taking a look back to the beginning

Well here we are at the end of the semester, it all happened so fast! I was looking over all my past notes and blogs and i ran across the blog towards the beginning of the semester where i was searching through the Chronicle for the past references. I was struggling to make a link. I stated that maybe since we had just started the class that was the reason i couldn't find anything and that i just needed to give myself time to learn more.

Well now during the last week of classes i decided to look back through a chronicle to find the past. I hate to say that i came up empty handed. I felt quite discouraged from not being able to do what i had set out to accomplish.
Then i started think of all the group and individual presentations and how so many links were made with ease to the past. So now i feel better because although i may not be able to read this mornings paper and find a connection to the past, during a discussion of many movies, song, poems, plays, books and almost anything else i can find a link to the past. This idea makes me feel like i learned a lot now instead of feeling defeated.

Although this time of the semester is so stressful and just piled with loads of homework and studying i love to look back through the class notes, because it reminds me of the place that we stated. This then bring up the idea of T. S. Eliot and his fine words of wisdom....


"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"

We are ending up the class in the same place, but i am no longer the same person. I have learned and reflected on too many things this semester to have not been effected. I guess a part from being here to get a degree, this is what college is all about, putting in the time and effort to learn something and forever be changed.

Today was the first of the group presentations and it is just so funny to me that we have all been in the same class together but each presentation has been completely original and nothing like the one before it. It just amuses me that although we all have been sitting in the same class all semester together each person has gotten something different from the class. This idea is evident in all of the blogs. It is so interesting to go through different people's blogs and see how they interpreted or responded to a certain idea or theme or book. I love diversity and it looks like this class really allows people to explore there own ideas and interpret things in their own way, whether it is through poems or pictures or just written responses.

My five lines

I realized that i never posted my five lines that I picked from Ovid's Metamorphoses, better late than never

"Now, when it wills, the fatal day (which has
only the body in its grasp) can end
my years, however long or short their span.
But, with the better part of me, I'll gain
a place that's higher than the stars: my name,
indelible, eternal, will remain." (pg. 549)

There were so many lines in this book that i was thinking about for my particular five lines but my mind kept getting captured by these lines. I think they are so inspirational. These lines speak to me in a way that they wouldn't of last year and probably won't next year but at this point in my life and everything that is surrounding me, these lines are inspirational and comforting. I guess they just remind me that things don't die, they change...Ovid is proof of this, he is not dead...yet he lives each time I open his book and absorb his words.

Cupid and Psyche

Ok, I know we were only supposed to pick one picture of cupid and psyche...but i couldn't these are all great

"But - and here you must excuse a horrible idea which i hope nobody will ever put into practice - if you shaved the head of even the most beautiful woman alive and so deprived her face of its natural setting, then i don't care whether she originally floated down from Heaven, and was reborn from sea-foam like the Goddess Venus - i don't even care whether she were Venus herself, with everyone of the Graces and Cupids in attendance, Venus dripping with precious balsam and fragrant as Cinnamon, and with a famous girdle of love clasped around her waist- the fact is, that her baldness would leave her completely without attraction even for so devoted a husband as the God Vulcan" (pg 31 from the Golden Ass)


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I couldn't help but think of Britney Spear during this passage. I guess she didn't read the Golden Ass before taking the razor to her head.

Pyramus and Thisbe

I really liked this story. I think Shakespeare also enjoyed this tale because it seems to have been the inspiration for his Romeo and Juliet. This story was very captivating. Sometimes i think it is hard to get into stories that are in prose form (especially when they are so long), but something about this story really captured my attention and i couldn't help but let my thoughts be taken away with this story.

This photo is of mulberries and if you read this myth then you know why they are red. Originally this fruit was the color of snow, a pure white. The blood of Pyramus changed them red when he killed himself because he thought the love of his life was eaten by a lion. When Thisbe came out from hiding from the lion she found her beloved Pyramus dead, killed by his own dagger. She, from grief of losing her lover, also decided to kill herself with his dagger, but not before she begged the Gods to keep this fruit the color of their blood to show and remind everyone of their tragic love.

"And may you mulberry, whose boughts now shade one wretched body and will soon shade two, forever bear these darkly colored fruits as sign of our sad end, that men remember the death we met together" (115).

After she pleaded these words she also used Pyramus dagger to take her life. Although it was a very tragic story it was still very captivating and worth taking a look at.

Modern Day Lysistrata

It looks like in 2006 Aristophanes Lysistrata was put to life when these women in the story that follows decided to use her idea of withholding sex from their husbands and boyfriends in order to have them give up their guns.

This article was copied right off of the news.com site. The link is at the bottom if you are interested.

Gang wives call sex strike against crime
From correspondents in Bogota
September 13, 2006 12:00

THEY are calling it the "crossed legs" strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.
After meeting with the mayor's office to discuss a disarmament program, a group of women decided to deny their partners their conjugal rights and recorded a song for local radio to urge others to follow their example.

"We met with the wives and girlfriends of gang members and they were worried some were not handing over their guns and that is where they came up with the idea of a vigil or a sex strike," mayor's office representative Julio Cesar Gomez said.
"The message they are giving them is disarm or if not then they will decide how, when, where and at what time," he said by telephone.


I copied this page from this link if you want to check it out. I thought it was very funny and worth sharing

Surprising my Expectations

Dr. Sexson has said a few times that the perception of old greek mythology is that it is old and boring and i hate to say that i was influenced by this perception prior to this class. However, i am glad to say that i have learned that ancient greek mythology can be very very funny and very very touching.

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes is the first time that i removed the lens from my mind and completely let my guard down to enjoy the humor. Lysistrata is also one that just floored me. I still have a hard time believing that such an old work is so contemporary for today.

This class has really removed the prior expectations of me struggling to not fall asleep during each class and each time i picked up a book instead i love going to class to hear and learn of all the traditions and myths from back in the day and so far i have really enjoyed reading all of the works.

A deeper look into Steiner

After minutes wasted of procrastination on picking a page to focus on in the Steiner book, I decided to just randomly have my book open to a page and then plunge myself into that page regardless. Well my book stopped on page 232. I have read and reread that page and i think i have uncovered Steiner's writing style. He loves to repeat and throw in very unnecessary and complicated words. Don't worry Dr. Sexson i am not complaining....i always love to learn new words :)

Page 232 is full of repetition. Steiner is talking about the five different categories and he uses this page to label those categories in several different ways.
He starts on the previous page (231) to label and introduce these five categories. They should seem familiar to everyone who has been coming to class.
1. of men and of women
2. of age and of youth
3. of society and of the individual
4. of living and of dead
5. of men and of god(s)

After reading on, Steiner just goes on to describe these categories with different names that he finds appropriate. I have kindly decided to list the different names that he listed. I also at the end of each category have typed out what he has described the categories to represent and my own interpretation of what i think he means.....i hope i am not too far off base.....

1. men and women
masculinity and femininity
gender

*"When man and woman meet, they stand against each other as they stand close"
-I am not quite sure what he means by this statement...it seems awfully obvious.

2. age and youth
old and young
ageing and youth
age

*"Old and young seek in each other the pain of remembrance and the matching solace of futurity"
-I have understood this to mean that the old look back to the young to remember and to think of "the good old days" while the young look towards the old to see what is to come. I think both can learn a lot from each other not only about their own life but also about the lives of the people around them

3. society and individual
individual and the community or state
of private autonomy and of social collectivity
community
individual and communitas

*"Anarching individuation seeks interaction with the compulsion of law, of collective cohesion in the body politic"
- Here i believe that Steiner is just explain the different between the people that prefer to live a life without laws and regulations along with the people that like to live as a part of a larger whole.

4. living and dead
quick and dead
existence and mortality
by the cut between life and death
living and deceased

*"The dead inhabits the living and, in turn, await their visit"
-I believe this statement is just showing that the dead are around the living and just waiting until they too become part of the dead...??

5. men and god(s)
mortals and immortals
the human and the divine
by the potentials of accepted or denied encounter between the existential and the transcendent
mortals and god(s)

*The duel between men and the god(s) is the most aggressively amorous known to experience
-If I am reading into the correctly i believe that Steiner is saying that this pair is the one relationship most connected with love. This makes sense when you think about religions and how the god(s) are loving and the mortals are in love with the god(s). But this love is described as aggressively which i also find very appropriate when talking about the relationship between man and god...they don't always agree on what is right

Also, one of the sentences that struck was..."To arrive at oneself - the primordial journey - is to come up, polemically, against 'the other'"
To me this means that to fully understand oneself and to truly be awake with life is to understand the categories and to face them each, one against the other.

Class Notes

I just wanted to point out that there is a link for my class notes to the right at the top of the white box

Laughing at Life

Today in class Dr. Sexson said that Hermes shows us that you can always laugh. At first I really didn't agree. I just kept thinking that I can't see laughing when a loved one dies...but the more I thought about it, people do laugh when a loved ones dies. I have been to funerals that are sad and there is lots of crying but there is also laughing when thinking about the good times. Laughing is a stress reliever and I think it can be appropriate in almost any situation, So i guess I think that if you just step back and take a look at the situation, laughter can always make any moment better. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could always remember and see the humor in life.

When Dr. Sexson read about his experience with reading the Bozeman Daily Chronicle I was impressed. I was also very eager to try to find my own interpretations. I'm sad to say that I have not had a moment yet where I found the old story out of the new. I have been looking over the same paper for a couple of days and I can't seem to dig as deep as Dr. Sexson so easily showed us he could do. I read the obituaries and I think about the people that have passed and the kind of lives that they lead and the people that they left behind, but nothing extraordinary or extremely thought provoking comes out of my little daydreams. I look at the police reports and can see nothing beyond what they surface says. I read the headlines and the sports and the weather reports and all I can interpret are the words on the page. How does Dr. Sexson look beyond the surface to find what he knows is there. I have come to the conclusion that it is knowledge and patience. I am looking so hard for something that i am in turn actually just blinding myself. I have decided that i just need to stop looking for something that I am not ready to find. Every time i pick up a newspaper now i will look for something but i won't force myself to find something. My hopes are that by the end of the semester, after i have learned a lot more about the old, that i will then be able to sit down with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and find the old stories that are hiding just below the surface.