Morgan's Reflections

Labyrinth:

The Road’s Parallels “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.” (32) - The man The Road This post apocalyptic world that the man and the boy live in is completely barren, and all they have with them on their journey to the coast is their shopping cart and their dreams. The dreams consistently make an appearance throughout the book because the dreams that they have are defined by the man. The man defines dreams as bad because you lose the reality that you live in, but bad dreams and nightmares are good because they are similar to the reality that they are enduring. There are two main aspects of this journey that compare to the labyrinth. The first is impersonal use of man and boy. Because McCarthy did not use real names, the people on the journey could be substituted to be virtually anyone, and just like the labyrinth, anyone can use it. The other aspect of the journey for the boy and the man that is comparable to labyrinth is that each night as the boy sleeps, the man reflects on his work with his son and he uses the time to think about his journey and the road that has gotten him to this point in his life. The man has created his own labyrinth by sitting by the fire and bearing the cold, harsh winter conditions. Reflection is a key part to the apocalyptic world this is inhabited by the boy and the man because everyone needs time to escape the negatives of the reality they live in and focus on the positives.

The Journey that Leads to the Labyrinth “The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.” -Che Guevara Motorcycle Diaries (1) Che Guevara was an excellent explorer who set off on a pilgrimage that would transform his life. What Che is trying to articulate in this quote is that all of our journeys travel at different paces. No two journeys are the same, but all journeys need to have a starting point and an ending point. Whether it is known what the ending point of the journey will be, every journey needs to have one. While creating our labyrinth, I felt more in touch to the words of Che Guevara and his journey. Our journey was specific because there was a specific goal in mind, but the pilgrimage that Che and Ernesto went on did not have a specific goal. When Che left Argentina, he had no idea he would find the desire to heal the social injustices in the world. I believe that the labyrinth has parallels to the journey of Che and Ernesto because the goal of the labyrinth is to reflect, and each step taken has a significance. The labyrinth does not necessarily have to make a connection with the issue that brought you to the labyrinth, but by walking the labyrinth, we are bound to discover something in an aspect of our life that has the potential to change our entire journey as a hole. Although there may be times where we cannot immediately discover the resolution we are looking for, and something stands in our way just like Che’s asthma, it will eventually pass and our journey will continue.

Walking the Labyrinth Nothing compares to the sounds of nature. Hearing the wind blow, the rain fall, or even a crack of thunder bring me the most peace, so when we had the opportunity to walk the actual labyrinth I expected greatness to come from the self reflection I was about to encounter. The most vivid aspect of this course is the labyrinth because I was able to synthesize so many different aspects of the journey that I have come across throughout my pilgrimage class. While walking the labyrinth in the rain, I was able to reflect on the different journeys that we have read about so far. As the rain was coming down, I received vivid imagery from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and I pictured myself as one of the immigrants who as trying to overcome the harsh sea and swim to shore. Although the weather conditions were far from harsh, I pictured myself taking a journey similar to the journey that the man and the boy were on in The Road. Although the conditions were terrible, there was still a job to be done for them, and the weather would not and could not stand in their way. The weather inspired me to add new words to my dictionary that were weather related. I will take away the experience of peace that I gained while walking the labyrinth. Although life may be hectic at times, it is our responsibility to ourselves to create an environment for ourselves where we can reflect happily and peacefully. As life continues to speed up, it is important to focus on ourselves and the goals that we set for ourselves, and consistently, we see that each story has main characters who do not let their life control their journey and do make time for themselves and that is incredibly important for our transforming lives.

Pilgrimage:

“Knowledge is power,” this common phrase seems to run our lives as scholars. Rather than learning the material just to get another AP on your transcript, we are supposed to be learning to both challenge ourselves and to deepen our desire to learn. This semester, I would like to learn a new word every day. Rather than limiting myself to just English, I would like to expand on this idea by allowing myself to learn a new word in any language I choose. This pilgrimage will allow me to expand my knowledge and also take 5 minutes of of my day to alleviate my everyday life from the constant stressful and chaotic life of a senior. By learning new words in Spanish, for example, I would be able to expand my capabilities as a Spanish speaker. But, if I learn new words in multiple languages and have a language of the week, I will be able to change the way my brain works because studies have proven that people who speak more languages have better brains because their brain works off memory and disregards irrelevant information that comes across daily life. By learning new words in multiple languages, I will be able to more effectively communicate with those in my community and outside. While this task may seem overwhelming to find a new word every day, I am excited at the challenge of discovering new ways to being able to interact with those around me. As my pilgrimage progresses, I might change the idea of my pilgrimage to work on phrases rather than just individual words. By the end of my project, my goal is to be a more developed communicator.

Today while I was searching for cognates in Spanish and English, I came upon the cognates between spanish and arabic. This was incredibly interesting because it opened a new door to my project. While looking at a table with english, spanish, arabic, and urdu, I found that the root of many spanish words come arabic words. This thought process made a connection to my spanish class because we learned that through the Conquista, much of southern Spain was controlled by Muslims. For my project, I worked on my dictionary. While I still have no idea how I want to organize the dictionary, I was able to temporarily organize my dictionary. Today I focused on German, Spanish, Italian, French, and English emotions. I made a list of all the english words and the same word in other languages next to them. I was thinking about the most basic/frequently asked question used in my daily life and I realized it is “How are you?”. I have created a list of emotions and common reactions to those emotions. I am so pleased with the progress I have made today. As I continue to explore the organization of my project, I have decided that I want to organize everything alphabetically and then I want to organize everything by subject. I am excited to continue working with my dictionary.

I have always felt unable to fully express myself. As someone who constantly battles the concrete jungle of the 210 freeway, I have resorted to road range. Roughly two hours a day I spend yelling inside my car at the annoying Toyota that cut me off or the Mazda that broke the great yellow divide and crossed into the carpool lane before allowed this. As the road rage increased, I started to develop a vocabulary that my mother was not fond of, so this project initiated me to find new words to express the way a feel.

When I first started working on my dictionary, I did not know where to begin. I was lost on where to start looking for my words, so I did what all teenagers do: procrastinate by watching TV. Little did I know that TV would be such a vital role in my project. I began by watching rewatching “The Office” on Netflix. “The Office” has always been a soothing aspect to my life because it provides me with the comic relief the I need to overcome the tragedy of incredibly long task of defeating the concrete beast of the 210. While I was watching “The Office” with my subtitles on, I noticed the clever and witty puns that Michael Scott used throughout the series so that inspired me to analyze the English language and discover words that other people commonly use that I do not. As someone who admires foreign cultures and foreign languages, I knew I also wanted to explore how different languages have similarities after the Tower of Babel. I analyzed emotions and expressions from different languages and put them in a chart to see the comparison and to discover how the words relate. Many of which, to my surprise, had similarities.

After discovering the similarities between the different languages, I was inspired to investigate words and phrases that are used in different countries to explain situations that many of us go through on a daily basis. While initially I believed that this would be a daunting task, it turned out to be incredibly fun. I wanted to look for words based on things that I was experiencing in my daily life. I focused on finding a word to describe the relationship between my best friend and me when she underwent a dramatic event in her life. I was also super interested in travel throughout the first few months of the year that was inspired by my Global Scholars project, so I discovered words that people in other places use to talk about traveling to places that they have never been to.

The final aspect of my project includes the names that I added to my dictionary. Three of my cousins were expecting children in early to mid December, and so when we met up in November for Thanksgiving, they began discussing potential names for their children. I camp up with the idea to start defining people’s names in our class. I thought it would be a phenomenal addition to my project because it would include everyone on my journey.

As I reflect on my project so far, I am pleased with my progress and with all of the words that I have added to my arsenal of words. I was surprised at the connections that exist between different languages. I modeled the project after my real life situations, so this reflects the year so far. I want to continue to add to my dictionary and explore words that describe the world around me.