Class Notes/ Assignments

Where it all began: A Memory

A Fondness for the Water

The most vivid, and thus the first memory that I have, is of being in our neighborhood pool as a very young child, probably around two or three. I grew up with a passion for swimming that gave way to becoming a licensed scuba diver at age 13. 

I remember my grandfather picking me up and tossing me across the pool, hitting the water and diving to the bottom. I can still see how the light filtered through the water, splitting into thin shafts of light that sparkled and shimmered as the waves moved above me. It was late in the afternoon, almost dusk. My grandfather laughed and my grandmother told me I swam like a fish. She was never a strong swimmer, and was always amazed by how fast I was in the water. 

The memory itself is very short, it is hard to tell what all is from my own memory and what is from my family telling me stories about it. It all runs together, what is most vivid is the flashes of color and sound. But this perhaps could be what created my love for the water, the memory of feeling. The feeling of joy and speed as I darted through the water. 

This memory started it all. Leading me to have a great fondness for the water, any water. From the ocean, to rivers to lakes. I love it all. I swim in it all. It began here. With my first memory.  

Axis mundi: Navel of the world 

The  tree that is the connection of sky and earth where the four compasses directions meet. The center of the world. All trees are relatives of this one tree. 

My Morning Rituals:

·      This is my six month old Border Collie, his name is Duke. 

Duke wakes me up at 6am every morning. First he sets his head on my bed and licks my elbow until I turn over. Than he climbs up on my bed and rolls onto my chest, licking my face. I get up, open my door and Duke runs to the front door and sits down, waiting for me to put his leash on and open the door.

When he finishes his business we come back in, I fill his food and water and crawl back into bed leaving my door open. With a few minutes Duke will then bring me every toy he can find around the house and present them to my cranky form.

 After each toy is taken away and placed above his reach on my desk Duke will give up, go eat and then climb up on the bed.

 He will whine at me, which I will studiously ignore and eventually he will fall back asleep until I am ready for the day. Most days this happens I have only slept a few hours after closing the restaurant I work at and getting home around 2am.  

Aborigine Dreamtime Creation Story:

I first heard this story when I was in Australia at the Corraborra Aboriginal Center.

The story was told to us through singing and dancing. I have uploaded a link for you to listen to. It is a didgeridoo played by an aborigine. This instrument accompanied the dancers as they sang the myth. 

Before the dreamtime the land was vast, flat and empty. The “Maker of Many Things” drew forth the dreamtime ancestors from the ground and the sea. Some of these ancestors looked like the animals of today, like men and women, but most had the ability to change shape. Meaning that the Great Eagle ancestor was able to look like an eagle, or like a man upon his own will. As the ancestors traveled and met other ancestors the land would change. 

Where the Barramundi fish ancestor swam great rivers and lakes formed. The sun, moon and the stars were created when the Emu and Eagle ancestors fought over Emu eggs. The eagle stole an emu egg and throwing it into the sky where it burst into flame. The Maker of Many Things feeds the flames with sticks creating the sun each morning, cooling into embers every evening, before becoming the moon. The embers that have flown from the egg during the day become the stars that are only present at night.

 The Rainbow Snake was the Matron of the ancestors. Acting as the punisher if an ancestor did wrong, she would descend from her rock and drown them if she was not hungry enough to swallow them whole. The Rainbow snake also taught the human ancestors how to behave, bringing about civilization, gifting them with language. The ancestors eventually fled into the ground, the sky or the ocean after teaching their tribes their secret ceremonies and stories. Watching over each aborigine child as they complete the sacred walkabout ceremony, where each tribe learns to see the world as it was during dreamtime, a living being.

 Each child leaves the tribe on their own, walking and traveling the land just as the ancestors did before them, returning as an adult. This teaches them how to enter dreamtime at will because dreamtime never ends, instead has become parallel with the world we see today. With death each aborigine returns to this sacred time and sees that what might appear to be barren country is really a living creature, as much apart of each aborigine as they are apart of it. Everything that is today, was made during dreamtime, making everything on this earth sacred and precious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81vLopFB3wI

Myth Repetition:  

Here is a quick list of what I heard repeated today during different myths. Isn't it amazing that these stories come from all parts of the world, even are parts of modern religion and are so similar? Wars have been fought over these stories, and they are so incredibly alike. How interesting humans are. 

Man and woman

Floods

Seven days or nights

A balance of good and evil

Forbidden fruit

People out of mud

First try of people was not right, people were made again

Vain gods- I made you to worship me!

Eagles

Water covering the land

Marriage

Spurogmous- the ripping apart that is awesome

Incest

Serpents

7and 7

humans are created from some body part

 Cadmus and Harmonia:

In the first few pages of this myth we are asked the question "How did it all begin?" This sends readers on a journey to figure out a family tree. I have an incredibly rough and basic outline of what the family tree of Cadmus and Harmony is so far in the book. I have not included everyone of course, and would love for anyones input and additions to the tree.

A passage that spoke to me was page: because it is to me, perhaps the most clear. It is the story of Io and what became of her. The page begins with showing the basket that Europa carries and describing what it looks like. Of course, the image is of Io and her story. The page goes on to describe what exactly happened to Io. She dreamed of Zeus and his instructions, to leave her temple and walk her fathers fields. She was then turned into the very creature that symbolized the god, a heifer. She was supposed to stay within the consecrated grounds, but the Gadfly who would follow her around, driving her mad would cause her to cross the river. She then wandered the world.  The love of the god drove her to madness. I think love does that to a lot of people, and that it can very well turn them into different people, not unlike how she was turned into the cow. Io wandered until she reached Egypt and Zeus reach down and lightly touched her back. Io was then turned back into the girl she truly was and was swept away by Zeus. In love, and in life, there is some parallels to this. When in a relationship and unsatisfied some could go metaphorically crazy, and then when the right person arrives that crazy would be alleviated. I really did enjoy the parts of this book that I could understand, I think that in the coming years I will read this book again and hopefully understand more about it. I feel that the book has been crafted in an artful way that would, I'm sure stun me if I could read the book in its entirety. 

A great pain.

When I was seven years old I was at the movie theatre in my hometown of Boise, Idaho with my grandparents. There are these decorative pylons that are supposed to keep civilian cars and trucks from driving into the entertainment area, but that can be moved so trucks can unload band and stage equipment. They were are least twice my size at the time around 6 feet tall and made of concrete. I was skipping ahead of my grandparents and decided to skip around the pylon singing 'ring around the rosie, pockets full of posie'. unfortunately the pylon was not properly fixed to the ground and fell over on top of me. I was very much immersed in ballet and karate at the time and had incredible reflexes which enabled seven year old me to jump back quick enough to avoid my entire leg being crushed and only losing half of my big toe on my left foot, the pylon was still on top of my body. My grandfather lifted the pylon off of me and threw it to the side in a Herculean show of strength. I spent three months in the hospital with another six months rehabilitation. This accident  took the top of my big toe from the knuckle up. I continued dancing for several years as well as nine years of gymnastics and three years of karate after my accident. I powered through ballet though I had a very difficult time achieving point. Soon enough I found other callings and slowly quit those activities. Now I am a strong healthy young lady who is in her second year of college. I never let my small amputation stop me from being as active as I wanted and I never will. 

Mafia Initiation Rites

The new members are invited in and led to a secret location. They sit at a table surrounded by existing members of the mafia family. They have a gun and a knife in front of them and a skull is sitting in the middle of the table. Each new member is required to cut their finger and wipe it on the jaw bone of the skull. The head of the family tells them that they now share blood and are all one family. They swear an oath to life and die by the gun and the knife, to never sleep with, or hurt a family members wife or children. They also swear to never become involved with narcotics and to never inform to the authorities on the family.  And to never dishonor the family, if they do they will be considered an outsider and be taken care of. Their old families are now replaced by the mafia family and they all become brothers. After this oath is sworn they are allowed to mingle with the other members to get to know them. 

My Chariot(s):

This is the Jeep I worked my entire life to purchase. 

This is one of the five planes my dad has built. Specifically this is called a "Rocket" I have been flying my entire life and plan to get my pilots license in a few years.

Creation Myth in Real Life

I was recently in Yellowstone national park and was amused to see that my creation story somewhat related to my experiences. The idea of Dreamtime is that there is always life around you always something that you cannot see. Even when you think that you are alone, you aren't. The first picture I took looked as if the land bas barren just as it was before Dreamtime, without any living creatures other than grasses and trees. I zoomed my camera in on what we thought was rocks and bushes, and they began moving. When I was able to focus my camera I found that there was a herd of buffalo roaming there, far enough away to make the land appear empty. My parents were with me in the car on our way to Kody, Wyoming and I had to tell them my creation story once again. My parents had heard this story a few times since I came home from Australia and said that they didn't remember it the same way hearing it again especially with this example of life even when it appears to be gone.

   

What does it mean to "do it"

It means to embrace your future actions wholly. When you do something you need to do something well. Even if you fail if you at least try your hardest, giving it your all you can truly never fail. 'Do it" two simple words, four letters. put packed with so much information. I have no idea what someone is 'do'ing necessarily, unless we are using it as a colloquialism for sex, but I do know that whoever the words are talking about will be performing some type of action, hopefully doing it well. 

Henna

My roommate loves to do Henna tattoos so I asked her to do one for me in the form of the Caduceus. Which of course comes from Greek Mythology. It is certainly not her best, and I am happy to say it looked better in person because I had to wear it for the next two weeks.

First Snow.

Isn't there something magical, dare I say mythical when an animal sees snow for the first time? As I have blogged about before I have a Border Collie named Duke. This is his first winter and he saw snow for the first time a few weeks back. Here is a Picture of him before the snow got deeper and he was able to really play in it.
Basically a first snow sets a precedence for all future snow days. Just like a myth does. Duke was curious and cautious, but quickly learned to embrace what was around him. He rolled, ate, and snuffled the snow. 

Entering Poseidon's Realm

While I was in Australia I got to dive the Great Barrier Reef. I have had my Diving license for a number of years and was excited to use it in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. When you first descend everything is silent as if a blanket covers your ears. After a few moments you realize that  the ocean is not at all quiet. You can hear snorkelers above you, the ships mechanics moving, clicking noises as various things rub together and but perhaps most disconcerting is the lack of noise of a large fish moving about. I was snuck up on by a fish twice my size. His name is Morty, and he is the friendliest deep sea fish I have ever met. He swims to you, nuzzles your face, and lets you touch him. The dive master can even snap a picture of you and this huge creature for a price. I snapped my own pictures down in Poseidon's kingdom. 

Giving the thumbs up is actually something highly frowned upon, because it means you want to ascend. But I was just so excited!! haha

Here is Morty. :)

Giant Clam.

"Every girl who wants a bad boy really just wants a wounded hero."

This is probably the truest statement that deals with relationships that I've heard in a while. I can't say long time because I haven't experienced enough to do so. In terms of modern day life a girl wants to feel special in seeing something in the man that no one else sees, that their relationship defied the odds. This of course, hardly ever works out. Usually, as shown in Greek mythology the girl is just naive and will suffer a horrid fate, while the man gets off scott free. Now don't think that you are reading the words of a feminist, I have just as much disdain for a stupid woman and I do an awful man and vice versa. Most women in these myths have some sort of "secret" power, whether that is the ability to bear children or have magic glowing hair that can heal people as seen in the bastardization of Repunzel in the movie Tangled. Woman want a man who despite his tough interior and overbearing tendencies desperately loves her and suddenly becomes the perfect mate, inherently good regardless of his past. This tendency and 'fairytale' could very well stem from the large amount of arranged marriages when such myths were being dreamed up to tell history and explain natural events. Perhaps these myths stem from the Desperate Housewives of old as they sat around cooking or mending.  Regardless, they tell the truth. The truth of marriage, relationships, history and of people.

To read, to write, and to do so with a tenacity and excitement that is all encompassing in my life. 

To be me, I need to do these things, 

and that is what I have learned.

Finding out a story that I adore, that I have found a great fondness for is in fact untrue makes me feel a profound sadness. I want to believe, now whether that is due to my childlike fascination with the written word that has grown and matured, or because I feel betrayed by the teller is irrelevant. I understand that I have felt what the characters have felt, shared their hardships that perhaps alleviated my own, I have gone through their story life as if it were my own. And perhaps that is the reason for this sadness. Because I have put so much into the story, into the emotion behind it, that to find it to be false has taken something from me, but perhaps that is the best feeling of all. To be able to empathize so thoroughly with people who never lived, who never will live, but who lived in my heart and my mind because it became my experience.

We talked about Les Miserable in class and spoke about the wounded hero. I am incredibly familiar with Les Mis as I was head costumer for 3 years back home in Boise for the Image Factory. The last play I worked on before leaving home for college was Les Mis. I will always remember Les Mis as the end of an era, the actors who had become my family, the girls that worked under me had blossomed and become costumers in their own right. And then it ended, and that is the safest and most cathartic thing about it. That chapter ended in my life, just as Jean Valjean died, but something also began, just as Cossette and Marius married despite all odds. That play is about heartbreak, it is about triumph, it is about the end. But most of all it is about forgiveness, acceptance and honor. So much tragedy and sadness filled the pages of my script, but a life was saved, a people given freedom. And in order to have those two positive things people had to die, just as in myth. We cannot have one without the other. We need both to survive, even if we die. Les Mis made an impact on my life,  we all stood there as the curtain fell shut, bowing and crying and laughing. It was the end for most of us, the end of a family that i knew had my back, that I knew I could call at any time and they would be there for me. But was it really the end? Sure we may not spend countless hours together on production, during before and after the shows bonding, getting to know each other and growing as people, as actors and production managers. Even though the end was filled with tears and despair for everything was changing, I wouldn't give up the experience the love the wonder and hope that was gifted to me. So yes, Les Mis changed my life, it changed my very being. I will always love and adore it.

In my life I certainly have the Mother/Daughter/Crone characters.

I am the daughter, I was raised by the mother who is actually my grandmother, and the crone figure is my actual mother. My mother is a person who is riddled with sickness, she has multiple untreated mental disorders and suffers from brain damage due to diabetic comas. She is a wonderful individual but I simply do not get along with her. There is a lot of bad history between us, and that is why she takes on the crone. I spent my entire life taking care of her, making sure she showered, ate, and survived until the next day. My grandmother took care of me when she could, she and her husband my grandfather, whom I call my dad made sure I survived the next day. My grandmother is the sweetest most caring mother figure you can imagine, we are practically carbon copies of each other is that we both love the same things and agree most of the time. My mother, the Crone does represent death, the shadier side of the human condition. My grandmother represents the person I hope to be, she is the matured, stable female in my life. I am the daughter, the young one, the female only beginning to see the world.

We as humans love to use useless 'throw away' words that actually mean nothing, but seem to convey something to the listener. These can be the small talk we make with friends or strangers, being polite, being nice acting the way we are told we need to. THe useless drivel we say because we aren't really saying anything, nor do we really care about what they reply, we just fill the air with noise. With sound that isn't necessary. People say how they miss the old days when people sat and talked with each other and said hello on the street. That isn't what they really mean. They miss when people care enough to actually listen. It isn't the words they miss, but the intent. Intent is everything, it is far more important that what actually happens or what is actually said. 

The Storyteller

I found the book to be slow at the beginning, the book swings around to different topics and doesn't seem to have a clear plot at first. As we look at the pictures in the gallery, I felt as though I could see them, they reminded me of the gallery at the coffee exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies a few months ago. I feel like I want to know more about Mascuarita, more of his life, of his dislikes of his loves. He is spoken about by a friend, but a friend who sits on the outside of reality. Our friends and family want to believe the best of us, and will always say the best things about us to other people. My favorite part the the book may be the ultimate idea to keep walking, to always keep learning, growing as people as a culture. That idea we must always keep learning and having that be embodied by walking is a fascinating idea. I loved how eager the people were, how eager they awaited the next story, and how quickly they accepted a new story teller. Story telling is central to their lives as much as it is ours, we just don't consciously realize the implications of it. Story telling is such a powerful way to communicate, we can leave so much up to the audience to figure out for themselves. The audience has to decide for themselves what to believe, what to take away from the story, what will affect them as a person. That perhaps is the most wonderful part of storytelling, and of the book. I really did enjoy the book, I found it to be artful and inspiring. I will be paying attention to how I tell stories and how my audience receives them.

That, anyway is what I have learned.

I learned that tone can be just as important if not more important that the words we say. Mythology sets the tone for life just as my tone can change an innocent sentence into something else. For example, at work when I am carrying a hot pan, I would say “HOT behind!” to warn my coworkers, but with tone that can become, “hot behind,” which changes my words into something more like, look at that bodacious booty. Tone is just the air quotes we use everyday in every conversation. I may have known that before this class but I hadn’t learned it. I hadn’t taken the concept and applied it to my daily life as a conscious observation. I hadn’t thought about it. And maybe that is what I learned the most. To simply think about our lives, the myth that is our reality. 

Only through experience do we learn. I truly hope I have experienced enough of this class to be changed by it. These experiences other wise known as the middle, are usually initiation rights, I learned from initiation rights how ridiculous people are. I mean, what the hell are they doing impaling their kids on poles? Isn't culture strange? Their culture, their stories tell them this is what they need to do to move onto the next phase of their lives. Our culture, which is quite vanilla tells us to get our first hair cut, go to prom, graduate high school, go to college and eventually have children. How boring! But of course, I wouldn't have it any other way. I like my myths, they are easy, the stories of my culture today are quite simple. They make sense to me. These are the things that I grew up with.

Mythology shows that there is a recipe to life, whether that is the beginning, the middle and the end, women and snakes, men and pride, or the repetition of life events through the ages. The players may be different but the story stays the same.  The truth is nothing is new, everything has been done. Which is why living in a culture that strives on originality yet dares to define what a “good” life should be, we find that so difficult to accept. I hate it, I hate that there are no new experiences for me to have, nothing that hasn’t been done before, because it makes us feel as though we are unimportant. All the great things have already been achieved and then I hate that I hate. But maybe that is a good thing, perhaps it is the best thing of all, maybe we should rebel against what constrains us, because isn’t everyone being original just another way to be the same? 

The ideas we have may not be original but how we interpret them is. We are living in an unconscious collective of information, we have all the information we need at our disposal whether that is through myth, or our keyboards. The information is there because someone else did it first.

We learn from our past, we learn from the past lives of others. This is not to say that we don't repeat the things we find to be false or wrong. Of course we do, because each generation believes that they can change the world, that what went wrong then won't happen when we do it. Each daughter believes they will have a different life than their mother, each son strives to do better than the father. Nothing really changes though; the mountain is still there, though it may look different. So maybe we don’t actually learn, we just assume we do. We assume that because we have heard and seen what they did before us we are going to change the outcome, but that isn’t always possible. Mythology has taught me that. Regardless of what you do it is not always possible to change what will happen to you, to your family. Europa and IO couldn’t change their fates, so what makes us think we can? Daphne ran from Apollo and became a tree but that wasn’t escaping. She didn’t achieve freedom. Sure she may have gotten away from Apollo but is her new reality any better? I don’t think so. We are always moving towards our end, regardless of our efforts.

Mythology has taught me that everyone suffers, everyone triumphs, and there isn't always going to be a happy ending.  Just as was discussed in this class, we are always moving towards danger, our own end despite our desperate attempts to stop it. Theology, the gods, what a great myth. In the end though, we all face suffering and death. It may be a spectacular end, one that will be told for years with both sadness and love in the hearts and memories of our loved ones, or it may be quiet and soft, just a passing of the soul from the body. Because isn't death, as told to us by J.K Rowling, the next greatest adventure?

            As we sat in this windowless room, we learned so much about ourselves. Truly. I learned more about myself and my life than anything else. I learned to laugh at the human experience, to not take myself or myth too seriously because isn’t it a glorious thing to be able to laugh at ourselves? To be able to laugh at our failing as a species as well as our accomplishments. I learned so much about me and about people, but that is of course because we are myth. Myth is our reality and our reality is myth. And that anyway, is what I have learned.