Cassandra

Cassandra, the Greek:  Κασσάνδρα  (I like the way Greek letters look.) 

Narrating myth is not one of my strengths.  In fact, my writing about such stuff was once brushed off as “shallow” by one of my professors.   Oh well, I’m still going to talk about Cassandra. 

I’ve been meaning to talk about her for a while because her story always sort of bothered me.  It’s almost too tragic, if that’s possible for a character at the center of several Greek Tragic Stories.    There’s the fact that she was blessed in the art of prophecy, wise in a certain way, yet no one paid her any heed.   Sounds familiar for a woman (ha).  

She was the loveliest of the daughters of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy.  So lovely, infact, that she attracted the attention of Apollo.  He fell in love with her, taught her the art of prophecy.  But in the end, she rejected his love.

In Agamemnon, Aeschylus puts it like this:

Cassandra:  . . . he [Apollo] wrestled with me, and he breathed his delight.

Chorus:  Did you come to the getting of children, then, as people do?

Cassandra:  I promised that to Loxias (Apollo), but I broke my word.   

She “broke her word” to Apollo,  and was promptly punished.   He allowed her keep her gift of vision, prophecy, but he took away the privilege that came along with such a gift and made it so that no one would ever believe her.  Rendering her blessing a curse.   What good does it do a body to be able to see the future and be helpless to do anything about it?     

She foresaw the destruction of Troy.

When Paris sailed to Sparta, she warned her father, King Priam, that the outcome of this visit would lead to the destruction of his city.  Yet, Paris was allowed to sail to Sparta.  I think we all know what happened next, but I’ll go there anyway, briefly:  He abducted Helen, brought her to Troy, and started the Trojan War. 

She also knew about the Wooden Horse.  

She pleaded with the Trojans to keep it outside of the city-gates, yet it was wheeled into the city, pregnant as it was, with armed Greek soldiers.  

They really should have listened to her.

Things just get worse for her.   As the city was being ravaged, pillaged, and burned by the marauding Greeks Soldiers, she clung to the altar of Athena for protection.   This was sacred space.  One must not abuse a person who was seeking refuge at the altar of a God.   Yet, one did.  He was Ajax, the Locrian.  Not that other Ajax, the one who was the strongest, biggest.  The one who went crazy after being denied the armor of Achilles.  No, this was a smaller fool.   He tore Cassandra from the alter and raped her, and she was subsequently passed off to his chief, Agamemnon, as a war prize.

Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae.   He was also the brother of Helen’s husband,  Menelaus.   After the destruction of Troy was complete, he returned home to Mycenae with Cassadra as his concubine.  Which was silly of him.  Not that this [having a concubine] was unprecedented, but because he had a wife who had been raging at him for roughly ten years for the following reason.

When the first Greek fleet started on its journey to Troy, it was held up by lack of winds.   It was Artemis.  She was adamant that a sacrifice be made by Agamemnon to atone for the bloodshed that would arise from the war.   It was a very specific sacrifice.  It was his daughter, Iphigenia.  I think her sacrifice deserves its own post, so I will spare the details here, but it was through her death that the Greeks were granted wind to sail off to Troy.  It’s enough, I think, to say that his wife, Clytaemnestra, was bitter about this.

So bitter that while he was away in Troy (for 10 years), she shacked up with his cousin, a fellow named Aigisthos.  Aigisthhos had his own reasons for hating Agememnon, but I won’t go into that here.  It was their agreement that Agamemnon was dead meat should he return to Mycenae.

It so happens that returning to Mycenae with Cassandra in tow meant that she was dead meat as well. 

She foresaw that, too.

 

Me, Bitter?

^ My boyfriend, Orlando Bloom, and his sister taking a walk with her dog like two GD years ago.   I like her outfit even though I prob should not like it so much.  And I like him too, even though I prob should not like him too much.

*

My sisters and I are kinda weird.  Things will be wondrous and all of a sudden someone will say something that triggers up hurt feelings and all hell willl break loose.  Like yesterday.  The older one was being annoying and so we told her to go spend the weekend with her good friend, Snow Blindness.   Hee Hee!  It’s what we call this particular friend because she’s is, for lack of a better description, very white bread.   Not pale, just American.  Whatever that means. 

Anyway, the joke started when we were watching this show about Mount Everest and heard about instances of ’snow blindess’ where people go blind from the sun reflecting on the snow or something.  So the younger sister said the older sister should be careful about hanging out with this particular friend lest she get snow blindness.   I’m sorry but that makes me laugh.

Is this making sense?   Anyway, older sister was being annoying and when I told her to spend the weekend with snow blindness, she got all hurt and said:  “Stop being mean to my friends.”  She said she thought it was becoming a pattern with me ever since I told off that other friend of hers (the social-climbing hobag) like two months ago.  

She thinks I’m rude and she thinks I should apologize to the social-climber who lives down the street from a billionaire.   I don’t think I will.  I’m not rude, by the way.  I’m a doll.       

My brother also told me that I was bitter.   

I think he said that because I was in a pissy mood last week and I started going off on some odd tangents because I wasn’t feeling quite right.  I don’t know what set me off, but this one was about being a black woman, and how that meant I had been  marked for failure by God.  I don’t actually believe that, but it felt like the right bong to tap at the time. 

I told him that I was all sorts of phucked for the following reasons:  According to statistics I am destined to never get married and if I did happen to get married, it probably would not be to a black man, considering the vast majority of them don’t fancy black women.   Basically just spewing shit I’ve heard from reading those IR blogs on the internet.   I don’t even give a shit about who I marry (if I marry).   I just wanted to make a case for the plight of black women.    

Those things are the devil, by the way.  IR blogs.  Most of the  one’s I’ve read are downright creepy.  White Men For Black Women, Black Women Deserve Better.  Do you know about those?!  I stumbled across a few of them whilst blog-hopping a few months ago and it’s wy weird.  People say the darndest things!  It’s always been my opinion that preferences for dating any particular race are silly and stupid.  You can’t pick and choose who you fall in love with, and you certainly shouldn’t force it.

I don’t have a preference.  If someone is smart and attractive and charming or even just smart and maybe charming, I don’t give a good eph what color they are or how they look.  I’ve had a black boyfriend and a white boyfriend.  Yep.  Just two actual boyfriends my whole entire life.   I’ve had dozens of crushes that have spanned people from each continent.   Also, the guys who tend to like me or flirt with me are usually always not black.   I don’t understand!  I don’t mind, either. But I still don’t understand!   So you must understand it would be quite silly of me to not be open to all possibilities.

Please don’t ask me where I’m going with this because I have no fuzzy idea.

Bitter. 

That’s a harsh word, innit?  I don’t think I’m bitter.  Do I come across as bitter?  My friends have never said I was bitter.  My brother’s not even the only one who voiced this sentiment.  My mom says stuff insinuating as much all the time.   I think I’ve been a little more negative than positive lately, but so what?  There’s sort of a lot to be bitter about.  While I’m waiting for Grad School I’ve had to toil in stupid-ass jobs.   That’s enough to make a bytch bitter.   I split up with my boyfriend (we’d been together longer than some marriages).  Orlando Bloom is shagging a ribald dingo who masquerades as a Victoria’s Secret model.   That’s enough to make a bytch bitter, too.  

I keep getting derailed.   I’ve been thinking off all the points in my life that folks have failed me.  It goes back to second grade when I decided I wanted to be ballet dancer.  Don’t laugh at me, even though this is hardcore pathetic.   I have a natural aptitude for dancing, coordination, etc.  But I was never able to do anything with it because my mother just brushed off my desire to dance.  Whatever.   I just wish she would have put me a damn dance class. I feel robbed.    Yes, I’m re-re and I need to let that shit go.  But it bothers the hell out of me.  Also, what’s with not making me learn French, German, and Italian in my childhood?  I’d be such an International slut right now if she had only thought about my phuture!  

I’m just kidding. 

I do need to lighten up, though.  I really, really, do. Bitterness dressed up with levity is still bitterness.  I don’t want to be a sour person who makes people cringe.  I’m pretty sure you are all cringing, as you should be.   You must be embarrassed for me right now. 

So I’m trying to forgive my mother for robbing me of a successful dancing career and I’m trying to forgive God for cursing black women and I’m trying to forgive Orlando Bloom for his quotidian shagging of that phucking ugly dingo.

Pheel Phree To Laff At This Phucking Blog (and the layout)

 

 

Can I just say that having re-re blog layouts is fun stuph?  And can I also say that I want to dig a hole and crawl into that motherphucker for all eternity?  And can I also say that people arriving at this dumb ass blog on scholastic trails are in for a big phat phucking surprise? 

Stop leaving me comments saying that this site didn’t help you with your phucking studies.   I don’t care, you big re-re!  Furthermore, stop doing study shortcuts and go park your arse in a phucking library cubicle with actual books.  Last time I checked, they still wrote those motherphuckers.

Orlando Bloom has a 2″ pecker.  That is all.

 

 

 

Statement of Purpose

Dear Department of History Graduate Coordinator,

I am very aware that the deadline to apply to the Fall M.A. program is May 15.  That understood, there is no way in hell that I will have the supplementary application materials delivered to you by that date.  So perchance you have low standards and are also in desperate need of more tuition funds and allow me into your program, I am firing off this statement of purpose to you.

My academic background doesn’t blow, but it doesn’t glow.  I did a damned good job in many courses  and I did a damn bad job in at least two of them.  A GD  B-!   That hurt for days.   But I have a good excuse for that one summer course in 2005:  I was moving, you fools.  It is very hard and very traumatic looking for an apartment in Los Angeles, all right?  I found a great place, by the way.   Venice Beach!   So that move impacted my grade, all right?  Cut me some slack.  

Apart from all this, I landed on the Dean’s List more than a few times.  Think about that shit when you start getting pissy about that B-. 

I double-majored in History and Classical Civilization.  That should tell you two things:  That I have no business savvy and that I live in a dream world.  It’s sad, really.  But a good sad.  I’ve been out of school for about a year, and I’ve used that year to cement my decision to go to grad school.   I know it’s a faux pas to say that you’re pursuing grad school because you can’t hack it in the real world, but… I’m applying to grad school beacuse I can’t hack it in the real world.  My majors don’t mean shit to anyone outside of academia and not much to anyone inside academia. 

I’m lying a little bit.   It’s more than not being able to hack it in real life.  There is also the fact that I don’t want to do much else outside of studying and researching the past.  It’s just something I have an aptitude and a tenderness for.  It just fits; I understand how to deal with it.  And I never was into money.  So please take this application as what it actually truly is:  A request to allow me to pursue my happiness.  Who are you to deny me this?   An asshole, that’s who you are.   Don’t be an asshole.  Induct me into your little academic club of pedantry.   I’ll fit right in and be happy, as happy as one can be when they are surrounded by pedants.

That reminds me of this one bytch who had the gall to correct my pronunciation of “Campus Martius”.  I said “Marshus”, and she said “Mart-ee-us.”  The Latin way.   Bytch!  I had a British professor.   He taught me all wrong and shit (maybe).  But he was sexy and you aren’t, so it will always be “Marshus” to me.    Sorry, but I really hate that bytch tard.  Oh, the campus martius was the ‘Field of Mars = the Martial Field’ where Romans soldiers learned the arts of War.      

My primary field will be Ancient History.   I dig me some Greeks and Romans.  Especially the Romans because they intersect with the New Testament and they have cooler names.  Plus I have a crush on Tiberius.  I am very intrigued by the Ancient Code of Hospitality.  The Greeks called it xenia.   Guest-Friendship.  Sadly, the code of hospitality is all but dead in the modern world. 

Also, I like the myth alot.  Myths are sexy. 

My Secondary field may sound odd to you, but who cares about what you think is odd, Department God?  California History.  Woot!  Or less specific, the U.S. after 1850.  California History is cool beans.  It’s full of dust, cowboys, Indians,  European rapists explorers, gold, whores, and immigrants from all over the phucking world.   Los Angeles history should have been a movie already.  Chinatown hit pieces of it.   Just pieces, though. So much corruption, so little time.

My career goals are as follows:   Since I don’t want to deal with the great unwashed i.e., children, I would like to instruct at the college level.  I may stop here at the M.A., but then again, I might not.  Depends on if some bastard decides to marry me or not.   Just kidding.  I would love to teach children, but for some reason it’s not my true calling.   I need to research and argue with people. 

Please pretty please admit me for Fall 2008.   I don’t want to wait until Winter Quarter!  I do not!  Rescue me from hell, and let me in! 

My life is in your hands.  I trust you’ll do what’s right here.