Bitch, please!

" Nor, if we could watch a spark dart across a synaptic gap in the brain, would we cry out, "Mom!" or "Uncle Toby!", for thinking is conducted by entities we don't know, wouldn't recognize on the street."

The following are responses to this quotation from my classmates.

-Thoughts are composed of chemical reactions of synopsis, and these things are only significant to us because of how we experience them.  We feel sad because our brain tells us to, but without our brain doing that, we wouldn't feel very different.

- Our brain is a part of our body that makes up the whole works on it's own, we may or may not know the movement of synapses in our brain, only the result of it.

- Our brain similarly works like hypertext.  If we don't know something right away we urge ourselves to think until a spark of knowledge finally comes through.  It's like we didn't know a word and the hypertext linked us to another source with the answer.  *Hypertext works like our brain the way it sets up ways to find more answers. 

Writing Space: Chapter One

     My favorite section of this chapter would have to be the first page.  With the help of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris excerpt,  Bolter's introduction to his introduction created a great image for me.  I really find the idea of "This will destroy that."  The power of a book over a monumental structure and hundreds of years of history is a grand example of societal evolution.  Granted, Notre Dame is still standing as a major tourist attraction and place of worship, it's purpose is different now than when it was first erected.  Text has changed many time over the years.  From stone to screen, there have been many generations of recording methods.
      Bolter brings up the impermanence of text today.  For instance, I can post this blog and go back and change it if I so choose.  There is something about printed text that seems so much more permanent.  Bolter doesn't mention how a tangible item, such as a book, can be destroyed, but something let loose into syber space is there forever.  The idea of monumentality vs. changeability is a reoccurring idea in this text as well as in the world of writing.  To expand on this idea, I ask blog readers to respond whether or not they think that this changeability has anything to do with the strength behind people's posted thoughts.  Do you think that forms of changeable text have become available partly because writers these days are quick to publish, afraid to make their thoughts permanent, feel like the Internet is so cluttered their writing may not be found so easily, etc?  
     Personally I prefer reading from a book than reading on the Internet.  I always have a book on me, and I love being able to open one anywhere.  I enjoy the tangibility of a book and using my imagination to create an image for what I'm reading.  No need for a makeacartoonofyourself application on the side of my literature.

Four Letter Word Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r1nqYNjpLY

The Problem of Describing Trees

    Rejection is introduced with the obviously negative word no.  Ending the 8th line of this poem, the two letter word changes the general feel and perspective of the speaker.  From there, the tone of this piece follows in the footsteps of the word no, and a harsh and metaphorical description takes place.  After reading the poem once, I felt as though I could sense the darker twist coming on before the word no.  No is where the rejection is announced, but words like drying and threw up give me unsettling images and hint at the rejection. The same word follows the original appearance and becomes structurally appropriate. Words like limits and disenchant support the rejection word.