Create your own origin (or ``no-origin'', if you prefer) myth, using metaphors of your choice to express in a transcendent way some of the important aspects of your own ``cosmic order''. (Use your imagination!) What does your myth have in common with the myths we have read in class? How is it different?
In the beginning there was the hula hoop. There was no land, no water, no light, no dark, no grey area--all was the hula hoop, and the hula hoop was all.
Then the hula hoop began to move. It was pulled by something unknown: magic, fate, [centrifugal] force? No one knows for sure. But for some reason it began making slow sideways circles in the nothingness. The mystical plastic pellets inside it began to make a high, irritating whirring sound like an electric coffee bean grinder. Gradually, the white stripes on the pale purple Toy of the Heavens disappeared into a blur. It was moving that fast.
Just then (or 5.2 seconds later; is it really that important?), famed radio personality and comic actor Red Buttons emerged from the center of the 'hoop.
``42'' Red said. Nothing happened.
``Damn,'' he said, ``I was sure that would work.''
Scratching his pugnacious nose, Red thought for a minute (exactly).
``Gosh, it's dark in the nothingness,'' he said.
He fumbled for his cigar box and lighter. It took him three tries, but he finally got one lit. Sparks flew out of it, and those became the stars. Tobacco fell out of it, and that became the planets. It was a very cheap cigar, one of those short, cheap ones they sell at gas stations in Michigan.
``Not like the ones in Miami,'' Mr Buttons said, taking a sad puff. ``I've got a little `connection' down there. Hoo boy! Those things are good!''
Just then, the hula hoop began to move again, and Red hobbled over to climb back through it to the other side. When he emerged from the portal, he was standing on some spongy grey rock, not unlike a 60s Star Trek set.
``What is this strange feeling in my throat?'' Red said, puzzled. ``I believe I'll call it... `thirst'.'' And the liquid I need... I believe I'll call it... `bourbon'.'' And with that, a fantastic shot glass with the number 42 on it appeared in his hand.
``That's all I get?'' he asked the Nothingness above him. ``Well, better than nothing.''
He downed the bourbon in one swallow, and began ``inventing'' other fun liquids. After an hour or so, he had had so much fun that he could no longer enunciate, so no more magic liquid would appear. And he had spilled it all over himself and the Styrofoam rocks. And that is how the oceans came to be.
Inadvertently inventing sleep, Red passed out and woke up unwell, inadvertently inventing projectile vomiting. Every time he vomited, a cloud of mystical mixed drink would emerge from his throat and change into neat pairs of wild animals. None of these animals exist today though, because they were all brothers and sisters and thought mating would be ``too weird''.
But Red just kept on vomiting and when he got to the place chronologically where he had ordered seven magic whiskey sours, they turned into distantly related deer who did marry but were always sensitive about Mormon jokes.
Poor Red recovered from his hangover, looked around at the universe he had created, and decided he had better get a copyright or those bastards at Warner were going to rip him off. And that is why he screams: ``As a [representative] of Buttons, Inc., I order you to cease and desist!'' at the corner of Hollywood and Vine at passersby, all day, and all of the bourbon-sloshed night.
I started my story with an eternal hula hoop, a perfect, circular state from which Red Buttons emerges to destroy the tranquility. I answer the question of who created the universe (Red, naturally), but I don't answer the larger question: Who created Red? And for that matter, Who created the hula hoop? In this way, I suppose my myth can be seen as Creator-less, since my mystical hula hoop did not create itself, and it has been there since the beginning.
The hula hoop has something of a symbolic meaning in my personal culture. It's sort of an anti-phallic symbol, because I'm tired of reading about them and wanted to do something different. Red appears through an object that could symbolize a birth canal.
Red is also not a grad deity because he is fallible. Like the Coyote in our Native American myths, Red makes mistakes. His very first attempt to create the universe, by referencing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the [Galaxy], is completely unsuccessful. In fact, his creation of the universe and all the things in it [is] entirely accidental.
A possible mode of analysis for my myth is trying to understand it numerically. Numbers are present throughout, from Red's first utterance of ``42'' through his three tires to light a cigarette and the number of animals he creates while projectile vomiting. That would be a silly mode of analysis for this myth, however, because I chose the numbers almost completely arbitrarily.
An important question one must ask oneself when analyzing a myth is, Do the figures in it represent good and evil, or did they come into existence before good and evil existed? In this case I would say Red has always been immoral and always will be.
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