Pictures Be True

This is the picture that I brought on Wednesday. My family and I were at some fishy part of Disney World, and, of course, the parents had to document every single moment of it. As my dad points for us to look at the camera, we smile—and it got me mid-blink. I remember my dad telling me he caught that shark and gave it to Disney because he's a good man. With childhood innocence, my sister and I believed. What father lies to their kids?

To me, this is how I remember that moment, how my mother captured the three of us in a happy time.

Susan Sontag disagrees. She claims, "one never understands anything from a photograph," and I can see where she is coming from. If some random person saw this picture, would they get the story that I experienced? Even for me, the memory is vague in my mind: I have no idea who took the picture; I have no idea if my eyes are closed or just small; I have no idea if my dad said he donated the shark to Disney. I'm "[filling] in the blanks." I can understand Sontag's argument that "functioning takes place in time and must be explained in time."

However, I wouldn't call all of this "mental pollution." I would not say that photographs prevents us from seeing the open skies. Sure, they can be "a semblance of knowledge, a semblance of wisdom," but they can incite action. Doesn't Sarah Mclachlan's commercial prove that? Since its airing, it raised $30 million for ASPCA. Photographs are triggers to memories, to feelings, to experiences. There is more to "the world"—"reality"—than the aesthetics.

I Don't Even Know

We all have that one friend: he has the varsity sport, the presidential authority, and those indescribable good looks. If high school was like nature, Darwin would praise him for being the best; if high school was like a religion, he would be our deity. And everyone doesn't stop talking about him; he actually doesn't need to brag about himself because every other person will do it for him.

"Did you hear? He got the best score."

"Yesterday, he saved a kitten, dog, pig, ... from a burning building."

Of course, everyone loves hearing this stuff—it's great inspiration of what we could have been. When college decisions start to come out and we see that he got into some prestigious university, we'll be happy for him. It's another thing we can all talk about. We won't be jealous at all because we've built this guy to be the best—we knew this was coming. Everyone bragged about him, complimenting every single achievement, supporting him after he already succeeded.

I'll be happy for him too—but I think there are better things to worry about. Sometimes, I think that people get so engrossed in other's works, comparing their achievements to their peers, that they lose sight of their own prize. High school is a lot of pressure, where we truly see the hierarchy of intelligence, athletics, etc., but everyone has their own path to follow. Walking down someone else's, discussing the latest test scores or essay grades, won't get you where you want to go.

Society's Believe It or Not

Figure 1

I have my qualms with the banana. It's too soft for my liking, and the taste is, at best, unique. Sometimes, I'd eat four bananas in a day, while for the next two months I wouldn't touch one. Is it even a fruit? It doesn't have any seeds to produce other banana-giving life. This is why I have trust issues. Recently, I found out the yellow fruit we call the banana, that long, soft byproduct of some tree, isn't even real. 

As seen in Figure 1, this is a wild banana. It's smaller and, somehow, in some unnatural way,  contains seeds to continue the banana bloodline. Only through human intervention, the domestication of the fruit eight thousand years ago, that thing sitting on our counter is not of Nature. We've neutered the banana, ridding its seeds for convenience. It's ironic that we advertise the all-natural banana as something untouched by the pesticides we've created, as if one could walk into the tropics and pick a pure, luscious—seedless—banana. Human-kind has broken Nature's beauty, mangling it into its own image.

I can relate to Chet Raymo's reaction to genetic engineering: it does give a "sense of foreboding" (9). The banana is proof that "a gene is potentially immortal" (10), that there should be something to be uneasy about, and impossible to revert back to purity. We see the wild banana above as odd, a hoax; we are accustomed to the unreal than the natural. The world that I live in is ultimately a synthetic one, a "spooky Frankensteinian quality" (10), unsure what is wild or some patched-up gene experiment. Even for the "unconquerable" (1) Okefenokee Swamp, we can't be certain if this swamp has been spotless of human hands.

It is as Raymo warns: "The unexamined quest for knowledge is hemmed with peril" (11). Step one was the banana, but years from now, who knows what else (flying pigs, the Loch Ness Monster, etc.) we will see as Nature's picture.

Puzzle Paragraph 1

Once upon a time, we slept, unaware of the "pitiful privilege" (44-45) happening between our deep breaths. And as Jesus begged his disciples to stay up with him before his crucifixion, Florence Kelley presses us to do the same: to stay up with her against child labor and fight for women suffrage. Nearly everyone, mostly of women, at the suffrage convention had to be invigorated by Kelley's speech; knowing most of her audience are the caretakers of their families, she uses her pathos to make child labor laws an idea worth supporting. Her rhetoric appeals to her audience's emotions, like her first sentence, the statistic that "we have . . . two million children . . . who are earning their own bread" (1-2). This is plainly backwards. These kids, capable of more than factory work, are the ones supporting their families; they are the ones that keeping their family afloat "while we sleep" (29). Even today, this is overall taboo—a disgrace. Kelley wants us to stop seeing the pink elephants, to think everything is all right as we topple into bed and knock out through the work shift. "For the sake of the children (92), sober up because there is a battle to be fought. 

Action-Reaction

For the woman in "Black Men and Public Space," is there anything wrong with her response? There is always that slim chance she would get jumped in that "mean, impoverished section of Chicago" (1), and I honestly see nothing wrong with the woman "[picking] up her pace" (1) and dashing out of a possibly dangerous situation. Brent Staples, the author of the piece, even admits he is "indistinguishable from the muggers . . . from the surrounding ghetto" (2). Hypothetically, if the person behind the woman is white instead of black, still tall with "a beard and billowing hair" (1), would she act the same? Unless someone follows her around, no one knows, not even Brent Staples.

Yet, there is no denying the social stigma attached to black people. Staples is consistently battered by a fake reputation that he unwillingly has to endure, like the scene at the office (8) and dog incident at the jewelry store (9). What can Staples do to cleanse this stigma? What can he do to change a person's instant reaction? That woman won't just stop being careful because there is always a slight risk no one wants to take.

That's why Staples "smother[s] the rage" (11); he "whistle[s] melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi" (12). At the moment, there seems to be no way around the generalizations except to adapt to it. The best option is to let the stigma peter out.

League of Dad-Legends

Jealous?

I wouldn't say the relationship between my father and me is physical; it's more along the lines of digital. 

If anyone knows me, I am Korean. And we all know what "sport" Koreans are known for: my people are amazing at video games. From what I hear, there is a huge gaming addiction there. It's so bad that Korea had to place a Shutdown law (also known as the Cinderella law) where kids under the age of sixteen are not allowed to play games from midnight to six in the morning. But nonetheless, my dad and I embrace our culture, cry over Kim Yuna's silver medal, and go on the computer to play some games. 

He never plays with me but watches me press some keys and get some pentakills. Oddly, during those late nights of gaming with my dad next to me, I realize that this is our father-son quality time. Before anyone starts to judge, I don't see this as weird because my dad is just cool like that. He knows the games I play and is slowly picking up on game lingo. Sometimes, I think he does this to know me more, putting in the time to see what I'm interested in, and this alone shows love. 

For me and probably many others, the father-son relationship is subtle. Somehow, there's always a way around verbal love, but I'm glad my dad and I can relate on this one thing.

The Melody of the Night

"The Melody of the Night" by Leonid Afremov

Down this river walk,

It's the Melody of the Night,

Layered by the hum of the street lights,

The ripples echoing like bells

The serenity of this quiet moment.

To stand in awe is impossible,

Understanding is incomprehensible;

It just compels us forward

Every moving chord towards

An unknown end.

Our footsteps gliding across the glossed floors

I see my black dog, by my side, curiously staring into the river;

Its shallow breaths keeping this timeless moment in check

A metronome to pulse reality in me,

That by day thousands forget

The symphony playing in the background,

Even I myself am unaware of the sounds
Of the flashing hues of blue in the sky
Or the gentle rhythm of the city cries.
I'm doubtful of what the future holds
It's like this path, fogged up ahead
We're just a new couple;
We don't know what to expect.

Yet now it seems

So beautiful through my senses

The trees' respectful silence

Our single path illuminated by their colored leaves—

The natural prisms—

The lights reflected off the stained lenses.

This romantic song shared between me and her
And I pull her closer to me,
To think it all started as an honest dog walk.
We strolled through the streets alongside our opposite pups
Soon it was nothing, the absence of street talk.
Daylight's curtain rose and
The artificial fires flared out of the posts.
She gasps at the breathtaking light show.
The city has so much to offer,
Its odd moments of tranquility.
Our relationship touched by the river flow
And stable beside the greens,
It's hard to determine what's to come—
The misty unseen.
We're only following the hum of the lights
She and I together, listening to the quiet, bright
Melody of the Night.