Rootwords

Black River

2010-06-04T04:25:00.000-04:00

Startled snake is sprawling
Between mountains, oh, black river,
And I am a fierce companion,
I am mirror-man forever,
I am twisted, piercing perfect,
This is complimentary treason,
There is nothing else I wish for,
I'm the man for every season.

But I am a sailor
Heading towards the curtained dark,
The horizon, peppered starlight,
Let my compass find its mark.
Black, black river, what you carry
Is a danger-driven treasure.
Sail, sail on towards other suns,
Towards other sorrows, other pleasures.

Ebony is bleeding
From tomorrow, oh, black river,
I can see you never breathing,
You will have come first forever.
There's a name for what you gave me;
While we're waiting for the ending,
Let yourself enjoy the journey,
Life's a fortune that's worth spending.

But I am a sailor
Heading towards the curtained dark,
The horizon, peppered starlight,
Let my compass find its mark.
Black, black river, what you carry
Is a danger-driven treasure.
Sail, sail on towards other suns,
Towards other sorrows, other pleasures.

Shatter again
While the sky remains unbroken,
I can remember lights I've never seen
Twirling above you,
Ballerinas screaming
About the next time it'll be the last time
And all the times in between.

Black and white and wild,
You are a torrent, oh, black river.
Give me courage to remember
I am stronger than forever;
We have changed what's not been spoken
Throwing wishes in the water,
All the tears that make a river
Still recall the sound of laughter.

All of us are sailors
Heading toward the curtained dark,
The horizon, peppered starlight,
Let the compass find its mark.
And wherever fate may drive us,
Leave our pathways carved in stone
In the hope that other sailors
Never have to sail alone.

Just some lyrics...

2010-06-04T04:20:00.001-04:00

Well goddamn she's a pretty little rocker
Hot nights and a bed that's harder than stone
Once the stars go to sleep
And you know that she rolls like the thunder
She's off key but at least her song is her own
This lullaby's hers to keep.

She's glorious
She doesn't have a name
In blue or brown
Somehow her eyes are all the same
She's everywhere
The music's loud, smoke fills the air
And the beer flows
That's when she knows
She's come home.

When she stands she's the queen of her kingdom
When she walks the whole world moves under her feet
Every seat is her throne
She spends smiles when she can't spend her money
She buys love and the danger makes her complete
Without regrets she wakes alone.

She's glorious
She doesn't have a name
In blue or brown
Somehow her eyes are all the same
She's everywhere
The music's loud, smoke fills the air
And the beer flows
That's when she knows
She's come home.

You can keep
All your white knights, pretty lights
Paint her picture neon and gold
You can hear
How her heart beats as she sleeps
Makes you want to give her the world
For a day
As if it could make the music stay.

Well goddamn she's a pretty little junkie--
Cold sweats and a fog that covers her eyes
Just an hour before dawn
And she knows what the toll is for breaking
She's so high but at least she followed the sun
Once before she comes undone.
Lullaby...

She's glorious
Impossible to tame
She's Icarus
And nobody's to blame
She's everywhere
And in the end when all those feathers melt away
You know what she'd want to say--
That although she fell alone
She flew on wings that were her own
And she's finally found her home.

Special Post: re: "My tweenage historical bookshelf"

2009-09-17T14:19:00.002-04:00

In reply to this blog entry, which keeps giving me a "Sorry, we cannot accept this data" error when I try to comment--

My favourite historical fiction book in middle school was "Lincoln" by Gore Vidal. A cinder block of a book for a kid that age, I know, but I loved it, since Lincoln was my hero and role model. I loved "To Kill A Mockingbird," "Number the Stars," and "The Man Who Was Poe" by Avi. I also seem to recall that the Johnny Dixon mysteries by John Bellairs seemed historical in nature to me, though I cannot remember if they dealt with any specific REAL history or were just Johnny and Professor Childermass bopping around very old places (in New England, if I recall correctly) mucking about with antiques and ghosts and abandoned houses. I loved those best, I think -- how fitting for my having gone into historic archaeology! Another fantastic favourite was "The King's Swift Rider" by Mollie Hunter, which tells the story of a young boy in the time of Robert the Bruce of Scotland.

As a side-note -- I sadly cannot think of any specific books right now, but when discussing historical fiction, I think it is necessary to include the stories that are part of history, that were told by our ancestors. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes all play an important role in who we are historically. Any search on culture-specific myths, legends, and folklore should turn up plenty of results.

Entitlement, Equality

2009-08-19T01:14:00.001-04:00

Why is it so difficult for people to understand that changing other people's behaviors and attitudes takes work?

Respect... is a difficult thing to define or write rules for. Every person, regardless of age, gender, race, sexual preference, physical appearance or ability, or any other variable, deserves respect for their basic human rights. If you need to know what that really means, a list can be found here. In brief, and what I am trying to say, is that every living person deserves to have their dignity as a living individual respected -- every human deserves respect insofar as they may not be enslaved, harmed, or treated unequally by the law.

But human rights get fuzzy when you inject the element of culture. Even "free" societies allow bigoted and discriminatory behaviors under the law -- because it takes a lot of time and a lot of WORK for all variations of human behavior, identity, and form to be fully understood, accepted, and given firm and clear means of communication -- i.e. words that apply specifically to different KINDS of people. My dears, until just over 100 years ago, there was no way to clearly communicate, in the English language, what homosexuality was. There were Biblical words, considered obscene and taboo in polite company, and there were slang terms that mutated from region to region and were as variable as snowflakes, but 100 years ago, no one could explain that their sexual orientation was anything other than heterosexual and be understood by the majority of society, much less ACCEPTED by it.

It takes work to get to that acceptance and understanding. This is as it has always been -- a matter of survival. We are not, as a species, psychologically programmed to accept changes in social routine without a fight. Of course we fear the Other -- for most of our history as a species on this planet, the Other has been a bringer of death, disease, rape, tyranny, etc. We have an inborn genetic understanding that any change in social routine is dangerous. Most of us will react this way even when it is not true. It is the same instinct that makes us homesick when we leave our primary caretakers' nest; it is the same instinct that makes us continue to love our childhood games and stories well beyond childhood. The familiar is safe.

At no time in the course of human history has there been a people like Americans. Other countries may have blood mixed by invasion and trade; other countries have seen the "lawful" invasion of foreigners as the result of empire expansion; and Canada and Australia may have majority populations whose ancestors were not native to their lands; but no country except America has so many people from so many places. No other country has so many mutts. No other country imports and exports people to and from all over the world like a country breathing people, despite our recent absurd obsession over "border safety."

I don't point this out as an observation made to stir patriotism. I am writing this to post to places where the vast majority of readers will be American. I am writing as a person whose online venues are run and populated by mostly Americans. And my point is that if ever there was a society with the tools to encourage acceptance, understanding, and begin to break our instinctual habits in the interests of the equality of all humans, it is this society. Like any other nation, we are rife with bigotry, lawful discrimination, miscommunication, and lack of education. But we don't have to be. We are truly privileged in that we have the potential to become something magnificent if we can figure out how to deal with our instinctive misgivings about each other.

Which brings me back to my point. I have regularly in the past but far more so recently seen a certain attitude that pervades any discussion of inequalities -- an attitude that no one should have to "bend over backwards" for people who will not immediately and unquestioningly alter their behavior for the sake of any transgression against a person who is an Other to them -- be that transgression as immense as enslavement and discrimination, or as minor as an unintentional use of an unknowingly offensive word. That same attitude seems to walk hand-in-hand with the idea that no person who experiences unequal treatment should have to explain themselves to the people whose actions and attitudes must be changed.

This attitude is absurd and unrealistic.

No, it is not fair that some people have to make a great effort to be treated with equality in their own societies. But it is necessary. Humanity's instinctive fear of the Other does not justify bigotry and discrimination, but it does explain it. It is not rational to expect people to change on their own accord the behaviors and attitudes that have been practiced and taught in their society for spans of time that engulf generations more than I myself can count on either side of my own family tree. It is not realistic to expect people to alter their attitudes just because they are told they should.

Changes in behavior and attitudes come from respect. The concept of respect is deeply ingrained in our social rituals, which is how we communicate respect for other persons. When most people think of a ritual, they think of things like shaking hands, addressing elders and social superiors by certain titles, observing courteous behaviors on the road and in other social situations, and even practicing basic hygeine. Rituals are the practices of peace which we, as a society, agree to follow and to recognize in order to maintain order. Our rituals are a language, and like our spoken language, they are ever-changing, and can mean much even at the most subtle levels.

Every victory of equality is an alteration in social rituals. This is not a small thing. This is not a demand one can make of a society without having to work for it. Rituals are observed on a platform of respect, but respect must be earned. This is not a radical concept, and it has been proven to work in the past. This is the same basis on which Ghandi and King practiced their movements of social evolution.

All people who want equality must work for it, and prove themselves deserving of it. This is not done through hostility, or through attitudes of entitlement. This is accomplished through gradual, persistent efforts to prove oneself able to coexist peacefully with the majority, to earn one's own livelihood, and to contribute to the common good. This is accomplished through a willingness to educate those who do not understand the position of the Other, and through persistent self-discipline and humility.

In short -- yes, it sucks to be the Other. Yes, it's hard to be misunderstood, mistreated by the majority and their laws, and to be born into a life that will be inherently more difficult that someone else's in very basic ways due to differences beyond one's own control. But no amount of indignant hostility will ultimately promote a cause. Equality is achieved through patience and willingness to work to help those who want to understand and change.

So many times, I have seen people come forward with questions only to be told off with varying degrees of hostility and informed that they need to "do their own research" before they can come back and ask more informed questions without being judged and accused of ignorance, malice, and "privilege" (a word I disapprove of vehemently, but that's a rant for another post). Not only do these responses actually discourage people from changing, they reflect an arrogant ignorance and carelessness for one's peers. It says that you believe yourself to be better than them, because you are somehow more enlightened. And maybe, in a sense, you are -- but what's the point of being enlightened if your psychological evolution serves no one but yourself? What good are you with all your intellectual content if you won't give what you know to others who would seek and accept that understanding and add to the progress of social evolution?

Again, I'm not saying it's fair. I know full well, as a person who belongs to a group that is lawfully discriminated against, that it can be damn tiring to have to constantly explain oneself to others. But you know what? It's worth it. Equality is a worthy goal, but not an easy one. It demands that we must all be heroes. Heroism is not the same as aggressive hostility. Heroism is self-discipline, patience, understanding, generosity...

The world will not give to you what you do not give to it. Mankind has potential for so much good, so much enlightenment, so much magnificent triumphs of what we would call virtue and humanity and progress -- but these things cannot and will not come unless those of us who want equality are willing to earn it, however unfair it may seem that that work must be done. We are all who we are. We are all capable of our own heroism. But we will fail if we continue to allow ourselves to believe the lies of entitlement. There is no productivity in victimization. There is no progress from passivity. I do not preach that everyone should be a martyr, but if you read this far and leave with anything, I want you to leave with this thought:

You are a member of the infinitely variable and complex structure, Mankind. You have a right to yourself as much as anyone, but the world is not a kind or merciful place. Mankind is a machine capable of magnificent functions, but the machine cannot function if its parts cannot work in harmony. It is up to you to show, through peace and open education, that you can belong in the whole without disrupting its productivity. It is equally up to your fellow humans to make an effort to incorporate the solution you offer. But it is not up to them to find your place for you, or to figure out how you work unless you meet them half way and welcome them into who you are, as you want them to welcome you into identification as part of who THEY are.

These are idealistic thoughts. These are demanding thoughts. But if even one person reads this and decides to devote their efforts to educating those who are willing and to living as productive and peaceful a life as their society will allow them to live, then the world has been changed just that much for the better, and that is worth everything. Our evolution is EVERYBODY'S business.

From Washington DC, the world is listening, Fayah.

2009-08-18T15:17:00.003-04:00

There is nothing I can add to this that can possibly do anything but detract from the eloquence of these words. This is the poetry of something real, that means more as itself than it ever could through the reinterpretation of the greatest poets or politicians.

In the brutality, the honesty, and the beauty -- there is Truth. This is something important.

From Idiomagic on LiveJournal, a public post, copied here in its entirety:

I heartily wish I didn't have to report this. I just found out that Fayah was one of the women who led the protests on July 30th at Neda Agha Soltan's gravesite.

She was beaten severely by several Basij militiamen with batons, and struck repeatedly on the head.

Her friends carried her away from the cemetary to a friend's house. She died on August 2nd, having never regained consciousness.

Fayah Azadi was 23 years old, a student at Tehran University, studying art. She was a talented painter, and a staunch supporter of democracy and women's rights.

Nothing I can say can do justice to her courage and dedication and resolve, so I am reposting her last email to me. Her words are the best epitaph I can imagine.

Please note, if you are one of the people who abhors martyrdom and the very concept of dying for a cause, I respect your opinion but this is not the place to state it. I am deeply distraught right now, and I fear I would not give your opinions the thoughtful response that they deserve. Thank you.

"I love life. I love to laugh and be with my friends. There are so many books I want to read, movies I want to see, people I want to meet. I want to marry, to be a good wife and mother. I want to grow old with the people I love, to feel the sun on my face, to see the ocean, to travel.

My country is in a terrible state. People have no jobs. There is no money. People have no freedom. Women must hide themselves from the world, and we have no choices.

Our people--we are not terrorists. We hate terrorists. And that is what our government has become. They kill our people for no reason. They torture us in their prisons because we want freedom. They make our country look evil, they make our religion look evil.

We are fighting for our freedom, for our religion, for our country. If we do nothing while injustice abounds, we become unjust. We turn into the ones we hate.

I have to fight. I have to go back on the streets. I will make them kill me. I will join Neda, with my friends, and then maybe the world will hear us.

I never thought I would become a martyr, but it is needed. The more of us they kill, the smaller they become, the more strength the people will have. Maybe my death will mean nothing, but maybe it will buy my country freedom.

I am very sad that I will never be a mother, that I will never do the things I love, but I would rather die than do nothing and know that I am to blame for the tortures, the murder, the hatred.

Please tell the world how much we love life. That we are not terrorists. We just want to be free."
-----

From Washington DC, the world is listening, Fayah.

--VG

History in action!

2009-02-18T01:03:00.003-05:00

Tonight, the Interpreting Material Culture class was finally introduced to the main house at Morven, where we'll be doing a lot of work in the coming weeks. Our previous classes have been held in the coach house, which is not connected to the mansion itself.

Follow this link to see the official Morven Park website. The first large green button under the animated banner, "Mansion & Grounds," has a brief advertisement video that allows you to see some of the outside of the house and grounds. It calls the house "newly renovated." In fact, the house is being renovated and is not yet open to the public. The current plan is to have a few of the front rooms open to visitors by April, but at the moment, the house is a gutted work-in-progress.

As grand as it looks in the video and website pictures, the impressive front is barely a hint at the massive labyrinthine interior. It is unimaginably immense, which is why the restoration process has taken over two decades so far and still has a long way to go. As of now, approximately $8 million has gone into the restoration project, which is small peanuts compared to other sites, and what will eventually be spent on this one. It is only through the luck of some smart financial moves early in the project that the foundation can afford to continue its efforts with the economy as it is now.

Below, I have about 25 photographs from our introductory tour. They were taken with my cell phone, so I apologize for the horrid quality of some of them. Dim light messes with the auto-focus, it seems.

And now, take a look at a few snapshots of what goes into preserving a historic home:

This is a sadly fuzzy shot of a lightbulb above the door to the mansion safe, which was installed in the 1920's. It was very Mafia.

These are the original floorboards, which have been in storage in a trailer for three years. Many rooms have piles of these lying around. They're being reacclimated to their original environment: before reinstalling them, the wood needs time to return to its proper shape after being stored elsewhere for so long. Each floorboard is numbered; they will be laid exactly the way they were before.

This photo is difficult to make out, but it was meant to be a shot of the wall under a staircase in the same hallway the safe door is in. With the floorboards removed, there's a gap between the wall and floor letting in light from the next room.

There are gaps like these in many of the rooms, made to install a fantastic fire-extinguishing system that uses an oxygen,removing mist rather than water to extinguish fire. You can see the original brickwork through the gaps.

This room is right off the main entry. I took this photo to show the high ceilings. The section of missing wall in the corner shows the original wooden framework, behind which is the outer wall of the earlier brick structure.

A close-up of one of the French windows. This will all be repainted and patched up eventually.

And here's what's behind that bare framework in the corner two photos up! You can see the foundation of the main structure. There's a large gap because it was originally slightly out of alignment with the additions.

Another view of the wall through the framework. You can't see it in my photos sadly, but this spot is still unpatched because they actually found where there used to be a door leading out of the main structure, which was bricked over and hidden.

Messy, deteriorated brickwork between the two walls.

An unfinished patching job where the pipes leading to the fire extinguishers were installed. I'm not sure what the white stuff is exactly, but we were instructed not to touch it with our bare hands as it contains lime.

The doorway between another side room and the main hall. It's a huge doorway and the ceiling goes up yet another three feet or so beyond it.

Some terrifying carvings on a mantlepiece.

The so-called Trophy Room is everyone's favourite. In stark contrast to the pale yellow and white dust-covered rooms of the rest of the house, it is rich and colorful, the top half of the wall papered in salmon burlap, and the bottom half all dark wood. The hunting trophies were inherited by the Davis family from previous owners.

The Trophy Room again. A braided hoof...?

MOOSE!

A wider view of the room.

Piled furniture under the deer head. I actually took this photo three times because it so confused me -- the large covered thing in the middle was not yellow, and I have no idea why my camera continued to register it as such. It was white. Huh.

In the bathroom off one corner of the Trophy Room -- a square toilet!

More mantle sculpture in the main hall.

Ancient electrical fixtures in the library. The wires are covered in CLOTH. Yes, that's a good idea...

Original wallpaper behind the bookshelf panneling.

Most of the ceilings had been restored, but here's one that had had no work done on it yet. It was terribly shabby.

Another gap between wall and wall, this one on the 2nd floor.

The kitchen! An iron stovetop put in where the hearth used to be.

The bottom of the cabinets all around the room. I thought it was quite beautiful.

Govorner Davis' bed. We were all at a loss as to how anyone could sleep comfortably on that -- it's too short for any adult of normal height.

So ends my tour. There will be more as the semester progresses. In March and April, once the construction has been finished in a few of the lower-level rooms, our class will go in to assist with some of the less specialized tasks -- taking inventory, re-hanging mirrors and portraits, situating the furniture, etc. Our professor told us we may even be allowed to help restore some of the heads in the Trophy Room, but they have to consult the experts on that, since the methods of preserving trophies back then involved arsenic and they don't know right now if it's safe to let students help.

A great class today. I hope those of you not paying for this have enjoyed my little glimpse into the field I plan to go into!

My Opening Farewell

2009-01-18T19:36:00.001-05:00

Suddenly it’s so hard to find
The sound of the words to speak her troubled mind,
So I’m offering these to her as if to be kind:
There’s a train everyday leaving either way;
There’s a world, you know.
There’s a way to go,
And you’ll soon be gone – that’s just as well.
This is my opening farewell.
~Jackson Browne
-----

My family and I will be leaving DC tomorrow for the inauguration. We’ll be staying two or three nights out in the mountains and return when the most chaotic part of the political circus has gone back home.

A lot of people have asked me why we would choose to make our collective exodus for such an historic event. The simplest answer is convenience and safety. The city will be flooded with people, and beginning at midnight tomorrow, all the bridges will be closed. Even during normal workdays, it’s hard for us to find anywhere to put our cars, as we have no garage or back yard and are not permitted to park on the side-streets – we live on one of the city’s main streets. It would be an absurd task to so much as go down to the grocery store. Add to that the fact that the city will be as fortified as it can be made, and many of its exits blocked... we simply do not wish to be around for it.

But for my part, I have reasons more jaded. I have never been a great fan of political fervor, and the emphasis being mounted on this event makes me ill. Historic it will be indeed. And a shift in the direction of this country was, without a doubt, necessary. But I believe the real historical event will be a day people may not recognize at all, and one I probably will not live to see. It will come when we, as a society, elect a PERSON to the presidency who will be to us a leader first, regardless of whether they are black or white, gay or straight or bisexual or asexual, man or woman or transgendered, childless or a parent of many, Christian or Jewish or Muslim or atheist or Buddhist or Wiccan or members of a dragon-worshipping Druidic sect who all put on lingerie and shake their booties to Queen songs every Wednesday night in the parking lot of a holy abandoned bowling alley.

We will remember Obama’s inauguration the way we remember our children’s first words. It will be something precious, but it will not be the defining moment that shapes our nation any more than the first time I got my 17-month-old goddaughter to say “please” is indicative to me of who she will be as an adult. We are showing that we are not longer the world’s infant nation throwing tantrums for our black milk. We as people are growing up, but we have not yet evolved.

The real historic day will come when we learn to see each other as people first. It will come when equality under the law means equality under the law. It will come when we obliterate categories of people as standards of judgment. It will come the day we elect a person to our Presidency and the first thought in our minds is not “Wow, a lesbian President!” but rather,

“We have chosen well.”

Death, Duende, and Jingle Bells

2008-12-15T19:13:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

-----

I've never thought of real traditional Christmas stuff as being especially cheerful and G-rated. This subject, brought up initially by a friend of mine, made me think of this photo from a Christmas show I was in several years ago. The plot involved several deaths and the highlight of the show was the curtains behind the throne transforming into a Shadow Knight puppet three times the height of the puppeteer working it, which chased one of the actors through the audience and terrified people before disappearing out a back exit. This was followed by a funeral scene (modeled after real traditional ceremonies, the girl in the veil is the human sacrifice) and the dance with the skeleton – the Danse Macabre -- set in an otherworldly ruined castle overgrown with evergreens and dead branches. And did I mention the prophetic dwarves who foretold the King’s defeat by the Shadow Knight?

And when the door begins to crack
It's like a stick across your back,
And when your back begins to smart
It's like a penknife in your heart,
And when your heart begins to bleed
You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.

And then of course there's the Abbots Bromley, which is haunting and subtly sexual in a very weird way, and a medieval ballad called "Man mei longe him lives wene," the lyrics of which translate as follows:

Man may expect long life, yet often, for him, there waits a trick. Fair weather often turns to rain, and sunshine is wondrously made. Therefore, man, bethink thyself – all thy green youth shall fade. Well-a-day! Neither King nor Queen shall escape the drinking of death’s draught. Man, ere thou fallest off thy bench, quench thy sin.

All of this, I think, is fitting -- Christmas is a celebration of a joyous event, but it's also a mark of the darkest, coldest, hardest part of the year which has been observed by cultures worldwide throughout history. Şeva Zistanê, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, Ziemassvētki, Dongzhi, Yalda, Soyalangwul, Wayeb, Saturnalia, the list goes on. It's a celebration of a birth, but also of death -- the death of the year, the child who must die, the death of light, the fires guttering against the wind, the wolves at the door, and the ghosts in the frost on the window. Jacob Marley's calling. St. George fights the dragon and loses, and somewhere in a manger is an infant whose ultimate purpose is to be unjustly tortured and killed by a corrupt tyrant.

Cheerful holiday, yes?

The joy of this time of year comes from the people who MAKE joy in defiance of the world turning away from us in its deep sleep and reducing mankind to a few little candles while kings and shepherds and the son of God huddle on the straw and the dirt with the livestock. Like them, in the end, we share the same feral fear of the dark and the butcher's block. Looking at other traditional winter celebrations, it seems that regardless of time, race, religion, or place, our collective human consciousness has always viewed the winter solstice as a time when walls between the mortal and immortal worlds crack and crumble, and as they become less distinct, so too do the boundaries between humanity and the beasts whose warmth and grain we share, or whose howls and roars we flee. The ghosts we dressed our children as not two months ago are just as present, and seem somehow more real now.

Now. Here, in this time and place, we have become very good at making joy and lighting the darkness. The radios play jingle bells, the streets are decked in ribbons and wreaths and fairy-lights, cartoon images of jolly old gentlemen and his chipper little helpers are plastered to every window and wall. Yet even there, the echoed symbols of mankind’s more visceral nature brought out by the dark and the cold can be seen. Somewhere long ago and buried deep, claymation Rudolph and the herd of flying caribou merge back into the same sexually driven rut-instinct and raw strength that inspired the Abbots Bromley dancers to don the antlers of the game they hunted; and the Keeblerized toybuilders revert to their untraceably old selves:

...they are commonly described as semi-divine beings associated with fertility and the cult of the ancestors and ancestor worship. The notion of elves thus appears similar to the animistic belief in spirits of nature and of the deceased, common to nearly all human religions; this is also true for the Old Norse belief in dísir, fylgjur and vörðar ("follower" and "warden" spirits, respectively). Like spirits, the elves were not bound by physical limitations and could pass through walls and doors in the manner of ghosts, which happens in Norna-Gests þáttr.

All of these are part of what we are, the very root of humanity, the memetic ancestry of our collective consciousness. We laugh, we carol, give gifts and feast, but at the deepest heart of Christmas, we realize that we are infinite, and we embrace our duende.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us -- listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
~Susan Cooper

The elegant misinterpretation of Christianity, and why I'm wearing a cross

2008-11-23T01:08:00.005-05:00

This is a reflection posted not long ago to my old journal. I thought it fitting to repost here as a first "real" entry. The lyrics quoted in the beginning and end are from the song "Illuminations" by Gogol Bordello. They didn't inspire the text set to them; it was a happy coincidence that I found the song around the time I was thinking of trying to collect this particular sentiment in text.
-----

Don't believe them for a moment,
For a second, do not believe, my friend
When you are down, them are not coming
With a helping hand.
Of course there is no us and them
But them, they do not think the same,
It's them who do not think.

They never step on spiritual path
They paint their faces so differently from ours
And if you listen closely
That war it never stops.

Be them new Romans,
Don't envy them my friend.
Be their lives longer,
Their longer lives are spent
Without a love or faithful friend
All those things they have to rent.

But we who see our destiny
In sound of this same old punk song
Let rest originality for sake of passing it around.
Illuminating realization number one:
You are the only light there is
For yourself, my friend.

So they tell you "Jesus saves." Who is Jesus? Go into any Church or a vast selection of hotel rooms worldwide and you'll find a book that has a great deal to say on the subject. In brief, Jesus is the son of God (which, by the way, so are you, according to said book) who was born in a stable and had many adventures before his death, resurrection, and ascension into Heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Lord. Good, you probably recognize this. The identity of the supposed Savior is told in parables and episodic chapters by four fellows he was tight with. Consider these.

Now consider this hypothetical situation:

Gather together a bunch of people. It doesn't matter how many. Five, fifty, five thousand. It doesn't matter what religion they are, what race, what nationality, what gender, or their age (so long as they are capable of rational communication).

Ask them:
Have you ever felt that you were born into the wrong place or time?
Have you ever felt that your parents or elders expected more of you than you should be expected to give?
Have you ever had someone try to convince you not to do the right thing because the alternative would be easier or more fun and the "right thing" isn't that important anyway?
Have you ever felt as if your real home is somewhere else, somewhere you've never seen?
Have you ever had the right answer to something, but been ignored or put down for unjust or mean or selfish reasons?
Have you ever been betrayed by someone you thought was your friend?
Have you been disappointed in people living down to your bad expectations of them?
Have you been proud of people living up to higher than your expectations of them?
Have you ever been punished for something someone else did?

...and if, by now, every single person in your hypothetical group has not answered "yes" to at least one question, there are many more you can ask.

All of these things are part of who Jesus was.

Think about that.

It's one of the most elegant metaphors ever constructed. Every human on this planet embodies at least one piece of all the elements that make up the identity of the Savior. Jesus is therefor universal human identity. And in this reinterpretation, you find that the ultimate key to wholeness, virtue, balance, and peace is not blind servitude to the demands of an ancient god-made-flesh, but self-empowerment through the realization of man's essential connection to mankind. Everyone is the savior. So long as you have the capacity for rational thought and self-awareness, you have the capacity to choose to become your own savior. You find your own peace. You fulfill your own prophesy. You walk in the footsteps of your gods until you realize they walk in yours.

So that is why I'm wearing a cross. It does not mean that I am a blind follower of outdated philosophies. It means I am a self-aware, self-empowered extension of the universal God embodied in humanity -- the God whose religion is life, whose church is this planet, and whose only commandment is "Be."

There'll be no saviors any soon coming down
And anyway illuminations
Never come from the crowned.
Illuminating realization number one:
You are the only light there is For yourself, my friend.

Welcome.

2008-11-21T18:48:00.002-05:00

So here I am! Moving into my new home here at blogger.com. There won't be an overwhelming amount of personal information or idle commentary on irrelivancies from here on; but as this is my first post, I might as well use it to introduce my readers to yours truly, The Author, and, for the sake of historical record, make note of a few circumstantial irrelivancies (which may or may not prove relevant at a later time).

My name is Ven. That was not the name given to me at birth, but it is the name I was given at the point in my life when I became more or less who I am now, and formed the foundation of who I will be for the rest of it. I am 24 years old. I live at home with my parents and two younger siblings (when they came home), and two cats -- our own resident fluffball of 7 years, Bilbo Baggins, and Merlin, a communal cat who has adopted us and lives primarily at our house despite belonging to a neighbor. Also included in the group of people I consider immediate family are my soulmate-friend Tenne-Mouse and her daughter Sarah Rose.

I shall set the stage: It's winter here in Washington DC, much colder than it's been this time of year since I was a child. The air has ice-teeth and there's a wind that wants to devour you. I love it. If you were to look at myself and my siblings standing together, it would be clear which of us got one sid or the other of our ancestral blood more strongly. My sister was born Italian, after my mother -- she has darker skin than I, and fine, Roman features, green eyes and thin hair and that passion of soul that you so often find in Mediterranians. My brother, also, has more of the Italian blood than I, with his thick, dark curls, tall, thin stature, and a personality that calls out to people, to family -- he is loyal to a fault. I, however, am a child of my father's Russian gypsy blood -- hazel-eyed and introverted and intellectual with a solid frame and a fondness for occasionally drinking a bit more than I ought to, and oh, how I love the cold and the darkness of winter.

And what is going on in my life right now? I got my driver's license finally last week. I am learning to speak Russian with Rosetta Stone. I have a book of verse in progress, very close to a state I would feel confident in showing a publisher. I have a job working for my parents, though I have no intention of keeping it any longer than I have to. I'll be taking out a loan from them soon to help pay for a car so I can get to a job that suits me better.

And what kind of job? Well, I don't know just yet. I write poetry and prose, I have extensive experience and training in voice and stage performance, I served an apprenticeship for about a year with one of the last true classic art Masters in the world, I have certain business skills unavoidably acquired from my parents' business, I can cook, grow a garden... the world is my oyster.

And I have a lot to say. But that's what this blog is for.

Welcome, everyone.