Thursday, January 31, 2013

Dryads

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne
Now, I know that I've already blogged about Apollo and Daphne in an earlier post, but this made me smile so much.

One of my very close friends (the one I mentioned who calls me a tree earlier) is living in Austria right now, taking all sorts of different courses - one of which is an Art History one. She sent me this image with an email that I found this morning while I was eating breakfast.

"This picture made me think of you. I had never seen this Bernini sculpture, but it screams Autumn. A nymph turning into a tree. :) " She knows me so well - and yet she had no idea of the significance of this statue to me.

Tree Nymph in Vancouver Richard Henne
This Bernini sculpture is my absolute favorite that I have ever seen so far. It is at home in the Borghese Museum in Rome, Italy, and is one of the most gorgeous creations I have ever seen (this one, and The Rape of Proserpina which is housed in the room next to it). When you look at the detail, when you see impressions of fingerprints on skin, and all of the tiny perfect details, you can hardly believe that it's made of marble. Someone created that. It's amazing, isn't it? A nymph turning into a tree. Gorgeous.

Willows, Rowans, Tamaracks, Aspens, Birches, Pines. I love it.If I was to be a part of Ovid's mythology, I would hope to be a dryad.


Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Mother of Beauty

"She kept her poise, even facing the dread altar, and knew that the ceremony was her death, even as Neoptolemus held sword to strike, and as her eyes met his, she said distinctly, 'Now is the time to take my gentle blood. Your sword has choice of either throat or breast.' Then she offered her throat and breast to him, we may be sure that she'd be no man's servant."

- "The Sacrifice of Polyxena" Metamorphoses

 Death.

What would we do if death was staring straight at us? A gun to our foreheads, impending torture, a disease we can't cure. What would we do?

I've always wondered how I would react in that situation if it ever arose. If I could keep calm, and hold my wits about me and not melt into a slobbering mess of tears and fear. I would hope that I could be strong enough to embrace what was coming with grace and poise. That passage above moved me so much because I think that is what we'd all like to be like, wouldn't it? Defiance in the face of something you really have no control over?

Sure, she could have jumped off of the pyre and tried to run - which would have been pointless because the Greeks would have dragged her kicking and screaming back. Her honor was her armor. It's not about the dying - it's about how you die.

This may seem like a morbid topic, but honestly, are there any of us who don't wonder about dying? It's easy for me to say right now that I'm not afraid of it. I'm not. At least, not for myself. But the idea of losing some of the people I hold dearest,as I nearly experienced last fall, is terrifying to me. 

Would I be able to be like Polyxena? I truly hope so.

"Death is the Mother of Beauty, once you understand her for what She is."
- Dr. Sexson.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Th snake got me thinking about something - the "s" sound. Why is it in so many stories that snakes always get the bad rap? Is it the fact that they're slithery and strange and they bite?

I actually think it's the noise they make.

When I was thirteen, I once wrote a book that I modeled after Christopher Paolini's "Eragon" about two girls and their winged horses, instead of dragons (my love of strong feminine hero characters and horses had been coupled together). "Eragon" was one of those books from my childhood that really inspired me to words, and made me want to tell stories. I took this story about my strong feminine characters and gave it to numerous people to read, to edit, and to comment on. Shelley Freese, the wife of my elementary school principal, is an author, and I greatly respected (and still do) her opinion. There was one comment that she made about the lead villain in my story that still sticks quite clearly in my head with relevance to the scaly creatures above: "Great name! It must be out human fear of the "s" sound that causes us to have so many villains who start with an S!"

I remember thinking, Huh. That's interesting... and doing nothing about looking into that. But now that I think about it, it's quite true. Sauron and Saruman from The Lord of the Rings, Shan-Yu from  Mulan, Sweeney Todd, Sianel from my own story... We do seem to have quite a few villains in literature and pop culture. Or what about sharks or spiders, two other commonly feared creatures?

What is the myth behind the "s" sound?

While I'm not sure that this directly falls into the answer for this question, it makes a lot of sense on some other levels. The term I kept stumbling upon was "infrasound." Infrasound is a hertz frequency below 20 Hz - which is undetectable by human ears. They're bass waves and vibrations that are felt, which, according to the Skeptic'sDictionary, "have been shown to produce a range of effects in some people including anxiety, extreme sorrow, and chills." Another interesting tidbit said that because these sounds are not heard, they can, "make people feel vaguely that odd or supernatural events are taking place." They're also the frequencies that people associate with white noise/EVP. 

Interesting. Maybe not directly connected, but there's some interesting psychological going-on's here.

 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Trees, trees, EVERYWHERE.

I've always been seeing trees - as I said in an earlier post, they've been a huge part of my life. So, this is why, after an hour of sitting in front of my computer, trying to figure out what it is that I want to write about, that I come to the story I want to tell you.

My mind has been in Nepal for the last two days -
specifically with this group of people in Phortse, and specifically specifically with someone who's standing in the middle in the back near the tall man, wearing a hat that I know is green but looks gray in this picture. Needless to say...I've had a bit of trouble focusing. So, I decided to direct my attention to exactly that.

I entered "nepali mythology" into my search engine and hit enter, hoping something good would come up. I found a lot of different stories, many about the mountain gods that resided in the peaks surrounding the villages, and many about beautiful goddesses (the Five Sisters). While interesting, none of it sparked something for which I wanted to write about, until I stopped scrolling when a title jumped out at me: "The Heavenly Rope."

This happened to be one of those moments where my mind switches gears on me completely, and I thought, That reminds me of the rope they climb up to find Jake's ikran in Avatar! Which went to, I wonder what mythology there is behind the scenes of that movie!!! New tab opened, "avatar movie mythology" searched, and I ran straight into the Tree of Souls from the movie - which is said to be borrowed from Norse mythology - the tree Yggdrasil.

In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil in the center of the universe, the being that holds all nine words in the universe.

TREES. EVERYWHERE.

And the worlds within? Asgard - where Chris Hemsworth resides as Thor in the movie.comic book I'd never read before a few months ago. Valhalla which brings to mind valkyries for me, as I wanted to be one when I was about 13. And the opera! And this wonderful book that I read at about that age called "The Sea of Trolls" by Nancy Farmer. I read that book so many times over., and would like to read again in light of the Norse mythology that keeps cropping up.

My mind is spinning a little bit right now.

Thank you, person in the green/gray hat for always distracting me - especially when it ends up leading me somewhere.

Monday, January 21, 2013

                                       So. Much. LOVE. What lucky trees!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

I Dreamed a Dream...

So, a lot of my dreams are clearer than this, but they're all equally odd. The most vivid thing I remember about it was being in my prom dress from my senior year of high school - this green one, modeled after Keira Knightley's in Atonement that I wanted so badly (and still do, as the one I received left much to be desired). There was a lot of running, and I was in this cafeteria like room, ducking behind a bench - lot's of screaming, lot's of gunshots. Then, I was getting into a car outside of my grandparent's house in Miles City. The last shot, it was dark out, and I was walking back to the vehicles with a group of people, still in my dress. I pulled open the drivers side door of my boyfriend's Toyota Tacoma and sat down, the door still swung open. I had this overwhelming feeling of disappointment as I was sitting there, and I didn't know what to attribute it too.

However, when I woke up this morning, I had four missed calls and two voicemails from my boyfriend, who is in Nepal right now. He had tried to call me for the first time since he left earlier this month, and I had left my phone on silent. I AM AN IDIOT. Suddenly the disappointment in the dream felt like an ironic foreshadowing.

Not to mention, I had a dream and a coincidence all rolled into one.


Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Seven Kingdoms

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray was one of my favorite books when it came out. I was perusing through it the other day hoping to read out some inspiration for a book I'm working on, and the name Circe jumped out at me - and it was one I remembered from The Odyssey. From what I remember of that book, Circe's role involves turning all of Odysseus's men into pigs, turning them back when she realizes she has no power over Odysseus himself, and waylaying them for another year so that Odysseus can knock her up (do not get me started on him).

So I looked into her background a bit more. She was the Daughter of the Sun, and her many talents include sorcery, metamorphosis, necromancy, and a lot of knowledge involving herbs. After killing her husband, she was exiled by her father, who was Helios, to the island of Aeaea, which is where Odysseus ends up with her.

Suddenly, someone else's name made a lot more sense to me. My epiphany for the day:
                                                                    
                                                                  Cersei


My most recent television addiction would have to be Game of Thrones, which I discovered this last summer and am eagerly awaiting the third season (as well as the time to read the books it was based on). Anyway, the woman pictured above is Cersei, pronounced the same way as the Daughter of the Sun's name. Cersei is the queen of the seven Kingdom's of Westeros, rules from the sunny, island like city of King's Landing, and her powers include seduction, poison, and the murder of her husband's closest advisor, as well as a few other things I'll fail to mention on purpose. She's one of those characters you love to hate, and after digging a little deeper into the Greek Circe's background, the name the author chose for her is quite fitting.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

"In earth she stood, white thighs embraced by climbing bark, her white arms branches, her fair head swaying in a cloud of leaves; all that was Daphne bowed in the stirring of the wind, the glittering green leaf entwined within her hair and she was laurel."

        - Ovid's Metamorphoses "Apollo and Daphne"

The assignment we were given on Monday, which requires us to hug a tree, is probably one of the most wonderful tasks I have ever been given in any class. It will not be the first tree I've ever hugged; that actually took place this last summer in Yosemite National Park, when I went walking through the Sequoias.

They are enormous, these beautiful rust-colored trees, and they look like they go up for miles above your head. They were one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen, almost like wise giants or old beings from some myth that had been there for centuries, guarding, watching, waiting, protecting. So I wrapped my arms around one of the huge bases, pressed my cheek against the rough bark, and listened. I'm not sure what I expected to hear, but I suppose I wanted there to be a heartbeat because they seemed so, so alive. Ancient and old, like elders who could tell wonderful and terrible stories about all the things they've seen.

One of my closest friends calls me a tree. Whether it's because I'm long and willowy, or because I've always loved them, I'm not sure. The story of Daphne has always been one of my favorites; this last fall I had the opportunity to see Bernini's wonderful depiction of her escaping Apollo's embrace, forever captured in marble.

Tree stories, Grandmother Willow, The Giving Tree, dryads, the aspen grove from my childhood campsite on the Boulder River - all of this rings deeply within me.The tree that just a few months ago saved my brother's life.

The trees in Bozeman are beautiful. I can't wait to see which one will be the next one I hug.




Thursday, January 10, 2013

My Etymology

"Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground." 

- Andrea Gibson

I love names. I started making lists of them when I was younger, taken from the books I would read or the people I met. I'd steal my parents old baby name books, copy my favorites, dog-ear the pages, and I'd be delighted when my parents old lists would fall out and I'd get to read the names that could have been something other than my own. Amber, Brittany, Jordan - but they chose Autumn. 

In Hindu Mythology, Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge, music, arts, and sciences. It is said that Brahma created the universe through her knowledge. The other name she is known by is Sharada, which in Sanskrit means "of autumn." She was said to favor that season. It made me smile to find that small connection to my name. 

There are so many meanings to our names, so many different connotations to people all over the world, and they can range from a beautiful Indian goddess, to a little girl who was named for the colorful leaves outside the hospital she was born in. Who knew?