*Seeing Stars*

I did it. I finally gave up on my paper. It's not that I feel defeated, it's just that I can't possibly write about it anymore. Not like that, not in paper-writing language. I do have this presentation to give this afternoon though. I'm still trying to decide the best way to present all the things I want to say...

First, I stumbled on my paper topic by sheer luck. The Tempest definitely pulls rank as far as my favorite Shakespeare plays go, and I really wanted to work with that, but I didn't know where to go...I started googling pictures of Caliban, like the ones in the book we passed around in class that day....

 

 I was lucky! I got to present today instead of last Thursday... some of the presentations on Caliban, especially comparing him to Poseidon..and all this talk of Ovid....and a conversation with a friend about Moby Dick....AHA!  CETUS.....PERSEUS....  Sea-monters, heros, tragic equations....ANDROMEDA...it even sort of sounds like Miranda. It's the images that lead me there.

 Every time I got really lost when I was writing this thing, I had to think back to what lead me to any of my conclusions, and the concept of consuming myth, and of images as metaphors served as a kind of epileptic roadmap the entire way. Blink, and it all makes sense, Miranda as the goddess, blink again, Andromeda, Caliban, Cetus, Ferdinand, Perseus...it never fit exactly, but that seems to be Hughe's theory, that the images evoked themselves are powerful enough to make the connections, to set the tone and the mood.
 Drunk on "celestial liquor", you can start to recognize the patterns, the parents and originals in the form of the constellations that hang over our the characters heads, silently portraying their mythic origins.

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Cabbalism is extremely limited. But, I think that in the Cabbalist tree there is a at least a good metaphor for the interconnectedness of mythology, and that's what I tried to keep imagining every time I was second guessing myself about my paper. There are no right answers, only more clues, more hallways, more rooms in the library...