Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country

Salmon Creek

Hello---it occurs to me that I could provide the link to the Promised Land art album for those of you who don't get these posts on the website. So here it is.

We're just back from four days of camping on Salmon Creek, which empties into the north fork of the Kern River in the southern Sierras. Truly lovely. A place to make or rediscover faith.

In his insipid book All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum offers some prescriptions for a better world, like imagine if we all, everyone in the world, laid down in the afternoon with our blankies and then got to have cookies and milk when we got up. Please. Reading books like this was the chief downside of writing a dissertation about self-help books.

But employing the method, if not the spirit of Fulghum, here's my suggestion: imagine a world in which everyone had access to a clear cold creek and could strip down and jump in and get chilled down to the bones and lay naked on a warm rock in the breeze afterwards every single day that hypothermia was not a distinct possibility. Success is not being too timid to dunk your head too. And then we eat a cookie.

New Photo Album: Promised Land

I've posted a new photo album of art work and some poetry that traces a few lines through my life and my relationship with the desert, a place that holds special significance for me and is often source, muse, and conversation partner in my experiments with visual art. The link is in the left sidebar.

Art is many things for me. At the most basic level, making art is fun. The engagement with the materials, be they paint or paper, cast away pieces of wood, feathers or seeds, is always rich. The material world is true to itself and behaves in its own fashion. You have to understand the properties of what you are working with and let them draw you into what is possible. What is initially imagined is rarely realized but the reward is often something much more interesting.

Making art is also an exercise in seeing, really looking at something closely and allowing myself to be influenced by it. I have made a lot of art out of natural objects like seeds and wood and rocks to develop an aesthetic appreciation for what occurs naturally. The world expresses itself in tremendous diversity and complexity. We often attribute this to rather dry and mechanical reasons of adaptation and survival of the fittest and all that, and overlook the possibility that this beautiful diversity, the red patch on a black bird’s wing for example, or the waxy diamonds on the shell of a desert tortoise, reflect a cosmic impulse towards the beautiful as well as the useful. A roadrunner has red, white, and blue stripes over its eyes! And what story lies behind the knots and stains in a common piece of plywood, a tree turned into a commodity (an inexpensive one at that) that retains its unique character despite the glues and formaldehyde?

Making art is also a way into, as well as beyond, myself. I started painting and taking my interest in art seriously when my life was a shambles. Making art is one of the most healing activities that I know, besides taking a long walk far away from the sounds of traffic, petting a cat, or sleeping between clean sheets. If you let go of the desire to make something “good,” a valuable conversation may begin that continues long after the project is formally completed. Which leads me to my next point...

Making art is an exercise in taking my interests seriously, beginning with the discovery of them. Interests are not the equivalent of concerns. I have many concerns ---intolerance and world peace, global warming, justice, consumerism, the shaky economy, my financial situation, the pain in my arms, and the possibility of too many rattlesnakes in my yard this summer. These concerns can consume all of my energy and lead me to forget my connection to the world itself. Then I lose enthusiasm; I find it hard to care or keep going. My interests flow from what I love and these sustain me. In an essay about writing, Annie Dillard says that the task is not to write about what you love, but to write about what only you love. I think this speaks to any creative act because the greatest gift we have is our attention. That opens all the doors.

Finally, making art is an attempt to enter into and appreciate beauty, and to make something beautiful myself. My efforts are primitive but essential to my experience of love of self and Other.

Please check out the album (subscribers, that means you have to visit the site). Hope you enjoy it.

High Desert Mythological Roundtable Meets Tuesday June 30th

7-9PM, Friendship Hall, Joshua Tree Retreat Center (Mentalphysics, Hwy. 62)

                                                                            "Trickster Tales”

Along time ago, near the very beginning from our human point of view, there was no earth, only water. Coyote was floating around on a small raft when he met the ducks. "My brothers," he said, "I think it's just you and me. No one else around. That's not good." The ducks considered his words. Coyote said," My brothers, you must get me some earth so I can make things right."

Come hear the rest of this story and other trickster tales about lying, stealing, cheating, and creativity. Free. Donation for the room suggested. Cookies and other goodies appreciated.

The High Desert Mythological RoundTable is instigated by the mythic influence of the high desert, with assistance from the Joseph Campbell Foundation. We meet the last Tuesday of every month at the JTRC. Email me for more information.

Honey Moon

Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year, the day the "sun stands still." The significance of this event for people in many cultures, as far as we know, precedes and far outweighs that of more familiar holidays. If you're looking for something to celebrate, or a moment to reflect or connect to the larger powers and patterns that contain and support this human enterprise, the solstice is a good opportunity for both. The veil between the worlds, as the Celts say, is very thin. We can communicate with the unseen, however you define it.

The Celts called the solstice Midsummer or Litha. They celebrated the fertility of the earth and power of the cosmos, the fruit of the wedding of Heaven and Earth under the Honey Moon, an event reinforced this year by the conjunction of the planets Venus and Mars. Think Aphrodite and Ares, Love and War, the Feminine and the Masculine, the powers of relatedness and the powers of discrimination or discernment. These themes can be imagined in the context of a relationship with another person or between the aspects of self. It's a good time to ask "What do I want to bring into the world?"

The summer solstice begins (began) at 1:45AM but don't be dismayed if you're a bit late in calling the powers that be. Happy honey moon!

Prickly Pear

I've been working on a "photo" album of artwork to post for a couple of weeks now. Don't ask me why this notion is so compelling, but the idea wouldn't let me rest until I agreed and now it refuses to be finished.

This may be the same muse who inspired me to paint this image on the unfinished east wall of our cabin last week. Here's to crazy enthusiasms and the freedom to follow where they lead, even though they make you a bit nuts.

Prickly Pear

A heart can be a prickly pear
in a shroud of grief,
And it is easily broken if
you wear it on your sleeve.
But try too hard
to keep it safe
and it will lose its beat,
And all you'll have,
for life and love
is just a piece
of meat.

---Catherine Svehla

Nature gods

I keep thinking about the concluding lines of Cynthia Anderson's wonderful poem about Prometheus on the Rebound (see the previous post); "We may be nature gods, but we're still here." What I hear is an assertion of the value of the elemental and the durability of the forces of the natural world, forces like wind and earthquakes and the subtle shifts inspired by the cycles of the moon that continue despite what we think about them, and despite our "knowledge" and concepts and desire to control them. Zeus is aligned with the mind and ideas and with a different kind of authority, more transitory I think the poem implies, then the authority of the primeval.

A lot of the discussion about Prometheus (on this blog anyway) focuses on the fire as consciousness, as intelligence and as self-awareness like the kind Eve and Adam gained when they ate the apple. But what about the other part of our Promethean legacy, the connection to the earth (we're made of mud) and the forces that precede consciousness---instincts and the body? Western history can be read as a romance with reason that requires the repression of the instinctual. Instincts are associated with the body and sensory awareness, they're primitive drives and not to be trusted. Reason, so the thinking goes, is what makes a human being human, reason is the saving grace, the facility that allows us to be fair, to be just, to understand and learn, to make tools and build cities and pass laws, to be objective, to self-actualize, and to discover spiritual truth.

As I noted in the post about mythopoesis and the two Shelleys interpretations of the myth of Prometheus, the primacy of reason has been questioned. But the insistence on the value of the heart in addition to the mind isn't necessarily a move towards the body, the instinctual self, or the physical world. These are still chained to the rock. Now we actually call demands for clean water and air and food a "special interest." Now looking up at a dark night sky full of stars is a luxury.

Our disconnect from the body and the instinctual self is a huge source of problems. As individuals, we tend to look for a sense of place and wholeness by moving further and further up and out into the realms of thought when both exist the moment we feel our feet firmly planted on the earth. We need both, are both. This is one way to imagine our place in the middle, a place we share with Prometheus.

Prometheus on the Rebound

What would you do after being chained
to a rock for 30,000 years?
Would you go straight home?
Some say Prometheus knew Jupiter's secrets
and could have used that knowledge
early on to gain his freedom.
But he would not sink so low.
He made his point exhaustively
and is remembered as a hero
not as he must have looked
staggering down Mt. Caucasus,
supported by Hercules,
the wound in his side still open
the shepherds’ fires far below.
I want Prometheus to go a little crazy,
not found the Golden Age of Shelley.
Let him stay in a bar for as long
as he wants, using up the matchbooks,
comforted by women who don't care
who he is. Then he might settle down
in an underground room,
far from the memory of eagles,
making his clay figures that come to life
when he breathes on them.
His fellow Titans would visit
from Tartarus on weekends.
They would embrace him, saying,
Take heart. We may be nature gods,
but we're all still here.

---Cynthia Anderson

Cynthia is a writer and poet who recently moved to the high desert from Santa Barbara. She's a member of the mythological roundtable. Check out poetry and photography. Or check out Cynthia's writing services. This painting of Prometheus is by Gustave Moreau.

Prometheus

 Cover your heavens

with clouds and vapors, Zeus
and, like the boy who lops off
heads of thistles,
try your hand on oaks
and mountaintops.

But you can't touch my earth,
my cabin that you did not build,
my hearth whose glow you watch
with envy.

There's none more pitiful than you, Gods!
The breath of our prayers
is your paltry nourishment,
our meager altar gifts sustain
your dreams of majesty.
You'd starve
but for the foolish hopes
of children and beggars.

When I was a child and didn't know
which way to turn,
I raised my eyes bewildered to the sky
as though beyond it were an ear
to listen to my sorrows,
a heart like mine
to pity my distress.

Who stood with me against the Titans'
wantonness,
who rescued me from death,
from slavery?
Was it not you, my own, my glowing heart
that did all this?
And, cheated, in your youthful goodness
gave glowing thanks to him
who nods up there?

And I should worship thee? What for?
Have you ever
lightened my pain when I was anguished?

Ever
stilled the tears
when I was frightened?
Was it not almighty time
and eternal fate,
my masters as well as yours,
who forged me into manhood?

Did you, by chance, suppose
that I should hate life,
flee into deserts,
just because
not all my fancy dreams
had come to pass?

I sit here, shaping men and women
in my image,
a race destined, like I,
to suffer and to cry,
to savor joy, to laugh,
and disregard you
as I did. 

---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (translated by Erich Harth). Painting by Heinrich Fuger, Prometheus brings Fire to Mankind, c. 1817

Remaking Prometheus

The myth of Prometheus, with the gift of fire, Pandora, the long suffering on the rock and the liver-eating eagle, and the accidental? prophesied? release brought about by Heracles continues to intrigue and fascinate. What does this story suggest about the human condition, about limitation, about suffering, about consciousness? What is the fire? Was, is, Prometheus a hero?

Interpreters of the myth give different answers to these questions, answers that reflect the changing concerns of the culture, the personality of the interpreter, and the enduring value of this strange story. This is mythopoesis, engagement and re-making of myth, and we do it all of the time. I've come across a few mythopoetical variations on Prometheus that you might want to investigate, variations that give different meanings to the story that Hesiod tells as a straightforward lesson: do wrong and get punished, cross the gods and suffer for your stupidity. According to Hesiod, who wrote his version around 800 B.C., Prometheus was wrong, end of story.

Flash forward 400 years to the tragedian Aeschylus and now Prometheus is a hero, must be a hero for us, because without him, human beings would not survive. Prometheus is creator and benefactor. Prometheus also sets an example for human life, that is, it is human to push against the limits and human to suffer. That is the beautiful tragedy of human life. This interpretation reflects and extends the evolution in Greek religion and philosophy, in their political and social organization, and in their art. The Greeks gave us (as members of Western culture) our notions of the human as noble and as heroic,they gave us the idea that humans can approach the gods through the cultivation of reason, virtue, and art, they experimented first with democracy.

Flash forward even further to 1820 and Percy Bysshe Shelley. People have lived through the American and French revolutions, have seen the dawn of the industrial age and are debating the progress of society. What is being gained, what is being lost, and how can human society be perfected? In his poem "Prometheus Unbound," Shelley writes a revolutionary work in support of hope and mercy and the powerful knowledge of the heart. In Shelley's view, the Olympians beat the Titans because the Olympians valued knowledge and the Titans were ignorant. The Titan Prometheus is an exception and sides with Zeus, who he later surpasses. Prometheus "wins" the rivalry with Zeus because Prometheus gains, through suffering injustice, the knowledge of the heart, empathy---something that Zeus never does understand. Reflecting on his own times, Shelley argues that Enlightenment reason and science alone are not enough and can never lead to a moral and beautiful society.

About the same time, Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. Mary shares her husband's concern for the heart. But she goes further to argue against what she believes is a huge problem with a one-sided attachment to "reason," a technology fueled hubris. If humans think they are gods and try to act as gods, disaster will follow. This reminds me of the fate of the Titanic, the ship that was too big and too well-built to sink... kind of like our banks.

One last example is Goethe. In his poem "Prometheus," (which I'll post) he focuses on Prometheus as a being in the middle, not human and also not a god, not an Olympian, and more to the point, not a god because he cares about and sides with the human. Prometheus is in the middle and he founds the realm of the in-between, the human realm. One characteristic of this middle position, of being in-between, is alienation and loneliness. Alienation, Goethe says, is the most commonly shared characteristic of modern life, and our model is Prometheus.

More information about all of these variations is available on the web and elsewhere. If you come across another interesting angle, pass it long. This is a world made of stories.