Athena Checks My Blogging
About two-and-one-half years ago when I submitted my “Concept Paper” outlining my dissertation, I anticipated that the second chapter would introduce the goddess Athene, starting with her Minoan-Mycenaean origins and leading up her guidance and support of the (male) hero in Greek myth. Just over a year after that, I promised the chair of my dissertation committee that chapter on February 1, 2009.
Every time I started to write it, however, I didn’t seem ready. Some perhaps might say it was laziness. And perhaps it was.
Only when I saw the parallels between Sonny Corleone and Achilles, whose rage at the outset of the Iliad is about to ignite a civil war in the Achaean camp, did I realize that I couldn’t introduce the deity who restrains him until showing first the nature of his rage. Achilles was not alone–in Greek myth or human society. Other men have close to letting their anger getting the best of them before mastering it, while some never do.
In short, I had to show why the owl-eyed goddess was necessary and to introduce the a problem she addresses in Greek myth (and hence culture) and so show her meaning to that society–and, by extension, to our own. So, I added in a second chapter, an extended exegesis of the Bronze Age barroom brawl which begins the oldest of Greek epics. A female friend dubbed it my “testosterone chapter.” I submitted that two weeks ago.
And now, I’m about to submit the chapter I was supposed to have completed one year and 17 days ago. It came together in a matter of days (I took four days off in the two-week period). I had done most of the research (and all that I had used in the first week of writing) well before the initial “deadline.” It came together not then when the research was complete, but after that new chapter was.
There is something in this, though I am, at this moment, perhaps not qualified competent to express it in a succinct catch phrase. Perhaps, one of you can. I struggled over something for nearly a year, only to find it falling into place in little over a week.
All that said, I’m pretty drained from all this writing and may take the whole weekend off from blogging. I’ll see how I feel. While Bruce blogs up at storm from CPAC on Friday, I’ll be at the Getty Library where I do my research. And I won’t be bringing my laptop.
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The conscious mind always wants to think that it is in control, and it has barely hands and time enough even to touch half of the reins of half of the horses that ferry us. Go deep, Dan.
Comment by Phil Holmes — February 18, 2010 @ 7:40 pm - February 18, 2010
Weird, I used the images of reining in horses in this chapter, as horses, a force of the unconscious, belong in Poseidon’s realm. And to Athena goes the taming.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — February 18, 2010 @ 7:41 pm - February 18, 2010
Poor Athena. The one who says “no” shall always bear more bruises than the one who says “yes.” How easy it is, to say yes. How easy it is, to release the horses.
Comment by Phil Holmes — February 18, 2010 @ 7:58 pm - February 18, 2010
I had a Waves and Thermo professor that used to remind us as he handed out each problem-set that “your brain is an excellent parallel processor”, meaning that we should begin the problem-set the night we got it, because there’d be a lot of problems that we couldn’t answer until we’d thought about them for a while, gotten nowhere, and begun thinking about something else. Then, unbidden, the answer would come to us. (He was right, of course, and I should’ve started listening to him sooner than I did.)
Have you ever seen crystals grow under a microscope as a solution is cooling or evaporating? For a while nothing happens, then swoosh, these beautiful feathers start sprouting out, the formations feeding off their own order, as the growth of the ordered crystals gives more substrate for the unordered molecules to join the pattern. Maybe crystallization is a good word.
Comment by lil' math geek — February 18, 2010 @ 9:34 pm - February 18, 2010
Good for you Dan. Take some time for yourself now, enjoy, and for God’s sake get yourself laid.
Comment by John in Dublin CA — February 18, 2010 @ 11:02 pm - February 18, 2010
Congratulations on finally finishing the chapter. They sometimes take longer to complete than you expect–especially when you have other things on your mind. After I finished about two chapters of my dissertation, I pretty much just started churning the other ones out. I made myself write a certain amount each day, and eventually it all just started coming together. Of course, in those days the distraction of blogging didn’t really exist (or if it did, I didn’t know about it yet), but I still managed to spend a lot of time online in ways that had no relevance to my dissertation.
Comment by Kurt — February 19, 2010 @ 1:15 am - February 19, 2010
“And now, I’m about to submit the chapter I was supposed to have completed one year and 17 days ago.”
Only one year and 17 days late? Dan, you do realize you’re blowing the curve for all the other dissertation writers out there, don’t you?…
Seriously, congratulations!
Comment by Wesley M. — February 19, 2010 @ 10:39 am - February 19, 2010
The most famous dream in science belonged to August Kekule. He claimed it was how he finally deciphered the structure of the benzene ring. It is a measure of how much of our mental work goes on outside of our awareness. Your experience with Chapter 3 would make sense to any Psychoanalyst.
Comment by ShrinkWrapped — February 19, 2010 @ 5:45 pm - February 19, 2010