Frozen Pipes and Cramping Feet, More Ancient Love Poems and Charlie Hebdo

So, as part of the Daybook Project, I finally got my hands on the 2015 Egyptian Calendar, created by Amente Nofre, a group of religious reconstructionists.  Now, the ancient Egyptian calendar was based entirely on agricultural events, i.e., the Nile inundation, the planting, the harvest.  Their months were lunar cycles.  In any event, the group has managed to align that ancient religious calendar with the common era calendar – and thank goodness for that! – as I’d found it very difficult to figure out which festival was celebrated at which time of the year as I knew the year.  And the best part of this work is that they cite their ancient sources! – such a novelty, as so few writers seem to know how to do that.

Nothing like waking up at 2 am to discover you have no water.  OHNO!  Pipes froze!!!  (Not surprising considering last time we looked it was -19 with the wind chill.)  But I do have a heat tape turned on, so ... WTF?  Next, I went to the storage shed to take my garbage bins out to the road to be picked up.  Lock is frozen.  This cold snap is insane.  Have a call in to two possible sources of help  - both of whom said they’d return calls within 20 minutes, and neither of whom have called back at all.  And those calls went to their “Emergency Help Line”, naturally.

Thanks to neither one of them – my favorite professional handyman, Dana, came over with a heater, and I had running water after about 45 minutes ... and no cracks in the pipes, thank goodness.

One thing the intense cold did do was freeze up my lower legs – well, not literally, but the cold did trigger a series of mega-lower leg cramps in the middle of the night.  48 hours later and I’m still limping, one of them was so bad.  The other thing those leg cramps did was pull my right knee muscle (the one on the outside of the kneecap) so suddenly and forcefully that it’s still burning like a son-of-a-whatever every time I bend it.  Looked it up.  Typically caused by a sports injury.  Nope, in this case caused by a sudden tendon and muscle spasm that yanked my entire right leg and foot to the left – my right foot was darn near facing the left leg and foot, that’s how violent it was.  I never thought a cramp could be so powerful it could actually stretch or tear a muscle, but it looks like it can.  Anybody have any good homeopathic remedies for muscle tears?  Because ... damn.

On a more cheerful note, I found another awesome ancient Egyptian poem I just loved, written from a female point of view, which I find so refreshing:

I just chanced to be happening by
in the neighborhood where he lives;
His door, as I hoped, was open –
and I spied on my secret love.
How tall he stood by his mother,
brothers and sisters little about him;
Love steals the heart of a poor thing like me
pointing her toes down his street.
And how gentle my young love looked
(there’s none like him),
Character spotless they say ...
out of the edge of my eye...
I caught him look at me as I passed.

Alone by myself at last,
I could almost cry with delight!
Now, just a word with you, love,
that’s what I’ve wanted since I first saw you.
If only Mother knew of my longing
(and let it occur to her soon) –
O Golden Lady, descend for me.
plant him square in her heart!
Then I’d run to my love, kiss him hard
right in front of his crew,
I’d drip no tears of shame or shyness
just because people were there,
But proud I’d be at their taking it in
(let them drown their eyes in my loving you)
If you only acknowledge you know me
(Oh, tell all Egypt you love me!)
Then I’d make solemn announcement;
every day holy to Hathor!
And we two, love, would worship together,
kneel, a matched pair, to the Goddess.

Oh, how my heart pounds
(try to be circumspect!)
eager to get myself out!
Let me drink in the shape of my love
tall in the shuddering night!
Love Songs of the New Kingdom, 1974, University of Texas Press, Austin, translated by John L. Foster, pgs. 56-57

I especially liked the last line: “tall in the shuddering night” – are we SURE this was based on the original Egyptian?  I do have a hieroglyphics dictionary set ... I would love to know where “shuddering” came from.

I realize I don’t often touch on Current Events, but the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris (combined with the other horrific crimes those guys committed) has left me stunned.  It did accomplish one thing, though – everyone is having intense, passionate, heated discussions about it, from all points of view, which at times is very enlightening to read.  It’s obvious to anyone who reads this blog that I am not a huge fan of the Big 3 Abrahamic religions:  Christianity, Islam, Judaism  - so, lest any one think I am perpetuating a specifically anti-Islamic point of view on this, think again.

The fundamentalists and extremists of all three of them are fully capable of hideous amounts of violence, bloodshed and hatred towards anyone who doesn’t agree with them – look at George Bush’s “God told me to bomb the Iraqis!” ugliness for a recent example that many people seem to have forgotten in their urgency to blame all Muslims for this - and the discussions I see are peppered with the usual “Us Against Them” idiocy from all three of those groups.  Other opinions are well-thought out and presented, even if I don’t necessarily agree with them.  But at least there is discussion, which may be a good thing.  Will it change anything?  Who knows?

Love Songs of the New Kingdom and Celebrating Puberty with Bob Cowsill Part II

Flee him, my heart - and hurry! -
for I know all too well this love of yours.
My antic heart won't let me walk like others
but dances off when I want it home.
It will not wait to let me catch my tunic
nor stop to let me get my party fan;
It leaves no time to shadow eyes with love lines,
no time at all to oil my unloved body.

"Don't stand there waiting! Get inside!"
so heart says as I stand there full of him.
O heart, don't make my aching thoughts turn foolish!
Why, are we mad? who gave you leave?
(It's wrong!)

Believe it or not, that glorious poem was created between 1600 – 1085 BCE ... in Ancient Egypt, the New Kingdom era.  Found in Love Songs of the New Kingdom, translated from the ancient Egyptian by John L.  Foster (1974, University of Texas Press, Austin).  Love the book, love that poem among many others ... but it made me wonder if I were reading an Egyptian poetess (in which case, she's astonishing!), or  John L. Foster - he does say he tried to remain true to the idioms, syntax, etc., of the originals, but also says he used a certain degree of freedom in translation. I would love to see the original hieroglyphics and literal translations for this particular one, to see how he did his translation - although he does do that for some of them. Summary: a marvelous collection of love poetry.

Nothing like starting a job search only to find out that COMCAST has disabled your fax line, moved your home telephone to the disabled fax line, and never bothered to look into it, despite repeated calls.  By the fourth or fifth call, they finally sent someone out and fixed it.  (Meanwhile, I’d never given out my cell phone number as a contact, and my answering machine announced that I had 41 missed calls!)  Another fun day with Comcast.  Yet another reason why they’re one of the most intensely disliked companies in the entire country.

But on the “glass half full” side – finally!  I got my SETI@home program to work.  I signed on to that in about 10 years ago, and at some point it stopped working.  SETI may be excellent at a lot of things, but Customer Service ain’t one of them – I’d continually ask for help and get no reply, so the program just sat there, idle, for the longest time.  Finally, they offered a new version of the program to download that was much more user-friendly, and I was able to re-start it.  I’m back to being mesmerized by the working graphics.  And I’m sure my computer will be the one to process the unit that proves we’re not the only intelligent life in the universe!  (Ahh, nothing like delusions of grandeur to cheer me right up.)

A topic they posted on their website basically asked, “What would the impact on society be if the discovery of life in space actually happened?”  Their analysis was a great deal more positive than my own “off-the-cuff” analysis was.  Not that I thought American society would degenerate into chaos or anything, but my own feeling was that the number of people who, like me, would react with a “Coool!” and a fascination to learn more would be relatively small compared to the number of people who would immediately toss the news onto their own political and religious accelerant bonfires ... making the news a lot more terrifying than it actually was.  All we would have discovered was that life VERY far away (and at some time in the past, when you take into account how long it would have taken for it to reach us) used radio signals, not that they were planning an immediate invasion and the annihilation of a swarm of parasitic homosapiens in a galaxy far far away from them.  But most Americans aren’t exactly logical, are they?

I’m sure I should be doing something industrious, but right now I’m just basking in the goofing off of it all.  Except for picking up the mail, there is nowhere I have to go or need to be .... and I definitely don’t want to battle pre and post-holiday shoppers anyway.  I did trek back over to North Andover and take a good look at my storage facility there ... Dana is going to clear it out. and I finally won’t have to pay them anymore, thank goodness.

But I did find my mother’s teapot!  Once I can find my iPhone cord, I’ll upload the photo.  I thought I had lost it; apparently, I had packed and stored it.  It’s one of those plain, much used variety of utilitarian teapots that bring back warm fuzzy  memories of my mother.  I’m in the middle of cleaning it out, using denture cleaner tablets – which have so many great uses, I’m almost sorry I don’t wear dentures.  This was not the teapot she used for Sunday dinners or company – this was her own personal daily teapot.  Dad did drink tea occasionally, but mostly drank coffee, so I always associate it with Mom.

And now for the amazing news.  Apparently, I will be “celebrating puberty with Bob Cowsill” after all.  They are having a 50th Anniversary concert on April 11th at The Cutting Room, celebrating their first record deal with Joda Records.  You never saw anyone hit the “Buy Tickets” button so fast in your life.  Then I had one of those, “I can’t believe it ... after all these years, I’m finally going to see ...” moments that almost felt like I’d reverted back to those days of hopeless idiocy I remembered.  I still can’t believe it.  Hotel booked, train tickets purchased, concert ticket bought ... methinks I’m off to see The Cowsills.

http://tickets.thecuttingroomnyc.com/event/754693-cowsills-new-york/