Stability through Style.

A few questions have been prompted so far in this course, and to begin the semester I have a few opinion or personal responses to these questions. The first being: Why Shakespeare? and the second pertains to the repetition of stories from mythology to Shakespeare and so on.

To begin with the latter, and to be brief- There is an inescapable rhythm and cycle to things. This cycle is represented in all facets of life and the natural world. The seasons ceremoniously rise and fall. Petals bloom from   black boughs and are blown asunder within a breath of wind. We see waning moons effaced out our windows where reflections of waxwings  live on in ashen fluff. We come and go. Our lives, our stories are lunar, not linear.

In borrowing fashion, I recently watched a documentary on The Buddha because last semester a fellow and inspiring student (Ashley) spoke about the film and the effect it had on her. I can't recall if she brought up these particular points of the movie, if she did this is perhaps why they stuck out to me amidst this films intricate tapestry. I feel these points both illustrate the beauty of revisiting literature, the power of originality.

The first being story of Siddhartha; After years of self torture and self deprivation Siddhartha sits under a tree and a young peasant approaches him and gives him a bowl of rice pudding. After years of eating nothing but a grain of rice a day, Siddhartha indulges in this rice pudding. The flood of senorsy stimulation washes over him, the first taste takes him back to childhood where his mother would feed him rice pudding, he sees his life as a web of interconnectivity between all moments and all people. This is his epiphanic moment.

For anyone who has persevered through In Search of Lost Time, or for any of you who like me have attempted but only made it about twenty pages, you will resoundingly recall the inaugural scene. Siddhartha's story is re-presented in Proust with the vehicle of a petite madeline instead of rice pudding.

for full effect, please read Proust here. http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html

By simply reading this, you will understand my first question. Why Shakespeare? you will also save me sometime on this blog because if I start going, I won't be able to stop. And class begisn in an hour. Read Proust and you will understand though. It comes down to one thing: Your style. Anyone can tell a story, but how you do it, that is the question.