Walking Away to Try Again free essay sample

Remembering the past can be painful. The relentless aching within your heart when you walked away from something true. Things are always easier said than done. One always realizes this fact by walking away. You experience the diminishing joy you once had, silently escaping your heart leaving your soul feeling empty and isolated. You experience the loss of addiction to love, a feeling that was always there. Love can be a dark world full of deceitful promises and crystal tears. That’s why sometimes by walking away and to try again, can give you a more desirable happiness. To obliterate the pain from the past can be done. The thought to move on can be enviable. Time is relieving of pain and savior of shattered pieces. Even though you may be a frail structure to love, risks are meant to be taken. It’s time to relinquish the anger you have trapped within. We will write a custom essay sample on Walking Away to Try Again or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Oblige yourself to break through the shield that protects your encased heart. My body found life again. By decision through faith,my heart awakened with life again. You will feel like night can give way to day. Love is a benediction! My eyes lost the sight of fear and shone with assertiveness, When trust between two devoted hearts is linked its forever. The meaning of love may be obscure to other, but it’s a gift of life given to be experienced by every individual. Knowledgeable people question the mysteries of emotion dealing with the heart. They try scrutinizing the true meaning of love, feelings and uncontrollable emotions. When you walked way to take another chance†¦ My eyes dried away their tears and my heart started to beat again. You feel overwhelmed by happiness and no regrets. The deepest fears i kept hidden has been replaced by the emotions I have longed for. To be oblivious to the outside world feels intoxicating. You will never recede to the past. You feel rectified by the sentiment of love. Walk away and render your heart to a second chance! When I walked away it gave me back my life and someone true†¦

Demand for Beauty by Society Essays

Demand for Beauty by Society Essays Demand for Beauty by Society Paper Demand for Beauty by Society Paper OHO years. Foot binding was seen as a sign of beauty and attractiveness. Once a girl was of marriageable age, prospective mother-in-laws would come around and pick a wife for her son by the appearance of the girls feet. Foot binding was the act of wrapping a three- to five-year old girls feet with binding so as to bend the toes under, break the bones and force the back of the foot together. The bound foot was also a symbol of identity and virtue. A bound foot signified that a woman had achieved womanhood, and served as a mark of her gendered identity. Foot binding was not considered mutilation but a form of adornment, an embellishment to the human body. (HTTPS://spun. Com/alga/1/2/7565) Life in the Middle Ages was markedly different from the flourishing societies hundreds of years before. The dominance of Catholicism, and shorter life spans all contributed to the beauty ideal of the young, naturally beautiful and rosy-cheeked virgin. Where women Of today idealize celebrities in magazines, during the Medieval period it was the Virgin Mary who reigned supreme. She was normalized in paintings and sculpture as a youthful woman in her teens, her long flowing hair exposed. Very white skin was the main ideal, which women would achieve with a flour-based paste or lead makeup which is very dangerous and poisonous. While white skin connoted lily-white purity, it also helped disguise a lot of skin imperfections (while unknowingly causing many of them). Because of the popularity of pale skin, it made many European women and even men cut and bleed themselves to achieve it. ( Slideshows. Net/ineligibilitys-of-what-society-viewed-as- women-beauty-8005550) Following in the wake of the Middle Ages came the Renaissance era (1 5th Century), or the rebirth of the region. This began in Romance, Italy and quickly spread to the rest of Europe. During the Renaissance, art and beauty flourished once more, and it was not only considered in vogue but a necessity for women to look their best. The prolific art of the era, such as those drawn by the Renaissance masters portrays the beauty ideal of the time: a full, rounded figure, delicate features, smooth and pale skin, light-colored hair, a very high forehead, and flushed cheeks. Such features were associated with lath and nobility, which equated to beauty. The upper class ladies of Northern Europe would pluck their hairlines to make their foreheads seem higher, while in Italy, blond hair was a sign of beauty and high class. As result, women and men attempted to dye their hair by using bleach, saffron/ onion skin dye, and sitting under the sun for hours. England did not hit its stride until nearly the end of the Renaissance when Elizabeth I became queen. The era of her reign is also known as the English Renaissance, and some consider it the golden age of England. Elizabeth I adopted the mantle of The Virgin Queen and took serious measures to preserve this, even up to old age. Queen Elizabeth set many of the trends during this era. She popularized elaborate hairstyles (ideally in a shade of blond-red and with a frizzy texture like her own) and having a pale complexion. TO do this, they would use white powder called cruse, a poisonous mixture of white lead and vinegar. The use of this make-up withered the skin, caused sores, and damaged internal organs. As if lead-based make up wasnt bad enough, arsenic and radiation were later added as well. In the sasss women began to wear face powder that was made with arsenic. Health effects has been linked to a number of cancers including bladder, lungs, skin, nasal passages, and more. ( Businessperson. Com/gross-and-dangerous-ancient-beauty- #iXZZ3T16RCQ3W) Women in Italy also were in the habit of applying eyedroppers of poisonous belladonna to their eyes to make them sparkle, which could lead to vision loss over time (http://Alexei. Com/2014/07/28/beauty-standards-the rough-ages- 1 t). Wearing headdresses along with huge wigs also symbolizes beauty and wealth. Instead of hair gel and spray, lard was used to sculpt wigs in the sasss. The lard would attract rats and often these wigs would become infested with them. The wig was attached to a woman s real hair, which they would leave on for weeks. Sleeping with cages over their wigs became popular to avoid a rat infestation. In the 19th Century, women advocated a modest and natural beauty which means less use of cosmetics. In this century, beauty was all about what was on the inside: as long as your insides were pure, virtuous, and knew their place as a woman. The reign of Victoria brought about an era of modesty, morality, and a life devoted to conservative religious values. The elaborate cosmetics, hairstyles, and fashions of previous eras were now considered Lugar. If you wore bold makeup during this time, you were either an actress or a prostitute, none of whom were considered respectable women. Victorian beauty standards dictated that women appear pale, meek, and delicate creatures it helps that the restrictive corsets of the time led to a lot of swooning. Hairstyles were very modest as pods and soft curls were the norm, and if respectable Women Wore makeup it was with a very light touch, and in soft natural colors. Of course, fair skin was still prized and Victorian women went through great lengths to keep their skin pale to the point of looking sickly. Cold creams scented with rose and pomades made of lard and herbs kept skin smooth and hydrated. The Industrial Age would bring on the rise of mass-produced cosmetics and skincare, such as Ponds with their famous cold cream, and the arrival of subsequent brands would change the landscape of beauty in the next century (http://Alexei. Mom/2014/07/28/beauty- standards-through-ages-I I). During the Roaring Twenties (sass), societal trends reacted against the puritanical Victorian standards of beauty. Popular new short bobbed, waved or shingled hairstyles symbolized the growing freedom of women. The impact of cinema was felt for the first time, as women increasingly took their beauty cues fr om film stars such as Louise Brooks and Clara Bow. The heavy use of makeup also returned to fashion in this era. Generally, white women applied pale powder and cream rouge circles to the cheeks, plucked their eyebrows and penciled in thin arches, and painted their lips very red, emphasizing the cupids bow of the upper lip. Fashion-conscious white men wore their hair parted in or near the center and slicked back with brilliantine -? an oily, perfumed substance that added shine and kept hair in place. This look was popularized by screen idols such as Rudolph Valentine. Some African- American males adopted the conk, a hairstyle popularized by entertainer Cab Galloway. The conk was an attempt to straighten the hair and was accomplished by enduring a truly painstaking process of relaxing with a solution dominated by lye. ( Assurednesss. Com/ history offebeautyp)Asproughout the 1930sass 1940sassllywood starlets continued to set the trends in womens fashion. Longer, more feminine hairstyles became popular again, and women immediately copied Bette Davis curls, Betty GrabGrabbersnpinoth ringlets, and RitaRatawWorrywartsaming waves. Veronica Lake created a sensation by wearing a lock of hair that covered one eye. The hairstyle that most symbolized the era, however, was parted on the side, with soft curls falling over the shoulder. Also, for the first time, tanned skin (for both men and women) began to be perceived as a symbol of high class again showing the influence of screen stars on standards of beauty. Men continued to wear their hair short and often slicked back with oil, and skinny, trimmed mustaches were popularized by stars such as Errol Flynn. (http:// www. ukhaAssurednesss/hMomtory 0f boffybeautyn Asp 1980s thsasse of excess was easily translated into hairstyles, in general -? the bigger, the better. Pop stars such as Madonna and Cyndi LaCindypLapperized a style that included heavy makeup with vibrant neon colors and intentionally messed-up and off-colored hair. Michael Jackson sported the jheri cucheera sparkling wet-looking, heavily processed version of the Afro. Decidedly less audacious middle-class white teen-age boys adapted the punk-influenced spiked hairstyle, which sometimes included a small braid at the back of the neck (the rat tail). Androgyny also made a stunning impact n the 80s, froassinead OSinnedrOConnorhead to heavy metal hair bands with their makeup and explosion of long, dyed hair. In opposition to these trends, a neoconservative preppy look was also in, popularizing traditional short hairstyles for men and women. Todays pTodaysion of Beauty is molded by society. By the advertising, fashion, and cosmetic industries. We live in a society of billboards and ads, PhotoshoPhotostox. WBottom trained to believe that size two is perfect, while most healthy women in America fit into a size 12, and the true meaning and essence of Beauty slowly fades away. ( uffingtoPontificationsemComh-teatimeasuckernd-beauty-_b_5134228. htmI) ThHTMLdia can greatly affect young peoples health. The media broadcasts its perception of what is attractive and young people (both boys and girls) are susceptible to feeling the effects of that Young people can develop a distorted self-image which could lead to eating disorders, depression, or an unhealthy obsession with working out. You cant turn on the television or flip through a magazine without being bombarded with advertisements for weight loss pills, home gyms, and shake weights. Women are airbrushed on the cover of magazines to hide flaws. This creates an unrealistic and unhealthy image of beauty. ( personalPersonalu/Us3/Duobarfpbiogas_social_psychology/201 1/1 1 / media-and-the-perception-of-beauty-l . html) WhHTMLe open a magazine, we never see some 400-pound woman on the first page. Instead we see a woman who is 23% skinnier than an average woman, with her beautiful and flawless face. Many magazines (especially those for teens) offer content about how to look good. These magazines include three things that can affect body image. First, articles about appearance; these articles often include information on how get perfect abs muscles, advice on how to apply akeup, akeepps on what to wear. Second, advertisements; magazines often include ads for beauty and hair products, clothing and perfume. Many of these ads feature women that are underweight and men who are overly muscular. Then, the photos; most photos in magazines are altered so that wrinkles, fat, and pores disappear. Readers only see perfect and unrealistic bodies represented. One study found that 70% of teen girls and as well as boys agreed that magazines strongly influenced what they thought was the ideal body type. Seeing all this content related to appearance can make children and teens feel badly. When they compare their developing bodies to the images in magazines, they might feel depressed that they do not look like what they see. While most of the body image research has looked at how magazines affect girls, research is beginning to show that boys are affected by magazine images as well. (http://cmch. tvCACMenTV/) The Internet and social media provide a platform for women to seek out images Of what they Want to look like, a place for women to search for diet and exercise advice, as well as a an outlet through which women can perform outward comparisons with their peers and celebrities. Social networks may ot creattonew problems for women, but they do certainly intensify existing ones. Social media has made constant the ability to critique and analyze bodies in such a way that promotes body dissatisfaction, constant body surveillance, and disordered thoughts all of these factors that can potential leading to very serious eating disorders. (http://scholarship. claremonClaremontgiDeedevCGInvicegerentrtCGIeArticle#1026;? eses) Tosees as advertising and socializing have begun to merge, our lives have become photo heavy basing much of our judgments on what we see on the screen Of our computers or smartphosmartnessp>The Internet and social media have become more ubiquitous, so the line between the virtual and the real is blurred even more. Now, the perfect female body is not only on the billboard down the street or in the commercial on TV, but is strategically, yet seamlessly placed in our social networks. The slender, yet big breasted and flawless figure is intertwined with photos of our peers on FacebookFaceabletagraMainstreamt, the body type is even replicated amongst ordinary people, not only models and actresses. This unachievable ideal is deceivingly normalized through social media, but is still misleadingly achievable. Comparisons have only become stronger and more powerful, and as a result, more and more drastic measures have been taken to reach a certain ideal. There are now thousands of young girls who post selfiesselflessir social networks -? selfiesselflessre not airbrushed. Girls are attempting to achieve unhealthy body weights that they see in digitally edited photos in advertisements and replicating them on their own social media profiles. Although the ultimate goal of advertisements is to sell a product, and social networks are, as stated in their title, social, both technologies communicate deals: what we want to be like, whom we want to be with, and what we want to have . So, then, it is not that surprising that as the woman in advertising has decreased in size, so has the real woman tried even harder to reach that size. Are people unknowingly succumbing to the same dangers and corruptions that are raised by advertising through their peers on InstagraMainstreamebookFaceablep>After establishing the critical role that advertising plays in the lives of women, I think it is logical to assume that female body image will be similarly affected by other types of media. As the thin ideal portrayed in the edia hasEdieckly decreased in size, often due to photo editing software like PhotoshoPhotosomen have participated in extreme dieting habits. This is very horrible if social networking sites will exacerbate this problem. The perception of beauty is forced upon people in society from an early age through Cartoons and Animated Films. Firstly in childrens literature, Adams (1985) argued that children have become accustomed to hearing fairy tales, whether they are in books read before bedtime or in films. These stories continuously associate ugliness with bad and beauty with good (cited in Bull and Rumsey, Ramsey This can be applied to the well-known story of Cinderella (1950), a beautiful girl living with her stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. The stepmother and stepsisters mistreat Cinderella and make her do all the chores so they are instantly portrayed as bad people and their appearance is associated with this. Then towards the end, Cinderella finds her prince at the ball and lives happily ever after, implying that good things only happen to beautiful people. In addition to this, another popular fairy tale is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which is about a young girl who is poisoned by her jealous stepmother, the evil queen. Weitz (1Whiteargued that when the evil queen said if who is the fairest of them all. She is not asking a simple question; it has a much deeper meaning. The evil queen is battling with her loss of beauty and the thought of someone else being more beautiful than her. It shows that beauty is not just a physical entity but also a symbol for power and position. Not only is the evil queen getting older and losing the features that made her look young and attractive, she feels that on (Evil Stepsisters, Cinderella, n. d. ) (EvDl Queen Gives Snow White Poisonous Apple, n. d. )8 toD of this, she is losing her power as queen to her stepdaughter. Therefore, this sense of jealousy causes the queen to poison Snow White so she can continue to be the ruler of the land. This childrens fairy tale conveys the impression that you should do whatever it takes to be beautiful even if it means hurting someone else. http://wHttp. whomex. aEssex/sACioUKgy/documents/ research/publications/ug_journGU/voll 0/2pollC11CASSOCKSeJaMiscellaniespFallowPDFr, the famous novelist, Roald DaRoyald contrasting ideas of beauty. In his book The Twits (2007), he put a lot Of emphasis on inner beauty, as opposed to external beauty. This book is very positive for children as it uggests su ggestsople who have good thoughts are beautiful. External features such as the length of hair, the size of eyes and the shape of nose are not important when considering who is beautiful. In my opinion, this is a very key issue for children to be educated about rather than external beauty and consumer products such as make up. Secondly, the societal standards of beauty are enforced on children through toys. The Barbie doll has dominated the consumer market for toys for over fifty years, Barbie is so pervasive in contemporary popular culture that she hardly requires description (ToffoletDefoliate57). As one of the best-selling fashion dolls, the Barbie doll can be very influential on impressionable children. According to Dittmar,DimmittelHallowed (200Vive girls exposed to images of Barbie dolls reported lower body esteem and a greater desire for a thinner body shape in comparison to girls exposed to Emme dolMemea US size 16, and no dolls. The Barbie doll covertly enforces the expectations of society in relation to beauty onto children. The Barbie doll has a large variety of clothes, shoes and other commercial goods along with an endless list of different careers. One example of how the Barbie doll egativelactively children is the creation of the Slumber Party Barbie in 1965. Her accessories Were a set of bathroom scales permanently set on to 1 1 Olbs andLobsook titled How to Lose Weight, which only contained one instruction Dont eat (De Lacey, 2012). Furthermore, the book that contains the phrase dont eat is very unrealistic, as it is widely known that forcing yourself to miss meals can be very dangerous, as the body needs fuel to function. The Barbie doll is targeted at children and if they are able to identify with their dolls, they are more likely to be influenced by them or even consider them as role odels.Most of the children who have these dolls do not already know that her figure is unachievable and would therefore; want to conform in order to have a similar appearance to Barbies. The only way they could try and attempt this is by using the means Barbie uses: not eating. Children are impressionable so by playing with this doll, they unconsciously become aware of what is expected of them, in regards to beauty, from society. In my opinion, just as t he pretend baby dolls that little girls play with condition them for their future role as a mother, the Barbie doll conditions young girls for what is xpected expectedr future appearance. It is sending the message that beauty is the main priority and girls should use any means to achieve it, even if it leads to being unhealthy. Sometimes, because of your not so blessed physical appearance some will just drop a comment at your photo and say something unpleasant. CyberbulSpellbindingwhen a child or teen threatens, harasses or humiliates a peer using electronic technology, or is the victim of such actions.

Paper industry. Stora Enso Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Paper industry. Stora Enso - Essay Example Paper industry. Stora Enso Stora Enso has already become the leader in the market of paper and paperboards. It already has large pool of steadfast and existing customers; however it is important to maintain its position by conducting effective R& D process. Currently, Stora Enso is trying to improve its position by conducting the research in such areas as multi-color printing, new printing techniques as well as fiber-based packaging. Successful research in these areas might lead to the improvement in the quality of products and services that the company provides and assure that it will retain its leadership position in the market. Product development. As R&D is one of greatest priorities in Stora Enso, it is capable to market new products to existing customers. Recently, the company has developed new product- packages with radio frequency indicators, which the company sells to various pharmacies in Estonia and Finland. If the current trial of the sale process is completed successfully (as in today’s technological highly sophisticated era, there is no guarantee that the electronic forms of protection of goods and services can not be fortified), it will reduce the number of fortified drugs sold in Northern European market, and even in the world as well. Market development. The demand on the paper and packaging products has been growing steadfastly during the last several years. High prices on the paper in the USA are ones of the indicators of the growth in the demand on the paper and packaging products, another is growing demand in China. ... Market development. The demand on the paper and packaging products has been growing steadfastly during the last several years. High prices on the paper in the USA are ones of the indicators of the growth in the demand on the paper and packaging products, another is growing demand in China. Most of analytics almost universally agree that the demand will continue to grow in the next several years, and there are grounds to assume that manufactures in China will produce much less paper than current demand of the Chinese economy requires. According to the information of Datamonitor, China exhibited the growth of 9% in the demand on paper in 2005 compared with the same period in 2004.4 Stora Enso continues its aggressive expansion in the Chinese market. It recently has signed the contract with another paper company of China, in the southern province of Guangxi. According to the agreement mentioned the company will be able to acquire the rights on 600 ha of forests in the province, moreover the company is poised to establish 120000 ha of plantation to satisfy the demand on paper products in the province. 5 India is another potential market for the products of Stora Enso. Indian economy has been growing rapidly during the last several years as well; demand on the paper and the packaging products has been growing in this country and according to the predictions of several specialists this country will be another important player in the market of paper industry. Diversification. This is the part of Ansoff's matrix where new possibilities for the marketing of new products and services should be studied. As one knows from the theory of marketing there are two types of diversification: related and

Services Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Services Management - Essay Example For Virgin Trains and any other business for that matter, to realize improved service delivery and performance emanating from effective service process and people management, it is imperative that the business’ processes are aligned with the wants, needs, preferences, and tastes of its clients and employees. Such an alignment is quite an effective approach in promoting business effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility, technology use, and innovativeness. In addition, there should be a continuous attempt by the company to improve its processes. In other words, the firm should adopt a "process optimization process." This approach replaces the functionally focused and traditionally hierarchical management approaches that most businesses practice with more effectiveness and capabilities to generate revenues and reduce costs. Importantly, Virgin Trains ought to regard its service processes, service people, and resources as strategic assets, which must be well managed, understood, and constantly improved to help the business add value to its products and services. Finally, Virgin Trains may adopt sound process governance in which it would allocate its processes and work towards realizing its objectives in both its operational and progress-related sections.

The magic of the Arabian Nights Essay Example for Free

The magic of the Arabian Nights Essay The original, authentic, real Ur-text of the Arabian Nights (aka Alf Layla wa-Layla, or the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights, or just the Nights) is a mythical beast. There are far more than a thousand and one nights, for the thirty-four-and-a-half stories in the fourteenth or fifteenth century â€Å"core† body of the Nights were soon supplemented by other tales in Arabic and Persian, from the culture of medieval Baghdad and Cairo, and then in Hindi and Urdu and Turkish, tales carried by pilgrims and crusaders, merchants and raiders, back and forth by land and sea. And then came the narratives added by European translators, as well as the adaptations (in paintings and films) and retellings by modern novelists and poets. There is no agreed-upon table of contents. As Marina Warner points out, at the start of this enchanting book, â€Å"the stories themselves are shape-shifters†, and the Arabian Nights, like â€Å"one of the genies who stream out of a jar in a pillar of smoke†, took on new forms under new masters. The corpus lacks not only parents but a birthplace; Persia, Iraq, India, Syria and Egypt all claim to have spawned it. So the Thousand and One Arabian Nights are not only not a thousand and one but not (just) Arabian. The chronological and cultural strata of the Nights are like the layers of a nested Russian doll: you pull off the twentieth century (Salman Rushdie in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Walt Disney, Errol Flynn) and then the nineteenth and eighteenth century (Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Jean Antoine Galland, Richard Francis Burton, Edward W. Lane); and finally you get to the Arabic sources, and you think you’ve hit pay dirt. But then you sense, behind the Arabic, Homer and the Mahabharata, and the Bible, and you see that there is no there there. It’s not an artichoke – peel away the leaves of the later, accreted, interpolated layers until you find the original centre – but an onion: peel away the leaves and at the centre you find – nothing. Or, perhaps, everything; lacking a birthplace, the Nights also lack a grave: â€Å"The book cannot ever be read to its conclusion†, says Warner: â€Å"it is still being written†. Scholars who could not cure themselves of the nineteenth-century obsession  of searching for the source (of the Nights, of the Nile, of the human race . . .) were soon disappointed to discover that many of the most popular tales – including â€Å"Sinbad†, â€Å"Aladdin and his lamp†, and â€Å"Ali Baba and the forty thieves† – were arrivistes, with no legitimate Arab parents. Jorge Luis Borges, in his essay on â€Å"The Translators of the Thousand and One Nights†, credits Hanna Diab, the Christian Arab colleague of Galland, with the invention of several of these â€Å"orphan tales†. Aditya Behl (in Love’s Subtle Magic, 2012) traces Sinbad back to Sanskrit tales of Sanudasa the merchant. Like the beast fables and mirrors for princes that travelled from India to Europe, so too these sailors’ yarns about the marvels of the Indies circulated in the Islamic and pre-Islamic world of the Indian Ocean. (There is also a thirteenth-century Hebrew text of the Sinbad story). But for many people, the Arabian Nights without â€Å"Sinbad† or â€Å"Aladdin† is like Hamlet without Hamlet, and purists who produced â€Å"authentic† editions without these tales met with such backlash from the reading public that they quickly published supplementary volumes including the beloved bastards. Warner’s subtle unravelling of the rich history of this tradition, from the earliest Arabic traces to present-day interpretations, demonstrates that each of the many versions has a claim to its own authenticity. Yet, within the Arabic tradition, the tales of the Nights were discounted as popular trash, pulp fiction; despite numerous allusions to the Prophet, and quotations and echoes of the Qur’an, they were â€Å"too much fun, often transgressive or amoral fun, to be orthodox or respectable . . .†. Galland cleaned out the homosexual episodes, but Burton (whom Warner calls â€Å"the Frank Harris of the desert and the bazaar†) footnoted them and generally made the tales more salacious, stealing most of them from Richard Payne and adding many of his own, thumbing his nose at the prevailing prudery of Victorian Britain, â€Å"with glee and a fair deal of invention, projection, and transference†. One reviewer epitomized the European translators as â€Å"Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers.† Stranger Magic: Charmed states and the â€Å"Arabian Nights† explodes two myths about the Nights: that only the Arabic stories are the â€Å"real ones† and that  you need to know Arabic to understand the Arabian Nights. The two ideas are mutually reinforcing: if there were a single ancient Arabic text, one might well want to read it in the original language; but since there is no such text, the stories in all languages and translations are fair game for all of us to respond to (a creative process in which, as Borges put it, â€Å"the translator is being translated†). The full spectrum of stories certainly yields spectacular insights in the hands of Warner, Professor of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, who knows more than anyone alive about the uses of myth and folklore in literature, fine arts, and film. She has written eye-opening books about fairy tales about women (From the Beast to the Blonde: On fairy tales and their tellers, 1996) and men (No Go the Bogeyman: On scaring, lulling, and making mock, 2000) and spirits (Phantasmagoria, 2006) and much else. She is fluent in a number of European and classical languages. But she does not know Arabic. Though she grew up in Cairo and spoke Arabic as a child, â€Å"unfortunately nobody encouraged me to keep it up, and besides, I never could read it†. I must confess that, as a card-carrying Sanskrit snob myself, I first regarded Warner’s lack of Arabic as a potential barrier to her understanding of the stories; after all, as she herself remarks, of William Beckford (1760–1844), â€Å"Beckford paid attention to these inconsistencies and weaknesses in the fabric of the narrative, possibly because he was working from an Arabic manuscript, and the discipline of translation sharpens one’s wits†. Of course, Warner makes good use of the work of scholars of Arabic, pointing out, for instance, contrasts between the Arabic texts in which a huge female jinn (or genie) takes a trophy ring from 570 men, and the translations, in which she gets only ninety-eight. Moreover, the linguistic subtleties that can be achieved only by â€Å"working from an Arabic manuscript† are not essential to the hunt for the larger game that Warner is after, which is a literary archaeology and analysis of what the Nights have meant to people in diverse cultures and epochs, not merely as amusing Oriental artefacts but as profound sources of human understanding. And even linguistic purists will pardon Warner, as W. H. Auden once pardoned  Paul Claudel, for writing well. A fine novelist, Warner works her legerdemain, hiding behind the velvet curtain at the end of the book the endnotes that betray the extraordinary erudition under the elegant prose. She appreciates good writing and laces her book with bons mots from other writers as well as with her own memorable lines, such as â€Å"Homo narrans observes no ethnic divisions, and has more than one god before him† and â€Å"At a level beneath the surface of the narratives, a meaning gathers definition, the watermark in their fabric†. Good writing, good storytelling, is the heroine of this book, embodied in the heroine of the frame story within which all the other stories are gathered: Shahrazad (Scheherazade). The cuckolded and embittered Sultan Shahriyar every night marries a virgin whom he beheads in the morning; Shahrazad volunteers, but after they have slept together she tells him a story that is still unfinished at dawn; the Sultan postpones her execution to the next day, and the next, on and on; in the course of the stories, she cures the Sultan of his misogyny. This is a story about storytelling, feminist protest, dreams, sex and violence. For Warner, it is the springboard for a meditation, threaded throughout the book, on writing as an amulet, a talisman; for writing as magic; and for the story within a story. Putting your own frame around your story makes you the author instead of just a character in someone else’s story – though of course you may be that too, whether you know it or not. The frame mechanism also underlies the themes of the dreamer dreamt, dreams within dreams, and shared dreams, which abound in the Nights, where â€Å"the storytelling scene itself in the Sultan’s bedroom wraps the stories in the night†. Moreover, as Warner points out, â€Å"the anti-realism of the stories matches dream experiences: suddenness and vividness, fragmentation, episodic and often entangling structures, displacements in time and space, the instability of bodies, and a recurrence of certain motifs, are all features of dreams†. Some dreamers move about on flying beds, apropos of which Warner notes that the English words sofa (from suffiah in Arabic), divan (from diwan in Persian), and ottoman (Turkish) are all words for a day bed; the oriental sofa became â€Å"the epitome of oriental hedonism, . . . a low-lying  couch for reclining and abandoning oneself, alone or with others – to love-making, autoeroticism, smoking, gossiping, daydreaming, to storytelling, reading and studying, and to quietness and reflection†. It is the place where daydreaming readers lie fantasizing about the stories they’ve read. The dream stories, too, fly all over. The tale of â€Å"A Fortune Regained† is about a man who learns, from another man’s dream, where his own fortune is hidden. Borges retold it as â€Å"The Story of Two Dreamers† and attributes it to the Arab historian al-Ishaqi, but it also entered Jewish Hassidic tradition (as the tale of Rabbi Eisik from Cracow) and was retold by Martin Buber. Sanskritists can trace some of the dream tales in the Nights back to the Sanskrit text of the Yogavasistha, which was composed alongside the Ocean of Stories, the Indian version of the Arabian Nights (frames within frames, and all), in Kashmir in the eleventh or twelfth century. But Warner’s goal is different; she traces the dream stories forward to our present world, where the idea that the individual mind creates its own reality, which other consciousnesses may enter and control, â€Å"has become a central modern myth, paranoid, solipsistic, and deeply deterministic. It has gained purchase because it matches the way many experience their lives†. Warner chooses just fifteen stories to retell briefly, from both the oldest and later layers (though she does not include â€Å"Sinbad† or â€Å"Aladdin and his lamp†: there is an Aladdin, but instead of a lamp he has a flying bed). Each story inspires an essay on several themes central to that story: jinns, carpets, witches, magicians, dervishes, dream knowledge, Orientalism, King Solomon, talismans, Voltaire and his crowd, Goethe, flying, toys, money, shadows, films, machines, couches, and much, much more. The essays form a coherent chain. This is not, however, a book to read straight through but one to wander in, forward and back, night after night. Most of the stories involve magic. Warner’s argument about the importance of magical thinking in modernity is not particularly surprising, but she documents it in highly original ways. Her analysis of the exoticization of magic through the use of Oriental material, since the eighteenth century,  enhances her discussion of the way that early films of stories from the Nights superimpose Arabic magic on the magic of filmmaking, so that the magic flying horse becomes an objective correlative of the projector, with the peg between the ears of the magic steed, and the brake on the tail, echoing the mechanism that controls the passage of the film through the projector. There is also the magic of speech acts, not just, â€Å"With this ring I thee wed† but â€Å"Hoc est corpus meum†, which inspired the phrase â€Å"hocus pocus† in mockery of the â€Å"trick of transubstantiation†. Warner discusses the magic of things (such as rings and carpets) as fetishes, and cites Lorraine Daston’s insight (in Things That Talk, 2004) into idols (from the Greek eidolon), illusions that are misleading and fraudulent. Daston contrasts idols with evidence, but notes that the two often blend together; forensic exhibits may be fabricated or, on the other hand, become powerful fetishes and take on the idol’s ability to haunt. Warner compares these â€Å"objects with uncanny life† to Winnicott’s transitional objects and to the quasi-magical functioning of her BlackBerry, Satnav, and iPod. And then there is the magic of Freud. Warner suggests that when Freud called his couch an ottoman and covered it with a Persian carpet, he may have been, â€Å"consciously or unconsciously†, creating an Oriental setting for the first psychoanalytical talking cures, â€Å"a form of storytelling, with the roles reversed (it is the narrator who needs to be healed, not the listener-Sultan)†. Freud, who kept a statue of the Hindu god Vishnu on his desk, was very much an Orientalist. Orientalism looms large in Stranger Magic. â€Å"The Orient in the Arabian Nights has its own Orient†, says Warner, also quoting Amit Chaudhuri: â€Å"The Orient, in modernity, is not only a European invention but also an Oriental one†. Fairy tales had always had what Warner calls â€Å"a structural impulse† to imagine that dangerous magic came from far away, but the â€Å"gradual orientalisation of magicians† exacerbated the tendency to have the dirty work done by strangers, â€Å"so that the home team keeps its hands clean and its smile all innocence†. Warner writes in the shadow of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), but she is also sympathetic to Said’s later, more balanced, more generous self (in Culture and Imperialism, 1993), and she  acknowledges some of the positive uses of Orientalism. Through the dynamics of â€Å"reverse colonization†, eighteenth-century Europeans used images of Orientalist despotism and sexual and religious depravity to parody their own culture; Voltaire’s satirical Oriental contes were â€Å"an obvious instance of the West putting on Eastern dress in order to examine itself more clearly†. Western feminists could write of â€Å"emancipation in the Oriental mode†, calling up the image of Eastern men, castigated for tyranny and sexual abuses; while the effeminate East reflected Western women’s condition back to them. Performances of plays about Aladdin, in Britain, were used to address, covertly, arguments about the slave trade in America. The film The Thief of Bagdad (1924, directed by Raoul Walsh, and starring Douglas Fairbanks) is, as Warner points out, â€Å"flagrantly Orientalist†. It ends with the Thief â€Å"acclaimed by the adoring grateful multitude as he enters the city at the head of an army bent on rescuing Baghdad from the tyrant emperor†. For us, the city is no longer Hollywood’s â€Å"Bagdad†, but CNN’s Baghdad. As I read Stranger Magic, the city of Bagdad/Baghdad shimmered before my eyes in a double image: the magical place of flying carpets and the scene of a devastating war. I was stunned by the relevance of phrases from the old stories, such as, â€Å"He falls into such a rage he declares war on Iraq: he will lay the country to waste†. Eventually we learn that Baghdad and Iraq had those double meanings for Warner as well. How could they not? As she viewed the film, The Thief of Bagdad, during the war in Iraq in 2003, it became â€Å"an unconscious parable of Western expansionism at the level of nations†. She began the research for this book during the first Gulf War, and wrote it â€Å"during the many, appalling and unresolved conflicts in the regions where the Nights originated. I wanted to present another side of the culture cast as the enemy and an alternative history to vengeance and war†. Not that the Nights themselves come off scot-free; the â€Å"later layers† of narratives include a lot of violence against Christians and conversion to Islam, while the European translations are often anti-Semitic. But in earlier layers there is more interfaith marriage and the observance of Islamic precepts of  tolerance. Warner hopes that her reading of the Nights might offer â€Å"a path towards cha nging preconceptions about Arabs, Islam, and the history and civilization of the Middle and Near East†. The impulse to write a book reminding readers of the beauty and wisdom of that civilization makes Warner an Orientalist in the pre-Saidian, positive sense of the word, which once meant â€Å"people who love the Orient† – never mind how or why they loved it. Many of the early European historians of religions, in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were trying, within their Orientalist limits, to make the civilization of the Orient comprehensible, and hence acceptable, to people in the West who would otherwise regard all Orientals as ignorant savages. The founding mantra of the science of comparative religion was the hope that if you know peoples’ stories you are less likely to slaughter them, the lesson that Shahrazad taught to the Sultan. This is the comparatist’s version, avant la lettre, of Emmanuel Levinas’s famous dictum that the face of the other says, â€Å"Don’t kill me†. The guiding impulse of Stranger Magic tur ns out to be that noble, if perhaps naive, Orientalists’ goal. But Warner has another personal investment in this book. She asks, at the start, â€Å"How do we live with the intrinsic, problematic irrationality of our consciousness? How do we make a helpful distinction between religious adherence and an acknowledgement that myth and magic have their own logic and potential, independent of belief in higher powers?† Noting that eighteenth-century writers used the Orient as a place where â€Å"their own reasoning imagination could take wing†, and granting that â€Å"reasoned imagination† (Borges’s phrase) is an oxymoron, she nevertheless hopes that the dream-like stories of the Nights might be the â€Å"fable of modernity† that she has longed for, â€Å"a fable that would meet anthropological needs†. Warner confesses that her particular attraction to â€Å"the implausible, impossible, and fantastic stories† puzzles her, for, she remarks, â€Å"I was once a fervent Catholic and know what it is like to yield fully to verbal transformative magic, miracles, and other demands on faith beyond reason, and I struggled free (lost my faith) a long time ago. So why do I still like to think and read about jinn and animal metamorphoses, conjured palaces and vanishing  treasures, deadly automata and flying sofas, ghastly torments and ineluctable destinies?† Ah, Marina, walk over to that ottoman that Freud covered with the carpet, lie down, and reread that paragraph; it is not your question, but your answer. And, abracadabra, it is our answer too.

Superstition in Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn :: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Mark Twain saturates the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with many examples of superstition and myths. These aspects of the novel help the story progress, they provide entertainment and help the story identify with the time. The most important reason for the superstition and the rituals that come along with them are they are one of the main reasons for the adventure in the first place. There are many examples throught the story of the superstition from the spider in the candle to the rattle-snake skin and the hair-ball. One of the first examples of superstition is a simple thing that carried some of the biggest consequences.†One morning I happened to turn over the saltcellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. â€Å"This is an example of how everything superstition has a ritual to remove the bad luck. Huck was not satisfied thought with what the widow had done for him he says â€Å"The widow put in a good word for me, but that warn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.† This fear of bad luck was acompanied by seeing his fathers shoe prints in the snow so Huck knew he had to do something. What Huck ended up doing was going to Miss Watson’s slave Jim who had a magical hair-ball. When Huck goes to find out what the hairball can tell him Jim tells Huck that the hairball needs money to tell his fortune. All Huck had however is a conterfiet quarter. Jim managed to make it work though by sticking it inside a potato to fool the hair-ball. What the hair ball ended up telling them is this â€Å"Yo’ole fathe doan’ know yit what he’s a gwyne to do. Somtimes he spec he’ll go ‘way, en den ag’in he spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is tores easy enlet so ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hoverin’ roun’ ‘bout him. One uv’em’s light en t’other one is dark.

Musical Instruments Essay

1. Do you believe it is still possible that new musical instruments could be invented and widely distributed? Empirically, though the diversity of musical instruments has reached a quite high level, human has never stopped their exploration into music. So, I think it’s highly possible that several new musical instruments can be invented and widely distributed. The musical history has already proved this. Before 19th century, the majority of musical instruments are acoustic, and most people at that time held the opinion that we already have enough instruments. However, accompany with the development of electricity and latter computer technology, electronic music has grown rapidly. Musical instruments are no longer bonded within the acoustic. Maybe in the future, we can even use the photon to make some music. 2. Do you think that existing orchestral instruments will be drastically altered in the future? I think some fine turning may occur on existing orchestral instruments but drastically change may not happen. With hundred years of development and perfection, orchestra has already formed its own system and process. Its requirement to musical instruments is almost fixed. Already some fine turning may be applied in order to achieve better acoustic effect, but the outer shape and essential component of these musical instruments won’t be changed since they have already be a symbol of orchestra. 3. Will the computer and other electronic instruments eventually replace acoustical instruments? Which do you prefer? Definitely not. Diversity is an essential part of music, if all the music is generated by electronic devices, it can be quite boring and people will suffer aesthetic fatigue. Personally, I prefer acoustical instruments, why, just personal taste. 4. Please open YouTube and listen to composition Desintegrations for 17 instruments and computer tape (1983) created by French composer Tristan Murail (1947-). Can you separate sound materials created by the acoustic instruments from the tape material? Are they often fused? Are they created to resemble each other? For those parts in which only one instrument occurred I can figure out the type, while for those with more than two, I can not. Yes, they often fused together, especially in modern music. Yes, they do resemble to each other otherwise the music won’t achieve harmonic sound effect.