MJ#14: Apollo vs Dionysus

When I was five years old I had a “thing” for orcas.  I had stuffed animals, figurines, and even a couple books.  When people would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would promptly announce, “A marine biologist.”  At age 5. Yeah, I was a weird kid.

Well, I stubbornly clung on to that idea until sophomore year when I got into my first biology class and realized I didn’t speak that language.  I wandered about for a while in a confused daze.  What would I do with my life?  What would I become?  It was every adult’s first question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  I could no longer answer the fundamental conversation starter and it bothered me deeply.

Of course, that’s when I started a creative writing club with my friend Robyn. I had always been good at English and I’d been working on a ‘novel’ since fourth grade. Naturally, I had to keep updating it due to my rapid change in writing style so it hadn’t gotten very far yet, but I still I had a passion.  I would be a novelist.  

Writing is the ultimate Dionysian practice, full of feeling, wild unabated passion, in the hope of intoxicating another with words if only for a moment.  More than anything I loved being word drunk and I wanted to give that to someone else.

As a senior I found another passion, enough to match the ecstasy of pouring one’s soul onto the page.  Its name was Calculus. I was blown away by the simple complexity of numbers and variables sprawled out in such a movable order.  It was so much like writing in the way you could describe a way of life through a few, well thought out sentences.  How clever! I thought, How incredibly clever.

Calculus, as well as my CAD and AutoTech classes, convinced me to change my mind once again.  I would be an engineer, a mechanical engineer.  Apollo smiled on me that day.  Mechanical engineering was the logical, rational decision.  I was almost assured financial stability, and the market for engineers was good.  How very sensible.

So why does my heart yearn for Dionysus?

MJ#13: Liminal vs Liminoidal

There have been three major turning points in my rather brief time on this planet.  All three have shaped me as a person and changed how I observe myself and those around me.  The first would be the death of my father.  As his man-made death trap of a plane scattered in flames across the runway, the glasses of innocence shattered and I could see the cracks.  But I could also see the clear.  I knew the world then and I knew the world knew me as it always had.  That was my first liminal experience.

Several years later, my mother decided she was tired of living in the echoes of my father so we packed up and moved from California to Washington.  I was not doing so well in school then.  Most of my friends had abandoned me to my depression as they could not comprehend the sorrow of losing someone so dear.  They were too young, still wearing those glasses unbroken. I flourished in the new environment and changed my entire personality to better equip myself to the stupor of junior high.  This was my second liminal experience.

Then I was struck by the liminoidal.  I was introduced to my downfall.  A darkness and agonizing obsession of unprecedented proportions, Doctor Who shattered my imagination for at least a year.  I was astounded by the intricacy of the show, the unbelievable acting, and the evils of humanity. Honestly, it’s some scary shit.  My view of the world, the universe, was completely knocked over and replaced by a TV show.  Dear lord.

MJ #12: Apocalypse Myth: The Day the Universe Blinked

Holly pulled her jacket tighter around her. It was strangely chilly for a summer evening.  The air sank its fangs into her cheeks and sucked the heat from her breath, teasing her with the fog of exhaling.

I shouldn’t be able to see my breath.  It’s mid-July!

Holly quickened her pace and flung herself into the heated dome of The Observatory.

“It’s freezing out there!”  Holly untangled the scarf from her neck and shed her layers.

“The thermostat’s reading twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit but that’s the least of our worries. Come take a look at this.”

Billy Rosemary was not having a good day and Holly could tell.  He led her through the lobby and into the Beast room.

“How’s the Beast-ie this evening?” she gestured to the massive telescope perched in the center of the dome.

“Out of a job.”

“What?”

Billy sighed and turned towards her, eyes wild and puffy as if he’d been crying.

“Billy?”

“Take a look for yourself.”

They strode up to the platform in silence except for the clicking of Holly’s heels on the tiles. Billy hit the controls with trembling fingers.  He nodded.

“Okay.”

“Holly glanced one last time at her partner before plunging her eye into the telescope’s.  Every time Holly gazed into the beast it felt like the Beast gazed back. But not this time.  Or maybe now more than ever.  She pulled back in confusion.

Running her eyes over the computer simulation and diving back in, she understood why Billy was panicking.

“Billy, please tell me this piece of shit is broken.”

“It’s one-hundred percent operational. I’ve quadruple checked.”

“No.”

Holly’s knees bowed to the earth as she crumpled.

“No.”

“I know it’s hard to take but…. We need to tell someone about this.”

Adrian stared up at the sky in amazement.  It was as if the eyes of heaven were turning away in shame, closing forever on the sin of humanity.  His wife, close and familiar, huddled under the jacket they shared.

“Is that…?”

“The stars.  The stars are going out.”

As the spirits of the great universe abandoned their children in the pursuit of darkness, the Sun wondered at its path.  The Earth cried out and decreed Importance and tossed little trinkets of invention as offering into its depths, but the Sun couldn’t resist heavy eyelids.  When the Sun closed its eyes, so did the Earth.  And tears fell like rain.