Manifest Destiny in Terms of Cancer

            There are things in this universe whose sole outer layers are a clear demonstration of their whole essence. In other words, I could happen to look at a  book’s cover and quite correctly assume what the book is about and how it will express said idea. I’m not saying that I judge books based on their cover. My only interests in life are drinking wine and judging people. Not books.

            Just for the sake of not plagiarizing, I will concede to the fact that said statement of my love for wine flowing down my oesophagus and judging the bone structure and personality of fellow homosapiens is actually from a Tumblr gif. But my point stands: there are some things that are so blatantly themselves. Do I fail to make sense? Lets take the memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  It’s not the cover that interests me. It’s the title itself. I read the title and I feel like I know just about a whole lot of what the book will be like. The meaning of the words is so idealistic bordering on self-assured and supercilious. But for some reason, there’s a certain sardonic tone that’s implied. The title itself appealed to me because it spoke of humour, whether dry or wet with sanguine optimism, I could not tell. But it called out to me.

            I was right. The acknowledgements themselves (which take up about one sixth of the entire novel. I kid you not), are a comedy driven confession of just what underlines the memoir. The author includes a list of all the habitual events the author offers, such as going unconscious while inebriated, having sex without condoms, and going unconscious while inebriated while having sex without condoms. You get the point. He also proceeds to point out the themes that will be seen throughout the memoir, including but not limited to “The Unspoken Magic of Parental Disappearance”, “The Painfully, Endlessly Self-Conscious Book Aspect,” and the like. I loved it immediately.

            As to the actual memoir, the Dave Eggars begins by describing a short and uneventful conversation with his mother about his long stay in the bathroom. It went along the lines of:

            Mother: Were you playing with yourself?

            Dave: I was cutting my hair.

            Mother: You were contemplating your navel.

            Dave: Right. Whatever.

            The dialogue is so random, and yet so realistic and simple. It adds to the believability of the piece all the while keeping it interesting with such interesting characters.

            The real story begins when Dave talks about his mother lying on the couch every hour of every single day spitting out green fluid into a rag. He explains his mother’s cancer in such a way that words can’t describe, except his.

           

            When they opened her up: “ It was staring out at them, at the doctors, like a thousand writhing worms under a rock, swarming, shimmering, wet and oily—Good God!—or maybe not like worms but like a million little podules, each a tiny city of cancer, each with an unruly, sprawling, environmentally careless citizenry with no zoning laws whatsoever. When the doctor opened her up, and there was suddenly light thrown upon the world of cancer-podules, they were annoyed by the disturbance, and defiant. Turn off. The fucking. Light. They glared at the doctor, each podule, though a city into itself, having one single eye, one blind evil eye in the middle, which stared imperiously, as only a blind eye can do, out at the doctor. Go. The. Fuck. Away.The doctors did what they could, took the whole stomach out, connected what was left, this part to that, and sewed her back up, leaving the city as is, the colonists to their manifest destiny, their fossil fuels, their strip malls and suburban sprawl, and replaced the stomach with a tube and a portable external IV bag. It's kind of cute, the IV bag. She used to carry it with her, in a gray backpack—it's futuristic-looking, like a synthetic ice pack crossed with those liquid food pouches engineered for space travel. We have a name for it. We call it "the bag." “

            The way he describes cancer in that manner gave me goose bumps in the same way amazing singer have that same effect. The way her uses “wet” and “oily” shows the worms in a negative light. The lack of zoning laws creates an incredible imagery of sprawling chaos of cancerous cells running wild wreaking havoc, burning and disintegrating. The personification Eggars gives them by giving them words including “Fuck” add to the antagonistic and overall ruthless essence of their existence. The manifest destiny analogy could not be more impacting, in the way that one sees colonists spreading resolutely, with no qualms about what gets in their way, in their attempt to take advantage of what is rightfully theirs. Her body. Her life. And the way he manages to surprise the reader by going into a very detailed description about the IV bag and then dramatically, dryly, say, “We call it ‘the bad’,” is so unexpected and simple that it’s almost ironic in a way.

            Eggars has a way with words, there’s no doubt about it. And I can’t wait to find out what else he has to say.

           

            

Foreign Bodies in Your Trail of Thought

            A quotation can either be a potential hazard or a waltz into the heaven of perfect writing. It all depends on how you use it. In the essay, “Q as in Quotation,” the author explains how “quotations are caesuras in monologue, visible to all.” He explains the blatancy of quotations’ presence and the bold statement they make by just existing. In other words, they are very powerful entities that have to be dealt with in the same way a rabid pit bull with drool layering his mouth is dealt with: cautiously. Because if you take an impulsive step, you just might end with slobbery teeth marks tarnishing your entire flesh, or prose.

            The fact of the matter is that quotations are a “submission” to another’s thoughts, a “foreign body” that will affect your piece completely. If used and embedded in the wrong manner, they will create an abyss in your train of thought and will be proof of your failure. However, if you happen to embed a quotation to the point where it strengthens your point of view and it ties in like a perfectly beaded necklace, then it shall provide a strong piece. All quotations are good as long as the writer “remains in control,” to which point the “quotations won’t impoverish him.” The former is a perfect example of my own use of quotations in a way that drowns my own thoughts and holds me captive in their claws. Even if I happen to embed them into my monologue, all the remotely interesting, or even existing, ideas are encased by quotation marks. This deigns my piece to be overall lacking and dependent on the quotes to make any argument at all. And so the point is that quotations should be mere assets to back-up your own personal ideas, not the idea itself. Because if you present something in which the core of the issue are the quotations themselves, then you are not making an argument. The person you are quoting is the one controlling the whole piece. Be careful.

            As for the other aspects of punctuation, we should not assume they have been around since God spread light into the universe and snakes managed to producing fleshy and tempting apples. They didn’t.  In fact, there are very detailed histories as to the background of the semicolon and the comma. There is, indeed, a reason for the comma being used to indicate a pause, and for the semicolon to be used for connecting strongly related ideas. Baker talks of how said punctuation marks evolved and that ties in with the title of the piece in that the punctuation we use today has survived many changes, evolution has made them what they are today. Whether quotation marks came to be due to the one-eighty degree turn of a commas  and the semicolon being linked by an em-dash due to copy editing, they are what they are today.

            Both essays tie in with what we are learning in class most obviously due to the fact that the class itself is titled “Language.” Duh. Seriously, though, the quotation essay covers an important concept that we have yet to master, and that is that, even thought quotations are key in strengthening a person’s point of view or an argument, it is crucial that they are used in a very specific manner. We can’t abuse them and expect to be prized for the sole purpose that we used them in the first place. As for the origins of grammar, it is interesting to know that certain punctuation didn’t just walk onto earth and declare their presence mandatory. Most importantly, though, it’s important to know exactly why they are here in the first place, what characterizes them and the like, in order to fully comprehend how to use them correctly.

           

            

Feel Something

            Oh, how I would love to be sprinkled with gold dust. And I’m not using gold to describe dust that resembles the glistening yellow embers that resembles it. I mean gold. Like Mariah Carey who gets real gold crushed into a mixture of a skin tone that will later be spray tanned onto her flesh.

            Like that.

            But you know what? I know where I could accomplish said deed. Santa Marta, of course. I mean, Paternostro said, “Everyone got sprinkled with Santa Marta gold dust.”

            So we’re just going to have to trust her.

            Nah, I actually really liked that phrase. Yes, by gold she means money in duffel bags transported via boats, but that doesn’t take away the beauty it signifies. Almost as if Santa Marta in all its paradise wonder will leave a footprint in your mind and memory forever. Like gold dug in the deep confines of the earth’s soil, it will be stuck forever in your conscience. I just loved it.

            But speaking of gold, Silvana describes a scene in which “Ruben was pouring out $150, 000 in cash that had been left in a duffel bag outside their hotel room.” This takes place in la Guajira. This bag, along with many others, would later be stuffed into boats to be sailed away. What got to me was that the duffel bag was left there by a screaming guy shouting, “bathe in it, let it touch you.” Almost as if money could caress the soul. Almost as if money can rule your life.

            It can.

            And that is a factor of Colombia’s violence today. People who need to survive and barely make a living who are offered money in return for trafficking drugs, joining las FARC, etc. It happens.

            I was actually pondering the man and the suitcase outside his hotel room and I remembered when I was in Santa Marta, in front of a sailing port as well, when I found twenty books (I counted) lying on the public bathroom sink. Perfcetly stacked up and in english.  I waited until after the boat trip to check if their presence wasn’t due to a person’s forgetfulness, and when I saw them again, beckoning to me, I took four of them.

            I should go to jail.

            Ah, but they were forsaken, isolated in the unhygienic confines of a public bathroom?

            What would Jesus do?

            Any who, besides that interesting fact, Paternostro later talks about La Violencia and las FARC’s documents on the era, when she came upon texts that spoke of the details of that history. “ The rebels history lesson reads like a gory film: “pregnant stomachs were opened with knives,” “men skinned alive and tied to ant colonies”; “others with their genitals inside their mouths”; “or with their tongues hanging from their chest.” I can’t read anymore. I do not know where to file this information, in my brain or in my heart.”

            I can imagine a fetus being ripped with all other insides that a woman’s body has to offer. Intestines, liver. How beautiful. Then I think of the killer ant documentaries I see of crawling creatures that kill whole babies. Don’t ask me how. And while those thoughts line up in my head I find that I myself can’t bear to keep on reading that information. And that’s when I now that the pathos is just right in the nauseating and yet sad feeling washing me.

            Finally she manages to make me feel something.

            They weren’t even her own words.

Remember Prohibition?

            Every time I tell someone I am from Colombia, they automatically think about the artistic existence of the snow of cocaine and the grassy life of marijuana. Poetic, no?

            Really, though. And you wonder as to how I know this? I would like to account my inside knowledge to my mental capabilities as a mind reader and how costly and exhausting it is to be such a gifted human being. Sadly, my knowing this is because people say it out right.

            “ Do you have weed?”

            “Oh, right. Cocaine.”

            And of course you get the occasional bright Cheshire cat smiles that glint in their high glory, while saying, “I love your cocaine.” This one guy actually said that to a friend of mine once.

            I kid you not.

            So we have that reputation. That does not necessarily mean we are all a bunch of coked-up addicts that survive off dust incarcerating our veins. Paternostro quotes her friends boyfriend, Roman, saying, “Look around you. You see a bottle of alcohol and a pack of Malboros at every table, don’t you? Well, soon you will see another package. Soon you will be able to buy a package of joints like you buy tobacco. Marijuana will become so common that it’s going to be like buying beer at the supermarket. Remember Prohibition? And how many fortunes turned legal overnight when it ended? It’s going to be the same for me. Tobacco companies will be buying marijuana from my fields.”

            Oh, Roman, all drenched in aspirations of what never came true. Because while we may produced said hallucinogen entities, we do not consume them. Okay, some of us do. But in comparison to other countries, it’s pretty much nonexistent.

            But I’m just being bitter.

            Also, I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness for Roman. Or pity? Although at the same time it borders on disbelief because his cause is one so vile, and yet vile enough to make me wonder why he is in it in the first place. Also, the logos plaguing his statement seems to be matter-of-fact and yet there’s hope in when he talks of what will happen in the future.

            But he can’t foresee the future.

            Obviously. 

Flawless

            What is with America its so-called flawless perfection?

            What is it with Paternostro’s constant reiteration of America being the paramount impeccable existence lying on such a high pedestal? Yes, they have one of the most spurting and developed economies in the world. Yes, they are the center of the entertainment system what with Hollywood and all other material systems that survive on inordinate amounts of money and choking fame. Okay. Good for them. But that does not make America the epitome of a god to be worshiped and bow down to.

            Paternostro says, “ Guajiros were definitely corronchos, which for our purposes meant they weren’t Americanized, like us.”  I swear if America was a human being, said author would undoubtedly accost it and caress the hell out of it to the point of obtaining a restraining order. And seeing as she’s not actually from their, she would be encroaching on foreign boundaries and would receive a restraining order.

            If only.

            For starters ‘corronchos’ are just people with ultimately gaudy, cheap, tasteless fashion sense. Period. Maybe that’s just in Bogota or in my inner circle of life, but that’s how it is. She’s melting herself in a puddle of ethos because obviously being Americanized is the answer to everyone’s prayers and she gets some disturbing satisfaction in said accomplishment. She characterizes herself as Americanized and takes pride in such a fact. Who would be proud of consorting to conforming to the trend taking over the whole stratosphere? If she thinks she is special because she lived their for a while and got draped in the fabric of its being, then she has yet to come into contact with the words globalization and the diffusion of popular customs and trends by popular I mean American) that engulf the majority of the world.

            Yes. So special.

            I’d also like to point out her interest in North America and her obvious stereotyping of Colombia as a whole (she doesn’t seem to acquire and first-hand experience in the matter), as seen when she asks the guy on the plane why in the world he would willingly come to Colombia and saying, “It’s dangerous.”

            And so she fits in quite well with all the other ignorant Americans that deem their country the best and very easily manage to deign every other country certain stereotypes based on their very developed and independent manner of thinking.

            Sarcasm.

            Duh.

            The following map is called “ The World According to Americans.” It is hard to see, but Colombia is titled as United States of Cocaine. Paternostro is so lost running around her war with words while attempting to further her career, that it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the way she views the world:

Oh, yes.