As the Story Will Tell Itself: To Become the Mouth Which Holds the Universe

An interesting contraption: A bow sitting on a pedestal a fish-like contraption on the ceiling that always rotated and created an image of a fish in a pond below What kept it rotating? Was it wind, the motion of the earth, or even electricity? I like the image of Arjuna during the swayamvara: a "handsome beard", and "hair flowing down his shoulders". That is my kind of man. Have I tried applying my computer knowledge to my storytelling? How would I even do that in a subject like this? Did I choose the wrong reading if I really wanted to do that? Who are Jatilaa and Prachetasa? I admire them for having multiple husbands. What if Draupadi and the Pandavas were gender-bent? Note that Krishna repeats that Draupadi is born of fire, a righteous one. There are occasionally examples of diction that relate to this. Going back to the loss of the gambling game, what if Krishna had given Draupadi the power to unleash the strength of the fire from which she was bor...

Shiva After not seeing this series in a week, Shiva looks like a tragic character, though I know he is not meant to be one. Nonetheless, this story about how his first wife, Sati, was killed at a sacrifice he was not invited to is beyond depressing. I think it is understandable that he would choose to avoid letting his heart be torn apart like that again. Rejection is painful on its own, but utter loss is world-shattering. As out there as Shiva is, there are some endearing parts of his character and stories. Sati being reborn as Parvati and seeking him out as her husband again is a sweet story, even if Shiva only accepted out of grace. It is an example of where love transcends lifetimes kind of. Shiva's lack of knowledge of and possible refusal to conform to groom standards is a bit humorous. I heard a version of Shiva drinking the poison to where doing so was actually killing him. To save him, Parvati squeezed his neck to keep it from doing any more harm. But why did he drink...

Desolation stretched across the land from horizon to horizon. A barren forest still remained on this dead land. In the center stood a decrepit castle surrounded by ninety-nine bodies impaled on pikes, some still alive. Who could still live in such a place? Who could do such a thing to these people? The answer was simple: Count Jarasandha. Count Jarasandha walked about his victims with a goblet in hand. Every wriggle of pain and moan of agony filled him with euphoria. At random, he chose a victim, gave his wounds a squeeze, and let the blood drip into his goblet. He took a sip. Tonight he was especially parched, for he had recently escaped from a man named Krishna and his friends who had been hunting him. If the Count was going to face them, he also may as well do so with the home ground advantage. A racing chariot sounded in the distance. It was them: Krishna, Bhima, and Arjuna. They had found him. The three jumped from the chariot, weapons in hand. "It is over, Jarasandha,...

Here there is a story of a fruit that a king got from a sage, which would make his queen pregnant when she ate it. He split it between his two wives, and they each gave birth to half a lifeless child. One could change the fruit, the setting, what happened to the child, and so on of this seemingly common fruit-pregnancy scenario. Jarasandha starving his defeated enemies and eating feasts before them gives me a similar image of Dracula. In Dracula's case, however, he ate while watching people slowly die after being impaled on pikes. Both are sadists. Write Jarasandha similar to Dracula and Krishna similar to Van Helsing and gang who defeat him Buddha, according to one tradition, was an incarnation of Vishnu. That is interesting. Ooh, how interesting that Krishna taught some women how to use his altered version of the boomerang. That is quite progressive for the time. "Nothing is impossible if you are ready to accept the challenge." So even the author, narrator (...

The darkness, emptiness, and unable-to-observe imagery reminds me of the Hindu Calendar Art videos in the extra readings. By this, I mean the lack of the ability to observe and lack of life does correlate to the end of the universe, that is Vishnu closing his eyes. And in a senses, Vishnu's eyes were closed in his incarnation as Krishna right before his death. I still do not understand why piercing Krishna's soles would result in his death. Explore the curse given to the Yadava clan by the insulted sages. Explore how the clan's wealth and power destroyed them. Narada as one who relays news sounds like Mercury. Narada can cause quarrels among gods and goddesses, spreads gossip and rumors, and spins tales... Is he a good choice to use in a story one writes as the one who starts a quarrel, directly or indirectly? Krishna is a more rebellious and well-rounded incarnation of Vishnu. Perhaps one can look at his rebellious nature in a story: Krishna the bad boy; Krishn...

Where I was about to note a comment, the video beat me to it. They ways in which the world and ideas are represented, like in a balance of male and female, are interesting ways of viewing them. However, culture takes this and corrupts it. Sexist values and power-hungry politics choose to take some of these things literally to justify the oppression, persecution, and abuse of certain groups of people in society. Being all too aware of this practice, that makes it hard to objectively look at and think about these concepts without reminders of said corruption from society. If he banyan tree provides shade, then we both have a lot in common. Ha! It is interesting to think of a snake, especially a cobra, something so venomous, as a symbol of fertility, something to create rather than destroy life. Red as potential energy; green as realized energy: that sounds like a stop light. Now white meaning stillness and black meaning movement seems opposite to what I would have expected. White wou...

To preface, I feel like the title of this blog might be a little misleading. I think I have been fairly productive this entire week, but I have been bad at doing things that should be pretty high priority. By this I mean, say, studying for my Operating Systems and my Theory of Computation exams I have this upcoming week. Now I have been trying to get ahead in the assignments in this class so that I can focus on those things, which I am proud of what I managed so far, but the problem still is actually sitting down to study... And here I am writing for my blog. The main reason I wanted to do this kind of blog this week, besides getting some extra credit, was for something I discovered on my day off yesterday (Saturday). First of all, that was the first Saturday I have had off in months thanks to the OU vs. Texas game. I decided to spend it leisurely, instead of studying, by visiting my old roommate and her cat that lived with us. We went to a little store called Craig's Curiosity E...