FRONT MATTER
- Read Chapter 12 of Calasso.
("I have a little note to myself here. It says, 'The End'.")
- Make a hundred air-quotes over coversations you have in the next few days. See what happens. Blog about it.
IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:
- 'To invite the gods is to ruin our relationship with them...'
--Calasso
- Robert Graves' three archetypes of the woman:
= The Daughter
= The Mother
= The Crone
- "Freud says we should all be unconfined polymorphous infantile balls of sexual energy. But we are repressed. So we sit on psychoanalysts' couches and tell them our dreams. 'Oh,' they say, 'You dreamed of a "pencil". You dreamed of a "house".'
- "All dancing is dirty dancing; the tango, waltzes... You may say, 'You have a dirty mind', well, so do you. There's no one innocent here."
- "Heat only goes one way. Soon the universe will be room temperature. But what makes heat? Body heat, animals coming into heat; don't stop moving. Keep doing the tango.
Even thinking generates heat. Don't stop moving."
- Libido/Life-Force/Sexual Life Force
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How of my clay is made the hangman's lime. The lips of time leech to the fountain head; Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round the stars. And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm."
- "The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" by Dylan Thomas
- The Story of the Fisher-King
- Alternative story to The Fisher King found in T.S. Eliot's poem, 'The Waste Land', found here.
(A sample...
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust..."
- from 'The Waste Land', by T.S. Eliot)
- The (Grimm) Story of Rapunzel
("It's a more horrifying story, but it's a more interesting story. What does this tell you? The memorable things are the awful ones.")
'The gods get bored with men who have no stories.'
--Calasso
ET CETERA
"The gods' wedding gift was one disaster after another. They know something we don't. The one worthwhile thing you can be in this life is interesting."
"Maybe Medusa was beautiful the whole time, and she was just looked at the wrong way."
"The man's always kind of a dope, isn't he?"
