MSU English 212

Books Books Books

2005-12-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

I'm finishing up Tess of the D'ubervilles which Dr. Sexson loaned me. MMM... it's nice and sad. Perfect for the holidays. I'll post about it once I'm finished(it's my study break).

I'm here in the library looking for a book I need to write a scary paper and something which Valerie mentioned to me surfaced from my subconcious. She said "did you know the library only has one copy of Paradise Lost?" Well, here's a link to that. Look at how many books exist discussing Paradise Lost and compare that to the the number of actual copies. Does this reflect our culture? How nice and sad...

Click This

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

I understand why this book is found on the MSU top 100. I also see that anyone who rewrites this story with modern context will find their book replacing this one. It is outdated, out of fassion, antiqueted. I find most of the language difficult, repellent and gangly. For several characters, this difficult language was intended as a mark against their intellegence. But the severity of the interference with my reading was so great I cannot excuse the language barrier. There are a few good quotes and several nice parallels among the themes. I imagine it would be a good book for group discussion.

The themes about love and loss, life and sin, have unexpected depth. I enjoyed those. I think men especially must read this book as it gives several perspectives on sex which, today, are not commonly discussed. Skip the first 80 or 90 pages as needed or read only the first sentence of each paragraph until you find the book interesting. It will probably become interesting once Angel shows up(that's when i found it interesting). After reading the book, look at how the text is ballanced. I found it quite interesting to compare in the sense of Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and see how much emphasis is put into each of them. Is this called the mathematics of a novel? Anyway, I thought it nice.

Final Project - The Matrix References

2005-12-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

While leaving class, Sunny Rae told me about the moment she stopped watching The Matrix. She explained that when Cipher was sitting with Agent Smith, eating steak, and saying "ignorance is bliss", the raw icky steak made her sick to her stomach.(Gee, me too!) I had one of those "oops!" moments because I completely missed that when I cover food. Food in the matrix, Cipher refers to has "Goddamned goop" and Tank says "It's a single-celled protien with vitamines and minerals, everything the body needs".(followed by Mouse) "It doesn't have everything the body needs... To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human." In the real world, food is a sustinance but nothing more. In the matrix, food takes on a more carnal nature. The pleasure of eating, such blissful nature, is sin according to the Classical tradition from the ignorance which goes with it. But Cipher makes a choice between that and the "bowl of snot" as Apoch describes it. Chosing ignorance becomes chosing sin. In the shot of Cipher eating the steak, while he describes it, the camera is foccussed on his face but not on the steak. The steak becomes blury. Ignorance does not lead us into detailed information but away from a sharp crisp image of life. Oooooo... Light bulb conversation. :)

Biblical and Classical References found in The Matrix

B denotes Biblical, C denotes Classical, M denotes Modern of Biblical/Classical nature
Reloaded denotes The Matrix Reloaded, Revolutions denotes The Matrix Revolutions

How did I descend upon this topic? I was watching The Matrix Revolutions and saw Agent Smith grab The Oracle by the wrist and place his other hand just above her wrist to copy himself upon her. It shouted at me “hey! This is a classical metaphor for abduction and rape!” Every other character Agent Smith shows copying occurring through the chest. Either this was a merely a coincidence or a direct reference to the Classical tradition. As I pondered this, a saying of Neos rang in my mind just like the telephone which brings him out of the matrix. “This can’t be just coincidence. It can’t be.”

The following are references which can be tied into the Biblical and Classical traditions. I’ve taken many more notes than this but I must keep my writing somewhat tied to the structures of the class. If you’re a Matrix fan, I’ve many more juicy morsels of thought found in these movies which I would love to discuss. This might not be the typical essay format but it will still(hopefully) prove interesting to read(especially for you matrix fans). I’ve used parentheses quite liberally as a guide to keep my writing on the path(first matrix movie) and differentiate my subject, the first movie, from the following sequels when it becomes necessary to give background information (connections, parallels, light bulbs, etc) from the other two movies.

Every time I watch these movies I am exposed to new levels of understanding about what is them, the ever deepening meaning found within its plot, dialogue, and camera work. I’ve met people who read the bible every day and always get something new from their readings. I suppose you could say I’ve taken the easy road as I watch The Matrix for the same educational purpose. Our Biblical and Classical literature class has given me wide new avenues to reinterpret my viewings of The Matrix. Even the Biblical and Classical material I was already familiar with now has an unexpected depth and texture. These movies are pregnant with references beyond all expectation.

So here is a surface of meaning behind those references. I’ll need to watch the trilogy several hundred times before I can dig beneath their surface.

B/C The movie starts with the direct image of Darkness into Light. The flashlight image, searching in the darkness, finds a door.(The importance of Light and Doors merge together in Reloaded when Neo enters the door that leads to the architect) We find Trinity in a single room, the only entrance and exit which is the front door. This reminds me of Frye’s metaphor of the cave.
B The first shot outdoors in the movie is of the outside of the hotel. It scrolls from the top to the bottom, referencing Frye’s ladder in the mountain metaphor. The image of the axis mundi, the even sided cross with the circle around it, is found next to the vertical word “Heart” on a neon sign. The vertical nature of the axis mundi and how it is traveled according to the heart is shown with an amazing amount of obviousness.(The image of the axis mundi, the same which appears next to the heart, is found later on in Revolutions in the night club, “club Hell”, of the Merovingian. “The Merovingian” is a direct reference to the supposed line of early French nobility which claims to trace it’s blood back to the child of Mary Magdalene and the blood of Jesus Christ. The color Red becomes vital in its association and is the color worn by both the Merovingian and his wife Persephone. Persephone is an obvious reference to the Classical tradition.)
C Neo reads on his computer screen “wake up neo”. This references, roughly, Plato’s allegory of the cave. It is an introduction to the more obvious reference to the allegory of the cave afterword. This reference strongly reinforces the obvious nature of the cave as “a system of control” and the sufferance inside of it through sleep, through being unaware, through being controlled by the cave.
M The number on Neos door reads 101. This is how we determine some level of knowledge to be at its beginning. Take college classes for example, 101 is the intro level. Neo takes Choy’s money and places it inside a copy of Simulacra & Simulation(READ THIS BOOK!). He opens his book to the chapter “On Nihilism”, which he has removed the pages of in an effort to hide objects(I could write an entire essay on this one shot of the movie), and places money inside the book while he removes some computer program on a disk. Simulacra & Simulation, in part, is about the decay of iconology and a commentary on the Biblical tradition.
B “Hallelujah man. You’re my savoir, my own personal Jesus Christ” says Choy as Neo hands him the disk. This is both the first reference to Neo as a savior, in the Biblical sense, and the first direct commentary on Christianity. He will routinely be referred to as “The One” which can loosely reference most prophets from most religions. The direct commentary on Christianity is of Jesus Christ being “personal”. Neo is helping only one person. By helping more than one person, Neo will ultimately transcend the act towards the individual into the act of the individual for the world through sacrifice. (In Revolutions, Neo dies through the agency of The Source at the machine city. Light bursts forth from him in the shape of the cross we associate with the Biblical tradition, the bottom is longer and fits the legs. In effect, Neo is crucified for the salvation of both the humans alive in zion and those inside the matrix, for those who know and accept him as well as those still in ignorance.)
B/C “Jesus. I just thought that you were a guy.” “Most guys do.” This is the first conversation Neo has with Trinity. Here we are shown the male dominated idea of power and the patriarchal nature of society. It is related to Jesus through secondary reference. Without Mary Magdalene, Jesus would not have had the same capacity for love, a legendary argument. Here, this argument is our introduction to Trinity and the love they will share throughout the three movies. Patriarchy. Power. Women are the real answer.
B/C “You believe that you are special. That the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken.” This is spoken to Thomas Anderson, not Neo. When he is merely human, he is not special. The Rules do apply to him. When he becomes more than human, he is special and the rules do not apply to him. This is connected with the nature of rules which do not apply to Jesus or to the Gods in the Biblical and Classical traditions.
B “Thomas Anderson.” Google “Biblical Anderson” Thomas can be a reference to the gospel of Thomas in which there are no stories about Jesus, just sayings. Alone this may not be of much significance but, combined with the conversation Neo has with Morpheus, it stands out. “I don’t know if you’re ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately you and I have run out of time.”…“Stand up and see for yourself”. Must we see Jesus through the stories of others or can we see Jesus through his sayings? Can we see Jesus for ourselves?
B “Jesus Christ! That thing’s real!?” Does Jesus define reality? This also asks if Jesus Christ is real. Because of the nature of the “bug” the agents leave in Neo, a bug which is in the matrix and thus not “real”, by asking if Jesus is real, when the bug is not, we can see the connection that Jesus is not real in the way that we see. However the bug was something which had to be removed. So the reality of Jesus is one which is different from what we think it to be.
B “Do you believe in fate Neo?”…“Why not?” “Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.” This is commentary on control, on choice, and the omnipresence of an all powerful deity. Only God is to have this power over the life of humans. Yet humans are to have free will. Some level of compromise must be made of the level of choice and power the individual has and that which God must exercise upon humans. As this parallels with the matrix, the matrix replaces the role of God and also exercises complete dominance and control over the humans trapped inside it. (This sentence about control over life and the issue of control is raised further in Reloaded by Counselor Hammand who asks “just what is control?” and sums up Neos response with the answer “the power to give life and the power to end it.” This sense of control, when held entirely by god or by people, becomes too much power. This is the attitude we hold as agriculturalists and have held for 10,000 years. Agent Smith goes into greater detail about this later on in the movie with his speech about how humans take over an area, consume every natural resource, and then the only thing left to do is spread to another area. This has been the exact pattern of agriculture and agricultural people. What is the fate of the agriculturalist? The matrix. Our dominance of fate and control will leave us without choice in either of them.
C “Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.” This is the most direct and obvious reference to the allegory of the cave in the entire movie(aside from the visual references). In the cave, the people inside of it cannot tell they are in a cave because all they have seen are the images from the light of their cave fire on the cave wall. They do not understand how these images are created because they cannot be outside the cave to see what is occurring. (In Reloaded and Revolutions, this ties in with the Merovingian’s principles of Cause and Effect.) People inside it cannot see the matrix for what it is, they must wake up from it and see the physical nature of the cave they have escaped from.
B When Neo is flushed out of the matrix, his slide down a tube is reflective of descent in the axis mundi. By landing in water, one of Frye’s metaphors for the changing of levels, we see Neo pulled(by machine, oddly enough) into the light in the hold of the Nebuchadnezzar and into the life of a free human. “Nebuchadnezzar” interestingly enough has the etymological meaning “protect the crown” and refers to the monarch who rebuilt almost all of Babylon and almost every structure outside of the city in the land. See Nebuchadnezzar wikipedia. Interestingly, the inscription on the ship of the Nebuchadnezzar, “Mark III 11” reads the following from the Bible, “¹¹Whenever the evil^[a] spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." When the sentinel is facing Neo after cutting through the ship hull, it falls down before him from the EMP. (This happens again at the end of Reloaded when Neo places his hand in front of him and stops them using his mind, effectively delivering a miracle.)
C “I can’t go back, can I.” “No, but if you could, would you really want to.” This is another reference to the allegory of the cave. Neo and Morpheus converse about the matrix and beneath this conversation is the parallel of the matrix being the real world and their real world being the land of the Gods. When they are inside the matrix, they are superhuman.
B Zion, “deep underground where it’s still warm”, is(at least part of it) quite literally a cave. Zion is a metaphor for the promised land where god lives among his people. Neo and trinity live there and, interestingly enough, the homes in which the people live are red and inside where as the pods in which they live inside the matrix are red but on the outside. Inversion!
B “I won’t lie to you Neo…everyone who has faced an agent has died. But where they have failed you will succeed.” The agents are synonymous with Goliath and Neo with David. The agents “strength and speed are based on a world that is built on rules and because of that they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.” Neos strength is based on belief, as was David’s. “Don’t think you are, know you are.” When Neo first fights Agent Smith and Trinity asks “What is he doing?” Morpheus answers “He’s beginning to believe.”
B Cipher, which means puzzle, the Judas who betrays Morpheus and kills crew members from the Nebuchadnezzar, is the one who introduces Neo(in the real world) to alcohol. In vino veritas, through Ciphers drinking we get the truth. “A word of advice, if you see an agent, you do what we do. Run. You run your ass off.” Cipher does not have the belief to fight an agent(as Neo and Morpheus do). This conflicts with what Morpheus has told Neo(paragraph above) and contrasts the betrayer and the leader. But Morpheus is “more than just a leader, you were a father.” In this instance, Cipher is also playing Cain, killing his “Able” brothers. As in the story of Cain and Able, Adam(Morpheus) plays no role in the resolution of Cain. Instead of divine judgment, there is the miracle Tanks not dying. While Cipher prepares to remove the plug from Neos head he claims “There’d have to be some kind of a miracle to stop me. I mean, how can he be the one, if he’s DEAD!” But Tank isn’t dead. “No, I don’t believe it!” “Believe it or not you piece of shit you’re still gonna burn!” Tanks weapon fries Cipher and there is also the reference to hell, where sinners go to burn.
C The Oracle is a direct reference to the Classical tradition. She wears ying-yang earings and a green dress(she is the only character in the matrix to wear all green). As Neo and Morpheus enter the building of the Oracle, there is a blind man sitting in the hallway with red tiling and red graffiti on the wall behind him. Morpheus nods to him and he nods back to Morpheus. Blindness leads to oracular vision. Blindness occurs with red behind us. (Red references blood, which Neo gives up along with his eyes in Revolutions to become a blind prophet who can see what others cannot, the light inside of machines.) When they enter the elevator, we see the graffiti on the wall behind the blind man is that of a pair of eyes while at the same time Neo crosses them and reaches his hands towards his face, with fingers on either side of and aimed above his nose. “Try not to think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide. She can help you to find the path.” The Oracle isn’t right, the Oracle simply knows and tells. Right requires wrong and this is not the nature of an Oracle. Oracles exercise knowing. (Neo explains to The Source at the machine city, once he has become blind and a prophet, “Soon he will spread through this city as he has spread through the matrix. You cannot stop him, but I can.” “We don’t need you. We need nothing!” “If that’s true then I’ve made a mistake and you should kill me now.”) Oracles are right only as far as their telling of the truth and of the future is correct. Being right and being correct are two different things and, for clarity, Oracles must be viewed without the nature of “right” associated with their prophecy.
B The Oracle says “being the one is just like being in love”. Neo, constantly compared to Jesus, is told that being in love is like being Jesus. All forms of Christianity compare Jesus to love and use of the word “just” confirms the exact nature of love in Jesus. Neo is lead into love through Trinity(think father, son, holy ghost) and it is Trinity’s love which brings Neo back to life. Here, love creates life in the metaphorical sense(in the literal, the physical act of love breeds life. Someone once told me that love is when you put someone else’s needs ahead of your own(I grew older and then read Stranger In A Strange Land for myself and saw where that idea had appeared most recently in popular literature). When leaving the TV repair shop, Neo says “you first” and hands trinity the telephone. Biblically, love is shown by placing god before ones own self, regardless of what happens, as in the story of Job and again with Jonah. When Job and Jonah show their faith and submission to god, we are shown their love for god becomes them almost in the entirety of their being and demonstrating effectively the similarity between loving god and being in love.
B Being The One and the discussion of love is paralleled throughout the matrix with several themes, namely that of food. In response to Neo, the Oracle says she is in the matrix because “I love candy”. Then she eats a red piece of candy which looks remarkably like the red pill Neo swallowed to exit the matrix. Red, the color of love and life, the primary color found upon the sweaters of all the ship captains in Reloaded and Revolutions, the color of the pods humans are physically held inside of while their minds are connected to the matrix and the color of the doors to their homes in zion, is a powerful connecting symbol for loves struggle. Candy, like love, is sweet when you have it but it is not always present and we must appreciate it when we have access.) Though food inside the series as a subject is somewhat broader, there are two other images of characters eating and each of these images is associated with love. The Oracle hands Neo a cookie, apologizes for giving him bad news and tells him he will feel better after he eats it. Though coming from the Oracle, this act can be compared to the act of communion. It replenishes the soul while connecting the receiver and the giver through the means of faith and love(this is preceded in the scene by a discussion concerning belief). The third marriage of food and love is the cake orgasm delivered by the Merovingian in Reloaded and represents the physical carnal lust side of love. The Merovingian and his wife Persephone are almost vampiric in their consumption of the emotions of the real people inside of the matrix, specifically of love.
B “I think they’re trying to save him.” The agent speaking shows the connection between Trinity and Neo and that Trinity is necessary for Neo to do any saving at all. “He’s not gonna make it” Neo mutters to himself. Neo jumps, catches Morpheus and ‘saves’ him. This is prophetic because in Revolutions the city of zion faces destruction at the hands of the machines and Neo must again make a jump to save Morpheus and the rest of zion. Trinity, the woman and a parallel for love, is with him driving the ship(Neo is the blind prophet). Neo cannot head through them but can make it over the machines, in effect he ‘jumps’ over them and lands inside the machine city(in a ship called the Logos, literally bringing “The Word” to the machines).
B Crucifixion. Neo must die before he can become the one and Neo must die again for the salvation of humankind. In his first death in the matrix, we see the red blood(red is love) from the first wound and then we see the red of his second wound sprayed on the wall behind him. Then the image of Neo accepting every bullet from Smiths gun with open arms. His death and Trinity’s love allow for resurrection.(During his second death, in Revolutions, we see light spread out from his body beginning in the shape of the christian cross.) When Neo wakes up from his death, it is, like the beginning of the movie, an image from darkness into light focused upon the love Neo and Trinity share, their first kiss. “I’m going to show these people a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without boarders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.” Neo brings, through Trinity, love into the matrix.

Group 4 Presentation Notes

2005-12-05T15:42:00.000-08:00

Sympathy For The Devil
by The Rolling Stones

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
(woo woo, woo woo)

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me
(who who, who who)

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay
(woo woo, who who)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
(who who)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
(who who, who who)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
(woo woo, who who)

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
(who who, who who)

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
(who who)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
(woo woo, woo woo)

Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
(woo woo)

Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame

Oh, who
woo, woo
Woo, who
Woo, woo
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah

What's my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name

Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Woo woo
Woo woo

Study Test Questions

2005-11-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

Dr. Sexson started out mentioning the following things before we came up with questions. So these things are important.
- Gospel of Thomas, the Nag Hamadi Scrolls, 1945
- Escatology, difference between Literal Escatology and Realized Escatology, the world is going to end vs. kingdom of god is right here right now
- Group Presentations, study these ejournals
*Cave, Maggie, Abdul
*Garden, Allison
*Mountain, Amy
*Furnace, ____
*Definitions Graph, Mick(bottom)
- Kairos, crucial time, right now
- "as a last resort, study Frye". i think he won't be putting heavey emphasis on the reading. it will probably come from the presentations and ejournals.

here were the class questions
1) Which gospel was probably writen first?
- Mark, but we have questions about Thomas!
2) What is a good word to describe the community of Jesus and his pals?
- Esoteric __ def: exclusive, inside, private
3) Signifigance of Mark 14:51, man in linen cloth, leaves naked
- Christianity starts out as a mystery religion
4) How does the classical tradition explain the existance of seasons?
- Story of Persephone and Demeter
5) What are the 4 levels of the Axis Mundi?
- Heaven, Paradise, Earth, Hell
6) In the classical, Kore(sp?)
- Abducted Maiden
7) According to Black Elk, on which mountain is the center of the world?
- Wherever you are standing at the moment [suplemental, Mt. Harney]
8) What where the three synoptic gospels?
- Mathew, Mark, Luke
9) Why is John not one of the synoptics?
- more Spiritualized
10) What word does Mark use 42 times?
- Immediatly
11) Who were the Eummenidies before they became the Eummenidies?
- The Furries
12) Why do we suffer?
- A) so that the bards can sing about us?
B) didn't go to class yesterday
C) so we can get the truth
D) because we did something to deserve it

matching with
1) Oresteia
2) Homer
3) Book of Job
4) Originated in ENG 212

A|2 B|4 C|1 D|3

13) Def: Retributive Justice, Justice-Greek Dicy, Theodicy, justice of god
- Gods Justice
14) What is the only thing better than Death?
- never to have been born
15) "Remember your creator in the days of your youth..."
- Chapter 12 book of Eclesiastes
16) What 2 things were the Hebraic Prophets concerned about?
- 1) Scoial Justice 2) Exclusive Worship of Yahweh
17) Why is the Gospel not a good source of History?
- not as interested in Facts, more foccused on Prophecy
18) Where is the word Testement derived from?
- Biblical tradition, when a witness placed his hand upon the thigh/genitals to proclaim the truth, the accurate history, His-Story + Patriarcal society, from the genitles springs the truth
19) What does the New Testement tell us about how one should live?
- treat your neighbor as you would be treated and love your enemy
20) Which titles did Jesus quote/refer to the most?
- 1) Law & Prophets 2) Issiah
21) What is Jesus most commonly used phrase?
- "kingdom of god"
22) What were the two types of Wisdom?
- Polonium and Appolonium, Conventional and Pessemistic/Speculative
23) Why did the Furries go after Orestes and not Clydemnestra?
- because the Furries go after blood crimes
24) Difference between two traditons(Classical/Biblical), Essay
- Essay
25) What is the precendent behind all action/tradition?
- Myth
26) What is the meaning of the word Appocolypse?
- Removing the Veil
27) What is the definition of Hubris?
- Overwhelming Arogence in the face of the Gods
28) What are the 3 things to Rever in the Classical tradition?
- 1) Gods 2) Parents 3) Stranger
29) Who did Aggamemnon sacrifice to put wind into his sails?
- Iephegenia(sp?), i think he wants it spelled correctly
30) Comparision between Prometheus and Job
- Prometheus/Defiant Job/Submission

Word A Day

2005-11-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

"Screed" is my new scrabble word. That inspired me to share with everyone Word-A-Day. Everyone should subscribe to Word-A-Day. It's wonderful! And look at that delicious third sentence in the first paragraph! MMM!!! Delicious!

-----Original Message-----
From: Wordsmith [mailto:wsmith@wordsmith.org]
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 1:18 AM
To: linguaphile@wordsmith.org
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--bight

Columbus, Ohio
December 2000

It's 23 degree F (-5 degree C). The small lake behind our place is frozen solid. The generously sprinkled snow makes a soft cushion to tempt any laggard leaf that has not yet fallen in tune with nature.

My daughter Ananya and I are getting ready to go out. The peak of winter has its dress code. "It is too cold out there," I tell her. "Let's wear two pairs of pants." The mind of a three-year-old has its own ways to interpret our Centigrades and Fahrenheits. "It's two cold today so we need to wear two pairs of pants?" she asks.

Clothed for the occasion, we take our make-shift sled -- an empty plastic box tied to a blue nylon rope -- and head out. Her "friends" and "sister" -- Winnie the Pooh, Chief the Dog, and a doll -- accompany us as we go out onto the lake. She tugs at the rope and the sled makes a path in the fresh snow. The friends and sister seem to be enjoying the ride as we cross the frozen lake, walking, running, and skiing in our boots. Now it's her turn to sit in the sled and the friends and sister cheerfully make room and welcome her in. And it's my turn to pull the sled.

"I wonder where we get zero cold?" she inquires.
"Hmm...," I try to think of an example, one she is familiar with, "In Hawaii." "And one cold?" "In Seattle."

She iterates through other possibilities until we reach the extremes.

"How about five cold?"
"That would be the North Pole."
"And six cold?"
"There is no such thing as six cold."
"So can we go to the North Pole?" Her eyes brighten, "I can play with the polar bears there and meet Santa!" "Sure, we can," I assure her.

Even with our heavy coats, gloves, mittens, caps, mufflers, socks, boots, and two pairs of pants, cold is beginning to seep in. Our noses have turned red and it's time to go back in. I hold the friends and sister while she eagerly fills the sled with snow for the snowman we'll make in our living room.

New snow begins falling as if trying to make up for all that we've picked up. I treasure the moments as I wonder about her future, keenly aware of our fleeting time together. With unfettered imagination who is to say where a child can't reach?

* * *

In this week's words we'll see a few uncommon homophones - words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings or spellings - of common words.

bight (byt) noun

1. A bend in a coastline; also the body of water along such a curve.
Example: The Bight of Benin in W. Africa.

2. The curved part or the middle of a rope (as contrasted with the ends).

[From Old English byht (bend). Ultimately from Indo-European root bheug- (to bend) that is also the source of bow, bagel, bee, bog, akimbo, and buxom (originally one who is obedient or pliant).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=bight

-Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org)

"[Hurricane] Wilma's surge proved too much for two houseboats that sank to the bottom of the bight." Brian Haas; Hard-hitting Storm Takes Some Bluster Out of Key West;
The Seattle Times; Oct 25, 2005.

Ishmaelitis

2005-11-17T18:41:00.000-08:00

As of yet, I have not posted ideas or experiences concerning the biblical portion of this class(aside from Frye notes). Having read Mila 18(Leon Uris) and reread Ishmael(Daniel Quinn) this last week, I'm feeling the need to express. Let me go get my soap box.

Don't be offended. But if you are, it's nothing personal.

My experiences with christianity and most christians have led me into viewing both this specific religions religious institutions and their practitioners as largely a waste. My earliest experiences with christianity(beyond being baptised) were of church. My earliest memory in a church was of one around the corner from where we lived when my parents moved to NYC. We lived on what was then a crack street. I guess you could call this a crack church. My memory is of feeling bored and antcy while sitting on the bench next to my mother. I saw some kids in a nearby row making paper airplanes. I thought I'd give it a try. Those kids were a little older than me and they could tear paper into better squares for airplanes than I could. I distinctly remember how my hands couldn't tear the paper along straight lines. The paper tore so easily. I made a few folds and thought my airplane might work but I figured I should show it to my mother first. She was really mad at me, and not for ignoring the sermon(lecture). No one had ever explained to me that bibles were important and that it's paper you don't use to make paper airplanes.

I have always enjoyed paper airplanes. My mom used to work in a building at Columbia University with a huge rotundum(think big round room). My dad and I would make paper airplanes and throw them off the second story to see how they would fly while waiting for my mom to finish with work. The transition from flat into 3 dimensional, from useless to productive, this was fascinating to me. How can I ask for more in life than the gift to create something that is out of something that is not? This is very much how literature works. Flat paper with print on it means nothing until we breath life into it, through the physical(paper airplanes) or the imaginative(reading). My first memory of a church is of this imagination process, as I was capable of expressing to my fullest, being shut down. I'm sure I was punished in some idiotic fassion(my parents have never been as creative as me). My imagination had been stomped on and this has remained the main theme of christianity in my life.

Kindergarden found me in a church school. I was in the last grade. My memories of this year are somewhat fragment. Only the interesting ones have survived with all the details intact. I remember accidentaly stapling a piece of paper to my finger and running around the room screaming wildly in terror while avoiding the scary adults chasing me. I didn't know they only wanted to help. I can lead a pretty good chase. Haven't you ever wondered what a staple in the fleshy meaty part of your thumb would feel like? In restrospect, it's only worth it if people chase you because you can wave your arms and the paper makes cool motions in the air while you run.

The next 8 years I would spend at another church-type school. But it was a big one. Apparently, cathedrals are bigger and somehow more important than regular churches. I guess any building can become a church if you consecrate it. Cathedrals have stricter archatectural, social, or religious rules. I don't know why they're more important but they just are. I haven't figured that one out yet. By now I had also started reading actual books. Barensteine Bear books were wonderful. Once the magic of literature was unlocked to me, I read every day. Over and over and over I would read those Barensteine Bear books. Even if I was reading a book I had previously read 50 times, each time I read those books was important. Each time was fresh. Each time held something new for me. Somewhere in a combination of words and pictures was a limmitless universe I can still enter today. It is the limmitless universe of the Barensteine Bears. I would even read at night. My parents would want time at night to unwind from their busy hectic days and put me to bed, in part, to get some quiet. So I'd demand the hall light be kept on "to keep away the monsters"(which still periodicly show up) and read by that. It would hurt to read at night so I'd rotate my reading by keeping one eye shut. This is why today I wear glasses and the perscription for my eyes is uneven. Every time I see or wear my glasses, I am connected with my love for reading. While typing this sentance right now, I've removed my glasses and the blury text appearing on the computer screen can, with some imagination, be turned into words from one of my favorite Barensteine Bears books. Once it's with you, it never leaves. It's not even a heart beat away. It IS your heart beat. Note: Draw a connection between growth in reading, growth in religious institution, paper is the binding agent.

This new grade school of mine has been strongest academic environment I've ever encountered. Most of the college professors I've had in my 6 years at MSU present about as much information as I would recieve in my gradeschool classes. ex: 7th grade text books. My 7th grade grammer book was Comptons College Grammer Book. My 7th grade Latin text book, Jenny Year 1, is far more advanced than any other language text book I've used. My 7th grade Math course covered precalc(same as my math core math 151). My 7th grade French text book, Bienvenue, well, at least they used an updated version when I took French 1 as a freshman here. Same text book, wow. So in this highly structured and academicly intense environment was a breeding ground for critical thinking and individual expression. I won't go into the social elements of the school, but if you're curious just ask me where some of my classmates ended up.

By 3rd grade I'd read everything on my parents book shelf except their copies of the bible. The bible appeared to me as obtuse, obscure, and obfuscated(note: latin prefix O or OB, from or away from). To me, the reading was as flat as the paper it was printed on. My parents were sending me to sunday school where I would ask the teacher impossible questions. "If god is all powerful, could god make a pizza so big that even god couldn't eat it? If god couldn't eat the pizza, then he couldn't be all powerful. If god couldn't make the pizza, then he couldn't be all powerful." Honestly, I was an ass about it. But at least I was smart. The woman teaching the class couldn't hold a normal conversation with me if I asked her about anything other than christianity. So instead of doing reading homework for sunday school, I would read novels off my parents book shelf(sometimes for the second or third time). My behavoir hasn't really changed. Even now, I'd rather read my own books than the books teachers tell me I need to read(although sometimes those ones end up being good too).

Now, during all of this, it's important to factor in my yearly trips back to Montana for the summers. I would play in my grandmothers garden, soak in my other grandmothers hot tub, and play with cousins. They would also take me to church. This is where I gloss over 10 years of aggrivation. Gradualy, they've accepted that I'm not going to be christian and no amount of mistreatment will inspire me to do so. I am not a perfect little catholic grandchild. But it's ok, I've been writen off because they have plenty of other catholic grandchildren(NOTE: this is only one of my sets of grandparents, the others are well meaning and I think only now have begun to come into their prime).

Eventualy, I would go spend my afternoons outdoors in a park instead of inside their church. I breathed the air. I felt the flowers. I tasted the sweet grass on the wind. I climbed trees. I rolled rocks. I watched birds. I raced against myself in every compatition. I was alive. I have never been alive inside of a church, paper airplanes or otherwise. They are a physical box around the imagination I am dying to express daily. The paint on their walls never changes. The ornamentation hanging from the walls and ceilings never changes. I had twice weekly classes in the cathedral which were always the same thing. "How many different devices for world domination can I assemble out of the items in my pocket?" It got to the point where I would save interesting things from throughout the day with strong amounts of anticipation for using them. Pen Cap = 7 minutes. Pocket Lint = 4 minutes. Large Eraser = 6 minutes. Paper Clip = 9 minutes. Combine these elements together and a form of imaginative fussion takes place. More time can be spent with them together in combination than their total time as individual elements. This was how my imagination expressed itself. I didn't have grass to run around in or trees to climb up. I had a chair to sit in.

My highly academic environment and highly surpressive of my imagination religious environment changed when I went to highschool. I went to one of the top public highschools in the nation and was tortured with their appathetic attempt at learning. Academics had surpased christianity as the main torment and hindrence of my education. I read books for English class which I had previously read in 5th grade. Math and Science were all areas I had covered previously. When we say highschool is hell, my experience of highschool time was that it was never ending. Those were the longest 50 minute classes of my life. My academic inspiration has suffered ever since. While the academics sucked, I was at least free of the bonds of christianity.

By now, a very clear distinction has been formed between christianity and other religions. While I was still in NYC, every year my family went to sader with our good friends. Judaism, as a religion, is less about "we believe" and more about "we remember". This is strikingly different from christianity. The inside of the mosque on 96th street and 1st avenue is the largest physical piece of art ever to touch my mind and heart. I understand about "the power of Islam". One of my good friends from gradeschool, her father died of cancer the other year. It is one of the most wrong things I've ever seen. The best way to learn about suffering, in it's entirety and how to circumvent it, is with the teachings of Buddah. The way christianity deals with life and death is simply not good enough for me. Christianity is the religion most lacking which I have come into contact with and, for the first time in this journal entry, has been capitolized only because it is at the beginning of a sentance.

Ishmael and Mila 18 deal with the ideas of agriculture and the nazi's as representative of an unstopable force which only ends by destroying itself. This unstopable force is in actuality an idea. The idea that we can control our lives and the lives of the others around us, that we can and should control what lives and what dies, is the single most frightening idea of mass distribution in the history of our species. More so than any other major religion, christianity appears to perpetuate this idea. Ethnocentrism, cultural domination, and human/animal exploitation exist because of this idea. Every form of poverty existing in the world today can give its thanks to this idea. The upwards trickle of dollars we see in every developed country, where money goes from the working to the rich while widening the gap between the two, exists because of this idea. Every political system on the planet is supported by this idea. Major religions work as an impotent stopgap for surpressing the awful results of this idea. It is intended to provide a controlled system for the management of this idea and with its reliance on humans it is subject to the failings of humans. The most terrifying thing about religions is that they support this idea and, because their support and justification are printed onto paper, we lend them an unreasonable amount of faith.

We are faced with an impossible situation. Our world, it's countries, it's politics, it's people, it's major religions all run parallel with this line of reasoning, that humans are the pinnicle of achievement and, as such, are beyond the existing laws for everything else. We are so peak, we can superimpose our own laws over the naturaly existing ones. And we are so ignorant we expect this to work. This cycle cannot perpetuate itself indefinatly with success. This is the impossible situation we face. Somehow, we must step outside of that cycle. We will not create an impossible solution through the use of dogma or ignorance. Only by exercising our imaginations, by making them fly, can we develope paterns which will survive and thrive under the tyrany of the mass belief of "right". We need environments and institutions which support criticle thinking and imagination, not environments and institutions supporting mass excremental thought.

At the beginning of this lengthy post, I said "most christians". I've met some who, through an extrodonairy act of humility and submission, do not see themselves as gods gift to the Earth. They are simply here, for the time being. They have no fetish for controling every single life system on Earth and no enforced apathy or ignorance about perpetuating these ideas. They've been grounded in their belief system and are unquestioning. I'm not sure if it was their individual nature, that they were more compassionate, patient and sincere than others, or if they were simply ideal models of christians, the type of person churches try to create. I lean towards individual nature. I've met plenty of people who tell me I'm going to their hell because I don't believe in their god. Oddly, when I ask them "oh, which religion are you?" I never hear "Judaism" or "Islam" or "Buddhist" or "Hindi" etc... I don't think anyone else has seen the irony that I already AM living in their hell. This world is falling appart at the seems from the thoughts and attitudes that people like that hold dear and close. I wake up, go about my day, and go to sleep and this idea is always there. That time sense of hell, the unending, my experience in highschool, its like that every day. And it's all because of that little idea about controlling life.

I haven't edited anything above. I'll give myself a day or two and reread it. My guess is there are probably some pretty large gaps that need filling and questions that need answering. Feel free to inquire further into my ramblings...

-Edit-
i changed my mind. i don't really want to add to what i've said. it captures more of my spirit and less of my thought. for that reason, i don't want to change it. not yet...

Fun Article

2005-11-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

article copied ruthlessly and in entirety from
salon.com/books/review/2005/11/16/myths
which i have posted here to avoid their damn comercials.

Why Myths Still Matter

The religious rituals that surrounded them are gone, but we're still drawn to stories that transform the world -- and ourselves.
By Laura Miller

Nov. 16, 2005 | A friend of mine, a classicist, believes that the news stories that most captivate the public always tap into some venerable Western myth or folk tale. George W. Bush (or any recovered addict) is the prodigal son; Chandra Levy is a sacrificial maiden along the lines of Andromeda or Iphigenia; Scott Peterson is Bluebeard. Sometimes the people acting out these old stories know just what they're doing -- W. expects his evangelical base to respond instinctively to his remake of the New Testament parable. Others, like Peterson, find themselves cast in their roles against their will. And chances are that the bottom-feeding tabloids that capitalized on Levy's death have never even heard of Iphigenia.

But maybe my friend's idea is tautological -- perhaps the definition of a myth is simply this: a story we feel compelled to tell over and over again. That's the notion behind a new series of books, "The Myths," launched this fall. Canongate Books will publish novella-length retellings of ancient myths, written by such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Donna Tartt.

The first two books, Atwood's "The Penelopiad" and Winterson's "Weight," choose classical Greek myths, "The Odyssey" and the story of Atlas and Heracles, respectively. (Presumably, some contributors will follow the lead of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and pick myths from other traditions.) Atwood and Winterson stick pretty close to the earliest versions of these stories, but their results are radically different without actually violating the premise. There could be no better illustration of the fact that after centuries of telling and talking about myths, we're still not sure what they are and why they move us.

By way of introduction, the series kicks off with a nonfiction volume, "A Short History of Myth" by Karen Armstrong. The choice of Armstrong makes sense: Her exploration, in "The Battle for God," of the differences between two modes of thought, "logos" and "mythos," is an eloquent argument for the value of certain impractical ideas. Logos, Armstrong explained, is "the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world." It "must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external realities if it is to be effective." Mythos, in contrast, is "not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning."

According to Armstrong, premodern people considered both modes "essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence." While logos can tell us how to grow crops, build cathedrals and split atoms, mythos, often in circuitous ways, speaks of why we do these things.

A Briton, a former nun and a self-described "freelance monotheist," Armstrong lives in a mostly secular society set in a larger world roiled by religious fundamentalism. The mythos/logos formulation serves her well in the task of criticizing both. As a liberal person of faith, she can argue that a logos-ruled culture like Britain's fails to speak to the persistent desire for meaning. And then she can point out that literal-minded fundamentalists -- who insist that biblical stories describe actual historical events and divine directives -- mistakenly treat the metaphorical mythos of the Bible as if it were the logos of, say, Newton's law of gravitation.

But, at heart, Armstrong writes about religion, not literature, and her "A Short History of Myth" isn't a very satisfying lead-in to a collection of fictional works. For Armstrong, the high point in the history of religion came with what the German philosopher Karl Jasper called "the Axial Age," when "new religious and philosophical systems emerged: Confucianism and Taoism in China; Buddhism and Hinduism in India; monotheism in the Middle East and Greek rationalism in Europe." These aren't, however, traditions known for their great myths (except for the legends in the Old Testament, which seem to be a holdover from earlier times anyway).

The Axial Age heralded a new kind of spirituality that even Armstrong acknowledges "was not so heavily dependent upon external rituals and practices," rituals that many scholars regard as indivisible from the myths themselves. This "new concern about the individual conscience and morality" introduced by the Axial faiths may be worth celebrating (provided the faithful manage to act accordingly), but by concentrating on the inner life of the individual it made the communal ceremonies of mythic pantheism less important.

And none of this explains why the myths -- particularly the Greek and Norse myths -- are still with us, why painters still paint them, audiences still turn out to see them performed and writers still plunder them for material. When Armstrong insists that a myth cannot be separated from the rituals that embodied it, she is voicing a common anthropological idea about how mythic religions work. But is it really true, as Armstrong asserts, that "reading a myth without the transforming ritual that goes with it is as incomplete an experience as simply reading the lyrics of an opera without the music"?

Demeter, the Greek harvest goddess, forsook the world when Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnapped her daughter, Persephone. To save the planet from ruin, the gods reunited the mother and daughter, but because Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds while she was with Hades, she is forced to rejoin him for a few months of the year; hence, winter. No doubt this story had its maximum resonance in the secret seasonal rituals -- the Eleusian Mysteries -- performed by the people who believed it to be "true." But the story still retains great beauty for those of us who don't subscribe to that religion or observe those rituals. (We don't even know what those rituals were, as no record of them survives.) And in a way, millions of us relive Demeter's story every time we see a lurid movie in which a distraught parent searches for a daughter lost in an urban underworld of drugs or porn or prostitution.

Even stripped of their original religious significance, even when we don't know their source, myths still strike us as being filled with meaning. Why this should be so is one of the mysteries of human culture. In the Middle Ages, scholars believed that ancient myths that seemed to pre-figure Christianity were allegorical premonitions of the revealed truth of the New Testament -- sort of like echoes that worked backward in time. Mr. Casaubon, the desiccated scholar in George Eliot's "Middlemarch," labored on a Victorian version of the same idea, his famously pointless and unfinished "key to all mythologies."

In the 20th century, the psychiatrist Carl Jung formed his theory of archetypes, motifs recurring throughout most cultures. The archetypes, he believed, arise from the collective unconscious, an inherited body of symbols shared by all humanity. Jung's concepts have stuck with us, and were eventually popularized by Joseph Campbell, who described various heroic myths as metaphors for the journey of an individual psyche from childhood to maturity. The fact that George Lucas was able to fashion a blockbuster pop epic -- "Star Wars" -- using Campbell's work as a blueprint demonstrates just how much power those stories retain.

Winterson approaches the myth of Atlas in this way, as a vehicle for reflection on the self. Atlas was a giant, a Titan condemned to support the world on his shoulders as punishment for rebelling against the gods. (Winterson, a lesbian raised in an evangelical Christian home, identifies with that rebellion.) He gets a brief respite when Heracles offers to take over the task in exchange for the golden apples that grow on a tree in Atlas' garden. (Only Atlas can pick them, and obtaining the apples is one of 12 labors Heracles is compelled to perform as punishment for flying into a rage and killing his own family.) Once the giant returns with the apples, Heracles asks Atlas to spell him for a moment so he can pad his shoulders, then runs off with the apples.

For Winterson, this is a story of unnecessary burdens -- not just Atlas', but Heracles' labors as well. Her Heracles is a boorish brute, a man of pure action, made uneasy by the immobility imposed by Atlas' task. Compelled to stand still for once, "his only company was the hornet buzzing outside his head, the thought-wasp buzzing Why? Why? Why?" Atlas, on the other hand, holds up the world with "such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost." In the story's most charming development, Atlas winds up freeing and adopting Laika, a dog shot into space by the Soviets in 1957. Having learned to love Laika as much as he loves the world, he finally considers the possibility of laying his burden down. "I chose this story above all others," Winterson writes, "because it's a story I'm struggling to end."

For Jung, myths and other archetypes stood for internal psychological states; Campbell's theories, as presented in his televised interviews with PBS journalist Bill Moyers, had a more social aspect. The purpose of myths, Campbell claimed, was to instruct us on "how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances." Moyers' questions -- not surprisingly, given his political background -- prompted Campbell to expound on how myths show us how to have a better marriage, reject empty consumerism and respect the environment.

Structuralism, beginning with the great French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1950s, often took a less sanguine view of what myths teach us. These stories, they argued, are founded in cultural concepts that shape the way the people in that culture understand their world. Our inclination to grasp our experience in terms of duality -- light/dark, male/female, good/evil or, for that matter, mythos/logos -- is one example of such an underlying concept. Myths, a structuralist might say, supply us with dramatic confirmation of our own way of interpreting things. The peculiar, heady response they elicit from us -- that feeling of recognition -- comes from the fact that, on a subterranean level, they tell us that the values of our culture, the values we already hold, are right and true.

Atwood's ironic "Penelopiad" would probably please the structuralists. She has Penelope tell the story of Odysseus' long absence, but complicates it with the choral commentary of the 12 maids her husband executed upon his return. Was Penelope, as she and the "official" version of the story insist, faithful to her husband for the 20 years he was away? Were the maids, hanged for consorting with the suitors, merely the unfortunate victims of bad luck? "The Penelopiad" exhibits some long-standing Atwoodian interests: the difficulty of discovering the truth about people's private lives and the casual brutality of class hierarchies. She takes the Greeks' notion of heroism and turns it inside out, like a shirt, so that we can see the seams.

Theories about what myths are meant to teach us vary, but the idea that their job is to teach is tenacious. It's tempting to raise the Armstrongian point that this is a utilitarian, logos-shaped view of the ultimate in mythos material. C.S. Lewis, in his capacity as a literary critic, once wrote that myth gives us the sensation that "something of great moment has been communicated to us," and that "the recurrent efforts of the mind to grasp -- we mean, chiefly, to conceptualize -- this something, are seen in the persistent tendency of humanity to provide myths with allegorical explanations. And after all allegories have been tried, the myth itself continues to feel more important than they."

Lewis wrote persuasively about myth because (despite his Christianity) he was at heart a platonist and perfectly comfortable with the notion that what makes myths powerful is the fact that we can never adequately explain how they work and what they do. He also believed that people have never stopped making myths, even if nowadays they don't usually consider themselves to be doing something religious. Lewis' own good friend J.R.R. Tolkien created an imaginative work in "The Lord of the Rings" that millions of readers respond to with an immediacy that has little to do with modern notions of a "great" novel. Lewis thought Kafka had a similar myth-making genius.

In contemplating the stylistic inadequacy of one of his favorite writers, George MacDonald, Lewis asked himself if myth weren't, after all, something "extra-literary." A myth, he concluded, was "a particular kind of story which has a value in itself -- a value independent of its embodiment in any literary work. The story of Orpheus strikes and strikes deep, of itself; the fact that Virgil and others have told it in good poetry is irrelevant." Language itself isn't even required. The story could be told in mime or silent film or in a wordless comic book and it would still be itself. Furthermore, it can be told in widely different ways -- set in the favelas of Brazil, for example, like Marcel Camus' 1959 film "Black Orpheus," or in a kind of modern, surrealist neverland like Cocteau's "Orpheus" -- and still be the same myth.

Today, our standards of literary excellence are intimately entwined with the idea of originality and individual expression. Myths, on the other hand, are communal. They are also stories first and foremost, and contemporary literary critics do not hold story in particularly high regard, when they regard it at all. Like depictions of sex, story is seen as appealing to people on the crudest level, to the lowest common denominator. A book that has nothing else to offer can still thrill hordes of unsophisticated readers with pure, page-turning plot.

The seminal modernist works that still define our idea of literary genius often referred to myth without actually partaking of it. Mythic fragments float through T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," but there are no stories in the poem. James Joyce's "Ulysses" is not the epic tale of a man's 10-year journey home from a foreign war; instead, the novel aims to elevate a day in the life of an ordinary fellow to the grandeur of a hero's adventures. When such works succeed, they succeed in a modern fashion, as unique, form-breaking innovations, but not as myth.

As exhilarating as the modernist experiment has been, it eventually collided with what appears to be a fact of human nature, the reality that our minds are built of stories. To stick with the metaphor above, a steady diet of books without stories turns out to be as appealing as a life without sex; some people take to it, but not many. At the same time, an explosion of media has immersed the average citizen in a cloud of competing voices, and those voices have learned that stories capture people's attention. In a culture where nearly everyone -- politicians, TV producers, journalists, advertisers -- talks obsessively about the power of stories, the very artists most associated with the telling of tales, novelists, seem the least comfortable doing it.

So the "Myths" series is very welcome. It reminds us that not every talented writer can or should aspire to the model of the novelist as iconoclastic Great Man. (It's no coincidence that some of highest-profile contributors to the series are women.) Both Atwood and Winterson weave less prestigious modes of storytelling -- gossip and memoir -- into their new versions of Greek myths. The best novels have always had at least a dash of both. And perhaps the best myths have, too. But underneath it all there is still the "something of great moment" that Lewis wrote about, a something that eludes definition. Perhaps Winterson puts it best when she writes, "These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true."

tid-bits

2005-11-14T00:54:00.000-08:00

No one has taken on my question. :-( I guess it sucks..
I attempted some form of an explanation for Emily's question here.

Family Proverb: "Don't get hurt. It hurts to get hurt."

Bad Days: Bad days can begin and end in any number of ways. They can start out with low test grades, end with vehicle accidents, and are usually filled with an assortment of accidents, mishaps, goofups, mistakes, victimizations, judgements, sacrifice and suffering. Their machinery is often greased with blood, your blood. And isn't that just so fun.

I think I might be having a bad day right now. I woke up and found I had 13 calls from my best friend. It looks like she won't be able to move here next sememster because of legal issues. And then when I had to walk to class from the parking lot, I realized I forgot to wear warm clothing and I was really really cold. And then when I tried to sign up for some of my classes, the computer wouldn't let me because someone stupid entered the times for the class wrong(no, it's not me) and so I have to go kavetch to the NAS department about some moron being a moron and oh oh oh! the frustrations!!!

I "literally" have a question...

2005-11-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

Check out this awesome article on the word "literally". http://www.slate.com/id/2129105

The Oresteia is full of amazingly gory details. The situations are both believable and unbelievable. Realism, not as we understand it but as we see it presented, is turned inside out and supplanted with what I will call "Hyper-Realism". How is this change neccesary or unneccesary to the telling of the Oresteia? Is it intended as a stage device for the play? Are we only now seeing it as a delivery system through writing for its audience? Literally, why is it there?

Oresteia and Halloween

2005-10-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

I would love to post about the great literary masterwork that is the Oresteia, about its pinnicle of "classical" humor, and about its cultural importance today. I just might do those things, but not in this post right here. No, because I have recently become hooked on vampire novels. The wonderful thing about reading books from 2nd hand stores and garage sales is there's never a shortage of potential fiction. I picked up this book, loved it, and now I'm reading the whole series.

Throughout history the vampire appears in association with the femanine in almost all cases up until Brahme Stoker gave 'Dracula' a weewee. Only recently have they been associated with the masculine with the femanine as a secondary association. This has made reading the Oresteia very interesting for me. I'm not looking for direct vampiric reference, oh no. Direct and indirect reference to the ideas concerning the historical nature of vampirism are what catch my eye.

One of the earliest writen representations of a vampire in modern popular culture is in the biblical tradition. Lilth is associated with the fall of the femanine and, more so, the fall of ones own humanity. Connected with the dark and with death, there is also the repulsion to and sepperation from light, from heaven, from love. This concept of vampirism is not of a garlic hating flying bat transformed from human shape but a human empty of all peace, love, reason, and hope. Immortal life without those good beautiful aspects of human existance would be one where the person, or vampire, must aquire those missing things at the expense of the innocent. This is the idea of vampirism in its infancy, the parasitic cycle of a deamon subsisting upon a vast sea of ignorant humanity which is incapable of contestation. Published very roughly around the the time of the stories involving lilth, the Oresteia incorporates the same archetypal characteristics of 'The Fallen Woman'.

and now quotes!
(so if I wasn't clear, these quotes simply caught my eye as a potential reference to the pre-vampiric attitudes of ye olde times)

Agamemnon
1. p109 line 177

Zeus has led us on to know,
the Helmsman lays it down as law
that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again,
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned o nthe awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.

2. p117 line 374

And still some say
that heaven would never stoop to punish men
who trample the lovely grace of things
untouchable. How wrong they are!

3. p125 line 596

What dawn can feast a woman's eyes like this?
I can see the light, the husband plucked from war
by the Saving God and open wide the gates.

4. p130 line 717

A captivating pet for the young,
and the old men adored it, pampered it
in their arms, day in, day out,
like an infant just born.
Its eyes on fire, little beggar,
fawning for its belly, slave to food.

5. p131 line 131

But Justice shines in sooty hovels,
loves the decent life.
From proud halls crusted with gilt by filthy hands
she turns her eyes to find the pure in spirit -
spurning the wealth stamped counterfeit with praise,
she steers all things towards their destined end.

6. p141 line 1017

But a man's life-blood
is dark and mortal.
Once it wets the earth
what song can sing it back?
Not even the master-healer
who brought the dead to life -
Zeus stopped the man before he did more harm.

7. p144 line 1063

She's mad,
her evil genius murmuring in her ears.
She comes from a city fresh caught.
She must learn to take the cutting bridle
before she foams her spirit off in blood -

8. p145 line 1088

No... the house that hates god,
an echoing womb of guilt, kinsmen
torturing kinsmen, severed heads,
slaughterhouse of heroes, soil streaming blood -

9. p147 line 1115

No no, look there! -
what's that? some net flung out of hell -
No, she is the snare,
the bedmate, deathmate, murder's strong right arm!

10. p149 line 1164

What are you saying? Wait, it's clear,
a child could see the truth, it wounds within,
like a bloody fang it tears -
I hear your destiny - breakign sobs,
cries that stab the ears.

11. p152 line 1230

For so much suffereing,
I tell you, someone plots revenge.
A lion who lacks a lion's heart,
he sprawled at home in the royal lair
and set a trap for the lord on his return.
...
he is so blind, so lost to that detestable hellhound
who pricks her earst and fawns and her tongue draws out
her glittering words of welcome -

12. p165 line 1519

What can i say with all my warmth and love?
Here in the black widow's web you lie,
gasping out your life
in a sacrilegious death, dear god,
reduced to a slave's bed
my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,
by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword.

The Libation Bearers
13. p201 line 517

And food, what did the little monster want?
She gave it her breast to suck - she was dreaming.
And didn't it tear her nipple, the brute inhuman -
Blood curdled the milk with each sharp tug...

14. p205 line 615

People shudder and moan, and can't forget -
each new horror that comes
we call the hells of Lemnos.
Loathed by the gods for guilt,
cast off by men, disgraced, their line dies out.
Whoe could respect what god detests?

15. p216 line 879 - The entire scene with Orestes and Clytaemnestra

About half of the quotes above I had marked in my book. The rest I found while looking for the marked passages. They show with a good amount of accuracy the dark pattern of the 'proto-vampire' in literature. I suspect Clytaemnestra was, to some degree, based off of folk tales of the time, urban myths, and scary stories. We have the boogy man today and if you're renting scary halloween movies you'll probably see him. I know I won't. I hate scary movies.

I have not yet read The Eumenides. As I read it, I will be looking for the themes of weakness, darkness, blood, captivation, possesion, the fall, shadow, pale reflection, etc...

Presentation Pictures and Notes

2005-10-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Group 1
Note: Cave Pictures and nice chart in background
Presentation emphasis on food and sharing.

Group2
Emphasis on the woman as a garden.
Start in the garden, Fall, empty, caused by a woman. End in the garden, Full, fruitful, caused by a woman. The cycle of life.

Group 3
Furnace. Can you see all the awesome sock puppets? sock puppets listed by name underneath pictures from left to right.(if I have a name wrong can someone from group 3 please let me know?)

Utility Worker for gate to the furnace meets Jesus.

Utility Worker and Perseus(gene simmons from kiss)

utility worker, Dante, Freud???

Utility Worker, Hephestus???, Jesus, Freud???

Group 4
Mountains! I hope you liked our presentation! 4 levels of existence: Fallen Earth, Paradise, Heaven, Hell. Each has its own sense of time. Images of ascent are Mountain, Tower, Ladder and Image-of-ascent-#4(?!), Images of descent are caves and pools of water. We used poetry excerpts from poets mentioned in our chapter. Poets - W.B. Yeates and T.S. Elliot.

Group 5
Garden and Sex Ed 101 with Winthrope Frye! Garden/Female. Women remove and place us back in the garden. Sex as metaphor transforms into the physical.

Group 6
Mountain. DVD presentation.

Additional Notes: This was the best I could do pasting from excel

Vico	Levels	Metaphorical	Respected Time	Time
Gods	Heaven	Kerygmatic	Sacred Time	Total Now, Real Preasent
Heros	Paradise	Ideological	Sacred Time	Exuberance, Dance, Energy
Men	Earth	Conceptual	Profane Time	Linear, Cyclical
Chaos	Hell	Descriptive	Profane Time	Demonic, Duration, Repatition

Black Elk took some anthropologists to the center of the world, a mountain in North Dakota. "The center of the world is wherever you happen to be."

Study Notes for First Test

2005-10-10T17:36:00.000-07:00

This is devided into 2 parts. The first part are the questions we went over in class. The second part is a list of my study notes and vocab list. As always, never expect anything I write to be spelled correctly.

Class Test Questions:

Laughter - teaching tool used to prove a point with a story, even if we don't understand the laughter(historical context is lost on us)
YHWH as a trickster - ridiculing other tribes
Shift from Nomadic peoples into Agricultural, from Hebrews to Jesus
Will of YHWH brought about by women circumventing men, -Rebekah -Lots daughters -Tamar
Levites Concubine (type of wife)
Patrilocal vs. Virilocal DEF: patrilocal, man visits woman in the house of her father // virilocal, man takes woman from the house of her father into his own house and takes on the responsiblity of her father to take care of her
Hospitality > protecting women - as women are portrayed in bible
This view of great importance placed on Hospitality is found in both biblical and classical writings
Biblicaly, there is a difference between the feminine and the female - feminine, biological // female, cultural and socialy defined
The bible was writen over 1,000 years in several different areas
"You" in Hebrew bible means "Men". It is gender definitive
Vocab - Teraphim, household gods // Decalogue, 10 commandments split into 2 sections, worship laws and social laws, different versions found in J and P // Synecdoche - link
What are names of Adam and Eve's children? Cain, Able, Seth and other sons and daughters. check out question number 7 - link
How did Jakob get his name changed? He wrestled with an angel
How many of the Danaids are in the underworld pouring water? 48, one left with husband, the other was captured by Poseidon
Which part of the human body is grabbed during abduction? The wrist
What are the 3 stages of the mexis relationship? Conviviality, Rape, Indiference
More Vocab - Cannon, link(SCROLL DOWN ON PAGE AND READ WORD HISTORY!!!) // Psyche, Soul // Sporagmos, tearing of flesh, dismemberment // Paronomasia, word play // Lacunae, gaps in the story, found in biblical tradition // Patriarchy, rule of fathers, from body part meaning "the head" - "head of the family"
What are the four levels of discourse in Frye? Descriptive, Conceptual, Ideological, Kerigmatic
Literal meaning of the name Prometheus - he who thinks before he acts, forethought
What happened to Thystes sons? They were chopped up and served to him as dinner
What biblical phrase best describes Frye's most important point? "Life more abundent"
Which books are in the Torah(law), pentateuch(READ WORD HISTORY) - Genisis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Duteronomy
The Philistines get Hemorrhoids from storing the Arc of the Covenant
How'd Zeus break the cycle of death of sons/fathers? He ate Metis
What are the four Viconian stages? Gods, Heros, Men, Chaos

PART TWO:

The Grapes of Wrath was writen by what author and mentioned in what song by what artist? John Steinbeck, Battle Hym of the Republic by Julia How - "Stamping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored" - comes from Revelations
Where did Colloso find his inspiration and some details for writing stories? He looked at the classical paintings about the scenes he would write.
See under Vocab and Definitions, Documentary Hypothosis. Name the five different authors of the bible. J, E, D, P, R.
List the works of the following Greek authors: Ovid, Homer, Hesiod, Vergil, and list the names of the playwrites with surviving work. Ovid, Metamorphoses(over 280 stories) - Homer, Illiad and Oddessy(was Homer Illiterate?) - Hesiod, Theogony - Vergil, Aeneid - Surviving playwrites are Sophecles, Euripides, Escalis, and Aristophanes who wrote The Oresteiya, one of our text books
"He who sews the wind will reap the wirlwind"
"Why use 5 words when you can use 100?"(the long winded nature of the bible) There is a difference between repetituous and long winded. Metaphores(without "like" or "as") and Similes(only "like" and "as") are used at great length. The bible authors drop "like" and "as"(and metaphores) replacing them with "is" to make their writings more powerful!
Differences between J and P bible authors! 1. name for "god" - J, "god" - P, no name until later 2. order of creation - J, humans on 7th day - P, humans on 6th day 3. god described as being - J, on earth, humanly - P, transcendent -- read Valeries post.
The F word, "Fall" - The T word, "Truth"
The Paratactic use of "And" empowers the story and the reader. The use of "Because", "However", and "Before" takes power from the audience
Freud believed we contain the memories of our entire life, even the things "we don't remember" are still inside our heads. Jung believed that we all have a collective memory of all past human lives.
Gaia gives birth to everything, inlcuding her husband Uranos. Uranus pushes male children back into mom.(parallels with Greeks fear of male children being born who will be stronger than the father) This is the same as the biblical story of Moses. Chronos, son of Gaia, castrates his dad with a scythe and the gentils, tossed into a foamy sea, become Aphrodite. Chronos eats his own sons but Zues is spirited away. Chronos eats a rock instead and Zues grows up to usurpe Chronos. Zeus ends the cycle by eating his mom, Metis(wisdom).
Building a church on the ruins of a pagan worship site does two things 1. represses aspects of pagan religion and 2. adopts the energy of that pagan religion(followers, ceremonies, etc). These are really the same thing.
How are the Homeric hyms and the biblical styles different? The Homeric hyms give all possible details and the biblical styles say as few details as possible.
Frye makes the point that there is no moral for biblical stories. The moral of the story is the story. The entire parabel is the story and not reducible to "the point". "The point" of the parabel is the experience of the parabel, both inside the story and for the reader/listener.
J list - Abraham, Isaac(means "laughter"), Joshua, Moses, Samual, Saul, David
Know the story about Josheph and his Brothers
2 Kingdoms, Northern Israel where the name of god is "Elohiem" and Southern Judeah where the name of god is "Yahweh"
Be prepared to answer the question "What do you know now about the tension between the biblical and classical traditions and what difference does it make?" It will probably appear in short answer or essay form.

Vocab and Definitions: check out dictionary.com and wikipedia.org where my notes are missing information. I'm not gonna do ALL of your work for you!

Centripital - Reader making sense of the world
Centrifugal - Sourcing for the word outside of the text
Perfunctory -
Theodicy - (theo, god - dicy, justice) about why do we suffer, gods justice, we don't understand
Theocentric - god centered
Documentary Hypothosis -
Metaphor -
Repetative Parallels -
Repetition -
of Frye's 4 modes, Kerygmatic - Speculative, Romantic, Metaphysical, Mythological, Immagination, Messege, Proclomation
Poesies - mindset/art of making poetry
Hieroglyphic - Hier, sacred and glyph, pictures - a special type of language
Onomatopoeia - words that sound like their meanings, "Woosh" and "Howl", wind blowing and YHWH
Anthropomorphism -
Anthropocentrism -
"Biblical Perportions" - "a scene right out of the bible"
Iconoclastic -
Metempsychosis - transmigration of souls
Apocalypes - unveiling, revealing, revelation
Misprision - word mistake, lovely class Misprisions are 1."The sun comes up over a sentimental cup over lard"(Cheryl Crow) 2."You're the key to my peace of pie"(Shania Twain) 3."Charles Intestine"(MS)
Prolix - abundant
Synonyymous Parallelism -
Antithetical -
Paratactic - it is a type of speach and it uses "and" frequently with purpose and intention and little kids often use it and I'm using it right now and that proves my point.
Mnemosyne - 9 daughters of memory
Lethia - forget
Alethia - unforgetting
Aros - love, driving procreative force
Heirogamy - many gods/sacred things
Sacrifice - make sacred
Homeopathy - world of the sacred
Animate - spirit/life
Inanimate - lacking spirit/life

Frye(2)

2005-09-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

I'm still only getting through Fry 5 or 10 pages at a time. I have the sense that this is because he speaks only of his ideas and does not weave some great story with his words. The light bulbs are not particularly illuminating for me. I have the sense that this is because he drains me and I'm too tired to enjoy his light. It never feels very gentle. That must be why I enjoy my lava lamp so much.

Some Lightbulbish things:

p19 "The voice of reason is often weak and ineffectual, however, because of the difference between the reasonable and the rational."
p25 "We distinguish two forms of rhetoric which, if not always debased, are certainly suspect: propaganda and advertising."
p42 "[The social contract, patriotic and other forms of loyalty, religious beliefs, and class conditioned attitudes and behavoir]... develope from the ideological aspect of myth, and consequently tend to be directly expressed in ideological prose language."
p61 "The point is not that myth falsifies history, but that history, the continuous record of what ascendant ideologies do, falsifies primary concern."
p63 "Literature is an art of words."
p82 "The discoverer of the principle that all verbal structures descend from mythological origins was Vico, and Vico's axiom was verum factum: what is true for us is what we have made.
p96 "Literature is a technique of meditation, in the widest and most flexible sense."

ugh. makes my brain feel like one of those brown mashy bananas.

Google Homework

2005-09-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Grapes of Wrath: The best source of information I found was Wikipedia. Documentary Hypothesis: Several good readings.

Repetitive Parallelism: This was tough to Google. Apparently, "repetitive parallelism" is the same as "staircase parallelism", in which two lines of writing share the same beginning(the opening of the second line is the same as the opening of the first line).

Biblical Proportions: Not so much fun to Google. An English Idiom meaning "blame god. don't blame me, us, them."

Art on the Web

2005-09-09T17:29:00.000-07:00

I am the class judge-high-arbitor of decency! Woohoo!

First I must say two things: One, googling images is rediculous amounts of fun and I encourage everyone to do this occasionaly. It is rewarding and exciting. You never know what you might find next. Two, don't click on ANYTHING if you are offended by nipples, buns, nude babbies, etc. 1/2 of the art described in Cadmus and Harmony has these. The nipples and buns might be covered with a sheet, but the billowy wind will still leave little to the imagination. By clicking on the right links, you could concievably get to some very raunchy stuff. If it offends you, stop there. Don't keep clicking on the offensive material. Blame your own curious self if you keep clicking. So, here's my system to indicate the indecent, the clothed, and the particularly relevent art.

* Iindicates nipples, butts, naked babbies and potentialy anything else(painting, barbie doll or any other form/medium). Also, please use the word "Caution" or "Graphic" somewhere visible.
+ Indicates a work of art which appears to be one of Calasso's inspirations. These would be the important ones to look at as they relate to class material.
Blank(or no notation) indicates a relevence to the subject but with no potentialy offensive material.

That being said, here are some pictures I googled up from the first half of chapter 1.

Zeus taking Europa
*+ http://www.uco.es/~ca1lamag/Galerias/RUBENS%20El%20rapto%20de%20Europa.JPG
+ http://www.thekeffs.freeserve.co.uk/EU%20Flag_files/Zeus%20&%20Europa%201.jpg
http://www.informatika.bf.uni-lj.si/zeus&europa.jpg
http://www.themosaicmaker.com/europanew.jpg
* http://www.tfsimon.com/EUROPA.bmp.jpg
http://www.theoi.com/image/K1.10Zeus.jpg
* http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/main/courses/classics150/museum150/zeus/image8.jpg
* http://www.arts-cape.com/hollypedlosky/manifoldimages/europa400p.jpg
http://www.pizzeria-europa.de/images/europa/goet2.gif

Talos protecting Europa
http://www.entrenet.com/~groedmed/greekm/images/talos.jpg

Boreas and Oreithyia
*http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Kevin-Strom-personal/Art/MorganEvelynDe_BoreasAndOreithyia_1896.jpg
http://www.theoi.com/image/T28.2Boreas.jpg
http://www.ub.uit.no/northernlights/images/pyth01d.jpg
http://www.paeonia.ch/Hist/Daph/Bilder/B0436KU01.JPG

Persephone
http://www.mitovi.beotel.yu/graphics/persephone%20leighton.jpg

Interesting side note: "Creusa felt appolo's hands llock around her wrists as she bent to pick saffron"(p4)
Look at how in most of these abduction pictures, the wrists are the object of motion. We are shown the wrist as it would indicate motion from both subjects. It represents the subjects idea of control in the paintings. Also, see how the horns can simulate the wrist. Early femanism!

Io priestess in the Heraion near Argos
http://www.trincoll.edu/~greger/hist111-2005.html
http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/images/109images/greek_archaic_classical/architecture/model_heraion.jpg
http://greciantiga.org/img/tpl/sjsu-tplherargos.jpg
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~classics/greece2003/updates/week3_4/april10.html

Ariadne and Baccus
* http://www.wga.hu/art/c/carracci/annibale/farnese/farnese1.jpg

Minotaur at Crete
http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/minotaur.jpg
http://www.all-hotels.com/images/homepage_pics/cretemino.jpg

Theseus and Helen
http://www.sikyon.com/Athens/Theseus/theseus_helen1.jpg

These were fun sites I stumbled accross while googling. Watchout for the occasional nudie.
http://www.dani-on-tour.ch/Travelogues/Tibet-D/tibetinfo-ca-ph.html
http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/knossos_text.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/ia2/athena06/miscstories.html
* http://www.fjkluth.com/helen.html contains graphic barbie material(good site)
infact, check out all of www.fjkluth.com because it's hilarious(almost entirely graphic)
* http://www.ncf.ca/~bf906 contains graphic cross stich material. yes, cross stich.

Words with Power

2005-09-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a Haiku I composed in anticipation of Frye-Frustration. I am preparing for my brain to be Fryed. I'm feeling like a peeled potato about to be dropped into the Fryer. Once I'm done, I'll need lots of catch-up. Oh ok, that one was really bad. I'll stop before I'm tied and hung by a Northrop e.

Soft Cover Hard Book.
Sentence Is Impossible.
Reading Frye. OH! Why?

First interesting Frye Quote: In the introduction he says "To summerize briefly my central thesis on this point: every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature."(pxiii) It caught my attention because it 1) had the owrth "thesis" and 2) can be taken two very different ways if the comma is not recognized. Note: the comman between "inherited" and "transmitted" changes the way the sentence is read. If the comma were not there, the sentence would be saying all cultures have a mythology modified by writing. Be prepared for these grammerical odities when reading his sentences. Don't get fooled!

edit: But now that I'm rereading it, just what is he saying!? Argh! Now I'm full of maybes. What is this? This isn't reading. This is madness. I don't mind foggy obscure meanning but right now I'm is so far removed from normal retrospective thought I feel like shouting at the author. I can just tell, this book is going to be interesting but it's also go to waste my time while I scratch my head wondering just what the hell he's saying.

update: I can't read more than about 10 pages per day. This book somehow steals the joy of philiosophy from me. It leaves my brain feeling parched. And the light bulbs don't feel particularly lightbulbish. :-(

Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

2005-09-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

I went backpacking for labor day weekend. Woohoo! In case you are wondering, the spanish peaks are still beautiful. I read most of the first chapter by firelight, waiting for the logs to burn down into coals. Then I would star gaze waiting for the coals to go out. I found it interesting that the constellations I was looking at were named by the Greeks, the subjects of the first chapter also being Greek. There seemed to be a parallel going on between the reading and the stars by way of firelight. But I don't think I want to put words to it. I'll simply remember the feelings.

Chapter 1: The theme which stuck out most to me is "that which is said". This is emphasized through the agencies of abduction and metamorphosis. Abduction and metamorphosis are similar and each appear to overlap the other. Abduction is the act of change from one setting into that of another. Metamorphosis appears to be nearly the same in its application towards humans(and what is left of a human after partial or total metamorphosis). Herodotus: "To abduct women is considered the action of scoundrels, but to worry about abducted women is the reaction of fools... it is clear that, had they not wanted to be abducted, they would not have been."(p8) The justification towards indifference concerning the situation of abducted women is an acceptance of the practice by society and form of metamorphosis. We have 'what is said' dictated by the change occuring without control for that change.

"What is considered unnameable among other peoples is available for all who want to hear in Create. -- Mystery, in Crete, was made plain to all, no one tried to hide it."(p9) Here, "that which is said" is shown in connection with mystery. The vailed, the hidden, the mysterious is that which is never spoken. When the wall of silence is broken, the mystery and its answers are displayed for all to see. "Crete, with its hundred cities and not a single defensive wall around them," has cities which do not wall mystery. The spoken life in Crete and its explination of mystery is an abduction of the silence and mystery surrounding life of the Greek mainland. The stage is set for the gods and mans metamorphosis.

First Post and First Day of Class

2005-08-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

PERTANENT INFO: MWF 2:10 - 3:00 in room 222 AJM
Office: 2-183 Wilson Office Hours: 1-2, 3-4 M; 3-5:30 WF & by appointment
there will be no use of the term "old testament" in this class.

First day of class and I'm near the top of the waiting list! Woohoo! Everyone have a good summer? Good.

So the first thing any self-respecting english major does at the beginning of the semester is take their book list to Wilson Ave. Books and purchase from the local independent bookstore. Did you pay 2 dollars for The Oresteia? (note: study questions at the bottom of the page) Well, I'm happy. I saved roughly 30 dollars by purchasing books there instead of at the bookstore.

And how's this for coincidence? Dr. Sexson mentions The Great McGinty in class. I bought a used book(in honor of the beginning of the semester I always buy something I want to read that there may be compatition with what I must read for class) and it referenced The Great McGinty. The Godfather Papers, by Mario Puzo, a book writen to avoid the unwelcomed questions caused by his absurdly famous book The Godfather, contains a quote from The Great McGinty.

A character in The Great McGinty says, "If you didn't have graft, you'd get a
very low grade of person in politics." When the gentle Thoreau heard that
the Massachusetts legislature had conveniend, he told a friend, "I must
hurry to town to buy a lock for my pack door."(p 73)

So school has started off with an interesting coincidence. And here's a google link for "The Great McGinty"

Edit: Wow. Later on in my book Finnegans Wake was mentioned. Apparently, the husband of the typist burned the last 50 pages of the manuscript and the publisher had to type it out himself(from his own copy). That's what the story reads.