Group Facilitations

I think this assignment was pretty great overall. Mythologies are very interesting subjects that share plenty of information and knowledge with readers, as well as entertain them. It also gave us students an opportunity to get a feel of what it is like to lead an entire class discussion (for those of us who have not experienced it yet, anyway.)

I also wanted to thank everyone who participated in my group's facilitation assignment of making their own ending to the Trickster tale. I did go through everyone's blogs to see what they came up with, and it was awesome! So thank you again, and for those of you who are interested in how the story really goes, here it is:

Long ago, when man was newly come into the world, there were days when he was the happiest creature of all. Those were the days when spring brushed across the willow tails, or when his children ripened with the blueberries in the sun of summer, or when the goldenrod bloomed in the autumn haze.

But always the mists of autumn evenings grew more chill, and the sun's strokes grew shorter. Then man saw winter moving near, and he became fearful and unhappy. He was afraid for his children, and for the grandfathers and grandmothers who carried in their heads the sacred tales of the tribe. Many of these, young and old, would die in the long, ice-bitter months of winter.

Coyote, like the rest of the People, had no need for fire. So he seldom concerned himself with it, until one spring day when he was passing a human village. There the women were singing a song of mourning for the babies and the old ones who had died in the winter. Their voices moaned like the west wind through a buffalo skull, prickling the hairs on Coyote's neck.

"Feel how the sun is now warm on our backs," one of the men was saying. "Feel how it warms the earth and makes these stones hot to the touch. If only we could have had a small piece of the sun in our teepees during the winter."

Coyote, overhearing this, felt sorry for the men and women. He also felt that there was something he could do to help them. He knew of a faraway mountain-top where the three Fire Beings lived. These Beings kept fire to themselves, guarding it carefully for fear that man might somehow acquire it and become as strong as they. Coyote saw that he could do a good turn for man at the expense of these selfish Fire Beings.

So Coyote went to the mountain of the Fire Beings and crept to its top. He watched the way that the Beings guarded their fire. As he approached, the Beings leaped to their feet and gazed searchingly round their camp. Their eyes glinted like bloodstones, and their hands were clawed like the talons of the great black vulture.

"What's that? What's that I hear?" hissed one of the Beings.

"A thief, skulking in the bushes!" screeched another.

The third looked more closely, and saw Coyote. But he had gone to the mountain-top on all fours, so the Being thought she saw only an ordinary coyote slinking among the trees.

"It is no one, it is nothing!" she cried, and the other two looked where she pointed and also saw only a grey coyote. They sat down again by their fire and paid Coyote no more attention.

So he watched all day and night as the Fire Beings guarded their fire. He saw how they fed it pine cones and dry branches from the sycamore trees. He saw how they stamped furiously on runaway rivulets of flame that sometimes nibbled outwards on edges of dry grass. He saw also how, at night, the Beings took turns to sit by the fire. Two would sleep while one was on guard; and at certain times the Being by the fire would get up and go into their teepee, and another would come out to sit by the fire.

Coyote saw that the Beings were always jealously watchful of their fire except during one part of the day. That was in the earliest morning, when the first winds of dawn arose on the mountains. Then the Being by the fire would hurry, shivering, into the teepee calling, "Sister, sister, go out and watch the fire." But the next Being would always be slow to go out for her turn, her head spinning with sleep and the thin dreams of dawn.

Coyote, seeing all this, went down the mountain and spoke to his friends among the People. He told them of hairless man, fearing the cold and death of winter. And he told them of the Fire Beings, and the warmth and brightness of the flame. They all agreed that man should have fire, and they all promised to help Coyote's undertaking.

Then Coyote sped again to the mountain top. Again the Fire Beings leaped up when he came close, and one cried out, "What's that? A thief, a thief!"

But again the others looked closely, and saw only a grey coyote hunting among the bushes. So they sat down again and paid him no more attention.

Coyote waited through the day, and watched as night fell and two of the Beings went off to the teepee to sleep. He watched as they changed over at certain times all the night long, until at last the dawn winds rose.

Then the Being on guard called, "Sister, sister, get up and watch the fire."

And the Being whose turn it was climbed slow and sleepy from her bed, saying, "Yes, yes, I am coming. Do not shout so."

But before she could come out of the teepee, Coyote lunged from the bushes, snatched up a glowing portion of fire, and sprang away down the mountainside.

Screaming, the Fire Beings flew after him. Swift as Coyote ran, they caught up with him, and one of them reached out a clutching hand. Her fingers touched only the tip of the tail, but the touch was enough to turn the hairs white, and coyote tail tips are white still. Coyote shouted, and flung the fire away from him. But the others of the People had gathered at the mountain's foot. Squirrel saw the fire falling, and caught it, putting it on her back and fleeing away through the treetops. The fire scorched her back so painfully that her tail curled up and back, as squirrels' tails still do today.

The Fire Beings then pursued Squirrel, who threw the fire to Chipmunk. Chattering with fear, Chipmunk stood still as if rooted until the Beings were almost upon her. Then, as she turned to run, one Being clawed at her, tearing down the length of her back and leaving three stripes that are to be seen on chipmunks' backs even today. Chipmunk threw the fire to Frog, and the Beings turned towards him. One of the Beings grasped his tail, but Frog gave a mighty leap and tore himself free, leaving his tail behind in the Being's hand, which is why frogs have had no tails ever since.

As the Beings came after him again, Frog flung the fire on to Wood. And Wood swallowed it.

The Fire Beings gathered round, but they did not know how to get the fire out of Wood. They promised it gifts, sang to it and shouted at it. They twisted it and struck it and tore it with their knives. But Wood did not give up the fire. In the end, defeated, the Beings went back to their mountaintop and left the People alone.

But Coyote knew how to get fire out of Wood. And he went to the village of men and showed them how. He showed them the trick of rubbing two dry sticks together, and the trick of spinning a sharpened stick in a hole made in another piece of wood. So man was from then on warm and safe through the killing cold of winter.

Trickster Facilitation

This myth is very well known and not created by me. I only took a portion of the short story for the purpose of our group's facilitation. Again, I am not taking credit for this myth!

Long ago, when man was newly come into the world, there were days when he was the happiest creature of all. Those were the days when spring brushed across the willow tails, or when his children ripened with the blueberries in the sun of summer, or when the goldenrod bloomed in the autumn haze.

But always the mists of autumn evenings grew more chill, and the sun's strokes grew shorter. Then man saw winter moving near, and he became fearful and unhappy. He was afraid for his children, and for the grandfathers and grandmothers who carried in their heads the sacred tales of the tribe. Many of these, young and old, would die in the long, ice-bitter months of winter.

Coyote, like the rest of the People, had no need for fire. So he seldom concerned himself with it, until one spring day when he was passing a human village. There the women were singing a song of mourning for the babies and the old ones who had died in the winter. Their voices moaned like the west wind through a buffalo skull, prickling the hairs on Coyote's neck.

"Feel how the sun is now warm on our backs," one of the men was saying. "Feel how it warms the earth and makes these stones hot to the touch. If only we could have had a small piece of the sun in our teepees during the winter."

Coyote, overhearing this...

Based on the elements of the "Trickster" we have discussed so far, come up with your own unique conclusion by yourself or with your row to this short story. It is completely open ended; just use the elements we have mentioned as guidelines to how you think the rest of the story goes. Post your final product with an original title onto your blog when you are finished!

Mythology

Mythology is a very interesting subject that can really expand the ideas of people if used properly. Myths are created through the imagination, even if they are parables of sorts. Regardless of the overall intention of myths (if there even is one,) the fact remains that it takes creativity in order to develop them.

Plato believes that myths are bad for society because they deceive us. They make people believe that they can be like Hercules or Odysseus, when in reality people like them rarely exist, if at all. On top of that, the situations they are in are rarely seen by the common man, and so to make society look at these men as a form of "guidelines" to how to be a man would do nothing except deflate their hopes.

Personally, I think Plato couldn't be more wrong on that subject. He has too little faith in the capabilities of the human mind. Sir Phillip Sidney said it well when he claimed that people SHOULD look up to these men as guidelines, as the morals and lessons they teach will help carve these men into stronger individuals that will better assist the common man. The power of the human mind is vast, more than Plato gives it credit for. We as readers can tell the difference between ourselves and Hercules, we know what he can do and what we cannot do.

Mythology is a wonderful tool in the upbringing of children. Take Santa Claus, for instance. He is a mythical person, and he gives hope and happiness every december to hundreds of thousands of children. He brings families together even though he is not real, and when the child learns that Santa Clause is not real, yes they go through a short sad stage in life, but their outlook on the world is rarely skewed in a permanent deformed manner. They eventually accept the reality of it and move on with their lives, letting that innocence either fade away on let it live on within them. If Plato thinks that is a bad thing, then I'd love to meet him in person and teach him a thing or two about happiness...

Poetry

Happiness

There's a pain in my chest,
It makes me feel funny,
Did that kick pierce through my vest,
Or am I just too sunny?

The past dictates how we think,
The present does little for the soul,
The future makes us want to sink,
Which of these guides us to our goal?

The answer may not be clear now,
Nor will it in ten, twenty years,
But as long as your thoughts allow,
In the end, you will cheer.


Companionship

I think I know about friendship.
I think I know about love.
It depends on if you count
Nineteen years of togetherness as either.

We were born under the same moon,
Raised together under the same roof,
We did not share the same blood,
But of love and friendship,
We think we knew.

We learned each other's culture,
Learned each other's hobbies,
Learned each other's love,
Learned each other's body.

In daycare we shared our bed.
In preschool we shared our toys.
In elementary school we shared our innocence.
In middle school we shared our infatuation.
In high school we shared our love.
In college...there was no one to share with.

She was a victim to fate, chance, technology.
The yellow light beckoned her to turn.
It beckoned the other to drive faster.
The collision was unavoidable.
Her life, my life, gone in an instant.

Edited in a 3rd poem on May 4th, 2010:

Misunderstanding

I give you my time,
I don’t really mind
Since it makes you chime
Despite the daily grind.

I give you my trust,
It is a fragile being
Which easily turns to dust
I swear by the all-seeing.

I give you my love,
Drink it like a wine
As you are like a dove
One that is all mine.

In return you offer me the miracle of creation,
When all I really want is the new playstation.

Flying Japan

The rising sun high in the sky
The Sakura leading the season
It really makes me want to fly
Even though it defies reason

The crowd rushing into the train
Going to where they have to be
Even Obaa-san lives in vain
Ignoring the beauty I see

When will the darkness go and fade?
When will the light fly in the sky?
I will have my Nihon made
So that my people can say bye.

The weakness known as "Death"

The sonnet “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne celebrates the notion of life vividly while staring death in the eye fearlessly. It is a beautiful poem that teaches readers to cherish their own life as well as not fear death. Death is generally portrayed as a terrifying thing, because the last thing anyone wants to do is die. However, Donne challenges that belief by arguing that people do not need to fear death because when people die, they move on to another plain while death disappears forever. Donne argues that if anyone truly dies when a person passes away, it is death, not the individual.

From the very beginning of this sonnet, the speaker challenges the notion of death with the first quatrain. They say “Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so” (Lines 1-2). The speaker powerfully addresses death, telling it that it has nothing to be “proud” of, and that while many have called death “mighty and dreadful,” it really is not. The speaker continues and says “For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, / Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me” (3-4). Here the speaker is telling death that even though it may think it has claimed the lives of so many people, it really has not because when people pass on they move to another plain. They do not fade away into nothingness, according to the speaker’s argument. On top of that, death cannot kill anyone because death must wait for the individual to grow old, or take a mortal wound and such. Death cannot deliberately cause any of these things, and therefore cannot truly kill anyone. Death must wait for people, not vice versa.

The second quatrain continues the verbal assault on death, using metaphors to express what death must feel like. The speaker compares death to sleep, claiming that “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, / Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow” (5-6). This wonderfully put together set of lines makes a rather matter-of-fact argument against death. The speaker argues that sleep, which is considered just a snapshot of what death is like, is very pleasurable for people. That said, if death is truly “eternal sleep,” then the pleasure of death must be much greater than sleeping itself. It may seem like a silly argument, but the author was most likely using this to counter the stereotypical idea of what death is really like. Donne basically said that if death really is just a never-ending nap, then it does not sound all that bad. The next lines take this argument even further as the speaker says, “And soonest our best men with thee do go, / Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery” (7-8). The speaker ridicules death here, claiming that when the best of men pass on their souls will be delivered to whatever heavenly plain the speaker sees. It is a very powerful statement, as it is arguing that even when death greets people, all death will do is grant them safe passage to the next realm, which the author must see as a pure and blissful place. For the speaker, there is nothing to fear in death, and he continues to butcher it brutally throughout the sonnet.

The final quatrain added with a couplet completely demolish any notion that death should be regarded as a powerful object in which people should cower in fear from. The speaker starts by saying, “[Death] art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, / and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell” (9-10). The speaker all but slaps death in the face here, saying that death cannot take charge of people’s lives in any way whatsoever. Instead, death is a “slave” to all these other things that cause people to die. Such a weak thing should not be feared by others. Not only that, but the speaker claims that death sleeps with “poison, war, and sickness,” as if to say that if death is such a powerful and omnipotent being, then why does it bed with such distasteful things? Donne brilliantly uses these powerful words to provide explicit imagery of what death truly looks like to the reader, and then uses it to back up his argument that death should not be revered at all. If that was not bad enough, the speaker belittles death’s power by saying “And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well, / And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?” (11-12). The speaker compares the power of death to drugs that can kill people, and do it much faster than waiting for death to come around. Therefore, why does death’s pride swell so much when it is as weak, if not weaker, than something as small as a pill? The final couplet of this sonnet really delivers the ultimate blow to death: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die” (13-14). The speaker is saying that once people do pass on, they wake up eternally in heavenly bliss after a “short sleep.” And after they do wake up, there will no longer be such a thing as death, and therefore it is death that dies in the end, not the individual. It is a very powerful statement that Donne strewed together beautifully to defy the fear of death once and for all.

Several critics have discussed this sonnet as well, and interpretations vary greatly despite the overall straightforwardness of the text. Frederic Tromly, the author of “Milton Responds to Donne: ‘On Time’ and ‘Death Be Not Proud’,” argues that “After his triumphant opening assertion of victory over Death, the speaker’s certainty falters, and he proceeds to engage in casuistical and contradictory arguments with Death. Thus, he claims unconvincingly that Death must be more pleasant than rest and sleep because they are merely ‘pictures’ of Death, but then he suddenly shifts to argue that Death is a despicable slave who dwells ‘with poison, war, and sickness’.” Tromly makes a valid argument, but the reason why the speaker compared death to sleep in the first place is because people generally call death “eternal sleep.” It is not that the speaker believes that it is truly eternal, it was more of a counter-argument to the idea, as if to say “why, if death is eternal slumber, and sleeping feels great, then death must be wonderful!” What the speaker truly believes is that death dwells with things such as “poison, war, and sickness,” as these things are what lead to death. Though Tromly’s argument is understandable, the speaker did not contradict him or herself once during this sonnet. Norman Vance, author of “Donne’s ‘Death Be Not Proud’ and The Book of Homilies” compares the lines in the text to religious texts such as the Corinthians: “As modern editors have noted, ‘Death Be Not Proud,’ Donne’s Holy Sonnet on the death of death, draws on and dramatizes 1 Corinthians 15, particularly verse 26, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’.” The lines are similar, but not once in Donne’s sonnet was God or religion mentioned by the speaker, save for maybe the idea of afterlife, but that is debatable. The speaker is strictly discussing death and what it really looks like when all the mist as cleared. Yes, it is possible that Donne was inspired by some religious text, but he is not trying to advocate some sort of spiritual point to his readers. He is strictly discussing the relationship between man and death, and how man perceives death to be something far grander and more powerful than it actually is, nothing more and nothing less.

“Death Be Not Proud” is a fantastic piece of work that advocates the defiance of death. People do not need to live their whole lives in fear of dying, which is simply what Donne was trying to show his readers with this sonnet. If people live their lives in constant fear, then very little will get done, and such a life can and will be judged as meaningless. Donne wants his readers to embrace life and enjoy it for what it is. When their time does come, he wants them to look death in the eye, smirk, and punch him in the face.

Works Cited

Donne, John. "Death Be Not Proud." 100 Best-Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995. Print.

Tromly, Frederic B. "Milton Responds to Donne: "On Time" and "Death Be Not Proud"." Modern Philology 80.4 (1983): 390-3.

Vance, Norman. "Donne's "Death Be Not Proud" and the Book of Homilies." Notes and Queries 254.1 (2009): 75-6.

A Singing America

Walt Whitman's "I hear America Singing" is a very joyous celebration of the idea of "America." Whitman portrays several people performing everyday jobs, but doing so happily. Just the fact that they are doing these jobs, such as carpentering, boating, shoe making, and wood-cutting, helps for a better, stronger tomorrow on American soil, as far as Whitman is concerned.

I do not think that these workers are actually singing, I believe Whitman used singing more as a metaphor to express the joy of everyday labor that is necessary for America to function. Sadly this love of hard labor is all but gone today. People today seem to shun the idea of labor, that it is for poor, ignorant people, and that it is something they should not have to do. Based off of this poem, Whitman would probably cry tears of sorrow if he heard of this mentallity common among so many Americans today that he loves.

An interesting quote I got from the poem is, "Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else." It struck me rather hard because it sounds like the speaker is saying that the art of shoe making is the shoemaker's, and no one else. It is their gift, and no one can take it from them. It is a rather powerful statement that I believe can benefit many people today if they looked at their work like that. Instead, most people generally despise their jobs, performing it out of necessity rather than desire.

To wrap things up, when I read this poem I immediately thought of one song done by the group Metallica. Listening to it, I wonder if Whitman would find it to be a glorious example of America today, or would he shun it as an insult to the idea of "America?" Here is the song, and just to warn you all, there are several curse words within the lyrics. Viewer discretion is advised!