Famous Last Words: Week 2... a lot can happen in 10 days

It felt really weird to see that my last post here was just 10 days ago because it feels like forever. So much happened. I added a story here on Thursday of Week 0 (early start to the classes), and that same night my father died. It was expected... but still: it was not expected at that moment; no one knew when the end would come and when I would get that phone call. But it was absolutely and completely peaceful, and also a hospice miracle. He was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in October of 2017, and the oncologist did radiation therapy to reduce the tumor. They called it "palliative radiation," but it just about killed him; he went on hospice in January of 2018, and they gave him just a week or two to live.

But instead: he lived for another two and a half years. What was killing him, it turned out, was not the radiation (although that had really weakened him) or even the cancer... what was killing him was malnutrition, dehydration, and loneliness (he had been alone at home since my mother died in 2015).

So, thanks to Hospice, he managed to make his exit while being at home (he was not hospitalized even once during this whole ordeal), and without any pain either (which is definitely miraculous). This past Wednesday, August 26, would have been his 93rd birthday.

Anyway, it means the start of this school year is even more not-normal than usual. I feel really grateful that I have classes to distract me. There's a ton of paperwork and practical stuff to take care of, but all of that is going to be slow because of COVID. Yep. He died in Austin, and the funeral home explained that COVID has caused such a backlog that I might not get the death certificate for weeks. The lawyer said the same: all the court proceedings related to estate probate are backed up so that this is all going to take way longer than usual. 

And now, I thought I'd say something here about how this all relates to this class. 

For Christmas last year, I wanted to give him a nice present but I really couldn't think of anything to get him... so I wrote him a book! I used National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to write a book that I published at Lulu and took to him at Christmas. He loves jokes, so I made a collection of Nasruddin and Birbal stories for him; they are folktales that have a lot in common with jokes. Here's that book: Witty Tales of Nasruddin and Birbal.

Some of the stories were really short, and some were longer (a page or maybe two pages). By that point, he was getting confused, and reading the longer stories was hard for him, but he loves to read (and to write; he published his last book when he was 90! Science and Sociology), and the very short stories worked great. So I bought him some books of "drabbles" (100-word stories): mystery, science fiction, horror. I hadn't even realized how popular 100-word stories are! He really liked those: perfect for his attention span.

I also tried writing my own 100-word stories, and it was so much fun! My goal was to make a book of 100-word stories for my dad's birthday since he liked the Christmas present so much. Plus I just loved writing these tiny stories; I've never found a genre of writing that suited me so well.

Then the pandemic came, and I couldn't go to Austin anymore. I used to go to Austin every month or so, but for Spring Break, his hospice nurse told me it was too dangerous to come; I blogged about that here.

So, since I couldn't go to Austin anymore, I needed some way to connect with my dad at a distance. He's really deaf, which meant phone calls didn't work. So I started texting jokes every day to his caregivers, and they would show him the jokes on their phones, and I started writing LOTS of these 100-word stories. My goal was to create a book of 100-word stories every month during the summer (the last one being for his birthday in August).

So, that is what I did! The first one was the Nasruddin book; here's a picture his caregiver sent to me when he got that one back in June.

The very last one arrived about a week before he died. He was staying mostly in bed at that point, but he told his caregiver that he wanted to get out of bed and get dressed and go sit in his reading chair so she could take a picture to send to me of him with the book. So she sent me this picture; that's him with the Teaching Guide book that came at the end after the Nasruddin, India, and Aesop books.

So, that's the last picture I have of my dad, and it makes me feel really happy that we were connected through the summer books that I wrote for him. 

Both he and my mother loved to read, and they encouraged my love of books and reading in every way, and that has in turn defined my life. I'm grateful to both of them for that; a love of books and reading is probably the most important gift that they gave to me.

This turned out to be a longer post than I expected, but I felt like trying to write all this down... and now you can see how the 100-word story I wrote for my previous post at this blog is connected to my real life too (even though it took way more than 100 words to explain it...).

Microfiction: The Tug of War

For this microfiction, I picked a little folktale that seemed like it could work as a 6-word story, so here is the 100-word version, and then the 6-word version:

Tug of War

"Help me pull my cow out of the mud," Rabbit said to Elephant.

"I'm glad to help!" Elephant replied.

"Pull when I give the command," Rabbit said, tying a rope around Elephant.

Then Rabbit said the same to Whale. Whale agreed, and Rabbit tied the other end of the rope around Whale.

Then Rabbit hid in the bushes between them and shouted, "PULL!"

Elephant pulled.

Whale pulled.

They were both amazed at how hard it was to pull the cow from the mud!

Finally Elephant pulled Whale onto the land, and they realized Rabbit had tricked them.

Rabbit just laughed.

Elephant pulled.

Whale pulled.

Rabbit laughed.

Author's Note. This is a famous African folktale which is told in the United States as a Brer Rabbit story and in the Caribbean as an Anansi story. This particular version is based on a Creole story about Rabbit (Compair Lapin): "5. Compair Bouki and Compair Lapin," in Louisiana Folk-Tales by Alcee Fortier (1895); online here. In that story, Rabbit plays another trick on Whale and Elephant afterwards, disguising himself as a deer. Throughout the story, Rabbit (Compair Lapin) is boasting to his friend Bouki about the tricks he is playing on Commère Baleine and the elephant (who is not referred to with a kinship title). Here's a version with Anansi: Anansi, Whale, and Elephant. And when I was trying to decide if "tug of war" should be hyphenated or not, I looked it up at Wikipedia: it has an article of its own there! Tug of war (not hyphenated).

The 6-word version really only makes sense if you know the folktale, so that makes the 6-word version kind of like a proverb, like the way "the boy who cried wolf" is a kind of miniature story assuming that you know how the story goes. I think for my microfictions this semester, I am going to try to find stories like this which can be told as very short stories and also turn into a proverb, like here where "Elephant pulled; Whale pulled; Rabbit laughed" refers to the way that a little guy can outsmart the two big guys by using a trick. 

Images: Elephant from Pexels, Whale from Pxhere, and Rabbit from Robobobobo at Flickr.

Topic Brainstorm: Myth-Folklore F20

 I've never tried doing both classes in one semester, but I think I'm up for that challenge this semester, and I really want to stay in touch with both classes from student perspective too... so, here are some ideas about a Myth-Folklore Storybook that I might do.

Anansi. This is such an obvious choice, and I really like the idea I came up with in the other brainstorming post about doing a microfiction COMBINED with a longer story on a single page, so I could find 3 or 4 interrelated Anansi stories, and tell one of them in some detail while letting the other ones just be microfiction to put the story in context of some Anansi pattern. I have so many great Anansi stories to choose from. The Adventures Of Anansi The Spider: a radio show!

Chain Tales. I keep coming across wonderful chain tales which I am including in the microfiction projects, but of course chain tales do not do well in 100 words, and the cumulative tales especially lose all of their charm. So I was thinking of going through the microfictions to look for chain tales and then telling them in a more fully expanded form for a Storybook. Especially if I am doing microfictions for the India Storybook, then a longer form project would make sense here. I would need to do some research looking for chain tales to use... like sparrow's revenge on the elephant, just to take one example. My old Chain Tales project:

 

Sufis. Another possibility is to do a Sufi Storybook! Since I will have the Sufi book of Tiny Tales coming out this semester, having a Storybook to go with that could be fun. And I could build it around personalities like Rabia and Ibrahim and Abu Said! Ibrahim and the angels:

Tricksters. This actually might be really excellent too: I am so interested in trickster figures, and I could pull out some trickster stories from Aesop, plus Anansi and Brer Rabbit, and maybe some Nasruddin stories that really show his trickster side... or some Coyote stories to collect now! Oh, now that I think about this one I think I like it the best! I think this is what I will do, and that would let me write a good introduction about tricksters in general. And I would love to put Anansi and Rabbit side by side. YES. I think this is what it will be. It will be so nice to write some Rabbit stories too; I missed Brer Rabbit this summer.

Rabbit and Turtle

Topic Brainstorm: Indian Epics F20

I am really torn about what kind of focus to choose for a Storybook! Last year I did Ramayana microfiction, and the year before that I did Hanuman in the Thai Ramayana... so I'm thinking I should do something not Ramayana-related, but I'm really not sure. Anyway, here are the four ideas that really come to mind:

Hanuman Beyond-the-Ramayana. Yes, I never get tired of stories about Hanuman. There are lots of stories about Hanuman that are not part of the Valmiki Ramayana, so I was thinking it might be cool to do a project that focused exclusively on those Hanuman stories that are not in the Ramayana. I would rely on Lutgendorf's book for that. (These stories could easily come from my Hanuman microfiction project.)

Women of the Mahabharata. This is really appealing to me: there are so many great women characters, and in the same way that Chitra Divakaruni told the whole Mahabharata from Draupadi's point of view, I wonder if I could create a Storybook that gives a sense of the overall arc of the Mahabharata using just women characters. (These stories could easily come from my Mahabharata microfiction project.) I know I would want to write about Amba! I did a good index of the Ganguli Mahabharata I can use to try to stay organized, plus there's Macfie's index.

Tales of Krishna. I know that is kind of vague, but I'm going to be working on Krishna microfiction anyway, and there is always room for more Krishna stories in this class. In fact, that would be a big advantage of doing a Krishna project (I want to work my way through the Bhagavata Purana portions related to Krishna, or maybe the Harivamsha), making people more interested in Krishna so that by the time we get around to the Krishna weeks in class, people might be intrigued by that.

Tales of Ganesha. I included some Ganesha stories in the Tiny Tales of India book, and I wrote a fair number of Ganesha microfictions last semester... I could turn that into a cool Ganesha project. For that one, I might put a few microfictions on the page, and then tell one more story in more detail. In fact, that might be a cool approach for any kind of microfiction project, choosing four stories that interconnect somehow, and telling one of those stories in more detail!

(Valampuri Ganesha)

Pygmalion and the Woman of Wax

When you read the story of Pygmalion and the ivory statue, did you notice what Ovid said about the wax? As Pygmalion saw his beloved statue coming to life, the hard ivory became like wax: The ivory yielded to his touch, and lost its hardness, altering under his fingers, as the beeswax of Hymettus softens in the sun...

(Mount Hymettus)

Well, here's what Ovid didn't tell you: wax was the best that Venus could do with that statue. In the name of love, the goddess brought the statue to life, and she softened the statue as much as she could: Pygmalion had a loving wife made of wax. Not flesh and blood. Wax. Sweet-smelling beeswax, soft and pliable. And since the best beeswax in the ancient world came from Mount Hymettus near Athens, that is what Pygmalion called his wife: Hymetta.

Because she was made of wax, Hymetta could not go out in the daytime; the hot sun of Greece would be sure to melt her. She could go out only at night, by the light of the moon.

Pygmalion was actually glad to have his wife stay at home. He had a low opinion of ordinary women, and he preferred for his precious Hymetta not to associate with those other women. Instead, the loving couple would take moonlit strolls through the garden at night, and Pygmalion would tell Hymetta the stories of the constellations in the sky. 

Hymetta's favorite story was about Andromeda and how the hero Perseus rescued her from the sea-monster. 

(constellation Andromeda)

"That's so romantic!" she would sigh, smiling. Pygmalion was her hero, and she was happy with her life, strange though it was.

Eventually, as Ovid tells us, they had a son. When the boy was born, the parents discovered that he, like his mother, was made of wax. Pygmalion was a bit worried, but the baby was so beautiful and had such a gentle disposition that he loved his wax-son as if he were a real child of flesh and blood.

Thus Pygmalion the bachelor found himself with a family of wax: his wax-wife Hymetta, and his little wax-son, whom they named Paphos.

In many ways, raising their little wax-son was much easier than raising a child of flesh and blood. Paphos grew and grew, but he did not need food or drink. Somehow he just grew! He also did not suffer from any illnesses of any kind, nor did he feel any pain. As he ran and jumped and played roughhouse with his mother and father, he never hurt himself, and he never cried. Little Paphos had a happy childhood, as happy as any child could want. 

Like his mother, Paphos loved to go on moonlit walks with his father and hear the stories of the constellations. Most of all he loved to hear about the adventures of the great hero Hercules.

(constellation Hercules)

"I want to be a hero like Hercules too!" Paphos would say, and Pygmalion would just smile at him, while Hymetta stroked her son's wax hair.

As time went by, however, Paphos grew restless. His parents tried to make him sleep for most of the day, but sometimes he would awake and hear the sounds of other children playing outside, and he wanted to play with them. He asked hundreds of questions about the daytime world, and the more he learned, the more he wanted to go see the world for himself. Pygmalion took his son out at night, but this was not enough. "I cannot see in the dark!" little Paphos protested. "I want to see how things really look! I want to play with the other children! It's not fair!"

Then it happened. One day Paphos awoke around noon, and he crept outside without his parents noticing. It took only a few minutes for the boy to melt in the sun. He became a puddle of wax, nothing more.

When his parents awoke and could not find him in the house, Hymetta was frantic, and she ran outside to look for him, with no thought for her own safety.

"Wait!" shouted Pygmalion.

But Hymetta was already out the door, and then she saw the puddle of wax. "PAPHOS!" she shouted. But she was too late: Paphos had melted, and it took only a few seconds for Hymetta to melt in the sun there beside her son. By the time Pygmalion reached her, she was barely recognizable, and her last words were just a whisper: "I ... will ... stay ... with ... our ... child ..." 

As Pygmalion knelt beside his family, he prayed to Venus, and with a different prayer this time. "Let me stay with my wife and our child, O Goddess! Make me into wax also!"

The goddess again took pity on Pygmalion, and this time it was Pygmalion who underwent a metamorphosis: his flesh and blood and bones all turned into beeswax that mingled with the wax of his wife and their son. 

The goddess then appeared in a vision to the priestess of her temple there and told the priestess what had happened. The priestess came and gathered up the wax, and she shaped that wax into candles that burned in Venus's temple, illuminating the temple with the light of love.

Thus ends the story of the family of wax.

(beeswax candles)

Author's Note. Yeah, I know: it's a downer. But at least Pygmalion turned out to be a good and loving person, right? Devoted husband, devoted father. In Ovid's story, he comes off as seriously creepy, and I wanted to tell something more sympathetic.

I got the idea for the wax family from the beautiful South African folktale about wax-children. Here's a version online: Children of Wax. So, I wrote my story as a sequel to Ovid's Pygmalion story, using the idea of a wax-child as my starting point, and then developing the story from there (wax-mother, and then Pygmalion becoming wax in the end too). In the African folktale, the children are wax (not the parents), and one of the wax-children insists on going out into the daylight. He melts, and the surviving children use his wax to make a magical bird, as you can see here in the illustration:

(Children of Wax)

Bibliography. Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000). In the Anthology: Metamorphosis.

Week 2 Reading Anthology: Pygmalion

I've decided I want to use Pygmalion for my story telling, so that's where I focused my notes here. From a YouTube video:

I want to write a sequel to the story about the statue-woman and Pygmalion having a child who will turn out to be a "child of wax" like in that African folktale. So I need clues from this story to help me with the sequel:

Pygmalion is a misogynist, but he has an idealized view of women and perhaps of family life too...? He kisses the statue, and brings presents: shells, pebbles, birds, flowers, beads, amber (that amber detail is very interesting!). He dresses up the statue: clothing, jewelry... puts it on the bed with luxurious bedspreads.

Venus festival with offering of a heifer (killed!)... If you can grant all things, you gods, I wish as a bride to have...” so maybe there could be a sacrifice to get a child. Sign of the goddess: she made the flame flare up and shake.

When he kisses her, she loses her hardness: "as the beeswax of Hymettus softens in the sun and is moulded" ... PERFECT! I had forgotten there was a reference to wax in the story itself. Now I totally want to do this child-of-wax story.

Ends with bearing a son Paphos.

Hey, maybe she could be wax and not flesh!!! The story says it was flesh, but maybe not: " It was flesh! The pulse throbbed under his thumb." ... I'll look at the Latin for some clues later maybe.

I totally want to do the wax story now!

(beeswax by katrien berckmoes)

Story source: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000). In the Anthology: Metamorphosis.

Week 2 Reading Overview: Myth-Folklore

I'm going to be taking both classes, so I'm not sure I will be doing the reading every week in both classes. The Indian Epics reading is going to be more relevant to some of my ongoing projects, so I might just get to Myth-Folklore part of the time. But we'll see! Here are the units that I am most interested in working on:

Choose from CLASSICAL and/or BIBLICAL units for Weeks 3 and 4.
Week 3: Tiny Tales from Aesop: I want to try out some of the storytelling ideas! 
Week 4: Tiny Tales from Aesop

Choose from MIDDLE EASTERN and/or INDIAN units for Weeks 5 and 6.
Week 5: Tiny Tales from Nasruddin 
Week 6: Tiny Tales from India

Choose from ASIAN and/or AFRICAN units for Weeks 7 and 9. [Week 8 is review week.]
Week 7: Anansi: I should have some good 100-word Anansi stories to share by then. 
Week 9: Brer Rabbit. I can never get enough Brer Rabbit!

Choose from NATIVE AMERICAN units for Weeks 10 and 11.
Week 10: Cherokee (because I will be working on the Southeastern project soon) 
Week 11: Southwestern (that is my other planned Native American focus)

Choose from BRITISH and/or CELTIC units for Weeks 12 and 13.
Week 12: Welsh Tales: I can definitely imagine doing a Welsh Tiny Tales project. 
Week 13: More Welsh Tales

Choose from EUROPEAN units for Weeks 14 and 15.
Week 14: Italian (I love the stories in the Crane book) 
Week 15: [Dead Week; I plan to be done by the end of Week 14, maybe Week 13]

I'm excited about having the Tiny Tales books from this summer be part of the class this semester, and if all goes well, I should have the Anansi book, plus the SE and SW Nations books ready for Spring semester, and then Brer Rabbit and Coyote both ready for Fall 2021.

The Tiny Tales books from this summer: