Skip to main content

The Platypus in 2017

As Counting Crows tells us it's been one long December, but there's reason to believe maybe next year will be better than the last. I suppose by now I can say that I successfully got out of the canyon, Hollywood, and all that. So, aside from surviving Harvey, what occurred here at Platypus of Truth?

Well, for starters, this year has been the least productive of posts since I started blogging. There are some outside reasons for that: new job, shorter summer, travel to see relatives, Harvey. There are also internal reasons. Unlike previous years, 2017 wasn't given over to reviewing books so much as to learning how to watch film. A new discipline means more time spent on organizing my thoughts and less time spent on writing. 2017 also saw an uptick in artwork on the blog as I began attempting to work in new mediums, particularly digital ones. Finally, I spent the year barfing out a lot of bad Eliot as free verse seemed the best way to get my thoughts out. There were other kinds of writing too (Powerpoints, Greek study, notes on Rome and Egypt), but they all went into the job rather than the blog.

At face value, 2018 isn't promising to be any different from 2017. We all know that doesn't mean much. This blog has always been about whatever happens to be on my mind at a given time. It is in that sense truly a "web log"; a sort of public journal. That may make it eclectic, but it also keeps things fresh. After all, who can tell where thought may take us? So as we close down 2017, here's looking forward to new adventures in the next year at Platypus of Truth!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...