Class Notes 3/29

Homework: be generating paper topics....

Christina's blog......anyone who has blogged has contributed to the uniqueness of the class....

More Homework, same homework: blog about the blogs of others, and although Christina's blog was superb, Dr. Sexson asked the rest of us to be more specific.

Wizard of Oz clip - audience, largely children, needs to have lessons and messages...

The Alchemist, young adult level

Erin has loves The Alchemist, see her blog.

The Following Story, which should all be reading, quotes mysterious mental maneuver from Transparent Things by Nabokov.

We need to give up intellectual pretentiousness, anger, superiority, etc. in order to read The Alchemist. It is all part of the great ocean of the sea of stories!

We heard Joan's thesis idea.....Joan I have some books for you and some sources if you need any! See her blog.

simple definition of Alchemy: purification of the soul

to purify, to simplify, burn out impurities
we start with "yuck" or base matter, get rid of all the yuck, Purify to get pure essence.

Finnegans Wake alchemist.....Shem see pages 183-5

Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding
"Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe"

Heraclitus.....quotes at the beginning and throughout.....Eliot stealing from him

Job in life, to purify ourselves, but there are so many distractions ...... David Bowie gets distracted from saving his home planet....in the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth



where the rose and fire become one, the rose is a central symbol in the Four Quartets,

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Poems2008/RoseInAlchemy.html

also see page 80 in The Alchemist

Carl Jung, archetypal patterns in literature

pg 183 in Finnegans Wake, Joyce working with the notion of muck not alien because when we read Dante's The Divine Comedy we see people swimming in excrement......

wikipedia -The Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus' shirt in Greek mythology was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the "poison dress" motif

page. 83 in The Alchemist, "Did you learn anything?"
reminds us of The Wizard of Oz
surface of the emerald, last lines of the Four Quartets....

"Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

condition of complete simplicity, kenosis is missing in The Alchemist....it is missing Samuel Beckett

At the FW meeting, Queen of Underworld, gives up everything...

page 185, the question and answer section, Laurence Fishburne, who played Morpheus in The Matrix, is going to play the alchemist in The Alchemist.

Class Notes 3/26

Quiz: April 9th, monday
blog your working thesis: April 12th, friday

Rachel has been working on her thesis....time deja vu, memory

We watched the youtube.com clip from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy realizes....or is told....she had the power all along...."had to leard it for herself"....not enough to want it, go look fo heart's desire.....find the Oz clip here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11BQQvVy8LI

Read:
Lissa's blog, hate & love, Shakespeare, Jon Orsi's blog....existential crisis.......

have you been following your dream? I hope not, because my dream last night a giant tarantula was chasing me........

The Alchemist - Personal Legend, see wikipedia...

Kyle's blog, sleep paralysis....BLOG: room where you sleep

portal in Alchemist, into other works that are in the book. Rumi had already written this story....and Rabbi, Treasure Under the Bridge....
treasure alwas in my possesion

So what? you can change lead into gold. gold would be worth nothing.

East Coker:
"You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not. "

no ecstasy, go by way of ignorance...
need to go through portal...

ecstasy - ekstasis - standing outside ourself....
enthusiasm - posessed by god

go through the dark night of the soul...

Kenosis, emptying out...

Vishnu dream: lotos rose from the navel
Four Quartets: "And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,"

HOMEWORK: blog about the blogger/blog who has taught you the most, or has been the most important to you.....

Class Notes 3/24

April 12....blog your thesis statment for your paper ...

Dr. Sexson wanted to reinforce some things...

Maggie saw the class as becoming cultish...reminding us not to blindly follow the leader figure....could turn into a Jim Jones figure.

(As a side comment of my own: I understand if anyone might be feeling a bit overwhelmed in Dr. Sexson's class. Dr. Sexson's classes are usually full of repeat customers. To someone new to the "Sexson" experience, it might be cultish, but really, it is just people who enjoy what and how they learn in class. And this is something I enjoy being a part of. Learning with people who have an interest and passion in class. The mutual enjoyment of learning and comradeship in class is brought out by Dr. Sexson, and I have yet to find anything like it in any other class, and I've been at MSU for 5 years. And if it looks like we've all drank the Kool Aid.....it's because we have.)


The magician or leader exposes self to be not so smart... hmmmm..(but that is what smart people do.)
-Oracle in The Matrix
-Ovid's witch
-Prospero, gives everything up in the end..."drown my books"

where will you be without that feather, Dumbo

We watched a clip of a movie version of The Tempest.....a clip of Prospero drowing his books....

when we call something wierd, we are applying it to something we don't understand.

Vishnu Dreaming the World, Joseph Campbell

"Hence, we are all one in Vishnu: manifestations, inflections, of this dreaming power of Vishnu; broken images of himself rippling on the spontaneously active surface of his subtle mind stuff. Moreover, this sleeping god's divine dream of the universe is pictured in Indian art as a great lotus plant growing from his navel. The idea is that the dream unfolds like a glorious flower, and that this flower is the energy-or, as the Indians say. the shakti or goddess-of the god. I hope that some of you are recalling the counterparts of some of these images in the Biblical tradition. The waters that are stirred into action when creation takes place are comparable to those of the first verse of the Bible, where it is said that the wind or breath of god blew, or brooded, over the waters. "

we are all the dreams of Vishnu - what happens when he wakes up?
something dreams through you, you are not your dream....part of the Self (catpital ess).

Midsummers Night Dream, dreamer, sacred marriage
bottoms dream because it had a bottom

The Alchemist

Doug reminded of Siddhartha
paradox

should not cease from exploration and return to where you started and know the place for the first time.

transmutation of the soul.....metaphor lead into gold

define: McGuffin
Google: elixir of life

Santiago's treasure a metaphor, like the battlefield in the Bhagavad-Gita

Harry Potter........got people reading again.....also a lot of Alchemy in the books.

*we have to evolve our sense of imagination
young: read the Alchemist
older: read Joyce's The Al-Shem-ist in Finnegans Wake.

Michael, Dr. Sexson...a person worth saving from Hawaii, ocean of stories we need to appreciate.
The Following Story, recapitulates & deals with every theme of the class. We should be re-reading that and blogging on it.....

More Alchemist....

The above painting is by Bega, an oil painting 'The Alchemist' in 1663.

So I realize I gave myself over completely to The Alchemist. I know it was a bit cheesy, and I had little doubt that Santiago would fail, because he couldn't, because it is just that kind of book. I knew he was the one the alchemist in the desert oasis was waiting for, and of course he would be able to turn himself into the wind, because that is they way this book is. If he wasn't successful, then there wouldn't be much of a story. But oh do I still love it, ever so much.

I was reading the blogs, and as I read Bizz Browning's blog I was intrigued. Bizz says, "I mean, I guess it's kind of funny that this guy traveled this long distance, got rich and lost it three times- got the crap beaten out of him, and then has the huge epiphany that he should have stayed home. It's a bit of sick joke, when all of these wise people tell him to keep going onward to find his treasure."

Now a couple years ago I would have agreed with Bizz. Like what's the point? He left just to find out that what he really needed was at home? But wait, sounds like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz maybe a little bit?

However, had Santiago stayed at home he would never have found the treasure in the church, because he would never have made to the pyramids. Santiago would have gone off the shear his sheep, perhaps married that cute girl in the next village, and never realized his own personal legend. It is like going on a pilgrimage or something like that. Santiago learns more about himself and the world, and his soul(?) through the large detour from the treasure in the abandoned church. So he never had an epiphany in terms of, oh I should have stayed home, (now I could be wrong) but I think the epiphany, or realization is that he now knew that he had to leave, in order to return and know that place for the first time, and truly know himself.

page 152, "The boy reached the Soul of the World, and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles."
He realizes that everything in the world is connected through the divine, so when he communicates with the soul of the world he is communicating with the soul of God, which is his own soul. Sounds like, Meister Eckhart:"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."

Through leaving his comfortable life as a shepherd, he is able to have a religious, mystical experience. While this was really cool, I like that I originally thought his Personal Legend was to find the treasure, when really (as it appears to me) his Personal Legend was to his search for the treasure. But I suppose finding the treasure is his Personal Legend, not for the gold and jewels, but for the experiences leading up to it. Because the money never mattered anyway, seeing as how he was robbed three times and managed to gain it all back. What Santiago gained in his traveling, searching, and experiences, was more profitable than his treasure. He gets the gold and the girl as a bonus perhaps. But that is just my interpretation.

While looking around on the Internet I found this blog Broken Mystic, which provides the Guarantor of Gazelle. The blog mentions the Soul of the World, and Fatima. It is a nice little story. If you don't eat animals you will love it. I like meat, but I love this story.

Also, we have already encountered an alchemist in our Highbrow/Lowbrow class, Shem, from Finnegans Wake, but Alchemy runs throughout Finnegans Wake in many other ways. I found an interesting JSTOR resource called, "Alchemy in Finnegans Wake", by Barbara DiBernard. Unfortunately it will not allow me to copy and paste, but visit the link and just read a little bit for yourself. Definitely interesting!

also, I know what an alchemist is, but just to double check I went to Wikipedia: and I put in bold that part that I thought really hit home in The Alchemist, "achieving ultimate wisdom", is perhaps being enlightened....

Alchemy, originally derived from the Ancient Greek word khemia (Χημία) meaning
"art of transmuting metals", later arabicized as al-kimia (الكيمياء), is both a
philosophy and an ancient practice focused on the attempt to change base metals
into gold, investigating the preparation of the "elixir of longevity", and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the
alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing
unusual properties.[1] The practical aspect of alchemy generated the basics of
modern inorganic chemistry, namely concerning procedures, equipment and the
identification and use of many current substances.

The Alchemist, initial thoughts

The other night I couldn't sleep, so I decided it was time to start The Alchemist. I figured I would read a couple pages, go to sleep, and resume reading in the morning. Instead, I was up till about 3 am until I finished the book. If this is the lowbrow popular book, then I'm impressed. I loved this book, my life is changed. In fact I gave my copy of The Alchemist to Sutter's mom and brother, and went and bought another copy for myself. In fact, I was thinking about how recommendable this book is, compared to T.S. Eliot's, Four Quartets. While I would reccomend T.S. Eliot, The Alchemist would be easier to give to people and know they could read and be moved, because it is easier to understand.

*spoiler alert*

The Alchemist was for Theme #5, Dolce Domum, Home sweet Home, To arrive where we started, (and know the place for the first time). This seems pretty easy to pick out, Santiago has to travel all the way to the pyramids in Egypt, to return to find the treasure buried in the abandoned church where he had spent the night with his sheep. When he sleeps there it feels haunted, but when he returns he knows that it is where is Personal Legend has led him. Santiago had to leave and go through all sorts of experiences, Crystal merchant, being robbed three times, crossing the desert, etc, you know if you read the book, and he truly knows the abandoned church, but rather he truly knows himself when he returns. He finds his personal legend, but he also knows the Soul of the World. Just a cool book, and I completely understand why people love it so much. I want to find my personal legend and some treasure and really know myself and the place where I started.

I noticed that in The Tempest, Prospero brings everyone into a magic circle, and The alchemist from the Oasis puts the cobra in a circle where it is calm and tame. Just a little thing I noticed.

"And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand." page 12-13.

I wish I had underlined more, but it was so late at night and I just wanted to enjoy the book. As Haroun led me into a fantasy world of stories, Santiago captivated my heart and soul.

page 152, "The boy reached the Soul of the World, and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles."
This passage reminds me of Chapter IV, Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, "Verily, not for the sake of the husband, my dear, is the husband loved, but is loved for the sake of the self. Atman is the self, and Atman is Brahman, Brahman is the absolute, supreme reality, the divine. So that the Brahman is the real attraction for wife to husband, and vice versa. As Santiago's soul was also the soul of God, Atman is Brahman. That is just a little connection I couldn't help thinking about as I read the book. Sanitago's whole experience seems like an epiphany, when he returns to the abandoned church and knows the place for the first time, and as he reaches a state of mind that allows him to become the wind, it is a mystical experience.

Love it.

Class Notes 3/10

The lines we are memorizing.....Filming at The Baxter on Willson and Main, upstiars from Ted's and The Bacchus, April 6, Tuesday, 6pm - 9pm. Wear black. If so inspired, make a mask.....artistic, not cheesy.


look up Matrix in the dictionary, womb, where babies form, ground mass where fossils form.

Doug shared the birth story of his daughter

No matter how calm the entrance into the world, first breath (that has never been breathed before) shakes the little body. it is traumatic.


Dr. Sexson - "Haven't you ever been in a dark alley in Missoula? They're all birth trauma."


remember before we are born


Memory Theatre


Miranda crying now to make up for not remembering crying when she was 3


Aladdin....final words of genie.....mythology....


What is the Matrix?

Most used and repeated word in The Tempest, "Now"

"that which are living can only die...."
Prospero is the Director, everything has to be ritualisticly perfect
Prospero has designed everything...after marooning people, has to change their lives in 3 hours. Also has to marry off his daughter. Calaban paired with Prospero from the very beginning.
- Political mariiage, Miranda to Ferdinand
- set Ariel free

*Prospero is not just one thing, doing an enormous amount of symbolic work.

Now in 20th century we see Prospero in a negative light, white plantation owner, opressive, Calaban played as African American, Prospero portrayed as the asshole of assholes, teaches Calaban new language...HOWEVER this interpretation is incomplete. Prospero is niether one thing or the other, he his the benign magician, the dark magician, kind, oppressive, a liminal figure. (a trickster figure, to teach us something about ourselves?)

Shakespeare aware of tarot cards, alchemy, psychic technology

*an uncurtaining in the Tempest.....removes the curtain to reveal man and woman playing chess....Miranda and Ferdinand....
extrodinary, expose the machinery, people brought into the magical cirlce....forgives everyone......

Jameson's Irish Whiskey

Sound at all familiar?

Class Notes 3/5

Notes:

Gluten Issues? talk to Rio

The Tempest...really a storm? still a point of uncertainty by some

Mnemosyne

clowns to murder Prospero, Calaban says to get the books, he knows how important they are

represent appearance of a storm...
but people are forever fooling us....(I can never tell the natural hair color of some of my friends)
magician fools us...it's all a trick, an illusion...
but we think the world is real...

what is the role of the father in comedy? he is the obstacle between the boy and the girl
boy and girl make googoo eyes at eachother, love at first site
Prospero knows his role, has to make himself the obstacle
"as my soul prompts it"
stage manager is Ariel, doing the special effects, not reall, an illusion
Prospero managing everything....
Prospero is tired of the same thing as was Bill in Ground Hogs Day.......
and the people who work in Disneyland...every aspect of the city is a simulation of an imagined place...
(I remember Sutter explaining postmoderism to me using Disneyland as an example. To get to Disneyland you have to park and then walk through the parking lot, then you enter into Disney Land which is a simulation of the real world, with different countries and attractions and food etc. Disneyland is presented as this real world, and the parking lot isn't real, but the parking lot is where reality is, and Disneyland is where reality is simulated. Something like that."

Boatswain!

Backett wants us to think about 'I' and think about the sutobiography, we aren't the same people we were and when writing our autobiography it cannot be accurate because we've changed, it is a fiction, it is a lie.

"Miranda's Attendents": memory, medievalism, cyberspace and soul, article by Dr. Sexson
life as dream or illusion
Miranda remembers having 4 or 5 attendents...Prospero asks, what else do you see, or rather he says, "What see'st that else/In the dark backward and abysm of time?" 1.2
(we are to memorize this sentence and use it on someone....just for fun)
Prospero is taking Mirana back through her memory....
little theatrical performance of someone sitting in a dark room with images projected on the wall
Prospero situates Miranda in a memory drama, recollections are factual and mythic
understanding extended by Frances Yates, The Art of Memory.

temenos: In religious discourse in English, Temenos has also come to refer to a territory, plane, receptacle or field of deity or divinity. Temenos is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct.

"the more you remember...the more you remember." - Dr. Sexson

Kyle started reciting the top 50 guitarists from Rolling Stone

See Christina's blog and her Allegory of the Cave drawing, quite good.....which led Dr. Sexson to bring up Don Quixote.......

(But what I thought of was the movie called The Truman Show with Jim Carry. The man grows up on a TV show in a dome where everything is simulated for him! His marriage, his job, the sun, the weather, everything! Until he starts to see the inner mechanisms that run the simulation. One time in the elevator he sees people he isn't supposed to, a light falls from the sky, he notices simulated habits and movements of people....and sails to the outer edge of the simulated ocean to the simulated sky, where there is a door and he steps out into the real sun for the very first time.)

This fits the theme, life as dream or illusion, The Truman Show, we accept the reality with which we are presented:



Passage to India, read it

Class Notes 3/3

Notes:

Dr. Sexson started listing people's blogs to read and I couldn't keep up.....so just read every one's blogs, but we are supposed to be doing that anyway....

pg. 186 Molloy: Moran hears voices in his head

Sarah Knox, read her blog, other people's language driving our life....hers is a sophisticated blog, with a good connection between Stranger Than Fiction and Beckett

The Tempest (disliked by James the Rat)
Prospero breaks character, asking for applause....

So: the story of the Tempest is not particularly compelling....Duke Prospero spent his time reading books(magic and alchemy), brother usurped (sounds like Jacob and Esau) and he exiles Prospero with 3year old daughter and counsellor and provisions
they get to an island, inhabited by a witch & spirit of earth as ugly deformed son and spirit air
Prospero makes earth and air his servants...daughter grows up to about 14 or 15 years old....Calaban likes her.... Ship goes by island....Alanzo (participated in the overthrow of Prospero)

*Shakespeare's attempt to tell the entire history of everything in one play

Prospero = Shakespeare

in common with Joyce the consistent theme of the collision of brothers.....and old theme......Bible, Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel......

Tempest, tempo, time........play about time

beginning of the play is a storm..........or is it?? NOT. There is not storm. It is an illusion.

Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare -- Philomenla, Ovid

So, There is not storm, but the characters act like a storm...(which would be what they were doing anyway acting on a stage, just people pretending there is a storm, making it look like there was)

Miranda is one who is filled with awe and wonder....this is the lens she sees the world through.....Bizz and me.......innocent

How do we know there is no storm? ship is in the bay....Prospero simulates storm....simulacrum, simulacra

Matrix (MOVIE) the book in the beginning where Neo(Rio) stashes his money, a hollow book, "Simulacra and Simulation" someone was thinking when they made this movie!

connection between Tempest and the Matrix
Miranda, given over to imperiousness of what stimulates senses
"If by your art...."
knows it is a simulation, isn't real....but can't help but believe it

Plato, Allegory of the Cave....shadows on wall....

Morpheus, "welcome to the desert of the real"

Wizard of OZ..." Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."
we know this actually means pay great attention to the man behind the curtain...expose the machinery that creates the illusions...
Wizard pretends to be a bad wizard....for Dorothy to get information about illusions....goes home, OZ a simulation

Prospero to Miranda: Collect yourself!

read Jon Orsi's blog for a look at some local demotic language

Tempest 1.2 about page 11
Miranda, ignorance is bliss
Prospero, tis time
When Prospero instructs Miranda is important information...mnemonic technician....
true knowledge of un-forgetting
Prospero....(Dr. Sexson) acts as shaman....with daughter
"the hour has now come..."
Prospero, remembering is the key to recollection...
What has Prospero unlocked??? move from personal recollection to mythological, attendents...9....muses

Matrix, glitch.....deja vu, black cat

HW: think about attendants, and what does glitch mean?

Class Notes 3/1 & Beckett

Notes: (My own input will be in parentheses)

World as Dream & Illusion

( The above theme leads me think of the world as Maya, from Hindu philosophy,Advaita Vedanta philosophy, it is all an illusion. Everything is Maya. Since Brahman is the only truth, Maya cannot be true. Imaginary man running up an imaginary tree from an imaginary Elephant.)

To Do: We should start blogging on The Tempest, The Matrix, and Stranger then Fiction

In class we watched an abbreviated version of Stranger Than Fiction (Thank you Rio!)
Lowbrow version of Beckett = Movie, Stranger Than Fiction

Blog: How does this movie connect to:
-Fiction as life
-Samuel Beckett
?

fiction being truth??
(But isn't fiction often more interesting than reality? Why do people read books? or watch movies....to see a more interesting and different [fictional] reality. This makes me think of The Decay of Lying, Wilde, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". [from wikipedia] Wilde holds that art sets the aesthetic principles by which people perceive life. What is found in life and nature is not what is really there, but is that which artists have taught people to find there, through art.)

We are all in a story........(our own story I suppose)
But what if we are all characters in a story....?

In the movie he saves the boy from being killed by the bus, and he says, "I had to." Not only because he is a compassionate man, but because it was written.
(Am I writing this blog because that is how I am written in a novel starring myself?....or maybe someone else? or maybe no one? or maybe the human race? I can't help but recommend Paul Auster's book Travels in the Scriptorium.......again. If you liked the movie Stranger Than Fiction, you might like this short novel. I will lend it out.)

********************************************

Samuel Beckett link, Samuel Beckett's Postmodern Fictions by Brian Finney

The unstable, heterogeneous and dispersed social reality of the postmodern
cannot be contained within any totalizing theory. Without such metanarratives,
Lyotard argues, each work of art, "working without rules in order to formulate
the rules of what will have been done," becomes a unique event describing its
own process of coming into being.

This is what Beckett's fictions do.
Each one starts out anew, inventing its rules as it goes along. Its subject is
itself, the narrating voice creating a world out of language. Before, between
and after the jabber of words that constitute the fiction is silence. How to
express silence through sound? Beckett is preoccupied with this dilemma from the
beginning of his career.