Aikman.

I had to come to New York City to find the wonders and glory of farmer’s lemonade.

check it:

http://food.realsimple.com/realsimple/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1085518

It’s so hard trying to understand different cultures sometimes. The other night my friends and I were talking about the affect cities has left on societies around the world. The large conglomerations based in America have found themselves in numerous countries all over the world. And they adapt, in order to thrive. For example, a McDonald’s in Russia has lamb on the menu, whereas a McDonald’s in South America has a dessert menu based on the local fruits.
The point was though, that any culture is affected by the cities around them. Tiny indigenious villages in Mexico have TVs or radios as outputs to the “outside.” I got a picture of an Amish couple one day and I felt it captured this couple’s tranquility and the essence of an Amish lifestyle with beautiful woods and a gorgeous clear blue sky in the background. But I barely realized the lady in it is wearing sneakers and it kind of made me a little sad.

I miss the colors that make up home. 

A man came up to us during a fishing trip, riding a homemade bike and sportin a huge snake around his neck. He had a polaroid camera and he asked us if we would like to take a picture with his pet boa. He was charging 5 dollars a picture. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Not because I was scared of the massive snake. But because I was broke and we still had the long drive home. I miss people like him, with a made up texas twang.Spring Break has been fun. 

I always see this cemetery when I fly into LaGuardia and every time, I tell myself I’m going to visit it. I never do though. I think I will when I come back from Spring Break only because I’m running out of time and I don’t want to push it back to next year. I’ll do it this April, for sure.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=9bbd2777de68f048dff2a6938e911e86c9a02eae

New York City has a reputation for being cruel. However, it is the people who inhabit the city that make it their own personal hell. In Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Man-Moth,” a cheerless man inhabits the underground tunnels of New York, hiding from reality. Robert Frank’s photograph “Sick of Goodby’s” captures the state of mind of someone tired of endings in general. Both the photo and the poem portray a sense of  despair and evoke tremendous sadness and pity. Although seemingly different and unassociated, both pieces are alike in various ways. Both photo and poem relate to the monotony and despondency that even a big city life can precipitate. Through tone, imagery, and style Bishop tells of the same heartache and cessation that a busy city life can lead to, much as Frank does in a single photo. 

“The Man-Moth” is an “oracular” poem, spurring questions and ambiguities from the very title. Bishop read the misprint for the word mammoth in a newspaper one afternoon and was instantly inspired, claiming that “an oracle spoke from the page of the New York Times, kindly explaining New York City to me, at least for a moment” (Bishop, 2). The typo led to the birth of her Man-Moth, a man who is unconsciously drawn to light, just as moths are drawn to anything bright. The moth flutters around the bright light, around and around, accomplishing nothing at all. This poem follows the Man-Moth’s unconscious, almost ritual, failings at reaching the moon, or his goals in the city. The title instantly tells the reader what can be expected. In a similar fashion, Frank’s photo “Sick of Goodby’s” alerts the reader to expect something sad or lonely. The lack of an “e” at the end of “goodbye” is haunting because the ignorance and lack of knowledge portrayed is sorry and poignant. Such a mistake in spelling also provides an image of youth and innocence. To have something young and carefree be associated with such sorrow is stirring. What the title does, is it says exactly what is seen in the picture. Like “The Man-Moth,” it  reflects the subject matter and tone for the reader even before anything happens.

Despite being labeled a single photograph, Robert Frank’s photograph is actually a set of two images, one placed right above the other. This approach offers an esoteric perception of having more of nothing to see. An essay which discusses the photograph makes note of how “the inclusion of multiple photographic frames in one image allows Frank a new means of exploring isolation in the visual plane” (Niedenthal, 1). This collage of images is reminiscent of the way Bishop provides the reader with the two images of the Man-Moth’s own isolation in the dark underground and on his trips towards the moon.  In Frank’s first image, the words “sick of” are painted on a mirror. The paint drips like blood, evoking pain and discomfort. The mirror reflects nothing but the arm of a man, holding a small doll. American artist Joyce Kozloff observes that “Frank’s subjects may have been attached to each other but are dissociated in space” (Niedenthal, 1). This is true for both the doll and the Man-Moth in that they exist and are present, but they are disjointed from humanity and logic.

That is to say the doll is a symbol of purity and the past, but its presence in the photo isn’t natural or even accidental. It is placed there by the dark, omniscient hand and though Frank might have seen placing the doll on the picture as a “rational,” “serious object” the way Eiffel thought his Eiffel Tower a necessity, it is “only the form of a baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational” (Barthes, 6). It further accents the disillusionment Frank was feeling at the time the photograph was taken, as well as ushering in the second image: a mirror with the words “goodby’s.” Frank’s daughter had died in a plane crash and he had just left New York. He was working in Mabou, Canada where “nothing happens” and he had “time to think, to make a decision” (Woodward, 5). What he had time to think about was his life, and just how chaotic it could be in the hustle and bustle of the city.

Just as gloomy, the symbolism in “The Man-Moth” isn’t any less negative towards the city. The moon in this poem is not only a light source in the shadowy and broken city, but it is a hole. It is a gateway to better and lighter things. And for that very reason, the Man-Moth is attracted to the “queer light” of the moon, the symbol of great heights, of a “temperature impossible to record in thermometers” (Man-Moth, line 8). The Man-Moth does not look up at the moon often because he lives busily and is absorbed in his work. The Man-Moth spends most of his time underground, in the shadow of his own self. He does not aim to succeed because he is scared of defeat. 

However, the Man-Moth does have “occasional visits to the surface” and he “trembles but he must investigate as high as he can climb” (Man-Moth, line 16). He’s a man unsure of himself, unsure of many things except his own self doubt. He hangs about the moon and it’s light for as long as he can, until he falls back to the ground. After his defeat, he has learned nothing from the experience. “He flits,/he flutters” in pain and sorrow back underground into the safety of the darkness. He goes backwards, as portrayed literally in the fourth stanza where he “always seats himself facing the wrong way” on the train (Man-Moth, lines 26-27, 29). Here, the speaker emphasizes the disparity in which  the Man-Moth is living in. He is trapped in the innovative city, he is literally seated in one of its biggest technological marvels -the subway- yet he is only a prisoner.

Furthermore, the composition of the poem itself is important. The stanzas are cut up into paragraph-like bundles, with the short first lines conspicuously placed towards the center. These first lines are not long enough to break past a five syllable count, and  they offer a premise to the whole stanza. In fact, “the short first line with the conspicuous caesura is used to establish both place and perspective, but then is immediately followed with an image that seems to undermine the perspective that has been set up” in the second line (Benigni, 1). The speaker introduces the poem with the line “Here, above,” elevating the reader to a status above “man” in the poem (Man-Moth, line 1). The lines break at the points that require pauses so that the speaker is telling the story in a slow, dramatic way. 

Likewise, the composition of Frank’s picture is also very precise. “Sick of Goodby’s” was taken on a Polaroid, which “degrades the photographic image,” which he then scratched the emulsion of. This altered state of the photo gives the image a much more tattered and tried look.  The angle at which he shot the second photo gives the allusion that the mirror is a closing door. His use of black and white film is captivating. It draws the eye in, focusing on the harsh contrasts between the empty blacks and the crisp whites, “as if the photographs were actual transmitters of light rather than its mere recorders. In combination with the black voids that often surround it, the light in Frank’s photographs thus often contributes to the sense of threat that pervades many of his works,” this one included (Baier, 59).

Correspondingly, a looming sense of threat can also be found in “The Man-Moth’s” ending. In the end, “one tear” is the Man-Moth’s only possession. His eyes, which should beam and shine bright with life are “all dark pupil, an entire night itself” (Man-Moth, lines 42-43). He has been completely devoured by the dark, starless city sky now. The speaker goes on to describe the “one tear, his only possession…pure enough to drink” (Man-Moth, line 48). This tear “like the bee’s sting, slips” (Man-Moth, line 45). Once the stinger is lost, the death of the bee is subsequent. Likewise, once the Man-Moth’s tear has been shed, he is destroyed. The final stanza describes the Man-Moth’s figurative death as “he closes up the eye” (Man Moth, line 44). The flashlight in his eye is an artificial light. It is not natural like the light of the moon. Still, he is a moth and so he will settle for any light. This artificial light is a fake world, or rather, a real and boring world which he has finally settled for. It is not the life he hoped to have. He is stuck underground in the subways going from job to job. The city is literally on top of him. Frank’s picture offers an equally unhappy resolution. Despite his obvious unsatisfaction in goodbyes and endings, Frank is not doing anything to stop the goodbyes and the pain. He is merely stating his frustration in his photo.  

New York City is known for being unkind and monotonous. Joan Didion once claimed that “it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair” (Didion, 687). Its lifestyle is often a stressed and tired one in which “everything that is said…(one seems) to have heard before, and could no longer listen” (Didion, 687).  “The Man-Moth” and “Sick of Goodby’s” manifest the boredom and anxiety with failure or unwanted partings that city life can bring. Although it isn’t obvious at first, these two pieces of art both share a common disenchantment with the city. They both exhibit the acceptance of unhappiness in exchange for any sort of life at all. They create a sorrowful mystique, perhaps the very sorrowful mystique one could call New York City.