Aug. 29th: Metamorphosis, muses, remembering, &c.

"If you want to get an 'A' in this class you will unquestionably have to invoke the muses."


FRONT MATTER:

- Make a blog. Update it twice a week, and comment on others' blogs, all semester long.
QUESTION: "What do you write about in your blog?"
M.S. ANSWERS: "Well, it will have nothing to do with you. You are mostly hollow and shallow. You will need to say 'Sing in me now Muse, fill me so I may understand... (On your blog) anything goes, so long as it entertains me."

-Try to remember your earliest memory.

- Be aware that in the near future (the 12th of September) you will assuming the role of storyteller in front of the class for three minutes, to tell us the creation story you will be assigned.

- Consider checking out 'Metamorphosis' by Ovid.


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

Escatology: The study of the end of everything .

Apocalypse: Derived from the prefix apo, or 'the removal of', or 'the separation of', and 'Calypso', the nymph of the island of Ogygia, whose name comes from καλύπτω (kalyptō), meaning "to cover", "to conceal", "to hide", or "to deceive".

Mnemosyne and Zeus have nine beautiful daughters who came to be known as the Muses. 

They are:

Calliope - Epic poetry

Clio - History

Erato - Love poetry

Euterpe - Song

Melpomene - Tragedy

Polyhymnia - Hymns

Terpsichore - Dance

Thalia - Comedy

Urania - Astronomy.

Aphrodisiac: Derived from 'Aphrodite.'

The three parts to myth...
- Seperation
- Initiation
- Return


ET CETERA:

"In this class redundancy is good. Error is good. Take the wrong roads. If you spend your life on only one road, the right road, you'll only ever arrive to one place, the right place. How terribly boring!"

"Myth is fluid. Myth is metamorphosis. Wait ten minutes and it will change into something else."

"One of the great secrets of life is what you can receive if you ask or invoke. If you are genuinely committed to a project or course of action, you will see the whole world conspire to help you."

"A teacher's job is not to teach students what they do not know, but to remind them of what they've forgotten. What do we need to remember? Absolutely everything. Because that is what we've forgotten."

"Why do we get so concerned with the fact we are going to die? Why are we so concerned with that void? What about the void that came before? It's the same place. We are--and were--content with this previous void, the one from which we came. Why not the one to which we are all going?"

"These days we tend to reduce Zeus to nothing more than a serial rapist. He is the Bill Clinton of gods... Or is Bill Clinton the Zeus of politicians?"

"The things we think are irrelevant."