Jonathan Orsi

            There is a whiteness inherent to blank pages, blank canvases. This whiteness alludes to free from and to limitless possibilities, but it is in a sense a blanketing suffocation of predetermined structure. The artists’ palate is broad but only in respect to the Iris¹, and the poet only has words to play with². New buildings may be erected with radical and unseen forms but they shall forever be made of old stones³.  To purge into the future, on must first decipher the past. The forging of Joyce’s Novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an act of ritualized remembrance, a re-visitation on time past, re-presented through art in time present and perhaps in time future⁴. This act of this ritual liberates the art—not in the sense it disconnects or severs the ties to any one point, but that it binds and re-connects to all points.

             The old adage, “united we stand, divided we fall” echoes a notable truth through the catacombed hallways of this philosophy.   The concept of singularity or original identity even, is limiting in that it isolates an object’s wave, refusing to acknowledge its’ successor and predecessors. In doing so it dismisses any notion of enacted or adopted influence. Moreover, the very concept of originality effaces the most noble of all truths: that past, present, and future are in fact one. When we attempt to categorize or identify any object, we cast a medusa like gaze upon it, reducing it to unmoving stone⁵.

The portrait at a glance is a static image. Unmoving, defined and confined to its borders. The high edged frame sit heavy on the canvas like prison walls. The incarcerated images vacantly stares and mutely reiterates- silence. But the paintings durable pigments⁶ have secrets of their own. The eyes of the portrait unceasing follow like those in some faintly remembered Marx brother’s film. And upon this further inspection we can perhaps see that there is far more captured on that canvas than a solitary face. To start, features and imperfections spin stories of genealogies, and childhood injuries. This remembered image is comprised of more than pliable paints. It is the summation of an entire life condensed into one moment recollected.

            The portrait then becomes transparant⁷ and it is through this transparency that the portraits true power shines. Freedom emanates not through originality, instead through unceasing cross referential⁸  connectivity.  Joyce is combative with this notion; he attempts to disassociate himself with all elements of ascription. Stephen wrestles with the tools at his disposal as both items that bind him and simultaneously liberate him,

“The language in which we are speaking is his before it is min. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language” (166).

This is the central paradoxical juncture that flows throughout the text. Stephen’s only means of original expression are intrinsically grounded to pre-established foundations. Like fighting against a rip tide, the greater Stephen’s effort is to depart, the further he lapses back into the current. Stephen consistently reiterates those constraints he wishes to evade, “You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets” (179). This is most difficult contradiction that—until the rise...and fall of Finnegan—Joyce cannot seem to overcome. Through this combativeness he is creating and extending an inescapable labarynth⁹   of identity.   At one point in the novel, Stephen’s fried turns to him and says, "it’s a curious thing you know, that your mind is supersaturate in religion which you say you disbelieve” (212).  The most difficult contradiction that—until the rise...and fall of Finnegan—Joyce cannot overcome is the

This issue repeats itself ceaselessly and indeed becomes quite tautological and painful. The Ovidian quote that prefaces the novel almost becomes a mantra¹⁰ for the novel itself. Turning to unknown arts, Daedalus does perhaps forge an uncreated consciousness, but it’s for the millionth time. This Sisyphusian¹¹ repetition threatens to implode and consume itself¹². The central shift then must take place where reader and protagonist cease resistance and succumb to submission.

Elidae, in his work Myth and Reality writes that, “The return to the origins gives the hope of rebirth” (30). This notion is actualize by the novel through its highly conventional, unconventional initiation, “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down the along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…” (1). This childhood remembrance—perhaps a first memory—is a return to the origins of Stephen’s consciousness. Michael Levenson in his critical essay Stephen’s Diary notes this point with reference to the books ending, “A Portrait of the Artist ends by reversing its opening. It retraces its own steps and concludes where it began” (199).  The entire novel itself is a revisitation of a life remembered. Through this act of remembrance, Stephen returns to the place he started ¹³ and begins (again) to know it.

His recirculation¹⁴ no longer entraps him, it becomes a mechanism of freedom actualized through immortality, “his soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her gravesclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freed and power of his soul, as the great artificers whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable” (149).  By embracing the myriad of mythic traditions that encompass him, Stephen ascends the realm of mortality and is granted almost God like omnipotence.  Levenson writes, “He is more than his qualities: he is all those forms which his life inheres, the myths which enclose him, the past which begot him, the prospects which await him. This is the heavy burden that Joycean character must bear; it must be all that it has been and all that it might become” (203).

Though Stephen’s attachments and emotions come and go¹⁵ like the tide, at the apex of his expression Stephen soars on the wings and remembrance of things past¹⁶,

“Now as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophocey…No, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a wingedform flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawklike man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and have been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging a new in his workshop out of sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?” (148).

            Stephen’s character is constantly sized by this exalting power ¹⁷ of elation then subsequently purged of his illusion¹⁸. It becomes this inhalation and exhalation¹⁹ of ether of life and all therein contained.

            The closing words of Joyce’s novel, in that moment of contention, the still point, neither moving from nor towards; there is the dance²⁰. It is that moment between contradiction, between breaths; Zero that embodies all. This zero space lingers in limbo in between April 27^{th 21} and the rhythmic trodding footsteps of a membered moocow. Zero is along the riverrun. And again, fin²², echoing midstream between the “millionth time” and the “uncreated consciousness” lays somewhere in the smithy of Stephens’s soul the sound of silence²³, the song of zero.

1.      Iris referring to the eye, in that one is limited to what can be perceived. Iris also being the Greek personification of the rainbow, the basic colors from which comprise all othes.

2.      A Reference to the character  Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, and his cry, “Oh my Lolita, I only have words to play with!”.

3.      A Reference to T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets, “Old stone to new building, old timer to new fires.”

4.      Elliot’s “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.”

5.      A Reference to Dustin’s blog dealing with “the gaze”.

6.      Alluding to the closing words of Nabokov’s Lolita, “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."

7.      A Reference to Nabokov’s book and theme “Transparent Things”

8.      A remembrance of a quote by Cees Nooteboom “The world is a never-ending cross-reference.”

9.      The labyrinth being that of Ovid’s Daedalus, the labyrinth he created and subsequently became entrapped in.

10.   Mantra being a practice of Buddhists wherein they repeat and repeat a phrase or sound to as to achieve liberation.

11.  Emphasizing the repletion that is Sisyphus who continually rolled the boulder up the hill only to have it roll back to the bottom.

12.  Ouroboros

13.  In reference to the closing segment of Elliot, “We shall not cease from exploration…”

14.  One of the few decipherable words beginning Finnegans Wake “..brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

15.  To come and go is perhaps the most noted theme of Samuel Beckett’s work I have come across and is in many ways the most minimalized interpretation of all life.

16.  Remembrance of Things Past  the initial translated title of Proust great work also known as In Search of Lost Time

17.  An expression owed to Elieda’s own beautiful words and philosophy, “that in one way or another one “lives” the myth, in the sense that one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected.”

18.  This notion of illusion deeply explored in Shakespeare’s The Tempest but the concept that it may seize and release you, is perhaps most eloquently expressed by Caliban’s Soliloquy, “Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156

19.  Breath by Samuel Beckett. Also in relation to Ecclesiastics  also…everything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ZON66BbB0

20.  A Reference again to Elliot

21.  My Birthday!

22.  A cunning reference and inversion to Fin Again (funnagain…I mean Finnegan)

23.  A reference to Corin’s beautiful blog.

Jon Orsi-Welp

Somewhat naively I ventured into darkness. I turned my mind to unknown arts.
I wanted to do something grand, so I took on the assignment of writing about Mythology in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I was a bit premature in my assumption that Daedalus begin the main character in the book equates to me having a leisurely time writing this paper.
This is not to say I haven't enjoyed that task, and that I have any regrets, but it does bring about a certain number of important issues.

The first being a recently adopted rule. Never read anything for the first time under any impending deadline or for any restrictive assignment. Approaching a text with an unresearched  preconception leads only to disaster.

also, literature is in many ways is like wine.
It is a delicate art.
It intoxicates.
It can bring people together.
It can bring them apart.
It is too and too great to be reduced to a list of "it"s

My point however is that, any text, like any bottle of wine is not meant to be swallowed whole, nor is any one glass of it meant to be drained in an instant. Instead, each subtle intricacy must come to full fruition and blossom on the palate in moments of savored tantric bliss.
John Nay commented on this in today's performance, invoking Joyce for this perfect palatable passage.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder!          


there are shades upon shades of transparent things. 
While reading I have found it unacceptable to bore ahead. 
The goal of reading is not to "finish" a work. It is to read it. 
Robert Pirsig, in his "novel" Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has a really great idea, or mantra- Zen is not on the mountain top, it is in the climb. 

 

Jon Orsi- On Books

Too little thought went into my last blog on Epiphanies. Specifically concerning the venue of Books- I really didn't have a whole lot to say.
There is no easy way to describe the phenomena and I suppose that's what particularly drew me to The Aleph because its subject is epiphanic. I felt and still feel today that this short story is the magnum opus of my literary vocabulary thus far.
Instead of breaking some sort of copyright by posting the story on here, I'll just give you the option to check it out yourself here (though I have sense that this translation is lacking somehow)

But what came to me was the acceptance that though this story  "IT" for me there are many other "it's" I have come across and each has it's place. Some are very small, the "light-bulb" that clicked over my head with these may have only been one of those eco-illegal 70W incandescent bulbs.

I will share these in the hopes that further meditation on them will help me reseed the fields of my mind.
I often have held the view that literature is sort of womb, fruitful and ceaseless in it's births yet each one can yield a new (both fresh and varied) life.
(Dr. Luebner had a great discussion skirting this idea that, he described the importance of where one reads a book and the idea that one copy of a book can be very different depending on where, when, how and by whom it is read.)
Where was I?
Ah yes, So these following bits and pieces of epiphanic literature influenced me in former life-as each passing day creates another life lived formerly- and revisiting them now may have a different effect. Or perhaps they may spark interest in whoever may be reading.

Ezra Pound-

IN THE STATION OF THE METRO
These appartions of faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.

-the simple radiance of beauty, the simple radiance of simplicity. This made me love poetry.

From The Tempest-

The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again. (III.ii.130–138)

Though I truly love this play because its role in the disillusionment of the theater, of literature, of all things really, Calliban's soliloquy expresses the power of the illusion. Both sides to this coin comprise the coin itself. The yin and the yang. This symbol is not just something cool to draw on your grade school notebook, it is representative of the balance of life and in this case epiphanic literature. Wikipedia actually puts it quite well, "describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn."


From Finnegans Wake-

"in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling, he plunged both of his newly anointed hands, the core of his cushlas, in her singimari saffron strummans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it, that was deep-dark and ample like this red bog at sundown" 

 -There really isn't a "word" in this book that with enough investment wouldn't yield and epiphany but, this passage in particular struck me quite well. Very beautiful, very sensual.


Wallace Stevens-
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.


-This distills beauty, simplicity and notion of epiphany reappearing  in different form.
If pound was my first poetic love. This was my re-bound. upgrade.


I was wrong to attempt to classify or issue quality to any epiphanic moment. They occur at every moment, in every moment.
as Eliot puts it
"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before or after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment."

But, these instances, I find, are worth mentioning.

Jon Orsi- Things I think about

As I recall, we were assigned to have an epiphany. Now I can’t remember if the assignment was for this class (Bible) or the other (Mythologies) or perhaps one of the others (…) but I feel that that bit of information is trivial.

The notion that this could be an assignment is also quite flawed. These are happenings that cannot be conjured, and the implication of ownership seems to diminish the instance.

I can never presume to have and epiphany. I can only be fortunate enough for one to have me.




At some point or another I concluded that there are only two instances or scenarios that have provided an appropriate venue for these visits of a divine visage.

One being dreams.

The other: Books.




To begin with I’d really like to talk about a dream I just had—this statement I realize, usually prefaces a long winded story that has seemingly blown the mind of the emphatic narrator, while the poor listener feigns interest and secretly awaits this awkward retelling to end. I’m sorry. But flatter me—It wasn’t necessarily an extraordinary dream by any means, but something about it still claws at me. It involved a gunfight which is strangely common in my dreams. I was positioned in a bell tower of my own construction and I was fending off some adversary, but the situation quickly soured and I sense my impeding doom. This may sound bland to the reader, but imagine if you will the undoubted sense you are about to die. I realized that this was it. Uncreative people on a first date often ask the question: If you had five minutes to live what would you do? And the answers are usually as uninteresting as the people discussing the question. But now this question was upon me and there was no possibility of sex if I answered right, there was only death. I wasn't in a state of panic. I did not feel defeated. I knew that this was the end but, I did not feel as though things were overI took what little time I had to simply be.
You could ask me today or any day in the future and I could recall every finite detail of those final moments down to the smell and feel of my oilskin shroud, the sound of cracking pinewood panels, or the pressure of the book I clasped to my breast.
There was recess in the wooden floor that led to a steep stairwell. A fitted door was in place and though it could have been easily opened, I knew that there was nothing for me beyond it. I lay myself in this shallow grave and draped myself in heavy canvas. Bullets tore through the pine box tower yet their impending closeness did little to stop my ceremony. In my right hand I held a Bible but felt no urge to read it. Instead I placed it under my head as I lay prostrate. In my left hand, pressed against my chest with an unmovable weight was the novel Form Whom the Bell Tolls. And even though this was a good book, it was by no means one I would have ever called sacred, or one I would ask for on my death bed, but something at that particular moment, something very really, wanted this novel with me. I kept repeating the last paragraph to myself without having to open the book. I felt something beyond solace in the novel's closing words, I felt a sense of immortality.

What is beyond explanation is when I awoke I stumbled to my bookshelf and deposited a cache of books on the floor, eventually finding For Whom the Bell Tolls I flipped to the last page and I saw the words exactly as I had repeated them in my dream. Verbatim.
I can truthfully say however, that prior to this dream. If I was called upon to recite those lines I would undoubtably fail. I knew something about pine needles on a forest floor but that's about as far as I could go.
Even now the words are fleeting, but in that dream they were clear to me as any. In fact these words were all I wanted. My answer to that abominable question--in that moment at least-- would have been: I want to hear these words:

Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the trail, came riding up, his thin face serious and grave. His sub machine gun lay across his saddle in the crook of his left arm. Robert Jordan lay behind the tree, holding onto himself very carefully and delicately to keep his hands steady. He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.


This whole ordeal for me was pretty mind blowing and I've tried to share this with others but, and I am guilty of this myself, I know that everyone who is being told a "dream story" Is really just thinking: "Man I can't wait 'til this person stops talking so I can tell an even better story that really centers more around the idea of me."

But--And this is what makes the story so interesting for anyone who can conceive of it-- When I remembered that passage- it did not have anything to do with me.

What I mean by this is pretty tough to explain but, I will try.

I did not know those words. So when I was recounting them, I was tapping into this unconscious aquifer that sits beneath the bedrock of all our minds.

Dreams seem very "me" oriented, but they are about as personal as breath and air and we can only claim as much ownership. For we share this ether of life and dreams. And in our sharing we snip fences and topple walls, we dissolve borders and emancipate our minds.

This shared consciousness is explored by Jung with his Archetypal roles. In the final chapter of Words With Power by Northrop Frye, Frye discusses Goethe's evocation of this world. Frye states, " In the second part of Faust we are told that Faust himself, without the help of Mephistopheles, must descend into the realm of the "mothers' to bring up the deeper mythical archetypes such as Helen of Troy".
  Joseph Cambell also discusses it at length as the shared mythic realm of our minds. A realm that is "controlled" by the entire sea of stories, A sea that is comprised by mythos both learned and un-learned.

There are fascinating studies that attempt to define this phenomena, (again I am reminded of Dustin's paper discussing the "gaze" and the very confined and constricting nature of definition and designation) but alas, some of these studies are very interesting.
For example, a study that has been conducted a great number of times with the same result revolves around Crossword puzzles.
A large group is given a crossword puzzle and their success and completion rate is documented, these puzzles are broad casted and published in various newspapers thus making them and their answers well known among the broad community. All the while a separate group, isolated during this time, is then administered the puzzle and their success and completion rates are consistently and stunningly much higher and faster.
More can be read on this subject here

But I digress,
Whether or not I can really understand what particularly drew me to that novel other than it too describes the moment in detail before death, It is a perfect thread in the tapestry of collectivity
Those clever enough or deeply in tune will have already pointed this out to themselves, but the Tittle of this Novel is taken from A John Donne Poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The significance of this is pretty self evident, "No man is an island" concisely summarizes my entire point (though there is nothing concise about it).

This comes into my next, and orignal point:

There are only two instances where I feel as though I have experienced an epiphany.

Dreams

and Literature.

I've tried to express how this is true in dreams but its a very abstract concept and the less that's said about it- I fell the better.

Literature, books and poems are a little more tangible.

The Donne poem above provided me with the slight onset of such an experience, yet I liken it's strength to the moon's pale fire*

(*aside: I truly loved Nabokov's Pale Fire, but  its radiance I still find has been eclipsed by Lolita's might)

these experiences run on the same frequency, but Epiphany is reserved for those whose power is deafening.

 It is almost orgasmic but in a tantric sense, there is no release so to speak, but something has undoubtedly  changed. One can describe this moment as apocalyptic as we have discussed in the sense you find your self unveiled. with unshaded eyes the light simultaneously blinds and illuminates all.
In my attempt to describe or define this moment I am diminishing it. So I will leave it as it is.

But this moment came to me not in a fire of a burning bush, nor did it come to me atop any mountain. Instead it happened on night, In the s.u.b. of all places. I cracked a new book I had picked up on a whim (I really did "crack" it--the spine is ruined) The book was a collection of the works of Jorge Louis Borges, and the story I came upon was The Aleph. And it changed my world.
I realize I talk about this instance a lot and I hope its not sounding tired by now, but this particular moment was for me very sacred and I will never let that go.

Jon Orsi bad day. thats an understatement

Sunday- work all day. After spending my entire horrible day at work fantasizing about making and having good Chinese food in Montana (is this possible?)I spent way too much money at the co-op (greedy faux-societal-aware, capitalist-classicism-perpetuating-pigs) subsequently over-drafted my account -damn-. Then drove to Big Sky, cooked food but it fell short of exceptions of anything "Chinese" or "food". After "dinner" i get in number of arguments, resulting in poor, terror-gripped nightmare sleep (grizzly bear beavers and a cheating girlfriend)...but this is just the night before my bad day.
Next day: I wake up way too late. Only have time for coffee and cereal, sadly there is only raisin bran. While carrying cereal and coffee to table, I drop the coffee cup into my bowl of cereal which results in a mess I fail to clean up, which results in yet another argument
that I lose.
Driving recklessly as I often do, I drop my second cup of coffee of the morning, this time in my lap. I swear, punch the steering wheel, hurt my hand. Red light. Damn. Red light. Dammnn. Red light... why?...
It's about 8:03 as I make it to campus, class started about three minutes ago, but at least I'm here. Right?
no, you aren't.
Blue lights in the rear-view (I will omit the profuse profanity).
Me- "sorry officer, just running late for school"
Officer Javert "oh don't worry about it, I'll get you set up in just a minute so you don't miss class"
Promptly -thirty-five minutes no joke- later i am cited for driving without proof of insurance, driving without a valid registration, driving without a valid drivers license, and speeding.
I give him a high handed salute and say thank you.
I missed my class so I just went home.
I get to my house and step out of my car, which is subsequently is directly into a pile of dog poop.
Finally make my way into the house and then I find I have to clean my entire house just to sit down and cook food. After doing this, I let off some steam by yelling at Yogi for pooping in the yard. But then I feel bad, so I tell em' "he's a good boy" which gets him all excited and he pees on my feet.
Then a few uneventful hours pass.
Then... I see one of my roommates has fabricated a tattoo gun and given himself a pretty good tattoo.

So. and this is actually the point where my day went wrong.

I get a tattoo.
yes.

and in the words of Johnny Cash, "I hung my head and cried"

Jon Orsi-- Tyger by the Tale

Reading John Nay’s poetry has further solidified and understanding of the way we are, that for long years I have come to accept. The central idea is that of the two way ladder, while we descend, we simultaneously ascend-the action being entirely independent or unintentional of the outcome, yet the outcome is a direct product of the action.

What epitomized this for me in John’s poetry was through his descent of the ages—gold to iron—the poetics took off in unbound flight. With his closing stanza being a saturation of understanding. And only through the full conceptualization and experience of decline can one see, wholly, the image of the poem/life/world (considerably synonyms).  After complete decay comes rebirth, phoenix like—more brilliant in its second coming, and more radiant by its contrast to the bleakness of its present context.
The idea though, is that the composition of the poem  or any poem for that matter is an act of creation. And as the poem itself is completed upon the conclusion, its birth is present in the moment of death- and this cycle begets itself. It may also beget new understanding away from itself. Poetics, mythos, logos- may all serve as catalyst for those exposed. This effect on future generations may be unseen or unnoticed, but it may too serve as a moment of great awakening.

 These epiphanic happenings may serve as the flood--in all its occurrences-- to cleanse, to unveil, to enlighten.

as with Nay's poem, and  Ovid's, and the Bible... flood flows forth on unclean grounds. In these dystopic visions, the world* shattered by understanding, by the poetic. It is a barbaric yawp that awakens the sleeping. It unclouds the eyes.

As in Steven’s Poem Disillusionment of Ten O’clock  -from my newly acquired collected poems (thank you Vargos- support your local bookstore) – the beauty of the world is reserved for those free of illusion, but the illusion is not the dream, rather the absence of dream. The illusion is the limitations of life that we subscribe to, that we-unable to see beyond, are limited to.

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock 

The houses are haunted

By white night-gowns.

None are green,

Or purple with green rings,

Or green with yellow rings,

Or yellow with blue rings.

None of them are strange,

With socks of lace

And beaded ceintures.

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles.

Only, here and there, an old sailor,

Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches Tigers

In red weather. 

The absurdity is not catching tigers, or technicolored nightgown schemes. But, rather the absurdity is the formula of white- nightgowns, the absurdity of life devoid of absurd possibilities.

Subjected to limitations of any age, or anything for that matter our world becomes limited. In one of Dustin’s blogs he speaks about “the gaze” Rather than paraphrase or misinterpreted what Dustin put most eloquently, I will instead give a piece of what he as written “To gaze upon something is not to open oneself to it, but to impose an organizational structure upon it: the gaze makes sense rather than receiving it.”

Perhaps my even mentioning of this blog, Johns blog, or my even mentioning at all is an act of futility because I am imposing structure, but I am trying to receive.
But, my point is with John’s or Ovid full realization or omnipotence over the ages and over himself he has become free from the boundaries of ages or self.

There is a great Blake quote I often turn to because it provides me solace and inspiration.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

This is a passage from his work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell which too, works along the two way ladder. For he envisioned a world inverted since the fall of man, the only way up is down.

And if we descend down into our subconscious level, the shared consciousness of the world. A world dictated by archetypes, we may find our lives too, dictated.  There are happening at bay that are out of our control, out of our consciousness even. But if we understand that these are all threads of the web of the collective,if we understand and become familiar with the subconscious, the archetypes of our lives, the mythic tradition of the world, then perhaps we may become masters of that world. We may become the artificer, or we may finally realize that we have been all along.

Jon Orsi. The beginnings of beginnings

These are, the beginning ideas on the beginning of things.
bear with me, the ideas may seem fragmented and un-realized but they may hopefully ignite the excitement they do in me.
-and tonight hopefully i will provide the unabridged version of all things considered.
but fore now, please regard the following story.

"The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts of which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or Guiana wakes up from a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his soul has really been away hunting, fishing, felling trees, or whatever else he has dreamed of doing, while all the time his body has been lying motionless in his hammock. A whole Bororo village has been thrown into a panic and nearly deserted because somebody had dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily approaching it. A Macusi Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his employer had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly reproached his master next morning for his want of consideration in thus making a poor invalid go out and toil during the night. The Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate the most incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their haste that these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are firmly convinced of the truth of what they relate; for these wonderful adventures are simply their dreams, which they do not distinguish from waking realities" The Golden Bough pg 218

How is it, that through our dreams we are exposed to a world entirely unknown yet simultaneously familiar? Our dreams are, after all, our own creations. Yet within these creations manifest unlearned truths. I have often awoken from a dream with information, accurate information, on subjects I have never before studied. Who hasn't in their waking life encounter a new place, a new happening that was somehow familiar? Whether we say things like, "I've been here before, in a long forgotten dream" or the Keanue depleted "Whoa...dejavu" there is something unidentifiable, mystical mechanism at work, when we find ourselves attune to to an unlearned world, that is however remembered. 

This siphoning of the unknown cistern of knowledge, flows daily. It is constantly nourishing and irrigating our present, from the archaic waters of the past. The source of these rivers, the headwaters of time may at a glance be an elusive apparition, but the consciousness of self as a tributary is entirely possible realization. We may drink of these waters, but we are of them, and into them we shall continuously flow.

Cambell, and Jung have access to this aquifer of archetypes, the fountainhead of myth...the collective unconscious. How shall I even begin? ...I will return.

What is most interesting to me, this the power of connection to this underworld of understanding. Limitless. The hollywoodization of these thematics has for some unveiled a great number of truths, for others it has merely done what Hollywood has always done. Blind us.
There is something very real, and very sacred even behind "Morpheus and Neo's Excellent Adventure"

Another surprising movie discovery was the Cohen Brothers (you really can't go wrong) movie Men Who Stare at Goats. It was fairly good humor and so forth, but until I saw and read some of the information lead up to the creation of this movie (that um, these happenings are real--people dropping goats with their minds...remote viewing) that I realized that this was yet another piece to the puzzled picture that ascribes our world, and its limitless nature.

For any of you that haven't been turned on to this, Remote Viewing is a practice of deep meditation that conjures accurate information about a place or object that the "viewer" has never seen, been near, had any training or prior information about, or even heard of. This is a program that has been multi million dollarly funded by the U.S. government as a military weapon. no joke.

a quote from one of the founders of this program on how it works is as follows, "During this process, the viewer becomes linked directly to the collective unconscious - also referred to as the Matrix. The process works whether the target is in the next room or on the other side of the world. This information can exist anywhere in time or at any point in the Universe, as mind exists outside of time and space."

I have endless oceans more to say about all of these things, but for the time being i just need to get them out there.

Jon Orsi- in response to Kari's Blog

Kari has- now and for as long as I can recall- always been a great source of knowledge, inspiration and interpretation. Often I call to Kari the muse, and always am I fulfilled. Her most recent blog on Eliade's chapter 7 I found to be very well put and well distilled. A little note she made really illuminated my day (well night- its 9:30) -

"we still retain a tiny spark of Divine Reality within us, which we can recapture when we do "remember" and awaken."


The idea that, in the act of remembrance we attain a passage or (re)connection to divine reality, really suits me well and it makes me smile. Because I believe this. I truly do, I just often forget and then fail to see the inter-web of ceaseless connections, but moments of remembrance not only reassure my beliefs, but they are in effect a practice of them.


- as a side note, that is somewhat related (or entirely related, for all things are) I was just turned on to this comedian Bill Hicks and i realized(remembered) how hilarious he actually is.
Though the subject matter is "off key" for class i suppose, the realization he talks about is in a way very mythological- you just have to see it all the way through to the end.
For such a long time when I heard the name mentioned I always assumed that people were referencing one of those dummies from the "blue collar comedy tour" but its not, dont worry.

Jon Orsi. A Small Thing

It has been hard this year to get in the blogging spirit, especially when look around at some of the other blogs that are setting that bar -Nay, Dustin, Ashley, Rio (the usual suspects) and pretty much every one else as well- But these blogs have inspired me to meet that bar and hopefully exceed it.

-That will have to wait until next time however. because for this blog I just want to talk about something. A small thing, but it has blossomed.

It started out with this assignment we've all been given- to find a myth and present it to the class. I was initially overcome with dread and distaste for the assignment. I created a list of personal reasons why I didn't really want to do this, and essentially planned on simply not doing it. Problem solved.

Coming to my senses and admitting to myself that my "personal reasons" were nothing more than a thesaurused list of "personal procrastinations". Problem resolved.

One thing in my life has forever been a small thing- a part of my ancestry that I cannot, through any living bloodline trace, and that I know virtually nothing about: A small drop of naive blood, but even small things have their place.
Many of the french who first came to that -Nova Scotia/ quebec --area had,  if not good, at least civil relationships with the native population and eventually became interwoven into the community- adoptions, and many trappers married squaw wives. As it turns out  my fathers great-grandmother (mothers side) was one of them.
So, climbing blindly backwards through mauslin layers of cobwebs and things forgotten, I trace a small drop of Abenaki blood into my own.
This fact has forever-in my prospective- been forgotten. But even forgotten things have their remembrance.

So, after this fall backward four generations, I arrive once more: here.
At this assignment, I had once thought to be a drag.
What happened next, threw me further back to where I once began, before time recollected.
I started looking into Abenaki mythologies and I found this amazing website.

Actually, hold on. As i am writing i realize that that's not how this all happenstancially fell into place.
What initially happened was the following story:
I see Tristan in the library as I am working. He asks me a question about this assignment, which sparks my unveiling of obligations suppressed.
I start thinking about how getting up in front of the class is kind of like being a stand up comedian of sorts.
I realize I already have a mythology memorized that is both the creation of namesake of my home town and the river it is named for.
This is quickly dubbed when I realize how offensive this story is, and how completely esoteric it is as well.
But the story has to do with the Abenaki and thence, I lapse into the story ascribed above.

so back-forward, again to where I was, again to where I am: here. -trying to start this assignment as it were.

...and i found this amazing website... On which it details the major characters of Abenaki mythology, and their mythologies.

reading here, I realize the importance of passing these stories on. I realize I have been largely if not completely void of this honor, I never knew my great great mother, i never knew these stories.
But re-touching something, even a small thing resonates within me with a powerful acoustic.

Despite my distance, and my diluted blood line, I feel- at least i would like to feel- that though this familiarity is faded from long years of absence, one movement of remembrance can revive and restore an apparition of rapture.

so anywho. this is one of the many stories published on this website, I dislike that it came to me through the medium of the internet- yet, so be it. but i would like to think that this story had come down from a time forgotten, and will continue to do so to times unknown.

The Great Spirit, in a time not known to us looked about and saw nothing. No colors, no beauty. Time was silent in darkness. There was no sound. Nothing could be seen or felt. The Great Spirit decided to fill this space with light and life.
From his great power he commanded the sparks of creation. He ordered Tôlba, the Great Turtle to come from the waters and become the land. The Great Spirit molded the mountains and the valleys on turtle's back. He put white clouds into the blue skies. He was very happy.He said, "Everything is ready now. I will fill this place with the happy movement of life."He thought and thought about what kind of creatures he would make.

Where would they live? What would they do? What would their purpose be? He wanted a perfect plan. He thought so hard that he became very tired and fell asleep.
His sleep was filled with dreams of his creation. He saw strange things in his dream. He saw animals crawling on four legs, some on two. Some creatures flew with wings, some swam with fins. There were plants of all colors, covering the ground everywhere. Insects buzzed around, dogs barked, birds sang, and human beings called to each other. Everything seemed out of place. The Great Spirit thought he was having a bad dream. He thought, nothing could be this imperfect.
When the Great Spirit awakened, he saw a beaver nibbling on a branch. He realized the world of his dream became his creation. Everything he dreamed about came true. When he saw the beaver make his home, and a dam to provide a pond for his family to swim in, he then knew every thing has it's place, and purpose in the time to come.
It has been told among our people from generation to generation. We must not question our dreams. They are our creation.

-isn't that something. A small thing perhaps, but all things have their place.

Jon Orsi, Ovid words of beauty

Despite the main themes running though The Metamorphoses are usually rape and death. There is an unmistakable beauty radiating from this text. As I come across those passages that are particularly rich, I will try and share them.

"Either the Architect of All, the author of the universe, in order to beget a better world created man from seed divine." -Book I page 5-6

"In those times, upon its natie mountain heights, the pine still stood unfelled; no wood had yet been yhauled down to the limpid waves, that it might sail to foreign countries; and the only coasts that mortals knew in that age were their own." -Book I page 6

"Four times the moon had linked it's cresent tips"- Book II page 50

"How often is she chased along the rocks by barking dogs, for she who was a hunter has become the hunted one-a frightened fugitive. When beasts draw near, she hides, forgetting how she now appears; although she is a she-bear, she still fears the sight of bears along the mountain slopes and shudders when the wolves approach."
Book II page 56

"Europa now is terrified; she claps one horn with her right hand; meanwhile the left rests on the bull's great croup. She turns to glance back at the shore, so distant now. Her robes are fluttering --they swell in the sea breeze."--Book II 73


-though it is discussing rape. The rape of Europa is probably one of the most elegant and stunning depictions of the act itself. The effect is chilling, the power of words, the imageistic nature of the scene is undeniably adept.

jon orsi.pop-mythology right quick.

tiny note- reading the blogs I came across Michelle Storouds. And she mentioned how on the show 30 rock there is a peacock named Argus. clearly the shows writers know there studies. It reminded me of an episode of the simpson- which I love(d)- and whos writers clearly were studious english majors as well...

I've found this script from the episode I recalled. it still makes me laugh.

At Itchy & Scratchy, Intl., Meyers has called a meeting of the writers (who look strikingly similar to the real Simpsons writers) along with Krusty and a female network executive.

MEYERS
I have figured out how to rejuvenate the show. It's so simple, you egghead writers would've never thought of it! What we need is... a new character! One that today's kids can relate to!

The writers look at each other, uncertain.

OAKLEY
Are you absolutely sure that's wise, sir? I mean, I don't want to sound pretentious here, but Itchy and Scratchy comprise a dramaturgical dyad.

KRUSTY
Hey, this ain't art, it's business! (to Meyers) Whaddya got in mind? Sexy broad? Gangster octopus?

MEYERS
No, no. The animal chain of command goes mouse, cat, dog. (to the writers) D-O-G.

WEINSTEIN (a writer)
Uh, a dog? Isn't that a tad predictable?

EXECUTIVE
In your dreams. We're talking the original dog from hell.

OAKLEY (a writer)
You mean Cerberus?

orsi -Opening and unleashing The Golden Bough

I realize that one of the most difficult aspects of "blogging" is knowing where and when to stop. Blogs seem to service as a converted canvas of the mind, ideas are expressed freely.This is both the beauty and the tribulation of blogging. Images associated with these ideas are presented, countless links and cross references branch off and root. Often I am unable to keep this entanglement of ideas ordered. There is just so much to be said, so many stemming thoughts, and I am not really versed enough in any of them to keep the chaos contained.
That being said, I almost laughed when I really started reading more of the Golden Bough passage. It broke the stagnant pool of my mind like a rock, spiking jets of water up and outward, a wake of ripples extending in all directions. Now I'm going to try and keep these waves contained and fluid, for in my mind they fractaled in a picturesque pattern. But when i try to convey them it is often splintered fragments of the full mindscape. so bare with me.

This passage is nearly perfect for this class, foreverything. It just takes a little reading into- it's one of those transparent things.
" Further, when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some common object, such as an animal, or plant, or fire, or water, it is sometimes considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and replace it by another. A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of change in language; for where it prevails to any considerable extent many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up" page 306

So, as is custom with the Nicrobarese tribe, when someone dies who is named "monkey" for example, the word dies along with the person. So actual monkeys are no longer referred to as such they become "yeknoms" ...or something-not important.
What is important is the concept at play. And here is where that old mysterious mental maneuver is enacted. The importance of this practice is, essentially the essence of this class. What is dealt with here is "image death" or "label death". When the "monkey" dies, no monkey actually dies. Just the word by which we call the thing itself. The label is merely a vehicle for the "object" (and i use this word with some hesitation) to ride. Just as the body is a vehicle for the soul. Just as the story, its characters and setting are a vehicle for the mythos.
When 'death' occurs it can take away the image of the being, it can take away the name, but it does not take away the being itself.
Long years I have contemplated a single sentence from Ovid. Longer years still, have others before, and will others after me move with these words. Even those who have never read them.

"For all things change, but no thing dies. The spirit wanders: here and there, at will, the soul can journey from an animal into a human body, and fro us to beasts; it occupies a body but it never perishes." Pythagoras (book XV page 519)

This is a reading, not of the above but its still great. it only has 27 views. I feel like it should have a lot more.

also, I started reading up a bit more on Pythagoras and I found this amazing article about it--and so many other things-- J Stor Pythagoras

and then reading this, I remembered a story by Jorge Luis Borges (thank you Dustin for turning me on to him) that fits the metempsychosis or "trans migration of souls, or... reincarnation.
""I have been Homer; soon, like Ulysses, I shall be Nobody; soon, I shall be all men--I shall be dead"

To anyone who hasn't yet read Borges, i'd say: do so. It'll twist yo cap back.