The Witch I Worry - Flash Fiction (Carsin Ablon, 6th Period AP Literature)

This story was inspired by the drawing on the left which is titled Cleaning by Byron Otis. 

Her presence was that of an injured, aggressive animal, whimpering for help and scaring those who approach. Being near her was having your shoulder looked over. My master lurked, obsessively.

My knees were raw, my hands were pruned, and my back ached like hers. I was the fourth maid; the fourth to scrub her house’s rotting wooden floors, the fourth to dust her bare furniture, and the fourth to polish her picture frames.

The widow I worked for was Ms. Shrim; A sour, broken, terrifying modern day Ebenezer Scrooge. She lived in a beautiful place that only a being so draining could ruin. I ask her constantly “Ms. Shrim, would you like to go outside? Maybe I could take you to watch the boats?”

Her house overlooked the bay. Mr. Shrim used to sit and stare at. He would watch as boats drifted in slowly, as if that had no purpose, no real cause. They carried only sense of leisure that Ms. Shrim could not grasp. Shrim had nowhere to be, nothing to do, yet she approached every minute task anxiously. She held her fists tightly as she played out her routine that I helped drag on every day. I arrive at her house. She is already sitting at her kitchen table. I tell her “good morning”. I feel her stare as I begin to cook her a breakfast. I sit and listen to her eat.

Eight hours a day I spend with that woman, every day the same for almost 4 years now.  

During the day, as I cleaned for her, I desperately scanned her desert home for something off putting; any type of change. Something to look at that neither she nor I have ever seen.

One morning, I walked in to see Ms. Shrim hunched at her window. I slowly approached and asked “is everything alright Ms. Shrim?” Her head pivoted towards me on her rusted neck. A filter of black and white rushed through the room as the little color in the air evaporated. So I left. I began cooking. Four years she sat at her table in the chair that now stood empty like the rest of her furniture. I peer over to check the witch of a woman I was so worried about.

That day I cooked grits like every other day. I scooped the soft, sandy food into a bowl and carefully asked “would you like to eat at the table or by the window Ms. Shrim?” and I heard no response.

I turned the corner to find no one. No hag, no venomous woman, not even a rude comment. Just an open window.

I slowly approached the window where she previously stood. I called out “Ms. Shrim?” I looked out of the window. A boat was leaving the bay.  

Written by Carsin Ablon.

In Defense of Visual Art

In Defense of Visual Art

By Carsin Ablon

Artists, according to the earliest of human kind in which we have record of, were known as silent communicators or creators: an artist fuses and manipulates both of these forms of comprehension. For the artist is not only a historian and a documenter of occurrences, but the artist conceptualizes all ideas of the  most abandoned corners of the mind, expressing, uncovering and revealing crystal from a layer of stone. Artists, by no means remain the only form of early communication, nor are they scientists, who understand even the unobserved, as to be a scientist or modern communicator comes with a sense of logic and purpose which art survives without. An artist depicts the development of human thought; showing the timeline of the past and paving way for the future. The marks of a brush or material of a sculpture expresses an aesthetic through development, showing lifestyles and fashion, all within a finite and tangible work; continuously observable without context are the works of Bourgeois or Grotjahn, which ask only for instinctual reaction without knowledge. The sounds of music, the movement of dance, and the ability to comprehend text all remain temporary and dependent on human continuation in the way that a piece of art does not rely on to simply exist.

Aestheticism, design, color, form, concept, and story are only a few of the components and elements of art that are individually explored; however until all elements and functions of artistic perception united in a cohesive form is art achieved. Art balances and varies all existing elements of experience differently to create new genres, all of which pull from a mass gene pool like the varying of species all of which can instinctively connect to the tissue of man. The man’s tool of looking seeks the rare and the stimulating simultaneously and naturally thus birthing the need for art, which has created design, created craft, and created a standard of experimentation of thought, all of which influence the renewable resource which is a lucid, ephemeral shapelessness beast that nests in the thoughts of mankind. For art is an ever-expanding mine containing unknown, yet discover-able substance that can be portrayed only by a discoverer; while all notes, all words, and all movements can only be produced in so many finite forms before becoming unoriginal. The artist is a transmitter, which sends thought as a natural data which each computing mind can process  and experience infinitely…

Artists are the makers of the undefined; the theorists that rely not on fact, but on idea ; the never-ending source of creation, the recorder of the newly conceived, and worry not about purpose; but simply on existence. Artists are the expediters of the unknown mind.  

A City. A Suburb. A Slum.

Finally. A single chapter in How To Read Literature Like a Professor that i can honestly (somewhat) agree with.

         

In Thomas Foster's nineteenth chapter, titled "Geography Matters", the history and significance of the four seasons are analyzed in relation to literature. Geography, the study of the physical features of the earth and its atmosphere, and of human activity as it affects  and is affected by an environment (according to Google), has been original factor of success and development throughout all early human life. Thanks to geography, the Mayan civilization thrived, the Egyptian empire erected the pyramids, and the world's range of biological diversity remains vast. It only makes sense that modern life's largest determining factors hold a large place in literature as well. 

          

Ever since I moved houses about five years ago, I have heard Realtor after Realtor repeat the following saying: "Location, location, location". Location, being the placement of objects and life in relation to geography, was a high, if not the highest priority of real estate. Location determined a houses price, a houses size, a houses safety, and even a house's structural integrity. Most importantly however, location determined a house's environment and therefore the environment of said house's residents. Would location put me in a suburb? a city? a slum? How would geography affect my story?

          

On page 137 of How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster elaborates on the significance of location and geography in relation to literature by referencing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a young boy named Huck sails down the Mississippi river with an escaped slave named Jim. The location, being the Mississippi river, holds major significance to the novel’s plot as Mark Twain could have chosen any other river in America for an escaped slave and young boy to travel down. However, the Mississippi river’s location in the southern slave states changes Jim and Finn’s sailing from a simple escape, to a full on adventure. In fact, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn depends more on geography than most other famous novels as Jim’s presence jeopardizes Huck and various other raft members constantly as they travel through a slave territory. Without Jim, Huck’s journey down the Mississippi could have been a breeze. Without the Mississippi river, Jim and Huck’s travels could have been a breeze. However, it is because Mark Twain decided to create a problem by putting Jim, with Huck, on the Mississippi river that allows the delightful yet dark plot and story of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to develop.  Mark Twain’s most famous piece of literature relies entirely on a conflict constructed by geographical and character restraints that seem like they could have been pulled from a hat. By simply placing an escaped slave on a river that travels throughout the length of the south, Mark Twain constructed on of America’s most loved, meaningful and entertaining stories.

         

Five years after living in North Dallas, and reading Foster’s commentary on Huck Fin, I have realized how my geographical constraints have sculpted my lifestyle. I live closer to certain friends who have also become my closest friends. Now I live further from a gym and now I am less active. Because it is North Dallas, my neighbors are very boring people, and therefore I stay in a little more. Although geography can be unfortunate, geography is never the less important to all who acknowledge the significance or not.

Written by Carsin Ablon

The Freudian Fiction Conflict

On page 7 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, author Thomas C. Foster quotes legendary psychologist Sigmund Freud's famous line: "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Sigmund Freud, known for his wild and abstract yet logical statements about the meanings of objects, like cigars, in the dreams of those who he psychoanalyzed, used his famous quotation to re-assure people that sometimes, an object, be it in art or literature, is just an object with no further significance. Freud's famous quote goes to say that sometimes there is no archetype, symbolism, or metaphor in an element of art. Now Freud's cigar quote holds enormous truth in relation to modern art as well as modern writing.

Today's art scene seems to be convoluted by those who search too far and too hard for an inner meaning or a hidden piece of information that may or may not exist in an art work that has been left purposefully vague. Due to this developing direction of modern works, a piece of modern literature, like a modern painting, can be deduced to nothing just as easily as meaning can be found. Personally, I find the vagueness of modern poetry, literature, and art alike to be what makes modern art great and frustrating simultaneously as vagueness in something that may potentially have inner meaning allows for the observer of said art to make their own conclusions. Frustratingly however, the person observing the same piece of modern art's interpretation is almost guaranteed to be entirely different than your own rendering both observers equally right and wrong.

The coexistence of differing theories about art and literature however, remains a vital component of artistic experience. The same indistinct idea of self relation to art that makes the validity of modern works arguable keeps the current state of art thriving. However, as a stubborn person reading about how to read and intemperate literature, I feel unsatisfied by a professor telling me that the best way to approach meaning in literature is with a blurry understanding of Freud's literal cigar and the figurative cigar.

The difference between the literal and figurative cigar is the difference of a Chagall painting, and a Pollock painting. A Chagall is decorated with enormous amounts of symbolism and metaphors and strong story telling while the Pollock painting is beautiful to look at. Both are valid, both are significant. However, the two styles are regularly jumbled together as people desperate for self connection in art search for meaning in Pollock's paint splatters while observers look for the aestheticism in Chagall's hectic settings. The same seems present in the world of literature as noted by Foster's brief history of the diverse and also vague role of a meal in a story.

As noted on page 8 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the common meal, or even the food being eaten ant the meal, can be the most or least important factor of a story. A meal, being loaded with traditions of respect and curious, as well as being a personal time to consume, creates a a setting of complicated interactions between charterers. However, in a modern work of literature, the role of said meal, be it major or insignificant, can be overlooked quite easily without a sense of unattractive and blunt simplicity in presence. the role of the major and minor parts of a story, to me, seem lost in the vague rules of modern works, thus leaving Freud and Foster's conclusions on inner meaning unsatisfying.

Art has never been and never will be as finite as other parts of life. However, as the description of what art can and can't be expands, the generally avoided sense of blunt depiction that comes with overly clear messages may need to be re-introduced for the sake of cohesiveness in art.



Written by Carsin Ablon