Summation- Ends and Beginings

I'm sad this is ending. From the first moment Professor Sexson walked in to the class and asked if this was the anthropology class and (happy to find it wasn't) started talking to us about mythologies being the precedent to every action, I was hooked. I have learned so much from this class about not only myth but life.

I've had so many people tease me about being an English Major (though they say teaching it is a slight improvement) in the last year. To hear Proffessor Sexson speak and make an argument for the arts and speak as if they not only had value, but had more value than business or science, well... it made me feel like I had found somewhere I belong.

I want to teach English because I love the stories and everything they teach you. There is nothing like putting down a book and feeling like you can't possibly be the same person as when you picked it up. Professor Sexson said in class on day "Education is not information; it's transformation. The point is not to fill your heads with facts but to be changed in the twinkling of an eye." This has stuck with me from the moment he said it because thats the feeling I love; the transformation.

 Todays is the last day of class. I haven't posted nearly enough of my thoughts from this class online but oh well. Even though it won't be graded I want to add all my class notes on here at some point just to save them somewhere digital. Each time I go back through I notice something I had forgotten, much like how each time we read Ovid we find something we missed.

But back to endings. I keep searching for the perfect way to sum up everything we have talked about over the last semester in the course. I can't seem to find the words but I know at the same time this is ending something new is beginning. I've already signed up for the Honors Mythologies class in the Fall and can't wait to see where that takes me. As for this summer I only hope that I can hone my mythic detective skills a little more and just remember that even though I am sad to see this end something else is starting that might be even better. And if not... Well I'm sure it will transform and change in to something new.

My Life as a Mythic Detective

Never an Ordinary Day

My Life as a Mythic Detective

I used to have many ordinary days. I would get up, go to class, eat, study, work, spend time with friends, and then go back to bed to without anything spectacular ever happening to me. I would grow bored with the monotony of life and wish to go out on adventures; backpacking with friends, tubing the Madison, or even just loosing myself in to the alternate realities of novels. I would grow frustrated with myself for focusing on work and school without a clear picture of why I was doing these things and why they were important. I lived a lot of my life on auto pilot, ignoring all the details that now sparkle at me like twinkling stars on a cloudless night.

My Friday began exactly where my Thursday ended; cuddled up in bed dreaming of the snake my 4th grade classroom kept as a pet. Her name was mini-mac and in my dream the whole class had been searching for her until my science teacher found her curled around a broom in the corner of the classroom. Just as he reached out to untangle her coils from the handle my alarm went off. “I met you before the fall of Rome. And I begged you to let me take you home. You were wrong, I was right You said goodbye, I said goodnight! It's all been done...” The Bare Naked Ladies song “Its all been done” startles me from the 4th grade classroom and back to my dorm room. Groaning slightly I get up and start getting ready for the day.

“It's all been done” still stuck in my head I find myself singing along before realizing what I am doing. Smiling, I remember something I once heard; That there is only one reason for being on Earth and that is to sing. Letting my mind wander I go back to the snake in my dream which so resembles the Aesculapius. I never feared snakes as a child regardless of the bad rap they got in my bible study class. I was always fascinated to watch mini-mac shed her skin because it seemed that she left another version of herself behind. It was no surprise to me to find out that in the story of Gilgamesh snakes are believed to be immortal. They leave their dead body behind and just slither away.

Later on that day while walking to my Education class I pass by a woman who was obviously pregnant. Her belly, just beginning to become round, shows evidence of her child. She reminds me suddenly of story of Bacchus's dual births, first from the mortal woman Semele, and second from the thigh of Zeus himself. I try to imagine for a moment what Zeus must have looked like with a baby belly stuck on his thigh. The image is odd for me until I remember how Zeus had impregnated Leda in the form of a swan and produced two eggs. I imagine the look of surprise that would occur on this poor woman's face if she were to birth egg, even if the most beautiful girl in the world were to hatch from it.

Class that day brought about a discussion on the common core standards for education in Montana and standardized testing. I have never been a fan of standardized testing and find it frustrating that funding for schools is liked to success on these tests. Education isn't about the information that must be know to pass these tests; education is about transformation. The point is not to fill your heads with facts but to be changed (as Professor Sexson puts it) in the “twinkling of an eye.” As I listen to the heated debate now brewing I consider my choice to be a teacher. I love English and specifically all of the stories that make up the subject in school, but many of my peers look down on my choice. They say that there isn't a point to having a high school English teacher because by that grade level the students know how to read and write and there isn't anything left to teach. What my peers don't realize is that I won't be trying to teach them anything; I just want to help them remember all of the things they already know. Just like Plato's story of how humanity lost its wings and and fell to the much and mud of Earth, I and my future students have forgotten the very things that will let us fly.

Classes end for the day and I head home, walking around the oval being torn up for the construction of Suite 3 behind North Hedges. The grass is torn up, the dirt exposed, and to the far side the mound of earth lies three trees uprooted. My heart sinks for a moment as I remember sitting underneath one of them in the shade last year with my boyfriend Phil talking about nothing and enjoying spring. Now it lies dead and the transformation of Daphne, undergone to avoid Apollo, is in vain.

After finishing the pile of chemistry homework on my desk, I decide to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies. While mixing together the flour and brown sugar I remember Ceres the goddess of grain and other home related things. Though not as dramatic of a goddess as many others, her favor was of great importance for growing crops that produced the flour I use to bake my cookies. Waiting for the cookies to bake, I glance up at the fire panel on the wall. The panel reads “Cerberus Productions;” an obvious reference to the three headed dog that guards the underworld in mythologies. Yet another thing in my day that reminds me of Ovid. The timer beeps and I take out the cookies while imagining what it must be like to live in the underworld like Persephone did.

*Knock. Knock. Knock* Three times I hear the sound before I realize Phil is knocking at the kitchen door. The sun is setting behind him in the glass door, like Apollos chariot ridding out of sight. I let him in and we sit down for a couple warm cookies and a glass of cold milk each. “How was your day?” he asks me.

I smile and think about if for a second. I had dreamed, gotten up, went to class, done homework, worked, ate, made a batch of cookies, and these were all normal every day things but somehow my day was anything but ordinary. I noticed the connections between my life and the many stories about what has come before me. I saw the mythologies, the true stories, that precede me. Though I still have many clues left to discover my own mythological story before I end this life and begin a new one, I have taken a step towards being a mythic detective.

Finally, I answer him. “It was anything but ordinary.”

Just for a laugh...

I'm not usually to post random jokes I found on the Internet anywhere let alone a class blog but I couldn't help but share this. For anyone who isn't as big of a Disney nerd as me this scene is from Hercules when Meg is singing "Won't say I'm in love." And yes I was slightly disappointed.

Words- "Epic!" and "Myth"

Ever since listening to Fred Turner's presentation in class last week I've been hearing the word "epic" more often. Though I had heard friends and peers use "epic" to describe things that are "cool" or "awesome" I had never made the connection the epic poetry such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Now when I hear my peers using, or when I use the word "epic" I smile and remember Turner's presentation.

In my Multicultural Education class I just finished up a presentation on Native American Literature. I had to create lesson plans to be implemented in an 11th grade English class and naturally, after enjoying this class so much, I choose to discuss Native American Creation Myths. I looked at two creation myths from different tribes, the Yupik and the Blackfoot tribes. In my presentation I briefly explained the two myths and what I would do in the lesson. Afterwards I was given written feedback from my peers about my presentation and I was sad to find that someone was severally insulted that I used the word "myth" to describe the creation stories from the Native American tribes. They said that I should not have used the word "myth" because to their culture these stories are what they believe in and see as true. Though initially I was upset that I was perceived as being culturally insensitive in a lesson designed specifically to be culturally sensitive, I realized this shouldn't be an issue. Over an over we have discussed that myths are the president to every action. They are going back to the origins, the beginning, and this is exactly what I was trying to teach my potential students. I wasn't insulting Native American Culture by calling their stories "myth;" I easily could have called the biblical creation story a "myth." I wish whichever of my peers wrote that feedback would take Professor Sexson's Mythologies class and see that the word "myth" has more to it than most people see.   

For anyone interested this is a video for part of the Yupik creation my preformed in the oral tradition style by Jack Dalton.

Also click on the picture for a link to the Blackfoot creation story if your interested.

Frederick Turner

Spring Evening

By Frederick Turner

Above the baby-powder clouds

The sky is china blue.

Soon, young and chattering, the crowds

Of stars come pushing through.

And this is the first dispensation,

The setting up of the odds;

This is the eve of creation,

This is the time of the gods.

I had only ever been to one poetry reading before the evening with Frederick Turner so I come in unsure what to expect. The reading I went to before was an awards ceremony of local writers who each got up and read the poem that won them an award and that was it. I enjoyed Turner's poetry a lot more than I did the most of "award winning" poems at the previous poetry event I had attended. 

Class last Friday was even better than the mesmerizing spoken poetry. I had never thought about the connection between the gaining of knowledge and a woman's pain in childbirth. I was also interested by the idea that death is intimately connected with knowledge, and that knowledge of death is one of the deepest kinds of knowledge. Overall I wish Turner would have had more time to speak with us. 

Oh and apparently Epic hates incest.

Opps! No sex changes!

So in class I mentioned that Hyena's do in fact change gender. Apparently I was wrong on that. I went home and did some research on the subject and that is in fact a myth (yes the use of that word was supposed to be ironic).
The female hyena is very often confused with the male hyena which is what started the idea that they change sex. If you want to read more about this I found a website that I linked below for everyone to read.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/hyena.html

It explains the similarities in about the 9th paragraph down.

Sorry about the misinformation!!

Trees for Phil

 

It's all about trees.

Though we talked about this a lot earlier in the class I still can't help but notice when trees pop up in my everyday life. This Sunday was my boyfriend's (or significant otter as Dr. Sexson puts it) 20th birthday. At a loss as to what to buy a college age Physics major I recalled how the two of us spent several days working in his back yard in Colorado planting a rose garden together. He enjoys landscaping and gardening so the project was fun despite the hours moving dirt, pulling weeds, and building a retaining wall. I remember a conversation we had while we were planting the roses about how much work his family had put in to their backyard (which by the way is beautiful landscaped). As a bit of a hick from the middle of the woods in Alaska I never realized how much effort people in the lower 48 put in to their yards and how expensive the whole process was. When his family moved in there was nothing but a dirt lot behind the house and since then they have planted numerous trees, bushes, and flower gardens. I was surprised to find out that if they had had this done professionally it would have cost over $100,000. Even doing the work themselves the trees cost a ridiculous amount of money (in my mind) because they grow so slowly. In this memory I found the perfect gift.
I decided to buy him a tree, not a full sized tree mind you, but a small one that he can keep it in a pot in his apartment through college. This way by the time he is old enough to buy a house and settle down the tree will be big enough to plant in the ground. This way instead of spending a ton of money on a mature tree he will already have one started. I let him help choose which kind and we decided on a walnut tree. I suggested a Laurel in honor of Daphne but found out they won't grow very well where he has interest in living.
  

End Times- Fire or Ice

 When I think about the end of the world, the apocalypse, Robert Frost comes to mind. His poem, "Fire and Ice" has been one of my favorites since the first time that I read it in 5th grade.  It reads as follows:

Fire and Ice

By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

After reading the last chapter of Ovid the idea of no end but merely change appeals to me more than destruction ice or fire the Frost's words still echo in my head.

Perpetual Flow of Energy

"The only reality is the perpetual flow of vital energy." Montale

I came across this quote in a book I was reading for my poetry class. It proceeded  Derek Mahon's poem "A Swim in Co. Wicklow."Though it took me a while to understand what the poems meaning was I realized it was all held in Montale's quote. The poem talks about the changes and flowing nature of water in all of its form; from the lakes, rivers, and woodland pools to the "swirl and spin" of the sea.

This theme struck a cord with me after reading the last chapter of Ovid for the second time. Like the flow of water or "virtual energy" Ovid explains that life is cyclical; nothing is ever destroyed but only changes. It exists in a closed circle of change.

"Nothing retains the shape of what it was, And Nature, always making old things new, Proves nothing dies within the universe, But takes another being in new forms." - Ovid

I thought Montale's quote fit nicely in to what we were talking about in class Monday so I figured I would share it.