Four Quartets

I have developed a new habit as of late involving reading a quartet a night to a boy who I recently started courting. It has been a few weeks and if I am not available, I will read to him over Skype. I have now read the Four Quartets in totality approximately four times, excluding reading it at the beginning of the semester. But, listening to Gerrit read it to the class, I gained more understanding in that one reading than I have in the past month of reading it myself.

Gerrit, wonderful job. I hope that by now this boy has a far deeper understanding than I, as he has listened to me reading to him every day for a month.

Birkerts and Dragonflies

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/oceanic-feeling/sven-birkerts-the-art-of-attention/

This story of Birkerts resonated so strongly with me.

From the first glace of the picture at the top of the page, before reading a single word Birkerts had written, my mind slipped into the world of dragonflies. Odonates. My favorite of insects. Even just this photo of a zipper pull (which I did not recognize as a zipper pull upon first glace, and saw only a dragonfly), evoked such flood of memories of my own times forced to absorb myself in thought.

For four summers, I worked observing rare dragonfly species on the Connecticut river in Western Massachusetts for a hydro power plant. I measured the water level every ten minutes to see how the power plant effected water levels, I recorded boat wakes, and I watched for larval or juvenile dragonflies as they emerged from the river. It was an hour commute to the river, and another hour commute by kayak once in the river to reach my designated site. I had to be set up and ready to record before the sun rose each day, and could not leave the sites until after the sun set each evening.

My first year working with dragonflies, I was constantly bored. I brought with me any form of entertainment that I could; a book, ipod, journals for writing, notepads for sketching, my phone, a large lunch, crosswords, sudokus, everything. I hated my job. I could not stand the monotony of the task I was assigned to do: sit for 14 hours on a log, a look up at a stick in the water every ten minutes. Theoretically, there were larval dragonflies that I could watch emerge from the water and eclose, a long process of shedding the exuvial casing and unfolding its wet and teneral wings. Though I found many empty casings along the shore, I never once saw a larval dragonfly eclose during that first summer.

My second year recording dragonflies begun much the same as the previous year had been. I made sure to distract myself as much as possible, as I had equated distractions with happiness during work. One day, I decided to make a rule for myself, one that would forever change the way that I live my life. I decided that the time would pass quicker if I did not allow myself to multitask. Multitasking is valued in our society today, seen as a virtue if you can successfully do many things at the same time. But there are many more subtle ways that we all multitask that we do not ever think of, unless of course we force ourselves to. If I were listening to music, I would close my eyes and sit down. If I were eating my lunch, I would turn off my music. If I were pacing on my 100 ft plot of riverfront, I would not simultaneously be talking on the phone. Each activity I partook it, no matter how familiar, I would devote all of my attention towards that one activity. Now, this is much much harder to do than it sounds. as Birkerts says "to pay attention, to attend. To be present, not merely in body - it is an action of the spirit".

Eventually, over the next few years of single-tasking, I slowly weeded out the distractions that I so heavily depended on for entertainment. I started to leave my journals and sketch pads at home. Next went the crosswords, and sudokus, my ipod, and eventually my book. As the distractions in my life faded away, the dragonflies appeared. Larval dragonflies treacherously made the trek from deep in the river to the banks by my side to start the 4-8 hour process of eclosure; hopefully without mortality due to raising water levels, predation, or boat wakes. And I not only had the privilege of watching, but I was able to participate.

I learned to bring nothing with me in my kayak each morning. I sat entranced by the stillness at sunrise, meditated with the ripples of the afternoon. I sat each day, completely naked and steeped in my surroundings. I fasted from sunrise to sunset, as food too became a distraction so great that to sacrifice eating in order to remain present in my environment was essential. I sat for 14 hours a day, absorbed in my thoughts, and the river, and the dragonflies. I studied the raspberry bushes that enveloped the beach; each ovary on the perfect fruit bearing life. I took note of when the fish took their meals and what insects they ate. I watched the birds nesting in the erroding banks across the river. "We have no sense of the clock-face; we are fully absorbed by out thoughts, images, and scenarios". I became so in tuned with my surrounds that a once a chipmunk ran over to me and sat on my foot. I had successfully camouflaged myself. I was the earth.

"There is a big difference between our attempting to pay attention to something and having our attention captured - arrested - by something. The capture is what interests me."

One day during my final summer on the river, I sat in peace watching the river ebb and flow. The day drifting by before my eyes. I saw a stir at the edge of the river, and watched with curiosity as a larval common green darner dragonfly walked slowly from the river. It had spent probably two years beneath the surface. As a part of my duties for work, I was required to stay and watch the dragonfly from the moment it broke the surface of the river, to when it fully eclosed and flew away. This process can take upwards of 8 hours. And yes, I was to stay and accompany this insect even if it meant staying long beyond sunset and the required hours. I observed the dragonfly as is crawled gracelessly onto the rough sands, and struggled over twigs and leaf matter. It walked up a blade of thick grass, that sagged with its weight. The process began, in which the casing breaks open along the back. And slowly, over the course of hours the wet and teneral dragonfly emerges from its own exuvie which has held it for years. It takes the shape of what anybody could recognize as a dragonfly. It stands upon the empty shell that reaches out with thin white threads that yearn for life again. The teneral insect spreads its wings, soft and wet and vulnerable. And it waits. It waits for its wings to dry so it can finally break free of this earthly world. It had been about six hours, and I had not yet torn my eyes away from this transformation.

The dragonfly broke free. It spread its wings and flew for the very first time. Within seconds, a bird swooped from the sky and ate the dragonfly I had become so invested in. Before my eyes I saw life taken away, so unceremoniously. What I could never have predicted was the visceral reaction that followed. I vomited, and everything went black. For the first time, I saw a window into the realm of the Forms. A realm of essences and truths. I awoke afraid, alone, vomit covering my naked breasts. The sun was setting and nobody had noticed the death of this beautiful being. Nobody had seen life snatched from the air. Nobody had seen my transcendence into an other-wordly realm.

Birkerts and I both found truth in our monotony. We both learned what it meant to be attentive.

"...Though recognitions often come during these trances, when the mind is so susceptible."

Explication of my Mythic Coat

A Reminder of Our Shared Story

“The general principle is that the higher up we are, the more clearly we can see the bottom action as a demonic parody of the top” (Frye, 52). Throughout the course of the semester, the underlying theme is how the past possesses the present. Frye takes this concept a step further. I interpret this quote as meaning that the further each of us is from an event in our own lives, we can see more and more clearly that the present is merely a twisted displacement of previous episodes in our lives. This theme has been alluded to in every text we have read, “In my beginning is my end” (Eliot).

As I thought about this idea introduced most poignantly by Frye, I could not shake the idea that we, each individual human, is carrying with them a metaphorical coat. We carry a coat of all the shared stories of our earth, and of our ancestors, and stories from every corner of the globe. Similarly, we wear our own personal coats. Coats that mimic these shared stories of our collective past. We can now, being higher up, see our actions as parodies of those stories before, and below. Our coats reflect our personal histories, and how they are embroidered upon us, reminding us that we are indeed reliving a demonic parody. The coat that I have chosen to make is representative of our shared stories. But, is equally a my own story, as the way I have chosen to express these stories so clearly shows influences from my own life.

I have always been interested in fiber arts and textiles, and this manifests itself in a variety of ways including sewing, quilting, knitting, felting, spinning yarn, and weaving, just to name a few. The history of textiles is rich, and integrally connected to myths and stories from all over the world. The English word “text” comes from the Latin word for weaving, texare. This explains common phrases such as “weaving a story”. Though there are countless stories involving fiber, I will name only a few. Neith was an Egyptian goddess of weaving, and also the mighty aid of war. Penelope wove by day, and unraveled her beautiful work by night as to avoid marrying one of the suitors. Saule was the life-affirming Baltic sun goddess, who spun sunbeams with the spinning wheel. Working with fiber has been a part of myth throughout time, and from all over the world. By creating my own coat, I wove myself into the larger story.

Though an insignificant piece of the puzzle, I have taken my role in a tale much bigger than my own. And, each story of each weaver is indeed a displacement of those that came before.

The coat itself appears to be jumbled, or lacking in consistent theme. This was intentional, as it is not the plot or storyline of each of these myths that tie them together. Rather, the theme of how they each story has been displaced in various examples discussed in class. We have read in class a different demonic parody of each of these stories, many of which have been displaced multiple times, by many different authors. It is not the story that binds the coat together, but rather the displacements of these stories.

I will not discuss in detail each of the images depicted on the coat, as I am assuming that each member of the class is familiar with these myths. The hood of the jacket is covered in snakes, just as on the head of the feared Medusa. On the rear of the coat I have shown Icarus, flying too close to the sun. His feathers lay strewn across the coat. Below his remains, a quince tree dominates the back of the jacket. (Quinces have appeared in high frequencies in my life as of late. As noted above, though this coat shows the communal stories, it also serves as my own story as told through those of the past.) The tree can be interpreted as that of the Garden of Eden, or the tree of life, and is easily appropriated to a number of stories. The Tree is what bridges the higher to the lower, the living to the dead, the earth and the underworld. The underworld is shown on the front side of the coat. Here I have placed the lyre of Orpheus, and the pomegranate of Persephone.

We are displacement. We are the demonic parody. And we must carry coats to remind us as such. We wear the shared stories, and through them, we are reminded that our stories are not really our own.

Dream #4

I will omit the details for your sake. 

I had a dream last night in which I was walking along the beach and found a mummified person washed up ashore. I unwrapped her gauze and was startled to find a living breathing girl beneath the bandages. She was a nameless porn-star who became my best friend and lover. Long story short: we lived happily ever after. 

The end.  

Coincidence

I had found myself in a daze, time had slipped beyond my grasp. I was unsure how long I had been in these woods, these familiar woods. The snowy mountains towered around me, yet the sun warmed the rocks and soil beneath my hammock. The smell of opium hung thick in the air; a blanket of perfumed smoke. Had I been here for days, or weeks, or months? I could not muster the care to wonder.

Moses had found me when I needed him most. Looking up at his tall slender figure, I attempted to deduce whether or not he was the prophet Moses. He looked exactly the way I would have expected the prophet Moses to have looked. A tall, skinny, Iranian man. His tangled mat of hair graces his skinny waist, and his formidable beard must have been more than a foot long. I later learned that he had not bathed in over ten years. Moses found me, he slipped his hand into mine. He spoke in Farsi, sweet and dark. I let him into my hammock, and he sucked me into his hole. A hole where the tea was bitter with poppy seeds, and the beautiful blur of Farsi whirling thorough my ears. 

Eventually, my vision cleared. It had indeed been weeks. I had to leave, to not come back. I had let myself get lost in this alternate world; a world where my troubles were left behind as soon as I found myself in these woods. The paradox of extreme introspection, juxtaposed with the complete ignorance of my own life. I had no connection to these people. I had no phone, no way of using the Internet, no method of bridging my life with that of Moses again. 

Home was about a 16 hours drive from those woods where I had left Moses about a month prior. My life had returned to the typical monotony familiar to me. But, walking down a street one day, in a city of approximately 20 million people, I literally ran into him. I saw Moses. His lanky legs, his dready hair, his deep dark eyes and prominent nose. And once again, I found myself sucked into his hole. 

What a coincidence.

P.s.

I later found that these men were all involved in the Iranian mafia. They were traveling with fake passports; transporting benzene oil from Iran to Pakistan, and bringing opium from Pakistan back to Iran. 

Dream #3

I was planning on going to the library tomorrow morning, though, like many mornings I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep.

But, after returning to sleep I had a dream that I woke up in order to take a shower. I walked out of my bedroom and saw a shower of something. I tried to turn on the kitchen light, and then the living room lights; they would not turn on. In the dark and creepy corners of my kitchen, I saw something lurking. It took the shape of a bird. The bird flew to me, flapping in my face. It pecked me hard in the back of my head. Suddenly, there were tons of birds, flapping all around me and pecking at my head. Rain slapped against the dreary windows. And, with one heavy peck on the head, I awoke. 

Expunged of personhood and knit back together again

We were asked in class to attempt to assemble and reassemble ourselves. relieve ourselves of all of our beliefs.

This complete disassembly of my beliefs happened to me in a profound manner whilst experimenting with the powerful hallucinogen DMT. These things are incredibly difficult to put into words. When one gains access to the realm of the forms, even if it is only glancing through this analogical window, it is not an experience easily verbalized. 

I was stripped of myself. Momentarily relieved of all memories, all scraps of Sally that I hold onto when defining what it is to be myself. And then, slowly and rather painfully, as if I were chewing on tinfoil, my own self image creeped back into myself. But it was different. And yet exactly the same. The best way to describe my reassembly is as if an interior designer had entered my mind and completely redesigned my insides, but using only the materials that were already at hand. All of the contents were the same, and yet the room they resided in looked completely different. I had been disassembled and reassembled myself. I had been temporarily relieved of all of my beliefs, not only about myself but about everything else as well. I lay paralyzed, attempting to comprehend my restructured interior. 

It has been two years since my interiors were disassembled, redesigned by some outside source, and assembled back again in a way almost recognizable from the original... And yet exactly the same. And, after two years, I have gained no further access or explanation to what the implications of this dissasembly were. 

I wanted to say in class..

I actually wanted to sing in class.

I was shocked to find out that the majority of my peers have never heard Alice's Restaurant. I wanted so badly to belt out one of my favorite songs. But, alas, I have a terrible voice and I'm too shy to sing in front of people.

So instead I've found a link where you all can watch the movie, which basically just disects and explains the song in great detail, entailing all of the original people to act out the basis of the song again in the form of a film.

But seriously. Watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0jfwlWDgto

Enjoy!

Dream #2: I Swear It's Tuesday

On Monday morning I awoke as usual with the annoying buzzing of my alarm. And, as usual I turned off my annoying alarm and went right back to bed. I had the most vivid dream of waking up and realizing the day was Tuesday, not Monday. And this would all be fine except for the fact that I was supposed to meet with Simon Dixon, and the freshman in my section of Texts and Critics in order to conduct the midterm reviews on Monday afternoon. I was trying to rationalize (in my dream) how I could have possibly missed out on a whole day. The only explaination I could think of is that the previous day I had assumed was a Sunday, so I did not attend classes. In which case, I could conceivable wake up on Tuesday and realize with horror that I had all together missed my Monday.

I awoke from my sleep and first thing started to compose an apologetic email to Simon, attempting to explain how I had accidentally gotten my days all mixed up, and thought that yesterday was Sunday, when it was indeed a Monday, So I thought that today was Monday, when turned out to actually be Tuesday, and therefore I missed all of the responsibilities I was supposed to be doing on the actual Monday. Halfway through the email, I stopped to check my calander. It was Monday. I hadn't skipped Monday, I had not misidentified my Sunday, and it was not at all a Tuesday. It was all just a dream.

The man I met from Phraxos

I was attempting to reach the Greek island of Paros from the Aegean coast of Tukey, a task I did not for see to be with as difficult or time consuming as it turned out to be. I had been sleeping in my hammock for about a week before I spent many sleepless nights on varies ferries that went to islands that were not at all my final destination. I had made a plan with one of my older brothers almost a month beforehand. Neither of us had a phone, or Internet, nor had we been in contact with each other at all. We had made a plan to meet on a certain date at the ferry station on the island of Paros. I was already three days late before I even arrived in Athens. 

Athens was not at all what I expected. I arrived at the Piraeus port at 6 am, after sleeping on the cold and windy deck of a ferry for the last 14 hours. In order to stretch my tight muscles and weary legs, I sat down on the e,pty side walk to do some yoga poses. That is when I met the man from Phraxos. I do not remember his name, and in my dreary haze I listened patiently as he introduced himself. He was in his late 70s and had a thick mop of grey hair. He carried with him a very large stomach and was dressed as if he were headed to the beach. The man from Phraxos invited me over to his house for lunch. As I didn't have to be on a ferry until late that night I thought I might as well.

In his apartment, the man from Phraxos proceeded to tell me his entire life story; his childhood on the remote island, his wife, his children, and his job before retirement working customs at the port. I wasn't interested so much as I was too tired to do anything else. Ruins were beginning to bore me, so acropolis seemed like more of a chore than a treat. I guess I had nothing better to do than to eat sandwiches and drink coffee with this old man from Phraxos.

But as the day progressed, I started to feel trapped; as if I were no longer a guest but a prisoner. I no longer wanted to listen to this old man tell me about his life. I wanted to go swimming. I wanted to find a shady place to set up my hammock and take a nap. I wanted to eat pistachio ice cream. I wanted to leave. I couldnt leave. I made some excuses, but the lure of free food kept me a little bit longer. (I was not used to living on the euro, and my budget was almost non existent). By now, I really did want to leave. He grabbed me by the wrist, pulled me to him. He offered to pay me for sex. How betrayed I felt. This man who I had felt to connected to, who had taken me into his home and fed me and told me stories of his childhood and of his wife, and now he wont let me go. More than I feel disgusted, I feel deeply wounded. Tricked. I run out of his front door, down his steps and begin to walk briskly down the street back towards the port. Oh shit. My suitcase. Of course I had left my suitcase in the trunk of his car. In my shame I knocked at his apartment door, I had somehow become dependent on this man. All of my worldy belongings were in his car: My clothes, my alchemical guidbook, my journal, juggling balls, hand blown glass marbles, calcite crystals from Montana, an amethyst crystal from Cappadocia, my fire dancing equiptment. He had everything in the world that I cared about,  locked up in the back of his truck.

It took me almost half way through reading The Magus before I realized what my connection to Nicholas's island was. The only man I have ever known from Phraxos was kind to me. He showed interest in my for no particular reason, and took me into his home to tell me the stories of his life and to feed me wonderful Greek food. But, he tricked me. He betrayed my trust. And that is the only man I have ever met from the island of Phraxos.

Here is a photo of me on the island if Paros (I did indeed make it there eventually), relatively close to the island of Phraxos where Nicholas resided.

Dream #1: Mythic Coat Inspiration

I had a dream about two weeks ago about a coat. It is when ended up inspiring me to create an appliqued mythic coat for my final project! I had a dream about a patchwork leather coat. It's shape is remeniscent of a leaf, and the hood is pointy, as if it belongs to an elf. it corsets down the back with tea stained lace, and the hood and pockets are trimmed with purple rabbit fur. all along the hem, there are two or three layers of gathered lace. The lining is really special. A few years ago, my brother was working in China, and brought be back a dozen yards of beautiful silk brocade that he purcased at a fabric market. I've been waiting for exactly the right project before I cut into this beautiful fabric. This silk will line the inside of my literal deram coat.

I awoke in the middle of the night and had to sketch this coat. It was the first time in about nine months that I've been truly inspired to sew somthing beautiful. But, seeing as I have never made a coat with this particular pattern that I envision, I need to make one out of cheaper materials first as a pratice run. This practice coat will be the one that I make for this class. My mythic dream coat.

Magus: The First 50 Pages

First, I apologize that I have been behind in my blogs. I don't own a working computer, nor do I have internet where I live, so I have been jotting handwritten notes in my notebook all semester whilst I read instead of blogging regularly. That being said, I was flipping through my notebook and found my reaction to the Magus when I was a mere 50 pages into the book and found it amusing.

I cried for almost the entire first 50 pages to this book. I'm not sure why, as it is not outwardly sad, but it struck an unexpected chord. I was sitting on the floor of my apartment cuddled next to the sketchy antique gas heater in a bundle of blankets with a cup of loose leaf earl grey tea. It was the recipe for my favorite kind of night. But instead, as I started the Magus, I found myself moved. And depressed. And all sorts of other emotions that welled up.Why would somebody write such a book? People who hate themselves and hate each other, and hate life, but are too cowardly to do anything about it.

Alas, my boyfriend and his roommate showed up to my house just as Alison was leaving for work, and Nicholas is leaving for Greece. Of course friends decide to surprise me in the height of my crying fit. I could not wrap m head around the idea of going out to the bar when my book was so viscerally effecting me. I did indeed go out to the bar, but the whole time was thinking to myself "why am I partaking in meaningless small talk when I could be at home. reading?" And so I went home. And read my sad book.

Quality in Education

Quality in education cannot be defined by any over-arching words that encompass all students of all kinds. Quality means something different for each student who seeks education, and what is valuable inside a classroom, and at a university differs greatly. This is why there are big schools, small schools, pre-professional schools, and liberal arts schools, just to scratch the surface. For me, a quality education requires professors who care about their students. Teachers who put the well-being and success of their pupils before their own research, or anything else. I personally can only receive this in a small classroom environment; where teachers and students interact on a personal level, and the teachers understand the learning needs of the student body. A quality education comes from not only a strong classroom experience, but a large support network outside of the classroom. It comes from advisers and department heads; faculty and staff both working together to create an academic sanctuary. 

Every student has a different idea of what quality and success means to them. In order to provide a student with quality, educators must know how to meet the needs each of their students individually. This might sounds unrealistic. We need more teachers, smaller classes, more individualized educations, and educators that care about their students, not just about their own research. 

In The Secular Scripture, I was Startled to Read:

Startled might be a little bit strong. To rephrase, I might say that I read something that I found particularly thought provoking. 

On pages 47-48 in The Secular Scrpiture, Frye brings up the difference between "and then", and "hence". The distinction that Frye makes between narrative using the terminology "and then" as opposed to the terminology "hence", and the implications of these little words really stuck with me. In terms of coincidences, I could not help but imagining if all of the stories we old used the word "hence", implying a deterministic nature of coincidences. I guess that this would lead us back to our previous argument about coincidence versus synchronicity. If the word "hence" were always to be used in real life instead of the words "and then", than all coincidence would instead be synchronicity. 

It's not that the reading itself startled me, but I startled myself in how much I clung to this notion. I was sitting in the library desperately wishing that we lived in a world of "hence"s. A world where all coincidences meant something much larger than two similar events. A world of "and then" is so boring. so tedious. A world that has little room for magic. A world of "hence", on the other hand, allows us a world full of meaning; where every action determines the actions to come. Further, imagine if we all lived in a world where even though coincidences were merely "and then", as they are today, but we treated our own choices as if they had "hence" implications? Wouldn't the world be a better place to live in? 

I'm sorry, I stray quite a bit from the book. I was startled by my own reaction to a seemingly small idea presented in this book.

The Secular Scripture

Here are a few things that Frye compares to one another:

Imagination vs reality
Romantic vs realistic
Asleep (dreaming) vs waking (reality
horizontal vs vertical
and then vs hence
work vs play
created scripture vs revealed scripture

Random thoughts, notes, quotes, and questions:

p. 24: Do you think that popular literature is really a waste of time, as is suggested?

p. 36: Displacement: The adjusting of a formulaic structure to a roughly credible context.

p.42: "...What gives a novelist moral dignity is not the story he tells, but a wisdom and insight brought to bear on the world outside literature, and which he has managed to capture within literature.

p. 43: So, Frye identifies a problem of people concentrating on what the book talks about rather than what is actually presents.

p. 45: Victorian art and literature being very representative of the world, because that was a reflection of values at the time. What values of today are reflected in modern art and literature?
"What is being said about society that the story is reflecting?"

p. 47-48: Can real life coincidences be described in terms of  "hence" narrative? if so, what does this imply about fate and determinism as opposed to if coincidences are described with "and then" narrative?

p. 52: "The general principle is that the higher us we are, the more clearly we can see the bottom of the action as a demonic parody of the top." Meaning, the further away we are from a past action, the better we can see that our own lives are merely displacements of previous things that have already happened to us.

p. 56: Is it possible that film has indeed destroyed realism in literature?


The romance seeps out into the world that it reflects.

United Postal Service

Dr. Sexson said that if he told us that if he said we would see UPS trucks, than we would indeed start to see UPS trucks everywhere. He was wrong. I have yet to see a UPS truck.

How the Past Posses the Present and Future in Night-Sea Journey

The Night-Sea Journey anthropomorphizes and displaces the role of a sperm and a human in the process of fertilization, and the journey a sperm must go through in order to achieve such an ambitious feat. This story touches on many stories that have been told in the past, and using genius displacement allows the reader to identify with the sperm, as we too are going about our lives that will ultimately lead to death.The sperm in this story is given many human traits, and looks to the human as if they are a god. Not a perfect, monotheistic god, but rather a highly flawed god similar to those in the myths of Ancient Greece.

In Ancient Greek mythologies, the many gods were all flawed characters, who had motives of their own and were not at all the all-knowing, all-loving monotheistic god that many look up to today. Similarly, the sperm in Night Sea Journey look upon the human "Makers" in a light not unlike the way humans viewed their gods in Ancient Greece. The Makers have many nights and seas, and are willing to kill almost all who live in their sea. In this story, the sperm speculate about a possible hierarchy of Makers. a Maker of the Makers. Gods too had a hierarchy of importance, some gods being the maker or father of other gods. The sperm seem to have an acute understanding of their own mortality. But, there are a few who are able to escape mortality. There are some who go on into a new cycle, and are able to live beyond the night-sea. In Greek myths, many humans mated with deities, blurring the lines between what it means to be mortal and immortal.

Just as humans looked up to the gods as a higher form of being; sperm in the night-sea look up to humans as almost deities, who few selected of their kind gain access into the next realm. The story told is not a new one, merely a twist on a familiar tale of overcoming unbelievable adversity and obstacles in a land strewn with deities.

Finnegans Wake

During last Tuesday's class I was completely enchanted with the way Professor Sexson had recited parts of Finnegans Wake to the class, and found myself craving more. Though I was too tired to tackle reading it myself, I found a recording of Finnegans Wake being read on Youtube, and sat down for a listen. I quickly became almost entranced with the words, and taking the advice that had been offered in class I did not attempt to make sense, but rather let the words lap over me softly like a piece of music. In the way that a mother reads to a child, I put myself in the position of the child; listening to the story halfheartedly while I focused more on the soothing and melodic pulse of my new Youtube mother's voice.

It was comforting in class to be told to "not get distracted by sense". I recently took a Victorian poetry course whilst studying abroad in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the assignments given by the professor was to analyze and interpret The Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll. This poem was particularly fun to look at, seeing as I have had it memorized for as long as I can remember and have fond memories associated with this beautiful piece of nonsense. The reaction of the rest of the students was a much less pleasant one consisting of frustration, and one student actually being brought to tears. I can see how troubling this type of literature might be, especially for a non-native English speaker, and this could have been remedied by the professor offering the same advice as Professor Sexson offered while looking at Finnegans Wake. Sometimes it is more important to look beyond sense and view these types of works more in the category of music.