_Nymphs_finding_the_head_of_Orpheus.jpg)
Time to watch, retool. Been immersed in Robert Sapolsky's work -- his Stanford class on Human Behavior Biology is online, whole. If only everyone would watch it. Try the first lecture and let him convince you why.
Stephen -- you need to interview him.
My perspective: lotsa of changes coming and in the works regarding the way we heal and live. Medicine, especially. With all the emphasis and money shaping the APPLICATION (that was a mistake, caps locked, but let's leave it) of what we're learning about the genome, my mind spins. No end of scenarios for spec fic / fiction, which is my bag. But think: People already paying gobs of money to have a tiny fraction of their genetic material analysed for markers and tendencies. Big business, and how will this affect / effect research, what gets entrenched, what to grasp and let go of (ala what happened with hydrocarbons /oil vs. developing alt.energy), how it's applied? People, we need to get educated on how to think about this, and not leave it to pharma and the free-market god and its handmaid Fundamentalists.
Not hard to understand that this is not a good time to be filtered by Facebook and web-bots, sorted into bubbles by Murdocian empires, etc.
Please watch Sapolsky. (Also at http://www.virtualprofessors.com/stanford-bio-250-human-behavioral-biology )
extra credit peruse n extrapolate (and as we said...): http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/
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Can't type anymore -- so a redux:
an interstitial aside.
elvis costello says you have to learn to write in the dark so you won't
forget what comes to you there. my legal pad this a.m. said:
1. growth is the holy
2. we are our ideas
3. the past is initiation
4. community fosters the growth of the individual
given: we live our lives as individuals yet ^
in a balloon off to side:
why the fascination w/ mysticism (e.g., say, late antiquity's
neoplatonic revival): what is in the time that...? ---> (circles back)
as
body is to mind
propaganda a manipulation of conscious thought through unconscious thought.
uc: space of thinking
Jung: uc space of Self
---> religion ---> rules that shape thought, know the rules, shape the
action. war of ideas: ideas of war.
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and so dark was saying what?
Meanwhile... the word Triumph traces back to mean Dionysos / Bacchus. Really. Little joke on Constantine and friends, ye wily romantics.
merikan heritage dictionary:
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: tri·umphed, tri·umph·ing, tri·umphs
1. To be victorious or successful; win. 2. To rejoice over a success or victory; exult. 3. To receive honors upon return from a victory in ancient Rome. Used of a general. NOUN:1. The fact of being victorious; victory or conquest. See synonyms at victory. 2. A noteworthy or spectacular success. 3. Exultation or rejoicing over victory or success. 4. A public celebration in ancient Rome to welcome a returning victorious commander and his army. 5. Obsolete A public celebration or spectacular pageant. ETYMOLOGY:Middle English triomfen, from Old French triumpher, from Latin triumph
re, from triumphus, triumph, from earlier triumpus, ultimately (probably via Etruscan) from Greek thriambos, hymn to Dionysus.NOw, go google thriambos
(as in: they're doing it again.)
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speaking of which -- more jots from the dark:
what is the space btwn inner and outer? where is it? that space the two share is the stage where the Greeks met their gods, (great perspective in the intro by David Kovaks to the most recent Loeb Bacchae) to a physical statement, a place where all can meet. fixed in time, moved by eros, theatre the meeting of mortals and immortals.
film is this too, but film is not married to time. which both limits and expands what it can do.
the temple is the eye of the polis. and so is the stage.
analogs:
the physical timespace manifestation of that personified messenger, the daemon Hermes / Dionysos... birth star... all of these.
novel is an inner / outer meeting space, a "stage" for the daemon.
unfixed in time and space.
Heading to the woods today. Mine in english, my daughter's in her beautiful greek, a supplication: Thank you.
TO DIONYSUS
I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud- crying god, splendid son of Zeus
and glorious Semele. The rich- haired Nymphs received him in their bosoms from the lord his
father and fostered and nurtured him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of
his father he grew up in a sweet- smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals.
But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began he to wander
continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed with ivy and laurel.
And the Nymphs followed in his train with him for their leader; and the boundless
forest was filled with their outcry.
And so hail to you, Dionysus, god of abundant clusters! Grant that we may
come again rejoicing to this season, and from that season onwards for many a year.
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blessings.