The Mythos of Enders
During my all too brief time on the island with you amazing writers, I managed to create and post a video podcast for my online class regarding the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony at Mycone. This is when all the gods and mortals ate at the same table, and humans never knew sickness, loss, or struggle. In other words, it was paradise just before the fall, and so it can also, in my humble opinion, be aligned with the birth of art (thus I have betrayed my first core value: art emerges from pain). Also during this time, after conversations with several of you, I proposed to Mike the idea of a workshop (or series of workshops) for summer 09 on the topic of mythology. After all, being virtually surrounded by water, away from loved ones, cast into a common fate with strangers…all this is archetypal and alludes to Odysseus (your choice: Circe or Calypso’s island).
So what is at stake here? What are the lessons, the tests, the gift that looks like a trick or the trick that looks like a gift? Water is the literal and metaphorical symbol of life while winter denotes death, isolation, loss. So the ions are charged with meaning. We sit, watch the horizon, dream common dreams, and muse. The ships will not return to the shore, so like Odysseus, if we are to leave it is because the dream of home hasn’t faded. When we leave, we leave alone but with gifts from the gods. We build our rafts in bricoler fashion: rags and bones and driftwood…memories, dreams, blood. And the return is always mythic…always illo tempore (in that time). By this, I mean prodigal son, Odysseus, Portia. We return home a stranger, both to ourselves and to our loved ones. This isn’t negative per se, but it births art so it is essential. If we never leave home, if we never travel beyond, if we never cross into darkness, we shall have no gifts to bring back.
Wishing you all god speed on your journeys, and the cool part is that this summer, ironically as well as mythically, will now suddenly constitute your journey home as well.
Si Vales,
Aaron
Such a great way to really share a topic and help others understand it, great job
May 20, 2013 at 9:12 pm
Nice and interesting article to read and i had fun doing that
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May 18, 2013 at 9:40 am
Great article, thank’s very much for sharing, love some of Aaron’s thougts, I’m busy trying to memorise them now
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Regards Franco
April 10, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Love your post Aaron especially this bit:
‘If we never leave home, if we never travel beyond, if we never cross into darkness, we shall have no gifts to bring back’
I like it. It means a lot to me. I made that step into darkness – I’ve been living abroad, thousands miles from home for the last 8 years.
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December 27, 2012 at 5:56 am
Hey everyone,
I was just talking with a friend the other day about how I know nothing of Odysseus – that I onece tried to read both that and Neitsche and even James Joyce all in one summer after school in an ambitious attempt to make up for all I’d skipped or lost sight of and came up very short and gave up and came sprinting back to the more comfortable contemporary fiction. I would love to try again and have some guidiance from Baron on the island this summer.
The island was so comforting and scary and hopeful – maybe just another journey of writers to outsiders but it was ours and it was alive with the pounding surf and the snow and the wind and the seawall.
I can’t wait to return.
David
February 13, 2009 at 7:18 am
When I left Enders, I felt out of place and out of time. I wasn’t ready to stay, wanting to move forward, but I wasn’t ready to go home either. I was in a limbic state, the place of shadows and dusk – between here and there. It was as if I was leaving the hospital after having my first child. I was secretly terrified and excited at the same time. I was no longer myself. I was now a new mother. Leaving Enders, the feelings were the same, so many years later. Except this time I knew the process of morphing into something new would take its toll and I would be more complete for it.
So home I went; to a house that had seen two really big parties without any real clean up from either. So, I cleaned house. And cleaned house some more. That’s where the metaphor was I suppose, in the every day-ness of my life and in finding my way through and past the sameness of my old life into the new and different.
The challenges and choices I chose to step up to are now here, though I’m still in a kind of limbo – feeling the differences of then and now, realizing first hand the new and different is really new and different and when it gets dark, it’s really dark for a time!
So what’s at stake here?
Whether I accept and triumph over the sameness into the new and different is what will determine my fate and my next steps as a writer as I make my way toward wholeness. I am still in the shadows of the darkness and probably will be in a limbic state for some time. But, I think that’s what can make the journey so unique and worthwhile.
My path is set. I don’t quite know where it will actually go, I am walking with faith in my ability to take up the challenges to be the writer I dream of becoming, and faith in our teachers, our next residencies, and new friends yet to be. I have no past to fall back on, but I have new friends to walk with. I am indeed fortunate.
And while Michael is the director and Elizabeth the organizer, Aaron, you are the anchor. Because it is a mythic journey, and the water is not always smooth.
I can’t wait to do the mythology courses!
Tina
February 8, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Floating out here on the deep—which rages at times and which is sometimes placid, smooth and reflective as a mirror—I’m grateful for my raft of rags and bones and driftwood…memories, dreams, blood. Grateful, also, for the messages in bottles that appear just when I need them in the form of emails and phone calls, bringing news of my people, The Writers, and tidings of good will (along with the odd “this part of this piece doesn’t quite work.”)
I did return home a stranger, though one I recognize vaguely. My husband commented on this very thing on New Year’s Day: “Who is going to come back from that island?” Well, me, only changed irrevocably.
I love the idea of a workshop (or several workshops) on the topic of mythology—of which I am woefully ignorant.
February 5, 2009 at 4:17 pm