Welcome to Mikayla's Blog

The Monkey King depiction:  Source        "One day I awoke. There was nothing before I existed, I was born of the rock and sculpted by the Heavens. I was a handcrafted entity that was untouchable for all my life, until now. I had my run-in with rebellion, I fought back with the Gods, I met with the Buddha, and I became a Buddha. I have a life full of journey and adventure, yet, I yearn for more."        It had been 12 years since the Monkey King had been seen, then, the news came. The Monkey King was going to come out of hiding, but only to train a new enlightened one. He would come out for just one year in order to find someone to fill his shoes, then, he would never be seen again. "I am tired of the responsibility, the weight that I carry on my shoulders is too much for one man, I need someone to carry on the torch" he exclaims, publicly to the town. "I need not this power that I carry, I will be training one new soul to take over...

Monkey Fights a Demon:  Source         Like I said with part A's reading, I was very excited to continue The Monkey King's story to see where the adventure leads. I was not disappointed with where the story led. The story wrapped up very nicely and was very satisfying when Sun became a Buddha himself. To me, the story was something positive to look towards. I understand the role model that Sun serves as to young Chinese Buddhists. I really enjoyed the first story in the second half of the lineup, "The Lord of the Heavens". To me, this story was a great culmination. My favorite passage reads, "the Evening Star came forward, however, and said: “This ape was born of the purest powers of heaven and earth and sun and moon. He has gained the hidden knowledge and has become an immortal. Recall, O Lord, your great love for all that which has life, and forgive him his sin! Issue an order that he be called up to the heavens and be given a charge here, so that he may c...

The Monkey King: The Waterfall:  Source        For this Tuesday's reading, I chose "The Monkey King". I chose this story because back in 2017, a friend who is a Chinese major wanted to introduce me to his favorite Chinese movies, and this was one of them. The movie was interesting, to say the least. The story was entirely different from the movie rendition, which is to be expected, of course. Because of that, I am really glad that I chose to read the original story of the Monkey King, even though I did enjoy the movie. Like with last week's story of Aladdin, the two sources are entirely different but valuable for their own reasons. The same remains true for this week's reading, after going through all of Part A's stories for this reading I realized just how different the source material is from the goofy film that I saw a few years back. Reading about how the Monkey King was born out of rock and fertilized by the Heavens was so interesting, the story gets ...

Personal image of my brother Jackson, me, and my boyfriend, Jake. (In order left to right) Hot Sauce when I was eight years old, I created new daily plot to kill my four-year-old sister I locked her outside in the “too scary” dark I rolled her down the driveway in my “too big” rollerblades I left her hanging at the mercy of the “too tall” monkey bars I always knew my little sister was different, shit, for a solid month of her four-year-old life the only word she would utter was “hot sauce” thus, earning her the appropriate nickname Hot Sauce it was not until eighth grade that I realized just how “weird” that kid was acting out in class, being sent home from school, never felt herself my senior year of high school, Hot Sauces’ freshman year we had a class together, physical science I noticed that the name “Jackson” made a reoccurring appearance across her notebooks The name scrawled in loving calligraphy obsessively across her lab journal s...

Cartoon depiction of Disney's Aladdin:  Source        As I mentioned with Part A of the readings, I was really looking forward to reading the Arabian Nights stories specifically because of reading Aladdin. Much like many children, I got lost in the world of Aladdin as a kid, the whimsical magic, incredible visuals, and easy to follow storylines were perfected by Disney to deliver a wonderful children's movie. The stories that I read this week are no different. Getting lost in the world of Aladdin is not hard to do, the stories are so mesmerizing, reading scenes such as, "Aladdin found everything as the magician had said, gathered some fruit off the trees, and, having got the lamp, arrived at the mouth of the cave. The magician cried out in a great hurry: "Make haste and give me the lamp." This Aladdin refused to do until he was out of the cave. The magician flew into a terrible passion, and throwing some more powder on the fire, he said something, and th...

Image of the cartoon (Disney) Aladdin:  Source        Like many, the majority of what I know about Arabian nights, or, 1001 Nights, is from the Disney cartoon Aladdin. These readings were quite wonderful, and I genuinely enjoyed my time reading the first half of the Arabian Nights stories. Being exposed to other cultures, specifically Middle Eastern counties literature, is very important to me. I took a World Literature course last semester where we read Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih (one of my favorite novels ever) and Kim by Rudyard Kipling. So I have been exposed to a fair amount of Eastern literature, but not nearly as much as I would like. Of course, I am looking forward to the second part of the readings where I get to read Aladdin, but these stories were still very intriguing. My favorite story of this bunch was "The Sultan and the Fish" because of the storytelling aspect. This story has Scheherazade telling a story about a gen...

Buddha Figure:  Source          Of course, everyone knows the story of THE Buddha. But what about those doing good for others without recognition. Those people who do right in the world without anyone ever knowing? Well, that is what my brother aimed to do when we were young. We are old and tired now, but when we were young, my brother and I would travel around to the poorest areas in the villages at night. We would drop off bread, clean water, and other necessary material goods. We wanted to be anonymous. Of course, we went our separate paths and I got married and had children, but my brother devoted his life to the public without ever once being publicly known, he never wanted any fame or fortune, he did not want the attention. In fact, he wanted quite the opposite. My brother is dead and gone now, so that is why I have finally decided to tell his story.       My brother went to jail at age 17 and was away for 6 years. I do not want t...

  Personal Image of a statue of Buddha from my time in Hong Kong   For me, this was the most exciting reading to work on so far. As I have previously mentioned, I was raised Buddhist by my father, so I have always had a deep connection with Buddhism and the "life of Buddha". I have made the joke many times that both my father and I are terrible Buddhists in practice, so any opportunity to learn more about the culture, the faith, and the history is exciting to me. Reading all of these stories this week made me feel more in tune with the faith that I was brought up in, obviously being in America, there is not much Buddhist culture to latch onto or learn about, but reading these little anecdotes was a very valuable experience for me. I loved reading the legends and the stories and the fables, all of the different aspects that lead from Siddartha Guatama becoming the Buddha. My favorite story, and the focal point of my notes, is "Siddhartha Becomes the Buddha". Thi...

For my project, I am eager to learn about the cultural depiction of dogs. I am interested to see how they work themselves into the mythology, how they are regarded through history, and how they have served humans through time. I am especially interested in Aesop's fables, but I would like to expand to see how they translate into Greek/Roman/Norse/etc. mythology. More than anything, my Storybook will be more of an anthology, a collection of stories about dogs, rather than a linear narrative. Possible Story Sources Aesop's Fables: The Farmer and His Dogs : The key feature of this story is that one cold winter a farmer resorts to killing all of his animals in order to survive, the dogs catch on and figure that they ought to escape before they are next. This, to me, shows how dogs are held in a higher morality as compared to other animals, as the farmer goes through all of his other animals before even thinking about eating the dogs. Aesop's Fables: The Dog and the ...

The Cultural Depictions of Dogs:  Homepage Goofy, who is allegedly actually a cow, not a dog:  Source

1986 Banner,  Source Story Lab; Microfiction Summer of 1986 It was not hard to make friends in a small town like Verona, Texas. When you go to school you are practically assigned a couple dozen friends for life, no one really left our small town, and no one really came in. There is something to be said about this sort of extreme consistency, but I never really found it bland. I had my couple of friends, of course, but it was more obligatory friendship rather than a close bond, and maybe that’s why I was seeking more. In the summer of 1986 my mom had heard on the radio about a few girls my age going missing in some of the neighboring towns, the reporter summed it up to them running away with their boyfriends, so mom quit allowing me to see Peter and sent me away for the summer to make some new friends. Mom said the girls who ran away with their boyfriends were just bored and needed stimulation, thus earning me a one-way ticket to the YWCA camp that a few of my friends were...

Ganymede and the Eagle, by La Sueur:  Source Reading Notes, Part B:         As previously mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed this week's readings that I have chosen, Psyche and Cupid by Apuleius. This section of stories, to me, felt the most action-packed. This section felt like it told a chronological story, like "Venus and the Goddesses, Psyche's Prayer, Venus and Mercury, Venus and Psyche, Psyche's Next Task, The Third Task, The Jar of Beauty, The Sleep of the Dead, The Wedding Feast, and The Escape". The stories, in my opinion, in Section B, are more linear than Section A, which felt more sporadic and pieced together. I genuinely enjoyed both sections and all 21 stories, but my favorite was "The Third Task". This story is a quick little story that encompasses a lot of detail. It is the 6th story in the second section, and I really enjoyed reading it. The story is the final bit of the linear focus of the story, and to me, was the most intriguing sto...

Psyche and Amor, also known as Psyche Receiving Cupid's First Kiss (1798), by François Gérard: a symbolic butterfly hovers over Psyche in a moment of innocence poised before sexual awakening. Source:  Source Reading Notes:           Originally from Metamorphoses, also known as "The Golden Ass", is a tale about overcoming love and the psyche. Although I enjoyed the entirety Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche, my favorite story by far was "Psyche's beauty" as it displayed a different aspect of the overarching narrative. I thought that the text was the most intriguing of the section, and to me, told the best part of the story. The story opens on an uplifting positive note, the story is one of absolute beauty of the highest regards, "In a certain city there lived a king and queen who had three daughters of surpassing beauty. Though the elder two were extremely pleasing, still it was thought they were only worthy of mortal praise, but the youngest girl’...