Final Draft of An Open Collection of Thoughts

Jenny Ijoma

Nolan Chessman

GS-UY 102 D

6 August 2015

An Open Collection of Thoughts

            There is confusion in choice. The difference between one story and another is the explicit ending; the tell of a tale is how articulately the story is formed, how masterfully its conclusion is spun, like a silk web, waiting to be found. Time and again, what is assumed to occur, is different from what actually does occur; the disappointment ensued from such a bittersweet realization is often hard to fathom, to stomach, like the journey to somewhere new.

The man that climbs down these steps into the oblivion that is the burrowed subway has a goal in mind. He descends, quickly, seemingly fluid in motion, as he navigates between the estranged persons tumbling around him, from the grotesque stares and disturbing lurches at him, the clutches. Why bother to be consumed, bothered, by the faces around you? There is no value, no point, in memorizing an entity that doesn’t smile. So, in this stream of consciousness, the man boards the open doors bestowed upon him, jostled to the middle of the car by fellows more entitled than he, and soon enters the semblance of normality. Normality. Customariness. Familiarity. And his destination? As soon as he stumbles from the crevices of deep thought, he’ll have missed his stop; time to retrace his steps.

Malcolm Gladwell in the essay The Art of Failure elaborates this conventional disappointment, the denotation of an established win that’s arbitrarily highlighted by loss. To shed some light on this, take into consideration the absence of thought. Whereas a step-by-step guide detailing the twists and turns to get from point A to point B may prove useful in some sense of the word, “human beings... falter under pressure” so much to the point that when equipped with the tools to withstand any and all form of failure, submit to said failure, unexpectedly (Gladwell). Take the magnifying glass closer. What is failure if it is personified by the varying perspectives around a person? What is it if it differs from person to person?

For this reason, it can be viewed as an attempt, and righteously so. To fumble, to mess up, are all synonyms of failure, sugar coated for the more sensitive to hearing. Despite the faltering escape from such a mundane event, one must come into the thinking that this is a reality that encompasses all people. I screw up, I miss deadlines, I slip upstairs, and I fall, fanatically imagining it was a fabulous fail, but most definitely an embarrassment to all involved. My mindset? I aim for perfection, I lay in wake for the next opportunity to do better than the last time, better than my better, but perfection, like failure, is relative to every entity involved and “the distinction between these two states is critical”, like choking and panicking, and it creates an almost irrefutable, ironic disparity, that while the two could be polar opposites, the degree of difference is almost laughable (Gladwell).

This idealistic perfection is unreachable and creates a large topic of concern, for when our choices are consumed for an impossible end goal, that goal slowly but surely becomes invisible. We can take this form of unattainable perfection and pine it under a warmer light. In Jonathon Franzen’s essay Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts there is a clear focus on what such a fanatical perfection will give the user; any attempt to subjugate another person to a watered down form of empathy, commonly referred to as love, is a distorted idea, when in fact the watered down substance you then produce is the self-induced “like” embodied within “a person defined by a desperation to be liked”, lacking “integrity…, a center” (Franzen). This perfection is “less of a victory” when compared to true, daunting effort that failures, that flaws ensue (Gladwell). If our unreliable success is from the impeding need to be perfect, then our failure should therefore be a catalyst of acceptance for our imperfection.

The film The Five Obstructions, directed by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, pillars this belief, as time and time again a single piece of work is ripped and torn at to be turned into something different but almost equally fervent. What is an idea if not a string of thoughts that are seemingly coherent? And if a thought is mutated in a way, turned blue to the air of change, what would one make of the idea? Is it different, its inner workings holding the skeleton of something strange, or is it the same, because essentially the colours were never a cause of concern for the thinker?  The work recreated is the film The Perfect Man but its essence stays the same; the idea is that no matter how bountifully profitable something can be, its essence can remain in whatever is derived from it, no matter if that work is redone with different people, different places, or different equipment. An idea is mine whether it is colourized, cut and paste, laughed at, or ignored; it bares my name, my fruition, and any and all apparently evident creativity nestled within the burrows of my mind.

And this creativity is a pawn. In the essay Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle, this creativity is marked by an excursion from the beauty of the hummingbird, its magnificent abilities and star potential, to the realization of something much more sublime, something so grotesquely and beautifully human. Despite age giving our minds time to grieve on the truth inkling within our cores the knowledge that “all hearts [even ours]… are bruised and scarred”, afraid to feel for fear of lack acknowledgement (Doyle). This, is the gateway to self-destruction because from the fear to bear our weakest selves, our hearts, brings resentment, no better shown than on our faces, for if I have to lie to another how collected I am for them to better accept who I am then it shows “[I’ve] been despaired of being loved for who [I] truly [am]”, a person capable of so much more than being a face on a screen (Franzen). For who am I but just another person fully capable of the same failures as the person to the side of me, another face on this screen, each perfectly imperfect in all the same, odd ways.

When we compare ourselves, each despairingly different, we collect the similarities we find amusing, the features we wish to highlight upon in a new entity, this we call perfection. In walks an entity possessing fewer blemishes than what another has; jealousy is produced. From the get-go, we are creatures of habits, stalking our prey, watching their ways, pouncing when opportunity arises, often breaking the bounds we create to protect ourselves in order to get to something greater. The times settle in of the occasions in which I found myself dreading the frown that would sit in my face as I peered at what new picture the mirror would show next. I would jab my fingers into my cheeks and push upwards, tricking my mind into the few milliseconds of delight that would make a clown weep. I can physically feel jealousy, compare me to the creatures in heeled feet the stalk the streets like the falcons of the sky. I can emotionally feel jealousy, stray away from the petite, the beautiful, but compare me to living gazelles, their beautiful two toned coats, far more richer, in perspective, than me.

If jealousy is the product from the obvious and outrageous failure to achieve unreachable perfection, then there should not be much a surprise when it arises; jealousy is a poignant being that lives on the irrefutable belief that a person can attain anything they wish to attain when that isn’t possible. So much time is wasted for the heart to simply to be hit and start crumbling down “in an instant” when in the time it spent saving “its heartbeats” for the perfect opportunity to open itself, it could have realized it was no better off than any other part made entirely of flesh, pumping within (Doyle). There is far too much disparity in the augmented perfection in the sky and its success and the lesser inadequacy along the stones we walk along and its unsatisfactory failure.

We shouldn’t hold our hands up for the ball that won’t come. If there is truth to Gladwell’s and Franzen's words, then the beauty we wholeheartedly look for within ourselves comes from the mistakes that we make, the unapparent journey to the finish line waiting for us to cross; there is this existential route in which we embark in order to find something we like about ourselves, that I love about myself, and it’s one that is more than profitable, that although there is no perfect answer to this, there is an acceptable one. There are a motley of different crossings and passes we can make, but the track is circular, its finite, and it’ll be crossed one way or another, with your knowledge or without. Take in stride the beauty found within the journeys― all the new things you’ll see.

Works Cited

Doyle, Brian. "Joyas Voladoras." Joyas Voladoras. The American Scholar, 12 June 2012. 
          Web. 2 Aug. 2015.

Franzen, Jonathan. "Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts." The New York Times. The 
          New York Times, 28 May 2011. Web. 2 Aug. 2015.

Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Art of Failure." Gladwell.com. Gladwell.com, 21 Aug. 2000. 
          Web. 2 Aug. 2015.

The Five Obstructions. Koch Vision Entertainment, 2003. Film.

Draft 2 of An Open Collection of Thoughts

The changes that I’ve made between drafts 1 and 2 ultimately have not been much. I did not receive much if any feedback on where my essay was going other than it was alright in the sense that it was purely just a work I was elaborating upon, an idea that with more additional information, I expanded a few ideas in a seemingly coherent paper. I will search for more opportunities to revise my essay, but I don’t believe there was much to change right now. The reverse outline I made did show some discerning key terms between paragraphs, but the central idea is still highly prevalent through the entirety of my paper.

An Open Collection of Thoughts

            There is confusion in choice. The difference between one story and another is the explicit ending; the tell of a tale is how articulately the story is formed, how masterfully its conclusion is spun, like a silk web, waiting to be found. Time and again, what is assumed to occur, is different from what occurs; the disappointment ensued from such a bittersweet realization is often hard to fathom, to stomach, like the journey to somewhere new.

The man that climbs down these steps into the oblivion that is the burrowed subway has a goal in mind. He descends, quickly, seemingly fluid in motion, as he navigates between the estranged persons tumbling around him, from the grotesque stares and disturbing lurches at him, his character. Why bother to be consumed by the faces around you? There is no value, no point, in memorizing an entity that doesn’t smile. So, in this stream of consciousness, the man boards the open doors bestowed upon him, jostled to the middle of the car by fellows more entitled than he, and soon enters the semblance of normality. Normality. Customariness. Familiarity. And his destination? As soon as he stumbles from the crevices of deep thought, he’ll have missed his stop; time to retrace his steps.

Malcolm Gladwell in the essay The Art of Failure elaborates this conventional disappointment, the denotation of an established win that’s arbitrarily highlighted by loss. To shed some light on this, take into consideration the absence of thought. Whereas a step-by-step guide detailing the twists and turns to get from point A to point B may prove useful in some sense of the word, “human beings... falter under pressure” so much to the point that when equipped with the tools to withstand any and all form of failure, submit to said failure, unexpectedly (Gladwell). Take the magnifying glass closer. What is failure if it is personified by the varying perspectives around a person? What is it if it differs from person to person?

For this reason, it can be viewed as an attempt, and righteously so. To fumble, to mess up, are all synonyms of failure, sugar coated for the more sensitive to hearing. Despite the faltering escape from such a mundane event, one must come into the thinking that this is a reality that encompasses all people. I screw up, I miss deadlines, I slip upstairs, and I fall, fanatically imagining it was a fabulous fail, but most definitely an embarrassment to all involved. My mindset? I aim for perfection, I lay in wake for the next opportunity to do better than the last time, better than my better, but perfection, like failure, is relative to every entity involved, “the distinction between these two states is critical”, like choking and panicking, and it creates an almost irrefutable, ironic disparity, that while the two could be polar opposites, the degree of difference is almost laughable (Gladwell).

This idealistic perfection is unreachable and creates a large topic of concern, for when our choices are consumed for an impossible end goal, that goal slowly but surely becomes invisible. We can take this form of unattainable perfection and pine it under a warmer light. In Jonathon Franzen’s essay Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts there is a clear focus on what such a fanatical perfection will give the user; any attempt to subjugate another person to a watered down form of empathy, commonly referred to as love, is a distorted idea, when in fact the watered down substance you then produce is the self-induced “like” embodied within “a person defined by a desperation to be liked”, lacking “integrity…, a center” (Franzen). This perfection is “less of a victory” when compared to true, daunting effort (Gladwell). If our unreliable success is from the impeding need to be perfect, then our failure should therefore be a catalyst of acceptance for our imperfection.

The film The Five Obstructions, directed by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, pillars this belief, as time and time again a single piece of work is ripped and torn at to be turned into something different but almost equally fervent. What is an idea if not a string of thoughts that are seemingly coherent? And if a thought mutated in a way, turned blue to the air of change, what would one make of the idea? Is it different, its inner workings holding the skeleton of something strange, or is it the same, because essentially the colours were never a cause of concern for the thinker?  The work recreated  is The Perfect Man but its essence stays the same; the idea is that no matter how bountifully profitable something can be, its essence can remain in whatever is derived from it, no matter if that work is redone with different people, different places, or different equipment. An idea is mine whether it is colourized, cut and paste, laughed at, or ignored; it bares my name, my fruition, and any and all apparently evident creativity nestled within the burrows of my mind.

And this creativity is a pawn. In the essay Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle, this creativity is marked by an excursion from the beauty of the hummingbird, its magnificent abilities and star potential, to the realization of something much more sublime, something so grotesquely and beautifully human. Despite age giving our minds time to grieve on the truth inkling within our cores the knowledge that “all hearts [even ours]… are bruised and scarred”, afraid to feel for fear of lack acknowledgement (Doyle). This is the gateway to self-destruction because from the fear to bear our weakest selves, our hearts, comes in the form resentment, no better shown than on our faces, for if I have to lie to another how collected I am for them to better accept who I am then it shows “[I’ve] been despaired of being loved for who [I] truly [am]”, a person capable of so much more than being a face on a screen (Franzen). For who am I but just another person full capable of the same failures as the person to the side of me, another face on the screen, each perfectly imperfect in all the same, odd ways.

When we compare ourselves, each despairingly different, we collect the similarities we find amusing, the features we wish to highlight upon in a new entity, this we call perfection. In walks an entity possessing fewer blemishes than what another has; jealousy is produced. From the get-go, we are creatures of habits, stalking our prey, watching their ways, pouncing when opportunity arises, often breaking the bounds we create to protect ourselves in order to get to something greater. I feel this commonplace in my mind often. The times settle in of the occasions in which I found myself dreading the frown that would sit in my face as I peered at what new picture the mirror would show next. I would jab my fingers into my cheeks and push upwards, tricking my mind into the few milliseconds of delight that would make a clown weep. I can physically feel jealousy, compare me to the creatures in heeled feet the stalk the streets like the falcons of the sky. I can emotionally feel jealousy, stray away from the petite, the beautiful, but compare me to living gazelles, their beautiful two toned coats, far more richer, in perspective, than me.

If jealousy is the product from the obvious and outrageous failure to achieve unreachable perfection, then there should not be much a surprise when it arises; jealousy is a poignant being that lives on the irrefutable belief that a person can attain anything they wish to attain when that isn’t possible. So much time is wasted for the heart to simply to be hit and start crumbling down “in an instant” when in the time it spent saving “its heartbeats” for the perfect opportunity to open itself, it could have realized it was no better off than any other part made entirely of flesh, pumping within (Doyle). There is far too much disparity in the augmented perfection in the sky and its success and the lesser inadequacy along the stones we walk along and its disappoint failure.

We shouldn’t hold our hands up for the ball that won’t come. If there is truth to Gladwell’s words, then the beauty we wholeheartedly look for within ourselves comes from the mistakes that we make, the unapparent journey to the finish line waiting for us to cross; but if I’m seeing correctly, then Franzen is also right, the route in which we embark in order to find something we like about ourselves, that I love about myself, is one that is more than profitable, that although there is no perfect answer, there is an acceptable one. There are a motley of different crossings and findings we can make, but the track is circular, its finite, and it’ll be crossed one way or another, with your knowledge or without. Take in stride the beauty found within the journeys― all the new things you’ll see.

Reverse Outline of Draft of An Open Collection of Thoughts

Here is the link to my reverse outline of my draft of An Open Collection of Thoughts:

https://docs.google.com/a/nyu.edu/document/d/1x-7FH61KoCUfJQvi7DtahcTrXjsR7GIDqzLb6S4GYcM/edit?usp=sharing

Draft 1 of An Open Collection of Thoughts

An Open Collection of Thoughts

            There is confusion in choice. The difference between one story and another is the explicit ending; the tell of a tale is how articulately the story is formed, how masterfully its conclusion is spun, like a silk web, waiting to be found. Time and again, what is assumed to occur, is different from what occurs; the disappointment ensued from such a bittersweet realization is often hard to fathom, to stomach, like the journey to somewhere new.

The man that climbs down these steps into the oblivion that is the burrowed subway has a goal in mind. He descends, quickly, seemingly fluid in motion, as he navigates between the estranged persons tumbling around him, from the grotesque stares and disturbing lurches at him, his character. Why bother to be consumed by the faces around you? There is no value, no point, in memorizing an entity that doesn’t smile. So, in this stream of consciousness, the man boards the open doors bestowed upon him, jostled to the middle of the car by fellows more entitled than he, and soon enters the semblance of normality. Normality. Customariness. Familiarity. And his destination? As soon as he stumbles from the crevices of deep thought, he’ll have missed his stop; time to retrace his steps.

Malcolm Gladwell in the essay The Art of Failure elaborates this conventional disappointment, the denotation of an established win that’s arbitrarily highlighted by loss. To shed some light on this, take into consideration the absence of thought. Whereas a step-by-step guide detailing the twists and turns to get from point A to point B may prove useful in some sense of the word, “human beings... falter under pressure” so much to the point that when equipped with the tools to withstand any and all form of failure, submit to said failure, unexpectedly (Gladwell). Take the magnifying glass closer. What is failure if it is personified by the varying perspectives around a person? What is it if it differs from person to person?

For this reason, it can be viewed as an attempt, and righteously so. To fumble, to mess up, are all synonyms of failure, sugar coated for the more sensitive to hearing. Despite the faltering escape from such a mundane event, one must come into the thinking that this is a reality that encompasses all people. I screw up, I miss deadlines, I slip upstairs, and I fall, fanatically imagining it was a fabulous fail, but most definitely an embarrassment to all involved. My mindset? I aim for perfection, I lay in wake for the next opportunity to do better than the last time, better than my better, but perfection, like failure, is relative to every entity involved, “the distinction between these two states is critical”, like choking and panicking, and it creates an almost irrefutable, ironic disparity, that while the two could be polar opposites, the degree of difference is almost laughable (Gladwell).

This idealistic perfection is unreachable and creates a large topic of concern, for when our choices are consumed for an impossible end goal, that goal slowly but surely becomes invisible. We can take this form of unattainable perfection and pine it under a warmer light. In Jonathon Franzen’s essay Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts there is a clear focus on what such a fanatical perfection will give the user; any attempt to subjugate another person to a watered down form of empathy, commonly referred to as love, is a distorted idea, when in fact the watered down substance you then produce is the self-induced “like” embodied within “a person defined by a desperation to be liked”, lacking “integrity…, a center” (Franzen). This perfection is “less of a victory” when compared to true, daunting effort (Gladwell). If our unreliable success is from the impeding need to be perfect, then our failure should therefore be a catalyst of acceptance for our imperfection.

The film The Five Obstructions, directed by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, pillars this belief, as time and time again a single piece of work is ripped and torn at to be turned into something different but almost equally fervent. What is an idea if not a string of thoughts that are seemingly coherent? And if a thought mutated in a way, turned blue to the air of change, what would one make of the idea? Is it different, its inner workings holding the skeleton of something strange, or is it the same, because essentially the colours were never a cause of concern for the thinker?  The work recreated  is The Perfect Man but its essence stays the same; the idea is that no matter how bountifully profitable something can be, its essence can remain in whatever is derived from it, no matter if that work is redone with different people, different places, or different equipment. An idea is mine whether it is colourized, cut and paste, laughed at, or ignored; it bares my name, my fruition, and any and all apparently evident creativity nestled within the burrows of my mind.

And this creativity is a pawn. In the essay Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle, this creativity is marked by an excursion from the beauty of the hummingbird, its magnificent abilities and star potential, to the realization of something much more sublime, something so grotesquely and beautifully human. Despite age giving our minds time to grieve on the truth inkling within our cores the knowledge that “all hearts [even ours]… are bruised and scarred”, afraid to feel for fear of lack acknowledgement (Doyle). This is the gateway to self-destruction because from the fear to bear our weakest selves, our hearts, comes in the form resentment, no better shown than on our faces, for if I have to lie to another how collected I am for them to better accept who I am then it shows “[I’ve] been despaired of being loved for who [I] truly [am]”, a person capable of so much more than being a face on a screen (Franzen). I? A person full capable of the same failures as the person to the side of me, another face on the screen, each perfectly imperfect in all the same, odd ways.

When we compare ourselves, each despairingly different, we collect the similarities we find amusing, the features we wish to highlight upon in a new entity, this we call perfection. In walks an entity possessing fewer blemishes than what another has; jealousy is produced. From the get-go, we are creatures of habits, stalking our prey, watching their ways, pouncing when opportunity arises, often breaking the bounds we create to protect ourselves in order to get to something greater. I feel this commonplace in my mind often. The times settle in of the occasions in which I found myself dreading the frown that would sit in my face as I peered at what new picture the mirror would show next. I would jab my fingers into my cheeks and push upwards, tricking my mind into the few milliseconds of delight that would make a clown weep. I can physically feel jealousy, compare me to the creatures in heeled feet the stalk the streets like the falcons of the sky. I can emotionally feel jealousy, stray away from the petite, the beautiful, but compare me to living gazelles, their beautiful two toned coats, far more richer, in perspective, than me.

If jealousy is the product from the obvious and outrageous failure to achieve unreachable perfection, then there should not be much a surprise when it arises; jealousy is a poignant being that lives on the irrefutable belief that a person can attain anything they wish to attain when that isn’t possible. So much time is wasted for the heart to simply to be hit and start crumbling down “in an instant” when in the time it spent saving “its heartbeats” for the perfect opportunity to open itself, it could have realized it was no better off than any other part made entirely of flesh, pumping within (Doyle). There is far too much disparity in the augmented perfection in the sky and its success and the lesser inadequacy along the stones we walk along.

We shouldn’t hold our hands up for the ball that won’t come. If there is truth to Gladwell’s words, then the beauty we wholeheartedly look for within ourselves comes from the mistakes that we make, the unapparent journey to the finish line waiting for us to cross; but Franzen causes me to see, the route in which we embark in order to find something we like about ourselves, that I love about myself, is one that is more than profitable, that although there is no perfect answer, there is an acceptable one. There are a motley of different crossings and findings we can make, but the track is circular, its finite, and it’ll be crossed one way or another, with your knowledge or without. Take in stride the beauty found within the journeys― all the new things you’ll see.

An Open Collection of Thoughts (Reflection)

An Open Collection of Thoughts

 Because a bulk of this realization for this post is similar to the last, there is an addendum to it at the end. From my previous essay “Nostalgic Irony”, I decided to expand upon the moment that personified the idea of living ideas. My mind is a jungle, the limbs of trees, thoughts, stretching far and wide, creating their own canopy. It’s a bit of a struggle to narrow onto a specific tree, a certain branch, a single leaf. This moment primarily focuses on wishes from said ideas I have inside of myself.

In this second essay, I really want to push the envelope. I have the capabilities to make an essay that is at least mostly comprehensible and abstract to the point of wowing another, including myself ironically, but I personally feel like I lack a certain form of coherence that I see from other mentor texts seen throughout the course. I want to elaborate on this moment so much so that I create something if not equal then better than my first essay.

In my first essay I used the essays Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle and Here is New York by E.B. White, and while I’m not completely certain which essay I feel the most comfortable incorporating over the other, Here is New York was the center focus of my last essay, so I feel that I will be steering away from any potential danger of not completing the point of the second essay: find a new idea. Joyas Voladoras then is a good fit, but in regards to the new essays we have available to us, I will try to embed the essays The Art of Failure by Malcolm Gladwell, because it paints a rather splendid image of trial and error that I feel works with my moment, and Language Choice by Young-Jin Park, because of its many personal testimonies. I also feel like I could try to incorporate the film The Five Obstructions because the method of recreation is another underlying theme within this new essay (although it isn’t precisely the main focus).

The bulk of my second essay is still in the process of being writing. My paper will try to begin with a very vivid introduction of a car driving through a winding road to reach a far destination or someone boarding a train to get off at a stop that the end up missing and work back to get where they need to be. This introduction will help personify the journey of reaching a conclusion whilst elaborating the moment I picked that’s about fluttering thoughts (i.e. “try this, go wherever”). The middle of the essay, other than introducing the previous texts and films I wish to incorporate, will foreshadow the central focus of the paper, and have a clear ending that I hope will be in likeness to my first essay.

Foundation of Second Essay

My thoughts, putrid birds flying onto my shoulder tops, would chirp their inner songs urging me to fulfill the tiniest wants: get lost here, find this, try that, and go wherever.

From my previous essay “Nostalgic Irony”, I decided to expand upon the moment that personified the idea of living ideas. My mind is a jungle, the limbs of trees, thoughts, stretching far and wide, creating their own canopy. It’s a bit of a struggle to narrow onto a specific tree, a certain branch, a single leaf. This moment primarily focuses on wishes from said ideas I have inside of myself.

In this second essay, I really want to push the envelope. I have the capabilities to make an essay that is at least mostly comprehensible and abstract to the point of wowing another, including myself ironically, but I personally feel like I lack a certain form of coherence that I see from other mentor texts seen throughout the course. I want to elaborate on this moment so much so that I create something if not equal then better than my first essay.

In my first essay I used the essays Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle and Here is New York by E.B. White, and while I’m not completely certain which essay I feel the most comfortable incorporating over the other, Here is New York was the center focus of my last essay, so I feel that I will be steering away from any potential danger of not completing the point of the second essay: find a new idea. Joyas Voladoras then is a good fit, but in regards to the new essays we have available to us, I will try to embed the essays The Art of Failure by Malcolm Gladwell, because it paints a rather splendid image of trial and error that I feel works with my moment, and Language Choice by Young-Jin Park, because of its many personal testimonies. I also feel like I could try to incorporate the film The Five Obstructions because the method of recreation is another underlying theme within this new essay (although it isn’t precisely the main focus).

The Definition of Success (Response to The Art of Failure and How I Hacked My Brain with Adderall)

“Human beings sometimes falter under pressure. Pilots crash and divers drown. Under the glare of competition, basketball players cannot find the basket and golfers cannot find the pin.”

“We live in an age obsessed with success, with documenting the myriad ways by which talented people overcome challenges and obstacles.”

“We have to learn that sometimes a poor performance reflects not the innate ability of the performer but the complexion of the audience; and that sometimes a poor test score is the sign not of a poor student but of a good one.”

(The Art of Failure)

 “It's kind of like going to the pharmacist, complaining of having Mystery AIDS, the flu, and erectile dysfunction, and getting one single pill to cure them all, but the pill is actually no pills at all.”

“Going a little furthur I’d say it's a duty to think actively about how we can use medicine and technology to expand the limits of our knowledge, to define new paradigms of information that will help everyone deal with an explosion of knowledge that no one in the world knows how to deal with.”

“All of this, of course, is one person's perspective. Your mileage will certainly vary drastically.”

(How I Hacked My Brain with Adderall)

The Definition of Success

                We spin, endlessly, infinitely, and seemingly limitlessly. The world, filled with beings that possess the ability to talk and walk, ought to have some form of clear disambiguation when it comes to the end result of an action. In said action, competition is produced when two people want to judge which action wins out over the other; rivalry is elementary. Pit these people against each other to produce the idea of success, explicit or implied. How do you judge a person for how well they do? The status of a product produced is relative; because it’s not finite, no single person can discern how successful a particular thing or action is.

                I grasp things differently. When I was about eleven years old, I understood what failure was completely. I was taking a vocabulary quiz with other students in my class and I proceeded to cheat off the kid next to me in an effort to avoid getting a failing grade that I’d have to bring home to my father. You don’t just bring back that sort of news; it’s the sort of news best felt, specifically in the rear. I was going to cheat, I did cheat, and I got caught so laughingly easily I can remember the snickering by the other children in the room when I was written up by my teacher.

                There was a particular sting in the air as a felt the note being drafted up. Perhaps, if Malcolm Gladwell’s piece The Art in Failure holds truth to the perception in success and failure in the world today, then, yes, “human beings sometimes falter under pressure” so much to the point we don’t just stumble. We fall. A lot. This is because of what drives us. Instead of wanting to merely complete a task, we seek out to do the 110% to feel a form of validation that’s practically alien to explain. But, by Trent Wolbe’s How I Hacked My Brain with Adderall a laughable tale about drug use to awaken the brain to new possibilities, this desire to succeed, and do all we can to succeed, is subjective, it’s all “one’s perspective” and that perspective varies greatly from person to person. Holding a person accountable to the idea of a form of success set in place by another is trying to copycat perfection, which isn’t possible by any means.

                Many turn to the use of other things to achieve their success and while “medicine and technology [can] expand the limits of our knowledge” this limit should be broken through the self, rather than through alternative means; success comes in many shapes and sizes, in different colours and forms, but a “poor performance. . . reflects the complexion of the audience” meaning that before we go about judging others on what they do we must first ask ourselves what we’re capable of individually; we cannot go about asking for what we can’t do.

Turning from the Mirror (Response to Liking is for Cowards and The Wedding Toast I'll Never Give)

We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all… Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.

(Liking is for Cowards)

He summed it up as: “Life is suffering — and yet.”

There is perfection only in death.

But there is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.

(The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give)

Turning from the Mirror

          It’s underlying. It swims below the surface. There is an obsessive beauty in doing a certain action or method the right way. This could be a set of instructions for building a unit to be used, or an even greater ordeal. There is a primitive want within the individual to do things a specific way because it’s what they’ve been structured to do or what they want to make sure to avoid in the future.

          The text itself comes and sits at a table, facing one another. They exchange thoughts and ideas, coming to the idea of a shared notion between the two; be it known that because “there is perfection in death”, a MOE from Ada Calhoun’s The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give, it is insane to realize simply how idolized humans have become over the idea of perfection. When there is an inability to do so, be perfect, conflict arises, despite the fact that we as social beings find acceptance through a network between each other, as Jonathon Franzen says in Liking is for Cowards, so that perfection is as unreachable as the level of actual satisfaction that can be received from likes on social media.

          But if we want to find unity together, why is it so easy for us to be strewn apart like forgotten child’s toys in a playroom? Ready to buy a new object to become fixated upon?

          Modern America has the plight of the pursuit of happiness. It has its own misconstrued concepts, but the overall idea provides a gross paradox upon the subject of love: if you aren’t happy with the person you find yourself with, leave them to go try again with another. If that doesn’t work out for you, go and try again. And again. We are sickeningly seeking out to please what we see reflected in the mirror despite realizing that there are beings around us just as deserving, if not more so, of genuine love, empathy, and kindness. If “life is suffering”, then why do we try to isolate our minds into the thought that we must suffer alone? That no one around us could possibly understand what could be going on within our heads. (We aren’t that special.) We must try to preserve the relationships we have for the fear of losing them is an evident possibility; we must always try despite the possibility of utter failure that can actually come about from such an attempt.

Final Draft of Nostalgic Irony

Jenny Ijoma

Nolan Chessman

GS-UY 102 D

22 July 2015

Nostalgic Irony

The body is a vessel. It’s marvelous, it’s a room. There is a singular noise to be heard from said room, a particular beating driven from such a place that has the largest capacity, the largest potential, to do practically anything. But it beats. It drives you, the individual, to a destination unknown to you, so eloquently, so exquisitely. Do all you can to ensure you are content with where you end up.

A goldfish will die in saltwater. Its body isn’t equipped to handle it. It serves its purpose in a different setting, it wants to live where it’s comfortable; it will flock to what its cells feel compatible with, a thought so realistically unfamiliar to the body as a whole, like a secret language every entity dances to. Think of the latent forlorn feeling of losing your place. This experience washes over the train of thought you have, it overwhelms it to the point of derailing it. Where are you?

I blink. The familiar street corner that appeared in front of me through the only window available now shows gallant buildings constantly being worked on, the furthest one advertising a lottery. My night sky, pale and empty, has its own idea. It shines bright, geometrically illuminating as far as I can see through these frames. The city is different. Its unfamiliarity to me is as obvious as a candle in a dark room; in the work Here is New York by E.B. White there is a large elaboration to the scenic mystery of the city of New York; I fail to hear “Manhattan’s breathing”, as E.B. White says, its vitality that of a person with inner workings, thoughts, desires.

My mind zooms to home, or what was. I blame my upbringing. There is a terrifying disparity between fantasy and reality; it pains me to feel the almost bittersweet comfort in the honesty of the city that is to many that arrive “to escape, not face, reality”. My home, a two story structure, built like a cot made to withstand the test of time, now a room in a building that reminds me of the Empire State Building. My fences are gone, now a clever mix of concrete and glass, and while White is right, there is a particular reason as to why this city is the “destination… the goal” despite being built on practical contempt. If you want invisibility, you’re in the best place. Your face, forgettable, thanks to the city’s “gift of privacy” and insulated individuality.

Sometimes I relay to myself, in hindsight this probably was not the best decision, and other times I remember the sobering feeling of sobbing on a sidewalk corner feeling lost, all in place, in mind, and in time. The city has a beautiful ability to “[compress] all life, all races and breeds, into [such] a small island” that subdues the few, but strangely many, quips and whims the mind seems to have when it lurches at the possibility that perhaps “it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow” and you feel important, rather than irrelevant, and pointless. But if the “price of [your] ambition is a life closer to death”, as Brian Doyle says from the work Doyas Voladoras, a literature work abstractly spinning upon knowledge of the hummingbird, then perhaps there is joy to be had when living in the fast lane, that there’s a form of happiness that can be somehow successfully derived from its “forlornness or forsakenness”, by White’s terms. How awful it must be to not fully comprehend, to have to balance between the unreasonable destruction or fulfillment of an individual in such a stunning place that nearly hand delivers “spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale”.

Dreams and desires are equivalent to each other: when deferred they have the uttermost potential to have our “hearts grow cold”, as Doyle says. Potential is the key word. Whether one wants a new job or another wants to go to a new place, there are risks, there are always risks. You quit your job. You sell your home. Human beings are so interesting; how is it a person can honestly be happy spending their precious “two billion heartbeats” living a life they are comfortable with changing on a dime? With the flick of a wrist, the thought of change plants itself in your head, it grows and suffers, taut for nutrition, and in sensing its thirst for the sun, blooms within your eyes with the target it originally had for you.

I flew over a thousand miles into the bright light. It was gorgeous distraction to the distraught feeling that consumed my insides. I had longed for the chance to start over, to get an opportunity to leave where I had grown up, and home paled in comparison of the city. Suburbia, the wishy washy idea of balancing residency with a side of big city dreams, never prepared me for the environment I walked in on. The stereotype was true. As I walked within a crowd of motley individuals consumed with their own lives, I wore a cloak of invisibility. There was a scary air filled with the “gift of privacy” and utter abandonment that could render a person practically senseless.

I wanted so much for the cliché. I wanted to laugh instantaneously with a stranger and end up becoming their confidant, their friend. I wanted to bump into the man of my dreams on the street, share a conversation, and continuously pinch myself as I asked myself whether the experience was real and truly happening right before me. I so wished for a chance to be so immersed with my surroundings on a journey elsewhere that I find myself in an abandoned library of sorts and just ooze and pour at the bounty of literature right before me. My thoughts, putrid birds flying onto my shoulder tops, would chirp their inner songs urging me to fulfill the tiniest wants: get lost here, find this, try that, and go wherever.

Freedom was never a choice for me. From a young age until I found myself in college, my parents enforced the strict understanding that my life was not my own. How does a caged bird fully embrace an open door? Is it too afraid to fly out, for fear of the unknown, or does it leave, completely and entirely hopeful that its life will get better, that everything ultimately gets better?

If deferred dreams dry in the sun only to float away in the wind, turning into specs of dust, as Langston Hughes says in the work Harlem, then we must recognize that we are “utterly open with no one in the end”, as Doyle states, and to make our dreams an actuality, no matter where they may possibly take us, be it across the street, in a car, or on a plane. These actions will get a reaction, and that reaction is the insurance of a “rejuvenation” so plentiful it will creep into the corners of your mind that hid away the childish urges to cater to your heart’s quirks, to whatever possibly allowed you to be happy instead of the ordinary humdrum that you fell accustomed into living.

Maybe life is supposed to be lived in parts, each relatable but somehow independent of each other. Yet that relationship bridges the gaps we have within ourselves, it builds the foundations of who we are to each other and to ourselves. Where you arise from will compose you, you are scripted letter by letter from the humble beginnings of your youth or the extravagance you felt upon your face every morning as a child. As you step away from this, be it from maturity or anything else, your independence, your freedom, will be scarred from the cage from which it left. It will fly to new heights, and do what it wants, what it’s always wanted to do.

The city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you to try to horribly fall into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and unrealistic. Yet take joy in it. Find the happiness, find a form of happiness, in any way you possibly can. There is such a loveliness to the neglected thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from living a dream, not matter how extravagant. Take matters into your hands instead of dwelling on the possibilities that can arise from an idea; take an idea and put it into action.

Works Cited

Doyle, Brian. "Joyas Volardores." The American Scholar. The American Scholar, 12 June 2012.

Web. 16 July 2015.

Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 1951. Web. 19 July 2015.

White, E.B. "Here Is New York." Here Is New York, E.B. White (1949). Travel Studies, 1949.

Web. 16 July 2015.

Draft 2 of Nostalgic Irony

Between drafts 1 and 2, I’ve made a few changes. My essay overall, lacked a focus on the main idea, so there is an additional conclusion near the end that better ties to the idea of the relationship between home and the individual, and how that can possibly affect one’s freedom when they are gone and what they will do with that freedom. Other than the additional paragraph, I proofread once more for clarity and changes the sentence structure of a few phrases, and then I made sure to credit mentions for the A Dream Deferred poem by Langston Hughes. Overall, these changes add tremendously to the point of the essay, which is to bridge together the text to myself and construct a work relatable to not only myself but the reader.

The body is a vessel. It’s marvelous, it’s a room. There is a singular noise to be heard from said room, a particular beating driven from such a place that has the largest capacity, the largest potential, to do practically anything. But it beats. It drives you, the individual, to a destination unknown to you, so eloquently, so exquisitely. Do all you can to ensure you are content with where you end up.

A goldfish will die in saltwater. Its body isn’t equipped to handle it. It serves its purpose in a different setting, it wants to live where it’s comfortable; it will flock to what its cells feel compatible with, a thought so realistically unfamiliar to the body as a whole, like a secret language every entity dances to. Think of the latent forlorn feeling of losing your place. This experience washes over the train of thought you have, it overwhelms it to the point of derailing it. Where are you?

I blink. The familiar street corner that appeared in front of me through the only window available now shows gallant buildings constantly being worked on, the furthest one advertising a lottery. My night sky, pale and empty, has its own idea. It shines bright, geometrically illuminating as far as I can see through these frames. The city is different. Its unfamiliarity to me is as obvious as a candle in a dark room; I fail to hear “Manhattan’s breathing”, as E.B. White says, its vitality that of a person with inner workings, thoughts, desires.

My mind zooms to home, or what was. I blame my upbringing. There is a terrifying disparity between fantasy and reality; it pains me to feel the almost bittersweet comfort in the honesty of the city that is to many that arrive “to escape, not face, reality”. My home, a two story structure, built like a cot made to withstand the test of time, now a room in a building that reminds me of the Empire State Building. My fences are gone, now a clever mix of concrete and glass, and while White is right, there is a particular reason as to why this city is the “destination… the goal” despite being built on practical contempt. If you want invisibility, you’re in the best place. Your face, forgettable, thanks to the city’s “gift of privacy” and insulated individuality.

Sometimes I relay to myself, in hindsight this probably was not the best decision, and other times I remember the sobering feeling of sobbing on a sidewalk corner feeling lost, all in place, in mind, and in time. The city has a beautiful ability to “[compress] all life, all races and breeds, into [such] a small island” that subdues the few, but strangely many, quips and whims the mind seems to have when it lurches at the possibility that perhaps “it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow” and you feel important, rather than irrelevant, and pointless. But if the “price of [your] ambition is a life closer to death”, as Brian Doyle says, then perhaps there is joy to be had when living in the fast lane, that there’s a form of happiness that can be somehow successfully derived from its “forlornness or forsakenness”, by White’s terms. How awful it must be to not fully comprehend, to have to balance between the unreasonable destruction or fulfillment of an individual in such a stunning place that nearly hand delivers “spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale”.

Dreams and desires are equivalent to each other: when deferred they have the uttermost potential to have our “hearts grow cold”, as Doyle says. Potential is the key word. Whether one wants a new job or another wants to go to a new place, there are risks, there are always risks. You quit your job. You sell your home. Human beings are so interesting; how is it a person can honestly be happy spending their precious “two billion heartbeats” living a life they are comfortable with changing on a dime? With the flick of a wrist, the thought of change plants itself in your head, it grows and suffers, taut for nutrition, and in sensing its thirst for the sun, blooms within your eyes with the target it originally had for you.

I flew over a thousand miles into the bright light. It was gorgeous distraction to the distraught feeling that consumed my insides. I had longed for the chance to start over, to get an opportunity to leave where I had grown up, and home paled in comparison of the city. Suburbia, the wishy washy idea of balancing residency with a side of big city dreams, never prepared me for the environment I walked in on. The stereotype was true. As I walked within a crowd of motley individuals consumed with their own lives, I wore a cloak of invisibility. There was a scary air filled with the “gift of privacy” and utter abandonment that could render a person practically senseless.

I wanted so much for the cliché. I wanted to laugh instantaneously with a stranger and end up becoming their confidant, their friend. I wanted to bump into the man of my dreams on the street, share a conversation, and continuously pinch myself as I asked myself whether the experience was real and truly happening right before me. I so wished for a chance to be so immersed with my surroundings on a journey elsewhere that I find myself in an abandoned library of sorts and just ooze and pour at the bounty of literature right before me. My thoughts, putrid birds flying onto my shoulder tops, would chirp their inner songs urging me to fulfill the tiniest wants: get lost here, find this, try that, and go wherever.

Freedom was never a choice for me. From a young age until I found myself in college, my parents enforced the strict understanding that my life was not my own. How does a caged bird fully embrace an open door? Is it too afraid to fly out, for fear of the unknown, or does it leave, completely and entirely hopeful that its life will get better, that everything ultimately gets better?

If deferred dreams dry in the sun only to float away in the wind, turning into specs of dust, as Langston Hughes says, then we must recognize that we are “utterly open with no one in the end”, as Doyle states, and to make our dreams an actuality, no matter where they may possibly take us, be it across the street, in a car, or on a plane. These actions will get a reaction, and that reaction is the insurance of a “rejuvenation” so plentiful it will creep into the corners of your mind that hid away the childish urges to cater to your heart’s quirks, to whatever possibly allowed you to be happy instead of the ordinary humdrum that you fell accustomed into living.

Maybe life is supposed to be lived in parts, each relatable but somehow independent of each other. Yet that relationship bridges the gaps we have within ourselves, it builds the foundations of who we are to each other and to ourselves. Where you arise from will compose you, you are scripted letter by letter from the humble beginnings of your youth or the extravagance you felt upon your face every morning as a child. As you step away from this, whether from maturity, your independence, your freedom, will be scarred from the cage from which it left. It will fly to new heights, and do what it wants, what it’s always wanted to do.

The city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you to try to horribly fall into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and unrealistic. Yet take joy in it. Find the happiness, find a form of happiness, in any way you possibly can. There is such a loveliness to the neglected thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from living a dream, not matter how extravagant. Take matters into your hands instead of dwelling on the possibilities that can arise from an idea; take an idea and put it into action.

Reverse Outline of Draft of Nostalgic Irony

Here is the link to my draft of Nostalgic Irony:

https://docs.google.com/a/nyu.edu/document/d/1xCzUvdcp6sL1lvbYf2jRO18PolU5Z99qWiPrtjeVVQM/edit?usp=sharing

Draft 1 of Nostalgic Irony

Nostalgic Irony

The body is a vessel. It’s marvelous, it’s a room. There is a singular noise to be heard from said room, a particular beating driven from such a place that has the largest capacity, the largest potential, to do practically anything. But it beats. It drives you, the individual, to a destination unknown to you, so eloquently, so exquisitely. Do all you can to ensure you are content with where you end up.

A goldfish will die in saltwater. Its body isn’t equipped to handle it. It serves its purpose in a different setting, it wants to live where it’s comfortable; it will flock to what its cells feel compatible with, a thought so realistically unfamiliar to the body as a whole, like a secret language every entity dances to. Think of the latent forlorn feeling of losing your place. This experience washes over the train of thought you have, it overwhelms it to the point of derailing it. Where are you?

I blink. The familiar street corner that appeared in front of me through the only window available now shows gallant buildings constantly being worked on, the furthest one advertising a lottery. My night sky, pale and empty, has its own idea. It shines bright, geometrically illuminating as far as I can see through these frames. The city is different. Its unfamiliarity to me is as obvious as a candle in a dark room; I fail to hear “Manhattan’s breathing”, as E.B. White says, its vitality that of a person with inner workings, thoughts, desires.

My mind zooms to home, or what was. I blame my upbringing. There is a terrifying disparity between fantasy and reality; it pains me to feel the almost bittersweet comfort in the honesty of the city that is many arrive “to escape, not face, reality”. My home, a two story structure, built like a cot made to withstand the test of time, now a room in a building that reminds me of the Empire State Building. My fences are gone, now a clever mix of concrete and glass, and while White is right, there is a particular reason as to why this city is the “destination… the goal” despite being built on practical contempt. If you want invisibility, you’re in the best place. Your face, forgettable, thanks to the city’s “gift of privacy” and insulated individuality.

Sometimes I relay to myself, in hindsight this probably was not the best decision, and other times I remember the sobering feeling of sobbing on a sidewalk corner feeling lost, all in place, in mind, and in time. The city has a beautiful ability to “[compress] all life, all races and breeds, into [such] a small island” that subdues the few, but strangely many, quips and whims the mind seems to have when it lurches at the possibility that perhaps “it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow” and you feel important, rather than irrelevant, and pointless. But if the “price of [your] ambition is a life closer to death”, as Brian Doyle says, then perhaps there is joy to be had when living in the fast lane, that there’s a form of happiness that can be somehow successfully derived from its “forlornness or forsakenness”, by White’s terms. How awful it must be to not fully comprehend, to have to balance between the unreasonable destruction or fulfillment of an individual in such a stunning place that almost hand delivers “spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale”.

Dreams and desires are equivalent to each other: when deferred they have the uttermost potential to have our “hearts grow cold”, as Doyle says. Potential is the key word. Whether one wants a new job or another wants to go to a new place, there are risks, there are always risks. You quit your job. You sell your home. Human beings are so interesting; how is it a person can honestly be happy spending their precious “two billion heartbeats” living a life they are comfortable with changing on a dime? With the flick of a wrist, the thought of change plants itself in your head, it grows and suffers, taut for nutrition, and in sensing its thirst for the sun, blooms within your eyes with the target it originally had for you.

I flew over a thousand miles into the bright light. It was gorgeous distraction to the distraught feeling that consumed my insides. I had longed for the chance to start over, to get an opportunity to leave where I had grown up, and home paled in comparison of the city. Suburbia, the wishy washy idea of balancing residency with a side of big city dreams, never prepared me for the environment I walked in on. The stereotype was true. As I walked within a crowd of motley individuals consumed with their own lives, I wore a cloak of invisibility. There was a scary air filled with the “gift of privacy” and utter abandonment that could render a person practically senseless.

I wanted so much for the cliché. I wanted to laugh instantaneously with a stranger and end up becoming their confidant, their friend. I wanted to bump into the man of dreams on the street, share a conversation, and continuously pinch myself as I asked myself whether the experience was real and truly happening right before me. I so wished for a chance to be so immersed with my surroundings on a journey elsewhere that I find myself in an abandoned library of sorts and just ooze and pour of the bounty of literature right before me. My thoughts, putrid birds flying onto my shoulder tops, would chirp their inner songs urging me to fulfill the tiniest wants: get lost here, find this, try that, and go wherever.

Freedom was never a choice for me. From a young age until I found myself in college, my parents enforced the strict understanding that my life was not my own. How does a caged bird fully embrace an open door? Is it too afraid to fly out, for fear of the unknown, or does it leave, completely and entirely hopeful that its life will get better, that everything ultimately gets better?

If deferred dreams dry in the sun only to float away in the wind, turning into specs of dust, then we must recognize that we are “utterly open with no one in the end”, as Doyle states, and to make our dreams an actuality, no matter where they may possibly take us, but it across the street, in a car, or on a plane. These actions will get a reaction, and that reaction is the insurance of “rejuvenation” so plentiful it will creep into the corners of your mind that hid away the childish urges to cater to your heart’s quirks, to whatever possibly allowed you to be happy instead of the ordinary humdrum that you fell accustomed into living.

The city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you too try to horribly fall into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and unrealistic. Yet take joy in it. Find the happiness, find a form of happiness, in any way you possibly can. There is such a loveliness to the neglected thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from living a dream, not matter how extravagant. Take matters into your hands instead of dwelling on the possibilities that can arise from an idea; take an idea and put it into action.

Idea of Essay 1

“Ingredients” in Essay

·         Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle

The significance of this ingredient is the emotional connection it creates. It imposes pathos, feelings, that allow for an alienated piece of work to have feelings as well.

·         Here is New York by E.B. White

The significance of this ingredient is the idea of the city, New York, and its almost satirical description through the eyes of a person who has lived within its walls to experience the life it can give.

·         Personal Experience

The significance of this ingredient is the honesty in the life I’ve lived and the experiences I’ve had.

Paragraph for Tying Together Essay of Ingredients

The city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you too try to horribly fall into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and unrealistic. Yet take joy in it. Find the happiness, find a form of happiness, in any way you possibly can. There is such a loveliness to the neglected thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from living a dream, not matter how extravagant.

Letter to Lisa Nieto

The body is a vessel. It’s marvelous, it’s a room. There is a singular noise to be heard from said room, a particular beating driven from such a place that has the largest capacity, the largest potential, to do practically anything. But it beats. It drives you, the individual, to a destination unknown to you, so eloquently, so exquisitely. Do all you can to ensure you are content with where you end up. The work Here is New York by E.B. White and Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle build upon each other, through a series of pathos that can be integrated into feelings the city of New York may ensue upon an individual that finds themselves within its walls.

A goldfish will die in saltwater. Its body isn’t equipped to handle it. It serves its purpose in a different setting, it wants to live where it’s comfortable; it will flock to what its cells feel compatible with, a thought so realistically unfamiliar to the body as a whole, like a secret language every entity dances to. Think of the latent forlorn feeling of losing your place. This experience washes over the train of thought you have, it overwhelms it to the point of derailing it. Where are you?

I blink. The familiar street corner that appeared in front of me through the only window available now shows gallant buildings constantly being worked on, the furthest one advertising a lottery. My night sky, pale and empty, has its own idea. It shines bright, geometrically illuminating as far as I can see through these frames. The city is different. Its unfamiliarity to me is as obvious as a candle in a dark room; I fail to hear “Manhattan’s breathing”, as E.B. White says, its vitality that of a person with inner workings, thoughts, desires.

My mind zooms to home, or what was. I blame my upbringing. There is a terrifying disparity between fantasy and reality; it pains me to feel the almost bittersweet comfort in the honesty of the city that is many arrive “to escape, not face, reality”. My home, a two story structure, built like a cot made to withstand the test of time, now a room in a building that reminds me of the Empire State Building. My fences are gone, now a clever mix of concrete and glass, and while White is right, there is a particular reason as to why this city is the “destination… the goal” despite being built on practical contempt. If you want invisibility, you’re in the best place. Your face, forgettable, thanks to the city’s “gift of privacy” and insulated individuality.

Sometimes I relay to myself, in hindsight this probably was not the best decision, and other times I remember the sobering feeling of sobbing on a sidewalk corner feeling lost, all in place, in mind, and in time. The city has a beautiful ability to “[compress] all life, all races and breeds, into [such] a small island” that subdues the few, but strangely many, quips and whims the mind seems to have when it lurches at the possibility that perhaps “it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow” and you feel important, rather than irrelevant, and pointless. But if the “price of [your] ambition is a life closer to death”, as Brian Doyle says, then perhaps there is joy to be had when living in the fast lane, that there’s a form of happiness that can be somehow successfully derived from its “forlornness or forsakenness”, by White’s terms. How awful it must be to not fully comprehend, to have to balance between the unreasonable destruction or fulfillment of an individual in such a stunning place that almost hand delivers “spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale”.

Dreams and desires are equivalent to each other: when deferred they have the uttermost potential to have our “hearts grow cold”, as Doyle says. Potential is the key word. Whether one wants a new job or another wants to go to a new place, there are risks, there are always risks. You quit your job. You sell your home. Human beings are so interesting; how is it a person can honestly be happy spending their precious “two billion heartbeats” living a life they are comfortable with changing on a dime? With the flick of a wrist, the thought of change plants itself in your head, it grows and suffers, taut for nutrition, and in sensing its thirst for the sun, blooms within your eyes with the target it originally had for you.

If deferred dreams dry in the sun only to float away in the wind, turning into specs of dust, then we must recognize that we are “utterly open with no one in the end”, as Doyle states, and to make our dreams an actuality, no matter where they may possibly take us, but it across the street, in a car, or on a plane. These actions will get a reaction, and that reaction is the insurance of “rejuvenation” so plentiful it will creep into the corners of your mind that hid away the childish urges to cater to your heart’s quirks, to whatever possibly allowed you to be happy instead of the ordinary humdrum that you fell accustomed into living.

The city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you too try to horribly fall into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and unrealistic. Through that awareness, find yourself more fortunate than the ones around you that lack the same head; there is such a loveliness to the neglected thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from living a dream, not matter how extravagant.