MEMOIRS OF THE PHOENIX
The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.
-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The phoenix has been an enduring mythological symbol for millennia and across vastly different cultures. Despite such varieties of societies and times, the phoenix is consistently characterized as a bird with brightly colored plumage, which, after a long life, dies in a fire of its own making only to rise again from the ashes. From religious and naturalistic symbolism in ancient Egypt, to a secular symbol for armies, communities, and even societies, as well as an often-used literary symbol, this mythical bird's representation of death and rebirth seems to resonate with humankind's aspirations.
Although many cultures have their own interpretation of the phoenix, the differences in nuance are overshadowed by the mythical creature's more homogeneous characteristics. The phoenix is always a bird, usually having plumage of colors corresponding to fire: yellow, orange, red, and gold. The most universal characteristic is the bird's ability to resurrect. Living a long life (the exact age can vary from five hundred to over a thousand years), the bird dies in a self-created fire, burning into a pile of ashes, from which a phoenix chick is born, representing a cyclical process of life from death. Because it is reborn from its own death, the phoenix also took on the characteristics of regeneration and immortality.
Let us imagine the Phoenix has written for us Memoirs. Death, always wishing for us a full and meaningful life, reads to us from these Memoirs. Â
We therefore recall here some of these from that audience:
1. How our friend Death both preserves and enhances our life.
2. How it was that the American Indian Swan-Woman wove the first basket and how the first poem rose up from Dawn.
3. How it was that problems of translation from the Japanese revealed something unexpected about the roots of language and something astounding about me and perhaps ourselves.
4. How it was that geometry came to be and has re-marked a paradox of our age: the rationality of the irrational.
5. Finally, we invite Sophocles to return and recall for us how it was necessary that Oedipus step back into his origins and so is even now bursting forth  Phoenix-like from our future.
In conclusion, such an attempt to rethink ourselves from the beginning may not now be inappropriate and might even find an audience. Â
Memoirs of the Phoenix: Shatterings
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Book Details
Author(s)Reece Harris
PublisherOutskirts Press
ISBN / ASIN1432776223
ISBN-139781432776220
AvailabilityUsually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank699,857
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸