Gloomy November Poems, Feronia Festivals, Almond Milk and Surviving Puberty with Bob Cowsill

I’ve been hunting and pecking for a scrap of a November poem ... you’d be surprised how few of them there are that don’t reference war, bloodshed, coldness and death. 

The day dies slowly in the western sky;
The sunset splendor fades, and wan and cold
The far peaks wait the sunrise; cheerily
The goatherd calls his wanderers to their fold.
My weary soul, that fain would cease to roam,
Take comfort; evening bringeth all things home.

Homeward the swift-winged sea-gull takes its flight;
The ebbing tide breaks softly on the sand;
The sunlight boats draw shoreward for the night;
The shadows deepen over sea and land.
Be still, my soul; the hour is not yet come,
‘Ere the gods once more see thee safely home.

(Yes, that “the gods” instead of “God” in the last line was my revision.  But still ...)

Made me wonder how the month of November ended up with such a pitiful reputation.  I know the name came from “novem” (“nine”) when the Roman calendar only had 10 months in it; the number nine traditionally had the “end of things” association.  But really, November isn’t all that bad, is it?

Closest thing I could find that pinged my heart was the Italian singer Syria’s “Sei Tu”, which technically is not a November song, but a winter at the beach song.  Needless to say, “winter” and “beach” both appealed to me.  You can go to You Tube and search for Syria, Sei Tu – she debuted the song at the 1997 Festival of San Remo.  http://lyricstranslate.com provided the translation.  True, translations are never perfect – nor do they perpetuate the rhyme and meter of the original – but I liked the lyrics anyway:

Sei Tu
There are days, even in winter time,
a little sunny
when you feel like going out to take a walk
and the blood is so warm
inside my veins
even if it's cold I'm going to the seaside
and I am at peace with myself
in my tranquility
no wind could take me away
and it almost hurts my eyes
this light that won't go away
and yet suddenly it's dark
inside this soul of mine
It's you that I miss
It's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
is for you to stay the way you are
the way you are...

There are moonlit nights
when you don't want to sleep
and you feel like writing and thinking
the clock ticks slowly
inside this room
sooner or later the dawn will have to come
and I'm at peace with myself
because I have no faults
but to have wanted you....
it's that when it comes to giving
I give everything I have
and then suddenly
an emptiness inside me comes

It's you I miss
it's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
it's for you to stay as you are
as you are... as you are... as you are

I started trying to fill in the gaps in my annual “calendar” – which events, celebrations, festivals were or are held on which days.  Long project – I started it a few years ago, drift away for a time and then pick it back up again. 

November 15th rolled around and I was feeling both very rhythmic, hip-swiveling to Gianni Morandi, and then ethereal, with Vivaldi.  But at least I was consistent in my inconsistency.  I had re-filled the backyard bird feeder after the nor’easter and high winds had blown all of the seed out of it a week ago.  The birds were probably cursing me out, it took me so long to refill it.  Ten minutes later, they were all gathered around it, stuffing themselves and looking very happy.  I came back into the study and opened my few source books on ancient day calendars.  I’ve mentioned them before.  Their usefulness on a given day varies.  Some of them are just bewildering.

November 15th seems not to have engendered a lot of celebrations, no matter which civilization was discussed.  One source book said, simply, “Egyptian Day”.  No mention of what one was supposed to do or celebrate on “Egyptian Day”.  Say, Yay for Egyptians?  Who knows?  The Thoughts for the Quiet Hour book contributed a really depressing November poem about coming to the end of your life.  Oh, lovely.  Another thought it would be appropriate to celebrate Georgia O’Keefe’s birthday.  Really??  Mentalfloss offered “Clean out your refrigerator” day.  Uh-huh.  I celebrate that holiday every day – it’s called “eating”.  Another website tells me the day was  the Roman Feronia Festival.  Well OK, that sounded promising.  What, pray tell, was the Feronia Festival?  A “Festival in honor of Feronia” was the answer.

Yeah, I sorta already guessed that.

I look up Feronia:  “Feronia’s themes are fertility, abundance, earth, freedom, sports and recreation. Her symbols are fire and coals.  This Roman fire Goddess provides fertility and abundance during even the harshest of times ... If you find your inner reserves waning with the winter’s darkness, light a candle sometime today to invoke Feronia’s vitality. Better still, light it for a few minutes each day until you feel your energy returning.”  (Patricia Telesco, “365 Goddess: a daily guide to the magic and inspiration of the goddess”.)

Patricia Monaghan wrote that Feronia “made Her simple home in woodlands like those at Campania or at the foot of mountains like Soracte.  She may date to the era before Rome some believe She is a vestigial Etruscan Goddess, powerful enough to maintain Her own identity after Roman conquest, for Her major sanctuaries were in the central Italian areas where the Etruscans once lived.”

So there you go.  Happy Feronia Day!

The last of the source books thought November 15th was the perfect day of the year for a "Rite of Puberty" Day. Not a holiday, not a past holiday or celebration.  A Rite ... of Puberty.  On November 15th.  Really.  What exactly does one actually do to celebrate "Puberty"?  Especially if you've already gone through the experience and can't imagine anything you'd like less than celebrating it - or perhaps I'm only recalling those years from the safety of a slightly more sane adulthood.  It almost feels like I would be celebrating  "Temporary Insanity" Day.

The only link between that entry and my actual life that I can see is probably the pleasure I’m getting out of re-discovering the Cowsills ... when I tell you that my bedroom wallpaper around the age of 12 was an homage to the newly discovered and much appreciated sensual appeal of the “older man” (by which I mean the 18-year old Bob Cowsill, or however old he was at the time), I’m not kidding.  Picture a 12-year old, starry-eyed schoolgirl fervently whimpering, “He is the most beautiful human being who has ever existed since the dawn of recorded time!” (or something equally as goofy and scientifically unprovable), and that was me, every time Teen Beat, or Tiger Beat or 16, or whatever those magazines were back then, came out with a new photo of Bob Cowsill.

It occurs to me now that girls of that age must be gifted professionals at drowning themselves in relentless, unwavering – if grotesquely misdirected – optimism.  Every time I would read such sober, scholarly articles as, “What Kind of Girl does Bob REALLY Want?” they never seemed to mention seriously under aged ones with her teeth in braces, or one whose pet peeves were fractions, and her precocious little brother stealing her diary and writing in it.  Yet the emotions barreled on.  The unreachable Bob even got married somewhere in there, and that hopeless crush remained undented, because now it had tragic, “woe-is-me”, soap-opera tinged overtones which must have satisfied some sort of unfolding inner hormone-fueled self narrative.

Ah, puberty – that magical time in your life when enlightenment dawns and you discover that at least some boys may not, in fact, be terminally infected with “cooties”.  Would I have wanted anyone to publicly call attention to it – to me - in a rite???  HAIL no.  What pre-teen would??  As I recall, these were the slammed door, “leave me alone!” years when I would nurture unfamiliar sensations and unnamable hungers in secret, protecting them from prying eyes, naysayers and curious bystanders alike, confident in my belief that I was the only girl to have ever entertained such thoughts, felt such feelings, blushed so hotly at a handsome boy’s open and generous ... and two-dimensional ... smile from her bedroom wall.

Well, I could always hold a belated “Thank you Bob Cowsill” Rite of Puberty for myself now, I suppose - after all, today is supposedly the day for it.  As far as imprinting on someone during those years of roller-coaster emotional explosions go, I could have done a lot worse than Bob Cowsill, who had that “I drink milk!” wholesome image behind him – imagine where I’d be today if he’d been the spokesman for the “Underage Beer Guzzling” society.

Although, speaking of milk:  I have to confess that I cannot tolerate the taste of real milk. (Sorry, Bob!)  Not that I’m lactose intolerant or anything, I just didn’t like the taste. I haven’t had any since I was a child – I wasn’t even fond of it when I was a child ... it was just put in front of me and I was told to drink it – being an inexcusably obedient child at that age, I did.  As soon as I wasn’t told to drink it anymore, I stopped.  I can’t remember what I did drink in my post childhood years – fruit juices, and tea maybe, I always liked tea.  OK, correct that:  I was an obnoxious tea snob, I’m ashamed to say.  We never had soft drinks in the house, so I didn’t drink that until my college years.  I’ve always been a happy water-drinker too, so I probably drank a lot of tap water “on the rocks” in those years.

But then I kept seeing cartons of almond milk in the communal refrigerator at work.  One day, being curious, I tasted it, and was pleasantly surprised – I actually liked the taste of it.  Even so, it took me a while to buy some for myself – now, I drink it all the time.  Well, not ALL the time, but frequently enough that I had to look it up so see what I was actually getting out of it.  Supposedly, it has a lot of health benefits and few calories for the filling benefit.

In fact, I’ve taken to it so much I keep waiting for the downside:  some horrible side-effect brought on my guzzling almond milk all the time.  Anybody know of any?

New Home ... and Amtrak Needs to Fire Julie - Seriously

I am now a homeowner, back in her apartment, eating a comfort-food dinner of lemon-peppered corn and kale, trying to figure out where to jump first.   Packing, driving an hour to Seabrook, cleaning ... in between running to the bank, disposing of sharps, buying cleaning supplies, calling the doctor, preparing for a trip to New York City?  I’m listening to Renato Zero, Gianni Morandi and Massimo Ranieri ... the standards from my pre-Il Volo days ... packing up cat miscellany – food, liners, carriers – to donate to Bulgers.

I was stunned when an act as innocuous as preparing to donate the cat carriers, liners, food and litter to Bulgers just about killed me.  Instead of doing that, I came home with everything still in the car, choked up, and slept off the impending emotional meltdown.  I did donate everything to the vet the next morning, but it wasn’t easy and I bawled all the way back home.

And I STILL don’t feel any resistance between my hands!  This is driving me bat-shit crazy.

That said ... I am really working on my temper and frustration level when things don’t go the way I want them to.  I am not at my best in a state of chaos, and if there is one thing I can say about the last week or so ... utter chaos.  I also often forgot which day of the week it was ... which meant things like:  I came home last night from an exhausting day doing a home inspection #2 with Dana and buying appliances and thinking I had a full day to recuperate and pack for the trip to New York.

I was a day off.

I got a phone message from Amtrak telling me “Your train reservation for tomorrow has been cancelled; we put you on another train.”  I screamed “Tomorrow??!!??” and called them frantically.  I had been sure it was the 25th.  Nope, the 26th.  Il Volo’s concert was the 27th.  Naturally, I sat through at least fifteen minutes of crap spewed by their “virtual assistant” – Julie, I think her “name” is – to the point where I was screaming, “Shut the *(&*(^& up, you freaking %^&*%^!!”  Finally I got a live human being who, in response to my saying, “I can’t find the reservation number,” asked:  “What’s your reservation number?”  I could barely think of anything polite to say to that.

Turns out there is some sort of electrical failure which shut down all the Acela trains between New York and Boston.  I was unceremoniously tossed out of first class and into business – complete with refund, but I would rather have the first class seat.  My typical reaction would be, “Naturally.  The one weekend I need peace and tranquility between here and New York, the Sky Sadist goes and fucks it up.  Thanks, you miserable *($%^.

The day to recover disappeared and I frantically tried to pull all of my hotel, train and ticket reservations together.  I tried to focus on the things that HAD gone right:  i.e., the washing machine in Seabrook had worked so I had clean clothes; at least I had come into the study and listened to the messages as opposed to going straight to bed and being hit with the shocking news first thing in the morning – very unlike me, but I really did try to find the blessings as opposed to the curse.

Gianni Morandi, Wolves and More Sex Magick

The Wolf Moon arrived yesterday ... and in honor of the majestic Wolf, the first photo I saw signing into Twitter was this wonderful photo of Il Volo with the incomparable Gianni Morandi. Last time we saw photos like this, the guest singers appeared on the second album (Placido Domingo, Eros Ramazzotti), so that was my first thought: is Gianni making a guest appearance on the Spanish version of the new album? What a way to get me to buy the Spanish version – put Gianni Morandi on it!!

And you may say, "Hey! What’s dem gotta do wif a wolf?" Well, first: not much. OK, nothing, really. Second: get your dentures fixed; you’re slurring again. Third: SPEAK ENGLISH!

But fourth: the photo did get me singing Morandi’s Fino alla fine del mondo ("Until the End of the World") all day, which I suppose is the Italian pop equivalent of howling at the moon with indescribable loneliness. The British equivalent would be Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf (2004) and the American? Probably Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London (Live in Passaic 1982 of course! If you have a favorite song that transforms you into a hungry wolf by the second note, let me know, and I’ll try to link to a live version.



I ran across a perfect example of the damage that the judeo-christian-islamic mindset does to their cultures when the topic of sex is under discussion. In this case – and I don’t know who the writer is in this case – someone is writing out a rather confusing sex magick spell.

I’m willing to lay down good money on his national origins: either British or American. Same problem that I have had in the past with writing out spells: what is its purpose? and, where did you get it? are two pieces of information it would be really helpful to know. Both are missing. Obviously, it’s a sex magick spell, given the instructions, and the fact that part of the spell involves invoking Baphomet.

Here’s another problem: Baphomet. Taken out of Wikipedia:

Baphomet is a supposed pagan deity (i.e., a product of Christian folklore concerning pagans), revived in the 19th century as a figure of occultism and Satanism. It first appeared in 11th and 12th century Latin and Provençal as a corruption of "Mahomet", the Latinisation of "Muhammad",[1] but later it appeared as a term for a pagan idol in trial transcripts of the Inquisition of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century. The name first came into popular English-speaking consciousness in the 19th century, with debate and speculation on the reasons for the suppression of the Templars.[2]

Since 1855, the name Baphomet has been associated with a "Sabbatic Goat" image drawn by Eliphas Lévi. It represents the duality of male and female, as well as Heaven and Hell or night and day signified by the raising of one arm and the downward gesture of the other. It can be taken in fact, to represent any of the major harmonious dichotomies of the cosmos. However, Baphomet has been connected with Satanism as well, primarily due to the adoption of its symbol by the Church of Satan.

Given the sketchy history of this figure of Baphomet I doubt I’d have any reason to invoke it without doing considerable more non-Wikipedia research on it – there are so many other well known and much admired deities you can invoke if you’re casting love or lust spells. Even Aleister Crowley had some trouble trying to research the thing, and if it was something invented by Templars to placate christian torturers ... I have the same problem with it that I have with a lot of other wiccan stuff: NOT TRADITIONAL!

But fine. So maybe this spell writer knows something about Baphomet we don’t. But here he is describing the steps of the invocation. Keep in mind that all he’s doing here is raising sexual energy:

"Then when done, visualize yourself as a sexual beast; doing what beasts do when in heat. And it's probably better if you intent someone who already has that look and body language which says "Let's whoopie". Use the picture to masturbate and do all manner of nasty obscene acts."

Well, alrighty, then!  I have yet to read a traditional Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman spell that uses the words "let’s whoopie" and "nasty obscene acts" in their spells, although you’re right, I haven’t read them all. Still, I doubt I will find phrases like that. Thinking of sex as a "nasty obscene act" is not how the traditionalists thought before the common era. They considered it normal. "Nasty" is something right out of the christian playbook of shame. In other words, this apologist has already turned a simple energy raising spell into something shameful, ugly and disgusting. Made me want to say, "Ew!" and wash my hands with antibacterial hand gel or something.

Okay, so when we’re not a teenage American boy thinking himself all that, down there in his basement and writing up his own version of a titillating spell ... the truth is, a little research will bring you to the realization that sexual energy is a potent and powerful force.

So, here’s another spell example: the writer – who thankfully has dispensed with the christian "sex is dirty and bad!" messages she might have been handed in her youth - has found a picture of a man she finds arousing and desirable.

And I clutched that to my chest as I went into an altered state, which was extraordinary and intense, with amazing feelings of energy coursing through me. And I then proceeded to use a little good old-fashioned sex magic, which is essentially the harnessing of one's arousal and orgasm. That energy is directed into what it is that you are longing for, the goal of your spell, the object of your prayers. And for me it was embodied in this image.

See? No drama, no cringing, no euphemisms that make you go "ew" – none of that. The two examples are night and day. One was the product of the guilt-ridden christian culture, the other wasn’t. One was enthusiastic and positive; clear-headed, even. The other sounded like something that just crawled out of the sewer.

And while I realize I haven’t finished with the list of fallen angels yet, it also made me wonder if I wouldn’t learn more history on the incubus if I researched traditional sex magick spells. Hmmm.