The Mistery Of Dreaming

What do you know about your dreams ?There always been a controversy about the dreams. We have a proximally of 150,000 dreams when we got to the age of 70 and a proximally of 1680 of them are nightmares. Most of the dreams we have are associated with the things that happened in our regular life. If the dreams that we normally have got some type of meaning is inconclusive. There are many theories. Some experts said that the dreams we have are caused by the stress in our life. But. in the contrary “The Father of psychology”, Sigmund Freud, have another theory that said that the dreams we have are desires and things we want in life. He also says that inside of the dreams we have symbols insides that represents universal meanings. Not everyone knows but, we always have dreams either we remember them or not. If we do not remember them is because we sleep pretty well but if you remembered your dream is because you did not sleep satisfactorily and you woke up in the middle of an important phase in your dream called REM (rapid eye movement).

For example I was really stressful because I was about to take a test and it was really difficult, I had a hard time trying to learn all the concepts. I went to bed with all of the stress and I had a dream that I was at the classroom I took the test and my mind was on blank. There are times that we have dreams and we don’t know why that appears in our brains and there is not an specific or a real study that can explain why that strange things happened. I know that we all wish that there was a method or a certain explanation to our dreams but, sadly there isn’t one. There can be many reasons explaining our dreams but it will always be a mystery

"A Small Place" Identity

Reading “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid the reader can see how important the importance of the identity is to her. In this work Jamaica describes how the identity of the Antiguan people has been affected by the colonial status of the Island after the English Invasion. In much parts of her work the reader can see how mad Jamaica feel of this cultural change happening in Antigua and she don’t only get mad at the English, but also get mad at the Antiguan people for not been able to open their eyes and see what the English is doing and had done to the culture in Antigua. According to Jamaica the has been so much that the people living in Antigua don’t know what they are and also they don’t realize that their living under an invasion.

 

 She also gets mad at the tourist for only focusing in the “beautiful” part of Antigua and not seeing what is behind. A tourist is a person that travel for pleasure and have a good time, so I don’t think that is a necessity for a tourist to focus on the negative aspect of a place when it travels. In Puerto Rico we can see the same that at this work by Jamaica Kincaid. This island have great thing to admire like their beaches, forests and cultural places that can catch the attention of any tourist, but I think is selfish attitude to expect that a tourist need to focus on the negative aspect of a place when the main purpose for the is to have a pleasant moment of relaxation. I can understand the point of Jamaica where she is looking for the attention of the people on the exterior to see how is the situation in Antigua and maybe do something about it, but insulting the tourist is not the way of solving a such complex theme like is this one.

"A Small Place"

On this time we had the opportunity to read “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, an Antiguan novelist and essayist. This story is divided in sections where in each one a different theme is discussed. Jamaica describes how great the experience of a tourist in Antigua is, but in counterpart also how the “insiders” or people living in the island live in hard conditions and poverty.  Everything in A Small Place, even the historical text, is filtered through Kincaid’s highly subjective, personal point of view and is mostly told in the first person. She also talks about the corruption in the island and how the government doesn’t care about the civilians on the island and after 10 years of an earthquake, people is still waiting for repairs.

 

On another section Jamaica describes how where her early years on the “old” Antigua, like she called it. In this time Antigua was under the colonial possession of Great Britain. Jamaica talks about how strong were the racism, how the Antiguans were treated as servants to the English and how the Antiguan culture was affected by the English invasion.  Much of the section is concerned with the distortions that colonialism has created in the minds of the Antiguans; Antiguans do not tend to recognize racism as such, says Kincaid, and the bad behavior of individual English people never seems to affect the general reverence for English culture.  For Kincaid, the problem is compounded by the fact that the people of Antigua can express themselves only in the language of those who enslaved and oppressed them. Kincaid’s tone is usually bitter and sarcastic, especially when dealing with Antigua’s colonial past and tourist-driven present. There are more tender moments of melancholy throughout; however, anger is the prevailing mood.

Reflection on journal

During this lapse of time in our Journey in Literature class our professor, Cynthia Pittmann, gave the students an opportunity to make our own journal in style of diary. Every day during 10 minutes every student wrote the first thoughts that came through mind and wrote them down the same way that in a diary. This exercise was accompanied with an exercise called “Life Compass”. In this life compass students had the opportunity to express each feeling through day. This included spiritual, emotional, mental and physical mood. Both of this exercises helped the student to develop an internal journey through its mind. One of the rule to this exercise was to not stop moving your hand, which isn’t easy after you have been writing through a couple of minutes. This helped to develop strategies of fast and concise writing, which it really helps in this phase of every student college life.  

 

Working with this project helped me as an individual to discover words and thoughts I didn’t knew that they existed. It also helped me to develop a more fluent use of the English while writing. You only had 10 minutes to write whatever thought entered your mind so, through this time my mind started an outburst of thoughts and feelings that you can’t even control. The hand writing through this exercise wasn’t so good at all, but the way our mind started running was pretty special enough to forget about hand writing or orthographic errors. This project also helped me as a way to canalize my energy through writing and to vent through days. This is a great exercise to keep on doing even when the project is over, because you never know what your mind is capable of.

Deep in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico, called by most the island of enhancement. Called by most of us the best place to live and the happiest world on earth. Even though our opinion in other parts of the world they have negative aspect of Puerto Rico. Criminality, economy, poverty, unemployment, etc.; are most of the reason that the world have a negative image of Puerto Rico. But what if they could see the bright side of Puerto Rico? What if they could see deep inside of the persons that compound this beautiful island? Puerto Rico is not only problems, criminality and bad economy, Puerto Rico is full of persons that are always ready to extend their hand to needed one, of persons that always are always trying to make other people happy even though their situations and of persons always try to find the positive side to everything.

Is pretty difficult to find a puertorican that actually says, “I wished I’ve never was born in this island”. We puertoricans are pretty patriotic and we always are going to defend our island to any negative comment of us. Not only in the island puertorican are patriotic, they are also all around the world constantly defending the ideals, persons and situations here in Puerto Rico. In an article by Peter Roberts, called “The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology” he wrote and quote; “The identity of any human can be specified by using, singly or in combination, many different universal criteria, e.g. sex, age, religion. However, in the modern, political world human beings are automatically identified with a country, and national identity is generally established by place of birth or place of residence”. So my message to all the persons that make negative comments of Puerto Rico is not to come a visit the beautiful places this island has, but go deep in Puerto Rico to really discover what really Puerto Rico, the island of enchanment, is really made of.

Dead Poets Society, Knox Overstreet Internal and External Journey

 The past wednseday September 10 the class had the opportunity to see the great movie classic “Dead’s Poets Society” in which appeared recently dead star and loved actor, Robin Williams. As part of the character journal for this movie I chose Knox Overstreet. Knox recognizes the importance of individualism when he becomes infatuated with “Chris”, a girl that he has never actually met before. He became obsessed with “Chris” which already had a boyfriend, called Chet. He ends up risking his life in front of Chet to win her heart. Knox assumed individual authority of his choices and stop obeying traditional authority figures. As his internal journey, Knox didn’t undergo any kind of self-realization like Todd did. He just threw himself into the romanticism and used that as his interpretation of “carpe diem”.

In his external journey, he broke rules to see her, competed for her attention with her boyfriend, and sacrificed his relationship with his family.Knox can be called as the luckiest one of the characters in the movie as the only authority figure he face was Chet and it wasn’t the same kind of authority that Mr.Perry was to Neil or the school was to Nwanda. So maybe that is why things worked out better for Knox than Neil and Nwanda. Chris obviously does like the attention Knox gives her, and in the end, holds his hand at the play. Although this has a happy outcome, this is completely an example of romanticism. The main point is that Knox risked quite a lot for a girl he never really even talked to. Many times the “wanting” is more intense than the actual being in the situation.  Knox’s fearless mind will forever demonstrate the importance and necessity of self-discovery and individual growth to new generations of teenagers to come.

About me, Waldemar Dominguez

Who is Waldemar Dominguez? From here it comes? Well let’s start by his parents, Waldemar Dominguez Morales and Keila Soto Jaume. Both born and raised in Jayuya, a town in the deepest part of Puerto Rico.  And both were first generation college students in their family. They moved from Jayuya to Rio Piedras on 1996, where they received their first and only son, named after his dad, Waldemar. It was a hard task for Waldemar and Keila to study and on the same time raises a newborn child. After 5 years of studying and working both finished their degrees and moved to Dorado, where “Waldito’s” story began.

Waldemar started to play multiple sports like basketball, baseball and volleyball; he later on decided to play baseball. Born as an only son all the eyes of the family were on him. What is he going to play? How is he doing on school? What he is going to study? All of those questions were constantly asked by his family, which has always stood in sports manners. His parents were always behind him on study manners too and with their support help him to become an honor roll student since elementary school until high school. He later on was accepted in the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus, the same college that his parents studied when he was just a little boy. He also got a scholarship on the college baseball team. He in currently completing a bachelor on natural sciences, with a specialization on chemistry. Waldemar is still on his familys eyes as the oldest nephew and grandson of the family. He have big task on he is shoulders to demonstrate what his capable of.

2nd Reflection On "Running Brave" Film

On the second part of the movie “Running Brave” the viewer can see how Billy’s life had a turnaround related to his identity. A group of event happened through this part of the movie that affected him hardly. The lost of Frank, his mate and very important person in Billy Mills life, discrimination and problems with his identity. At a point of the film Billy actually quits his dreams of running on the Olympics, but he found his way up again and made it to fulfill his dreams.

Billy was invited to a fraternity on his college but he wasn’t accepted because of his Indian race. Also he had an encounter with a college security guard who hesitated if he was or not a student or an intruder. Furthermore he was able to invite family from his tribe but the development wasn’t the waited by Billy. His brother Frank was supposed to stay with Mills in Kansas, but when his family came to visit him found out that Billy had changed its indigenous identity to a more Americanized. This made his family return to the Indian reservation as his cousin said to him “Let’s go, he is a white now”. All of these events had a serious effect on Billy’s internal journey to his dreams. Billy’s performance on races where quickly vanishing as he was losing that freedom essence he felt when, to run just because he had to, causing him to move back to the Indian reservation.

Billy Mills Indian identity was really put to work after he reached college. After Frank death he felt emptiness insides of him because he already lost to big persons in his life, his dad and now his brother. The viewer can see how not only Indians, but other races, faced cultural difficulties and discrimination in order to complete their dreams. Billy felt defeated by society, barriers and problems at one point, but that didn’t stop him to complete his dream of participating on the Olympics. 

Reflection On "Running Brave" Film, Inspired On Billy Mills Story

“Running Brave” is a film inspired in Native American runner and Olympic gold medalist, Billy Mills. He has completed one of the biggest feats in Olympics history. A comeback victory on the final race of 10,000 meters of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to win the gold medal for his country, USA. During his journey to becoming an American hero on sports he faced a lot of discrimination and problems adapting to a new culture. Billy made a jump from a South Dakota Native America tribe, to the University of Kansas, one of the best college’s on sports in the whole United States.

In his internal journey the viewer can see how Billy Mills faced discrimination when he entered to the Kansas University. Even the same team discriminated him after every victory when they asked him if “the victory was for the team or for the tribe”. His way of feeling free and release all of his stress and tension was running. One of his motivations to become a great runner was his father, who after participated on clandestine boxing matches trying to raise money died. He grew up with the absence of his father, so he needed to make thing on his own and became a mature person.

At his external journey the viewer can he what he faced since high school until his Olympic run. First his college coach wasn’t sure if Billy was worthy of a scholarship on Kansas University because he already had experiences with Native American runners who he described as “undisciplined”. Already at college Billy had to adapt to a different culture from his tribe, how to act, how to dress, how to eat and his manners. Also he faced another difficulty which didn’t stop him in his journey to fulfill his dreams. He wasn’t recruited on the USA Olympic team, but that didn’t and he made the tryout again got recruited on his second time. Regardless of what he faced and all the obstacles that were in his way, he overcome his difficulties and became one of the best athletes in North America Olympic history.