Identity Juice

I chose to do my last creative response for “The Journey of Ibn Fattouma,” a Mahfouz tale of a man’s journey throughout space (and time) in search for Gebel, a heavenly city of mystical realms and supposedly a place that no one left once they had arrived. Gebel represents this perfect destination, a site of endless wonder and captivation that’s almost meant to be the source of all of his goals and the reason why he chooses to embark on this treacherous journey in the first place. Along the way he encounters temptation and civil war, and left and right he’s forced to delay his journey until the magical city of Gebel finally fades into view. It’s seen as perched atop of a far-off mountain, close enough so Ibn Fattouma can see it, but far enough so that the readers are still left wondering whether or not he actually arrives at his destination. For my original response, I wrote about how I took Mahfouz’s message as saying that we mustn’t use this idea of “heaven” to spur us to do good; rather, we must embark on difficult journeys and tests of self-worth because of our genuine desire to do good and to make good, not for any type of personal gain or ending destination. If we were only to embark on our personal journeys because of that finale, we lose sight of the progress we make along the way and the challenges we overcome during that process.

Without a doubt, choosing what type of creative response to do for “The Journey of Ibn Fattouma” was definitely one of the more difficult decisions. In the end, I chose to do a digital collage using a college-maker that I found online; although it’s incredibly simple, I definitely feel like I put a lot of thought into which pictures went into the collage and what the pictures both represented to me and how they related to the story itself. As seen below, the collage features a collection of photos that all depict a sort of magical, “heaven on Earth” sort of setting. Although these pictures may seem like they were computer-generated or heavily edited, they’re actually all real places all over the world, and the photos are all pictures taken by ordinary photographers and avid travelers. Starting from a pretty young age – around ten or eleven years old, I would say – I’ve had a habit of making lists of very specific places that I would like to travel to one day (“At least when I’m rich and famous,” I would say to myself and my parents). Every single one of these pictures included are places I found on my list – these places include, but are not limited to, Angel Falls in Venezuela, Mont St. Michel in France, and Zhangjiajie National Park in China. But what do all of these places have in common? Sure enough, every single one of them is breathtakingly beautiful; some are natural formations (waterfalls, mountains, etc.) and some are manmade constructions (castles, for example), but all of them share a similar wondrous beauty that captivates the eye and truly gives off that special “heaven on Earth, hard to reach” sort of atmosphere. What they also have in common, however, is what they symbolize for me personally. For a long time now, these destinations – and all of the places on my travel list – were more than just pretty places that I “just HAD” to visit one day. Rather, they represented my goals for the future and my personal ambitions, essentially my future success represented in a materialistic form, or in the form of a place that I could travel to. While it’s definitely true that there is nothing wrong with having personal ambitions and dreams of what you want to accomplish in the future – after all, those goals can effectively fuel one’s drive for perseverance and doing one’s best – it’s just as important to note that if you focus too much on that final goal, you lose sight of what’s equally valuable – the journey you went through to achieve it.

“Heaven” Collage

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2014 at 7:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized.