Commentary on the INTERESTing Things

     Wow. Let me just say.  This poem has SUCH a twist.  He really had me going there; I thought his wife was missing and that she had been cheating on him.  There I was feeling like the world had fallen straight into darkness and immorality.  I was sad for this guy!  I even wondered in the space between line 6 and 7 what he would do; would he divorce her?  Would he refuse to give up and try to fix things?  NOPE!  Because she is only on Pinterest. 

     I love how the poem is set up as this "crime against humanity" when in truth, Griffin's wife is only addicted to an (awesome!) online forum.  Now that I am calmer about the whole situation, I can see how annoyed he could be.  Pinterest is so cool and filled with such great ideas for literally everything that it is so easy to spend countless of hours browsing that website.  I already have multiple boards on that website that include decor ideas for my wedding, instructions on how to set up Bookshelf beds and Doctor Who edible arrangements. 

     If we try to dissect how Griffin set up his poem, it is probably worth mentioning that his word choice at the beginning of the poem is drastically far away from what we might associate with an addiction to a website.  The fact that he specifically said she was "gone for many days" indicates that he WANTED us to believe she had done something drastically wrong.  When someone says his wife is "gone", it usually means she is either dead or she has left him.  Constantly surfing a website does not mean this person is "gone", but at the same time, he means that she is "gone" in the sense that her brain and attention is somewhere else, not with him.  She might be physically near him, but her mind is surely elsewhere.

     Likewise, "I've tried sending her messages" immediately made sense to me as Griffin trying to call his wife or text her, asking her where she is and when she was coming home.  It never occurred to me that she was in his face, but he couldn't reach her on a conscious level because she was too entranced by Pinterest.  The "messages" he was sending her probably were not using his phone but rather by voice--yelling-- or by some other means of signaling her back to reality. 

     When Griffin mentions that "she's lost/ with her new found interest", I was so sure she was cheating on him.  At that point, I was so disappointed in her and sad for him (which says a lot about this poem because it got me to feel that way).  My mind was on his side for some reason, perhaps because he was the one writing this poem, which tells us that he cares enough about the situation to write about it.  She could be lost in her interest because the way Pinterest works is that you look up your interest,and then there are a million different pictures, crafts and more to look though.  If she was really being obsessive, she could get easily lost in whatever her interest is. 

     "Curse her friend" had me thinking he wanted to punch the other man, but here I thought it was very weird that he called the other man "her friend".  If this has truly been a cheating incident, I would have expected Griffin to have called the other man a worse name to say the least, maybe even a curse word.  This would be the first indication that this is not a case of unfaithfulness.  On the other hand though, if Griffin was trying to keep the poem PG and use code word; "friend" could surely be a stand-in for a much worse concept. 

    Finally we get to the end of the poem, "curse her friend/ who invited her to/ Pinterest".  Shocked would probably be the least of my reactions.  It was very cool to have everything you perceived flipped on its head and turn out the complete opposite.  Griffin's wife is not cheating on him; she is simply online a lot and it is ALMOST like she has left him.  It is not the same situation but at the same time, I can see the similarities.  

       She is "gone" all the time, she does not respond to his "messages", and she's "lost" in her "interest" on Pinterest.  I guess it makes sense...

Tough luck, Griffin, you're going to need it trying to get your wife away from Pinterest. My recommendation:

Also, find your own interest on Pinterest while you're doing that. 

It All Comes Down To:

I don't know anything!
and I'll never know.
Nope, YOU'll never know.
Because no one has any answers,
or at least none that they can share.

Answers are for you 
to keep,
not for you 
to share.
Find them
Possess them
Keep them.

This is all it adds up to.

Can you save us?  (sing this hauntingly)
Save us with Light
Save us with Road
Save us with Words
Save us?

but don't save us with answers. 
THEY can't save anyone.

Watch For What's Under the Gold

Title: 

Both up and down, but left and right,

Filling your eyelids with things of light.

Shiny, but not made of precious metal.

Bright and sparkly—the burning unsettle.

Lots and lots of yellow gold, lots of red gold.

There is no gold!...
there is NO g o l d!

My Critical Reflection on "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

 Robert Frost Chooses Fire

 

Humans are the kind of creatures that like to ponder over death and specifically, their own deaths.

Robert Frost is no different. 

Indeed, he writes this poem called "Fire and Ice", and like most poetry, it is about death.  The biggest different between what most other people would say and our poet’s words is the fact that he is contemplating the world’s death and not just his own.  

Beginning with the rhyme scheme, Frost uses a basic one that has the effect of producing music, or at the very least, a musical beat.

ABAABCBCB 

Fire, Ice, Desire, Fire, Twice, Hate, Ice, Great, Suffice. 

These last words that rhyme also pretty much carry the bulk of the poem.  The last words of any poem usually provide us, the readers, with a brief understanding on what the poem is talking about and in this case, the fire and ice methods both appear here with connections to certain emotions and specifically, information about Frost's preferences. 

Obviously Frost is talking about death so either method, fire or ice,  would result in the same outcome; therefore, the method itself must hold its own importance. 

Frost prefers fire and Frost puts it first in the poem.

Frost explicitly says that he himself favors fire over ice.  There are many different ways by which Frost shows us this; one of which is explicitly stating it in the poem.  The other methods, however, are not as explicit, but rather more implicit. 

Method #1: Alliteration 

The alliteration in the line, "Favor" and "Fire", calls attention to the fact that fire is like to passion and overall emotion. Frost also links his own favor to the element of destruction.  Based on this emphasis, we can figure out that Frost prefers to be ended by a force that is alive and not by ice that is emotionless and the exact opposite of fire.

Method #2: Ignoring name sakes

Robert Frost does not want to die by frost until the second time he courts death and is sure to die.  Frost's last name is FROST, which is an offshoot of actual ice and cold weather.  The fact that Frost ignored this connection to himself, chose fire first, and also placed Fire before Ice on the poem lines indicates that Frost prefers fire in every way and wants to make certain that that preference is reflected in all aspects of the poem.

Method #3: Placing Ice 2nd

Most people find doing thing twice tedious and annoying.   These feelings can often result in hatred, which is an emotion that can be linked to Ice if that hate is a cold hate. If someone like Frost had to die twice, he most certainly would hate death for making him go through it twice; therefore, Ice as a second choice accommodates the feeling of cold and unforgiving hatred for having to die twice. 

 Method #4: Is it good or is it great?

     
                VS. 

When people describe what they love, they like to over embellish and affix adjectives like "amazing" and "perfect" to those loved objects.  Frost's description of Ice, as a force of death and destruction, is found in this line: "It is also great/And would suffice".  At first, readers would think that Ice was "great" in the sense that it was not a force to be reckoned with and has significant power, but we quickly realize as we keep reading that that is not what Frost intends to mean.  He is not over embellishing Ice, but rather, he is describing it as "sufficient".  It is the word "suffice" that throw us off the idea we initially perceived by the word "great".  The  juxtaposition of these two words, "great" and "suffice", are exact opposites just like Fire and Ice and they both play into Frost's preference for fire over ice.  Ice, even though it suffices in its role as the death reaper, is not as great as Fire, giving "great" a double meaning.  This double meaning places Ice as a "great" force that is capable, but not the best or most amazing force out there.   

In the end, Frost shows us that he prefers Fire to Ice in all ways.

Golden Shovel--"Gospel" by Panic at the Disco

Away! By an Imperfect Imposter

I’m supposed to be scared of the dark ‘cause

there is no burning fire lighting the way. These

maps that cloud my mind are just inoperative words.

“Guide me!” but where am I going? Are

all my destinations harboring secret knives?

Metal and pen mark up my world, so much that

the sky is starting to bleed with firefly blood. Often,

rather than sometimes, they leave me behind and leave.

These are the places and faces that leave scars.

It is the fear

                         of

Flip this upside down

Commentary on the Light Bulbs in the Sky

What do you think of when you see stars at night?

           What was I looking for?  Look up.  Look to the sky.  Look at the expanse.  What do you see?  Galileo saw stars.  I wonder if that was what he was looking for...  Doesn't mater, either way he saw his future. 

            I can't remember where I first saw this.  It might have been just an coincidence.  I don't think I was looking for a line--NOT poetry, that's for sure.  Perhaps what I wanted was a word.  A single word that could explain the phenomenon that is starlight.  Perhaps I just googled the word "stars" and it came up on Google Images.   

See? There it is again! 

       Different colors, different fonts.  Some are drawn, some painted and some are just pictures with this caption.  It is the same, always the same, in the end.  It is the one line that seems to haunt me.  Haunting me just like the darkness that did not haunt Galileo, even when there are no stars in the sky....or are there always? 

           It is my fundamental belief that one day the stars are just going to fall out of the sky. NOT because they have "burned out" as some scientists have claimed they some day would, but because they are sick and tired of us ignoring them.  I mean think about it!  We turn on our City Lights and poof! there goes all the stars in the tri-state area.  I'm convinced this is why stars favor farms and woodlands... they always let them shine there.

See?.... and look how they shine!...

             I did some research.  Some people say Galileo was burned at stake, for heresy of course, trying to convince people the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around.  (My advice on that: be weary of the clergy)

.......He wasn't scared of the dark.  He was too busy.  Fearing the night, the dark, was not even an option. 

Why? Why was fear not even a possibility?  

    Because it couldn't be.

(If you did't get that one, you should really rethink your priorities)

Where is the one place you can see the softest of lights?  A place where light bulbs in the sky can shine without a prehistoric ball of gas over-shadowing a fledgling reality?

Only in the darkest of nights.

You can't be afraid of the dark when it holds within it a force of nature. Sometimes you search your whole life for something, only to find it when you can no longer see what's before you.  The stars always shine, even when you aren't looking.  I think J.R.R Tolkien knew this, I think he read these lines while he was thinking up the Elves in the Lord of the Rings... (Turn it in flagged it in 1937)

  

Fondly Fearful. F-E-A-R-F-U-L.  F-O-N-D-L-Y.  Full of fear.  What did he think of when he looked at stars?  Was he trying to find out why the stars were so interesting, why their starlight was so consuming?  Did he see Wonder personified in tiny white Christmas tree lights that were found in the clearance bin at Michael's?  I wonder if he ever found what he was looking for.  I wonder if it was all worth his clergy-inflicted, too-early and irreversible end.

(Don't forget this one)

Scratch that: I believe there are beautiful things seen by the astronomers.

I don't know if Galileo ever found what he was seeking, searching for and staying up all night.  He loved the stars too much to succumb to fear, and for the stars in the sky he died.  These few lines, statement, poem, words are more of a legacy than a spider ever left.  In the end, the world of wonder and the world of starry did collide.

(Play both videos simultaneously, with Video 2 muted)

So tell me now, what do you think of when you see stars at night?