Today is 12.19.18.11.10 8 Ok 18 Yaxk’in

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

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor/Robert Tiso, Glass Harp

Lachesis

Half past love’s labor lost

on a melting watch’s

persistent memory,

half past the half life

of the lithium chorus

singing out the lauds and matins

like a bach fugue

played on water harmonica

and glockenspiel,

Lachesis measures out the bolt

laced like a suture

through the wounded heart—

a live wire—

thread of lightning

whipcracking the air

from the coil

to Tesla’s outstretched hand

as he allows his body

to be crucified by light

in this passion play

of Dr. Electric.

“therefore I will wail and howl,

I will go stripped and naked:

I will make a wailing

like the dragons,

and mourning as the owls”

Today is 12.19.18.10.16 7 Kib 4 Yaxk’in

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

The Future?

Check out the Hang Seng Index; you can watch the stocks fall and volatility rise in (sur)real time. Though the Masters of Paradigm have been baying to the Chicken-Little skies like a flack (flock+pack) of Shar-Poos on Ritalin that reducing debt and spending is the cure for our sovereign woes, it seems that the “markets” do not like governmental austerity nearly so much they think they do, which is to say, not at all. As soon as the debt ceiling bill (to be here and hereafter known as The Suck Heard ‘Round The World) was passed in Congress and  signed into law by President Obama, everyone suddenly looked up and noticed that the actual effects of enforced austerity in countries in the Euro Zone was, like, bad. And as the illimitable Atrios has sang out many a time:

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeee…

+++

The WD-40 Company should consider issuing its fine product in vintage years. It’s a pure petroleum distillate, no fish oil or hog lard–fine dinosaur wine, but currently non-vintage. One could invest in a case of vintage “40″ as a hedge against inflation… Checking in at the company website, I see that it already offers a collectible series. Go to “Gunny’s Garage” and get in on the ground floor, folks…pre-peak-oil WD-40 can only accrue in value as pure petroleum lubricants become more and more rare; not to mention the nostalgia value that will also accrue as our military-technological Imperium fades, in a product promotion that “supports the troops.”

+++

I try to think ahead, just for fun. What is fun for me is not necessarily fun for you. To prepare for my place in the new economy, I’m taking up stone knapping. Dr. Omed’s Fine Flint and Obsidian blades, suitable for all hunter-gatherer and neo-Aztec needs, including dressing out captured bankers and stockbrokers, coming soon to a fine rock shelter near you.

I have seen the aboriginal future, and it involves laying your still beating heart on the altar atop the Pyramid of the Sun.

The Werewolf in Love

Wolves, Lower                                                                                         Shawna Khalily

The Werewolf in Love

When you go afar off, hunting alone

my heart turns white,

my bones wither to dry sticks,

my fur turns to smoke,

and my singed tongue dissolves

to a black stone

too heavy

to lift in song

even in the full silver of moontide.

When you are running afar, my alpha,

my chosen mate—

I am just a man,

dressed in smuts and ashes—

The dogstar bites my brain

with a mouth full of Januaries—

And I think,

she will litter moondogs

without me to hunt while she dens—

I think,

I will hire on with a traveling sideshow

as Dogboy,

and search for her

among the crowds of prey.

But when I hear you howl, afar off

your song ignites

a pillar of fire in my brain

my eyes re-ember

the lay of our land, the promised wilderness

and I return the call

across the valley of the shadow.

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The poem of course is my own. I wrote it for Mrs. Dr. Omed in 1997 before she became my Missus and before I accepted the virtual mantle of the Reverend and Doctor Omed. It is one of the poems in the book I wrote for her, An Army, with Banners. The image above is of a woodcut print made by the printmaker and artist Shawna Khalily. Mrs. Dr. Omed and I first met Shawna and first saw her work at Day’s Espresso and Coffee on Bardstown Road in Louisville, the day she hung her show on the walls of the coffeehouse. We knew that day one of those prints would be coming home with us, and last Sunday, the last day of her show, we just happened to wander in as Shawna arrived to take down her art. The print pictured above went into our car. It now hangs on our wall, where I can see it as I type this.  I’m so happy I could howl.

…Little old lady got mutilated late last night, werewolves of Luhvul again…

…Aaaaaahooooo…*

*As Charles Simic wrote in one of his poems, and as my friend Clarissa Pinkola Estes reminds us in her book, Women Who Run With The Wolves:

He who cannot howl will not find his pack.

The Bread of Wolves

The bread of wolves
burns our tongues
hot from the oven
of a howl.
The bread of wolves
is red
as an ember.
Cinders fly on a stiff wind
from eye to eye,
thigh to thigh.
Do you hear the panting of the running pack?
To make the bread,
take locoweed, bonemeal, poppyseed,
apple cores, pomegranate rinds.
Stir and add semen,
blood of menarche,
and hartshorn.
Moisten with a hard squeeze of the bitch teat
of the old moon
in the new moon’s arms.
Knead
breasts of the women you have loved,
until hard and smooth and round
as nine months of mother belly.
Melt snow
in black iron
over an open fire of small wood,
for the steam must tast of rust
and wood smoke.
Float the loaves inside the kettles
for the uprising.
When all these moons are full,
thrust into hot ashes.
Bake until the bread of wolves
is red
as embers
and cinders fly from eye to eye,
thigh to thigh,
and you hear the panting
of the running pack.
Push out the loaves with a rod
of willow, oak, or iron.
Do not let cool.
The bread of wolves
should burn the tongue
hot from the oven
of a howl.

Today is 12.19.18.10.12 3 Eb 0 Yaxk’in

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

Rising Bread as Full Moon.

Lammas had come round again. I take note of it on the Tent Show, when I remember, as I did two years ago today:

Lammas aka Loaf Mass aka Lughnasadh is a feast celebrated on the cross-quarter day halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, by convenience of tradition,  August 1st or 2nd. It is called the feast of first fruits–the fruits of the year’s harvest. The first fruits are honored by baking bread made from flour milled from the new crop of wheat.

By tradition, the first reaping from the field is winnowed, milled, mixed, baked, and consumed all on the day or days (sometimes Lammas is two day affair) of the festival.

Today it’s too damn hot to bake bread, even virtually, so stare at the image above and imagine with me the Bread Moon rising in the evening sky while the tree frogs sing their hymns of sex and longing in the tall cypresses outside my window. As for first fruits,

…the spirit of thing is to honor and give attention to the “daily bread,” the food you put in your mouth on this day, preferably a food handmade from basic, unadulterated ingredients.

Food close to its roots, so to speak, that has some savor of the ground it grew in or place it came from, that’s best, though hunger can make a Twinkie, or potato chips, or a baloney sandwich on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip, holy. You want to be hungry when you eat the food you’ve consecrated for Loaf Mass. Bringing your hunger to the table is part of what makes the food a holy offering and the table a consecrated altar to whatever god or gods you’ve asked to dinner.

The fruits I prepared for our dinner tonight were white yams, cucumber-leek salad with yogurt and dill, corn on the cob, and briefly (briefly) seared filet d’cow. Some of the meal was locally sourced via our neighborhood green grocer, The Root Cellar. If you live in Old Louisville, or anywhere near it, go see, feel, smell, taste, and buy the fresh, local fruits, veggies, eggs, milk, cheese, etc. The man (his name is Ron) needs your business, and we need such businesses and the local growers who supply them to survive and thrive in the coming years when local food will be the main source of calories available, as it will once the dinosaur wine becomes too expensive and we can no longer sustain long petro-fueled supply chains and industrial agriculture.

Others are having their tea party (sponsored by FOX news and with a salad bar catered by Applebees, hanging strange fruit in their Liberty Tree for another round of Whack-O-Bama. Let us take other liberties, and may the salt we take with our bread keep its savor. Watch the Bread Moon rise. Listen to the tree frogs chirruping in the cypresses.