Boring?

Today we were told that we were all boring. Kind of depressing, isn't it? And you might even be dillusional enough to think that were true if you had listened to the professor's description of our lives. Luckily for me, not only am I a bad listener, but I also disagree with it to such extent that words do no justice to how I feel about it. But I'll try.

Trying to fool people that they are boring is in my opinion an odd thing to do. To disprove that statement, remember the last time you were with your friends before you left to college, your best friends and the people who know more about your than your parents do. What did you do? Chances are that you didn't do anything that would look exciting on paper. Maybe you watched a movie together, ate at your favorite place, or shared your last joint together, I'm not going to judge. Someone looking in from the outside would say that it looks like you had an ordinary day. But what would they know? How would they have any idea how significant that day was to you? Those raindrops falling on your head the last day you were with your best friends may seem like simple precipitation to an outsider, but for you they were a subtle reminder of how short of a time you have left, watching the clock of your childhood reach the end, knowing all that you knew before was going to change.

So to that stranger looking in, you had an ordinary day. But to you, you had experienced one of the most memorable and life-changing days of your life, one which would be so vivid that you would take it to the grave, and possibly even after that. This is what I mean when I say that nobody's life is boring. Not one day gone by doesn't have a significance to us, whether we remember it or not. The point is, every single day that you have gone through has changed you in some way, even if you don't remember what you had for breakfast two days ago. To say that day was boring is to say your whole life journey is nothing but a note on a paper, to be examined and judged to be unimportant and mundane. And that simply isn't fair to those people.

Catching Tigers In Red Weather

This phrase is infinitesimal in meaning, because it has a different meaning for everyone. It is generally described as the pursuit of something rare or desired (or both). For someone in particular, it may be trying to find members of the quickly disappearing tiger species. For me, it is the pursuit of being the best at everything I do - no exceptions. This can be seen as a blessing, or a flaw, depending on whether one likes to be as hyper-competitive as I am. For Robert Frost it can be to describe the perfect nature scene in one of his poems. For Kobe Bryant it manifests itself in dropping 40 with 10 assists every game. And yet it might also be to catch the tiger in your dream as you lie asleep on a boat with your boots on. Whatever it is, it is always elusive and does not always appear as you had imagined.

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

The title of this blog was one of the objectives we were supposed to think about, and the professor explained it in class today. However, I don't know if I agree with his explanation. Apparently, our thought process needs to see something written down before we truly know about it. Then exactly how did every pre-Sumerian (and the many cultures after the Sumerians that still did not have written language) know about their culture, and what message their stories contained?

Many nations used oral language to portray mythology, religion, and any other collection of tales. And who is to say that since these stories were not written down, the people had no idea what they were talking about and were just saying collective babble? Oral mythology is no less interesting or deep than written mythology. Take the story of Beowulf for example - the oldest European myth that we know of today. Beowulf was a mercenary in Geatland, modern-day Scandinavia, when a king contacted him to rid his kingdom of the troll Grendel that had been plaguing his people for years. What does Beowulf do? He takes his oversized sword and not only slays Grendel, but also chops off the trolls mother's head. He then probably returned to the king's hall, covered in blood and intestines, and feasted. Pretty awesome tale huh? Now that story has been retold orally for many hundreds of years before ever being written down.

To me, this all disproves that you need to see what you say before you know what you think. The entirety of oral tradition never wrote down anything, and the stories these people passed down have been preserved remarkably, and are some of the most talked-about and interesting myths of all time.

Overheard Awesome Convo

As I am supposed to do, I listened in on a conversation. I was in the library studying and reading and these two guys sat at my table and started talking about one of my favorite movies - "Jackass 2". They were talking about a specific scene in the movie where Johnny Knoxville puts on a blindfold, takes a drag of a cigarette, and then a bull charges him straight-on, and throws him in the air like a piece of styrofoam. Johnny quickly gets up and jumps the fence of the bullfighting ring. I talked to the two dudes and all three of us reminisced about the movie. Good times.

Third Class

After class, just read "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", and have already read before the story of Demeter and Persephone. To be honest, I don't like Bob Dylan, and his lyrics don't make one bit of sense. The poem "It's" (I'm getting better at this shortening thing) describes a bunch of random scenes including "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun" which is impossible, since if it was your kid, for him to be an orphan you would have to be dead. He then talks about sailors rowing home, army men going home, and the "vagabond" who is knocking on your door, wearing your old hand-me-down clothes. And then you strike a match for some reason. Sense? No. Good poem? No. I don't see a single connection between this and the previous stories we read about a man fooling women and killing them.

However, the myth of Demeter and Persephone is one of the most commonly told Ancient Greek tales. It is an aetiological description of how the seasons came to be. Persephone, daughter of harvest goddess Demeter, is one day pulled down into the underworld by Hades, who is allowed to do this because Zeus is alright with it. Demeter starts looking for her daughter, and doesn't eat or do her godly duties, which means that earth's crops start dying. Zeus is not longer alright with this, and sends Hermes to demand that Persephone be returned. He agrees, but only if she has suffered as her mother did and not eaten anything for 8 days. Turns out, she ate pomegranate seeds and its because of this that she spends part of the year with Demeter and part of it with Hades.

This myth has elements that are similar to the previous stories about the Pied Piper and Connie that we read, including the trickery used by Hades to plant a cosmic flower that would allow him to tear open the earth and pull Persephone into the underworld. However, this is much different from the story of Connie because Connie was much more in control than Persephone ever was. Hades was not only one of the most powerful gods of Ancient Greece, he was also Zeus' brother, and had his consent to wed Persephone, so she never really had a voice in the matter. In any case, the stories we read before are rather similar to this one, which hints at the possibility of this being another part of the archetype I outlined in my last post.

Second Class

After reading "Jabberwocky", I'm not really sure why prof told us it was hard to understand. Seemed pretty simple, there's a monster named Jabberwock and he has a bird named Jubjub and the Bandersnatch as sidekicks, and the kid takes them out. I read the explanation after that and I was right.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", "The Demon Lover", and "The Pied Piper Of Tucson" seemed all related somehow, especially "Where" and "Pied". Notice how I really shortened those titles down the second time around. They are both basically the same story, with minor changes in each. "Pied" seems to be the real story about a serial killer named Charles Shmid during the '60's and "Where" is a simple retelling of this news story. Both tell the tale of a man who lures women with his sweet talk, and the women realize that something is wrong with the man. This is also the story of "The Demon Lover", where a woman meets a man who wants to show her a different lifestyle, and she eventually realizes that it is the devil. He then breaks the ship in half and kills her. Interesting poem.

All three stories are retellings of a single archetype. An archetype that is familiar to us - the dangerous stranger who picks up women (possibly really dumb women?) and the women later realize they weren't dealing with a troublesome yet attractive man, but with the embodiment of evil.

First blog.. thoughts

Made a blog, but it didn't let me log back in for some reason. Stupid web.
Anyway this is a copy+paste of what I wrote for my other blog's first day of class:

First class, pretty chill. Got a class description, syllabus, the whole nine yards. Prof butchered my name pretty gnarly but thats alright, I'm used to it. Class is over, and uhh, thats it.