Forty-Two

The assignment for today was to 'write one reflective blog entry'. We had various doubts as to what we should reflect on, and how reflective we should be, but since we got no responses, I have decided to reflect on my life. I have everything one could ask for to live happy forever, a good house, food for every meal, a loving family (even if we don't realize it all the time), caring friends, a good education, IQ points, etc. But there are very few people who are able to always be happy- you know, without the help of …um… happy pills. So this eloquent introduction gives way to my thoroughly, at least to me, complicated life.

Even though I have all these things that should make me content, I am not entirely happy. I might be joyous at times, but I still always feel this kind of emptiness, a feeling that a part of me isn't there. For my mental sanity and to give me a little hope that everything will not always be like this, I pinpoint this as being the fault of the atmosphere I am now. Our school, the situation with my family- having to go through three different teenage phases at the same time, plus a family crisis on the side-, the fact that I have lost more than half of my closest friends in the past two years. That atmosphere. I have already found a the problem, or a replacement of it until I really find what it is, but I cannot seem to find the solution. Every time I feel overwhelmed or just plain blue I think that I would like to pack everything and go to Australia for a year, Australia being my latest ideal escape place (yes, this does have to do with the hot boys who have the even hotter accents; I may be sad, but I'm still me inside!) I think that if I could go to another place which had nothing to do with here for some time then I would find what I'm looking for. This may have to do with the fact that last year I was living in France in an exchange for the whole year. I know I felt like this there too, mostly in the beginning of the year, but I think I have blocked all the bad memories out, another strategy to keep on waking up every day to face my life. I mostly started seeing how good I had it there when I came back, when I started feeling like this again, a feeling of being of being trapped inside the boundaries of my former life here, when in reality I had changed. I still tried to come back with an open mind to a new kind of life here, but as you can see, it didn't work. Walking away from everything, escaping, probably isn't the answer to this problem, but the idea of it is what keeps me going forward, towards a promise that something better will come along.

Speaking of promises, the other day a girl read my fortune- out of a chocolate sticker kind of thing (a mona from a Chocolatina Jet). Even though I don't believe in that stuff, from fortune tellers to ghosts, she told me something that was scarily accurate. She said that in this moment I was feeling lost, wondering where I was going and if I should change roads. This exactly how I am feeling, like I need an exit to get on a different lane, it's a good thing that someone knows without me having to tell them, because, frankly, I wouldn't be able to explain it. She also said that someone would come along and would make snap out of it, telling me: you are on the right track, you are going somewhere with your life. She told me I was just going through a though time, I like to explain it as a kind of one-eight-of-life crisis, but that a new person would come into my life and end the toughness. One thing I cannot remember is if she said soon, that all this would happen soon. Oh, how I wish she did say soon.

 
 

This probably wasn't at all what my teacher had in mind with this assignment, really it just makes me sound like a suicidal Dr. Phil case, but that's what he gets from not being clear. Here's a piece of the real Daniela Berenguer for whoever wants it (though I really doubt he does!)

 
 

PS: The title of this is forty-two because, anyone who has seen or read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will understand this, forty-two is the answer to everything, it is the answer to The Ultimate Question-which is itself unknown. Right now, forty-two is all that I need.

Snapping Point

In the Book of Job Job is a good man, 'a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil', as God praises him to be. He never sinned and was always respectful to God, he frequently made sacrifices and blessed the Lord and all his children. This is why I find it so weird, first of all that God is talking with Satan, and that he lets Himself be manipulated by Satan, and second that God does nothing to stop Job's life from being destroyed by Satan, even does some of the destroying Himself. Job says 'I am full of confusion', he has always acted perfectly towards God, and he is being repaid by having to suffer more than anyone like him should suffer. However, if he had acted differently, disrespected Him, then the consequences would have also been horrible. He does not know what to do and, frankly, neither do I: it seems that God is never satisfied with what we do, He will always be up there observing us and judging us, punishing us when we don't do exactly what He wants- even if we don't know what that is. I think that sucks.

I still don't understand the paper Satan had to do in this part of the story, chapters one through ten, because he says: 'But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.' I understood from this that Satan was going to make Job suffer, as if he was God, so that Job might curse and hate God. However, I think that the one who put all those curses on Job was God, so I don't see why he does it or what relevance Satan has in the story. To me, God can represent evil all by Himself.

One thing that I saw was very common, and very normal to happen in today's world, is that even though Job suffered through so much, and most of it was put unto him by God, he always kept his calm and never even as much as cursed Him. That was until his friends came to visit him and 'they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.' You always have the kind of person who is perfect and does everything right and never says bad words or does something inappropriate, at least on the outside. But these kinds of people are always bound to snap, with people they are very close to or with people who they would least expect it with. This is what happened with Job, once he was around his close friends he let loose and lashed out at God, cursing him and sinning and asking Him why he was doing this to him- why He couldn't just let him die.

Moses, Behind the Scenes

The beginning of the Second Book of Moses, Exodus, is also the beginning of the story of Moses.

One of the first things I noticed was that it said '[I am the] Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob'. This brings forth a very important piece of information for my conspiracy of why the covenants and the same stories and basically everything got passed down exactly the same with each passing generation. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all the fathers of Catholicism and Jewish religion. They were the base from which everyone else started off, especially in Israel. We can very clearly see the covenants that God has with Israel, as he always calls them 'the children of Israel' and makes a plan to save them from the fate the Egyptians were enforcing on them.

Another thing I noticed is how perfectly common and how morally right they make slavery and adultery seem, even though these are now one of the most punished sins and crimes. In most all of the stories in the KJB they mention their servants, but curiously enough, they never say when it started or if it is wrong or right.

 

Going back to the story, I find no purpose to what the Lord God did, sending such small plagues like flies, frogs, snakes, even locusts instead of taking this salvation seriously and doing something to really convince the Pharaoh to let His people go. Nor do I see any explanation for it other than he was showing off. He was playing the almighty roll, wanting everyone to bow over to His powers, as we see how always speaking to Moses He says: 'ye may know how that I am the Lord.' Or: 'I AM THAT I AM'- indicating his 'superiority'. And at least God knows that every time the Pharaoh says he will back off he is lying, I find kind of pathetic that after almost five times that the same thing has happened, Moses and his brother, Aaron, still trust the Pharaoh.

The paragraph of Exodus 14:10 through 14:12 spoke more to me than mostly anything I've read. I don't know why, but I get a sort of desperation coming through the voices of the people, the same kind of desperation and fear that I find in narratives about the Holocaust, when crowd panic sets in and makes a lot of people who could be able to defend themselves kneel down and face their futures without even trying to fight back. I hate it, how in so many cases such amounts of people were made felt so entirely not human that they didn't even care if they lived or not.

We again see a kind of evil coming from God, not evil, but a wish for people to suffer, even if it they deserve it. That goes totally against the imange I had of God, the one I had gotten from the church. 15:3 'The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.'

Finally, I had never really thought about it, it is simply a popular assumption: Moses is a hero for his people. But nobody ever mentioned Aaron, even though he didn't do much, he was still there. And let's face it, God was the one who did everything, he told Moses what to say, gave him powers, and all Moses did was follow His very precise instructions. Still, 'the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people'.

Like Father, Like Son

From chapters twenty-six on (until chapter thirty-five), we hear about various stories.

First is the story about Isaac and how he was sent to wander and conquer the lands by God, and he lied about his wife being his sister, and was cursed and thrown out, and then was used to reach God by the same ones who had rejected him, and built altars all along his ways, and was blessed with children from God- just like his father, Abraham. Isaac's wife, Rebekah bares twins: Esau and Jacob.

Jacob was cunning and very smart, and so he got Esau to deny his birthrights and he cheated Esau out of Isaac's blessing, by dressing up and passing as him to his dying, blind father. However, this action was totally maneuvered and controlled by Rebekah, who preferred Jacob, and so he must not have to take all of the blame. Then Jacob, fearing Esau's revenge and again being controlled by his mother, left for Laban's lands, Laban being his uncle. There he falls in love with Rachel, Laban's daughter (that would make them cousins, incestuous much?!), and he promises Laban seven years of labor in exchange for his daughter. When the seven years end, Laban sneaks his eldest daughter, Leah, to be with Jacob. That way Jacob has to promise seven more years of labor to get Rachel, who is who he really wants. After twenty years of being cheated and mistreated by Laban, Jacob leaves with his wives and eleven sons to go back to his lands, over where Esau rules now.

They get there and Jacob sends gifts and servants in front of him, as to avoid his brother's anger, but he is greeted only by love and kindness. Then Jacob and his crew continue traveling through all lands, all the while committing the same actions and mistakes as his father. He travels and build altars until Rachel dies, when she is buried just like Sarah was buried once before.

 

I think that throughout this whole journey, we see a very big change in Jacob. At first he is very sly and seems to have no morals, as we can see he betrays his own brother to get what isn't rightfully his, but towards the middle we can see that he turns humble and is willing to work no matter how hard to get what he wants, exchanging almost twenty years of labor with Laban for his true love. However, when he returns home, he starts acting like a total coward, sending all these people and presents in front of him so his brother would forget to get back at him for what he did. Even though it worked, he was forgiven, I think he should have still gotten what he deserved.

 

In the middle of all this story there is a part where out of the blue, Jacob finds himself wrestling with some guy. I think that guy is God. He tells Jacob: 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed', which is something that God himself says afterwards. We see another Jewish tradition that comes out of this scene, 'the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank … because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.' The bond seems to just be getting bigger.

Abraham, God, and A Bit of Nobody Else

In chapter seventeen God tells Abraham: 'ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.' This is a very important Jewish tradition, and it shows the relation between Catholicism and Jewish religion in the Old Testament of the Bible. He also tells Abraham that he shall bear a son and he 'shalt call his name Isaac: and [He] will establish [His] covenant with him', this makes me think how, if covenants last through whole generations, God deals with so many of them at a time. It brings back my doubt of what these men have done to get the special treatment, Isaac isn't even born yet and he is already promised a covenant.

In chapter nineteen we hear again about Lot, Abraham's nephew. He protects and shelters two of Gods angels and so he is warned that the city will be destroyed and he and his family leava just in time to be saved. On their way out of their homes, Lot's wife looks back to the city and turns into a pillar of salt. This shows once again the humanity of God, even of His angels: they weren't warmly welcomed into a city so they decide to destroy it and kill everyone in it. It does not send a good message to me, especially the one that we always hear is supposedly sent by God: If someone hits you, turn the other cheek. This story also shows another very human aspect, although this one is shown through a human, it is impatience. When Lot's wife turns back to the city it reminds me of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in Metamorphosis. There is a line in it, 'Is this story a story of an artist, and the loss that comes from sudden self-consciousness or impatience?' which I think fits here perfectly. For just one moment of doubt, there is a consequence so great that there is no turning back.

The next four chapters talk about Abraham and his son Isaac, who was finally born of Abraham 'in his old age'. It tells about another time when God again defended Abraham after he tells another king that Sarah is but his sister, and God takes revenge on said king. An interesting story, and one that shows us that Abraham is not just a lazy man spoiled by God (there seem to be few moments when we see this), is the story of Abraham and Isaac. God asks Abraham to take his son Isaac to make a sacrifice in a sacred mountain top, and Abraham as a faithful follower does so. When they get there Abraham realizes that the sacrifice will not be of a lamb, but of his only child. Still, as an even more faithful servant, he calmly 'bound[s] Isaac his son, and [lays] him on the altar upon the wood'. When he is ready to stick a knife in him, an 'angel of the Lord' says it's okay, he can not kill his son because he has proven himself worthy and totally devoted to God. But it's too late, Isaac is already dead. Just kidding!

In chapter twenty-three Sarah dies, and Abraham mourns for her and then gives his riches to bury 'his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre'. The next chapter talks about how Abraham sent a servant to find a wife for his son, Isaac. He finds the one who is meant to be, after being guided by God to follow certain clues, and goes back to Isaac to introduce them. They 'know' each other and then Isaac is consoled of his mother's death. This shows God's covenant in work, even from now he is making him feel better.

Teacher’s Pets

In chapter ten we are told all about Noah’s family, and how after the flood they all separated and had their own languages and cultures. However, in chapter eleven it says that after the flood all men had one language and lived together and lived peacefully until God scattered them through the world and they became separated. I find this very contradicting and very annoying, you cannot make up your mind about a certain topic if its story is always changing.

Chapter twelve and thirteen tell the story of how, after man was one and had one language and one culture, God ordered Abram to leave his land: ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee’. So Abram followed His orders like a perfect teacher’s pet and left Caanan with his wife and his nephew. Along the way he stopped to build altars and confer with God until they arrived to Egypt. Here, to avoid being killed out of jealousy he said that his beautiful wife, Sarai, was just his sister and so he was given riches and she was taken to the Pharaoh. Then plagues from God invaded the Pharaoh’s house and he found out the truth about Sarai and Abram, and they were all kicked out from Egypt. In chapter thirteen he and Lot, his nephew, parted ways- Lot to Jordan and the plains of the east while Abram was given by God all the rest of the land to govern.

It looks as if God always has favorites, he always has one man he protects and guides for seemingly no reason. But I think that it is done selfishly, He promises and protects these men and in return they follow Him, adore Him, make sacrifices to Him, and defend Him in the Earth. This is another quality that makes Lord God appear selfish, evil, and uncaring for His creations. Another point I disagree with here is that these ‘favorites’ of God never seem to do anything to deserve that treatment. Adam was stupid and just created (maybe out of boredom, we shall never know) by God, Noah just lived on earth and happened to love God, and Abram literally had nothing else going for him other than he being Noah’s descendant. Still, they can get away with anything and God jumps to defend and protect them. For example, Abram had no problem in having his wife handed over to another man, the Pharaoh in Egypt, and of having other women and men himself but as soon as God saw this, He began sending plagues to the Pharaoh in revenge. I find all this very unreasonable.

I have found the perfect word for it: ‘the Lord made a covenant with Abram’. Covenant! We can see that he made one with Noah and with Adam too, this kind of special bond with them. And we finally see what God sees in Abram, when Lot was in trouble he gathered an army and went to defeat Lot’s capturers. He did this without being told by God, so I see that there is in fact something in him that makes him stand out. Later on, God says to him ‘I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward’. He is kind of a fatherly figure to him, you could say. Anyway, what Abram asked for is to be able to have a boy with his wife, but he didn’t exactly get what he wished for. As Sarai was unable to give birth, he conceived one with Sarai’s maid, Hagar-with Sarai’s blessing too. Then Hagar ran away but was confronted by ‘an angel of the Lord’ and told to go back and have Abram’s child and call him Ishmael. It says that Ishmael would be ‘a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren’. This reminds me of our summer reading book, Ishmael, who is actually a gorilla. Both books have just become so much deeper.

College Life- or Not

There are so many words to find,

When describing this work of art,

But unfortunately none come to mind,

So please excuse this improvised start.

Well the obvious is there,

Two men in a complicated relationship

Reaching towards something, we don’t know where.

We see one that is naked (he sure can strip!)

And the other has clothes on.

The former one looks fatherly and wise,

Probably weary of his son.

This one, in turn, seems to, not quite so despise,

But he is not in such a hurry to strengthen their bond.

Maybe he’s going off to college, one might guess,

Or maybe it’s just God with nothing to respond

To Him leaving Adam to deal with their mess.

I hope you sincerely enjoyed

My rambling on,

And that next time he is seen,

Adam might at least wear an apron.