Friday, October 3, 2008

Finding Literature

"Stasis in the arts is tantamount to death." This quote by Charles Marsh aptly describes my lack of affinity in the blogosphere. Having being reminded of this degenerating blog by a friend who should be studying, I shall do myself justice this time(by writing this post) for the hard work I put in in creating this blog in the first place.

I believe with Orwell that "When language suffers, the general atmosphere must suffer as well. " Due to the lack of literary writing and practice due to my negligence, I have forgotten what it meant and felt like writing a literature essay. I have relegated it like an economics essay, or a geography essay, which is atypical and follows a tightly structured style that hinders creativity.

Whilst my grades for these 2 subjects did improve by a few grades from block test (thank God), literature has taken a drastic fall from its once glorious days. Do let me indulge in my fancies by writing this short, little allegory which I visualised on the bus a few months back(it underwent changes as I typed it). Hopefully, this comes out of my Imagining Other Worlds paper.

It scuttered out of the cracked device,
finding its new sense of freedom,
remarked breathlessly : "Brave new world,
that has such sights and smells in it"
That it vowed, "It shall be my dwelling place!"
There lies prominently, a yellow cube,
on top of the smooth marble-
deceptively deceptive.
It moves. Smells like marshmellow.
A nip or two won't do.
To stop would be a fool.
And so it does,
merrilly chewing upon its delightful find.
"What could happen?"
The yellow cube dissolves,
as with the rat.
Another success,
says the man.
Now whose the fool?

I hope you see what the yellow cube, the rat, the world and the man symbolises. I had a pre taste of laughter knowing that you have been led into thinking the yellow cube as the quintessential cheese cube, which actually turns out to be rat poison, irresistably deadly. (As with conventional thinking) Well the shift came in an inspiration, but also of a need to cut my semi poem short.

The rat would have survived if it remained in its 'cracked device', in conditions terrible in our human perception, but in a rat's world, dirt and grime, gosammer of webs, that is Christmas decorations. Likewise, I say that although in the world we live in, though it may be fraught with "sights and smells", temptations that are irresistably deadly, like the "yellow cube", we should still recline in the "crack device", which offers us a respite in this transitory life. After all, on the other side of the wall, lies a "straight and narrow" crack that only the wise and faithful rat can survive to reach, into abundant life and freedom on the fields of gold, God's heavenly kingdom.