Tag: William Blake

Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish.

July 9th • Nausicaa

The Twofold form Hermaphroditic: and the Double-sexed; The Female-male & the Male-female, self-dividing stood Before him in their beauty, & in cruelties of holiness! Shining in darkness, glorious upon the deeps of Entuthon. 8:47 pm

Scene [Tranquilla convent, in the back garden. The sisters are preparing to receive a novice for initiation into the order. St. Agatha and Sister Mary Peter wait with ten fingers locked for her to arrive. ]

St. Agatha: Sister Mary Peter, have you seen my breasts?

Sister Mary Peter: You left them in the rectory Reverend Mother, shall I retrieve them for you?

St. Agatha: No, no. No. Nuisance they are anyway, really, although I do feel like I lose a charm every time I take them off. Still, we have a new novice coming and it would be a waste of this whitewashed face and cool coif not to long to appear, well, complete.

Sister Mary Peter: It is a natural craving, Reverend Mother, but you’re looking splendid. Dressed up to the nines.

St. Agatha. Never mind, no time. I can see her coming with my dexter optic! O look who it is for the love of God! I thought they were dumping Martha on us and instead it’s Lizzie Twigg! How are you at all? What have you been doing with yourself? [kiss] and delighted to [kiss] see you!

Lizzie Twigg: Hello Agatha. I would have been here sooner but there was all that barbed wire.

St. Agatha: We do like to cloister ourselves here! But never mind never mind. No hurry, my dear sister soul. I’m just so happy you’re not Martha! So vindictive for what she can’t get. Oh my child! So, here you are, giving up your desire to aid gentlemen in literary work.

Lizzie Twigg: Yes, I’m done with men. I loved an Aeon and that ended badly. Felt like I was drowning half the time. Now I want to dedicate myself to somebody more, I don’t know, along the straight and narrow. Linear minded. Gets us from then to when.

St. Agatha: Well as a fellow bride of Christ you will have that, even the calendar starts with him, to some end point. So, let’s have a look at you. Nice well-filled hose, though they are a bit down around the ankle.

Sister Mary Peter: Voice like a pick axe, no good for the choir. Are you lame?

Lizzie Twigg: No. My boots are a bit tight though.

St. Agatha: You might have a high arched instep.

Lizzie Twigg: Um. I have a question. I’ve heard things about the sisters here. That some of you get a bit, well, odd. I’ve heard about some sisters licking pennies all the time, and wanting to smell rock oil, and all kinds of. Is this, is this true?

St. Agatha: It’s only the virgins who go mad in the end. I take it you’re?

Lizzie Twigg: Not. No.

St. Agatha. I thought not. You have that I’m all clean come dirty me look. Now, when was the start of your last menstrual period? Must have been within the past couple of days.

Lizzie Twigg: Today. And it’s awful. Feels a ton weight. How did you know?

St Agatha: The plants are withering. And the fiddle strings have all snapped.

Sister Mary Peter: The milk is turning too.

St. Agatha: Sister Mary Peter, go get St. Patricia, she can coagulate Miss Twigg’s blood. Now Miss Twigg, we’ll stop your menstruation for now, but you’ll have to get into step with the rest of us. We all bleed together according to the moon.

Lizzie Twigg: I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude or question is it all a fake or anything but, none of you look like, well, like the menstruating type. No offense. How many women?

St. Agatha: Listen sister, we feel it ourselves too, ok, all of us together. We can be a pack of devils when it’s coming on, I can tell you, especially Sister Mary Peter!

Lizzie Twigg: She’s a hot little devil all the same. We were girlfriends at school you know.

St. Agatha: Oh were you? And how do you find her now?

Lizzie Twigg: Well back then she was yours for the asking! And not to pick holes in her appearance or anything, but she does have fewer teeth than before.

St. Agatha: Never you mind that now. We all have bodies, we all have curves inside our deshabillé, but if you are to undertake a novitiate with us you’ll find within our walls sanctity and corporeality intermingle. Bring your agenbite of inwit, but don’t forget your frillies for Raoul, honey, He likes them both. Now come with me child, that’s a lovely shirt shining beneath your what? But we must get on with dressing each other for the sacrifice.

Love laughs at locksmiths.

July 7th • Nausicaa

The bat that flits at the close of eve has left the Brain that won't Believe.

8:42 pm

I have just this one flaw, and it was just an accident or I’d be perfect. I’ll be perfect for him and I will do everything I can to make sure of that! He’ll believe in me. He is so ideal, is he real? I want him to come here to me now in the twilight, I’ll hold the baby on my knee and we can pretend it is ours. And we’ll be together and I’ll be free and he’ll be my all in all. I believe if I believe as hard as I can then it will be because reality is what we believe it to be. I wrote that down once and it is so totally true because it is what I believe. I can be a poet, and I’ll give everything to him and we’ll be happy, even if he is already married or something because who cares, am I right? Makes no difference. We’ll get past any obstacle because we’ll be together and nothing else will matter.

And, my word, didn’t the little chap enjoy that!

June 30th • Nausicaa

My mother groaned! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud; Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swaddling bands: Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast. 8:30:61 pm

Holy Mary he is such a cutie! Cissy and Edy playing peek-a-boo and he laughs like a little angel! So cute. He’ll talk soon, everybody say’s he’s smart for 11 months and big for his age too. He’ll turn out to be somebody important. Just look at him! Look at the size of him! He won’t sit up though, I suppose that’s normal. But otherwise he’s very advanced for his little age. But he can be loud! What were Edy and Cissy thinking, bringing a baby out this late? They should take that screaming little shit home and the little brats of twins too. Getting on my last nerve. Good thing we’re so far from the water here or I’d want to throw him into the ocean! See if he swims. Lucky for him he’s cute. I suppose that’s why. A baby is great and all, but not when it is wet and screaming. But I guess you can’t just box it up and send it back.

What a persuasive power that girl had!

June 18th • Nausicaa

He siezd the boy in his immortal hands While Enitharmon followd him weeping in dismal woe Up to the iron mountains top & there the Jealous chain fell from his bosom on the mountain. The Spectre dark held the fierce boy Los naild him down binding around his limbs the accursed chain O how bright Enitharmon howld & cried Over her son. Obdurate Los bound down her loved Joy. 8:02 pm

So here’s how its done. First, get your syringe of medicine or whatever it is ready and a pillowcase too. Distract them with the television or something, but don’t let them lean back on a couch or anything or you’ll have a harder time. Best to do it when they are standing. So, once you have your materials ready, you sneak up behind the little brat and stuff their arms into a pillowcase behind their back. Then lay them down as fast as you can on the floor. They’ll be kicking and screaming bloody murder and that’s ok; the screaming keeps their mouths open until they see the medicine coming. This is why you have to act fast because the little shit is going to be working against you from here on out. Make sure when you get your little angel to the floor that the weight of their body on the pillowcase pins their arms inside. Then, straddle the little darling’s head with your knees and squeeze to hold the head in place. Your particular little brat might be a biter, so watch out! Squeeze with your knees but don’t crush, as much as at this point you’d like to, am I right? Then pinch the kid’s nose closed and hold there until they open up. Shoot that medicine in there as fast as you can. Here’s a tip — it helps to aim for the cheek because you could cause a gag reflex if you go for the back of the throat and you don’t want to get puked on! Keep holding the little lovely’s nose until they swallow. It’s either swallow or stop breathing at this point, and they’ll make the right choice every time. No praising them after for getting through it. That just encourages them.

Space: what you damn well have to see.

April 4th • Scylla and Charybdis

Then Eno a daughter of Beulah took a Moment of Time And drew it out to Seven thousand years with much care & affliction And many tears & in Every year made windows into Eden. She also took an atom of space & opend its center Into Infinitude & ornamented it with wondrous art. 2:06 pm

Forming. Forming. And I thought the afterlife was for fulfilling. Try resurrection some time! I died. I came back. Who does that? I must be, yes, I am a God. Yes. Yes. Feel it. I was the formless spiritual and now I am the Allfather, Adam Kadmon, the heavenly man. Jesus Christ I’m a magician now, the magician of the beautiful! Oh yes, I am back. I was never an ordinary person. I lived the life esoteric, and look at me now! Get a glimpse of my elemental! Not so blurry today. This is the virgin birth, right here. In this space. At this time. Soul reinserted into body. I am God!

Krishna: Stop!

Wait, what just happened. Who are you? Why did everything just freeze in place? Why are you blue?

Krishna: I have stopped time. Listen to me, I will tell you the secret of life.

I already know the secret of life. I am the secret of life! Look at me. I’m back, baby. I’m here. I’m in a library talking Hamlet with a kid and an old new critic. And I am the only one here who knows the truth of the afterlife that the kid dances around.

Krishna: Those who are without faith in my teaching cannot attain me; they endlessly return to this world shuttling from death to death.

Ah, but that’s where you are wrong blue man, I haven’t been reincarnated. This is not your ordinary metempsychosis. You are looking at resurrection! This is altogether a different kettle of fish.

The Ondt: [Clipping the end of a cigar. Havana. A fine Romeo y Julieta] You smell like a kettle of fish, Æ, your Auric egg’s gone bad.

Krishna: That rotten egg smell is your sulfuric breath, Ondt. What are you doing here? How did you get into this moment? I stopped time, this is our now. Out, Ondt!

The Ondt: [making faces at himself in the window] Honey, this is my space. I can crawl into your now through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood and back out through Blake’s buttocks into eternity if I like. You hold to the now all you like, but it is the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

Krishna: Fine. Æ, we shall proceed regardless. You have not become deathless; you have merely become manifest without a rebirth. You are most certainly not God or even a god. I am God! I am known by everyone as the many, the One; behind the faces of a million gods, they can see my face. I am the ritual and the worship, the medicine and the mantra, the butter burnt in the fire, and I am the flames that consume it.

The Ondt: [Taking the form of the Lord of Loaves] Got a light? And hey, don’t burn up all that butter.

You both need to cool it. Look, I used to think that the world’s revolutions were born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on a hillside, from the people for whom the earth is a living mother. But I don’t think so anymore. The world’s revolutions are born from those of us who say this verily is that. I took my own fate by the balls. The point is I am the point. I have free will! I used to think that God is a stage manager in the theatre of the eternal, but I am beyond that now. I am God if I say I am God. What of it? You can be God too if you like. And look there, you see that person breathing all over us? That one who clicks instead of talks? And stares and stares, eyeballs moving here and now here and then over to here. There is God. God is a click in the street.

The Ondt: [Blowing smoke rings] The peatsmoke is going to his head.

Krishna: [Crossing his arms defensively. He is caught between the devil and the ocean of Theosophy] I know all beings who have passed, and all who live now, Æ, and all who are yet to be. In the face of the one who can see all temporalities, how can you be so distressingly shortsighted? How can you believe your will is free?

You guys can blow smoke up my ass all day if you like, I don’t care. I know what I know. Talk until you are blue in the face. I’m making plans.

His blood wooed by grace of language and gesture

March 10th • Aeolus

For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk or jew; Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. 12:40 pm

[Scene: A courtroom in Denmark ornately furnished and decorated with four stone effigies in frozen music, the human forms of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. Mercy has a heart carved on her sleeve, Pity a human face, Love the human form divine, and Peace is wearing a strapless black velvet Atelier Versace gown worthy of the red carpet with Neil Lane jewels and a Jaime Mascaro clutch. We approve of the two diamond clips arranged on a draped section but Peace looks like the dress of unfortunate fabric choice is wearing her, and that leg jutting out unnaturally gives the effect of one trying too hard.]

Judge Seymour Bushe: Will council for the prosecution please approach the bench.

Moses: Your Honor?

Judge Seymour Bushe: I’ve had enough of you dropping the ball. I must repeat, that we do not wish to hear about anything soultransfigured or soultransfiguring or any other bloody thing that might become of the soul. Stick with the law, the lex talionis if you must, but be aware that the defense is using the law of evidence. And he has balls of stone. Call the damn witness and let’s get on with it.

Moses: Your honor, I believe the ball dropped five minutes ago. I call King Hamlet of Denmark.

Demosthenes: Objection. King Hamlet of Denmark is dead.

Moses: He is a ghost, your honor, and though he comes in a questionable shape, he has full use of his voice and it is imperative to the proof of King Claudius’ guilt that we lend a serious hearing to what he shall unfold.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Proceed.

Moses: Your Majesty, you deserve to live, deserve to live. Please tell the court how King Claudius achieved your murder.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor, the question assumes facts not in evidence.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Sustained. Moses, you must prove King Claudius’ guilt, not assume it.

Moses: Your Majesty, please explain to the court your experience of the night you died.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark: List, list, O List! Murder! Murder most foul, strange and unnatural. That incestuous, that adulterate beast, with Witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts that have the power so to seduce! — won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor. There is no evidence before this court that the witness knew of any adultery on the part of King Claudius or the Queen during his lifetime. As there is no evidence that the witness had no personal knowledge of what he testifies to know, I move to have his words stricken.

Judge Seymour Bushe: Sustained. Mr. Ghost, please keep to the facts as you experienced them.

The Ghost of King Hamlet of Denmark: Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon, upon my secure hour Claudius stole with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of mine ear did pour the leprous distilment.

Demosthenes: Objection, your Honor, that’s hearsay, which I move be stricken from the record. If the witness was asleep, he could have no personal knowledge of anything occurring in his orchard.

Moses: Your Honor, as a ghost His Highness is in a unique position to act as witness to his own murder. He exists in eternity now and thus partakes of all eternity. He has access to the holy book into which all things are inscribed! I pray thee, do not blot his words out of thy book now being written.

Demosthenes: [after a pause, a false lull, quite ordinary really] If I may, your Honor, it is painful for children to be orphaned of a father. Yes, but it is a beautiful thing to be the heir of a father’s fame. And of this pain we shall find the deity to be the cause, to whom mortal creatures must yield. As such I move the court to dismiss the complaint in this action for the reason that the complaint fails to allege sufficient facts which, if true, establish probable cause to believe that King Claudius committed any offense alleged by the prosecution.

Judge Seymour Bushe: [takes out his matchbook thoughtfully and lights a cigar] As I must determine the whole aftercourse of the defendant’s life, the court will recess to consider the motion. Good Christ who do I have to fuck to get a better gig? I could have left this job long ago, only for . . . but no matter. Ah well, do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Across the sands of all the world followed by the suns flaming sword.

February 21st • Proteus

11:43 am

That’s twice I forgot to take slips off the library counter. Remember it now. Try. Comes and goes. How did I start it? The sounds. Moomb woomb allwoombing toomb. Mouth to her kiss. No, two mouths. Glue them together. Gluey. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss. Wayawayawayawayaway. Ooeeehah. huh. Where? To evening lands. Omnis caro ad te veniet. His bat sails. Her bat shawl. On swift sail flaming. From storm and south. He comes, pale vampire. Mouth to my mouth. I am set naked on your kingdom. Oh, thy kingdom come! A winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. The moist star. Unto thee all flesh shall come. What is her burying grave, that is her womb? Tomb. Mouth to her womb. allwombing tomb. Oomb. Thou’rt my Mother from the Womb, Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb. Trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines. Across the sands of all the world. Is that what I wrote? Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Tides myriadislanded, within her. A tide westering, moondrawn. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Followed by the sun’s flaming sword. to the west. Trekking to evening lands. Pale vampire, through storm his eyes. Bloodying the sea. The winedark sea. O shit give it up. Who ever anywhere will read these written words?

Shut your eyes and see

February 8th • Proteus

11:00 am

The world is real and eternal. Don’t take my word for it, think through your eyes. Look at the idealists, they knew how to use a good work around. Take Berkeley for example.

Berkeley: There is not existence without the mind. Objects cannot exist without a mind perceiving them.

So to perceive is to be. Oh yeah, then when I leave the room does it disappear? Come on.

Berkeley: Objects continue because God sees them.

And there you are. A likely story. Convenient to invent a universal perceiver so all things can be seen and thus be real. Even Schopenhauer, who had a bit more sense than the other idealists, speaks this treason.

Schopenhauer: The world is my idea.

Please, what about that sun up there behind those clouds? And this beach, these shells I crunch under my feet and this sand washing through my fingers?

Schopenhauer: It is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun and a hand that feels the earth.

But what about time? Close your eyes. Think of a very short space of time. You aren’t closing your eyes. You think I can’t see you? I can’t see you and you are real. Now close them. Nothing will disappear. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Ok, close your eyes later and think of very short times of space. And listen. Rhythms, the nearing tide, the crunch under your feet. Close your eyes and look through the opacity of your eyelids. Is it is all still there? World without end? All the time, and all time? You did not need to see to believe. All still here. Me too. Look, there are my feet. Buck’s shoes. I’m wearing his pants too. And Jim’s hat. But whether one thing comes after another or they stand nicely side by side, the world is not the idea of a creator. There is no Los, that fallen earth owner creating material reality in his forge, or holding his diaphanous orb of fire as he walks into the crypt of eternity wearing Blake’s hat. Nor are there ghosts within. Listen. That’s a ghost talking, Hamlet’s father. Howsomever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother. Now look what you’ve done. I should never have spoken to you. Your fault! My mother, ghost with ashes on her breath, is walking here. No. Jesus! I will not fall over that cliff that beetle’s o’er his base. Oh Christ look now, look with your thoughts. There I go.

Thought is the thought of thought

January 24th • Nestor

10:10 am

Hello. We have not yet met, though I confess I have been watching you. I hover in the background around these parts. Your name? I’m Genevieve. Pleased to meet you in person at last. You have nice eyes. I’m sorry, have I embarrassed you? I notice eyes. I keep my eye on a young man who frequents this place. I’m using his hands now. Not his eyes, oh no, they are terrible. He can hardly see! You should see the font size he uses. Still he is much better off than my mother was, before I cured her blindness. Yes, that was one of my miracles. Love me. Hey! I saw that. Don’t give me that look. I did cure her. I did. Ok fine, I was the one who made her blind in the first place. I’m sorry, ok, but she was being totally controlling; she didn’t want me to get married because she thought I was too young. It’s not like he wasn’t a nice guy, he was God! I wanted to be a bride of Christ, so shoot me. Ok, yes, I was only seven years old. But still. Anyway once when I asked to go to my boyfriend’s house to hang out, do a little worshiping, get out of doing housework, she grounded me and slapped me across the face. So I made her blind. But then I unblinded her. Eventually. Let’s not make a federal case of it. I am a saint. That means I am pure and good and people worship me. Now where were we. Oh yes. Stephen has terrible vision, that guy Jim is all but blind, and Stephen spent the morning trying to teach blind old Milton to a bunch of hung-over eye-rollers. Freshmen in the winter quarter aren’t scared anymore and it is clear he lost authority pretty much on day one. You can see it from space. So here I am, doing my community service. I look out for Stephen sometimes because he can’t very well look out for himself. See? I like the way your eyes move, back and forth like that. It’s nice. Steven was all about movement today. In his head, right behind his eyes. He had his students droning on about Lycidas “And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more.” Bore me to tears. I wish Stephen could see his student’s eyes when he teaches. Or be like me just once and peek under their lashes at what they are thinking. They would be much more interested in his thoughts than in his so-called lesson plans. Stephen was thinking today that reality must be the actualizing of whatever is possible. The movement of it. You see? Look over there, headed this way. It’s possibility, you see? Teeming multitudinous potential now moments. Not now yet. To be, but not is. Then there is the chosen one. I don’t mean my boyfriend! Not that kind of chosen one. I mean the now moment that rides between what could be and what was. The verb of the thing, you see? Reality doesn’t live in the multitudes of possibilities or in the chosen one event that turns into history. It is in the movement from what could be to what was. At least, that is what Stephen thinks today. Is he right? Well, that’s not for me to show you. He’ll figure it out in his tranquil brightness. His soul, you see? The form of forms. He was also thinking about dragons. That was fun. Blake’s dragons, you know. You know him? A real visionary that one. Nice eyes too. Big, widely set. Blake’s dragons emerge from their caves whenever there is a real battle that needs fighting. A war, the intellectual kind that happens in eternity. The kind of war that clears the way for creative work. And our boy Stephen, as reluctant as he may be, has some fights ahead. Anybody with eyes can see that coming.

I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame.

January 21st • Nestor

10:00 am

My students. We peer at each other through the narrow chinks of our caverns. Oh they are aware of their parents’ money and my own lack of rule. They pay up front in exchange for damaged goods. None of them realize that knowledge isn’t for sale, it’s for steal. Come and get it, nobody is giving you anything. Blank faces asking blank windows for answers. Blake says the last judgement begins when people come to think that imagination and intellect are of no use. Not important anymore. He says we will all see the end differently — an individually tailored vision. Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear? I hear the end of space and smell the end of time, it stinks a mile off. And then what? What is left after finite space and consecutive time? The infinite and the eternal, eternity’s mansions. What else? Blake says he saw the permanent realities of everything in fractal arrangement across differing levels of scale. From here he sees a person, approach and there appears a multitude. Withdraw to a farther distance and the multitude is an infant in a woman’s arms. Humanity on every level. Class yesterday, oh the humanity. Talked about Pyrrhus, murdered by an old woman with a ceiling tile. He’s the one who couldn’t win for losing. [polldaddy survey=”9C1CDE38614C3192″ type=”button” title=”You, do you know anything about Pyrrhus?” style=”rounded” text_color=”FFFFFF” back_color=”000000″]