A room with all white walls- Displaced Myth

It all started back in August of 1994.
   "Now you be careful when you go to college. People aren't always how they seem to be." The old woman said with a concerned look on her aged face.

   "I will Gram. I promise." replied the beautiful young girl.

Girl wasn't the right word though...she was a young woman. The only world she had traveled or seen was in the book and movies, she read and saw. Maybe had she saw the truth, the reality with in those stories and images she clung too so hard she wouldn't have fallen for the trap. But she fell regardless of her Grandmother's warnings, and her own instincts.

With in the first month of college she had her first real love. She did love him and for the next few months everything was good. However, like all good things it came to an end. After their first real fight the young woman decided to drink her problems away...this is where the real problem began. She woke up in a strange place,  a strange house, a strange bed, and a stranger next to her.

When she had realized what had happened and exactly WHO it happened with she was scared. In a matter of weeks she realized that she was in over her head, not by feet but by miles. She was afraid of what was growing inside of her...for what would become of her unknown child. She already knew that normal was not going to happen, not after that night.

   "Sam...I need your help." tears swelled in her eyes as she looked at his face. She always went to him with her problems, he made her feel safe, secure like a dad or brother.

   "I'm worried. Not only for my safety, but yours, my families. You know what its father was, you know what he was capable of... What if what grows inside of me is the same?" her voice trembled.

   "We can't do anything... Not until after you have given birth, but I promise you that what grows inside of you is only half of that monster. It is half of you also, and maybe just maybe your good will ride it of the dark."His voice sounded confident, but he wasn't. He only sounded that way for her benefit.

Months came and passed. The seed of life grew with in her. She found out that she was to have a boy and whether she liked it or not she would have to give it a name. She hated the thought of it, she had to name something she didn't want. Actually it wasn't that she didn't want him, she always wanted children, but not this way and not this one. Daemyn that was to be his name. From that moment on she grew attached she couldn't help it the name made him real made him a part of her. After she gave birth, things went bad again.

She knew what he was, she knew that he was to much like his father, she knew the moment she found him huddled over a lunch box filled with dead animals.

   "He is his fathers son, what ever part of you was in him is gone! You have to let me deal with this, you can't put everyone in danger of his uncontrollable desires!" Sam said his voice was forceful, it made her cringe she had never seen him this way. She curled up against the wall hugging her knees to her chest crying uncontrollable, as he took her son.

She didn't know what Sam had done with him, she just knew that he wasn't her concern at least at that time. Years later she saw a man hunter for a viscous serial killer who targeted young women. She knew it was him, no question. The FBI said that kid was lost in the labyrinth of a thing called the foster care system for years and that he had a history of violence. It took years before they actually caught him but they did and he was given the death sentence. He died on his 18th birthday.

Sam had never returned that night, she didn't have to ask why she already knew. However, she thought of him, that day her son was killed. She wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he had a family, if he thought of her. She didn't know.

I couldn't go back not to face her, not after I couldn't kill him, I couldn't do what needed to be done. I could only hope to lose him in the system to keep him out of public for as long as possible. Short of putting him in some secret, abandoned, underground city this was all I could do. It's been years now I want to go home... I want my son to go home. We have been here too long. I didn't want him to grow up the way he did. For the past 15 years we have been living in the "City of Lights" Vegas.  I have managed to keep a roof over Landon and I's head, food on the table, and clothes on our back. I am a pool player, a good one I can hold my own against the pros, but I don't do it for big money, I do it to survive. I'm worried though Landon is better than I am and he is only 16, fame, money, all of it goes to his head. I warn him that if he goes down that path, it will not end. I was making arrangements to fly back to Washington, when I got the call. He hadn't listened, he got in way over his head and couldn't get out. 

   "Is this Sam Jones, father of Landon Jones?" an unemotional voice rang through the phone.

My heart thumped louder as to answer the question for me "Yes."
   "Yes, it is." I barely managed to whisper I knew what was coming it was said. 

   "I'm sorry sir but you need to come down the the county corners office and I.D. the body."

When I stumbled through the cold hard steel door, to that room, I felt like I was going to be sick. 
There on a metal slab lay his beloved son, he had felt the rush, of fame and money and in the end it burnt him. It was all my fault. I was never the same after Landon's death, I couldn't forgive myself I hated kids even my own nephew I couldn't stand the sight of. My sister unaware how far my hatred went left the her son at my house unattained. When I came back I found the only childhood craft left made by Landon lay in ruins on the floor of his room. The rest is a curtain of red... from what I was I have pieced together,I threw my nephew my own flesh and blood from the top most wind of my house. As he was falling to his impending death he changed into a bird. From that day the bird does not fly to close to the sun, nor does it rest in high place because of the fear of the fall. All I know is that I am room surrounded by white walls, wearing a white jacket and nobody believes me.... 

Under Which Lyre

I found this in a book of poems by my favorite author. It just so happened to be placed right next to my favorite poem which is "Leap Before You Look". 

Under Which Lyre

A Reactionary Tract for the Times

(PHI BETA KAPPA POEM, HARVARD 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,

          The bloodstains on the bushes yield

To seeping showers,

And in their convalescent state

The fractured towns associate

With summer flowers.

        Encamped upon the college plain

Raw veterans already train

As freshman forces;

Instructors with sarcastic tongue

 Shepherd the battle-weary young

Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances 

       For mastering the arts and sciences

They stroll or run, 

                         And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter 

Are shot to pieces by the shorter 

Poems of Donne. 

         Professors back from secret missions

Resume their proper eruditions,

Though some regret it;

They liked their dictaphones a lot,

        They met some big wheels, and do not

Let you forget it.

 But Zeus' inscrutable decree

Permits the will-to-disagree

To be pandemic,

Ordains that vaudeville shall preach

And every commencement speech

Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war

    Is instantly declared once more

’Twixt those who follow

Precocious Hermes all the way

       And those who without qualms obey

Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,

                           Though fought with smiles and Christian names

And less dramatic,

This dialectic strife between

   The civil gods is just as mean,

And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth

   Is life and death on Middle Earth;

Their a-historic

Antipathy forever gripes

    All ages and somatic types,

The sophomoric

Who face the future’s darkest hints

With giggles or with prairie squints

As stout as Cortez,

    And those who like myself turn pale

As we approach with ragged sail

The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play

And only do their best when they

Are told they oughtn’t;

Apollo’s children never shrink

      From boring jobs but have to think

Their work important.

Related by antithesis,

           A compromise between us is

Impossible;

        Respect perhaps but friendship never:

Falstaff the fool confronts forever

The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,

Apollo’s welcome to the throne,

Fasces and falcons;

He loves to rule, has always done it;

      The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,

Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,

       His common-sense in secret schemes

To rule the heart;

Unable to invent the lyre,

 Creates with simulated fire

Official art.

And when he occupies a college,

        Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;

He pays particular

Attention to Commercial Thought,

Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,

In his curricula.

  Athletic, extrovert and crude,

For him, to work in solitude

Is the offence,

The goal a populous Nirvana:

                His shield bears this device: Mens sana

Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,

      From Right to Left have met success,

His banners wave

From Yale to Princeton, and the news

From Broadway to the Book Reviews

Is very grave.

    His radio Homers all day long

In over-Whitmanated song

That does not scan,

With adjectives laid end to end,

    Extol the doughnut and commend

The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing

  On sport or spousal love or spring

Or dogs or dusters,

                Invented by some court-house bard

For recitation by the yard

In filibusters.

        To him ascend the prize orations

And sets of fugal variations

         On some folk-ballad,

While dietitians sacrifice

          A glass of prune-juice or a nice

       Marsh-mallow salad.

             Charged with his compound of sensational

Sex plus some undenominational

Religious matter,

Enormous novels by co-eds

              Rain down on our defenceless heads

    Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms

          Behind our battle-line, in swarms

    That keep alighting,

His existentialists declare

          That they are in complete despair,

 Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;

White Aphrodite is on our side:

What though his threat

   To organize us grow more critical?

Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,

Shall beat him yet.

                     Lone scholars, sniping from the walls

Of learned periodicals, 

        Our facts defend, 

Our intellectual marines,

    Landing in little magazines 

      Capture a trend.

  By night our student Underground

At cocktail parties whisper round

From ear to ear;

Fat figures in the public eye

                Collapse next morning, ambushed by

  Some witty sneer.

   In our morale must lie our strength:

So, that we may behold at length

Routed Apollo’s

Battalions melt away like fog,

         Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,

           Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, 

Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis 

On education, 

Thou shalt not worship projects nor

 Shalt thou or thine bow down before 

Administration.

         Thou shalt not answer questionnaires 

Or quizzes upon World-Affairs, 

   Nor with compliance 

Take any test. Thou shalt not sit

With statisticians nor commit 

A social science.

      Thou shalt not be on friendly terms

With guys in advertising firms,

  Nor speak with such

As read the Bible for its prose,

     Nor, above all, make love to those

  Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose

     Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

And take short views. 

WH Auden

Gramz and I tell a story

Once upon a time, there was a kind old grandmother, a daughter, and two beautiful children. They decided to travel to a far off land to acquire some exotic fabrics, to make beautiful clothing for the city. The grandmother and mother went off to shop, leaving the kids with some money to play games. Like all little kids the money didn't last long enough to keep the kids preoccupied while the adults where handling business. The oldest one had a stroke of genius when he saw a bridge built over a wishing pond.

"Come." He said to his little sister, "I have an idea."

They walked to the center of the bridge and the brother said, "You have to squeeze through the bars. I can't I'm to big. I'll hold your ankles, while you fish out as much money as you can."

The little girl opened her mouth to protest.... "Do you want to play games or not?!" Her brother snapped.

The little girl slid between the rails on the bridge and let herself down slowing, praying that her brother would not drop her. Her fingers skimmed the water, as her brother lowered her closer to the surface. After about fifteen minutes both children had a handful of coins.

"We need quarters." The boy said. He then gave the little girl all the change besides the quarters. She walked up to a nice young lady behind a counter, and said "Excuse me miss, but can I get these in quarters please."

The young lady took one look at the little girl with a such innocent eyes and big smile, and said, "Sure Sweetheart."

Out of the noise of the busy market place a sharp voice came "Young lady what do you think your doing? And where did you get that money?"

The little girl look at her mother's stern face and said "We found it momma."

"Found it! Found it where? Why is your hair wet?"

"Under the machines. I was sucking on it." The little girl replied as she grabbed the wet strand of hair and placed it in her mouth. Only then did she realize it was half an inch farther up then she could suck.

"Kids, why don't we go find a place to eat while your mom finishes paying." Said the old grandmother.

The kids followed her to a table where they sat. She looked at her two grandchildren and asked in a soft voice, "Okay, kids where did you really get the money from? Dong worry I won't tell your mother and you won't be get in trouble."

They looked at each other and the little girl said, "We got it from the wishing pond." She looked down, feeling ashamed, when she heard her grandmother laugh.

"You know, your mother stole petemoss from the local grocery store when she was 17, because she was bored. I found it the next day in the back yard, when she told me what she had done I made her return it to the store. After that we just laughed about it."

"What are you all laughing at?" The mother had come to join them to eat. She took a good long stern look at her children and asked "Are you two ready to tell me, where you really got all that money?"

With out hesitation the little girl looked at her mom with a very serious face and replied "The wishing pond. But momma you can't be bad at us. You stole from a grocery store once and you were much older then we are."

There was a moment of silence and everyone started laughing. "Did you have to tell them that?" The daughter asked her mother. "Couldn't you have at least told them about your escapade as a thief, instead of mine?"

"Wait... Gramz has stolen?" The boy asked after catching his breath.

"A story for a different day son."

Stories Over and Over and Over again.......

Stories, we all spend our lives telling them. About this, about that, about people, but some. Some stories are so good that we wished they'd never end. The are so gripping that we'll go with out sleep to see a little bit more. Some stories bring us laughter, some times they bring us tears, but isn't that what a story does, makes you feel. Stories are so powerful, they really are with us forever. 

- Dustin Hoffman

This post is way late, but it's in regards to repetition and stories. When we are little we love doing or watching things over and over. We love playing the same games, reading the same books, and watching the same movies. It's almost as if we would never get bored of doing it, at that time in our lives we love doing it. As we get older we grow old, we become more opposed to doing something over and over. Some people say things like "Different day, same shit." or "Same old, same old." But is that really true? Did they really relive the same exact things as they did yesterday or the day before that? If so, I think you maybe stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, and I would suggest getting some serious help at that point.

The quote above in my mind puts the way I think and feel about stories into words for others to understand. Everything we have done, are doing, and will do in the future will become stories. Stories for us to tell, for others to to tell. Our memories are the story they just haven't been given a voice yet. When we share those memories they become the stories people tell about us long after we have passed.
I love telling stories, hearing them, reading them, and watching them. There is something about them that make me feel. Feel like I'm right there in the middle of all the action, the heartbreak, the happiness, and the sorrow. They have a way of pulling me from reality into the a world of imagination where the impossible is possible.

I tell stories all the time, if you ask my friends I have my favorites that I love to tell. Sometimes I'll tell someone the same story two or thee times with out even realizing that I already told them. To some its annoying as hell, to others they really don't mind. The way I see it is that I never tell the story the same twice. The place is different, the mood is different, and the story applies differently this time compared to the last time. Like a mentioned in class I actually ask my Grams to tell me stories I have heard time and time again because I love to hear them. What I didn't say was as much as I like to hear the story again and again, I love the look on her face when she tells it. I know that in that moment, she loves to tell it as much as I love hearing it.

The Forbidden Fruit

So awhile back in class we discussed Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit. Like most kids growing up I had heard this story numerous times. The story I was told went something like the following: God created man and from man he created woman. He placed man and woman in a garden and told them they may eat and do whatever they like EXCEPT eat the fruit from the tree in which the snake lived. Eve was walking in the garden one day and she came across the tree with the snake. And with some cunning words of encouragement from the snake Eve ate of the Forbidden Fruit. She then gave some to Adam and well God found out he wasn't all to happy. The original sin had been made and we now live in the world today. 

So I did a little looking and found an interesting YouTube video that has an alternate theory about how the event actually played out.

Anyways the entire point of this blog was to tell you all about my recent experience with my own version of the Forbidden Fruit. So recently I quite smoking, which to most people it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Its not like being addicted to some hardcore drugs of even alcohol in most peoples eyes, but unless you've been there you really don't know. Even I don't have a right to say that because unlike most people who smoke, I didn't smoke right. How you may ask? Easy I didn't inhale right. Instead of inhaling into my lungs I kept the smoke in my mouth like you would a cigar. Which is what I had originally smoked before smoking cigarettes. So I didn't get the big nicotine buzz that most people do when they smoke. But enough about inhaling right, I'll get to my point. When I stopped smoking I felt like a little kid who had gotten her toy taken away, it was in sight but out of reach. I compared it to the Forbidden Fruit something I wanted but got told I couldn't have. 

Sedna (Inuit Creation Story)

This is the Version I couldn't tell in class

As the legend goes, Sedna was a beautiful Inuit girl who lived with her father. She was very vain and thought she was too beautiful to marry just anyone. Time and time again she turned down hunters who came to her camp wishing to marry her. Finally one day her father said to her "Sedna, we have no food and we will go hungry soon. You need a husband to take care of you, so the next hunter who comes to ask your hand in marriage, you must marry him." Sedna ignored her father and kept brushing her hair as she looked at her reflection in the water.

 Soon her father saw another hunter approaching their camp. The man was dressed elegantly in furs and appeared to be well-to-do even though his face was hidden. Sedna's father spoke to the man. "If you wish to seek a wife I have a beautiful daughter . She can cook and sew and I know she will make a good wife." Under great protest, Sedna was placed aboard of the hunters kayak and journeyed to her new home. Soon they arrived at an island. Sedna looked around. She could see nothing. No sod hut, no tent, just bare rocks and a cliff. The hunter stood before Sedna and as he pulled down his hood, he let out and evil laugh. Sedna's husband was not a man as she had thought but a raven in disguise. She screamed and tried to run, but the bird dragged her to a clearing on the cliff. Sedna's new home was a few tufts of animal hair and feathers strewn about on the hard, cold rock. The only food she had to eat was fish. Her husband, the raven, brought raw fish to her after a day of flying off in search of food.

Sedna was very unhappy and miserable. She cried and cried and called her father's name. Through the howling arctic winds Sedna's father could hear his daughter's cries. He felt guilty for what he had done as he knew she was sad. Sedna's father decided it was time to rescue his daughter. He loaded up his kayak and paddled for days through the frigid arctic waters to his Sedna's home. When he arrived Sedna was standing on the shore. Sedna hugged her father then quickly climbed into his kayak and paddled away. After many hours of travel Sedna turned and saw a black speck far off into the distance. She felt the fear well up inside of her for she knew the speck was her angry husband flying in search of her.

The big black raven swooped down upon the kayak bobbing on the ocean. Sedna's father took his paddle and struck at the raven but missed as the bird continued to harass them. Finally the raven swooped down near the kayak and flapped his wing upon the ocean. A vicious storm began to brew. The calm arctic ocean soon became a raging torrent tossing the tiny kayak to and fro. Sedna's father became very frightened. He grabbed Sedna and threw her over the side of the kayak into the ocean. "Here, he screamed, here is your precious wife, please do not hurt me, take her."

Sedna screamed and struggled as her body began go numb in the icy arctic waters. She swam to the kayak and reached up, her fingers grasping the side of the boat. Her father, terrified by the raging storm, thought only of himself as he grabbed the paddle and began to pound against Sedna's fingers. Sedna screamed for her father to stop but to no avail. Her frozen fingers cracked and fell into the ocean. Affected by her ghastly husbands powers, Sedna's fingers while sinking to the bottom, turned into seals. Sedna attempted again to swim and cling to her father's kayak. Again he grabbed the paddle and began beating at her hands. Again Sedna's hands, frozen by the arctic sea again cracked off. The stumps began to drift to the bottom of the sea, this time turned into the whales and other large mammals. Sedna could fight no more and began to sink herself.

Sedna, tourmented and raging with anger for what had happened to her, did not perish. She became, and still is today, the goddess of the sea. Sedna's companions are the seals, and the whales that sit with her at the bottom on the ocean. Her anger and fury against man is what drums up the violent seas and storms . Hunters have a great respect for her. Legend has it that they must treat her with respect. Shaman's from the world above must swim down to her to comb her long black tangled hair. This calms Sedna down. Once this is done, she releases her mammals to allow the Inuit to eat from the bounty of the sea. It is for this reason in the north that after a hunter catches a seal he drops water into the mouth of the mammal, a gesture to thank Sedna for her kindness in allowing him to feed his family.

This is the legend of Sedna.

Here is a video of the Story teller David Heathfield telling another version of this myth

(If you can't watch it the link to the video is the second one under Sources.)

Sources: http://www.hvgb.net/~sedna/story.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9UybixVaz4

Class notes 23-30, 2013

Jan. 23, 2013

• Everything you need is in your back yard 
• Apollo and Daphne 
• Bernini
• Forgotten

• Cave of Dreams (movie) WATCH!
• William Shakespeare 
• Sonnet 73
• old
• twilight - sun goes down
• autumn
• fire

• Lycidas
• John Milton

• Apollo & Daphne
• Cupids Arrow
• pursued & pursuer 
• she fled
• she became more beautiful as she fled
• turned into a tree
• Laurel tree
• Laure- leaf placed on the head of winners

• Etiology
• study of causation or origins understanding of myth as an explanation of the origins of cult practices 

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces 

• Iliad 
• ex nihilo (nothing)
• by though or feeling
• Earth diver
• Dividing in two 
• Heaven & Earth
• creation of dismembering a being (deities)

Jan 25, 2013

• sacred accounts
• found in nearly all religions
• at that time
• in illo tempor
• Tao Te Ching
• ex nihilo
•  through though, word dream or bodily secretion of divine being
• earth diver
• mostly Indian
• etiological
• Babylonian Creation Myth
• Enuma Elish
• When on High
• Marduk (hero)
• cuts body into two
• Axis Mundi
• cosmic axis, world axis
• age of speech
• creation of memory
• Forbidden Fruit

Jan. 28, 2013

• Boshongo Creation Myth
• Salish Creation Myth
• Finish Creation Myth
• Zulu Creation Myth
• Greek Persian Creation Myth
• Maori Creation Myth
• Thompson Indian Creation Myth
• Slavic Creation Myth
• Persian Creation Myth
• Isaac Esma Book Last Questrian
• Grovant Indian Creation Myth

Jan. 30, 2013

• Inca Creation Myth
• Celtic Creation Myth
• Inuit Creation Myth
• Cherokee Creation Myth
• Ancient Egyptian Myth
• Norse Creation Myth
• Hungarian Creation Myth
• Upanishads Creation Myth
• Korean Creation Myth
• Aboriginal (Australian) Creation Myth
• Aztec Creation Myth
• Egyptian (Atem) Creation Myth
• Egyptian Creation Myth
• Raven Creation Myth (North Western)
• Mayan Creation Myth
• Mongolian Creation Myth