A Personal Myth (fiction)

A Personal Myth (fiction)

Before the World, all was dark, an empty voracious night called the Dream. At the heart of this Dream lay the Maelstrom, a blind crawling chaos with eight thousand hoary legs skittering out into the void. The Maelstrom had no parents, no progeny, but had woven a great Web from her womb that stretched to the ends of the Dream, and she slept in the middle of this Web, waiting, and dreaming all the possible things that might one day be. She dreamt of animals, constructions, man, and each Form she dreamt was drawn by her legs into the Web, there the Forms hung frozen in the Dream, ready for her to consume, and digest them back into chaos to be spun again.

One such dream was a man named Murphy, who likewise had no history, having just been dreamt. But on seeing that all the scattered Forms around him were being drawn slowly into the monster’s gaping maw decided that he would not be eaten and returned back to the unformed chaos. The Maelstrom’s Dream had grown so large by now that there were endless places to hide; one could wander for lifetimes in any direction through the strange frozen Forms without ever once escaping the Web. Murphy realized that if he were to combat the Maelstrom, he too would have to dream, imagining a Sword, a great Knowledge, and a Reflection of himself to act as a decoy, as food for the beast while he waited in the shadows, ready to slay her.

And so Murphy dreamt, and waited, and soon he had his Sword and Knowledge, and the Maelstrom’s legs reached for the Reflection to draw it into her jaws, and still he waited, at the edge of the Dream, for that moment when the Maelstrom was busy consuming his Reflection, and he would be able to strike. And as planned, she ate. The Reflection was slowly ground down in endless rows of jagged teeth into shimmering shards that were scattered to the edges of the Night, becoming Stars. All the while the Maelstrom hummed a low tuneless melody to herself, as it was all the same to her what she ate, a screaming man or his mute reflection, for she was the dark itself, which consumes all things. Then Murphy raised his Sword, its edge sharpened to pierce his toothsome foe, and he slashed down through the Web, through the Dream, and cleaved the Maelstrom in two. Each of the Maelstrom’s halves reared up to attack, one of them raked its great pincers across the side of his face so that his left Eye was torn and blinded. But Murphy was too close to the Dream’s core for the Maelstrom’s halves to grasp him.

He slashed again, and a third time, each slice further subdividing the Maelstrom until it was sundered into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than a man’s hand, eight-limbed miniatures of their Mother’s pattern, all skittering about at Murphy’s feet. The Hero, for that’s what he had become for this half-formed Dream, summoned his great Knowledge and called the creatures “Spider,” a grave insult he had overheard in the Maelstrom’s sleeping murmurs. Murphy banished the Spiders to the edges of the Dream, where they might bide in the dark corners in their own small webs, but never come back together to overwhelm the Dream. With his foe thus fought, and her remnants dispersed, Murphy planted the Sword in the darkness beside him. And then he smiled, which was like a glimmer of Light for the first time striking the dark World. The battle had made him tired, so gathering the cut strands of the Web around him like a blanket, he laid in the center where the Maelstrom had lay, and had a Dream of his own.
As he slept, Murphy grew, until his body filled the void. His ribs became the rocky earth, his fingers blossomed into flowers and trees, and his blood flowed into rivers and seas. He dreamt that his head would become a castle, but it continued to expand until it was a mountain whose peak brushed the Sky and looked down over the whole young World. His Eyes took flight, and chased each other around the Sky, the whole one shedding such a glorious Light that it illuminated everything below, and the torn Eye reflecting as best it could, following the glowing orb as a sullen moon. And above their orbit, his haughty brow formed the dome of Space, and his hair tangled with the Stars of his shattered Reflection. And so the World came into being and was quickly populated with Murphy’s imagination, all life a Dream to stave off the uncertainty that lies in the darkness of night.

Murphy had but one law for his newborn Dream: that whatever could happen would happen, with as much glory and wonder as might be brought forth into the World. However, being only a young World, he was mightily alone, and could dream only those Forms that he had seen hanging in the Maelstrom’s Web. The next day, Murphy’s strong Eye arched over the whole World while his other Eye struggled to catch up, shedding its meager gaze through the night. Murphy reflected on the Forms he had seen and how he might make sense of their disorder, all chaotic from being hung in the limbo of the Web. Murphy took one Form into his hands, and called it a Book, and when next his Eye illuminated the land, he transcribed what he saw into the Book. Later, as he lay in his castle on top of the mountain, he reflected over what had been written, naming the Forms and sorting them out into Classes and Orders: those that moved and those that were rooted, those that had no life, and those which were invisible, spirits or forces he could only see by their affect on the others; that which stirs water, that which melts snow, that which weighs on beasts and reduces them to bones. Murphy watched his World, and wrote, and soon filled the whole Book, which he closed with another bright smile, feeling that he had now ordered everything in its right place.

Yet when next his Eye rose Murphy looked closer and was shocked, and looked closer still at his World. For he saw that where there had been only enough Forms to fill a Book, now there were Details, each Form its own small World of infinite variations. And Murphy realized that he would have to write another Book, several Books, a Book for each Form, which he started at once, each day focusing his Eye on all the Details of just one Form. He wrote intensely, setting each finished Book on a shelf in his keep, but soon realized there would be little room left to sleep, and he would have to do something with this endless library. Being ever resourceful, as this was his own Dream after all, Murphy erected another story to his castle, and another story after that, filling each with Books and moving his bed ever closer to the Sky.

But still he had but scratched the surface of recording everything in his domain, and rarely going down to the lowest stories of his castle anymore became afraid, that he might forget something that he had written, that he might accidentally record something twice. This thought filled Murphy with much confusion, over what a doubling of Forms might mean (for he felt still somewhat guilty for casting his Reflection into the Maelstrom’s jaws). So one night he hurried down the Book-lined stairs, determined to take note of what each volume contained, and if possible devise a catalogue, an Order of Orders, which was more work and Words, but he had an eternity to fill with Words, his only companion. So he descended and descended and somewhere on the second story he began to notice Webs, thick draping dust which sent a chill down his spine. Having built his knowledge up to the Sky, Murphy had left his earliest words to rot and ruin. For roping up his earliest tomes, and shredding them back into chaos, was a Spider, still a slivered reflection of its Dark Mother’s horror. Had it not obeyed his banishing Words? He called it Spider again, but still it spun a web that threatened to tear his Words asunder and reduce them back into unknown Forms.

Murphy rued that he had planted his Sword on the roof of his castle, where it had grown to be a Tree of enormous girth, whose branches gave shade and sweet fruit to his whole World. If only he had the Sword now he might slay this intruder. But at the very thought of his dark, dividing blade, the Spider trembled and turned and straightaway leapt towards Murphy, its jaws snapping wide to avenge its Mother’s murder. Unarmed and in profound terror, Murphy turned and fled, scattering stacks of precious manuscripts in his flight. Up story after story he fled, racing to the top of his tower, with the Spider eating his every footstep, not more than a pace behind and growing larger as it climbed, filing the entire castle with its chaotic binds.
Once upon the roof Murphy didn’t dare stop, but climbed right up the Tree, what had once been his Sword, struggling up the branches towards the overhanging void of the Sky. In his haste the branches were stripped bare and became bones, their fruit made quick into beating organs. But Murphy had no time to marvel at this transformation, for the Spider was rapidly gaining. Glancing back, Murphy swore that it was a Spider no more, but the Mother, the very Maelstrom herself come back to torment him, to finish what she started when she first spun his Form. So Murphy climbed, and wondered that the Tree had no end in sight and seemed to breathe and sigh as he rushed up higher. Indeed it rose so high that its branches pierced the Sky, and Murphy clambered out through this hole into another World, where at last he stopped and looked down below.

The Maelstrom had now webbed the entire Tree, the ropey tendrils almost obscuring its natural growth. Murphy gasped, for there was his sought for Order of Order, not the linear branches he had written in his Books, but a sprawling Net that connected each Form to all others. He could embrace the Maelstrom if it wasn’t his sworn Nemesis, so instead he smiled, and at his joy the Maelstrom was reduced, turning back into a Spider that cowered in the branches, rattling the bones of Forms that lay caught in its Web. Gasping, Murphy stepped back again. For he had not climbed up the Tree and out of a hole in the Sky at all, but had emerged from the head of another Form, one he had not seen before yet was the loveliest in this entire World. This Form was familiar, in a way his own body was familiar, but different in certain appealing ways. He called the Form Woman, and lay down like the Sky over the Earth to gaze into her eyes, which slowly opened with an equally radiant smile.

The Woman called herself Mata, and told Murphy she had just woken from the most peculiar Dream, in which a small man had climbed up from out of her insides, frightened and chased by his own frail Shadow. Murphy listened and wondered what this could mean, for hadn’t it been his World, his Dream, that was now this beautiful Woman? Perhaps there were several Worlds, endless Dreamers, of whom he was only one, and Murphy wanted to set out at once to find them all, to record all the Forms of all the Dreams that might be. But Mata grabbed his hand with such force and held him to her, so that Murphy decided to be content in her sweet embrace. And that is why the Sky rests above the Earth and does not go running off at the slightest whim and wonder. And so they lay like this, with his Eyes gazing over her entire body, learning her Details that still contained all the Forms he had studied before.
And all he saw was beautiful and wondrous, though sometimes behind Mata’s Eyes, when she was gazing off at a distant storm, Murphy thought he saw a darkness unfurling, the spinning Form of the Shadow he had left behind in that other World. For somewhere the Maelstrom was still inside her, biding its Time and weaving its Order of Orders that would inevitably consume his Books and Words. He called that Shadow Death, and though it made him deeply sad, Murphy loved Mata even more for that chaos she bore inside her chest; the necessary uncertainty of living that drove off boredom and forced him to act his best. For on the day it might strike and finally take him back into the darkness of night, he wanted to be as full of love and wonder as it was possible for a man to realize in this life.

And so Murphy and Mata lived like this, reveling in their shared Dream, and occasionally other Dreamers wandered by, whose Dreams Murphy wrote down in his Books and added to his own. And they were happy and as full of love and wonder as it was possible for them to be, and before long Mata gave birth, her body heaving with great tremors which shook the entire Earth. From between the mountains of her legs a bright being shot forth, a boy of such vigor and mirth that he might have glory over the entire World. Murphy named him Will, writing the name down on the first page of a new Book. But Mata was not done, for in her labors still struggled a second son, who after many more hours crept slowly into the World. This boy seemed weak and woeful, trembling at life and almost unable to survive. Yet Murphy saw a gleam in his second son’s ryes, a deep understanding immediately applied when the boy crawled over to the Book and began reading what had been written inside. So Murphy called the boy Wise, and that night, Mata dreamt that her youngest child would grow to take care of his father’s library, ordering all the Dreams in all the Worlds, a task of which Murphy thoughtfully approved.

As for the first Twin, Will was wild, and so full of life that they could never predict what he would get into. He was always found running around and building forts from unfinished Forms, or inventing games and songs for the children of the other Dreamers to play, who all worshipped him for his bright smile and exuberance. He even carved a Sword like his father’s and went around stabbing at dark corners, saying that he was hunting the Maelstrom, which touched Murphy’s heart, though he didn’t know what this act boded for the boy’s future.

Then one day Murphy and Mata’s neighbor, an old man named Kairos, who was said to be the most ancient of the Dreamers, older perhaps than the Maelstrom herself, came and told Murphy that he had caught Will stealing the apples from his garden. At his father’s displeasure, the youth said he only wanted to hold a Feast for the other children, especially those who did not have apples of their own, which eased some of Murphy’s anger. But Kairos was not so easily appeased, and working himself up into a divine frenzy began to prophesy that what the boy needed was to go on a Quest. But first, he cried, eyes rolling wide and foot stamping on the ground, there would be many trials. A great flood would descend, heralding the Maelstrom’s return, and all the Dreamers would have to set sail towards another Dream, filled with stone Towers hung with Webs and strange Machines, where in their tears they would forget that they were dreaming. And after several generations this dark Dream would be overcome by Wars and Flame, and only then would Will be called to his Quest: to find the Key of Remembering how to dream, to slay the Maelstrom again, and to lead the people through the Flames towards a Feast with which they would found a new Dream. And only then would the theft of the apples be atoned.

Will did not believe the old man’s Words, thinking them the raving of a madman, and promptly forgot, running off overjoyed to have evaded punishment. Murphy himself was not so unconcerned, but even he felt Kairos’s predictions to be rather absurd. He could easily have repaid the apple’s theft and then they could all continue to dream in peace, but just in case he decided to dream of a Ship that night. Wise, who had been listening quietly this whole time, wrote down the old man’s Words the way he wrote down all Words, as if they were the Truth. And then he closed his book and bound it tight, for as Mata cried over her son’s cursed fate, it had quickly began to rain.

deepening returns

I decided since I haven't touched this blog in ages, and have been trying to post more online at my livejournal regarding my current studies on myth, symbol, and ritual for school that I really should just start another "real" blog.

So I direct anyone who stumbles here to...

The Absent Narrative

bees in birds and bugs in brains

Seussian nightmares.

The other day I was walking up the street and looked down to see a dead bird in the gutter. This wasn't disturbing in itself, even with its guts splayed open to the morning sun, but there swarming about in the bird's chest was a handful of bees, not just flitting about with an idle buzz but actively digging into the avian. It was actually kind of beautiful, and if I hadn't been so shocked and on my way to school I would have gotten my camera to take a picture of it. In hindsight it seemed an odd thing for bees to be doing, last time I checked I didn't think bees ate flesh, and beyond colony-collapse disorder I wonder just how else the environment is effecting wildlife.

Perhaps more disturbing was a news report I stumbled on (via posthuman blues) about brain-eating amoebas that have killed 6 people in southern lakes this year, an unprecedented spike in the number of deaths by the brain-eating amoeba, which if you splash in a still, algae-covered lake and get water up your nose, will crawl up to your brain and eat till you die, in two deliriously painful weeks. That this is real disturbs me, that the amoeba's thrive in hot water and the scientist studying them thinks we'll only see more of this as global warming continues disturbs me. That the symptoms of having your brain eaten by an amoeba are a stiff neck and headaches disturbs me (because that's how I've been feeling for the past week, though I think I'm suffering more from spending too much time looking back and forth between my computer and books for this research paper). I think what disturbs me the most is trying not to imagine these creatures somehow getting into a city's water supply. Actually I am more frightened by the possibility of spiders crawling into my ears and laying eggs, which I'm not sure is really possible but I still don't know what happened to that big mother who was crawling around the corners of my room all last week.

I actually have more important things to say, but they are being quietly consumed by the massive amount of research I'm doing to interpret the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛta for class. Having not done a research paper in years I'm actually quite excited. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle using information as the pieces, and with no final picture but what you want to make it. Of course, I also love organizing information, a trait that seems to run in my family, and hopefully I'll actually get around to writing the paper before it's due in a week and a half.

Faster than a Speeding Pharisee

I finally nerved myself up to talk to Dr. Clothey in person, which if anything will allow me to finally get some sleep and stop imagining what I might say to him. Admittedly I was a bit surprised by how unresponsive he was to the work I've done and plans for studying dreams and myth, but perhaps that was mostly due to being a bit more nervous than I expected to be and not presenting myself clearly. And when it comes to dreams, Clothey claims to not treat them as all that important, rather looking down on Jungian ideas (as well as on Campbell, for the understandable reason that Campbell has tried to draw too many broad parallels in myth without considering individual cultural differences).

However when I started asking specific questions Clothey got much more animated, particularly when it came to the topic of modern myth. I was surprised and a little pleased later to find him recycle much of our conversation into his class discussion, even touching briefly on eschatological myths. As far as modern mythemes that are active in the American landscape (his term, I'd perhaps say mindscape, or symbolscape), he tried to draw a thread from the Mesopotamian myth of Marduke slaying Tiamat and creating the world from her body, a justification of war, land ownership/division, and the concentration of power in the city-state, to our modern mythology of manifest destiny. John Wayne and the Wild West, the demonization of nature and Native Americans, the valorization of war and concretization of power in a figurehead, as we see with George Bush and Iraq, one more conquering saint against his draconic nemesis. Also interesting was Clothey's insistence on the modern myth of the "incompetent male," where once men where supposed to be like John Wayne, now they are portrayed in the media as idiots, yahoos, sexually and culturally impotent, with recourse only in "viagra and guns." Which of course made me want to consider what other sorts of mythemes might be at work to counter such a grim Babylonian vision of America. The environmental and anti-war movements were his two suggestions, though I imagine there could be much deeper mythological themes that could be brought to bear, and may be necessary in order to reorient the direction our culture is heading in...

Today Sophie asked if comic book superheroes might be part of our modern mythology, an idea that I've been pondering for years. She suggested that maybe they related to Nietzsche's idea of the 'superman,' which I thought more suggestive of the Taoist 'supreme man,' a state of self-transcendence. A good number of superheroes on the other hand repair to this world in order to save humanity or establish a new order or morality. The story of Superman paralleling the myth of Jesus, even down to them dying, extolls the need for an external salvation. Of course, many other superheroes were normal people who somehow became more than just that, and in doing a spot of research I came upon a review of a book called "The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture," where one of the essayists actually does compare Batman as the Nietzschean 'ubermensch,' and as mythologically important for the modern individual. We are asked to be no longer John, but Bruce Wayne.

Ironic, or synchronistic to all this was an odd dream last night of attending Sophie on some sort of similarly superheroesque quest she was on, complete with a large number of costume or disguise changes. Also during class yesterday Sophie called just as we were discussing the creation mytheme of demiurges and all the incarnations of the goddess Sophia.


[Edit: I'd get some sleep if I wasn't now too busy trying to track down obscure Easter Island and Aztec mythologies to figure out what to focus my paper on. No rest for the curious.]

Jodorowsky on Life

I wanted to write something about psycho-spiritual crises, about my reasons for dreaming, studying myths and literature, about what I am looking for in myself, in the world...

...but Alejandro Jodorowsky's words (from a recent interview) might have to suffice.

"Do you pray? And if so, to who or to what?"

No, I don’t believe in praying to an external god, but I think in the interior of ourselves, we have what I call the interior world. A world which is a clear point of light, which is not you, but it is the fountain of life within yourself. When they discovered America, there was a fountain where you wash and get young – the fountain of youth. The fountain of health is inside you. And every night, I try to approach there. That for me is to pray, to make emptiness and to come to the centre of yourself, to try to go there.

...

You have no fear of death?

Not anymore. I am completely prepared to die – spiritually, not corporally. My body wants to live. The body always wants to be immortal, not to die. And the soul accepts death - that is good. But it’s not good if my body wants to die, because my life is shorter. You menace me with a knife, and I will defend myself, I will ask somebody to protect me, no? Even if I say [to myself], “I can die.” I understand that.

Do have any beliefs about what happens afterwards?

Why? Why be curious about what will happen, it will happen anyway, it will happen! Either I’ll go there or there – everything will happen. It’s fantastic – the future is fantastic! Anything that will happen will happen!"

what I meant to write earlier, but didn't have the heart

Sophie got back from Boston yesterday and we got together after my classes, talking late into the night about what's going on in our hearts, our minds. I mostly tried to articulate the many questions that have been circling for days, about community involvement, my reasons and goals for studying myth and literature, the somewhat existential crises I was feeling Sunday night, walking up the back streets of Bloomfield alone, with the dark looming rain clouds and Sigur Ros in my headphones, seeing the sunset reflected in dirty windows and a feather on the edge of a puddle that sent a shiver through my heart. But I was feeling totally ungrounded, adrift in the world, cut loose from community, my dreams, any truly revealing or opening experience. According to Charles Long (whose book Alpha I am reading for class) describes myth as a symbolic ordering which makes clear how the world is present for man, and though I haven't had as clear recall on my dreams these past weeks, they are one of the most consistent places where my world is revealed to me, further deepened by my love of literature, stories that speak to broader realities and make life make sense, the same way Sophie said she finds such peace and place in poetry. But community can do likewise, talking and playing music with other people in a way I haven't in a long time, social rituals which I miss and should seek out, in our ideas for a personal salon, in looking at joining some student organization. But it runs deeper, I have constantly through my life sought out experiences that broaden my reality, which put me in deeper touch with mystery, awe, what is possible. Experiences that are more fully real, with that existential quality of utter wonder and terror, beauty and pain, balanced into one moment. I wonder, is it possible to find such moments of transcendence at all times, a total irruption of the sacred? That mindset of the continual "Yes!" which finds this sacredity not in some external "Other" but in the identification of the self with the whole world, in each indescribable moment...

In all my classes the question of duality keeps coming up, Plato's two causes of Reason and Necessity, Barthe's "Doxology"- cultrually instilled beliefs that cast differences in terms of conflict, even Evolutionary Psychologists trying to find proof for differences in sexual proclivities. In Critical Reading we had the Deconstructionist critique explained as one that tries to get beyond artificial dualities, and in myths we have abstract, primal dualities, a coincidence of opposites, that are necessary to the symbolic ordering of the world, but are ultimately transcended. Kinds of academic or epic yoga, in short. The question aside (for the time being) of how this is all related to sexuality, which has also come up in all these classes, I still fail to see why reality has to be expressed in dualistic terms, or how it is possibe to percieve it otherwise. Certainly there are always grey borders and ambiguities between concepts, certainly I have had many moments that have stretched my consciousness past any individual identification, an acceptance of being intimately part of the whole. And yet, I still hide in my room, don't talk to most people, look for differences, still feel isolated and alien even in groups of joyous and close friends. I still can't grasp how two such primaly opposed forces as Night and Day can be rectified, much less to speak of Life and Death, when they just seem so phenomenologically distinct. Sure, life is a dream, but one tha tfails to convey the same symbolic depth, that sense of chaotic possibility, except in those rare moments of lucidity or hallucination, whereas the death of sleep, even in its most mundane moments, is utterly profound with psycho-spiritual implications. Life of course can also be profound, it does not just have to be these routines, this profanity, the dead hands of history and binary logic, it can be awesome, Real, the day too can show us, and quite symbolically, how we are present in the world. I am not quite there yet though, and most of the time just want people to be quiet so that I can read in peace, and go back to sleep.

Dream Theatre

I haven't had any really epic or interesting dreams since returning from our road-trip, when I was taught to fly by the witches and went on a journey into the depths of hell, but being immersed in mythology lately I started thinking last night as I was falling to sleep about just how many of my older dreams are mythic in scope, and woke at seven from this suitably epic adventure (though epic in a way much different than most of my dreams):

I was in a packed movie theatre waiting for the show to begin. A couple other kids in front of me wondered what the movie was, and as it started I knew it was a flick about the end of the world, one I had seen before and highly enjoyed, but also was living in. Something was really wrong and the crowd dispersed. My brother Devon was in front of me and turned around to talk. There was some tension between us, a sort of brotherly competition which the voice-over explained. My twin Scott showed up with his girlfriend Anne, who was dressed in wet blue-white robes and arguing with him or mad over something he'd done, though he only looked sheepish. We had to get out of there fast. Suddenly I found myself on a long rocky strand jutting out into the sea with thick clouds overhead. Alberto was with me and we were trying to figure out how to get to a square black prison or military outpost that loomed on an island to right far out in the sea, where Sophie and Sarah were being held prisoner. There were many military personnel swarming over the strand with surveying and radio equipment. I looked up just as the clouds parted to see an enormous jet black metal spaceship flying close and fast over the whole sky. Alberto and the soldiers also exclaimed at the sight of this monolithic apparition and ran around wildly, for it was the sign we were waiting for, a herald of the end. At the sight of the spaceship, the soldiers called to the prison, and soon an equally large black ship, like an airship carrier or square submarine charged from the island towards the strand at an enormous speed. Both it and the spaceship had a gothic quality that on waking reminded me of the Cathedral of Learning. The ship approached, looking like it wouldn't stop, but run right into the strand, so Alberto and I scrambled down the rocky side to where a white ship had fortuitously pulled up, captained by young anarchist pirates out for a joy cruise, enjoying feasts and games on their floating party. I leapt from the strand onto the pirate ship, bowling into the revelers and upsetting one girl who wanted to raise a stink about our intrusion. At that the black ship swung along side, and a military officer leaned out to take the girl's complaint. She however didn't want to deal with the military, so instead the officer gave us each a grey coin that was like a demerit for bad behavior or token of our guilt. The anarchists wanted to sail off and continue partying, but I was more concerned with rescuing our lovers from the island and preparing for the invasion of both the army and the spaceship.

Myth is Alive and Well (Though Not For Goats)

For my Myth Symbol and Ritual class I was asked to keep in eye on the media for themes of a mythic quality to share in class later today. Though this article is much more related to an instance of ritual than myth, I thought it perhaps a perfect example of how ancient beliefs are still alive in the modern world.

Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet. (via Monkeyfilter)

Two goats were sacrificed in front of a Boeing 757 at the Kathmandu Airport to the Hindu deity Akash Bhairav. After the sacrifice, the plane, which had been grounded due to electrical problems, was reportedly fixed and is back in flight. The irony perhaps is that the article describes Bhairav as being a deity of sky protection whose image is emblazoned on the side of the plane, whereas the god is linguistically a transformation of Bhairava, a manifestation of Shiva associated with destruction and prayed to in order to destroy enemies, which makes me wonder just what the Nepalese have in mind for their flights.

Also somewhat mythic is the legendary chupacabra supposedly caught by a hunter in South Texas, which regardless if it turns out to just be a mangy grey fox and not the "goat-sucking" monster, still shows people's willingness to believe in the mythic and supernatural. Though I've never heard of foxes sucking the blood out of live chickens... DNA tests still pending.

I also, true to form, read ahead in my texts for class so that I can be better prepared for the discussions. Reading Levi-Strauss' "Structural Analysis of Myth" yesterday fascinated me with his breakdown of myth as linguistic themes that can be analyzed, much the way I performed something akin to Calvin Hall's statistical analysis on my own dream themes last year. It is interesting to note that dreams are perhaps more rooted in language, as their recall is often based on, is only based on, what one can actually say about the images, that which can be repeated later on waking. Any small detail of a particular dream is important to its significance, from shades of light to pronunciations of names, whereas myth, according to Levi-Strauus, is that which remains when it is taken out of the language, the themes which carry across regardless of the particular linguistic events (a function that he claims places myth at the opposite end of the spectrum from poetry, despite other mythologists' (like Campbell) assertions that myth and poetry are inextricably intertwined). In order to recall a dream for recording, I've found it best to lay in bed half-way between wake and sleep and review the visual images of the dream with specific phrases and descriptions that won't as quickly dissipate upon getting up and being confronted by the stronger images of the World. Another interesting point is his idea that myths linguistically express not only the past and present of a culture, but the continuation of the events into the future, not something quite so akin to prophecy but a subjunctive pattern recognition that also perhaps allows one to make inferences from dreams about projected or desired states of the psyche. How does a story (whether mythic or oneiric) suggest what one might need to do in life? This is perhaps Eliade's take on myth as a paradigm for cultural rituals and actions that reaffirm the cosmological abstractions of the narrative, as well as Jung's assertion that dreams serve the function of self-actualization.