The singing Cicada

Tuesday November 8th Class Note

- Exams were passed back, average grade was a 88%

-Magus was due today, Mr. Sexson has given us some extra time to finish it.  We are also to blog about it, and a substantial blog at that

-The paper is a 3 page term paper that is assumed to be about the Magus unless you tell Mr. Sexson a different idea to write about. 

•  Dead Man-THE Johnny Depp movie made in 1995 about William Blake, who is going to the far west, he is an accountant, he is an oaf.  He gets in a fight with the man who shovels coal. (One scene has them riding through the red wood forest by the looks of it)  Native American (nobody) says to William Blake-I have prepared your canoe, it is time for you to leave now, to go back where you came from, to the place where all the spirits came from, where they return, this world will no longer concern you.   
•     Sexson cannot say enough positive things about this film
•   In the movie, he is already dead through the entire thing...he just does not know.This is about Odysseus in the Cyclopes cave.  Odysseus says his name is nobody to the cyclopes.
• Tibetan book of the dead = documentary, before the soul can go to the other world, it must first repeat all the violent          things of its past life.  You are already dead, you just need to prepare for it.
• We have forgotten about myths, because we watch movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and not Dead Man.
•  Before Kevin was a gleam in his daddy's eye, he was nobody.
• The Swerve ( a book about how the world became modern) written by Stephen Greenblatt. Pagio discovered it and copied it. It was read by many people of the word.  It had a lot to do with how the world turned out today.
• All the world is already made, we are just its players.  When we die, we do not grieve ourselves, those we left behind grieve.
• Socrates once said, all of life is a preparation for death.

Page 335,  Mircae Eliade-Primitives to Zen

• Moment of death-http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/160.html
• Nobody knows who you are, and nobody knows what to do. 
• Need to send people off with the proper things seen, proper things done, and the proper things said.  Not all fake like funeral homes make them.
• William Shakespeare - 
• Eschatology-(logos-a ground) (the soul) has to do with the things at the end.  A branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind
• Metempsychosis-transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.  Nothing ever dies.
• Parabola is a magazine of myth and rituals and symbols.  First created in Dylon Montana,written by D.M. Dooling. ( Montana knows about Myths)  A parabola is a swerve, it is a conic section of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface.  Means coming in off the side. 
• Parabola-Parabol ( a story told to illustrate a moral point)  Parable of the lost sheep, the good Samaritan...A story that deconstructs the point you thought it would make.  A man walking down 8th street in Bozo is come upon from Pike thugs who beat him up, and a Catholic priest passes him by to go to mass, a Methodist passes him by on his way to lunch, a Middle Eastern who lives in an attic  takes the injured by to the pickle barrel and buys him a full sandwich, plus anything else he wants.  Morale?  (Impressive if he can eat a whole sandwich.) The person you thought would help didn't, and the person you didn't think would help did.

Page 375 Mircae Eliade

• On the Transmigration of the soul-http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/181.html
• Spokane = sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Father tells his 2 son after his trip to Spokane, come home and we will forgive and throw you a party.  The other 1 son is furious because he has worked every day in his life and been good. Father says, I see you every day, but son 2 was lost and now he is found.
• Mary and Martha- Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, Martha is washing the dishes.  Martha says I have to spend all my day working and slaving so that YOU can go out and do whatever you want! Jesus tells Martha, you are distracted by many things, there is only one thing that is needful.  What is this thing? He suggest that Mary has chosen the right thing
• Gesang ist dasein- Sonnet to Orpheus... translation. A god can do it. but tell me how a man can follow him thorough the narrow lyre.  the human self is split; where two heart ways cross, there is no temple to Apollo.  Song, as you teach it, is not desire, not a wooling of something that is finally attained; song is existence.  Easy for the god....
• The ant and the grasshopper  grasshopper (cicada) spends his time fiddling around, while the ant works.  The grasshopper is cold for the winter, the ant is warm.  ~Who chose the right path?  Song is existence, we are hear in order to sing!  
• Cicada leave behind a beautiful case, there is no death there is only translation.
• Justin's Blog, why do we suffer?  Justin says we should be our own bards!  We are here to sing.
• Socrates says Cicadas were once human beings, the muses taught them to sing, and it was so enjoyable that they forgot to sleep, eat, they forgot to do everything, so they died.  Zeus transformed them into cicadas (song is existence  because he loved the song so much.