Last Words

There have been a few classes that have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think this may just be one of them.  In this class we have learned about everything and so much more.  We can now honestly say that we understand the reasons behind everything we do, and the answer is always mythology.  We know that everything is connected, and understand the importance behind ceremonies.  Most of all we know that there is no such thing as an ordinary day!

Renaming Io

         My parents have cows, so every year we have a small batch of baby cows that my sisters and I name.  This year we had four baby cows to name.  Every year I am faced with the problem of what to name the calf that is designated mine.  My sisters give their's name like Star, Sweetie Pie, Cutie Pie, Snow, Magic, and Domino.  However, I am infamous for giving mine the more unusual and strange names, such as Lover Boy, Harry Houdini, Criss Angel, Byron, El Diablo, and Diablo.  Last year I found the perfect name for this years calf, but maybe it was fate that I forgot it.  This year the baby cow that I got was a girl, and the smallest out of the four. I stuggled to find a name that was as good as the forgot one, when I remembered Ovid, and the stories of Io and Europia.  Io was turned into a white cow to prevent Juno from finding out about Jove's affair.  So I have decided that in honor of this Mythologies course, and Ovid, that my calf will be named Io.  Hopefully she will have a better life then her namesake! 

Io 

 Io and Harry Houdini and others 

My Life as a Mythic Detective

            One of the largest overlying themes of Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, is in fact metamorphosis or transformation. Every few pages someone is transformed into a flower, a tree, an animal, a star, a guy, or a girl.  Everything in the stories must undergo a transformation, but that is the story of life.  Small seeds transform into huge trees, and insignificant caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies.  What appears to be a rock can turn into a bird, a reptile, or an amphibian.  Ovid has taught me that everything must undergo transformations in order to survive and grow. 

 In order for books to be good they have to have dynamic characters, which are characters that evolve from the beginning of the book to the end.  They grow and learn and by the end of the book they are not the same people that the book started with.  At the same time the reader has changed just a little too.  Much like reading Ovid, we have all changed and transformed into someone slightly different from who we were.  We now have the knowledge about the precedent behind every action that we take.  From this class we have transformed from average university students into mythic detectives.  We know the sad story behind the peacock’s feathers, and view every tree as a person in another form.  No matter how hard we try to deny it, Ovid has affected us all.  We can no longer see the world through the rose-colored glasses we had on when we first walked through that door; instead we now see the world in a different light as it truly is.  Because of this class we have all now started our own transformation from the uninformed to the enlightened.

As humans we are forced to undergo changes throughout our lives in order to move forward and grow.  As we travel through life we are transformed from a helpless baby who depends on others, into an adult who has others depending on him or her.   None of us is the same person we were when we were twelve, or even the same person we were before we started this class.  Although our transformations may not be as elaborate as the one’s mentioned in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, they still affect us just as much.   Through Ovid we can realize that change isn’t always such a negative thing. 

  If Daphne didn’t transform she would not be remembered as the girl who turned into a laurel tree, instead she would be just another victim of the gods.  But she transformed and her name lives on through those who know her story, and through the Laurel tree as a permanent remembrance of her life and death.  For those of us who have taken Professor Sexson’s class trees will always be a reminder of those we have lost.  The same is true of the other mythic people featured in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses. If Io was not forcefully turned into a cow to hid Jove’s adultery, then she would just be another name in a long list of Jovian affairs.  Her whole story would have ended differently and it affect the stories of many others.

 A lot of the individuals featured in Ovid are transformed as a form of punishment, while only a few are transformed in order to preserve their lives.   But is there transformation really a form of punishment?  Because of their misdeeds, and their transformation into another shape, we are able to learn.  We now know that being too vain like Narcissus or too proud such as Arachne was, will only lead to our downfall and our transformation into something that we had not envisioned.  From Daedalus and his son Icarus, we know that if we fly too high we will get burned but also that if we fly to low we will die just the same.  They also show us how holding onto grief can transform us into a monster, and instead we should be thankful for the time we have.  Because of Ovid we have transformed and realize that the stories we have learn about in these past few weeks can be the stories of our lives.  We continue to make the same mistakes that those before us have made countless times, but it is necessary so that we transform into who we are meant to be and achieve.  The Ovidian stories are preserved in us, as we reenact them, learn from them, and transform.  In taking this class we are now some of the enlightened few who know this, and we accept it because we have no other option.  As others wonder as to the meanings behind their actions, we know that the answers can be found in Ovid.  As we move through life and transform into different people then we are now, we can rest assured in the fact that others have overcome the same struggles and fears.  And just as the snake transforms by shedding its skin we too shed our skin and transform. 

Snakes and Jorge

Lately we have been talking about snakes in class, and I have to admit I am not the biggest fan of snakes.  As long as their is some type of glass wall between them and me, I am fine.  However, if I see one somewhere unexpected or in the wild, I can assure you that I will become a hysterical sobbing mess in seconds.  But honestly what would you expect me to do?  I have spent my whole life in rural Southwest Montana, being warned of the dangers of snakes, especially rattlesnakes.  In elementary school we would receive lectures about what to do if we ever saw a snake, and how to react.  I have watched (from a distance) my father shoot a rattlesnake, and my best friend came home from school one day to find that her dog had died from a rattlesnake bite.  From a young age we are taught to be wary and cautious of snakes, which translates as fear.  

However, that being said, I did become the proud owner of a rattlesnake.  My mother had found one of our cats playing with a baby rattlesnake in the driveway.  She caught it and put it in a jar, and then brought it to the store, where I spent the afternoon introducing Jorge to unsuspecting customers.  Unfortunately, my parents  forced me to surrender Jorge for his sake and my own.  He was released into a beautiful field very far from my house.  

Displacement Story

The day began as every Tuesday before it had, for the past 10 years.  He sat at the same desk and drank the same bitter tasting coffee, out of the mug he always used, it promoted fire prevention by depicting small deer running away from the faded orange and red flames.  There he read the same newspaper he had loyally subscribed to 10 years ago.  The news was one of the few things that had changed over the years; the Dow was down and gas was up.

The day continued to progress as every Tuesday before it had.  He answered the phone, updated the map on the wall, and sent the only other ranger Dan, out to supervise the daily things.  When he had started working as a ranger at the park, he worked in the office with five other rangers, but now due to the changing times it was only him and Dan.  He spent most of his days alone in the office, having sent Dan off to the far corners of the park, to deal with tourists and such, which was how he preferred it.  He didn't like Dan much, he was much younger, and had no time to listen to an old man's stories, instead Dan yearned for adventure.  Dan wanted forest fires to fight, and drug dealers to apprehend.  The men who came before Dan were the ones he liked, they were cautious, wise, and always had a story to tell.  However, by now they had all retired, and spend their days with grandchildren or golfing.  He only had two years left before he could join them.

The call came in around two o'clock, a young girl claiming that she witnessed a guy starting a fire.  Since he had sent Dan away, he would have to check it out himself.  He didn't bother to leave a note, as he knew that Dan had probably decided to have a drink at the bar and call it a day.  Instead, he locked the door and started the old jeep, Dan always took the newer jeep because it had GPS.  However, having memorized the park years before he had no need for GPS, and if on the off chance that he did get lost, he knew how to read a map unlike Dan.  As he drove, along the bumpy trails, he wondered if he should even bother to respond to the call.  Most likely it would turn out to be teenagers with booze and firecrackers, however, there had been a rash of recent arson attempts in the park lately, so it was worth a look.

Eventually he arrived at the area the caller specified, only too find nothing out of the ordinary.  Then, he noticed a small curl of smoke just visible over the tree line, with a sigh and a groan he eased his way out of the jeep.  Pushing his way through the trees, his nose was meet with the harsh smell of gasoline.  Then, he saw him, the arson, Dan.  For a second they just stared at each other, then Dan with a small gasp dropped the flaming match that was just beginning to burn his fingers.  Then chaos erupted.  Dan had coated the surrounding trees with gasoline and they quickly burst into flames.  Dan ran away through the flame-less trees behind him, leaving him all alone as the flames closed in.  For a second he considered running knowing that if he could make it to the pond he might be able to survive, but a moment of hesitation was all the flames need to close off his escape.  A few hot embers flew up in his face, burning his forehead, as the thick hot smoke began to choke him.  As he began to lose consciousness, the smoke seemed to take the forms of the older rangers, Nicholas, John, Mario, Bert, Jeff, Dustin, Ian, Allen, Gavin, and Rusty.  They lurched over him, as the smoke and flames became to smother and singe him, as he screamed in pain.  Then everything went black.

Signs and Symbols

I think that to truly understand the mystery of the ten jelly jars, we must think like the son.  Due to the son's ailment of referential mania, he believes he is the subject of everything.  He thinks that the clouds and trees talk about him and that his every breath is recorded and analyzed.  Because of this he is driven to send all of his time decoding the messages, "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme."  So what would the son decipher the jelly jars to be?

Another thing is the baby bird who fell out of his nest.  Some people, believe that finding a dead bird is an omen that something bad will soon happen, or that someone you knew or loved has passed away.

"The Spinners"

On Monday and Wednesday we discussed a lot about this painting during class.  However, I would like to talk about something that we didn't cover, or maybe I am just reading to much into the painting.  Like we alluded to in class, I believe that the elderly women in front of the spinning wheel is the Goddess Athena, and the women in white with her back to us is Arachne.  But what I would like to focus on is the three helpers to Athena and Arachne (the women in the left hand corner holding the curtain, the women in the red skirt in the center, and the women to the far right).  However, I don't want to focus on them specifically but on the fact that there is three of them.

Three seems to be a very important number in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  There are three main ruler Jove, Neptune, and Hades. The entrance to the underworld is guarded by a three headed dog, and there are nine muses, which is a multiple of three.  The three Graces, the three Furies, and the Goddess Hecate is described as being three-headed or three-formed.  These are just the occurrences of the number three that I can remember, and have found by glancing through Ovid's Metamorphoses, there are many more.
If you look in the background of the painting there appears to be three more women looking at the tapestry. The tapestry itself gets its theme from Titian's painting "Rape of Europa", which features three cherubs.