Not an Ending

Before this class, my idea of mythology was typically of the Greek gods and stories that I had heard and learned in several high school class so I generally expected this same sort of thing from this class.  I was surprised that that wasn't at all what I've taken from this.  While I still love Greek Mythology and will probably strive to do more research on it and learn more of the history behind it, I have learned to appreciate mythology in a much broader sense.  This class has taught me a lot about myself.  As many have pointed out, Ovid knows more about their lives than they do themselves, I would tend to disagree.  I feel that Ovid has taught me that I have access to my life in ways that I hadn't realized before.  I know go through my days with open eyes and notice things I hadn't before.  I have learned that no day is ordinary if you simply realize that every day is a gift and we are lucky to be able to experience the pieces of events that help shape the entire story that we are all apart of.  Our days will continue on after this class, and we will draw closer and closer to the ending of our roles within this never ending story.

Original and Ordinary

I've been thinking a lot about how throughout this class we have constantly been mentioning two things.  The first being that nothing is original.  And the second is our assignment to have an ordinary day.  While I understand that everything has already been done before I have trouble fully accepting this concept.  We are constantly discovering things that are "new" and finding different ways to do things.  If everything has been done before than how are we able to discover these things? Wouldn't we have a cure for cancer?  Shouldn't the world be at peace with one another? None of these things are true, so therefore I have to believe that some things haven't been done before.  Or maybe this is more of a matter of the fact that they haven't been done by us at this time.  As we go through our lives we are constantly learning and making our own discoveries.  I think this means be are doing something original, but it is something original to us personally.  This also leads directly to our assignment to have an ordinary day.  As soon as we were given this assignment, everyone started to notice things that happened throughout their day that they didn't think was so ordinary.  I personally think the true aspect of this assignment was to stop going through the motions of everyday life, and actually live.  This simple task caused all of us to pay attention to our lives! Unordinary things happen to us constantly! But we will never notice them if we don't slow down and take the time to fully live and appreciate our lives.

My Life as a Mythic Detective

When we were first given this assignment, I thought about how I’ve seen so many connections with art and mythology in my life.  I originally came to school to be an architect because I knew that I wanted to do something creative with my life and this would allow me to do that but not live the life of a struggling artist.  But as I explored this field and partook in classes, I realized that if I was an architect I was never going to be given the opportunity to design the things I loved.  I enjoyed creating organic, curved, structures out of expensive materials which is extremely unpractical for what is needed in the world.  I also realized that I would always be designing for someone else, and following their requirements so this took away my creative freedom.  As a result, I realized I needed to stick with an art field that gives me the freedom in life that I’d been striving for so I switched to graphic design.  Some of the core classes for this major include several art history classes.  I took my first one this semester, simultaneously with mythologies.  As I’ve read Ovid’s Metamorphosis and learned the history of art, I have realized that they are directly related.  So many famous art pieces have portrayed mythological themes such as Peter Brueghel’s, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.”  This coincides with the story of Daedalus and Icarus in Book 8.  I’ve placed this picture on the following page as a reference.  The artist took details from Ovid such as the farmer at his plow, the shepherd leaning on his staff, the fisherman down by the water, but none of these figures seem to notice the subtle inclusion of Icarus falling into the water.  I love this story because it shows that we aren’t always as ready for certain tasks as we think we are, and patience is essential when growing up.

I was planning on listing many more of these images, as there are probably thousands that have been done over time referencing Metamorphosis but I think this would end up being a lengthy list so instead I thought about breaking my own life down and pointing out key moments that have shaped my mythological journey as I’ve grown up.

There is always a beginning, a middle and an end, however when I tell my mythological story, it won’t have an end because I am still on my journey.  I will of course start at the beginning.  I was born in Baltimore, Maryland and was an extremely colicky baby.  I was extremely cute of course but I wasn’t one of those babies that liked to cuddle with her parents.  I wanted to sleep but never really could and gave my parents a pretty hard time at first.  After a few years they figured they would have another baby because it couldn’t get much worse after me.  We moved to Helena where my sister was born which is the primary location of my mythological life.  When my sister was born I was no longer the center of my parents world, I had to share their attention.  This is always a struggle for many people.  As humans we want as much attention as we can possibly get, it’s just in our nature.  As toddlers, we think the world strictly revolves around us.  If we cover our eyes and can’t see, than that means that no one else can possibly see either.  We are self-involved and don’t move past this until later on in life.  I started taking ballet lessons when I was four, then my sister started these as well.  I joined a soccer team so my sister decided she wanted to play soccer.  I loved to paint so my sister wanted to paint.  I started racing dragsters with my dad, so my sister started racing as well.  I quit ballet when I got into high school and joined the cheer team.  Guess what?  My sister did this as well.  When I was young I began to resent this as I started to notice the reoccurring trend.  She was always doing what I was doing which created a competition between us.  I’m sure participating in the same activities was easier on my parents because they could take us to the same locations and not be constantly running around, but I initially hated how much she copied me!  I always fought with my mom about this because the copying was so frustrating; especially if she beat me in one of our drag races.  My parents would always tell me that I should be flattered that my little sister wanted to do everything that I did because it meant she wanted to be like me, but I always had trouble seeing things that way.  Then as I started to mature and somewhat grow up in high school, I started to realize that she really did admire me, and that I should be honored by this.

As we grew up, my sister started to get intense pains beginning in her knees.  We took her to the doctor several times and were always told it was tendonitis or growing pains and that it would subside when she had fully grown.  When she got into high school and finished growing the pain started to get worse and spread.  She now had shooting pain starting in her lower back that went down her legs and later spread to her arms.  These developments really increased when I went away to college.  My mom traveled around to different hospitals with her to try and help her because she could no longer sit down for an extended period of time.  Doctors had prescribed her with a ton of different kinds of medication that no child should ever have to deal with.  She then had doctors tell her that the pain was just in her head and that she was faking it because they had run so many tests and simply didn’t want to try anything else.  This caused my sister to lose a lot of faith because she knew that it was real and having professionals tell her she was basically crazy seemed unbearable and she wanted to give up.  Thank goodness my mom never let her.  Finally this last winter break she was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, spondylo arthritis, piriformis syndrome, and fibromyalgia.  She has started physical therapy for it and it is finally starting to improve. 

Finally, let’s get back to mythology.  The beginning of this story started with my parents having a colicky baby in Baltimore, Maryland.  As when we are children and think everyone’s world revolves around us, I thought my story would primarily be about me and my life; but as I have matured and grown up, moving to the middle of my story, it has become about my life with my sister.  She is my very best friend in the world and I am now honored that she wanted to be like me even throughout all of the struggles she has gone through in her life.  I know that it doesn’t matter what I do with my life, people are what matter so I always want to surround myself with these opportunities.  Overall, I have no idea what my mythological ending will be, but I know I want it to no longer just involve myself.  As a mythological detective I am striving to think more selflessly and have realized that everything has come from something else and we all need people and past knowledge to survive. 

Circles

I've been thinking about my life as a mythic detective and one thing that has really stood out to me and continuous reoccurs throughout my day would be the concept of a circle.  On Friday our professor mentioned, "There's no such thing as an ending, there is just a new beginning."  This directly relates to the concept of a circle which I think leads to the concept of origins.  Even if we think we are being "original" and starting something new, there is a very good chance that someone else has already done it before.  What goes around comes around and we are always repeating ourselves. 
I am in a drawing class where we are working on a capstone project for the end of the year where we were assigned to complete three drawings on anything we have observed.  I was recently in Oahu and was going through several of the pictures I had taken at Pearl Harbor and decided to focus my capstone project on the wars of our world.  My first piece is focusing on WWII and includes a series of images that overlap each other.  My second piece includes the Iraq war images, and the third is a futuristic possible war with North Korea.  A common element I am using within all of these pieces is a clock to record time.  As the clock has evolved from the old fashioned roman numeral to today digital, our weapons and technology have evolved with this as well.  One thing I am hoping to put across with these images is the fact that we are constantly going in circles as a clock does.  We are making the same general mistakes in war and always starting another leading me back to my point that nothing is original, within both our mistakes and our ideas.  Are we truly evolving as a society? Or are we always going to make the same mistakes since nothing is ever really new?

Tabula Rasa

I was looking through my notes and working on my mythic detective presentation when I came across the phrase "tabula rasa".  I looked up information on this and the first Wikipedia definition says, Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate in Latin, is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.  I can see both sides of this argument and am sort of torn between what I think I believe personally.  The idea that we are all born with a clean slate is comforting because it allows us to have so many possibilities, to learn endlessly, to be whoever we want to be.  This can also be scary because we are placed in the hands of two or sometimes one person as our guide and to start shaping what we will know and who we will be.  At the same time how can we be born with absolutely no knowledge at all.  That seems like such a hard thing to comprehend.  How can we learn anything if we didn't already know how to do the simple act of learning itself?  We are made up of many parts and those parts know how to function to make us exist, therefore, don't we already know something? Like how to live?  This is a topic I feel I could debate endlessly.

Questions and Knowledge

A lot of different things really struck out to me while listening to Fredrick Turners lecture on Friday.  One of them was when he briefly said, "Maybe knowledge has something to do with death." When he said this it was very quick and almost as if it were a simple thought in his mind, however it was extremely interesting to me and got me really thinking.  As we further develop in our society we gain knowledge.  This has lead to technological advancements.  We know live in houses instead of caves.  We use cell phones constantly instead of strictly face to face interaction.  We have developed ways to destroy each other.  As we grow older as a society, our advancements will continue to expand.  Will this come to a point where eventually our knowledge is so great that some day we might be able to prevent death and save our societies so we can live forever? Or will we end up destroying each other before we gain the technology to solve things such as a cure for cancer?  As we obtain more knowledge we also gain one vital attribute; questions. I'm encouraged to keep asking questions throughout my life because this will always lead to more knowledge.  Just a few thoughts on my mind.

Speakers

When we were assigned to attend the author talk last night at the Museum of the Rockies, at first I thought about all of the things I had to get done that night and started stressing out when adding another item to that list.  Then I thought about how enthusiastic and excited our professor was about the speaker we'd be listening to.  I realized that this was something that I needed to attend and keep an open mind about.  It turned out to be an extremely rewarding experience.  Fredrick Turner is passionate about his writing and it came across immediately when he walked onto the stage.  While listening to him read some of his works you can't help but feel like you are within the stories he reads.  He captured feelings and emotions in his words that were filled throughout the room.  I am very glad I attended this lecture and look forward to other talks that I attend outside of my classes in the future.

Writing Stories Assignment

I've never really been one to sit down and make up stories so I don't have much practice.  I love to paint and enjoy the expressions you create through actions that you can portray rather than writing down words but I took a shot at this assignment so hopefully it's somewhat entertaining. :)

A Betrayal

High school is hard. Everyone who’s been there knows it.  But somehow it always seems like it’s easier for those popular kids.  You all know who I’m talking about.  At Bozeman High School, there is a senior named Lacey who is absolutely beautiful.  She is head cheerleader and dating Aaron, the quarterback on the football team.  Life seemed like it was so perfect for both of them and everyone envied their love.  During the first week of September a girl named Rayna started attending Bozeman High.  She was a transfer from Big Sky High School in Missoula.  Since she was new to the school she didn’t know very many people, but on her first day she was told about how Lacey was the most popular girl in school and everyone wanted to be friends with her.  Rayna ended up having Biology and History with Lacey so she started sitting by Lacey hoping to get on her good graces.  Over the next few weeks they ended up being extremely good friends and Rayna started to become popular as well.  She really liked her new school because many people would talk to her and invite her to parties on the weekend.  At Rayna’s old school, she had a few friends, but she had never experienced actually being popular like she was at Bozeman High School.  Her parents started to notice that her school work was slacking because she was out late with her new friends all the time instead of doing her homework.  They tried to encourage her to spend more time with her studies but she was too excited that everyone liked her. 

State football was coming up, and the Hawks were going to Helena to play the Bruins in the state championship game.  Lacey and Rayna were planning on riding there together with a bunch of their friends and they were very excited.  Lacey’s aunt lived in Helena so all of the girls were going to stay the night at her house so they didn’t have to leave the game early to drive back home.  When they got to the game Lacey disappeared after the first quarter and Rayna began to worry.  She asked a few people if they’d seen her but no one had.  Rayna decided to go looking for her to make sure that she was okay and found her in the dark parking lot outback.   She started to walk up to her but noticed that she was talking to someone that she didn’t recognize.  Lacey threw her arms around the guy and kissed him on the cheek without letting go.  This seemed like an intimate moment for the two and Rayna was shocked with what she saw.  Why would Lacey be cheating on Aaron?  They were both so perfect together.  She wasn’t sure what to think so she went back into the game to join her other friends and continued enjoying the night. 

When they all got home the next day, Rayna couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen.  She had gotten to know Aaron very well since she was Lacey’s best friend, and really respected him.  Aaron didn’t deserve to be cheated on so Rayna decided to call him and tell him what she had seen.  He was completely devastated and hung up the phone right after Rayna had told him the news.  That night Rayna stayed at home with her family and worried what would happen at school the next week.  On Monday she woke up late and was running late so she missed the first period of class.  Second period was Biology.  She always sat with Lacey so she was figured she’d act normal and do the same.  When she walked in the class, another girl was sitting with Lacey and neither one of them would even look at Rayna.  She knew they were mad at her and later found out that Aaron and dumped Lacey.  None of their usual friend group would talk to Rayna so she ate lunch by herself and went to all of her classes alone.  This continued for the rest of the week.  Friday was homecoming and all of the girls were planning on meeting up at Lacey’s house to get ready together.  Rayna already had her dress so she decided to show up hoping to apologize to Lacey and explain why she had told Aaron.  When she got to the house Lacey opened the door but left the screen door shut so that Rayna couldn’t get in.  Rayna tried to apologize that she had hurt her and that she hoped they could move past it and still be friends.  Lacey said that Rayna had seen her with her cousin Jared and that his girlfriend died in a car accident and he didn’t want to make a seen at the game so that’s why they were outside by themselves for so long.  Aaron didn’t believe Lacey and wasn’t planning on dating her again.  Rayna felt awful for her mistake but Lacey turned their friends against her and she was once again the outcast in high school. 

The Spinner

The Spinner by Diego Velazquez



I truly enjoy painting.  When I begin something, I generally have an idea of what I'd like to do but as I'm in the process of creating it, usually things change and you put them on the canvas.  This painting was probaby created from the background, up to the foreground. This creates layers and a lot of thought to the composition.  I feel that this painting almost seems like two separate pieces.  The people in the foreground create their own scene allowing the viewer to focus on them and their specific actions/story.  As you look at the painting longer, your eyes start to wander to the background and you see what is behind the people at the front.  I think this is about a stage or a play that we are watching.  The people in the foreground represent the people on the stage and we frocus on them and their story as viewers in the audience.  The scene in the background tells us the story of behind the scenes or backstage at a play.  The red curtain on the left further demonstrates this theory.

Trees

Finally posting our tree picture.  It took us awhile but we finally remembered to take it.  This is a plant/tree in our house that is placed by a piano.  I think music is a great part of our culture, history, and mythology so this was an important choice for me.



Notes 3/4

Books 4, 5, and 6

Just wait a few minutes if you don't like something and it will change....

*Remember to blog*

How have the artists represented stories? blog by Friday
-Diego Velazquez- The Spinner
-Aracne

Mnemosyne- mother of the muses

Stories
Final Project- my life as a mythic detective

Notes 3/1

A Man Called Horse (film)
"Whatever is past posses the present " quote from a book
3 most frequent stories for Inititation
-crocodile bumps
-ant gloves
-land divers

Buddhism
-4 Noble Truths

If you haven't suffer yet, you will
*The readiness is all- Hamelot, Act 5
"You need to do the right thing"

Nacirema Article

 I tried to add the article that I read on the Nacirema incase anyone wanted to read it.  It would only upload as pictures so hopefully you can zoom in to read it.  It's definitely worth looing at and try to keep an open mind even though you already know the truth about this article!

Dreams

Ever since we have been given the assignment to dream and record it on our blogs, I have been very concious that I am indeed dreaming, but I've been waking up in the middle of the night and falling back asleep then forgetting the dream the next morning.  This has been driving me crazy and I started looking to see if it was morning yet when I would wake up.  Someone this must have triggered some kind of clock in my body because I would consistantly wake up at 2, 4, and 6 in the morning.  This would literally happen at the same times every night.  I decided to stop looking at the clock to try to get myself to stop waking up! Finally last night I dreamed and I mostly remember it so I will share as much as I can now since my frustration has taken over this assignment.  I was at a concert with my sister and we were having a great time singing along to the songs with the artist as loud as we possibly could and just taking the whole concert seen in.  They were doing a special thing at this concert where a microphone was passed around throughout the crowd and sometimes the artist would let the member that was holding the microphone sing in with the song.  At one point I was given the microphone and she let me since the song ( I dont remember who the artist was on the stage) but the song that was playing was, I Will Always Love You.  I sang the song and everyone in the crowd cheered and kept telling me how great I was.  After the concert some of my sorority sister appeared in the crowd and were telling me that someone had recorded me singing and put it on youtube and that the video had received a ton of great feedback! Then a record company came up to me and wanted to sign me and start my new singing carreer. I was very excited and my sister and I started walking back to our car.  It was then day time and the field our car was in turned into a drag racing car track and my dad showed up and told us we needed to get ready for the race.  Then I woke up.  So that is my dream, I'm assuming in a few years I will become a professional singer and racecar driver :)

Art and Mythology

I'm a graphic design major and one of the required classes that we have to take is Art History.  Throughout the class we have been going over many pieces that relate to mythology.  Many of these are centered around religion during the Renaissance period and also focus on Adam and Eve. 

The above picture is called the Fall of Man by Albrecht Durer in 1504. 

Titian, The Meeting of Bacchus
and Ariadne in 1522

These are just a couple of examples of the pieces that are directly telling stories of mythology.  I've realized that it's hard to go throughout your day without coming across something that relates to mythology.

The Maori Creation Myth

In the beginning, there was Te Kore, The Nothing.  From Te Kore came Te Po, The Night.  There were many nights. The last Night joined with Space and there came into being two thoughts.  These thoughts were called Rangi, the Sky Father, and Papa, the Earth Mother.  They were so much in love that they held each other tightly and refused to let go of each other. Thus the sky and the eath were joined solidly together.  There was no light on the earth as Rangi and Papa’s tight embrace prevented it.  There was not even enough room for Time to slip between them.  Papa and Rangi gave birth to over 100 children; some of the children were Tangaroa, god of the sea, Tane, god of the forests, Tumatauenga, god of war, Whiro, god of darkness and Tawhirimatea, god of the winds. They were all trapped between their parents and could hardly move. The children talked about what they should do.  Tane suggested that he would separate their parents.  Whiro, was angry with Tane, because he was the eldest, and he should be the one to do this. Tawhiri wanted their parents to be left alone. Tumatauenga thought they should just kill the parents. But in the end, most of the children agreed that Tane should push them apart. Tane, god of the forests, carried four poles with him.  He placed one of the poles by his parents’ legs and one by their heads. He then pushed his parents apart. He pushed for years and years and years.  Rangi the Sky and Pap the Earth were separated became the sky above and earth below as we know them today. The blood from Rangi became the red of the sunset. The blood from Papa became the red clay earth. Light came into the world at last. The children moved to the four corners. But Tawhiri was very angry at what had been done. The anger grew in him until he couldn’t bear it any more. Tawhiri ripped out his eyes and threw them into the heavens, where they turned into the first two stars. He then turned his blind fury on all of his brothers. He blew hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones. He made tsunamis and huge storms. His anger had no end. Papa and Rangi were unhappy. They missed eachother so much that they cried and cried and cried. Rangi’s tears became rivers and oceans and dew on the grass. The mists that rise from the ground are from Pap, sighing with loneliness.

Notes and Observations

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Last semester I took an Artchitectural history class and we started out by looking at the origins of architure which began with stone formations and moved to cave paintings.  We watched a few short documentaries on this film and I found it to be absolutely fascinating.

Everything you need has been in front of you and inside you all along. This was the moral behind the Wizard of Oz and I think it applies to many aspects of our lives.

Metamorphoses- compared to the changes of trees.  Shakespear Sonnet 73- he's talking about a tree

A student in our class pointed out that she didn't see the tree she chose for her tree picture until she was given the assignment and realized that she really liked the tree.  I think this statement also refers back to a common theme that keeps coming up within our discussions about how everything we need is right in front of us.  Until we truly open our eyes, we won't really be able to view the world around us or appreciate what we have.

Apollo's first love was Daphne- struck by Cupid's Arrow

At the end of Daphne and Apollo, he embraces her and says she will be his tree. She turned into a Laurel tree. These leaves are now used as a symbol for winners and honor.  People wear the leaves in their hair.

***Etiology- the study of causation or origination.  Why things are they way they are.
In a Galaxy Far Far Away....
Hero with 1000 faces- Joseph Campbell
George Lucas got Star Wars from this.

On Monday- Start Creation Stories

Fredderick Turner- "Epic" wrote this.
Guest speaker

4 Types
1- X Nihilo- thought word, world of nothing
2- Earth Diver- god sends amphibions, brings particle of earth from the ocean floor
3- Creation by dividing in two- promordial heaven/earth
4- Creation by dismemberment of promordial being

Stories Upon Stories

Last year in college I took a literature class that focused on the origins of classic fairytales.  I hadn't realized that every Disney fairytale that I knew had originally came from a previous version from many years ago.  There are probably thousands of versions of every one of these stories and it interested me that a lot of them were very dark and involved death.  Somewhere along the way someone thought to change these stories to be told at a childrens level but there are many adult rated origins that I'd never heard of before.  Now when I read stories I tend to unconciously look for its similarities to other things that I've heard.  As I was reading the beginning of Book IV, Pyramus and Thisbe, I drew a connection to the story of Romeo and Juliet.  These two were so in love that they would do anything to be together and it resulted in confusion and a tragic death.  This also brings me to our professor's point that nothing is original any more and that everything comes from something else.  I think I will probably take that lesson and look for it a lot throughout my life.

Notes 1/14

Notes for 1/14/2013

Assignment- Have someone take your picture hugging a tree *

Every time you step outside you experience a myth.  An example is going over the threshhold.
First stage in the hero's journey- Call to adventure.

Baucus- god of wine and merriment

All fairytales are from myths.
The Transformation- "The Princess and the Frog"

*There is a woman behind every hero

Look up Monomyth- 17 stages***
Seperation
Inititation
Transformation

Education is transformation not information
Ovid Metamorphoses was written in the year 8. Over 2000 years ago

Italo Calvino- Condensed, compact point of unimaginable energy that will explode
                   - Woman making noodles

If you don't like a story just wait and it will change

I personally really like this last sentence because it feels like inspiration to continue forward even if things get hard in your life.

Creation Myth

http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/064.html

I added the link that will directly go to the creation myth I have chosen.  To summarize this story, a chief came down from the upper world and threw five of the hairs from his head onto the ground and they formed five perfect women.  He asked each of them what they would like to be in this world.  The first said she would like to bear children that would bring bad into the world.  The second wanted to bear children bringing good into the world; the third asked to be Earth; the fourth fire; and the fifth water.  This was how everything began.

I've never had any experience with blogging so I hope I'm doing this right.