Today's class opened with the long statement of an Abyssinian tribal woman in response to "what is a woman?". She says, in short, that a woman can never know what it is to be a man, nor a man a woman, and that a woman will always be a mother, once she has become one. Contemplation of things like this(that end up touching to some extent or another on innate gender differences/realities)usually results in making me feel oddly uneasy; however, I do rather agree with Mr. Sexson's observation that imagination is the foundation of compassion. Shakespeare wasn't a female, and yet in his work we often find fascinating, witty, deep female conciousnesses(sp?). Hayao Miyazaki is a man, yet he makes films that revolve around the journeys of a female hero. Such a litany could go on for some time, yet it does remain that imagination does act as a spur to empathy, gender, racial or otherwise.
In terms of words, two were introduced today. Sparagmos, which refers to the tearing or rending of living flesh(yuck), and metapsychosis, which is the transmigration of the soul from one body to another, which goes along the lines of nothing ever really dies, it only changes. And barbarian, which means roughly "a person who does not speak my language."
We were also introduced to the history of the herms, which were blocks/statues at crossroads in Greece dedicated to Hermes--as the name suggests--with large erections attached to them. When religous reform came to Greece, they went around and broke all of the erections off. Wonder if it was the same "they" who burnt down the library in Alexandria. Leave it to the pernicous, understood They.