Daily Archives: January 29, 2013

Cooking, Family

Well Meat, Good Sir

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Winter                                                                                Cold Moon

Back from the Butcher and Boar.  Quite the testosterone joint for a place with no televisions tuned to the game.  In fact, no televisions.  This place is about meat.  Fish, fowl and game.  I had wild boar sausage, a side of fried green tomatoes and spicy greens.  Kate and I shared a sampler of their pickled meats.

To my surprise I liked the Braunschweiger.  It came in a small glass terrine, a paste, and made me think I’d never had good Braunschweiger before.

The place, though, was noisy.  In extremis.  Even for those without impaired hearing it would have been difficult to hold a normal conversation.

The interior is dark wood, lots of mirrors, granite topped tables and sturdy forks, spoons and especially the knives.

The bar, a long one, had almost 100% business type guys sitting ordering from the gray haired bar tender who moved methodically and quietly from patron to patron.  The wait staff is young, good looking men and women in black Butcher and Boar t-shirts.

We decided in the end that it was a nice place to visit, once.  Probably not a return place for us older generation carnivores.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Fafnir and Medea

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Winter                                                                              Cold Moon

Read the lay of Fafnir today.  In this lay Sigurd kills Fafnir, a dwarf transformed into a dragon by the Aegis-helm (helmet of Aegir–terror), then seizes “the cursed gold ofAndvari‘s as well as the ring, Andvaranaut.”  Loki seized them to ransom Odin and Hoenir.  When he did he was told the items “…would bring about the death of whoever possessed them.”  Wikipedia

(Fáfnir guards the gold hoard in this illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner‘s Siegfried.)

This is core material both for Wagner’s Ring Cycle and for Tolkien.

Later I spent more time with Jason and Medea, in particular Medea right now, who is plotting, in a long soliloquy, to marry Jason, brush off her father the King and escape backwards Colchis for the wonders of Greece.  She’s trouble right from the very start.

Tonight Kate and I are headed to the Butcher and Boar for a carnivore’s night out.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Life Long Passion

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Winter                                                            Cold Moon

“A mythology is the comment of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind…”                                                                                                                                            H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

A life-long fascination with mythology and its companion fields, ancient religions and folklore, can be explained by this quote.  We have multiple ways of understanding the world, of asking and answering big questions.  In our day science is regnant, queen of the epistemological universe, but it is not enough.  Not now and not ever.

(Charles Le Brun, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1685)

Science cannot answer a why question.  It can only answer how.  Neither can science answer an ethical question.  It can only speak to the effects of a course of action over another in the physical world.  This is not a criticism of science, rather an acknowledgment of its limits.

Mythologies (usually ancient religions), ancient religions, legends and folklore are our attempts to answer the why questions.  They also express our best thinking on the ethical questions, especially folklore, fairy tales in particular.

Where did we come from and why?  “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”  NRSV

(edward_burne-jones-the_last_sleep_of_arthur)

Want to live a good life?  Live like Baldr or Jesus or Lao Tze or Arthur.

How can we tell a just society from an unjust one?  Look at the 8th Century Jewish prophets.  Look at Confucius. (not a religion, yes, but functions like one)  Look at the Icelandic Sagas.  Different answers in each one.

I fell in love with these complex, contradictory wonderful narratives when I was 9 years old, maybe a bit younger.  Aunt Barbara gave me a copy of Bullfinches’ Mythology.  I loved Superman and Batman and Marvel Comics.  I was an attentive student in Sunday School and later in seminary.  Over time I’ve come to recognize this fascination as a ruling passion in my life, one that guides life choices with power in my inner world.

It will not, I imagine, fade.  It means writing fantasy is a work of great joy and a hell of a lot of fun.