On Essay Packet 1

My attitude was very polar while reading this packet. I either loved the "essay" or I hated it. I really only enjoyed two of the essays while I was confused by the others. I very much enjoyed "Farder to Reache" and "Total Eclipse" to be specific. While I was reading the packet, I was confronted with my own perceptions of an essay. Frankly, I'd never even imagined what a creative essay would be like or if it even existed. I always imagined essays to be like those of John Locke or Karl Marx or Malcom X; more as proposals to address a certain issue or persuasions regarding a certain topic. What is an essay and how is a "creative" essay different? What is the purpose of a "creative" essay as opposed to an academic essay that usually intends to inform/persuade? It is apparent that a "creative" essay does not necessarily intend to outline a story/plot, except in "Total Eclipse." It is an analasys of an event as it pertains to the meaning of life, maybe?
I found "Farder to Reache" very interesting."It isn't easy to walk through a day...with the mind fixed on infinity." This quote rung true to me. I love to revel in the sense of freedom that infinity brngs to mind, but sometimes the thought of infinity can make you feel so lost and overwhelmed. Sometimes in this class even, the realization that I can write whatever I want in a burden. I could write anything, everything, and that realization alone puts me at more a loss of words than a solution to my dilema. I also liked the bit at the end where the author imagined 'shooting the shit' with Whitman and Kepler atop a veranda in the fog of the morning. It sounds so romantic and relaxing! And the idea of collaborating with the finite formulators of infinate ideas sounds fascinating.
"Total Eclipse" was absolutely captivating. At first I though, what does a story about an eclipse have to do with an essay. But when I neared the end, the author tied it all together very nicely with the lifesaver and fried eggs and relating the eclipse to the mind's inner-workings. While I was reading about the Crab Nebula as a star in the process of exploding that originally exploded in 1054 and expanded at a rate of 70 million miles/day and yet had barely increased in size as seen from Earth, an interesting idea popped into my head. What if the progression and concept of time was different for every galaxy? What if that explosion almost a thousand years ago and its expansion into the universe only equated to a day or an hour on that side of the universe? I assume others have thought about this, too. The author speaks about living half her life asleep and the other half only half-conscious. I considered an idea that a friend brought-up with me. Might our lives be a construct of our own minds? Might our minds create everything and cause things to happen in our lives? Maybe we're always asleep. The author brings up the idea that our minds are pacified by trivial things, like fried eggs or a spaniel. "The mind wants the world to return its love." The writer seem to cling to the idea of God but that is where I'm fundamentally different. Maybe the universe has nothing to return? Maybe it's meant to be cold, dark, and meaningless and we should stop frantically searching for an answer.