last night I attended the birthday party for The King James Bible, and The Tempest. First of all, happy birthday! to two wonderful pieces of literature. Secondly I would like to commend the performance of our own educator Dr. Sexson, as well as all of the other performer, who did a fantastic job of making the whole piece as entertaining as it was informative. Man, those people can all sing like champions. The scripting for the event was very well done, and though I'm not sure who exactly pieced that together, that person, or persons, deserves a bit of recognition, because I was both laughing, and rubbing my chin in deep thought pretty much the whole time. The cake (which I'm sure is what most people reading this are curious about) was also quite good. Even though my first piece of the bible was white cake with vanilla frosting, it was exceptionally moist, and really melted in my mouth. My second piece of cake was of the tempest, and luckily there was some chocolate to this one. It was equal in all ways to the bible cake, splendid. There was also some cider that was great, so thanks to whomever it was that brought all of those delicious treats! If you missed the event, I must say, you truly did miss out on something. Good food, good people, and good entertainment; all things made for a most enjoyable evening.

My Final Paper

“Raising” questions about mythology

            Parents: they bring people and gods alike into the world, and unfortunately for many mythological characters, they occasionally try to take them out of it as well. A life threatening conflict between parent and child certainly serves to make a tale very dramatic, but for all of its excitement, and entertainment value, it often seems to end (or rather, never seems to end) in a perpetuation of the violence that sparked the conflict.

            The cyclical nature of the universe is not something mysterious, or unseen, but there does seem to be a strange force protecting this fragile loop. This force is the force of habit. It is comfort; the comfort of turning what has been into what will be again, that stays man from breaking the mold. It is knowing, reciting, and then living our myth that makes these tragic stories truly “the precedent behind every action.” (Calasso 383) It persists in the same way it began; with a father or mother who only wants power; with a child who will do anything to take their power away; and with an evolution, of a child who becomes a parent. The whole pattern of events, from Uranus down to modern times, has remained essentially the same.

            We will begin in ilo tempore, or simply, “in the beginning,” with the story of Kronos and his father Uranus. Uranus, the Sky, was the father of many powerful beings in Greek mythology. Among them were the Hundred Handed Ones, who each possessed 100 brutishly muscular arms, and 50 heads; The Cyclopes, who were alike the Gods in every way, save for their single eye; Echidna, the mother of most of Greece’s monsters; and finally, and surely most importantly, The Titans. There were many Titans, and all of them possessed tremendous strength, so Uranus, wanting with all his being to remain the supreme power, began to hide them all away inside the Earth’s great caverns. Earth, Gaia, the mother of all Sky’s children, devised a plan to exact a cruel, but fitting punishment on Sky: “Without delay she created the element of grey adamant, and made a great reaping-hook, and showed it to her children.

            “’Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say?” (Hesiod’s Theogony) This line portends millennium after millennium of the primitive philosophy of fighting fire with fire, as they say. This question has opened the door, not just to exacting a violent punishment for a violent crime, but for perpetuation of any crime. Ever hear the expression “An eye for an eye?” This question is the grey adamant, created by Gaia, it is the metal, the virtue, from which is shaped the follow up statement; the ever dreadful “reaping-hook.” “We could get redress for your father’s cruelty,” Said great Gaia, “After all, he was the one who started using violence!” There should be no doubt as to who is to blame for the crime of child abuse, but who is responsible for its continuation? It is just as much Gaia as Uranus, but then, is Kronos not also to blame? When all of Gaia’s other children cower at the thought of fighting with their father, Kronos alone stands up to be the “liberator” of his siblings, and so in liberating himself, he has locked mankind in a cycle of familial violence. “'Mother, I am willing to undertake and carry through your plan. I have no respect for our infamous father, since he was the one who started using violence.'” And Kronos did as he promised.

            This is a strange tale, certainly, but standing alone, it does not explain why child abuse tends to be a pattern in families, even in modern days. It fails to demonstrate the psychology of it as is, but when paired with the story of Kronos and Zeus, everything becomes clearer.

            Kronos, after claiming his father’s place as the most powerful of the deities, began to have children of his own by the Titaness Rhea. It was only once he had put himself in his father’s shoes that he saw clearly the reasons for Uranus’ wicked actions. Only once he was seated upon the throne at Olympus, did he realize how precarious that perch was. But Rhea was not the Earth. There was no way to hide the children he was fathering inside of her, so instead he hid them inside himself. He ate them. The abused son became the abusive father, not necessarily because it seemed like the best idea, but because it was the only behavior he knew, and he was not the ingenious type. One by one, he swallowed his children, in order to avoid being overcome by them. But Rhea had to be cleverer than Gaia. Her children weren’t around long enough to castrate their father with a sickle, so she had to hide one away until it was strong enough to battle for the throne. This lucky child was Zeus. Rhea stashed her baby away in a cave, (the precedent behind stashing wondrous treasures in caves perhaps?) and there, Zeus grew. Meanwhile, Rhea presented Kronos with a baby shaped rock, wrapped in cloth, which he swallowed whole, just like he had with all of his children, and there the rock rested, in the pit of his stomach, until the day the real Zeus would come, and strike his evil father down.

            So it was written, so is hath been. Zeus grew strong within the cave, and one day he emerged, a most comely, and powerful god. The full story of the battle of Zeus and Kronos is much too long to tell, but in the abridged version, Rhea beguiles her husband into accepting Zeus as an Olympian, to be his cupbearer. Zeus then gives Kronos a special drink, which causes him to vomit up all of the children he had previously swallowed whole, and they joined Zeus in a tremendous battle against the Titans, which ended with the Olympian God’s claiming their thrones, and a new order being established. (Hunt) But what was it that made this new order so different from the old? What was it about Zeus that allowed him to break the pattern of damaged children becoming bad fathers? When examined closely, there are a couple details that stand out as being different. In the Story of Kronos and Uranus, it is not only the father, but also the mother who is violent, even though they are oppositely so. Therefore, Kronos is given only negative examples of how to parent. In the myth of Zeus and Kronos, Rhea simply hides Zeus away to be raised by nymphs, which was apparently the ancient version of foster parenting. Then one nymph, Metis (Wisdom), prepares a special drink for Zeus to give to his father, which makes him vomit up all of his swallowed children. It is then Zeus who decides that a battle must be fought, and it is not only Zeus and Kronos, but all of the Olympians and Titans who fight. And so there is no singular point of guilt for violent action, but rather the behavior, and therefore the blame, is dispersed. This war de-emphasized the importance of a father/son conflict, and created instead, a conflict based on the principal of freedom. It is the notion of freedom, and the aid of Wisdom that makes Zeus the exception, allowing him to temporarily break the loop. But as long as there is myth, stories trickle down, and precipitate a reenactment of their contents. So it hath been, so it shall be.

            Tantalus was a very rich king and a very powerful king indeed. Some even believed he was Zeus’ own son. So despite the fact that he was an annoyance to everyone who knew him, Zeus continued to invite him to feast with the gods on Olympus. One day, Tantalus opened up his own humble palace to the gods, and decided to serve them a very rare meal indeed; his own son, Pelops. (Calasso 177) In this story we have several pieces of the myth of Zeus and Kronos. We have a powerful king, eating his son to stay in power. Make no mistake, just because Pelops wasn’t about to kill Tantalus and steal his kingdom does not mean that this wasn’t about power. Tantalus wanted to stay in favor with the gods, which is a greater power than any mortal can create for himself, so he tried to do so by feeding his own son to Zeus, the god who does not eat children. Again, Zeus refused to eat the son. Instead Zeus and the other gods pieced Pelops back together, and where Demeter had accidentally eaten a piece of his shoulder while lamenting the loss of her own daughter, there was a new shoulder blade, made of sparkling ivory. The gods marveled at how beautiful this boy was, and again it was Rhea who preserved the son, and the order of good nature, by breathing life into the reassembled Pelops. Pelops was whisked away to be a cupbearer on Olympus, just as Zeus had been before him, but he was the cupbearer of Zeus’ brother, Poseidon; and their relationship was one of love, not of calculating malice. So again, we see here a cycle. Surely the cycle has been transformed, but it is nonetheless, still a cycle that has not been broken, only tweaked.

            The story of Pelops’ family does not end there, but rather epitomizes the cyclical nature of bad parenting in the mythological world. The family continues to kill within itself, and yet still refuses to die, all the way down to Orestes. But what of Orestes? What is special about him? To fully understand, we must follow Pelops’ lineage a few more generations. First, Pelops begot many sons, two of whom play major roles in the cycle. These two sons were Thyestes, and Atreus, whose mother had a very familiar request of them. She told them that their father had not been fair, that he favored their bastard brother over them, and that they should use violence to solve their problems. So again we see the mother ask the question, “Children of mine and of an evil father, I wonder whether you would like to do as I say…?” The new Gaia, Hippodameia, suggested that they kill their half brother, Chrysippus, so that one of her own sons may claim the power. Again, perhaps the details have changed, but in the precipitating events, it is the request of the mother using violence that causes the acts to persist in the next generation. After the deed was done, it was unclear who would get to rule over Pelops’ lands once the king had died, so the two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, began to feud. To quote Brandon Boyd, “success is a devilish opiate…” Once Atreus had already established his success; once he already had the upper hand in his conflict with Thyestes, he invites Thyestes to a banquet, where one can guess, based on the story of Tantalus and Pelops, what is to be served. Thyestes’ own children were bubbling away in the pot, and though they were not Atreus’ sons, they were, nonetheless, children in his family. The conflict has many other examples of bad parenting, but in order to get to the end of the cycle we must look at one of Atreus’ sons, or rather, one of Thyestes’ sons, whom Atreus believes to be one of his own, Agamemnon. Agamemnon needed to get to Troy, and had only one way to do it; sacrifice a virgin. Who did he choose? His own Daughter. His grandmother orders the death of her step son, his father, Atreus, kills and eats all of Agamemnon’s cousins (who were really his half brothers and sisters), his true father, Thyestes, rapes his own daughter, and now Agamemnon slits the throat of his daughter, Iphigenia, sacrificing her to the gods, so that he may bring death to the foot of the great walls of Ilius. The virgin’s mother, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, has the mind to avenge her daughter, and so she fashions a reaping hook of her own design, and the mother’s violent intentions will lead the next generation, her son Orestes, to violence once again.

            As the great wheel of bad parenting turns, Clytemnestra sits on Agamemnon’s throne, while Agamemnon lies dead on the floor. She has just killed her husband, with the help of her lover Aegisthus, who is the product of Thyestes raping his own daughter, Pelopia, and so, as Roberto Calasso so eloquently states, “The blood flows from Thyestes, at the hand of Thyestes, from one son of Thyestes, at the hands of another son of Thyestes.” (Calasso 188). And as a result of Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus’ violent actions, Orestes comes in, and kills them both; his own mother, and his own uncle. And so, we are back to Kronos killing Uranus. And as has been the case this whole time, the players are rearranged, but the game is still exactly the same: parent is abusive, or violent in some way, and child kills parent. But without Metis around, without wisdom, how can Orestes break this cycle which has been his curse; handed down to him from his father, and from his father’s father, all the way back to his father’s father’s father’s father, Tantalus? Luckily for Orestes, Metis has been preserved in the strangest of ways.

            Although Zeus avoided making the same mistakes as his father, that is, he avoided eating his own children, he did eat the mother of his child. Once Zeus had paired with Metis, he was compelled to ingest her, in order to keep his own children from uprooting him from his throne, (sound familiar? Even when he seemingly breaks the cycle, Zeus ends up preserving it). So he ate Metis, who was with child at the time, and this child was Athena. It would appear to all on Olympus, that Zeus had fathered Athena by himself, from his own head. Funny, the daughter of Wisdom comes from the head of the god, not the hand; from his source of intentions, not his source of actions. And so it is that Metis, Wisdom, lives on in Athena. Athena, daughter of Wisdom, is the one who finally helps Orestes to end the cycle of familial violence in the family of Pelops, when she acquits him for the murder of his mother. So it is that the key to breaking a harmful cycle has always been, and will always be, wisdom.

            Every parent has a choice to make, about how to raise their children, but for either road they take, myth has already been there, laying the bricks for millennia. Each caregiver chooses which road they would like to take, and each choice provides a separate destiny for generations to come. Nowadays we don’t say that a parent has chosen the road of Uranus, we say that they are abusive, and we swoop in like Rhea, to whisk the victimized children away to the path of Zeus, but it is all too often that these stories end up taking the path of Kronos, and for all our best efforts, we must wait at least one more generation before Wisdom presents herself in whatever fashion, and a child is raised in a way that will break the cycle, for at least one more family.

Sources Cited

Boyd, Brandon Charles. "If Not Now, When?...From Brandon." Incubus World Headquarters.

Incubus, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.enjoyincubus.com/us/news/if-not-now-when-brandon>.

Calasso, Roberto. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Print.

Eliade, Mircea. From Primitives to Zen. N.p.: Nebulous Cargo Productions, 1996. N. pag. From

Primitives to Zen. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/>.

*"Family Tree of the Greek gods." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. WIkipedia, 13 Sept. 2011.

Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods>.

Hunt, J. M. "Creation of the World." Greek Mythology Story Creation of the World. N.p., n.d.

Web. 4 Dec. 2011. <http://www.desy.de/gna/interpedia/greek_myth/creation.html>.

West, M. L. Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. Oxford, NY: Oxford World's  Classics,

2008. Print.

*NOTE: The Family Tree of the Greek Gods, although not specifically referenced in the paper, was used as a resource for fact checking, more than anything else. 

myth presentation

Perhaps this family tree will help y'all to follow some of the happenings in the cycle of events mentioned in this paper

         On page 626 of my copy of The Magus (which is the copy that the book store sold, for those of you who are wondering if it is the same pagination as your own book), Lily de Seitas tells Nicholas "Every answer is a kind of death," which, in my humble opinion, justifies the ending of the book entirely, making it perhaps the most important quote in the entire book, certainly top three if nothing else. See, if there had been a more definite ending (that is, if it had told us what happened with Nicholas and Alison, or with Conchis, and the next year's godgame) then the entire world that the novel created has an ending, and it is dead, like the Latin language. The way the book ends keeps the characters alive in the reader's mind. Instead of wondering about what happened to the characters after this last moment as if it were some past event that history recorded, which could be looked up, and recounted, I felt as though I was wondering what the characters were doing at this moment, in 2011, and how they were fairing after this whole "godgame" business. That is the power of this quote. Instead of providing a moment in which the godgame is clearly finished, and the relationship between Alison and Nicholas takes a definite route, in one direction or another, the moment, the situation is left in the open for us to ponder. It's not as though the author were preserving the last moment, as if it were the flower under the bell jar (Beauty and the Beast reference) never to die because it was frozen in time; rather, the immortality comes from the fact that the moment was fleeting, it was only one small part of a series of moments that comprised this interaction, and it was presented as such; as though what happened next truly happened next, but was none of our concern. Fowles planted a seed in those last moments, which may have bloomed any type of flora, and it was left up to each reader to decide what that seed would produce, and to come back to that seed later on, and examine it. It was never meant to be appreciated right away. Just as one cannot appreciate a garden until the flowers start to blossom.
             Does the last quote not make what happens next obvious? No. Who is to say whether or not any of these characters have loved? Who is it that truly needs the chance to love tomorrow for the first time? And furthermore, assuming (as I, and I'm sure most people did) that the target of the quote was Nicholas, who knows whether or not his next chance at love will be with Alison? Nobody (I would guess that even Mr. Fowles never knew, because it was never the important thing). 
             I would've rather not posted any of this in all honesty, because anyone who didn't consciously realize this for his or her self, probably did have the same feeling, but didn't realize it, and sooner or later they certainly would have realized it, and understood, and they would have grown to love the book for its lessons in time. But as it stands, I've quite possibly ruined this little piece of self realization for the people who fall into this category (if any in the class do), and I've cheated them out of ever being able to love this novel as much as I do. Much like Nicholas himself, the reader is driven to certain self-realizations, upon finishing the book, which offer a very gratifying sense of introspective knowledge. In other words: sorry if you didn't like the book, and you feel as though you already understood the gravity of this quote, because chances are that you understood the quote, but didn't fully appreciate it's weight, and now I've spoiled everything even further for you. I think that this miniature "life lesson-ette" is more what the quote is about than the actual literal significance of the words themselves, and so, by explaining the quote, I've actually taken away it's true meaning, so that it can never fully be explained, unless one already understood it entirely in the first place. Bummer.

I just finished The Magus, and I don't understand why everyone gets so upset about the ending. What more would you have asked for?...

            I've gotten through 496 pages of The Magus, and I cannot get over the way in which this book has constructed a total mind-maze! I mean, usually it's incredibly easy to see through a book's plot; to end up where you suspected you would end up, even though your resolve in your initial intuition may have been shaken a bit from time to time. But this book is different. It's different because, even if you know what is going to happen, you never know how much is laid out for you to see through, and you never know how much deeper each little vein of the plot really goes. Just like Nicholas in Conchis' masque. It's really very well constructed for that reason; it puts the reader in the situation of the main character, and not just because of the first person perspective, nor simply because you have a mystery to figure out along with the character, but because you too must feel the indignant sting of having been wrong in a conclusion, and you too must feel betrayed every time Nicholas feels betrayed, and because you are forced to sympathize with a man who you do not want to admit is really quite similar to yourself in many ways. Am I assuming too much about your personality? I should think not. Nicholas is like all young people I know, my friends, my "enemies", and my self. I say so because he starts out with too much confidence in what he wants to do (this is not everyone, but it is one large group of people), then he realizes that he detests the conditions he's in (change of major?) and decides to pursue something a bit different, thought I will admit, going to Greece is not quite the same as switching from a pre-med major to an anthropology major, or something of the like. Nicholas also has a relationship that he isn't fully invested in, but that tugs at his heart strings a bit every time he's getting a little lonely (at first anyhow). This is kind of a slap in the face for some people, who would think "Oh, I've never been nearly such a pig!", but just give it some thought. Maybe our cases haven't been nearly so extreme as the relationship between Alison and Nicholas, and maybe we've even resisted the urge to use somebody to temporarily patch up a hole in our lives until we've found something better, but we've all had that little thought. Even if it was just the shade of a notion that you labeled as a demon right away, Dionysus has possessed you for one or more seconds at some point in time and said, "Maybe, just for a night or two, you could..."
             Anyhow, I would hate to sympathize with a character I don't much like any longer. But how could I avoid talking about what seems to be the ultimate betrayal against him? Alison is dead, and proven (in his mind) to be so, and yet "Julie/Lily" still makes love to him with apparent amour, only for us to see that it's truly been done with the callous of a hooker! If you don't feel bad for the man at that point, you're even more hard hearted than he had ever been toward Alison. Elle ne l'aime pas du tout! The poor sap. But now, truly, I am done sympathizing with this man.
             I have postulated theory upon theory about what might be happening. Most of them have become rubble strewn at the base of my final plausible conclusion to the book (which I can't possibly write in my blog, just in case people are not so far into the book), but I will say this. If the pattern of my theorizing continues, in two or three chapters, my final plausible theory will be in the same state as all my others. In fact, I wouldn't hardly claim this theory out loud if someone asked me, because it is so outlandish, but only because everything which is not outlandish is refuted the page after it is conceived. And furthermore, the book has a way of making you doubt your own sanity to a degree, or rather, I think I might known what happens, but the book doesn't particularly suggest it, so I feel the characters of the book staring at me through the pages saying "that's what you think is going to happen? No way man, you're miles off." And since I can't get my footing on what may or may not happen next, I have to accept the roll of Nicholas, of the bystander who cannot escape the masque, and so must let its natural current whisk him along, until finally, battered and bruised I have reached the natural conclusion. And the foreboding notion that everyone hates the end of this book certainly doesn't assuage the feeling I have that the natural end to this current is something analogous to a waterfall.
                 I also feel almost like a character who has made it yea far in the masque, because when I hear which page others are on, all I can do is smile and think "have fun", and then laugh to myself in that menacing chuckle that denotes some sort of dramatic irony. In other words, I am the ancient stone bust on Conchis' silver platter, and I have that wry smile that you cannot decode any more than you can escape it. So, to all of you who are not so far into the book, have fun.

            So I went to the presentation on The King James Bible, and The Lotus-Sutra the other night, and something they said sort of reminded me of a quote from The Magus. I can't remember the exact phrasing, or even the approximate page number in the book, but it was something to the effect of (and mind you, I'm paraphrasing) Do you think the novel is dead as an art form? It was something that Nicholas used to joke about with his friends at university, and Conchis brought up the memory by saying he hated fiction, and had burned all of his novels. Anyway, one of the two gents presenting was talking about how it was the end of the printed era, and how the scripture was sort of having its super nova event, where it shines brightest just before it dies out. So I was thinking (and was considering asking the men), how is scripture any different from myth? In fact, I feel like it's probably pretty obvious to most people that scripture is mythology (whether you believe or not, it is in either  case, mythology, a true story). So if scripture is on its last leg, does that mean that all of mythology is? It was sort of a curious thing that this was brought up briefly in class today. But more importantly than simply recognizing that the age of the novel, of the written, printed story, is at an end, is identifying the reason. Why does nobody seem to want to buy books anymore? I think most of us will agree that sitting in front of a computer screen doing homework is no more enjoyable than reading a book. At any rate a book doesn't have that terrible back lighting that can give one headaches after a couple hours. And frankly, do you realize the number of books you would need to have on a kindle to see a return in your investment of $139.99? It's all a bit absurd, really. Anyway, this is more of a fuel for the fire entry, because I would love to hear some input on the decline of the printed text, if anyone cares to share, because I do find it to be an important issue. The loss of print as a media affects many areas of society, socioeconomically as well as aesthetically, so perhaps in class people will weigh in on the subject, or on their own blogs, but the important thing is to just think about it for yourself. I, personally, can think of very few things as comfortable as sitting down with a cup of coffee and a book on a cold, grey morning, so what the hell is everybody else doing while I'm reading? Also perhaps consider how a decline in the physical printed text could change the way people write/speak. Would there be a subsequent decline in all aspects of the language? Would there be any art left to it? certainly there would be people who wrote for the aesthetic purposes, despite the fact that it would no longer be a lucrative career in any way, but we could lose all ability to create new works of genius. How many people read a blog entry compared to the number that read a book? It could take a seriously Sci-Fi turn from there. I would assume it would be a long time before anything as crazy as that would happen, but even when I'm an old, old man, I would rather not see it be so.

            I feel I should also mention, with regards to the Deal/Beal presentation, that the whole thing was really quite interesting, and I would recommend going to the 400th "birthday party" for The King James Bible, and The Tempest. By the way, the mint brownies after the presentation were delicious.

Once upon a time, when I was but a third grader, still held securely under the impressions which society places on such young and malleable minds, I stumbled upon a realization that would ultimately disassemble, brick by brick, that foundation of blissful ignorance which had kept me so sheltered, so warm and unaware, up to that pivotal moment in time and space. I could beat around the bush for paragraph upon paragraph with flourishes of language, but to do such would be in vain, more so than in vogue. That is to say, to keep with what is current, it would more behoove me to be expedient in my explanation of the aforementioned event, than to drag out, with lofty language and a carefully crafted prose, that tale which I am about to unfold. For this reason alone, I will be sure to get right to the point.

The point is this; that one cannot properly tell a respectable story in a dull line of bare facts, any more than one can paint a respectable picture with only one colour. Rather one must lay down each word, like a brush stroke, with a naturalness, and yet, an exactness, in order to convey the true emotion of the artist. Eventually, what appears is a canvas, with all of the story displayed upon it, in the fashion of something much more ancient than that characteristic modern directness. An artistry that seems lost to the world, only because we lack the patience to craft it. In other words, sorry ladies and gents, I will not be the least bit forthright, as many of you might wish. I will attempt, to the best of my meager abilities, to tell you the story exactly how it happened, down to the minutest emotional truth; down to the very finest brush stroke. But I digress. If you wish simply to know how my world view was dissolve in a three sentence dialogue, have it your way, skip to the last paragraph, for those of you who have the time and patience to hear a story, read on.

Once upon a time, around the age of 9, I sat in my living room at midnight cradling a cup of hot chocolate in my  nervous hands. The trembling liquid was growing luke warm with my patience, and as luke warm as my patience. Why would these people not just go to bed? When the devil was Santa going to come, if all these adults would not dawn their evening attire, and hit the hay? My Cousin, of the same age, and same mindset as myself, sat enveloped in an arm chair right beside my own, fidgeting childishly with the buttons of his coat, and it was clear that we shared the same thought. We had just returned from mass, a traditional catholic service held at one of many local churches in Helena. It seemed almost a shame to me that we should waste our time in the rinky dink little Saint Mary's church, when we could've stood (albeit for twice as long) in the what meager admiration was humanly possible surrounded by the archaic grandeur of the St. Helena's Cathedral. But who was I, with attentiveness comparable to a gold fish, to complain about such things? At any rate, if we had attended the mass at the cathedral, like we used to, we should still have been there, and I would not have had those few paramount moments of genius, which would lead to an unraveling of faith that would overshadow even an archangel's fall from grace. As I mulled over my cup of cocoa, I realized something strange. I had gotten a type of video game (Pokemon gold version, coolest game ever) as a gift from an aunt earlier that evening, but I hadn't the means to play a Gameboy game, seeing as I did not have a Gameboy. What is one who has just returned from church to do in this situation? I prayed. I prayed to as a suppliant to a merciful God, that I may receive a Gameboy from the enigmatic Santa Clause, so that I may play my new game.

And thus was sowed the seed of faith, dropped in the path which was plowed by the fates, in vain, for the seed of reason. Religion is a curious thing, but the fates were not to turn their backs now, and not ever. A new field must simply be plowed, and my face forced into the light.

All that night I had mused over the game. Such a game, for such a boy as myself, was endless entertainment (so far quite literally endless, as I never caught all 150 available Pokemon from this version. as M.C. Escher said, "art (or in this case, Pokemon) is never finished, only abandoned.") I thought, and I thought, and when finally the sweet boon of sleep was shed over my heavy self, I dreamed, and I dreamed, and all these thoughts and dreams were about Pokemon. As was tradition, my cousin Ryan, and I woke up in the middle of the night, between three and four a.m., and we went to the top of the stairs, and we waited. We waited silently, and patiently at the peak of those stairs, and we did it every year, until at long last 7:00 a.m. rolled around, and we could go wake up the parents, and unwrap our gifts. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, much more than wrapping paper would be undone this year. But that thought never crossed our minds as we waited, with a patience that can only be accredited to religion, to a faith that the time would come, when all would be revealed. With each tick, the second hand rode, swift and steady as a horseman, round the clock. Assuring that the dawn would be ushered in, and when the time was right, when all the clock's horsemen rode faithfully into their appointed places, the veil would be lifted. For us, that time was 7:00 a.m. Or so we thought.

The hours dragged on, each time we went to check the clock, it became more and more apparent that the horse must be riding with a broken leg. only 13 minutes had passed? But it felt like an hour! only 5 minutes? surely you must mean 25! But nothing speeds the flow of time. And soon enough, we grew weary, and fell asleep once more, there at the top of the stairs.

It was not until some years later that I learned to appreciate the cleverness of our parents. Somehow they managed, without waking us (and I am the epitome of a light sleeper) to bring all of the presents out in the short periods of time during which we slept, which were never more than 20 minutes a piece. And they apparently accomplished this in utter silence.

The morning approached, and well before dawn we were up making cups of hot chocolate, and all the while I had my game at hand. My poor, homeless game. 6:59 could not have been a longer minute. The agony of pulling teeth would have been preferred at that point, but finally 7 o'clock arrived! In a dash, we sprung upon our sleeping parents, and woke them with such a clatter as to be sure that our sisters in adjacent rooms had all woken up as well. We all filed into the living room, and proceeded with what has become the vain shell of a previously enchanting ritual. We began to open presents. Presents that had been flown on a flying sleigh from remote reaches of the Arctic Circle. Presents fashioned by mythical creatures under the haunting glow of the northern lights. Presents placed with love from an enigma which every child loves as though he is God himself, under a tree which overshadows all religious symbols in a child's mind. This was true religion. The passion, the fervor that enveloped the room; the palpable aura of mystified gratitude. Which is easier for a child to love: a faceless God he is taught to love through fear, a God who has drown the earth on a whim long ago; or a gentle old man in a quaint timeless cottage at the north pole, who has a taciturn compassion for all things great and small, and who brings gifts to people he's never met, simply out of kindness? Make no mistake, Santa Clause is the true God in the eyes of most young Americans. It is Santa who is born, and revived each Christmas season, to take away our sins, and replace them with gifts, and a sense of childish wonder. As I said before, religion is a curious thing. The bible says an eye for an eye, but how can one blind religion to the extent that it blinds us? My IQ is well above average, my skills of reasoning are anything but lacking, at this age of 9 I was already petitioning our school for better pizza! And yet the wonder of a God, of Santa Clause, had blinded me to all evidence of impossibility. But perhaps religion is doing us a favor, perhaps ignorance truly is bliss. And so, with all of these thought as far from my mind as ever, the presents were unwrapped, and sure enough, there it was. At the bottom of my stocking, hidden beneath two scratch lottery tickets, and caramel filled chocolate Santas was the Gameboy.

Needless to say, I was grateful beyond measure to my God, and I spent almost the entire day, lost in my fantastical odyssey. For the first time, invested entirely in the character, in the game, I was master of my own destiny! I played, and played until the real world began to look as pixilated a my fantasy world, and then it was time for dinner.

On the dining room table, a lovely solid oak table, with a history of family feast that nearly predates me, a feast was lain. Ryan and I looked at each other with eyes the size of dinner rolls, and we were lost. As all the family made merry round the family table, I had a small question, a a seemingly insignificant thought, which I asked on a careless whim. The fates were again overturning the fertile soil of my young mind. And this time, the seeds of reason would be sown. "Mom," I said, "where did you get my Gameboy from?" And as soon as I had asked it, I recalled the answer for myself, but it was too late.
 "Oh, just from WalMart." she replied, and all religion was undone.
"Oh, I thought Santa had brought it for me..." the clock struck 7:00, and even as the sun sunk further out of sight behind the jagged mountains, the veil was lifted, and the horsemen rode in, and the light was thrust upon my face. Sight, unhappy sight.

I just realized today, while I was listening to some music, that some of my favorite blues artists are as mythological as anything we've talked about in class all semester! If any of you listen to blues, you probably know at least one of the story I'm referring to: that of Robert Johnson. His story is very similar to that of the earlier Tommy Johnson, and intertwined with that of friend and mentor Ike Zimmerman. Much of the mystery behind the lives of these men surely has to do with the area in which they lived, that of the Mississippi delta. There is, and always has been, a touch of dark mystique surrounding the area, and the legends of the delta blues musicians that run from in ilo tempore all the way up to the 1940's emphasize this fact. We have these guy's voices recorded, we know they lived, and in an age when it was not too hard to keep one's records straight. After all, Robert Johnson was from the mid '30's; he was making music during the depression, we have plenty of history recorded during these times, plenty of logic and reason, if you will, and still there are myths that are as old as Hades and Persephone swirling around these men.

I suppose after saying this it is only appropriate for me to tell the story of at least one of them, so I'll tell that of Robert Johnson, so I can kill a few birds with one stone.
         A long time ago, back in the roaring '20's there was a young boy from down south. He was living near the delta in Mississippi, he grew up there in the river's mouth. He was a smart boy, and charming too, but he wasn't any musician yet. Sure, the boy could play a little back up for some of the real talented bluesmen that came into the bars, but he couldn't play guitar, not yet. After a while the boy grew tired of always playing the brides maid, so he set out to learn guitar. He lit out for a teacher, but he wasn't going have to go to far. He only had to turn his head, and talk to a man at the bar. The old man told him, and just maybe because he heard of Tommy Johnson having done it, but the old man told him "You just head down to the crossroads, 'round midnight, and you'll have all the talent you've ever wanted." So the boy headed down to the crossroads when it was late, and he came across a big old man. The man said "Hand me that guitar Bobby, and I'll tune it up, and put the blues in your hands." So the man took the guitar from young Robert Johnson, and tuned it up just so. And the devil played a couple songs he wrote, and said "Now look here Bobby, this guitar knows everything you want to know. and I'll give it back to you, boy, if you'll just let me have that soul." Young Robert Johnson he grew up a good religious kid, but even the church couldn't stop him from taking the devil's little deal. He took back his guitar, and shook hands, and left his soul to steal.

I suppose that's just one version of how it happened, one of the oldest versions at least. Another one I heard said Robert Johnson could only play harmonica, so he wanted to learn guitar, and he went to find a teacher. He fell asleep at the crossroads, waiting for a Greyhound, and woke up with a man looking down at him. The man told Robert Johnson that if he wanted to learn guitar, he just had to shake his hand, and promise his soul to the devil, and Robert Johnson could play the blues better than any other delta bluesman ever. So he did, and went back into the bar he had just left a couple hours ago, and played until the bar was supposed to close, but everybody was so amazed with his playing that nobody could leave until Robert got up and said he needed to get some sleep. The bar's regulars figured what had happened, because they knew that a few hours ago young Robert Johnson couldn't play "Hot Crossed Buns", and now he was a master of guitar. Robert Johnson has a song called Cross Road Blues, which I've posted up above, moral of the song being, when you go down to the cross roads, you're going to have to choose which way you want to go.

People also used to say that Ike Zimmerman learned to play the blues from the devil, while sitting on tombstones in a graveyard, and that he and the devil taught Robert Johnson the same way, in the same graveyard. (To dampen the aura of mystery a little bit, Ike Zimmerman, and Robert Johnson did practice in a graveyard, according to Zimmerman's daughter, because it was quiet, and nobody would disturb them in a graveyard).

Anyway, if you like blues or urban legends, check out Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Ike Zimmerman. You won't be disappointed.

I was thinking a bit more about the myth of the Bridger Whale after leaving class today, because my friends and I never looked away from it, but saluted it both on the way up and on the way down from the mountain. So I thought a bit about it, to try to recall any misfortunes which may have befallen us whilst up at Bridger (keep in mind I did not ski Bridger last season), and I could not recall any involving me. Then I thought a bit more, and realized that last year at Bridger, a few of my friends who also salute the whale on the way up as well as the way back, did have a couple of very unfortunate incidents which occurred, almost certainly due to their malpractice of the whale ritual (because if it was just bad luck, or if the cause was scientifically explicable, it would not be as mythological). Last year, there were a pair of injuries which befell my friends on Bridger, the first being a torn ACL. See, this poor friend of mine was skiing along very nonchalantly when suddenly, his left ski dug in to the snow for no apparent reason, and he was twisted out of his binding (ejected) and that twisting and pulling damaged his knee for the rest of the season. He has not returned to Bridger since. The second was much stranger in nature (there was a scientific explanation for this one, but we'll ignore it).  A fine young gentleman of the age of 19 was standing patiently in the lift line, have a good ol' time with his friends, when suddenly, his body went stiff, and his ski gear rang rattling round him, as he fell to the ground. He began to convulse at which point it was apparent that he was having a seizure! a bloody seizure! And all due to this infernal whale! But one must understand that it is not the whale which causes these things, but rather the neglect of the whale; of its significance; of its mystery. By performing incorrectly that ritual which secures skiers a safe and merry day on the slopes, woe was brought upon my beloved friends, and they were laid low (but not killed as it would mean in The Iliad) by the power of the mighty whale. So, as it turns out, it seems that there is some credibility to the version of the story told in class today. At any rate, you won't catch me looking at the thing on the way back up anymore.

I'm going to recommend what some may indeed consider a very strange type of book: "Shamanic Journeying" by Sandra Ingerman. I recommend this book for a couple of reasons; one because it is short, and interesting, even if you don't care to try shamanic journeying (I myself haven't yet, but I probably will eventually. Why not, yeah?); the second reason being that there are several references to myth, and how the experience of shamanic journeying is a very mythological one indeed. I thought to myself, whilst reading this book, what better way to get really involved in a mythology, than to have this type of mythical experience, while potentially meeting characters of myth, folk lore, and actual history (not to mention spirit animals, woohoo!) Essentially the book is a beginner's guide to taking shamanic journeys for one's self, (in fact the full title is "Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner's Guide"). It has some funny anecdotal stories, mixed in with some information about how, when, and why to "journey". It's only 84 small pages long, with some rather large font, so it's not any huge investment in time, but certainly one must invest their mind in the reading to truly garner the full experience of what the text is offering. It's doubtful that anybody will end up reading it, but if nothing else, I would at least recommend Googling it, or how to journey, just for mythology's sake.

Holy Guacamole, haven't had time to blog for weeks now, but I can finally get around to sharing a dream at least. Please, take some time to grab a cup of coffee and settle yourself in, because I have long, vivid dreams (or so I've been told).

It all starts with me, hanging out with a girl, who is dressed in some pretty elegant attire, considering the setting of my dream. That being said, I suppose The best place to start might be describing the setting. It's (for lack of a better term) shitty. Almost every building in sight has been reduced to heaps of metal and glass, broken, twisted, and morose. Those buildings which are not ruins, are perhaps even more dreary; probably at least 30 stories each, only a handful of wall-less sky scrapers are left to tower over the undead city. (No, no actual undead zombies, just a zombie-esque city). Only floors/ and ceilings and a few support beams make up the framework of each buildings, with the exterior walls all laying in mountains of broken concrete around the base of each building. In fact, the only walls still in tact are those surrounding the stairwell, and a those of a few fortunate rooms, which have managed to keep their structural integrity. There are several places in which even the floor/ceilings are breaking, which leaves large ramp-like slabs hanging down between floors.It's cloudy, and rains constantly (like London, or Seattle) but there is no thunder or lightning to provide excitement or stimulation for anyone surveying the scene. The Sky is grey. The buildings are grey. the people's clothes are grey.
But this girl's clothes are not grey. She's wearing a black dress, ordained with black sequens, and small beads of various metallic colors (small as in Indian bead work small). It looks a lot like a cocktail dress. She's 19 or 20 I'd say, and she's really a nice enough girl, but not too deep, just crazy good looking. Her dad is a well-to-do Persian looking fellow, dressed in a dark grey suit, with a dark blue paisley tie. Nice looking salt and pepper beard by the way. (Keep in mind, well-to-do in this dream means your room looks like a crappy apartment, with all the wall paper peeling, but the fact that it has four walls is a status symbol equivalent to owning a house where everything is marble inlaid with gold). So this hefty Persian man likes me quite a bit, and wants to help me out; make me a successful guy or what have you. I even have a room with three walls and a door; it;s only missing the wall facing out towards the nothingness that has become everything. (yes, i realize that line was lame). So this guy thinks I'm an asset to him in some way, so he invites me up to a loft type area (guarded by men in army clothes for some reason) and this place looks really nice, minus the no walls part. it has a balcony type deal in the middle of the room (dream logic). Anyway, before he gets there, his daughter (the girl with the dress) starts being a bit promiscuous, and he walks in while she is dancing, and he gets mad and has me exiled from the building.
Somehow I manage to walk from that city to a new one, without really walking anywhere (again, dream logic), and I'm three quarters of the way up this stair well (only thing I remember from the stairwell), and I see these army dressed mob lackies evicting a poor asian family from their room with walls, so that their boss can take it. Bummer, I suppose. Anyway, by this time, I've gone from wearing a nice button up shirt and tie, to wearing a big thick grey tweed jacket, and a grey hoodie, and some hobo gloves, also dark grey.  I realize that I look a bit like Clive Owen from the movie "Children of Men". So I reach the top floor of this sky scraper, and its drizzling as usual, and I feel all of these drops dripping on my exposed left cheek while i'm trying to lay down on this big slab of concrete that fell down from the roof, and I finally realize just how cold and foggy it really is, and I think to myself, "holy shit, I have to live in this frigid, damp, terrible shit for the rest of my life." So I decide instead to rally the troops (the other miserable tenants of the top floor) and try to start a fire. Unfortunately it's too wet out, and nobody has had a lighter in years anyway, so that was useless. So I resolved to try to think of some other plan after I got some sleep, and my dream ended with me looking down at my shoes, and seeing this dreary, lifeless city out of the corner of my eye thinking, "maybe I can make it a little bit better tomorrow..."

Clive Owen in "Children of Men"

I posted a song called "Song to Sing the Siren", by John Frusciante (the first and second video on the top bar are of equal quality) because in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Calasso begs the question "What song did the sirens sing?" and, in a nut shell, this song is about the sirens singing to a guy, and he's basically singing this song back to them (on the surface at least). The album is called The Empyrean (meaning heavenly), and some of it's songs are pretty darn mythological.

    I thought, after our talks about the different ages, and the cyclical nature of a life, I might share this quote from my favorite author/singer Brandon Boyd: "There's no such thing as the good old days, the older we all get, the better we all were...and maybe it is the end of the world, but when was it not?...we are all tomorrow's food, today."
    I always think of this line when I think about the age of Heroes and how (geriatric) people tend to revel, with a sort of nostalgia, or wistfulness, about how good things were back in the day. (This one is also for all the people who think we need to get back to Reaganomics. NO.)

Well, I've pretty much finished the book since my last blog, and I haven't really been blogging, because I've been so busy reading. At any rate, I've certainly got a few things to blog about, so I'll break them up over the next few days and talk about them in small bits. Let me preface this section by saying this: Do not feel obligated to read this whole blog. It might really frustrate you to read the whole thing, and then realize it doesn't have any real conclusion, or point in the end. That said today's blog topic is Helen as the  result of coupling beauty and necessity.
    "The rape of Nemesis was the most formidable theological gamble of Zeus's reign. To provoke a forced convergence of beauty and necessity was to challenge the law of heaven. Only Olympus could have sustained such a thing, certainly not earth where that challenge blazed uncontrollably throughout Helen's lifetime. it was a time marked...by calamity. But it was also the time men would go on dreaming of, long after the fire had gone out." This passage prompted a sort of flood of contemplation for me. See, for the most part I just appreciate the book for its narrative quality, but there are a few passages, including this one, that just make me think about everything; things that don't even seem related to the book, but they are, I'm sure, in some strange way. For now, however, I'll try to stay as on topic as I can.
   So Zeus goes through this whole elaborate rouse to rape Nemesis, and then from the egg Nemesis lays, Helen hatches in Leda's womb basically, Ergo the forced coupling of Necessity and Beauty. But is Helen herself necessity and beauty? Helen is beautiful, yes. In fact, she is the most beautiful. People waged a nine year war over her, because she was so ineffably beautiful. But in what ways did Helen represent necessity? I had a divergence in my thought here. Firstly, when I could not think of any way in which Helen embodied necessity, I got abstract. I thought "Well I suppose that death is a necessity, as is the end of an era, and Helen was the death of the heroes, and the end of their age." But that seemed way too far fetched, so I tried to think of how she actually did represent necessity, and all I could come up with was this: essentially, Helen herself is the necessity. Once you've seen something so beautiful, can you feel any other way, but to feel as though you need it? Can you really live as full a life without it? Or perhaps it's not so much the obtaining of beautiful things that is a necessity, but the wanting of beauty. Wanting what one finds beautiful is essentially the beginning of loving something, and what is more necessary than love?
    But Helen isn't really an embodiment of love either, she is something lusted after, and Calasso describes her as a fire that rages and destroys, not something easily loved. So like a fire, she kills all who try to get too near her. Except for Theseus, but he was the exception only because he was able to abandon her, to keep his distance, to avoid seeing Helen as the necessity. And here I kind of went on a train of thought tangential to the original. Theseus took the virginity of the most beautiful girl ever to live. In effect, he "initiated" her into the life of lust and careless abandonment she would know (albeit know the other side of) for the rest of her life. Theseus was also "the initiate of heroes". Helen was no hero. In fact, Helen herself brought about "the end of the age of hereoes." The end of the Theseus, and his other initiates. In my thoughts this makes a bit of sense, because Helen's own true mother is Nemesis, vengeance. And what better way to take revenge on Theseus for taking advantage of, and then deserting her, than to wipe out his entire generation of friends? But  I digress.
   There is also the possibility that Helen doesn't embody each in representing their coupling, but is rather just a memento of the coupling of necessity and beauty, of Nemesis and Zeus. But which was which? Nemesis, a figure of necessity, was also super beautiful, and Zeus, the god of gods, was able to finally "[unite] himself with her, out of powerful necessity." so each had a bit of both beauty and necessity. but Zeus's necessity seems less like something bound to happen, and more like something forced to happen, but what happens happens, and is therefore necessary to history, simply because it exists. This powerful necessity is not the same as something necessary, but rather a different definition of necessity (definition number 5 of 5 in Webster's dictionary in fact): an unavoidable need or compulsion to do something. In this case, that something was Nemesis (bad joke). So maybe it is in this definition, which Helen's necessity is embodied. People have an uncontrolable need or desire to have her. Like Zeus needed to have Nemesis.
   So how is Helen both beauty, and necessity? This question I still can't really answer with any certainty. Perhaps this is because this coupling "could only be sustained on Olympus, certainly not on earth...." or perhaps the answer is just eluding me because I missed something in the reading, or perhaps it's just one or a mixture of the answers I've already proposed. If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Laters Alligators, Jerrod

Well this isn't really about a reading, but I had a some mythological experiences today that I thought someone might appreciate. Really the one I was freaking out about most was probably the smallest example ever, but it was just a showing of fate. So I'm walking down this road (it was actually a concrete sidewalk, but if you picture a dirt road, the story is a bit more mythological), and I see a man about 50 feet away from me walking on a path that will surely intersect mine. The closer we get to each other, the more certain I become that, if one of us does not change either speed, or course soon, we are bound to run into one another. Seeing this as something I wanted to avoid, I decided to cut a corner with about 5 feet left before impact (approximately two strides). The man must have had the same thought, because he also felt it necessary to cut the same corner at the same time. This being the case, we bumped into each other, and the fates popped out from behind a bush and sneered at me. I shook a fist at them and cursed them. "Darn you fates!" I said, (but none of this latter part actually happened) but the fates had already won, and vanished. See I was going to run into this poor guy, and experience this awkward exchange of apologies no matter what. If I had stayed on course, surely, so would have he. Since I tried to escape this fate, naturally so did he, and so we created for ourselves the exact event we both sought to avoid, and we both experienced it's inevitability. Myth!
     The only other things that really happened today were less mythical in form than in content. First, a friend of mine sent me an email of the song Oh, Comely, which I had never heard before, but it uses some pretty mythological vocabulary. And secondly, I met a dog named Apollo, and he was super cute!

  It's taken me a while to get this first post up, not for lack of reading, but because I don't use computers very often, or very well. But here we are, and here we go.

  Upon reading the first couple of chapters, I found myself thinking, more than anything, about how paranoid every attractive girl must have been back in these times. It seems as though if you had a rockin' bod, and your head wasn't on a swivel, you could be abducted at any moment by any one of the various Gods. Heaven forbid you should pick flowers, because you'd be snatched up quick as any daisy, and if you go swimming, there is probably a divine voyeur checking you out from somewhere "on high". 

  I was also noticed (and was psyched about) the fact that the Gods could be gay without any of the other Gods calling them out on it. Dionysus was in love with Ampelos, and was also apparently one of the biggest womanizing figures in myth. I was surprised to get open bisexuality from the ancients (a God nonetheless) when so many of us still don't want to ask or be told today. Dionysus seemed like a terrible being, but he has such a duality to his character that he really just reminds me of most of my favorite musicians, or a Third Eye Blind song. He starts out with a love, loses it, and turns pain and loss into art (wine is artistic in my opinion, I understand if someone chooses not to agree with this). I just get the image of him slumped up against a thick tree in some forest, drunk and alone, holding a golden goblet just barely upright enough to spill only a few drops of wine. I picture the sharp and bitter taste of strong red wine mingling with internalized anger and drizzling out of the corners of slack jaws in a stream of profanity. I don't want to quote too many lines from page 45, so I would encourage reading over the first paragraph on this page carefully, and really picturing and understanding the wonderful analogies Calasso uses. Some beautiful writing.

  I also liked the point Calasso brought up about how Erigone was the farthest thing from a "celestial queen", but still managed to make it into the heavens as a constellation, just because it's interesting to think about this weird, macabre story hanging in the sky with all of the heroes and monsters of epic poems, and classic tales, like a strange cousin. just a thought, I suppose.

  Until next time, 

  Jerrod