Reflecting on the Thoreau quote, "we should read the eternities rather than the times" I found a passage that says almost the exact opposite in a Simon and Garfunkel song, Overs. The stanza goes,
"Why don't we stop foolin' ourselves,
The game is over, over, over,
No good times, no bad times
There's no times at all,
Just the New York Times."
Now the song is actually about two people who were in a relationship and aren't any more, but if we take this stanza out of its context I think that it could be interpreted to mean something with a much more encompassing interpretation that we can reflect on today. Assuming that nothing is original anymore, I think it is fair to say that we certainly like to think that we are original and in that sense we are foolin' ourselves, when we think the game is on the game has been over for years, and like a broken tape we just keep playing the same songs over and over. All we have left is the New York Times, because more than anything else what seems more original to us is the news. The news happens everyday, and more often than not it is the same shit that happens every day, but somehow it feel new and original everyday. I'm not sure why, but I do it everyday, I go to the Book Store, buy a newspaper for 50 cents and look through it like I'm going to see something I haven't seen before, but it's always the same. People debating, people passing laws, people getting arrested, people dying, people being born, and every once in awhile you'll get a nice article about someone doing something nice. But isn't that just life? It's weird to think about because, I look back at all that I've learned this semester and it seems like that was all they were doing back then too. I don't know why, but I like to think that there is more to life than what goes on in the newspapers. Maybe that is why I like the Metamorphoses so much because it has all those lying, cheating, dying, baby making aspects of real life but with a twist, magic.

Awhile ago I wrote a blog about how the gods and goddesses were always interfereing with the humans and that there life would be much simpler if the gods had just stayed out of it. I think that a really good example of this, though there are many, is the story of Apollo and Daphne. Though I don't think we touched on this story in class it is one of my favorites and in recently rereading it I noticed the involvment of Cupid, or Eros, more so than I did the first time I read the story.

Daphne is the daughter of Peneus, which is a river oddly enough, and Apollo fell in love with her because of a dispute between Cupid and himself. Apparently Apollo was making fun of Cupid when he was practicing shooting his bow, naturally this made Cupid mad and to take revenge on Apollo he shot him with one of his love arrows causing him to fall in love with Daphne and then shot Daphne with a lead arrow which stopped her from falling in love with him, causing a bit of a dilema. After discovering that she could never escape Apollo she prayed to her father which in return turned her into a tree, a laurel tree. Even then Apollo fell in love with the laurel tree and it became sacred to him. There is one particular piece of art that I found that is both very beautiful and very prominent in the time that it was painted. It is called Apollo and Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiolo and was painted sometime between 1470 and 1480 which is significant because prior to this there was a long absense of mythological art work due to the rise of Christianity.

My favorite passage from this poem is this,

"Such was the god, and such the flying fair,

She urged by fear, her feet did swiftly move,

But he more swiftly, who was urged by love,

He gathers ground upon her in the chase;

Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace,

And just is fastening on the wished embrace,

The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright,

Spent with the labor of so long a flight,

And now despairing, cast a mournful look,

Upon the streams of her paternal brook,

'Oh help', she cried, 'in this extremest need!

If water gods are deities indeed:

Gape earth, and this unhappy wrench intomb;

Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come'.

Scarce had she finished, when her feet she found

Benumbed with cold, and fasted to the ground;

A filmy rind about her body grows.

Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:

The nymph is all into a lawrel gone;

The smoothness of her skin remains alone."

Dionysus

One of my favorite gods that we just got a little glimpse of is Dionysus or Bacchus to the Romans, so I did a little more research on him and here's what I found out.
Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, and therefore spent much of his life fleeing from Hera. His birth was a pretty exciting one as told by Apollodorus, apparently Hera, Zeus's actual wife, got so jealous that Zeus had impregnated Semele that she convinced Semele to ask Zeus to show himself in all his glory, but because Semele was human she could not withstand the sight of Zeus in all his glory, and she died. But Zeus was able to remove the unborn baby from her belly and place it in his own thigh, where Dionysus was born from. When he was born Zeus gave Dionysus to Ino, Semele's sister, who had two other children, Learches and Melicertes. But Hera in all her jealousy made Ino and her husband go mad. Athamus, Ino's husband, ended up killing his son Learches with a spear, mistaking him for a stag and Ino ended up killing their other son by placing him in boiling water. Ino then threw herself into the ocean holding her boiled baby. So last but certainly not least Dionysus spent the rest of his life wandering the earth trying to avoid the rather of Hera. Along his travels he aquired many vineyards and hence became the god of wine. He has also been associated with plant life, festivals, dance, and just pure excess - that is with everything that takes man out of his dailt routine.
When he returned to Greece, the sisters of Semele had convinced everyone that he was not the son of Zeus but the product of their sister and some man she had been cheating with. First, Dionysus punished the woman that had spread these rumors by causing them to go mad and sent them up to Mount Cithaeron. Thebes was ruled by Pentheus at the time, who was actually a cousin of Dionysus. So, Dionysus went to talk to his brother and convince him that he was actually the son of Zeus. There he convinced Pentheus to go up to Mount Cithaeron and see where he had made the woman mad. When Pentheus did this the woman tore out a tree and smashed him and then cut him into pieces. Agave, Pentheus's mother, took her son's head and stuck it to a Thyrsus ( a staff with ivy leaves at the top) and carried it to the city, displaying it with pride in her madness. And this is the major plot line in The Bacchae, a tragedy by Euripides.

Modern Midas's

I really enjoyed group fo's video today that was very clever and it turned out really good. I like the story of Midas because I too know a lot of greedy people. Often times when people ask me what I'm going to do with my major and I reply that I have no freakin' idea, they question why I would pursue a major that has such insecure career opportunities. I answer that people have lost their sense of passion and focus soely on majors that can grantee them a secure job that makes them lots of money so they can grow up get a job, get married to a good looking suitor and support them and their children for the rest of their lives. BOOO! That fantasy rarely plays itself out and besides how boring. I like to answer these people with sarcastic answers like, oh I'm just going to write a best seller and make a million dollars, then I'll never have to work again! ha.  Then they are  stuck there thinking that I'm the ass... haha, if only they knew. Greed makes you the ass, buddy! People have lost the concept that dreams can become reality and I think that is a big reason why society pushes students to have a secure major that is going to secure them for the rest of their lives. I am glad that I am not secure, because the places that pursuing my passions will take me is probably going to be a lot father and a lot more fun than securing my future with money.

Group Presentations

I had a a lot of fun with group presentations. It was fun to see other people's ideas as well. Just to recap on what we performed today, we had an initial feast of Dionysus to start off in which we danced the sparagmos dance and ripped apart an animal (aka a bag of bags). The Festival was meant to bring us good luck throughout the rest of our plays, which I think it did.
The first play was written by Crystal and Brittney who recently had pets die, and felt that it reflected the play Antigone really well. So we went with that for one play. It was hard thinking of a mondern day Antigone because though we may often believe that the rules set for us are not correct, hardly do we have the chance to rebel so publicly. So, the dogs were a very mild form of Antigone.
The next play was Bizz's idea, because like she said during class this actually happened to her during high school, and it was pretty funny. The main gist of the play was simply a young boy with a "genius" idea to answer a girl who had asked him to a school dance. The tribulations that young people with go through and the problems that they have along the way is pretty hilarious, and this was a pretty good example of that.
And the third play was the man eating himself play, from Ovid's metamorphosis. we reenacted the poem in a modern light by placing the father as a talent agent and forcing her daughter to act slutty in order to get parts so as to feed his eating habit which ended up being the death of him one day when all he had to eat was himself.
Personally I liked the third play the best but everyone seemed to like the flaming toilet a lot and I can understand that, it was pretty funny, and fun to act out too.

I learned something interesting in my linguistics class today. We were talking about the evolution of the English language, Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Late Modern English and some of the famous works that correlated with these time periods and Shakespeare came up. Not to take away from Shakespeare in the least, because I truly do believe that he was a literary genius, but Dr. Coffey brought up an interesting point that the printing press had just been released right around the same time that Shakespeare started writing so many of his plays. This may explain a little bit of why Shakespeare is so famous, because he was one of the first talented authors to actually be able to present his work to the public without having to manually right out every script. Another interesting fact is that even at this time only about 5% of the public was literate, so even when the printing press was invented only a fraction of the population could actually read what was being printed. AND also just as interesting was the information that he told us about the Old English texts, like Beowulf. Because there was no printing press every copy of that text was hand written! Holy crap! That is a lot of writing and to think that when that was written only about 1% of people were literate and those were the priests and the heads of the church. To think that something that was only originally written down survived all these years in its full form is pretty amazing, I mean that was around 1300 years ago! I think that this stuff is so interesting, and I find it funny that this information is being expressed the way that it is in a Linguistics class and was not presented in any survey class that I have taken, Brit Lit I or II, World Lit I or II… It would have been nice to know when I was reading Beowulf that it was originally just a written manuscript and every copy that was made had to been rewritten. Dr. Sexton, that is why I really appreciate you because you come with a database of extended knowledge that overall adds to the effectiveness of what we are reading. So thank you.
Some of my favorite Shakespeare quote:
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."
"Ambition should be made of sterner stuff."
"And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse."
"As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words."
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."

I really enjoyed all the individual presentations and I looking forward to all the group projects. Ours is coming together really well and it should be really funny. Our interpretations of the past possessing the future is very....creative. Regarding the individual presentations I really liked the theme that someone brought up about how magic is lost with age. It is the sad truth and something that we should try to work on, and it is probably a big reason as to why we find these metamorphoses poems and the golden ass works so interesting because in brings to light magic in a way that we can relate to, and make it seem almost real. When we are young magic is everywhere because we are able to create it more freely and with a more open imagination. I think that in growing up we loose some of the possibilities we once found in everything because we learn that that is not the way to perceive something or other, and in that sense our imaginations are thwarted and magic becomes less real and that is sad because I like magic, I like the idea of the unreal, the idea that there is some cool powers that we can see if we look hard enough. Anyway I thought that was a really good idea for a paper, props to whoever did that, sorry I'm not very good with names.