Today is 12.19.16.13.7 1 Manik’ 5 Yax

1173 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

Beauties

a lovely face covered with powder
and rose petals,
a cluster
of faces
cloaked in gray ash,
smooth as an oil slick.
skin covered with ink.
hair covered with feathers.
we are not burning,
we are not
burning,
we are
sitting near
a gap, a small chasm
staring mutely at each other.
there is something about this,
this beauty that aches,
that aches
but does not cry out.

P. F. Anderson

Today is also Momentile Monday. P. F. Anderson wrote this poem in response to the very first scissor dance I posted as tinydancer; Anderson blogs her poetry at Rosefire Rising; she ’tiles excellent images at
http://momentile.com/pfanderson.

I ’tile multifariously, as tinydancer, tinydoctor, Etellyhobokelly, and maybe under other e-aliases but that would be telling. See this post for a bit more on Momentile and why I’m ’tiling.

Today is 12.19.16.13.0 7 Ahau 18 Ch’en

1180 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

mariposa, spread
your lashes, lips, your fine tongue
embrace the long line
hollowed with heat, memories,
opening to erasure

Today is also Momentile Monday. The very first one, as a matter of fact. I posted the scissor dance on Momentile as tinydancer; P. F. Anderson wrote the caption. It’s because of her captions that I’m making my Mondays Momentile. Anderson blogs her poetry at Rosefire Rising; she ’tiles excellent images at http://momentile.com/pfanderson. 

I ’tile multifariously, as tinydancer, tinydoctor, Etellyhobokelly, and maybe under other e-aliases but that would be telling. Dr. Omed has MAD (Multiple Avatar Disorder).

See my last post for a bit more on Momentile and why I’m ’tiling.

Update: Deb Scott has posted her Monday Momentile on Stoney Moss.

Today is 12.19.16.12.15 2 Men 13 Ch’en

1185 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

The face of the fire goddess swells with her aching,
dozens of her nipples leak blood and cluster together,
around her spin seconds become hours and hours become seconds,
as the air consumed abandons both breath and breathing.

P. F. Anderson

I posted this Scissor Dance* on my tinydancer account on Momentile back in August. What is Momentile?

Momentile is a free online service that easily lets anyone chronicle their day with a single image…A momentile consists of a single image, defined only by the date it was published. That’s it. Void of explanation and free from context, a momentile is pure visual communication.

That’s from the About page, and it’s a fair description. I find it easy to use, the learning curve very mild as online interfaces go. One image per momentiler per day, no text unless the text is in the image itself.  I enjoy selecting and uploading my single image. Void of explanation and free from context.

Welcome to my void. This is where it gets interesting: You can’t post a caption to your own image, but you can caption other ’tilers images, and any ’tiler (everyone) logged on to Momentile can caption your ’tile. P. F. Anderson wrote the above “caption” to this Scissor Dance. Who is P. F. Anderson?

P. F. Anderson is someone I “know” primarily through microblogging, on Twitter and on Identi.ca.  P. F. Anderson is in fact the one who sent me the invitation to join Momentile (currently in alpha testing) in the first place. I am grateful to her for that, but that’s not why I’m posting her caption to my ’tile; I post her caption because I like it. P. F. Anderson, I have discovered, is a very fine poet. She can write a sonnet, with proper meter, rhyme scheme, and real skill with the form.

P. F. Anderson has written vatic poem-captions for several of my ’tiles, and you may soon see more ’tiles and more of her lovely captions on the Tent Show (unless she says not). Why? Because a momentile a day keeps the Doctor in play.

*A Scissor Dance is a collage cut and pasted the old fashioned way, with scissors, glue, and a stack of old magazines.

Yesterday was International Rock Flipping Day

I forgot.

I forgot to mark my calendar, I’m a day late–and I broke the rules, too.

The first and prime rule of International Rock Flipping Day, set in stone, so to speak, by founder Dave Bonta, is the participants flip their rocks on September 20th, the official date thereof.  But I’m cheating.

I flipped my rock back on May 17th, while rearranging a flower bed. The reason I’m flouting the rule and posting these pictures taken last spring  is the beetles. I’m hoping someone can identify the species.

I’ve never seen beetles like these before, yet there they were minding their own business under an oblong chunk of striped native limestone next to my driveway, until I flipped.  I broke another rule–I didn’t replace the rock as I found it, either. I shifted it to a position dictated by Mrs. Dr. Omed. Mea culpa, Dave.

September is Monsoon Season

The weatherman reports 3 inches of rain fell today in Tulsa. So far.

I hope the labyrinth dries out a bit before our Equinox fire ceremony.

Today is 12.19.16.12.13 13 Ben 11 Ch’en

1187 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

Carl Jung’s Liber Novus aka the Red Book

Spike, the man I refer to as the other half of my brain, gets a big hat tip–make that a sweeping flourish of my black velvet sombrero, and a deep bow–for sending me a link to this article: The Holy Grail of the Unconscious, in the New York Times Magazine. It’s a long article in latter-day Innertube terms–ten pages, but I found it worth the reading. The subject is the secret ur-text of the sect of Jungian Psychoanalysis.

As he entered middle age Carl Jung began keeping a record of, well, his inner Jungian process. He transcribed his musings in Germanic calligraphy in an oversize journal bound in red leather, and illustrated them with elaborate paintings. Jung’s paintings fairly jump off the page, vivid and strange. The text is equally strange, according to the article.

The Red Book resembles nothing so much as a rare incunabulum from the early days of printing, so neat is the script, except the paintings are as colorful and intricate as the illustrations in a medieval Book of Hours painted in a monastery scriptorium.

Jung filled over 200 large pages with handwritten script and paintings before he locked it in a cupboard. After spending a 100 years or so first in that cupboard and later in a safety deposit box in a bank vault in Zurich, Jung’s descendants have been persuaded to reveal the Red Book to the world, to have the text translated into English, and to publish that translation with a high quality facsimile of the book itself.

I can’t wait to see that.

More linkage: The Astrology of Carl Jung and his Red Book, Carl Jung’s Secret Book

Today is 12.19.16.12.11 11 Chuwen 9 Ch’en

1189 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

Mowing the labyrinth.

Well, it’s a long, long time
From May to December
But the days grow short,
When you reach September.
And the autumn weather
Turns the leaves to gray
And I haven’t got time
For the waiting game.

And the days dwindle down
To a precious few . . .
September, November . . .
And these few precious days
I spend with you.
These precious days
I spend with you.

Music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Berthold Brecht, translated by Maxwell Anderson, and best sung by Lotte Lenya.

Tuesday is the Autumnal Equinox; 12 hours of daylight, 12 hour of night. As the song says, the days grow short(er) until the Winter Solstice. Among our circle of friends we have a fire ceremony which I made up off the top of my head for a Winter Solstice party a few years back, and which we perform at both the Solstices and the Equinoxes of the solar year. A once impromptu ritual is now an ingrained tradition, and if I forget part of it or get it wrong, I will immediately be reminded and corrected by the congregation. It’s very simple and entirely ecumenical; doesn’t matter what you believe or whether you believe anything at all: the best kind of religious service, as far as I’m concerned. It goes like this:

As the sun is going down, build a fire and light it, keep it burning. Go have something to eat and drink. Each congregant sits down at some point in the evening and makes two lists on separate pieces of paper (we like to use Chinese joss paper). On one piece of paper write down a list of “Begones,” which anything or anybody you wish to pass out of your life. On the other write out a list of “Will-Be-Dones,” which anything or anybody you wish to come into your life. When all congregants have completed their lists (some people spend a lot of time on their lists, particularly the Begones), we all go out to the fire.

Each person picks a small piece of preferably aromatic wood out of a basket, and is given Chinese joss money to burn. Each person puts their piece of wood on the fire, one by one. Then the lists. Begones go first. As each person puts their list on the fire, everyone yells “BEGONE!” as loud as they please. Then go the Will-Be-Dones; all yell “WILL-BE-DONE!” with, of course, a will. Then everyone throws their joss money on the fire and yells “LET IT BURN!” That’s about it, really. If you have a pope, which we do, he or she will pronounce a blessing, and give a short (short) homily. Then go back in the house and have another drink. Let the Begones be gone, let the Will-Be-Dones be done, and let us have money to burn. Prost!

This year we will have the fire bowl in the center of the labyrinth I cut in the back lawn, and walking the five courses of the labyrinth will become part of the ritual. We will come down were we ought to be, as the Shaker hymn has it:

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley
of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d
To bow and to bend
we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight
‘Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Nihil Obstat ox His Loveliness the Pope*, the Right Reverend and Doctor Omed

*of the Seventh Day Atheist Aztec Baptist Synod.

Today is 12.19.16.12.10 10 Ok 8 Ch’en

119o shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

A Momentile a day keeps the Doctor in play.

Patches of  grass have grown very high this summer off the bike trail along the Arkansas River–higher than my head–higher than my hat in places, which is to say six feet tall or more.  Annie Beagle and I followed a dirt footpath through the tall grass down to the riverside just to see where it lead–it lead to the camp of a couple homeless guys–and I caught sight of the mortal remains of an oppossum, not playing, curled up a few feet off the path under a young hackberry tree.

Today is 12.19.16.12.9 9 Muluk 7 Ch’en

1191 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

A ho-meme in the form of a .GIF file

This weekend I saw some teabaggers demonstrating on the street corner by the local mall. At the stop light, I rolled down the car window and gave them the Lord’s Own Superfinger, in recognition of their exercise of the right of free speech guaranteed to all citizens under the Bill of Rights–No matter how paranoid and delusional the beliefs expressed. In this case, expressed mainly by waving signs.

All the demonstrators were white and relatively well-heeled–denizens of suburban South Tulsa, by the look of them. The signs were for the most part not handmade–the majority had the usual slick but stupid meta-racist slogans and caricatures of Obama, blown-up-at-the-print-shop images downloaded from winger innertube sites, no doubt. Talk about astroturfing.

I did not think to take pictures, though my camera was on the passenger seat. I was using the hand I didn’t have on the steering wheel to signal our shared comity of anger, in the universal semaphore of that emotion.  With, and at them.  Alas, I wanted to do more, but lacked time and the proper implements. The light turned green, and I drove on.

Just this morning, five days since sharing this fleeting moment of primal rage with primeval white suburbians, I thought of a way to challenge them in their own, fact-free zone. But first, some fresh, pertinent vocabulary:

Ho-meme, n. A particularly crass, often simple-minded, but persistent false meme. Example: Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim Socialist who wants to kill your grandmother;

See also, Ho-memer, n., a person who promotes a Ho-meme by any means available without regard to the available facts. Example: Orly Taitz;

See also, Dimbulbican, n. That aliquot of the American body politic serving as a reservoir of Ho-meme infection. Synonyms: Tea-bagger; Dittohead; Fox News viewer;

See also, Dupid, n., adj, a portmanteau of duped+stupid. The condition of being attractive to and attracted by Ho-memes. Example usage: Dupid is as dupid does.

You see, pilgrims and seekers, those Caucasian Americans demonstrating on the sidewalk in front of the mall who sparked in me a smoldering flame of hot cognition are but a tiny subset of the cohort of Dimbulbicans that have been pissing me off since the Nixon administration. My entire adult life has been spent as an unwilling auditor of the spew of ho-memes by, for, and of, these people, the free range dupid.  I don’t have to draw you a Venn diagram to show you where my rage intersects with theirs, do I? I’m glad they have a president they can hate as much as I hate what 8 years of Bush has done to this country.

I also savor the bitter, bitter irony in the fact that Obama, the man they love to hate, is the very model of a modern mainstream Democrat, which is to say, slightly to the right of Nixon on most issues.

The German scholar of myth Ernst Cassirer coined a word for the maze of cognitive self-deception that makes humans slaves to endless, self-generated bunk: Urdummheit. I translate that as “primeval stupidity.”  Urdummheit is not stupid as in dumb, it is an emergent quality of cognitive brain function in all of us, including the very bright and the merely monkey clever, the heritable bequest of selection pressures past.  Dupid is as dupid does.

We need new words, and new mutations. Hopeful monsters must slouch to Bedlam to be born. In the meantime, there are the little skirmishes in the long war.

So here’s the new play for the next scrimmage with a scrum of sign-waving teabaggers on the street corner–I call it The Teabagger Strip Challenge:

Approach teabaggers with a friendly smile. Ask them if they are wearing American made clothing. Ask them what countries individual items of clothing were MADE IN. Suggest that they check the labels on said items of clothing. Suggest that they divest themselves of all items of clothing manufactured in whole or in part in a foreign country currently governed by a Socialist, Communist, Islamic, or other bad guy authoritarian regime. Ask them if they are wearing any clothing at all that was made in America, and NOT made in a foreign country under the sway of Socialist, Communist, Islamic, or other tyranny.

In the fantasy league version of this, we have a grant from the evil librul billionaire George Soros, Michael Moore and Sasha Baron Cohen are playing for our side, and we offer the teabaggers increasingly large sums of cold hard cash for the Socialist shirts off their backs.

If we can’t get them stark naked we can get them disheveled and discomfited. Yes we can.

Today is 12.19.16.12.8 8 Lamat 6 Ch’en

1192 shopping days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

I cut a five course medieval labyrinth in the backyard with the lawnmower.

I walk it every morning and every evening, rain or shine.

This evening the September monsoon rain continued to fall in Tulsa. Bumbershoot weather.

Have you ever walked a labyrinth? Not a maze, a labyrinth. A maze has false turnings and dead ends; the way in and the way out are hidden by walls or hedges. A maze is a puzzle or a trap; a sort of crossword for the feet. The purpose of a maze is to get lost. A labyrinth does not need concealment; it has curves and turnings that in the end bring the walker to the center of the pattern. The way out is the same as the way in. Turn about and follow the same meanders coiled on themselves. Step over threshold and exit where you entered. Like all forms of meditation or prayer the only change is the self of the one walks the path. The purpose of the labryrinth is to be found.

I walk my labyrinth with head inclined, because the lanes are 20 inches–the swath of the lawnmower blade–wide, and I need to watch where I put my feet. I stop to look up and take in the view at whim at points along the way. When I reach the end of the turning path, the center circle of the labyrinth, I take a breath, let it out, walk the inside of the circle counter-clockwise, then clockwise, take a breath, let it out, step out of the center circle and wind my way back to the threshold, take a breath, let it out, and step off into the higher grass of the rest of the lawn. There’s no particular reason why I do it this way. It’s just the way I do it. I recommend stopping to breath and take in the view.

I first walked a labyrinth one evening by candlelight, with my wife and several hundred other people, at a war protest, way back when it was still an invasion and not an occupation, a mission that could be accomplished, according to the man who set it all in motion. It was a temporary labyrinth staked out on the lawn in front of the local United Church of Christ (The “Don’t put a period where God put a comma,” people). Walking that labyrinth was like being wrapped in a prayer; we all committed magic without a license as cars whizzed by on Harvard Blvd.

The experience of that labyrinth moved me, and moved with me. I wanted to do it again. I laid out my first labyrinth–a classical seven course labyrinth, a pattern that comes down from prehistory–in the backyard of our previous house, using scavenged bricks and pieces of brick, tiles, glass insulators from old telephone poles, and chunks of native sandstone and limestone, the goaf left over from my hobby of  fossil fossicking.  The homely junkyard-visionary aesthetic of my original labyrinth did not please Mrs. Dr. Omed. She does not share my fondness for the rocks and heterogenous junk I collect whilst going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it.

I had to take up that labyrinth and leave its materials behind when we left the old homestead and moved to our present abode. I still wanted a labyrinth. Took me a year to get around to it. Now I mow my own–A simple, elegant solution for which I cannot take credit. I saw one cut into the lawn of a local Episcopal Church, and I stole the idea. Mrs. Dr. Omed likes the way the new labyrinth lends form to an otherwise undistinguished rectangle of suburban greensward. She’s been walking it herself.  The simple act of walking within bounds of a ritual path cut in grass does her good,  she’s found. Now if I could just talk her into adding a couple of menhirs…