Sarah Giorgi's Paragraph on Place: The view is awe inspiring, like something out of a painting in the Louvre. You can touch the clouds, smell of pine, hear the birds. Surrounded by all this magnificence, you feel as small as an ant. The land spreads out in all directions from beneath your feet. And although you are at peace, you can’t help but feel fear: fear of bears, fear of loneliness, and fear misdirection. Yet all these emotions are nothing compared to the beauty that surrounds you.
Close Reading Analysis: By opening the piece with the words “the view,” Sarah Giorgi allows us to believe she is already present at the location, observing it. At first, our position to the author is one of an observer who does not have direct access to the view itself, but has access to the author’s experience of it. This abruptly shifts, however, when the second sentence begins with the second person pronoun, “you.” The pronoun drags us into the piece. In fact, we find ourselves replacing Giorgi. She is not observing us as we engage with this view. However, we cannot yet visualize what is before us. Giorgi offers us visual details by way of the auditory, olfactory, and touch senses, and not by way of sight. In other words, the view materializes before us through our experience of it and not just our ability to see it. We realize there are clouds because, she tells us, we can “touch” them. We learn there are “birds” because we can “hear” them. We imagine “pine[s]” because we can “smell” them. The piece is packed with opposites. “Magnificence” is perceived by way of embodying an “ant.” Land moves “out[ward]” despite being “beneath [our] feet.” We experience “peace” while we also feel “fear.” We are isolated, yet surrounded by birds and the possibility of bears. And so, the movement back and forth between opposites and extremes leaves us unsettled. She asks us to respond to the sublimity of the place, of the unknown and unreliability of the place by settling into it, by immersing ourselves in it. But perhaps what is most interesting in this piece is that Giorgi likens a very sensory experience of a place to “a painting in the Louvre.” While a painting in a museum can be beautiful and even awe-inspiring, there are few ways we can experience a painting other than seeing it. We cannot touch it, or smell it, or hear it. This comparison, then, redefines the way we understand Giorgi to experience artwork in a museum as much, if not more, than it portrays her experience of the world at large. In fact, there is no better way to understand Giorgi’s view of the world than to unpack her final sentence: “Yet all these emotions are nothing compared to the beauty that surrounds you.” “Emotion” is compared directly to “beauty.” For Giorgi, experiencing the beautiful moves well beyond the visual. It is an all-embodied experience.
43 Comments
Brandon Lee
8/29/2017 11:03:39 pm
Original Passage:
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Shokoofeh
9/20/2017 04:08:52 pm
SHOKOOFEH
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Maribel Juarez Vargas
8/30/2017 04:51:20 pm
Original Reflection:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:10:32 am
Dear Maribel,
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Ryan Van
8/30/2017 07:46:49 pm
Vincent Lyau’s Paragraph on Place:
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Ryan Van
8/30/2017 08:29:29 pm
Sorry! I meant to put
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:14:13 am
Dear Ryan,
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Vincent Lyau
8/30/2017 07:54:01 pm
Lorenzo Dela Cruz’s Paragraph on Place:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:16:08 am
Dear Vincent,
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Lorenzo dela Cruz
8/30/2017 10:00:38 pm
Original Passage:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:18:06 am
Dear Lorenzo,
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Seth Dumaguin
8/30/2017 10:09:17 pm
The girl walks into Plaza del Valle. Pyramids of exotic fruits are stacked alongside each other resembling a meadow full of vibrant colors. Vendors try to fight off the groups of swarming flies without much luck. On one hand women carry bags of groceries while plucking fruits with the other. A little boy chases a stray dog down the corridors towards the butcher's shop. The steady beat of the knife hitting the cutting board falls into rhythm with the love songs playing on the speakers. As night falls one by one lights begin to flicker, keeping the plaza alive. The smell of burning wood fills the air and smoke begins to work its way out of the windows. She stops at the center of the plaza and takes it all in. She is home.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:20:42 am
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Hudson Northrop
8/30/2017 10:33:59 pm
He's sitting on a chair, one of those office chairs that you might expect in an office building down on main street. The seat is made of felt, with a singular plastic stem that protrudes down from the base of the seat and which splits off into 4 horizontal beams with wheels attached at the ends. As he sits on it he is careful not to lean back too far, as the back is very loose and wobbly and is prone to having it collapse on the sitter. The boy on the chair and pushes off of his mahogany desk with his legs, which sends him spiraling off to the plain blue wall on the other side of the room. He then plants the tips of his feet on that wall and pushes himself back to the mahogany desk.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:22:24 am
Dear Hudson,
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Allan Lee
8/30/2017 10:50:29 pm
Original Passage by Maribel Juarez Vargas
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:23:33 am
Dear Allan
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Elizabeth Lemons
8/31/2017 12:42:27 am
Allan Lee's Passage:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:28:06 am
Dear Elizabeth
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Nicole Mendoza
8/31/2017 01:26:14 am
Original passage:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:31:12 am
Dear Nicole
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Christina Gaspar
8/31/2017 01:37:00 am
Original Reflection:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:32:42 am
Dear Christina
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Lauren Jones
8/31/2017 10:04:28 am
Original Passage by Ryan Van:
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Lauren Jones
8/31/2017 10:05:58 am
(I accidentally left out the last sentence)
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:35:00 am
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Natalie Enos
8/31/2017 11:21:41 am
Original passage: The room smelled of one day old bed sheets. In the room, everything was motionless. There was a desk with some papers, books, and pencils thrown around. And as the wind disrupted their place on the desk, some loose papers had scattered across the brown carpet. Also on the carpet were some heavily ornamented christmas sweaters as well as some colorful Batman socks. There was no sound in the room except one. Loud snoring. And on the bed, head thrown against the pillow, there was a kid passed out.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:36:44 am
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Sarah Giorgi
8/31/2017 01:04:18 pm
The smell of fresh laundry blows in by a summer breeze from the barely cracked patio door that stands sturdy against the sway outside. The view of the streets from the sixth floor is largely obscured by the green potted plants that stand high next to the hanging laundry, all whites against blue skies, but I can still see a cat lazing atop a car parked on the side of the narrow road. I can hear the distant chatter and cheering of elementary students returning home from classes; the washing machine chimes happily to signal the end of its cycle and my time to take down the dried clothes that now only move lightly in the calm wind.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:49:27 am
Dear Sarah,
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Jillian Behrens
8/31/2017 01:09:10 pm
Original Passage by Nicole Mendoza:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:47:09 am
Dear Jillian,
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Ava Mora
8/31/2017 01:20:47 pm
Original Passage by Shokoofeh: Mammoth Lakes is a forest with mountains in the backdrop that are still capped in snow in late August. She's sitting on a log, maybe a rock, that she's found. She avoids thinking about the possibility of a bear finding their campsite, finding her. "Everything is in a bear box," she thinks. After so many nights backpacking she should be more comfortable with wildlife than she is. There is a lake before her, so clear. The water is so limpid, she can see the algae-covered logs sinking (or are they resting?) at the bottom. She thinks about finishing the novel she's reading, but instead she takes out her wooden pipe. "Beautiful scenery is always made more beautiful with smoke," she says out loud to her partner. He gives her the eye, knowing that she won't actually smoke. She likes to feel the pipe in her hands more than she enjoys the experience of smoking itself.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:44:15 am
Dear Ava,
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Shalin Shah
8/31/2017 01:32:32 pm
Original Essay:
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:42:29 am
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Lorenzo dela Cruz
9/11/2017 09:01:46 pm
This isn't my piece though...
Sydney Juilen
8/31/2017 01:33:25 pm
Ava Mora's Paragraph on Place: "There's always a feeling a [sic] get when leaving New York City, and another one when coming back. In the crazy rush of the city where people are moving miles a minute and the tall scrapers above enclose you, you get a rush. The rush of feeling fast, powerful confident. Through this rush you also see beauty all around, whether it be taking a stroll in Central Park, walking around Washington Square Park and listening to musicians or making the brave, yet beautiful, hike across the Brooklyn Bridge. Being from New York City you always had something to do, and somewhere to go. The variety of places is why I love my home so much and am proud to call it my favorite place. In New York, similarly to Berkeley, you can be anyone you want whenever you want. You can do whatever you want whenever you want. Maybe it's not the observation of the place of why it's my favorite, but rather how it affects and changes me while there, gone or just getting back.”
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:41:24 am
Dear Sydney,
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Damaris Hernandez
8/31/2017 01:38:02 pm
Jillian Behrens's Paragraph on Place: My favorite place that immediately came to mind is my mother's small office room, though I don't know that it's my absolute favorite place in the whole world. I think that it came to mind so quickly because I just moved out of my house for the first time, and I moved very far away, and I am very homesick. In my mother's office, there's a large recliner chair that she relaxes in while she does her work. Next to the chair is an end-side table that always has a large mug of coffee. On Wednesdays, she gets to work from home, and over the summer we would always spend these days together. I would lie on the floor and watch Law and Order SVU or some other crime show on Netflix or Hulu, while she typed up her briefs.
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Shokoofeh
9/6/2017 11:40:17 am
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Christina Hendricks
8/31/2017 01:41:47 pm
SETH DUMAGUIN’s original piece:
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Shokoofeh
9/11/2017 12:17:00 pm
Dear Christina,
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