Love, Soul, Underage Driving

There was a boy called Phaeton. Now he wasn't the best boy, nor the luckiest. Phaeton told his friends that his father was Apollo (and he's not lying). After being kind of beat up by his friends who thought he was lying, he goes in search for his father. When he reaches the temple, Apollo acknowledges him as his son, and promises to grant him a wish by the name of Styx (a promise by the name of Styx must be done). Phaeton asks to drive the sun chariot (or the sun), to which Apollo didn't want to, for it was too dangerous. Yet, a promise was a promise, and the wish was fulfilled. Apollo told a bunch of safety precautions to Phaeton before he left on the chariot, but he didn't listen. He was attacked by constellations, burned the earth, and finally, dies when he falls into a river.

This is exactly why I oppose to underage driving. Just kidding.

I know that Phaeton encountered some poor fate, but I guess he deserved it. He should have listened to his father at least. Well, it's not like I always listen to my father. Anyways, according to this, he was the one that burned Africa, making all the deserts. Technically, he started global warming. He was also the one that burned the skin of the people in Africa, forming the black race. Now, now. Phaeton obviously made more trouble than an average Joe there. Let's just hope the river water cooled his mind off as he went to the underworld.


The next story was Eros (or Cupid) and Psyche. So Psyche was very beautiful, making Aphrodite mad. She sent Eros to her so that he could punish her, but Eros falls in love with her. Therefore, they are allowed to marry with one circumstance. Psyche is forbidden from seeing Eros. When Psyche's sisters come and talk about her new wife, they thought it was suspicious, and suggested that he might be a monster. Although Psyche loved her husband, she decides to take her sisters' advice and at night, sees the husbands face with the candle. She sees Eros, and as she is surprised, some wax falls on Eros, waking him. He leaves, saying something about how love can never be together with doubt. Psyche does all kinds of things to get Eros back (doing chores for Aphrodite, going to the underworld for this thing). She soon gets petrified, but soon healed and reunited wit Eros. Psyche is made a goddess, and they live happily ever after.

Now, this was one of the stories that I liked from the whole book. I liked how 'Psyche' also meant the soul (or a butterfly), and how this particular one is going towards love, no matter what is in the way. Maybe it's saying that the soul and love will always be together. Did that make sense? If it didn't, never mind.

In the story, although Psyche is shown as the 'good' main character, doing all those stuff just for love, it seems she has some bad things too. She didn't believe her husband, despite their love, creating disbelief between them. Also, she was petrified because of the box given from the underworld because of the curiousity (and partly greed, since she was told the box contained 'beauty'). As the people say: The curiousity killed the cat. No. The curiousity ALMOST killed the cat. Well, in this case, the curiousity almost killed the butterfly. Whatever. Forget it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that it is yet another happy ending story. I totally agree with what was said in the text:
Q: "So it has a happy ending?"
A: "It has a very happy ending."
Q: "Almost none of these stories have completely happy endings."

A: "This is different." "It's just inevitable. The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.

Speaking of which, what I said earlier about the soul/butterfly going towards love and being together wasn't total gibberish after all.

Be Yourself

I just read 'Pomona and Vertumnus'. I was wondering why I didn't know this story while I knew all the others, and I found out that this was the only pure-latin story in Metamorphoses.

So Vertumnus loves Pomona, but he just can't go to her as himself. He disguises himself and always watches her from far away (what most people would call stalking), until one day, he dresses up as an old woman and tells her that she should get a man, one such as Vermuntus (which is himself). He tells her a story to convince her, but it wasn't all that successful. Well, it turns out that Pomona knew that it was a disguise from the beginning. She tells Vertumnus to take the wig and the dress off, revealing his real self. Finally, Vertumnus is accepted.

It was just last post that I said that there were almost no stories that were entirely a happy ending, and guess what? Here's one right now. Maybe it has something to do with it being the only story that was not passed on from the Greeks.

This story is clearly trying to tell us a lesson. One that I always try to accomplish: Be yourself. This lesson was more directed towards the audience than the other stories, where it took some time to analyze all the meaning inside the story. Well, whatever.

The 'be yourself' thing kind of reminded me of something.
Can you guess? That's right.
I like bacon.

Disturbing Stories

I read the stories 'Erysichthon' and 'Orpheus and Eurydice'.
Although both are tragedies (kind of) and are both somewhat disturbing, it's cool how one's a typical story about a selfish guy, and the other is about love.

In 'Erysichthon', he decides to cut off a tree that is special to Ceres for his own. Well, he thought he wouldn't get punished, did he? Ceres ordered hunger to go to Erysichton, making him almost hungry to death. He ate all he food in the house, sold his family for more food, and in the end, ended up eating himself. The following quote sent chills down my spine, "Bon appetit." (Metamorphoses, p.40, Ceres)

I know it's kind of short and not that significant either, but I can just imagine with what kind of facial expression Ceres had when she said that. I don't know. Scary.


'Orpheus and Eurydice' is a very beautiful love story. Well, that's what I thought until Eurydice died of a snake bite. Orpheus goes to the underworld to get her back, and somehow manages to convince Hades and Persephone to give her back through his emotions expressed by his song. The only condition that she will be sent back alive, was that he was to not look at her as he went back above ground. Too bad miracles never happen. He looks back, Eurydice is sent back, and Orpheus is not allowed to go back in. Orpheus gets killed by these women who got angry at Orpheus for not being able to forget Eurydice and does nothing else. It was sad how Eurydice couldn't remember Orpheus in the end. Why does it seem that Greek mythology doesn't have any true happy ending stories?

Haha. Bon appetit.

Bird Love? - Alcyone and Ceyx

'Alcyone and Ceyx' from Metamorphoses was a great piece of writing.
In the story, Ceyx goes off on a boat-trip to hear a prophecy (for he thought that the gods disliked him or something like that), in which his wife, Alcyone, is left home alone. When Ceyx dies in a storm and Alcyone finds out, Hera (or Juno) decides to preserve their love and family through transforming and reviving them both as seabirds. They had children (chicks in this case) and lived happily ever after. Typical. Well, clearly, the gods had a weird sense of humor and decided to not just revive Ceyx. They had to become birds. Well, no complaints. I like birds.



First of all, why didn't Ceyx go through land instead of going through the sea if he knew that the gods disliked him? I guess he wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
Second, what the [beep] is with Alcyone, deciding to sleep in the shore? Yeah. Because that' a good idea. One that will bring back her husband. Yup.
Finally, why seabirds? Why not pigeons, sparrows electric eels or alpakas? Well, as I mentioned before, I like birds, so nothing to complain about there. What did they become anyways? Seagulls? Puffins? Pelicans? Penguins?

Speaking of which, I like penguins.

Chaos into All - Creation

The beginning of 'Metamorphoses'. Creation.

According to this, the world was created from chaos. A god popped into being, and he (if I'm not mistaken, it was Gaia, and most definetly not a he.) decided to create the earth and the sky. Humans were created from Prometheus using the earth to mold man. Too bad it's not possible in our days.

Anyways, it was pretty boring at first. The website in which I heard this piece had this slow and boring narrator. But the ideas presented were pretty nice. What actually made me think was the similarity this had compared with the big bang theory. This told that everything was once chaos: everything in one place, then the world was created. I can't believe how people in different times can have same ideas and thoughts despite their difference in terms of technology.

Another remarkable thing I could deduce was that from seeing that they said that the earth and sky were made, it appears people then thought that earth was the center of all the things in the universe, if you know what I mean.

Cool.

The REAL End...

This was a unique book i read. It wasn't about romance, spy detective plots, some Micael Bay super-action book, teenage vampires, or about wizards and dragons.
No, i was about teachings, and only teachings. I didn't realize this until later in the book. Anyways, the story that Krishna is trying to covince Arjuna to fight in a war in which he doesn't want to. In the process, Arjuna learns a whole load of divine stuff, and in the end, is convinced to obey Krishna, especially after Krishna decided to show that he was a god and shows his superiority. Psst. Show-off.

Some of the arguments that Krishna provided were very deep and convincing that it even made me agree sometimes. Yet, I will not be becoming Hindu.

Although I somewhat enjoyed reading this book, I'm not actually looking forward to another piece of writing like that. I believe I read enough Hindu writing for a lifetime.

The REAL End

of the Bhagavad-Gita

Closing the Curtains

Yay! The end of the Bhagavad-Gita. No more Hindu writing for a while.

Krishna tells Arjuna of three types of faith: lucid, passionate, and darkly inert. He explains with detail about each one with examples and metaphors. For example, he said, "Foods that please lucid men are savory, smooth, firm, and rich... Passionate men crave foods that are bitter, sour, salty, hot... The food that pleases men of dark inertia is stale, unsavory, putrid, and spoiled..." (p.132, stanza 8, The Bhagavad-Gita)

I'll just stop with the analysis here. The task is to draw. Not to write. I like drawing. =)

This... is pretty much it. Cool. :)

The End.

The Allmighty Show Off

Krishna shows his universal form to Arjuna. He tells Arjuna that all the warriors are meant to die, and killing them would only change his destiny by making him king. Also, Krishna mentions that those who understand him are to not come back to the material world. He shows his importance through telling many things to Arjuna, such as telling him that he is the universe and stuff.

It appears that Krishna is using 'ethos' (persuasion through character) to persuade Arjuna. He is making himself 'trustworthy' by emphasizing that he is a god and that he knows the way the universe is (He IS the universe. -_-).

When Krishna mentioned that it would only change his destiny, I don't think it is entirely true, for the warriors were meant to die later, and maybe that would have affected their destiny. Is there such a thing as changing destiny? Destiny means that there is already a path destined for you. Weird.

If Krishna is so powerful and a know-it-all, why isn't he doing what he believes is right? Is it because he is meant to teach others of the divine yoga? I guess so. Never mind. Case closed.

Although Krishna is showing off and doing all kinds of stuff to try to convince Arjuna to kill, it seems it's not changing Arjuna's will; it's only giving him more questions and confusing him more. Although Krishna is a god and everything, I still don't want Arjuna to kill. I want him to keep the peace between the families and stop it through non-violence. Sorry Krishna.

Rebirth?

The Karma Ghost - by Blob Maker Productions :)

This is a totally unrelated animation video. I just put it up because it is cool and the title includes the word 'karma'. Yes, I'm weird.

I think I'm the only one that finally noticed that the whole book will be about teachings. As in, they will not enter war until maybe the end.

Krishna keeps teaching Arjuna about yoga, such as the path of knowledge: the jnana yoga. He is later also told that when he dies, he should think of the divine, or he will go through the suffering of rebirth. Krishna keeps mentioning about how yoga is important for life and how it must be done.

I agree with most of the things that Krishna is telling Arjuna to convince him, and it appears that the things he is saying has a very deep meaning. Yet, some of the things he said sounded a little weird for me. For example, he said that reincrnation would bring suffering, but think logically: Based on the information given by the text, we are people who have lived before, and we apparantly can't remember it. This is more of a second (or more) chance to live a better life. Something like that.

Anyways, I don't have much on my mind now; I'm thinking about muffins. So that's the end of my very-short-and-simple-talk-about-rebirth-and-other-stuff-concerning-the-text.

Between Acting and Inacting

Arjuna is still arguing with Krishna. When will they end? Anyways, Arjuna thinks that knowledge is more important than action, but Krishna convinces him that to gain wisdom, one must go through action. (Karma Yoga) Also, he talks about how it has to be done with self-awareness. He explains how he has been teaching yoga for a very long time. They keep talking about how action is better than renunciation and so on.

I like how the ideas and thoughts given are very deep and convincing. Yet, I still see it somewhat wrong that Krishna is trying to persuade Arjuna to kill.

But now, Krishna is accepted as one of the main 'good' characters, and appears to be the 'right' character, making him more believable to the readers than it was in the first teaching.

I think it is pretty weird that they have still not had some action despite the time the story has been continuing for. I guess this shows how this is a teaching book and not a novel. This can also be seen from that the divisions are not called chapters but teachings.


In my personal opinion, I would still prefer that Arjuna wouldn't kill. Why? I don't know.