Jesus and Lazarus

The story of Jesus and Lazarus is commonly referred to as the Resurrection of Lazarus, for reasons that will become apparent later. The story begins when Jesus's friend Lazarus of Bethany becomes sick and dies. Jesus proclaims to his disciples that, through the love of God, Lazarus will be raised from the dead, and he travels to Bethany to prove just that. When he arrives, he finds that Lazarus had been dead and entombed for four days. Jesus meets with Lazarus's sister Martha and tells her that all people who believe in God live beyond death, which is hella important in the Christian faith. Jesus goes with Mary and Martha and many other Jews who followed him from Jerusalem to visit Lazarus's tomb. When they get there, they all cry because Lazarus is dead, and then Jesus says a prayer to God to raise Lazarus from the dead to show the people the power of faith in God, and then Lazarus walked out of the tomb and was totally fine. 

This story is obviously incredibly important in the Bible because it explicitly states that those who believe in God will never actually die, which I know is said throughout the Bible but this story lays it on particularly thick. This idea of eternal life has been one of the major cruxes of Christian faith, serving as a motivation for both conversion and upholding its principles no matter the cost. The fact that this idea can be assigned to this story makes the tale of Lazarus very important.

Another interesting aspect of this story is the fact that Lazarus is physically resurrected, as opposed to experiencing a spiritual ascension to heaven that is typical among saints. I am curious to know the significance of Lazarus's physical resurrection when all of the other saints seemed to remain ethereal. Christianity describes an eventual reckoning that will occur when all followers of Christ will be physically resurrected, but the Bible makes incredibly few references to this happening outside of this future event. This is one of them, which, I think, is pretty significant.

One final note about the term 'resurrection'. I've been using it pretty freely throughout this post, but, while perusing the internet, I found that Christians only consider someone coming back to life as a resurrection if they are then free from death forever. Lazarus was not, and this story is more formally known as the Raising of Lazarus, which correctly conforms to the terminology.

  

[source]

Perseus and Medusa

The oracle of Delphi told Acrisius that his grandson would kill him one day. To prevent this, he locked his daughter up to deprive her of any possible intercourse. However, Zeus somehow pierced through the walls of her chamber and, well, you know what happened. Perseus was born and Acrisius sent them both away to an island far, far away. The king of the island really wanted to get with his mom, but Perseus was in the way, so he sent him off on a nearly impossible quest – to bring back the head of the gorgon Medusa. Medusa was beautiful but she was poisonous; anyone that dared to look her in the face turned to stone. Perseus was prepared for this, however. He had a sword, an invisible cap, winged sandals, and a mirror to look at Medusa without looking at her directly in the face. He cut off her head and took it back home. I’m sure the king of the island was pretty disappointed to see Perseus come back from that journey. I’m supposed to write about hair. I don’t know what to say about it. I like hair? Hair is cool. It does a lot of things, from being straight to being curly to being different colors and all that fun stuff. I’m glad I don’t have snakes as hair, you’ve got to pity Medusa for that one.

[source] (some modern versions portray medusa as hideous, but most of the ancient ones describe her as the most beautiful woman in the world)

TYBG 4 teaching me how 2 cook

      Eris, goddess of discord, felt left out because she wasn't invited to a wedding. She decided to stir up trouble and get back at everyone by tossing a golden apple into the banquet, saying it was reserved for the hottest chick in the place. Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena were fighting over it, so Zeus stepped in by not deciding and having someone else figure it out. This duty was placed on the sexiest guy, Paris: Prince of Troy. Aphrodite managed to seduce him to choose her by promising him the most beautiful girl in the world, Helen of Sparta. Helen was thus taken from Sparta to Troy, where she became Helen of Troy.

      Food and my boyfriend Adam are my two favorite things in this world. The two of us are always cooking up something, be it swag or a lamb tagine. I don't know where to begin with all this because cooking food and learning about the culture behind it is a big part of my life. I guess the most “divine” foods are middle eastern. Turkish and Persian foods have so many divine ingredients like pomegranate, lime, honey, saffron, yogurt, lamb, goat, almonds, pistachios, rose, mint, dried fruits, and exotic spices, the kind of stuff that would be eaten at a god party. Some of my other favorite ingredients include anything tropical. Plantains, sweet potatoes, chiles, mangoes, papayas, coconut, lime, ginger, hibiscus. I have to stop myself there.

      Adam and I have it all worked out: we are starting with learning simple Indian cooking and technique. From there it won't be too hard to master West African and Caribbean, as it's mainly just different ingredients. Then it's on to North African and Middle Eastern cooking, which I already have a good grasp of. After that we are going to learn French technique, which is a more fickle process, but from there we could make great Creole and Cajun food. We already have southern cooking down. Alton Brown is our hero and we get lots of advice from watching Good Eats. 

      Food I think is the most perfect art form, as it appeals to all the senses and serves such a human functionality. 

Check out how to become a Master Chef by watching these videos!

Sonnet XLII

Sonnet XLII

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! 
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
   All days are nights to see till I see thee,
   And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

The poet is analyzing his own disturbed mind and the dark brightness that love has cast upon it after the torment and anguish of betrayal. He uses language of shadows and forms of bleak shapes to cast an air of despair. The theme of shadow helps to push the medium of bleak theme throughout the poem and vasten the overall idea of vapidness that is eluded throughout this piece. In this sonnet the shadows seem to flicker and in the end one enters a dream world which is as real to the poet as the world of absence from which he strives to escape. The days become nights and nights days, and the natural order of things is inverted and confounded.

"Sonnet 104" by William Shakespeare

For this blog, I chose to analyze William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 104." Considering this is a sonnet written by the eminent William Shakespeare, perhaps the greatest playwright and poet in human history, it is hardly surprising that this particular sonnet follows the general form of an English, or Shakespearean, Sonnet (Shakespeare popularized this form of sonnet). "Sonnet 104" only slightly deviates from the general form of the Shakespearean Sonnet, with perhaps two lines diverging from the regular metrical pattern, and is thus comprised of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter with the following rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The volta, which in poetic terminology is defined as a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion, seems to occur in line 12 of the poem, where it serves to partially contradict what the speaker states in the preceding lines. Throughout most of the poem, the speaker (who I will refer to as a "he" throughout the remainder of this blog post to avoid the "he/she" redundancy since this sonnet was written by a man) consistently expresses that while the seasons may change with rapid frequency, the person whom he loves remains just as young and beautiful as when they first met. In line 12, however, the speaker conveys some doubt of the supposed ceaselessness of his lover's beauty and subsequently states that even though the beloved may eventually die, to the speaker, there will never be a person more beautiful.

I chose to analyze this sonnet for its deep, powerful reflection on the nature and potency of true, genuine love. As I briefly mentioned in my above evaluation, "Sonnet 104" concerns the speaker's unwavering love for another, which is expressed through the speaker's perception of youth and beauty in his lover. From the very beginning of the poem, the speaker announces that "To me, fair friend, you never can be old," indicating that the beloved will always remain dear and beautiful to the speaker despite age--an insinuation that seems to support the old adage that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The speaker continues with this statement by contrasting his lover's beauty with the ever-changing  season, thereby further emphasizing the eternality of beauty when two people truly love each other; the seasons may change, yet beauty lasts. Although the speaker admits that he could possibly lose sight of his lover's beauty in the future, which highly doubts will be the case, he nonetheless states that while his lover will eventually die, there will never be anyone quite as beautiful to him.

Pablo Saborio

How could I begin

when the earth below me

clusters in great furrows of graphic skin

its glimmer trapped

in pockets of wrinkles

with the open slit of red dawn

the opening lips of a raw horizon

with my imaginary blood in its arc,

‘ how ’

in this awry mirror to begin

and inevitably

to end ?

This poem was extremely hard to decipher, however, i believe that the author is referencing his lover in saying that how can he begin when that which is his earth, his lover, is aged and grown without him. He references pockets of wrinkles and great furrows of graphic skin to reference the age with which his lover has gone on with life without him. He ends by saying "In this awry mirror to begin and inevitably to end" He is referring to how he is looking into what he has become and wondering how things could have gone so unplanned and how his life has gone awry and there is nothing he can do about it so now it must inevitably end this way. This poem is a powerful piece on the fruitlessness of his love and the toll it has taken on him.

Daedalus and Icarus

Daedalus was a brilliant inventor, but he pissed off the King Minos, ruler of Crete, and has to gtfo. He uses some wax to build wings for him and his son Icarus and Dad Daedalus warns his son to fly at a middle height: the seawater will dampen the wings and the sun will melt them. Icarus heeds his father's advice for a bit, but then he gets cocky. He's having so much fun flying that he forgets the warning and flies too close to the sun. Sure enough, his wings melt, and Icarus plummets into the sea and drowns. Daedalus is devastated by his son's death, but the show must go on. He flies on to Sicily, where he mourns Icarus and builds a temple in honor of the god Apollo.

This story directly exemplifies Obedience and risk because Icarus disobeyed his  father and took the risk to fly close to the sun for his own pleasure and in turn faced the consequences. The moral of this story is in favor of obedience. 

Personal Story: 

One time i disobeyed my mom and she spanked me in a walmart... this was last year.