Personal Myth: Humans

Humans, by me

Humans, by me

Here is my next chapter in my personal myth project, which explores what it means to be human in this world. For me, what's interesting about being a humans is how language, laughter, and story can be used to   mediate the natural cycles of life and death. Given that I love learning foreign languages, I really feel that language is an integral part of the human experience. Maybe it's because I feel that words fail me too often, and that stories uplift me, but my own experience of the world is closely related to the human faculty for language and for nonlanguage too.

5: Growth and Renewal

The Tree of Life, by Gustav Klimt

It's time for the fifth installment of the number series based on The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider. 

With the number five comes the pentagon and pentagram. Many natural structures, from leaves to hands, follow a pentagram structure, and so the pentagram often symbolizes creativity and fecundity. Check out the link above to discover more naturally occurring five-ness. 

The pentagram also holds within it various phi relationships, so Schneider uses this chapter as an opportunity to introduce the golden mean and golden spiral. This page has a pretty good explanation of how you get there. I won't dwell on the details, but do try to make your own spiral for the fun of it! (Klimt's painting above is a display of Archimedian spirals. The golden spiral is the spiral of shells and galaxies, but because the distance between its swirls expands with each round, it's harder to find in artwork.) 

Have you ever felt like you were on a spiral path? Jackob Bernoulli created a motto for the golden spiral: Eadem mutato reurgo (Although changed, I arise again the same). There's something beautiful about imagining myself journeying on a spiral labyrinth. Many authors and artists have described the spiral's magical qualities, including the great Nabokov:

"The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free. I thought this up when I was a schoolboy, and I also discovered that Hegel's triadic series (so popular in old Russia) expressed merely the essential spirality of all things in relation to time. Twirl follows twirl, and every synthesis is the thesis of the next series. If we consider the simplest spiral, three series may be distinguished in it, corresponding to those of the triad: We can call "thetic" the small curve or arc that initiates the convolution centrally; "antithetic" the larger arc that faces the first in the process of continuing it; and "synthetic" the still ampler arc that continues the second while following the first along the outer side. And so on."
    —Speak Memory, by Vladmir Nabokov

Truth Dwelling on Earth

Galileo's Moon, by Scout and Catalogue
via Ill Seen and Ill Said

"It is true without lying, certain and most true.

That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing.

And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.

By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.

So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this.

Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended."

    —Translation of The Emerald Tablet, by Sir Isaac Newton

Admiring: Mapper of Alchemy

Louise Despont laying out her work
(from her tumblr)

The work of Louise Despont reminds me of alchemical diagrams mapping out processes and visions. Creating her works on the paper of old ledger books, she uses muted colors to fill the pages with geometric shapes and curves. I found it difficult to pick a piece to showcase because each piece is so captivating in the way she balances simplicity of shape with complexity of design.

What do you see when you look at the circles above? A Buddhist wheel? A geometer's diagram? An ouroboros?

Postmodern Hymn: Pig

Flowers in Your Hair, by Louise van Terheijden

I woke up with a fragment of a song floating in my head the other morning, and it took me a while to figure out which song I was singing to myself. It turned out to be "Pig," by the Dave Matthews Band.

Wash out this tired notion 

That the best is yet to come 

But while you're dancing on the ground 

Don't think of when you're gone 

Love! love!? what more is there?

Apparently I had the lyrics slightly wrong, because I was singing "wash out this time notion." Oh well, the message is still the same. Enjoy life as it comes, and open up to love.

Happy May Day!

May Queen, by Ronnie Creswell

May the season be filled with abundant blessings and joy!

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

by J. J. Granville
via Little Hokum Rag

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

    —Matthew 7:3

Lately I've been thinking a lot about stories we tell ourselves, and the verse above keeps popping into my head. I feel like it has beautiful applicability to current postmodern concepts of personal narratives. 

There are times when I don't enjoy the stories other people tell about themselves. The stories seem so detached from the reality that I'm seeing. But then I remember that the stories I tell about myself are just as strange and unfathomable. So what can I do?

Surely there is a way to be gentle and loving that shows our friends the unexplored sides to the stories they tell. It probably doesn't do much good to get indignant about little mythologies (unless they're tending towards weirdo, evil delusions), because for the person who's telling them, these mythologies are true. If we are craving gentleness from others, it seems only kind to be gentle with others' stories.

And maybe we can open our own life story up to the contributing views of others. What do you think? Is it possible to allow someone else to share in the authorship of your life?