Banishing and Recovering

All the world’s roads lead to the heart of the Warrior;

she plunges unhesitatingly into the river of passions

always flowing through her life.

The warrior knows that she is free to choose her desires

and she makes these decisions with

courage, detachment and – sometimes

with just a  touch of madness.

She embraces her passions and enjoys them intensely.

She knows that there is no no need to renounce the pleasures

of conquest; they are part of life

and bring joy to all those

who participate in them.

But she never loses sight of things that last

or of the strong bonds forged over time.

A Warrior can distinguish between

the transient

and the enduring.

Warrior of the Light:  A Manual, Paulo Coelho, Harper One Publishers, 2003, pg. 2

Magick:   spent one entire afternoon in mid-August banishing things ... this was the night of the new moon of August; no better a time for banishing things.  Impediments, blockages, everything.  What a day it had been ... I could not seem to regain my wits, or my peace of mind, at all.  I have a friend who had to sit through all the agony and the tears and the self-recrimination (although, as good friends do, she held him completely accountable for everything and called him every name in the book).  Then around 5:30 at night, these appeared.  No, not from the heartbreaker, from her ... just because she felt so bad for me.  What are friends for?  They were a “Happy Anniversary” bouquet, so naturally, I said, “Huh?  Anniversary of what?”  The card read, “Happy Anniversary a year early, to you and to the wonderful man who knocks Bozo the Clown off his pedestal.”  I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing.  Like I said ... and I did appreciate the sentiment.

The August new moon – in Virgo – set the scene for the banishment of some things, the call for the growth of others.  I began the meditation not quite in any frame of mind to seek out anyone else in the love sphere ... as this was one of those “once in a lifetime” loves you don’t get over all that easily ... but I did ask for aid in healing the shattered heart I was dealing with, because boy, did I need it.

Then I remembered something:  I had a lot of mystical training behind me.  That’s how upended I was – I’d forgotten that in the the hysteria of the heartbreak.  Yes, I’d forgotten I had power.  I didn’t have to be the victim of happenstance; I had more power than that.

Did a lot of research on rituals that didn’t involve forcing him to do something against his will.    I mean, really, how much fun is forcing someone to love you against their will?  Not much.

I finally decided on 3 of them, all performed over time ... giving him the opportunity to rethink what HE was doing; not forcing him to think anything he normally wouldn’t.  Not forcing him to feel things he didn’t feel.  None of that interfering with him ... what I did was re-open the channel of communication between us and keep it open.

And it worked.  Boy and howdy did it work.  This time I did not forget to thank all deities, spirits and powers for their help ... I definitely forgot to do that the last time ... but he reached back out to me ... and I learned anew what love was:  forgiveness, courage, understanding, empathy ... all good things.  The part of our relationship that needed a little tweak was the erotic side of it ... so I reminded him of that ever so gently, and let him respond in his own fashion:  hungry, longing, aching.  I fell head over heels in love with him all over again, a little wiser and more patient this time.

I realized that this man is going to need a lot of encouragement ... a lot of not assuming he knows what I mean when I say something; a lot of clear speaking, clear writing, clear communicating, telling him what I want and letting him roll that around in his libido when he awakens in the morning, horny and hungry.

Valuable lesson learned:  if you’re being trained in something, don’t forget all your lessons when your heart is broken.  Remember who you are and what you’ve been trained to do.  And then do it.

Back to the Biography of Satan (Kersey Graves, 1924).  You’ll recall when we last left this work (July 2), I was rather annoyed at the quotation of the infamous “Rev. Mr. D ----“ and his “fit of inspirational turgescence and mental explosion ...”.  However, Graves, despite forcing readers to meander their way through miles of formal gardens planted with his own flowery prose, does make a few good points – or he has thus far.  There’s only so much flowery prose I can stand before setting it aside for a while.  Most importantly, if you look at the initial “bad deeds” performed by various humans in the early pages of the christian bible, at no point do you read of any of them being tossed into a fiery pit overseen by a nasty dude with horns and a pitchfork.

Good examples:  Adam & Eve, Cain murdering Abel, everyone on the planet except for Noah and his arkful of inhabitants.  In fact, Eve’s big punishment for supposedly getting all of humanity tossed out of Eden was having cramps in childbirth, Cain was sentenced to be a vagabond ... and in Noah’s case?  A lot of people drowned, supposedly – but there was no mention of any of them being roasted in any fiery pits for having committed sins so grievous than the whole world had to be drowned as a result.

Moses never makes mention of either concept in those ten commandments of his.  Graves makes a good point with this – if this concept were intact from the very start of judeo-christian beliefs, you would have thunk that these major crimes would have earned these beings a visit to a fiery pit somewhere ... but it didn’t.  The reason:  this concept didn’t exist at the times these tales were recorded.  So, if I’m looking at Paradise Lost, at which point did the fall of an angel named Lucifer come into the picture?  Because it sure wasn’t in the original story of the banishment from Eden.  Eve spoke to a serpent, the traditional symbol of wisdom and healing, not some fiery fallen angel with a bad temper.  And, Graves reasoned, if humanity had managed to survive without the presence of “The Big Bad” for four thousand years, what did the introduction of such a being actually accomplish?  Has humanity improved in any measurable capacity with the introduction of this being into the belief system?

Gullibility, Irony and Karma

Everything has been upended ... I can’t concentrate enough to work on C’era una volta, I can’t concentrate enough to finish Beautiful Beige, I can’t concentrate on anything, truthfully.

And I have been learning valuable lessons about gullibility.  I know, what a boring topic.  I would agree, had it not just had it hit me squarely between the eyes with the force of a bullet, taking me completely by surprise.

I usually don’t spend a lot of energy on gullibility or even trust, or at least I never thought I did.  I just realized why that was – I didn’t care enough.  Isn’t that a horrible lesson to learn?

Your heart is so lacking in ... whatever emotion most people have that makes them care about “the other” that you don’t really care whether or not they feel anything for you ... some poor schmuck falls head over heels in love with you, and after a time they could spend an hour screaming that you’re the most heartless so-and-so they ever had the misfortune of encountering, and you just regard them as something of a curious insect, because you didn’t share whatever emotion they were feeling.  And yes, that has happened a lot.  I’m not saying it happens every single day of my life – just that it tends to happen more often than it doesn’t.  I seem to have always gotten myself tangled up in uneven relationships ... and 9 times out of 10 that imbalance comes from me not feeling anywhere as much about him as he did about me.

And then – the gods of irony decided it was time for me to learn a valuable lesson – and I fell head over heels in love with the one person even more uninvested than I was.  I think when I regain my wits, I might even see the humor or the irony in it ... perhaps what some might call “karma”.  For the moment, though – I’m completely upended.

I had no familiarity with the other side, or very little of it.  As I said, when it hit me, it didn’t just brush by me and disappear, it hit me with the force of a bullet, and I was left utterly floundering.  It felt like I had just died inside.

I Heard the Trees Scream As They Fell
A clearing, bright as daylight, a body
laying upon the dry leaves, entrails strewn
in crackling tinder, her dried heart bloodied
once torn, silent, accusing and immune

from life’s dim vagaries now, you look down
at the face once animated and young
she says I saw the image, heard the sound
of trees ripped from the roots to which they clung

I heard the trees scream in pain as they fell
Or was it my own cry that I heard,
he lied, he lied, he lied, I know too well
when you are no longer bound to the earth

now falling behind you, anguish so sweet
even the birds are stilled in reverence,
his last endearment, brief as a heartbeat,
my only now forgotten recompense.
© Me, 2015, Snake’s Trail

So there you go, I thought, when I finished with that pitiful ode to my misery.  Stick that on my urn.

Right after that, I started sorting through everything ... it began as clearing out a flash drive, and evolved into a deeper dive into progression.  Actually, it started as a cleaning everything out activity, because I think part of me expected to die. 

Oh, not that I was planning on off’ing myself – hardly.  I’m too big a coward for that.  No, I assumed the Universe was doing it for me.  Wait until the very end and shatter her heart into a million pieces for the proverbial swan song.  Pure entertainment for the Sky Sadist.  When you’ve loved someone that long and that passionately, to have them slide themselves disinterestedly out from under you – where are you going to go but down?  I mean, sure if you had a crush that lasted a week, maybe it stings but you survive.  But all these years?  When they're all tangled up in your head and heart with everything from music to poetry to your own art and your own writing and your own self image to the clothes in your closet to the perfume on your body?  No, you don’t survive that.  I expected to die, because there was nowhere else to go, after that.

So I set about planning on selling everything off, which seemed a worthwhile – and fortunately distracting – activity after the day or so leading up to that poem.  Yes, I had just had my heart shattered into a million irretrievable miniscule pieces, little atomies now spreading out into empty space, alone and isolated - but with what little energy there was left in me, I thought maybe I should start clearing out the rest of me.  Life wasn't all that fun anymore.

Then, for lack of anything else to do, I went to the gym and tried to give myself a heart attack and die (went way over maximum heart rate, running; didn’t work.  All I did was sweat like a pig and stagger home, still not dead but doing my damnedest to get there.)  Looked like it was going to storm out there.  I looked it up.  Yup.  Scattered thunderstorms, starting at 9:15 a.m.  Cheered up briefly.  Maybe I’ll get hit by lightening.  Or hydroplane off the road.  Something!  Anything!  Just take me out of this pain!  Of course not.  The sun came out and stayed out.  Not a storm cloud in sight.  Sure, maybe I’ll hydroplane off the bone dry road in bright sunshine!  Got home safe from a bunch of pointless errands, safe, sound and miserable.

I had learned learned through experience that sometimes things can change in a heartbeat.  Look at the “Miracle Oil” moment.   I say “miracle” although it wasn’t, really – apparently, people have known it was great for muscle stiffness and pain for eons ... no one bothered to tell me, though, until Mr. Spirit Guide got tired of my whining and moaning and decided to slap me upside the head with it:  “Use THIS, you numbskull!”

All I had to do was “google” it, and there it was:  my “miracle oil”.  So I went from relentless leg spasms to very few of them.  Sure, I stink like the fragrant bush the oil is made from, but I can live with that – as long as my legs were no longer twisting themselves into knots.  And that changed in 3/10ths of a second!  So obviously, things can and do change very quickly.

But this time ... no, this time was different.  This time it hurt down into the core of my bones and even further than that – maybe down into my cells, and maybe further than that ... into my quantum self, if such a thing were possible.

I came home and dove into my own past ... for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain, I was obsessively looking for my mother’s recipe for Rosemary Chicken, astounded because I couldn’t find it.  I had been carrying around our collection of recipe cards since I was a child and naïvely believed I could collect all of the recipes in the world ... handwriting and typing them onto index cards and filing them into categories ... and I had started with my mother’s collection.  She added to it over the years, so I found scores of cards and recipes in her handwriting, as well as her mother’s and grandmother’s handwriting.  So much of it I would never – ever – prepare or eat, but I couldn’t bring myself to cull any of it.  But no Rosemary Chicken.  I sprayed the inside of the box with Liquid Gold ... I hadn’t made any effort to preserve the beauty of the wooden box with its little clasp since I inherited it ... and then started looking through external and flash drives to see if I had captured it anywhere else.

This is when I began sorting through everything.  Temporarily forgot about the Rosemary Chicken and started looking at my own recent past ... after the Carbonite disaster, that is; before that, I had nothing, unless I’d fortuitously printed it out like I had the 1993 journal.  Found the history of disinterest on my part.  Found that I had even questioned it on numerous occasions:  will I ever know what love is?  Will I ever care about anyone?  Why is my heart so cold?  Why was my heart made this way?  Why haven’t I found anyone to love?

Then I burst into tears.  Non ce la faccio, mi arrendo.  I can’t do it; I give up.  I went back to Paradise Lost, because it fit.   This wasn’t where I was expecting to go with Paradise Lost; I was expecting to countermand it; instead, I agreed with it.  Even the First Duality can finally shatter into nothing, huh?  Never saw THAT coming ...

Planet Fitness, The Succubae of Balzac, MRI Fantasies and Mosquitos

It has been quite along time since I’ve spent my mornings – well, not the entire morning, merely the first hour or so of it – at a local gym, because, let’s be honest, since the accident, I haven’t really been in any shape to tackle any exercise equipment.  That has been slowly changing.  The physical therapy, the exercise ball and the leg weights, all of it combined made me suspect I might be ready to visit a gym again.  This was morning #4 – and I feel absolutely wonderful.  I’ve been restricting myself to the equipment I know I can use without regretting it desperately the following day, and so far I haven’t regretted it at all.  If anything, I feel more energized and mobile, which is a huge step forward.  Thank you, Planet Fitness!

(Now my only issue of concern is that all of my gym clothes are too big ... before things start falling off of me, I think I might want to look into buying a few things in smaller sizes ...)

Yet another classic procurement from the Used Book Superstore:  The Droll Stories of Balzac (Honoré de Balzac).  This was the Book League of America edition, 1940, with Steele Savage’s illustrations.

Balzac is an author (Charles Dickens is another) whose prose is so densely elegant, I regret the story or novel coming to a conclusion ... this was no different.  In this case (and you all know why this caught my attention), he had written a short story called The Succubus.  And while it’s true I have zero use for one of THOSE (sorry, succubae!), I wondered if he had done any research into the history of the topic before writing it.  I still suspect that the belief in the demonic nature of the incubus/succubus originated with Enoch and the Watchers.  Haven’t been able to find the smoking gun, so to speak, but I do whatever research I can with what little unbiased material there is out there.  And Balzac – who knows what his exact influences were?  I’m sure I’ll find out, soon enough, so stay tuned for the Honoré de Balzac succubus analysis!

So far, we’re back to the deus ex machina (translation for those who need it:  “an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel”) of the time period, which inevitably reads something as follows: 

“ ... and then he handed me a sheaf of ancient documents which had never seen the light of day – until now!”

It’s always ancient scrolls or parchments or dusty packets of ancient correspondences tied in a neat bundle by a faded ribbon, or ... whatever ... that the author just HAS to reveal to his or her eager, drooling public – primarily because the entire plot depends on it.  So yes, I started out the story rolling my eyes and muttering, “Oh, PULEEZE.”  Then you need to wade through a distasteful barrage of “pious” christian anti-semitism and other nonsense ... before getting to the inquest contained in these long-hidden ancient documents ... which I can’t quite bring myself to tackle at the moment, as it seems to be a catalogue more of the idiocy of rural French townsfolk than the history of the succubus “demon” herself, who appears to be “Moorish”.  Well, that would figure.  I can tell you that she seems to be leaving a lot of French rural farmers and tradesmen exhausted to the point of near-death, and we haven’t even met her yet!  Only christians would see sex as something to be feared to the point where it stands a good chance of killing you off.

The last of the MRI’s were done this week, two of them, back to back.  MRIs don’t really bother me ... I’ve been known to come close to taking a nap in them, actually:  the banging and whirring and other noises that might bother most people sound like white noise to me, and I come close to drifting off peacefully.  In this case, I enjoyed the most delicious fantasy ... as opposed to falling asleep ... maybe one of these days I will go into more detail – but on second thought, I probably won’t.  Consider yourselves fortunately spared the embarrassment of it. 

Unfortunately, all peaceful 90 minutes in the machine were almost immediately offset by a long line of really annoying women:  the one who let her annoying little toddler run rampant in the Lahey cafeteria, nearly upending some elderly people in walkers; the elderly driver who decided to take a meandering and leisurely drive up Route 1 at a nerve wracking 35 miles per hour (the speed limit varied between 45 and 55), oblivious to line of seriously irritated drivers behind her, none of whom could pass her or believe me, we would have; the MRI tech who proceeded to lose the velcro buckle to my leg brace, now requiring me to call the brace guy and order a new one; the list went on and on.  This seemed to be, “Annoying Women Day” because ... damn!  They seemed to be out and about in droves.

I was looking for a July poem, and found nothing but, “I walked beneath the dense canopy of lush trees and enjoyed the drone of mosquitos” sorts of things ... I don’t know why, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of that.  Particularly the drone of mosquitos as I seem to have attracted a particularly hungry one, judging by the rapacious chomping he did on my lower legs while I slept the other night.

Instead, the closest anyone will ever get to my MRI fantasy: 

July 18th
Silence between us stretched into ribbon’d
paths, footless and still; if I could track new
passage through these trees, follow moribund
rue clusters touched as you slipped by, askew

and disturbed by your passing; following,
I would know your destination, suspect
your wary avoidance of my winnowing
your irresistible scent, raw aspect

now trailing behind you, anguish so sweet
even the birds are stilled in reverence,
your last endearment, brief as a heartbeat,
my only melodious recompense.

© Me, 18 July 2015, Snake’s Trail
 

More on Fallen Angels, Enoch and Where Lust Went Wrong

Found the most wonderful store in Burlington, which I suspect I will never visit again ... not because of them, but because it was near the Lahey Medical Center ... The Used Book Superstore, at 256 Cambridge Street.  I could have bought out huge swaths of the entire store, but restrained myself.

One of the books I found was the Forbidden Mysteries of Enoch – even though the book was written by cult leader and thoroughly distasteful (not to mention amoral and hypocritical) Elizabeth Clare Prophet – it does provide something useful:  an annotated copy of the Book of Enoch, which I’m finding very helpful, and some other avenues of research:  the writings of Origen, for example.  The rest of her thesis – that those same fallen angels are still around, causing all of the world’s financial, social, military and other ills (riiiiight) – we’ll just toss onto the crackpot conspiracy theory bonfire, shall we?  Why yes, I believe we shall.  As soon as she starts babbling about “the elect” – you know, only “those few of us who know anything”! - you know she’s up to her eyeballs in a pathetically misinformed idiocracy.

Origen is a hoot to read.  The christian terror of sex is nowhere more evident than in the ramblings of this guy, who – although there are a few historians who raise one skeptical eyebrow at the story – took Matthew 19:12 literally ...

“For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” Matthew 19:12, King James Version (KJV)

... by which I mean that he promptly castrated himself so as not to be corrupted by those evil women who brought down the angels mentioned in Enoch.  Unfortunately – possibly due to pain and blood loss -  he didn’t have the common sense to turn up his nose at the actual women who did the “dirty deed”; instead, he basically blamed all women for it ... and I have to say, if I’m going to be blamed for something merely by virtue of being female, I should have at least had the fun of getting passionately deflowered by someone who fell so in love with me from the stratosphere he just had to drop 80,000 feet straight down and pay me a visit.  “Ooooh, c’mere and flutter those BIG  wings, you ethereal hunk, you ...!”

The story of Origen castrating himself – and can we say, “Ouch!” for those days without general anesthesia? – makes one strongly suspect that he had a few serious psychological and emotional issues involving the fairer sex even before he decided that chopping things off was the best way to restrain himself, leaving him probably not the best person to make any comments at all on the story in the Book of Enoch.  Just my own personal opinion.    But pardonez moi while one member of that fairer sex – by which I mean moi – bursts out laughing at him.  The story came from Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica.  And this is the guy christians think is a great theologian?

As for the story of the fallen angels itself?  Origen’s big issue with the tale was that the fallen angels taught women – who might not have been able to attract REAL men any other way – to “adorn” themselves, they had taught the women, “operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had promulgated the powers of enchantments, and had traced out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars—they conferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental mean of womanly ostentation, the radiances of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of orchil with which wools are coloured, and that black powder itself wherewith the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent.”

So Origen’s great grievance over the tale was that the fallen angels taught women to look so sexy and so attractive wearing make-up and jewelry that he felt compelled to join the ranks of the castrati?

Ladies, next time you’re in front of your make-up mirrors, you know who to really thank for the final result.

But, accurate or not – and I really wish this woman would cite her sources! – she introduces her thesis with this:

“Back in the first few centuries after Christ, the Church Fathers were philosophizing on the origins of evil in God’s universe – especially on earth.  All agreed that evil was rooted in the angels who fell from heaven – the familiar scriptural account about an archangel’s rebellion against the Almighty and the angels who were cast out with him.”

“All agreed”?  Really?  So – they had all forgotten about the other story – remember Genesis and the Garden of Eden?  Eve and the apple?  The serpent?  Yes, THAT story of where evil originated.  Now we have another one.  True, both stories, it seems, point fingers at independently thinking, make-up wearing women flashing their jewelry as the true culprits responsible for the downfall of mankind, but how had we gone from Genesis to a bunch of men identified as “Church Fathers” - one of them apparently newly capable of singing soprano with the Vienna Boys Choir – all agreeing that the fallen angels were responsible for everything?  Yeah, I’m thinking she just plain ol’ made that up!

Her unfortunate point of view is evident from the start:  “They taught the women sorcery, incantations and divination – twisted versions of the secrets of heaven.”  Huh?  Those are EXACTLY the “secrets of heaven”, you dimwitted ignoramus!  Tapping into the quantum sea?  Creating one’s own reality?  Following one’s subconscious directions?  Sounds like you’re the one with the twisted versions of things, not Samyaza and his men.  I really don’t like stupid women.  Or maybe you haven’t noticed that?

She complains that the angels “developed an insatiable lust for the daughters of men” – and again, you’re thinking:  really?  What exactly is the issue here?  Corporeal vs. incorporeal?  You have an entire pantheon of gods and goddesses pre-dating this story who actually personified love and lust and all the most glorious aspects of human nature – look at Eros, Anteros, Venus for starters – where did this start to become so ... ugly?  When did a desire for intimacy become so worthy of condemnation?  Prophet doesn’t seem to question her own judgement, although – if you read her online biographical sketches, you learn that lust was a significant part of her own psychological make-up, as she apparently bedded a large swath of men in her cult without blinking - or bothering her husband or their wives with the gory details.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Prophet, apparently.

As for me – I don’t get it.  When did “lust” – a hunger for sexual intimacy – turn so ugly?  This story has so many key components missing, it’s frustrating.

The research continues ...

Beautiful Beige, Creators in Conversation, Art and Moloch

C’era una volta ... now we’re on to Moloch.  What an odd thing Moloch is ... traditional sources say he’s an evil demon that people sacrificed children to ... which makes zero sense ... in the days of tribal supremacy, children would be considered of a source of incredible value to the strength and power of the tribe, not something you had so many of you could sacrifice them ... and in fact, if you look him up now, there is a growing belief among scholars that he wasn’t connected with sacrifices of any kind.  Now, that old Sumerian bugaboo, Abraham – DOES have a rather well-known tale of attempted child sacrifice on his record ... which makes you wonder if the development of the character of Moloch as requiring it wasn’t a bit self-reverential – or at the very least, a major effort at (“Look! It’s Haley’s Comet!”) illusionary distraction - on the part of later writers of rabbinic texts ... which of course, christians inherited and didn’t even question.

Have been thoroughly engrossed in the Transgression:  Creators in Conversation podcasts on iTunes:  Menton J. Matthews, III, David Stoupakis and the awesome Damien Echols in intense conversations about art, energy, souls, magick, passion and creativity, meditating, creating things with thought (thought forms) ... consciousness other than our own ... external intelligences ... pushing yourself beyond your boundaries and stepping outside of your comfort zone, reincarnation ... sigils of the urban landscape, A Winter’s Tale, doing what is uncomfortable in order to grow,  “poetry in motion” posters on the subway ... just exhilarating to listen to, believe me ... if you ever have the chance to tune in – do so.  I still have about 4 or 5 more to go until I’m caught up.

One of the most resonating points for me came from Damien:  his view of art itself.  He had little use for “art for art’s sake” – people who created something because they thought it made them look “cool” or “hip” or it was what people expected of them or wanted ... or whatever.  None of them liked commissions where they were handed something specific:  “paint my kid sister riding a unicorn with a purple sunset and fairies in the bushes,” – they all preferred beginning with a general concept and interpreting that concept the way they saw it in their mind’s eye.

But as for that “general concept”, Damien’s comment was that it was, for him, almost a snapshot of a moment in his own experience; a relic, a souvenir of a moment.  Something you could look at and experience anew what you were thinking, what you were feeling when the first image or concept flooded your mind and you gave voice to it – however you defined that “giving of voice”:  be it painting, poetry, music, sculpture, architecture ...

In my case ... while working daily on C’era una volta, I’d finally finished Beautiful Beige, and was in the process of pinning the three layers together (top, batting, back) in preparation for quilting.  Looking at it, I immediately remembered the moment it depicted:  I was in North Andover, Massachusetts.  I was listening to the song again for the first time in years ... in fact, the last time I’d listened to it, I had been young and clueless.  This time I actually heard the lyrics.

An image came into my mind with the force of an epiphany ... I saw a woman’s hand, reaching out, trembling, to touch the spadix of a lily she has cultivated and planted in a precious golden cup on her windowsill, not aware of the hands reaching hungrily out of bright starry heavens in her direction ... the lily, having been forced to grow in such dry, airless sunlight, is sterile, blunted and sharp edged, but as she touches the one part of it that is sensuous and full, she experiences her own awakening, as a fire that begins to sparkle in the air around her ...

... and I did sense myself in the awakening woman, whose own unwillingness or fear of experiencing a complete surrender to love, has instead tried to recreate and grow safe images of love and all of its riotous blooming vitality, which protected her and kept her a safe distance away from the real thing. The epiphany was that being willing to love does require an unnatural fearlessness out of you ... the willingness to fail utterly, to be heartbroken and devastated ... but until you are willing to reach out fearlessly, you will never know anything other than false and unnaturally controllable images of the real thing.

It IS terrifying to reach out to someone who could possibly shatter your heart, not knowing what you’ll find when you do ...

... which led to the willingness as this blog began, to initiate the “search for a soul mate”.  And so many other things exploded out of that one moment, my Beautiful Beige moment.

In any event, the visual image percolated through moves, upheavals, family tragedies, everything that happened afterwards ... until it finally found its way out and into visual form.  Part of the rest of the story will be told through the quilting design itself.

Aspartame Poisoning, Duality and Great Insults

There was an article that went its way through Facebook – who knows where it originated – on the symptoms of aspartame poisoning.  Two of the symptoms jumped right off the page at me:  muscle spasms and leg numbness/weakness.  I went and looked at the bottle of sugar-free Coffee Mate I’ve been drinking in my coffee every single morning since ... practically forever.  They apparently use sucrose, which was in the same category.

Neither the primary care or the endocrinologist had a lot of studies on aspartame poisoning they could pull up, but both suggested the same thing:  stop using it, then; let’s see what happens.

So ... my first morning using light cream and a teaspoon of stevia instead.  You know, if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s having my morning coffee messed with.  So I wasn’t happy with the taste, no – right now it tastes more like espresso to me than my morning coffee.  But I spent weeks in Italy drinking coffee that tasted exactly like this, so I thought:  I can adapt.  If this is what the issue was, all this time ... I can definitely adapt.  I’m not sure how much time I should be giving this.

In C’era una volta, I was reaching the point where I needed to figure out where the character of Satan originated.  I knew he wasn’t part of the Jewish tradition, so I needed to learn where the concept originated and why – mainly because I needed to know where John Milton came up with his rather colorful version of the guy.  Christians had to have drawn it from somewhere, and for some reason ... surely there had to be more to it than just controlling people out of fear, although I’m sure that was an added benefit of coming up with the Big Bad to point at and blame for everything they did that fell short of ethical purity.

I also knew other traditions believed in a “dark and light” duality, but even they hadn’t come up with a being to embody the dark side of things.  Zoroaster, for example, taught that darkness and light (or also translated as lies and truth) existed inside of each person and it was their responsibility to decide which side gained the upper hand.

Like most people, deities had always encompassed both light and dark aspects.  Pazuzu was a perfect example:  if you were a Sumerian, he was a household protector, someone you called upon to protect you and your family, someone you admired and thanked wholeheartedly for your blessings ... and someone who sent locusts when he was pissed off.  Like anyone else, he had his sunshiny and cloudy days.  And he was definitely not known as a being who possessed little girls and made them throw up green split-pea soup and masturbate with crucifixes until The Exorcist – if the ancient Sumerians were still around, they would be seriously pissed off at how badly the poor guy was libeled in that film.  (But since they’re not, I’ll act in their stead).  Blatty made that up, everybody!!! All of that disgusting stuff came out of Blatty’s head, not Pazuzu’s!!  Just saying!

So I was reading a biographical history of the character.  Unfortunately, it was written back in 1865, in an age where people would write coy little things like, “A popular Christian clergyman, the Rev. Mr. D ----, in a fit of inspirational turgescence and mental explosion ...” and should you wish to verify said “inspirational turgescence” – you’re basically out of luck, because who the heck knows who he’s supposedly quoting?

But what a great turn of phrase!  I would love to use that on somebody.  You know, like you’re on a first date, and the guy is boring you witless with his relentless self-indulgent opinions on everything.  You bat your eyelashes and purr:  “Oh myyyy, what inspirational turgescence!”

Okay, fine if you’re too lazy to look it up:   tur·ges·cence  (tûr-jĕs′əns).  n.  The condition of being swollen, the process of swelling, pomposity; self-importance.  Happy now?

Point is:  the author, Kersey Graves, was prone (in his own variation of turgescence, I would imagine) to write coy little sentences like that, making the heads of his readers ... or more specifically, me ... blow up in frustration.


But back to the Rev. Mr. D ---- of Xenia, Ohio, whoever he was ... this was part of his sermon to a congregation of men, women .. and impressionable young children.  Read this, and you’re thinking, “Wow.  No wonder people walk around filled with such horror and dread ... what a horrible image to lay out in front of them! Everyone you know and love – your spouse, your parents, your siblings – in unspeakable agony, while this awful being is stomping on them, sending geysers of their blood all over his own clothes, with a look of ... delight?? ... on his face.   Because ... why?  They’ve made a mistake?  They did something wrong?  This is their supposed loving deity?  He sounds worse than all of the world’s most evil tyrants rolled up into one ... a demonic creature so horrible you’d beg to escape any universe in which this thing has any place at all.

And where did the Rev. Mr. D ----- get his awful imagery?  Can you just imagine him simply writing out this grotesque sermon?  Surely – you think – he had to have a biblical source of inspiration for this – surely it didn’t come out of his own horribly twisted mind!  And you’d be wrong, of course.

As neither the Torah or the Bible has any such description – the good (and I use that term rather doubtfully) Reverend just plain old made it up ... in the days before blood-soaked horror movies, apparently church on Sundays was the rough equivalent.  But what he did have was Isaiah 45:7.

From the various versions:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things (KJV).
I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things (NKJV).
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things (NIV).
The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these (NASB).
I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord, who does all these things (RSV).

Yes, what the reverend did have was proof that the original texts christians draw from (in this case the old testament, or the Torah) state rather baldly that it is their deity who is the source of all evil, not a separate entity.  Which would certainly explain how the poor, unsuspecting citizens of Xenia, Ohio got hit with such a nightmarish description, although it’s equally astounding that they didn’t all run screaming out the church doors and move to Columbus, where things might have been presented to them more rationally.  No offense to the residents of Xenia, but ... why didn’t you just fire the pulpit-pounding, blood-thirsty fool?  True, they might have – we’ll never know, will we?

Advice from a Spirit, Italy Gets Robbed ... and Bob Tells A Story

Okay, I’m not going to go into that much detail ... suffice it to say that another dream (this one a gift from a certain guardian spirit who shall remain nameless) gave me instructions on how to stop the spasms and twitches in my lower legs.

The dream was actually an image of me acting in the role of – I’m assuming – a hair dresser.  Another very handsome man – who shall also remain nameless because he’s still very much alive! – was sitting in the chair in front of me, wearing one of those plastic sheets that barbers put over you so you don’t end up with hair cuttings all over your shirt.

The only odd thing about this scenario was that I wasn’t cutting his hair, I was gently applying oil to the top of his head with a cotton ball.  He said, “What is that?  It feels weird,” and I looked down to discover he had hair growing out of his scalp where he hadn’t had any hair at all a few moments ago.  I lifted his hand and let him touch his new hair, and he whipped around in the chair to gape at me with an expression of shocked amazement and astonishment on his face.  End of dream.

At the time I had the dream, I was in such pain you wouldn’t believe it – ongoing leg spasms and twitches so painful, I was unable to accomplish simple things like shuffling around the house with a walker ... I mostly just sat and suffered and kept taking more and more muscle relaxers which were making me dizzy, groggy and nauseous.

Because of the identity of the man in that chair, I knew exactly who had sent the dream to me ... and because of that, I’m thinking, “Okay, I don’t think he wants me to take the contents of the dream THAT literally.  ” (In other words, I’m sure the man in the chair would not have been all that amused, had I chased him around in real life threatening to apply oil to the top of his head with a cotton ball). 

I suspected I was supposed to figure out which oil I had been using in this dream – that way, I thought, maybe the underlying message would make more sense.

So I did a little bit of internet research on the few bottles of oil I had in the house at the time.  Some of it cooking oil, some of it fragrant oil, some of it spiritual oil.  I was researching my third or fourth type of oil, when I found it.  Used for strengthening and re-growing hair.  Then I read one of its other uses:  curing muscle pain and stiffness.  Enlightenment slowly dawned and I said, “Ahhh-ha!”

Like most homeopathic remedies for things, I anticipated that if this oil did anything beneficial for my lower legs at all, it would take time to build up in my system.  But I had grown to trust this particular spirit/guide, so, as soon as I identified the oil, I went and applied some, just to see what happened.  What was I expecting?  I expected that I would be using it as some sort of massage oil on my legs.  But I expected wrong.  I knew this spirit well, and should have known better.  (I have apologized to that wonderful spirit more than once for doubting things he tells me.)

The spasms and twitches stopped in their tracks less than a minute after my application.  Just with a cotton ball.  No massaging, no kneading of the muscles.  Just applying it.  The spasms and twitching and pain stopped – as though someone had flicked a switch.  My jaw practically hit the floor.  I was so not expecting that I stared at my own legs with the same expression that the handsome man in the barber chair had on his face in my dream when he discovered he suddenly had his hair back.  I said, “Wha ...?  How is that possible?”

But it was.  And three days later – as long as I keep applying it – I still haven’t had any leg spasms or twitches or pain.  This is, quite truthfully, one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.

And may I now take this opportunity to apologize again to this really awesome guardian spirit ... publicly ... I am so sorry!  You would hope that at some point, I’d stop underestimating you!

Meanwhile ... now that I have a lot of my energy back ... I’m thinking up all sorts of things I can do to kill time until I see the neuro-muscular specialist.  Not sure which one to do first.

Bob telling a wonderful story about The Cowsills at Yankee Stadium in 1966 – and The Beach Boys setting fire to the locker room.  I could listen to him all day!




Finale, Eurovision.  Il Volo and Italy definitely won the popular vote – by a mile – but the jury in Vienna not surprisingly went with the politically safe choice and picked Sweden.  Il Volo won the televote by a wide margin - the "televote" being the vote by the public throughout all of Europe.  Needless to say, the howls of outrage are still going on.  But Il Volo turned in one heck of a performance ... as always, they were magnificent.  In any event – here’s their finale performance.

Journey to 1993: Edmund Spenser, Prophetic Dreams, Surprising Love Poems and Armin Shimerman's Quark

Thinkest thou I’ll tease the smile
of one so far and distant placed,
and self-protective, all the while
in public eye, to be embraced?
Methinks the man will soon be chased,
by one who seeks his visage fair
Not caring I, he lewd or chaste,
More wishing I be with him there ...
Me, 1993, “Good Grief”

An interesting day, reliving 1993.  Believe it or not, that was actually generated after having watched a VHS tape of an original Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton.  They had included a song with the episode – but the song made me think of Edmund Spenser.  From what I recall, the song was about having loved someone forever.  THAT brought to mind a conversation with the awesome Armin Shimerman I’d had when a friend dragged me to a Star Trek convention across the street from Penn Station.  I forget why she was so desperate to go – some actor SHE was off the deep end over - but I liked Deep Space Nine, so said, “Sure!”  and went along with her.

I actually had a great time – very enjoyable.  And really enjoyed a brief chat with Armin Shimerman (who played Quark in that series) – and who is also one of the most gifted and well-read Shakespearean actors on the planet.  In that conversation, Edmund Spenser came up; I’d gone out after the conversation and bought a collection of his works.

Coincidentally, Armin also played a character named Pascal in the same Beauty and the Beast series; so this was an entire synchronicity of events happening here like a chain of dominos.  One thing reminded me of the next.  Watching the episode, I was reminded of Armin Shimerman who reminded me of Edmund Spenser who reminded me of his sonnets, while listening to a love song that reminded me of first loves that had felt like they went on forever, because I had never forgotten them.

With me so far?  So guess who who that opening love poem – dashed off without thinking, really, while this line of dominos was falling – was about?  I actually gave it the title, “Good Grief”, because I thought it sounded so ... silly and obsessive (considering that it was 1993 and I thought at the time that the man I had written the Spenserian inspired love poem about had disappeared off the face of the planet 20 years earlier in the early 1970’s) when I wrote it.

Give you a hint:  I just met him for the first time a week ago and nearly fainted on him.  Yup.

Anyway, I just found it today and grinned from ear to ear.  And thank goodness I hadn’t found this yet when I wrote him the letter I handed him!  Good grief indeed:  he would have taken one look at that and said the same thing; although hopefully I would have had the sense not to reprint it in the letter.

What happened today was that I located a file folder containing all of the pages from a journal I kept in 1993.  Most of it is wincingly ridiculous, but I found another very strange entry:  Wednesday, October 27, 1993.  I had a cold at the time and had taken a cold medicine that made me very groggy before going to sleep:

“Had a horrible sleep last night, which I still don’t understand; maybe it resulted from too many doses of Nyquil or something.  It was of being shot on the subway.  All I remember of it was a man with a gun.  He shot at me, and I fell off the seat to my left and landed face down on the floor.  Question rose in mind mind:  was I faking it, or had he really shot me?  I could sense him pointing the gun a second time at my back as I lay there.  Then I woke up, struggling out of a deep sleep.”

What makes that entry a little odd is that on December 7, 1993, on the LIRR, Colin Ferguson “pulled out his gun and started firing at passengers. He killed six and wounded nineteen before being stopped by three of the passengers.”  I recall even thinking, “I think I dreamed about this,” at the time – meaning, I heard about it on the news, and thought, “This sounds familiar,” as though it had already happened.

I’m not sure if I even looked it up in my own journal to check – just had the thought and let it go – but I certainly dreamed something that shared some of the details with something that actually happened.  Not sure what I was supposed to DO with that – start jumping up and down and crying, “There’s going to be a shooting on a train – somewhere, sometime - by somebody”?  I couldn‘t, obviously, which makes me always wonder about the value of what appears to be precognitive dreams like that.  Nothing you can do about it – just stand there and watch it unfold when it does, and brag that you’re psychic or something?  And I never rode the LIRR, so it wasn’t even something that impacted me personally – my dream took place on a subway, because that’s what I rode every day.

I also had come up with the most awesomely creative idea for a quilted triptych based on Spenser’s Sonnet #71:

I joy to see how, in your drawen work,
Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe compare,
And me unto the Spyder, that doth lurke
In close awayt, to catch her unaware.
Right so your selfe were caught in cunning snare
Of a deare foe, and thralled to his love;
In whose streight bands ye now captived are
So firmely, that ye never may remove.
But as your worke is woven all about
With woodbynd flowers and fragrant eglantine,
So sweet your prison you in time shall prove,
With many deare delights bedecked fyne:
And all thensforth eternall peace shall see
Betweene the Spyder and the gentle Bee.

As I read the idea, I definitely remember laying the entire plan out in my Quilt Journal at the time ... one of the many valuable, irretrievable documents that made up the creativity of a human life that Carbonite utterly and permanently destroyed in their Epic Fail later on.  To this day, every time I see the name “Carbonite”, I want to shriek:  don’t fall for it, don’t do it!  they’re lying!  They’ll destroy your life’s documents like they destroyed mine!!

Yes, the damage they did carries on to this day, that’s how far reaching their failure was.  And is.

In fact, the destruction of my Quilt Journal was so massive, I couldn’t even work up the energy to start a new one until THIS YEAR – and it has been, what?  Five years since they lost the first one?  Six?  And the paltry one I have now will never come close to the one they destroyed.

(Yeah, I know:  hold grudges much?) (Why yes – something that overwhelmingly destructive?  Yes, I do.)

Another Spenserian sonnet I fell in love with in 1993.  I had changed the gender of the piece – he had been writing about a woman; I rewrote it for a man:

Was it the work of nature or of Art?
which tempred so the feature of his face:
that pride and mischief mixt by equall part,
do both appear t'adorn his beauties grace?
For with mild humor, which doth pride displace,
he to his love doth lookers eyes allure:
and with stern countenance back again doth chase
their looser lookes that stir up lusts impure,
With such strange terms his eyes he doth inure,
that with one look he doth my life dismay:
and with another doth it straight recure,
his smile me draws, his frown me drives away.
Thus doth he train and teach me with his looks,
such art of eyes I never read in books.
Sonnet 21 by Edmund Spenser

I don't remember who I had in mind with that Spenserian re-write.  You would think it was the same long-lost (at the time) "first crush" who inspired the quick love poem that opened this entry, but I'm not certain of that.  Other than these beauties, 1993 seemed to have been a rather angry year:  in a job I hated, working for a boss I didn’t like, not happy at all.  The only pleasure I seemed to derive from the year was a burst of creativity that Carbonite completely destroyed all records of ... and some really nice poetry, thanks to a Shakespearean-loving Ferengi.  I wonder if I ever thanked him for that.

Clothes Patterns, Fabric, Neanderthals and Soul Mates

Had the most delicious swordfish for lunch – well, a portion of one anyway – I made it just like I would have made fresh tuna and let it marinate overnight, and it came out like melt-in-your mouth heaven:  marinated and then braised in wine, fruit juice, ginger, leeks, garlic and soy sauce, and the fish was so succulent it fell apart on your fork.  I have discovered I really love leeks, by the way, surprising exactly no one because I am a passionate fan of onions and garlic when I can get away with eating them and not asphyxiating anybody.  It has always seemed a shame to me that roots so heavenly and fragrant and delicious and healthy are the same roots which leak out your pores and have people backing away from you.

Back to the pattern creation:  to my surprise, I found two tops that had the back yoke like I wanted, so now I can make an attempt at reverse engineering them for my first try at a “made from scratch” clothes pattern.  Hadn’t thought of them because they (yes, both of them) had been in the “missing a button” box for so long.  Clothes are really poorly made these days:  you wear them once and buttons just fall off of them.  Found the buttons too, so may actually be able to wear them again, assuming they’re not too big for me now ... once I sew the buttons on, that is.

There was this pattern I bought many years ago – a Retro Pattern from 1952 (Butterick) – which I just loved, although I doubted I could ever wear it ... big, full skirt, that wraps around from the back and buttons in the front, lined by double-edged bias tape that makes this wonderful, slimming line down the front ... and all of a sudden, my proportions are small enough that I can make it quite easily.  The plan was to shorten it dramatically ... no way was I going to wear the full length skirt you see here; I just loved that “Y” bias tape line down the center and the contrast “overskirt” illusion.

To give you an example of how I envisioned the shortened version – here’s another dress maker who had the same idea, although I planned to use  more contrast in the bias tape, but I did love how the dress looked – whoever she is, she did a gorgeous job on it.

So, I found some fabric in my collection that I thought might work, and started to cut out the pieces, WHILE hemming the sundress WHILE sewing on lost buttons WHILE layering We Can Fly in preparation for quilting it WHILE preparing Beautiful Beige for the applique work WHILE staring in dismay at my dishwasher.  (More on that later.)

It at least helped me begin to use up my fabric collection, which I really need to use up.  And while I was sorting through the bin of clothes fabric I found this amazingly lovely rose pattern, in either chiffon or silk or SOMETHING, a very light and sexy fabric ... with what looks like a muted grey/turquoise background ... (you’ll recall I had made the decision to reverse engineer a top in turquoise designed to match the moonstone ring?) and went, “Holy (bleep).”  I’d completely forgotten I had that before I went and bought the new fabric.  Need to measure it to see how much of it I have.

Unfortunately – it seems to be a veritable static electricity magnet, and it’s not even winter when static is typically an issue.  I had said I didn’t want it to cling – I hate the sensation of things that “cling”, drives me nuts – so I’m already trying to think of alternatives – i.e., like lining it, or using it as an overlay – that will minimize any static issues.

Also discovered I’d bought about 3 yards of a gorgeous fabric – heavy hand, brown with embroidery designs on it (also in brown, or perhaps black) – thinking:  I really need to find a beautiful dress pattern for this.  Don’t want to make it boring as a suit.  So I’m still cutting the pieces for the retro wrap around dress ... discovered I don’t have quite the full floor space for it, so it’s a challenge.

I’ve never eaten fiddlehead ferns before ... found some at the grocery store, and decided to try them – will sauté some up today and let you know how they taste.

C’era una volta
I suddenly realized that I had a counterpoint to the image of a soul mate as a Neanderthal ... the image I had of the two of us, roaming the grasslands together.  I loved that image when I first saw it; we’re such arrogant, self-righteous snots these days, we cannot conceive of our former selves in prehistoric times experiencing a full range of emotions, but that image showed me that we could and did.

The counterpoint was written recently; the experience of meeting someone for the first time that you’ve known and loved before.  You may not be bound together in this life, but you realize that it doesn’t matter – they’re still who they have always been, and you’re always connected with them at the soul level.  The reason I knew I’d hit the mark was that after writing it, I sat and read it aloud ... and discovered tears were running down my face.  Not of unhappiness; joyful tears of remembrance.

So, obviously, I’m working on that again, too ... I finally got the appointment with the neuro-muscular specialist, so I’m keeping myself busy until then.

Dishwasher:  I've had it installed for about a year and already both of the screws bolting it to the underside of the kitchen counter have fallen out - within a day of each other.  Just stared at the dislodged screws in amazement.  Now for the fun of trying to screw them both back in, thoroughly irritated that I need to do it.

Last:  Il Volo is now in competition for Eurovision 2015, representing Italy.  Their song?  Grande Amore, of course.  Today’s the big day.  And here they are, rehearsing – someone could probably fix their microphones before the finale – although the small imperfections in the rehearsal are why they have full dress rehearsals.  Can’t wait to see the final performance!