after Wallace Stevens

I
When Noah's ark alit on the mountain,
The first thing he sent out
Was the raven.

II
I talked amongst my selves
Like a coffee klatsch
Of three ravens.

III
The raven flew down to its dead dinner
Chilled by autumn winds.

IV
The god and goddess
Are one.
The god and goddess and a raven
Are just too much.

V
I do not know which more pierces me,
The rasp of trickery
Or the rasp of hunger,
The raven cawing
Or just before.

VI
Trees filled the bay window
With shifting shadows.
The light crossed it,
To and fro.
The raven,
Hiding in a branch,
Drew a ray of darkness.

VII
O footballers of Baltimore,
Why do you imagine merchandised birds?
Do you not see how the raven
Flits around the wallets
Hiding in your pockets?

VIII
I know great tales
And speak in golden voices;
But raven knows
That he and I
Share the same dinner.

IX
When the raven made its nest,
It found itself
At the center of the world.

X
At the sight of ravens
Flying under full moonlight,
Even the Goths of Santa Cruz
Would put down their lattes.

XI
She drove to Los Angeles
In a red chariot.
Once, looking in the side mirror,
She mistook
The stuffed animal in the back window
For a raven.

XII
The waters have dried up from the earth.
Raven has returned to Noah.

XIII
It was night all the time.
It was dark
And it was going to stay dark.
The raven flew
And returned with the sun. ©2008 Carol Gunby

Posted at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Disclaimer: Not the official entry for this week (official entries will all be found under the 'School' category, for those who are playing along at home).

Now, then. (And what an odd turn of phrase that is, by the way...suggesting a conflation of past & present that feels very familiar.) Since I have a dreadfully long commute (45-60 minutes each way), I spend a lot of time in the car with my iPod. Goddess bless the podcast revolution, because as much as I love music, and that's a lot, having whole radio shows and other interesting intellectual tidbits to listen to during that time has (I firmly believe) saved my mind from becoming some kind of grayish polenta. So, since in the vernacular of The Tipping Point I'm a Maven who loves to share information, here are a couple of great, mythologically-relevant podcasts I'd recommend.

• Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason – Six episodes. I think this ran on PBS TV a couple of years back. They have streaming video of all of the interviews as well as downloadable audio, and what interviews! Jeanette Winterson on Atlas and the Old Testament, Will Power on translating Oedipus to hip-hop, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood on the stories of religion....and a bunch more.
• Radio Lab – I mentioned this one a few posts back, and it's rapidly become one of my favorites. While the show deals with ostensibly science-related topics (a lot of neurology in particular), there is always a strong sense of humanity and story. The series is ongoing, and I'd highly recommend a few shows in particular to get you started: Sleep, Memory and Forgetting, and The Ring and I.

And that's all I've got for tonight. Back to the books!

Posted at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jenny Holzer's latest twitter: MYTH CAN MAKE REALITY MORE INTELLIGIBLE

So true, eh? And Twitter is the perfect platform for her art, in so many ways (follow her now: jennyholzer). At least I'm assuming it's her; we never do know for sure...

Posted at 01:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Raven, trickster, appears
behind the oracular candy bar,
dark sweet thing,
brings fire, light, creation itself
a gift
to the myth-hungry two-legged
who come up out of mud,
crying in darkness

Stolen from the Sky Chief, this light,
by playing the innocent;
a pine needle in the right girl
becomes a baby boy:
the Chief's grandson.
His glowing toy: our sun,
and his message to me,
"Be not confined
by what you seem to be." ©2008 Carol Gunby

Raven is the mythological figure that chose me in class through a numbered candy bar drawing, and he'll be showing up here a lot, I think, as I try to figure out what he might mean for me. I'm still learning about him; there are a lot of raven stories in Native American traditions of the Pacific Northwest, where he roughly parallels the Southwest's Coyote as a trickster figure. He has a different energy about him, though, something more brooding and dark (think Edgar Allen Poe vs. Wile E. Coyote for general associations). Maybe he'll have something interesting to say to my inner goth.

I also can't help but think of the Raven character in a play I saw a few years back called Bright River, which was a deeply imaginative redressing of Dante's Inferno in modern clothes (consider Purgatory as a Greyhound Bus depot). The raven, like all the characters in the play, has a chance to tell his story, and his plaintiveness in recounting his childhood in a prison gave me a new perspective on these dark birds. While the play's no longer being performed live as far as I know, I would really recommend getting the CD at the link above; the storytelling is superb, and so is the music that accompanies the tale.

Posted at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, the promised recap of my first week of school. I drove down to Santa Barbara on Saturday, with all of my books, shiny new pencils, the laptop, etc. I almost went and bought Pee Chee folders out of nostalgia, but based on the amount of reading, am glad I went with the 3" binder instead. The drive down was stunning, good Mexican food in SLO, rolled in nice and early around 4:30, so there was time to unpack before dinner. The picture to the right is our dining hall—it has those great long family-style tables that could probably seat 16 if you really had to.

Dinner was just like high school, trying to figure out who to sit with (since I didn't know anyone) or whether to sit alone...finally sat down with some folks and introduced myself, had a nice chat, and got invited to go into Santa Barbara for some friendly drinking after the non-newbies got out of class at 9. A little light reading in my room, and then went to wait in the lobby for what turned out to be about an hour. My inviter never showed up, but in the course of waiting, I ended up talking with some of the folks from the fall 07 class, the one we were about to join, and stayed up until the wee hours with them in the student lounge. An auspicious start for someone so formerly shy.

Day 1: Orientation. Our fall classmates get to go to the beach while we get the big campus tour, a chance to shop at the bookstore (they got me 4 times, the bastards!), financial aid info, etc. Class starts after lunch, and we're right into it with human development theory and Jung for the next day and a half. By the end of this first day, my butt is already sore and my brain full. Less auspicious. Also a wonderful welcome dinner this first night, where everyone in the Humanities program eats together and we have a chance to toast those who are graduating and hear their words of wisdom. Lovely way to start off, and nice closure for those who are leaving, I think...the class graduating this term is only the second one ever since the start of the program.

Day 2: Psych-Out. Another 9 hours packed full of development, discussion, and sore asses. The fall folks, who were already here for 5 days before us, are really hurting and have to stretch a lot. Some of the wisdom from last night about pacing yourself & taking care of the body takes on new resonance. Wondering what brain yoga would look like because I feel the need for stretching there.

Day 3: Art. Such a breath of fresh air to start the day with pictures after all of those words. We get to watch part of Rivers and Tides, one of my favorite movies, and I suddenly want to go outside and play with rocks. Good discussions all day, very lively, and we get to make collages after dinner. Such a wonderful experience; it seemed like a lot of us regressed in a good way and just had a lot of fun cutting up images, sharing our glues sticks and scissors as we tried to represent ourselves on paper.

Day 4: Into the Technological Beast. One last session of art in the morning, a warm goodbye circle and then lunch (did I mention that the food was completely awesome?). In the afternoon, the class we've been told to fear, Technology and the Global Citizen. In the end, not so bad, although I can see that the technical requirements are intimidating at first if you're not used to them. Everybody catches on quickly though, and we choose our myths by random candy bar drawing (I get Raven, interesting—what is the universe trying to say there?) Really getting sore by this time, a little sciatic pain down the right leg. Am already making mental notes of cushy things to bring for the summer/fall session.

Day 5: More Tech & Home. Last two sessions of class. We install Audacity to prep for the podcasting assignment, delve deeper into APA style and other arcane but necessary items we will need to master, and then at 4:30, we're out the door (one last stop at the bookstore), and I start driving home, into what turns out to be a pretty heavy rainstorm. Listened to Radio Lab podcasts all the way back, lots of synchronicities with things we'd discussed during the week, need to be on the lookout for those now that I'm in Jung-land.

So that's the summary, and it's also the preamble to some upcoming posts that may seem slightly out of character. Being basically lazy, I'm using this blog for my blog requirements in class, so if the three of you see stuff that looks suspiciously like homework, your instincts are correct. Feel free to join in the discussion though—I'm all for cross-fertilization and some interesting hybrids might just result.

Posted at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)