Poem 1

Water, wet, weeping these are the remnants of the storm.
The woman hangs onto the dresser as if
it were a stuffed childhood animal.  Off in
the distance a boat approaches.  The men
young and muscular lend aid to  the woman
in her flooded house.  A ladder is brought up from
the flooded garage and placed against the boat
wading ten feet above.  She slowly climbs from her
second story room up the ladder into the
waiting boat.  A man dives from the boat
into the murky deep.  As she struggles to
 pull herself into the boat a heave is felt from below.  Up and over she goes as she rolls into the waiting boat, finally safe at last.

Thoughts about "The Killing Fields"

I have to admit I originally thought that this movie would be boring.  I find it very enjoyable and am amazed at what harsh treatment military forces can give to civilians.  It was my belief that they had to treat them humanely, were in this movie the cambodians were treated very poorly.  I see now how history is a memory, all of these traumatic events are not something that can just be forgotten by someone.  They will always reside within a person's mind.  Those people will more often than not publicize their feelings and try and start a movement to help out in situations such as is presented in this movie.

Lake as a Pool of Memory

The lake or any lake can easily be compared to a national memory.  Memories are stored in the control center of our bodies.  This is otherwise known as our brain.  The brain contains everything we have been through and how we dealt with those issues.  It remembers every part of our past and though we are unable to obtain all of those memories they are always there.  The brain though only part and relatively small can store massive amounts of data.  

Lakes are the same way.  Though they can consist of hundreds of miles they are still small when being compared to the size of the entire country.  However though they are small, lakes are able to hold millions of things ranging from algae to big fish such as bass.  All of these things are living together even though you may be unable to see all of them.  The reason lakes can be compared to a national memory is because they are immensely big and can contain all of the memories that a nation has.  Lakes can be compared to the human brain of a nation.  Lakes are small but are still part of the nation and with the exception of erosion and minute changes they generally stay the same. 

Lakes are not like people.  They do not die off in eighty years.  They are there through all the good and the bad times and as such they are able to say that they were part of the nation during all the historical moments.    People also always add a sense of bias to their decisions and their thoughts.  Lakes do not have that ability and so the memories that they hold are not positioned to make one side look good and the other look bad.  They hold the memory of events as they happen with no outside decision to skew how it perceives the event.

My Lai pgs 250-260

Some of the barriers that I have found with this reading was the text itself.  While reading I found it difficult to fully understand the context because there were misspellings as well as some fictional statements.  The routine misspellings was a major distraction for me.  Another barrier included the use of using vocab. in different forms than I have usually seen it and words that were outside of my realm of understanding.  It took me several rereads  of paragraphs to be able to get through the reading.  I also feel that as I was reading the article I found myself wondering about the true main point of the article.  I possibly was reading too in depth, but it seemed to me that this article revolves more around the good and evil inside men rather than a cultural identity.  Though the topic is interesting I found it hard to focus on true topic at hand because of the continuous discussion in regards to polls and media comments.  Another barrier that I encountered was a lack of interest.  The first few pages really drew me in and I had genuine interest, but as the reading continued there were points in which it seemed like the author was just trying to add length to the article.

Gaps that I encountered with this article also included the lack of vocab knowledge and an absence of a firm understanding for the time in history.  Words such as culling and jeremiad left me puzzled.  As I did not have a clear understanding for the time period and representatives of the US during this time I was compelled to look up  Henry Kissenger so as to have a better understanding for him.  The article lists him as the national security advisor.  However, when I looked him up my results said that he was the US Secretary of State at the time.  With this discrepancy I found myself second guessing the article.  I originally began reading this with the assumption that I would be able to breeze through it and have a clear idea of what the text was about.  As I began reading the text became much more complex and required many rereads to be able to comprehend the material.