symbolic 28: ashes, ashes, we've all fallen down
"O my people, what have I done unto thee."
According to the New Book of Knowledge (which I found forgotten on the shelf at a Girl Scout Camp one Thanksgiving weekend a long time ago), the Christian holidays are completely based on pagan rituals. Folk will try to convince you otherwise but ask them what is the source of the date of Easter? We mark Christmas -- December 25th -- as the day Jesus Christ was born, but what day do we mark as his final day on this planet? Easter. What's the date of Easter?
(And yes, I know we covered this one already, but bear with me. Christmas was so long ago that I had forgotten, and since you already know the answer, you can say it with me.)
Easter, as you can tell them after they're done sputtering and fumbling for an answer, is the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Which, if you look at that in pagan-speak, is the first holy day following the first complete lunar cycle following the first day of spring. Let's see, there's a little Druidism in there, a little nod to the primal rhythm of the matriarchy, and just the most important landmark of the vegetation cults.
Ash Wednesday falls 40 days (not counting Sundays) before Easter and is the beginning of Lent, the time of penance and abstinence before the big Holy Holy of Easter. It has always tickled me that Fat Tuesday is the day before; the day prior to beginning a time of prayer and contemplation, you participate in the year's biggest drunken debauchery. Says a lot about one's intent during Lent, doesn't it?
I was never much for penitence; I never do well at the temporary suspension of behavior. I'm kind of an all or nothing sort of guy. Okay, I'm not much of an "or nothing" type either. While the idea of denying yourself some lifestyle aspect certainly has merit, the idea that you are doing it as a nod to the mythological efforts of Jesus Christ is laughable. "Chocolate? You're giving up chocolate for Lent? How marvelous. Why didn't I think of that? Me? Oh, I'm just martyring myself to make a point to my Father and to Mankind. But don't mind me. Chocolate abstinence is certainly a noble goal."
"This is the time of tension between dying and birth."
I usually read T. S. Eliot's poem "Ash Wednesday" on Ash Wednesday. It's a ritual I've fallen out of these last few years for any number of reasons, the most current one being that I can't find my damn copy of the poem. Fortunately the Internet provides. And, as I read it again while I write this, I get hung up on the first stanza.
This is where we are: lost, fallen, confused. Hopeless. We numb ourselves on Fat Tuesday and spend Lent trying to flush our livers. We...never mind, you know what you do to yourself. You know why you kill your Hope: you're not smart enough, not brave enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, not skilled enough, not driven enough. You go on a diet to save your health, yet you still eat the same shit everyday and sneak off in the afternoon to have yourself a treat, Pavlovian-style. Why don't we care enough to save ourselves? Because we don't have a good reason.
We need there to be life on Mars. Bug-eyed, snarling, snapping, pissed off and technologically fifty years our senior. Rain some space aliens down on our heads and shove us off the top of the food chain. That's the wake-up call we need. Because there is nothing else to challenge our survival. You can get up, go to work, come home, pay the bills, make a family, and die in the middle of an orgasm when you are seventy-three, and THAT is considered a life. What's the incentive to try for anything else?
For me? For Eliot? There has got to be something else. Suffer me not to be separated.
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.