myth

In September I will be teaching three courses and facilitating various workshops. The courses are focused on creativity, culture, and personal development. The workshops are focused on the growing issues surrounding technology use among youth (and adults). Some of the workshops are private events (for specific organizations, or in particular schools). If you are interested in attending or sponsoring a workshop, please let me know.

The courses I will be teaching at Kwantlen are for those interested in educational experiences that are purposeful, engaging, fun, and useful. My goal with these courses is to help students rediscover the authentic joy of learning. Here are the course descriptions:

Mythological Narratives

Creative writing is a powerful, ancient, and yet delicate practice. We write -- quietly, often in isolation, in tentative and mercurial moods. We revise, and turn back upon our own narratives, and wonder about the reception our work might meet in the world. Sometimes we hide manuscripts in drawers, or take deliberate action -- as did Franz Kafka and Mahatma Gandhi -- to prevent our words from making their way to an audience. Kafka and Gandhi were both unsuccessful in preventing their writings from being destroyed; but their impulse to do so, to keep hooded the hawk of their creativity, is common among writers of all stripes. We're not sure that we have, really, anything to say; or we are afraid that if our words are not well met we might ourselves be wounded. Or we believe, as did the ancient Egyptians, that words have their own life, for good or for ill, and that writing is a means of seizing the power of the gods. This course attempts to explore this conversation -- between the writer and the wider world -- and to find ways of bringing our writing safely out of hiding.

We will be exploring myth, and writing craft, and method, and the strategic practices every writer must learn in wrestling with narrative. Each of us will examine our strengths -- the ways in which the natural mood and flavour of our writing makes itself known -- and our vulnerabilities as well: how we get stuck, or lazy, how we lost confidence and gain doubt. How we learn to shut down and hope the whole thing will go away.

This course is about writing, and reading, and making a claim for the fundamental right of storytelling. Within that context, we will explore the ancient practices of myth-making (particularly as regards family and culture), the hurdles of writing (as they involve craft and precision and clarity) and the great gifts we might receive from others of our creative kin (that is to say, the long tradition of writers of writers and myth-makers).

The threshold between fact and fiction (which is not the same as that between truth and lie) is one of the territories of myth. In this course we stake out that territory, inspecting the geology of its forms and ideals, finding our own individual places to homestead. Myth involves the search for truth, and fidelity to fact, yet also an awareness that truth and fact are often provisional, and mythological; they are shapeshifters on the wide-open plain of creativity. We will explore what this means, and what to do about it.

For more information, feel free to review the course page.
The course is offered Tuesdays, beginning September 7, from 10:00am to 12:50pm, at Kwantlen's Surrey campus.
The prerequisites for this course are minimal: 30 credits of 1100 or higher courses, or permission from the instructor. If you are interested in the course but unsure about your suitability, please let me know.

Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts 3100

This course is about creativity, about making a claim for the fundamental right of intentional creative action. Within that context, we will explore the ancient and modern practices of creative endeavor (particularly as regards family and culture), the hurdles of creativity (as they involve craft and precision and clarity) and the great gifts we might receive from others of our creative kin (that is to say, the long tradition of writers, poets, sculptors, dancers, craftspeople of all stripes, musicians, myth-makers, and so on). Throughout this process, our guiding archetype will be that of the trickster.

The goal of the course (from my point of view, at least), is to have fun: to preserve and nurture the creative and imaginative spirit that is the foundation of all the arts and sciences. The course will include a variety of learning experiences contingent upon regular attendance and dedicated participation. Because creativity is an interactive process, much of the class time will be devoted to group experiential exercises, individual reflective tasks, collaborative endeavors, and practical assignments.

For more information, feel free to review the course page.
The course is offered Thursdays, beginning September 9, from 10:00am to 12:50pm, at Kwantlen's Surrey campus.
The prerequisites for this course are minimal: 30 credits of 1100 or higher courses, or permission from the instructor. If you are interested in the course but unsure about your suitability, please let me know.

I am lost in a sea of confusion of my own making.

How did I get here? Where am I going?

How many times have I experienced this this deja vu of endless repetition.

I have wandered for years, not knowing to which horizon I am traveling.

Ghosts of people pass me everyday; Familiar faces are few and fade together.

The world whirls around me as if I’m caught in a whirlpool, and I am sinking fast.

Erebus creeps in from the edges, and covers all in his embrace.

The hands of unseen spectres try to pull me under.

I run.

As Tierney has kindly pointed out, Carl Jung's Red Book will be published this fall. Here are some of the mythological motifs it contains:

"The footnotes ... include references to Faust, Keats, Ovid, the Norse gods Odin and Thor, the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, the Greek goddess Hecate, ancient Gnostic texts, Greek Hyperboreans, King Herod, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, astrology, the artist Giacometti and the alchemical formulation of gold. And that’s just naming a few. The central premise of the book ... is that Jung had become disillusioned with scientific rationalism — what he called 'the spirit of the times' — and over the course of many quixotic encounters with his own soul and with other inner figures, he comes to know and appreciate 'the spirit of the depths,' a field that makes room for magic, coincidence and the mythological metaphors delivered by dreams."