Waiting for Godot

I can truly understand why some people would be confused by the play “Waiting for Godot”. However, I feel like this play or story has so many meanings, I feel as if the author tries to get people to think, but the moral of the story is so obvious. I personally think the story of “Waiting for Godot” is constructed around hope, a lot like our Christian belief system. Even from the title you can draw some connection to the Christian faith and God, the title is waiting for “GODot” and if you take some time to look the first three letter of Godot’s name clearly spells out God, so it’s obvious the writer of the story is basing the story of the Christian belief. In addition to, I feel as if the two main characters in the story Vladimir and Estragon represents us as Christians and the tree is a representation of the world, we live our life as Christians waiting for God on a day to day basis, like Vladimir and Estragon we have no idea if God is real or how does he look like, but we wait on his return. We wait by this tree and many different obstacles comes our way, we sometime feel like quitting and to just go home, we sometimes face things that are so tragic that we become spiritually suicidal, however we stick around base on a young boy with a message that indicates that GODot is real and he may not come today but there is a good chance that he will be here tomorrow and we as Christians cannot make the mistake of going home and leaving the tree of the Christian faith because tomorrow GODot just may come and we will be no where to be found. I may be completely wrong about my translation of this story, but I honestly feel as if that is exactly what the author is trying to say.

Confusing Poets

Poets are very artistic individuals. So when the question rises of, do poets purposely write their poems in attempt to confuse their audience? I would have to answer "no," simply because I feel that most writers write to express their thoughts and emotions in ways that distinguish them from other poets. In every kind of art, rather music, poetry, painting, acting, and many other forms of arts, I feel that people seek for originality and we as the audience don't want to see the same things from every artist, because that would then become very redundant and for some reason our human minds can’t seem to appreciate things that we see on a regular basis or things we hear too often. So I don't think poets strive to make their writings as difficult or confusing as possible I honestly think they try to be more different than other poets. Most people strive for individuality and I strongly believe that is what makes us as people so unique. Though we were created equally in the image of God, the Lord also makes us our own person, though we may have similar ideas however, no two individuals think the same. The fact that we as people don’t think the same is what I believe constitute our uniqueness and that is why poets express their poems in ways that truly define their feelings. I also believe people find different meanings in poetry based on their ability to connect with the poem. I feel if the person is able to draw some kind of personal connection to the subject of the poem, they are then less likely to be confused with the poem, and another beautiful thing about poetry is that we have the ability to translate it in whatever way we want. The Bible for example is full of poetry however; people have found so many different meanings to writings of these poets that we now have so many different denominations based on the translation of the biblical poems.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along

During the last class session we watched the film Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along. It was a pretty good film for the most part. However, a few times during the film, the actors almost appeared as if they were trying a little too hard. During the film it was hard to differentiate between if the writer was trying to demonstrate sadness or if he was just trying to win a few good laughs. During the film Dr. horrible has this big crush on this girl that he frequently sees at the laundry mat name Penny, but he never gets to talk to her. So when he finally gets the chance to make a good impression on her, he was so busy worrying about his evil plan to steal the van, that he blew it and his plan pretty much backfire and he almost ran her over with that same van and to add insult to injury, his worst enemy Captain Hammer comes to save Penny’s life and then she finally falls in love with him. Though Captain Hammer was supposed to be the hero in the film and the good guy, he appeared to be very egocentric and acted as if he was bully. The way the writer wrote this film you begin to fall in love with Dr. Horrible, even though he is portrayed as the villain. Me personally I wanted Dr. Horrible to achieve out of this hatred I grew to have for Captain Hammer as the film continued, I was cheering for the bad guy. I found a lot of different scenes to be funny in the film, one that stood out was when Penny was introducing captain Hammer to Dr. Horrible in the laundry mat and Captain Horrible made this comment about his hammer and he came back to verify to Dr. Horrible exactly what he meant by his hammer.

Lake Bonny Park

My trip to Lake Bonny Park was very nice. The day was very windy and it was overcast throughout the whole time I was there, however I still enjoyed myself. I went there by myself so I didn’t have anyone to distract me from interaction with nature. I started this moment with nature by walking around the park and looking for anything out of the ordinary, so for the first 15 to 20 minutes I pretty much just observe everything, while also being very aware of my surrounding and watching out for snakes and gators. While observing I saw a few different types of butterflies, some were yellow some were blue and some were other colors, they were very pretty, I tried taking some pictures from my phone, but they were too fast so I couldn’t get a focus on them.
Throughout the time I was at the park, I took a few different pictures of things I thought that was interesting, some turned out pretty good and some didn’t really turn out that great. I took about 20 minutes just to meditate on some of the things that is going on in my life, I mostly thought about my plans for after I graduate in the spring and I thought about some of my relationships and what I can do to make them better. I also took time to write a poem, I would post it on this blog, but it’s not that good.
The whole time I was there I was pretty much by myself so it gave me time to do some of things that I wanted to do. It’s been a long time since I had a long conversation with God, so I felt like that was my opportunity so I took about 10 to 15 minutes just to pray to God and just thank him for all that he has brought me through this year, I also took time to listen to what God had to say. This trip to Lake Bonny Park was really nice; I got the opportunity to connect with nature on a complete different level, while taking time to have a really good conversation with God.

Praying

During the last class session we read the poem “praying” by Mary Oliver and I completely agree with this poem from the first line all the way till the last one. In the poem it basically says that prayer do not have to be a novel, it could be just “a few words patch together.” I think we as Christians sometimes think that we have to say so much to God so he can understand everything we mean, to the last detail. In doing this I think we fail to acknowledge how great God is, he already knows what we want or what we need, even before we realize it. Another line in the poem that really stuck out to me was when she said, “this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks,” I think we as Christians are very guilty of that, we sometime take prayer, especially when we are praying out loud, as some kind of contest, we try to use these big words in order to impress our peers, it seems as if sometimes we are seeking some kind of compliment from the people around us, as if we are waiting for someone to let us know that was great prayer. Another line of the poem that really spoke to me was when she said “a silence, in which another voice may speak,” this line is basically telling me that prayer is not just speaking to God. Sometimes we just need to silence our voices and listen to what God has to say to us. I have known for a while now, that a conversation requires both speaking and listening, so if we are not listening to what God is trying to tell us, the conversation “prayer” cannot work. I’m not trying to criticize people that prays out loud or that prays for a very long time, I just hope that we have the right motive behind our prayers.

The Planet

During the last class session we talked mainly about nature, we read the poem “ State of the Planet” by Robert Hass, and many of different lines from the poem stuck out to me, some of them was very confusing, but some were very interesting and got me really thinking. In the poem the poet uses the line, “As sensitive to temperature as skin is to a lover’s touch,” to describe the planet, I didn’t only find this line to be very beautiful, but also very factual. I think we sometime take for granted how perfectly well placed our planet is, we sometime don’t understand that if our planet was even a inch away or a inch closer to the sun that we would either freeze to death or burn to death. Another line in the poem says, “it must be a gift of evolution that human’s can’t sustain wonder.” This line of the poem really stuck out to me because it is so true, we as people on this planet don’t enjoy the wonder of the planet that God created for us, we some time forget that prior to Adam and Eve that this planet was created as a paradise and even post to Adam and Eve God never destroyed the world that he created. Today, we seem to be fascinated by different types of technology and we disregard different wonders, such as the rain forest and nature as a whole. It’s hard to say that technology as a whole is a bad thing, because a lot of good things come from technology, but I think it would be safe to say that we could be more careful about how we use technology and we can try to be more careful in the process, without abusing nature and the beauty of our planet.