Alcmena

                                       Alcmena being seduced by Jove

Alcmena's story takes place in Book IX, page 299 in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the story is rather simple. Alcmena is born into the world world (parents are Elctryon and Anaxo) and she marries the King of Thebes. Everything is going well and they have an heir to the throne; but Jove being the cruel god he is comes down to earth and seduces/impregnates her. This stops the King of Thebes from ever sleeping with Alcmena again because he fears  Jove's jealousy and relationships cannot last without the sexual ingredient. 

Everything is going fine in her pregnancy until she reaches the ninth month and starts having contractions. They are extremely painful for her since female mortals are not equipped correctly to give birth to a god. She is brought to the heavens and calls on Luncina (mid-wife) who is cut-off and instructed by Juno to pro-long the birth. She does this by sitting down, crossing her legs, inter-weaving her fingers, and saying a chant that closes the birth-canal.  Alcmena, "longs to die from pain; my words would move the hardest of stones to tears. Around me the Theban woman also pleaded, prayed: they tried to give me the strength to meet this test. Now one of my attendants was Galanthis" (p.300) is called upon by Alcmena. Galanthis surprises everyone by declaring Hercules has been born and Lucina more so than anyone else jumps out of her seat, uncrossing her legs, unweaving her fingers, and stopping the chant; opening the birth canal and out plops Hercules (for real this time). Galanthis's punishment for betraying the gods is being transformed into a weasel but because she was loyal to Alcmena she keeps her as a side-kick for the rest of her days. Alcmena was also the last mortal woman that Jove seduces so something must have had an impact on his feelings :(

                                                         Galanthis

Henderson

"Well, I stood up on that one. This strange, many-figured, calcareous white stone was under my feet. That stone, too, was a world away of its own, or more than a single world, world within world, in a dreaming series" (Bellow, 197).
A few weeks ago we talked about living in a world within a world and in this section of the book Bellow shows us the world Henderson lives within. He came from a life where he lived the everyday hustle and bustle a person expects living in NYC. He constantly heard "I want, I want" but once he has lived amongst the Wairiri people for a short period the voices does not come as often.
On page 233 King Dahfu says, "Now, Mr. Henderson, I am convinced you are a man of wide and spacious imagination, and that also you need.... You particularly need." Henderson responds that his voice comes as, "I want, I want" and we are able to understand the changes he has experienced. He no longer feels the stress he used to and his world has changed because he now sees his through new eyes. Thus creating a new world within his world; this is something that comes with a change in living situations. The world a person sees has everything to do with not only a person's financial status but where they live geographically. The beauty a person sees in the world varies, for me personally I loved the ocean my entire life growing up and since I started surfing I never thought I would leave it...then I came to Montana. The mountains have changed my "world within world" perspective, I now see life as well as death in the mountains in a way I could have never thought possible; but is one similar to what I used to see in the ocean. The way the ocean changes in tides can cause significant amounts of death to animals and crustaceans that are dependent on the amount of water left in the tide-pools. Just as a sudden winter drops feet of snow can change the patterns of Snow and Canadian Geese which Bozeman has seen a recent jump in because of the cold weather and snow conditions. There are now several thousand in a field by my house showing us how dependent they are on the "world within world" they experience daily in a world that we learned in class we experience fall/winter because Persephone at food while living (dying?) in the underworld.

Connections

My roommate shot a deer on Thursday and yesterday was my first time skinning an animal ever; it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it even drove me to want to get a rifle so I will be able to provide for myself with meat for next winter. I have saved the skin from the deer and plan on turning the fur into a nice pair of mittens because I assume they have evolved through their thousands of years on earth to have a fairly well Gore-Tex outer-layer.
As we skinned the animal together I felt as though I was part of the kill as I used a knife to cut into his hind-quarters and slowly pealed the fur off the back like a t-shirt. This is how Logan explained how to remove the coat and at first it truly disgusted me but I realized this animal had given his life so we would be able to eat throughout the winter. I felt it was essential to utilize every piece of the animal because other than the fact I am rather poor at the moment, I also believe it is important to use each part of the animal just as natives did. This brought me back to Henderson the Rain King and how all the remote tribes he visits are connected to the land and animals surrounding them because without them they would not exist. This also relates to another story my roommates told me from when they went hunting in a undisclosed spot where a group of North Dakotans had shot a cow elk and let it wander off and die without searching for it. This is disrespectful decision to the elk because they killed an animal that dozens if not hundreds of people would have loved to kill themselves so they could provide for their family through the winter. Instead these NorDak's just let the animal die in pain instead of doing what Logan had to do and slit the animals throat because the animal was wheezing and slowly passing away. This is probably the strongest connection a person can have to the animal because as he went to cut into the throat the animal just stared him in the eyes until their was no longer a pulse.

                         Thought this photo was pretty funny; NOT Logan
Too often these days people throw out old clothes and other possessions that have lost value instead of passing them along to people who are less fortunate. Everything has a value and can be utilized in a way that is still effective, hell you can use tendons from the deer to make your own bow and the bone to make arrows (I have another friend working on this right now) and this I believe is the first step to stopping waste.

"The Gold Bug"

 "...when the time comes for planting out the rice which has been grown in seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go to the forest and cut a young Karma-tree, or the branch of one. Bearing it in triumph they return dancing, singing, and beating drums, and plant it in the middle of the village dancing ground." p.397 Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough. Obviously Legrander gets better karma from the Karma-tree than the Oraons and Mundas of Bengal.

                                                        My Gold-Bug

For my Major Author's class we are reading Edgar Allan Poe and for Monday we were supposed to read "The Gold-Bug." This is a story about a man Legrander, his slave-Jupiter, and the narrator. Legrander has found a new species that Jupiter claims to be made of gold because of the weight and color. Skipping over several details...Jupiter climbs to the seventh level of limbs in a tree and goes the to edge of safety and finds a skull nailed to the tree-limb that, "de face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good, without any trouble." The three men then dig a whole where a piece of string Jupiter dropped through the left eye socket and touched the ground. They then find an estimate of 1.5 million dollars with a mixture of rings, diamonds, and coins.

This entire story struck me with a connection to the supernatural; finding a dead bug that is the consistency of gold is something I do not believe to be possible but I could be wrong. It is the typical Poe to write from with an abstract perspective and this is one of his stories that I found interesting. The fact he repeats the skull's eyes are pecked out by crows something I could imagine one of the many Greek/Roman gods using as a bully tactic to a human who was the victor in a contest.
Finding this amount of gold and other various valuables is something that made me immediately think of Pirates. Pirates are mythological to me because of their ability to live for months at sea by taking advantage of others and impeding their future because they feel their goods are more valuable to them (pirates) than the original owners. Legrander had previously been wealthy but he continues to keep his eyes peeled in-case there is an opportunity to regain his status. The way he goes about finding the gold reminds me of the "take 50 steps facing West, 10 to the East, and 23 to North by Northwest" and the only way this could ever truly work for someone is if they had a connection to the gods. There must always be someone looking down on Legrander....

Born Again

"Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear. If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard." p. 298 The Golden Bough

Snake Link


While the second part of the quotation does not directly correlate to my blog, I could not disregard it because it included wizards, and let's face it, wizards are pretty cool fellows.
In class on Thursday we discussed how life is constantly regenerated which reminded me of a book I read when I was younger titled Eleven Seconds by Travis Roy a Boston University hockey player. 11 seconds into his college hockey career he tripped and went head first into the boards and became a paraplegic. In the book he discusses his personal belief that he will be reborn until he lives a life that he deems perfect. This does not even mean to never make mistakes because mistakes are part of the beauty of life but it means on that satisfies and makes him personally happy. He met his wife and lives an enjoyable life so this does not rule out "this life" he is currently living is not the life he will deem perfect. I like this idea because part of being a human is making mistakes and it is not until the mistake is made that we truly learn. From instinct people are able to make the right or wrong decision. Instinct is defined as, "fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli" this stimuli must come from somewhere so why not believe we are just repeating our time on earth? I personally do not believe in an afterlife so coming back to earth fills my appetite.