{"id":106,"date":"2014-02-12T12:01:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=106"},"modified":"2015-01-06T11:21:06","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T16:21:06","slug":"have-we-already-fallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2014\/02\/12\/have-we-already-fallen\/","title":{"rendered":"Have We Already Fallen?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I had lately learned that another way of writing ‘FALL IN LOVE’ was ‘WALK THE PLANK.’ I was tired of balancing blind-fold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Lately learned” implies prior ignorance. It is so interesting that a feeling, a sense of happiness, a supposed ‘euphoric’ feeling can be so scary. The unstated connection made between the narrators heart and an “unplumbed sea” demonstrates the depth<\/em>\u00a0of the universal language of love.<\/p>\n

I see freight in the words plank, balancing, blind-fold, slip<\/em> and even sea;\u00a0<\/em>but why are these words associated with the oh so beautiful LOVE? Well, this fear was just learned. ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ or, was<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Why is love a “slender plank?” Is it the fear of the unknown<\/strong>? Fear of getting hurt<\/strong>? Fear of shame<\/strong>? Or fear of slipping off the slender plank and into the unplumbed sea? The Author suggests that his\/her new learning of the dangers of love is strictly a game of ‘survival of the fittest.’ If we have already ‘fallen’ in love… then how are we still on the plank? There’s a connection there. The only difference is that it is an emotional fall, not a physical fall.<\/p>\n

“Balancing blind-fold on a slender beam” would instill fear in us, it would give us an almost\u00a0animalistic<\/em> instinct to fight, to prevail and to survive<\/strong>. Who did The Narrator ‘learn’ that you need to ‘survive’ love from? Is he\/she crazy? Or did we teach ourselves? Are we dying to survive something that would never kill us in the first place?<\/p>\n

In Sedgwick’s Tendencies, <\/em>she\u00a0states that,<\/p>\n

“The survival of each one is a miracle. Everyone who survived has stories about how it was done” (1).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe this is the “newly learned” case in Winterson’s Written on the Body<\/em>? Should we fear love? or love the fear? I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is the fear of the unknown within the unplumbed sea that makes us fear surviving<\/strong>, but LOVE survival<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I had lately learned that another way of writing ‘FALL IN LOVE’ was ‘WALK THE PLANK.’ I was tired of balancing blind-fold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26). “Lately learned” implies prior ignorance. It is so interesting that a feeling, a sense of happiness, a supposed ‘euphoric’ feeling can … Continue reading Have We Already Fallen?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2034,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93617],"tags":[93495,93514,93510,93494,974,93515,93513,93509,93512,93511,93493],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-blog-post","tag-eve-sedgwick","tag-fall-in-love","tag-ignorance","tag-jeanette-winterson","tag-love","tag-sea","tag-shame","tag-survival","tag-unknown","tag-walk-the-plank","tag-written-on-the-body"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}