I have one class in room 120 of one building, and another class in room 222 of a different building-- this other class is, my new class, and checking today right before heading out to it for the first time, my eye skipped to the room number for the class above it on the schedule, which means that when I found the room I was looking for for my first Eternal Family class, I gloriously opened the door into... the dark noisy boiler room. And so I had to go and check the actual room number again, discovered what must have happened, and got to class late, but it was okay, since it's my first day.
Today was busy. I had all of last week's work to make up for in that class, as well as the work from last time and this time in my other religion class (the class webpage was down when it came time to do the assignment last week) as well as the work for my wholly online color and design class to get started on and complete, and my typography module to complete. I doubt that Mondays will normally be this frantic/stressful. Tomorrow is Tuesday, with only one class and only one thing due, and I'll finally have opportunity to take up questions about portfolio review and all that up with my typography teacher, who is also my academic advisor, so, hey that's a fell swoop.
I hate to be writing about nothing but school stuff lately; I'm sorry. It's not the only thing I'm doing lately (though, mostly, basically, well yeah, yes it is.) Testing out my wings, I'm beginning to get on research again for the dark and shadowy Things That Don't Even Come Back Around (I'm writing a book! cliché is what other people do!), reading a bunch of Slavic and Northern European fairy tales and that kind of thing.
Fairy tales are nuts, because there are so many of them, but after not-long-at-all, they all exhibit the exact same plot patterns, which are not only similar (oh hey that firebird is stealing my golden apples again!) but are also unlike the storytelling modes we expect in modern western tradition (oh hey the golden apple macguffin really has absolutely nothing else to do with the rest of the story aside from some kind of tangential call-to-action, but now that you've already been on this adventure completing any one of a number of tropic patterns, youngest of three sons, you should totally decapitate this fox to reveal he's actually a handsome shapeshifting cursed prince!) And this kind of thing is something I'm absolutely in love with, some absolutely bizarre pattern with some pseudo-symbolic quasi-ritualistic significance that shows up and is never mentioned again (let's go talk to the east wind! nope, but let's go talk to the west wind! nope, but let's go talk to the south wind! nope, but let's go talk to the north wind!)
Moments of great significance like that, that ultimately get relegated to background material, those are delicious to me-- I mentioned a couple of days ago how random King Louie's appearance was in the Jungle Book, and how that film's got a lot of such moments, and this storytelling mode has a lot to do with that. It's a drought, the Peace Rock appears, some greater truer glimpse of the Law of the Jungle is revealed, and the ramifications featured by all animals possessing the ability of speech and an idea of morality is hinted at; Mowgli reveals his true nature, Sher Khan reveals his true nature, they're set against each other, and the drought ends with a decision to be made. Ultimately that serves some small advancement directly of the plot, and some deeper truth is revealed as well but never dwelled on. Mowgli is free to hop from random encounter to random encounter, but it's the encounter that feels like it had cosmic significance that kicks off everything else.
People have spent so long codifying what makes a story like all the others, that I think they've forgotten that what makes a story worth reading and telling is what makes it different. Not literally "forgotten," of course, and it's not like reliance on formula is a new thing, but, there's a lot of fantastic potential in these old storytelling modes, and it's still always a breath of, like, that hyperconcentrated fresh air that comes in a little canister, when they show up.
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