Images of Metamorphoses II

Celebrity Hubris from Richard Horton

"Callisto" - Audrey Heyman

Boötes, Arcas the "Bear Warden"

Ursa Major, Callisto the "Great Bear"

Images of Metamorphoses I

"Pyrrha" - Louvre

"Daughter of Pyrrah" - Taft 

Dreams

So I hadn't had a dream that was like this one in a long time. Perhaps ever.

I am on vacation, I think. I kept remembering the setting as NYC but the beaches were sandy and warm so it felt more like Florida or California. Maybe Miami or LA. Attempting to rationalize dreams once again... First there is a tsunami. The whole city begins to flood and those who have not evacuated ascend to the upper floors of the high-rise buildings to escape the flooding. The tsunami takes on a persona. It changes from being a natural disaster to some sort of alien invasion. The waters ebb and flow and there is a distinct cohesion between droplets. There emerge five heroes who vow to save the city from this invasion. I am somehow recruited to assist the heroes and taught the secrets of flight. The superheroes are reminiscent of comic book identities clad in their tight-fitting costumes, all extremely buff, and collaborating to fight some evil.

At some point we are surfing gigantic swells that are hundreds of feet high, then alight into the air with surfboards in hand and fly off. I fly through the broken out window of a skyscraper into a well furnished home. But the furniture keeps morphing and rearranging itself within the single room.

Then I wake up. I wrote most of it down to keep from forgetting and then went back and fell fast asleep again.
The second dream was not nearly as vivid or descriptive and far more brief.

I am in a library leaning over the railing of some sort of mezzanine. This is not a local library but a vast one with many people in it. It almost feels more like a cross between a hotel some capitol building. The furnishings are lavish and the wood is a dark cherry with panels inlaid in the walls. Suddenly there is a riot below. Maybe not a riot but a stampede. I am confused by what is occurring but the people below are all rushing to the front doors in search of escape. I sit down at one of the tables lining the mezzanine and let the throng of crazed library goers pass. And then I realize, in the dream, this is all just a video game. Same as the first one.

When I woke up from the second wild dream in one night I wondered what gave me such strange dreams and then it struck me: 5 Hour Energy and watching Ponyo before bed. I attribute the wild night to that.

Memories of Amsterdam

The very first memories which I can recall are those of my early childhood, or rather toddler-hood spent with my parents in Amsterdam. The duration of our stay there lasted the entirety of my second year. I can't place any of the memories from the Netherlands in any sort of chronological order but when the question was asked, this memory instantly popped into my head. No need for any further brain searching.

Madurodam, Amsterdam

I recall the tiny city as "the miniature village". It was large enough when I was two years to be amazing, large enough to get lost easily, yet somehow I must have recognized, even at two, that the city was a miniaturized version of some other city. Or perhaps this was an association I made later on when recollecting this image. Googling the terms, "miniature village" and "Amsterdam" inundated my screen with photos of the tiny city and transported me back to my youth and wandering in the tiny village. The name always eludes me, but apparently the tiny city is a fairly well known tourist attraction called Madurodam. 
I remember being enthralled with the "tiny village" as a child and long to one day share this spectacle with my children. 
There are other things about Amsterdam that I remember but none as well as Madurodam. I remember living on a houseboat. Luckily I was never seasick as a child. I also recall having a young Dutch friend who lived on the houseboat with us, in the apartment across the hall. There were clogs also. I'm not sure anyone actually wore them, but I can recall my mother desperately wanting a pair. She must have talked about those things for the following ten years too.


So that about does it for my earliest memories. Or at least what I can remember from my toddler abuse of the Amsterdam privilege. My childhood as seen through the hazy pot smoke and opium dens, growing up in the red light district.

Myrrha's life after death

So much for the tree-spirit conceived as incorporate or immanent in the tree. We have now to show that the tree-spirit is often conceived and represented as detached from the tree and clothed in human form, and even as embodied in living men or women. The evidence for this anthropomorphic representation of the tree-spirit is largely to be found in the popular customs of European peasantry. Sir James George Frazer.

This snippet of text from The Golden Bough immediately reminded me of the story of Myrrha and her incestuous relations with Theias. Her untimely transfiguration into tree-form while her wooden womb swelled with the fetus of Adonis was a transformation from human to tree. The quote from Frazer is the reinvention and perpetuation of the "tree-spirit" in European myth. These recreated European tree-spirits appear to have reversed the morphing process Myrrha underwent. They are reversing Myrrha's transformation and becoming "embodied in living men or women".