In our attempts to learn a new language, we might try to synthesize all the parts of ourselves that were shattered when we built Babel. "Learn a language, get a new soul," a Czech proverb declares. Maybe deep in our psyche, we know all human language to be one.
Journal Fetish
Despite myself, I looked at these blank journals before anything else in the bookstore. The other books have already fulfilled their creative potential. They are tragically incomplete and absolute without a writer.
A Doll’s House and Mojada: Tradition, Ambition, and Being Humane
As a country, we are less compassionate and unmotivated to help others. No one kept count of the damages that kept slowly accumulating. Now, we’re paying for it—and it’s time to take a look around. I don’t think Luis Alfaro’s Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles could have come at a better time.
Protected: Alarms: Sexual Violence and Spiritual Freedom in the University – Part 2
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: Alarms: Sexual Violence and Spiritual Freedom in the University – Part 1
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Collage Compulsion: Embracing Chaos
The interaction of the components in a collage are a psychic play that is deeply personal to the artist, even if they're unaware of it.
The Tale of Peresphone
To many, Persephone is a scandalous love story about a young girl taken from her mother by an evil, dark god. Others might view it as a twisted coming of age tale, with some not-so-subtle-allusions between "womanhood," fertility, and the bright red colors of pomegranate that Persephone eats. A more promising and philosophically poignant meaning lies underneath the tale. What makes Persephone's tale so tragic is its necessity: the allure of death, and death itself, is inextricable in the continuation of life, rendering us all paradoxes in disguise. We live and thrive in our dissonances and conflicts, our beauty conceived by melancholy.
The Cuban Exile Community of Florida: Forever Full of Contradictions, Even Today.
I have always been personally fascinated with Miami. Ever since I watched all seasons of Dexter and read all three books, I investigated the cultural climate of the area, reading news articles and blogs, trying to ascertain what could produce such a violent but gripping drama. What I found were stories of trailer park revenge, of people using priceless art to smuggle drugs in their motels, of a man running into the middle of a freeway, naked, covered in peanut butter. And, more recently, a man receiving a court-ordered ban from ordering pizza ever again.
But then I discovered a strain of American history I hadn't fully explored before, evoked in the show with the beautiful string music of the Buena Vista Social Club playing as Dexter roamed through Miami on his midnight hunt. With just a few Google searches, I found a large community of Cuban-American exiles, who came to Miami to escape the Cuban Revolution.