The ending and the willing suspension of disbelief

So... I feel it is safe to talk about the ending now, hopefully. I feel that the ending, with the enforced seperation of Lyra and Will, is really where the reader has to create a personal framework which to suspend disbelief from. The first reaction I had to this seperation was anger but thinking back throughout the trilogy it had to happen and nothing I can do can re-enuite them. This seperation is a must, the novel basically teaches the reader about Lyra's movement from innocence to experience and how as an adult she has to make certain choices and because of this 'experience' she can no longer be with Will. These personal stories, or framework as mentioned above, are an interesting insight into where Pullman might go or really where anyone might go with there own willing suspension of disbelief. By this I am referring to the fan fiction located on various His Dark Materials fan websites across the internet. It seems that a lot of people were mad at the ending and created a new ending, yet we know this can't happen, which I would say to my delight many fans realized and wrote somewhat of a continuation of the end of the trilogy; this was a nice insight into what Pullman does for people and how individual people create their suspension. These fan factions delve into the world, giving fictional recollections of things like the adventures of Will and Lyra's daemons after their seperation from the children before entering the land of the dead, or how Will and Lyra are still so young with pretty much there entire lives ahead of them a great deal of post trilogy fiction sheds light on there possible roads of travel. I find all of these things interesting because as Pullman says "the aim of writing is to delight" and he must really be delighting people because the responses to his trilogy are phenomenal; inspiring people of all ages to write, and not write because they have to, but just to write and suspend their own disbeliefs to create something that will force the reader of their own writing to do the same, to suspend, which starts the cycle of endless imagination.

paper for Child and Young Adult Lit.

John Nehring
Child and Young Adult Lit.

Lost in the Extraordinary
“The almost sensual bliss, the intoxicating blend of excitement and surrender we feel when someone says ‘Once upon a time…’ Any education that neglects this dimension of experience will be dry and tasteless with no nourishment in it. People-children especially-need this experience of delight.” Phillip Pullman
Giving oneself over to the extraordinary is complicated webbing that involves above all things art. By art I’m not framing a thought that invokes the Mona Lisa or Starry Night yet these might come to mind, but a plethora of art that is made up of the Mona Lisa but not limited to this one small piece in the larger web which includes subjects as literature, theatre, sculpture, music, opera, and so on. The arts are a way for an adolescent to start at an early stage to not forget what he/she is about on the inside.
The extraordinary isn’t something you need to search for, except for in yourself, it is in everyone and only needs to be awoken inside; this awakening goes hand in hand with the arts, negative compatibility, and a willing suspension of disbelief. For the purpose of this paper I am going to start off with the child and his connection to the extraordinary, move to the possible fall or unimaginative adulthood, and finish with a possible portal ‘back’ into the extraordinary.
A child, though open to many interpretations of what actually makes up a child, for the purpose of this paper, we will define a child as innocence. The child is innocent because the child isn’t searching for the ‘right’ meaning or even for a meaning at all, it is just there, taking what comes and forgetting what goes. The child is void of reason, truth, and an ‘un’-imagination. This is what is so beautiful about a child, it has no set path, and is free to find out through mistakes what life is asking of it. In Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Lyra’s journey, her destiny, can only come true if she is allowed to make mistakes: “…she must fulfill this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing, because only in her ignorance can we be saved…what it means is that she must be free to make mistakes” (Pullman 130). This is not only a statement that explains the concept of a child and how we must let them understand the world through their own eyes, but it also contains one of the key problems with society today, something I will refer to as interruption, but I will come back to that later. The idea of allowing children to make mistakes, I feel is rooted in Pullman’s lecture on “the school of morals,” which is planted in the belief that “we can learn what’s good and what’s bad, what’s generous and unselfish, what’s cruel and mean, from fiction” (East Anglia Lecture, 4). In a sense the ‘school of morals’ is the experience of life when you live or suffer it.
As we have talked about in class, a child loses innocence when he/she starts to read. As innocence starts to turn into experience the path of life becomes more concrete, by our own will or by societies is something I will leave you to decide. Yet, it happens none the less, and this is the deciding moment when what we read and the structure set up around what is being read is on the tip of a ball point pen. At this point in life-a foggy, unclear point in life- is where, at least in present day society, most paths are set for us by grown-ups-parents, professors, ‘mature’ people. Through my own experience’s growing up, art wasn’t even near the center of my life, which seemed to be the case for most around me. By this I merely am stating that what we define as the arts (from above) was usually looked at in a negative light, full of ridicule for the people trying to follow this path, or it was just shoved aside to make room for more ‘important’ things like geography, algebra, gym class. Through this construct I feel the common path leads away from the arts into a more concrete, closed world where fact is the forerunner into experience, but why? Pullman states in an article, Theatre-the true key stage that the arts are a viable and necessary companion in life, a companion that helps in the journey to create a ‘grown-up’ that isn’t an automated working machine without imagination or emotion; he feels that if you do limit these things from a child “they perish on the inside, and it doesn’t show” (Theatre, 1). This closing of the mind is what leads us away from the extraordinary.
As I talked about above, the key principle here is ‘interruption.’ I would say that this fall from the extraordinary is a type of interruption of John Keats’ idea of Negative Compatibility. In one of Keats’ letters to George and Thomas Keats, December 22, 1817, he states that “…Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Isn’t this the exact type of interruption that I touched on earlier, a path that leads away from uncertainties, a path that is full of fact and reason. By this time it might feel that I am an advocate against fact and reason, but this just isn’t the case, I am merely stating that if one’s life is solely concentrated on fact and reason, the child is gone forever and life would consist of nothing as mentally stimulating as the imagination.
I am regressing; this idea, Negative Capability, is seen when reading anything with fantastical elements in it, Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, or even Keats Ode to a Nightingale. The most impressive part of this suspension is when writers like Keats and Carroll emulate this idea in their writing. In Alice in Wonderland the reader sees Alice stuck in a room with a door so small she can’t get through. She is stumped on how to get out of this room, until a key appears on a small table in the room, yet she is still too big. Shortly after this realization she finds a small unmarked bottle with a paper label tied to the neck that says “drink me.” After she drinks the elixir she eventually reaches the desired height to go through the door (Carrol 15-17). In Keats Ode to a Nightingale the narrator also drinks a type of potion: “My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drain” (Keats, 2-3). In both examples the person drinks something to reach or explain the desired affect. This in a sense is the extraordinary, it has been there all along, in front of our eyes. Now don’t go drinking everything in site to try to reach the extraordinary; it is a type of portmantou where the drink is the imagination, the innocence which is lost in so many people. Earlier in this semester I created a displacement of the Bozeman Police Reports where by using reality as a basis I created a type of portal for the listeners imagination into the world of pretend, a place to suspend the beliefs and instead fill it with the uncertainties and mysteries which make up a good story. Yet, even though it was made up, no one doubted or questioned, but just listened with attention, with imagination, with their negative capability.
If we are all on the path described earlier, the concrete, closed path or if the journey on the path is over and the arts have been forgotten or closed off deep inside, the following is the savior of the extraordinary. Everything in the arts is embedded with the extraordinary, it is just a point of looking at the stories themselves, believing in them for what they are, using our willing suspension of disbelief-our imagination-to give oneself back to the extraordinary. The willing suspension of disbelief is a term invented by William Taylor Coleridge which is basically momentarily, possibly for only a few seconds, minutes, or longer if not interrupted, stopping the thought process and giving oneself to the innocence of the imagination; the pretend (Holland 1).

When you get the chance drink the hemlock or the unmarked bottle with only the words “drink me” on them, let your daemon find out who it is, say open sesame-once upon a time-in a land far, far away, don’t stop yourself at the limits of your mind, but let it go, let it find the imagination, regain this thing that is your own, move forward into the extraordinary and feel the wonderous power of life. As with life you need to delight and only do things that are worth doing for yourself or your imagination. The extraordinary isn’t far from any of us, it is just the will or ‘willing’ that can bring you to it.

the "North's" connections

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs. Wallace Stevens

-In class the other day we were talking about 'North' or at least the idea of north, and it was brought up that Wallace Stevens writes about the Aurora's, a very distinct aspect of the north in Pullman's His Dark Materials.
I think it is interesting to think of the north as an idea, an imaginary place full of mystery and danger. It seems as if Pullman, almost through realism, relates a notion of a story, whoever fantastical it might be, to the common reader. I believe in his idea of the north because he takes things already present in the matter and turns certain mysteries or wonderings we might have about a place and turns them into reality.
I can see this realism in Wallace Stevens poems yet in a slightly different way. He to uses the raven (black bird)as a character in his writing, just as Pullman does. Also he seems to incorporate or at least have been captivated by the north to include it in some aspects of his poetry. In stanza X Stevens wrote, "At the sight of blackbirds/
Flying in a green light/ Even the bawds of euphony/ Would cry out sharply." Here it seems to me that Stevens is referring to the blackbirds flying with the Aurora for their background. The idea of the north seems to capture more than just Pullman and Stevens since so many people have been attracted to Pullman's writings. Also it is interesting to take an idea and see it pop up in all sorts of interesting places.

Dreams...

There is one dream, or I guess a nightmare is what you would call it, that I had when I was young and for some reason I have always remembered the dream. I can't really recollect any other dreams or at least to the clarity that I still can recollect this one. Before the dream begins a little background information on my day before this night, at least to the extent that I can remember. I had watched the movie the Burbs with Tom Hanks as the lead actor.

In the movie Tom Hanks (spoiler report!) is living next to a bunch of murderers that have killed a bunch of people and are cremating them in their basement and burying them under the foundation.
In my dream I am being carried by a bunch of small men. The men were really small, and resembled a cross between the Ewoks in the movie Star Wars with the sand people in the movie Star Wars. So these small men were carrying me, about 6-8 of them, and they are carrying me to this huge grill, probably big enough to roast 3 children, and the grill is situated in the back yard of the murderers house in The Burbs. And then right when they were lowering me on I woke up.
I am not sure why I always remember this dream, possibly because when I woke up I was so freaked out that it was real it, in a way, burned itself into my mind. It is still kind of scary for me to this day.
I think this might be why we have dreams, in my notes from Nov. 7th I wrote down that "terror into art, only way to deal w/ terror." When looking at my dream it seems that this is what happened. My mind was so terrified about these killers, possibly because it was happening in a relatively safe neighborhood like where I was living that it turned it into a dream, a 'dealable' option for me so I could cope with it in a way. If dreams and art are connected it seems that all of the themes through the class could be connected, art-dream, coincidence obviously ties in with those two, so three out of five isn't bad.

Here's a link to a clip from The Burbs, it seems like a much funnier movie now...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik4fILNVdRE

More than just true...

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

* G.K. Chesterton


I love this quote. It says so much and still says it in an exciting way. The message it gives is a central message in this class, that through experience, through ideas where dragonslayers take down these great beasts is where the truth lies not in just the fact that they exist; a situation has to be present where a story doesn't just tell us its true it shows it. This seems almost a way of getting your readers to believe, to not just tell but to show. How much am I suppose to believe that Bluebeard is such a bad man? You show me. This vision of the imagination that fairy tales present is the basis of fairy tales, making us imagine and then believing the imagined.

Notes for November 17th

His Dark Materials

--Can't get to far from Daemon
--Naggy; needy
--a part of its human
--Willing suspension of disbelief to enter book... needed to be able to suspend reality at a wim and believe what your mind is reading if only for a few seconds.

--Pullman talking about teaching people to write; no rules, willing suspension of certainty (changes Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief)

--Lyre- wind plays instrument... Lyre= Lyra, the central character in His Dark Materials. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHq1H5cmL5w
Hopefully this link works... it is a link to a man playing the Lyre, he is claiming that the song is from 1300 B.C. in some of his playing.

--Get rid of the notion that the text is going to teach us anything.

-- 6 degrees of seperation

--"Its a pour memory that only goes one way."
-Aleithiometer
+leith- Lethe- rive in Hades where you drink the water and you forget.
-Aleithiometer= takes away the forgetfulness; 'un'-forgetting
--Glen Gould- "32 short pieces of Glen Gould"
-haunted by the idea of 'the north.'
--gold bug variations...
--Central metaphor at the basis of the trilogy is the Aurora Borealis
-I have seen the Aurora's. Growing up in North Dakota they were usually visual in the winter at some times throughout the winter. The following is a picture that I found that most closely resembled my memory of the Aurora's, this picture is close except they were slightly more red.

--Wallace Stevens Poems- about idea of 'North.'
--
Domination Of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. -Wallace Stevens

--Nobazembla- try to find it in text and reality...
-I found some pretty interesting facts on Nova Zembla
--Nova Zembla
+Novaya Zemlya is the proper name; it is only known as Nova Zembla in Dutch. It is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe. The indigenous population consists of about 100 Nenetses who subsist mainly on fishing, trapping, polar bear hunting, and seal hunting.

--the Aleithiometer is a guide to symbols and the importance and many meanings or level of meanings in them... such as a portmanteau.

Scharfanugal

I think one of the most enjoyable and fascinating things to me about reading Pullman's trilogy (or any young adult literature for that matter) is the use of made up or 'new' words. Here are a few: aerodock, anbaric (a type of electricity or power), and since I started writing this blog I found an interesting page on the terminology of His Dark Materials, here it is; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials_terminology. I like how Pullman says things, and not just what he is saying. He creates a world that is different; one that is strange to the everyday person, yet because it is different it stimulates the brain to a greater extent than an everyday read. We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.

* Philip Pullman

Quiz notes

Subject Matter: Tatar-endings, Talbout pages, Alice: Humpty-Wool & Water-Tweedles-Caterpillar-Question of Morals.

Questions from class:

Classic illustrator of Alice-Tenniel
Virtue-last word of B&B
Who wins after death-the worms-yet, "We triumph over worms through art" (Groucho Marx)
Oscar Wilde-life imitates art
5 themes of class: myth dreams coincidence, art, history
White Knight is? Carroll
Parody: counter part to Alice: Crocodile moral counterpart to Bee
Food mock turtle sings of? soup
Mad Hatter's answer to Raven and Writing desk riddle: no clue
After Shakespeare: most quoted author: Carroll
The White Rabbit drops a fan...
myth is a depersonalized dream and dream is a personalized myth.
Come up with portmantaeu of Humpty Dumpty.
Who is the rudest of all the flowers? The violet
Where does Alice live in all of us? the unconscious
When Alice first shrinks how tall is she? 10 in.
Deleted chapter of Looking Glass? The Wasp and the Wig
How does Alice offend the mouse? Talking of her cat and dog
During ref. main intent of child lit? instill moral values
What 2 animals sparked curiousity in evolution? Monkey and mammoth
Gutenberg press
Mercury making Hatters Mad is what? misplaced concreteness
What do Beauty's tears turn into in the Cocteau movie? Diamonds
Trust the tale and not the teller.
Carroll's nickname, du-du... cause he stutters.
1st Bible published in U.S. was in Algonquin.
Tatology
Goody-two-shoes is an emblem of perfection that adults lack.
Alice Pleasance Liddell
Re-create last line of Alice.
What is contained in the ending poem of Looking Glass? Acrostic
Walter Pater said: All art aspires to the condition of music.

Flowers in Fairytales

I seem to keep running into the idea of smelling flowers as a meaning for something. In the Wizard of Oz, the lion, Dorothy, Toto, and even the mice all fall subject to the powerful properties of the Poppies. And then in Carrol's Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the original manuscript, the rabbit doesn't drop a fan but a type of flower (Nosegay) that makes Alice shrink. Nosegay means gallantry and Red Poppies means consolation. (Go to if you want more flower meanings)

I have been debating over the significance in each piece of work. In the Wizard of Oz the poppies play a key role in almost stopping the group. I have looked at this scene, using consolation as my guide, and I feel that the Poppies are a type of hinderance but also a type of motherly love. They are a hinderance because they stop the travel of the group, but why do the poppies actually stop them? This is where my idea of motherly love comes into play. If the poppies mean consolation, or an alleviation of grief, couldn't the poppies be looked at as a mother, possibly even 'the mother,' the Blessed Virgin Mary.



The way I see it is that the poppies are the womb or the mother's embrace. Dorothy, lost with no way home, and the lion, without courage, are so affected by the embrace that they can't make it out of the field. (An important note I think is that if the tinman and the scarecrow were human at the time, God's children, that they would be equally effected) The poppies are the motherly embrace by trying to keep these people within its clutches, holding them, comforting them, letting them forget their problems. The slipping into sleep is a symbol of the warmth and comfort found by a child in his/her mothers arms. This point is especially relevant when looking at how scared Dorothy must be in a different place, and how scared the lion is because he lacks the confidence that mothers (parents) instilled in their offspring.



In Alice in Wonderland the possible meanings behind the flower are more concrete (I am not sure if thats the word I want). Gallantry, or heroic behavior, the meaning of Nosegay, is seen in Alice. The first thought that came to mind was the fact that she was so quick to follow the rabbit, not worrying about what might happen, and then not worrying about getting hurt while falling for a long time. I haven't thought as much about how flowers perform in this text and hope to expand on some ideas when I have more time.

Is anyone's 'last' work, actually the last?

In class on Friday we were talking about Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest. But is this really his last play or piece of writing? Or is anyone's last paper their last, Plato's Laws, or Carrol's The Hunting of the Snark?
If everything is a displacement into something else, wouldn't Shakespeare's last work actually be a beginning into a web work of Shakespeare or Shakesperian influenced writing? So by saying it is his last work, wouldn't you also be saying that his work isn't timeless and ceases to have connections with another piece of writing?
I think one could argue that by the direct or indirect subjection of The Tempest that in a sense Shakespeare's last work just plain isn't. Through the collaberation of Shakespeare and whomever decides to use him as a basis or idea starter, wouldn't Shakespeare take on the title of a type of co-author? What I am trying to say is that since The Tempest Shakespeare has lent a hand from good writing to bad and everything in between.
By looking at his 'last' work this way would be a claim that The Tempest is really the beginning. After something has been written it isn't finished or complete, but has just started its perilous journey with no end in-sight.
The following is a small excerpt of how I came to my conclusion:
I think an important thing to note here is that on citations. If someone cites a work, in either works cited or works consulted, isn't the author in essence giving credit to that author? If they are giving credit, they must have felt there was some impact that could possible be seen by readers/critics as not independent. If the author feels that his work was created not only by his own ideas,but by building off of previous ones, wouldn't we consider these 'citations of impact' as actually co-authorship?

Notes for November 7th

Themes of the class: history, myth, dream, art, coincidence

Terror into art, only way to deal w/ terror; like fairy tales in Tartar book.

Shakespeare...
The Tempest; the last play he wrote. (see Shakespeare post)

"A Mad Tea Party"

When the question came up in class on which chapter was my favorite in Alice in Wonderland I knew right away which one I enjoyed the most: A Mad Tea Party. There are several reasons why I enjoyed this one, but mainly the riddle which I will get to in a bit.
I want to start off with the actual tea party, which includes the Madhatter, the March Hare and a Dormouse, at least before Alice arrives. I wanted to dwell on what the March Hare says to Alice in the beginning of the tea party, "Then you should say what you mean," The March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied;"at least-at least I mean what I say-thats the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. This distinction in sentence structure is intriguing where the sentence is made up of the same words yet it has quite different meanings. It almost seems as this is a lesson, a necessary lesson in life-it seems as if Alice is growing up, learning. For a college educated reader the difference in the two sentences might seem quite obvious, yet I feel that as a child the recognization as these two sentences thought 'one' execute different meanings. It seems to be emphasizing the power of words and how you can manipulate them into doing what the user wants.
Right before this confrontation is when the Riddle is asked..."Why is a raven like a writing desk?" I was intrigued by this passage not only because riddles are intriguing but because the use of the raven in it, the portmanteau of meanings. The raven is used as a portmanteau throughout not only children's lit but life and the stories told throughout. I have been debating over possible answers to this riddle and the only thing I have been able to come up with is kind of a stretch. A raven is like a writing desk in that both are looked at with the power of knowledge, the raven for seeing everything that happens, an onlooker from the sky, whereas a writing desk absorbs everything that touch it, the subtle pen strokes that etch the knowledge into the wood frame. They both are there at the creation (the raven in Native myth) of a masterpiece-nature, a book, anything. My answer delighted my senses well enough, but I had to find what Carrol felt the answer was, which I found in the preface for the 1896 edition where it says, "enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz: 'Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!' This Riddle, as orginally invented, had no answer at all. First off, for the record, I like my answer better, and secondly, the orginal riddle had no answer? What? I felt a wierd tingle when I read that line, a riddle with no answer? I have contemplated over this idea quite a bit and this is what I have come up with... he gave us the riddle to only think. To think, to imagine what possible connection could these two entities have? I feel that his answer isn't right just as my answer isn't right to him. The answer to the riddle is whatever you feel like it is, it is personal to the person doing the answering.
Also at the end of this chapter is when Alice finally makes it into the garden, the place she had been trying to get to since the beginning. Also here is where Alice makes one of the key remarks to the whole book; "Now, I'll manage better this time..." This quote is outlining the existence of a trial and error childhood, where one road will lead you down a path, possibly not the right path, but an experience is still felt on this path; after the experiences start to build up a greater sense of the world, of knowledge is acquired. Even though Alice hasn't recieved/reached what she yearns for, she is still content with the adventure she is on, making her more curious and curious as the book goes on. It almost seems as if she is on a path from innocence to experience.

The Raven

I was scanning over some notes I had on My Book and Heart Shall never Part and I came across one note where I wrote that in the movie it is said that the "Raven was the master of Capital words." I find this interesting because I am taking a class right now called Studies in a Major Author where we are concentrating on a Native American writer, Louise Erdrich, who comes from the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe Indians in North Dakota. This is an interesting connection in that the raven is a key figure in Native storytelling and tales. Extraordinary beings like the Raven emphasize the importance of a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. I feel this would help to expand my some what weak answer early on my blog on what is nature, child, book... I feel this is what nature is, something created by mankind but is only inherently real when the relationship between the mind and the made-up (nature) is in a type of symbiosis or state of grace. I think this statement yields to the reason why it is so hard to define a term like nature because we (by we I am stating anyone who is growing up in the age of technology like we are) aren't living as symbiotic as we once were so to find this relationship is harder than finding the relationship between nature and man that doesn't work. I am regressing, I feel that the Raven is an important figure in any society, yet known for his trickery the Raven is also known for knowledge and wisdom, something I feel more closely connected to a Raven than with trickery. So in Native stories the Raven is almost seen as a master of capital words, but instead of capital words he is the master of trickery, of delight.

stepping stones to wisdom

Here is a picture of my "Alice in Wonderland" I felt so connected to the Tartar book of fairytales, a feeling that you get from a book that delights and lets you in on all the minute details that may or may not matter to the book as a whole is nice, they are there for the taking yet aren't an integral part to the story; they remind me of the Tidbits. The Tidbits is a news column that has little 'tidbits' of information in them which is why, in the end I decided to buy The Annotated Alice. This fascination with tidbits, small facts of such minute information how could they hardly help or be interesting? Well I will tell you... they seem to open up your mind to endless possibilities. I feel myself scanning over them after I have read and interpreted a passage in whatever way my mind put the pieces together and the tidbits are almost a stepping stone to keep my thoughts, my ideas moving, sometimes they help and sometimes they hinder. These 'stepping stones' also remind me of Alice In Sunderland. Yet I have only made it a few short pages into this book it feels to take the same structure as this idea of 'stepping stones.' Except with Sunderland the 'stepping stones' are right in the text, no sidebar needed. It is like the idea of six degrees of seperation where the degrees are plotted for us and all it takes on our part are the 'steps.'

My Book and Heart Shall Never Part response

The most interesting thing of My Book and Heart Shall never Part for me was the cap the small child was made to wear that had a message on each of the three sides; one side said "It is fifty to one but you are," another said " I'll consider it," and the last said "I may be wrong." These sayings, usually put on a type of thinking cap was most notably written down in The History of Little Goody Two Shoes which is why it seems so relevent to the class. A cap and saying like this was eluded to in some Sherlock Holmes books I used to read as a child where Sherlock would settle down in his smoking jacket to consider difficult 'three-pipe' problems. It is fascinating to see a connection like this, where in my child hood I used to religiously read all of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, I grow up to settle them in the back of my mind to collect dust, I take a class involved with children's literature wherein the professor of this course makes a movie that has a cap that Sherlock Holmes used or was used as a type of model for his and other peoples ways of figuring out problems.

notes for October 27th

Notes:
-chello music
--the serenity of music and how this serenity is often used as the music during the playing time. What types of music were used in the play of fairy tales?
-where words are impossible to describe?
=what world...
=What did she mean by that? Absolutely nothing, its music...

-Isaac Watts How doth the busy little bee
^-"Idleness was the devil's playground"
-- "How doth the Little Bee" is one of Isaac Watts's didactic poems for children that Lewis Carroll parodies in Alice in Wonderland:

How doth the little busy Bee
Improve each shining Hour,
And gather Honey all the day
From every opening Flower!

How skilfully she builds her Cell!
How neat she spreads the Wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet Food she makes.

In Works of Labour or of Skill
I would be busy too:
For Satan finds some Mischief still
For idle Hands to do.

In Books, or Work, or healthful Play
Let my first Years be past,
That I may give for every Day
Some good Account at last. [1715]

-Matrix is based on Alice in Wonderland
--make you be moral and busy
--eviscerate/disembowel
-My Book and Heart shall never part
--Plato's allegory of the cave
-if it can't be seen; deceive
--misplaced concreteness
--inadequate responses; questions still need to be asked
--wolf mask- boy behind mask- girl steals mask from boy
-- Children's lit. goes beyond the what is needful; all stories are portal stories...The subersion of child's lit.
--ironic- "a movie that teaches us that books aren't for teaching"

The real 'morals'

Cinderella

The beautiful woman should take hast,
for coming upon them only hell will create.
Yet they believe beauty is the right path,
I am sorry to say, I only see rath.

The tale that is to be spun and pondered,
is tainted by the people who forever wonder.
Searching for beauty with sight only,
they will find this path very lonely.

And for the women who believe this,
who beautify themselves with out amiss.
You will find one day, the man with you,
is not a man, but only part of a selfish few.


Bluebeard
Oh, ye, with curiousness and charm,
you do no good, but only harm.
If this is a moral, then listen well,
since curiousity came from hell.

Your multi-tracked mind shouldn't wander,
for your husband is all you should ponder.
Through fire and brimstone, look ahead,
if you stray, I only see dread.

So to all you newly married wives,
I hope you have enjoyed your lives,
since now has the time come
for you to be content with dumb.

Linda Sexson lecture

Dr. Linda Sexson was gracious enough to come speak to our class today. The following contains some brief notes that I took on this day:
Fairtales: Didactic-god, morals, etiquette, pragmatic, nature.
-begin to become speculative
--literacy
-when child starts to become literate- lose childhood
--nature - bird hatching- writers hope kids relate/think God

Charles Dickens is re-defining himself...

I was struck by a question on this quiz, where someone in the class
came up with; What author wanted to marry Little Red Riding Hood and
the answer Charles Dickens. I feel that this is a regression of the
Oedipus Complex. This, where instead of having the boy love/obsess over
the mother, the father is now reversing the roles wanting to marry the
innocent child- L.R.R.H. Through Dickens obvious ties withchildrens
literature I feel that he had become what he did, he became so engulfed
in his work that he became the child in his work, loving another
(child) in what he himself was so deeply submersed in. He not only
loved L.R.R.H. because first off, how could you not love her, but also
in that he felt like a child again, re-defining his lines of gender,
realizing that this object in front of him is slightly different; now I
am not implying that this relationship is sexual in anyway (if you look at an early post of mine on the oedipus complex you will see why).

I mean who wouldn't want to marry that:

Oct. 10th, QUIZ NOTES FOR MONDAY

List of items on quiz...
-L.R.R.H.
-Cindy vanity
Hanzel and Gretel
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Rapunzel
East of the Sun West of the Moon
Juniper Tree
Bluebeard

Test Questions:
What is archetypal lady-Prank Queen
Portmanteau-multi-level word; many levels of meaning.
privelaged #'s in Fairy Tales: 3, 7
What is misplaced concretness?
Type 333-Little Red
collective unconscious manifests itself as archetypes
"If your really crafty you will get both."
What are the three parts of the universal quest? seperation, initiation, myth
Triple Goddess: mother maiden crone
Why is there no original? All lit. is displaced myth
bow-recognition of the devine
Aladdin, genie-"I'm not history..."
Grimm's Cinderella-Ashgirl
motif index- Hans, B&B, East of Sun..., what motif? Searching for missing husband/beast groom
mother daughter duo; Demeter and Persephone
Fairytale haikue of moral...
What is the significance of Blue in Bluebeard?
B&B-transformation by love
Archetype for talking animal- the goldan ass
Why did Cupid wake up? Hot oil
Spoonerism- 'flop moor'
Which romanitc poet believed? Already know everything there is to know... Wordsworth
What mythical story is B&B come from? Cupid and Psyche
Bluebeards-against 'female curiousity'
Which Grimm story has a witch? Hansel and Gretal
What author wanted to marry Little Red? Charles Dickens
What phrase begins most fairy tales? Once upon a time
Keltic version of cinderella- her mother was a ewe/sheep

Fairy Tale Displacement

bOZEMAN dAILY cHRONICLE, Friday, September 19, 2008 Records/Regions

Police Reports

The Bozeman Police Department reports for Friday include the following:

Early Friday morning, an officer responded to an alarm at Party On, located on N. 19^th. When the officer arrived on the scene he found that one of the large glass windows was broken and several items appeared to be missing.

Officers responding to a report of a loud party observed numerous underage drinkers entering and exiting the residence. The police also noted that there were piles of dead bird and fish carcasses outside the residents. When the officers knocked on the door the male renter locked the door and turned the music up. The officers were discouraged and left.

Just after midnight, an officer assisted the fire department in extinguishing a burning mattress in the middle of Bozeman Trail Road. A young man was arrested in association with the fire for urinating on the flames. He claims he had been at a weeklong party and felt that his larger than normal intake of fluids would be beneficial to the fire department.

A Bozeman man was severely injured Friday afternoon when a stampede of camera carrying citizens ran him over near Bluebird Ln. off of Bozeman Trail Road. The large herd of people was not found, but a statewide search party has been established to find the hit and run offenders.

Notice: All Bozeman citizens should be aware that today law 1697 section B has been put into effect. This law states that the “consequences of curiosity,” will be strictly and readily enforced only by the Bozeman Police Department and Gallatin County Sheriff’s Department.

911 dispatchers reported a fake phone call from a woman claiming she was going to die from fright. Police passed on the opportunity to deal with the troubled woman.

The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Department responded to a noise ordinance complaint near Three Forks at a place called the Meadows. The noise turned out to be a meeting of the secret society, The Pentavirate. All members of the society were arrested except Colonel Sanders who somehow escaped.

A herd of sheep was rounded up by the Bozeman Animal Control division that had somehow gotten loose and was creating a large dust storm in the southeast end of the valley. No sheep were injured in this rescue attempt.

Two men, waving guns out of the windows of their 1984 DeLorean escaped three patrol cars in a high speed pursuit Friday.

A domestic disturbance was reported at 1341 Bozeman Trail Road late Friday night. When the police approached the residents of Colonel Sanders they found him dead. He had been shot and run over, which appeared to have been done by a 1984 DeLorean. In related news, the police officers had also found a hideous costume on the man, which turned out to be the same costume stolen from PartyOn that morning. The costume was returned.

By John Nehring

I feel like I need to clarify some things about this displacement. In class, before my presentation, I said that all of these reports were true. I was saying that more for the effect than the actual factual basis behind these police reports. That doesn't mean that these aren't true, but rather that most of these police reports are based, some more loosely than others, on real police reports that I found. For example, the male urinating on the mattress, that did actually happen, and in fact it happened right outside of my house awhile ago. I took real life police reports from the past and changed them to fit my fairytale.

Looking for the Oedipus complex

When I came across this idea in class, the Oedipus complex I felt that I would look a little deeper into it. In the Oedipus complex a child is fixated on the parent of opposite sex and competes with the same sex parent for attention of the opposite sex parent. During childhood he/she starts to gain gender by realizing a difference between his/her parents and a similiarity to one and not the other therefore acquiring gender. Also, a possible erotic attachment to the opposite sex parent is common where a full on sexual act isn't implied but more of a deep primitive physical sensation felt when thinking about the opposite sex parent.
Along with this attraction comes along something I think everyone can relate to in one way or another, jealousy. If a deep desire like this is felt an obvious reaction to the other parent would probably take place and in this case it takes the form of jealousy. In this instance, lets take a boy for example, a critical point of awakening is where the child realizes that the mother has affections for others besides itself. This leads into a type of loosening of ties with the mother of vulnerability, dependence, and intimacy. The Oedipal move blocks the routes of sexual and identification love back to the mother. She becomes a separate object, removed from his ideal self. Thus she can be the subject of object love. This separation and externalization of love allows a transition away from narcissism of earlier stages. The boy thus returns to the mother as a separate individual. That separation may be emphasized with scorn and a sense of mastery over women. Women become separated reminders of lost and forbidden unity. Their unique attributes, from softness to general femininity are, in consequence, also lost and must be given up as a part of the distancing process. Women become thus both desired and feared. The symbolic phallus becomes a means of protection for the boy and the rituals of mastery used to cover up feelings of loss. Separation leads to unavailability and hence the scarcity principle takes effect, increasing desire. Women thus create a tension in boys between a lost paradise and dangerous sirens.
This complex is seen in so many fairy tales throughout the Tartar book, "Little Red Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel" all consciously or not show the child in this situation.