#mirrortext

[mirrorgrets]

Dear Zelda, | a Tears of the Kingdom epistolatory fic | 1.1k words

Link writes down his thoughts as he travels through Hyrule (again).

buttondown.email/calderas/archive/dear-zelda-loz

[minim]

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[mirrortext]

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw08084/Virginia-Woolf

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-untitled-providence-rhode-island-ar00356

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-space-providence-rhode-island-ar003

[callmejudah]

That Glee Girl

I’d allowed many a tear to fall in the car as I sat outside the house listening to her voice for a few minutes more. But I didn’t expect to fall apart at the front door to the house. I managed the keys surprisingly well and pushed the door open. The tears were a steady flow and a lump was forming in my throat. I attempted to swallow it as I met the gaze of my ever constant welcoming committee.

“Hi, Jessie J. I’m going to make a recording today.” I tried to choke out a response of interest in my four year old niece’s plans for the day, but the pain hit me hard at that exact moment. Her worry showed on her face. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong, Jessie J?” I couldn’t answer her because my sobs became audible, restricting any possible words from coming out. I carefully made my way to the stairs to descend to my room. She went to the bottom of the stairs that would lead to the top level of the house and called out to my parents, “Jessica is crying.” Normally, I hate it when she calls me that. I cringe when anyone calls me that. She usually only uses that name immediately after my parents have said it. But I heard the softness of the way she said it. I heard the concern in her voice. And I was able to admit that she was right. The realization made my cries louder as I reached my room. 

Jessica was crying. That young girl, that lost “young lady”, as my father refers to me daily, was grieving uncontrollably. I retired my name and opted for my initials four years ago. I had taken the first step on a journey to become who I felt I was since the age of seven, though I’d never exactly known who that was. I’d only recently begun dismantling the decades of confusion, mistakes, despair and conforming that had molded Jessica and trapped Judah. But Jessica will always exist. I wept. I wailed. I tried to pull out what little hair I have. I heard my sister call my niece back to her. She’d tried to follow me down to my room like she does everyday. I choked on the vomit that was rising up to my throat and spit out the little that succeeded. All while my parents tried to console me. I finally reached that “don’t touch me!’ jerk away point and they exited the room. On her way out, my mother asked “did something happen at work (someone I cared about passed the month before) or is this about that Glee girl?” 

 That Glee girl. I said nothing. I remained hunched over with my back to her until she finally left. That Glee girl had created a safe space for me. That Glee girl had given me a circle of friends that I never would have found on my own. That Glee girl had healed wounds that I wasn’t even aware existed. She provided the pen for me to rewrite my future in the way I saw fit. And now her story has been cut short. To say I’m not coping well would be an understatement. I climbed into my bed and cried myself to sleep. I had another sixteen hour shift that would start in less than seven hours. When I returned home the next day, my niece was patiently waiting for me. She told me she’d never seen me cry like that. Never. “It was a lot”, she said. “I just wanted to make you feel better, like Grandma and Papa did. I’m sorry you cried.” 

“They didn’t make me feel better, kid. So don’t be too upset.” 

“But Jessie J, why couldn’t you tell Grandma why you were crying?” 

“You know how you fall sometimes and it hurts so much that you cry really hard?” She nodded. “And when your mom tries to ask what happened, you can’t speak clearly?” She nodded again. “It’s like that. My soul hurts, Beastie. I’m in a lot of pain. Like when Bill Withers died and you wanted him to still be alive and singing in Vegas. I miss a singer too.” 

I showed her my phone wallpaper. “She looks pretty.” I was the one who nodded then. “I’m sorry you miss her.” I assured her that she had nothing to be sorry about. Then I retired to my room and to bed, preparing for the next shift. Here we are eleven days later and I have not had a single day pass without me feeling like vomiting. I have struggled through 8 or 9 sixteen hour shifts. I have chastised myself for crying in the shower. I have buried myself in the grief of others on social media, refusing to address my own. As I make plans to travel to California for her vigil, the feeling gets worse. I’m not ready. I will never be ready. But I need the hurt to come. I need to finally pull the knife out of my chest. I will forever feel the lack that her death has left in this world. I am always going to miss the magic of “that Glee girl.” Naya Rivera, for such a long pivotal time in my life, you were my glee. Thank you. 

To her, 

With love.♥♥

[eyegiene]

Via https://www.instagram.com/p/CMmt1UoBCiK/?igshid=fyfz75rocyi4

[killeekrak]

RED ID#819456489

Lost in the Darkness and Forgotten through Death

Professor Tim Z. Hernandez’s presentation discussed a plane that crashed in Los Gatos Canyon on January 28, 1948.  In the tragic accident that occurred, several people were killed; some American citizens while most were Mexican citizens.  The crash was all over social media with the names of the deceased.  But not all of their names were released.  Only the US citizen’s names were mentioned and bodies were returned to their families, while the Mexican citizens did not have their names mentioned.  The bodies were also buried in unnamed graves sites in Fresno, California.  Hernandez spent seven long years finding family members of the deceased to help shine a little light on the families to find their long-lost relative in the dark.  

In Raoul Peck’s documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” he also helped shined a light on the African American community’s hardships and pain.  The documentary focused on James Baldwin’s life and friendships with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  and their assassinations.  The documentary focused on black culture and how African Americans are treated by the “white man”.  It displayed how African Americans were treated and viewed by the public.  How they were treated unfairly because of the color of their skin or because they didn’t look like the “white man”.

In both the presentation and documentary video, they effectively used the art of music to give their stories more impact and meaning.  Hernandez had Joel Rafael sing in the beginning of his presentation to honor the lives that was lost in the plane crash.  Peck uses music and movies to give a deeper impact on certain events that occurred at that certain time.  The presentation and documentary both present a similar major problem: that some Americans favor the ideal “white man” over a colored person.  Some American citizens see themselves as superior than other races.  It’s evident when they announce the deaths of the four American citizens in the Los Gatos Canyon plane crash and not mention the names of the Mexican citizens, it’s evident when they took over the lands of the Natives because of Manifest Destiny, and it’s completely evident on the way they treat African Americans.  

[monamirrortext-blog]

I have read this book and seen the movie several times, but studying this book completely changed my way of seeing it. It was so interesting, discerning all the metaphors, allusions and harmatia that are present in the book. I enjoyed analysing the mirror effect of a book within a book and how it affected the main character, Hazel Grace. Never before have I realised how this book is clever, thorough, witty and well written. I haven’t realised the parallel between Ann Frank’s diary which ends when her life ends, and An Imperial Affliction, which also ends when the main character dies. The three girls (Hazel included) are all youths about to become women and Ann Frank and Hazel are experiencing sexuality for the same time, in the same place. I really enjoyed studying this book in class, especially when I realised that everything had a connection and a meaning. It was my favorite book we have studied. Analysing all the metaphors of this book was really my favorite part of the class.

[sarasaysphotography-blog]

cineTrek: You Know What Sparknotes Is?

One of my favorite moments was seeing you perform the Sparknotes version of the sonnet versus the old English versus Spanish because it added humor and every student in that room cringed when you mentioned Sparknotes as if they had no idea professors knew what it was.You can get varied emotions based on the dialect in which words are spoken.

When listening to sonnet 24 I made a mental note of the words windows and eyes in the spirit of MirrorText. Eyes are commonly regarded as the windows to the soul and it is as if the eyes lead to the heart thus true intentions and that person’s truths. The line, “To find where your true image pictured lies/Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still/That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes,” brought about the idea that only in looking through someone’s eyes and past the surface may you know someone’s heart and truth. On another note, sonnet 24 brought me back to all of the surrealist artists mentioned in This Is Magritte by Patricia Allmer. Through the simile of comparing Shakespeare’s own eye to a painter, I envisioned Magritte’s paintings The Human Condition and False Mirror side by side and the deception that depiction can be created in. Eyes may act as windows, but perhaps the window isn’t really a window at all but a depiction of what someone has already painted.

           Another obvious highlight of the night was Paul Kruse’s performance of Brush Up Your Shakespeare for all comedic purposes. He was incredibly talented and had a stage presence and persona that left me crying from laughter in my seat.

[mirrorgrets]

starlight choices | an interactive Coco-centric fic | 4.3k total words

Follow this short story as Coco, as she navigates her choices when it comes to magic and saving her mother.

http://rescalderas.itch.io/starlight-choices

[arcencial]

Two Sides of the Ink

Cultural Politics of Tattoos in Japan: Nation, Body, Transformation     David Holloway Tattooing has the reputation of being negative and having negative connotations. But to many tattoos are positive, they are happy, They bring peace and strength. In the past tattoos have signified prison time, criminality, and even the number of people an individual has killed. During the holocaust those targeted by Hitler’s Nazis had serial numbers tattooed upon their bodies. It was a way of identifying them but also a way of objectifying an entire race. In the times of slavery, slave owners would mark slaves with ink to ensure if they were lost or escaped, they would be returned for ink could not be removed. Even more recently tattoos are a self brand, whether to be included in a gang or to be excluded from mainstream society. It has even been taken to the extent of having separate bathrooms, brothels and beaches for those that have tattoos so as not to offend those who do not. With these incidents kept in mind it is understandable why the Japanese culture may frown upon body modification with tattooing. But not to the point of raiding tattoo shops and punishing those who tattoo or have been tattooed. The Japanese have strict beliefs when it comes to body modification the purity of the body in general. For instance they do not believe in organ transplants even in the most dire of situations. For it may add impurities to the body. Their culture does not allow the female population to take oral contraceptives either for it distorts the natural rhythm of the human body. But now days tattoos are a form of self expression, they are therapeutic to many and worn with honor. It has been said and even more so now that people embrace the qualities that they have tattooed upon their bodies.

[eyegiene]

Yikes

Bib Dummies, Photo by Martin Munkácsi, 1927-33

[mirrortext]

French Dispatch Artistic Anaylsis

Hannah Quinton

11/1/2021

English 157 French Dispatch essay

    In the 2021 motion picture by Wes Anderson, The French Dispatch is an allusion to the New Yorker and follows the story of a publishing company based in Liberty, Kansas where the editor Arthur Howitzer and his team of journalists meet to come up with ideas for their up-coming issue. The issue includes three stories. The first  is the Cycling Reporter, which is simply about a man named Herbsaint Sazerac who travels on his bike around southwest France and describes the places and residents and describes how the story will be told in the cinematography and symbolism of the colors. The Second story we are told is called The Concrete Masterpiece follows a man named Moses- who has been locked up in jail and is serving a life sentence because he committed two homicides. Moses, however, is a genius artist where he paints his prison guard naked, a woman named Simone who is also his muse. While he is in prison though another prisoner, Julian Cadazio buys Moses’s artwork and takes it out to showings outside of the prison and makes Moses famous because of his talent with a brush. The third story is called Revisions to a Manifesto follows Zeffirelli, played by Timothee Chalamet who is a young rebellious kid in a group of activists and we follow him in his love life. For our last story, The private dining room of the police commissioner” we watch the story of a talk show host talks about his experience of a chef and police officer who cooks whenever he is in the station however it soon turns into a story about his son getting kidnapped and the talk show host and police officer going on a mission to save his son. Every single one of these stories portrayed by Anderson has a very similar way of using cinematography to explain to the viewers what's going on, for example the use of color. This is also very similar to many of the texts we are reading in the English 157 class, Comics and History, which is taught by William Nericcio. Some of the readings we do in this class also use the artwork to portray feelings and emotions. 

To start off, Anderson is known for his gift of explaining a story through cinematography. Throughout this film it was more like reading a book rather than watching a movie because of the lack of camera movement. Every scene was typically in one frame and the camera stayed in the same place unlike traditional movies where the camera will follow the actors or just move around in general, instead Anderson kept the cameras still, which made the movie seem almost like a comic or a picture book. Of course this makes sense because Anderson is telling the story of a newspaper article so Andersons way of directing the scenes perfectly captures the idea of a comic strip in a newspaper. In the book Epiletic by David B. also does a great job of capturing signature moments like this when David B. describes the mental illness. They both use forms of artwork to describe what the story is about. We can also relate Frida Kahlo's illustrations to the Concrete Masterpiece where we watch Moses- the genius artist illustrates his love in an untraditional way of art that often confuses people with a traditional eye for art. Kahlo also uses an untraditional way to express her feelings in her artwork- when she first started painting it was unusual to hear about woman artists especially with nude artwork of herself with such deep meaning so when watching Moses started painting his love for Simone by using ‘modern art’ they both showed similarities in terms that they changed the idea of art.

Another important factor that lies within both the readings throughout the class and the stories told by Anderson is the use of color. During the Anderson stories in The French Dispatch most of the stories were told in black and white. It was only when in present time that it was in color, or when things in the stories had significant meaning. For example, the first showing of Moses’s art was in color, but after it was in black and white. In the first story, The Cyclicing Reporter he demonstrates that the past will be in black and white and the future will be in color and that outlines how the story will be shown with color. During the reading of the Parable of the Sower color is often used to visually show us Laurens hyper-empthay. Most of Parable of the Sower uses cooler tones and not much color except when Laurens abilities are shown. Color is a very important part of storytelling because of that and shows what the inner-meaning of a story can be, for example Laurens empathy is a prime example of how racism can affect people even if it isn't directly physical. The color in the French Dispatch is used to invoke the viewers of a classic 1920’s film so the viewer truly feels almost a part of a movie as if we were watching it in the 1920’s.

Another comparison you can point out is in the Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner and Ghost worlds are the comic strips they both used. In the film Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner they had a scene where the cop were chasing down the kidnapper of the son, the art style changed from black and white to a colored comic cartoon that looked like comic strips in a newspaper article. It was also very similar to the art style that David Clowes illistruates in the novel Ghost worlds. Anderson illustrated that this way because he wanted it to resemble the comic strip in the New Yorker as much as possible, and the comic strips of EIGHTBALL which is where the original Ghost World can be found. Comic strips were very common back in the day for being one of the only types of entertainment to be colorized, so for Anderson to use the color technique to make everything seem older except for the animated part is quite observant of him.

In Conclusion we can see that Wes Anderson used many artistic techniques in his films that authors use in their writing and illustrations. For example he used the art of color and his cinematography to really portray how a book or an article would be filmed. Many books such as Parable of the Sower have many similarities throughout the stories that Wes Anderson used. 

[callmejudah]

It's been awhile...

But I suppose I was overdue. The depression won. That's a constant. But the regret I feel? That's the overdue part.

[giillllly]

Girl Power

In Myriam Gurba’s “Mean,” she describes one of the most gruesome parts of not only her life, but also other victims as well. As a young adult, Gurba was sexually assaulted by a vicious and disgusting man. Not only did he assault her, but he assaulted other women in her community as well, and murdered a young woman named Sophia. Myrium constructs her life narrative as a way to express her assault and also pay homage to Sophia.  Although Gurba has experienced something as awful as sexual assault, she is still able to have warm smile and easygoing demeanor with her students and colleagues in present day time. Gurba chose literature as an outlet to voice her story and help many girls everywhere how to love with their assault. Gurba is an inspiration for those who have suffered the unimaginable. Her colorful life has not been taken away by such a despicable man and such a despicable act, and she continues to share her life with the world and help others to digest their own trauma. Whether or not Myrium Gurba knows it, she’s a kickass woman and powerful symbol of what a true strong woman stands for. 

[eyegiene]

At @lastbookstorela #mirrortext

[recommendednamer-blog]

A mirror of American teenagers I went to movie theatre to see a movie called “Lady Bird.” When I first heard about that movie, I have no idea what it will be like. It is really impressive after I watched it. Although I went my high school in China, and I don’t know what is high school life in America like. However, I think this movie is a mirror of American high school life. It is about the story of “Lady Bird” who is a high school girl lives in Sacramento and trying to get in her dream university in New York. Many stories happened in the movie are very impressive. Lady Bird knew Danny from the drama club. They fell in love really soon. Then, they stayed together almost everyday, and Danny invited Lady Bird to spend her Thanksgiving together with his grandmother, which is a really different experience for Lady Bird. They tried many things like alcohols that teenagers at that age usually want to try. However, they broke up later. Lady Bird argued with her mom usually, although they really love each other. After she broke up with Danny, they had an argument behind  her working place. Danny said Lady Bird’s mom is very strict, however, we then first heard Lady Bird said her mom has a big heart and is very warm. From that, we can know that Lady Bird really loves her mom. Her mom and she were arguing a lot sometimes and sometimes they are the best friends. I think most of people can find themselves in that. Although teenagers sometimes argue with their parents hardly, they still love each other. There was an big argument between themselves after her mom found that Lady Bird didn’t tell her truth about university. She even didn’t talk to Lady Bird. Lady Bird doesn’t like her city, so she was trying to make it to East Coast. Lady Bird was trying to mask herself all the time, but she finally found who is she. When she got into the college, she found out how she likes her city, how much her family like themselves although they didn’t show it at most of time. And she even started to like herself. When she was in the party in university, she firstly answered her name by her real name “Christine.” This movie is really impressive me. The characters are vivic. It is a mirror that reflects teenagers’ lives. This semester, we read “Ghost World,” which is also about life about teenager girls. In Ghost World, Enid also doesn’t like herself. She tried to use different customs and dress to mask herself. Christine used name Lady Bird to mask herself. However, the difference is that Lady Bird at the end found that her family loves her and started to be herself, but Enid got on that Bus and headed to a new city to start a new life after high school.