Sometimes You Have to Get it Out

One of my favorite songs is Holy Cross by River City Extension.

Here's a link to the song- Holy Cross audio youtube video
And here's a link to the lyrics- Holy Cross- River City Extension lyrics

Sometimes the things we feel are too much. We have to vent, to let it out, subject one of our friends or peers to a sea of emotions. We expect to be understood when we rant, and to be met with compassion and sympathy. All too often, that's not the case, and the final result ends up being frustration. To me, that's what Holy Cross is about, the frustration that comes from believing in people and the lack of understanding that is apparent.

One of my favorite lines in this song is "I hid your name upon the quilt I knit, still, I don't think that you'd understand." In this line, the writer is trying to show a gesture of appreciation and love to someone, but he's afraid that his intentions will be misconceived. The "still", to me, is a representation of the fact that even though he's trying, and even though it's a large gesture, the person he's trying to make see the light doesn't have the capacity to understand why he's doing it. Another line that stands out to me is "Well I don't think the lord understands / And why the hell'd it take so long to grow?/ Perhaps we worship all the things we know" The part of this I love is "Well I don't think the lord understands". I love this line because of the way the songwriter is singing about God, a supposedly almighty and all-seeing power, in a way that puts God on a human level, and the way he even dares to be a little bit (honestly) condescending towards the epitome of religious respect. The writer is rejecting the company of the figure that many turn to in times of great need, and simply dismissing the fact that God would be able to comprehend his emotions.

At the end of this song, after the last line plays and the last note is fading out, there's a little snippet of speech: "Sometimes, you're in a bad place and you have to- you know you have to get it out and uh- I don't know. Everybody wants to do everything. I want to do everything. You- Ya Know?" I love the way the song goes from a critical tone to a voice that plays directly to the listener, and stops being combative. The last two words of the song: "Ya know?" are perfectly ironic to me. The entire song is about how nobody ever fully understands anyone else, and then the song ends with the writer asking for the listener to understand what he's been saying. Even though no one understands him, he's asking for understanding. My theory on this is that without saying these things, he'd only be lonelier than if he didn't say them, even if they won't be fully comprehended. 

Every time this song ends, I'm left with the words "ya know" echoing in my head, asking me to understand the song. It's funny, because I'm being asked to understand something I've just been told I won't be able to. It's a cycle we go through, asking to be understood, hoping that maybe this one time someone will be able to know exactly what you mean, and ending up frustrated again. Ultimately, we're in the same lonely place that we were in when we stared. But as said, sometimes you just have to get it out. 

In the Name of Love

The Pact by Jodi Picoult is about a suicide pact, or what seems to be one at first. Emily and Chris have been friends since birth, and neither of them have childhood memories that don't involve the other. Emily suffers sexual abuse as a child, and it haunts her so that even when her and Chris's relationship turns into one of lovers, she can't feel comfortably intimate with him. Emily has a lot of pressure to go far in life, and when she gets pregnant, she decides she can't handle it, and decides to kill herself. She tells Chris of this plan, and he decides to try to stop her. As the plan develops, Chris keeps waiting to stop her, and finally, they end up with the gun to Emily's head and Chris not being able to stop it anymore. Chris shoots Emily, the person he loves most in the world, and suddenly she's gone, and it's his fault. 

So why didn't Chris stop Emily? Instead of trying to get help, as you're supposed to do for a friend who informs you of a suicide plan, Chris aides in the ending of Emily's life. The reason that Chris did this is very complex. For part of the time while Emily was planning her own death, Chris could have been in denial. 

Even though he knew that his girlfriend was suicidal, he could have not realized the full extent of the problem, or not wanted to accept it. 

My theory, and the one that seems most plausible due to the characters' relationship is that by helping Emily kill herself, Chris actually thought he was helping her. He was setting her free from a life she hated living, and he didn't want to betray her trust by telling someone of her wishes. Chris did what he thought was best for Emily, just as he had done his whole life. 

People often make mistakes, think that they can solve problems that are in reality too big for them to handle. Most of the time, this ends up in a bad situation, but in Chris's case, it ended up in the death of the person he loved most. 

"majority-minority" country

Link: The New Face of America

The article from upfront scholastic magazine, "The New Face of America", is about how more minorities are being born in America than whites.The article starts off with Jessica Ramirez explaining how since she grew up in a predominantly Latino school she never felt like a minority, even though in the overall US, she is. The article goes on to explain how a recent census of the US presented that minority births now outnumber non-Latino white births. This is happening because high immigration rates from countries such as Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines, and also because of the increasing number of mixed-race marriages. This fast rate of change is unlike any other country's in the world. Never before has there been such a racially different generational gap. It will be interesting to see where it leads in the next decades.

I think that the author wants the reader to be aware of the rapidly changing racial state of our country. In a place where people are sometimes made fun of or stereotyped for their racial differences, race is beginning to not be such an isolating factor. The nation is changing rapidly and leaving no room for racism and bigotry. I think that the author wants the reader to feel a sense of acceptance. The power to accept people and in return, to be accepted by their peers, for their race, no matter what their background.

This article makes me think about the foundation of this country, and how it was founded on ideas on equality and justice for everyone. Right now, I can think of many social divisions that don't have the equality or rights they deserve. For example, women in high power jobs, gays and marriage laws, immigrants and immigration and labor laws, and the list goes on. The only people who seem to have a fair amount of rights are straight white men, and as we can see from predicted polls, they aren't going to be the majority of people in this country anymore. This country was founded as a place for people escaping persecution to come, and the first settlers (besides Native Americans) made a life in a new place as somewhere to get away from being judged on who they were. The fact that America will soon become a "majority-minority" country is a huge step in the same direction our ancestors took when they created a place where people could live in acceptance alongside each other.