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.