Better late than never!

Because who's to say the lighthearted pleasure of dressing in costumes on Halloween should be reserved only for children? Why should we abandon our colorful breaks from the ordinary simply because we have gotten older?  Once upon a time, our imaginations were in shape and allowed us to live life with an open mind - a time in which our perceptions were not clouded with certainty. Let us not cast away symbols of our childhood, as these are the molds which have shaped us to be who we are today.

This video is very much related and every moment is worth watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBVJuA0jr6Y

My Displaced Wedding

We all have that aunt and uncle with whom we are ashamed to be seen in public. In my case, they are my aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Aaron. My most embarrassing memory of them is their behavior at my wedding in my uncle’s garden chateau in France. It was a beautiful scene with a fully-stocked table hors d’oeuvres – fruit platters, veggie trays, cracker sandwiches, teriyaki chicken skewers, and all other sorts of delicacies accompanied by an open bar. Basically, we had everything you could ever ask for. All of this food was surrounding our three-tier custom-made cake to be cut by my bride and I after the reception. While we were getting ready, the wedding guests starting showing up, the first of whom were Aaron and Elizabeth. The wedding went off without a hitch until my lovely bride and I went to cut the cake. There was already a huge chunk of cake missing out of it! Aaron and Elizabeth ended up confessing. Aaron said Elizabeth talked him into it. Elizabeth said that her lawyer friend who shows up just after they did convinced her to cut the cake. Personally, I think they both partook in the open bar a bit too freely. Needless to say, they’re never welcome back to any of my functions, or my garden.

If you weren’t able to decipher the myth hidden in this displacement, I will point out some hints. Aaron and Elizabeth were the first ones to the reception, which had anything one could desire. They performed the only forbidden act. The man was convinced by a woman. The woman was convinced by a snake… er, lawyer. They were banished. Give up? Of course you don’t. This is the story of Adam and Eve! But you knew that.

Calasso's Unbreakable Mold

    On pg. 174/5 in the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso tells a story of Athenian craftsmen. As Calasso puts it, the shaping of molds was the activity par excellence in ancient Athens. The Greeks knew that once made, their molds could be applied to an extremely wide range of materials for a very long time to come. The casts created using the mold will survive much longer than that which shaped them. Calasso goes on to say that "we live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their molds... In the beginning was the mold." This original mold is the foundation by which we live our lives day to day - myth.

    As Calasso states earlier in the book, myth is the precedent behind every action. I did not put that in quotes so as to purposefully plagiarize it, as he did from another sentient being who had thought that same thing in the distant past. There is no such thing as originality in life, as every possible scenario we face on a day-to-day basis has already been enacted within mythology, one way or another. Our job is simply to realize the extent of displacement that our own stories hold. Myths can be used to decode parts of your life by the century, decade, year, month, or even hour - the reward for doing so is yours to discover.