Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats

Tonight's research took an interesting turn, from orbital patterns of moons
to symbolist poetry.

The Greeks and Romans were not too terribly interested in Leda's story -
Helen and her war were much more heavily featured in their arts and
story-telling traditions. But later, especially in the Italian Renaissance,
painters and poets took up the tale, romanticizing the rape, eroticizing
the swan-on-lady action, and exhaulting (?) Leda's place in history, as the
mother of Helen.


Exhibit A:

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                    Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

- W.B. Yeats


PS, "vague" is from a Latin word meaning "wandering." How could Leda's
hands, trembling and unable to get a firm grasp on any feathers, push
away a god in all his forceful glory?

"...before the indifferent beak could let her drop?" Does Yeats imagine
all this happening IN THE AIR, with Zeus holding Leda's neck in his beak,
beating his wings the whole time?

This is What The Universe Looks Like

I never realized until today, how unable I was to visualize space.

Despite being an avid fan of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, I have always pictured a black velvet canopy with little white specks whenever I heard the word "space." Science Fiction uses more imagery than simple stars and emptiness, but I had always assumed that these beautiful giant nebulas were the stuff of, well, science fiction.

But today I visited the NASA website - they have a great Astronomy Picture of the Day archive - and look what I found. Much more than "Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are."

There is the most beautiful dust and fire you have ever seen.

And only 4% of the universe is made up of matter we are able to perceive.
96% of the universe is missing. It's nothing. We can't find it.

And it's always getting bigger.

Space. Wow.

"Holy Shit Theatre"

What an inspiring article from Lauren Gunderson of the Huffington Post.

Holy Shit Theatre: An Urgent Age of Badassery.

What is Holy Sh*t Theatre? At the risk of sounding like a 1920's carnival, Holy Sh*t Theatre is a live thrill that might be racy, terrifying, shocking, surprising, bizarre but is definitely riveting, engaging, and high quality. You will feel this theatre. You will sense the performance. It might make you laugh or gasp, but it will make you do it. You'll see something unusual, risky, bold, wild. The boldness will be in the acting, directing, design, music as well as the text. Holy Sh*t Theatre is an electric collaboration of quality, artistry, and intelligence. It needn't be expensive or highly technical. It is no place for irony or nonchalance. It must make you say, think, or yawp: "Holy sh*t, that was awesome."

Holy Sh*t Theatre does not want you to just remember the show - it wants to re-feel it. Every time you think of the production of Blasted your stomach will clench and you will take a fresh breath in honor of what you experienced. That. Is badass, charged-up, Holy Sh*t Theatre.



This is what theater truly is about - making people think and feel until they swear.

Let's do it.

Fantastic Radio Show on Space

We've all been thinking about the universe, and of course, Carl Sagan. This is a link to a Radiolab show about space, including and interview with Carl Sagan' s third wife and widow.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/05/12

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.

Incredible Image of Io

From the NASA website. This is a giant volcanic plume on the planet caused by the constant tidal pulling. The plume, named Prometheus, might have been active for almost 20 years. Also a great detail shot of the moon. So beautiful.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_758.html

Europa

From the NASA website:

 The surface of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, consists mostly of huge blocks of ice that have cracked and shifted about, suggesting that there may be an ocean of liquid water underneath.

An unusual moon...

*One of the smoothest bodies in the solar system
*None of the valleys, ridges, pits, blisters, or icy flows go above or below the surface any deeper than a few hundred yards. Though the ice crust is 2 miles deep.
* Europa has a hot core. Hotter than thee surface.  The gravitation pull of Jupiter and Jupiter's satellites pull the moon's interior  in different directions causing heat.  

And ... A bit of text about Europa's mythology (greek)

Europa is named after the beautiful Phoenician princess who, according to Greek mythology, Zeus saw gathering flowers and immediately fell in love with. Zeus transformed himself into a white bull and carried Europa away to the island of Crete. He then revealed his true identity and Europa became the first queen of Crete. By Zeus, she mothered Trojan war contemporaries Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Zeus later re-created the shape of the white bull in the stars which is now known as the constellation Taurus.

Hm.
And, Ganymede has it's own magnetic field. 

Cojones

As we get started, I'm finding that I am running into a lot of difficulty with having the cojones to say "Yes, we've started a theatre company." I find myself having to battle with my inner cynic who keeps saying things like: "Oh, how juvenile," "Oh you wide-eyed little actor," and "Every theatre major says that." Why does this happen?

I think it's interesting that this inner chorus keeps coming up for me despite my total faith in collaboration and this group's ability to create meaningful work while having a wonderful time doing it. Funny that my reactions to this journey are incredible joy followed by fear. Having cojones, turns out, is difficult to maintain with all of the negative feedback internally and externally from a culture that loves reveling in failure. Why can aspiration and drive so easily be spun? I find it so strange that this kind of reaction is so automatic for me.

I am choosing to notice (and occasionally freak out when I forget my Zen) and examine this feeling, and commit to staying focused on desires, hopes, and faith.

I am choosing to listen to this voice not as something that will control my actions, but as something that is letting me learn about myself.

I’m choosing to give myself the gift of taking this seriously (with the compulsory laughs thrown in).

First blog entry down. Whew…that took some cojones.