If, at the beginning of this class, someone would have said I'd be the kind of person with multiple blogs, I'd be skeptical, but, as it turns out, I'm infected by it. After reading a blog entry by Zach Morris, I started thinking about some of the quotes I absolutely adore, words I memorize and repeat softly to myself sporadically throughout my days. There are a few which I can roll off the top of my head, but most of my favorite thoughts or phrases, jokes, etc. I keep in a book dedicated to that purpose alone. My sister always told me that I'd never look at that thing again, but I wound up using it ALL the time. When I don't know what to say, sometimes I look there. I go there for inspiration, and sometimes for strength. Other times, I go there because I have absolutely nothing better to do and a few quotes make me laugh.
I am nowhere near close to having all the words that make me feel something, anything, but I'm okay with that. These are mere snapshots, things that catch my eye or make me laugh, flashes of who I am or what I care for. After reading Zach's post, I thought I'd set up another blog dedicated just to these quotes. I'll be posting some soon and every so often later. Feel free to comment or leave quotes of your own! I'm ALWAYS looking for good ones.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
"beauty only, absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting"
"divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life"
Today in class, Professor Sexson spoke about mankind's eternal quest for beauty. He defined it in two terms: immortality and the good. Upon hearing these words, and reading this tiny passage in the Symposium, I kept flashing back to a movie I have just recently seen, American Beauty. A friend recommended I watch this, and at first I was skeptical. His movie tastes often differ from mine. Now, I am eternally grateful for his recommendation. It's more than a movie to me. It's an awakening.
I've posted a link to a monologue that...at the basest level is completely concurrent to what we talked about in class. But in the sense of the divine....this is...an eternity. The movie opened my eyes to how I see the world, giving definition to concepts I have struggled to define for quite some time. I hope that you all watch the film in its entirety, but even without doing so, these few scenes are powerful enough. They are not circumstantially bound to the contextual limitations of the film itself.
The first is the monologue I mentioned before and my favorite monologue in the movie.
The second is the very last monologue. Though it starts out circumstantially bound, the last three or four lines are...the crux of the movie, the revelation, the beginning and essence of understanding. And beautiful.
She's Mine.
"'When a man loves the beautiful, what does he love?' I answered her, 'That the beautiful may be his."
These are the words of Diotima to Socrates in the Symposium. Furthermore she says, " love may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good". The question of what love is has plagued mankind since the dawn of his creation. What does it mean, to feel something seemingly inexplicable and with power beyond our means? Love is a strange and captivating force, and we do preposterous things for our loves and our love itself. And none of us know what it means.
If we are to examine what Diotima says about the nature of loving in these lines, we can infer that to be loved is to be good. But what does that mean? We are taught that being "good" is entirely subjective, so what then does it truly mean to be "good", to be loved? Perhaps to be loved means to be seen as good in the eyes of another, our other half as Aristophanes would say. Is it true that we can only see the good in one we love?
Ditotima's words also bring up the concept of possession in love: "that the beautiful may be his." What does it mean to truly possess another, that which is good? What does it mean to say, "This is mine." The concept of possession, after all, is a strange one when one really thinks about it. We assign a part of ourselves to an object in order that it does not leave us. We are subservient to it at that point because we fear it's departure. We have all felt that tiny sense of sheer panic at the perceived departure of our cell phones or car keys. And in that moment, we seem less than what we were before, somehow bereft of concrete definition. In effect, we seek to assimilate these objects or beings outside of ourselves into our definition of who we are, into our very being. In our attempt to define these objects as "mine," however, they begin to define us. So what does it mean, really, to say a thing is ours? To be someones? As we can never truly assimilate that which is without into that which is within, the ability to own remains forever beyond our grasp; therefore, the idea of holding another as our own is but the attempt to integrate that other into ourselves as much as we can. Is this love? Maybe. Or maybe the very act of love is not that of holding as Diotima says, but of becoming.
These are the words of Diotima to Socrates in the Symposium. Furthermore she says, " love may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good". The question of what love is has plagued mankind since the dawn of his creation. What does it mean, to feel something seemingly inexplicable and with power beyond our means? Love is a strange and captivating force, and we do preposterous things for our loves and our love itself. And none of us know what it means.
If we are to examine what Diotima says about the nature of loving in these lines, we can infer that to be loved is to be good. But what does that mean? We are taught that being "good" is entirely subjective, so what then does it truly mean to be "good", to be loved? Perhaps to be loved means to be seen as good in the eyes of another, our other half as Aristophanes would say. Is it true that we can only see the good in one we love?
Ditotima's words also bring up the concept of possession in love: "that the beautiful may be his." What does it mean to truly possess another, that which is good? What does it mean to say, "This is mine." The concept of possession, after all, is a strange one when one really thinks about it. We assign a part of ourselves to an object in order that it does not leave us. We are subservient to it at that point because we fear it's departure. We have all felt that tiny sense of sheer panic at the perceived departure of our cell phones or car keys. And in that moment, we seem less than what we were before, somehow bereft of concrete definition. In effect, we seek to assimilate these objects or beings outside of ourselves into our definition of who we are, into our very being. In our attempt to define these objects as "mine," however, they begin to define us. So what does it mean, really, to say a thing is ours? To be someones? As we can never truly assimilate that which is without into that which is within, the ability to own remains forever beyond our grasp; therefore, the idea of holding another as our own is but the attempt to integrate that other into ourselves as much as we can. Is this love? Maybe. Or maybe the very act of love is not that of holding as Diotima says, but of becoming.
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