Jasmine Estevez

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid

This to me sounded like a routine the young girl had in her everyday life. “Wash the color cloths on Tuesday…. soak your little cloths right after you take them off”. Her life was boring and repetitive full of rituals which she must do properly each day. Although as I kept reading I came to realize that this short essay was about a mother telling her young girl how she was supposed to do things. She asked her a question and when the young girl answered she kept giving her a list on how things should be done and what she shouldn’t be doing. “This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming”. This quote right here I didn’t like so much. The mother is basically telling her child that she is eventually going to become a slut and in order to prevent it from happening she should hem the dress properly. The mother even tells her child how she should smile. This is what I believe is going through the child’s head:

“Mother doesn’t even give me a chance to speak. Throughout this whole lecture I am only able to get two sentences in the conversation. I am overwhelmed with all of this mother is saying. She is expecting so much from me. I haven’t even grown and experienced things on my own as much. Its as if she wants me to be perfect and make no mistakes. Come to think of it mother might of gone through these things and is now letting me know this is how this is done so I wont commit the same mistakes as herself. I still believe it’s a bit too much for me. Haven’t I already been washing cloths and speaking to boys just fine. Just let me grow and learn on my own with you as a mother protecting me and giving me advice instead of a list of things on how to do things.”

At the end I feel like the young girl disappointed her mother by asking “but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” because after all this time of her explaining what she must do to be perfect in everything she does the child still wonders if the baker would even let her touch the bread. “You mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?”, here you can see how the mother is disappointed and doesn’t believe that after all this talk she will still choose to be someone who does things wrong.

Jasmine Estevez

Woolf has constructed Mrs. Dalloway to show how the characters in the novel are interconnected. We can see it starting off with Clarissa and Peter Walsh.  At the very beginning of the novel Clarissa was about to head out to buy some flowers when she starts thinking about Peter. We are all interconnected with someone because we can hear see or even experience a new adventure and still be reminded of that one person. “Musing among the vegetables?” – was that it? – “I prefer men to cauliflowers” – was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on the terrace – Peter Walsh. Here we can see how Clarissa about to leave for flowers suddenly remembers about Peter. Clarissa then ends up bumping into Hugh and while conversing she still remembers Peter. “She could remember scene after scene at Bourton – Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber’s block.” It seems like any little scene or person she saw reminded her of Peter and the memories they had.

We then see this interconnection with Clarissa and Septimus. They are two different people who happen to have a lot in common. When being described they are said to have a bird like face. Also their views on life are very similar. They enjoy the beautiful things in life and when the accident happened they were both there very intrigued to what was going on. Clarissa and Septimus think about death in which they have no fear of. Clarissa thinks about her own death while Septimus about Evans. Although at the scene of the accident he happened to say “I will kill myself”.

In this novel everyone seems to be interconnected with Clarissa somehow.

Jasmine Estevez

Journey to School

“Goodbye Dad” Jasmine called out to her father Victor who was in the shower. She ran down the stairs and held the door wide open. “What a beautiful day it is today, oh how I wish it was summer again,” she thought to herself. Jasmine shut the door behind her and was now on her way to the seven train. While going down Junction Boulevard she always encounters Larry, who sits on a cardboard with a little cup next to him. Both his legs are missing his foot. Larry looks at Jasmine and she tries not to make eye contact, for looking at him makes her feel bad.

Once she got to the train Jasmine thought to herself how hot it was. Looking to the right she saw her train coming so she walked to the same door she always entered. “Yes a seat,” she hurried to sit down. Jasmine was going to read when she began to day dream about the guy she was with the day before. Contemplating weather, she wanted to pursue something or just stay as friends. At grand central she got off and transferred to the six train. There was this one mother who was sitting in between her two children. They all had that same light brown curly hair and she just stared at them thinking how cute and nice hair they had. At 23^rd Street Jasmine got off and headed down one block to Baruch. She looks at her time and thinks yes I’m not going to be late. Once Jasmine gets to the building door she remembers how they always ask for ID. For some reason this irritates her especially when she’s late. The struggle it is sometimes to find things in her purse. Although this one time she noticed the police guard wasn’t even checking. She then hurried to catch the elevator which happened to still be there. Jasmine gets off on the fourteenth floor and walks down to her classroom. “Good my seat isn’t taken” she thinks. After she sits she looks at her phone until its time for class to begin.

Jasmine Estevez

Pablo Picasso; Woman Plaiting Her Hair

This painting was created by Pablo Picasso in the year of 1906. It is of a woman wearing nothing. She seems to be slouched on her knees touching her hair which is really long. The painting captured my attention because she wasn’t what people would call perfect nowadays but I loved it. This is what people should look up to. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your body but love yourself the way you are. The lady in the painting doesn’t look happy nor sad. I feel like she’s in front of a mirror fixing her hair and just staring at her body. Her bottom half is fading away or probably covered with some sort of robe. All the artist is really concentrated on is her bodies top half. This painting is a great portrait of what we humans look like and are. We aren’t perfect people who sit up straight and have perfect bodies. Everyone has their own flaws and you just have to accept it or live with the disappointment. While looking at this I wondered what Pablo was thinking about when he drew this. Was this his ideal picture of a women drawn on paper. Artists I believe draw what they see or feel and maybe he knew of someone who expired him to draw this. The painting is just focused on her touching her hair meanwhile the background is just a cloudy looking color. So you don’t really care about the background when looking at Pablo’s painting but you are concentrated on her. She’s a thick woman with long hair and then you begin to think and really look into her face just to try and figure out what this painting is really portraying to us. Over all the Museum of Modern Art had many great paintings and even sculptures that I enjoyed looking at. Some just stood out to me more than the others like this painting.

“Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind ; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind ; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to.” Here in New York I live with my parents and feel like we are trapped in this one place. Until we travel to DR where we can finally feel free is what it feels like. Over there we go out so much and visit our family members. Meanwhile here in New York I barely see my family because we are all busy doing something. Either working, going to sleep, or just getting home tired wanting to fall asleep. We have to go away in order to even enjoy each others presence even more or “until we come to” like it says in the Heart of Sutra.

“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” by Whitman. Once I step onto the soil of Dominican Republic I look around and notice a big difference from New York City. Then I say to myself we are still all the same in many ways. We are all humans who breathe and talk but are just from different parts of the world. “Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same”, even though I wasn’t born in DR my parents were and as well as their parents. We all come from our parents and our parents from their own. In a way we are all the same and come from someone who was born from the Dominican Republic.

“The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has not taste of the distillation, it is odorless, it is my mouth forever, I am in love with it” by Whitman. I love this quote because it is something I always say. Here in New York people, especially kids now a days don’t enjoy the fresh outside air or even activities that can be done outside. Many kids are just busy at home playing video games or if they are outside in the park I’m pretty sure they have a cell phone in their hands. In DR you don’t see this everyone is outside, walking, talking and just enjoying what God has created. It’s so nice to just sit in front of our house and relax, have a little talk and just laugh. I just love the vibe and everything about this country.