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hjk As I stepped onto the platform and walked down the terminal, my imagination began to stir. Images of wild beasts roaming the land, and savage men armed with spears filled my mind. I had landed in Africa, land of the untamed; or so I thought. For weeks people had been filling my mind with vivid descriptions of a country they had never seen, and I swallowed it all up. Walking toward the exit, I imagined seeing a luscious forest ahead of me, filled with exotic animals, and wild beasts. To my surprise, I walked out to a commercial road. Towering buildings, heavy traffic, and choking smog were all I could see. I thought to myself, â€Å" Is this Africa?† If so â€Å"where are the elephants, the lions, and savage tribe man?† What I encountered was a civilized city. As the days progressed, and I traveled throughout the city, I came to the conclusions that someone had lied to me. This place was definitely not Boston; however, it was not the place I had imagined. Why was this place so different from the descriptions given to me by several people? Did they intentionally lie to me, or did they just want to stir up my imagination? It took me a while, but I was able to figure it out. These people didn’t mean to misinform me about Africa. They were just relating to me the same stereotypical information they too had heard from someone else. As with many other places, Africa was put into a category. It was categorized as an uncivilized, hostile region. Visiting Africa, I formed the true picture. I saw it for what it is, an extravagant country. The busy city, filled with modern day equipment was just the beginning. Seeing past this enabled me to see the true beauty of Africa. A three day visit to Sun City, a resort in Africa was enough to erase all past thoughts on Africa. The resort showed both the past and present history of Africa. The center held the modernized casino, surrounded by theaters, shops, and game centers. However it was the sites on the outskirts that opened my eyes. The one thing in particular was the 5 story high temple.

Discourse Communities

DC Essay, Draft 1 Discourse Communities Essay There is a very large variety of academic discourse communities available at the universities today. Deciding to go to college is deciding to enter an academic discourse community all on its own but deciding to choose a major is entering a more specified discourse community. There are many similarities and differences between every separate community which makes it difficult for some people to choose.Understanding a community must be done before involving oneself. Comparing and contrasting majors can make it easier for someone to choose which academic discourse community they decide to involve themselves in. Comparing and contrasting majors can be much simpler than it seems. Taking the time to describe a rhetorical purpose, audience, and values can be a good outline for to understand the community. An example of this would be comparing the discourse communities of a nursing major and an education major.According to the Sacramento State Co urse Catalog, â€Å"Nursing is a caring discipline with a foundation of nursing science guided by the application of moral and ethical principles of care and responsibility† and â€Å"The professional educator brings together subject matter knowledge, appropriate strategies, and interpersonal skills essential to providing successful learning experiences for children. † Preparing to work first-hand with people, possibly even very young children, is the main similarity between the two majors.Although the two prepare to help the community, they plan to help in different ways. The two majors are in a sense the same in their future purpose caring the same values, but different in the actual action it will entail. Both Nursing and Education carry the social value of an equal opportunity. The majors do not discriminate between the sexes or age of a person unlike athletics major possibly would. A woman at a very elderly age most likely wouldn’t be able to run a triathlo n and be successful at the same time.Nursing provides health and well-being for the community also providing safety. By treating someone of a contagious and deadly disease a nurse could possibly prevented a whole community from contact of this disease. Education provides common and even uncommon knowledge also building a future for the community. Teaching a young community to read and write makes them literate allowing them to seek high-end careers in the future.Rhetorically, an audience or a nurse could be doctors, parents, or the elderly while the audience of an educator would most likely be parents, their students directly, or the community no longer directly tied to the education environment. A typical purpose a nurse might have would be to provide health and safety to the community in order to keep a community alive. On the other hand a purpose for an educator would be to educate the community of the importance of a health and safety so they are aware of the seriousness of the matter.Personas in both fields would most likely be informative and professional. Comparing and contrasting the similarities between two separate majors can ease the decision of joining a discourse community. Values of the community can be very similar which may be what draws a person to both but the purpose of them can be completely different. Understanding the communities is done by exploring these aspects and applying rhetorical cases to them. Works Cited â€Å"Sacramento State University Catalog† (2012-2014)

Italian Culture

The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel By Licia Canton In recent years, ethnic minority writing has played a major Pole in shedding light on the complexity of the Canadian identity. Italian-Canadians figure among the numerous communities active on the Canadian literary scene. In the last decade in particular the Italian-Canadian literary corpus, which traces its development alongside the growing Italian-Canadian community, has seen numerous publications, especially novels.This paper discusses language, specifically the tension arising from the Italian word invading the Canadian text, as a representation of hyphenated identity in the following Italian-Canadian novels: Frank Paci’s The Italians (1978), Black Madonna (1982) and The Father (1984), Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth (1982), Mary Melfi’s Infertility Rites (1991), Nino Ricci’s In a Glass House (1993) and Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion (1995).The n ovels trace the process towards defining an identity which is torn between two conflicting cultures, the Italian and the Canadian. The analysis of these narratives shows that the tension and the negotiation between the Italian and the Canadian components of the bicultural identity represented at the level of the events narrated are also at work in the texture of the writing. Language causes friction between the two cultures presented in the narratives: the question of identity is played out in the weaving of the words.In the Italian-Canadian novel, Italian elements are an impediment in the quest towards Canadianness. Although the new generation embraces Canadianness through education, friends and lifestyle, the presence of the old country remains through the influence of parents, customs and language. Otherness as represented by the old country can never be completely erased even in the second generation. The Italian component, therefore, is something of a weed which keeps resurfaci ng. The same occurs at the level of the writing.The novels discussed are written in English—Canadian English as opposed to American, British or Australian English—in a Canadian context and for a Canadian audience. The Italian word surfaces now and then thereby breaking the flow of the English-Canadian text. The presence of the heritage language in the English text is what Francesco Loriggio calls â€Å"the device of the stone† (39) or, to use Enoch Padolsky’s words, the â€Å"linguistic stone† (56). The Italian word within the English text is like a stone or a stumbling block.The presence of the â€Å"heritage† language within the â€Å"ethnic text† is a device used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. Italian may take up as little space as a word or as much as a sentence, but in each case there is a noticeable effect on the narrative. Italian surfaces in different forms to break th e flow of the English text: as a translated or untranslated word; as a literal translation of a phrase or sentence given in English; and as an English sentence having a latinate structure.There are two major reasons for the Italian word â€Å"contaminating† the English text: the first is purely to give the text an Italian flavour—to mark l’italianita of the writing; the second, which I focus on in this paper, serves a specific function in illustrating the duality inherent in the Italian-Canadian identity. The Italian word is present when there is no appropriate English equivalent: this points to the difference and, in extreme cases, to the incompatibility between the two cultures expressed within Italian-Canadian reality.And, the Italian presence, either as a word on the page or in the nuances of the sentence structure, points to the fact that within an Italian-Canadian reality there exists a constant process of translation. The tension existing between elements of the Italian culture and the Canadian society in which the characters must constantly negotiate a space for their identity is especially evident in what I call â€Å"the irreplaceable Italian word. † In such instances the English translation would not do justice to the Italian original.Examples include the following discussion of polpi in Frank Paci’s The Father, polenta in Paci’s The Italians, calle and vaporetto in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth, and Ia busta in Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion. In Paci’s The Father, Oreste Mancuso who represents Italy, wants to instill a strong sense of the Italian heritage in his sons, whereas his wife Maddalena upholds Canadianness or the Canadian way. The tension between these two characters, and therefore between the two cultures, is illustrated in the following passage:He [Oreste] brought up a bowl of dark grapes and set them on the table beside the polpi, a dish of fish stewed in large quantities of oil and red peppers†¦ The dish was so strong that no-one else in the family could eat it. A fresh loaf from the bakery rested beside his favourite dish. (63-64) In this passage, the word polpi breaks both the English language and the Canadian culture by highlighting the Italian one. The word polpi refers to Oreste’s favourite dish, something from the old country that he will not give up, like making his own bread and wine.In this scene the bread was made by Oreste in his bakery, and he has just finished making wine. The word polpi also emphasizes the tension between the members of the family: Oreste who represents the ways of the old country, and Maddalena and Stefano who want to become Canadianized. It is significant, then, that no one besides Oreste can eat the polpi because they are too strong, signifying â€Å"too old country. † The rejection of the polpi by the rest of the family is symbolically a rejection of Oreste and of the old country.In The Italians, the narrator (speaking from Alberto’s perspective) comments on Giulia’s tendency to prepare too much food: â€Å"To judge from the meal’s size, she still hadn’t got over the years in the old country when they had been forced to eat polenta almost every day. They had scarcely seen meat then†¦ †(74). The word polenta disrupts the English passage in two ways. First, the mere presence of the Italian word causes tension within the first sentence. Second, the word polenta causes a shift in setting, from the overabundant Christmas meal that Giulia has prepared in the present to the poverty experienced in the Italy of the past.The presence of the Italian word results in the juxtaposition of the Italian setting and the Canadian one, thereby pointing to the fact that the Italian past (the poverty which caused a diet of cornmeal and bread) is an undeniable component of Italian-Canadian identity. In other words, the Italia n past is responsible for the behaviour of the present, in this case Giulia’s fear of regression. The inclusion of specific Italian words in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth also takes the reader back to the Italian setting.In the subordinate narrative (Marco’s story), the author uses nouns such as vaporetto and calle that are specific to the Venetian setting: Seeing the floating station for the vaporetto before him, Marco realized he had been going in the wrong direction†¦ (21) Stopping at the top of a bridge and gazing down at the twisting calle, he saw the last of the evening crowd†¦ He began running, pushing his way down the calle, then turning off down a narrow, empty fondamento (30). He broke into a slight run. Calle. Bridge. One more—the last narrow street was blocked off. (37)In this passage the Italian words which describe Marco’s Venice cause the reader to experience the Italian component of the novel. The vaporetto is a common means of transportation in the water city. An English equivalent such as â€Å"boat† or â€Å"little steamer† could have been included, but no English word could do justice to the image created by the word vaporetto. Similarly, the word calle could be replaced by â€Å"narrow street,† as in the last sentence quoted above. The calle, however, is one of Venice’s specific attributes. In fact, The Collins Concise Italian-English Dictionary gives the meaning for calle as â€Å"narrow street (in Venice). The fondamento refers to the platform or quay at the edge of the water—where manmade construction meets one of the natural elements, water. The fondamento represents stability, a product of man’s rationality, whereas water represents nature’s uncontrollability and unpredictability—as in the recurring Venetian floods, one of which is described in Edwards’ novel. The presence of Italian words in the above passage, as i n the novel itself, which are very specific to the city of Venice, creates an image of the setting inhabited by Marco, a setting which is at the root of Bianca’s (the Italian-Canadian protagonist) quest for identity.Venice—the calle, the vaporetto, the water—is an ineffaceable component of Bianca’s identity as well as Marco’s. The passage quoted above reflects Marco’s unstable and precarious situation: his lack of direction, psychological and physical (given that â€Å"he had been going in the wrong direction†), and his sense of panic are indications of his impending nervous breakdown. The words italicized in the above passage are simultaneously associated with motion—the constant motion, therefore instability—and the maze which qualifies Marco’s psychological state.The author has chosen these specific Italian words to create a detailed image of the Italian water city and to illustrate the vulnerability of an indi vidual’s identity. In the last chapter of Fabrizio’s Passion, the narrator takes the time to explain the connotations of the busta (the envelope) which is an integral part of Lucia Notte’s wedding as of many Italian-Canadian weddings: Peter is tripping over Lucia, their hands encumbered by white envelopes handed to them by the guests after the handshakes. Those famous Italian envelopes†¦ La busta.How to describe this seemingly simple object intrinsically linked to Italian-American weddings? This tiny white envelope seals what consideration or dislike one family holds for another†¦ Each envelope is a potential time bomb. It can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. All confessed, yet nothing ever openly spelled out—one family’s unbreakable loyalty to you as well as another’s hypocrisy. (226-7) The busta holds nuances and connotations that the â€Å"envelope† does not. What the narrator does not spell ou t is that the busta is the carrier of a monetary amount given to the newlyweds as a gift.It is the specific amount of money contained in the envelope which â€Å"can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. † The word busta in the above passage is more than a simple envelope; it is a symbol of the traditional Italian wedding in Canada. It brings together the friends and relatives from the old country in the setting of the new country. The word paesano, or paesani in the plural, which appears in several instances in the novels has several connotations. In Italian a paesano is a person who is from the same town, or nearby town, in Italy.For instance, in commenting on his first weeks in Mersea the narrator of In a Glass House points to â€Å"the strange half-familiar faces of the paesani who came to visit† (3). Here, the word paesani refers to people originally from Valle del Sole, Vittorio’s hometown, or from neighbouring towns. For the Italian living abroad, such as the Italian-Canadian, the word paesano has taken on a broader meaning to refer to Italians of the same region. And, in regions outside of Italy inhabited by few Italians, paesano refers to Italians in general.This meaning of paesano has also been adopted by non-Italians to show kinship or goodwill, be it sincere or not. It is sometimes used to make fun of the Italian as well. Mario Innocente (In a Glass House) comments on the non-Italian’s use of the word paesano in the passage below: â€Å"Mario,† he [the German] said. â€Å"Mario, Mario, como stai, paesano? †Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ â€Å"That was the guy I bought the farm from,† he [Mario] said. â€Å"Those Germans —paesano this, paesano that, everyone’s a paesano. But the old bastard just wanted to make sure I don’t forget to pay him. † (31)The passage shows the Italian’s mistrust of non-Italians who try to ingratiate themselves by relying on the inherent frie ndship implied in the word paesano. Although Mario Innocente is not fooled by this, his young son Vittorio is lured into a false sense of friendship by the bullies on the school bus: â€Å"Italiano,† I [Vittorio] said, clutching at the familiar word. â€Å"Ah, Italiano! † He thumped a hand on his chest. â€Å"Me speak Italiano mucho mucho. Me paesano. † When the other boys got on the bus and came to the back, the black-haired boy said they were paesani as well, and each in turn smiled broadly at me and shook my hand. (49)Vittorio soon discovers that the pretense of friendship is simply a way of making fun of him. The word paesano, then, brings together the Italian and the non-Italian, be it positive or negative, sincere or not. For the Italian-Canadian, the word creates a link between the new country and Italy by defining and uniting those of the same origin; at the same time the word allows the non-Italian, or the Canadian, to enter into the Italian culture alb eit under false pretense. The word paesano brings together the two components of Italian-Canadian identity in uniting the true sense of the word with the meaning adopted by non-Italians.In each of the examples quoted above, the presence of the Italian word highlights something specifically Italian within Italian-Canadian reality and emphasizes the fact that this component cannot be erased or replaced within a Canadian context. The author’s choice to include the translation of an Italian word or sentence renders the text accessible to the reader who does not read Italian. It therefore establishes a certain openness—the will to reach beyond a minority audience. On the other hand, the absence of the translation renders inaccessible certain sections of the novel to readers who do not read Italian.In this case, it can be argued that the author risks alienating the non-Italian speaking reader, thereby establishing a certain degree of elitism for the novel. Arun Mukherjee dis tinguishes between the two by labelling the reader a â€Å"cultural insider† or a â€Å"cultural outsider† (44). Of course, in certain instances in which the Italian word appears without the translation the meaning is not lost for the reader. In other cases, the translation is necessary to understand the allusion made and the nuances of the action.In The Italians, for instance, it is necessary for the reader to know the meaning of the words â€Å"ero ubriaco† (20; â€Å"I was drunk†) in order to understand the reason Lorenzo gives for raping his wife. Another such instance occurs in The Lion’s Mouth: Stasera mi butto is the title of â€Å"the silly pop song† Marco and his bride-to-be had danced to the summer before their wedding (30). The reference to the pop song has a number of implications that the reader who does not read Italian will miss. The English equivalent of Stasera mi butto is â€Å"Tonight I throw myself† or â€Å"I aba ndon myself tonight. The meaning is very important because it refers to Marco’s status in his marriage: by marrying Paola—a wealthy but overly demanding and domineering wife, whom he does not love—Marco abandons â€Å"his† self, losing his own identity in order to improve his social status. At the same time, the reference to the song foreshadows Marco’s one night stand with Elena, the woman he has loved since childhood: Marco abandons himself to Elena that same night (stasera), thereby unknowingly entangling himself in a terrorist plot and jeopardizing his marriage and his reputation.The process of translating is an undeniable step in writing for the Italian-Canadian author. Joseph Pivato makes this point in Echo: Essays on Other Literatures: â€Å"Independently of the language or languages the Italian writer uses, he or she is always translating. It often seems that the translating process becomes more important than the distant Italian reality t hat it may be evoking† (125). Translation is a way of bringing together the two worlds which make up the Italian-Canadian reality.Bianca, the narrator in The Lion’s Mouth, is very conscious of the activity of translating inherent in the process of narration and in her Italian-Canadian reality. Edwards’ novel highlights the complexity of the presence of Italian words, and their English equivalents: Bianca simultaneously reads her aunt’s letter written in Italian and translates it into English for herself: â€Å"Bianca, se sapessi, Se sapessi,† if you knew, if you knew, â€Å"Que [sic, Chel disgrazia di Dio. † God’s disgrace? I must be translating incorrectly, a disgrace from God. â€Å"Barbara scossa. † Barbara has been shocked? it? shaken?†¦ Worse, Marco (you, you) suffered a nervous breakdown. † Esaurimento nervoso, the words translated literally as an exhaustion of the nerves. (9-10) This passage illustrates the int erplay between levels of the text and the complications resulting from the presence of Italian as well as the negotiation involved between â€Å"the Italian† and â€Å"the Canadian† components of the narrator’s Italian-Canadian reality. The narrator translates for her own benefit: to ascertain that she understands the written Italian word, she feels compelled to find the English equivalent.This illustrates the constant need to bring together the two components of her reality in an attempt to better understand herself. The narrator points to the importance of the translation process necessary when the Italian word, in this case her aunt’s letter, enters her own Canadian context. The narrator takes her role as translator very seriously in finding the appropriate word, which testifies to the notion that the Italian-Canadian lives in a state of constant translation. Fabrizio, the narrator in Fabrizio’s Passion, shares the same attention to detail in th e act of translating: â€Å"When I finish the pasta, faccio la scarpetta. Literally, this translates as ‘to wet one’s shoe,’ that is, to soak a piece of bread in the tomato sauce, and wipe clean one’s plate! )† (65). In the two examples mentioned, the act of translating is an attempt to unite the two worlds which comprise the narrator’s reality, that of the Italian-Canadian. This is done in two simultaneous ways: first, by stating in Italian that which has its origin in the Italian world (the aunt’s letter; the way one cleans the plate with bread); and second, by giving the English equivalent so that the non-Italian reader, rather than feel alienated, feels connected to that Italian world being described.The tension existing between the Italian and the Canadian is rooted as deeply as the structure of the sentence, virtually beneath the texture of the writing. The stilted sentence is an English sentence which sounds Italian—a sen tence which has a latinate structure as opposed to an anglo-saxon or germanic structure. It is important to stress that the stilted sentence is different from the literal translation. In Infertility Rites, for instance, Nina is asked â€Å"When are you going to buy your baby? † (11) which is a direct translation from the Italian idiom meaning â€Å"when will you have a baby. This is a literal translation purposely used to maintain the Italian flavour and to indicate that the words were spoken in Italian. The same is true of the following: â€Å"I pour myself another cup of American coffee—what mother calls ‘coloured water†(137). The expression â€Å"coloured water† is a direct translation for the Italian cliche on American coffee. In The Lion’s Mouth, Bianca reads in her aunt’s letter that her cousin Marco has had â€Å"an exhaustion of the nerves†Ã¢â‚¬â€the literal translation of esaurimento newoso meaning a nervous breakdown (10).In these examples, the objective is not to sound English but to transmit the Italian idiom into English words without remaining faithful to the nuances of each language. This is usually done to indicate that the words are originally spoken in Italian. In the stilted sentence, on the other hand, Italian is not present as words but at the level of the sentence structure, a characteristic which has been criticized as badly written English, or simply bad writing.I would suggest, instead, that the presence of latinate structures within the Italian-Canadian novel represents, to use Pasquale Verdicchio’s words, â€Å"the utterances of immigrant culture† (214) and mirrors the reality of the Italian-Canadian experience. The following passage from Black Madonna illustrates the latinate structure present in a conversation between Assunta and Marie, who represent polar opposites of the Italian-Canadian duality: â€Å"Ma, I’m going to Toronto,† Marie said abrupt ly. â€Å"They. . She couldn’t find the Italian word for â€Å"accepted. † [sic] â€Å"They took me. â€Å"Ma, I have to go. More times I go to school, better job. † â€Å"You tell to your father†¦ These things, I don’t understand†¦ You go to school—good. You smart—good. But you crazy. Your head in the clouds. The older you get, the crazier you get. I don’t understand you. To Toronto you want to go? † (70-1) In order to communicate with her mother, Marie is forced to speak like her. Although Marie’s â€Å"More times I go to school, better job† is not correct English, the structure is correct in Italian. Likewise, Assunta’s â€Å"These things, I don’t understand. † and â€Å"To Toronto you want to go? (where the (in)direct object precedes the verb) have an Italian structure. The sentence â€Å"You tell to your father,† on the other hand, is a direct translation of the Italia n. Moreover, the subject of their conversation consists of the â€Å"push and pull† characteristic of the old way versus the new way: the traditional Italian mother does not want her daughter to leave home, whereas Marie wants to experience the freedom of Canadian society. In Fabrizio’s Passion, Fabrizio uses an Italian sentence structure when he says â€Å"I am fourteen years old but am thirty in my head† (72).This does not work grammatically in English but is often used in Italian. Likewise, in The Lion’s Mouth: â€Å"But where have you been?†¦ We waited an hour, but since you didn’t have the courtesy to even phone†¦ † (37-38) and â€Å"So loud you have to have that record? † (42) have an Italian sentence structure. Such a structure is appropriate here given that the sentences are spoken by an Italian, Marco’s mother. Bianca, too, is guilty of using the latinate sentence structure: â€Å"Her bedroom, that evening I visited, was sparse, cell-like† (116).The following passage appears at the end of The Lion’s Mouth, in the Epilogue: This week, Barbara arrived and I must play the wise aunt with a trunkful of distractions. Poor child—as I write she is standing in the living room, staring out the window at the still leafless trees and mud-filled garden, wondering what place is this. . . So I begin again my life in this city, this land. (my italics, 178) Even though narrating her tale has given Bianca a clear focus on both components of her cultural makeup, the stiltedness of the italicized words emphasize the influence of Bianca’s Italian heritage.It is also significant that the first phrase, â€Å"wondering what place is this,† refers to Barbara, the Italian girl visiting from Venice, taking in the novelty and difference of western Canada. The presence of the heritage language within the â€Å"ethnic text† has led to accusations of bad writing, and the use of the stilted sentence may be perceived as the writer’s inability to master the English language. On the contrary, these â€Å"ethnic markers† or â€Å"linguistic stones† are devices purposely used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. As Pasquale Verdicchio argues:By stressing latinate vocabulary, by the insertion of Italian syntactical forms, and by the inclusion of linguistic elements that represent the utterances of immigrant culture, these [Italian-Canadian] writers have altered the semantic field of English, thereby denying expected meaning. (214) The fact that the Italian word interrupts the flow of the English text is a way of illustrating the symptoms of otherness which are an undeniable characteristic of Italian-Canadian reality. The presence of the Italian word within the English text should not be interpreted as a barrier between the two (Italian and Canadian) cultures.Rather, the meshing of Italia n words with English words should be seen as the negotiation necessary in order to bring the two cultures together. Arun Mukherjee writes that â€Å"Ethnic minority texts inform their readers, through the presence of other languages†¦ about the multi-cultural and multilingual nature of Canadian society† (46). Through their fiction Italian-Canadian writers suggest that in order to come to terms with the element of â€Å"schizophrenia† inherent in a bicultural identity, the individual must undertake the process of reevaluating the heritage culture.By using the â€Å"device of the stone,† the Italian-Canadian writer attempts to illustrate the continuous transfer from one culture/language to the other experienced by bicultural individuals. Canton , Licia. (2004). â€Å"The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel. † Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada . Ed. Lianne Moyes et al. Toronto : Guernica. Works Cited D’Alfonso, Antonio. Fabrizi o’s Passion. Toronto: Guernica, 1995. Edwards, Caterina. The Lion’s Mouth. Edmonton: NeWest, 1982. Loriggio, Francesco. History, Literary History, and Ethnic Literature. † Literatures ofLesserDiffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Melfi, Mary. Infertility Rites. Montreal: Guernica, 1991. Mukherjee, Arun. â€Å"Teaching Ethnic Minority Writing: A Report from the Classroom. † Journal of Canadian Studies 31. 3 (1996): 3 8-47. Paci, Frank. Black Madonna. Ottawa: Oberon, 1982. The Father. Ottawa: Oberon, 1984. The Italians. Ottawa: Oberon, 1978. Padolsky, Enoch. â€Å"Canadian Minority Writing and Acculturation Options. Literatures of Lesser Diffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Pivato, Joseph. Echo: Essays on Other Literatures. Toronto: Guernica, 1994. Ricci, Nino. In a Glass House. Toronto: McCleltand and Stewart, 1993. Verdicchio, Pasquale. â€Å"Subalterns Abroad: Writi ng Between Nations and Cultures. † Social Pluralism and Literary History. Ed. Francesco Loriggio. Toronto: Guernica, 1996. 206-226. Getting Weird and Ugly with Nino Ricci By Brian Gorman â€Å"Are you saying my book is wholesome? † Nino Ricci demands.His mock indignation is a response to a question, couched in diplomacy, about many Canadian storytellers' affinity for subjects that some people might consider weird and unwholesome. In the case of his latest book, the Giller Prize-nominated Where She Has Gone, the â€Å"weird and unwholesome† subject is incest, between the narrator and his half-sister. It occurs to one that this would not be out of place in a Canadian movie, as beguiled as our film-makers are with the weird and the unwholesome. He quotes Freud, about taboos being the foundation of civilization. You could argue that civilization began when this taboo was created, that the guilt that created led to civilization. And there's something formative about t he incest taboo. Anthropologists have found that it was one of the first taboos. â€Å"But there's a lot of it going on in our society. Incest occurs a lot more often than we care to acknowledge—usually as part of an abusive relationship. One person is always unwilling. â€Å"Obviously, since there's such a strong taboo against it, people want to do it. † The incestuous relationship in question comes at the end of a trilogy—Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House and now WhereShe Has Gone—that constitutes a sprawling, ambitious immigrant saga drawing equally from Ricci's Italian heritage (his parents were immigrants) and his Ontario â€Å"Calvinist† upbringing. â€Å"I didn't start out to write an immigrant saga,† he says. â€Å"I started out to write anything but an immigrant saga. My original idea was to explore an intense relationship between a brother and a sister. â€Å"It started out as a piece of erotica. A friend told me that you co uld write erotica and sell it for $200 a pop in New York. â€Å"I didn't want to talk about ethnicity.I was primarily influenced by British literature. Fortunately, I had older siblings who did well in school and interested me in reading. I didn't get it from my parents. They encouraged education, but in a more general sense. † Which brings us around to Canadianness, film and the weird and unwholesome. He says maybe it's a reaction against the reserve imposed on us by â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage. † This is a very strange irony—Ricci, a Catholic, talking to another Catholic about â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage†Ã¢â‚¬â€and it doesn't go unnoticed.The distant, unemotional and introspective nature of much of our storytelling, then, â€Å"may just be the result of our living in a cold climate,† he shrugs. â€Å"Maybe it's much more banal than we think. † Brian Gorman. â€Å"Getting Weird and Ugly With Nino Ricci. †. www. canoe . ca/JamBooksFeatures/ricci_nino. html. Magical Complexity By Naomi Guttman Nina Ricci has already received much deserved acclaim from writers across the country and abroad for this book, and I can only concur. Lives of the Saints, a book which any writer would be glad to have accomplished at any time, is all the more praiseworthy for being a first novel.The year is 1960, but in Valle del Salle, the poor Appenine village in which the novel is set, you would not know it: there is no electric power, grain is still cut with a scythe, and a snake bite is a sign that the evil eye has paid one a visit. Vittorio Innocente is the adult narrator telling the story of his boyhood: when the action begins Vittorio is turning seven. His father has left to seek his fortune in â€Å"America† several years before and Vittorio and his mother, Cristina, live with her father, Valle del Salle’s old mayor, in relative comfort.But Vittorio’s parents are estranged by more than an ocean and though Vittorio, with his innocent eyes, provides the filter through which all is told, it is really Cristina who is the central figure of the novel. It is she who is bitten by a green snake during a rendezvous in the barn with her nameless blue-eyed lover; she who wages a battle f pride with the village in which she was born; and she who eight months into the pregnancy which has become a symbol of her scorn and thus the source of this battle, engineers an escape to Canada, taking her son with her.As always with a first-person narrative, there is a delicate balance between what can be told and how. Vittorio is an expert listener, and because he is a child during the action of the tale, he gives very little in the way of interpretation. And so, as with all well-made things, the novel has the effect of appearing to be simple, which it is not, for it is terribly difficult to maintain that balance between the point of view of an adult regarding his childhood with adult insight, and that of the intuitive knowledge and fantastic distortions of the child he was at the time.Yet Ricci has been able to negotiate the distance between those voices with grace. The novel’s tension is cunningly built, the language is beautiful, and the symbolism plainly in view without coyness or flag-waving. Through Vittorio’s eyes we learn about the village, its characters, its colour, its superstitions and the envy, â€Å"invidia,† that distances villager from villager. The life of the village and the drama that is unfolding in Vittorio’s home is told with precision, care, a wonderful eye for detail rendered through the child’s experience, as well as a perfect ear for dialogue.In fact with his gift for translating the specific idiom of the people of Valle del Solle—the true-sounding syntax, the well-chosen Italian word of phrase—I felt as though I were reading in Italian and translating for myself, an experience much like watching a wo nderful foreign film with sub-titles and feeling that one has actually understood the words as they were spoken. And it may be said that this novel is filmic.In its use of colour, place and time, its ability to tell the story not only of Vittorio and his family but of an entire village, it conveys the magical wisdom of childhood and the complexity of what are supposed to be simple lives in such a compelling narrative that, in the right hands, Lives of the Saints could be as grand and sublime a spectacle as Fanny and Alexander or My Life as a Dog. Of course no film could capture the lyricism of Ricci’s descriptions: the image of the sun rising â€Å"round and scarlet, sucking in the dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. And then there is silence: †¦ the silence of the house would wash over me, filling my head like a scream, crowding out my private thoughts. The silence seem ed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house, to dissolve furnishings and leave me suspended in a pure, electric emptiness, so volatile that the crunch of my mother’s hoe threatened to shatter the house to its foundations. Without giving away the ending, I will say that my only qualms about the book came in the very last chapters where, though I understand its fictional necessity, as a feminist I question the implications it engenders.Early in the novel â€Å"la maestra† tells Vittorio and his classmates that a saint can be found anywhere at all, even among their ranks. Ricci reminds us in this novel that all lives, no matter how common they appear, are the locus for turmoil, the stuff, if not of sainthood, of drama, and can be fashioned into that category of novel to which Lives of the Saints certainly belongs: the novel one wishes will not end. Fortunately for us, it is the first of a trilogy and so the end will not come so soon. Guttman, Naomi. (1990).  "Magical Complexity; Review of Lives of the Saints†.Matrix 32: 74-5. The Hyperbolical Project of Cristina: A Derridean Analysis of Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints By Roberta Imboden Jacques Derrida’s â€Å"Cogito and the History of Madness,† catapulted him into the centre of the French intellectual world. This essay, a commentary )n Michel Foucault’s book, The History of Madness, is seen as an excellent example of the deconstructionist method at work in relation to metaphysics. What Derrida examines from this rather large tome is a few passages that Foucault writes about Descartes.Foucault’s thesis is that Descartes, in his analysis of the Cogito, was the first philosopher to separate reason from non reason, from madness, and that this split was either a cause of, or at least, was representative of, the attitude which resulted in the first internment of mad persons within institutions in human history. That Descartes is responsible for all s orts of divisions, of separations, in the modem Western human psyche, such as that between pint and matter, between reason and the emotions, is common in philosophical analysis, but Foucault’s thesis is unusual in his emphasis upon the reason/madness split.If one then applies Derrida’s subsequent insights to Nino Ricci ‘s prize winning novel, Lives of the Saints, an understanding of the novel will appear that should not only further illuminate the power of this first novel, and the talents of its author, but iso explain to students of literature what I was not able to explain to my own students, not until now, why Cristina, the heroine, had to die in the rime of life when a world of love and of freedom beckoned to her for he first time.Derrida, who prefaces his remarks with a special tribute to his teacher and mentor, Foucault, claims that in the Cogito of Descartes, in its pure moment before it attempts to reflect, to articulate, this bipolar split never took pl ace, and that the Cogito is valid for both the mad and the sane person. What this Cogito is about is â€Å"the hyperbolical project† (52) which is â€Å"an unprecedented excess† (52) that â€Å"overflows the totality of that which can be thought†¦ in the direction of the non-determined, Nothingness or infinity† (57), toward non-meaning or toward meaning.This project takes one beyond all limits, all barriers, all contradictions, all opposing opposites. It is the element of excess that causes Derrida to claim that the Cogito involves madness, derangement (57), since the hyperbolical project seeks to move beyond what the world would refer to as that which reason, logos, can itself attain, but it is not clinical madness, that is, what psychiatrists would consider to be a chemical disorder of the brain. It is the madness of the Cogito which simply refuses the limitations that the world of common sense says are necessary in order to be sane.It is madness in which doubt is a central element, since it is a state of mind in which all things are possible, in which, in a sense, the figure of Ivan Karamazov looms, shouting his now famous, â€Å"everything is permitted. † But, for the distraught Ivan, this phrase refers only to the world of morality. For the Cartesian Cogito of Derrida this phrase is more far-reaching, since it is primarily epistemological: all visions of reality, and of one’s response to that reality, are possible. Such a state of mind is madness in the most fundamental sense.Not surprising is the fact that this state of the Cogito, when reason and madness have not been separated, is also an intense moment; consequently, this is simultaneously a state of mind in which reason is at its apex of intensity, as is madness. It is the moment of the full power of reason, and therefore the moment of a mad reason, an ancient, all powerful reason that is very different from the reason of which Foucault speaks in relation to De scartes. The reason of which Derrida speaks is not a truncated, chained and bound reason, but rather, a reason of â€Å"mad audacity† (55).That this project is a movement toward the non-determined means that it cannot be â€Å"enclosed in a factual and determined historical structure† (60), cannot be captured within a concrete world that demands clear delineations, separations, within a history that must move from the past, through the present, toward the future, â€Å"for it is the project of exceeding every finite and determined totality† (60), the project of exceeding â€Å"all that is real, factual and existent† (56).Consequently, Derrida refers to this project as demonic, probably because it violates the ancient codes of both the Judaeo-Christian and the classical Greek worlds. Both the warnings of eating the apple of the tree of knowledge and that of succumbing to hubris are warnings not to follow the hyperbolical project, not to attempt to grasp wi th one’s mind all that is and all that could be. But the excessive moment of the hyperbolical project ends when one reflects upon and communicates the Cogito to oneself and then to others.One cannot be mad if one is to communicate this meaning in discourse. It is at this moment, when one breaks the silence, in reflection and in speech, that one safeguards oneself against the epistemological madness of non-distinction among infinite visions of reality, of beyond reality, and of the infinite possibilities of responses to these visions. Now is the basic, fundamental moment of separation of reason from madness, the moment of difference. Speech violently liberates, differs itself from madness and simultaneously imprisons it (60).Only then can finite thought and history reign (61), for finite thought is dependent upon a process that must involve exclusion, as is history, which is dependent upon concrete events, and the exclusive choosing of events in order to make up the story that is history. This articulation of the hyperbolical project, the â€Å"attempt-to-say-the-demonic-hyperbole†¦ is the original profundity of the will in general†¦ is a first passion and keeps within itself a trace of violence† (61). That is. he attempt to communicate the intense moment of the hyperbolical project is the human will’s passionate attempt to make concrete this project of excess. This moment of intense passion is doomed forever to failure, but its titanic, gargantuan effort founds the world and history (57). No wonder that it carries traces of violence. The actual creation of the physical universe, according to the big bang theory, was certainly violent. Speech, language, is that which regulates the â€Å"relationship between that which exceeds and the exceeded totality† (62).Speech separates the world of the hyperbolical project, the world that exceeds, the world of excess, from the world in which we live, the world that is exceeded by the h yperbolical project. Speech emerges from the silence and separates us from the pure Cogito, makes a difference between us and its project, and forces us to make choices, to decide. Since we can no longer have the possibility of grasping all possibilities, we must decide what finite possibilities we must choose. We no longer can live in a world of hyperbolical doubt whose condition is that all is possible.We now are thrown into a world of dazzling light where certainty emerges as a safeguard against madness, for communication functions in such a manner that it â€Å"inspect(s), master(s), limit(s) hyperbole† (59), since reason knows that the total derangement of the hyperbolical moment â€Å"will bring subversion to pure thought† (53). It is most probably because of the implied suffering in the action of speech that Derrida says that speech operates within a â€Å"caesura† (54), a â€Å"wound† (54). that â€Å"opens up life as historicity† (54). Fur thermore, the moment of communication, of speech, is one of crisis for two reasons.Firstly, reason is in grave danger, since in moving from its origin, the pure Cogito of the hyperbolical project, it is in danger of forgetting its origins, of â€Å"blanketing them by the rationalist and transcendent. il unveiling (of) itself† (62). It is then, ironically, that reason is â€Å"madder than madness† (62), for reason moves toward oblivion of this origin, ard therefore toward non-meaning. Madness is at this moment closer to â€Å"the wellspring of sense† (62), and, subsequently. is closer to the rational, however silent it is. Reason is now â€Å"separated from itself as adness, is exiled from itself’ (62). Thus, the communication of the Cogito is the choosing of reason, an act which divides the reason of meaning from the labyrinth of non-meaning; but the price is the loss of dentity with itself and the loss of the possibility of infinite possibility. Secondl y, in ths moment of crisis, hubris is born of articulation, and although hubris S coincident with creation, its major quality is in excess that must operate within finitude, a quality that the concrete world of history is likely to punish severely.My thesis is that reading Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints in the light of this particular Derridean essay is essential for the understanding of the main character, Cristina, the woman whose presence. through the narration of her young son, Vittorio, dominates the entire novel. She lives in a hill-town in the Italian Appennines with her son and her father, the mayor of the town, who is accused of having sold out to the fascists.Her husband, absent for four years since he emigrated to Canada, supposedly to create a new life for Cristina and Vittorio, writes monthly letters of wild scribble, but, for Cristina, he is simply absent and for Vittorio, he is simply a shadowy, violent memory. The tension of the novel revolves around a scene , from Vittorio’s perspective, which is composed of a stable, a muffled shout (1), followed by a green snake escaping from the stable and a pair of blue eyes that run away toward a car.The combination of these events results in the pregnancy of Cristina, and in the very traditional and superstitious people of the village shunning her. To establish Cristina as the Cartesian-Derridean Cogito, it is best to begin by analyzing her silence, as it is observed by the narrator, Vittorio. From the perspective of the reader she tells us nothing of what she truly thinks or feels. What happened in the stable? We can only guess, but that is exactly what we must do.Her only comment is to Luciano, one of her friends in Rocca Secca, â€Å"Anyway I have my own trouble to worry about. I hope he didn’t leave me a little gift—he got very excited when he saw that snake† (66). After this incident, â€Å"a deep silence†¦ descended on the house the very walls, the floor, t he splintered table, seemed to have grown strangely distant and mute, as if guarding some secret themselves† (57). Cristina â€Å"withdrew into shadowy silence† (74), broken mainly by her â€Å"quiet sobbing at night mingling with the sigh of the wind, like something inhuman† (77). The silence seemed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house† (77). Of his mother’s relationship to himself, in particular, Vittorio says, there are â€Å"no words now to bridge the silence† (74). There are only â€Å"silent meals† (74) and the silence between Cristina and the grandfather, her father, more or less extends until the end of the novel. A second characteristic that marks Cristina as the embodiment of the Derridean Cogito is the strange non-delineation between reason and madness that surrounds her.In relation to the element of reason, she is one of the best educated women in the village. But most outstanding is her absolute contempt for the superstition of the villagers who seem to have inherited an ancient pagan superstition that intermingles with Catholicism and erupts every year in the procession of the Virgin Mary whose statue is carried throughout the town. All the doors and windows of the houses of the village are open except for those of Cristina. Their being steadfastly shut makes her a living testimony to rationality itself.But this rationality is strangely interwoven with madness in the snakebite incident. First, at the very beginning of the book, when she is bitten by the snake in the stable, she waits quietly in front of her house for the ride to the hospital. DiLucci, who gives Cristina the ride says to her, â€Å"You’d think you were just going to the market† (16). He seems disconcerted by her â€Å"unexpected calm† (16). Then, Vittorio says that the tourniquet â€Å"sank into her leg†¦ but my mother did not wince or grimace† (17).Finally, she slowly succumbs to a trancel ike, rigid state which sends her into the deepest possible form of physical silence. She is literally outside of what one would normally refer to as a rational state, but, she never rants, raves or rambles. Instead, she is inhumanly calm. She seems to transcend both fear and pain. Before the onset of the results of the venom she is â€Å"rationally silent,† telling her father again and again that what she was doing in the barn was feeding the pigs, and when she overcomes the venom and fully returns to her conscious state. he is â€Å"bright and alert† (18), again â€Å"rational,† but silent. It is almosi as if the brief period of the rigid trancelike state is simply a deepening of the rational/mad silence that will surround her throughout most of the novel. The non-delineation of madness/reason on this rather basic level, when examined in the light of other non-delineations, leads to an extremely important aspect of the Derridean hyperbolical project, that of ep istemological madness.But the major point at the moment is to look at these other non-delineations in relation to Cristina’s being the Derridean Cogito, and to her subsequently being involved with the hyperbolical project. The relationship between Cristina and Vittorio, the most important relationship in the novel, is a good example of Cristina’s sense of lack of division, of boundary, and threatens the villager’s view of what they perceive as the most fundamental of relationships, that of mother and son.The implication of the villagers who hurl accusations at her in her role as mother is that she behaves toward him more like a sister or friend than a mother since she refuses to send the seven-year-old Vittorio into the fields to do agricultural work at 4:00 a. m. , as the other mothers do. The extreme case is Vittorio’s only friend, Fabrizio, whose father forces him to remain in the fields so long that he cannot go to school. Instead, Cristina and Vittor io are accused of playing together like children all the time.But this relationship of mother/sister/friend also is, simultaneously, a mother/ lover relationship. At the age of seven an upset Vittorio is told that he can no longer share his mother’s bed. His grandfather says, â€Å"Next month you’ll be seven. That’s no age to be sleeping with your mother† (34). Then, when Cristina takes Vittorio to the cave of the underground pool, Vittorio discovers a pair of tinted glasses in the straw, similar to the shattered pair that he found when the man with the eyes of the blue flame ran from the stable.The relationship of mother/lover emerges when Vittorio suddenly sees his naked mother standing above him as she is about to dive into the pool. No sensuous touch ever occurs; the entire scene has a preternatural quality about it. At this moment, through Vittorio’s eyes, we see a truly beautiful woman, one, whom he says, bears no resemblance to the other vil lage women, a â€Å"smooth and sleek† (33) woman who takes on the qualities of some ancient Greek goddess, such as Calypso or Circe. Like them, she has beauty and power for good and for evil.If Calypso, she has the power to grant men immortality and eternal youth (Homer 58), although she may also deter them from their lawful, faithful wives. If Circe, she has the power to turn men into swine (118-119)—therefore, Cristina’s reference to feeding the pigs when she was in the stable—and has the subsequent power to return them to their human form with an unearthly beauty that heretofore they had not possessed. Thus, Cristina is eternal beauty, love, and eternal faithful relationship, as well as ugliness, treachery and unfaithfulness.This non-delineation, non-difference, non-choice, non-separation is evident also in her relationships with mature men. In being unfaithful to her long absent husband in Canada, she is faithful to her blue-eyed lover, for, in the im agination of the careful reader, the hints and fragmented pieces of Vittorio’s memory draw a picture of a youthful love of Cristina for a young German soldier, a love that preceded her marriage to Mario of her own village. The German was her first, and in a sense, her only lover.The dim memory of Mario given to us by Vittorio is anything but that of a lover. He is seen as a violent figure who hurled an object against his mother’s face, a memory that is questionable, but, nevertheless, Cristina does have a small scar on her face in the shape of a â€Å"disjointed cross† (Lives 37). But two other passages give foundation to Vittorio’s memory. Cristina says of Mario to Alfredo, â€Å"The only way he knows how to talk is with the back of his hand† (95).Then, when Vittorio sees the letter with the â€Å"small neat script of bright blue† (158), he says that this writing is not that of his â€Å"father’s violent hand† (158). Thus, her infidelity is true faithfulness. Furthermore, if the reader is tempted to see the blue-eyed soldier as a fascist, a member of a military machine ruled by fascist ideology, careful reading indicates that this young man was probably a communist who, somehow, in a way never explained, deserted the army and most likely was involved in some sort of dangerous, heroic undercover, or partisan action against the Nazis.And Cristina, in her silent way, lives for years with secret rendezvous, probably in Rocca Secca, with this lover, while simultaneously living in harmony with her fascist father who is just as traditional in his attitudes as the rest of the villagers. She does not choose. She does not have to because she does not speak. One can continue to multiply this non-delineation, non-difference way of living by adding that no line exists between desire/love and duty or Cristina, nor between meaning and non-meaning.She lives desire, her love for her lover, for Vittorio, for her father, b ut she also is a dutiful daughter and mother, and no duty exists for her vis-a-vis her husband since she appears to feel that she has been abandoned. Some men in her family had gone to the New World and returned, but some, like Cristina’s paternal grandfather, have disappeared. Her feeling of abandonment is exhibited when she hurls at her father the accusation that her husband i-as probably been sleeping with every whore in America (154). Furthermore, she appears to live in some beyond world of meaning/non-meaning.The literal reading of the text sees a talented, vibrant woman living the daily life of deathly isolation and suppression of all that she is. This text is that of a meaningless life. But Cristina wishes to grasp the totality, no matter what it means, and it is here that the text of a meaningful life lies. Derrida actually claims that this action is the origin of meaning (Writing 57. ). What she most passionately desires in this project is to grasp the totality of fr eedom, a freedom that cannot really be thought.It is a freedom that â€Å"wants it all†: to be a dutiful daughter of a traditional, fascist father, to be a passionate lover of a blue-eyed fugitive communist, to be a respected educated, highly rational citizen of a traditional, uneducated superstition-haunted village, to be a loving, playful mother, yet a mother who never tells her son anything. it is a mad project of excess that can be implied by these few words. but not completely thought, for Cristina is grasping for that which goes beyond words and thoughts. This mad project, best labelled epistemological madness, is the major mark of the hyperbolical project of the Derridean Cogito.The villagers unconsciously understand this quality in Cristina, for they, too have an epistemology, since everyone does, and her behavior and silence are seen by the villagers as a derangement, a displacement, a subversion of their â€Å"rationality,† their â€Å"raison d’etre,à ¢â‚¬  for her very existence threatens all their beliefs, their epistemology. Cristina’s existence not only threatens their view of reality in relation to Catholicism as they live it, but also their ancient superstitions, especially their complex view of the ability of one person to curse another, that is, the power of a person to exercise effectively â€Å"the evil eye. But, most important, her existence threatens the villagers’ understanding of human relationships, especially of those between men and women, of family relationships in general, of the place of women in society, and of the consequent possibility of their freedom. Thus, Cristina upsets the foundation of meaning for the villagers; her existence threatens the clear certainty of their lives with doubt. That Cristina’s threat is as powerful as it is, is derived from its being rooted in the intensity of an ancient mad rationality. She grapples toward all possibilities, the villagers toward none.Not s urprising, because Cristina’s very existence is perceived by the villagers to be a threat, the unspoken accusation against her is that she is mad in the sense of the supposed madness of witchcraft. Since they dimly perceive that she attempts to grasp the totality of reality, and that somehow she lives within a forbidden space, she surely must be in touch with the demonic and suffers from a subsequent dangerous madness. One could object to this analysis, saying that the witch-craze existed a few centuries ago, but it must be remembered that these villagers appear to have a completely pre-scientific mentality.In the days of the witch craze, at the centre of all the lore surrounding witchcraft, was the belief that the Devil would assume human form and it is then that the woman witch would have sexual intercourse with him (Malleus Maleficarium 27). In the earliest days of the witch craze, a phenomenon that some historians believe grew out of the attack upon heretics (Russell 229) , many men were accused of witchcraft (279), but many women, especially women from the upper classes, were attracted to these heretical sects because it was only there that they could enjoy something that resembled equality (282).This factor, plus many other social factors, finally made women the sole victims of the witch craze, and as this phenomenon centred more and more upon women, the accusations moved from those of heresy, toward those of sexual intercourse with the Devil. The link between Cristina’s Father’s accusatory â€Å"communista† and Alfredo’s dire, oblique prediction that Cristina’s unborn child will have a serpentine head is reminiscent of the historical link between sexual relations with the devil and heresy, for to the religious, fascist father, the term â€Å"communista† implies the worst kind of heresy of his time.That Vittorio describes the eyes that he saw at the stable as turning magically a luminous blue as they caught the sunlight†¦ (and that they were) â€Å"bright flames that held me† (Lives 12) is net surprising. To him, obviously, the Devil, who must take male human form in order to have sexual relations with a woman, really had ‘visited’ Christina in the stable. Once again, Cristina lives the logos/madness non-delineation, for although the witch lore follows her everywhere, her reaction to it is that of scoffing rationality.She laughs while saying, â€Å"Stupidaggini† (57). Although the rational reader, too, scoffs at the link that the villagers see between the Devil and Cristina, there are indications in the text that in a profound mythical sense, there is a link between Cristina and the demonic. This point is strengthened by the underground cave scene. The hot spring sulphuric waters of this underground place where Cristina obviously feels very safe and at home have reverberations, as does the river that she and Vittorio must cross, of Hades, and of the riv er Styx.A this point, let us not forget that Derrida refers to the hyperbolical project as demonic, for it symbolizes the pursuit of excess, of forbidden knowledge. Furthermore, of course, for the pure Cogito which Cristina at this moment, personifies, there is no division, no boundary, between reason and the labyrinth, between meaning and non-meaning, between God and the Devil. Cristina is usually so self-contained, so stoical, so powerful in her seeming control of herself.But on two occasions before the climactic leave-taking of the village, she concretely, actively, displays the hyperbolical project’s element of mad excess, once in a violent physical fight with one of the village women, and once in the dance at the end of the festival. One day after school some of the schoolmates of Vittorio beat him. When Cristina hears of the event, surmising that one of the mothers of these boys had provoked the incident because of the rumors of the snake and of her pregnancy, Cristina races through the town and into the woman’s house and attacks her.Cristina attempts to strangle her, but the frightened, amazed woman pulls away in time. Later, at the end of the festival, Cristina grabs Vittorio’s arm and takes him to the centre of the dancing and begins to dance, to whirl very quickly. Vittorio finds the entire situation mad, wild, dizzying. Dancing/strangling: a strange dual manifestation of this project. Finally, as she and Vittorio leave the village forever, Cristina articulates what she thinks and feels to the villagers.In a driving rain, standing beside the truck that is going to drive them to the dock in Naples, she stops, and at all the villagers who are watching her from balconies and windows, she hurls these words. Fools†¦ You tried to kill me but you see I’m still alive. And now you came to watch me hang, but I won’t he hanged, not by your stupid rules and superstitions. You are the ones who are dead, not me, because not one of you know what it means to be free and to make a choice, and I pray to God that he wipes this town and all its stupidities off the face of the earth! 184) This is the moment of articulation, of speech, of separation of reason from madness, of her declaring a difference between herself and madness. It is the moment that she publicly articulates decision, her decision to leave her fascist father and his village of narrow superstitious tradition, to cease being a dutiful daughter and village citizen, and to choose to go to her lover, a man who is not her husband, according to law, and to go to a world that is radically different from that in which she has always lived.She no longer attempts to grasp the totality. She knows that definite decisions, choices, must be made, that she must declare that differences exist that cannot be lived simultaneously. The nightly sighs, and sobs of hyperbolical doubt are over, and her taunting, proud shouts at the staring villagers are the shouts of a sudden manifestation of certainty, of a rational certainty that separates her from their superstition.

Smart socket Essays

Smart socket Essays Smart socket Essay Smart socket Essay Although ad-hoc solutions exist for some of these problems, it is usually up to the applications user to discover the cause of the connectivity problems and find a solution. In this paper we describe Smokestacks, a communication library that lifts this burden by automatically discovering the connectivity problems and solving them with as little support from the user as possible. Categories and Subject Descriptors: C. 2. 4 [Distributed Systems]: Distributed applications General Terms: Algorithms, Design, Reliability Keywords: Connectivity Problems, Grids, Networking, Parallel Applications 1 . Parallel applications are increasingly run in Grid environments. Unfortunately, on many Grid sites the ability of machines to create or accept network connections is severely limited by network address translation (NAT) [14, 26] or firewalls [15]. There are even sites that completely disallow any direct communication between the compute nodes and the rest of the world (e. G. , the French Grinding system [3]). In addition, multi homing (machines with multiple network addresses) can further complicate connection setup. For parallel applications that require direct communication between their components, these limitations have hampered the transition from traditional multi receptors or cluster systems to Grids. When a combination of Grid sites is used, serious connectivity problems are often encountered. Smokestacks is part of the Ibis project, and can be found at CSS. Vi. Ml/ibis Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or the full citation on the first page. Many problems, however, can only be solved by adapting the application or the communication library it uses. To make matters worse, as soon as the set of Grid systems being used changes, large part of this process needs to be repeated. As a result, running a parallel application on multiple Grid sites can be a strenuous task [34]. In this paper we will describe a solution to this problem: the Smokestacks communication library. The primary focus of Smokestacks is on ease of use. It automatically discovers a wide range of connectivity problems and attempts to solve them with little or no support from the user. Smokestacks combines many known solutions, such as port forwarding, TCP splicing and SSH tunneling, and introduces several new ones that resolve problems with multi homing and machine identification. In 30 connection setup experiments, using 6 different sites worldwide, Smokestacks was always able to establish a connection, while conventional sockets only worked in 6 experiments. Using heuristics and caching, Smokestacks is able to significantly improve the connection setup performance. Smokestacks offers a single integrated solution that hides the complexity of connection setup in Grids behind a simple interface that closely resembles sockets. We will show that it is relatively straightforward to port an existing application to Smokestacks, provided that certain programming guidelines are followed. Smokestacks is not specifically intended for use in parallel applications or Grids. It can also be applied to other distributed applications, such as visualization, cooperative environments, or even consumer applications such as instant messaging, file sharing, or online gaming. However, many of these applications only require a very limited degree of connectivity. Often, clients simply connect to a server in a well-known location, making it relatively easy to apply an ad-hoc solution when a connectivity problem occurs. Parallel applications, however, can be much more challenging. They often require a large number of connections between the participating machines, and each machine must such applications in a Grid environment with limited connectivity is difficult. Therefore, this paper will focus on this domain. N Section 2 we describe the connectivity related problems encountered while running applications on multiple Grid sites. Section 3 describes how these problems are solved in Smokestacks and briefly looks at the programming interface. Section 4 evaluates the performance of Smokestacks, Section 5 describes related work, and Section 6 concludes. 2. CONNECTIVITY PROBLEMS In this section we will give a description of the network related problems that can occur when running a single parallel or distributed application on multiple Grid sites. . 1 Firewalls As described in [1 5], A firewall is an agent which screens network traffic in some way, blocking traffic it believes to be inappropriate, dangerous, or both. . Many sites use firewalls to protect their network from unauthorized access. Firewalls usually allow outbound connections, but block incoming connections, often with the exception of a few welkin ports (e. G. , port 22 for SSH). It is obvious that this inactivity restriction can cause severe problems when running a parallel application on multiple sites. When only a single participating site uses firewall, the connectivity problems can sometimes be solved by ensuring that the connections setups are in the right direction, I. E. , that all required connections between open and firewall machines are initiated at the firewall site. This solution may require changes to the applications or communication libraries, however. Also, if both sites use a firewall, this approach can no longer be used. In this case, a firewall will always be encountered regardless of he connection setup direction. One way to solve the problems is to request an open port range in the firewall. Connectivity can then be restored by adapting the application to only use ports in this range. Besides requiring reconfiguration of the firewall, open ports are also seen as a threat to site security. When both machines are behind a firewall it may still be possible to establish a direct connection using a mechanism called TCP splicing [6, 10, 13, 20]. Simply put, this mechanism works by simultaneously performing a connection setup from both sides. Since this approach requires explicit cooperation teens the machines, some alternative communication channel must be available. . 2 Network Address Translation As described in [21], Network Address Translation is a method by which IP addresses are mapped from one address realm to another, providing transparent routing to end hosts. . NAT was introduced in [12] as a temporary solution to the problem of IPPP address depletion. Although the intended solution for this problem, IPPP, has been available for some time, NAT is still widely used to day. Frequently used [21, 29]. This type of NAT allows outbound connections from sites using riveter addresses, but does not allow incoming connections. Both the IP address (and related fields) and the transport identifier (e. G. , TCP and JODI port numbers) of packets are translated, thereby preventing port number collisions when a set of hosts share a single external address. As mentioned above, NAT only allows outbound network connections. Incoming connections are rejected, since the connection request does not contain enough information to find the destination machine (I. E. , only the external IP address is provided, but that may be shared by many machines). This restriction leads to connectivity problems hat are very similar to those caused by firewalls. Therefore, the solution described in Section 2. 1 (connecting in the right direction) also applies too NAT setup, and fails in a similar way when multiple NAT sites try to interconnect. Although the TCP splicing mechanism can also be used to connect two NAT sites, a more complex algorithm is required to compensate for the port translation performed by NAT [6, 20]. Some NAT implementations have support for port forwarding, where all incoming connections on a certain port can be automatically forwarded to a certain host inside the NAT site. Using mechanisms such as Upon [5], DIF [28], or MEDICO [30], applications can contact the NAT implementation and change the port forwarding rules on demand. Port forwarding lifts many of the restrictions on incoming connections. Unfortunately, Upon is mostly found in consumer devices, MEDICO is still under development, and DIF only supports NAT (and firewall) implementations based on Interfile [1]. As a result, these mechanisms are not (yet) generally usable in Grid applications. Currently, Smokestacks only supports Upon. In addition to causing connection setup problems, NAT also complicates machine identification. Machines in a NAT tit generally use IP addresses in the private range [26]. These addresses are only usable within a local network and are not globally unique. Unfortunately, parallel applications often use a machines IP address to create a unique identifier for that machine. When multiple NAT sites participate in a single parallel run, however, this approach can not be used, since the machine addresses are no longer guaranteed to be unique. 2. 3 Non-routed networks On some sites no direct communication between the compute nodes and the outside world is possible due to a strict separation between the internal and external networks. No aching is accessible, and the connectivity of this machine may be limited by a firewall or NAT. Two of the sites used in Section 4 use such a setup. It is clear that this is a major limitation when the site is used in a parallel application. The only possibility for the compute nodes to communicate with other sites is to use front-end machine as a bridge to the outside world, using, for example, an SSH tunnel or a SOCKS [24] proxy. These are non-trivial to set up, however. 2. 4 Multi Homing When multi-homed machines (I. E. , machines with multiple network addresses) participate in a parallel application, another interesting problem occurs. When creating a connection to such a machine, a choice must be made on which of the possible target addresses to use. The outcome of this choice may depend on the location of the machine that initiates the connection. For example, the front-end machine of a site has two addresses, a public one, reachable over the internet, and a private one used to communicate with the sites compute nodes. As a result, a different address must be used to reach teachings depending on whether the connection originates inside or outside of the site. In [34] we called this the Reverse Routing Problem. Normally, when a multi-homed machine is trying to connect to a single IP address, a routing table on the machine decides which network is used for the outgoing connection. In the example described above the reverse problem is encountered. Instead of having to decide how to exit a multi-homed machine, we must decide on how to enter it. This problem is non-trivial, since the source machine generally does not have enough information available to select the correct target address. As a result, several connection attempts to different addresses of the target may be necessary before a connection can be established. In Section 3. 2 we will describe heuristics that can be used to speed up this process. Multi homing can have a major effect on the implementation of parallel programming libraries. The example above shows that it is not sufficient to use a single address to represent a multi-homed machine. Instead, all addresses must be made available to the other participants of the parallel application. In addition, some of the addresses may be in a private range and refer to a different machine when used in a different site. Therefore, it is also essential to check if a connection was established to the correct machine. 3. SMOKESTACKS In this section we will give an overview of the design, implementation and programming interface of the Smokestacks library, and describe how it solves the problems described in the previous section. 3. 1 Overview Currently, Smokestacks offers four different connection setup mechanisms, Direct, Reverse, Splicing, and Routed. An overview of how these mechanisms solve the connectivity problems described in Section 2. As the table shows, each problem is solved by at least one mechanism. Table 1 : Overview of connectivity problems and their solutions. Connection Setup Mechanism Problems Direct Reverse Splicing Routed Identification X Multi Homing X Single FEW/NAT pox xx Dual MINOT (X) XX No Routing X The machine identification and multi-homing problems are solved by the direct connection setup. As will be explained below, this approach also has limited firewall traversal capabilities (using SSH tunneling), so in certain situations it may succeed in establishing a connection in a single or even a dual firewall setting. In the table these entries are shown between brackets. A reverse connection setup is only capable of creating a connection when a single firewall or NAT limits the connectivity. Splicing is capable of middling both single and dual firewall/NAT configurations. However, this approach is significantly more complex than a reverse connection setup (especially with dual NAT) and may not always succeed. Therefore, reverse connection setup is preferred for single firewall/NAT configurations. A routed connection setup can be used in any situation where the connectivity is limited. Unlike the previous two approaches it does not result in a direct connection. Instead all network traffic is routed via external processes called hubs (explained in Section 3. 3), which may degrade both latency and throughput of the connection. Therefore, the previous mechanisms are preferred. When connecting to or from a machine on a non-routed network, however, a routed connection is the only choice. The Smokestacks implementation is divided into two layers, a low-level Direct Connection Layer, responsible for all actions that can be initiated on a single machine, and a high-level Virtual Connection Layer that uses side-channel communication to implement actions that require cooperation of multiple machines. The direct connection layer is implemented using the standard socket library. The virtual connection layer is implemented using the direct connection layer. Both layers will be explained in more detail below. Currently, Smokestacks is implemented using Java [2]. 3. 2 Direct Connection Layer do not require explicit cooperation between machines, such as determining the local addresses or creating a direct connection. It also supports a limited form of SSH tunneling. 3. 2. 1 Machine Identification During initialization, the direct connection layer starts by scanning all available network interfaces to determine which IP addresses are available to the machine. It then generates a unique machine identifier that contains these addresses, and that can be used to contact the machine. This identifier will automatically be unique if it contains at least one public address. If all addresses are private, however, additional work must be done. A machine that only has private addresses is either in a NAT site or uses a non-routed network. In the first case, a unique identifier can still be generated for the machine by acquiring the external address of the NAT. Provided that this address is public, the combination of external and machine addresses should also be unique, since other machines in the same NAT site should have a different set of private addresses, and all other NAT sites should have different external address. The Smokestacks library will use Upon to discover the external address of the NAT site. If this discovery fails, or if the returned address is not public, a Universally Unique Identifier (JUDI) [23], will be generated and included in the machine identifier, thereby making it unique. 3. 2. 2 Connection Setup Once initialized, the direct connection layer can be used to set up connections to other machines. The identifier of the target machine may contain multiple network addresses, some of which may not be reachable from the current location. The private dresses in the identifier may even refer to a completely different machine, so it is important that the identity of the machine is checked during connection setup. As a result, several connection attempts may be necessary before the correct connection can be established. When multiple target addresses are available, a choice must be made in which order the connection attempts will be performed. Although simply using the addresses in an arbitrary order should always result in a connection (pro-vided that a direct connection is possible), this may not be the most efficient approach. Many Grid sites offer historiographer networks such as Merriment [7] or Infinite [4] in addition to a regular Ethernet network. Using such a network for inter-site communication may significantly improve the applications performance. In general, these fast networks are not routed and use addresses in the private range, while the regular Ethernet networks (often) use public addresses. Therefore, by sorting the target addresses and trying all private ones first, the fast local networks will automatically be selected in sites with such a setup. The drawback of if the connection originates on a different site. This may cause a significant overhead. Therefore, Smokestacks uses a heuristic that sorts the target addresses in relation to the addresses that are available locally. For example, if only a public address is available on the local machine, it is unlikely that it will be able to create a direct connection to a private address of a target. As a result, the connection order public before private is used. This order is also used if both machines have public and private addresses, but the private addresses refer to a different network (e. G. , 10. 0. 0. 10 vs 192. 168. 1. 20). The order private before public is only used if both machines have private addresses in the same range. Section 4 will illustrate the performance benefits of this heuristic. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make a distinction between addresses of the same class. For example, if a target has multiple private addresses, we can not automatically determine which address is best. Therefore, if a certain network is preferred, the user must specify this explicitly. Without this explicit configuration, Smokestacks will still create a direct connection (if possible), and the parallel application will run, but its performance may be suboptimal. When a connection has been established, an identity check s performed to ensure that the correct machine has been reached. This would be a simple comparison if the complete identifier of the target is available, but unfortunately this is not always the case. User provided addresses are often used to bootstrap a parallel application. These addresses are often limited to a single hosannas or IP address, which may only be part of the addresses available to the target machine. Therefore, the identity check used by Smokestacks also allows the use of partial identifiers. Whenever a connection is created, the target machine provides its complete identity o the machine initiating the connection. This machine then checks if both the public and private addresses in the partial identity are a subset of the ones in the complete identity. If so, the partial identity is accepted as a subset of the complete identity, and the connection is established. Note that although the connection is created to a machine that matches the address specified by the user, it is not necessarily the correct machine from the viewpoint of the parallel application. Unfortunately, in such cases it is up to the user to provide an address that contains enough information to reach the correct machine. . 2. 3 Open Port Ranges and Port Forwarding When a firewall has an open port range available, Smokestacks can ensure that all sockets used for incoming connections are bound to a port in this range. There is no way of discovering this range automatically, however, so it must be specified explicitly by the user. In addition, Smokestacks can use the Upon protocol to configure a NAT to do port forwarding, I. E. Automatically forward all incoming connections on a certain external port to a specified internal address. However, as explained before, this protocol is mainly used in consumer devices. In addition to regular network connections, the direct connection layer also has limited support for SSH tunneling. This feature is useful for connecting to machines behind a firewall that allows SSH connections to pass through. It does, however, require a suitabl e SSH setup (I. E. , public key authentication must be enabled). Creating an SSH tunnel is similar to a regular connection setup. The target addresses are sorted and tried consecutively. Instead of using the port specified in the connection setup, however, the default SSH port (I. E. , 22) is used. When a connection is established and the authentication is successful, the receiving SSH daemon is instructed to forward all traffic to the original destination port on the same machine. If this succeeds, the regular identity check will be performed to ensure that the right machine has been reached. Although this approach is useful, it can only be used to set up a tunnel to a different process on the target machine. Using this approach to forward traffic to different machines requires extra information. For example, setting up an SSH tunnel to a compute node of a site through the sites fronted, can only be done if it is clear that the fronted must be contacted in order to reach the target machine. Although this approach is used in some projects [8], the necessary information cannot be obtained automatically and must be provided by the user. Therefore, Smokestacks uses a different approach which will be described in detail in Section 3. 3. 3. 2. Limitations The direct connection layer offers several types of connection setup which have in common that they can be initiated by a single machine. No explicit cooperation between machines is necessary to establish the connection. There are many cases, however, where connectivity is too limited and the direct connection layer cannot be used. In general, direct connections to sites that use NAT or a firewall are not possible. Although SSH tunneling and o pen port ranges alleviate the firewall problems, they require a suitable SSH setup or extra information from the user. Port forwarding reduces the problems with NAT, but is rarely supported in Grid systems. Therefore, these features are of limited use. In the next section we will give a detailed description of the virtual connection layer, which solves these problems. 3. 3 Virtual Connection Layer Like the direct connection layer, the virtual connection layer implements several types of connection setup. It offers a simple, socket-like API and has a modular design, making it easy to extend. Besides a direct module that uses the direct connection layer described above, it contains several modules that offer more advanced types of connection setup. These modules have in common that they cooperation (and thus communication) between the source and target machines in order to establish a connection. As a result, side-channel communication is required to implement these modules. 3. 3. 1 Side-Channel Communication In Smokestacks, side-channel communication is implemented by creating a network f interconnected processes called hubs. These hubs are typically started on the fronted machines of each participating site, so their number is usually small. When a hub is started, the location of one or more other hubs must be provided. Each hub will attempt to setup a connection to the others using the direct connection layer. Although many of these connections may fail to be established, this is not a problem as long as a spanning tree is created that connects all hubs. The hubs use a gossiping protocol to exchange information about themselves and the hubs they know, with the hubs that they are connected to. This way information about each hub quickly spreads to all hubs in the network. Whenever a hub receives information about a hub it has not seen before, it will attempt to set up a connection to this hub. This way, new connections will be discovered automatically. All gossiped information contains a state number indicating the state of the originating machine when the information was sent. Since information from a hub may reach another hub through multiple paths, the state number allows the receiver to decide which information is most recent. By recording the length of the path traversed thus far in he gossiped information, hubs can determine the distance to the sites that they can not reach directly. Whenever a hub receives a piece of information about another hub containing a shorter distance than it has seen so far, it will remember both the distance and the hub from which the information was obtained. This way, we automatically create a distributed routing table with the shortest paths between each pair of hubs. This table is later used to forward application information (as will be described below). When an application is started, the virtual layer on each machine creates a single connection to the hub local to its tit. The location of this hub can either be explicitly species- fled or discovered automatically using JODI multicast. 3. 3. 2 Virtual Addresses The connection to the hub can now be used as a side channel to forward requests to otherwise unreachable machines. To ensure that the target machines can be found, addresses are used, consisting of the machine identifier (see Section 3. 2), a port number, and the identifier of the hub the machine is connected to. All requests for the target machine can then be sent to the local hub, which forwards it in the direction of the target

Friendship Essay Samples Essay Example

Friendship Essay Samples Essay Example Friendship Essay Samples Essay Friendship Essay Samples Essay How I met my best friend It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I decided to take a stroll to the park to stretch my legs. I was so tired after a whole morning of playing video games in my living room. On this particular day, the park seemed to be a bit deserted. Just a few kids playing with their kites and a lone dancer entertaining a young couple who seemed less interested in his acts. It is at that time I saw her! Sitting under a short well-trimmed bush was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her long golden hair was hanging down her neck, and it kept getting in the way of her golden glasses. She was holding a small book, and it seemed she was buried to the neck in the contents of the book. I walked towards her and gently leaned forward to have a closer look at what she reading. A little startled she looked up and saw me smiling down on her extending my hand for a greeting. As if not able to clearly see my face because of the glaring sunlight, she tilted her spectacles slightly down her nose and said hi Friendship Goals It was one of those days that you feel the whole universe is against you somehow. I had woken up late and missed the bus, which meant I would get late for the final exam. Well, I did get late, but that is beside the point. After the exam, I was feeling so forlorn, and the fact that it was raining was not helping either. A few hours later, I was seated in a restaurant crying my eyes out. I had just been robbed and my phone, purse and laptop were lost. I was at my lowest point. I was trying not to attract attention to myself by looking out the window where no one really cared. This lady barely a year older than myself passes by, catches a glimpse of my teary eyes, turns around and walks into the restaurant. All the while I was saying a silent prayer that she does not walk up to me. Well, she did anyway. Without saying a word, she handed me a paper towel, sat down and said, I will still be here when you are ready to talk. It is now five years later, and I do not know what drove her to do what she did. It does not matter anyway, because after knowing her, I have a pretty good idea. My classmate essay : My life may not be too long. One may not say it is too short either. Throughout the time that I have lived, I had many memories. Some are best described as happy and enjoyable much as I also have distressful memories. Importantly though, many of the memories have been an important lesson to me. In any case, events leading to any memories must be significant in ones life. An event would never be remembered unless it caused a significant impact in ones life. Lessons learnt from memorable events often stick in the mind. Today, I have one of the best memories during one of the days in elementary school. I was only ten years attending elementary school in the United States. Throughout my life, I have always found breaks important especially if there is a snack or some meal. This made the lunch break one of my favorite breaks during my year in the elementary level. In addition, my granny was prepared a delicious sandwich and I would always look ahead at having it. Occasionally, we sat together in a group of friends and shared our food. We would then play games such as tether-ball and capture the flag, which made the lunch break more interesting. Moments spent eating and playing with these friends formed the foundation for our strong friendship today. In a period of three years, we formed a strong cycle of genuine friends. I never realized that childhood friends would last that long until lately when I recalled the things we did together. We continued to have lunch. We would still play games during and after lunch, which seems to have strengthened the bond further. Many people believe that dinning together helps to establish a close and tight bond between members. From a personal experience, this happened and helped me in making lifetime friends from childhood. Teachers knew my circle of friends. They encouraged extend the same friendship in studies. We would discuss and work on assignments together, which helped to improve our performance. In this group was John, a talkative kid, who was always making us laugh almost all the time. I would always hush him when he went too far. He would always make this annoying face whenever I did it. I would always make a joke out of his funny face to calm him down. We grew fond of each other and even started visiting each other at our homes. This friendship was pronounced and parents knew about, and encouraged it. The bond grew stronger and we even went for holidays together. Until now, even though we have families of our own, we still chat and have family meetings and holidays together. How I met my best friend essay It happened about 17 years ago. I was in the 2nd grade, and I happened to spend a lot of time in class talking to the guy who sat next to me. Obviously, the teachers were not pleased. One day, out of frustration, the teacher-in-charge of the class requested me to switch places with one of the students in the front row, next to a quiet and polite little kid. Immediately when I sat next to the kid, the very first thing I noticed was how beautiful and clean his handwriting was. To this day, I think he has the best handwriting I have seen. From then we spent some few years sitting close to one another at school until we switched streams to go to different colleges and then to various universities. But throughout all the years, we have spent hours and hours talking about seemingly irrelevant topics, none of which has been about a person, never have we gossiped. We solved crosses, cycled back from school together, spent every some holidays at each others place playing chase, Play Station g ames soccer and even football. There is no limit to how much I have learned from him. We have had many friends who have come and gone. Some stuck by our side. This one just happens to stick with me. I still find him attractive. Up to date, we still share the same enthusiasm always solving crosswords like young school boys, and discussing the answers online. He even calls me up in the middle of the night just to explain why Jupiter has the highest amount of helium in the atmosphere, of all planets. I dont see why that should change. Interestingly, his name means love and happiness.