A Grieved Transition (SSR)

The article this response is referring to.

     Teenagers across the county are faced daily with decisions that fall along the lines of choosing an outfit to wear, choosing to study for a test or choosing what to do after school. All of these choices are adolescent thoughts and innocent decisions. These choices are those of a simplistic, care free life of a teenager.A boy from Niles, Ohio Jacob Larosa, age fifteen, is accused of beating to death a ninety four year old, Marie Belcastro. The decision to trespass into another's home with the intention of robbing and killing the home owner, is an adult decision, despite the age of the perpetrator. 

      

      Jacob Larosa, fifteen years of age, made the gruesome decision of murder at an age where being a teenager should have been his only worry. But because of his choices made, he must accept the consequences that will be inflicted upon him. He can no long be considered a mere child after committing such an offense. Therefore, he can no longer be punished as a child. His innocence was given up at the expense of the murder of a ninety-four year old neighbor. Larosa entered into adulthood as soon the woman's heart ceased to beat any longer. 

     Larosa made the adult decision of committing a felony and the court should rule his punishment as one that any other killer would receive. To see him receive anything other than being treated like an adult would be a moral fault of the court. Even though  Larosa is only fifteen, the court needs to ignore the age involved in the case and needs to view the intensity of the crime committed. It is a terrible shame that a young boy must locked away for the rest of his life; nonetheless he made a mature enough decision to be tried as an adult.

      When a boy comes home to his mother covered in blood, her first concern is the safety of her child. This mother believes from the start of the occurrence that her child is an innocent victim. In this case the evil child was not the victim; the boy had given the burden to someone else. This life changing decision was that of an adult and the court should rule the punishment to be susceptible to the crime. For a child who has taken a life has made the choice to rid him self of an adolescent label, has made the the choice to become an adult.

Sympathy for A Deer (PB)

     A fawn is described purely by vulnerability. Flourishing expanses are only a temporary estate for the deer child. She waits hidden between the wild flowers and the great unknown. Her freckled camouflage shines in the light of day. She feels a great safety in the assurance that her mother watches vigilantly over her while the tranquility of their forest protects them and nurtures them both. Black berries are carefully picked from prickled vines and the trees protect the deer from lurking harm. The wind makes the fawns tail dance and her mother laughs accordingly. For now they know no menace; peril doesn't not knock on their front door. They drink from a pool of sustenance as night begins to fall and the sky's turn amber colored and soon will the forest be tenebrous. Stars fall over the trees to be framed within branches and the timber sings a gentle lullaby as it protects the fawn and her mother quietly until the first blush of dawn. This concludes the clandestine day of the Deer.

     But no sympathy is felt for a being that is at peace and relaxation. No. My sympathy comes from somewhere deep inside the human world. My father is a taxidermist and I've grown to know the art far too well. My sympathy comes from sights of Deer that I have seen very often. Disfigured bodies lay on the cement floor with eyes that plead for sympathy. Boxes filled to the brim with severed skullcaps with sets of antlers attached. Elevated Kiddie pools with furred hides to drain the blood from the husk. Bodies hang from the ceiling waiting to be scraped of their insides. Dead marbled eyes stare down from a coat that has since been filled with life and breath. Scenes from a horror film? Not exactly. Such scenes as these have been familiarized to my conscience and my brain hardly thinks the least when exposed to such repugnance. But in result of this exposure, my sympathy for the Deer has grown.

     I have known two faces of the animal. The face filled with misfortune and eyes of glass. And the face filled with breath and eyes of splendor. The latter of the two is a bewildering sight. Few instances in a human's life provides enough awe to bring a man to his knees. A man falls to the ground when he is faced with anguish and grief, but seldom does he fall when encountered by stupor. the sighting of a wild Deer provides a man with a glorious stupefaction only found through this manner. Dead eyes on the wall only provide a man with the wonder of not knowing how beautiful the animal once was.

    I will never understand the profession of my father, but have come to accept it. My sympathy for a Deer lies in the perplexity of innocent beings that are murdered for sport and displayed as trophies. One thousand words can be read in the eyes of a spry Odocoileus virginianus. If one is gentle enough to read them, a new world is unlocked. A world that doesn't know harm and strives to live as a deer does. Much can be learned from and animal as majestic as the Deer. 

     And when the Fawn wakes up, she feels the new day as one that will provide her with hopeful protection and will lead her into a serene and everlasting life.

A Comparison of Solitudes (SSR)

"From the solitude of the wood, [man] has passed to the more dreadful solitude of the heart." - Loren Eiseley 

When a man embarks on the endeavor of life, he is first woken by a solitude that will accompany him for the rest of his time on earth. When an infant is born, he is confined to a world that is in his own head.  His embryonic communication skills sway him to assume that he is alone and this assumption will haunt him for the rest of his life. This loneliness is carried inside of his heart throughout his childhood and into his adult life. Though he develops many means of communication with other beings, in our human world he still feels a forlorn presence that occupies part of his soul.

With this particular quote, Loren Eiseley speaks of two very different natures of solitude. The latter of the two mentioned by Eiseley, is more fatal to human happiness and prosperity. Although both are created by the individual himself, a solitude of the heart is what happens inside of oneself; whereas, solitude of the wood connotes to what is happening around oneself. 

Loneliness of heart is what a man is condemned with from his birth and it is his choice to let it flourish or fade. As we grow, we are able to make the choice of allowing others to enter our souls and touch in us, "love and passion, pain and pleasure, grief and comfort" (Daniel E. Gawthrop). Or we make the formidable decision of driving interaction out of our lives and relinquishing our life to the isolation of our own mind. Distance from happiness grows in a private life and a misanthropic sorrow takes the place of love and joy. This solitude, as Eiseley identifies, is one of dread, but even so, each generation becomes progressively more reclusive.

The solitude of wood is a life selected by one who is called out to by nature. A man chooses this life style to gain knowledge of the world around him. He becomes a recluse to find out why it is that his life depends on human interaction, or why it does not. This man does not become bitter toward his fellow earth dwellers; rather he embraces them and finds exuberance in every form of life. Although a seclusion from civilization is still a hiatus in the furors of human life, it is a thing not borne with a man, he can leave is type of solitude behind him and rejoin his brothers. He does not carry the ball and chain of forlorn eyes and hands that are parsimonious toward the men around him. He returns to his brothers with greater knowledge of the world and tells them of his troglodytic exploit.

How does one know the difference between the two genus' of solitude? One can evaluate his perception of desolation by his thoughts of humanity when he is alone. Does he feel bitter and cold toward his friends? Or rather does he feel reverent and more knowledge of the world around him? 

The Transcendental: A Student of Nature (CRR)

The sun, as he ascends into his mid-day home and transitions our world from a crepuscular and obfuscous night to a welcoming dawn, he feels a negligence. The same negligence that is felt by the admonishing moon as she stares down to her pupils who clamor around on the Earth below. This level of disregard is only shared between the sun and the moon. The two lovers weep for their children who, day by day, become more and more oblivious to the lessons that they perpetually attempt to teach. But a perpetual attempt is an attempt, nonetheless; a teacher can teach for hours and hours without cease, but if a student is unwilling to learn, then the lesson are no more than a endeavor.

Transcendentalism is a term that has, for centuries now, been hidden away and appears to be mainly taught in schools as a writing movement that occurred in the 1820s. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are the advocates behind the ideologies of the Transcendental Movement. In their works regarding nature, they speak reverently of the lessons that the natural world has to offer the human world. Writers who expanded on the idea of transcendentalism, often spoke of individualism and encouraged readers to further understand the world through the study of nature.

Often times, the human world is a selfish one. The human world is an industrious one. The human world is a negligent one. Each man carries his own strifes. The human world has forced upon a man, the idea that occupation is the answer to the unsolvable question of life. Man in turn believes that he will find happiness in ideas such as money, popularity, and success. This world has created a selfish man; this man has created an industrious world. And together, the man and his world have become negligent to their natural beginnings. 

Transcendentalism ideologies work to yield an end to the heedlessness of our human world. It reveals that there lies ignored beauty and education in the simplicity of a wind-blown leaf. There lies ignored mystery and bewilderment in the reproductive cycle of a slug. How deeply we parallel these occurrences to our human lives depends on the intellect of the individual. This intellect is the type that realizes the necessity to forget everything taught in the human world. While not everyone can detect a buried meaning in the direction of the wind, every human can find peaceful aspects in the freedom of the wind to choose its direction. This transcendentalistic way of life encourages its followers to omit the strifes that they are seemingly presented with and open their mind and soul to the simplicity of nature's ever-changing and ever-stable temperament. 

The human world believes that everything is about money and competition. A human life is often spent in misery and sorrow due to their own perception of the world around them. Humans believe that intellect and knowledge is the algebraic formula to find success and happiness. But nature knows the real answers. Nature is aware that to know all you must forget all. Nature perpetually attempts to teach the human world of its lucid knowledge. 

And quietly, seldom, but repeatedly, a vigilant student is born; he becomes enticed by nature's simplicity and spends his whole life as a student at the mercy of natural world. He puts his whole trust in the lessons taught by the growth of a sapling and the feather on a bird's back. And it is often only he who is then able to spend his life in a great halcyon, cradled in the benevolent arms of his creator.