No Question, Really

If you want a moment or band more steeped in mythology... well, there is none, sorry.

Gods and Men Part I

Ah, the obligatory introduction paragraph. Why does everything need to be slid down our throats slowly? What's that overused metaphor with the frog in the boiling water? Anyway, someone once told me that the hardest part of writing was not the beginning but the end. That's bull, the start is way harder. Not saying that ending is easy, but just think of Bilbo, and you get the idea. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door." It's scary stuff, leaving comfort and starting something. A blog is like a journey, and like Tolkien also liked to remind us, "Not all who wander are lost." But I am, always, lost!

The last blog got me thinking about (wo)man's inner conflict, namely my own inner turmoil. (Let's face it, I can't speak for others. All I know is "I think therefore I am.") Last semester I read a book, "Into the Wild". I find myself thinking about Chris McCandless randomly. In a desk staring at the chalk board, watching the snow flakes float from the sky, in awe of the blue mountains on the horizon, and talking with my friends about nothing. What would Chris do in this situation? What would he think of me? It's almost like I know him. Like I can conjure up a Chris McCandless spirit and chat with him. I see that smiling face holding a porcupine on his last fateful journey into the Alaskan wilderness, and it feels like I am not alone. There is someone who has suffered as much as me, and probably more.


Here is a man that really tried to live out "being one with nature".

The conflict that Steiner and many new age writers describe is what makes us depressed. All of us long for this "non-conflict" state, be it heaven or nirvana. We want this chaos to end. We want to throw away all these seemingly needless desires and longings and run away. Run away, like Chris, run away and maybe never return. When man first entered civilization he left behind the woes of needless death, of instability of the elements, of the horror of killing wild animals, but he also lost something. He lost being "one" with the world. Man lost his innocence, his figurative childhood. Adam and Eve left the garden and Enkidu entered the civilized world. One of complexities and conflict. One of walls between women and men, the old and young, death and life, the state and the individual, and most importantly, mortals and immortals. We lost the gods. We lost paradise.

And then, adding to this already huge weight, the horror of being alone on a rocky planet in the middle of nothing. To quote Karen Armstrong's book, A Short History of Myth, "The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) ... was filled with horror when he contemplated the 'eternal silence' of the infinite universe opened up by modern science: 'When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair" (Armstrong 128). Quite a good sypnapsis of the show LOST actually.

But it is important to remember we are not aliens in a foreign world.

Our thoughts and our dreams and our realties are also the universe's thoughts, dreams, and realities. You, me, your family, my family, everyone we know, every piece of sand on a beach, every tree in the forest, every flittering butterfly, every flower blooming in the prairie, rabbit, dog, cat, mouse, demon, angel, and decaying body. And like the great Alan Watts said, 'the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean’s depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets... Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps’ nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains, and all of their potentialities for unfamiliar creeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains.' Everything is one, the good and the bad, black and white, death and life, woman and man, light and dark, happy and sad. You are not a soul encaged inside a flesh prison. You weren't thrown into an alien world. An alien universe. You are part of this universe. You are this universe. Look around you, everything, everything in this room, it all came from earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. Stars, black holes, nebula clouds, exploding super novas and dying white dwarves, all you. All you. You didn't spring from no where. No. You are materials made of this planet. We all are.

Part II will confront civilization and the struggles of modern man.

More matter with less art

Last night, I finally got to sit down with George Steiner, and I gotta admit, my attention span is terrible. I understand most of it -- at least I think I do -- but it's just too... too... wordy. Streamlined, efficient, words I greatly appreciate, but seeing myself surrounded by English Majors, I may be in the minority. Take Shakespeare, the Bible, any old ancient story like Gilgamesh or The Iliad, hell George Steiner, all overly wordy. Didn't Gertrude tell Polonius, "More matter with less art" (Act I, Scene II, Line 95)? That being said, George does have some substance. The five conflict thing is pretty intriguing, not only for lit/mythology (is there a definite difference between the two anyway?) but for real life. George says, "Men and women, old and young, the individual and the community or state, the quick and the dead, mortal and immortals, define themselves in the conflictual process of defining each other" (Steiner 231). Who is this George Steiner? Is he a yin-yang enthusiast hiding his buddhist mysticism behind a veil of analysis!?

I cannot deny that I'm greatly fascinated with all this "all is one" stuff. A wave wouldn't be a wave without the descent. A coin wouldn't be a coin without the tails-side. There would be no dark without light. No woman without man. No individual without community. No life without death. No immortals without mortals. No Batman without the Joker ("you complete me!"). I can't help but think of Alan Watts. This guy is something special, and I highly encourage anybody who is exploring the universe to download his FREE podcast at iTunes. Seriously, Trey Parker and Matt Stone love him too. Anyway, Alan said crazy stuff like, "You are an aperature through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself." But also dug deeper into our existence, and explains it a way that makes sense. He said this about duality: "Most of us assume as a matter of common sense that space is nothing, that it's not important and has no energy. But as a matter of fact, space is the basis of existence. How could you have stars without space? Stars shine out of space and something comes out of nothing just in the same way as when you listen, in an unprejudiced way, you hear all sounds coming out of silence. It is amazing. Silence is the origin of sound just as space is the origin of stars, and woman is the origin of man. If you listen and pay close attention to what is, you will discover that there is no past, no future, and no one listening. You cannot hear yourself listening. You live in the eternal now and you are that. It is really extremely simple, and that is the way it is."

A horrifically new age article titled Dionysus Risen adds, "David Cronenberg’s early experimental film Crimes of the Future, in which he depicts a world where women have died out due to a cosmetics disaster. 'Men have to absorb the femaleness that is gone from the planet. It can’t just cease to exist because women aren’t around. It starts to bring out their own femaleness more, because that duality and balance is necessary.' Even if we lived forever, we would still have to die." Good stuff, if you are into that sort of thing.

So it would be obvious that all conflict derives from forces that are opposites but complete eachother. Just like all those epic movies where good battles evil, except this is at a smaller scale. This is you verse the opposite of you. In my case: women, the state, death, immortals, and old age. This is me looking at that cute girl in the cafeteria with the blond hair and face kinda like Amy Smart's. This is me frightened of going bald. This is me terrified of the afterlife and what's next. This is me battling the state with my libertarian ideals. And most intriguing of all, this is me waging my war on God. This is me grabbing my head and grinding my teeth in a dramatic way, overloaded with angst! And speaking of David Cronenberg, this is my head exploding!

Clap Your Hands!

Hi! I'm Nick Axline. You'll know me as the kinda cute kid who sits in the back of the class and doesn't say anything! Naw, I'm joshing, I'm really very ugly. Hideous in fact. A living troll creature. My nose is large and bulbous, warts growing over it like algea. My eyes are a vicious red, evil, terrifying to behold. My hair is wirey, crinkled, something that a witch would wear. This all seems so painfully hip, doesn't it? Nodding quickly. I agree, but I don't know how else to start. Maybe I'm having such a hard time getting going because the janitor cleaning the bathroom is whistling. Always the same tune, unfamiliar, not catchy, annoying. Doesn't he realize these walls are thin? That I can hear his every out-of-tune note? Ug... it's this sort of thing that drives a person back to his proto days. Admittedly, I have nothing to write about going into this. So what's the point of continuing on? Why don't I just stop now, and forget I even started? Shut down the computer, take a cigar out of my pocket, light it up, breath in deeply, release the tension. Oh yeah. But something compels me to trudge on. Splatter my thoughts onto the computer screen. Perhaps I'm just stalling from doing homework that is more pressing, or maybe I just like writing. Dare I say, maybe a combination of both? (Imagine my eyebrow rising in a suggestive way, half smirk.) And I do seem to be taking exceedingly long with an introductory paragraph. The only thing I'm really leaving out is pointless shout-outs to pop cultures references. Hmmm, maybe for the next paragraph. I truly am a Post-modern man.

The other day, in English 210, my lady teacher asked the class what we believed mythology was. She talked fast, smiling, teeth-bared, handing out a sheet with a bunch of quotes about mythology. Oh jeez, the quotes were so painful. So... easy. And these terrible quotes seemed to send the class into some sort of self-gratification fury. A bunch of hands shot up, throwing their "hipster" ideas out there. Self-indulging their own intelligence. I'm sure afterwards, many came out thinking they were the best thing since tylonel, Barack Obama, or, dare I say, toilet paper. But don't get me wrong, I have the most bloated ego to ever grace terra firma! I practically worship myself, and my alter is my computer. But when I come across other people who's heads are also firmly shoved up their own crack... well, ha, it bugs me. Let's face it, hippies/intellectuals/ego-retards they are the most grown-inducingly, teeth-clenchingly, assholes God ever gave us. (But they are God's creatures too, don't forget!) Now humbleness, the ability to laugh, admit you were wrong, that's something I can appreciate. It's also a very rare gift. When you run across these people it's like a breath of fresh air. Great example: Dumbledore. (There, I got my pointless shout out in.) I notice in J.K. Rowling's universe, humbleness is next to Godliness. Seriously, all the "good" characters are humble, while all the "evil" ones are arrogant jerks. But perhaps that's just fantasy cliche. (Speaking of emotionally confused, depressed, messed-up people, Lost is back on tonight! And don't forget BSG on fridays. Final Cylon is...)

But what is mythology? Seems my Eng 210 teacher (and much of my class) is firmly set on the idea that it's religion. That it requires some form of tradition or worship ceremony to go a long with it. Dictionary.com says it's, "a set of stories, traditions, or beliefs associated with a particular group or the history of an event, arising naturally or deliberately fostered". So that begs the question, is worship or ceremony really intregal to mythology? How is the story of Hercules, Perseus, Thor, Loki, Zeus (the list goes on and on) different from Superman, Spiderman, or the Hulk (again the list goes on and on and on and on)? And my answer is very little. Both tie a group of people together. Both are set in their own separate make-believe worlds. Mythology's function is binding, for entertainment. There is a clear distinction between it and religion.

So what is the point of learning about mythology? If we can claim Supes, Megatron, Voldemort, and Ironman as part of our own collective mythology? Well, like what the Cylons like to remind, "All this has happened before, and will happen again." Everything that happens is based on people who have come before. As our country slides into the Great Depression 2! (this time it means business), is it not important for us to remember the 1920's? As more challenging times loom, should we not look to our grandfather's for advice? The fed has been creating money at the fastest rate than it ever has. This is a response to the mistake of the past. Even freaking Baz Luhrmann is getting in on the action by directing "The Great Gatsby". This bloated-head dingbat had this to say, "If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to..." (Maybe I'm being a little hard on the man that directed "Moulin Rouge!", but do I really need to hear I'm "drunk on money" from a Hollywood director?)

As our world looks to Obama to save us, should we not be a little worried about what might come from it? We are in dire straights, banks are being bailed out, companies cutting jobs, and Obama wants to create more debt. When will people learn that government run entities are corrupt and unweildy, and why are we rejecting our free market principles when they have gotten it right so far. The housing bubble was the government's falt. Why have them fix it? Makes no sense.

But now we arrive at Obama's strength. His humbleness, and so called willingness to listen to others with other point of views. He chatted with McCain, Bush, and is trying to get approval from the Republicans in the House and Senate, but we haven't seen yet whether he is a new "great communicater". I hope he listens to Ron Paul and others like him, people who are willing to do what is right. (Not people who are going to put band-aids over booboos and wait to solve them for another day. I like that politicians listen to those who didn't see these problems coming, but not to those who did.) Is Obama really the messiah we have all been waiting for? Is his willingness to cooperate, reason, and listen similar to Jesus Christ? But what does that make Bush? GOD! God never listened to anybody. Arrogant, full of himself, a badass. (God, I hate Bush!)