Snakes
A festival of purgation. //
“Being sick” is also a negotiation between myself and the world, I was thinking yesterday. As we kept progressing through this illness, as if it were an argument, the subsequent days offering different perspectives on it, beginning with aches, shakes, and nausea, that climax in a night of vomiting, (un-willing efforts to empty an already hollowed stomach), disease passing as through a spectrum of these bodily systems, modes. The last few days it turned into the upper part of the body, head and chest, which are now swollen with mobilization, inundative rescue efforts, wracked by sneezes and coughs. So chapped lips and nose, morning voices cut with sludge, and sinus headache. My trifling desire to shut out all light and sound.
This is not me falling prey, I (comedienne) assure my husband, who tends to view illness as weakness in surrender. This is a battle, this phlegmy mess is our mounted defense and a glorious victory in progress… And then (feeling very American) meekly apologizing for being a burden while thusly underway.
My mind has been so sluggish, especially after that weird mania of day three. The last thing I want now is to focus on the specific task of writing. Which requires razor edges and piercing sight, building by division and seeking subtler senses of coherence, not to mention, setting out the beggar’s bowl for inspiration. (And caffeine, now seven days without. Who even am I?) You never know what gift you’ll get. Reading, ok, I’ve done a lot of that, in a hazy stupor absorbing many terrible things. What else is new.
The whole Neil Gaiman situation is gross and fascinating, (the archived link, at six days old, is already obsolete?), with offshoots to and from nearly everything relevant, to me and my humble epic, an irresistible exemplar of subterfuge poetic manipulation. Or as (poor, dear) Tori put it, last year, a wolf disguised as sheep. How blessed we are to have our own contemporary Lysias. Good thing we’ve got horses, as those armies really kept perfectly still. It is not mine but my other favorite response so far is this one. (Is this guy an asshole? or just ornery? I don’t know these people, their whisper networks, and yet,) It brings a shiver to read such incisive commentary, or perhaps that’s just leftover fever.
I have some digesting to do, and further healing, before offering my thoughts on all that. Other than, to celebrate its coming out. A festival of purgation.
Then yesterday I was thinking, while coughing until the gag reflex came, (apologies but I guess I will add Montaigne to the inevitable list of influences around here, who really put no limits on the observations he would share), and why not? These sensations and this experience are no less expressions of something true than, well, a tree growing, or an approaching storm. The red rose blooming. Baudelaire’s “take” (“take” = “make”) on a rotting corpse. (The ever-unheeded warning that “anyone can do it”.) This too is experience and introspection is in theory possible, here as everywhere, in war as in peace, in decay as in life.
Perhaps it is a reliable cornerstone of interpretation for these modern horrors, as purgation. (Or as Americans call it these days, inauguration.) We have ceremonies too for calling out the demons, for coughing them up and spitting them out, the upending of bodily-function as vomit, (I despise and resist this feeling, to no avail), as banishment of the enemy one made of oneself. (Must we deal with it now, the nightmare of involuntary anal penetration? Dear God, what would Jesus do? With Christ’s remains interred in this necessary question.) Or what else is a virus? Embrace your closest intimate, the toilet bowl. Disease as ecstatic dance, revelling in the expulsive revelation of noxious bodily fluids!
I’d been thinking lately also, here is another possible referent of Morychos. A cthonic deity, local and obscure, the kind whose worship seems to have been ubiquitous in Ancient Greek “civilization”, as folk practice. These things rarely if ever made it into the written record. Modern historians had (imagine it) interpreted a whole society based only on its polite conversation. Ye noble Greeks. Here’s yet another way of cultivating a partial truth, by limiting your resources to official, state-sanctioned documents. Well history, which is human, will always be more akin to “the state”, than to “the true”. Disregard images on vases, atypical animals represented on temple reliefs, a coiling snake on the throne of Zeus. Which figure was the interloper? To which one did we sacrifice our children? This is not modern, not at all. It has ever been difficult for us to see through the deception of our ongoing efforts, “to groom”.
So I started reading (pre-flu) Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion by Jane Ellen Harrison, (a fascinating historical figure in her own right), the seminal academic text on stratification of divinity in the ancient world. Written word versus unrecorded ritual, text versus ceremonial relief, the one kind of god you like to talk about, the other that doesn’t bear mentioning. Indispensable reading for students of invisibility, (in whatever dialectical direction), a constant reminder that we are secrets kept from ourselves,
Of mystery as the shroud.
You will never understand anything unless you assume the unmentionable, subterranean. Dead bodies. That said, I’m not convinced I contain multitudes at all. This skin is too fragile, this spirit bloated, and this willing, quite broken. It seems more to me that they (or we, the multitudes) come spilling out, un-contained, as yellow bile. Seemingly seamless stories vibrate with fever of the undisclosed. We, who remain unread, unwritten will be known as forgotten prisoners of his, awaiting our climactic liberation.
This is the radical steadfastness of faith, as Furies. We do not look at the time.
To the alien, from another side. // Earth used to be the most beautiful place.
You could go running, under-leaf, through waist-deep tangled-grass jungle, wondering about snakes but not stopping because you had lost something in there, your heart breaking along fault lines in egg shells of worry and the impossibility of searching this dense pocket of hiding. The sharp limits of eyes. (It could start to rain and the drops, clear pinpoints and gashes on your naked arms, would feel body-temperature, not quite cool.) You would give birth to yourself, clambering out from staggered layers of green into a rice field, shifting pale to yellow, (footsteps uneven in cracking, caked mud, swaying in) needle-soft fibers cascading with grain. A sea of it. (It could start pouring, but the heavy, like wind-whipped-metal, grey holds.) Do you go left, right, forward into the field, or back to the jungle? (Ok, good choice. Turn to page 56.)
Words come from behind you, you don’t understand those, but fearful fluttering heartbeats, you do. From underneath places, trembling invisibles look back, lines of sight never meeting, from too many directions. You never held what happened, there. Life was snuffed out in missed-crossings, disappeared, or worse, waited past the faltering light, as if to be found again, hoping but knowing, skin and memory growing thin and colder, until heart stopped. It gave up, it was over, but then, you were found. A strange struggle, distracting but home again, having made plans that seem irrelevant, at this point. Washed a sink full of dishes. Sat on the floor, scratching stray sentences in dust. It would be dark, but not raining, and anyway, you would be under the solid wood floor of another world, with footsteps relying heavily on the grammar of your (earthy) answer.
Somebody who loved you might bring you food that was soft and crunchy and salty and sweet. And a lit stick of honeyed incense. Parts of you would fall back in right places. You could remove clothes, find yourself misshapen, and step into a hot shower under pitch-navy sky. Becoming twin bodies, ocean and sorrow in a breathy coccoon against deep space. I would work my fingers into your scalp, and medicinal smells of sudsy substances would rinse off in slippery streams to either side of your (kissed) face. Scrub around ears. You could be clean. (And the miracle of that.) You could put on clean clothes. You could slip between clean sheets underneath a comforter blanket that was the perfect thickness for this night’s chill, with just enough weight to let you feel, well, enough. Plus a cat, on your legs. Yes, cats were amazing. You could cover your eyes, and drift off, as a warm hand slipped softly into yours. Everything that was lost, would be home, would be dreamt or forgotten, singing or held, would be tucked under feathers, bed scattered with blossoms, and the waning crescent would disappear into the better side of night.
One felt gratitude, and mistook it for fear. That is how beautiful Earth was. We couldn’t contain the joy it put into us, so we turned it upside-down, into fear.
Witch’s mane and chaos truffles. //
I don’t look at the sky today. It’s too bright.
A discussion about zucchini, which isn’t commonly grown or eaten here, whether, where, and how we can grow it, in the wilder garden, outside the wall. Easy to grow, but the danger of curcubits is that the plants are favorite hiding places for pit vipers (the small green ones) and cobras (the “kings”). One also avoids walking in jungle areas, or anywhere really, without a wide-brimmed hat. Snakes will attack your head and face, from above, which, if you’re very lucky, doesn’t kill you.
Discovering periods of my life I seem to have stashed into dark, cobwebbed corners, so they’ve been barely, rarely remembered. Now, when I think of them, they strike me as odd, alienating, inappropriate. What to do with these memories?
Related: some things you can’t learn until you separate yourself. Dysfunctional situations prevent growth. Situations, institutions, environments, are not surface problems, but deep.
We stop at a small bridge, over a ravine, to collect aren palm fibers, (duk), from a fallen tree. It looks like a witch’s black hair, (it’s used as this, in ceremonial representation, also as mane of Barong), a matted tangle that we tug apart. Afterwards my skin is dry and tight, and sinuses are on edge from the dust.
Fragments of conversation with school children, walking by, two boys and a girl, puzzled to see us. Until we explain, “ini untuk tempat tidur ayam”. They smile, hands on hips, like adults. O iya, of course, it’s for chickens.
Back home. Grace leads chicks to the lowest garden, jumping down a one-meter (or so) drop. They need “assistance” getting back to the chicken house, so E grabs Grace and I grab the cilik-cilik, but it turns complicated as they scatter into a chaotic (cuteness) matrix. Soon I’m Lucille Balling again, chocolate chicks like quick-moving truffles, stuffing in bra, like an expert.
Separating oneself is like separating duk, tangled and tough. It decides whether and where it comes apart, and what comes with it, that you didn’t expect.
Now time for practice. Salam to all.
To understand the meaning of rain here, it’s useful to know that we live half outside. This is typical in Balinese villages. When it rains, that means staying dry in the bedroom or going outside to living areas and getting a little wet. The kitchen and bale (our little “living room”) are covered, but walkways get slippery, stray drops are always blowing in, the more wind and rain, the less dry, the less safe for cats and electronic devices. Huddling in from the edges. It can be… inconvenient, but I mostly like living close to the weather. And the garden, and the bugs, snails, bats, frogs, geckos and tokays, occasional birds, snakes, monitor lizards, stranger cats, etc., that visit.
That little bale is also the place where we socialize at home, and it’s visited daily by members of our Balinese family. Writing and my yoga practice demand a sustained level of privacy that’s not typical of family life here. (And not good at all for social anxiety.) I’d always heard that “Asian culture” was “more family-centered, less individualistic” than Western, but I never understood it until I lived (sort of) immersed in it. (I say sort of, because we don’t live at the main family compound, but at a nearby offshoot. Even so,) it seems to me like a drastically different lifestyle that has profound effects on mental, emotional, social, psycho-spiritual development. Not least because families take care of their elderly. I think treatment of elders sets a strong foundation for how people think and feel about death and dying, what comes to be and passes away, and what, if anything, is deathless.
How Not to Break
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow.
//
People forget the absolute confusion it would throw us into. Our poor hearts. To be flirted with by Socrates!
Everyone reacted in his own way. There were puppies, pitbulls and poodles among us, Siamese cats, golden retrievers, kosher beef hotdogs, poisonous spiders and slithering snakes, all electrified, burning cheeks, clammy hands, contemptuous coughs, eyes rolling exaggeratedly behind backs, tea-drinking, name-calling, note-taking, knowing looks, mistaken engagements, pregnant pauses, drunken outbursts, drunken confessions, drunken makeouts, sneaking sweets into pursed lips, so many petty jealousies you wouldn’t believe.
Backstabbing, frontstabbing, it got ugly, abusive. Nobody wanted to see himself like that. Some went abstract, algebraic, symbolic, tried to ignore it, tied their hands as they slept. It exhausted us all. Some dismissed her for it, pretended cute compliments were sarcastic slights, secret glances a lie, the multi-entendres a meaningless flourish, intellectual metaphor, performative bullshit, while sneaking behind bushes. Some named it irony, her beloveds and her beautifully saids, a great number of grown men turned theatrically, cartoonishly evil, sending pornography to professional inboxes, these are historical facts, they just broke.
From her simple, sweet flirtation: they broke.
The question was always, how not to break.
(Hold it together?) What does he want. (Does he want it from me?) What do I want. (Why do I want it?) Do I want to give. (Do I have what he wants?) Do I believe him. (Is it about sex?) The stimulation of bodies to pleasure, more pleasure, until lost in the pleasure. (Reforged in pleasure?) Is it empty or is it full. (It or me?) Am I safe or am I in danger. (Which is the one that holds me together?)
The heart becomes a gaping question.
After all, this is a rite of passage. Few of us pass. (Pass into what?) The beautiful is what we call it when someone just does.
//
Must be a snake nest in the garden because the cats have caught three babies so far. Small, brown, narrow heads, E says not dangerous but how they rear their heads and face you off… Then I had a dream some deity, reflected shimmering gold and black, commanded I build it a temple. It was terrifying.