Because I learned more.

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” 
― Albert Camus, The Fall

As the semester closes, I feel the need to write a little more about what I have learned in Lit 285. I wrote my final paper on the insight that this class has given me into the significance of storytelling to humanity as it was a strong theme in this class which was new to me and lured me in; however, many other things from this temperate classroom will stick with me as well.

We’ll start at the end as that is how my impressions have compounded and been left.

In the end, I learned about what we have learned. I've enjoyed my classmates’ presentations, and have found the various takes on the information presented this semester incredibly insightful. Though there are some things that we all seemed to take home; everyone had something to add to our collective recollection of knowledge. I also learned, when writing what I have learned, that the intimacy of sharing what I have learned with the rest of the class made writing my paper much more difficult. I could hear how personal these things were to my fellow classmates through their final presentations as well. It seems the things which we covered in this class, being very relative to our lives, are quite personal in nature.

In the end, I learned that maybe the truth doesn't really matter; that maybe an even realer truth lies veiled within our lies, tales and fantasies. I learned that there’s a joy in the mysteries of life and that sometimes not knowing is better than being disappointed. I remembered the willing suspension of disbelief and that “someday” never comes and that if you’re not moving forward, you’re regressing towards a state of stagnation and death. And I learned about the saving power of fiction, which has always been dear to my heart.

My grandfather has always been one of my heroes. He’s fearless and kind and I remember always loving and admiring his personal life stories and his library. I remember as a kid, always thinking how cool it was that my grandpa was one of the smartest people I knew and he hadn't even graduated high school. His library was filled with hundreds of books on history, astronomy, classic literature, poetry and more; every one of which he had read completely and most more than once. My grandpa gave me the very first book he ever bought and read. He was seventeen years old and had just dropped out of high school and joined the Navy during World War II. He was stationed in Hawaii and bought the book  – I can only imagine, as he's never told me  – to kill some time and distract himself. The book is called “Lone Cowboy” by Will James, and is a story about a cowboy’s adventures in the northern plains. I love that book and am afraid to read it before I have it restored because it is old and crumbly and I don’t want to destroy it; but I love to think about how an adventure tale with pictures in it changed my grandpa’s life and inspired him to become the self-educated, wise old man he is today.

In the end, I remembered that stories add years to your life. And I learned that when everything falls to pieces, you dance. I always thought that you laughed when everything fell to pieces, but I suppose either would work just as well. I learned that our final assignment beyond this class is to be interesting, and remembered how important it is to be interesting. And when we were told to be interesting, it reminded me of a quote from a song that I hadn't heard in years but has stuck with me since high school. I couldn't remember who sang it or how the song went, but “if you’re bored then you must be boring too” stuck in my mind because I had always loved and believed the line. I had to look it up online and found a song called “Just a Simple Plan” by a band named Piebald that I hadn't listened to in at least seven years. As I listened to it and remembered the lyrics, I was taken back to a different time and place that I hadn't thought much about in a while. I went to a Piebald concert with my brother and his pregnant wife when we were all practically babies and I was going to hair school, living in St. George Utah with them and my oldest niece Olivia. Listening to the song while sitting at my computer in my warm office and staring out the window at an entirely different world from then, all the confused thoughts and emotions of that time in my life came rushing back to me like I was still there now. In the end, I remembered how music, pictures, and stories can often mean so much more than we can ever even dream of putting into words.

In the end, I remembered that life is just a succession of suffering; and that no one makes it out without scars; and that in the end, we all die alone. I remembered that “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.” (Faulkner, As I Lay Dying) I learned that rape is commonplace and that we like to blame the gods for our problems. I learned to think about the things that we've forgotten and that our lives our drowning in references to our history and mythology in places most of us do not realize they exist.

To be honest, in the end, I learned and remembered so much that half of it is already eluding me again.

Now in the last week of class, I’m very glad that I randomly decided to take Lit 285 – it was not a class I needed though it fulfilled a requirement – though I must admit that I do regret that I will not be able to take any other classes from Michael Sexson. It was a pleasure, for sure, and I’m glad to at least have pages of notes and my blog to remind me of the innumerable things I've learned and remembered in Mythologies this fall. 

Thanks for the semester, Dr. Sexson. 

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

“Promise me you’ll tell my story” my friend captioned a short video clip he recently shared of his mother speaking to a room full of elementary school students. She was introducing her father, an eighty nine year old former Navajo Code talker and medicine man and advising the students to listen well with a subtle air of urgency, saying “… And to always, always keep it in your heart and in your mind because Grandpa’s getting old now, he’s going to be gone soon, and he won’t be able to tell his stories…” Her father, Samuel Holiday, travels to share his stories and will share them with anyone who wants to listen. He knows the importance of sharing the collective wisdom one regains in a lifetime, and he doesn't want it all to be lost.

Everyone’s heard the stories. Whether from grandparents, teachers, older siblings or friends; we've all been told and touched without hands in some way at some point or another in our lives. I hear stories all day long at work and though the names of clients often elude me, I can always remember something important about or to them. Veterans and farmers, mothers and volunteers; everyone has a story, though some are assuredly more interesting than others, and most people seem almost eager to share their experience. Stories relay information in a way that makes them relatable, leaving a permanent impression on the listener and giving them a nameless something that they can keep with them for the rest of their lives. The stories themselves seem to have an inherent wisdom about them that supersedes any analytic relation of the same notions. Or as Lewis Carroll more simply put it, “No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time”.

The things within stories seem to run through our bloodstream just as naturally as water cutting through the side of a hill. Stories make us feel and connect us to each other; teaching us things through our entire being in a subtle but powerful way that keeps us from forgetting, like we do so many of the lessons we learn with our brain and not our whole bodies. Stories allow us to lose ourselves in someone else and return home with a little piece of their wisdom added to our beings. They breathe life and motion into us in places where we did not even know we had never been before. We are, it seems, only an accumulative sum of our experience and our reaction to each; and stories allow us to gain experience which we otherwise may not have access to, or which we do not desire to experience. A good story holds within it some piece of the very essence of life, making it resound within us for an extended time after, the way only a truly illuminating tale can.

Once you swallow the story, whether it’s true or not doesn't even matter anymore; what matters is that you are forever changed. At this point the line between fiction and reality seems to lose its importance. There can be truth in the story whether the story is true itself, and perhaps it can even be said that it is often easier to find the truth in fiction than in reality, as reality can tend to be a complicated assortment of messes.

So through the real or imagined adventures of another, you can acquire one more memory to add to the collections of illusions you've accumulated inside the attic of your being. The sum of these experiences makes you who you are today, who you were yesterday, and who you will be fifty years from tomorrow. And whether you remember where you picked up that bit of knowledge fifty years from now won’t matter, whether from a friend, a dream or a novel. It will just be a little piece of you that you can share as well.

It seems to me that the most important things in life cannot be explained in any other way than through story. Non-narrative words often fail when trying to illuminate the sentiment and meaning behind our movement through the erratic force which is life; but a good story rings as true and pervasive as a storm peeling itself off the mountains and pushing across the valley, commanding everything in its path. Stories keep us present and empathetic, giving us meaning and relevance in a harsh and tragic world. So what is the moral behind our mythological heritage? What do we learn through the punishments of the jealous or negligent gods? Through the feats and misdeeds of our heroes? Through the tangled web of tragedy that we call mythology. Is the purpose really as simple as “because the gods get bored with men who have no stories” (p. 387, Calasso)? As Yeats says, “Things fall apart the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned” and so we find ourselves in the middle of it all. And that, I suppose, is why we keep walking; keep moving, running from room temperature as it means nothing but a flat-lined heartbeat, and anything, at least, is better than that. And I suppose that’s why we find solace in our stories and mythologies; because, like Harmony, we learn that we “need not fear the uncertain life opening up before” us. As she realized, “whichever way her wandering husband went, the encircling sash of myth would wrap around the young Harmony. For every step, the footprint was already there” (p. 383, Calasso). And what do we ever really have to fear if someone else has already gone through it before us?

Life is but a myth – the volatile and ever-changing veil of perspectives and reactions which we choose to believe. It seems that in the end, we all die. And along the way, of course, we all experience love and loss. And the things that stick with us ‘til death are the things that moved us, changed us, shaped us into whatever forms we allowed them to make of us. And that, it seems to me, is the essential truth in any myth. The often shocking and appalling truths which make life as we know it, because life for us is as it is for the Machiguengas, in that “history marches neither forward nor backward: it goes around and round in circles” (p. 240, Llosa).

The Displacement of It All.

I had a hard time picking a myth for my displaced myth. To be honest, I had to ask a friend for help. I had no problem coming up with displacements; but when I would alter a story, all of a sudden I would question my details or think of a different story that might be better to displace. Then I started to run into the problem of where does one myth stop and another begin. And the problem of, oh, but that myth could easily be confused for that myth. And, finally, the problem that all of a sudden they all seemed the same.

 I initially tried to pick a true displaced myth from one of the many extraordinary stories that clients have shared with me in the seven years I’ve been doing hair – husband left her for a man, terrible accidents and addictions, married someone she’d only known a week, married the same woman three times, travels, children, deaths, and on and on. But, though all the stories were similar to myths I knew, I could find none that quite followed any myth I could think of. And that’s when I started having a hard time telling them apart. It seems some themes run strong in the mythological world. 

So I asked my friend to pick a well known myth for me and I displaced it. 

A Modern Trojan War (likenesses to Trojan War highlighted)

So. My story is about a hypothetical guy named Mike. Mike comes from old money. He and his brother AJ are both politicians and attorneys, trust fund babies living it up in the Yellowstone Club. 

One day, about ten years ago, they decided to fly to Texas to buy some fancy cars. They went to a Barrett-Jackson auction and both bought beautiful Ferraris. AJ’s Ferrari was nice, but Mike’s was incredibly rare and astoundingly expensive (Agamemnon was married to Helen's sister). AJ told Mike that it was the world’s most beautiful car, and the reputation stuck with it when they brought it home to the Yellowstone Club. 

After they got home, Mike and AJ had to leave town for a family funeral, their uncle had died. When they returned home to the Yellowstone Club, they found Mike’s car had been stolen. Shortly after, one of their friends called Mike and told him he’d seen their coworker Patrick driving his car around town. 

Mike was furious. How dare Patrick have the balls to steal and then drive his beautiful Ferrari all over town! So Mike and AJ decided to sue the hell out of Patrick to make him pay and get Mike’s car back. 

Mike and Patrick began a court battle that was to last nine years. Both sides lost friends who were sick of all the fighting, had friends have to file bankruptcy after financially supporting the case, and lost their own time and efforts. After nine years, the battle still showed no sign of being anywhere near an end. Mike, frustrated with it all, sent an apology note and flowers to Patrick, telling him he was throwing in the towel. Inside the note was a plane ticket, all expenses paid trip to Hawaii. Mike wrote to Patrick to enjoy his gift, the fight was over.

Patrick was stoked. He flew to Hawaii and partied, celebrating his victory, finally able to relax for the first time in nine years. 

When he returned home, his beautiful house had been burned to the ground. 

When Mike and AJ burned the house down, they were going to leave behind the car to burn as well; but in that garage, the light bouncing off the frame, the car was just so beautiful they couldn’t leave it behind.

They drove the beautiful Ferrari home, getting stuck in a snow storm on the way.

La verdad.

"It is a good thing for the man who walks to walk", the storyteller relates this knowledge shared with him by the seripigari and continues, saying "that is wisdom, I believe. It is most likely a good thing. For a man to be what he is. Aren't we Machiguengas now the way we were a long time ago? The way we were that day in the Gran Pongo when Tasurinchi began breathing us out: that's how we are. And that's why we haven't disappeared. That's why we keep on walking, perhaps." (220)

He says this after relating his own personal experience, and another bit of wisdom from a seripigari, who claimed that "being born with a face like yours isn't the worst evil; it's not knowing one's obligation" which Mascarita, the storyteller, ponders. "Not being at one with one's destiny, then? That happened to me before I became what I am now. I was no more than a wrapping, a shell, the body of one whose soul has left through the top of one's head." (214)

And yet, the animals in Amazonia still kill their imperfect offspring.

Envisioning the world of the Jewish Machiguenga storyteller through the enlightened and entranced mind of Mario Vargas Llosa was a fascinating journey for me. As a writer, I cannot help but let my fantasy wander deeper into the forests of the Amazon and wonder what words were spoken in actuality by this unorthodox hablador; what paths led to which journeys and how our Mascarita manages to become one with a tribe to which he was not born; but the more I ponder, the more Llosa's insights and ideas on the matter display themselves to me as essentially flawless. Llosa is so well-researched on the subject and has obviously spent an incredible amount of time considering the topic, so much so that I cannot find any fault in his ideas and representations of a matter which no one could possibly fully and properly represent with any sort of certainty.

Llosa's comparison of Mascarita basically being a marginalized marginalized person - between his Jewish ancestry and his birthmark - helping him to relate to the Machiguengas and also that of the Jewish people walking, being pushed out time and again, and continuing to be who they are in spite of everything seemingly being against them being who they are spoke to me as obvious truth - though they were something I'd never before thought of in my life. And when problems arise in the Machiguenga culture, the answer is to walk, to remember who you are, to fulfill your obligation. Walk. Such a simple thing, but it really has been capable of allowing their tribal culture to survive for many years; as outside of Amazonia in South America, things change year by year as different political parties take over or different cultural influences are introduced and so on. And you wouldn't think something as simple as walking would be easy to forget. But we humans seem to forget everything unless it's shoved under our noses and stinks.

Mascarita's rebirth is something that I also think, though he takes it to the extremes, that most people can relate to on some level. Did your life have meaning before it had meaning? When did you learn to really see and know yourself and what you contribute to the world? Or do you contribute to the world? And do you know what you are? Sometimes, it seems, we may not really fit within the lines that our lives have constructed around us.

And if this is the case, are you brave enough to push those walls aside, and step without them into an unknown realm. I dare say most of us are not.

As the storyteller says "I had a bad trance, and in it I lived through a story I'd rather not remember. Nonetheless, I still remember it." (202) "But I haven't been able to forget and I go on telling about it." (207)

Maybe it's worth us telling about.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

So it goes.

But what have we lost?

I am not about to try to advocate any of the initiation rites we went over in class.

And I think what we have lost is more than just these initiation rites.

Doesn't it seem to take longer and longer to reach adulthood these days? I know many people whose children are living with them, or on their dollar, well into their thirties. I suppose we live longer, so no big deal, but there was a time when getting married at fifteen wasn't child marriage and initiation rites were in place to prepare you for a merciless world.

Though it's politically incorrect and perhaps distasteful, I love the phrase "white girl problems". Really, most of us primarily have white girl problems in our lives. The majority of people in the U.S. today are not fighting daily for survival - for food, water, sex; against enemies, animals and diseases. I'm not saying we live in a perfect world, but most of the things that are problems for us, are not things that people used to even have the time to think about. As genuinely fucked up as many of the initiation rituals which we learned in class were, I believe there were/are even worse things going on outside of the communities' reach which could happen to the people who practiced these rites. They were raising their children to be strong for survival. And as brutal as those rituals seem to us; life can/could be even more brutal.

And our initiation rituals? Sweet sixteen, turning twenty one, getting a doctorate, or even joining the military - to prevent myself from further expletives I'll use the word I used in my last blog: cakewalk. Our lives - with, perhaps, the exception of those in the military - are so much safer and less painful, that our initiations seem to have fallen in step.

I think in a lot of instances we've lost our sense of connection with life as we have lost our bond with death and pain, but I'll take it. I'd much rather jump in a snowy mountain lake; dig my hands in the cool, black dirt; or race through the cold wind in the air to remind myself I'm alive than have to endure the hardships so many have before me.

Initiations

I had free choice on my initiation presentation and I chose to do it on the Heaven's Gate cult. I started by looking into cult initiation rites, but - surprise, surprise - there is little information to be found on the internet concerning the initiation rites of cults. I did, however, find a lot of information on Heaven's Gate.

I remember when Heaven's Gate was in the news, I was about ten at the time, and all I knew was that they had committed mass suicide. It stands out in my brain still, as something to do with a comet and the world ending, but the world didn't end! Once I started looking into them, I found the leader and the movement rather fascinating. I watched the first four sections of their initiatory video and would have continued had I more time. I included the first segment below for your viewing pleasure.




In case you have no interest in watching, the above man is Do. Do is, as he says, "the mind of Jesus" in a new contemporary flesh body. He goes on and on, but long story short, the world was ready to be recycled and Do wanted to help you make the journey from Earth to heaven before it was too late. All you had to do was shed your flesh body so that you could don your extraterrestrial body when you get to the kingdom level above the human level, i.e. heaven. And that's exactly what his followers did.

There are no initiation rites to get into the cult; they did not consider themselves a cult and welcomed anyone who wanted to join them and believe. However, they did require the greatest sacrifice in order to journey to heaven. And in March of 1997, 39 followers gave up their lives in order to initiate themselves into the kingdom of God.

The reason I believe this counts as an initiation rite, rather than what it appears to be to us, a death rite, is because these people genuinely believed that they were not committing suicide. They have information all over their website about how suicide is wrong and an act against God. They followed the proper steps and killed themselves just so, in the correct manner for the soul to leave the body, unscathed, and be able to continue on its journey. They took three days to do it, a few people at a time, helping each other along the way: cyanide and arsenic, followed by a barbiturate and vodka and a nice plastic bag to asphyxiate yourself.

Sure makes the Christian initiatory rite of baptism look like a cakewalk.

It's just so tedious...

... and I'm just so slow.

There are many tedious things which I do not mind doing. I secretly enjoy bookkeeping, paying bills, putting away groceries, and even doing the dishes so long as time is in on my side. Tedious schoolwork I enjoy, it's a challenge for me. And when, at work doing a hair color, I put scores and scores of foils in people's hair, they never fail to mention "that looks so tedious!" to which I reply "it's just like doing needlework". And it is, and I do genuinely love it. There is something to be said for the comfort found in repetition. 

That being said, there are some things that are tedious which I do not enjoy, and my most loathed of these is cleaning. I hate cleaning. I'm a messy person by nature who needs a clean house in order to keep a clear and sane mind. However, I absolutely hate cleaning. I move too slow, I'm too much of a perfectionist, I get distracted, and I'm allergic to everything so I sneeze and drip the whole time I clean. 

I've tried everything to make the tedium of cleaning less painful - cleaning with friends, listening to music, breaking it up, doing it all at once, watching movies while I clean, and on and on - and yet, though I always enjoy the feeling of satisfaction at the end, I cannot seems to figure out a way to hate cleaning less. Is there always a way, you think, to make yourself enjoy the tedious things in life? Perhaps time would help me, because that usually is the big stresser there - too much to do and not enough time so the thing you despise the most moves to the bottom of the list and you despise it even more for being there. 

You know my plan to someday rid housecleaning of its tediousness? Pay someone else to do it. 

Recreating My Creation Myth

This is me sharing/enacting my creation story with my friend, Channy. Channy is taking the picture while I tell the story and play the role of Mbumba, vomiting up the universe as we know it today. I tried to find children to share the story with, but alas the timing did not work out so I shared it with my friend and my dogs. 

My friend thought the story was funny, but my dogs were not too impressed. 

I'll share the story again at my niece's birthday in a few weeks...

The Final Pages

I chose to look deeper into the last pages of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. I was feeling very indecisive with what page to pick, and then it occurred to me that perhaps it is worth looking into what Calasso would like to leave with us. And it turns out Calasso leaves us with a circle. Though there is much more to look into in the passage, Calasso starts and ends the book with the bull Zeus carrying off Europa over the sea. I am left with the impression that Calasso's problem of "how did it all begin?" is a problem as there is no beginning or end to mythology, but an ever present ring of truths.

The last section in the book is about Cadmus and Harmony, old snakes together leaving the city of Thebes. After reading this section (390-391), to be honest, I had more questions than answers. I learned that Thebes was destroyed by an earthquake caused by Dionysus, and that Cadmus had brought with him the alphabet when he came to Greece in search of his sister Europa. Although I previously knew none of this, I needed to know more. So I started doing my own research. I learned that Cadmus built the city of Thebes, after the oracle at Delphi told him to quit his search for his sister, and follow a special cow and build a city where the cow lay down. Cadmus was of direct godly lineage and a Phoenician. He killed a sacred water dragon when he first arrived where he would build Thebes, which plagued his life with misfortune for many years.

In spite of the fact that all of the gods were present and in support at the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, their lives were incredibly troubled by the gods. Looking at the genealogy of Cadmus, I could not help but notice how much Zeus is in and out of the family's lives! His name is dotted all over the family tree, bringing with it rape and tragedy. And Dionysus is Cadmus' grandson! So the divine grandson of a mortal destroyed the city which his grandfather built from nothing. And there's more snakes. Dionysus was conceived from Zeus and Semele as Zeus in the form of an intoxicating snake, bringing into the world with him the god's gift of wine.

Inachus Melia Zeus Io Phoroneus Epaphus Memphis Libya Poseidon Belus Achiroe Agenor Telephassa Danaus Pieria Aegyptus Cadmus Cilix Europa Phoenix Mantineus Hypermnestra Lynceus Harmonia Zeus Polydorus Sparta Lacedaemon Ocalea Abas Agave Sarpedon Rhadamanthus Autonoë Eurydice Acrisius Ino Minos Zeus Danaë Semele Zeus Perseus Dionysus

It seems unsurprising to me that humans would eventually turn to indifference towards the gods after their behavior. I feel like if I were Cadmus, I would be pretty unhappy with the gods, raping my sister and my daughter; and that's only what I found out with some light research.

Calasso ends the book by telling us the tale of the final misfortune of Cadmus, but also reminding us that he made a permanent mark on Greece with his introduction of the alphabet. "No one could erase those small letters, those fly's feet that Cadmus the Phoenician had scattered across Greece, where the winds had brought him in his quest for Europa carried off by a bull that rose from the sea".