You always constantly repeat yourself whether I should do this and that. Will you let me do what I want even if it is only for once? I feel like you want me to be how you want me to be. I don’t want to grow to be a person you want me to be, I want to grow as a person I would like to see myself in the future. You often accused me and tell me not to do certain things that I have never even done, like when you told me not to sing benna. “I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” Instead of telling me what can and cannot do, why you never tell me what is the reason I cannot do that. Is it for other people to see the way I behave so it will not embarrass you? or Is it for me? I cannot seem to find the answer without you telling me its wrong.

You are the person I look up to, the person I would like to ask advice from. All you can tell me is the thing that I must and mustn’t do. I am confused on how I should live my life. If I do whatever I want to do, you will tell me not to. But I want to. I want to figure out something without you telling me it’s not right, I want to learn from my mistake so i will not repeat the same mistake twice. I do not want to live on anybody’s expectation and high standard because I am just a girl.

Mrs. Dalloway was made during the time ager World War I, so this book has been considered as a war book. I did not realize this until we discuss this in class. Mrs. Dalloway has many interesting characters to discuss but Clarissa and Septimus similarity that caught me the most. From the chart above, I did not write exactly the same thing between Clarissa and Septimus. I wanted to highlight how I see them based on the book in a few words. I feel like Clarissa is the female version of Septimus, it may seem odd but Clarissa seeing the world in a “sane-way” while Septimus looking at it in an “insane way”

They question their life. Clarissa looking at it through the way she lives her life. She is very involved with the physical life, she cares about the society too much. She is engaged with the society, either throwing party and interacting with the high society. She seems to always concern about her physical appearance, I feel like she is also a little bit insecure about herself because she tries to find something wrong with herself that she can’t figure out. Clarissa is really aware of her surroundings and she tries to maintain her relationship with the society, no matter how she feels about it.

Septimus sees the world differently than Clarissa, we can say it is indeed the exact opposite. Septimus released himself from seeing the perspective of life through the physical life, and in fact he is not involved in the physical life anymore. Septimus went to war and had the guilt because he’s alive and his friends had died during the war. He stills value the society despite how he feels about the people, because he thinks a lot of them are lack of honesty and kindness. He struggles to keep up with the society and that is why he has mental problem.

I think both of them are trying to please the society and both of them are struggling with it. It may have seem that there aren’t any similarity between the two, but from the way they think and do something; I see it that they are very much alike. I can understand why Septimus look deeply through life outside the physical life because he had seen so many deaths around him. While Clarissa has to live the way she feels like she needs to do.

Menik woke up after her alarm went off and she still feel tired after working the whole day the day before. She fought that feeling because she knew she had to go to her class. She checked her phone to see how the weather was going to be, lately the weather was unpredictable. She got out of the house wishing her next neighbors were not sitting down outside because they would have said hey and she did not feel like talking. She thought, “oh its good they’re not here,” She kept on walking without really paying attention to anything and she always kept hear earphones on.  She finally got into the 85th st-forest parkway station to catch the J train. She felt tired so that most of the time if she got somewhere to seat she would just take a nap in the train, then she fell asleep. She did not really fall asleep because of the thought she would miss her stop at Canal st. to catch the 6 train, so she kept waking up as the train went by. Finally she arrived at Canal st, she always found it annoying that there was so many people there and people walk so slow, but she kept it to herself. She just kept walking and she caught the 6 train to go to 23rd st. It did not take long. When she arrived there, she felt glad that she finally got there because she did not really like the ride and just kept walking to Baruch.

I have been living in New York for a while now, I have never thought that MoMA is one of the place that I have to visit because I am not the kind of person who likes art and I never was into it. When I visited it, surprisingly there were a lot people there. I went around to see a painting that I would like to analyze, there were a lot of paintings, I truly had no idea which one to choose because all of them looked interesting. I made up my mind and I picked a painting called “Still Life with Apples” (1898) by Paul Cézanne.

When I see the painting the first thing that came to my mind was how the picture looked so natural but yet abstract. The painting looks fascinating and captivating. The way he painted it as if he sees it differently, by coloring the tablecloth in 3 different colors and it looked blurry in the edge of the table makes me wonder why he did what he did. The apples in the painting look messy, unorganized however he called it “still life” because the apples look perfectly still on its place. The apples surrounded by neutral and dark color; there is some parts where the color looks unfinished and blurry. The only things that looks bright and lively are the apples. It makes me think that he’s trying to tell us about life, how there are things that makes life even, there is the dark side and the bright side of life, there is also sadness and happiness.

The first time I watched the video, I can’t stop thinking about how she keep echoing the word “language” to “anguish.” I thought that the poem was very different from other poems that I have read and listened to. I come to realize that the poem that Philip wrote is about oppression and displacement of the slaves. When she said, “English is my father tongue,a father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language,” (Philip) this line can be connected to Frederick Douglass’ narrative. He was forced to speak english because his masters were english speakers but it is illegal to read. The way Philip read her poem makes me feel like she is unaware of her “mother tongue” because she is forced to speak her “father tongue” that she mentioned as a foreign language.  Philip tried to make us understand how its like to be born a slave, not knowing your origin, not being able to have the privileges that others have because you are a slave.

Language is a form of communication that we use everyday, it is the most common one to express ourselves. Just knowing how to speak a language is not enough; being able to read and to speak it is the privilege that the slaves back then could not have. Douglass desired to read had opened a lot of new doors for him, he managed to escape and because of that he became a free man; not only that he is a free man he also left us a great work which is his narrative.

1. “I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.” (Whitman, 16)

When I read that quote it reminds me of the first time I went to The High Line, it was magnificent on how a lot of things happen up there I can see someone who sunbath, converse, just enjoying the view of the river or even just to take pictures of the skyscraper buildings across from it. I can see from one thing to another happen in that spacious area, I can see the diversity because of so many kind of people visit it; surprisingly I do not feel suffocated because of how spacy the place is and there is so many things for me to look at and enjoy, I feel like I’m having my own space amongst the crowd.

2. “He made his companions the tiger and the lizard, the wolf and the leopard; he befriended the civet and the deer, and he called the gibbon and baboon his kin.” (Wu Cheng’en, 424)

A quote from “The Journey to the West” that I feel like I can describe about Times Square. Whenever I visit Times Square, I like how the place is. It is the heart of New York; I can say a lot of people want to visit this place. New York City is a diverse city and Times Square is the right place to see it, and the quote tells me that diversity is something important. The more kind of people, the more connection you have with one another without any limitation it will bring you to another level of success that you have never imagined before.

3. “I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.” (Whitman,1)

Central Park is the center of peace in the hectic and a crowded city; it is located in the middle of Manhattan, which makes it convenient to be visited by people. I can find my peacefulness in there, I usually read, listening to music or just enjoying the view and the greenness of it. It is so refreshing for me to be able to release all the stress that might occur in my brain and I would not even feel it until I have the time to do so.

I was not able to post my image so here’s a link for the image:

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