The Colonel"), whom I have always pictured as black. It wasn't until my second reading of the book that I realized that his race is never explicitly stated. This leads me to wonder why I contemplated his skin color at all and my brain once again directs me to our first impression of the Colonel: he's "short and muscular with a shock of brown hair." OHAI, first subconscious clue - brown. I don't know what this says about me, but every time a character is described as having a hair color that is dark, the movie screen in my head gives 'em dark skin.
It's the same thing with those "tall, dark, and handsome" characters. You may be referring to his hair color, but I always envision a blonde girl leading around an Eastern European man tilting his hat to cast his body into shadow.
Maybe that's strange since people often color characters with familiar traits. To be honest, I usually picture characters as being light skinned unless it's explicitly otherwise stated. (I am Polish-American on one side and English on the other, so I am pretty damn close to actually being the color white.) But... that's probably not a good habit since people aren't homogeneous.
I don't know. Race is a touchy subject. I'm going to stop talking about it now.
The Colonel is one of my favorite characters. He reminds me of Oscar the Grouch - he's, well, grouchy, but in an endearing way. And he gives Miles (henceforth "Pudge") an excellent nickname! IRONY FOR DA LULZ.
Well, this was a shamefully shit first (second) post. SORRY. What can ya do? ("Stop procrastinating," answers the voice in my head.)
I’m trying to find the right balance between straight up discussing the book and relating my own forays into human civilization. I don’t want to be like, “well, the first letter on page 32 reminds me of the time when I was asked – nay, begged – to model by no less than fourteen agencies within a time span of three hours.” Whatever my flaws may be, I’m not that unabashedly narcissistic. (And also because the only time I've ever been asked to model was at the age of eight as my mom and I were walking past a vendor on the second floor of the mall. That, dear readers, is what we call a scam.) At the same time, people don’t often like reading other people’s dissertations about The Wonders of the Elusive Motif in this Very Important Book that You Don’t Understand. Especially not when there are 30 dissertations*. All in blog form.
Of course, I did just come up with that last paragraph while trying to establish “trust eyes” with myself in front of a full-length mirror, so perhaps I’m not an expert when it comes to not be egotistical…
*I mean “dissertation” in the “formal piece of writing way,” not the “needed to obtain a doctorate degree” way; as far as I know, I am not enrolled in graduate school.
Brains cause us nothing but pain and suffering. Why we even use them is a mystery to me...
Anyway, we open Looking for Alaska and are immediately sucked into the high-thrills life of Miles Halter: the curious teenager who accepts the dismal turnout to his going-away party without wanting to kill the no-show invitees. As he says, he's not disappointed because his low expectations are met. Still, don't you find it strange that he doesn't seem to care one bit? Proof that nobody cares about you enough to wish you goodbye?
Then again, you'd have a heart attack if you were perpetually surprised by your lack of friends.
Which leads us to the question of why - why doesn't he have any friends in Florida? He seems like your average nerdy kid. Cynics may say it's for the greater good of the plot. I think it's for the sole reason that his Floridian public school isn't his "Great Perhaps" - there's nothing there for him; how can he be invested in a place of absolutely no personal importance? When you make friends, you're giving a part of yourself away. You're saying, "Here I am! You can take this little piece of me and do with it what you want!" And if they're school friends, they're going to take that little piece of you and bury it in the fibers of that school whether you like it or not.
Once Miles arrives at Culver Creek, he wastes no time in embodying my thoughts before most social outings: planning the ideal outcome of the forthcoming event out in your head. O Miles, how truly thou doth speak. Like the trailer for most summer movies, the anticipation is so much better than the real thing.
Then, because he is hot, (wordplay wordplay hahaha!), he takes a shower, like all cool kids . [That was entirely too many commas for one sentence.]
Cool. I am cool. I am MILES [expletive] HALTER and I do what I want, goddammit!
In sashays Chip Martin (henceforth "The Colonel"), whom I have always pictured as black. It wasn't until my second reading of the book that I realized that his race is never explicitly stated. This leads me to wonder why I contemplated his skin color at all and my brain once again directs me to our first impression of the Colonel: he's "short and muscular with a shock of brown hair." OHAI, first subconscious clue - brown. I don't know what this says about me, but every time a character is described as having a hair color that is dark, the movie screen in my head gives 'em dark skin.
It's the same thing with those "tall, dark, and handsome" characters. You may be referring to his hair color, but I always envision a blonde girl leading around an Eastern European man tilting his hat to cast his body into shadow.
Maybe that's strange since people often color characters with familiar traits. To be honest, I usually picture characters as being light skinned unless it's explicitly otherwise stated. (I am Polish-American on one side and English on the other, so I am pretty damn close to actually being the color white.) But... that's probably not a good habit since people aren't homogeneous.
I don't know. Race is a touchy subject. I'm going to stop talking about it now.
The Colonel is one of my favorite characters. He reminds me of Oscar the Grouch - he's, well, grouchy, but in an endearing way. And he gives Miles (henceforth "Pudge") an excellent nickname! IRONY FOR DA LULZ.
Well, this was a shamefully shit first (second) post. SORRY. What can ya do? ("Stop procrastinating," answers the voice in my head.)
I’m trying to find the right balance between straight up discussing the book and relating my own forays into human civilization. I don’t want to be like, “well, the first letter on page 32 reminds me of the time when I was asked – nay, begged – to model by no less than fourteen agencies within a time span of three hours.” Whatever my flaws may be, I’m not that unabashedly narcissistic. (And also because the only time I've ever been asked to model was at the age of eight as my mom and I were walking past a vendor on the second floor of the mall. That, dear readers, is what we call a scam.) At the same time, people don’t often like reading other people’s dissertations about The Wonders of the Elusive Motif in this Very Important Book that You Don’t Understand. Especially not when there are 30 dissertations*. All in blog form.
Of course, I did just come up with that last paragraph while trying to establish “trust eyes” with myself in front of a full-length mirror, so perhaps I’m not an expert when it comes to not be egotistical…
*I mean “dissertation” in the “formal piece of writing way,” not the “needed to obtain a doctorate degree” way; as far as I know, I am not enrolled in graduate school.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
J-Scribbles Welcomes YOU!
I can't rightfully call this an F.A.Q. [wow, did I just separate that initialism with periods? Way to be an asshole in the first post, Vita] due to the minor detail that nobody has had so much as an opportunity to ask me questions, so please proceed to my freshly assembled H.A.Q. (Hypothetically Asked Questions).
Q: What the f@*&! is this?
A: The internet!
Q: Shut up. You're not funny. You know what I mean.
A: RUDE. And yes, I know I'm not funny... jerk.
Anyway, I'm glad you asked! This is a blog! More to the point, this is a blog in which I shall discuss John Green's books, starting with Looking for Alaska.
Q: ...Why?
A: Partially because I am participating in BEDA (Blog Every Day in August) for the second year and I thought this would be an excellent way to ensure that I have something to write about every day! And partially because I adore Looking for Alaska.
Q: That sounds really boring.
A: Way to judge, alternate personality of mine. Way. To. Judge.
It won't be boring. Trust me. If things get a little dry, I know how to shake 'em up...
Like, lock your fricking doors cuz HURRICANE VITA is passing through.
Q: ...Shut up. Please. Are you John Green?
A: Given that a) I am a teenager, b) I am a girl, c) I have no real profession to speak of unless you count babysitting, d) I neither possess the name "John" nor do I possess the name "Green," e) I referred to myself as "Vita" not five paragraphs ago and f) I am unfortunately not sensitive to the wonders of nature - all evidence points to the contrary.
Also I didn't write Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, or half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. If that's what you're asking.
Q: Do you have any affiliation to John Green? The author, I mean.
A: Thanks for specifying! As my tear stained pillows and lipstick smeared J-SCRIBBLES IS DA BOMB posters indicate, I have (much to my disappointment) never met John Green. I truly hope to meet him one day, however, and if all goes well, perhaps I will someday be working alongside him as a fellow YA author --
Q: So what you're saying is, you don't have any authority to speak about John Green or his published works. None at all.
A: Well. Technically speaking, no. But! My keen interest in literature and my undying passion for his books make me as qualified as any, I think, to comment on his novels --
Q: Remember how I told you to shut up?
A: Um. Yes. Maybe we should move on.
Q: Yeah, ya think? Are you going to be posting every day?
A: Every day in August except for Mondays and Fridays when you can find me at my collab blog, Raving Persuasions. (We don't talk about John Green there... not every day of the week, at least.)
Q: Haha! Like I would want to see YOU again!
A: I hope you realize that you're not succeeding in hurting my feelings. Anything else?
Q: No. Goodbye.
A: ...Jerk.
Q: What the f@*&! is this?
A: The internet!
Q: Shut up. You're not funny. You know what I mean.
A: RUDE. And yes, I know I'm not funny... jerk.
Anyway, I'm glad you asked! This is a blog! More to the point, this is a blog in which I shall discuss John Green's books, starting with Looking for Alaska.
Q: ...Why?
A: Partially because I am participating in BEDA (Blog Every Day in August) for the second year and I thought this would be an excellent way to ensure that I have something to write about every day! And partially because I adore Looking for Alaska.
Q: That sounds really boring.
A: Way to judge, alternate personality of mine. Way. To. Judge.
It won't be boring. Trust me. If things get a little dry, I know how to shake 'em up...
Like, lock your fricking doors cuz HURRICANE VITA is passing through.
Q: ...Shut up. Please. Are you John Green?
A: Given that a) I am a teenager, b) I am a girl, c) I have no real profession to speak of unless you count babysitting, d) I neither possess the name "John" nor do I possess the name "Green," e) I referred to myself as "Vita" not five paragraphs ago and f) I am unfortunately not sensitive to the wonders of nature - all evidence points to the contrary.
Also I didn't write Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, or half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. If that's what you're asking.
Q: Do you have any affiliation to John Green? The author, I mean.
A: Thanks for specifying! As my tear stained pillows and lipstick smeared J-SCRIBBLES IS DA BOMB posters indicate, I have (much to my disappointment) never met John Green. I truly hope to meet him one day, however, and if all goes well, perhaps I will someday be working alongside him as a fellow YA author --
Q: So what you're saying is, you don't have any authority to speak about John Green or his published works. None at all.
A: Well. Technically speaking, no. But! My keen interest in literature and my undying passion for his books make me as qualified as any, I think, to comment on his novels --
Q: Remember how I told you to shut up?
A: Um. Yes. Maybe we should move on.
Q: Yeah, ya think? Are you going to be posting every day?
A: Every day in August except for Mondays and Fridays when you can find me at my collab blog, Raving Persuasions. (We don't talk about John Green there... not every day of the week, at least.)
Q: Haha! Like I would want to see YOU again!
A: I hope you realize that you're not succeeding in hurting my feelings. Anything else?
Q: No. Goodbye.
A: ...Jerk.
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