The Minds Torque Wrench

Hmm, what to say about this enterprise of blogging, sleeping, dreaming, and reporting? It's very interesting how Tina's presentation during the ceremony is a direct parallel to my thinking on this matter.

We all started out rather "confuzzled" and didn't know what we should be writing about in terms of details or what others might find useful or insightful when they read our dreams. It was a growing and maturing process. Over time, I must say, that I did not feel any conscious awareness of the improvement of our blogging abilities, it happened seamlessly and effortlessly.

This, I believe, is due to the level of work that everyone in the class put into their blogs, websites, and classwork. We were doing a lot of reading, research, and collaborating, which led us all to become better dream-researchers. All the wealth of knowledge that we learned, we applied, whether subconsciously or consciously to our blogs and our responses to others' blogs.

I commend everyone on their great effort. It was truly a unique learning process for me.

I had this dream when I was very young. I believe it was right after watching some scary show whose name escapes me at the moment. I think it was something along the line of : The crypt keepers horror stories?

Me and a friend are sitting in a small room in these lounge chairs reading. He is reading the yellow pages and I am reading the dictionary. There is a narrow hallway behind us and we hear a creaking noise, so he decides to get up and look. He is gone for a while so I go after him. I reach the end of the hallway and look outside the window to see a statue of a native American holding a hatchet in his right hand.

I go outside, knowing already for some reason that the statue killed my friend Luis. I throw the statue in the back of a truck and drive to a forest. I dump the statue there and drive the car back feeling relieved.

I am flying over some countryside with a village nearby. I notice a lot of odd behavior which is out of place for such scenery. There is a cow doing crop-work, cutting crops and tending to the field. There is an old man laying on his back while a rooster is pecking at his chest. I think that the old man might be dead so I swoop down to look closer. The old man is alive and rather yet, he is smiling. The area where the rooster is pecking has become bloody and continues to worsen, but the old mans smile only grows into giggles and laughter. I then woke up.

I love this web project! For some reason, I learn much better through innovative tasks such as these than I do from regular instruction. Every class should have an online web project like this instead of dozens of essays or other projects.

This project requires more work than it sounds, and it is more delicate work. A lot of factors go into the thinking behind someone's website, that is what everyone has probably realized that this point. For those who were unaware, now when they visit someone's website, they will realize the time and effort that goes into it. In addition to this, looking for images and content for websites that is appropriate for your audience is crucial.

I moderate a few online automotive enthusiast forums and this is right in my league so perhaps that is why I am so comfortable and happy about it. I wonder if others have reservations or feelings of frustration and anxiety about their web projects.

I am in a blank space, completely black. However, I can see everything. I begin coughing, and from my mouth (I know it's gross) people jump out instead of mucous. These little people begin to pile up as I continue to cough and form into a resemblance of one of my older brothers who also begins to cough. I start to feel pain from coughing but he doesn't, nor are there little people jumping out of his mouth. I fall to my knees and pass out. Then I awoke.

In this dream, I am walking onto campus after parking my car. Outside campus, everything seems normal. There are people on the street, even the street vendor is there. I walk into campus and don't see anyone, not even the security guards at the entrance. I find this odd so I start walking towards Kiely Hall. I get there and go inside, all the lights are on and doors are open, but no one is there in any of the offices. I come back outside and I wake up as I step out the door of the building.

I was unable to take the Honor's Exam. This was due to my own recklessness. I was under the impression the exam would take place in the afternoon, however the day I missed class, it was rescheduled to 10:00am. At 10:00am on the day of the exam, I was at a parent teacher conference. Tina was nice enough to call me so that I found out, but it was too late at that point for me to make it. Thank you Tina for trying! :-)

After all these English credits and honors research and hard work, I'm not as upset about missing the exam as I had thought. I am upset that I was unable to achieve Honors status or apply all the knowledge I learned on the exam, but at this point, for me to be able to graduate and go on is most important to me. From the sound of things, everyone else did well and received their honors or high honors or highest honors and I want to congratulate them on their success and continued future successes.

It was a hard lesson to learn, but I need to be on top of things more.

I'm sure everyone has dreams where they revisit a bad memory or an event that caused guilt,

When I was five, I locked my older brother in an empty barrel and then ran and hid. My dad later pulled my brother out of the barrel, hours later, almost having sufficated. I don't know what I was thinking back then and this has always caused some sort of guilt from me when I remember this event.

In my dream, this event happened and I saw my younger self locking my brother in the barrel and then running away looking very scared. After I saw myself leave, I heard my brother yelling and screaming and hitting the sides of the barrel with his hand trying to get out. I walked over to the barrel and opened it,letting him out, crying and looking scared to death.

Revisiting this dream and the event that accompanied it, I wonder how many people can still argue against the emotionally driven content of dreams and say they are meaningless. Rather, to me it is more important to consider the questions: How much of a role do memories play in dreams?

:Sigh: Such relief! I felt comfortable about the sample exam before I took it but during the exam, I sort of blanked-out several times. I either would forget the name of the piece of the author. It's so much easier thinking about these thing's when one is not under pressure. This factor of pressure changes so many things, and the only thing to do about it is to prepare that much more so that I am that much more comfortable with the results.

I was able to get more than half of the identifications correct on this sample exam, as I expected. However, the authors that were on there were of a different body than what I had imagined. Maybe I am relying too greatly on too-well-known authors to show up? I should widen my base.

In this dream, I am swimming around new york city. I have a huge robe on and my index fingers are covered in blood. I keep swimming almost as if I am in a panic to find something. I look around and all the streets are flooded with water and I see other people on the street swimming. I think to myself that maybe I am in the future after all of the global warming stuff has taken its toll, As I move around, a gigantic tidal wave comes crashing onto one of the buildings, and ariel's father (from the little mermaid) is riding the wave with his lance in hand. All the people on the bottom started to cheer and for some reason, I felt scared.

Since I was unable to attend class due to a family related hospitalization, I would like to curve this blog entry towards expectations of the exam. I think that Shakespeare will definitely show up as well as Milton. There are good chances of Dickens, Melville, Thackeray, and Chaucer of course as well. It's sort of a relief, because these classic are what I was always most interested in during my studies of English so that gives me some confidence.

I think that everyone in this class should be able to get somewhere from 40-80% of the identification correctly. Nothing we have came up with in our study guides is distant from what we have been reading in the English major curriculum at Queens College. I feel bad that I wasn't able to make it to this sample exam, but I really look forward to the next one.

In this dream, I am falling from a building very fast. I have some blood coming out of my arm. I fall flat on my face but bounce off the floor like a piece of plastic. I turn around and there is a white kangaroo looking at me. It tells me something (can't remember) that scares me and I start running. I dont have control of my right arm as I run and its dragging and hanging like a.. well... dead arm. I stop after a while of running from exhaustion and turn around, the white kangaroo is still there. He takes my arm and starts biting on it. I start to yell and scream, but I do not feel any pain. The kangaroo looks very happy, almost as if his intention was never to hurt me, and then I awoke.White

Anglo Saxon Literature:
The literature from this period comes from the middle of the 5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is written in Anglo Saxon (Old English). This period encompasses roughly 600 years. The subgenres are epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English poetry are the Kenning, an often formulaic phrase that describes one thing in terms of another, e.g. in Beowulf, the sea is called the swan's road and Litotes, a dramatic understatement employed by the author for ironic effect. There are not many works that survived this period and although we know that oftentimes these poems were sung orally in front of crowds and even had harps playing, we are unsure of other oral traditions that may have existed.
Some of the most important works of this period are:

Beowulf
(Epic, Heroic Poem)- Beowulf was written by an unknown Anglo-Saxon poet around 700 a.d. The story takes place 200 years earlier then that in 500 A.D. and it is believed that many of the characters (namely the royal families) correspond to actual historical people. Only one manuscript of the work survived the anglo-saxon era and was not widely read or distributed. It was nearly lost in the 1700’s due to a fire and was not heavily read or distributed until the 19th century.
Summary:
Beowulf, a great warrior sails to Denmark to fight a demon called Grendel to help King Hrothgar of Denmark save his kingdom. Beowulf defeats the monster with his bare hands and is seen as a hero by the king and citizens of the land. Beowulf then defeats Grendel’s mother who wishes to avenge her son’s death Beowulf goes to return to his home in Geatland. He is greeted by the king and queen and hands over most of his riches to them. Beowulf lives back in Geat and are greatly rewarded for his accomplishments. When the King and King’s son die Beowulf ascends the thrown and takes over the land. As Beowulf ages his kingdom is compromised by a fierce dragon who was disturbed by citizens. Beowulf decides to fight the dragon because his life is almost over and he feels he owes it to his people to defeat one more monster. Beowulf with the help of an aid defeats the dragon but dies by a venomous bite. His body is burned and buried overlooking the sea.
Characters
Beowulf- Geatish Warrior who slays dragons and monsters and helps his lands prosper. He is boastful of his accomplishments and Is thought of a strong and fearless warrior.
Grendel- Monster that Beowulf defeats to help restore order to Denmark. The slaying of Grendel sets Beowulf’s persona of a fearless and strong warrior.
Grendel’s Mother- Comes back to avenge Grendel’s death by killinCVg one of the King’s most important Advisors. Beowulf in turn defeats her and returns with Grendel’s severed head as a trophy
King Hrothgar – Danish King who Beowulf goes to help. He is greatful to Beowulf and treats him as a son.
Hygelac – King of Geat and Beowulf’s uncle.
The Dragon- The final battle that Beowulf wins, but loses his life in the process.

Caedmon’s Hymn-
A nine line poem written by Caedmon an English poet (the earliest known English poet). The poem praises god and uses alliteration. It is believed to be one of the earliest examples of Old English poetry and is believed to be one of the earliest examples of written Germanic language.

Writing about poetry, at least for me, has always been an easy thing to do. I may not be going about it exactly as others do but I feel that my strategy for writing about poetry was definitely good enough to get me an A+ from a teacher who said she would not give any A's at all. I choose different aspects of the poem and dedicate paragraphs to them. I organize them into separate paragraphs and they usually consist of:

-Style, what makes it unique, or what stands out, and why
-Interpretation of content
-Feeling the reader gets when reading
-Possible relevance to poet's life
-Relation to time/society
-Favorite quotes, explanations/elaborations

Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook is a good source for information on writing about poetry.

I'm at the beach, (somewhat resembles Rockaway Beach to those familiar) and I look around to see that there are literally hundreds of people around me walking into the water. I start walking with them to see what the big fuss is about. The group of people I am closest to starts pushing me into the water, pushing me to get in front of them. After some failed attempts to ward them off, I end up at the front, and behind me are thousands of faceless people, an army of beach-dwellers, walking deeper into the water, their heads fully submerged. No one is sinking or floating or swimming, everyone is walking on the floor of the water as if they were glued to it. After some time, I see a giant orange ray of light with two smaller lights to its side. The strangers next to me start licking the sea floor. I remember waking up feeling very sweaty and out of breath.