May 18th- transfer post

There’s ups, downs, and all arounds.
Parents, I love mine. A voice of reason to my often irrational thinking. Thank you God for blessing me with good parents.

Realism blossomed after the era of Romance—it was immediate response to the flowery visage, didactic fiction, organic emotionalism and imaginative interpretations. Writers like Hawthorne, Emerson, Melville, Stowe, Douglass, Thoreau, Dickinson and a personal favorite Whitman were the lead hitters for this literary genre. They were the spiritualists, writers, artists and imaginations that suspected logic and reason were not the only way to uncover spiritual truths and emphasized subjectivity, intuition, individualism, and ambiguity that delved deeper into the mysteries of human kind.

I am more inclined to relate to this era— I am attracted to the sheer romantic notion that you can view life throw your own personal rose-colored classes. I love the novelty that nature is a state of innocence, attempting to rely more on intuition than institutions and be suspicious of societal codes and tradition. I love what was born into the Romantic Era specifically Gothicism, which before now, I always associated with black eyeliner, leather boots, and wallet chains. Now it is so much more. Gothicism was born out of northern Germanic Tribes often set in ruined castles, abbeys and dungeons evoking chilling terror exploiting supernatural irrationality and fear of the unknown. I’m a natural optimist so to discover my love for this writing was surprising. But I love the idea of this sensationalist writing that tapped into the human psyche that express subconscious fears and anxieties.

Characters like the Roderick in The Fall of the House of Usher, who’s own sanity is at stake by the end or the deranged narrator in Tell Tale Heart. The fact that evil is just as close as good. It’s absolutely fascinating. I’ve always been fascinated by extremes.

I could go about the unrealistic love I have for the Romantic Era— it being unrealistic because we are well into the age of Realism. Subjectivity was axed with the attempt to represent reality as best as we could. Which is probably for the best, because as much as I love the Romantic era it has numerable flaws that will do more harm than the highlights can do good.

Realism has been the dominant mode through out the 20th – 21st century. However the peak of this thought started after the Civil war up until 1914, before WWI. Realism can be seen as generally the rebuttle to the previous movements (Romaticism, Enlightenment, Puritanism). Instead of exaggerating their fiction, Realists attempted to represent common and ordinary life and instead of illustrating abstract truths they try to achieve practical solutions to solve problems. Realism strives to be objective and factual. I respect it. I can acknowledge its purpose and the good it can do but It’s cut and dry, common, boring, just purely… plausible.

And where is the fun in that?

But here’s where my introduction ties in… My parents are the Realists to my Romanticism.

My abstract thinking creates fanciful notions to which my imagination blinds me to the fact that they are impossible to succeed in reality. As much as I hate the fact that realism shatters my glittery paradigm, ego, and innate nature I can’t live in the Romantic era forever.

You can’t succeed in your bubble of non-reality. Or can you? I always have thought it is more detrimental to yourself and your community to lead a self-centered life. Living in a self-created reality rather than acknowledging the facts at hand—acknowledging the pain, the hurt, the problems around is ignorant. Ignoring reality is selfish and eventually your selfishness will become a burden to you and those around you. You will become a stagnant block that impedes progress, forgiveness, truth, peace and love. You might not be doing any harm but you’re not doing any good either and that could be considered just as bad.

Anyways, the purpose of this rambling is that I am finally acknowledging (or at least beginning to) that I have outgrown, for lack of better words, my bubble. I am no longer comfortable living in my skewed view of reality. I feel that the lies of my bubble is stifling my growth, constricting my opportunities. And although my bubble is fun n games, comfortable, fanciful and safe where is the fun in that? Where is the challenge? Where is the adversity?

More to come sure on this topic, until then, Thanks Mom and Dad (roommate and friends) for teaching me how to intertwine realists practicalities in my innate romantic tendencies.