Rude Garden 粗魯花園

A Taste of Afghanistan, Rob Densmore, 2009

2012-01-29T21:06:00.001-06:00

City sand has its own taste
Not the country’s dust,
But darker.
It’s stronger – bitter parts
Under infantry foot.
Under 500 years going and coming.
Kipling’s finest up and over –
Through the pass,
Through the places where soldiers stood
In stolid white snow.
Cemeteries in the pass where Alexander’s own
Fell on the square rocks.
Paved with smoothed over river rock,
This open grave – white, bare.

Kabul sand polishes everyone’s edges.
Tajiks sharp on the cusp
And Northern Alliance coming down
Hard in the fray.
They all want each other’s throats.
Their wives lost in the fight –
Save for pointed heels and
Gold bangled over fine red henna.

Eastern sand and southern sand,
Pakistan sand crooked as broken teeth,
Herati sand pure and rising to the top.
Nothing mixes and there is no space in between.
If God loved this place he doesn’t now.
If He breathed in the brass bullet casings
And the diesel air and spiteful prayers.
A place for lust and dirty children
And the things night can hide.

What things grown men can hide-
In the dark corners of their own children’s rooms.
In the big shadows of a capital with no master and no disciple.
No scope for all things to come together
The sand and the dust and the dirt that makes things grow-
When it is left alone.

But we’ve put our fingers in it
And the stirring and stamping won’t leave
Much for the growing.
Dust bowls and cyclone air will take the rest.
Every village is filled with it now –
Dust from our bombs and inside our APCs.
Dirt scrubbed from our rifle actions
And ground into our sweaty palms like Mississippi silt.

And still nothing grows.
I’ve taken a knee in seventeen villages –
On street corners and broken down roundabouts,
On highways and in shattered homes.
On helo pads and plywood chapel steps,
On the backs of dead men-
And screaming vile women.

They will, all of them, bend or break –
It is either them or me.
It’s either winning or losing
And putting in its place
What does not belong,
Sand of a different taste and hue
That cannot tell me it is sorry.

Ten Imaginary Still Lifes, by Joe Brainard

2012-01-26T19:34:00.000-06:00

Illustration by the author.

Imaginary Still Life No. 1

I close my eyes. I see a light-green vase. A very pale light-green vase. Right beside it sits something black. Something small. It is a small black ashtray. Getting smaller by the moment. Until--really--it is hardly more than--now--a tiny speck.

Imaginary Still Life No. 2

I close my eyes. I see white. Lots of white. And gray. Cool gray. Cool gray fabric shadows. (It is a painting!) With no yellow. By a very old man.

Imaginary Still Life No. 3

I close my eyes. I see bright orange. Almost red. A touch of purple. A speck of black. And a thick bluish stem. An exotic flower of some sort. Driftwood. Bamboo. A figurine. Chartreuse. (1953!) This is a Polynesian still life.

Imaginary Still Life No. 4

I close my eyes. I see a white statue (say 10" high) of David. Alabaster. And pink rose petals, sprinkled upon a black velvet drape. This is a sissy still life. Silly, but pretty. And in a certain way almost religious. "Eastern" religious. This still life is secretly smiling.

Imaginary Still Life No. 5

I close my eyes. I see a charming nosegay of violets in an ordinary drinking glass. That's all.

Imaginary Still Life No. 6

I close my eyes. I see old fruit. Pots and pans. And various and scattered utensils. Brown. Art. Dutch. By nobody in particular. (Museum.) And so, on to the Frans Hals.

Imaginary Still Life No. 7

I close my eyes. I see a lazy guitar. A little potted cactus plant. And the rainbow blendings of very bright colors woven into a poncho, slung across a hand-painted wooden chair. (1955!) This is a "tourista" postcard still life.

Imaginary Still Life No. 8

I close my eyes. I see pink. And green. And gold. All mixed up together. But now slowly evolving into three distinctive shapes. (. . . .) It is a pink kimono, gently discarded upon the corner of a green dressing table, which enters the picture frame at a very sharp angle. Behind it stands a gold screen of three panels. In this particular Japanese still life one gets the impression that something is going on that cannot be seen.

Imaginary Still Life No. 9

I close my eyes. I see . . . upon the corner of a black lacquered end table I see a clear crystal ashtray, containing a long white cigarette butt, crushed up into the figure "Z." Pink smears along the filter's edge implicates a woman. And now I can smell blue smoke in the air, lingering from a most recent exit, perhaps in a huff. A dozen dark red roses in a very tall vase completes this elegant--if icy--still life. A still life with a story. And probably a sad one.

Imaginary Still Life No. 10

I close my eyes. I see something copper. (A tea pot with missing lid.) And dried cornflowers in an earthenware pot. Against a brown velvet drape. "Sniff": I can smell last week's clay still in the air. As Mrs. Black (my high school art teacher) leans over my shoulder, trying not to be too impressed with the dashing highlights I have no doubt overindulged in, to impress her with.

Agostino Arrivabene, castrated – regenerate, 2008

2012-01-14T16:49:00.003-06:00

THE CALDRON -- Supreme good fortune

2012-01-12T17:38:00.000-06:00

THE JUDGMENT

Success.

While THE WELL relates to the social foundation of our life, and this foundation is likened to the water that serves to nourish growing wood, the present hexagram refers to the cultural superstructure of society. Here it is the wood that serves as nourishment for the flame, the spirit. All that is visible must grow beyond itself, extend into the realm of the invisible. Thereby it receives its true consecration and clarity and takes firm root in the cosmic order.

Here we see civilization as it reaches its culmination in religion. The ting serves in offering sacrifice to God. The highest earthly values must be sacrificed to the divine. But the truly divine does not manifest it apart from man. The supreme revelation of God appears in prophets and holy men. To venerate them is true veneration of God. The will of God, as revealed through them, should be accepted in humility; this brings inner enlightenment and true understanding of the world, and this leads to great good fortune and success.

THE IMAGE

Fire over wood:

The image of THE CALDRON

Thus the superior man consolidates his fate

By making his position correct.

The fate of fire depends on wood; as long as there is wood below, the fire burns above. It is the same in human life; there is in man likewise a fate that lends power to his life. And if he succeeds in assigning the right place to life and to fate, thus bringing the two into harmony, he puts his fate on a firm footing. These words contain hints about fostering of life as handed on by oral tradition in the secret teachings of Chinese yoga.

A Phonecall from Frank O’Hara, By Anne Waldman

2012-01-12T12:20:00.002-06:00

“That all these dyings may be life in death”

I was living in San Francisco

My heart was in Manhattan

It made no sense, no reference point

Hearing the sad horns at night,

fragile evocations of female stuff

The 3 tones (the last most resonant)

were like warnings, haiku-muezzins at dawn

The call came in the afternoon

“Frank, is that really you?”

I'd awake chilled at dawn

in the wooden house like an old ship

Stay bundled through the day

sitting on the stoop to catch the sun

I lived near the park whose deep green

over my shoulder made life cooler

Was my spirit faltering, grown duller?

I want to be free of poetry's ornaments,

its duty, free of constant irritation,

me in it, what was grander reason

for being? Do it, why? (Why, Frank?)

To make the energies dance etc.

My coat a cape of horrors

I'd walk through town or

impending earthquake. Was that it?

Ominous days. Street shiny with

hallucinatory light on sad dogs,

too many religious people, or a woman

startled me by her look of indecision

near the empty stadium

I walked back spooked by

my own darkness

Then Frank called to say

“What? Not done complaining yet?

Can't you smell the eucalyptus,

have you never neared the Pacific?

‘While frank and free/call for

musick while your veins swell’”

he sang, quoting a metaphysician

"Don't you know the secret, how to

wake up and see you don't exist, but

that does, don't you see phenomena

is so much more important than this?

I always love that.”

“Always?” I cried, wanting to believe him

“Yes.” “But say more! How can you if

it's sad & dead?” “But that's just it!

If! It isn't. It doesn't want to be

Do you want to be?” He was warming to his song

“Of course I don't have to put up with as

much as you do these days. These years.

But I do miss the color, the architecture,

the talk. You know, it was the life!

And dying is such an insult. After all

I was in love with breath and I loved

embracing those others, the lovers,

with my body.” He sighed & laughed

He wasn't quite as I'd remembered him

Not less generous, but more abstract

Did he even have a voice now, I wondered

or did I think it up in the middle

of this long day, phone in hand now

dialing Manhattan

Sister Corita, '60s Artist

2012-01-11T20:13:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T18:36:00.003-06:00

Spent day at Sardis Lake

Hobart Nichols Jr, Winter

2011-12-23T19:42:00.002-06:00

2011-12-21T17:43:00.002-06:00

James Schuyler

	Dec. 28, 1974
	The plants against the light which shines in (it's four o'clock) right on my chair: I'm in my chair: are silhouettes, barely green, growing black as my eyes move right, right to where the sun is. I am blinded by a fiery circle: I can't see what I write. A man comes down iron stairs (I don't look up) and picks up brushes which, against a sonata of Scriabin's, rattle like wind in a bamboo clump. A wooden sound, and purposeful footsteps softened by a drop-cloth-covered floor. To be encubed in flaming splendor, one foot on a Chinese rug, while the mad emotive music tears at my heart. Rip it open: I want to cleanse it in an icy wind. And what kind of tripe is that? Still, last night I did wish— no, that's my business and I don't wish it now. "Your poems," a clunkhead said, "have grown more open." I don't want to be open, merely to say, to see and say, things as they are. That at my elbow there is a wicker table. Hortus Second says a book. The fields beyond the feeding sparrows are brown, palely brown yet with an inward glow like that of someone of a frank good nature whom you trust. I want to hear the music hanging in the air and drink my Coca-Cola. The sun is off me now, the sky begins to color up, the air in here is filled with wildly flying notes. Yes, the sun moves off to the right and prepares to sink, setting, beyond the dunes, an ocean on fire.

Today in 1843 – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol goes on sale

2011-12-19T19:33:00.001-06:00

Saint Lucy's Day

2011-12-12T19:55:00.000-06:00

Lussinatta, the Lussi Night, was December 13. Then Lussi, a female being with evil traits, like a female demon or witch, was riding through the air with her followers, called Lussiferda. This itself might be an echo of the myth of the Wild Hunt, called Oskoreia in Scandinavia, found across Northern, Western and Central Europe.
Between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits, in some accounts also the spirits of the dead, were thought to be active outside. It was particularly dangerous to be out during Lussi Night. Children who had done mischief had to take special care, since Lussi could come down through the chimney and take them away, and certain tasks of work in the preparation for Yule had to be finished, or else the Lussi would come to punish the household. The tradition of Lussevaka – to stay awake through the Lussinatt to guard oneself and the household against evil, has found a modern form through throwing parties until daybreak. Another company of spirits might come riding through the night around Yule itself, journeying through the air, over land and water.

The Peaceable Kingdom by Fritz Eichenberg

2011-12-09T23:34:00.002-06:00

To You, By Kenneth Koch

2011-12-07T15:32:00.000-06:00

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

Koan: Learning To Be Silent

2011-11-29T09:46:00.002-06:00

The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of silence.

On the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: "Fix those lamps."

The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. "We are not supposed to say a word," he remarked.

"You two are stupid. Why did you talk?" asked the third.

"I am the only one who has not talked," concluded the fourth pupil.

White Autumn, by Robert Morgan

2011-11-28T19:59:00.000-06:00

She had always loved to read, even

in childhood during the Confederate War,

and built the habit later of staying up

by the oil lamp near the fireplace after

husband and children slept, the scrub-work done.

She fed the addiction in the hard years

of Reconstruction and even after

her husband died and she was forced

to provide and be sole foreman of the place.

While her only son fought in France

it was this second life, by the open window

in warm months when the pines on the hill

seemed to talk to the creek, or katydids

lined-out their hymns in the trees beyond the barn,

or by the familiar of fire in winter,

that sustained her. She and her daughters

later forgot the time, the exact date,

if there was such a day, she made her decision.

But after the children could cook

and garden and milk and bring in a little

by housecleaning for the rich in Flat Rock,

and the son returned from overseas

wounded but still able and married a war widow,

and when she had found just the right chair,

a rocker joined by a man over on Willow

from rubbed hickory, with cane seat and back,

and arms wide enough to rest her everlasting cup

of coffee on, or a heavy book,

she knew she had come to her place and would stay.

And from that day, if it was one time and not

a gradual recognition, she never crossed a threshold

or ventured from that special seat of rightness,

of presence and pleasure, except to be helped to bed

in the hours before dawn for a little nap.

That chair-every Christmas someone gave her a bright

cushion to break in-was the site on which she bathed

in a warm river of books and black coffee,

varieties of candy and cakes kept in a low cupboard

at hand. The cats passed through her lap and legs

and through the rungs of her seat. The tons

of firewood came in cold and left as light, smoke, ash.

She rode that upright cradle to sleep

and through many long visits with tiers of family,

kissing the babies like different kinds of fruit.

Always hiding the clay pipe in her cabinet

when company appeared. She chaired decisions

to keep the land and refused welfare.

On that creaking throne she ruled a tiny kingdom

through war, death of kin. Even on the night she did

stop breathing, near a hundred, no one knew

exactly when, but found the lamp still on,

the romance open to a new chapter,

and the sun just appearing at her elbow.

That these poets lived during my first 18 years amazes me!

2011-11-22T17:47:00.001-06:00

1950	Death of Edna St. Vincent Millay
1952	Death of Paul Éluard Death of George Santayana
1953	Death of Dylan Thomas
1955	Death of Wallace Stevens
1958	Death of Alfred Noyes Death of Robert W. Service
1959	Death of Edgar Guest
1960	Death of Boris Pasternak
1962	Death of E.E. Cummings
1963	Death of Sylvia Plath Death of Robert Frost Death of William Carlos Williams Death of Tristan Tzara Death of Jean Cocteau
1964	Death of Dame Edith Sitwell
1965	Death of T. S. Eliot
1966	Death of André Breton Death of Frank O'Hara
1967	Death of Carl Sandburg Death of John Edward Masefield

The Autumn Hunt

2011-11-22T10:59:00.002-06:00

Diana of Versailles,

Roman copy (1st or 2nd century AD)

of a lost Greek bronze original

attributed to Leochares, c. 325 BC

Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-21T18:55:00.002-06:00

Peoples' Library [click]

Gordon Mortensen. Late Autumn, 1998

2011-11-16T20:40:00.002-06:00

2011-11-11T19:53:00.002-06:00

Hickories in Overton Park, Larry Alexander, Photographer

2011-11-07T10:14:00.002-06:00

Hey, Mississippi, wake up!

2011-11-02T14:29:00.002-05:00

vote no on 26

Samhain: Season of Death and Renewal

2011-11-01T10:28:00.004-05:00

As the nights lengthen and the leaves take on their autumn colours, many of our cities prepare for a seasonal festival dominated by dark and frightening imagery. Ghosts, skeletons, hags, nocturnal creatures such as cats and bats, and grinning monster faces peer out at us from shop windows. Much of it is just commercialism, yet there is no denying that the atmosphere of the holiday still has a profound effect on the modern psyche -- as we can see from the spontaneous outrageousness of Hallowe'en parades, the creative expressions of death-related themes, and the general surge in mischief-making. All these customs, however, are a diffuse reflection of the beliefs and practices of the Celtic populations of Europe, for whom this feast was a crucial turning-point in the flow of time.

The earliest record we have of the festival of Samhain in the Celtic world comes from the Coligny Calendar, a native Celtic lunar calendar inscribed on bronze tablets and discovered in eastern France a hundred years ago. The calendar -- dated, through epigraphic evidence, to the 1st century CE -- is written in the Latin alphabet and was found in conjunction with a Roman-style statue (identified by some writers as Apollo, by others as Mars), but the language used is Gaulish and the dating system itself bears little resemblance to Roman models, implying that it represents the survival of an indigenous tradition maintained by native clergy. A detailed discussion of the calendar lies outside the scope of this article, but for our purposes it will be enough to point out that its year consists of twelve regularly recurring months that fall naturally into two groups, one headed by the month that is labeled SAMON (for Samonios) and the other by the month GIAMON (for Giamonios), and that the names of these two months are clearly related to the terms samos "summer" and giamos "winter" (cf. Gaelic samh(radh) "summer", geamh(radh) "winter"; Welsh haf "summer", gaeaf "winter"). The date of SAMON- xvii is identified as TRINVX SAMO SINDIV, which can be readily interpreted as an abbreviation of Trinouxtion Samonii sindiu ("The three-night-period of Samonios [is] today"). This is one of the very few dates in the calendar that is given a specific name, testifying to its importance as a festival; and since Samoni- is obviously the origin of the modern name Samhain, it is reasonable to equate the Trinouxtion Samonii with the feast that is still one of the most important dates in the Celtic ritual year.

We should note, however, that since the Coligny Calendar gives no indication of how its months relate to those of the Roman calendar, we have no conclusive evidence that would allow us to fit it into the framework of our own year, and scholars are still very much divided on the issue. The most confusing element, of course, is that Samon- refers to summer, and so would naturally lead one to think that a month with that name would head the summer half of the year; and many of the earlier interpretations of the Coligny Calendar take this for granted. In living Celtic tradition, however, the festival of Samhain, despite its name, is definitely the beginning of winter. Though such evidence doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that Continental Druids used a completely different terminology, many scholars now accept the authority of the living tradition and place the Samonios month in October/November.

What does the name of the festival mean, however? Here, again, we run into controversy. The traditional interpretation -- first put forward in the Mediaeval glossaries and still held to by native speakers -- is that it means "summer's end", being a combination of samh "summer" and fuin "ending, concealment". This is obviously a folk etymology, since we know that the earliest form of the word (Samoni-) had a different structure, but its importance to the living tradition should make us wary of dismissing it too lightly. Although philologists have been unable to find a plausible Indo-European explanation for a suffix -oni- meaning "end of" (the suffix, by the way, occurs in at least three of the other Coligny months), this is not conclusive in itself: there are quite a few other derivational suffixes attested in Old Celtic that resist an easy Indo-European etymology, although their meanings are uncontroversial. What should be kept in mind is that in the ritual context of the Celtic Year, Samhain is strongly identified with the "end" or "concealment" of Summer, the Light Half of the year. In the modern Gaelic languages the festival is called Samhain (Irish), Samhuinn (Scots Gaelic), and Sauin (Manx). The night on which it begins (Oíche Shamhna in Irish, Oidhche Shamhna in Scots Gaelic, Oie Houney in Manx) is the primary focus of the celebration. The Brythonic languages call the feast by a name meaning "first of Winter", borrowing the Latin term calenda which designates the first day of a month (Welsh Calan Gaeaf, Breton Kala-Goañv, Cornish Kalann Gwav), but the beliefs and practices associated with it are consistent with what we find in the Gaelic countries, and will help us discover a pan-Celtic theology of Samhain.

The Coligny Calendar's division of the year into two halves associated with summer and winter is still very strongly reflected in Celtic folk practice, where the yearly cycle consists of a dark half beginning on Samhain (November 1st), mirrored by a light half beginning on Bealtaine (May 1st). The rituals surrounding Samhain and Bealtaine are closely related to each other and make it clear that the two festivals are linked, but also that they deal with opposite energies within the unfolding of the year. What is explicit and active in one is implicit and dormant in the other, and vice versa. This is often expressed as the notion that what disappears in our world at once becomes present in the Otherworld, and it has even been suggested, on this basis, that Samhain's "summery" name was originally intended to designate the beginning of an Otherworld summer! Whether this is plausible or not, it remains certain that while Samhain began one kind of yearly cycle, Bealtaine began another, and both could be construed as a kind of "New Year". In ancient Ireland the High King inaugurated the year on Samhain for his household (and, symbolically, for all the people of Ireland) with the famous ritual of Tara, but in nearby Uisneach, the sacred centre held by the druids in complementary opposition to Tara, it was on Bealtaine that the main ritual cycle was begun. In both cases sacred fires were extinguished and re-lit, though this happened at sunset on Samhain and at dawn on Bealtaine. Bealtaine was a time of opening and expansion, Samhain a time of gathering-in and shutting, and for herd-owners like the Celts this was expressed with particular vividness by the release of cattle into upland pastures on Bealtaine and their return to the safety of the byres on Samhain.

Which of these two dates, then, should we think of primarily as the "Celtic New Year"? Although both deal with the beginning of a cycle, Samhain begins it in darkness, and there is no doubt about the pre-eminence of darkness in Celtic tradition. In De Bello Gallico Julius Caesar notes that the Celts began their daily cycle with sunset (spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum, sed noctium finiunt; dies natales et mensum et annorum initia sic obseruant, ut noctem dies subsequatur -- "they define all amounts of time not by the number of days, but by the number of nights; they celebrate birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such a way that the day is made to follow the night"), and this is confirmed by later Celtic practice. Darkness comes before light, because life appears in the darkness of the womb, all things have their beginning in the fertile chaos that is hidden from the rational mind. Thus the year begins with its dark half, holding the bright half in gestation as the seeds lie in apparent death underground, although the forces of growth are already at work in Otherworldly invisibility. The moment of death -- the passing into the concealing darkness -- is itself the first step in the renewal of life.

This association of death with fertility provided the theological background for a great number of end-of-harvest festivals celebrated by many cultures across Eurasia. Like Samhain, these festivals (which, for example, included the rituals of the Dyedy ("Ancestors") in the Slavic countries and the Vetrarkvöld festival in Scandinavia) linked the successful resumption of the agricultural cycle (after a period of apparent winter "death") to the propitiation of the human community's dead. The dead have passed away from the social concerns of this world to the primordial chaos of the Otherworld where all fertility has its roots, but they are still bound to the living by ties of kinship. It was hoped that, by strengthening these ties precisely when the natural cycle seemed to be passing through its own moment of death, the community of the living would be better able to profit from the energies of increase that lead out of death back to life. Dead kin were the Tribe's allies in the Otherworld, making it certain that the creative forces deep within the Land were being directed to serve the needs of the human community. They were, in Celtic terms, a "humanising" factor within the Fomorian realm.

Whatever the specific elements had been that determined the proper date of the end-of-harvest honouring of the dead in various places, by the ninth and tenth centuries the unifying influence of the Church had led to concentrating the rituals on November 1st and November 2nd. The first date was All Hallows, when the most spiritually powerful of the Christian community's dead (the Saints) were invoked to strengthen the living community, in a way quite consistent with pre-Christian thought. The second date, All Souls, was added on (first as a Benedictine practice, beginning ca. 988) as an extension of this concept, enlarging it to include the dead of families and local communities. Under the mantle of the specifically Christian observances, however, older patterns of ancestor veneration were preserved.

Most traditional Celtic communities maintain a year-round link of some sort with their departed, making them a part of all significant occurrences in the family, such as births, weddings and funerals. In areas of the Irish Gaeltacht it is still not unusual for a household to have a seomra thiar ("western room"), a section of the house (often just a nook or alcove) dedicated to the dead of the family. Objects that bring individual dead relatives to mind (old photographs, pipes, jewelry, etc.) are placed on a shelf or mantelpiece, and as one contemplates them one faces the setting sun and the vastness of the Atlantic, the direction the dead follow in their journey to the Otherworld. The rituals of Samhain, however, involved a more intense bonding with the dead, using the institution which, in Celtic tradition, was used to cement social links in a sacred and durable manner: the communal feast. Sharing food in a solemn context ("in the sight of gods and mortals") placed common and mutual responsibilities on all participants. Inviting the dead to such a feast encouraged the living to remember and honour their ancestors, while the dead in return were encouraged to have an interest in the welfare of their living kin.

On Samhain, the moment of the year's death, this world and the Otherworld become equivalent to each other, classificatory boundaries are removed from all categories, no barriers exist between the dead and the living, so both can authentically come together in one place to share a ritual feast. Individual Celtic communities have preserved a wealth of different customs related to the way this feast was actually celebrated: one can still discern some distorted elements of them in modern urban practices, such as Hallowe'en parties and trick-or-treating. Most of the customs, however, fall into two broad patterns. According to the first, a certain amount of food was set aside for the exclusive consumption of the dead. The dead were believed to be present as invisible entities; doors and windows were left unlocked to facilitate their coming into the house. In some cases, a specific type of food (usually cakes of some kind) was made solely for the dead; in others, a portion of the same food that the living would eat was set aside for them. The most classic example of this pattern (which is also found in Ireland and Scotland) is the boued an Anaon ("food of the hosts of the dead") custom in Brittany. The Anaon (the word appears to be the same as Annwn, the Welsh Otherworld; it is certainly a pre-Christian term) are the massed hosts of ancestral spirits, usually portrayed as hungry for sustenance from the world of the living. A large amount of food was set aside for their sole use, and had to remain untouched by any living hand for the full duration of the ritual period. Eating the food of the dead (even if one was desperately hungry) was considered to be a dreadful sacrilege: it condemned one to becoming a hungry ghost after death, barred from sharing the Samhain feast along with the rest of the Anaon. It was, in effect, a particularly horrible form of excommunication.

The other pattern of Samhain custom, on the contrary, encourages the recycling of the offered food into the community, thus strengthening social bonds. The most classic example of this second pattern is the Welsh cennad y meirw ("embassy of the dead") custom, although similar customs are found elsewhere in the Celtic and ex-Celtic world. Here, while the wealthier members of the community put together lavish Samhain feasts for their households, the poor take on the collective identity of the community's dead, and go from door to door to receive offerings in the name of the ancestors. At each house they are given a portion of the food that has been set aside for the dead. Originally the cenhadon would have been masked to abolish their mundane social roles and allow them to represent the dead more convincingly. To refuse food to the cenhadon for any reason at all was an act of impiety and would invite retaliation in the form of destruction of property -- retaliation that would go unpunished because of the holy nature of the ritual period. We can here see one of the origins of the "trick" aspect of our modern Hallowe'en customs, although nowadays it has largely lost its moral dimension.

A communal feast, of course, involves more than just food. The dead would not only have to be fed, they would have to be entertained. Games and pastimes associated with Samhain feasting vary a great deal from community to community, but they have certain themes in common. While the younger people engage in the ritualised games, the elders will be gossiping, reviewing all the notable events of the past year for the benefit of the dead, who will then be encouraged to continue to take an interest in the affairs of the living. The games themselves, in many cases, seem to have specific links with the mythology of death and the afterlife. Many of them involve apples -- in part, of course, because they are one of the last crops to be brought in and are thus easily available, but also as a reflection of the role apples play in beliefs about death: in Irish tradition the Otherworld place where the dead gather at a feast is called Eamhain Abhlach ("paradise of apples"), and its Welsh equivalent is Afallon. Some of the Scottish games in this context make use of parallel ordeals by water and fire, the two main elements out of which the world is made. The water ordeal is the familiar bobbing for apples, while the fire ordeal involves trying to take a bite out of an apple attached to a hanging stick which also bears a lit candle. This seems to be a reference to myths about the ordeals faced by the dead on their journey to the Otherworld -- a body of beliefs we unfortunately know only through fragments, although the basic concept of the journey and the ordeals is well established. Sharing the experiences of the dead was yet another way of affirming the solidarity between the dead and the living, and of aligning the powers of renewal in the Otherworld with this world's needs.

While the dead were brought closer to the living by the formal sharing of food, other offerings had to be made to the Land-spirits to reward them for their cooperation during the Harvest period, and to replenish their creative energy as they prepared to enter into a new cycle. With Samhain, the period of "truce" that had begun on Lúnasa was officially ended, and the fruits of the soil (especially wild crops) could no longer be harvested with impunity. Well within living memory, children in Celtic communities were warned not to eat the late berries that might still be ripening on roadside bushes, because "the fairies" or "the devil" had made them dangerous to consume. Having enabled the human community to survive by making the crops grow and by standing aside to let the Harvest take place, the powers of the Fomorian realm were now entitled to a gift of life-renewing blood; and Samhain was the season when the cattle that would not be kept through the winter were slaughtered. In historical times the date of the slaughter has specifically been Martinmas (November 11), certainly in part because the name of the saint suggested the Gaelic word mart ("cattle marked for slaughter"). As late as the 1830's, when Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin discussed some of these customs in his famous diary, the occasion was understood as a ritual "shedding of blood", and other sources show that during the same period blood sacrifices could even still be held indoors, to protect a house from malignant "fairy" influences by sprinkling an offering of blood at each corner.

Renewing social links with the dead and feeding the Land-spirits were both ritual means of ensuring a safe future. While Samhain (and the phenomenon of death which it celebrated) was obviously the end of a cycle, it was more importantly the start of a new one. Because all true novelty springs from the chaotic freedom and vitality of the Otherworld, a new cycle could be inaugurated only by dissolving all of the structures of the old one -- just as the moment of death dissolves our identity in this world, allowing the fresh energies of the Otherworld to impel us towards new life. This meant that, as happens in the feasts of renewal of many different cultures, certain types of social disorder were actively encouraged during the period of the festival, because they promoted the renewing influence of the Otherworld at the point in the yearly cycle where it would be most beneficial. Customs originating entirely in the world of cultural values -- such as those relating to social rank or gender-appropriate behaviour -- were the most likely to be violated. Disrespect could be shown to elders or to members of the upper classes. Cross-dressing was one of the most widespread and popular ways of expressing the dissolution of social categories, and in parts of Wales groups of young men in female garb were referred to as gwrachod ("hags" or "witches") as they wandered through the countryside on Calan Gaeaf, indulging in all kinds of mischief.

But the disorder, of course, was only the prelude to the return of order in a strengthened form. The structures that had been dissolved had to be re-created in order to channel the new energy from the Otherworld in the desired directions. While local communities would have had their own diverse methods of accomplishing this ritually (often through the extinguishing and re-kindling of household fires), more elaborate ceremonies were conducted by religious specialists at the sacred centres of a territory, in the name of the entire population. In pre-Christian Ireland the ritual of Tara, focusing on the High King in his role as linchpin of the social order, was the means for re-creating the world on Samhain. The Middle Irish text entitled Suidigud Tellaig Temra (The Settling of the Household of Tara) describes the essentials of the ritual and relates some of the mythology that explains its symbolism (albeit with a somewhat Christianised background), while Geoffrey Keating, the seventeenth-century encyclopaedist of traditional Irish lore, provides us with additional explanations of some of the elements. Since the Land itself, as a ritual entity, was conceived of as a square, so was Tara, for the purposes of this ceremony, seen as a four-sided space. Each of the directions was associated with one of the three functional classes of society (and with the divinity who was seen as the ruler of that function), the South being devoted specifically to the power of the Land and to the goddess who gave energy to the exercise of the social functions. The High King occupied the centre of the ritual area, while around him, strictly ordered by social rank, were representatives of the four provinces. Thus, when the New Year actually dawned, the magical heart of Ireland would contain a model of the entire social order of the country in miniature, engaged in the solemn feasting whereby all social links were strengthened, and all parts of the country would then benefit from the influence of this ritual. The actual inception of the new cycle was signaled by the lighting of a fire, not at Tara but at Tlachtga, which symbolically represented the southern province of Munster within the High King's central realm. This was the place where Tlachtga, the daughter of the mythological Druid Mug Ruith, died after being raped by the "sons of Simon Magus" (who wanted to gain the knowledge and talents she had inherited from her father) and after giving birth to three sons from three different fathers. This myth is obviously garbled in its modern version, yet one can still discern in it the figure of the Land-goddess and her three "functional" consorts. The association of the festival with the pre-eminently "female" southern quarter may explain why in some Welsh and Scottish communities it is specified by custom that Samhain ritual (preparation of the ceremonial food, etc.) must be overseen by nine women (in contrast to the nine men who preside over Bealtaine).

What of the role of the gods in this crucial turning-point of the ritual year? Since virtually all our knowledge of detailed ritual practices among the Celts comes from Christianised communities, references to divinities who were actually worshipped are, as one would expect, rare and indirect. However, some of the stories preserved in both folklore and mediaeval literature seem relevant to the theology of this feast. Images such as that of the hero Diarmait killed by a boar after his romance with Fionn Mac Cumhail's wife Gráinne; or that of wild Myrddin emerging from the forest with a herd of stags to kill his wife's lover by piercing him with a pair of antlers; or that of Gwyn ap Nudd ("White son of Mistmaker") fighting with Gwythyr ap Greidawl ("Wrathful son of Hot") every Calan Mai (Bealtaine) "until the day of Judgment" for the hand of their common love, Creiddylad; and the notion of the Fianna living off the wilderness from Bealtaine to Samhain and indoors from Samhain to Bealtaine all suggest a myth of certain divinities changing their status in relation to the Land-goddess in response to the change of seasons along the Samhain-Bealtaine axis. The common denominator of these motifs seems to be the figure of the antlered god now conventionally referred to as "Cernunnos", whose mythology has definite links to the stories of the Fianna and whose attributes symbolise seasonal change as well as the interface between nature and culture. Antlers are a seasonal phenomenon: they drop off in winter and begin to reappear as velvet at winter's end, returning to full glory in the spring. In Scots Gaelic terminology, the month immediately preceding Samhain is called an Damhar (damh-ghar, "stag-rut"), because it is when stags clash with each other during the mating season, shortly before losing their antlers, as the antlered god must undoubtedly lose his (which is why some "Cernunnos" statues -- like the one from St. Germain -- apparently had holes for removable antlers). Our sense of the seasonal importance of this event in Celtic ritual symbolism is reinforced by the custom in southwestern Brittany of baking appropriately shaped cakes called kornigoù ("little horns") to celebrate the coming of winter. From the many versions of the myth one can deduce that the antlered god is separated from his goddess-consort (who takes another lover) during the light half of the year, when he must live as a renunciate in the wilderness and wear his horns; but that with the coming of the dark season his rival is eliminated and he can return to his consort's embrace in the Otherworld -- abandoning, by the same token, the "horns" of his cuckoldry. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the bonnag Samhna -- the Samhain cake prepared specifically for the ritual-- made by the women who preside over the Samhain feast in parts of Gaelic Scotland is named after a cuckold in the community. And we find echoes of the same motif (as we often do) at the other end of the Indo-European world, in the ritual calendar of India, where on Divali (Dipâvali), the Feast of Lights, which is usually celebrated very close to Samhain, Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance and well-being, leaves her usual consort Vishnu (who falls asleep at this time) to return temporarily to her first husband, Kubera, the fat god of material riches.

The Land-goddess, too, changes her appearance at this time: the fertile part of her retreats to the Otherworld where she can join with her consort in beginning the creative work of the new yearly cycle (in their summer, which is our winter, as it were), but in our world only her "Fomorian" aspect remains, making the land barren and hostile to human comfort. In the Scottish Highlands this is the season of the Cailleach Bheura, the monstrous hag who wanders in the hills bringing bad weather, while in Wales we hear of the Hwch Ddu Gwta ("tailless black sow") who lurks menacingly in the darkness. Yet these are all aspects of the same being, the multiform Provider on whom we all depend, who must, like all things, replenish herself through alternating periods of action and repose, and who touches -- as we all must -- darkness and death to find the source of true renewal.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Céitinn, Seathrún (Geoffrey Keating), (ed. by Padraig de Brún) Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. Dublin, 1982.

Danaher, Kevin, The Year in Ireland. Cork, 1972.

MacNeill, Eoin, On the Notation and Chronology of the Calendar of Coligny, Ériu 10 (1926).

McNeill, F. Marian, The Silver Branch. Glasgow, 1953-66.

Owen, Trefor M., Welsh Folk Customs. Cardiff, 1959.

Rees, Alwyn & Brinley, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales. New York. 1961.

Sébillot, P. Y., Le Folklore de la Bretagne. Paris, 1968.

Suidigud Tellaig Temra (R.I. Best, ed. and trans.), Ériu 4 (1910).

Article by Alexei Kondratiev

May be reposted as long as the above attribution and copyright notice are retained

[Originally published in An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism, volume 2, issue 1/2, Samhain 1997/Iombolg 1998.]

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-30T00:09:00.001-05:00

Gilbert Gaul, His nephew, ca. 1890-1900

The Labors of October

2011-10-26T19:57:00.002-05:00

autumn leaves....

2011-10-26T19:18:00.002-05:00

2011-10-25T19:49:00.002-05:00

Song of Autumn [click]

_____________________________________________________________ 
Song Of Autumn by Paul Verlaine
trans. James Kirkup (each verse as haiku) 

   Long moans on autumn's 
  
saxophones - wound my heart with 
   
   languor's monotones
  
   Wan suffocations -
  
as hours creep - remembering 
   
   days gone by - I weep -
  
   Borne on weary winds,
  
my grief - hither and thither -
   
   a withering leaf

Philip Levine, Current U. S. Poet Laureate

2011-10-24T19:50:00.002-05:00

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.

from, “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do”

October's stone is the Opal...

2011-10-20T20:21:00.000-05:00

October's flower is the Calendula...

2011-10-18T19:13:00.003-05:00

And the Child cared nothing about the Looking-Glass . . .

2011-10-17T12:29:00.003-05:00

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

2011-10-13T12:19:00.002-05:00

In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

Their women cluck like starved pullets,

Dying for love.

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright, poet

2011-10-06T20:19:00.002-05:00

Steve Jobs died today at age 56 . . .

2011-10-05T20:06:00.002-05:00

2011-10-02T10:54:00.000-05:00

©Mark Chaddock

Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

Fire in the lake: the image of REVOLUTION.

Thus the superior man

Sets the calendar in order

And makes the seasons clear.

Fire below and the lake above combat and destroy each other. So too in the course of the year a combat takes place between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, eventuating in the revolution of the seasons, and man is able to adjust himself in advance to the demands of the different times.

Yesterday by W. S. Merwin (Born September 30, 1927)

2011-09-29T23:12:00.004-05:00

My friend says I was not a good son

you understand

I say yes I understand

he says I did not go

to see my parents very often you know

and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says

maybe I would go there once

a month or maybe even less

I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father

I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father

he was asking me about my life

how I was making out and he

went into the next room

to get something to give me

oh I say

feeling again the cold

of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father turned

in the doorway and saw me

look at my wristwatch and he

said you know I would like you to stay

and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said

I don't want you to feel that you

have to

just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father

said maybe

you have important work you are doing

or maybe you should be seeing

somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window

my friend is older than I am

he says and I told my father it was so

and I got up and left him then

you know

though there was nowhere I had to go

and nothing I had to do

Kevin Mizner, artist

2011-09-28T20:49:00.003-05:00

September, 1819, by William Wordsworth

2011-09-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

Departing summer hath assumed

An aspect tenderly illumed,

The gentlest look of spring;

That calls from yonder leafy shade

Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,

A timely carolling.

{LIMITATION}

2011-09-27T15:27:00.000-05:00

Hold to him in truth and loyalty;

“Truth, like a full earthen bowl.”

Thus in the end

Good fortune comes.

Truth, like a full earthen bowl

2011-09-27T15:03:00.002-05:00

Still Life with Tomatoes, a Bowl of Aubergines, and Onions
Luis Meléndez (1715-1780)

The sun rises over the earth.

2011-09-21T14:52:00.001-05:00

An enlightened ruler and an obedient servant —

this is the condition on which great progress depends.

Erik Johansson, artist, Gothenburg, Sweden

2011-09-18T13:52:00.003-05:00

For more of his work, click on the road.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.

2011-09-17T12:55:00.000-05:00

Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, September 15

2011-09-15T20:00:00.002-05:00

Our Lady who softens evil hearts, Russian icon, 19th century

Fleuve de Vie

2011-09-13T14:59:00.004-05:00

"Water of Life"

from the Urgell Beatus,

10th century illuminated manuscript,

Musei Diocesá de La Seu d'Urgell,

Spain

Today is the Festival of the Chrysanthemum...

2011-09-09T12:59:00.002-05:00

Arnold Iger, Artist

The Secret Art of Inviting Happiness, the Miraculous Medicine for All Diseases.

2011-09-01T19:02:00.000-05:00

At least for today:

Do not be angry,

Do not worry,

Be grateful,

Work with diligence,

Be kind to people.

Every morning and evening, join your hands in meditation and pray with your heart.

State in your mind and chant with your mouth for improvement of mind and body.

Mikao Usui, Founder of Usui Reiki Ryōhō

Moral Collapse of the American Nation

2011-09-01T15:17:00.002-05:00

An Afghan farmer’s son who was killed on January 15, 2010.
A member of the United States "kill team" is posing behind him.

The actual existence of torture in American jails is well known. Nonetheless, the publication on 16 April 2009, by the new United States administration, of documents that had hitherto been kept secret revealed details concerning the actual way in which torture was being carried out. I will briefly summarize these facts.

One is struck, first of all, by the incredibly persnickety regulations that were formulated in the CIA manuals and taken over by the legal authorities in the government. Up until then it had been possible to imagine that the practices of torture were what are called “blunders,” involuntary transgressions of the norms, occasioned by the urgency of the situation. Now on the contrary, it is clear that these were procedures fixed down to their least details, to the nearest inch and the nearest second.

They are divided into three categories, each of which comprises several degrees of intensity: preparatory (nakedness, manipulated feeding, sleep deprivation), corrective (blows) and coercive (being hosed with water, locked in boxes, or subjected to torture by immersion). Slaps on the face must be administered by the fingers spread out, halfway between the tip of the chin and the bottom of the earlobe. Hosing a naked prisoner with water can last for 20 minutes if the water is at 5°C, 40 if it is at 10°C, and up to 60 if it is 15°C. Sleep deprivation must not last longer than 180 hours, but, after 8 hours’ rest, they can begin again. Torture by immersion can last up to 12 seconds, no more than 2 hours per day, for 30 consecutive days (a particularly tough prisoner underwent this torture 183 times over, in March 2003). A prisoner should not be locked in a box for more than 2 hours, but if the box allows the prisoner to stand upright, he can stay there up to eight hours at a stretch, 18 hours per day. If you put an insect in with him, you cannot tell the prisoner that its sting will be extremely painful or indeed deadly. And so on and so forth, for page after page.

The indispensable partners of the torturers are the government’s legal advisers, who are there to ensure that their colleagues are immune from prosecution. This, too, is new: torture is no longer represented as an infraction of the common norm, regrettable but excusable; it is the legal norm. With this in mind, lawyers resort to another series of techniques. To get around the law, interrogations need to be conducted outside the United States, even if this means American bases. According to the official legal definitions, there is torture when the intention to produce intense suffering can be attested; so it will be suggested to the torturers that they deny the presence of any such intention. So slaps on the face are given not to produce any pain, but to cause surprise and humiliation. Being locked in a box is not meant to lead to sensory disorientation, but to make the prisoner feel uncomfortable! The torturer must always insist on his “good faith,” his “honest beliefs” and his reasonable premises. Euphemisms must be systematically employed: “reinforced techniques” instead of torture; “expert interrogator” for torturer. Care must also be taken to avoid leaving any material traces, and for this reason mental destruction is preferable to physical damage; for this reason, too, any visual recording of sessions is to be destroyed afterwards.

Tzvetan Todorov, The Fear of Barbarians. Todorov is a Bulgarian philosopher who studied at the University of Paris with Roland Barthes. He is the author of numerous books, including On Human Diversity and Hope and Memory, and has taught at Harvard, Yale and Columbia.

In Heaven EveryThing Is Fine

2011-08-30T13:15:00.000-05:00

C L I C K

The Battle of the Old Oak Tree

2011-08-29T15:05:00.005-05:00

"The foul vermin horde swarmed out of the north, intent on striking a psychological blow on the good folk of the forest by cutting down the Old Oak Tree. Rallying from all corners of the domain to protect the tree were the Mouse Guard, the otters of Finnegan the Blade’s tribe, and Captain Burdock Rabscuttle’s Wide Patrol of hares. The vermin horde of the evil rat Rufer, supported by the villain Durge the Wolverine and the nefarious warlock rat Skurr, had to make it to the Oak Tree and put four cuts into it before the valiant woodland folk could stop them. . .

The Old Oak Tree is under attack! Covered with blood, much of it now his own, and decorated with dozens of arrow shafts from Dand-O’s bow, the weary champion begins to chop down the iconic tree. Dand-O "Flatfoot is the only woodland creature surviving, and all he can do is loose shaft after shaft as the relentless wolverine hacks away. Durge swings with tired limbs, stumbling as arrows thud home through his armor and into his thick hide. Dand-O believes Durge is dead several times, but the wolverine still struggles to rise, sometimes making it to his feet to take yet another strike at the Old Oak Tree. Three fourths of the way through the mighty tree’s trunk, blade raised to deliver the final strike, Durge stops. He has been struck too many times. A final arrow slams into his hide, his armor torn and full of holes. It’s too much, and the relentless Vermin champion finally falls dead.

Corporal Dand-O Flatfoot is all that remains. The Vermin Horde lay dead across the downs or is running back north, leaderless and panicked. The heroic woodland creatures are scattered across the battle field, dead and dying, covered with death and glory. It has been a horrific and tragic day, but the Old Oak Tree still stands…"

But not today. The valiant oak at our northeast lot line has been under attack by the city, protecting its powerlines. Every couple of years men come out and hack away branches to clear the wires, and every time the oak revives and valiantly shapes itself well again. But today, today they took it entirely away.

2011-08-29T13:23:00.002-05:00

Johnny Cash & Joni Mitchell - The Long Black Veil [click]

2011-08-28T21:30:00.004-05:00

Edith Piaf, La Foule [click]

clickable contemplation

2011-08-23T14:44:00.002-05:00

Haystacks. Late Summer. Morning.

2011-08-22T20:34:00.001-05:00

Having stumbled into a post-modernist mindset and insatiably reading art criticism, confused about what is "true," etc (etc, etc), I somehow got the idea that, if you've seen Claude Monet's haystacks, they're passé consumerism, not to be trusted, and certainly not to be enjoyed. Wonder why? Anyway, how can I hope to surpass this vision of late summer in even many words?

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

2011-08-20T14:41:00.001-05:00

Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ

2011-08-19T14:01:00.001-05:00

I've always felt that I saw this event out of the corner of my eye, or as if something were missing. Methodists don't linger on it, but Wikipedia does make one think.

The Transfiguration is a pivotal moment, and the setting on the mountain is presented as the point where human nature meets God: the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal, with Christ himself as the connecting point, acting as the bridge between heaven and earth