A trickster blog
This will be an attempt to do a trickster blog, and it is an outgrowth of the online journal, Trickster's Way . For a good introduction to trickster, see Peter Michaels' site: A Fool's Paradise or Alan Abel's site: The Trickster or just Google trickster or tricksters, or check my notes below.
billspinks
Senior Dauber
Who is Trickster and how did this site come to be named what it is:
What’s in a Name (down and dirty, of course)
Who is Trickster and how did this site come to be named what it is:
What’s in a Name (down and dirty, of course)
Trickster, depending on your source, is either an Amerindian mythic figure (coyote, raven, etc), an archetypal figure of psychological or narrative import (fox, tinkers, cons, etc), a version of an undeveloped cultural hero who allows one to laugh at oneself and can chart the shoals of cultural prohibition and possibility, a universal figure that embodies the liminality of human existence, a mediator between the gods and humans who is the very nature of knowing and predicting, a trumped-up category of non-distinctive cultural confusion, or, as I have argued elsewhere, a pattern of semiotic renewal and creativity that plays out the wondrous patterns of our ambivalent intelligence. It is certain that the trickster figure is complex, and the literature about trickster is voluminous, but here I will play (a trickster penchant) with the notions of ambivalence, laugher, marginality, and transformation to engage in reflection on life and the world. I hope it proves of use to you.
A word about the name of this blog. That story is something of a trickster narrative itself. You see, as part of my retirement from teaching I have been trying to learn how to repair and build computers, and that has lead me to the notion of recycling computers and working with open-source systems like Linux to extend the access of folks to the information age. Well, one of my donators wanted a receipt, and all of the sudden, I needed a name. So I thought of the Northwest Indian story of Raven (as the one who, when the Creator has made a world of total water, dives down and brings up mud to start the land on which human beings will live) and came up with the Raven’s Mud Project. Of course, as I worked on notes for the computers I was diagnosing, refurbishing, or deconstructing, I needed a log, and so I became the Senior Mud Dauber, and the idea of for the blog just took over my head, and I said, "Silly me, Trickster has come to Visit." Hope that helps clarify what must be a rather strange collection of ideas and patterns.
.............................Happy Tricks to You!
