Enlightenment (lowercase “e”)

 

Hunger, thirst, lust

Desire, want, need

Aristotle from Greece, Beethoven on piano,

Voltaire through enlightenment, Pollock with cigarette

Reaching, trying to amount, achieve, attain

Without which there is nothing, unhappiness, lacking from nowhere about nothing only blackness, darkness, justified with emptiness

They who have tasted, sipped, felt, can’t let go – no

Longing, desire, insatiable hanker

Like the self-believed intellectual, nicotine addicted – apprentice alcoholic

More arrogant than Leonidas at Hell’s Gates

Criticizing, mocking and ungrateful – reaches

At last, for Aquinas

If I Can Make It there, I Can Make It Anywhere

 

All the unknowns I lusted for and drank greedily like the toddler slurps the last drops of his juice box. “Share with me your deepest secrets,” I cried.

I look to her inhabitants. They lose themselves and fall into her grasp and she takes them up like a thirsty sponge grabs fleks of water. Her awesome immensity seduces them. Potentiality and opportunity she offers and they lunge – just as they did before.

They push, they shove – grasping for the prize that would send them to oblivion. Ambition and joy, despair and sorrow shine and bleed and she has no pity or sympathy only reward.

I am on the boat and she throws waves and waves and with each onslaught the others are pitched into her darkness. She swells and convulses and I slip and fall – following.

Baudelaire has this amazing descriptive quality which I focused on imitating in this poem that I wrote about the opportunity in NYC. The poem that I took the most ideas from was “A Hemisphere In Tresses” which also seems to be talking about a city. He personifies the city and I did the same with NY. His work has many analogies and I tried to emulate this in my work.

Baudelaire also goes from first person narrative to general ideas. For instance, in the first two stanzas of “Any Where Out of the World,” the first makes statement and the second he launches into the first person. I started with first person and ended with it.

This was a very fun activity.

Sam Kelley

On page 101, Kant first discusses critical thinking and how it is a necessary daily habit and “a legacy to the Enlightenment.” This really struck me because in my life I am familiar with people who follow a political voice. The political voices are not actively involved in politics themselves but rather will digest the news that they deem relevant, translate it into their own words and then give it to their audience. Many people follow these political voices religiously and the fact is that their involvement in our political system is majorly governed by them. People trust one person more than a news source because they have the misconceived notion that there is a personal relationship between them and the political voice. Although, the truth is that these people who can dictate certain contributions in the political system most often aren’t saying the things they say because they truly believe them but because they know that they will gain higher ratings and maybe boost their viewing or listening numbers. In short, some people need to acquire their own voice rather than just trusting one person that they have been following for the past few years.

Kant’s thoughts could also apply to identity politics so rather than believing that because you fall into a certain ethnic or racial group you must vote for one person you should gain your own individualism. Both dutifully following a political voice or acting a way because you fall into a certain class or group are easy traps to fall in to but we should cultivate our critical thinking so “we become independent and skeptical adults , never carried away by mere prejudice or habit, and willing to examine all beliefs.”