Notes February 29, 2012

• Word of the day: ARCHITECTURE
• Presentations
• Myths of Storytelling
• Kane
• leaned towards the superiority of oral tradition vs the literary tradition
• myths = stories that the Earth tells that we overhear
• orality existed before literature
• context of speculation and irony
• have to write about orality for anyone to know about the evils of literacy
• Expectations
• each chapter is prefaced with a literary work
• interiorize the literary aspect
• need to memorize good portion of it
• immerse people in the story
• Discussion/Presentation
• What is Kane trying to say in the chapter?? Explain
• Show the reflective/conceptual ideas within the chapter
• show the romantic appreciation of the oral tradition
• Museyroom
• make architectually situated
• Base model on memory theater
• if multiple theater combine into one!
• know Loci
• Example: centerfold of Yates
• Gordanno Bruno would also be an example as he created the most complex museyroom in history
• The Art of Memory
• page 123
• Yates was WRONG on her discussion of Hypneratomachia Poliphili
• Hypneratomachia = Sleep/Dream Love Fight/Strife
• Wikipedia Link for the story
• Memory gone crazy
• Consolation of Philosophy
• book discussed in relation to Hypnerotomachi Poliphili
• John Crowley
• 3 book series
• 1st book: Agept about Bruno
• 2nd book: Love & Sleep about Hypnerotomachi Poliphili
• Hypnerotomachi Poliphili
• represents the Greek god Priapus 
• God of male genitalia
• secularized story of love, sexuality, erotics of architecture
• 1 of the most unreadable books in literature
• written in 1499 but not translated until 1999
• translated by Joscelyn Godwin
• Dream within a Dream
• mystery of western culture
• woodcuts
• inscriptions which no one knows what they mean
• probably the key to some memory mystery
• The Da Vinci Code
• Rule of Four
• 2004 
• obsessed with hypno

    Looking at Schlain's timeline yesterday in class, I started to wonder how we, as humans, even reached the stage of being able to have an Oral Tradition. Did it start because one person was more intelligent than the rest of the humans alive at that time or did orality somehow start because of an unconscious collective? The same question then later applies to the written tradition. These questions bothered me so much that paying attention in my later classes of the afternoon was probably one of the hardest things I have done in a long while. 
    When I was finally able to start actively pursuing the answers to these questions, I wondered where to start. As a frame of reference, I started writing up the questions, that I would like to be able to answer about the origins of the oral and literary traditions. Once I got started, my list of questions just kept growing exponentially and it is still continuing to grow. My first and most obvious question was "How is the collective unconscious related to the oral tradition?" which then led to "If the oral tradition was brought about by the collective unconscious, how do both of them relate to mythology?" and when I think of the mythology, archetypes immediately come to my mind. Just from those three questions, I found my starting places: Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Northrop Frye, & Erich Neuman. Immediately I started collecting and reading books by all of these brilliant men. 
    After about 6 hours of reading, the point I am at is that there is a distinct and compelling connection between the origins of the oral tradition, the origins of the literary traditions, the collective unconscious, and the roles that archetypal mythology in the collective and personal unconsciousness. 
    As most of us already know, Jung is the father of the collective unconscious. He is the man that coined the term and brought about its presence into the conscious minds of scholars worldwide. As was discussed yesterday in class, the woman creates which is right-brained function thus making it of the oral tradition. The right-brained function is connected to the mythos while the left-brained functions are more in tune with logos. As Schlain said, the mythos era was the era of the matriarchal mythologies leading me back to the idea of the Earth Goddess. I will expand even more on this aspect in later blogs. Women, especially those of the matriarchal mythos, are associated with serpents. Serpents are in turn related to Ouroboros, which represents renewal of life and the cycles of life (Earth Goddess). The matriarchal mythos, right-brain functions, and ouroboros are all connected to the ideas of Jung, which revolves around the concept of the collective unconscious in the personal and the intrapersonal sense. Matriarchal mythos leads me to Frye and Campbell because who else has studied the archetypes of the mythology more the Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell? Thus I will be sifting through their work for the foreseeable future to find all of the archetypes of matriarchal mythos that I can find, even though I will probably spend the most time on the archetype of the Earth Goddess, specifically when in relation to Deo and Kore and the Eleusinian Mysteries. 
    On the opposite end of the spectrum of the matriarchal mythos is the logos or logical. Logos is represented by the Freudian concepts of the patriarchal mythos which lead to or was brought around by the literary culture. "Man speaks and it is done" conceptualizes perfectly the culture of the literary world. I have not yet read the Goddess and the Alphabet but from what I have gathered from Dr. S., I think that it will further my thesis that the oral tradition and the literary tradition have been personified into the psychological concepts of Freud and Jung. Their different approaches on how the human psyche is structured looks directly into the points of how the human cultures shifted from oral to literary. Which supports Ong's hypothesis that literature did restructure the human brain and even, and more importantly, the human pysche or soul.
    What truly interests me however, is the collective unconscious and its primary role in the oral tradition. Obviously I like the literary tradition or else I would not be able to tell you or let alone think through these thoughts that have been going through my mind like crazy. But that is a periphery concept for me at this point. The primary concepts that I wish to explore is a conundrum to which I hope to find an answer but one may not exist. Did the oral tradition lead to the collective unconscious, which is basically a library of mythological archetypes or did the collective unconscious somehow form then open up the world of oral communication with the mythological archetypes already formed? I do not know the answer to this question as I see it sort of like which came first the chicken or the egg. But either direction that my research leads towards, I know that it will somehow involve the Earth Goddess as she is the main matriarchal mythos figure that represents ouroboros. 
   This is the point that I have been able to coherently form all of my thoughts on my search. The rest of my ideas are still forming but I have no doubt that as I read further into Jung, Campbell, Ong, Schlain, and Frye that the roles of the collective unconscious and matriarchal mythos archetypes will become even more apparent in the oral tradition and how it structured the human psyche for thousands of years. 

12 Sons of Jacob

1. I walked into Mixers on Boot Night Thursdays, just like I do most weeks and I look to the bar to my right and there is this pretty attractive dark haired man. He introduces himself as REUBEN around a mouthful of a huge and disgusting looking rueben sandwich. Right away I think that this is kind of weird as Mixers serves Mexican but I don't dwell on that as he managed to spit some of his sandwich in my face and laughing called it SEA food.
2. Next I look at the man sitting a couple bar stools over. I don't really even focus on what he looks like because I am astound at how loud he is yelling at the TV because he can't hear SIMON from American Idol, insulting some poor singer called EON. This poor man Simon says sings like an OX. 
3. Right away, I realize I want to avoid this guy like the plague! So I look over by the beer pong table and see a cowboy bending over in his LEVI jeans. I decide that it DEFINITELY more interesting than any guy yelling at the bar. However, it doesn't take long to see his girlfriend who is practically JOINED at the hip with him. By the way the girlfriend looked like an OX!!
4. Moving on.... Next is a guy who has obviously been at the bar for quite a while. I go sit by him because he is pretty good looking. Like a younger Brad Pitt (before he got too old to be attractive to me anymore). He even has the wavy, blonde LION-like hair that Brad is so famous for. So I ask this guy what his name is and he says JU. I am immediately intrigued by this name. I have never heard it before so I of course ask how he got the name. All he can say is DAH, dah, dah. Now I wasn't sure if he couldn't speak because of a lack of brain cells, being at the bar too long, or that he was astounded by my good looks but I decided to move on with my perusal of the bar.
5. At this point I decide its time for a drink! Going back up to the bar, I sit by this guy ZEB who was in my statistics class last year. He starts telling me about how he is going on a cruise SHIP for Spring Break. After talking for a while he asks, "can U LEND me some $$$ for a taxi to go home?"
6. As Zebulen leaves, one of my favorite songs come up over the sound system. I'm a star, which kind of sounds like ISSACHAR. Some guy starts doing karaoke to the song but his singing sounds more like braying like a DONKEY than actual singing.
7. As I am trying to figure out how to block out this horrific noise, I hear some yelling going on at the TVs in the back. I look over and see my childhood friend DAN, yelling at some sports show. He is yelling that the foul was obvious and not at all sneak like a SNAKE! I decide that this might not be the right time to reacquaint myself with an old friend and move on yet again.
8. As Dan is yelling, another friend comes walking in. He looks pretty beat up. He said he got into a bar fight earlier. "GAD, what were thinking getting into a bar fight? You got TRAMPLED!
9. I throw up my hands at the foolishness of men and walk away. Walking over by the pool table a guy who looks identical to ASHton KutchER runs right into me. By this point I'm pretty annoyed with me and ask why he wasn't looking where he was going. Just like Ashton, this guy even dressed like a spoiled RICH  boy. 
10. I decided to go check out the dance floor at this point as nothing of too much interest is going on at the bar. When I get over there, I see two men beating the living tar out of each other over which Taylor Swift song is the best one. And being the nosy person that I am, I wade in and pull them apart. After breaking it up, I ask the first one if he was hurt. He response was "NA, nothing PHATALI injured. To make matters even funnier, the song DEAR John was playing as the background noise. 
11. After getting away from the T. Swift fanatics, I look around, hardly believing that I haven't very of my friends. Usually we all meet up for Boot Night! Right then walk in my best buddies, JOESEPH and BENJAMIN. Immediately JOESEPH orders multiple rounds of shots so as to be FRUITFUL in his determination to get very drunk! And BENJAMIN grabs his drink while looking around like a WOLF for some new female prey to hit on!

After talking to these two, I decide it is definitely time for me to go home and go to bed. I need to be well-rested for Dr. Sexson's class the next day. 

The Conscious and Unconscious Aspects of Orality

    Before tonight I don't think I have truly appreciated Ong's insights. I have gotten a little behind in his book so it was my mission tonight to get completely caught up but I think that I may fail. My failure will actually be quite an accomplishment in this context. I will fail because of the following passage. It has intrigued me so much that I have had to put the book down so that I can try to understand what is being said.

  "Talk implements conscious life but it wells up into consciousness out of unconscious depths, though of course with the conscious as well as unconscious co-operation of society." Ong 81

  

  I have been pondering this quote for over an hour in the back of my mind and am still murky on exactly what it means. So I think that the only course of action is to break it down into minuscule pieces.

"Talk implements conscious life"

   This fragment is the most straightforward part of the quote's entirety. The ability to speak is what allows us, as human beings, to be able to express out thoughts. To be able convey meaning to one another. It gives us the ability to accomplish actions as a collective instead of just an individual. That is the basics of this one piece of the puzzle, which by itself is quite understandable and easy to grasp.

"but it well up into consciousness out of the unconscious depth"

    Again, I think that this fraction of the entirety is pretty basic. All thoughts that are part of our conscious, meaning that we realize that we are thinking of them, come from the part of our psyche, soul, or mind that we cannot know. This signifies that speaking is indeed a natural function of human beings. I take this to mean that speaking is similar to breathing. We do not have to think about it to accomplish it. My meaning is not that we would not have to think to have an effective type of oral communication but that it is instinctive to try to communicate orally, whether or not it would work would depend on the conscious thoughts that direct the intricacies of the language used. 

"though of course with the conscious as well as unconscious co-operation of society"

    This goes back to what I was saying above. Without the conscious and unconscious help of society as a whole, oral communication would have no realistic or practical place in our lives. In fact without this collective  cooperation, society as a whole would not function. I think that the unconscious and conscious aspects of society both have very significant roles that need to be explored. 

The conscious aspect signifies to the ever evolving language that we use today. We are consciously choosing to change our language and how we use it. As individuals, we may not choose to do so but as a societal whole it is a conscious choice. We don't respond in a vigorous negative manner when introduced to knew words such as texting or googling something. To prove my point, the spell check which is very persnickety did not yell at the words texting or googling, which it probably would have done so even ten years prior to today. 

    The unconscious aspects that Ong is referring to, I believe is a reference to Jung's collective unconscious. Our collective unconscious has allowed for us to build up to this point in our evolution of our oral mannerisms. We no longer have to work as a society to setup our language at the beginning of each generation. We have become so ingrained as a society that it is not even a question of how a child knows how to formulate words at very young ages. We have been ingrained from the womb to recognize oral cues, specifically those of our primary caretakers. These primary caretakers encourage the unconsciousness of a fetus to recognize their voices and even try to improve their intelligence before there is even consciousness. The example of women who play classical music for their unborn babies comes to mind. 

    The page that I found this quote on continues on to compare the aspects of orality that I have mentioned above with the artificiality of writing or script. To supplement Ong's point of artificiality continue thinking of the classical music example that I have just given. There is no way for the collective unconscious to try and influence the individual unconscious at this point. Thus proving that orality is a much more basic and primary part of the human psyche and that it stems from the unconscious mind just as much or more so than it comes from the individual conscious mind. 


    Also I would love to use the quote above as my one liner but obviously it does not fit into that specific category. However, here are a couple that I think goes along with my theme while still fitting into the requirements that accompany the theme of one-liners


"Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness" Ong 81


"Writing heightens consciousness" Ong 81


"To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance" Ong 81

My Quest to the Brave and Reckless Gods

    I have to be completely honest. I am struggling in this class to come up with anything interesting to say or blog about! In the Oceans class, I feel like I can't shut up but here I've hit a road block. In fact it looked a lot like this road block in my mind!
    So I decided to do what any intelligent student would do. Which is go read my peers' work and see if I come up with any ideas from that. Naturally I picked to read Nick's blogs, which not only blew my socks off but also blew off my boots! His insight and passion for his subjects astounded and intimidated me. Nick's discussion of hypnosis was particularly interesting. I agree with him that probably all of of us have been hypnotized at least sometime in our life.  I admit to being hypnotized on a regular basis through reading. This hypnosis normally comes when I am reading novels that allow me to leave my consciousness and go to where my brave and reckless gods live. When I get there I allow them to go free and fly. The most amazing thing is that I am flying with them. Ironically enough, these novels that allow me to enter this place usually are about the gods in some sense or else I am drawing connections to these gods, specifically Persephone or Poseidon. That is why I chose to use them as my 51 items to memorize.
    When reciting my items for class last week, I was able to hypnotize myself in room full of other living breathing people. While speaking I no longer saw or heard any of my peers. In fact, many of you may have noticed it was hard for Dr. Sexson to get my attention for me to stop. It was hard and almost painful for me to leave my self-hypnosis state and come back into my conscious self. In Nick's blog, he talked about how he sometimes has epiphanies during class lectures. Well that was one for me. I will openly admit that I have before tuned out in classes (never in Dr. S's though) but never have I been so far gone that I could not hear or see the people around me. It was an amazing feeling. In fact just writing about it now brings me back to a shadow of that state.
    After experiencing that wonderful feeling, I spent this past weekend trying to figure out when else I have been so enthralled to feel it, even if I did not know I was hypnotized. My answer was, unsurprisingly, when I was a child. So I spent much of my weekend regressing to my childhood. Now it isn't possible for me to be childlike for an entire weekend but I did my best. In order to put me back to that state of mind, I watched multiple Disney movies and cartoons, including Sleeping Beauty, Atlantis, The Lion King, and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. Most of these movies, I haven't seen in years but I still remembered various lines and scenes as if I had just watched them the day before. And I should remember these characters as they were my imaginary friends. Why would I create someone knew when I could just expand on the friends that I had already made? So my BFFs were Ariel, Meg, and Mulan.

   









  


 I think that it is important that I not only realize that I remember more of how I was a child but why each of these movies appealed to me at this time in my life. When picking my movies for the weekend, I had an unlimited amount of choices due to Netflix and Hastings but these movies stuck out to me for a reason. So here goes my analysis of Disney movies.
    The first movie I chose to watch this past weekend was Sleeping Beauty. Why this movie appealed to me is pretty basic. For the Oceans class, we needed to displace a fairytale and I chose to use Sleeping Beauty. But upon watching the movie and reading the story out of Grimm's Fairy tales, I think that this story appealed to me because of its use of Fauna, Flora, and Merriweather. I may be very wrong in this but to me they seem to symbolize the Muses. Typically there is 9 Muses but within the realm of stories, the most powerful numbers are 3 and 9. And let's face it, 9 fairies would not have worked within the context of this story. So I am putting Fauna, Flora, and Merriweather on my blog hoping that they will continue to give me inspiration for the rest of the semester.

     The next fairytale that intrigued my conscious and subconscious this weekend was Atlantis. I think that this story appealed to me because of its ancient origins and the loss of its roots. No one knew any longer how the mysteries of their civilization worked, just as I don't know how the Eleusinian Mysteries work. But because of this cartoon, I now have hope that I will to find the answers to my mysteries. I think that in a closer relation to this specific class, Atlantis relates to it because we are all exploring our own Atlantis, which is the recesses and crevices of our minds and memories. We have all forgotten how to work the ancient tools that we employed as children. Through our quest to become adults, we have lost the ability to remember the things that we have forgotten, namely we have forgotten everything. So I encourage all of you to find the show that represents your Atlantis in order to hypnotize yourself into remembering the language that will enable you to use your ancient tools.  

The next stop on my quest through my childhood was to the kingdom of MufasaSimba. As we all know  I cry pretty easily so you can just imagine the waterworks that were happening during this movie. However, the character that drew my attention was Rafiki. He is the wise-old man that symbolizes the truth within all of us. Rafiki is my own personal Hoopoe. He shows that the truth is within all of us. Not only does he illustrate this with his words but he also makes his words memorable. No one ever forgets Rafiki! He is kind of like Dr. Sexson in that way. Simba was guided into remembering who he had forgotten he was just like Dr. Sexson is guiding us all into remembering our childhood and the things we have forgotten.
    Now I know that very rarely does Dr. Sexson have complimentary things to say about Disney productions but like in the other class, I have to defend them as having their place of importance in the literary world. I agree that often they have stereotypical attributes that are not beneficial for children and young adults but they allow us all to set free the brave and reckless gods within us. In fact I would even go so far as to say that these Disney characters have become our gods and heroes, in the sense that they have replaced the ones of ancient Greece.
    Now that I have finished with this post and have been re-reading my work, I am starting to wonder how this relates to the Oral Tradition. In my head it was all sort of jumbled together when I started but my hope and aim was that it would all come together in a linear sort of way. I think what my subconscious is trying to tell me is that in order to be successful at building my memory palaces and becoming a part of the Oral Tradition is that I need to submit to my gods, both Greek and Disney. After submission will come the phase where I can use them as tools within my memory palaces. So don't be surprised if for the rest of the semester, you read about my memorization objects being personified by Ariel, Hades, or Shrek.

Notes February 13, 201

• POA memory system
• from Foer's book
• Tristan's blog
• Nick
• Onset of literacy= onset of forgetfulness
• Calvin & Hobbes cartoon
• once the boy moves out of the imaginal space the tiger once again becomes just a stuffed animal
• put away childish things
• Breanna's blog
• 1 liners from Ong
• everyone is to add at least 1 more line to her blog
• writing restructures consciousness
• In the oral tradition most things are ephemeral
• writing is a technology
• technology is something that extends the natural person: Sexson
• as interiority increase= literacy increase
• in the oral community, a person is the center of the universe
• Presentations
• explain Kane's idea
• provide an oral presentation of literature
• storytelling 
• commentary
• educate and entertain!
• psychically real
• Phoenicians invented the alphabet
• spread to the rest of the world
• Greeks restructured consciousness
• Plato
• paradoxical
• said that literature was bad but had to write it down to be listened to
• All three texts tell the same story
•  Thedorus
• Socrates talking about an Egyptian inventing writing
• would make people have reminders and not remember 

Notes February 10, 2012

• Tia's blog
• 2D memory palace
• labyrinth
• posters/ Museyroom
• Cabinets of curiosity
• complex
• Jennifer T.'s blog
• well-lit memory palace
• Revisions Psychology
• imaginative soul-
• imaginal
• tortured psychology
• "call this the veil of soul making"
• Seth's blog
• received a text from Ong
• Horrifying images
• stay close to the image
• alchemy
• within a closed vessel
• entire universe in a room
• iteratrio
• Imaginal space
• Louie's FABULOUS drawings
• Purification of the soul
• alchemy
• become perfect
• Summary of Ong
• Rio's blog has link
• chirographic
• writing by hand: script
• writing changes the way we think
• restructures consciousness
• noble savage
• view of the primary oral tradition
• Alphabet & the Goddess
• Leonard Shlain
• timeline of the world's progression of literature and its effects
• decline of the feminine
• written culture= law
• came from an Apollo story
• real mother is the father
• mother is the incubator
• consequences of literacy

Notes February 8, 2012

• Renaissance Humanism
• Petrarch
• carry book with them all the time
• Confessions of St. Augustine
• Chapter 10 
• everything centers on man/woman
• Term papers will be posters
•  memory palace
• Nick's blog
• hypnotized
• youtube video- needs warning
• reading= hypnosis
• Magi (magician)
• not only man is the center but the man's powers as well
• hermetic
• imaginal space
• imaginary friend
• Nicolo Machiavelli
• "better to be feared than loved"
• wrote poems to imaginable mistresses
• psychic reality
• response create existence
• "as if her were alive"- "Als obo"
• Jennifer T's blog
• iconoclasm
• Spencer's blog
• Ong
• primary orality
• people never experienced literacy or thought of literature 
• secondary orality
• predominately world of images
• visual literacy
• Shelby's blog
• words go out of existence
• ephemeral 
• Ong 71
• immortality
• orality vs literacy
• Figure of 10 stairs
• Elliot
• Wisdom of the Mythtellers
• death= death of library in oral tradition
• 
  

My 59 memorized items

I have decided that I can't procrastinate any longer and that I need to get my 51 things memorized! I have decided to memorize the Greek Gods names, their Roman form, and at least one of the things that they are known for. I chose to memorize these things because I am OBSESSED with Greek mythology. I often read the myths in my spare time or see their influences in all types of literature. But it is frustrating to me when I get them mixed up and have to look them up. Hopefully after I finish building my memory palace this confusion will be a thing of the past.

1. I am walking up the steps to my house and see Demeter raking the yard (which really I need to do this weekend). She is actually changed forms to look like this guy Demeter that was in my accounting class last year. With the leaves she is making a series of different piles instead of just one big one. (Demeter, Ceres, Vegetation)
2. One the other side of the lawn, I see a big pile of dirt that has a face in the mound. This reminds me of how Gaea is represented in the Percy Jackson books. (Gaea, Earth)
3. Next I look up to the balcony and see Zeus drawing lightning bolts from the sky. But weird thing is that the bolts originate from the planet Jupiter instead of just the sky. (Zeus, Jupiter, Sky)
4. I go up the steps and start to open the front door but it starts talking to me. There is a man's face in the middle of the door saying I have to solve a riddle in order to begin my journey. This face has a hooked nose that looks like a J. (Janus, Beginnings)
5. I solve the riddle and go inside. The first thing I see is the rose table. On the Rose Table is a plaque that says for "June". (Hera, Juno, Marriage)
6. On top of the rose table is a silver cooking pan full of flowers and other fauna.  (Pan, Faunus, Nature)
7. I turn to my right and go into the Formal Living room. Over by the front window, I see the sun shining in on this gorgeous man who is sucking helium out of a balloon with a big A on it. The man is wearing a Polo shirt.  (Apollo, Helios, Sun)
8. Next I go into the nook and see a leprechaun eating tune for lunch. (Fortuna, Luck)
9. I look into the Dining Room and see this man in a purple track suit drinking Sparkling Cider straight from the bottle. He is getting ready to head to a bachelor party. (Dionysus, Bacchus, Wine)
10. I go up the stairs and look into my room. There is see Persephone eating pomegranates and coring an apple while watching the Waking Dead. (Persephone, Kore, Queen of the Dead)
11. Around the corner is this big army guy looking into the Recruitment closet. Rambo is wearing pearls, high heels, and an airy looking dress. He is preparing for the war of formal recruitment while eating a Mars Bar candy. (Ares, Mars, War)
12. Walking down the hallway a little ways in the bathroom. I go in and see the bathtub filled to the brim and this miniature figurine of Percy Jackson playing in the water to to the tune of row row row your boat. (Poseidon, Neptune, Seas)
13. Leaving the bathroom, I go to the loft and see a blond woman watching love stories, specifically A Walk to Remember, a great love story. She is doing this while shaving her legs with a Venus Razor. (Aphrodite, Venus, Love)
14. Having toured the upstairs, I head back to main floor and see a man standing by our intercom system. There are little crabs running all over the intercom system. Marie Curie is right beside him announcing "man on upper". (Hermes, Mercury, Messenger)
15. I go past the intercom system into the TV room and see that the fire is going in hearth. I see a girl I went to school with Tia, wearing a bright yellow vest. (Hestia, Vesta, Hearth)
16. On the big flat-screen, I see a documentary about Princess Dianna. She is wearing a bright orange hunting vest while painting new art pieces. (Dianna, Artemis, Hunting)
17. Next going down stairs, I go to the laundry room and see that it has been transformed into my shop at home. I see my brother making cans into horse shoes. He is wearing this huge jersey that has the a dragon on the back with the name festus. (Hephaestus, Vulcan, Blacksmith)
18. Going into the Pit, I see the TV turned onto Wizards of Waverly Place where a cat has been turned into a little boy. (Hecate, Magic)
19. On the couch is a cherubic little boys playing with arrows who is eating roses. (Cupid, Eros, Love) 
20. Next I go into the hallway where all the lights are off and it is super dark. There is Mick Jagger who is dressed up as the cartoon Pluto. (Hades, Pluto, Underworld)
21. Lastly I head to the Chapter Room and at my spot in the front is Athena. She looks like Professor McGonagal from Harry Potter and is lecturing the chapter on the wisdom of war tactics. (Athena, Minerva, Wisdom)

Now we will see if I can remember all of these things for the test!

First came Orality, then Literacy, but what is the now??

"Shown how shifts hitherto labeled as shifts from magic to science, or from the so-called 'prelocical' to the more and more 'rational' state of consciousness, or from Levi-Strauss's 'savage' mind to domesticated thought, can be more economically and cogently explained as shifts from orality to various states of literacy" Ong 29. 
    I know that we were supposed to blog about Ong's one liners but when I read this passage it struck me as inspiration especially when I considered the states of literacy, specifically the state that we are currently in. 
    For the past month, we have been talking about the shift from the Oral Tradition to the Literate Tradition. How we, specifically Americans, have gone from being able to function using only our words to the point where we have to depend almost completely on writing in our daily lives. There has been differing views on whether this shift is having negative or positive impacts on us and more importantly on our future generations. However, the point that I want to very much discuss is the direction that we are now headed. We have left behind the arena of literature for the developing one of  technology. No longer are any of us writing but now we are typing, texting, tweeting, googling, and blogging. One may argue that these are all forms of writing but looking at myself and my peers, I am inclined to disagree. I believe that we are slipping into a sub-culture of literature that is quickly losing its oral and writing traditions. If we lose these traditions, what are we left with? 
    The oral tradition was used to tell stories, pass down traditions, and sustain religions. With the discovery of writing, we then used writing and books to pass down these traditions, keep our religions alive, and to entertain the masses with stories. But now everywhere you look there are iPads, iPods, iPhones, SmartPhones, and the list goes on and on. Through these devices our literary tradition slowly dies because we no longer see the need to use it correctly (Thnx instead of Thanks). We, the English majors of the world, are the rare exception to perpetuating the decline of literary values. The oral tradition is suffering the same fate. It is easier to text someone instead of call or visit. It is easier to email home instead of picking up the phone and calling our parents or making a business call. Even though I am as guilty of doing all these things as the next college student is, I feel as though we are regressing instead of progressing when it comes to our traditions of orality and literacy. The regression that seems to grow more entrenched in our psyche everyday leads me to wonder how my children are going to behave when they become teenagers in about twenty some odd years. Are they even going to have any verbal skills? Will they be able to write a research paper? Will they even know what physical paper is? Some of you may be saying that these questions are ridiculous but what were people saying fifty years ago about computers, if they had even heard of them? They were calling them impractical and an idea of science fiction geeks! I don't write this to make people feel guilty about having their laptop, iPhone, or anything else but to process through my own thoughts on the matter. Is technology really making our lives better? I don't think so, not in the sense of human memory or communication skills, and I am pretty sure that Mnemosyne would agree with me, if she were around! But her prescence decreases everyday with the increase of technology and our refusal to expand our individual memories.  

Puff the Dragon, my new hero...

Before today, I had never heard of Puff the Magic Dragon. Amazing, I know! I guess I was just more of a Little Mermaid and Scooby Do kind of kid. But today, while reading the poem of Puff's life, I actually started to tear up. Not only was the story sad but it reminded me of the time when I too had to grow up and stop visiting Ariel in my dreams. This is something that happens to everyone but what might not happen to everyone is the ability to remember back to this time and realize how much impact it had on the rest of a person's life. Now I cannot remember the exact day when my dreams stopped involving the romantic and mythological and became to center around my reality. But I do know that when that did happen, my life became much more mundane and unmemorable. And this truly is an utter shame! Now I might not remember exactly what my dreams were when I was a child but I do remember that they were amazing and awesome (which is a way overused word in our language) and mythological. I might not have known what stories I was re-enacting in my subconscious but I did recognize their importance. Once I lost these dreams, I lost my connection to my imagination which was my lifeline to the Muses. The loss of the Muses unbounded impact in my impact led to even greater consequences, the connection I have to their mother, Mnemosyne, or more contemporarily, my memory!
This has been a very roundabout way of describing how influential and important, my tears are when related to Puff the Dragon.

One grey night it happened,

Jackie Paper came no more

And Puff that mighty dragon,

He ceased his fearless roar.

His head now bent in sorrow,

Green scales fell like rain,

And Puff no longer went to play

Along that cheery lane.

Without his life-long friend,

He could not be brave

This one stanza of the poem is what effected me so strongly. It was so depressingly horrible to imagine this big strong dragon brought to this state through loneliness, which in reality transcribes into meaning not having anyone believing in him. I'm sure this is how the Muses feel when children grow into adults and stop allowing them to influence their dreams. But the power of our memories allow us to once again experience this feeling and influence of our own personal muses and memory, even if for only a minute, an hour, or a day.  So I feel need to give a big shout out to Puff the Dragon for allowing me to remember my childhood dreams. I can't wait to be his Jackie Paper for one night before I morph back into the adult I have become. 

Notes 2/6/2012

• Remove the words "like" & "just" from your vocabulary
• Ong
• taking a stand away from forgetfullness
• Check out Rio's blog
• Forgetfulness was a sin to the Greeks
• Anamnesis
• Plate
• Memory Magician- Prospero
• Hermetic sciences
• forgetfulness=lethel- comes from the idea of the River of Leth
• Becoming childlike
• everything is more memorable because it is new and exciting
• Nick's Blog
• Picasso
• represents reality by creating stark, memorable, & vivid images
• mythological distortion
• giants, witches, dwarfs, etc...
• Puff the Magic Dragon
• http://www.poemhunter.com/song/puff-the-magic-dragon/
• Ashley's Blog
• seeing words and speaking words creates image within the mind
• Finnigan's Wake
• suggests it is about things the dreamers sees right before he sleeps
• Revisioning Psychology
• James Hillman
• Ong
• "Memory is enormous...creates people with wings...thrill of discovery and awe" St. Augustine
• end of Chapter 2

Notes 2/3/2012

• Ong's Orality & Literacy
• cliff notes version
• Bingham
• Rio has the link on his blog
• Ong Chapter 4 & Yates Chapter 4 for 1st Quiz
• Art of Memory
• page 36-37; Chapter 2
• Plato
• seal 
• function of rhetoric
• Jennifer T.'s blog
• pictures of tables
• Tia's blog
• sound envelopes us
• sight isolates us
• Waking Life
• link on Rio's blog
• fabulous movie!
• anamnesis: remembering
• Nick's blog
• possessed by the idea of memory
• read!! 
• self-hypnosis
• Spencer's blog
• knock your socks off!!
• Old English
• talents of the mind to adapt
• Cameron's blog
• about Cassidy's blog
• which was about Spencer's blog
• Limitless
• movie
• invention of a drug that allows to use all of brain
• Ong
• practical
• page 39 Wisdom of Mythtales
• myths are repositories
• "mythological knowing"
• Song Lines by Bruce Chatwin
• travel writer who works with oral story tellers around the world