Michael
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Stephen, I am very glad you checked in with your awesome memory! I’d completely forgotten that that essay is in The Mythic Dimension. (And apparently so did Bob! lol) This makes matters MUCH easier as I don’t have involve HarperCollins in filing a DMCA notice. I did send an informal, if strongly worded email to the address provided on the site for the content to be removed before things get ‘official.’
Hopefully someone is paying attention!
Hi James! No, your link is no problem. The items for sale are legit, although, as Stephen mentions, if you want that particular essay, it’s in The Mythic Dimension.
Cheers!
Michael
Hi James and Robert!
I’m watching the store for Stephen. In All Her Names is a compilation of essays by various authors on the topic of the feminine divine, published in the early 90’s. Unfortunately it’s not one I’m familiar with! However, while it’s cool to read it is unfortunate that so much text has been published on that website. Doesn’t if figure that I log into the forums and run right into an intellectual property violation!
Cheers,
Michael
I was a spec ed teacher for 23 of my 32 years. I would have jumped right into English, but all those positions were filled by my older Boomer colleagues. Spec Ed was a wide open field, and I did have experience working with special needs kids during my camp counselor days. This included two weeks working with kids from the infamous Willowbrook facility at a sleep away camp in Harriman State Park in NYS, so I had that groove, also. But I was particularly blessed to be able to shift departments to fill a vacancy. I did one year in 7th and to years in 8th grade when my dept. chair said, “You’re stuck here. You need to move to the high school. There will be vacancies next year.” So one more guide showing me the way, which put me exactly where Mrs. Huey, my senior year English teacher, thought I should be.
Interesting how the world works sometimes.
The age old question! I suspect it’s going to vary from person to person, but, in general, what stops time for you? To make my own long story short, I worked with kids a lot when I was a teenager. I loved it! Senior year of HS my English teacher was horrified when she found out I wasn’t going to college. “You have to!” she said. “You need to be a teacher!”
That’s the refusal of the call, right there.
Well, off I went to work at a bank, department store, did this, did that until one day I realized I was wasting my time and went to college and majored in English (another passion). Senior year I was chatting with a grad student about how I didn’t know what to do after graduation. She told me her fiance was the asst principle of a private special ed school that needed assistant teachers. (meeting with the mentor/guide)
So I did that. And there was that “loving working with kids” thing again. Started a grad degree in education, became a spec ed teacher which filed my sails for 20 years. In the meantime, I’d had my transcript evaluated and found I had enough English credits to be certified in English. Became an English teacher and spent the last 7 years of my career teaching a college prep course for seniors that I designed, centered on the hero’s journey. Never worked so hard or loved my job so much. I taught for 32 years and during much of that, time stopped in a feeling of overwhelming fulfillment.
So, for me, bliss revealed itself when I was an adolescent, and it took a bit of time to realize that. I do suspect that this probably works for many people. It is interesting though, that as soon as I decided to go back to school, doors started opening for me along the way, guiding me to where I was meant to go. I met people who said the right thing at exactly the right time for me to shift course in the right direction.
That’s how it worked for me. But we have to be mindful of our opportunities as they arise and be willing to take a risk.
Greetings, Norland, and than you for helping us launch this new platform!
This piece is a thinker and no mistake, as Sam Gamgee might put it. Personal reflections: As I read along I found myself labeling various popular artists in a kind of program running in the background, sorting out the canned productions from those that seem, at least from my own perception (and that’s a critical point I think), “genuine” or expressions for their own sake.
And then I thought about myself. I recently went through something of a difficult period in which I found myself writing like mad, both prose and poetry. I thought to myself, “Well damn. I’m a crisis writer.” I also thought about who I am at the age I’m at, almost 64, and the lines from Desperado, ” You’re losin’ all your highs and lows/ Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”; how that seems to be at play as we grow older and the fiery passions of youth fade as we become, as Robin Williams described the Fisher King’s wound in the movie by the same name, “sick with experience.”
One thing seems certain, the Muse won’t be forced to whisper through you.
Anyway… there is one thought I’d like you to discuss a bit further. “Whenever opposites are undialectically torn apart, we are no longer dealing with the reality of true myth but with the alienation of an ideological fantasy.”
I can’t seem to quite wrap my head around that one. lol
Cheers,
Michael
Thank you, Stephen! You can’t overlook the significance of Hector being the only character that moves the audience toward compassion, and that it’s his death, and this moment in the story, that completes the arc of Achilles’ character development. In the beginning he’s sulking like a school boy. He’s brought out of that by the death of Patroclus and driven to revenge, an act of the ego made worse by the desecration of Hector’s body which, back then, was a big deal.
The selfless courage and honesty of Priam pierced his heart and for the first time he finds compassion.
Who else in the story earns your respect, other than Hector? Even the gods act like children. And the endless lists of the slain are mind numbing, dehumanizing.
In the end, the best are taken rendering war foolish and futile.
I think you expressed it well, Nandu. The dualistic nature of creation demands the Dionysian in contrast with the Apollonian, and each depend on the other. In terms of symbology, the human psyche requires a balance of both.
I think Hemingway would agree. lol
But they really do depend on each other, no, as dual pairing.
And after Stephen’s comments, I now have to buy this book!
I think one of the absolute best stories to exemplify the Hero’s Journey is The Wizard of Oz. I watched it just the other day and was once more taken how the different elements are quite in your face. Of course it’s all the more special because the hero is female, demonstrating that this archetypal adventure is gender neutral.
Welcome William!
Thank you for that heartfelt first post. These are, indeed, potentially myth generating times, and we should be particularly mindful of that. Campbell’s work, as much as it was written half a century ago is, as you say, still pertinent. Very much so!
Take care!
Michael
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