". . .Or, instead, they might meet on a Sunday, in the church where Lucy, growing up in a household with a second, heavenly, father, had been lead to believe every honorable man and every patient lady ends up. They would see eachother dressed in their nicest clothing. Such clothing that if the chance arose their wedding could happen that very day; and in her little universe, where lovers can meet and remeet as many times as desired, they usually did. . ."

"Alan Milby's daily life began with the setting of the sun and rarely before. On occassion he would venture out into the early evening for life's necessities, but these adventures were, as he would say: "to be avoided." Rather, his time was spent as he preferred: on his property, with his good eye peering through his favorite telescope, transfixed by the stars and celestial bodies all disguised by the distance of time. . ."

"The town station lies at the crossroad of the paths taken by local carriages and cars, and the passenger railway's northern line that takes it's passengers to and from the city. Marlee arrived on a sunny autumn day. A last return to where she grew up; a place she left in a rush some time before turning twenty. Over time she had grown used to the mountains which with time she had come to see as hills, the trees became stiff and squat, the people common and stale, and the once exciting hidden corners and secrets she discovered in her childhood became expected and dull into her teens. The shrinking valley, from any angle she could find, had become a cage of fading beauty. A prison without bars of iron, but seemingly inescapable walls of stone guarded by distance. . ."

"The monitor at the side of his bed continues to announce the slow unwinding of his biological clock at a currently steady rate of seventy-eight heartbeats per minute. Eyes closed; ignoring the indifferent white walls, the signs about living healthily, and the lifeless decoration of mass-produced photographs; the beeping of the monitor remains a constant reminder of the situation. . ."

"The view from the airplane window I had been admiring as we came in for landing is now obscured by the small airport as the automated pilot pulls us into the gate. I was alone on the flight last time too. My uncle's family, and some of his friends, will arrive later and each, depending on their familiarity with me or my parents, pretend they belong here as much as the next liar. My family aren't coming. Even if they had been invited, they know it'd be a bad look for my uncle to show up in any way other than in the comments about how inspiring it is that my uncle has given me the chances my parents never could. . ."

"Plin feels as though her arms get in the way of her sleep. Nightly she lies awake, exhausted, imagining what wonderful dreams she might never experience due to her uncompromising limbs. . ."

"The belief was of course unfounded. Still, the lightness in his chest gave rise to the feeling that he might, at any moment, fall from his bed, up to the ceiling, no longer tethered by gravity. Despite his conviction that this belief was ridiculous, he still decided to, rather than force his eyes closed and wait for sleep, get up and look for some object heavy enough to hold him down; ease his worries. . ."

“'Dear God,' my body shakes with uneasy breath—It's strange, returning here: the body of an old man; curled up and behaving like he were still a child; a child whose parents still dragged him to the local church every Sunday morning, pressed into uncomfortable, stiff clothing. . ."

"The rain on this planet doesn't feel like Earth's but it's hard to explain why. Chemically it's the same as far as I'm aware: water plus; it's still a clear blue and smells the same when it meets the dirt; the only thing that's changed is the planet. . ."

". . .Holding a side of the loosely drifting curtains she watches as passers-by begin the task of reviving the weekend market at the small square at one end of her usually quiet street. Small carts clatter on the cobblestones as vans and scooters carrying the products of local workshops and the produce of distant farms fill the air with the putter of combustion engines and puffs of exhaust that slowly build upon the thin grey clouds that already absorb the city. . ."

"The construction across the street woke me. Still not used to the soundscape of the city, I was overwhelmed by its ability to grow beyond the already impressive horns, sirens, and shouts that marked that restless night. No soft two-tone alarm of a Black-Capped Chicadee; no gentle rustle of leaves backed by a calmlmy falling river; only the Northern Flicker remained, though artificially; still dressed in yellow and hard headed as ever: drumming on the ground. . ."

"For modern viewers of the 1974 episode of the popular British science-fiction television show Doctor Who, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, its political messaging could not have been more clear. Opinions of which set of political beliefs the episode preached, however, differ. According to some, the episode was a reactionary backlash to the ideas presented in the earlier episode The Green Death from 1973, an episode collectively agreed upon as radically progressive. Others argue that Invasion of the Dinosaurs takes its political beliefs a step further than The Green Death in proposing that viewers should actively participate in the reduction of pollution rather than the previous episode's focus on not creating more pollution and merely criticizes a kind of utopianism, not extreme environmental action in itself. Looking at the episode and the popular environmental literature and movements created around the same time, namely A Blueprint for Survival and the PEOPLE party, it appears that these authors may be both right in their discovery and understanding of partisan beliefs within the story, but also wrong in failing to acknowledge the early Green movements that inspired the episode as bipartisan attempts to solve a global issue. Ultimately by looking at this episode and reactions to it, we can see that aligning issues with political identity instead of solutions leads to limited progress. . ."

"The 1952 premiere of John Cage's 4'33, a musical score lasting the titular four minutes and thirty-three seconds, consisted of the pianist, David Tudor, resisting the keys of his piano entirely. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of what many would, then and now, refuse to call music. No sound produced by any by-design or by-intent instruments occur throughout the performance and other noises are allowed to take precedent. The poorly subdued cough of a gravel-voiced audience member and the impatient shuffle of a pair of freshly-shined shoes in the midst of an undulating mutter of general confusion while from beyond the wooden walls of the Maverick Concert Hall the subtle rustle of the forest and the intermittent flutter of birds found their way into the makeshift orchestra. Inspiration to make the piece was partly inspired by his friend Robert Rauschenberg's 1951 White Paintings, a collection of canvases smoothly covered in a thick, white, house paint. Rauschenberg called them 'clocks,' saying that, if perceptive enough to read it, one could glean '. . .how many people were in the room, what time it was, and what the weather was like outside.' Maybe it's the shadow of wind-blown trees or rain-dappled windows riding the changing light of sunset, the faint hue reflecting off a viewer's red puffer jacket or the blanket of quiet and patient dust—the inert white painting is not awaiting an inevitable painter, begging for fix or amendment to its construction; Cage's audience is not waiting on a reluctant pianist, their minds cast forward to the end of the performance as they consider the possibility of a refund. The two artworks gather and direct focus, seeking purpose without. This purpose, however, doesn't grow on those trees outside the concert hall or those beyond the museum window—not in their wavering shadows or latent bird song—and this purpose they seek, the meaning they seek, is brought to them only by their observers. . ."

"If someone does not see meaning in something, it is because they are not putting meaning into it. . . [and] using this understanding of meaning as subjectively applied, and therefore subjectively powerful: we can look at how this effects art. We can look at the oh-so-common high-schooler argument that 'the curtains in the story are just blue' and how this line of thought means for some that the curtains are just blue; or how this would mean that if modern art is meaningless to you then you're right. In this line of thinking, an artist can create art with or without meaning, but what ultimately matters is if the viewer, the reader, the 'experiencer' creates the meaning. This makes art, or anything if you'll allow me the fancy, only complete in the mind of the its audience. What about works of art that have a meaning? What if the artist creates something with the intention of people understanding something specific, art that you are 'wrong' for thinking is about anything else. Art with a precondition, just like art without, succeeds or fails on its ability to connect with an audience. An example of this is the frequently discussed idea that 'there is no such thing as an anti-war film.' A filmmaker can make a movie with the intent to show war as horrifying as it is, but through its nature as a work of art, distant from the events it's depicting and often aiming for narrative and aesthetic pleasure, an 'anti-war' film can't help but make war seem, in some way, attractive. It is up to the viewer to create meaning from their own lives and experiences if they want to receive the full effect of the artist's intent. Italo Calvino argues, 2 An important clarification is that this can be harmful. For the uses I present, it is necessarily a personal hobby. The only defense I have that can extend into inter-personal discussion is the one I did not mention here of entertainment value. however, that regardless of intent, meaning is inherently present in art, specifically literature; referencing Don Quixote in Six Memos for the Next Millennium he says: “In realistic narrative, Mambrino's helmet becomes a barber's bowl, but it does not lose importance or meaning. . . I would say that the moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a knot in the network of invisible relationships. The symbolism of an object may be more or less explicit, but it is always there. We might even say that in a narrative any object is always magic.” Whether art is created with meaning imbued, meaning inherent, or meaning created, the viewer is required to make an effort to understand. . ."

"It is generally understood that Lincoln would have understood the impact Uncle Tom's Cabin had on public opinion. Though it is uncertain if he considered Stowe's novel or even Harriet Beecher Stowe herself to have started the United States Civil War, connections between the message of the novel can be seen in his later speeches to the country. The novel's focus on unity of ideals rather than division, the wrongs of both sides, and the importance of coming together fit perfectly with Lincoln's hopes and designs for reconstruction. “With malice toward none;” Lincoln says at the end of his second inaugural address, “with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.” This was in 1865, thirteen years after the full publication of Stowe's novel; a novel which demonstrated such a vision in its characters. As Eliza, George, and Henry flee Tom Loker and his group of slave-hunters, the three seeking freedom manage to injure Tom and send off his followers in search of help. Instead of continuing their run for the border, the three former slaves stop to help Tom—nurse his wounds and bring him to a place where he can recover. “We bear thee no malice,” they say to him, “thee shall be taken to a house where they'll nurse thee first rate,—as well as thy own mother could.”9 The goal of Stowe's book was not to prove that the abolitionist's were right, but that slavery was wrong. Both the North and South, in her estimation, were at fault for allowing such a violent and horrid practice to continue even, in the case of the North, even tangentially: the inaction of knowing about slavery and doing nothing was just as violent an action as those who held the whip. Though flawed in many aspects the effectiveness of Harriet Beecher Stowe's rhetoric in Uncle Tom's Cabin is doubtless and a standing record of the incredible impact of art and popular culture."

"The cannibal has often been used as a stereotype of the native of any country, but particularly that of the “new world” when discovered by European eyes. They are often described as uncivilized, uncultured, violent, dumb, and savage monsters who are only as good as the steer in front of a plow, the ox in front of the cart, the dog that chases the fox. Descriptions of Caliban, a near anagram of cannibal, in Shakespeare's The Tempest use all these terms and more and as a character he is shown to be of weak will and, in some ways, needing of command or colonization. This understanding might have made sense to an Englishman in the sixteenth century, not far into Europe's conquest over America. But into the twentieth century as colonizers begin to grant freedom to colonized nations and indigenous and enslave populations begin to get their rights, such a position, globally, is understood to be remarkably insensitive and plainly inaccurate. Aime Cesaire, a Martinician man of African descent and child of colonial rule, decided to amend the issues in Shakespeare's play by way of “Literary Cannibalism” through his version titled A Tempest (Une Tempete). This version would take the original play and dissect, or 'consume,' it to allow for reworking in to a piece of explicitly anti-colonial and anti-slavery sentiment. Through re- altogether provide an effective piece of rhetoric denouncing colonization both globally and specifically imagined characters, re-examined relationships, and a rewritten ending: Cesaire makes this change effectively and powerfully both relating to colonialism more broadly and its history in his home country of Martinique. . ."