Alankar's Blogs

  If there is anything I have learned – or maybe just something I have already known but it is strongly reinforced – from Waiting for Godot , it is that there are many perspectives to life: the helplessness portrayed by Vladimir and Estragon, the constancy in the world by Pozzo, and just the lack of casual motion by the play’s author, Samuel Beckett. Actually, I can even relate this to something I have been recently re-watching: Mr. Bean . The comedic show is about a character, Mr. Bean, who always gets himself into some sort of mess. With the few lines actually spoken, most of the show relies on Rowan Atkinson’s (the actor) awkward and unusual movements and facial expressions, which he does a fantastic job at. And it is this weirdness which makes the show so encapsulating. Rather than doing things the normal way, he always uses his quirkiness to come up with a brilliant, yet sort of stupid, solution. Whether it be exploding fireworks in a paint can to paint his room, removing th...

  I was planning on doing some creative poem, but I genuinely cannot think of anything, so this is just going to be a sort of reflection. So recently, for some mystical reason, a bunch of clips from The Looney Tunes Show started appearing in my YouTube recommendations. As a result, I just binge watched a lot of these short clips. I actually did watch the two seasons of this show when they originally aired back when I was still in elementary school; though, I originally never really thought much of the animated sitcom, which is probably why I completely forgot about its existence until recently. But, maybe because of nostalgia, as I was re-watching these highlights and small segments, I actually began to enjoy the show. So much so, that I’m planning on going through the whole show again during Spring Break. This isn’t even the only show I want to re-watch because of random clips. There’s Phineas & Ferb, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the classic Tom & Jerry cartoon. Alright, y...

                   One plays on repeat and until it is stuck in my mind The other one sticks together, so I add some milk to help the oats unbind. One is meant to motivate “till my bone collapse” While the other is supposed to be nutritional and filling so my poor eating habits don’t relapse. One of them has a flow that’s almost flawless But an hour before I play that track, I eat oatmeal which is the complete opposite as it is so gooey and disordered, it looks completely lawless. Nonetheless, they both require each other and work in tandem Like 2 touching cogs, letting me turn the peddles faster, and with that said, I’ll now end this memorandum.

  To be quite honest, poetry still has not won me over, but I will admit it has earned more of my respect. I understand how every word the poet uses is intentional: as Master Oogway would say, “there are no accidents.” And poetry definitely abides by this. But still, ever since I had to learn about the deconstructionist lens sometime around the beginning of the year, I have been continuously irked by whether I am analyzing the text the way the author intended. I guess the direct application of this analytical method in poetry would be chunking. For instance, while reading the poem for the silent seminar, how I viewed the structure, connotations, etc. of the poem affected how I chunked the poem, which in turn resulted in giving me a conclusion that was widely different than basically everyone else’s. In general, when analyzing large works, this has not been a problem, but when every word carries its own meaning, forming the specific intention the author had in mind when writing, I b...

  The process has begun A myriad of experiences I must write The process has begun The various contrasts shouldn’t seem to fight   The deadline fast approaches Procrastination – my strongest quality – fails to receive any mention The deadline fast approaches Sometimes after reading what I’ve wrote, I realize how I ignored the prompt, paralleling the Geneva Convention, you know, by making it nothing more than a suggestion*   I finally submit Waiting is all I can now do I finally submit Farewell sleepless nights energized by some coffee brew   It is inevitable The day will soon come It is inevitable To know if I have lost or have won   The future is yet to come Will I experience the internal storm “Storm Warnings” refers to?   The future is yet to come Regardless, the results I must not eschew *this is a joke

  The Hero’s Journey is something that we have all probably heard before, and something that may even seem instinctual when we see it in practice. Though, some parts of it are just really boring. For instance, in my book club group, we are reading Purple Hibiscus , and to be fair, there are some fascinating ideas – the effects of being very religious, devotion to parents, stepping into a different realm and seeing new perspectives – but ultimately, the interest sort of fades away with all the details of, what I would consider to be, unnecessary dialogue and events. There’s one other place that I’ve seen this type of occurrence regarding the Hero’s Journey: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. There is a film critic who explains it very well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeP42zUIF-c), but to quickly summarize, the Hero’s Journey is cut into half, and that first half is the first of the two Deathly Hallows movies. We see the literal journey of Harry, but we don’t see any...