IB Historiography: American Indians

I got a 24/25 for this historiography for my IB History of the Americas class.

Continue

Transitions: Thoughts on Things

I have made a decision; a decision that has always seem to entice and haunt me from afar, yet here I am reflecting upon an irrevocable choice. A choice I have made because of the dreams I was first indoctrinated with, and later accepted as my own. The dream is a common one, an aspiration for success. However this dream is intensified by the circumstances I have faced in my academic career as an undocumented student. However things have looked especially optimistic for immigrant students over the past couple years; I can dream.

The process of choosing where my education will continue has been quite frightening. You need a level a faith to commit yourself to school, and hope that everything will turn out alright. Furthermore, for most people these couple of transitional months, from high school to college, have been the first exposure I have with the economics of adult life. They, and I include myself, realize that college is more than educational compromise, but an economical one as well; money is scary.

However even if you think you are the smartest person in the world while in high school your intellectual capabilities are seriously shaken by the prospect of college. We have always been told that college is completely different beast from high school, and only the strongest will survive. Social Darwinism in the works. This premise of college, in my humble opinion, is complete bullshit. I just do not see the point in intimidating students in such a way. Motivation?

I have recently received my working visa card; it was very exciting because that economic uncertainty I had going into college was greatly ameliorated by the prospected of a minimum wage white-collar job; this more than my father ever got from the U.S. government. My parents vicarious tendencies could be annoying at times, yet I understand why they do this action. However I want you to always remember that you owe your parents nothing, and they at no point should dictate you life after the age of eighteen. We must all grow up at some point, but growing up I have realized has nothing to do with age. So how am I to know when I have grown up, and ready for the "real world". Maybe we will never truly be ready.      

Continue

IB English Analysis Essay

First off, hello its been a long time since anyone has written anything, but this is for a good reason. IB. Yes this program has single-handily taken away so much precious time that me and my authors have had no time to sit down and write for the blog. However IB is slowly winding down, and I find myself discovering the little gem I have tossed away to the unmerciful realms of internet irrelevance. It is time to get back to the writing ways I had promised myself in the summer of 2012, and continue improving my ability to craft magic with words. For now I will leave you with one of the many assessments that has kept me away, enjoy.

Continue

Rivers, Ponds, Lakes, and Streams

Sometimes I grow frustrated with the conventional idea of God. The idea of God, heaven, hell, the overworked stories that bury themselves inside the bible, I just can't place my heart in to it. Now, I don't want to give the impression that my ideas are impervious to change. Far from it. I enjoy discussing new ideas and allowing my thoughts and words to flow depending on the time, the place, the people. My thoughts change often when it comes to religion and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's reasonable and should be outright expected. Except it's, more often, not. If you change any bit of your thoughts, some would see it as a weakness. Something changed your mind and people hold you to it, shove it in your face, and remind you of the time where you didn't believe that and except you to feel terrible. They expect you to feel weak, ashamed. They expect you to feel hypocritical. But why? There should be no reason to do that to someone. If anything we should be encouraging them. We should be encouraging people to explore new ideas and twist it and turn it and change it all they want to what they feel is best. To what they feel comfortable with. See, when it comes to religion people often expect you to have a cemented answer. When they ask, they want to know who you affiliate yourself with. Where you stand. But what if you are not at a standpoint? What if you took different beliefs from each religion and changed it to fit you best? Why do people bestow that type of pressure on each other? Muhammad Ali had once said, "Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths".  And in the end, isn't that what religion is all about? Our truths and how others and ourselves can learn from them? And while, I don't exactly believe in a God, I still see that each religion is trying to offer something to this world. Something beautiful and it's up to you to use it anyway you want to. You can use it to justify your actions. You can use it to hurt others, save others, help others. And while it can be dishearteningly cruel, it can also be merciful.
Merciful. I don't believe in God but if God were true, I wish for him to be merciful. I can't believe in a God that is malicious. And for that reason, I do not believe in a hell. I don't want anyone to be punished for being human. I do not seek pleasure from the thought of torture being inflicted on someone for all eternity. I cannot stand the thought of the resonance of their eternal screams echoing in my head. But alas, I pray for a heaven. And others say that one cannot exist without the other but I disagree. I don't associate the two as opposites. They are things that can stand by themselves. Just as our emotions. I do not believe the opposite of love is hate and I do not believe the opposite of sadness is happiness because they can exist without the other. We feel them either way, and we don't need one to feel the other. But again, I cannot place my heart in heaven. Though I do appreciate the thoughts of eternal happiness, I cannot believe in such a place
but something better. I believe in an afterlife but I do not believe in what the stories in those mystical books say the afterlife is like. I don't think it has a specific location or look but a feeling. I think there's something big out there. Something better than what we believe. Something we're not getting a hold of. Something we're missing out on right now. Something beyond our imagination. Something that makes us feel apart of the whole universe and beyond.
And then there is the thought that may presumably haunt us all, that we are gone. That we no longer have the capability to think. That we don't even know what we are where we are or even have the ability to ponder. Just an empty acceptance of nothing. I don't want to believe in something like that. It terrifies me to the core. I don't want this all to go to waste. I want to continue thinking, moving, feeling. The mere possibility of it is dreadful, to say the least. But perhaps that is the curse bestowed upon mankind.

 I don't think any of us are wrong. It is your truth and you'll die with it as your only. It won't matter what anyone else thought. At least we can count on that.

Continue

Thanking Religion?

The idea of a God, and the lack of one, has been vital to my intellectual prosperity; to understand this occurrence one must look at my upbringing. In the early years of my childhood my parents were lenient when it came to matters regarding religion. However this suddenly changed about the time I was nine; by going to church my parents had initiated an impregnation of our home with religious dogma, from the ubiquitous holy imagery to the constant religious visitors. My environment was being enthralled with religion.

The predicament with this is that religion has this intellectual restrictive property; that limits the range of one's ken greatly. Let me explain. Belief requires a sort of surmising that borders on the insane. In the realm of belief God is all-knowing, and the bible is the source of all truth. This leads to great limitations in education, for if the bible contains all truth what is the point of exploration. Why go to school or do research if you could just stay home and read the bible or any other holy text. This was the type of thinking inflicting my mind, and I was happily ignorant of this for five years.     

Richard Dawkins abruptly stopped this period of complete ignorance one evening as I was reading his book called The God Delusion. Prior to this act of religious defiance one must get a feeling of the atmosphere leading up to this one moment. During this time I was exploring new areas of knowledge that were considered taboo to my religion. I was learning about the germ theory, big bang theory, and the evolution theory; ideas and concepts that labeled me an iconoclast to my community. However I kept on learning because these ideas were expanding my ken to new reaches that my religion could not and would not do. Furthermore, this new-found intellectual freedom catalyzed a hunger for more knowledge that persists to this very day. In this regard I find myself thanking religion for truly awakening the scholar in me.

Continue

Glisten of Chastity

                                    Glisten of Chastity

   The whore lies in the bed bleeding. She weeps quietly there alone. Clouds edge up against the side of the bed and lift her to the cool winter night.

"Come let me see your face. Look into the dark splats of beauty in your eyes"

She raises her head to the blinding voices. Red pouring to the ground. The streets look weak from this hieght.

"What fair star fell beneath your skin that you had a crystal spark? Look at this figure before your eyes, it is your being."

                                                     
                                                       -Silence-

Cool winds pass giving a warm arousing sensation. She looks to the side to where the Earth has made its distance.The moon erupts suddenly into the sky with a silhouette figure descending

"You have darken your flesh. Here I am"

He moves smoothly onto her body onto the slit in her legs from which she bleeds.

"Let me taste the blood of which your soul has become."

His tongue moves over it. She looks onto the figure of whom remains silhouettte.

"There it is. The hallow black that fills your voids."

He plunges his arm deep in her abyss launching roars of groans. Tears floods here eyes. Hands clenched on the sheets she screeams.

"Here, bare witness to what was yor demise"

He holds it to her face as she begins to cry a broken cry. Blood now rushing out from her.

"You once told me you loved me. You once told me you glisten in glee for me, but you fell in his rage. You now bleed his blood!"

The river runs dry. No more blood. From the sky he gestures his hand as though grasping its infinity. With a whiten glow he places it against her chest . He cuts at his wrist bleeding.

"Here now, I give you life"

She awakes to his face.

"I want to love you" - She

He grasps her thighs and burrys deep with a rhymic beat. Moans fill the air.

"Taste the light that you crave inside you."

She embraces it fully, kneeling before his legs, bobbing her head.

"Eat now for you had hunger for life, you lost it in your demise."

The moon spills onto the bed molding into a chalice. He releases his flow onto it.

"Drink for it will brighten your soul."

She grabs the chalice pouring the smooth white liquid into her.

"Look into my eyes. I now proclaim you free of what you were, here now is light."



"Do you love me?"

"Yes"- She

He grabs her breast squeezing them until she screamed.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes"- She

He claps his hands an fire spit onto her body, burning.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes"- She

He snaps his fingers and a thousand arrows pierce her flesh.

"Do you love me?

PAIN, SCREAMS

"Yes"-She

He placed a blade in her palm directing it to his chest.

"Stab me if you do not."

"I do, I do love you."

He looks into her eyes and smiles .
He sings.
The skies melt onto the bed drowning her,as he flies away......air.....come..........back..........












She awakes into a soft silk bed. The room nicely painted. Floor coated in marble tiles. She gets up, opens the door and sees.....

Continue

Thoughts From A Nobody

 Our world is continually going through a repetitive metamorphosis; 200 years ago we had barely conquered the means of using electricity, yet here we are conquerors of the digital age. What lead to these inconceivable alterations in human history? In my opinion, we owe all of this gradual progression to the great thinkers who innovate and invent. This leads me to wonder, where am I in this maelstrom of new trendsetters? Progression is not going to stop and new catalysts are needed to lead the new millennium into grandeur.

 The human mind is a mutable entity that embodies inconsistency to the fullest. However this tendencies to change is not a faux pas in part of the evolutionary process, but an endowment in some sorts. Due to this attribute we are able to always dream and aspire for betterment in our society because we know we are capable of it. Once we see the extent of our abilities we get a bit greedy and want more. Bigger skyscrapers, faster production, better technology, yet in this fuss we taint our gains. Ultimately, ironically, undoing the progression, yet we move forward; we are truly a comical being. 

This leads me to the internal impasse that inspires this post. Where am I in this maelstrom of new trendsetters? I see the news, the internet, the ever disappearing newspapers blasting into my face the accolades of these new age prodigies. There unlikely triumph over adversity, only strengthening their labels as scholars. These ambition that I have, are they unwarranted? I feel a sense of worthlessness when I think of the workaday contribution I have, and potentially will continue to have, on our society. Is it wrong that I want to do something to ameliorate the problems facing our world?

Are these feelings just fueled by personal gain? Is it that I want to be the center of attention, I want to be recognize, I want people to be proud of me? These are all things that I desire, but are they the sole reason I want to do good? And could this self-interest motivate not only my reasons to be good, but motivate the good we see in all human beings? This sensation of inadequacy still looms over me like a dark cloud; writing this post is almost as insignificant as my complaint. I am not sure if I will or will not make a contribution to the human race. But why must I feel bad about it?  

-Superbia et Occupatio

Continue