Am I a girl or am I a mold? A being with flesh and blood, but whose mind is mush, ready to to brainwashed into her making? Looking in the mirror, I see a girl with bright eyes and clean cheeks – Mother’s doing, for she always told me to be clean. I pull my skirt passed my knees and follow her rules, afraid of becoming “slut [she knows I am] so bent on becoming. How does she figure who I am too be? Treated like Cinderella, I am no longer a daughter, a sister, a person, but am a girl who is told how to smile and stare, how to wash and to seduce. There are so many wrongs that you are teaching me to prevent, but how will I know to fix the mistakes that life creates? Or is that it, that I will be a girl who never understands a mistake, because I live so calculated, so much like you? I am nothing but a girl, Mother, an adolescent who has yet to blossom into a mature woman, yet I am treated like a mature lover, learning to await her man. These are the things that make me me, yet are these the things that I am? Better yet, Mother, who are you, beneath the lessons and teaching? A woman who knows only to be the one a Baker would allow to squeeze the bread? Or are you more, frightened by the notion that a kitchen is merely a room in the house and not a prison?

One of the more interesting comparisons in Virginia Woolf’s text, Mrs. Dalloway is her connection between characters, Clarissa and Septimus. Although they never meet during the novel’s duration, they foil one another in their actions. The vendiagram below shows the similarities and differences between the two characters.

At 5:15 promptly, Chedva’s raucous alarm goes off, alerting her that the allowed amount of sleep is over. Slipping into some running gear, she follows her same routine – down the stairs, through the park, a right by the bakery, and back home once more. By 7 am, she is showered, dressed and contemplating life’s decision to invent oatmeal, the healthier breakfast option, before shrugging and reaching for the waffles.

7:45 is a rush to the B6 train along with every other Flatbush community member, yet Parker knows her so he’ll stop the bus in the middle of the street. Mother always said that a smile could go a long way. Reaching the Academy at 8:05 sharp, Chedva organizes herself and her classroom, before greeting her students and launching into her morning.

At 12:30, thoroughly exhausted, starved and in need of an espresso, she waves goodbye to Edmund, the security guard and walks down McDonald Ave. toward the ever-running F train. Up a ridiculous amount of stairs that knock the wind out of her, she finally arrives, usually just in time to have an asthma attack right before the train closes its doors.

Inhaling the combination potpourri of metro life, Chedva glances around, nodding to the man in yellow who is always on her train, at the same time, in the same car, in the same yellow shirt, everyday. Should she be worried? Suddenly its Broadway-Lafayette and it seems as if everyone needs to take the 6 train – since when did it become so popular at 2 in the afternoon? Three stops later and she’s walking under the construction site, wading through the anxious parents of the seemingly pretentious elementary school on the corner near Baruch. Left on Lexington, right into the twirling doors that give her a panic attack every time she uses them, she flashes the guard her id and a smile. There’s never a smile back, just a suspicious expression and a nod of acknowledgment. It’s 20 minutes before class, the elevator is on senior citizen speed, yet Chedva is still on-time and early, her personal favorite.

I love art. Simple. No questions there. I have always found myself marveled by a human’s ability to create something so beautiful, so unreal. Or maybe that’s just because I have zero artistic ability whatsoever. Anyways, I was really excited to go to the MoMa and see the art there since I love some of their pieces, but instead of choosing something I loved, I decided to give in to my true opinions.

Mary Heilmann’s piece, Tehachapi I and II, (I shown below) is simply a piece of canvas painted black and pink, with a filled in box in the inside. Although this piece didn’t have a price tag, her other similar pieces are selling for $5,000. Let’s backtrack for a minute – roughly $5,000 for a painting that is one color, with an alternate color block on the inside? Excuse me while I run to Michaels to purchase some materials and paint a blob.

Please don’t assume that my critics are because of my lack of knowledge in the modern art world, for I have been lectured and have studied this form of art for a long time. Yet, I always come up with the same response: this is not art. There’s nothing special nor moving or remotely life changing about this piece, yet she’s and other artists are famous for utilizing their 3 year old drawing abilities.

Since there is no information on the piece online or at the MoMa itself, I have been left to believe that if I paint circles on a piece of canvas in various colors then I can sell it for enough money to cover my rent and buy a pair of priced shoes.

Language is the powerful weapon that allows us to communicate with those around us. Yet, even with the expansive abilities that language provides, we still find ourselves lost at specific moments in our life. During moments of elation or violence, our ability to communicate becomes foreign to us. We begin to flop like a fish out of water, scrounging for a word like a blind man and his socks.

Marlene Nourbese Phillip discusses these ideas of language in her words, Discourse on a Logic of Language, a powerful poem of racism, sexism, and the inability to identify with oneself. It is evident that Phillip doesn’t consider English to be apart of her roots, but apart of the anguish her people underwent before freedom arose. By providing a masculine tone to the foreign language, she draws from the white men who oppressed her people, exploiting them. She softens her own tongue over the comforting word mother, claiming she has none, further emphasizing her inability to recognize her family tree.

This inability of recognition is similar to Frederick Douglas’ narrative, who also felt no motherly connection to his mother. “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with the much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.” (1.4) Douglas connects to Phillip through their lost identity, but also though their shared anguish on the English language. When he learned to speak English, although it opened a new world for Douglas, it also opened a burden of understand which Phillip conveys, the realism behind the life of slavery.

I really wanted to follow the format and choose one of the two “animals” that Blake uses in his poems to compare to Shelley’s Frankenstein yet I found that both of them fit so well, but also contrasted so greatly.

Blake’s, “The Lamb”, begins with a child asking this soft and gentle creature questions about its spiritual nature, such as who are you and who made you. This seemingly innocent child begins asking all of these profound questions that really correlate not only to realistic human nature, but to the questions that probably circulated The Monster’s head after his birth. Phenomenally so, the child actually answers his own questions, almost as if portraying both the child and the lamb. Yet what is most striking is that he answers back in a riddle, not giving the child a direct answer but making him consider it. I liked this as a comparison because the Monster himself had to answer his own questions of who he was and about his creator since there was no one around to do so for him.

Let’s not forget. The major contrast between the Lamb and the Monster is mainly in their physical form, for the description of there appearances couldn’t be any different. The Lamb is described as having a “tender voice” and providing “clothing of delight” from his soft wool. As we know, lambs are also generally considered soft, gentle creatures of nature. Contrastingly, Dr. Frankenstein describes his Monster as having “yellow skin [that] scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath…watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set…a shriveled complexion and straight black lips.”

But what about Blake’s “Tyger” and Frankenstein? Right off the bat, we find our first comparison – both the Monster and the Tyger are considered creatures of an “immortal hand or eye.” It is clear that Blake is saying that the animal in question is created only as a reflection of its created, something more apparent in relevancy to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, not Frankenstein. Yet, when one stops to consider Dr. Frankenstein as a monster himself for positioning himself as G-d, they can see him for another person – a man who took all that was inside of him and breathed it into another life form.

None of our answers about the Tyger’s existence and nature are answered in the poem, yet in Frankenstein, he explains his reasons for creation as the book continues. Although the Tyger seems to question evil in the world blinded by the notions of beauty (relevantly thinking as materialism), its correlation is perfect to why Frankenstein created the Monster in the first place. Although he thought he was doing something beautiful by discovering a new form of science, he actually was opening Pandora’s Box to the wickedness of secrecy. Clearly he didn’t understand the quote some things are better left hidden.

Conclusively, it’s clear that Frankenstein actually pulls strong connections to both poems by Blake, neither of the two being any stronger than the other. I believe that the strongest connection of all is actually placing the three in a venn diagram and using their equal parts to make a better point.

1.  “What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.”Walt Whitman – Song of Myself.

I chose this quote to represent my official journey from Los Angeles, CA to Brooklyn, NY. I moved here when I was 18 to attend a private college and found myself lost in a world I didn’t belong in. Think only girls and lots of flashy engagement rings while I read books and toyed with moving in with the Amazonian women. I really had no idea how I was going to survive independently in a city so unlike the one I grew up in so in essence, I launched everybody with me into an unknown world that I have come to love.

2.  “Tell a story, so that we understand why and how this world was created, who our ancestors were and where they came from, so that we understand where we are and where we may be going.” Hasif Amini – Story.

I chose this quote to represent my job as an assistant teacher for third grade girls in a Jewish academy. As a religious environment, we always stress to the students about our background and culture, who we are and where we came from. We believe that it’s within these roots that we should follow because they will show us the right path in the future.

3. “If man lack trustworthiness, it is difficult to know what he can accomplish!” Wu Cheng’en – Journey to the West.

I chose this quote to represent Baruch because it truly embodies what it means to be a student, especially in the collegiate world. If a person has been unable to find and trust themselves at this point in their life, they will always be blinded to their greatness. What I love about CUNY schools in general is that a lot of students are much older and are actually returning for a degree after spending a few years finding themselves and deciding what their accomplishments are to be. 

If we are being totally honest, The Heart Sutra was definitely a little confusing to grasp at introduction, but over time, when you stop trying so hard to digest it, it comes to you. The Heart Sutra discusses the concept of knowledge and emptiness, how one’s knowledge of emptiness is actually supposed to be extremely comforting. Excuse me if I’m wrong but I’m not exactly sure how understanding the emptiness of something is supposed to reassure me.

To me, the emptiness is almost comparative to a materialistic emptiness, that the Buddhist tradition is proving that by living in our materialist reality, we have become empty of ourselves. But who knows if that’s even right for I feel like there is a greater lesson to this Sutra that is beyond my knowledge, as if I am supposed to be empty but still full and understanding all at the same time. How paradoxical.

As for the Whitman piece, as well I was completely taken in a different direction than I assumed was intended just by the first few lines. It appeared as a love poem when he quotes that his atoms belong to him just as they belong to you, the you I assumed was his love interest. How wrong I was.

Once I read it a few times, I started to realize that this was indeed a poem about Whitman, who had decided to celebrate himself and stare at some grass while doing so. Romantic, no? He describes himself as different people, almost as if he’s reliving his maturation process. Then out of nowhere this child comes and questions the grass Whitman is clearly having a love affair with and suddenly his whole world has exploded because he has to describe everything simplistically.

Clearly both pieces were too winding and evasive to actually pinpoint their true meanings but one can guess. Yet, what really got to me is what is the point of reference between them? I’m sure there are plenty of other poems we could have placed side by side and dissected like a creature in a laboratory so why these two? Whitman clearly loves the world and is high on blades of grass we cannot begin to reach. The Heart Sutra just wants to teach everybody that they are just empty beings and once you accept that you have bitten into the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and liberated yourself.

I’m starting to believe that the only thing these two pieces have in common is that they both discuss this notion of oneself and discovering the truth behind it. I’m assuming that Whitman’s love for the world is similar to what The Heart Sutra was trying to explain but took a more twisted route in explanation. Whitman went all candlelight dinners and butterflies while The Heart Sutra embodied Poe by channeling negative energy to teach us about a lovely thing. So which is it really? Should we be celebrating ourselves or should we just agree that we are empty containers and that is the truth of all that matters?