A Silence Above My Head

There is a silent place above my head
above the clicking of the keys
Beneath a ballpoint or a lead
It is, if you could say,
       a place to clear my head.

It is not a place of the air
   it has no watery retreat,
   & dare I say
   the earth has never humbled my small discreet.
   It is sad to say
   its ontology is universally extinct.

Mind you, it exists everywhere,
    in lampshades and light fixtures,
    in turtles and tortellini too!
    But the "smartest & the best"
    have laid rest to this silence above peoples heads.

"It isn't for letters, for science, for pictures"
Yet science is the absence of expecting it,
letters the tethered sound in a change of texture.
& what provides a silence deeper while
looking for a sound to be seen
but peering at a picture?

Only the silence above my head
   renders a perfect picture-
-to which it fizzles down to a
   ballpoint or a lead
to portray a person you'll have to
  say is very much mislaid.
But to bad for you, you can't see the picture
  in my head.

Sacrifice

"There is a part of me that works much quicker than any other part. It knows before anything can be explained, and it understands when everything says no. It is with me and at times without me."

I rightly don't know what to say. I don't really care anymore. I'm so lost in oblivion and ready for something new, something to take hold--force myself down its throat. I want pain, I want suffering, anything but this endless sacrifice. I want to just give up-move away from everything and everyone--just get away.

But from what?

The more I think about dropping out this semester the more I think of what I'm dropping out of. This blog is titled sacrifice and for a very good reason. That is exactly what this semester has been-sacrifice. And it only seems fitting after the rapture of last semester that things would become dull, they would fizzle down to blank stares the usual groove of things. That is this time, this year, now is a time of learning, great learning, and to due that, to due it well is to sacrifice what everyone else has. To give up parties, and patience. To give up sex and girls. To give up nights of sleep and days in front of the T.V. To give up the gym and my physique. To give up the now now, so that I may show it then. To give up friends, and society.

But what is that last one thing which I will not give up?

What is that one last thing I won't let go of?

Dropping out really makes no sense because the one thing I really want to get away from is the only driving force inside of me. It is the gruel of my meager diet. The Devil and God are raging inside of me. That which pushes me on so much is the exact same thing which holds me back.


But who knows, maybe I'll come back maybe I won't. Depends on what's calling I suppose.


Great thanx to Jon Orsi for being there to talk to throughout classes and the semester (you're my favorite person to bounce ideas off of), Chase you've been great as a deskmate all mythlong. Seth, Alex, and Doug, I've enjoyed our discussions and bullshit after class. Rio, you're always a pleasure. Knox thank you so much for the Unicorn quotes. Za Zen I believe we have yet to finish Frye? Saving Bells, nice new haircut and you are always a breathe of relaxation in the classroom. Angel I'm sorry you couldn't be in class because of your flu, but I've enjoyed your blogs immensely. Ben, you're the film major all the Lit majors look to, and it's been a pleasure chatting with you all semester. Roberto I look forward to our weekly mandates. Mayan thank you for being the little spitfire you are and keeping me on my toes. Michelle, Josh, and Sari it was a blast being in a group with you! Dustin, you and I can do great things together. Good luck to the new Graduate Brittany, enjoy your time off, hopefully you'll still be around for a bit! Thanks to Leubner for his heavily insightful essay on Proust (pronounced with an "eww" not "ooo" as he has reminded me multiple times). And lastly thanks to Shaman Sexson who allows me to go where even I at times frighten myself. You have been like a father to me over the past few years, and it has been a raging and humbling experience.

I hope everyone has a wonderful break, that no one breaks anything, and that I see everyone at the crack of noon for finals.



Oh. and here's a poem for you.

It is call A. Renewed. Taste.
What is the evil that rests inside you?
The shame that shivers burning bones?

The flame you see kindled in another’s
Heart is a reflection of your own.

You only win
what you see.

Your own.
Your one.
Your won.

You only see the world
as you see fit,
And it is never fit.

Love is the fight for piece.
The fight for pieces jiggered
To fit a puzzle senses
Will never see fit.

Your fit
is the absence of love
in a perfect picture.

Love is neither
the picture
nor the fit.

Neither perfect
Nor the feeling.

Love is at a loss of
Everything
And
A recognition of all.

Love is not a word,
Nor a verb
But
The verb.

Love is the ghost of the past,
The shadow of the present,
And the air of eternity.

Love is the let go and the know,
For the first time,
The unspoken,
The unfelt
But always felt
Flutter of frozen wings.

Love is the heat of hell,
The sense we hid for an apple tree.

Love is the cold of sheol,
The sorrow we bought for an apple tree.

Love is society’s gossip
Without the gossip
-the truth in the lie-
The death in the life
We wish to die
Yet love to live.

You are the music
while the music lasts
-or-
You are not the music
While the music lasts:
Love is both and neither
As a child is his mother and father
And not his mother and father.

Love is the nonsense of sense
And never,
No never,
Will the laws of the world explain




The Princes will sit and
Applaud,
The paupers piss and moan,
And both will see the same thing;
But one will know,
And one will never know,
And I feel the shame is all my own.

I feel the evil in my bone.
Through you
I see the ripples’ shiver is
My one.
My won.
My own.

Death is the love of life,
And its white light,
My mind waits to overcome.

On this day,
And that day,
We shall overcome.

And a man you shall be,
And a man you won’t.

And both
And neither
You shall become.

Ends and Beginnings

"A tongue of Knots." Or. "Ends and Beginnings."

Every flow of thought
connects to another flow of thought
as the words fall to symbolism
& as the symbolism bear to words-
-nothing is forgotten-
even when, through a process that
thinks itself anew, deems
we need forget,
We place ourselves atop a mound
so as to overlook that which
we've forgotten.
But as the wind erodes the earth
and our self-same spirit sweeps the dust
we come to see our forgetfulness
is but the remembrance of the past
made manifest so as to remind-
to recapitulate, to recollect, to reconnect
that from which all conscience does flow.












We are the fallen, the flock from the flow,
Our choice IS our choice, deeming a dip
below is our only chance to rise hallowed:

That is it-

To Believe we are not here to forget to remember-
              -but to forget, to remember.


Thanx to Melinda Pierce for helping me discover its title.

The Cercopes

 Cercopes

 

Also spelled Kerkopes

 (Pronounced with a soft c and than a hard c while stressing the penultimate)

 Were two mischievous, apelike, pigmiesh, knaves who in greek mythology stole Heracles' Bow while he was sleeping. Heracles then snatched up these bothersome knaves and slung them over his back where he got a good view of his rear.

Encyclopedia Article

Offers alternative stories involving Zeus

Offers the mythos that the Cercopes were warned of the black bottomed one

Good Old WIKI!


Luckily for the Cercopes brothers their mother warned them of "melampygos" or the "black-bottomed one".

 

While they were hanging over Heracles they noticed that he had an awfully tan ass and couldn't help but begin giggling like little school children will do.

Herakles, the big stupid oaf that he is, asks what is so funny, and because life's been so rough on our brutish hero he can't help but laugh!

Yet somehow Hercules can't seem to smile because he's scared that his skirt will rip.

NO! THAT WAS MY LAST SKIRT!

More About the Cercopes

The Meddlesome Duo often go by an assortment of names

Passalus and Acmon

Basalas and Achemon

Olus and Eurybatus

and

Sillus and Triballus

They are kids of Theia and Oceanius

My Bellow

"68. IN South Africa, "tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship. The man who made the rain would naturally become the chief." -The Golden Bough, The Magic of Kings, Sir James Frazer, pg. 56

"88. There is no word in the Siamese language by which any creature of higher rank or greater dignity that a monarch can be described; and the missionaries, when they speak of God, are forced to use the native word for king." -The Golden Bough, The Magic of Kings, Sir James Frazer, pg 67

"190. If the high gods, who dwell remote from the fret and fever of this earthly life, are yet believed to die at last, it is not to be expected that a god who lodges in a frail tabernacle of flesh should escape the same fate. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shews symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay." -The Golden Bough, Death and Resurrection, Sir James Frazer, pg. 224-5

 "199. The explanation here given of the custom of Killing divine persons assumes, or at least is readily combined with, the idea that the soul of the slain divinity is transmitted to his successor."-The Golden Bough, Death and Resurrection, Sir James Frazer, pg 247

"There is probably no element of The Golden Bough that has become so familiar, or been so much exploited, as Frazer's theory of the Dying and Reviving God, or deposed and re-instated genius of fertility." -The Golden Bough, Dying and Reviving Gods, Additional Notes, pg 390.

The Egocentric man; that thing that believes he is the center from which things sprout, forgets that he is merely a portal through which all things may flow. 

IV.
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
-The Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot.

 Henderson and the Rain King in any mythological sense has been passed down to me by one "Rob Tatum." His name inscribed in red ink at the top of the promotional page on the inside of the novel at first gives nothing away. And as I'm going through with my green pen (I use colored pens religiously) I find that Mr. Tatum also has been using a green pen to underline key notes in the text; lines and notes I myself would have made. Thinking nothing of it I had set the book down (and pen) and gave myself up to dreams. Upon my next return to the novel I found Mr. Tatum was underlying in red. And how odd it seemed when peering up from the lines to my fist clenching the borders of the paperpack I myself also was holding a red pen.....

The Front artistry itself gives one the idea that Saul was supposed to write this novel with his last name "BELLOW" hanging over the top of a Lion and Henderson doing just that.

And I'd think that with the lines following that Bellow was stealing (as Thomas would have wanted) his idea of the desert directly from T.S. Eliot's Chorus's from the Rock:

                                                               "What have I done?"
"Shall I run back into the desert," I thought, "and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet. Let me throw away my gun and my helmet and the lighter and all this stuff and maybe I can get rid of my fierceness to and live out there on worms. On locusts. Until all the bad is burned out of me. Oh, the bad! Oh, the wrong, the wrong! What can I do about it? What can I do about all the damage? My character! God help me, I've made a mess of everything, and there's no getting away from the results. One look at me must tell the whole story."- Henderson and the Rain King, Saul Bellows, pg 49


"I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;
The men you are in these times deride
What has been done of good, you find explanations
To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.
Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics,
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother." -Choruses from "The Rock", T.S. Eliot

 All in all the likeness between the two and what one preaches and the other laments aren't uncanny. They are the same. Christ himself suffers the temptation of Satan in the Desert for fourty days. Desert, in the largest sense, represents Temptation (a word that owns banks for how much it says).

"432. Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what not from our own back to the back of another, the primitive fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another who will suffer them in his stead."-The Golden Bough, The Transference of Evil, Sir James Frazer, pg 509

An odd, albeit brilliant idea arise when we taken into account what Eliot, as well as Frazer are saying; The desert, this thematic symbol stands not for an animate thing, but an inanimate thing that flows between us. Henderson's "I Want" drives him into the "desert". And what else is Temptation if not wanting after that which you need not? Henderson himself cries "I haven't had enough desert yet. Let me throw away my gun and my helmet and the lighter and all this stuff and maybe I can get rid of my fierceness to and live out there on worms. On locusts. Until all the bad is burned out of me. Oh, the bad!"

Oh The Bad, The Desert.

In the last 45 minutes of Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen, the successor king (a Prince Mind you), after traveling through the desert of war to find Kurtz (The King he's sent to kill), he enters the Heart of Darkness to which we are first greeted by the Fool whom just as Shakespeare's character, sprouts out genius through a malnourished lens. Now, a mislead person may tell you the Fool's in Apocalypse Now or (more likely) Shakespeare are seeing pointless things: This is incorrect. Insensible.....partially. In the words of V. Sirin "to gain sense, first, we must go by a way of nonsense." But the fool is not the Prince, as the Journalist tangently expunges in his speech to the caged Martin Sheen; I believe Eliot says it best;

"....I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
Too swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool."-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot is referring to a deveiling (smoke in his poem) upon a gigantic level, something which Apocalypse Now merely treads its feet upon, but what I would like to point out is that Eliot himself has transcended to a mode of thought that likens him very much to the crazy Kurtz creature that we see in the film. Two things are of note; one being that the deveiling is not something sensible, and in not being sensible it presses him outside of the rational (though it is very much reasonable to those who've made such leaps of understanding) and due to the "unsound" methods he is placed outside of society in that he cannot communicate his methods, no matter how sound his results are; and two, his ascendance in knowledge places him where the primitives describe as a "king" or "god" and what the secular culture refers to either an eccentric, genius, savant, or lunatic (depending upon his achievements and social standing).

Inside the Christan Literary culture (do not mistake my for referring to any layperson you see wondering the streets or pews) is the idea that we achieve this level of ascendance not through ourselves but through God, or through the ordinance of the higher being. Eliot describes this idea of our subservience to a higher power that reaches to us first, and not in reverse with the lines

"Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us?"-Burnt Norton, IV, Four Quartets, T.S Eliot

Northrop Frye, A biblical Critic who believes he has unraveled the code to digesting the bible explains that Jacob's Ladder is argumentative proof of this: (remember that we do not dream, but dreams pass through us)

"And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it."

Frye speculates correctly that "The ladder of the dream was a ladder from heaven rather than to it: it was not a human construction but an image of the divine will to reach man." William Blake raps it up more precisely (and if you have the time to read his entire No Natural Religion I insist you do) in his description of the man who see the flow of the universe (Kurtz, Hamlet, Ecclessiastes) compared to him that sees only minutely:

He who see the infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only---Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. -No Natural Religion, William Blake

These arguments collectively assert that this ascendance, or lunacy, this escape out of the desert through the depth of the desert, is only possible through a higher power. There is, of course the other side of the argument: What the Bible refers to in The Tower of Babel in Genesis, and what Harold Bloom describes as the Anxiety of Poetic Influence; Poetic Influence being the higher power which the poet tries to ascend to and the anxiety being parallel to the rabbling of tongues.

 Bloom, a non-conventional Jew, and Frye himself a scholar critic as well as ordained pastor in Christianity both have deep roots on the bible; but as for the new testament, Bloom won't touch the thing, which is his downfall. Bloom's entire essay (the Anxiety of Influence, which is brilliant) hinges on the fact that the poet is leeching from prior poets (Eliot himself says "immature poets imitate, mature poets steal" and is referring to stealing conventions, not re-digesting) to create his own retelling, revision of what's been said. Bloom, who understands that a great poet is on its way decides to in fact disregard (if not slap in the face) Frye's own assertion which we will get to in a moment once I've let Bloom's words speak for him:

    "Poetic Influence--when it involves two strong, authentic poets,--always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist.

     My own Idiot Questioner, happily curled up in the labyrinth of my own being, protests: "What is the use of such a principle, whether the argument it informs be true or not?" Is it useful to be told that poets are not common readers, and particularly are not critics, in the true sense of critics, common readers raised to the highest power? And what is Poetic Influence anyway? Can the study of it really be anything more than the wearisome industry of source-hunting, of allusion-counting, an industry that will soon touch apocalypse anyway when it passes from scholars to computers? Is there not the shibboleth bequeathed us by Eliot, that the good poet steals, while the poor poet betrays an influence, borrows a voice? And are there not all the great Idealists of literary criticism, the deniers of poetic influence, ranging from Emerson with his maxims; "Insist on yourself: never imitate" and "Not possibly will the sou deign to repeat itself" to the recent transformation of Northrop Frye into the Arnold of our day, with his insistence that the Myth of Concern prevents poets from suffering the anxieties of obligation?"-The Anxiety of Influence, Clinamen or Poetic Misprision, Harold Bloom, pg 31, 2nd ed.

Bloom argues, what I've come to speculate, that the reason he has written such a principle, let alone an essay of criticism, is to pave the way for the next great poet. He does this while simultaneously asserting that Northrop Frye's Myth of Concerns (the culmination which we've partially discussed earlier and would be lunacy to explain in its fullest) is not the answer to the next great poet, the next Shakespeare; the poet from which all western anxiety of Poetic Influence extends according to Bloom. He even goes so far as to explain why Frye believes his Myth of Concerns prevents poets from suffering the anxieties of obligation saying

Against such idealism one cheerfully cites Lichtenberg's grand remark: "Yes, I too like to admire great men, but only those whose works I do not understand."-same, Harold Bloom, pg 31, 2nd ed.

This in itself points towards why critics believe Harold to be an arrogant bastard. He implies that Northrop Frye along with these other Idealist do not understand when in fact it is himself that understands not the common ground which Frye and Himself hold.

              I propose that the anxiety of influence with Bloom speaks of is the subservient spirit of these men striving for that which has not divinely manifested itself to them, and through no fault of their own they have tried to whittle from the past poets a mature production of their art which is merely a misprision. Bloom speaks of how "our current and future poets have only the consolation that no certain Titanic figure has risen since Milton and Wordsworth, not even Yeats or Stevens" leaving room for the anti-statement that in fact their will rise a new Titanic Poet. I propose that the Myth of Concerns that Frye speaks of does not "prevent poets form suffering the anxieties of obligation" but that it in fact it CAN prevent a poet, or poets from suffering the anxieties of obligation in that the doors of perception it opens when studied and loved leave not only poets but life itself naked to its eye. I propose that Frye's Myth of Concerns is the anxiety of Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence and that both were small stepping stones, attendant lords to a much greater picture. All this great poet has to do now is kill silent William.

Test # 2 Note

1. The Periedes are transformed into Magpies
2. What did Scylla steal from her dad? Purple hair
3. How did Daedelus trap the minotaur? The labyrinth
4. How did Theseus find his way out of the labyrinth? Twine from Ariadne.
5. What was on Europa’s Basket? The story of Io’s rape
6. How did Shakespeare out do Ovid in grotesqueness? Levenia’s hands were even cut off.
7.  Mythological animal from Flannery O’Connor’s Greenleaf? Bull

What is all mythology? Bull (for you shaman)

8. Where was Adonis struck by the boar? Groined
9. What mythic rule did Proserpina break? She ate a handful (seven in some tellings) of pomegranates
10. Why are there seasons? Proserpina ate while in the underworld
11. In Cadmus and Harmony what are the 3 stages?
1. Conviviality
2. Rape
3. Indifference
12. One of the few stories in Ovid with a happy ending? ( I said Io and Jove, but apparently becoming a god doesn’t cover up becoming a cow first:) Pygmalion
13.  “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
14.  According to Sexson, Ovid is telling us that the task of the artist is to alter nature.
15.  What is the difference between Arachne and Minerva’s tapestry? Minerva’s displayed the “state sponsored art” while Arachne weaved the gods as invasive criminals
16. How did Hercules die? Chunks of Flesh.
17. What did Venus turn Adonis’s blood into? Anemone Flower.
18.  According to Homer’s Odyssey, why do we suffer? So the poets have something to write about.
19. Ekphrasis- Velazquez and the Titian paintings (art within the art)
20. Corin’s parents- tom and Christine…or is it Timothy and Jody…..
21. What’s Hercules’ wife’s name? Dianera (diarrhea…)
22.  What is the Mythological Ideology of the Cornucopia? Hercules rips Achelous horn off.
23. Centaur who abducts Hercules wife? Nessus
24.  What does sleep represent to Eliade? Imprisonment and amnesia
25.  What was the fate of Icarus? Drowns (He ended up in a painting)

Noteworthy

Read Eliade Chapter 9 Again

View Dusty, Charismatic Kari, Alexa’s, and Sarah’s blog

Make sure you have your I minute myth ready by the 16^th

Review over old test material

Brush up on your Frazer

Watch Apocalypse Now

On hearing Dusty mention the myth of the eternal return

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away.""~ Abraham Lincoln

We ask the same questions

And receive the same answers;

The spirit always the same

The wording always different

The same picture perceived

But as a puzzle fills

     In only as the riffs in the sea allow

So does our perception drift upon

     The waves of table cloth and canvas

           Similar are we to children playing Atlas,

Holding the world as fingers feel fit,

  If only to kneel and see our

       Sky dissolve into an azure pane

           Where cloth and canvas are too much the same.

      Thus the piece does not fit.

          We draw back idol fingers; we quit.

      The water and the sky are too much the

           Same;

      Our small minds only see prettily

           Till the horrific rips wide sleepy eyes;

       What was one becomes two.

       (Oh if only then we knew)

II.

We return on a snowy night in April

  To a closet of Blankets and Boardgames

    And we set next to the windowpane

       That very puzzle that always left a complaint.

    The seasons pass, the white hairs grow

    The cabinets become clogged and

    A wintered wife’s complaint drags into a row

                 A crisis we all know

                 Though seldom see.

    “ This needs a closet cleaning!

       This needs a reawakening!”

        Her spirit translates

        What her words relate.

And as the pushbrooms and gloves

Come upon the hands, the hearts of these two loaves,

And as the mothballs roll down the hall

As they fall from an upturned broomsweep

Of cobwebs (nature’s crow’s feet)

And as the women who is bent bends to

A Sky beneath the cabinet filled for tea,

She picks up the Blue puzzle piece

And sees an abysmal repeat of whence

She was young; straight; when all seemed

                                                 At peace.

“Stop that racket”

And the Husband stopped

His ‘crack clack cracking’

And turned to see eyes aglow

That he scarcely remembered;

        As if he’d never known.

“Where is the puzzle that fits this piece?”

“Oh throw it away Suzanna! We don’t need

  Another game at the age in the least!”

“But I do need the absolution!

  I need the freedom,

  I need to know how these

  Edges meet in a crease!”

(“For my own skin is a parchment

   Fading fast, a simple portal

   That holds nothing immortal

   I’m a dead bag of bones

   That is stuck in her old house.

   Oh! How this home feels so alone!")

To her stature the old man cowers.

She has Spent her Spine to that of a Serpent,

And a simile would seem him to her prey,

He himself knelt upon knobbly knees;

   A prey in prayer,

   Oh man in this dream;

Especially this old horse in his

                              Nightmare.

To awake the new in the Old

     Is the only thing we know,

           The only thing we knew.

And what we see as children

Shall our mind see again

When the sky and sea fall apart

If only to de-scene-agrate.

……..

When a picture become whole

A hole rips wide and our eyes

See again, as before the dim

                      -But with the dim-

      

        (Where the desolation and

                     condensation

                  Are two but one.)

Nevertheless this is a wordy

                              Regression,

And though the spirit,

Our spirit learns the lesson,

Our eyes must return to the

       Present for its present.

It's for the birds

I've been watching this over and over and over again. Be warned that it is extremely crude and explicit but considering we are reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and people are being ripped limb for limb you can all handle it.
The name of the movie is reservoir dogs- strangely comparable to pool dogs-Acteaon's Dogs......
But what I would like you to point out for anyone that has seen the movie is that the entire movie happens twice; once in this opener, and again throughout the movie. That is, the same spirit behind what happens, happens in both. everything connects, and I'm not quite sure how to point it out yet, but the reason I noticed this is because of the line by Steve Buscemi where he calls tipping pregnant women is "For the Birds". I immediately thought of the constant transformation of people into birds because they spread trivial gossip that changes things even when it doesn't have any effect-merely a change of perspective.....I'm rambling on....more later.

Class Notes 10/21/10

Sexson Wisdom: All Classical Mythology may be found in Ovid Somewhere.

Our Minute Story is Due Nov. 16th.

Blogs to Read- Curtis, Jase, John, Melinda, and Sarah's

TERM PAPERS: Your term paper should be related to the importance of this class in Henderson and the Rain King.

THE THREE STAGE THEOS TAKES US THROUGH

Conviviality
Rape- in the philological sense
Indifference.

Sexson did a reading from Flannery O'Connor's GreenLeaf.  (I'm sure Rio will be available to make photocopies of this story for anyone :)

When we were talking about Procne in Greek Mythology we could not find a definition of what birds everyone turned into in Ovid's telling. Sexson routed through the depths of his library and found the metamophoses that will be on our tests.

Tereus translates into a Hoopoe
Philomela transforms into a Nightingale
Procne metamorphs into a Swallow


Remember Scylla- The look of Purple Hair


Myths is Bulls (Sexson widsom)

Bull is a Crete story

Aside; Hermes- In Greece all the Phallus' (Hermes had an ever hard on) were Knocked off the Hermes at crossroads during the Christian movement.

FOR  YOUR OWN ENJOYMENT- Research Priapus

Greek word for home- Nostos- Nostalgic

Buy Eugene O'niel's Desire Under the Elms

Shakespeare's Richard III is translation (you know, of sorts) of Daedulus and Icarus (SU-ON)

Read Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man in your spare (do we still have this?) time. (By James Joyce)

Daedulus and Icarus

Daedulus says "Though he owns all, he does not own the air."

"The artists needs to alter nature so that it can be seen as it really is"- Sexson Wisdom 101, this is inside of the story.

"The artist trains the world to see things."- Sexson Wisdom 201.

The Next few weeks we will be focusing on the story of Baucis and Philemon. You should begin reading Henderson and the Rain King and it would be wise to begin thinking of a paper topic now instead of later.

On Bad Days

I don't know if I believe in bad days anymore; just days that build character. A day can't be bad. It's not as if the day began to pout, and if rain is mother earth's tears, and not Zeus' blessing, I'm guessing she's crying because she's happy like any old mother who can't help but be overwhelmed by beauty or feeling. So what is a bad day? You. You and that unbridled pandorum of feelings that can't help but sway you this way or that. Ha. No wonder Xenophanes explained the Gods as abstractions of the human mind. The Gods all behave as meddlesome children who cannot control their emotions and disregard any collateral damage from their actions. So how often do we suffer the Gods?

It would seem to me that within each story within Ovid's rest a moral that serves to better help us live our lives to the fullest. But as easy as it is to pinpoint and figure out those stories which we've lived, how do we make the maneuver to understanding and most importantly remembering the stories that have yet to play out in our own lives?

A famous poet once said "Life wouldn't be so beautiful if it wasn't for our ability to forget if only to remember again." And while I don't exactly agree with him, he makes a strong point. We are a forgetful people. We often suffer through the same indulgences time and time again, because we never learn, or we forget, and are forced once again to drown in the chthonic waters until the day comes where we once again recollect, and remember the mor(t)ality of the stories passed down to us.

The Muddle of the Middle- class notes

"This is what Separates the boys form the men"

....It started out bad & got worse."

Aside: Homeric Hymns

Bad Joke 1: We should name the planet/moon Pluto, Persephone.....It seems more fitting.

Sexson Joke 1(?)- Persephone of the nice ankles....

-Marriage is the act of Abduction.

Demeter-Da Meter- Da Matter- Mother

Note! If your in a Chthonic situation don't touch the food.

#Assignment! Between now & next Tuesday find three clues of myth in your reality.

Aside: Buy the Gods Made Flesh

Look at Valezquez- Minerva & Arachne- spinners

Sexsonian Wisdom: The telling of stories transforms us morally.

#Assignment! Find the leg of Minerva in the world.

Aside- Fiction of the Archives- Natalie Zema Davis

Aside- Manuscript Found in Saragossa- Jan Potocki

Film Adaptation- The Saragossa Manuscript... Garcia showed this film for six years in the movie theater he owned.

Definition of a Satyr: Someone with Strong Sexual Desires.....So a man? (Bad Joke 2)

Trope- To Turn a thought, Skilled morphed into Greek is polytropos.

Demeter And Persephone Notes

The New Golden Bough/Dying & Reviving God, 283.

I. Demeter & Persephone

 A. Reflects the decay & revival of vegetation

  1. Identical myths

     a. Syrian- Aphrodite & Adonis

     b. Phrygian- Cybele & Attis

     c. Egyptian- Isis & Osiris

  2. Story

     a. goddess mourns the loss of a loved one

     b. the lost personifies the vegetation

     c. more especially the corn

     d. the lost one dies in winter to revive in the spring.

  3. The Lost One

     a. Greek fancy embodies it as the tender & pure form of a dead daughter bewailed by her sorrowing mother

     b. Oriental imagination figured the loved & lost one as a dead lover or as a dead husband lamented by his leman or his wife.

II. The Hymn to Demeter

 A. Historical facts

  1. Oldest literary document to narrate the myth

  2. Homeric

  3. Critics Assign to 7th Century

 B. Object of Poem

  1. Explain the origin of the Eleusain mysteries

  2. Complete silence of the poet as to Athens & the Athenians

  3. In after ages "they" took a conspicuous part in the festival

  4. Probable the hymn was composed in the far off time when Eleusis was still a pretty independent state.

 C. Hymn reveals to us the conception which the writer entertained of the character & functions of the two goddesses.

  1. Their natural shapes stand out sharply enough under the thin veil of poetical imagery.

  2. Youthful Persephone Plucking Flowers

   a. Roses & Lilies

   b. Crocuses & Violets

   c. Hyacinths & narcissuses

   d. In a Lush Meadow

  3. Pluto, Lord of The Dead

   a. Earth gapes; Issues from the abyss

   b. carried her off on his golden car.

   c. She is to be his bride in the gloomy underworld

  4. Demeter- Sorrowing Mother

   a. Yellow tresses veiled in a dark mourning mantle.

   b. Sought Persephone over land & sea

   c. Learns from Phoebus her daughters fate.

   d. Withdrew in high dungeon from the gods

   e. Took up her abode at Eleusis

   f. She then presents herself to the king's daughter

   g. Guised as an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an Olive tree beside Maiden's well.

   h. The Damsels come to draw water for their father's house.

   i. goddess suffers not the Seed to grow

   j. Vowed never to set foot on Olympus, nor

   k. let the corn sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her.

   l. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis lay bare.

   m. Zeus in alarm commands Pluto to disgorge his wife.

   n. Pluto smiles & obeys, but not before giving her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, so that she is forced to return

   o.Zeus judges that 2/3 with her mom, 1/3 with husband (sometimes halvzies)

  D. The Return

   1. Daughter returns to sunshine

   2. Gladly her mother receives her

   3. Demeter blankets the Earth in Corn

   4. Demeter then presents this sight to:

     a. Prince of Eleusis

     b. Triptolemus

     c. Eumolpus

     d. Diocles

     e. The King Celeus

   5. Demeter then reveals her sacred rites and mysteries

  E. The End.- Bard's Speech

   1. "Blessed is the mortal man who has seen these things, but he who has had no share of them in life will never be happy in death when he has descended into the darkness of the grave."

   2. "Ends the hymn with a pious prayer to Demeter & Persephone that they would be pleased to grant him a livelihood in return for his song.

Syrinx

The Reed.
The Pipe.
The blinded eyes.
The Sleepfull eyes,
Our Peacock's Pride.

The Dot Dot Dot
of a swollen story
slept through by Argos
Writer, and Reader alike.

Do You, Ovid,
Will You, Ovid,
Visit answers to my Daimon's day,
To my very own night?

Visit mine and his Eclipse,
if you wish,
By hoofed and heavy mare,
Come stay your visit.

By Day or By Night.
If Epiphany seems fancy stay the day,
and if a ladder come the latter;

This dot dot dot
Translate no fates,
Thus insists a visit,
Come tell me what is it!

The Reed.
The Pipe.
The Blinded Mind,
The Sleepfull Mind,

That Muse and Mercury's deceitful design.
Shall my want be submerged by their sound?
Is it worth it to wake if I must drown?

Quiz # 1 Questions

Quizzing Material
Ch. 1,2,3,7 in Eliade
Sexson's Pdf Article
Ovid's 1-4
Larry Avis Brown
Know The Major Gods Names in Translation from Greek to Roman.

Blogs To Read
Kari Bowles
Mari Shawn
Mayan Killer

Our Questions
1.Pan,Syrinx- Who put Argos to Sleep
2. July 15, 1991
    Franklin Wisconsin
    St. Louis Hospital
3. Mythos and Logos- Truth Story
4. In Illo Tempore- In the great time, Once upon a time.
5. Sparagmos- dismemberment
6. Anamnesis- Unforgetting everything, or Platonic recollection
7. Eliades 5 types of Creation stories
    a. Earth-diver
    b. Creation ex-nihilo
    c. Emergence
    d. Dismemberment
    e. Splitting or Ordering
8. Xenophanes- insisted that the gods were projections of the human mind.
9. metempsychosis-transmigration of souls
10. Europa (that's all I seemed to write....)
11. Who brought the age of Silver about? Jove overthrowing Saturn.
12. Picture Question over our creation stories!
13. 4 Creation Stories
     a. Women Creates
     b.The woman and snake create
     c. World created from dismemberment of Female Goddess
     d. Male creates from speech
14. en-theos- enthusiasm- (possessed by the Gods)
15. Daimon- "guardian angel"- really the other abstract of yourself
16. "Semele"- Sees Jove's true self. Her face goes boom!
17. Cadmus' 4 daughters
     a. Semele
     b. Atonome
     c. Agave
     d. Ino
18. Seth communicated whose Name? Io (Imagine if I0 was an ass and her name was ea. Things would've been a lot easier)
19. Coronis- "Crow" or "Raven"- used to be a white crow- Apollo
20. Kronus- Uranus-Saturn-Zeus
21. Triple Goddess- The Mother, The Maiden, The "Crone"-white goddess
22. Bear-Callisto transforms
23. Actaeon gazes on what he is not ready to see and becomes an animal.........stag.
24. "Don't Look" stories.
25. How did Thebes come about? Planting of Snakes Teeth
26. Pentheus- Refuses to worship Bacchus. - Ino Sparagmos's his ass.

Good Luck!

Pythian Dream

154. Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered a new house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoors of Minahassa in Celebes the priest performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through a list of the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the whole night through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of the master of the house, says, "Here you have your soul; go (soul) to-morrow away again." He then does the same, saying the same words, to the housewife and all the other members of the family.

While we were supposed to be writing a sentence for the tales in Ovid's which we most enjoy I became stuck on the story of the python, specifically this passage:

"To keep the memory of his great feat
alive, the god established sacred games;
and after the defeated serpent's name,
they were called Pythian. Here all young men
who proved to be the best at boxing or
at running or at chariot racing wore
a wreath of oak leaves as their crown of honor."- Ovid's

I couldn't quite figure out why, why I was suddenly obsessed with this passage. Why did it pop out to me? So I stared at it. I read it multiple times. I decided that the reason it was showing worth was due to how it takes something magnificently horrible and turns it into something joyously memorable.

When I went to bed, as I rolled into the womb of the sheets, tucking my head between pillow and sheets to hide from the rotation of the fan, I told myself I was going to dream tonight.

Remember what I said earlier about the worth of Python? Boy was I wrong.

At least to myself.

---

I awoke in white athletic shorts rimmed upon the bottoms in dark navy blue. A similar Jersey. A similar height to the one I have now, A similar build to the one I have now. Not the one I had in highschool when I wasn't playing basketball. The Crowd was cheering! people packed and up upon there feet in the tiny gymnasium where I used to sit through basketball games, athletic class, and those blessed stations of the cross.

That tiny room is certainly a cabinet overflowing with remembrance ready to be plucked and picked dry of detail but while I was awake in this dream I was thinking about non of these things. I was winning at basketball. Something I've never done.

Everything blurs and I come again into consciousness talking to a girl who's positively glowing, radiant with beauty. We're still at the gymnasium only it's been turned into a giant party. The girl and I are talking by the make shift bar in the corner. I keep flirting with her and she goes from pouring a drink to turning with a flip of her hair to smile at me. Back to pouring her drink. To smiling at me. She never takes a drink and for this I'm quite happy. I don't know if me talking to her is just the distraction she needs, or if it has nothing to do with her recent gift. Perhaps the bottomless drink symbolizes something that will never be filled.

Either I blacked out in my dream or I have forgotten the rest up to the point where I'm walking into the school to pick up somethings with my brother only to find out they are running practice without me. I'd forgotten about the practice involved in playing the game. I was running around aimlessly trying to do drills while all my giant teammates tried to help me understand what the coach was trying to do. And then drowned. Until Class today.

A Bozeman Myth

"That's not the true story, you know."

A raspy voice of criticism bound in arrogant delight.

It's coming from over there, somewhere behind the gentleman glossed with anxiety and arousal.

"The police never get it right you know."

Do you know?

"Well, I'm not supposed to say this. It's supposed to be a secret. Not many people even know about this."

She says. She says again. She adds dramatic affect. She's Probably curling little Suzie Cue's into her blonde hair. Smacking lips. Rolling eyes.

"But it was all set up by this girl with an Oxy addiction. You know Oxy-cottin. Well he has a prescription or something from when he was in the army. He hurt himself. But he never takes the pills."

She stressed Cotton, not sure yet very definite. Holes begin to Gape in her story. But is it her, or is it what she doesn't know? Or is it what we already know?

"Well this girl set it all up so they would get his pills for her. It didn't even happen on campus."

"Wait, didn't they ring the rape station?"

spouts another voice, female. Elongated. Pruned to carry every syllable.

"That's what they say, but I know. It didn't happen behind the gym. Who are you going to trust, some stupid police reports or me?"

-----------------------------------------------

We're supposed to be listening in on our peers turnings Kings into Gods are we not? Or is it the truth?

Ovid's Book I.....Chapter ?

218. In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not. Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Wetern Asia. Whatever its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, from place to place. Thus at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is. of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry.

ASIDE: In my spare time I've been reading the late Stegg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and can't help but notice how far society has come from this. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as its Sequel all have a central theme based upon the raping of women. The book has served quite well as a basis for current thoughts of women's rights in comparison with Mythologies as well as Bible as Literature. So, if you're interested in the metamorphosis of women's rights throughout time and culture, I'd invite you to read a truly thrilling set of present day novels to gain a deeper perspective. (warning: Contains far more brutal language and pictorial texture than Ovid's or the Bible)

Prologue- This most definitely describes Ovid in a moment; From "bodies becoming other bodies" to "Changes" to "Seamless" to "Weave", everything describes the interchanging circle of life.

The Creation- Poetic as a Johave writer, descriptive as the Priest, and much more entertaining than a simple boom and particles finding meaning. Favorite line: "The god placed above these winds the ether, without weight, a fluid free of Earth's impurity."

The Giants- odd, boring passage added to the fact that I've found no other textual evidence of this Myth in any other sacred texts leads me to believe that the Giants must have been Babelers, incapable of speech let alone writing. Favorite line: "heaped mountain peak on mountain mass, star-high"

The Flood- As again in this case the beginning always seems to be cleansed by water, and apocalypse's always has fire and brimstone; a complete destruction of the heavens and the earth compared to just the earth. Favorite line: "He brought to mind that, in the book of fates, this was inscribed: a time would come when sea and land would burn, a conflagration that would overturn the place of the sky-in fact destroy the stunning fabric of the universe.

Deucalion and Pyrrha- Just as we now throw salt over our shoulder to keep away bad luck, The Gods threw us.

Python- Story of how we make games out of the things that are horrible in order to make them less frightening. "London bridge is falling down" "Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down!"

Sarah Knox and The Crazies

586. In certain western civilizations, among the Xesson people, it is considered a sin for a woman to speak openly against a man in public. Whether it be blasphemous, malevolent, or in chide matters not; all the man must do is enter a holy place of worship and ask of the spirits that which he wishes to fall upon her and it shall be done. That is, in the dreamworld.

hmmmm......now I'm not saying anything.....but this seems oddly suspicious.....

A Verse from The Golden Bough

Last night, as I was reading, I came across this passage in The Golden Bough under Death and Resurrection and couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the potency of the verse. And without further ado this is the lead up passage as well as the clever little verse.

In some parts of Bavaria the boys who play the parts of Winter and Summer act their little drama in every house that they visit, and engage in a war of words before they come to blows, each of them vaunting the pleasures and benefits of the season he represents and disparaging those of the other. The dialogue is in verse. A few couplets may serve as specimens:-

Summer

"Green, green are meadows wherever I pass

And the mowers are busy among the grass."

Winter

"White, white are the meadows wherever I go,

And the sledges glide hissing across the snow."

Summer

"I'll climb up the tree where the red cherries glow,

And Winter can stand by himself down below."

Winter

"With you I will climb the cherry-tree tall,

Its branches will kindle the fire in the hall."

Summer

"O Winter, you are most uncivil

to send old women to the devil."

Winter

"By that I make them warm and mellow,

So let them bawl and let them bellow."

Summer

"I am the Summer in white array,

I'm chasing the Winter far, far away."

Winter

"I am the Winter in mantle of furs,

I'm chasing the Summer o'er bushes and burs."

Summer

"Just say a word more, and I'll have you bann'd

At once and for ever from Summer Land."

Winter

"O Summer, for all your bluster and brag,

You'd not dare to carry a hen in a bag."

Summer

"O Winter, your chatter no more can I stay,

I'll kick and I'll cuff you without delay."

Here ensues a scuffle between the two little boys, in which Summer gets the best of it, and turns Winter out of the house. But soon the beaten champion of Winter peeps in at the door and says with a humbled and crestfallen air:-

"O Summer, dear Summer, I'm under your bran,

For you are the master and I am the man."

To which Summer replies:-

" 'Tis a capital notion, an excellent plan,

   If I am the master and you are the man.

   So come, my dear Winter, and give me your hand,

   We'll travel together to Summer Land."

Present...er Day Myth.

"As the Garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous woman."

                                                                    -The Golden Bough; Taboo and Perils of the Soul 166.

Now I'm not quite sure which desk to use anymore. Nor whether or not this keyboard has in fact been infested. Or if the used books I've been receiving in the male have come underneath such perilous conditions! And, now to think of it, Barnes and Noble has a majority employment base of young and middle aged woman! I see death at every fingertip!

I must be a sacred chief or menstruating myself, and since I have neither the genitalia nor the genealogy I suppose it must be a hoax. Tackle this one MythBusters!

Now, on a more serious note.

More Present Day Myths

"Is not this whole world an illusion? And yet it fools everybody."  - Angela Carter

In our schools Dracula class yesterday we were discussing Orientallism, or The Orient, and how the word, was not a physical place, but a imaginative-magical mental place that had been instilled into the minds of Europeans through Literature. It was not the Land that brought the people or captivated the audiences, increasing the want and need to travel and enjoy; no, it was the writing. The stories. The not quite true, but most truthful, stories of adventure and excitement and other!

And it dawned on me.

This is myth. This is mythology at its best. This is storytellers captivating an audience, making them believe the unbelievable.

Now here is my question; are they believing the factual evidence of the story, or is it the spirit, the imagination, the breathing organism that the author has captured and condensed into literature that they truly believe in? Does the fable of a story ruin the truth inside? Or does it create a stronger truth?

Minute Myths For Thursday! & Class Notes

Everyone be sure to create a minute myth out of a creation story you've discovered amongst the cobwebs!

Make sure to rehearse or else face the hook!

Also.....

Check out Mercia Eliade's

5 Basic Types of Creation Myths

 Click For more about the Kaaba Stone.

Everyone be sure to read John Nay's Blogpost as well.

Refresh yourself on The hero's Myth by reading some humpty dumpty.

Humplty dumpty is the story of how we start out as a whole (creation) and then we fall (split) and our (failed) attempt to piece it back together (end). (For a refreshment of Humpty Dumpty)

SUBJECT TO WRITE ABOUT: The Presence of Myth in the present day.

PEOPLE WHO MISSED: we received groups today. Check with Shaman Sexson

Naked

"I'm naked."

hmm..

"I'm naked."

what?

"I am naked."

And she obviously isn't.

She's wearing black. All black. Except her belt buckle. That's silver.

 "James I'm naked."

 And she's looking down at me. and I up at her from aside, kneeling for some strange reason. Who knows where my subconscious was before it began lying to me.

"No, you don't understand I'm naked."

And she's obviously wearing a polyester v-neck. cut low to show the ripe breasts of her age. That trick of her trade. Her lips are done up. Red but not scarlet. Not magenta. but not pink. Red with the crimson of glosped on gloss. The rosy cheeks that you should really only see in seventy's reenactments of the rocking 20's that weren't ever as real as when they were done up in a film and a script.

And this is all scripted I'm sure. He's trying to tell me something. Myself. Arguing through this dolled up dress of a woman shouting at me through waving arms that she truly is naked and I wake up.

Class Notes Day # 4 9/9/10

I.
Origins -> Muddles -> Apocalypse

II.
Retitle YOUR BLOG SITE W/YOUR NAME
1. Go To Your Dashboard
2. Go To Settings underneath your blog
3. Re title the blog.
4. anymore instructions needed see me in class. I will walk you to the library and show you;)

III.
"Living a myth, one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events"

IV.
What is a dream if it isn't a personalized myth?

V.
And what is a myth if but an unpersonalized dream?

VI.
A Wonder full little Irony.

VII.
Is Myth a lie or the Truth?
Or....
what do you believe is truth? To find one is to know the other better.

VIII.
A Man is nothing without his Illusions!

IV.
Myth is Imitation!

" I just want to be Meeee!"

X.
Let's Pee differently

XI.
Myths are III Things
i. Sacred
ii. Exemplary
iii. Significant

XII.
A Year Living Biblically

XIII.
History is Bunk.
HIS STORY IS A LIE

XIV.
CEREMONIES

CERES MONIES

MONEY FOR CERES

XV.
3 people out of 45 know women give birth in pain.

XVI.

 Giving up childish things is to give up our illusions, not the text itself, but the illusions or tools/materials of the text that entrap and capture the spirit-that is to say, those "things" which affect our soul- and to truly reveal to ourselves the unspoken things, the origin of that which the human intellect wishes to identify and know within itself.

XVII.
i. Mystical
ii.Cosmological
ii.Sociological
iv. Psychological