Mythology, the soul of Architecture

Over the course of this semester I have been receiving two doses of mythology every Tuesday and Thursday from my architecture and mythology courses. Although this chance alignment is strange, what is stranger is that the subject material for both classes has lined up not only topically but temporally as well. Closer to the beginning of the semester I was able to hear the tale of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth from Dr.Sexson, and then again from my architecture teacher not too long afterwards. This would not seem to be too out of place except that later on in the year the story of Oedipus was questioned by a classmate and then "clarified" by Dr.Sexson, and on that same day my architecture professor gave the same story although told slightly differently. These coinciding coincidental stories gave me both an all too real grasp of the sex lives of inter species erotica and incestually inclined ancient Greeks, as well as an understanding as to the value of stories in architecture. When one thinks of the most beautiful work of art or the most picturesque building, they begin to wonder about the story that made the creators of the beauty work so hard. When one walks through the ruins of the labyrinth that may once have contained the Minotaur, all kinds of questions begin to arise about which stories contributed to its construction. I was fortunate enough to be in an architecture class that discussed much of what we now know about the civilization of Crete and what remains of its stories. We know that Crete was a cultural center for much of Greece and the ancient world, and it may have even been the source for the original identity of the Greek Gods. Eventually the fun of Crete was put to a stop, since they had not put up nearly as many fortifications as ornaments in their great palace. In discussing ancient Crete you are discussing its population called Minoans, which were named as such in tandem with their ancient and mythological king Minos. We dig up yet another mythological tale in discussing the conquerors of the Minoans: the nation of Mycenae. The Mycenaean city was as much fortified as the Minoan palace was not, with ornament left to a bare minimum and some of the largest walls ever built. Mycenae was supposedly founded by Perseus son of Zeus, and went on to become a powerful empire that under Agamemnon's rule united against, challenged, and eventually crushed Troy for stealing Helen. It may now seem that I am only ranting about random mythology through architecture, but I do have a point. My point is, that the world has yet to see structures as powerful and meaningful as in Crete, Mycenae, Athens, or Rome, mainly because architecture today aspires only to achieve new forms and shapes without having stories to back them up. It was stories that motivated the builders of the ancient world, because they were looking past every day life at something that was much more beautiful and pure; even Godlike. In imagining more than what mortals need to live in and instead creating what God's deserve to bask in, these long dead builders gave meaning to the stories of the Gods with architecture, and the architecture was given life through those same stories. When I look at architecture today it is easy for me to see what is lacking, real or made up it is lacking imagination given purpose through narrative.

That anyways is what I have learned

What I have learned, to tell you what I have learned is a lie in any way that I can say it. In trying to tell you what I have learned no matter how much I try to bring it back to this course I just end up talking about myself. You could say that makes me a selfish person, and as an individualistic American college student pursuing my education it is hard to argue against that. But I wish to ignore selfishness, because when you truly understand one individual you can then apply that knowledge to all individuals. The famous phrase “know thyself” written on the walls of Delphi have always resonated strongly with me. It is within the individual that we begin to write ourselves into the story that falls onto our ears from Sexson. Within the individual, relatability takes root and vestiges of empathy grow stronger. The more stories we hear, the more we imagine, the more we imagine the more complicated we become. Through this complexity of our private libraries of stories, of individuals, of refractions of what we could have been, we find the means to make ourselves. When I think about people, I think about stories, I think about how if I was born under different circumstances I could have been you and you me. I think about how the differences in our lives are really very trivial compared to the one transcendent identity that we all possess thanks to our individual stories of being a me. The loops that we can see in our lives of separation, initiation and return are similar stories told differently based on minute details that we perceive as negligible. But ignoring the differences in stories and writing them off as trivial is a dangerous procedure. It is so frighteningly dangerous and yet we suspect nothing. The difference between most humans DNA is said to be negligible, since we have a 99 percent DNA similarity to chimpanzees. Yet all the time scientists are discovering that the DNA that they have termed junk is actually the key to understanding important things such as a person's susceptibility to disease. Humans naturally try to arrange things in ordered patterns, it is our successful strategy for survival. But in searching for patterns in stories we end up looking for confirmation that everything is the same rather than appreciating individual difference. What we may view as “junk DNA” or “negligible differences” may just be the constituents of a higher degree of order that we cannot yet understand. And when we look at a story and categorize it according to everything else that we have learned or been told we may fail to see that the loop of separation and return is not a loop at all, but an upward spiral. Each time someone crawls, walks, and runs they hear words and stories and combine and compile them in an entirely informational and original fashion. They also have the benefit of living after all of their ancestors with many of their mistakes and successes in mind. Not everything that is dropped is picked up, but each time a story spirals through a lifetime it gains momentum in the things that were most important and relevant to the storyteller and former storyteller. When we hear tales of Gods and Goddesses we are actually hearing from the imaginations of past individuals not so different from ourselves. These imaginations of individuals reflect further the imaginations of individuals that influenced them. And furthermore we are not clearly seeing just what these people imagined, but instead the idyllic of what they wanted to represent people as. Within stories we find the individuals approximation of what they want people to be like, but how can these people accurately depict individuals when every individual is plagued with being unable to truly see themselves except through others eyes. Between what we hear about ourselves and what we see of others we create our own identities. This identity is a disjointed contraption which is actually just a very long series of other peoples stories haphazardly reflected across time and circumstance. Yet within all of this utter madness and chaos of who we are, and where we came from we find our true selves. From all of the information we collect from stories we calculate the best person we can be, we calculate the worst person we can be, and then we produce an aggregate based on the needs of the time. This may seem simplistic, but it gives us each a clear cut path to better ourselves with each new story heard. Every time we hear of a decision the participant of the story makes, we get to think, I would never do that, or I want to be the kind of person that would do that. It may seem like a small decision, but each time we decide how to define ourselves in response to the information we have achieved a great victory. It is as it has been said many times this semester, these are not things that I have learned, they are merely things that I have been reminded of in discussing mythology. If I were to speak of my tale as truly as I could you would come to understand me and you better. But in the process I would be lying based on my own perception of what happened and we would all be here a very long time. So I will only say this: It is not the world, it is not people, it is not nature, it is not animals that keep us alive and moving every day, it is our own stories. We are saturated with our own story in the high level of meaning that we find from every event that happens to us. When we stub our toe, or throw a piece of paper across the room into a garbage can, no one will ever find it as meaningful as we do. But it is through this process of individuals finding things that apply to them the most interesting that together we can search for things that interest everyone. In comparing our “junk” we can find ways to transcend our boredom and overcome seemingly similar circular cycles. For example, one of the most useful gems of junk that I have taken from this class is Sexson's infinite appreciation for the meaning in words. If you can’t have fun with words, then why did you work so hard to learn language. That is what I have appreciated so much about this class, unlike most others, people seem to care not only about the words that they say, but the words that everyone has said. Together we have appreciated the value that a story gives us in the dos and do nots implicit in the plot lines. I could say much more about all the things that I have learned in listening to your stories, but I feel that the learning is better expressed in the amount of change created in the individual from the influence of others stories. The individual identity reflects the social identity, and in the process the information changes in response to all the differences in each person, giving us an infinitely changing blob of cool and awesome ideas. That anyway is what I have remembered to learn so far.

Belated Creation Story

In the beginning there was continuity, all mass and energy in existence was condensed from an unknown time and place into the smallest portions of space that it could until it had no other option than to explode towards infinity pushed by an infinite amount of energy.  Following the wave of creation in an imperceptibly small amount of time was the energies desire to polarize into positive and negative versions of itself called matter and anti-matter. These two entities collided with themselves and each other in unimaginable amounts at first in basic configurations which would annihilate themselves when the positive and negative met to send high energy cosmic rays across space. It seemed at this point that existence would become no more complicated than Hydrogen and Helium, the two most rudimentary elements, since their evil twins anti-hydrogen and anti-helium seemed to desire their nonexistence. Fortunately our hero matter was able to prove its right to rule in its ability to stably and consistently form more complicated elements such as Lithium and Beryllium. Matter became more prevalent than its opposite and began condensing into giant molecular clouds. The clouds of molecular Hydrogen that were big enough to form stars were somehow destabilized from an outside source such as a black hole or from colliding into another molecular cloud. This destabilization caused the molecular clouds fragments to form together in a sphere of Hydrogen and Helium surrounded by a disk of cluttered matter that would become the planets of a solar system. This process happened over and over again with the degree of its variance limited only by the infinite continuity of the universes universal experiment which consists of the process of matter coalescing to form more and more complicated systems of energy.  The universe used and uses matter to discover which systems of energy can survive the best by redundantly combining it until only the most stable well suited combinations exist, all the time increasing in complexity. When one star in particular was created the molecular cloud surrounding it made nine planets and their moons with the most interesting planet forming from many different elements but mostly iron, oxygen, and silicon. The oxygen and silicon swirled around each other forming the majority of the mass. This spiral surrounded the hot iron core in an indescribable fusion of elements that would eventually stabilize to become the facility for life’s genesis itself. On the planet a system began as it had continued before: matter was allowed to combine in more stable forms because if it was unstable it would not hold together. This law of selecting for stability gave matter the chance to form molecular compounds of many varieties, all trying to become more complicated so as to survive longer. This drive toward complexity pushed life to many strange places until the most stable form yet conceived was achieved in humanity. Humanity increased its complexity and chances of survival more efficiently than any other form of life through passing on the method of breaking free from the past: knowledge.  Chance is what led the beginning to the middle and chance is what will take the middle to the end. However an end when perceive differently may merely be another beginning.

Startled to hear

I was startled to read in Mario Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller that according to a seripigari "Being born with a face like yours (Mascarita) isn't the worst evil; it's not knowing one's obligation." This is exactly the reason why Mascarita is so enamored with these people, they perceive only their purpose within their treatment of the world and those in it. This accounts for the surprisingly good treatment of Mascarita as he can still fulfill the two paramount functions of the Machiguengas: storytelling and walking. As long as the sun continues to rise and the people keep moving they are like saints. However those that lack the ability to do their part in keeping the sun up are considered outcasts and demons. Perhaps a cruel outlook to some, but it has brought them a very long ways and they are still walking, and the sun is still rising.

Initiations downfall and triumph

Much of what we have lost with the loss of initiation rituals will forever remain unclear as it is just that: lost. The vestiges of initiation can still be found today, merely communicated differently. For example the world culture of today generally finds more of a coming of age ceremony in the acts such as: losing ones virginity, getting married, or becoming a parent. The Jewish faith has the bar mitzvah and the Japanese consider thirteen years old as the age that one is more or less fully prepared to deal with the world, but none of these things should result in as much pain and suffering, nor risk of personal demise as the more brutal initiation rituals we have looked at. Without the risk and due process of pain it is hard to say whether or not these rituals have the same aptitude of effectiveness, but with the change in perception that these ceremonies bring surely there are still things to be gained. The perspective of someone that has lost their virginity may feel more at ease around their peers just as those that completed more painful initiation counterparts. The person that marries their significant other may feel the confidence to be themselves and act with more of a candid attitude with the responsibility of another person being associated with them. The person that becomes a parent understands that they need to at least pretend to be a fully functional human being in order to set a positive example for their progeny. Each of these things seems innocuous but fulfills a role of initiation in a much less horrific and modern way, preserving what we have potentially lost with a definite degree of pain and complication that it more subtly expressed. While there is definite gain in the modern cultural melting pot that globalization has made of the cultural consciousness, there is also something missing that no one can quite signify with words. This nonexistence is hiding behind every thought and action humans have in the search for an answer to why everything is the way it is and why any action should be taken at all. In some cultures this can be answered, in some religions as well, and yet as all cultures blend more together the cultural and religious explanations for why things are the way they are seem less plausible. The lack of plausibility leads us to the thing that lacks that if we had then nothing else would matter: purpose. The knowledge that what you are doing is right beyond a shadow of a doubt is a pleasure that few can be afforded without making assumptions about the way everything in the universe works. This pleasure is primarily achieved through the use of colorful mythology and the mythology of the Machiguengas has color in spades. The comfort of having purpose on your side is one of their greatest cultural successes, especially with how they manage to merge what should be done with the most interesting, mystical and downright nebulous explanations for occurrences. An example of this is how they manage to keep the sun rising by walking (clearly an extraordinary and worthy feat) not only does this give them a function to fulfill, it also gives them the identity of those who walk, and in tandem the incident possibility to create new stories to be told to future travelers. The creation of the storyteller and the wanderer identities are things that are no longer as central in the majority of human culture, it is as though we have forgotten that these were the primary things that made us human. Communicating a communal identity though storytelling that everyone can share in, and proceeding in a processional lifestyle of traveling to create the stories to be told are the main losses in my eyes and are things that the Machiguengas are lucky enough to maintain. The loss and the gain are not reconciled in a one to one exchange but perhaps if they are more closely examined the losses can be mitigated and the gains can be proliferated in a new more potent transcended identity.

My first memory

My first memory is a bit hazy, but I remember seeing the movie The Wizard of Oz and getting to the scene where the trees throw their fruit at Dorothy and I was terrified. I am not sure if this points to some deeper problem that I have with either fruit or malicious trees, but it resonates as one of the earliest things that I can picture along with the primal emotion of fear that something horrible has happened. Interestingly enough the book The Wizard of Oz has no such evil tree scene, and so the movies cruel interpretation and my discomfort are both the fault of the director of the film.