Famous Last Words - My Final Blog Post

I have really enjoyed this class. I have read stories I've never even heard of, learned about cultures all across time and space. I've improved in my writing, learned humility and when to accept that I've done well. I've read other people's stories and I've learned how to bestow constructive criticism and praise. This class has also taught me how to critically-assess stores, and think about how they represent people and places, and how their lessons can be incorporated into my own life. I've learned things here that have helped me elsewhere, and some of the things that I've learned elsewhere have helped me here. 

Going into this course, I was expecting a traditional online class, where we would read myths and write papers explaining them or get assigned historical research or something--which in some cases would probably provide interesting context. But I got so much more. The creative writing aspect of this class was not one that I anticipated but I was pleasantly surprised. I once described it to my mom as "reading myths then writing fan-fictions of those myths," but that's not really what's going on here. I mean it is, but it kind of isn't. Writing an adaptation of these old, old stories gives me an opportunity to participate in the oldest form of human entertainment--storytelling. I get to be a part of the oldest tradition of humankind--reading someone's version of the world, and retelling it with my experience mixed in, so that stories evolve over time and stay relevant. 

I know that I tend to slip into abstraction and philosophy, but I just want to make one thing very clear: I am very proud to have this experience, this exposure, and this opportunity to appreciate and create my world and the people in it. 

"Me" by Me

StoryLab - Crash Course Mythology (Creation Stories)

For the Story Lab assignment I chose to watch another Crash Course Mythology Unit on Creation Stories. And I know a bunch of different creation stories, some from this class and some from other classes or independent research, but I always like them. They're either poignantly symbolic or they're hilariously random. Either way, what fun.

So the first video is about creation ex nilium, creation from nothing. Obviously, everyone is familiar with the story of Genesis wherein God either created everything from nothing by hand or by simply speaking it into existence. There were other stories, including a Kono story where in Death creates  his home and ultimately the world out of a sea of mud and a few taunting words from a fellow god. The Mayan creation story also begins with a vast ocean, as does the Egyptian myth. The Mayan gods--Maker and Feathered Serpent--speak the world into existence (though they have to try four times to get it right). What I find most interesting is the idea of The Big Bang as a creation myth, and the fact that the Theory of Evolution also supposes that life all began from a vast body of water. I think this just kind of goes to show that all roads lead to Rome, whether you get there by folklore or science.

In the second video, "Water, Seed, Egg" he talks about how in many myths, there is not only the idea of "seed"--like, in the Biblical sense--creating the world, but also other fluids from gods, like blood and vomit. He also mentions how there is a widespread idea of the earth coming from an "egg" of some sort. In another myth, he talks about how a world-parent is sometimes present. For example, in one Chinese myth, the earth is within an egg and so are all the dualities of existence--Yin and Yang. And balance, the earth and the god are all one--and when the god died, the void of his power was filled by sin and pain. I think that's a cool concept, that the physical and the metaphorical all exist as one and that good and bad are neither rewards nor punishments, just things that are. 

The third video is about "Earth Mothers"--which is a very common trope: Mother Earth. Mother Earth makes sense, because the earth nourishes us like mothers do, and creates life--like mothers. In some cases, father's conceive gods and the earth alone, but more often Father and Mother must be present. Like in Hesiod's Theogony. There was chaos, and then there was Gaia. And she was the mother of everything--gods, titans, cyclopes, and Uranus--the Sky Father. What is so interesting to me is the "Succession Myth"--that fear in the Greek pantheon where the sons kill and overthrow their fathers. I think that says more about men than it does about mothers. I loved the Norse creation myth, it's god everything: succession myth, "Adam and Eve," dwarves. Honestly, the Norse pantheon is so underrated. 

In the final video, "Social Orders" describes how myths explain (or try to explain) our relationships. It's as annoying as it is well-known that the Bible positions women lower on the totem pole than men--which sucks, but isn't exclusive to Judeo-Christian myths. For example, God creating Eve from Adam's rib and allows him to name Even "woman" as if she is closer to a beast than a human. Then she is later cursed with pain in childbirth and told to be subservient to her husband--basically justification for sexism. Men's punishment is basically just working and dying, and it is because a man listened to a women. More misogyny in Hesiod's theogony via Pandora and her box. But the Greeks were famously misogynist, and so were tons of other societies, like Japan. I think it's cool that a lot of myths talk about how humans or one event messes up the good life for humanity, but it always puts the blame on women. We just can't catch a break.

"Pandora's Box" by Unknown Artist via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes - Crash Course Mythology (Mythical Places)

For this week, I chose to watch the Crash Course Mythology video unit on Mythical Places and I have found my favorite creation story. 

In the first video, "Gardens and Caves," we compare the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man to the Zuni story of the Emergence from the Caves. Garden of Eden is symbolic of humanity beginning as perfect beings, being forced to live in the world as a punishment for disobedience, and functions an impetus for moral behavior so that we may one day return to that state of perfection. But the Zuni creation story is better to me because it symbolizes humanity emerging from chaos, ignorance, and immaturity. Humans are, at first, living in filth and confusion beneath the earth before a god takes pity on them and sends his sons to free them. Once they do, they try to teach humanity how to live and keep tweaking them in their sleep until they get it just right. Very cool, because it still has the supernatural element-and that's always a crowd-pleaser, but it isn't so much about an indictment or a punishment--it's about a gift. 

In the second video, "Mountains," I learned about ow mountains are used to symbolize lots of different things in different stories. In the Chinese tale about the 10,000 Treasure Mountain, a poor but pure boy helps an old stranger, is rewarded with magic keys to the 10,000 Treasure mountain--one to enter and one to exit. Each time he goes into the mountain, he chooses a practical treasure: grinders and hoes that actually produce food. A wicked king tries to steal the treasures, and eventually takes a key--but only the one to enter. So the king dies surrounded by useless treasure and the boy can no longer enter the mountain, but is rewarded for his humility and work ethic with a bride. And I guess her family is already rich since they had the keys to a treasure mountain and never used them. In a Japanese story, we learn how mountains and other elements of nature are anthropomorphized and treated as their own spirits, such as in Shintoism. This really helps characterize nature as the complex entity that it is--something that can help us or harm us at any time. 

I liked the "Trees" episode. I knew the myth of Apollo and Daphne already, but I'd never heard the Vietnamese myth of Tun, Lun, and Tao (and I'm sure I didn't spell them correctly. It was tragic but it had the kind of symmetry that I like to see in myths. It was like "Romeo and Juliet" but with a love triangle instead of two immature kids who thought they were in love but really just sort of died to be dramatic. 

In the "Cities" video, he discusses the varied history of Jerusalem, a city that is a prominent feature in all of the Abrahamic faiths. Depending on time, place, and narrator, Jerusalem is either a beautiful, holy place, or a dirty, sinful den. He also talks about the history of Rome, which I love because I read several of the Roman foundation myths. I liked that the Romans went back and wrote a seamless creation story for themselves, and I think it's even more interesting to look a the stories in historical context, because you really can see what the ideas of a time and place were. I really do love these little videos. 

"Fires of Troy" by Kerstiaen de Keunick
via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes - Grimm Fairytales (Ashliman, Reading A)

I read the Grimm Fairytales (Ashliman) and, while they were obviously familiar there were definitely some differences in tone that I noticed. For example, they either don't end happily ever after or they do, but either way there's a certain about of gore. In two separate stories a wolf's stomach was cut open with scissors, and living characters escape his belly then fill his stomach with rocks and sew him back up just in time for the wolf to meet his demise. 2 different stories with that exact same trope! That's wild.

There were also stories that I'd never heard of, like The 7 Ravens. I'd never read that story before but it was very trippy. A brief synopsis: 
Seven sons, accidentally cursed to turn into ravens by their father, are eventually rescued by their once-sickly sister, who was indirectly responsible for their curse. She frees them from the glass mountain with the help of their dwarf-butler, despite the fact that she lost the magic chicken bone given to her by the stars--the only non-carnivorous heavenly bodies.
Like what? But also, I would totally watch this if it was like a Tim Burton movie. 

Then there are the morals that are in the stories, both overt and subtle. In Little Red Cap (Little Red Riding Hood), the moral is "Listen to your mother or you and your grandmother will be eaten by a wolf." In "Old Sultan," the moral is basically "Don't count out the underdog." I thought "Old Sultan" was weird though, because the wolf helps a dog avoid being killed by his master for being old but then the dog refuses to help the wolf steal just one sheep in return because he's loyal to his master. The same master that wanted him dead just for being old. It's such a turn around from Native American stories, because obviously one would expect reciprocity in friendship, and I don't think that loyalty to a cruel master would be the focus just because one is a dog and one is a human. But whatever. 

The Grimm Fairytales are very well-known, and for good reason. You could make them much darker with hardly any work, or you can make them much cleaner and lighter--like the story of The Elves (and the Shoe-maker) or Red Riding Hood or Rumplestiltskin. 

"Rumplestiltskin" by Helena via Flickr