The Gods, They Are Not Like Us

This week, I finished reading Madeline Miller’s novel, Circe (2018). As you can probably tell from the title, this is the story from Greek mythology of the renowned witch whose island is visited by Odysseus and his men when they are on the way back to Ithaca; she transforms the men into pigs but later turns them back into men for love of Odysseus. The episode of Circe’s island is but one incident among many in Odysseus’s journey, but in this novel, the story is told from Circe’s point of view and encompasses hundreds of years of her life, beginning in the court of her father, the sun god Helios.

Circe’s mother is a naiad, and all of her children with Helios turn out to be witches. In the novel, they are distrusted more than any other immortal save Prometheus for their powers, which threaten the gods because they stem from the earth, and in particular from pharmaka, magical plants. Never a favorite at her father’s court, Circe is eventually banished, for various transgressions, to the island of Aiaia, where she is marooned as a permanent exile. What’s meant as a punishment turns out to be the making of Circe as a witch; she begins to learn the ways of the island and develop her skills using native plants, while also befriending the animals who are for a time her only companions. She is later summoned to tend her sister Pasiphae as she gives birth to the Minotaur (a feat worthy of an entire team of witches). While at Knossos, Circe meets both her niece Ariadne and the famous Daedalus, the craftsman who, at the command of King Minos, builds the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur.

From all of this, you can see that Circe’s story overlaps with that of the characters central to the legend of the labyrinth. Ms. Miller takes a character peripheral to that story and lets us see Ariadne, Theseus, Minos, Pasiphae, Daedalus, and the rest from the point of view of someone who is immortal but almost human in her outlook. In my book, I explored the characters for their symbolic and psychological significance, but Ms. Miller turns them into flesh-and-blood characters—even the ones who are actually immortals. Pasiphae, for one, is thoroughly unlikeable but gives an admirably clear-eyed and unvarnished assessment of what life is like for a minor goddess in the court of a powerful father, something not even Circe is fully capable of acknowledging.

Ms. Miller manages the difficult task of “fleshing out” gods and goddesses, major and minor, and the legendary heroes and humans they interact with, giving them distinctive personalities and motivations. The inexplicable whims of the gods become understandable when she reveals them to be a mostly selfish lot of bored and egotistical goons with nothing but time on their hands. They’re either fatuous or vicious, or both. No wonder they thrive on flattery, pleasure, gossip, novelty, and the exercise of power—they’re a bit like the Ewings of Dallas or the Carringtons from Dynasty (for all you Boomers who don’t mind references to ’80s TV shows)—minus any of their redeeming qualities. They’re glorious and awe-inspiring, wonderful to look at; all hat and no cattle, if you will (though they have cattle, too, as it turns out—it’s character they lack). If you’ve ever felt sorry for the humans in the Greek stories fated to live under the thumb of the immortals who use them as pawns until the day they die and have to spend eternity in that gray and dismal spot, the Underworld: think again. This novel turns the entire matrix on its head and makes you consider whether being human is really so bad after all.

“Dreaming the myth forward” is a concept often spoken of at Pacifica, which is of course where I studied mythology. This novel is an excellent example of that, as the author creates a story that in many ways is quite faithful to the source material while putting a fresh interpretation on it. Circe, as a witch, is usually lumped in with all the other villainous gods, demigods, and monsters Odysseus must hazard on his way back home from the war. But in Ms. Miller’s conception, they meet almost as equals, having a believable if tragic relationship. When you see the situation from Circe’s point of view, turning men into pigs is an act of self-defense, perfectly understandable when you realize it is they who are abusing her. Odysseus is very much the flawed hero here, a strong man with some depth of character who is nevertheless brutal when dealing with others and out of his depth when he does return to Ithaca.

Circe is one of best retellings of classical mythology I have read. In some ways the novel might be characterized as a feminist retelling, with its emphasis on Circe’s Prospero-like claiming of her own power and agency, but the author gives a balanced view of the foibles of both gods and goddesses. Circe is in many ways a sympathetic character but remains a goddess until the end, and the twists and turns of her own fate make for a narrative every bit as compelling as that of Odysseus, if not more so.

Blue-Eyed Hero

Following the death of actor Kirk Douglas at age 103 last week, a slew of news stories appeared summarizing his life and achievements in the movie industry. I actually didn’t know very much about Mr. Douglas, but he does earn a place on this blog for his portrayal of Ulysses in the 1954 film of that name directed by Mario Camerini. It was my first introduction to Homer on film, and while in many ways it may have been less faithful to the spirit of the Greeks than other adaptations I’ve seen, it was, at the same time, one of the most entertaining versions of “The Odyssey” on record.

I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have some familiarity with the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. I read “The Iliad” when I was a teenager and followed it up immediately with “The Odyssey” but wouldn’t be truthful if I said I got a lot out of it. I remember having a book in junior high school with retellings of the stories of Greek and/or Roman mythology that was more accessible than Homer, Ovid, or Virgil in their original forms if also somewhat simplistic—but even at that stage I was already familiar with the stories. In the same way I absorbed fairy tales, seemingly without effort and from a variety of sources, I came to know ancient mythology without being able to say how it happened.

Even in junior high school, though, I was struck by the fatalism evident in many of myths, which—unlike fairy tales—sometimes ended unhappily. Why did Persephone have to keep going back to the Underworld just because she’d eaten some seeds, I wondered. Why did Daphne have to change her very being just because Apollo wouldn’t leave her in peace? Why couldn’t Icarus have listened to his father and flown a little further from the sun? There didn’t seem to be any answers to these questions except “that’s the way it was,” a sobering fatalism mixed up with all those wonderfully inventive characters and stories.

It wasn’t until I read some of the Greek tragedies that I realized that Odysseus was not always portrayed as the sympathetic, godlike hero I first knew who wandered for many years, enduring many hardships, only to return in triumph at last to his beloved home and family. The Odysseus who was instrumental in sacrificing Iphigenia at Aulis bears little relation to the hale and hearty Ulysses Mr. Douglas portrayed on screen in the 1950s, and to be honest, the big-screen Ulysses is the way I preferred him. He was glorious on screen, fearlessly brawling and maneuvering his way from one adventure to another, maintaining a sense of humor, courage, and elan no matter what happened, and looking good while doing it.

The versions of the myths I heard as a child emphasized the heroic qualities of the characters, while the “adult” versions revealed cruelty, ruthlessness, misogyny, and more. When you see Mr. Douglas’s Ulysses up on the screen, you know that he is truly a hero, that he deserves to defeat his enemies, and that his homecoming is a just reward. Well, who wouldn’t prefer to see him in that light? In Euripides, one finds it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the Greek cause because you know the human cost of purchasing the winds favorable to their venture. The Trojan War seems cursed from the outset, and the Greek leaders, including Odysseus, come across as a pack of savages.

While the “adult” versions of the myths make us extremely thoughtful about such things as war, peace, family psychodrama, and expediency, the more playful versions give us heroes and adventures we can follow by proxy. I’m not sure that one type is really that much more superior to the other—there’s plenty of room for multiple retellings of these stories, and there are many different ways to approach mythology. I have to thank Mr. Douglas for giving me my first and most visceral image of Ulysses, even if it is somewhat larger than life, since that is the one I will probably always cherish. I will admit to preferring my heroes to be heroic, even if it doesn’t always happen that way.

The Eros of Planet Raphael

On Wordplay’s Facebook page, we have been visited lately by a rather persistent Aphrodite who keeps making her presence known via images of luscious desserts and sexy planets (yes, you read that right). Here at Wordplay, we take responsibility for noticing and commenting on these aphrodisiacal moments that keep appearing in our culture, but did we invent them? No, we did not. Aphrodite is much older than anybody here, including Wordplay, and Wordplay is practically Methusaleh (we remember Beatlemania: think of that). Perhaps we will take credit for letting our imagination run and associating one thing with another in ways that might not have occurred to someone else.

We admit to always having had an eye for beautiful desserts, but sexy planets? As you know from reading our blog, we have an interest in both astronomy and the mythology of the night sky. Many celestial objects are named for gods, goddesses, and other mythical creatures, and it’s not surprising that some of the attributes of these mythic beings cling here and there to their namesakes. We respect scientific objectivity and understand that the methods and objectives of science and mythology do not always coincide, but we suspect that scientists are just as human as anyone else and (at least some of the time) respond to the “romance” of the night sky as well as its “objective reality”: the seductive quality of moonlight, the impulse to wish on a falling star, the allure of celestial visions swimming far out in space and brought into focus only with the aid of high-powered telescopes.

I am sure there are scientific reasons why astronomers and astrophysicists would apply filters that cause images of the planets to become saturated with certain colors, but the eye of imagination responds to the color’s allure, not the technical rationale for using it. When an artist’s rendering of a celestial object lovingly emphasizes its beauty, I assume that the artist is bringing Eros to bear on his or her work. This would explain why I look at an image of the planet Jupiter depicted in swirls of brown and cream by the Mabuchi Design Office/Astrobiology Center of Japan and see a cream puff or tiramisu, and why a rendering of a blue planet with the irresistible name of GJ 3512b seems to beckon like a love god.

In thinking about planet GJ 3512b (which I would probably name “Raphael”), I realized I’d been presented with a challenge. Some of the other planets were photographed or drawn with warm colors more associated with food and appetite, while GJ 3512b was enticingly swathed in bands of blue. Since blue is a “cool” color, more associated with spirit than with carnality, I wondered at the source of the allure. In looking at images of the color blue (and that was how I started my search), I realized almost immediately that while blue is indeed cool, it is somehow hot at the same time. This is perhaps not as strange as it seems if you think about the sensation in your fingers after you’ve been holding an ice cube: the intense cold almost feels like heat, in some contradictory-but-true sense. There’s a yin and yang to heat and cold, and they blend into one another. Robin’s egg blue may seem like an innocent color, one you might use in a child’s room, but there’s also the smoky blue of jazz.

I remember once being inspired to write a poem about the color blue, trying to interpret it through each of the senses (what it sounds like, what it tastes like, etc.), through a sort of applied synesthesia. (I did it on my lunch hour; yes, I suppose you have a lot of pent-up creativity when you’re surrounded by dusty law books all day.) I thought about that when putting together my photo essay on the erotic qualities of the color blue. To me, it’s as if, instead of throwing down an apple, Paris threw down three planets and asked, “Which is the fairest?” In the end, I’m not quite sure blue didn’t win out over some of the warmer colors, the blush pinks and the cafe au lait browns, because I kept finding more and more images of blue, all steeped with an intense allure, many more than I could use.

Here, then, is a supreme paradox in nature: how cool is, in reality, underneath it all, warm. (But props to blush pink and cafe au lait brown, too, for giving blue a run for its money.) It would be interesting to go through all of the colors like this and run a similar experiment. I suspect they all have the potential to be cool or hot; perceptions that assign this or that quality to certain colors are, to some extent, arbitrary. Eros is in the eye of the beholder.

Equal Time for Apollo

After I read my post from last week, something occurred to me: I didn’t bring Apollo into my archetypal discussion of Sherlock Holmes. For some people, he might seem like more of a natural match for the archetype of the Great Detective, with his devotion to science, music, and other pursuits. He didn’t even occur to me while I was writing the post, though I admit Mr. Holmes has attributes in common with him. I should at least have brought him up and said why Mr. Holmes seemed to me more like Athena than Apollo, so I’ll do that now. There are really several reasons.

First, I think of Apollo as trailing clouds of glory, making grand entrances, and otherwise creating a grand spectacle. He’s good at a number of different things and rather a proud god, sure of his appeal to nymphs and mortals alike. As the god of light, he’s always shining, and I can’t help but think of him in his most natural guise as possessing enviable golden curls that are constantly glinting and gleaming. In other words, you really can’t miss him—a room is almost too big to contain him. Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, is more of an indoor person, most at home talking things over with Watson in his rooms in Baker Street. Although you could say that he “sheds light” on the facts of his cases, it is more as if he points out to people things that they have seen for themselves but failed to understand. He does have a large store of knowledge about chemistry and other sciences, but aside from that, he’s uncannily observant.

I think of Mr. Holmes as more professor-like than the grandiose Apollo, as someone who uses his brain to the full. For that reason, he seems closer to Athena, who sprang from her father’s head and whose attribute is the owl. (Apollo seems more eagle-like.) Besides that, Mr. Holmes is no skirt-chaser, being very abstemious in that regard—more like Athena, Apollo’s chaste sister. In many ways, he seems not to care that much for his body and physical well-being. There is a darkness that clings to his character, a kind of counterbalance to his logical brilliance and devotion to scientific methods. He has an opium addiction that sometimes sinks him very deep into darkness, giving him more in common with Morpheus, the god of sleep and dreams, than with shining Apollo.

And yes, I know that both Apollo and Sherlock Holmes play stringed instruments, but Orpheus also played the lyre, and his melancholy seems much more in synch with Mr. Holmes than Apollo’s blazing virtuosity (I don’t object to blazing virtuosity; I’m only trying to draw a distinction between styles). I assume Apollo rarely does anything without the accompaniment of crescendos and thundering chords, those Fabio locks all a-tumble, as he overwhelms some poor Greek on the battlefield or chases a fleeing girl who couldn’t care less about his perfect pitch. His is more the grand style of Bach or Handel than the lyricism of Orpheus. I think of Mr. Holmes, generally, as playing for himself rather than with intent to impress.

Lastly, I was thinking about Mr. Holmes’s faculty with disguises, which reveals a tricksterish quality that he occasionally employs to good effect on cases. This sly, shape-shifting ability to change his coloration is at odds with Apollo’s proud, clear lines. In another context, I compared Apollo with an airline pilot, a role in which you expect clear-headedness, precision, and perhaps a certain amount of bravado, but most of all, decisiveness—you don’t want your pilot playing tricks on you or doing something unexpected. Many of the gods (including Apollo) had the ability to disguise themselves and play tricks when they wanted to, but Hermes is known for his quicksilver quality. Mr. Holmes, like Hermes, seems not only to make use of disguises for his own purposes but also to enjoy tricking people.

All of this is really to say that Mr. Holmes, like all of us, is an amalgam of different qualities, with perhaps one or two dominating. He’s not above showing off. And for those of you who think I’m being too hard on Apollo—who does, after all, have gifts of his own and sometimes plays an important, positive role in human affairs—I admit that there is something in what you say. My blog, however, is currently represented by an image of Apollo chasing a distressed nymph, so it’s probably a good idea to point out that all the gods have both light and dark aspects. I do think other qualities predominate in the character of Sherlock Holmes, though he takes much of his scientific brilliance from dazzling Apollo. But not the curly hair.

Essay on Panache

Last week, I wrote about the plethora of Sherlock Holmes stories currently flooding the bookshelves (and there are many others besides the ones I wrote about). I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to, though, about the appeal of the detective’s character. Although Mr. Holmes does represent an archetype, it’s not enough just to say that. I wonder, in fact, if he doesn’t represent the appearance of a new archetype that arose with the development of science, technology, and other aspects of modernity. I remember having a conversation with someone about whether new archetypes ever appear. I believe they do, in response to changing conditions. Maybe Sherlock Holmes is an instance of an archetypal character that appeared in response to the times and couldn’t have appeared sooner.

I was taught that the multiplicity of gods in the Greek and Roman pantheons represents various conditions and forces that affect all aspects of human life. In other words, there should be a god for every occasion. Sherlock Holmes probably has the most in common with Athena (or Minerva), but it’s not an exact match. Athena, who sprang from the head of her father, is the goddess of wisdom, but she is also a warrior goddess and often appears in the capacity of aiding or advising her favorites in matters of war and strategy. Holmes is a logician who combines finely honed powers of observation with an ability to draw conclusions from the evidence, which is perhaps not quite the same thing as wisdom, Athena-style. He solves puzzles and unravels mysteries, something the Greek gods were not necessarily wont to do, being more expert at creating mysteries and expecting mortals to accept things as they were.

There’s a chapter in my book on the nature of the labyrinth in the literature of the 19th century, and I discuss the detective novels that appeared at that period. I wrote at length about Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and about the way the plot of that novel resembles a labyrinth in which the characters are caught and out of which they escape only by following the threads that have ensnared them. They get very little assistance from anyone else and have to be their own detectives. The mood of the novel is somber, and although they succeed in rescuing a loved one, they prevail in spite of a largely uncaring world. Their triumph, however, is very real. Unlike the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Woman in White features a return from the underworld. The protagonists barely escape the labyrinth, but escape they do—their determination and detective work carry the day.

Sherlock Holmes is the professional embodiment of these characteristics. Doing what comes naturally to him, he makes a science of solving mysteries for other people. In his time, scientific inventiveness and technological advances were rapidly changing ways of life that had been settled, in some cases, for centuries. Much was gained, but much that had seemed certain, like Christianity and man’s place in the universe, didn’t seem as rock solid as it had been. I always think of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” as the expression of this sense of the loss of certitude: one lover exhorts the other to remain true in the face of a growing feeling that nothing—not the institutions of society nor the universe itself—offers security in an atmosphere of gathering darkness.

Behold, then, the entrance of Sherlock Holmes upon this somewhat chilling scene. While it may be true that the modern world really has “neither joy, nor love, nor light/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,” damn it, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, and you can bet he’ll give satisfaction, let the forces of darkness do what they will. He represents the triumph of mind over matter, and while I would agree that it’s quite possible to take the ascent of thought too far (in separating ourselves from nature, for instance, when we are always and ever a part of it, merely), Mr. Holmes does something the Greek heroes were rarely able to do, and that is to snatch people back from the edge of a precipice the Fates have prepared for them, and to do it without turning a whisker. Not only is he preternaturally effective, he also has style. I think style is vastly underrated.

By the way, I am not arguing that God is dead, or never lived, or that life has no meaning. I never said that. (Personally, I believe in God, by whatever name you call him/her.) I’m only describing the conditions in the 19th century in which people had reason to question a lot of what had been accepted as gospel for a long time. It’s necessary, in my opinion, to do this, to question things you’ve been told, but it can be quite uncomfortable. I don’t think the appearance of the archetype of the Great Detective means that man is in charge of all he surveys; it is more, perhaps, that he is taking his destiny into his own hands and fighting back against the joylessness, darkness, and pain that have, after all, been with humankind from the beginning and that religions were designed, in some measure, to deal with. Rather than opposing or replacing God, Sherlock Holmes rises to meet him, you might say, which is perhaps what God intended all along.

Mythology for the Literal-Minded

It came to my attention this week, quite by accident, that author Mark Haddon included a piece in his collection The Pier Falls and Other Stories that retells the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Neither is named, but the plot parallels the events of the myth closely enough (on a literal level, at least) that anyone familiar with the story will recognize what is meant. I'll be honest in saying that I didn't like the story, nor the one that preceded it, which was not myth-based, though it seemed to bear an odd kind of kinship to "The Island," the story I'm writing about. Both deal with horrific loss of life near the sea.

I sometimes feel that it's worth staying with an unpleasant book or sitting through an unpleasant movie, depending on what I perceive the artist's intent to be. I watched Munich, for instance, even though I found it difficult, because the theme was compelling. The question of just where the dividing line is between terrorists and anti-terrorists is a very real and important one, and it was brought home to me in a way I'll never forget in that film. It was worth sticking it out for the lesson it taught me.

Likewise, Mr. Haddon may well have a purpose in mind with his book, and if so, I may have gleaned it from the first two stories, though it's probably unfair to characterize the whole book without having read it all the way through. I guess what I'm saying is that if Mr. Haddon's purpose is to reveal the coarser side of human nature and the unfortunate tendency many people have of being drawn to the grisly and horrific events that befall others simply for the thrill of it, then I get what he's saying and thank him for his efforts, but I won't be reading any further. It may be that the rest of the book deals with other themes, but when I started on the third story and still found myself in carnival sideshow territory, I felt it was time to call it a day and go on to something else.

It's probably obvious to anyone who's read my book that I look at the story of Ariadne, Theseus, and the labyrinth as very symbolic and, underneath it all, life-affirming. My way of looking at it is not the only way, of course. Mr. Haddon's version is a horror story that nevertheless stays pretty close to the actual outline of the myth; the devil is in the details. His story even begins as quasi-realistic, as if Ariadne and Theseus might have been actual people--Ariadne a spoiled but sheltered princess who makes a fatal error in betraying her people for a man she's besotted with and Theseus a calculating and manipulative brute.

Mr. Haddon's way of dealing with the Dionysus part of the myth is not one I had seen before and conjures up the destructive aspect of the god. This side of Dionysus certainly appears elsewhere in mythology but not in the context of this myth, at least not to my knowledge, so it seemed to me a bit like mixing bad apples and worse oranges, though of course one has the creative license to do just that in a story of one's own telling. Ariadne's marriage to Dionysus in the classical version of the myth is a much more benign event than Mr. Haddon makes of it and supports the idea that Ariadne herself was viewed, at an earlier period of Greek history, as a powerful goddess. In some versions of the myth she, a goddess, was already married to Dionysus when she decided to help Theseus, so that perhaps the marriage on Naxos in later versions is a way of linking Ariadne, now a mortal, back to her original husband.

I discussed in my book some of the thinking about Ariadne's role in the myth, which centers on the idea that the labyrinth may originally have had a powerful religious meaning. I tend to see Ariadne as a positive figure guarding the secrets of life itself, the labyrinth in this sense becoming a symbol for birth, and even more than that, for becoming human. In that regard, her pairing with Dionysus makes sense, because he, too, is deeply connected with life in his associations with wine and the life cycle of the grape.

Whereas Demeter oversees agriculture in general, Dionysus's connection with the vine speaks of something that, paradoxical as it seems, is in some ways even more nuanced and refined. I'm talking about the life cycle of the grape and of how many things have to go just right in order for the winemaker to produce a fine wine. Dionysus presides over all of this, not just the growing of the grapes. The wine distills some of the essence of everything that goes into its making, the soil, the water, the sunlight, the container it's placed in, and, in no small amount, the soul of the winemaker, whose care of the vines has a great deal to do with how the wine turns out. Every vintage is unique, just as every person is.

By the way, I'm indebted to the movie Sideways for revealing to me so evocatively this nurturing aspect of Dionysus. That the main character, Miles, has a difficult relationship with wine, the very thing he loves and appreciates so well, is both a sad irony and a reminder that Dionysus does indeed have two sides, though bookish Miles is in some ways really more an Apollo kind of guy. Miles's boorish friend Jack, who has no appreciation for the subtle beauties of wine, embodies the dark side of Dionysus much better than Miles does. Miles's love interest, Maya, combines characteristics of both Demeter and Aphrodite, which really makes her the Ariadne to Miles's Dionysus.

All of this is just to say that in my reading of the labyrinth myth, Ariadne and Dionysus are both nurturing figures, and there is some support for this in scholarship. I was honestly rather shocked by Mr. Haddon's story, and even though I think most people realize there are many ways to read a myth, I want to point out, in this era of sensationalism and over-emoting that takes place everywhere from The Weather Channel to the nightly news, that the most shocking interpretation of a story isn't necessarily the best one and definitely isn't the only one. You can look at life through the eyes of love as a rich adventure filled with beauty and interest (despite its many serious problems) or you can look at it as a carnival sideshow, with one freakish event screaming for your attention until another one even worse comes along to take its place. I recommend that you not be that guy. (You know the one I mean.)

I don't know whether to thank Mr. Haddon for a lesson in the dangers of literal-minded mythology or to wash his mouth out with soap, but I rather suspect he had a reason for telling the story the way he did. As an example of literature as shock therapy, I'm not sure I've ever seen its equal. It's like a literary hairshirt. A tiny dab of that may be edifying, but more than that is going overboard. Whether he even expects you to finish the book or not is a question I'm not sure I can answer.

Tattoos and Shadows

Last week I wrote about my attempts to settle into L.A., and it seems a bit redundant to talk about job search woes again this week, though that is what I think about most of the time. What to do for a topic, then? I've been watching a little TV, but I'm circumspect about giving too much space to what I see there. How about a book review? I may have mentioned that I have a visitor's card to a local library that will let me check out one book at a time, but if I didn't, it's true--and for some reason I settled on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last week.

Someone recommended the book to me years ago, and I had seen the previews for the film that was made of it, but I never got around to reading it. The characters looked interesting, but I don't read a lot of suspense thrillers, which is what I suppose you would call this book. Having finished it, I have to say that I don't think I agree with the casting of the film: Daniel Craig seems too hardened and cynical for the main character, Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who runs afoul of a criminal and ends up on a kind of sabbatical, writing a family history for a wealthy industrialist. In the book, the Blomkvist character, while no Pollyanna, is painted in somewhat softer tones as a nice guy who does his best but ends up in a compromised position anyway.

The most unforgettable character in the book, is, of course, Lisbeth Salander, crack investigator, computer hacker, and social misfit who ends up helping Blomkvist solve a decades-old mystery and reopen his investigation of the criminal mastermind. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo came out in Sweden twelve years ago and has probably been read already by almost everyone except me. The only thing I can add to what everyone else has said is that I was struck by what a Hecate-like character Salander is. Hecate is probably a much less familiar figure to most people than the other Greek goddesses, shrouded as she is in mystery, darkness, and associations with magic. Salander, with her tattoos, piercings, and unconventional (not to mention off-putting) attire, personality, and habits, is an almost pure embodiment of that seldom seen goddess most associated with the black arts.

If you've ever read Greek mythology, you may have noticed a certain lack of what I would call morality in many of the gods' dealings with mortals. It's often hard to say whether the gods are "good" or "bad" because their actions often seem arbitrary--they seem to just do what they want to do, though they can sometimes be prevailed upon to assist mortals and arbitrate disagreements. They're a law unto themselves.

Hecate has an even darker profile than most of them, but is she "bad"? My sense is that because of the nature of what she does, which is to operate in darkness and concern herself with magic, with things just outside the ken of everyday concerns, most people would rather not think about her too much--until they need her. She might be the one they turn to for a potion or for matters requiring secrecy, guile, and a certain amount of ruthlessness, situations in which playing by ordinary rules won't get the job done. When this happens, most people would rather not talk about it.

That's the very definition of Salander, who operates by her own code and her own conventions; she isn't "bad" but she is certainly dangerous. She isn't motivated by petty concerns or greed, but once you make an enemy of her, she's implacable. Blomkvist is unable to figure out how she is able to find out some of the things she knows and do some of the things she does: firewalls, locks, laws, ethical conventions, and other people's opinions have no meaning for her. So, is she "bad"? A lot of people consider her so, and they certainly find her scary, but she isn't exactly amoral. She will go to great lengths to right a wrong (and when she considers something to be wrong, it usually is). She doesn't even have to be the target of the wrong but will act on someone else's behalf, without their even knowing anything about it.

The problem (or the advantage, depending on how you look at it) is that her solutions tend to be drastic as well as unlawful, but that's the Hecate coming out. She often operates in areas in which wrongs would go unpunished or even unnoticed if not for her intervention, situations in which ordinary remedies aren't available. Her actions can often be justified even as they veer into vigilantism. You sympathize with Salander and may even like her, but you're never really comfortable with her. She's just too devastatingly effective at operating in the shadows and outside the conventions that restrain most people. She's both unpredictable and uncanny.

Salander is also misunderstood by most of the people who know her, which is largely what has made her such an outlier, but the point is . . . a little bit of Hecate goes a long way. For a while, I had a plaque with Hecate's likeness on it in my bathroom, and even though I had several Buddhas and Shivas and the like scattered around because of my interest in mythology, I was never altogether comfortable with Hecate. For me, it was more a reminder that there are various forces at work in the world, whether we like them or not. I didn't bring her with me when I moved, as I decided that I'd had enough of a reminder. I'm not sure if I'll read any more of Stieg Larsson's books, either, but I'm certain I'll never forget the gothic and intransigent Lisbeth Salander. I think she has something to say to each of us.

Pluto, Is That You?

Yesterday I took an online quiz to test my knowledge of the planet Pluto, and to my surprise I got all the questions right. I didn't know I knew that much about it, but I have seen a couple of news articles about the New Horizons space probe and recently read the story of how Pluto was discovered in 1930. I understand that the photographs received by NASA have revealed the planet to be a bit bigger than scientists thought it was, and I'd like to congratulate Pluto in this regard. It must be hard enough hanging out there in the Kuiper Belt without being demoted; maybe being bigger will give Pluto back its bona fides.

When I was growing up, I thought of Pluto as almost the mascot of the solar system, probably because it shared its name with that friendly but goofy Disney dog. At the same time, its remoteness gave it a mystique no other planet had. Now all these years later, images of its surface are raining down on us from the space probe, and we're getting acquainted with its actual features. Imagine an object the size of a piano traveling safely for nine years across the vastness of space, arriving in the vicinity of distant Pluto in good enough condition to send back crisp images. What a miracle.

I read today that scientists are excited about the size of the mountains on Pluto and the likelihood that the planet has water. Pluto seems to be defying expectations in lots of ways, but surprisingly, the images I've seen don't stray all that far from what I might have imagined if you'd asked me to draw it when I was growing up. I think I imagined it as a very cold, silent, dim place, a place it would be hard to get to know.

As everyone knows from mythology, Pluto was also called Hades and was the god of the underworld--conceived as being below the ground, not out in space. Pluto was in some way connected with wealth, which may have come from the fact that he ruled his own vast kingdom, quite distinct from that of the upper regions. Despite the riches below the earth, his realm was a dim, inaccessible place for the living, not a place to go willingly even if you could get there, in contrast to all the effort it's taken to get to his planetary namesake.

We've sent a spacecraft as our emissary to the planet Pluto, a destination that will, in its own way, have a wealth of features to discover. I sometimes have mixed feelings when I read about explorations of other worlds and plans to possibly exploit them for our gain (though I realize anything like that is probably far in the future for distant Pluto). If only we could get our own house in order on Earth I might feel better about the possibility of colonizing other worlds, but I guess if we waited until we were perfectly wise we might never get anywhere.

I hope the images we're receiving will make all the work that went into the New Horizons project pay off, and I'm glad the ashes of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, went along for the ride. That was a lovely gesture that puts a human face on the whole enterprise and makes a nine-year voyage seem perhaps a bit less of a lonely ride. It also makes Pluto seem not quite as remote as it once was--though regardless of the distance, Pluto will always be a part of my solar system.

Obama and the White Bull

I saw a description for a course someone is offering on learning to recognize myths and archetypes in current events. What a good idea for a course--because how challenging is it to separate the real story from the apparently real in the news we see every day? Separating the false from the true is both an art and a science, and familiarity with myths can be a great help in discernment.

It helps, as I've said before, to view the political stage as just that--a stage. It's the practiced performance you see, not actors standing around being themselves (with a few exceptions). Unrehearsed events are so rare that it makes me wonder how often reporters even ask the right questions. I get the feeling sometimes that press events, talk shows, and public appearances of all kinds are predicated from the word "go" on certain things not being asked, so that it's not a matter of an official parrying a tough question or refusing to comment on something. The conversation never even gets to that point.

I've read reports in the news media that President Obama has been showing more emotion lately, as if to imply that he's "loosening up" and revealing a more human side. I view those reports with some skepticism, based on my observation that almost everything that happens in politics happens for a stone cold reason. I'm not saying that the President doesn't have any of the emotions he might be displaying, but I am saying that if he's letting you see them, that's a calculated decision on his part (the same goes for other warm and fuzzy Washington people).

Was there a time when being presidential carried more gravitas and less of the aura of carnival side show, or am I just imagining that? President Obama seems to want us to think that he's a great guy with feelings just like ours, a sense of humor, lovable foibles, etc., and that he's not even above appearing in someone's garage to record a podcast. I know this folksiness is meant to be disarming, but what I find interesting (and disconcerting) is the fact that Mr. Obama works so hard at projecting this image.

I try to read events--whether they're press conferences, speeches, interviews, or news items--a little like advertisements and a little like poems. If it's an ad, what are they trying to sell me? What's the motive? What's the gain? Reading an event like a poem means reading intuitively or slantwise--literal understanding is just the beginning. The more elusive truths only appear if you don't stare at them head-on but listen instead to your gut feelings.

Here's a Greek myth that surfaced for me this afternoon, in thinking about our President: Poseidon sent King Minos a beautiful white bull, a magnificent animal that, because it was sacred, was meant to be sacrificed to the gods. Minos coveted this bull, and instead of offering it up, decided to keep it for himself, substituting a lesser animal in its place. Much havoc ensued from this self-serving act; Minos' wife even fell in love with the bull, which led to the birth of a monster, the insatiable Minotaur, and the need for an elaborate labyrinth in which to hide it.

The currency in this myth concerns the bait-and-switch, which in our day is the slick appearance and trappings of power as a substitute for the true working of democracy. In matters of personal rights, trade, and economic justice for ordinary citizens, the President, as I see it, is too often on the side of the moneyed and the powerful (a true son of Zeus, like Minos)--but he doesn't want it to look that way. So in place of that just, self-sacrificing, and courageous leader of the free world that we need but don't have, he gladly offers up a shiny, photogenic, and urbane substitute. We'd like to believe it's the real thing, but the truth is, you know, it's just some old bull. And you're not fooled, because you know your mythology.

Crash of the Gods

As a student of myth, I've been trained to look at everyday events through an archetypal lens. This is not the only way to understand life, but it's often useful. I've found, though, that it's one thing to gleefully deconstruct a favorite film in terms of mythic themes and another to apply the same lens to difficult events in your own life.

Take the fender-bender I was involved in last week. At the time it was happening, I was calm but very annoyed. What a nuisance, on top of other things I had to deal with! I was on my way to read and drink iced coffee at Starbucks. It was a sunny April afternoon. I was coming up to a busy intersection when I heard an ambulance approaching from the left and stopped. A couple of seconds later, I felt the impact as someone hit me pretty hard from the rear. My first reaction was simply to feel stunned -- what happened? And then I felt aggravated. I put on my caution lights and got out to talk to the other driver.

This driver was in a large Ford pick-up, for which the bumper of my little Toyota was no match. I stated the obvious, which was that he had hit me. He said I had stopped in front of him. I pointed out that I had stopped for an ambulance, to which he had no real reply. Then he asked if I wanted to just exchange insurance information or call the police. I told him I would call the police, to which he replied, "Well, call them then." He didn't ask if I was OK or seem apologetic. He smiled through the entire conversation as if we were on some kind of a lark.

I called the police and waited 45 minutes for an officer to arrive. While we were waiting, the other driver came up to my window and asked if I knew how long it would be until someone came. I told him I didn't know. He asked if I wanted to go ahead and exchange insurance information. I told him I wanted to wait for the police; a little while later, an officer arrived. After we moved our cars out of traffic, the officer took our statements and told me I could get the report online. I told him I had a bit of a headache and would probably get checked out to make sure I was OK.

Since we were in the parking lot of a hospital, I went into the emergency room there. Besides asking a lot of questions and putting me through some range of motion exercises, the staff also recommended an X-ray for my arm, which was by then slightly sore. Figuring it was better to be safe, I had the X-ray, which showed I had no fracture. I was told the headache was due to an adrenaline rush.

OK, so much for the facts. Now, as one professor I know likes to say, which gods were present?

As I got out of my car and faced the other driver, I felt competing emotions. A car crash is a violent event, and the presence of all that adrenaline proves that the body reacts to it as such. I know I was feeling a bit under attack as I got out of my car, but another voice in my head reminded me of the importance of being calm. If you had been been nearby, watching the scene unfold, you would have seen the glinting armor and flashing helmet of warlike Athena emerging from the driver's side of that small Toyota. A goddess of war, yes, but not one who relies on brute strength; she is also known for wisdom and counsel. I'm glad she was there.

What of the other driver? I wasn't in his skin, so I can't answer for his state of mind (as far as I know, he hasn't contacted his adjuster yet, so I still don't know what he was thinking). However, his smile and veneer of joking make me think of no one so much as the trickster, Hermes (minus the charm the latter sometimes exudes). There's an element of the trickster in most accidents, but some hint of gaiety in the man's face, inappropriate under the circumstance, made this impression even stronger. He was clearly at fault, and perhaps acting clownish was his defense.

Then the officer, the representative of law and order, arrived. He was strictly professional and took the reports with a seasoned efficiency that spoke of having repeated the same scene many times. He was Zeus, appearing suddenly to dispense justice, only he came in a squad car instead of descending from on high. (Modern life requires some adjustment in the details.)

Then the emergency room. Apollo is the god most associated with modern medicine, with its scientific ways and means. Apollo is skillful and efficient but perhaps a bit cold; certainly I felt I was surrounded by capable people, but if you've ever spent any time in an emergency room cubicle, you'll probably agree that it's not the warmest, fuzziest place you can imagine. It was sterile and a bit chilly. I wasn't in dire straits, so I was left on my own for most of the time, behind a curtain, with someone coming in occasionally to ask questions, take my vital signs, or perform some other function. That's probably by design, as I'm sure the emergency room staff makes it a policy to keep accident victims under observation, even if they're seemingly intact.

Asklepios, the other Greek god most associated with medicine, had a different approach; patients sought healing at overnight visits to his temple, where it was believed that he visited them in dreams. My understanding is that the rest and attention given to the patient were part of the cure. I don't know the details, but I imagine reclining on a couch, eating grapes, and listening to the dulcet tones of a flute playing softly nearby. Perhaps a massage before dinner, then a bath in the healing waters, and a pleasant night's sleep on a cushioned and draperied bed, followed by a late breakfast and consultation with the resident healer, who looked like Dr. Joe Gannon.

Actually, I did have a curtain, and I did have a chair, although I couldn't get it to recline. It takes more imagination than I can summon to transform those clinical surroundings into an Asklepion temple, and I'm very glad I didn't have to spend the night. I have a feeling there wouldn't have been any flute playing. But as glad as I am to have been able to walk out on my own steam (which is really the main thing), it would have been nice to have a little nurturing. A cup of hot tea, perhaps, or a pat on the arm. Modern medicine recognizes the emotional impact of an event such as mine, as evidenced by the instruction sheet I was given that explained the possibility of feeling depressed or anxious afterwards. But there was little in the way of any therapy for the soul, any milk of human kindness (a bit of chocolate wouldn't have been amiss, either).

Of course, there's one last player in this event, and that's the ambulance whose approach started the chain of events. You may be struck, as I was, at the irony of being put in the emergency room by stopping for an emergency vehicle. I'm sure this isn't the first time it's happened, but since it happened to me, I'm trying to make sense of the scene. Was the ambulance simply a blind agent of Fate? Was it Apollo, carrying some other unfortunate in far worse shape and in dire need of healing? Since it was the sound of the siren that made me stop, it's tempting to compare it to the Sirens who made the sailors crash on the rocks (after all, the result was similar). Possibly, it was some combination of all of these. There are usually multiple stories involved in any situation, not just the one that seems obvious.

If this had been a movie, I would have been able to dissect it with some of the intellectual precision of Apollo, but since it's real life, it's a good deal messier and not as easy to interpret. Is there a theme? Were there heroes? Were there villains? Is there something to be learned? And just where was Asklepios when I needed him? The sum of what I know: An accident happened; it was a hassle. However, I did not lose my temper, despite a trying circumstance. And that's something (thank you, Athena).

The aftermath is that I'm doing a lot of walking for the time being. Good for the soreness, good for the soul, and a bit less stressful than entering the fray of traffic just now. I wrote a book called Solved by Walking, so I guess I'm following my own advice, though I didn't have this circumstance in mind when I called it that. No matter: whatever works.

Stories of the Wind

This afternoon I heard a strong wind in the trees outside, and it made me think of a paper I wrote a few years ago about the role of the wind deities in Navajo and Greek mythologies. I remember how strongly the wind blew that week, whistling through the cracks of the window in my room as I was writing. It was a cold, blustery December wind, fierce and shrill, an uncanny but appropriate backdrop to my scholarly efforts.

The wind I heard this afternoon had a different timbre. It was an autumn wind through and through, like the one Shelley addressed as "O Wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being," "sweet though in sadness." It was an expectant wind, unlike the storm winds of winter and summer, which somehow seem just part of the season, striking not a new note but blending into the overall effect. An autumn wind is restless and heralds change.

In many mythologies, wind is the life force of creation, the breath of the divinity. In some cases, it is the speaking of a word by a god (whose divine breath shapes the word) that creates the world and its humans. I was especially charmed by the conception of the wind in Navajo stories, in which the wind is present not only in nature and the gods but in each individual. Wind plays a central role in creation as well as in the ongoing relations between humans and deities. It sometimes takes the form of a helpful god appearing to an individual in times of trouble or need. At these times it takes the guise not of a powerful storm but of a quiet companion, whispering advice and wisdom. Not quite a guardian angel or a conscience, it's more like a sage friend. The Navajo call this wind deity Nilch'i.

Nilch'i plays an important part in the adventures of Reared Within the Mountains, the hero of The Mountain Chant. He appears to the hero at crucial times, issuing guidance, giving warnings, and teaching him how to access and use his own power. Although Nilch'i is a deity, the life force in him is the same force that animates Reared Within the Mountains and all other people. Nilch'i is much like an inner voice, inspiration (from Latin, "to breathe upon or into") that arises when the individual pays attention to its sometimes subtle utterances.

I was struck by the contrast between the role of the wind in the Navajo stories and the Greek myths. Heroes in the Greek myths are often at odds with the winds, which appear as tools of the gods, used to manipulate or punish humans; Odysseus and Agamemnon battle the winds on several occasions, usually coming out the worse for wear. Once, the god Aeolus tries to make Odysseus a present of the winds by tying them up in a bag, but Odysseus's men set them free, whereupon they blow the ship wildly off course, displaying the tricksterish nature that is often their hallmark.

The portrayal of the winds in both traditions is complex, but I see a fundamental difference between them centered on the issue of power and control. In Greek mythology, humans often seem to be at war, either with nature or each other. They are guided by the principle of Arete, "excellence," often in military and athletic pursuits that involve competition or strife. In Navajo mythology, the key concept is Hozhooji, living in harmony and beauty. Strife and discord are a part of the scene, but an individual seeking Hozhooji learns to live in balance with contending forces. Anyone can do this; you are not dependent on the whims of the gods or the impersonal workings of Fate but rather on your own ability and desire to live in tune with nature and other people.

In the Navajo stories, even a wild or destructive wind has its place and purpose in the overall scheme. It may cleanse the world and prepare it for a new season, like the wind blowing leaves around my apartment building this afternoon. It may come as a whirlwind, drilling a hole in which the hero shelters from his enemies. Or it may simply bring needed rains.

To me it seems that the wisdom in this Native American tradition has been trumped too many times by forces thriving on antagonism, but it's always possible to change course. I love the Greek myths but have always thought it would be tough to actually inhabit the world they portray (though in a way, we do inhabit the world they portray). I can better imagine living within the boundaries of the Navajo universe. Life is still difficult there, and certainly the winds still blow. But how different it would be to be measured not by the length of your sword or the size of your ship but by how well you listen.

An Off-Cannes Film Festival: It's Archetypal!

I used to enjoy reading mini-reviews of movies that appeared regularly in a local publication. And when I say mini, I'm serious: the reviews were only a short sentence or two. They were pithy, often witty, sometimes mean-spirited, and not to be trusted as a guide to what you should actually see. They were interesting to read merely because it was fun to see the writer sketch an entire film in a few words while turning a catchy phrase.

I thought I'd try to do the same with the movies I've watched over the last couple of weeks at home. None of these films are recent, some of them are quite old, and this is not necessarily a guide to what you should actually see. Also, I think there's plenty of meanness in the world, so I'll leave that element out. Witty is probably aiming too high, but pithy I should be able to handle, having both headline-composing and haiku-writing within my realm of experience.

I always thought it would be fun to be a film critic, and now, through the magic of blogging, I can be, even though the pay isn't much. I'm calling this "The Eclectic Minimalist's Archetypal Film Roundup." If you read anything into my choice of films, it's your own fault, because there's no premeditation involved. I just know what I like (or think I like. I'm not always right). Here's the roundup:

Garden State
Boy living in L.A. heavily medicated goes home to Jersey, meets girl, does primal scream therapy on truck in a rainstorm, self-heals in a bathtub. Reading: Persephone charms Hades clean out of the Underworld.

Man on the Train
A bank robber and retired teacher forge a friendship, sample how the other half lives, exchange notes on slippers and target-shooting.
Reading: Hermes and Hestia have tea and shoot at cans.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Three smart-aleck comedians zoom through the canon with a heavy emphasis on the tragedies (because "they're funnier"). They're right.
Reading: Hermes, Dionysus, and Apollo start their own circus.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Man-about-town journalist suffers catastrophic stroke, is forced to live imaginatively within severe limits, aided by heroic women.
Reading: Wounded Dionysus, attended by Mnemosyne and Muses.

An American in Paris
Gene Kelly paints, sings, and dances his way into hearts of two women, loves one, takes the other to a party, fantasizes choreography to a Gershwin melody.
Reading: Hmmm . . . the Apple of Discord maybe, but there are only two goddesses, and this is Paris, so there's singing, dancing, kissing, and starving artists, but no Trojan War.

Adam's Rib
Married lawyers mix careers and love in a hectic battle of the sexes in which the winner is -- it's a draw!
Reading: Zeus is bested but turns the tables on Hera, then they go to Connecticut.

Clerks
Generation X minimum-wagers get profane, play hockey on the roof, wax philosophical, attend a funeral on work time, weather bathroom death. First annoying, then wise.
Reading: Satyrs at the convenience store who sometimes channel Saturn.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Young lovers dream, meet secretly, get pregnant, and are parted in a candy-box setting where everybody (even the mailman) sings. You can't get that song out of your head for days.
Reading: Aphrodite gets walloped by Hestia, which may or may not be a good thing. You decide.

Inherit the Wind
Teacher is arrested for teaching evolution; lawyers, politicians, townspeople, demagogues jump into the fray. Sharp and surprisingly modern.
Reading: Apollo loses, but the battle lines get blurred in the melee.

Coco Before Chanel
Early life of Coco Chanel, who dreamed of success on stage, struggled in a man's world, crashed some parties, made her own clothes, and then other people's.
Reading: Artemis becomes Aphrodite. Or, Ariadne picks up her own thread, grabs needle.

Cool Hand Luke
Couldn't get disc to play.
Reading: Mercury in retrograde. A failure to communicate.

Solved by Walking

Today is August 22. I actually moved into my freshman dorm on Sunday, August 22, many years ago. (I remember this the same way I remember that full-time tuition was $242 that first semester.) I realized the significance of the date this afternoon when I was in the grocery store, pushing my cart past a lot of new college students who have just arrived in town. I wonder how many of them will do what I did and deliberately buy a different brand of laundry detergent than their mother used, just to prove how independent they are. Radicals!

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since that day, but at least I'm consistent -- I still use the same brand of detergent.

Fast forward a few decades to one year ago today. It was Saturday, August 22, and I was visiting St. Louis. Having just finished my last year of coursework in my doctoral program (four degrees later, different school), I was getting ready to walk a few labyrinths as an adjunct to all the book research I was facing. I thought of this as a fun way to enter the dissertation and balance the intellectual work on the labyrinth with an in-the-body experience. It seemed like a good idea to make the research experiential. I just didn't know how literal this would become, and that the whole trip would turn into a gigantic labyrinth.

I went into the first labyrinth on my agenda the next morning, a Sunday, when the grass was covered with a heavy dew, so that I literally got my feet wet. It was a turf labyrinth at a church just down the street from my hotel, and I was nursing an unexpected heartache from the night before along with sincere confusion about what I was doing there. So I did as the church's pamphlet suggested and asked myself that question as I was walking in. It was not pleasant; introspection is sometimes painful. However, it was probably at this point that walking labyrinths became something besides a game for me. I walked out a little later feeling like I might actually have touched something real.

Today I'm looking back on the winding road between that long-ago August 22, the first of my college career; August 22 of last year, my initiation into my dissertation; and today, August 22, 2010, when I did some writing for my dissertation, along with some more walking. There may be a glimmer of order in the chaos, if I'm not imagining it. I don't know where the road will go in a few years (or even a few hours). But I found this motto on a fountain near another labyrinth I walked that memorable weekend, one year ago. If I ever get a tattoo, maybe this should be on it. Solvitur ambulando: "It is solved by walking."

Summer of Wings

It's been really hot here lately; yesterday it was 95 (according to the bank clock over by the grocery store, it might have been closer to 100). It wasn't quite as hot today -- more like 90 -- and we had a little rain. I wouldn't exactly say that I like my summers quite this hot, but I'll take this over the middle of January any day. At least the sun is shining, and summer is teeming with life.

We had a wet spring, and it's been warm, which is good for all kinds of insects. There had been reports that firefly populations were decreasing in recent years, but there have been loads of them this summer. Going for an evening walk has been magical with all those little lights winking off and on, as if entire constellations had fallen from the sky and landed in the front lawns of the neighborhood. One night, a firefly landed on my pearl ring and hung on for quite a long time. I imagine he was attracted to the glow of the pearl and thought he'd met the Marilyn Monroe of fireflies.

I don't remember noticing a lot of dragonflies in years past, but I've seen many of them this year. One morning on my way to work I was stopped at a light when a group of them appeared out of nowhere, hovering in unison, with a slight rhythmic pulse, in between two lanes of traffic. They were like a mirage, as strange a sight as I have ever seen on Limestone on a summer morning, like fairies had suddenly descended on the street. I would almost have thought I was imagining them except that I glanced in my rear-view mirror and saw the face of the driver behind me. She had seen them, too.

Last week, I was sitting with some friends behind their family's summer house overlooking Craig's Creek and the Ohio River, watching the sun go down. Someone commented on the cicadas, which were really making a racket. I'm so used to it that it was just background noise to me until someone mentioned it. Both of my friends are from the South but live in Northern California. One of them has a degree in entomology, and he talked about how few insects there are in San Francisco compared to here.

Sitting there listening to those cicadas shrieking in the humid air as my friend talked gave me a new appreciation for them; I think I'd miss them if they weren't around, despite their noise, because they just sound like a summer night. It's actually the males making all the hullabaloo; they are singing to the female cicadas, trying to get a date.

While I was out walking this morning, I noticed many butterflies of varying sizes and colors. There are always a lot of butterflies in the summer, and maybe I'm imagining it since I'm so tuned into insects this year, but it seems as if there are more than usual, and more colorful ones. I feel like I'm in a technicolor nature film. Last week, by the Ohio, a large, almost iridescent blue one flew over us, flashing its wings in the sun. It looked like a small bird. I saw one this morning that had big yellow wings edged with elegant black spots, and it was also quite a beauty.

As for myths, dragonflies have had a fearsome reputation in some places, but in Norse mythology they are associated with Freya, the goddess of love and fertility. Butterflies represented psyche for the Greeks; the Blackfeet of North America believed that butterflies were bringers of dreams. For the Mayans, fireflies carried starlight, and cicadas, in ancient Greece, represented ecstasy.

There is a scene near the end of the post-apocalyptic film The Road in which the man and his son see a few flying insects, and it is a sign of hope. It had seemed until then that all life had been stamped out except for a few desperate (and not very attractive) humans. Maybe that's why it feels like a good omen to see all of these creatures around this summer. Despite everything, life persists and even, in some cases, thrives.

Ride This

Yesterday I went to Kings Island amusement park with friends. It's been a long while since I was last there, and I surprised myself this time by being braver than in the past. I'm not addicted to adrenaline; you're more likely most days to find me reading Jane Austen and sipping tea than tumbling head over heels on something called Invertigo. Some of my friends, though, turned out to be bigger thrill seekers than I had expected, so I ended up on rides that I'm sure I would have bypassed if I'd been in more sedate company.

I realized at some point yesterday that when I'm faced with 130-foot drops and G forces of 5, my attitude these days is fairly philosophical. Why? I attribute it to life experience. In three years, I commuted by plane 30 times to school on the West Coast without ever once crashing. I stood up in front of my classmates numerous times without bombing, though I used to think public speaking was one of my worst nightmares. I have been through fires and earthquake. I survived a wild ride down an alleged "road" on an Idaho butte in my brother's truck with a storm on the horizon. I've seen a grizzly bear. I've worked with lawyers for 12 years. I have driven the L.A. freeways. I've chased the Minotaur.

Things like that harden you up a bit, though I have to admit I balked at the sight of the Diamondback, Kings Island's newest and tallest roller coaster. It was just a little too vertical for someone who hadn't ridden in a while, and if you've studied Greek mythology at all, its sky-climbing aggressiveness summons up instant thoughts of the hubris that brought people like Phaeton and Icarus to such a spectacular end. So I sat out the Diamondback and let someone else tell me about it, though I felt a little sorry afterwards that I had missed it.

Later on, we found ourselves at the Vortex just as it reopened after being shut down for maintenance. Although its having "had a problem" of an unspecified nature raised a sense of mild alarm, I was determined to ride it since I had done so in the past. So we all jumped on, and two loops, one corkscrew, a boomerang, a helix, and much head-banging later, we arrived back at the station in one piece. You feel proud of yourself after something like that; it's sort of like threading a labyrinth that has fallen apart in the air. One friend told me that if I could handle that, I could handle the Diamondback, which, aside from the first drop, she said, was less intense in some ways than the Vortex. OK, maybe next time?

After that, it was thrill rides all the way, though the Racer and Adventure Express involved perhaps more bumping and bruising than fear. We got on something called Delirium that even at this moment I have trouble believing I did. It looks like a giant potato masher with a disk that spins at the end of the handle, and it swings 12 stories up in the air while you rotate on the disk, your feet dangling. If you don't believe me, here's a visual:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLh-j_FCy2c

I wouldn't have thought anything could top that, but we went on to ride a couple more coasters that were so extreme as to be almost violent: those taught me my limits. I came off Invertigo with a headache, and I must say even my die-hard friends were a bit shaken. I may cross that one off my bucket list. As for Flight Deck, it caught me off guard since its rating was only a 4, but it was so much like Invertigo that it brought back the headache that had just started to wane. After that, I think everyone had had enough. I had one more wish, since I thought it best to end things on a gentle note. So our very last ride of the day was on a beautiful old carousel with rearing horses and calliope music and the world spinning at a demure, ground-level pace. And perhaps you only fully appreciate the charms of a carousel after spending an afternoon defying the laws of gravity and common sense.

Today, I was a little stiff but otherwise unscathed. I took some Tylenol and enjoyed my proximity to Mother Earth. Here are my conclusions about yesterday's adventures:

1. People may not be meant to fly, but you'll never get them to admit it.
2. Soaring 12 stories is actually less painful than getting banged around and bruised at lower altitudes.
3. Getting out of your normal comfort zone is not a bad thing.
4. Roller coasters aren't as scary as some other things you encounter in life.
5. Closing your eyes? Always an option.

Mother's Day

I went with some friends this week to see a movie called The Back-up Plan. I probably would never have seen this movie except that someone had free tickets, and it turned into a good excuse for a night out. In this movie, the main character, Zoe, gets tired of waiting for Mr. Right and turns to a sperm donor to get pregnant. Since it's a comedy, the first thing that happens when she leaves the doctor's office is that she meets Mr. Right, and complications naturally ensue.

The most memorable scene is the one in which Zoe and Mr. Right (Stan) find themselves reluctantly present at the childbirth of one of Zoe's Single Mothers' Support Group acquaintances. The scene involves a water-filled wading pool, drumming, lots of physical comedy, and some rather primal screaming. I told my friends afterwards that it left me feeling not so bad about not having any babies.

When I was 10, I had a crush on Charlton Heston. I had a fantasy about marrying him and having seven children (the result of a cross-pollination between Planet of the Apes and The Sound of Music that didn't seem at all odd at the time). That was a little girl fantasy that went along with my dolls, my play kitchen, and my Easy-Bake oven. In my teens and early 20s, I had a less ambitious but still naive vision of married life with two children. Though I experienced overt anxiety when this didn't happen, part of me was probably relieved. On some level, I knew I had things to do that couldn't happen if I had someone else to take care of. I had seen how heavily motherhood weighed on my grandmothers, both of whom had many children, and on my own mother, who would have lived a very different life if she hadn't become the mother of three.

In Greek mythology, it always seemed to me that the unattached goddesses, Athena and Artemis, had the most freedom (and the most fun). While it was too bad that they had to be stuck as maidens, they at least had a wide scope of action and independence. Athena was wise and strong, and Artemis got to run around in the woods at night. The predominant image of a mother goddess was Demeter, whose main attribute seemed to be terrible suffering when her daughter was taken from her. Her lot hardly seemed desirable.

Now I know that all of these roles are available, no matter what a person's outward status is. I'm thinking about one of the most maternal people I know, a friend who is a nun; though she's without biological children, she's been the nurturer of countless other people's children. I've done a little mothering, too, on a small scale. I once adopted two kittens and was astonished and pleased when I realized that they regarded me as their mom after the first time I fed them. When they died years later, I suffered terribly. My nephew told me a few years ago that when he was little, he thought I was Mary Poppins because I was always showing up to take him places. Mary Poppins is a form of the Great Mother disguised as a nanny: she's stern, powerful, and a little scary but underneath it ultimately nurturing.

I was looking this week at pictures of my goddaughter dressed up for her prom. I was both amazed that she is already so grown up and glamorous but also wistful thinking about how close she and her mother, my old college friend, seem to be. I admire my friends with kids and have come to appreciate realistically how much self-sacrifice is involved in being a mother. No doubt it's a good thing I didn't take this on when I was still trying to learn how to mother myself.

I told someone the other day that I rarely dream about my mother, who died three years ago. But just the other night, I dreamed that I was rearranging some of my belongings when I saw a pale woman, whom I knew to be very ill, sitting nearby. A friend brought her a gift, a small pin with a vibrant red rose on it, and the sick woman was happy. Her happiness, and the vivid color of the rose, are the main things I remember. This morning I realized the pin looked a lot like one my mother once gave me (which I still have).

I haven't finished thinking about this dream, but it occurs to me that while I was moving some things around, rearranging what I already had, someone else came along with a gift of life, a beautiful rose, which was exactly what the ailing woman (some part of myself?) needed. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that this looked so much like the pin my mother gave me -- but probably not.