Final Post-the end is here

I already told you what I have learned, so i guess this post is a bit redundant. The world ends every day. It is most definitely ending today because I am done with this class. I do not know how I feel about that...a mixture of sadness and relief. As much as I love the intellectual prowess of the instructor and many of the classmates, I can't help but feel a bit below them in intellectualism (huh its a word, I actually thought I might be making it up). I feel like I have learned more in this class than any other, however, because I have learned about my surroundings.

Sure, knowing how to calculate integrals in calculus makes a person feel smart and being able to construct a behavior modification plan is quite useful, but Mythologies is the class that will stick with me. As I observe the world around me, I realize everthing's connection to the all-encompassing breadth of Mythology. My religion, my morals, my birth, my departure from home, my inevitable return to home, etc.-I would never have realized the mythological significance of all of this had it not been for Dr. Sexson's insistance that everything is mythological. This significance has made me realize that he is inexorably correct (not that I ever doubted him), and I feel privleged for being able to take a class from such an inspirational instructor.

Sorry for the gushing, but this class really is remarkable, and I am sure the vast majority of students who take it from Dr. Sexson have and will say the same thing. Thanks for the great semester everyone!

And now we begin....

Another Bad Day

Simon had a horrible day on Sunday. As it turned out, it was he and I's one year anniversary. It was supposed to be a great day in which we could celebrate the fact that we had made it a year together-no easy feat mind you.

The day started out okay. My cousin was in town so we went out to breakfast in the morning. This would be fine for a "normal" person, but as it turns out, Simon is incredibly awkward about money situations and being bought food just about surpasses his awkwardness threshold. No one else sensed the awkwardness of the situation as Simon and I are college students and should probably have breakfast bought for us from time to time, but the "incident" basically ruined his morning. On top of the situation at breakfast, the food actually made him feel sick and he considered vomiting for the following two hours.

After the nausea had abated to a manageable level, Simon was obligated to go to the Cat's Paw and watch football with a friend who was visiting from back home. He had a couple of drinks, which didn't make him feel any better, and came home before heading off to a study session for his abhorrent music theory class. He stopped in and said goodbye to me in fairly good spirits considering the lingering stomach ache and the unavoidable clash with the characters of the music department.

Five minutes after his departure, Simon yelled at me from the bottom of the stairs. He had been in a collision with another vehicle because he had not cleaned off his window well enough. This collision resulted in the driver's-side half of his front bumper being torn off and I had to drive and park Simon's car while he carried the bumper along side of it (it was still attached by wires). The other person involved in the collision drove off, which was actually lucky because the crash was Simon's fault.

After moving his car to a safe place, Simon took my car to campus, and luckily didn't come back so soon this time. When he did arrive back at the house, however, he announced that the study session had been a complete waste of time and he had "fucked up" his car for no reason. After venting for a time about his music class and his misgivings about having crashed his car, Simon was back to feeling better...until I had to be girl and screw everything up.

As the realization that I had not received a gift for our anniversary popped into my head, I did not have the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut, especially considering the present circumstances. I mentioned the absence of a present, which made Simon feel bad and pissed him off all over again. After that, I refused to leave him alone to cool off and followed him around yelling at him for a while (that was my attempt at making things better, albeit a horrible one).

After a while, I was forgiven for my indiscretion and we drove to Movie Lovers to rent Harry Potter and planned on spending the rest of our anniversary getting along. We managed to make it back to the house okay and went upstairs to look something up on the internet quickly before watching our movie. Simon became engrossed in a paper he had up on the computer and I began to feel ignored. This feeling sparked a new outburst on my part. I didn't realize at the time that Simon probably was acting a bit out of sorts, but it most likely wasn't because of me. It probably had something to do with the fact that he had messed up his car and had felt sick all day. However, I managed to reinstate the fight and bring it back in full force-throwing objects, screaming, etc. Sarah referred to it as a real "stem-winder"(the walls in our house are paper thin so Sarah is afforded the pleasure of listening to every one of Simon and I's numerous fights).

Simon and I ended up making up at about two o'clock in the morning and everything was absolutely fine, like it always is...but that does not negate the fact that Simon had one hell of a bad day, somewhat facilitated by yours truly. Poor guy, I don't even think he learned anything from it.

"The custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practiced in India and other parts of the East" -Frazer, Golden Bough, p. 9

I can recall people in our class alluding to or directly talking about tree-hugging, but the recent influx of blog posts, as tonight is the last night to compose such blog posts, renders my task of finding these particular references almost impossible. I was just looking to see if anyone had used this quote and the post that I did manage to find about tree-hugging, Jase's, did not so I figured I could go right ahead.

This quote can be considered closely related to the story of Apollo and Daphne, in which Daphne prays to become a tree to escape Apollo's lust and preserve her chastity.

[Apollo:] "'But since you cannot be my wife, you'll be my tree...'"-Ovid, p. 24


Good thing for Daphne, Apollo didn't know about this Indian/Eastern custom of marrying trees, or who know what he would have done. Little did he know he could have had her as his tree and his wife. Instead, he had to settle for wearing her laurel leaves as a sort of headdress. At least she approved of that, or at least he assumed that she approved in her tree-like indications of such that could undoubtedly be easily misinterpreted.

At least I never nearly killed us

What Sarah neglects to mention in her blog post about my driving issues is that none of the crashes I put us through were high-speed. Although my driving indiscretions are more numerous indeed, as logical thinkers we need to realize the importance of quality over quantity in this situation. None of my crashes could have been considered remotely sublime because none were life-threatening.

However, there is a somewhat sublime experience in one instance of "fence marauding," followed by a realization that the neighbor boy could keep his mouth shut, even at the tender age of 6. Let us refer back to example #2, in which Jordan joined us in our foray through the ditch and into the summer fallow field. This one could very well have been a sublime experience for young Jordan, or at least a terrifying one. I honestly think he feared for his life in two different instances that day. Christine (the Cadillac) had accumulated a rather impressive collection of books in her back window by the time I started driving. Jordan describing these books flying at his head as we ventured through the ditch and through the fence was quite comical. I have a vision of time standing still, and Jordan looking around at all of the books floating in the air, dangerously near his fuzzy little head. Luckily he wasn't hurt. I think I may have also terrified him when I told him NOT to tell ANYONE about what had happened. He didn't even tell his mother. Normally a vexatious little brat, one would expect Jordan to tell his mother at the first possible instant, but something in my tone of voice or facial expression told him that was an extremely bad idea. I think we all went through a bit of realized eschatology that day. Yes, I know I am a bad driver, but that day everyone found out and changed the way they think of me. At least how well they would trust me driving their children to the bus stop.

Although I am an admittedly bad driver and, thus, would never ask to drive the chariot, I must reiterate the irrefutable fact that I never almost killed anyone. Sure, Jordan thought I almost got him killed, but must I mention his age yet again? Sarah actually could have killed us, but I guess I can thank her for the semi-sublime experience.

Sarah, the sublimely bad driver

I have been thinking about what a sublime experience would be. I know that it would be simultaneously terrifying and beautiful, a life-changing experience. Perhaps being terrified is beautiful in itself because it leads to the greatest relief in many instances. The following story will explain what I mean.

When Sarah and I were in high-school, we drove a 1990 Cadillac Brougham. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a very, very large car, one that would be branded as a "boat." Here is a picture of me with the car. As you can see, it's not in very good shape, which will be explained shortly.

One day, when I was about fifteen, Sarah and I went to Lewistown (without permission) to get fireworks. We were going to take the pickup, which you can see in the background of this picture, but we decided to take the car instead and I can't remember why. It's a damn good thing we did.

On the way back from Lewistown, I unwittingly let Sarah drive. She was fourteen at the time, with no driver's license,and I was apparently unintelligent. I was telling Sarah a story about something that had happened to Dad several years ago. The story is actually worth re-telling, because it was probably a sublime experience for Dad.

One day, Dad was refilling a set of drills from the back of a straight truck. I am sure many people have no idea what I am talking about so here is a picture of a set of drills:

I know it's a picture of a toy, but it is actually pretty accurate and you can see the platform on which Dad would have been standing in order to refill it. Here is a picture of a straight truck with the box lifted:
Now imagine the drills directly behind the lifted box of the truck. The truck was full of seed and Dad was using a bucket to take seed out of the box of the truck and putting the seed into the drills. Dad jumped off of the platform of the drills to "take a leak" and the box of the truck broke loose, demolishing the drills. If Dad would have been on the drill platform, he would have most likely been killed. This event was undoubtedly terrifying for Dad because he almost died and beautiful because he did not die.

However, this story about Dad is not what this blog post is centered around. So back to my original story.

I was telling Sarah the story about Dad while she was driving 80 miles per hour down the highway toward Winifred. I tend to speak with my hands, and as I told the story this tendency was illustrated. Sarah couldn't help but look at me, and in doing so drifted slightly off of the highway. Being an inexperienced driver, Sarah panicked and over-corrected, sending us flying into the ditch at an angle nearly parallel to the highway. We skidded sideways so hard it popped the beads off the tires. We busted through one fence before skidding to a stop, fully upright and totally uninjured. Had we taken the pickup, the consequences of Sarah's mistakes would have proven much more dire, possibly fatal.

I barely remember the wreck. Time slowed way down and I remember thinking the whole time "we are going to be fine." In fact, I believe I was saying it out loud, but I cannot remember for sure. I was never even frightened until afterward, when I realized that we could have been killed had it not been for our enormous, wide-based car. Perhaps no one is terrified in a situation like that until it is over. It happens so fast, but time seems to slow to a near halt and you think about thousands of things in those few seconds while you are actually unsure of whether or not you will be "okay." The next day, Dad and I went to fix the fence, the tire guy put tires on the car, and I drove it home. Everything was okay.

I am not sure if this car accident qualifies as a sublime experience because, as I mentioned before, I never felt that terrified. I knew that old car would get us through unharmed. Perhaps the sublimity in it comes from the beauty of time slowing down and the thousands of thoughts rushing through my mind in just a few seconds. If anything, the experience made me look at that gigantic, beaten-up old car as beautiful.

"The Belly"

"Meantime another wizard exerts himself to attain the same end by means which we should regard as wholly irrational. He, in fact, pretends to be the expectant mother; a large stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his body represents the child in the womb, and following the directions shouted to him by his colleague on the real scene of operations, he moves this make-believe baby about on his body in exact imitation of the movements of the real baby until the infant is born" -James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, pg. 16


This passage is hilarious to me. It is one of the first passages I read in The Golden Bough and I never got around to posting about it. I love Frazer's hint of sarcasm throughout this section of the book as he obviously thinks it's all just a bit ridiculous. If I were having a child, I really don't think this would help me out, but would in fact probably distract me from the task at hand. I don't know actually...I have heard that particular task is pretty difficult to be distracted from. Having a doctor yell out the play-by-play on what the baby is doing might actually be helpful in some way, but probably more irritating than anything.

I like how the guy outside pretending to have a baby is a "colleague" of the doctor inside. Not that his job is not difficult, having a stone strapped to you and having to use your acting prowess to pretend it is an infant would be quite taxing, but I somehow think the "colleague" inside's job is a bit more important. The following picture depicts a person being forced to wear a fake "belly" because her father wants her to realize how much it would suck to be pregnant.


The movie that this is from, "10 Things I Hate About You" is actually a reimagining of "Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare so it somewhat fits into the mythological aspect of this blog.

Dreams

As I was just supposed to be working on my blog, I was taking a nap. As it turns out, I was working on my blog the whole time, by having a crazy dream.

First, let me preface this by talking a little bit about my place of work, the Blue Basket gas station on 19th. The Blue Basket is located near the freeway entrance and thus, near an overpass, which is a great place for bums to live. Therefore, I see bums and become familiar with them and sell them the beer and cigarettes all of those who give bums money pay for. Sometimes they buy food, but mostly for the dogs they have living up there with them.


Back to my dream. I was in a car with one such homeless person, one of the only whose name I do not know so let's call him John. We were driving around Bozeman and we were in his car. No, bums do not usually have cars, especially this one. I remember asking him if, since he had bought a car, he was planning on getting a job and saving up to buy a house. I was trying to psychoanalyze John and act as a sort of therapist to him. He scoffed at me...and handed me a tall boy of Steel Reserve (this parts realistic). We apparently were going to meet another bum, Roger, who I know and who also owned a car. I never saw any sign of Roger. The current bum and I drove down to an area of Bozeman I recognized in the dream but does not actually exist. I think it was near Joe's Parkway. We parked and walked to an art center (also nonexistent) downtown.

As we walked into the art center, John actually became the girlfriend of someone I grew up with. She and I walked through the several layers of the art center-there were about eight and I knew that in my dream. She provoked some little lizards that were inside of a cage and they attacked her hand but didn't hurt her and I was frightened. She then pulled a snake out of a cage of snakes (the art center had become a zoo apparently) and threw it behind a dresser thing. She was basically causing mayhem in this art center and I did not approve.

All the sudden, we were outside on the street, and I heard a voice belonging to Sarah that was telling me the bus was coming. Somehow, we ended up getting on the bus in a place where it does not normally pick people up and the bus driver was very angry with us. Then I woke up.

I'm sorry if you read through this whole ridiculous dream because it does not make any sense and you probably won't get much out of it...but it was still a dream and therefore mythological.

Final Paper

The End is Near, the End is Here

“I have been living a lie.” This is what I have jokingly said numerous times in my life when I discovered something I thought to be true was false or vice versa. The truth in this statement is what I have learned in this class. Every day the World ends for me. As new truths are unveiled my perception of the World as I know it is altered. As I learn information that will hone my skills for life after school, the lies I have previously believed are devalued and discounted. This way of thinking incorporates realized eschatology into the process of growing up.

As a college student, I learn every day. As a teacher, I will continue to learn every day. A new World will be revealed to me constantly in the form of new relationships and realizations about society as it changes over time. The children I teach will teach me in turn. I will learn humility, ardor, and, most importantly, patience. As these unveilings occur, I will need to understand them and realize their significance in order to fully live. This class has taught me how to do that.

Realized eschatology is the topic we covered that really resonates with me. Ever since I was a little girl I have been terrified of the apocalypse. I can remember New Year’s Eve in 1999. I was at Grandma and Papa’s house with Sarah, eating popcorn and watching cartoons until the big moment when we would enter into a new century. I held my breath at midnight, just like millions of other’s undoubtedly did, and the World didn’t end. Perhaps the World did end for me and those millions of others that night. We realized that we had believed in something that was totally untrue. Thus, what was supposed to be a literal eschatology actually turned out to be realized eschatology. Not knowing that at the time (I was ten years old), I began looking once again for a new end to look forward to with dread. I made the mistake of watching a show on the History channel about different apocalyptic predictions. I managed to latch on to one that said the World would end in 2002. I actually wrote on a bar napkin “the world will end in 2002” and put it back into the napkin holder so as to impart this newfound wisdom I felt was so prevalent. I feel sorry for whoever came across that napkin. I wonder if it led to another’s unveiling of the World.

Obviously, the World didn’t end in 2002 either, at least not in the literal sense. Somehow, this new prediction, the Mayan calendar 2012 one, has taken hold of me as well. Now that I know about realized eschatology, I feel much better about this. Perhaps the World will end that day, but the apocalypse is not going to happen. It will be the same as all the other predictions, the day will come and everyone will be frightened….then nothing will happen and we will all realize we have been mistaken once again. Realized eschatology will prevail like it has every other time in the past.

We see realized eschatology in all of the texts we read this semester. If a story has character development, it incorporates realized eschatology. As a character realizes his/her worth and purpose, his/her World ends and begins anew. Going to Africa is the end of Henderson’s World as he knows it. This is first of many “ends” this character goes through. In trying to become a hero for a village of people and failing, Henderson discovers that he is, in fact, not a hero. In moving the statue, Henderson realizes his strength and becomes “the rain king.” In meeting Dahfu and being taught by him, Henderson learns to think philosophically. These character developments continue on, culminating in Henderson’s realization that he needs to show more appreciation for his dutiful wife, Lily. As Henderson matures and makes these realizations and his World continues to begin and end, he is continuously, albeit unknowingly, being introduced to realized eschatology (Bellow).

Eliade talks about eschatology in “Myth and Reality,” but focuses on literal eschatology of different cultures, rather than realized. In “The ‘End of the World’ in modern art” subsection of his chapter on eschatology and cosmogony, Eliade does elude to realized eschatology-“And, the first among moderns, the artists have set themselves to destroying their World in order to re-create an artistic Universe in which man can at once live and contemplate and dream” (Eliade, p. 74). This quote does not directly talk about realized eschatology, but the part that grabs my attention is the “their World” part. This implies that everyone’s World is different.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, someone in nearly every story is transformed into something else. Realized eschatology is present in this as well. If I were transformed into a bird, I would most likely think of my World a bit differently. Everyone in Ovid undergoes some sort of transformation, be it physical or moral; even Jupiter stops raping women eventually. These transformations lead to a new way of thinking, or a cessation of thinking altogether in the cases of those who are turned into inanimate objects (Mandelbaum).

As I mentioned before, my World ends every day as I learn new information and mature as a person. This may not be true for someone who has a daily routine he or she never strays from. The opposite is assuredly true for a child. A child addresses misconceptions every day. This happens more often for them than for anyone else, including those of us that realize it is happening. Children are truly “living a lie;” we witness this in beliefs of Santa Claus and other mythical beings. For example, the day I realized irrefutably that Santa wasn’t real was probably the end of my World at that time.

Why does this all matter? I guess that is somewhat self-explanatory. Realizing that the World ends every day is important to me as it should be to everyone. As we grow up and mature, our lives are a series of ends and beginnings, some more obvious than others. Some are widely seen, like the end of the Y2K scare and the beginning of the new century. Some are more personal, like the day a person throws away their old conceptions and opens up to a new awareness of the World around them. Everyone undergoes their own realized eschatology, some more often than others. Many may never realize this is happening to them, but if the day comes that they do, it will be an end in itself. One day the World will have to actually end, but until then, it will end nearly every day for anyone who realizes that they are consistently unveiling a new World and a new way of thinking. This is what I have realized. Every day I learn, in some way or another, that I have been “living a lie.” I would not have realized this had it not been for this class. The “lie” I have been living is becoming a truth in that I now recognize it for what it is and am constantly modifying my perceptions of my World to invalidate it.

Works Cited

Bellow, Saul. Henderson the Rain King. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1963.

Mandelbaum, Allen. The Metamorphoses of Ovid: a new verse translation. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993.

I was listening to music the other night, and the song "When You Sleep" by Cake came on and I noticed a blatant and accurate reference to mythology. Here is the line:

Now Zeus was a womanizer
Always on the make
But Hera usually punished her that Zeus was one to take

This line doesn't necessarily fit into the song, but it definitely fits well into this class. I was actually thinking about composing a post about Juno because she reminds me of a person I know. I guess finding these lines gives me all the more reason to do so.

This person I know, let's call her Mandy, had an extremely unfaithful boyfriend, let's call him Paul. Paul would run around sleeping with girls from around he and Mandy's hometown on a regular basis. Mandy however, would never punish Paul for his indiscretions but would instead direct her anger toward whichever girl he had "hooked up with" most recently. Mandy called one of my good friends repeatedly, harassing her about an alleged transgression that never even happened. This pattern of infidelity and misdirected anger was repeated numerous times, and in the process, poor Mandy actually agreed to marry Paul. Of course it didn't work out and they broke off the engagement.

This personal experience makes me actually feel very sorry for Juno. She is in love with a man who is unfaithful to her. She doesn't want to lose his love so she doesn't punish him for his infidelity, but instead takes it all out on those her husband victimizes. She clearly sees no other way to alleviate the pain her husband causes her. Juno is in a tough place and comes across as a total bitch (okay...she is a total bitch), but we need to understand how difficult it must be for her. I'm sure Mandy would love to shed some light on the subject.