By dint of winning a Moth Story Slam* I was eligible to apply for the opportunity to go to Greece with Kevin Kling and a gaggle of MPR lovin' tourists. This would be a working vacation for the Travel Scholar as she or he would, in addition to various storytelling responsibilities, be required to keep a video diary and maintain a social media presence as well as other duties to help make this a marketable event for MPR.
The application was simply answering four questions that MPR/Moth provided in a 5-minute video. Here's my video:
Not my finest work, I admit, but I'm out of practice (or maybe it IS my finest work; a chilling prospect). It did whet my appetite for making a "Kaonashi Visits Some Stuff" video though so that might happen.
By the bye, I checked with MPR to see if being in Bangkok affected my eligibility and they said it didn't. Just that they'd take it into consideration.
Don't tell anyone at MPR but I've already got mixed feelings about the prospect of going. It would almost certainly mean going home in May because there's a bunch of stuff the Travel Scholar has to participate in back home. While my lungs would relish cutting my stay in Bangkok short that would mean leaving... get ready for it...ready for it?... that would mean leaving the kids I'm tutoring. Predictably in the way back of my mind I'm already dreading this inevitability. If there's one thing that terminally prevents my ability to actually become Buddhist, it's this. What is the point of NOT getting attached to little adorable people? I can't see it which is why I'll be back as a kid for them to tutor some day. Maybe I'll get it then.
*This is the one story I didn't invite anyone to. I did it on a lark for Melissa Clark because she was bummed about the prospect of not seeing me tell a story again for a good long while. You might think I remember this night as the one where I won a Moth event and qualified for the Travel Scholar opportunity. Nope. I remember it as the night I met Clark's then new significant other for the first time and he FRAKING ACED a potentially dicey social outing for a new boyfriend. Seriously, he delivered a pitch perfect, tour de force, ass whuppin' social outing that night. It was, in the words of Professor Slughorn (whom I'm sure Ms. Rowling will shortly reveal is actually an a-sexual alien who marries both of the recently divorced Ron and Hermione), "Wondrous to behold."
The Delphic "Know Thyself" is widely misunderstood. In the ancient Greek context its essential reference was to hubris. This hubris was narrowly a transgression against the gods, the best example of which is, oddly, from the Hebrews when the primordial human couple ate the forbidden fruit. Greek plays are typically about dilemmas that can't be avoided. In the philosophy of Homer, mortality is the very essence of the human condition and is what separates us from the gods. When Apollo says, "Know thyself," he means, "Know that you are mortal and don't try to be a god." Such a transgression is punished by a specific set of deities, the Nemeses. Here's the dilemma: Homer says that because Man is mortal the only meaning that can be gotten from life is kleios or "renown." It is the fame of a man that lives forever. However, the immortality of renown is like being a god, so to get renown one has to do things that are like "more than a man." As a result, some men who reach for greatness (kudos) transgress against the gods, as their deeds may have a more glorious hue in memory than the glory of the immortal gods themselves. Achilles, for instance, is held in higher esteem than Ares. This causes the gods to become jealous. The gods, being immortal, typically act like a bunch of teenagers. There is no death to give them gravitas. Petty emotions are more prominent among them. Apollo is a god of boundaries, so it is he who warns against hubris and may punish it when someone goes beyond his proper bounds. Hence, too, the doctrine of "nothing in excess," which is embedded in the root of their religion. Apollo doesn't care whether, for example, you introspect to learn whether you are an introvert or extrovert; he just doesn't want you to puff yourself up into something grandiose as if you were challenging the gods themselves.
ReplyDeleteWas that dildo that you were conversing with the same thing as we see in the background illustration protruding from Spectra's head? Should I fear Spectra?
ReplyDelete