The real difficulty I had was starting and completing an assignment that is 1) antithetical to my style of self-exploration, 2) did not do much to foster my creativity, and that 3) gave me very little in regard to practical uses of mass Internet communication–the very reason why I wanted to take this class in the first place. I only hope that others had more to gain than I did.

This image sums up how I feel about this blog.

This entire assignment is personal. The main reason why one puts art and information on the Internet is so that it may be shared with people who are not familiar with you personally. My image of wide scope might be vaguely interesting to others, but I have done relatively nothing of significance in my life so far. My image of wide scope would be interesting to people who do not know who I am only after I, say, become a famous children’s book author. The blog format also does not allow for easy reading for people who are not familiar with Mystories. Even after completing this assignment, I still have this indistinct feeling of puzzled bewilderment when I look at even the best Mystory examples, such as Vanessa Attia’s blog. It’s a sensation that lingers from the first few days of class when I first saw the blog being used in this unusual way. I guess I could liken the feeling to perhaps taking a fashion class that insists the students use books as hats.

Well, at least it's somewhat interesting, if not practical.

"Their silhouettes moved in the headlights of the southbound cars."

The story that encapsulates my Mood is my community story. Ponce de León achieved a form of immortality as he searched for the Fountain of Youth. Although he failed in the quest he is now remembered for, he still did it. He explored. He conquered. He is remembered.

The moon is wonder. It is danger. It is consequence. It is magic. It is the passage of time. It is adventure.

And, it is a symbol of achievement. “Shoot for the moon” is an oft-repeated phrase. Don’t be idle. Shoot for the moon. It will be there when you are gone. It is a reminder of one thing that is absolutely certain: all that is living shall die. And I? I will live till I die.

The Moon Tarot

The concept of the consenquences of the passage of time and how time consumes everything is tied to my entertainment, family, and community stories. The story of the hitchiker emphasizes one’s own mortality, as does the stories of Ponce de Leon (regarding his quest for immortality); the moon itself speaks in Majora’s Mask–it only states, “I will consume…I will consume everything.” Link himself, a symbol of the eternal child (much like Peter Pan) we learn in another part of the series dies eventually as well.

The moon has been as symbol for fertility, a symbol for change, birth, and death all in one, which reflects the complexity of life itself just as the moon reflects the light of the sun.

It tells me, “Don’t be idle; there’s no time to be idle–the world you haven’t yet explored is ending, one second at a time.” The moon forces you to acknowledge the consequence of wasting time and compels you to constantly move forward.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Insanity is an experiential effect often attributed to the moon. The affect was known as “lunacy,” from which our modern usage of the word derives. But, the stories I’ve shared on this blog have very little to do with madness.

In my family narratives, the moon is many things, all at once, but reveals feelings when I am ready to understand them. When I was a little girl, the crescent-shaped hole was consequence. I almost felt betrayed. A sense of extreme disillusionment came over me when I finally realized that I lived in a world that I could affect in irreversible ways. When I saw the moon again in the eyes of a dead man, I saw something in it that I did not see as a small child. I saw magic. Not the kind of illusive magic that I had believed in before, but something else. I can imagine that the only person to feel the way that I did at that very moment was the first person to ever gaze upon the dark side of the moon.

In my entertainment narrative, the feeling was different as the moon bore down on the world. There was a sense of imminent destruction if action was not taken. Near the end of the game, Link is shepherded into the very moon itself. It is an otherworldly, ethereal place with a languid sense of calm. There is only a green hill with a single tree where mysterious children play in masks. The colors are saturated, and everything ebbs and flows in a blurred tide of vivid hues.

Within the Moon

In my community story, Ponce de León takes to the moon-swayed sea. His adventures are lived on the ocean as he searches for his mystical fountain of eternal life. It is a escapade fit for a storybook. It is a storybook come to life, told as history by the people who would teach us all that we knew. I remember being in elementary school when my teacher first told the story to a classroom full of children who would not truly understand the value of a fountain of youth. At least, not until they were all grown up. Although the goal was not fully understood, the adventure was much appreciated.

The Triple Goddess

The moon is a light in a stole of darkness. But, all know that the light of the moon is only a reflection of the sun. The moon is associated with the feminine, the sensual, the romantic, the manic, the changeable. The classic “Triple Goddess” of maiden, mother, and crone is symbolized by phases of the moon. The waxing “maiden” moon is associated with enchantment and youthful enthusiasm, which reflects my state when I cut the waxing moon-like shape into my brother’s shirt as a child. The “crone” represents wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.

The Crescent

In Islam, the crescent moon symbolizes victory over death. There could not be a more apt symbol for the quest for immortality. The Fountain of Youth that Ponce de León sought out was the hope for overcoming death itself forever.

In the story of the Tarot, the Moon is a powerful card. All the mysteries sought can be found under the glow of the full moon…at least…there are the dark mysteries, ones regarding the most primal and ancient powers; powers of nature, not of civilization. It is a land poets, artists, musicians and madmen know well, a terrifying, alluring place, with very different rules. Wolves, howling in homage to the moon, run wild across this land, hunting along side maidens with bow and arrows; and creatures from childhood nightmares and fantasies peer from shadows, eyes glowing.

The Moon

My signifier, the moon, is found throughout the narratives of my Mystory. It was, at first, just a sliver–a small cut I made in my brother’s shirt when I was too young to understand consequence; it was a small, crescent-shaped hole that taught me that there are things in this world that cannot be undone. The moon then waxed and waned for me in the eyes of a man that looked out towards nothing at all. The moon dominated the sky and loomed overhead with malice in The Legend of Zelda–as day by day, hour by hour, the approaching moon threatened to consume…everything. It was the fear of being consumed by death that drove Juan Ponce de León to search for the Fountain of Youth, according to legend. Anyone on the ocean is subject to the power of the moon as it moves the shifting seas.

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

- Arthur O’Shaughnessy, from Music and Moonlight