I could have had the car repaired – again. I could have scheduled the second doctor’s appointment between 8 and 12. But no. Royal Crest Estates and AIMCO in their hideous (lack of) customer service, screwed me up – AGAIN. I tried desperately not to run over to the leasing office just to choke everyone in the office with my bare hands. And then you wonder why people go so berserk with rage they show up at places of business with sharp implements.Meanwhile, the floor guy who I drove all the way to Seabrook at 3 in the afternoon to meet over a week ago still hasn’t sent an estimate, despite repeated promises to do so. Now I need to find another who is more reliable.
Meanwhile, I discover that the Massachusetts Motor Vehicles Vehicle Registration WEBSITE is only operational Monday through Friday, 9-5 when 99% of drivers are at their place of employment and shouldn’t be accessing anything for personal business. REALLY, Massachusetts??? Do Massachusetts businesses know you’re stealing their employees’ time? Only open during business hours??? The WEBSITE?!? Oh please get me out of this hell hole governed by some of the most stupid human beings on the planet. The Website. THE WEBSITE.
Meanwhile, Stop & Shop is also getting more and more idiotic by the day ... I rarely go there any more due to their being the headquarters of the Soccer Mom’s Associative Ring of Massachusetts. (SMARM). Official SMARM Vehicle: SUV. Official Activity: Being raving idiots and so narcissistically lazy they can’t amble their wobbly, dimpled rumps a mere 5 feet to a shopping cart bay. Now they’ve talked S&S into foregoing the utterly delicious San Pellegrino (which I love, adore and am hopelessly addicted to) in favor of (are you sitting down?) Polar Double Fudge Cheesecake Seltzer Water!!!
I stood in the bottled water aisle and shrieked, “Double Fudge Cheesecake Seltzer Water!?? What evil woman came up with this idea???!!!?” A man AND a woman standing behind me fell down on the floor laughing. Because you know it was a woman. Every one knows it was a woman. No man on the planet woke up one morning and burbled, “You know what would taste good? Double Fudge Cheesecake Tonic Water!”
Three women cashiers agreed with me as well – only an idiot woman would have thought up THAT idea, because only fat, idiot, dimply-assed women are buying it. Back to Market Basket, which has more common sense at the moment.
(Deep breath). BREATHE, woman. Keep Calm and … whatever.
I still don’t know how to create parallel universes and step into them (see last entry), but I do know what I need to prepare for being able to do it: visualization, imagination, invocation, focus, intent … WILL. The underside of that: no distraction, disorder, disarray, disquiet.
One of the more interesting invocations I’ve read came out of Sex & Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (Leick). Background: Inanna is preparing to marry her beloved young gorgeous shepherd Piero … er, I mean, Dumuzi.
“She bathed in water, anointed herself with sweet oil,Put on for an outer garment the grand Queenly robe,
Also took her “man-beast” amulets,
Was strengthening the lapis-lazuli stones on her neck,
And held her cylinder seal in her hand.
The young lady stood waiting, Dumuzi pushed open the door,
And like a moonbeam she came forth to him out of the house.
He looked at her, rejoiced in her, took her in his arms and kissed her.”
Leick, Gwendolyn. Sex & Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature. Routledge, London and New York. 1994, 2003. Page 78.
“Man-Beast amulets”.
See, now, I’m once again questioning interpretative bias. The negative connotation of the word “beast” sounds condescending and christian to me, right out of the “We are the boss of you!” mentality that American christians spout on a regular basis, as they stagger drunkenly around in the woods with their shotguns waving vicious bear traps and spraying each other in the face with buckshot.
In this context, let’s go back to the Sumerians, who are trying to write a love story here. In much of their erotic love poetry, and even in charms and spells, Sumerians drew allegorical lines between the lust of human male animal and the lust they witnessed in the animals around them: the bull, the ram, the lion, the goat, and so forth. Robert D. Biggs, in ŠÀ. ZI. GA ancient Mesopotamian potency incantations (1967) wrote that, based upon potency incantations, “to describe the copulation of animals was considered sexually stimulating”, which is why you see women crying out to their bridegrooms to “mount me like a wild bull!”
So, the “man-beast amulet” takes on a certain significance here … especially if you’re doing magick. Do we know what those looked like? Can we design a new one? For example, a “centaur” would be considered a “man-beast” (i.e., man and horse), as would a sphinx (man, lion, bull, I think, but don’t quote me on that). An amulet depicting the god Pan would fulfill that requirement, or I’m even thinking a Cesare Borgia amulet: he’s a man, known for his virility and lust; their family crest was a bull! Would that count?
The importance, however, is that this is Inanna wearing the amulet. She’s preparing to marry her beloved Dumuzi (later known as Tammuz), and this is one of the ways she prepares for the wedding night: she puts on her “man-beast amulets”. If a Goddess does this to enchant her handsome bridegroom, I’m thinking there must be some good reason for it. I WISH I were the creative sort who could design her own “man-beast amulets” out of Sculpey© and bake them!
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