Showing posts with label Week 9. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Week 9. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Storytelling Week 9: Raven's Lament

They say the world is like a painter’s canvas, blank and empty, awaiting an artist touch to bring out the beauty calling from its expanse. This could not be truer than the world at its beginning. Then, the ground was only white where it was cold and brown where it was warm. The sun and moon shown upon an empty flat world. There was no life. However, it was world balanced on the edge of a blade, awaiting the right touch to fall into either absolute desolation or incomprehensible beauty. The day came where the world shifted, changing from its static circumstance just slightly enough. In the gaze of the moonlight formed a creature of shadows. It was like an ink dot upon unblemished parchment. Its feathers glimmered iridescent, throwing off colors not yet seen upon the world until then: blues, purples, and shimmering greens. Here was the raven, the first life upon an awaiting world.

As the raven took flight, he noticed there was nothing but flat empty expanse around him. It mattered not how long or far he flew. The only change was the shifting of brown to white upon the flat ground. After a time, the novelty of life wore off, and the raven decided to change its surroundings, he shifted into a form that allowed him to mold the world as he pleased. Then, he took up the earth and began to mold them into hills and mountains. He created great peaks and gentle hills, and where he took from the earth, ravines and canyons formed. As he continued his self-appointed tasks, water began to pool where previously it had only run unimpeded, turning into lakes and oceans. When the raven saw this, he was amazed, for he did not know that the rain that fell from the sky bright color beyond that of the sky. Now, the world was no longer flat, but the raven was still not pleased.

He saw the pale blues and soft greens the water had brought to the world. He sought to bring more color to the earth aside from that of the sky and of the ground. He started near the oceans. There he tore up the sand into fine particles where they were bleached by the sun, turning pale yellow. Then he went to the canyon. There at sunset each day, he took the colors of the falling star and painted them onto the side of the walls. He stole pieces from the rainbow and planted them into the ground, and there formed gems of every shade. Still, the raven was not satisfied. He went out and made grass grow upon the empty plains. Fauna that waved in the winds with colors from amber to emerald green. He shaped wild flowers of every species, from those that shown yellow to those that warned away with gleaming red. Even then, the raven was restless. His world was still incomplete. He continued to create. From his mind spouted great trees and creeping vines.

It is from one of this vines, that the world shifted once more. One vine continued to grow beyond what the raven expected or indeed knew, for he was busy elsewhere. As the vine reached maturity, a man stepped out from its bursting seeds. Curious, he began to explore the vibrant world in which he had been born. It took many days for the raven to return to this corner of the world, but when he did, he was greeted with the sight of man. curious the raven alighted in front of him and asked,

“Who are you?”

Raven by DoodleWithGlueGun
DeviantArt
Bibliography: Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911): source

Author's Note: I was inspired to write this story by the raven story about creation. I wanted to know what it was like for the raven before man sprouted from the vine. Granted in the original the raven had not created mountains  until later, or many other things that I attribute to him. It was interesting to me that the raven had such power of creation, but it took until man came out that he began to make animals. I suppose in my mind he did not know he could, because he was not aware that anything could work that way, he does not see himself as a animal but a part of the world.   

Monday, March 20, 2017

Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part B

The first woman
I would prefer this story not to cumulate with the rending of a woman into multiple parts and thus killing her. It would be more interesting for men to fight over her in battle or make it into a similar situation as Solomon and the two woman- with the one who loves her the most sis willing to giver her up to deep her alive . It would also be interesting if she were a goddess who ends up making two separate women based on what the men valued the most-dancing or stitching to each.

 Land of the dead
reminds me of Dante's Inferno- people are punished in similar forms of the sin and those who they met or inspired by in life are
guides upon the path. It would be interesting to make a path for myself or a beloved character and see where they end up in the path of the dead-like harry potter seeing Voldemort having seven different punishments happening at the same time or Bella being tormented incessantly

Which Way by Mike Coates
public domain pictures 
Bibliography:Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911): source


Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part A

Raven Myth
Aspects i want to keep: ability to transform into a man, association with shadows, ability to create living beings, making things to balance out human deeds, and so add to the bland world

possible story: raven sprang from shadows in a fully formed world-but it was like a blank canvas in a way- as he lived in the snowing north- and he began to create color to fill it- men still sprung from the seeds of his plants- he was lonely before man appeared- first words are "who are you"-
I want the mood to be dismal but beautiful
adding colors like brown or green or reds and pinks of flowers- colorful driftwood fire

another one i could write is how the raven is seeing the world today- and his despair at the ignorance of humans and how he has no more power to changed the world because his power came from the blank canvas of the world and we have used it all up with our own decorations or he is gradually corrupted by men -no longer caring as much for nature and slowly becoming more savage and less kindly- all his care for nature vanishes

or how he left Alaska and went to Australian having given up on the men of the tundra- and that is why there are all the weird animals down there- because he was trying to make a place where the animals would be safe from men who hunted them

Fantasy Raven by arnevierlinger
pixabay
Bibliography:Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911): source