Kindly Unspoken

Brad Manning's essay, "Arm Wrestling with My Father" emphasizes a another form of communication other than explicit words that can bond a family together, implicit actions. The narrator recognizes at a young age that his father doesn't bond with him through words but actions, but as a young kid he did not understand that his father was trying to communicate. This essay reminded me of a song I heard a while ago called Kindly Unspoken by Kate Voegele who sings about a lover that showed his feelings through silence rather than words. This apparently baffled her at first, but now she can understand this form of communication, "Its lucky I'm clever, if I didn't know better Id only believe that which I heard." Eventually the song shows how words are more likely to deceive while actions cannot. While this was a negative revelation it turns out to be a positive one for Manning. He figured out that his father was just trying to show him love, through competition, in his own special way. The relationship between Manning and his father embodies the saying, "Silence speaks louder than words."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkqrZ4zoNes

A Joyful Wedding

As the white grains pattered down the woman clenches his hands tightly, this is it.

All the long, numerous days planning and conniving have lead to this. 

She is finally his wife.

Her dress sparkles with the diamonds of wasted money,

some free themselves, plopping on the ground, leaving a trail of wasted glamor. 

The ground is littered with even more rice left discarded,
but more pressing worries occupy her mind right now.

What should I wear after this for our honeymoon? 

What hotel are we going to end up staying at? 

He better have made the reservations I told him to! 

Pasting a smile on her face she disregards those worries, 

figuring she’ll ask him later but right now she has to hold up her appearance

as an innocently joyful wife.

The man is wondering why he even agreed to marry this woman. 

She just uses up his money without regret.

He has just started to unravel the meaning of her traps to ensnare him.

Oh well, it's too late now.

He is trapped. 

The guests' cheeks hurt from all the fake laughter. 

Their dresses and tuxedos digging into their skin uncomfortably,

with the scratchy material leaving a sort of itchy feeling all over. 

They look at the bride and groom envying their happiness, 

while ignoring the plebeians knelt on the ground envying them.

The plebeians pick up what is deemed as trash to the rich, 

but seen by them as another way to put food on the table.

They're the only ones comfortable with what they wear,

since what they wear is practical with every article a purpose.

Hunching over, backs aching, stomachs growling,

the peasants pluck every morsel with care and precision.

Like animals they are forced to live this way because

while the rich keep getting richer,

as the poor keep getting more poor.

 

My Own Place In This Contradictory World

When I first moved to Troy I was astounded by the cultural diversity present here. All different cultures mixing together without reservations. It was like a mini melting pot in the big melting pot of America. The town I had moved from was a predominantly white town which made me feel like my skin color was something to be ashamed of as it stood out and was very different from the social norms there. This caused me to try to shake my culture off and try to assimilate myself into being the perfect American. I tried to loosen myself from any ties to my culture that I still had left, which surprisingly wasn't hard at all. I just gave up trying to fit in with the life of my parents and started to fit in with the life of my peers. However, when I moved to Troy I started to regret my actions. Seeing all of the different, unique people with their own cultures here started making me feel ashamed, yet again. My friends always joke that I'm not even Indian anymore. My tastes, experiences, preferences have all changed since I started denying that part of my identity. Now I regret this decision very much. I can't even speak my language fluently anymore or understand references to the culture. This was a very impactful realization because I realize that I should have tried to be a two in one combo, half American and half Indian. Instead of giving up in the battle against assimilation I should have reached a compromise. Now seeing my brother grow up and face some of the battles I did, I try to help him reach that compromise without completely giving up our culture. Helping him has helped me regain some of pieces I lost but what helped me the most were my parents who reached that healthy compromise without any help. They have found their own place as an immigrant family in a completely foreign country without losing their culture. My story relates to Amy Tan's story in how her family also realizes that the key to living comfortably in a society with a different culture is not complete assimilation, but finding a middle ground between cultures.

Perception vs. Identity

Identity is what a person really is, from personality to behavior, while perception is what another person chooses to see as their identity. From the perception of identity to the actual identity there is a gap formed by the prejudices and past experiences of the perceiver. The gap can be huge or miniscule all the depending on the eye of the perciever. An infant with not much exposure to prejudices or racism has a very small gap and can see the identity almost perfectly, which explains why many believe infants speak the truth. However, an adult with lots of exposure has a bigger gap that shows a bigger deviation from the truth. In the Nancy Mairs piece "Disability" many people seem to perceive a disability as consuming, leaving no time to behave like a normal person, but the actual identity of a disabled person is very normal and almost boring, "I menstruate, so I have to buy tampons, I worry about smoker's breath so I buy mouthwash..."(Mairs 14). This gap in judgement results from not having enough integration of the disabled with the able-bodied as Mairs mentions but also from the constant fear of someday joining the disabled. So in this case the gap serves as a cushion of safety that society places in minds to perceive another as completely different from their true identity, which is almost exactly the same as an able-bodied person. These safety cushions can be dangerous because they are also perceived and are not really in place. So they will not be there to catch the able-bodied person when they fall into the life of the the disabled, which is not made miserable by physical limitations but by mental limitations placed by the media. The world is really how one sees it so try to see the truth in it with no filters of prejudices.