Famous Last Words Week 6

This week was yet another roller coaster ride (I seem to have a lot of those) and next week won’t be much easier. This past week I had my first paper for capstone due and, like an inexperienced freshman, I waited until the day before it was due to really work on it. Granted, I thought the results section would be easier to handle and write out, but Lawdy it was not. Don’t worry, I learned my lesson. I have another paper due this Friday (for a different class) and I started on it last Wednesday.

One of the bright points to this week was that my Grandpa came into town! He drove all the way down from Colorado to visit friends down here and to deliver me some delicious Colorado honey and some unrendered lard (courtesy of my strange mother). I got to spend some time with him this weekend, which was very nice. I also made quiche for the first time in forever for one of my dear friend’s birthdays.

I also watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the first time in YEARS. I had forgotten how much of a great movie it was! I was also really surprised to learn it was kind of a flop and the makers of the film lost about $13 million from making it! It’s just such a good movie, I never would have expected that!

Go watch this right now.

Image: Amazon

Looking back, I think my best writing this week was the storytelling I did, “The Lawless Heart.” I adapted it from “Urashima Taro and the Sea Turtle,” a japanese fairytale.  Of course, the biggest complaint I have about it is the word count limit. Gets me every. Single. Time. How can I put the description and detail I want to make a story come alive AND have a good, conclusive ending in only 1000 words? It’s impossible, I tell you!

But I digress. This week was incredibly busy, but I got everything done and I’m proud of myself for it. So I’m going to sit back with my roommate and watch the rest of the Oscars. Have you seen the dresses this year!? Incredible!

Week 6 Storytelling: The Lawless Heart

There was once a small but productive town at the foot of a mountain. Its citizens were hardy mountain-dwelling folk and their export consisted mostly of lumber and high-mountain grain like amaranth and quinoa.
As with all towns, crime was an issue. Thankfully, crime in this little town was kept to a minimum by the respectable chief deputy, who rode tirelessly through the town on his horse, keeping everything in order. He had been the guardian of the town for years and loved his job. His eyes were hard, but his heart was kind.

One day, as he was trotting through the main plaza while merchants pitched their wares, he caught sight of a woman with matted hair in old, ragged clothes trying to sneak away a loaf of bread.
“Stop this instant!” he shouted.
She looked up at him with wild eyes and took off through the plaza, narrowly avoiding other merchants. The deputy urged his steed after her, jumping over whole carts and people.

He chased her for blocks and finally cornered the woman in an alleyway.
 As his horse approached her, she threw up her hands in helplessness, pleading, “Please, I am hungry and my people have weathered a hard winter. I only steal because I am so poor I have no shoes for myself or my children, and we have not had anything substantial to eat in weeks. For once, turn a blind eye to my poor wretched soul. We have suffered enough.”
The deputy felt a twinge of remorse for the woman. Sighing, he stroked his coarse, black mustache and locked eyes with the woman.
“Take it. But only this once. I keep an orderly town and intend to keep it that way.”
With that, he backed his horse out of the alleyway and back out onto the street.

The Dimitor Mountains

Image: wikipedia

Many years passed and the deputy did not see her again. His town was still in order and crime was at the lowest he had ever seen. After ensuring his other officers were stationed to where the plaza would be looked after, he decided to take time off by riding out into the mountains for the weekend.
He had ridden fifteen miles out of town with his horse and was nearing a part of the forest he was not familiar with. Dusk approached, so he let his horse graze as he set up camp for the night, gathering logs from fallen pine trees for fire.
Suddenly, he heard a startled whinny and hurried back over to his campsite. A huge grizzly bear, bigger than any he had ever seen was attacking his horse! He ran, yelling and waving his hands to scare it away but the bear turned its attention away from the horse to him. The officer drew out his hunting knife as the bear charged him, only to have the beast stop mere feet from him and collapse. He let out a long, shaky breath and noticed a spear shaft sticking out of the shaggy brown back.
Looking up, he saw a familiar face… fuller, healthier, with cleaner hair and better clothes than he last remembered.
“These parts of the woods are dangerous if you don’t know your way around,” she said grimly, walking over to yank the spear out.
 “Help me skin this guy and quarter him up - I don’t live too far from here and your horse needs to be tended.”
Wordless, still shaken from his life-or-death experience, the officer nodded and skinned the beast. The moon was high as he followed the woman back to her camp.

They arrived to a makeshift village of shacks and tee-pee style tents. This woman didn’t live in a town, but a commune! Mildly horrified, the officer avoided eye contact with the members and followed the woman to her tent.
She laid down her quarter of meat on a clean hide and looked at him. “If you were anyone else, I would have turned a blind eye. We don’t like strangers in these parts. We’re a proud, free people that live by our own rules.”
Her eyes gleamed defiantly. The officer nervously stroked his mustache and sighed.
“While I don’t agree with your way of life, I am eternally grateful for you saving me. I don’t know the way back to my town, but I will not burden you for any longer than necessary.”
The woman’s hard eyes softened and she lightly touched his shoulder. “No one should be lost or without a home. We’ll mend your horse and give you shelter until you can head back.”
So the officer stayed in the commune for a month until his horse was better. By then he had learned the lawless ways of the nomads and had begrudgingly found himself liking them more and more. They had a comfortable structure all their own - even without government, they were a happy, thriving community.

The Buffalo Commune in New Mexico, 1967

Image: Summer of Love

A month turned into two. Then two months into six. He had fallen in love with the lawless woman and had nearly forgotten about his town, until one day he decided to head back.
“You musn’t,” she begged. “You’ll never come back!”
He assured her that he would return, and not to worry. As he headed back on his horse with a crude map, she wept.
After a hard journey, he came upon familiar streets. He climbed off his horse and fixed his deputy badge to his shirt proudly and strolled down the main street, looking around at boarded windows and empty yards.
Suddenly, a sharp pain gripped him and he looked down to discover an arrowhead protruding from his chest. Gasping, he fell to the ground, coughing back blood as it welled up in his throat.
He looked up and saw two rough men coming towards him, smirking.
“Ain’t no lawmen been here for a while. This town is ours now, deputy,” he heard as he took his dying breath.

Author's Note: 

The word count gets me every. Single. Time. GAH! I wanted to add so much more detail and explanation to this story, but, as always, I would exceed the word count by doing so. At least I got most of what I wanted out of it. 

This story is based on the Japanese fairy tale, "Urashima Taro and the Sea Turtle." In the original story, Urashima is fishing and spares the life of a baby sea turtle. When his life is in danger many years later, he is saved by the same sea turtle and is taken to an underwater palace where he falls in love with a beautiful princess. 

Urashima stays at the palace for an unprecedented amount of time and begins to yearn to see his parents. The princess begs him not to go, saying he'll never return if he does, but he assures her he'll be back. Of course, when he goes to visit his parents he finds out he's actually been gone for three hundred years and everything he once knew is no more. 

I tried keeping to the original theme of the story, but I think this one adopted a new moral all its own: that certain community structures might work for one group of people, whereas others need to be governed and have set laws to function correctly. I think there are some communes out there that work very well (mostly due to their small community size), but larger communities need to have law and structure to operate and function. 

The ending to this was rather quick, but again I blame the word count. It's so hard to wrap things up when you're really wanting to make it juicier. Oh, well! Such is the way of things. 

Bibliography

Title: Uraschimataro and the Sea Turtle

Book: The Violet Fairy Book

Author: Andrew Lang

Year: 1901

Read the original story here!

Week 6 Reading B: Tibetan Folk Tales

I no almost nothing about Tibet, but I've always been drawn to it. Maybe because it's such a quiet place shrouded in simple mystery. I would like to visit someday and traverse the little mountain towns if the altitude doesn't kill me first. The fairy tale stories from this little-known country offer good morals (for the most part). Others are just that - fairy tales.

Covetousness:

This story was short, but was packed full of morals. In the end, almost all the characters featured in it died due to their lack of foresight and good morals. Keep in mind that all these stories are taking place in the same vicinity.
A hunter strings up a bow which will kill any animal that triggers the string loosing. First it kills a bear. A fox comes along, rejoices at all the meat he can eat (bear meat is pretty good; I can testify to this), and tries to undo the bow string so no other animals are killed. In doing this, he himself is killed. The moral of this is that, ‘one should not be greedy when there is already plenty.’ Personally, I think this is a poor way of presenting this lesson, but I didn’t write the tale.
The second moral comes in the form of an elephant attempting to jump like a rabbit he sees hopping along in a gulley. In doing this, his immense weight causes a large boulder to fall and crush him. The moral of this is, ‘Don’t do what you are not fit enough for (fitted for).” While this might be harder to view in terms of humans (seeing as how we’re of one single species, whereas the elephant and rabbit are not), it is nonetheless a good moral that (hopefully) stems from common sense.
The third moral is basically, ‘Work together, don’t be lazy.’ Seven robbers come across all these dead animals, rejoice at the meat, and start the cook it. Seeing as how they need water, they gripe and fight about who is going to go get it. Finally, four men agree to it and go to fetch the water while three stay back and cook the meat. Both parties decide to poison the other and nobody survives. The area becomes a massive multi-species graveyard.
Overall, I was pleased with this story. In 500 words it summed up three great morals, all having to do with the perils and consequences of covetousness.

Now just imagine this guy trying to hop like a bunny. 

Image: Audubon Institute

The Man With Five Friends with Different Colored Eyes

This story was… odd. I didn’t like the way it was told because it transitioned too quickly from one event to the next without much leeway. The morals weren’t nearly as good as the first story either.
A man is told by his dying father two rules he should live by to be happy in life. The first is to not trust his wife with any secrets until after she has borne him ten children. Ten children? Yikes. Ain’t nobody got time for that. The second is that he should not trust a man if he has light colored eyes.
So his father dies, he marries a woman and she soon bears him a son. So pleased is he by this, he tells her some secrets anyway. He also has five friends, only one of which who has dark-colored eyes.
Wanting to see if what his father told him was true, he spends good money on a hog on the way home, kills it, puts it in trousers and tells his wife he’s killed a man when he gets home. They bury him in the pond together. Soon thereafter they get into a fight and she tells the official about the man he killed. He’s soon put in jail and the only one of his friends to bail him out is the dark-eyed one (with some pretty heavy bail money).
The man, once freed, tells the official that it’s really just a hog in the lake and he talks about the test he put his wife and friends through to see if they were trustworthy. The official, so impressed by his wisdom, gives the man presents and praise. How is any of this realistic? A guy plays an elaborate prank on his wife and friends and gets promoted to be a chief? Out of most of the fairy tales I’ve read, this story is not only lacking in moral, but also the most unrealistic. Good thing it's just a fairy tale. 

Bibliography

Title: "Covetousness" and "The Man with Five Friends with different colored eyes"

Book: Tibetan Folk Tales

Author: A.L Shelton

Year: 1925

Read the stories here!  

Week 6 Reading A: Japanese Fairy Tales

For my first reading this week, I went straight for the Japanese fairy tales (by Lang). I've never really had the chance to read fairy tales from Japan, so I was really interested to see what of their culture spilled over into their writings. I have to say, they were certainly entertaining and definitely carried that 'fairy tale' vibe.

Schippeitaro: 

A young man comes of age and goes off looking for adventure! He vows to not come back until he’s made a name of himself doing some heroic deed.
Alright, so men get to choose what they want to do, but what about the women? Are they just stuck at home tending to the chickens or weaving (or whatever someone would do during that time period in Japan)? I wonder if there are any stories about girls coming of age, dressing up as men, and going to have their own adventures in Japan.
Anyway, the young man goes into this dense forest and finds a chapel to stay the night in. He’s woken up late in the night by the clamor of a bunch of cats dancing in the full moon. They keep yelling, “Don’t tell Schippeitaro!” He watches them and tries to get back to sleep. Anyone who has ever heard a cat yowling knows that this is a difficult feat.
Waking up in the morning, he finds a town nearby and sees a woman weeping. Curious, he asks what’s going on. Apparently, an annual sacrifice is made where a maiden is chosen to be offered up to the Spirit of the Mountain, who will eat her in return for keeping the town safe. The maiden will be offered to the Spirit in a casket. He then learns that Schippeitaro is a dog owned by the prince of the land.
The young man convinces the prince to let him borrow his dog for the night and tricks the Spirit of the Mountain into thinking he’s about to eat the maiden in the casket when, lo and behold, Schippeitaro is there instead! Both the young man and Schippeitaro kill many of the evil cat creatures and have a celebratory feast from the town in their name.
So here’s what I don’t understand - did the cat demon-creatures have a run-in with Schippeitaro before and that’s why they fear him, or do they just know the prince has this big dog named Schippeitaro that will most likely eat them? Either way, it wasn’t highlighted very well in the story. I was confused about just that, mostly. Other than that bit of confusion, this was a fun, light-hearted story to read.

Schippeitaro, by Frederick Richardson

Uraschimataro and the Turtle:

This story was a classic fairy tale. A young man who is very good with navigating his little ship through turbulent waves catches a little turtle one day among his full net of fish. The little turtle implores him to let her go, and, having a kind heart, the young man obliges.
One day, many years later, his ship is caught up in whirlwind and crashes. He struggles to get out of the wreckage, succeeds, and starts to swim for shore. But the turtle he saved all those years ago is huge now, and tells him to get onto her back and she’ll take him to shore.
That doesn’t happen. She instead takes him to see all the beautiful wonders of the ocean and finally, to the palace of the Princess of the Sea, Otohime. Uraschimataro falls in love with the beautiful princess and ends up spending an unknown amount of time with her.
Of course, as is the case with all fairy tales, he wants to go back to his loving parents and see them, but the princess begs him not to. Finally, after lots of convincing and promising he’ll come back, the princess concedes and gives him a golden box. As with all fairy tales, there’s just one condition. If Uraschimataro opens the box, he can never return to her.
So he goes back to his hometown and discovers three hundred years have passed in all his time with the princess. And as with most tragic fairy tales, he opens the golden box and is engulfed by a violet mist, withering him and turning him into an old man. He is soon taken by death, but not before telling his story to the village children.
So my thought the entire time during this story was, “Is this guy even human?” A sea turtle takes him down into the depths of the ocean for THREE DAYS and he doesn’t even have to come up for air. Maybe this guy was a fairy to begin with and he didn’t even realize it. Regardless, this was a good, classic example of a tragic fairytale.

Urashima Taro by Edmund Dulac

Bibliography

Title: "Schippeitaro" and "Uraschimataro and the Sea Turtle"

Book: "The Violet Fairy Book" and "The Pink Fairy Book"

Author: Andrew Lang

Year: 1897

Read the stories here!