That poor guy

I feel sorry for Prometheus. I mean the guy was just trying to help out a little and for that he gets his liver perpetually eaten every day?? i mean come on Zeus we all know that you are a tough guy but its that sort of abuse really necessary? I just wrote a paper about the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and talked about how Victors ultimate achievement of knowledge is his downfall. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it the humans. Victor, stole life from the gods and gave it to humans and for that, instead of having a perpetually picked liver he has to watch as his whole family is killed by his creation. such a powerful idea. If you follow too blindly in your aspirations you can end up hurting the people close to you. gives us all a lesson that we should never let our goals get in the way of the people we love. In the end, those people are all we have and you have to make an effort to hold on to them. I know it gets sappy and what not but seriously. You can take away everything i own, just don't take away the people i love and i think that translates to most peoples lives.

I love the concept of the Rose in The Golden Ass. Anything in the world could have turned him back into a human being but they picked the Rose. I did a little research, thats right i actually worked on my blog, and found that the Rose really played no hugely important role in greek mythology, which i thought i was interesting. you would think the key to his morphing back into a human would be significant! but a rose! to pick such a pure image as a bright red velvety flower seems perfect. With the rose too you can incorporate the idea of cycles and natures movement through the seasons. I just read shoni's blog about a flower going through the concrete. This reminded me of a favorite poem of mine by a well know and debatably dead warrior-poet, Tupac Shakur. it goes as follows....

"Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned
to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared."

so so sorry

Dr. Sexson, I feel bad. And I am not placing blame on any shoulders besides me own because that would be just plain unfair. I love your class. I love our readings and our discussions, i just feel guilty because I am honestly not a blogger. I feel at a disadvantage because I don't want this blog to show that i don't care, because i do. Yesterday I read The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. The young main character was trying to cope with the death of his grandmother, close family friend, and sister. and he just cant stop laughing. after his grandmother, a longtime respected member of the reservation is struck and killed by a drunk driver, after his closest family friend is shot in the face by his drunk best friend, and after his sister is too drunk to realize her trailor is on fire and burns alive....all he can do is laugh. hysterically laugh. He doesnt even cry when any of these horrible things happen as opposed to other parts in the book. when catharsis kicks in this boy can only laugh. When this young boy in the novel looks up grief his friend give him some useful advice. His friend gives him the play Medea by our favorite euripidies! He is trying to find joy in his life and preserve what happiness he still has left. Maybe if he murders his father and mother he will be able to save them....i really like that idea. not to say im gonna go kill anyone but the prospect of being able to free someone by death and not even looking at death as a bad thing. Its a door to open up to a world free of pain and suffereing. a peaceful world.

" But we are free after all. We are bound not by the laws of our nature but by the ways we can imagine ourselves breaking out of those laws without doing violence to our essential being. We are free to transcend ourselves. If we have the imagination for it." (pg. 67)

Starting out reading this book I kind of had a faint notion of what this book would be about. Alright, feral child alone in the wilderness and man tries to capture it. pretty fair guess in my opinion. Malouf starts talking about some really enticing ideas and travels so far away from the storyline that you just get lost in this sea of these huge philosophical and spiritual epiphanies. Whats so nice about it is you dont expect it coming but you dont really realize what is happening until your mid way through it. your just like hold on...what did he just say?? then you re-read it and its oh my god how does he just hop from subject to subject so fluently? fun reading.

Stadial Madness

Within the pink gooey substance that is my brain, there sits in the back of my head, a diminutive curious glow that is my memory. A smolder. This recollection of times passed tests my tolerance as if it were a toddler who refuses to stop howling. There is novelty inside our memory, and I believe that I knew more at my moment of conception than I do presently. In class we discussed the idea Anamnesis; Plato’s theory that you, right now, know everything there is to know, but…forgot it. We start from the top of the ladder and work our way down. Dr. Sexson believes the opposite; we start at the bottom climbing to the top, it is there at the closing stages, where we meet Sophia. Plato’s conjecture is more alluring. The suggestion of being born with absolute understanding of everything in the world is more mind-boggling than most ideas you encounter on the daily grind. The thought that as we progress through life, what we stumble upon does not enlighten us and nurture us, but rather harms us. In that moment of birth, we as infants have an immeasurable amount of knowledge that will only erode as we grow. crazyness.

Stadial Madness

Within the pink gooey substance that is my brain, there sits in the back of my head, a diminutive curious glow that is my memory. A smolder. This recollection of times passed tests my tolerance as if it were a toddler who refuses to stop howling. There is novelty inside our memory, and I believe that I knew more at my moment of conception than I do presently. In class we discussed the idea Anamnesis; Plato’s theory that you, right now, know everything there is to know, but…forgot it. We start from the top of the ladder and work our way down. Dr. Sexson believes the opposite; we start at the bottom climbing to the top, it is there at the closing stages, where we meet Sophia. Plato’s conjecture is more alluring. The suggestion of being born with absolute understanding of everything in the world is more mind-boggling than most ideas you encounter on the daily grind. The thought that as we progress through life, what we stumble upon does not enlighten us and nurture us, but rather harms us. In that moment of birth, we as infants have an immeasurable amount of knowledge that will only erode as we grow. crazyness.