Thought Train to Pusan

I’m going to be honest, despite hearing countless references to The Bell Jar and it’s author over the years, I never had any idea what it was about. And so finally, I decided to read it, with all it’s beautiful language and strange meanderings of thought and progress. I found myself both understanding and irritated throughout it, and while I liked reading it, I don’t know if I could have stood if it went on longer than it did. I also don’t understand why this novel and Sylvia Plath’s life has become so romanticized in the modern day, but maybe that’s just me. The life presented in the novel is a struggle of mental instability, and while it is important to read stories like this in an attempt to understand those afflicted, it by no means makes you feel good, nor should it be a mark of aspiration, despite the tragic poetics that may be deciphered from the words of pain. In any case, The Bell Jar is about a young woman named Esther, who we first meet at a summer internship for a ...

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of tarot cards: how they work, the different beliefs behind them, and more than anything, the symbolism involved. And so, on the spur of a moment, I picked up a book (and set of cards!) on tarot, these ones specifically being in the style of Steampunk. Why not just a regular deck? Because these ones looked beautiful, and I’ve sort of been digging the whole steampunk thing lately. And surprisingly, I feel like I made a bit of a connection to these cards, as weird as that may sound. The images just strike something in me, even if I don’t quite know how to do the whole “reading” thing yet, except for on a level of personal interpretation. In any case, what is included in The Steampunk Tarot Manual is a reasonably comprehensive layout of all the different cards in a typical tarot deck, their standard meanings, and a few different ideas as to what this might mean, especially given the images in the steampunk style. It also includes illustration...

I find that in a lot of romantic comedies these days, there is always that scene where the female is discussing her past relationships, only to at one point mention her “experimental college phase” that included a relationship or sexual experience with another woman. “Hahaha! Everyone does it! Look how uncomfortable or surprised the man she is currently dating looks right now!” But then I think, is that kind of experience really that common? Do girls always find that one, really intense friendship that leads to them experimenting romantically or sexually? Is it always just a “phase”? For some, obviously it is not. We know that. So why are these experiences so often played up for laughs? Annie On My Mind deals with two young girls in their last year of high school, discovering a new sort of kinship in each other, that eventually leads to romantic love. It is serious and confusing for them, and in all honesty, it feels real: like a real situation that might happen between two fri...