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?