script

Script For Class:
Scrtpit——————First Scene: A high school English teacher walks into a classroom, and sits on a desk where he processds to take the contents out of his briefcase (a notebook, several other books, and an apple”—he gazes at one particular book, a book of myth in quite contemplation: he has just recently graduated from college, and is about to teach his first class—a freshman English class that is starting with the value of myth. Before the class begins he has a brief monologue to himself about what he is going to teach.

John’s Monologue:
“Well…let’s see” He says with a sigh
“This is it, I suppose, I hope all those education classes were worth it.”
“And I hope my kids like me.”: Huffing on his apple and polishing it with his shirt
“But…ummm…let me think, what should be our first lesson…
“ahh…Demeter and Persophne…that should be an excellent topic for are first class.”
“I remember it being very appropriate…Not like that other myth garbage; rape, incest and violence—just motherly love—if I remember correctly…survey of Myth ,section I, that’s was the class”
“Great class other than the professor…what was his name…oh yeah, Dr Sexson…He got way to into it, thought myth was a physical performance…there will be none of that in my class room…besides, who would ever thought an old man would be full of such dirty jokes…slutty Shannon, corporeal similutide’s…the nerve of him.”
“He even went so far as to suggests that this story was about handing down humanity’s secerets of sexuality form mother to daughter—and that phallic symbols would be raised in respect of the this tradition…awful”
“Besides, I know this story is not about fertility”…I fondel the book in an erotic way. “This copy of Myth’s for teens is excellent”
“Much better descriptions than he ever gave…see right at the begening of Demeter and Persophne, there is a summery …it says the Myth is about compromise.”
“Compromise…” I say stroking my chin.
Action: I proceed to go write compromise on the board
“Hmm…that’s another compromise that will have to made; these children will need to appreciate the value of a book”
“I may seem old fashonied…huh huh, but in a sense I dipise technology”
“Plus, look how wonderful the print is, and myyyy…(I stroke the book erotically)the pictures in this edition”.
“If they do not understand the theme of compromise as the sole context—which I hope they do—at least they will be able to look at these wonderful pictures…”
I hold the book up
“Hale the printing press”
“There is only one thing though…I wish these stories followed more of a plot…like those wonderful John Grisham, and Daniel Brown novels.”
“But oh well.”
“At least I can guide, and teach about what is up on the board”
Action: Underneath compromise, I write Demeter and Persophne: a story of a mother only being able to see her daughter for a brief part of the year.
“Much like when I first went off to college…I missed my mother so much”

“Mythical joint custody”
Scene 2:
Class walks in, I introduce myself:
“Hello students, my name is John Nay.”
“I will be your instructor this year, I just graduated college so take it easy on me alright guys…huh huh huh.”
The class is whispering, and passing notes.
“And what we will be learning in my class this year, is the succession of events from the greek myths, to the modern and perfected novel: namely, John Grishrams, The associate.”
“Now, what are your names.”
Kate:‘I am kate of the beutifual eyes.”
Chris: I am Chris of the laughing rates.”
Kelsey: I am Kelsey of the free rent.”
Jeff: “and I am deep sea fishing Jeff .”
John: “Alrigh…hmm” I say a little confused. “So let’s begin. First, find a place of quite solitude and open your Myth’s for teens to p. 145, and read the myth Of Demeter and Persophne, and then we will discuss these that themes that I have writin on the board”
They read for a minute.
Jeff’s Part
Teacher: So even though we all know that the myth of Demeter and Persephone cannot be true, it nevertheless teaches us the power and importance of a mother-daughter relationship.
Student (without raising hand): I think that 'In whatever way a myth is told, it is true to the people who believe it. The principle of contexts only insists that a myth cannot be, or should not be, true for all people in all time.'
Teacher (aggravated): You need to learn to raise your hand son. But do you see how the myth uses language to make its point clear?
Student: No. It seems to me that the myth employs language to describe poetry that already exists in nature. You are confusing two aspects of myth. The art of mythtelling and the content of the myth are two different things.
Teacher: But you do understand that a master storyteller develops his own style to help keep his audience interested?
Student: I still don't think you are right. A master storyteller recognizes the power of myth and conveys this to the listener through his style. He checks the power, however, by periodic detachment to break the spell of the myth. He recognizes the danger such power can lead to in human hands.
Teacher: How can so much power come from language? I'm speaking now and my words don't seem to be casting and sort of spell.
Student: It's not the words themselves that hold the power, it is what they represent. Language is simply another form of domestication, and can be used to take away from and give back to nature. It is a human construct designed to organize and describe the inexpressible into a system of sounds. The description of emotions such as love and fear proves as futile as trying to describe a color in words. The oral poet shapes his style to entrance his audience so they are no longer listening to his sounds, but experiencing their meaning. This explains master storytellers, say "wansuuga" at the end of his poetry. It does not mean, "it is said" but rather "far-away saying from hear-say", or "it is being said (without knowing for sure)". It is impossible to condense the complexity of nature into simple sounds.

Kates Part:
Jon: “alright, alright…enough you Jeff of the laughing rats
Chris: That’s me:
John: whatever what did you guys really think”… not giving them anytime to really think. “Can anyone guess why myths from the oral tradition were often put into verse?
Kate: Because the word was being domesticated.
Jon: Wrong. Words aren’t wild animals; you can’t just fence them in.
Kate: Actually, that’s exactly what Neolithic tribes did to their stories. They versified them to imitate human forms, like the stomping of feet or the beat of a hand on a drum.
Jon: First of all, you just made that word up. And let’s stick to what the textbook says.
Kate: You can’t just explain myth by reading from a textbook.
Jon: Well since you seem know everything, why don’t you explain it?
Kate: Okay. When Neolithic tribes began to move away from hunting and gathering to agriculture, their stories followed suit—
Jon: Farming has nothing to do with myth. Are you making this up?
Kate: Would you just listen? Domesticating a word is like taming a goat or putting up a fence; the stanzas that are created when words are versified act like the fences around farms. The storyteller’s voice becomes measured in a regular unit and conforms to the domestication of nature that is created within the fence. So now you see that just when people began to fence in wild animals and plants, they also fenced in their stories by way of verse.
Jon: You’re just showing off. Do you enjoy making me look bad?
Kate: It’s not hard.
Jon: Thinks about it. Hey, wait a—
Kate: Interrupting. I’m not done, actually. In addition to fences imposing on wilderness and verses imposing on speech, mythologies of agricultural societies imposed upon one another.
Jon: Looking confused, does the math in his head. Gives up.
Kate: You see, when one tribe conquered another and took over their land, they had to come up with a way to deal with their new environment. The old inhabitants usually had their own set of myths, so the conquerors adopted the stories and manipulated them to use to their advantage. These signs of imposition are signs of myth in a developed agricultural context.
Jon: Sounds like a load of crap. Suspiciously. Did Dr. Sexson put you to this?
Kate: Who’s Sexson?
Jon: Never mind. Gurgling
Kate: Well I’m not done explaining and it’s just about to get interesting.
Jon: Sighs. Great, I can hardly wait.
Kate: People created these myths to deal with their surroundings. As their societies became more advanced, they imagined and created a set of higher forces that were pitted against humanity.
Jon: What do you mean by “higher forces”?
Kate: I mean gods. It’s natural for humanity to personify the forces that are acting against them, as a coping mechanism. The gods became every unknown force in the universe, for both good and evil, creating an outlet from which the imprisoned human found release. But the agricultural condition could offer relief only through transcendence—in this case, the worship of one new God to the exclusion of all others. Christianity, Islam, Judaism—these religions are agriculturalist and point to the transcendence of a limiting physical existence in which the self is felt to be imprisoned by its very efforts.
Jon: What does any of this have to do with what we were talking about?
Kate: When societies become agriculturalist, the setting is complete for a myth of transcendence. Coincidentally, when myths of transcendence arise, myth itself is transcended.
Chris’s Part:
John: Well does anyone else have anything to say on the subject.
Chris: You're very socratic, you know that?”
John: “Oh, thanks.”
Chris: “No, that's a bad thing. Like 'oh, we can't be out in the country, it's scary out here and there are animals and they're having sex and stuff, and only the cities have things to teach us'... myth isn't domestic like that. Or it can be, but in this case it isn't. You're taking out the “close to the human life-way” thing by trying to clean it up and desexualize it – or maybe that IS close to your life-way. Taking the wild natural state and domesticating it to make it not dangerous... humanized and housebroken... that's selling out. You're selling out this myth.
And you're completely missing the idea that the whole Demeter thing is about domestication and the transition from farming gods to king-type gods. Hades, prince of the underworld, raping the agricultural daughter and holding her captive? Hello! The transition and the fact that everything is always changing ...myths help us cope with that. By domesticating it and approaching it from the idea that it's static is the antithesis of myth.
John: “Young lady that is not appropriate language for the class. Please let me…”
Interrupted by Chris
Chris: Taking the consciousness of wildness and breaking it down into discrete entities instead of implying that everyone knows that the words are poor subsitutes for the reality of nature is only possible if you domesticate consciousness itself. It's the illusion of individuality. It's kind of gained a new life with the globalization movement. Are you considering the Athenian philosophers, here?
John: “Er, no.”
“The idea that oral myth is crap compared with being able to write it down and objectify it in mental frames? Give it a nice beginning, middle, and end? The Neoplatonists – and you should probably know this – said there was a mysticism beyond all the writing and beyond the nice domestic sphere. Whereas being of the Aristotelian school of thought, which is positively medieval, you've just made it all boring. Freytag would be proud. People have taken the idea of mythology and superimposed this idea that order will prevail, when it actually doesn't. It turns it all into a lie.
Chris: And just on a basic level, you've killed this myth by selecting this fatuous text, which buys into the nice clean, Aristotelian ideology. No wonder there are only four people that signed up for this class, and Dr. Sexson is having to turn them away in droves.
The Greeks that told this story didn't have television. This was their entertainment. You've made it not even entertaining. They would probably have fired you from your job as “myth guy” and made you a janitor or something where you couldn't do any damage to the entertainment industry.
Chris: You're probably one of those people who likes to summarize movies for your friends, and you would tell them that Batman is this strange guy in a bat suit who has cool toys and eventually gets the bad guy, end of story.
John: Hey I like Batman
Chris: I guess I'm saying that even literature can do justice to myths, and there are domestic-type myths, and myths about the city, but you've missed the boat. I have some book title recommendations if you'd like to hear about them.”
Kelsey’s Part:
John: well thank you Chris of the free rent, or whaterver…Since we did not accomplish anything, because all but one student today, I expect you to come prepared to talk about trickster myths for next class. So, here ome common animals displayed as the tricksters…they are the raven and the killer whale?
Kelsey: How is the killer whale tricky?
John: I have no idea- look it up yourself. Anyway, Biblical stories for instance…the Book of Job gives us a look into the trickster world, and shows how change can take place by these characters.
Kelsey: Is the change also related to weather, the human race and their choices as well as gods themselves? How are these characters portrayed as the tricksters?
John: Yes and by being tricky.
Kelsey: Did you know that Apollo and Hermes actually shared the power of civilization. Do you know that the gift of civilization is the lyre? Hermes later ends up as the mouthpiece of Apollo, with the power of prophecy. What are the chances of that?
John: 1 out of 3
Kelsey: OK... Anyway, because you have already established you want TEXTUAL evidence here you go! Page 244- We could call this outcome a "compromise." Maybe that is what we should do- but it would not work. You are too stubborn.

John: What is this about compromise? That word is not in my vocabulary

Kelsey: Authority dwells outside the story altogether. The mediator of a structure of opposition, it keeps itself hidden from questioning, being little more than the idea that a certain kind of order, the order conveyed in the story, will prevail. If this is true, you would not ask for examples but just go along with the stories, the myths themselves.

John: Let's stick with textual evidence.

Kelsey: I am... Literature is the mirror in which humanity regards itself. At the center of that pride is a notion of fixed recurrence. As you said before, 1 out of 3?

John: yes

Kelsey: With the invention of writing, an act of mythtelling can become perfectly predictable- always that same ratio. It cannot vary from the authorized version. Writing assumes that a single mind is in control, and it reinforces that illusion by habits of phrasing that suggest a consistency of consciousness.

John: a single mind huh?

Kelsey: Literacy is not a skill- it is a mentality. Body language, musical accompaniment, the breathing of listeners, the sense of event, the background noises of nature- all these go silent when language becomes a set of visual marks marching across a page. These symbols invoke their own kind of consciousness and authority, subtly pressing the newly created reader to choose which of two worlds is closer to the truth- the world of oral or the world of silent thought.

John: I like the idea of literacy as a mentality. Anyway...

“all right, I have had simply enough…
Class Dismissed!!!!!!!!!!!
Action: Everyone walks out of the room giggling and having a good time
I get on me knee’s and yell
“Shaman Sexson!!!”

Ecstatic Moments.

When i finished tristram shandy recently, i was asked to do an essay for Dr Lansverk's class. He offers a creative prompt, and I choose to emualte the style of tristram shandy in prose--actually it was an essay, but an essay in prose with the explcit purpose to digress from any specific subject matter. That is actually a lie, my last musing in the essay was what i found to be the most important subject matter of the book, and what I feel Dr Sexson might have been expressing as somethning to weep over when he talked abou this book in class--iknow i teared up a bit when i read this part, when young tirstram is travelling through france and he talks about young love, and then there was an external context i discoverd about the book and stenre--writing to the moment is impossible, and perhaps we need just remember our happiest memories to find that plane were beauty and immensity coincide--at least for a moment, and maybe i am too young to reall apreciate everything life has to offer, but this is what i did:

But it isn’t worth it after all to live, love and lust after morning dew, and then watch dawn’s haze roll through and reced and recollect moments past. To remember the dirt brown cannel’s of Holland, the purple-green fragrant blossoms spouting out of the concrete walls, and my yellow lab that ran along the shore of the beach with me—in the ocean’s gray haze, and cold breeze. And later, when I was teenager, in the old green wet hills near the lakes—New Hampshire, New England. The infinite long, and windy back roads through the fall’s yellow and red dropping leaves, the white churches, and the perfume from those first lips—the cascade of her blue eyes and that white dress, spring 2005. And the first time I really loved Montana’s mountains—when we were all still best friends playing catch outside—watching crimson-red fleeting-orange swirls—the last of days the sunlight, fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the evergreen and aspen trees. For, in that final moment between light and dark, a coyote howled at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence, and that—that was my last best memory.
Conclusion:
“And what was all that about”, my proof reader said on finishing the essay. “A Cock and Bull essay” I said—“ ACock and Bull Essay, and the best I have ever wrote”.

So, while I was doing some research/work/thinking for my presentation today, I stumbled on a blog idea that I thought was interesting. It relates back to the Finnigans Wake article, and is a pretty odd topic. I suppose it is one of those 3/1, 1/3 topics of coincident’s, and admiration that relates to James Joyce, and the whole world for that matter. Alright to get to the topic, my presentation topic is on context, and how myths that have survived thousands of years in the form of literature are empty shells of their former selves. Which if we reflect on the nature of this class is very true. The abstractions of writing exists in an isolated plane of existence reserved for English majors—I think Dante mentions this in his inferno—we are right between Paul Newman as cool hand luke, and Ovid writing the metamorphosis. But to retain my train of thought, what Finnigans wake has done for the novel according Dr Sexson, is put a halt to the limit of artistic expression in that medium; for there is literally nothing else that can be written that reaches the achievement of Finnigan’s wake—for this novel has everything (and as it says in the introduction of my edition of the book) something for everyone in no matter what age group, or time for that matter.

The magus as Yates has defined, is a divine being—and Bruno thought he achieved this stature with his artificial memory. Has Joyce achieved this task with the Wake? Is every song that has ever been sung vibrating out of this novel when one reads it? Is all the pain, the glory, and the anguish brimming within it? I do not know, but if they are, then the myths that James Joyce was quite fond of—such as those in Ovid—would be the myths we have all read, but they would also be the myths Kane discusses in the his book with the context we lack in understanding them. This is pretty outstanding if one really thinks about it—a book, a form of technology, echoing every human experience. What one need to do to achieve this. For to embody a shamanistic poet one needs to, as Kane says: “push the meaning away from words, [and be-] aware that no human story can be the last word on anything”. Think of the beginning and ending of this book, a circle within a square. Maybe this seems like I am giving praise to Joyce too much; but does not the bible chant similar revelations. I actually think this would be an interesting idea for a novel: a post apocalyptic world that only has the surviving text of finnigans wake. But to get back to my discussion without rambling on too long about my ideas. Only the mind of the divine could produce such, and perhaps Joyce reached this pinnacle of human existence—the pinnacle that allowed him to remember that, that was forgotten.

The idea I had other than the novel was that: perhaps the internet could bring Myth that has lost its context back to life, in a way that would allow us to return to moments throughout all human existence. The internet is such an ambiguous, democratic, undefinable, loud, and never-ending thing which adapts daily—into a non stable entity, with no true beginning or ending. With something such as this, perhaps it is possible to find that fleeting feeling the shaman had thousands of years ago when the agriculturalists plundered his village, or that lone blogger has merely just reflecting on his excursion in Hyalite canyon—where he found a voice that breezed through the trees.

Dr Sexson in his article made the point that Finnigans Wake is like a live body; that works as a living being would. The internet seems so to, it is a deep dark well of thought that has everything to say, if, and when you look for it. So I believe it does not have myths forgotten, or perhaps they are not myths forgotten, but myths that still hold true in any medium or mind as long as one is willing to engage in that particular experience which the internet has to offer—or will one day have to offer when it’s completed, and divine.

Giordano Bruno actually attempted to create the universe in his mind. With a technology such as the internet, we have the ability to create the universe with in electronic space. Everyday more information is added, more experience, more feeling. And everyday perhaps we are creating another god, another immortal.

Music as a Matter of Discussion.

So it seems it’s time for a blog. Well to start, I would like to say that I actually have had a bunch of ideas for blogs recently, and so for the sake of making this one not to tedious to read, I am only going to expound on one idea. For a while now, I suppose, I have been trying to piece together the little pieces of humanity that have driven artistic/historical movements thus far. I realize that this is practically everyone’s conquest in life, and it is simply—pretentious of me to write a sentence like that—but for the sake of direction and a unified composition—let’s ride the crest that will define our generation, and what we do henceforth.

I was reading an article yesterday in a publication called (Addbussters). The premise of the magazine is essentially deconstructing typical capitalistic perspective’s, that one might find in a popular American magazine, by the use of imagery that mocks western over consumption, and the shallow materialism of the 21st century. In this magazine they had an article on the succession of events toward post-modern art, music, and literature. What this article was trying to express, other than the non-bias history lesson, was that in order for progressive steps to happen, people need to avoid the post-modern aesthetic for—it has manifested this sick, globalized playground for the rich, at the expense of so many—and in order for us to construct a new aesthetic, we need abandon life as we know it for a new genre, and a new perspective that will be felt in life and expressed through the arts.

Why I have mentioned this (other than I think it is extremely valuable for the survival of expression in the 21st century) is that this class—and the article I just mentioned—have essentially addressed this important question: what is the result of major paradigm shifts, and what have they done to their contemporary’s consciousness. To address this issue in a medium other than the typical examples we have been addressing in class, let us now think about how writing, and the 20th and 21st centuries technological innovations have restructured music. I am not a musician, nor a music scholar, so forgive me those of you who are reading this, who would like to know where my opinion is coming from—it is just simply my perspective. Reading a quick wikkipedia article on the subject of musical notation, and it’s emergence in the world; I found that a written form of music exists in most cultures that also had a written form of their language. Quoting the wiki article, “Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth string to the 'ud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music”. Wow that sounds like someone we know, here’s a clue: the Magus. Anyway back to my discussion, which will focus on the evolution of music in the European world, and its roots in American music. Music like the visual artwork that was presented in catholic churches, was a means of propaganda of sorts—which really means just people trying to understand devout piousness as a means of making choices with prudence. Medieval scholar’s studying music, like medieval scholars studying writing and memory systems, struggled with an economic and practical way to organize such fleeting information. Along came, “Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995–1050” who created the earliest form of modern musical notation that would create this notion of a composer. This form of musical notation is now the dominant pervading form of recording music and is (get this) read from right to left, subordinating and encapsulating what was once fleeting.

I got the idea to write this blog from my friend’s dad who is one of the most well renowned professional jazz guitar player’s in New Hampshire. He is also a professor at a University. When I was last home we were talking about music, particularly jazz music and we got on the topic of classical musicians versus jazz musicians. What he told me about composers, and a joke that him and his fellow friends have about them is that—it is more of a just a tribute to the writer, and with in jazz, it is more to the moment and expression to the moment is something that is likely to happen. I feel like this all relates back to let’s see, at least 1 third of what we have been talking about. Writing isolates, jazz stimulates, and in terms of music—it begins to make sense that this music came from a primarily oral culture that had for its education: the streets, the people, religious re interpretation, and most importantly the ability to express anguish rebellion and mental freedom.

And this brings me to the end of my blog. The post-modern music-art industry has been corrupted by a false pretentious aesthetic that is vile, and quickly losing its value. I ask the reader, what kind of culture are we living in that values television shows that embrace snobbery, laziness, and overconsumption.

It is at least this, if not more: it is culture that gets bombarded with a medium of information that is coated in plutocratic ideology; the rich get richer, and the poor get numbed by prescription drugs, alcohol and a dying aesthetic that is on the verge burning out of contemporary existence for ever.

revised prose

I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning. For that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to tie one on—day after day…
And there he is a few hours later, as my aunt and I approach the family park in her blue State issued ford pickup truck—drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who still have the ability to imagine fame and fortune—rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing set the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always in the park—face turned in, and breathing the gravel. It was better than being at home alone she contended. In a matter of fact tone she looked over at me from the driver’s seat and said “he got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he is sober enough to stand straight, he walks with a limp…” My aunt sighed and squeezed the steering wheel a little, and told me she had been his nurse when he woke a few hours after the incident—where he learned the full details from the state trooper who was the first to arrive at the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck.
My aunt said in some manner sincerity had always been a virtue of Elijah’s, and on waking from the shock he asked in his first conscious moment about his wife. The topper discontentedly reposed, but gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragmented middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment…“When I was about 100 feet out of the wreck—I approached what I thought to be a couple of parked cars on the highway, with engine trouble.” Pacing around and gulping some ice water never making eye contact with Elijah he continued, “and I came upon it sir, your wife next you…she, I perceived to be dead.”
In his thoughts the white 23 year old state trooper with good intentions, for the Indian reservation, and its people, was still there…coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—the flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway; a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green steel mess with his head in his palms…My aunt said a little bitterly, “the man who was driving the civic had been drunk”.
In the bed below the bright fluorescent bulbs and the cackling fan wafting around stale air, something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes. He had seen the photos—that seemed to fill in the hazy edges were the New Mexico state trooper could not…which my aunt reasoned looking out at him now from the glaring windshield (in a recollective sort of distance from me) broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself.
As I watched him in the hot sun asleep on the grass I knew he owed the world at least that favor. What was pious sober living worth if it had brought him thus far? I knew he would rather see the rest of his days in a shade being removed. A place like the one he found himself as my aunt and I sat in the parking lot; with the children who had not yet even thought of driving on long dark highways…
That place where a butterfly could touch upon those swaying yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass—and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up—a place where rainbows formed with low dark moisture and sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never really care—in the shade and comfort of a summer dream.

What Is “It”

What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.””
Jack Kerouac--my first writer who was idol.

As I said I would do in my last blog—my discussion continues. What I would like to expound upon for today is Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, and how it relates to my own memory theater.
So to start:

…I remember a few months ago purchasing The Art of Memory, skimming through it briefly, reading some of the passages and pondering what (exactly did Camillo’s centerfold mean)—and thinking to myself, that this semester was going to be a tough one. And I suppose it has—but has it really been in the traditional sense of what a contemporary college student equates with hard. I start with this example: cramming for a test—I am sure every college student knows what I am talking about. We all have been fortified in that sick mindset of fluorescent light twittering on and off above our head, sipping stale coffee repeating like mad a few irrelevant concepts, for a class you hate…and there a few hours later in a drawn out solitude at 11:45 the librarian’s snaps you out of that edge of insanity reminding you that things close, and your bed is always a welcome place. Godamnit I hate that shit...So In a sense you might say, I was delightfully surprised to discover that the artificial memory was in fact aesthetic—not a compulsory technique in the typical way we remember irrevelent college drool—but an engaging experience that is everything, and which—folds neatly into your mind.

Why I chose to continue with the muses for my theater is simple: the park, the dogs, and the smell the breeze had breaking through the park trees is poetry. If anyone can recall from the beginning of the semester, Doctor Sexson on assessing the importance of remembering the muses said: what does one really have to do on a day to day basis that is more important than remembering the nine. This stuck, and perhaps I might be a mystic, but patterns of poetry and the muses riding crests of awe!!!!!! are everywhere. Weather they are divine or not, I cannot say. I Just know, like Jack Kerouac defined “IT”, that “IT” is an unexplainable plane were we truly are and above the realm of flesh and bone. Yates in her study of Camillo says that when studying his theater and its dynamics she discovered that Camillo believed in the three worlds of the Cabalist: “the supercelestial world of the sephiroth or the divine emanations: the middle celestial world of the stars; (and) the subcelestial or elemental world.” She latter goes on to explain that in a sense this notion is Platonic, and that Camillo is using the sephiroth as eternal places of his memory. And I suppose in a sense, the muses and there explicit power to evoke are engrained in my memory as Sephiroth, or “It”. Camallio believed his organic association was constructed upon eternal truth, and I suppose this is not really what I seek as the cornerstone to my theater—or maybe it is—I do not know. But I do understand my need to use the muses as a barricade and graspable objects between myself and “IT”. Finally, in a mystic sense, the practicality of the memory theater in this occult Platonic sense to myself and Camallio is that “The theater is thus a vision of the world and of the nature of things seen from a height, from the stars themselves and even from the supercelestial founts of wisdom beyond them”.

God bless the rusted water pail
Teaming with soaked green grass nectar.
God bless the old wooden white house—
In slow years they rest
Nantucket
Were blue curled waves stand still—
in that moment of memory
Were not a shade of light breaks that silence.
God bless laying in the grass
Not a moment too soon—
When Grandma loved seagulls
And my eyes covered with the summers crimson lids.

The Magicians Tricks:

Well, I have not writin a blog in over a month. What this reflects is numerous things I suppose, but I really don’t want to expound upon them. Anyway for this blog, I wanted to talk about my memory theater and the techniques I used for its construction. This blog might seem arbitrary—because I have the impression that class time on Wednesday will be dedicated to this subject—but for the sake of clarity I prefer to write about it.
My memory theater that I used for my fifty things is a place anyone in our class can visit—don’t worry—the unwashed masses are still excluded. Here are the directions: walk to Cooper Park (it’s on Story and 8th) make sure to walk there on a sunny day so as to marvel at the sun breaking through the leaf less trees, the melting snow off of the sidewalk, the chirping birds ushering in spring, and really marvel at the pleasure you have locking at least a few fragments of the scene before you forever in your mind. Once you’re at the park walk toward the large tree in the middle that has a large stone next to it. Once your there face the tree at the angle of 8th being at your left hand, and the bronze incrusted history of the before you. Now that you are at this place recall the muses from our class room, and suppose they are dog handlers for the day. For me Erato is Erato of the terriers—and she is directly in front of me leaning on the tree behind the fencing when I am here. Her ten dogs are leashed in a sort of leash that connects them all and she is holding them with her right hand. The first of the terriers is an Airedale Terrier. This dog has a flowing drifting breeze constantly upon it and it is looking at the dog next to him, which is a black Russian terrier. This dog is wearing a soviet cap. There are 8 more embellished images of terriers for this set of ten that Erato is holding on to. The next muse that I decided to take to the park was Clio. And I felt the dog breed that best embodied Clio was the hounds she has a ten set like Erato her right hand. She is standing next to me in the park, reading the bronze commemoration. Urania is Urania of the working dogs, and she is to the right of me up in a lamp post with floating dogs and the leash firm in her right hand. And bellow her is thalia of the sporting dogs looking up at her holding her ten set in her left hand. Finally Terpsichore the tiny dancer is on a large stone to the right of where I am standing with her toy dogs starting with Affenphincher—which I envisioned to look something like a purse dog that pinch’s an attractive materlistic girls fans.
It is strange, every comment that I have herd from classmates concerning this assignment was something along the lines of this: “it was really easy, it only took me less than hour to do. I thought it was going to be much harder than it was”. I suppose the reason people seemed to float through this assignment with such effortless grace was that each memory theater was personal and reflective. By making objects worth while to be remembered it is in a cliché term cake. We are what we remember and what moves us to remember.
:Part II of my memory theater explanation will be more abstract. This discussion will be continued tomorrow.