Lots of things I've been thinking about lately. lots of things that would be good updates. Yet for some reason I'm hesitant.

But here I was, sitting around with the Boy playing Half-Life. In my lavender bathrobe fresh out of the shower. Talking. and I need to write it down.

What excites me is myth and mythos (and thinking now in the same way pathos is mythos). These are the things that I like, those that take myth and retell it, that use myth, that draw from myth. oral histories. This is why I like Neil Gaiman, and the Things he writes like the Sandman and Stardust (which are the only ones I mention as they are the only I've read) but also his new book which is coming out (American Gods) which uses Norse Mythology in some way. What I don't know yet as I haven't read it. But this is appealing.

The weaving and retelling of tales to create new and (sometimes) better ones. Somewhere I heard a professor-type declare that there were only somewhere around 20 stories that have ever been told/(can be?) and everything else is a derivative of those 20.

Things with myth/mythos/mythic proportions or style. only things i've read, now i need to find more.

The Sandman and Stardust

Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories (mythic through the "nonsense" biblical language).

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Weetzie Bat (these become a fairytale)

Invisible Cities

Watership Down

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (although perhaps these have just become myth, to me anyway)

The Rats of NIMH

The Handmaid's Tale

Lots of SF uses myth or creates myth.

Lots of children's stories use, create, retell etc. myth.

I like oral histories, because it quickly becomes myth, while remaining entirely true, because it is the history and the knowing.

I like when history uses myth. or myth uses history to retell itself.

I don't like it when history is smoothed over to be nicer for children. I don't think that these are the same things; to meld history into myth is not to take the edges off. Sometimes it makes it more real. More immediate and honest and painful and true. And harder to forget.

It's the patterns of history that are really important to us. and the stories. History is about talking and communicating.

I want to go to Russia and collect tales from little old ladies and write them down and illustrate them and give them to other people.

I want to make children's animated movies about things like the making of the railroads and american settlement and Spanish civil war and andand that don't glorify or lie or try to apologize and make better.

I want to make movies about Americana and sunlight and being 5 with your single mom in grad school and camera angles.

I want to paint myself into murals. Until I become murals.

I want to create myth. Iwant to be myth.