The Complexities of Anamnesis

"Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is not permanent; it is conditional on circumstances, and when these change it ceases to operate. Thus when the Nandi men are away on a foray, nobody at home may pronounce the names of the absent warriors; they must be referred to as birds. Should a child so far forget itself as to mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother would rebuke it, saying, “Don’t talk of the birds who are in the heavens.”" -James G. Frazer; The Golden Bough

We have been greatly exposed to the concept of anamnesis this semester and how it would be such a great joy to have complete recollection and remembrance, as we have often discussed through Eliot's Four Quartets.  How wonderful would it be to remember all you have endured. The knowledge, the experiences, the life and rebirth. How would we react to such an event? Would it truly be a joyous one? It makes me curious as to why forgetting is linked with the River Lethe and why to forget is paralleled with a death.  Does the human mind forget as coping mechanism? A way to protect itself from the times of pain and suffering.  It is said that time heals all wounds, but perhaps it it just the act of forgetting that in fact is the true savior. Although I can relate and honor the argument that "which does not kill only makes you stronger", and maybe we are taking the easy way out as to just forget the times pain and suffering, but I cannot help but be as least partially thankful for the lethal water that we are forced to consume.  Even if it is only for self preservation and to find an inner strength to endure. 



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.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning

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.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning
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.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning

We laughed until we cried

"Another beneficent use of homeopathic magic is to heal or prevent sickness. The ancient Hindus performed an elaborate ceremony, based on homeopathic magic, for the cure of jaundice. Its main drift was to banish the yellow color to yellow creatures and yellow things, such as the sun, to which it properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy red color from a living, vigorous source, namely, a red bull."

In conjunction with the concept of using natural substances to heal like with homeopathy, it has always been said that one of the best "cure-all" remedies has been to release intense emotions with crying or laughter. Often, counselors and therapists will encourage sobbing when clients open up about troubling experiences. Physiologically, laughing and crying both reduce cortisol, a stress hormone, while raising endorphin and serotonin levels, both feel good hormones. Although they seems dichotomous, laughter and sobbing are remarkably similar which has lead to the common behaviors of laughing until crying or crying until it morphs into belly-shaking laughter.

This concept captured me during lecture and how applicable it is to everyday life. Emotions are timeless as we've seen countless times in Ovid and it has reached me through my bad day. 

 I believe my bad day began on a Monday (go figure) over the summer. I was sitting in a coffee shop explaining my upcoming fall class schedule to my brother and was excitedly telling him how I would only need to take 15 credits fall semester and 12 credits in the spring in order to graduate. It was then he gave me a deep, puzzled look and told me there was no way I had taken enough credits over the last 3 years in order to 'slack' senior year. Determined he was wrong about this, I printed off my transcript and showed him I had fulfilled all my requirements. WRONG! He informed me I was about 47 credits shy of my graduating target. Definitely too many to complete over 2 semesters. This also informed me that all my plans post-graduation would also be postponed. Plans like moving across the country and beginning graduate school, doing extensive traveling and having a blast. I'd be stuck in Bozeman another year. Crying commenced. In all of my research of trying to figure out how to counter this bad news I lost track of time and realized I was late for work. I scrambled to pack up my computer and books, ran out of the coffee shop, threw my stuff in my car and proceeded to speed down the road toward work. I made it to the corner of 19th and Main Street when my car died. I panicked and tried to restart it. Nothing. The light turned green and the line up of cars were itching to move, nearing closer and closer to my bumper encouraging me to move. Thankfully, a man next to me saw my car stalled out and helped me to push it out of the way. Crying commenced. I called my work to let them know I wouldn't be able to make it into work. And although my boss understood, she had a new edge to her voice than she did before and I could tell she was frustrated. I hung up then called a tow company to pick me up. Crying commenced. Finally, after 2 hours of sitting alone on a busy corner, I was rescued by the tow company. By the end of the day, I was completely overwhelmed and had exhausted my tears. That was when I began to laugh. Everything went so completely wrong that all I could do was chuckle about the day's events. It was almost a relief after feeling so drained from all the crying to finally laugh.

Its easy to slip into despair when I feels like everything goes pear-shaped, but I think that this idea that crying and laughter can occur simultaneously is important. It helps to realize that the journey to happiness isn't really a journey at all. Getting caught up in 'what needs to be done' and always looking forward to something new and exciting can blind you from the fact that your life isn't going to start sometime down the road. Life is happening now.

October 28 Lecture Notes

October 28 Myth lecture notes

The End

“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.” –T.S. Eliot, the Four Quartets

**Remember that life is cyclical**

James Joyce: Finnigan’s Wake

The weariness of life, you’ve got to deal with the situation

            -Best thing to do is talk to them and begin to understand

            -It is up to the woman to remember everything, and she becomes very sad at the end because she can remember and her lover (men) cannot

-The world is not only going to come to an end, but it’s already the end and it repeats over and over again

            -I.e. The Notebook

-“How do you know what you think until you think what you say?”

Ch. 4-Eliade, pg. 54

Eschatology-doctrine to the end of the world

Ontogeny-life of an individual is the same as the life of a culture; the development or developmental history of an individual organism

The Seven Ages of Man

1. birth-the infant mulling and puking in the nurse’s arms
2. kids
3. fancy young adult
4. soldiers
5. middle aged merchant
6. advanced middle age
7. the end, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”

Doesn’t it make you happy to know that you can have such a deep feeling to feel sad?

            -The tear jerker movies!

                        -Why? Because it is so artful, it is the artist who helps us deal with sadness so artfully

                                 -Sublimated sadness into beauty like Adonis and his transformation into a flower

Catharsis-the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

Freud- “We laugh in order to keep from crying, if we couldn’t laugh, we would be crying all the time”

            Laugh until we cry? Or do we cry until we laugh?

Dacrygelosis- alternating laughing and weeping

                           -Don’t take life so seriously because you’re not going to get out alive anyways!

Apocalypicists:

1.     Literal-there is a time and place for the end of the world

2.     Metaphorical-end of the world has already occurred, we just have not noticed, we aren’t smart enough to see the cyclical ending of the world

-We must wait to see the curtain lifted to see truth

Pythagoras:

A man who says its preferred not to eat meat because you don’t know its source-could be your grandma? Yikes.

Watch: Zed and Two Noughts

            -Movie about decomposition

Children’s death tunes:

“The worms crawl in,                                   “Ring around the rosy

The worms crawl out,                                    a pocket full of posies

The worms play pea-knuckle                          Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”

On your snout”

Another version of the worm song:

The Worms Crawl In,
The Worms Crawl Out,
Into your stomach,
And out your mouth.
They eat your intestines,
They scramble your heart.
Now you feel like
you’re all apart.
This is how
it is to die
you end up looking
like apple pie!

Ovid explains the transformation from decomposition of death to something graceful and beautiful:

What happens to your spinal cord when you die? It turns into a snake

Pg. 519: Ovid is talking about the vegetarian Pathegoras, “for all things change, but no thing dies, the spirit wanders: here and there, at will, the soul can journey from and animal into a human body”

Overcomes the doctrine of tragedy, a sophisticated version of reincarnation

If what you write down remains, then you shall remain

October 26 Lecture Notes

October 26 Myth lecture notes:

Start reading the Henderson the Rain King this weekend: how does this relate to mythology?

-Killing of the king

-The Golden Bough

-Survival of myth in the contemporary world

Quiz: November 9

Presentations Begin: November 23 (Groups #1, 2, 3)

Ovidian Story Presentation: November 16

Presentation of our term papers--will be posted to the blog, will be due in hard copy on day of presentation: December 7

Sublime=sublimination: divert or modify into culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity; of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe

Cornucopia: a symbol of plenty consisting of a goat’s horn filled with flowers, fruit, and corn

            -Origins from Achelous & Hercules

Nessus & Hercules:

Nessus (the centaur) love Deianera, but was shot with an arrow in his spine by Hercules

            -Had to cross the river, Hercules had to trust Nessus to bring Deianera across safely

            -Nessus takes Deianera and rapes her

            -Hercules shoots Nessus with a Hydra dipped arrow in the spine

Hydra: the animal with a hundred heads, poisoned blood

            -Nessus doesn’t want to die in vain so he gives Deianera his blood soaked shirt, tells her it’s an aphrodisiac, and it will work to make Hercules love her again if it were ever to be softened

           

“She gives Hercules the shirt,

“Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name,

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame,

Which human power cannot remove.

We only love, only suspire,

Consumer by either fire or fire.”

            -The Shirt of Flame, T.S. Eliot

           

-If it tries to remove the shirt, chunks of his flesh comes with it, he jumps into a pool, he then asks to be placed on a funeral pyre (A barbeque)

-The gods say he has suffered enough and places him in the sky as a constellation

Pygmalion:

Modern Day Pygmalions:

Pretty Woman

My Fair Lady

The Princess Diaries

An artists sculpts a figure of a beautiful woman, falls in love with it

*The power of the artist that changes simile to metaphor

            -Changes from what something is ‘like’ to what something ‘is’

            -Alters from object to subject

            -The function of the artist is to create reality

-The artist kisses, gives gifts to the ivory girl, dresses it, speaks to it

-Asks the gods, Venus, to have “one like my ivory girl” as his wife

-The statue comes to life!

            -9 months later, the girl gives birth to Paphos

            -In honor, Cyprus was called the Paphian isle

A Happy Ending!! J

The Birth of Adonis:

The story of the girl who is impregnated by her father, tries to flee, transformed into a tree, the tree had the baby, and gives birth to Adonis from the tree

            -Adonis is the figure of the most amazingly beautiful man

-Adoni=worshipped god, horrified patriarchs of the Bible, the women would sob for Adoni to come back to life, which repeats every year

• Adonis is so beautiful, he even attracts the love of Venus
• She warns Adonis against hunting and doing dangerous things to keep him safe so she will never suffer
• Adonis is on a wild boar hunt, lead by his hounds
• The boar tusks spur Adonis in the groin, Gored in the groin: MTV’s Jackass. Ha.
• Venus is devastated and she calls out that his memory will live on for eternity by reenacting his death at a giant feast

-The Gardens of Adonis: ritually every year, the ancient women of Greece would plant seeds in a shallow dish so that they grow and die quickly

-The anemone flower, “born of the wind” what he now represents

-“Live fast, love hard, die young”

Dionysus: comes to town and drives all the ladies crazy

            -Modern day: Sex, lies, and videotapes!

Perceptions

"In every one of these instances the life of the god-man is prolonged on condition of his

showing, in a severe physical contest of fight or flight, that his
bodily strength is not decayed, and that, therefore, the violent
death, which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the present be
postponed." -James G. Frazer

After acknowledging the fact that the artist is the master mind of our known world, I found a quote from 

Talmudic teachings stating: "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."

The concept of perception touches our lives every moment of everyday, and it affects each of us differently

in how we will respond to our next stimulus.  For example, I'm currently sitting with my boyfriend while 

he actively engages in Fantasy Football while watching the Oakland Raiders kick the Denver Bronco's ass. I 

believe the score is currently 31-0 and its not even half time yet. My perception: boring game.  His

perception: its Sunday afternoon football, this is the sport of warriors, and its important to me.  Although I 

am still attempting to learn the significance of this, he has had years of participation in the sport. He played

football all throughout high school, him and his best friend were collaborates for MVP, he has made 

countless friends and has had priceless experiences. So while he sees football as a weekly ritual, a hobby,

a passion, what have you, it has contributed to his character and become part of his identity. Football can

be seen as a sport, a waste of time, a way of life, a debate topic, inspiring, devastating, etc, etc. It really 

doesn't matter the description because for each, it will be and mean something different. All that matters

is: previous experience+current information=new perceptions. This is what the artist does. He creates new

perceptions for the eye to interpret. And it probably won't look anything like how the artist intended, but

it will undoubtedly alter your immediate perception of an object, a subject matter, or personal life value.

Welcome to college and prepare to have all previous conceptions peeled apart, altered, and reconstructed!

October 21 Lecture Notes

October 21 lecture notes

How is mythology related to a religious text?

Ovid is a key to all classical mythology and classical literature.

It is the secular scripture connected with the Bible

Holiday=holy-day

            Of course, every day could be a holy day and every moment can be or could become a holy moment

“The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatening decay” –James G. Frazer pg. 309

Term Paper: MUST be related to Henderson the Rain King; the mythological importance, creation, separations, etc

1^st State: Conviviality: your on good terms with someone; an atmosphere that’s friendly, lively, or enjoyable

2^nd Stage: Rape: physical and psychic invasion

• The gods appear in very invasive and violent awakening
• Invasion of myth into your own world

3^rd Stage: Indifference

Philomela-turned into a nightingale (makes a jug-jug-jug sound)

Tereas-hoopoe

Procne-swallow

The Stories of the Bulls

Flannery O’Connor:  Green Leaf

            About a farmer who has help that doesn’t do a lot, so she goes out to do the work by herself and she keeps seeing a bull in her yard. She asks for it to be removed and has a man “Green Leaf” to shoot him. Green Leaf scares him into the woods and the bull comes back and charges the woman, he pierces her through the heart

*Literature is a whole-lotta bull

Minos: one of the children of Europa

-Cretan stories

-Was supposed to sacrifice this beautiful, milky-white bull that comes from the sea but he was so beautiful he sacrifices another

-Pasiphae: was taken by the bull and she dressed up as a bull in order to mate with him

            -Passes through the permeable layer between humans and animals that is allowed and permitted in mythology

            -Pasiphae is impregnated by the bull and 9 mos. Later a half human-half bull was born

            -The Minotaur was born

                        -Monstrous child who repeatedly requested virgins to eat

            -Theseus: A hero must come and SAVE THE DAY

Daedalus: an artist, a craftsman, a carpenter

            -Built a labyrinth

            Pg. 253: “constructs this maze. He tricks the eye with many twisting paths that double back-one’s left without a point of reference.”

            -Exactly like Ovid’s twisted stories

                        -Ended up trapping up the Minotaur

*Ovid describes more: The man behind the curtain, the artist, the craftsman rather than the ‘over-the-top’ hero

Nostos: Home; homecoming

            -Wizard of Oz, sending Dorothy home

            -nostalgia

• The artist alters nature so that we can see the world the way it truly is –Ovid
• The artists trains us to see things the way they are

Diadem-a jeweled crown or headband worn as a symbol of sovereignty

It is because I say it is

"The ancient Germans believed there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles.  Their sacred women, we are told, looked on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or roar of the water, and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass." --James G. Frazer

After yesterday's lecture, I have come to appreciate Ovid from an entirely new perspective than I had previously seen.  I had been reading the stories of the great divinities and how they have affected common people. I had been feeling shock at his uncanny descriptions of sparagmos and the brutality of adultery, rape, crime, and sabotage. I had come to look at the characters he described as something of heroes, taking on monsters, or facing the great gods and challenging them like Arachne or Lycaon.  I was attempting to connect these historic heroes with a modern day hero and describe how an ordinary person or situation can become life-altering and "holy".  However, I'm pretty sure I was trying too hard. Why look for something so prodigious when the connections to the past are "plain as the nose on your face"?


In Ovid's illustration the story of the Minotaur, he only briefly touched on the hero's perspective, and focused more on "the man behind the curtain".  The artist and the craftsman, the puzzle builder, the person who can pick any object or being and manipulate it to make others see it they way he does. The artists trains us to see they way things really are. This is where I found my new appreciation of the stories in the Metamorphosis, he twists the thoughts and the actions of the characters in the stories to make us see it the way he wants us to. He is the artist, the craftsman, and the puzzle builder.  How clever!

I found a quote yesterday that was so relevant to this topic:
"Art is anything we can get away with" --Andy Warhol

I realize this blog is completely discombobulated, my attempt to make it cohesive is beyond my words right now, perhaps I have experienced my lovely epiphany, a sublime moment, indeed.