sparagmos, sparagmos

Sparagmos, Sparagmos, you're tearing me apart. You're ripping out my heart. I feel like I've been torn to shreds.

Sparagmos is apparently everyhwere.

Dr. Keeler read us "Kneeling Down to Peer into a Culvert" by Robert Bly in 550 today. The end of it reads, " I am alone, with no duties, living as I live. / Then one morning a head like mine pokes from the water. /I fight—it’s time, it’s right—and am torn to pieces fighting."

Tennesse Williams includes the concept in Suddenly Last Summer where "Each male protagonist is pursued, ripped apart, and consumed by the members of a community he sexually infiltrated. The truth about each sparagmos (rending) and omophagia (raw-eating) is uncovered in similar scenes between “psychotherapist” and amnesia victim. But while the truth brings destruction to each murdered man’s mother, only in Suddenly Last Summer is anyone saved by the awful revelation (Janice Siegel, “Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides’ Bacchae,” IJCT 11 (2004-2005), pp. 538-570).

We figuratively incorporate sparagmos, I think, in many cultural ways, including, but not limited to wills (particularly contested ones) and how we treat celebrities and political figures. Of course, it's present in the eucharist and in the myth of Dionysus.

Sue tells me sparagmos is in the myth of Isis and Osiris. Dr. Sexson referred me to Ovid's Metamorphosis. Let me know if you have any hot leads for me.

deja vu

Today, I illuminated Kacie, Jamie, Arianna, Jimmy and Ed about my deju vu epiphany. I was thinking that if archetypes repeat themselves continuously and ubiquitously- in literature, in dreams, in life - then deja vu could be nothing more than our recognition/recollection of and fitting into an archetype. And...since, according to Hillman, people in dreams are just spirits who take on the appearance of those we know, deja vu is just the repetition of an archetype which is now personalized and tailored to us.

So...deja vu is not us remembering something that happened to us; deja vu is us tapping into an unconscious archetype. I don't know if that makes sense to any of you, but it makes great sense to me and my very strong, weight-lifting brain.

Jamie tried to give me some "logical" and "realistic" scientific explanation about how deja vu is just our brains misfiring and sending our short-term memories into our long-term memories or some scientific mumbo-jumbo like that. But, I'm not buying it. My explanation is far more credible. :)

Frye - popular culture chart

This is a site that Dr. Sexson recommended to me and that all of you may find useful.

http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/sfclass/Fryechar.htm

It brings Frye's categories into popular culture.

The Surreal Michael Earl Craig

Part of the Wikipedia definition of surrealism goes like this. Surrealism is a movement “asserting that liberation of the human mind …can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the ‘unconscious mind’ to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately ‘truer’ than, everyday reality.”
I have to say, I didn’t feel particularly liberated after reading Craig’s collection of poems – confused, sometimes – disturbed, sometimes – but never liberated. Let me open the door to my mind and walk you through what might be my typical reaction to one of his poems.

“I’m Glad I Found The Horse Doc”
(Oh…a poem about a vet)

Another day, not
even drinking coffee on
the toilet makes me smile.
(ha ha ha – that’s a funny example, but probably a pleasant-enough
experience to make one smile.)

Today so apparent: someone
Should have kicked Kinski’s
Nosferatu in the nuts
HARD.
(ha, ha – that’s funny, too. I should know who Nosferatu is.
I better google it)
Or duct-taped him
to a pool table & raped him with a carrot.
(WHAT? Weren’t we just trying to think pleasant thoughts about
coffee and toilets?)

As a unit of nourishment
my cheeseburger comes at me
through the drive-up window.
(How'd we get to the drive-thru, and who calls a burger a unit?
How does it come at him?)

& later the local horse doc with
a fleck of placenta on his cheek
I put a hand on his shoulder
(He’s got placenta on his cheek?
How does Craig know it’s placenta?
I’m confused.)
I tell him “draw a face on
the side of your hand you’ll have a friend all day.”
Who says this to a grown man? I’ll
bet that the vet responded, “My
friend feels like punching you, jerk.”)

He tell me “one man’s journey
the inverse of another’s”
(Huh?)

So, this is pretty typical of my experience. Despite my foreknowledge that the poetry was surreal, I tricked myself into believing that the next poem would be a nice, realistic piece. This is probably attributable to several factors. First, according to English 510, my expectation of realism comes from the society around me, where everything must be “real.” I buy into that. Also, the poems contributed to all the trickiness by starting out somewhat normally. Then, out of nowhere, children would be licking bookshelves, brain-eating parasites would be headed for cake, and unfortunate people would be plagued with a particularly nasty asshole type of halitosis. What? Yep, you’ve lost me. Contrary to my mind being liberated, it’s just somewhat confounded. This is not to say that I hate the poems; I liked more than several of them, including “In the Januaried Mountains” and “I Rattled Off to Work Today.” I even liked “The Accomplished Hand” – that is, until the crowd turned into an angry amoeba about to beat the hairless woman.
Yep. All in all, I’m left wondering, Am I supposed to understand these and don’t? Is there some logic here? Ultimately, I don’t feel quite as bad as Craig does, like “a turd washed up on the shore of a quiet lake at a child’s birthday party,” “like one of the world’s largest assholes,” or “like a seahorse with his throat slit.” But, I don’t feel real great, either.

Dream persons - Hillman p.59-64

Here are notes from Hillman's section on dream persons. Please enjoy.

THE PERSONS I ENGAGE WITH IN DREAMS ARE NEITHER REPRESENTATIONS OF THEIR LIVING SELVES NOR PARTS OF MYSELF. THEY ARE SHADOW IMAGES THAT FILL ARCHETYPAL ROLES; THEY ARE MASKS, IN THE HOLLOW OF WHICH IS A NUMEN (SPIRIT)

3 approaches to dream persons
1. Freudian “Other people are essential for understanding dream persons” (takes you back to the actuality of the day)
Freud’s method of interpretation projects people in dreams back over the bridge into the dream day
2. Jungian “My personality is essential for understanding dream persons” (takes you back to subject as an expression of a person’s complexes)
Jung’s method takes the dream people into the subject of the dreamer – they become an expression of my psychic traits
In neither method do we ever truly leave the personal aspect of the dream persons- we remain engaged in the upperworld
3. Archetypal – “Only the persons of the dreams are essential for understanding the persons in the dream” (takes you back to the underworld of psychic images. They become mythic beings – not mainly by amplifying their mythic parallels but by seeing through to the imaginative persons within the personal masks)

Shadow figure or shades are not the people themselves or even the people’s essence
(older brother example – neither the actual brother nor the older, responsible traits)
Because the older brother is now a shade in the underworld, he is a purely psychic form
Teacher example in a dream is not only some intellectual potential of my psychic wholeness. More deeply, this figure is the archetypal mentor who, for now, in this dream, wears the robes of this schoolteacher or that professor.

Like in Homeric hymns, the god appears to the dreamer in the guise of a living friend.
(Egyptian) At the psychic level of existence, the essential image of our personal self, who is our shadow soul, is at the same time an image of a God.
In dreams, we are visited by nymphs, heroes and gods shapes like our friends of last evening.

The essence of the person is in the name.
One of the ways of restoring the “embracing vision of the myth” to the persons of last evening who have entered the dream is to look at their names. In their names are their souls.

Names are things in themselves – they do not represent something else where embodied by the name, but they are presentations of the mind to itself of its own presence. The name is the divine logos clothed in the person of the dream. We must find names for the figures or look more deeply into the names that are given. P.63

Embracing vision of the myth
No longer: Ego casting Shadow after it; instead, a shade literalizing an ego in front of it and behind which it can remain hidden.
Shadow figures in dreams – we should regard them LESS through their relations with the world and more as a reflection of the shades

550 poems

I preferred Jimmy’s poem “Prophet Township” to mine, so I used it for my starting point.

“Nostalgia”

In those days, people weren’t granted the luxury of prolonged grieving,
Even if their present was lived in life’s valleys.
There was no time for deeper questions
Or deeper pain
With work to be done.

A pause by you will not pause life.

While you sit in your chair with your head in your hands,
The snow will still be falling.
The fire left unstoked and unfed will be burning down to ashes.
Questions won’t keep you warm.

Divinity?
Yes, there’s a loved one in the attic until spring,
But thinking about it won’t get you “through till spring.”
Folded hands won’t break the ice on the horse trough.

Right now the ground is too hard to probe for the meaning of life
Or death
Especially when you have to actually live one in order to stay a step ahead of the other.

Those questions are better left for spring.


I had a really hard time finding a poem I hated, let alone one I disliked intensely. I settled on one that confounded me, “Some Last Questions” by W.S. Merwin. I'm sure that if I give it enough thoughtful contemplation, I will like it. In fact, after rereading it a couple times, this is becoming the case. But, I still don't completely understand it, and I find his imagery disturbing. I’m fairly certain that he’s talking about the dead body. But, I also think he’s using multiple definitions of some words, like feet (stumps, like the one’s attached to auction paddles) and hands (farm-hands or deck-hands). Nonetheless, I still don’t entirely understand it.

“Some Last Questions”

What is the head
A. Ash
What are the eyes
A. The wells have fallen in and have
Inhabitants
What are the feet
A. Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
A. Under them the impossible road is moving
Down which the broken necked mice push
Balls of blood with their noses
What is the tongue
A. The black coat that fell off the wall
With sleeves trying to say something
What are the hands
A. Paid
No what are the hands
A. Climbing back down the museum wall
To their ancestors the extinct shrews that will
Have left a message
What is the silence
A. As though it had a right to more
Who are the compatriots
A. They make the stars of bone

I don’t feel right satirizing this poem because there is undoubtedly a beautiful and deeper meaning that I, in my superficiality and ignorance, am missing. So, I’ve decided to take his approach, but address the body as it is living, instead of as it is dead.

What is the head
A. Means to insight
What are the eyes
A. Full of and for sight – therefore insightful, too
What are the feet
A. Marching in a poetic unit
No what are the feet
A. Under them many roads are moving
They are a solid base
What is the tongue
A. A flash of fire that licks up the wall
No what is the tongue
A. Tasting
What are the hands
A. Holding on and letting go
What is the silence
A. As if noise were better
Who are the compatriots
A. They make the silence more precious

paper ideas

I'm intrigued with the idea of sparagmos - particularly in the myth of Dionysus and how that myth is related to the Christian eucharist. How Jesus and Dionysus suffer - Dionysus by being pruned every year in the form of the grape vine - how he is reborn with each new growing season - how men feel like they are taking "in" Dionysus himself when they consume wine. Perhaps there are other characters like this in other religious and cultural traditions. There's probably a paper topic idea here. Hmmm...Ideas, anyone?

And, Wayne got me thinking about dream-catchers with all of his animal talk. I'm not sure if dream-catchers can be made into a paper topic or not. Maybe something along the lines that what the spider has made is more important than the spider itself...animals are representative of something else, and the web represents the spider, which represents something else... I did a little bit of reading on dream-catchers, and one site said that the dream-catchers aren't meant to last, reflecting the temporary state of youth. There comes a time when a child can't be protected from experience and, in fact, needs experience and knowledge to function in an adult world.

The dream-catcher has similarities to this picture my friend took of the Brooklyn Bridge when we were in New York in January.

sin-eaters

Sue and I were having a great conversation about Anna Nicole Smith the other day, when the topic of sin-eaters came up. I am fascinated with the idea of a person who is designated to eat the sins of his fellow villagers in order that the deceased can have a clear passage to the afterlife. A couple of years ago, I read or heard a story about how in one community, a sin-eater was nearing death, but no one in the community would step up to be the next sin-eater. So...the sin-eater was approaching death with ALL of the sins of the community members burdening his soul.
I think, if I were to write a paper about this, that the sin-eater could be connected to the character of the scapegoat. Ideas, anyone?

Analysis - "Humble House"

“Humble House” by David Baker seems to be telling the story of a house where a family, and perhaps generations of that family, have lived – not resided, but actually lived. The house, which is well-used and functional, mirrors the traits of the people who have lived there. The most underutilized house in the room is the sitting room, where ironically, no one sits; this room, stuffed with figurines, old plates and photos, and plastic-covered chairs is an artifice, in a way, and doesn’t reflect the real character of its inhabitants. It is avoided in favor of the other rooms, like the kitchen or the side porch, where people actually “live” – swing, smoke, sew, talk, drink coffee. The artificial room is not only not used, it is avoided. Toward the end of the poem, those in the house head “to our places…where the creek cuts through the graves,” where their family members are awaiting them.
I think that David Baker, through the imagery of the house and the cemetery, is suggesting that the spirit will live on infinitely. I’m led to believe this because of the journey to the graveyard at the poem’s end, but find hints throughout the poem.
First, the figurines in the room where nobody goes are tarnished, old, unpolished. The room itself is said to be for “the passing of the spirit world through the spirit of the house.” This leads me to believe, in tandem with the previous line, “Perhaps company will come soon, unannounced – “that there has been a recent death in the family. Maybe in some way the house is representative of the human body, which is a temporary stop for the spirit of a person, and the sitting room is representative of our avoidance of death – we would rather go on living than to be reminded of our own mortality.
The language describing the room as the place for “the passing of the spirit world” is mirrored in the description of the cemetery, where the whole family is waiting, “Passing toward home.” Earlier, the poet says, “Soon enough we will go to our places, down the road, where the creek cuts through the graves. “ This leads me to believe that their burial spots were, again, another temporary home and that Baker was extending the house/spirit imagery. Suggesting to me, like the house and the body are temporary stops, so is the cemetery, because, the body is not going to stay in the grave any more than a spirit will stay in the house. When the people make the journey to the cemetery, they will meet the “whole family” waiting for them, “passing toward home.” With the assistance of “worm and mole, creeper and clod,” they are becoming “humus, loam.”
I don’t know if I’m reaching here, but it seem to me that the poem then comes full-circle, like a life. The poem begins with references to the lawn, cramped with “hydrangeas, white heirloom lilies, wild creeper roses.” The repetition of “creeper” in the last line makes me believe that, kind of like Whitman, Baker is suggesting that nothing dies, everything goes onward, and to die is different than anyone supposes. By dying, the people are fertilizing the ground in which the plants will grow, giving a piece of themselves to the land in perpetuity, becoming a part of everything that grows and living eternally through that cycle.

Valpo Poetry Review

Here is the poem I chose from the Valparaiso Poetry Review ("I Confess, I Wanted To Be June" almost won, though).
Attempted analysis to follow.

Humble House

Even the lawn is cramped with hydrangeas,
white heirloom lilies, wild creeper roses
running the length of the porch, all of it
sloped on a grade from the yard to the road

The perspective is childhood or old age,
poor, but not poor enough to discern it.
Nor is the house large enough to waste room.
Perhaps company will come soon, unannounced -

but no one will sit in the sitting room.
That's for Hummel figurines, for small frames
unpolished for months, tarnished as flatware,
for old plates, photos, plastic-covered chairs.

That's for the passing of the spirit world
through the spirit of the house. Everyone
would rather stand in the kitchen where fruit
pies crisp on the sill, swing on the side porch,

or sit smoking or sewing or talking,
or take coffee in a cane chair upstairs.
There's functional humility in
everything but that room, where nobody stays.

Soon enough we will go to our places
down the road, where the creek cuts through the graves.
The whole family waits there, passing toward home,
worm and mole, creeper and clod, humus, loam.

David Baker

Dreams - Saturday night- February 3

As is typical for me, this dream starts in one location and ends in another. Both are fairly "realistic." The first one begins with me talking to an ex-boyfriend on the wireless telephone, only I'm able to hang up on him by wrinkling up one of his old shirts. I'm talking to him from a canyon with very steep and high rock faces, and not really talking, just yelling, basically. But every time I try to hang up on him and then uncrinkle the shirt, he's still on the line.
In the next part, all of the first-year TAs are at my parents' house in Chinook. We are all tired and take naps before going to several social events that night. When the alarm rings, Jamie gets up too fast and passes out. While she is regaining consciousness, she tells me that she has a book from college that she wants me to read, although she doesn't think she really got anything out of it. I tell everyone that the doctor told me that if you feel like you're going to pass out, to sit down on the floor, not in a chair, because then the blood may not ever go back up to your head. Another ex-boyfriend of mine questions if that is true. Ariana wants to know if that's true for "surprise" pass-outs, too, like if you are surprised by an on-line predator.

English 550 Collins poems

I gave it my best shot.

On the Road

I’m behind the wheel, again.
Today, I’m making a spontaneous trip to Crazytown.
This shimmering blacktop is apparently a popular and well-traveled by-way.
In fact, I went back just last semester, with Joan of Arc.
She drove.

There’s a folded and creased map on the passenger seat, but I don’t need directions.
Remember, I’ve been there before, more than once.
This map would tell the inexperienced traveler that
Just north of Crazytown one would find Looney Tunes,
Which is just east of Delirious
Which is south of the Tri-Cities.

As usual, I don’t plan on staying long,
I’m just a visitor.
The permanent residents find the living difficult.
The red brick at the lumberyard is consistently sold one shy of full load.
The cheap beer in your swinging plastic sack is two cans short of a six-pack.
The white porcelain shells of the eggs are usually cracked, their bright sun-yellow yolks spilling from the fissures.

So, I won’t be staying long.

But, now, I’ll turn off this busy two-lane mirage.
The bright yellow yolk of a sun is streaming out of its shell, is spilling into my eyes.
I’m looking for the exit to the freeway.
At the rate I’m going, I’ll need an express lane.
And, besides, expediency lessens pain,
And there is more than one way to get to there.

If you just happen to be driving by -
Speeding past on your way to somewhere else –
And you catch a blurred glimpse of me stopped by the side of the road, with, say,
A flat tire or a blown gasket
Just keep on driving.
Leave me there, even if you glance in your rearview mirror and see me waving my arms wildly or thrusting out.my thumb.

I’d better go alone.

Because, you see,
The only thing worse than being in a car on the road to Crazytown is not walking there,
It’s letting someone else drive.


The Art of Procrastination

There was a time when the bills,
Sitting expectantly on the edge of the table,
Would not have gathered dust

That was back when I bought into the idea that procrastination was a vice-
One of the deadlies – wedged
Between gluttony and sloth

Today, as a matter of fact,
I started over toward the bills, but
Was lured by the soon-to-be siren song of the

Teapot and drank deeply
And was entranced by the warmness of the tea
And the spirit of the steam.

But, I fully intended to return to the monetary matters of the day,
If it weren’t for my window
Open to the grass
and the sky
and the light of the sun

Annie Dillard thought
About seeing. How the world was fairly studded with
Pennies, unasked-for surprises.
But, anymore, who looks for pennies, let alone stoops to pick them up?
Who cares about nature’s pennies when there are dollars to account for?

I put my cup of tea
On top of the bills
Setting out expectantly to look for pennies.


Love Smart

I retrieved the package from my mailbox,
A book in a brown mailing envelope.
Love Smart by Dr. Phil had arrived anonymously.
I begin telling you in the dusty new daylight
Odd, I thought to myself as I tucked it under my arm.

The black type advised me to keep the heart, which is prone to flight, tethered to something sturdy, like that tree.
And I gesture to the silhouette outside.
The thick trunk where the robin sits motionless,
Black with the orange rays of the new sun -
Or, to something scientific, say, Newton’s Law
Or to this book.
A heart adrift on the wind may hope for clouds, sky, and stars
It may rise on the next breeze.

So, now, when the half-light reveals your eyes asking with your
outstretched and open palm
And while the ragged shadow of the bird leaving the branch crosses my face,
You need to understand

That before I met you, I was apparently loving stupidly
And, my heart stirred riskily with each updraft,
Courting emergencies, the kinds that ambulances can’t handle.

When my heart was returned to me the last time, it was
Not only broken but unwhole
The man who had mishandled it
Had kept a piece of it and tucked it in his breast pocket to carry
With his pens.

So, now, I need to explain that I can’t give you my whole heart
Partially, because I don’t have it all
And, also, because it wouldn’t be prudent.

But, please keep asking.
Because I think I can feel myself getting dumber already
And there is a soft breeze blowing in from the window.

family cooperation

I have lured my family into a little experiment. Since dreams follow similar patterns amongst strangers, I began wondering if the people in my family dreamed in the same way as I do. I'm curious to find out if my family and I dream in a similar fashion - if there will be more obvious connections within my family members than amongst strangers. So, I enlisted them (my sister, my parents) to record some of their dreams and send them to me. We'll see what happens.

Tales

I just finished reading a chapter from Russ McDonald's The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, where I found this quote from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. "For this world also which seems to us to sing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of lesser tales and yet these also are the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them."

devolution

Class discussion on Wednesday made me wonder about the devolution, not only of language, but of cultures. Isn't it common for every generation to believe that the next generation is somehow "less" than they are - whether it be work ethic, music choices, moral standards, or language? Why is this perceived as devolution rather than just evolution? It seems true that teenagers don't express themselves with the same word banks as their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, but does that inhibit communication? In their own ways, aren't they creating new and different ways to communicate in a time that almost demands expediency of communication? In terms of evolution, wouldn't a student be left behind if he chose to use an ink well and pen rather than a blog? If this is true in the manner of communication, wouldn't it also be true, to a certain degree to the words used to communicate?

Dreams - Wednesday night, January 31

Dream Wednesday night – January 31st

I am in my childhood church in Chinook, but I am the age that I am now. When it is time to take communion, I walk to and kneel at the altar naked, and I don’t seem to mind at all. In fact, as I turn from communion, I stand and face the audience, looking them all in the face. I even spread my arms out to my side, palms up, and assume a kind of Jesus on the cross pose. The pews, which from my seat looked packed, now reveal that there are not very many people in church. In fact, the entire left side of the church is empty except for my parents, who are sitting in the back.
When the service is over, a woman from the church I attend in Lewistown who is fairly unpleasant and incredibly aggressive, shoves past me at the pew to talk to her husband. I’ve had my clothes back on since I returned from communion.
After church, I go to a little room off the back of the sanctuary, kind of like a crying room for little children. This is a new addition to the church, which is getting remodeled. Dani and Ashley meet me there, where I am sitting with Dani’s boyfriend. Dani plugs in her blow dryer to dry her hair. I tell her she has to do that in the sanctuary.
We decide to go for a walk by the lake. The lake is disgusting, you can clearly see piles and piles of garbage at the bottom of it – spray starch bottles, old washing machines – most of this is located at the bottom of a little waterfall underneath the surface of the lake. It seems to really just be a dump at the bottom of a small lake. Ashley pretends to push her friend Katie in the water, but I tell her that this a really bad idea, given the filth. We now have a little boy with us, and we can’t understand what he’s saying. But, he’s very happy to be with us. We found him at a resort next to the lake.
When we go back in to the resort, (we had apparently already checked in, but were waiting for our room to be made up) there is a business conference going on. There are a lot of good-looking foreign men in suits and ties. We sit in the old 70s-style reception area to wait for our room. While we are waiting, the woman who owns the hotel is loudly talking about all of the spiders they’ve had in their hotel lately. She is killing many of them on the fireplace as we sit there – laughingly saying “Oh my goodness, there’s another one. We’ve had sooo many spiders lately.”
The room becomes a type of classroom, where we sit at tables – each of us has a computer. I’m trying to pay attention to what the professor is saying. She asks a question directly to me; I shake my head “no” – like I don’t know the answer. She praises me for providing the correct answer, which is no. I start surfing the internet, but land on a site with a very loud voiceover. I can’t shut it off. I try to turn over the speakers – shove them under my sweater – hug the computer, which also has speakers – but it won’t shut off. I have to explain to the professor why I’m on the internet while she’s trying to teach me about Shakespeare.
(Alarm rings)