the waves of time

"The leaden circles dissolved in the air."

This short, recurring sentence appears whenever Big Ben strikes, and if traced across the whole book, could represent the gongs of the clock itself, the reverberations of which leave an ominous air in their wake. Big Ben's chimes are beautiful, "musical," yet they reveal something more chilling within them: that time, life is "irrevocable." 

I think the "circles" refer to man's tendency to seamlessly, subconsciously weave the tenses (past, present, future) of time into every stage of our existence. The use of the word "leaden" connotes a heaviness, a weight, a burden. Time is oppressive. It ruthlessly, stealthily flows onward, onward, eroding our life by the droplets of each second. "Leaden" also brings to mind, quite literally, a block of lead: soft, malleable, visible, perceptible. Time is not pliable yet it is fluid in nature; time is not transformable—it is the transformer; time is not physically seen yet it is discernible all around us, on us; time is imperceivable, elusive; time dissolves.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff that life is made of." If we cannot capture or control time, the least we can do is to ride the waves with an appreciation of the beauty of every moment that is life. 

pies are sinfully delicious

This week we wrote an in-class essay on an amusing anecdote of a child’s struggle with wrongdoing.  Although at the time I was frantically focused on composing an AP student-worthy masterpiece (only Ms. V knows how successful I was with that), I can now allow my mind reign to ruminate over the central message of Soto’s story. The connotative diction and vivid imagery he uses show how the irresistibly “sweet” immediate effects of sin serenaded his not-yet-matured six-year-old senses, gently detaching him from the whispers of his tugging conscience. Soto portrays himself as caught in a “sticky” web of guilt, unable to distinguish between the pleasure and abhorrence of sin as they continually morph and transpose, until he finally concludes that sin is, essentially, “what you took and didn’t give back.”

Allow me to present a more articulate definition.

A wise person once said, “Sin is what causes uneasiness in your heart and what you dislike others to become aware of.” The first part of this concise yet comprehensive statement has to do with the innate gauge and inherent notion of goodness that exists within every human being. When a person breaks this notion, their inner gauge picks it up as a warning sign and alerts them that something is not right. In a similar vein, think about the second characteristic mentioned. If you have to quickly switch tabs when you hear your parents at the door, shove the phone in your pocket when the teacher passes by, or minimize the window when your boss steps in, you’re probably doing something you shouldn’t be.

It’s crucial that we respond to the disturbances in our heart by leaving and reversing what’s wrong; if we suppress them, our gauge will eventually dim out and cease to function—leaving us lost, as young Soto was, in a haze of pleasure and peccancy. 

othering

In “Disability,” Nancy Mairs scrutinizes with candid and humorous language the lack of realistic portrayal–if at all–of disabled people in media culture. At one point in the essay, she switches abruptly from her wry quips to a serious tone with one forthright statement: “This kind of effacement or isolation has painful, even dangerous consequences, however.”

These blunt words reveal another aspect of the multifaceted concept of othering. While I know that people are commonly outcast from society based on appearance, race, religion, or gender, it never struck me till now that there are many in this world who are banished to the fringes of humankind solely owing to their disabilities. 

When people shun others based on certain characteristics they deem repulsive, they do so secure in the belief that they are more powerful, more superior because they are removed beyond the other’s fatal flaws. Yet this is precisely where disability differs. Because as Mairs unflinchingly posits, “the fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Those who view disability as “a chronic incurable degenerative disease” and thus attempt to blot out the presence of the handicapped should use their narrow-mindedness as a catalyst for an acute awareness of their “own physical vulnerability.” For then it should come as no surprise that they are labeled by the very people they avoid as mere “Temporarily Abled Persons.”

Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words in the famous Brown vs. Board case ring true even in light of Mairs’s piece, almost as if they are an elucidation of the “painful, even dangerous consequences” she foretold. He said that such baseless othering of those different from us “generates [within them] a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.” And as long as we don’t bother to “insert disability daily into our field of vision,” these words will remain as applicable and valid as they were to society six decades ago.