But how did it all begin?
Io, 383. After the first class, Dr. Sexson stated, this is all we need to know. From this, I know nothing, while at the same time, I know everything. For me, I vision this to be a stone cast into a pond. The stone hitting the water is the beginning, while the ripples of water continue outwards towards the shore. It is as if these ripples of water repeat over and again, passing through time, losing strength, as distance and time separate the echos of the beginning.
But how did it all begin?
It seems to begin with Io, a dream, seduction, metamorphoses, abduction...the list goes on, but "out of these events history itself was born: the abduction of Helen, the Trojan War, and, before that, the Argonauts' expedition and the abduction of Medea--all are links in the same chain. A call to arms goes back and forth between Asia and Europe, and every back and forth is a woman, a woman and a swarm of predators, going from one shore to the other" (8). For how I am looking at this, Io and Zeus are the stone striking water, in turn, giving birth to history. The ripples, a lesser form of the original action.
Calasso uses a different way of describing this: "And all at once she understood what myth is, understood that myth is the precedent behind every action, its invisible, ever-present lining...For every step, the footprint was already there" (383). Each culture believes their time in history is special, ground breaking, original, separate from the past. Yet, "For every step, the footprint was already there," nothing is original, whatever it may be, it has happened in the past, someone has walked this path before.
On a different note, I want to look at "gifts of the mind" in a way I have never thought about before. "Danaus...had brought Greece the gift of water. Cadmus had brought Greece "gifts of the mind": vowels and consonants yoked together in tiny signs, "etched model of a silence that speaks"--the alphabet" (390). One cannot live without water, and for that, Danaus offered an incredible gift to Greece. However, without the alphabet, vowels and consonants, nothing would matter. There would have been no communication, no history, no myth. I see this class as Greece and the blog as our "gifts of the mind." This blog is a way to communicate, learn from others and open a bridge of communication which otherwise would be lost.
The Journey has begun, I look forward to seeing where it takes us.
