Arielle Baer

CONSCIOUSNESS REPORT #6

(so I just remembered that last night I dreamt about posting in this blog. I can't at all remember what though...)

Last weekend I went to go see 30 Days of Night the horror flick about vampires that prey on an Alaskan town during the month when they have no sunlight. Actually it wasn't really typical horror. There weren't moments where things jumped out at you or you were wondering what was behind the door. It was suprisingly good and very beautifully made. Yeah there was a lot of blood, which I'm never good with. Like I say my sister's the doctor in the family not me. She used to watch those televised surgeries, like while she was eating dinner sometimes. I never understood her. I just get really lightheaded when I see blood and ugh, just not my thing.

Well, I was going to write about Metallica's video for One but since Dominik completely stole my thunder I guess I'll have to go in a completely different direction with this post.

The idea of the "authenticity" of the autobiography really struck me. Maybe because as an autobiography we are led to believe that this is the most authentic account we could be getting. It is the author's personal story being told, through eye witness accounts. What else could be more authentic a story? Yet a few examples were brought up in class where we see that maybe we could be giving the author too much credit on this front. Or are we?

CONSCIOUSNESS REPORT #7

Well, I was trying to come up with something to write about for this thing when I decided to just go with what's right around the corner: my birthday! (woohoo!) Tomorrow I'm turning 24. There are so many things to talk about when it comes to birthdays. Growing up I always made such a big deal out of them, I guess I still do. But more in the sense that I make sure everyone knows that it's coming. I don't generally do anything for them, I just like to have people be aware.

Then I've always had friends who basically hid in a dark, warm corner for the duration of their birthdays. I could never understand what they were afraid of. Ok, getting older can be a bit of shock but I'm completely looking forward to it. I've always been friends with kids who were older than me, everyone I work with is substantially older than me (and they make sure to remind me of it, often) so I've never been afraid of age. I actually always remember embracing it.

I don't know what's up with that cheesy 50's horror flick title, it just felt right. So here's my attempt at an autobiographical lie. I'm a horrible sleeper and to make it worse my dreams are usually terrifying and extremely realistic. My sleeping problems are really important to me, so much so that sometimes I find myself exaggerating when it comes to how little sleep I get. Though that's a difficult thing to pinpoint in general. So maybe I'm not exaggerating?

Either way we haven't really touched on sleep or dreams too much this semester and like I said it's something I'm really interested in, something that I'm constantly thinking about so I figured I'd go with that.

I had so much fun writing the autobiographical lie that I figured I'd keep going on with it. I really wanted to write something on sleep/dreams, or I guess what I called the unconscious consciousness.

I guess my major concern is can this be turned into a longer piece? I'd love to use it as the basis for my final project.

So even after our workshop I didn't really have any clue what I was going to write about. I decided to go to the central library in Jamaica (I know an actual library! how very 1995 of me) and just kind of stroll around until I found some books that interested me and consequently create a paper out of that. Amazingly it worked.

I'm going to stick with the whole dream/sleep idea but lose the Jew bit (sorry, I know you were all so fascinated by it). Instead I was thinking of writing a paper/literary essay on sleep, dreams, and insanity in literature. There are so many great examples out there from classics to contemporary - Fight Club, Macbeth, Hamlet, ok almost any Shakespear play, Alice in Wonderland, Yellow Wallpaper (maybe?), Jekyll and Hyde, and so many more

Basically I want to discuss the connection between dreams, sleep (or lack thereof) and insanity and how this is used as a literary tool. An example that popped into my head right away was from Macbeth when he can't sleep and he goes outside and sees the dagger. But is it a dagger? Is he dreaming? Is he crazy? Either way this is the point in the story where he makes the decision to kill Macbeth and alters his life forever. Also, he doesn't know for sure if the weird sisters are real or a dream. Ah, too many ideas!

Ok I realize I really need to focus this in a bit. I figure once I start writing it a more focused theory will take shape.

Aleksey Dumer's post really hit home for me. I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease when I was about 14 and now coming up on my tenth year of diagnosis I can definitely see the changes I went through with how I was able to deal with the disease through the years.