Sunday, March 17, 2013

Brigid had a snake

Before the Irish were converted to Rome's Church,  They revered a mother Goddess called Brigid. Brigid's feast came at the time when the ewes began to lactate, when it was time to bring the sheep home from their winter pastures.
I am sorry that we no longer gather to celebrate  the lactation of the ewes.

Brigid had a snake, who emerged every February (just before the lactation of the ewes), to foretell the seasons. If Brigid's snake saw it's shadow, then 6 weeks more of winter would ensue. Shepherds would pay attention to Brigid's snake, and adjust their husbandry accordingly.

An Englishman, St Patrick, banished the snakes, and taught the Irish about sin, and how the only way to get close to God , was through the Roman Church.
St. Patrick was successful.

Fortunately, Irish ewes were never convinced, and still lactate regularly during the feast of Brigid.






Saturday, March 9, 2013

no death

I'm trying hard to tell something true.
I saw , myself, that there is no death.
I saw it myself. It really happened.
It is true.

Every two weeks,  I was paid, by the Fish and Wildlife Agency of the state of Oregon, to go to the headwaters  to see the spawning Chinooks. To record their acts.

The first week,  In deep pools , the last deep pools before the waters become algae-warm and still , the Chinooks , those few that have become Gods, Huge and gravid and hook-beaked., They wait. In the cool water, for the last time.
They were careless. Easy to observe. You could see them. They were fearless.You could reach into the cool water and touch their backs. I did. You could have too.
I could tell you where. I could have shown you on a map.
I wish you could have seen it. for it was a great beauty.
There were hundreds of them.

2 weeks later, upstream from the deep pools, Hook-beaked males and huge gravid females had begun digging their nests in what clean gravels they could find upstream from the pools,in the riffles.
Gravel , and eggs, and sperm, sperm, sperm...

2 weeks later, Poor dying huge Chinooks,in their beauty,  beaten and hosts to fungus, lay sideways near the banks of ancient river, their gills trying in vain to pull enough oxygen from the warm water to sustain life......But the warm waters of spawning dont provide enough oxygen for a cold deep ocean God.  So the great fish dies.
It might seem sad, but who among us will ever attain what these River Gods have attained, to absolutley have fullfilled ALL you have been meant to do , in life. All! Completed. Done.
Rest well, Chinooks!

2 weeks later, The banks are smelly with decomposed fishes. But nothing is still. Vibrating, pulsating, buzzing, insects make lively the dead fishes. Flies make  halos round the bodies of the Gods. There are wriggling swarms of maggots, along the sand, forming the shapes of the big Chinooks.  Birds fight over the carcasses, and bears come out the woods to dine.
Death is lively!


2 weeks later. Its quiet. There is no sign that any of it ever happened. There are no insects, no fish carcasses, hardly a bone, to show that it ever even happened. The fishes are gone. The insects are gone. The birds, the bears, ....gone. Like it never happened. Like nothing lived. Like nothing died.
Gone. Like it never happened. Leaving us  who have seen it, to doubt what we saw.


It gets colder. It gets dryer ..........Winter.....but in the very first melting of next early spring, still colder than what seems reasonable for life,............hearts pulse within scarlet salmon eggs in the cold gravels.






Pssssst. They dont stay dead

In the mountain streams in NE Oregon, in late summer, the Spring Chinooks arrive to spawn.

After feeding well and dwelling well in the waters all along  the west side of this continent,  for 4, or 5, or 6 years, they are large.
The females shine and are hugely gravid. The males faces elongate.  Their teeth grow. Their jaws hook.
 Though they still have work to do in this life, they are beginning to look like the immortal Gods that they are.

They arrive in late summer, Those among them that have acclimated to fresh water in the bays ,avoiding hungry sea lions, and have gone against the current of the West's mightiest River, Columbia.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Against all odds, they arrive on the south fork of the john Day ( ....not so many dams. and sufficiently rough country, the cattle dont be there. . Hallelujah.  Even now, in these times, Spawn , you salmon , SPAWN!

Middle Fork John Day :  Grazed. Grazed till there is no vegetation. Grazed . There is no riparian substrate.
Grazed. ...........to fucking DEATH......
yet'
Nah. Its probably too late
Now.

I'm so sorry.

True story. Not so happy

This is a true story.

Every late summer, since the early Pleistocene, maybe even before, Chinook salmon come into the headwaters of  mountain streams  in NE Oregon, for the spawning.
They spend 4, 5, maybe 6 years, on the west side of the continent , living and feeding, and being fish in the vast Pacific.
Those that live and feed well, become large. Upon maturity, they heed a call, and leave their oceanic lives, to come into the bay of the Columbia, to acclimate gradually to fresh water , while dodging hungry seals and sea lions.
They heed a call to swim against the current of the West's mightiest River, Columbia.

Past Bonneville Dam.
Past The Dalles Dam.
Past John Day Dam.
Past McNary Dam
Past Priest Rapids Dam
Where the Columbia meets with the Snake River, and Our chinooks go that way, because that is their call.
Past Ice Harbor Dam
Past Lower Monument Dam
Past Little Goose Dam
Past Lower Granite Dam

The miracle is, a few of them make it. They enter the Grande Ronde River, near LaGrande.....and Catherine Creek. Imnaha. Indian Creek......( Oh So sorry. Indian Creek run is no longer.)  (Oh. So sorry Grande Ronde run " functionally extinct" in 1990......

At a place along the Grand Ronde River, just below Tony Vey Meadows, you could see them.
Big.  So beautiful. And you could see em nicely, In clear deep pools where chinook salmon would dwell a little while , just before going upstream to finish their grand lives in spawning.
Only a few years ago. I saw them.
I wish you could see them too.


Oh.
I wanted to tell a true story , about eternal life. I wanted to tell that Death does not win.
I thought you might like to know that.

Not this time.
The federal government ( We, the  people!) recognized the value of the Grande Ronde Chinook run,and saw it declining, and spent a butt-load  of money and man-hours making the Grande Ronde River  welcoming to spawning Salmon. And quite rightly, we  restored the eroded banks of the Grand Ronde.

..........We tried. and in restoring the banks of the Grande Ronde River, we did good.    but we were not able to save the Grande Ronde Chinook run.

We failed.
The headwaters . The spawning grounds. were on private land.
One ranch. One land owner, and quite a few cows.
Its done.   Its gone.

The extinctions of the Great Auk, the Carolina Parakeet, The Passenger Pigeon. These are rightfully mourned.
But the Grande Ronde River Chinook run, went without headlines. I saw it. I remember. I will never forget.

Silt.
Kills.




















Saturday, February 9, 2013

A most excellent guest post.....from my Mom


                                                            Orion

                                                Long long ago
                                                When heaven was newly made
                                                God had a plan
                                                I will gather the stars 
                                                I will make Orion
                                                He will have a penis
                                                Orion will create the earth.

                                                His penis spouted oceans
                                                And his seed made a flower garden
                                                And Adam and Eve.              
                                                And the begetting began
                                                And God was pleased
                                               
                                                One night in winter   
                                                Priest was contemplating the heavens
                                                “Behold!”  Abomination!” spoke priest.
                                                Handmaidens were ordered to sew underpants
                                                Orion was high in his heaven.  Too high
                                                So Michaelangelo’s David had to wear the underpants
                                                Priest said “Behold, Orion has no penis.”
                                                “We gave him a knife.”
                                                “No more abomination”.
                                                (In later years this is known as the Renaissance)
                                                and God was not pleased.

                                                For many years no rain fell.
                                                Oceans dried, fish died.
                                                No seeds fell to the parched earth.
                                                (in 1931 they called it the Dust Bowl)

                                                Seek ye Orion and the seven stars
                                                On a fine February night
                                                He has no knife.
                                                He will plant your garden
                                                God will be pleased.

Doreen Lindstedt testifies!
                                               


                                               
                                                

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Holy Trinity of abominations

In order for  life to proceed on this earth, 3 basic things are vitally needed:

1. Shit
2.  Fucking
3.  Death

Nice people dont talk about any of the three.
Most people avoid any thoughts of the three...(except fucking. Everyone THINKS about fucking. They just dont talk about it.)

I think we should erect chapels, and shrines to the Real holy trinity.

Dead things become resurrected into live things through the admixture of byproducts of metabolism (shit)    , by means of biological reproduction (fucking). There s your eternal life. World without end , Amen, made possible by the holy trinity of shit, fucking, and death.

I'm planning for this year's garden.
Last years dead annuals have laid in my soil, being consumed, and shit out  by  microorganisms , who fuck without ceasing. The plants having fucked, have produced seeds as their last mortal act.
I'm going to plant these, and cover them generously with shit...fermented, composted shit, in which occurs dizzying incidences of  shitting, fucking and death.

Heres a link to a blog post about how I plant to use the media of the trinity to make a garden:http://smoulderingsuck.blogspot.com/






Sunday, January 27, 2013

Coatlicue Part 2: She has many faces.


Coatlicue was not always a dark god.
She was once bright, and cute and pastelly , and innocent. She looked a lot like this :
http://www.excerptsofinri.com/images/our_lady_of_guadalupe.jpg

She was innocent and chaste, and shiny. 
She was known for her goodness , purity, and abstinence, She gave birth as a virgin to a hybrid man/ god.

The unusual conception occurred when pious  Coatlicue was obediently sweeping the temple.
 A bundle of hummingbird feathers  was dislodged by her broom, and drifted up in between her virtuous legs. 
Nine months later, a virgin  Coatlicue gave birth to Quetzalcoatl, feathered snake, sort of a God, and sort of a man. (In Aztec  belief,and my belief as well, beings can be more than one thing at one time.  Check this out for graphic representation of the idea :
http://www.luckymojo.com/manopoderosa.gif 



Events subsequent to the virgin birth of her  feathered snake  turn that good girl into a dark devouring claw-footed snake-headed monster, and elevated Coatlicue from  pretty little  temple-sweeper to one big powerful diety. 
Stay tuned for part 3, in which Coatlicue gets MAD!


Saturday, January 26, 2013

Coatlicue (part1)


Coatlicue (Kwat-LEE-kay)  . She's a dark one.
Coatlicue means "she wears snakes"
She is also known as Toci (Our Grandmother) , and Teteoinan (Mother of Gods) , and  Cihuacoatl  (Our Lady of the serpent).

Coatlicue  is represented  wearing a skirt of rattlesnakes and a necklace  of human hearts, hands and skulls.  These are the remains of her  children, who she has devoured.
 She has claws on her feet, for digging graves. 
She has 2  rattlesnake heads arising from her neck, and smaller snake heads arising from her shoulders. Her flaccid breasts sag, from centuries of maternal nurturing. (Yes. She nurtures AND destroys.... Make no mistake everything born will have an end.)

Her massive image,  in  Stone was uncovered  in 1790, by one Antonio de León y Gama , during excavation on the Main  Plaza of Mexico City.

The stone is nearly 9 feet tall, and nearly writhes with basalt snakes.

The European conquerors who first dug her up, regarded the statue as an appalling and dreadful monster , but the children of the Mexica  recognized her.
 Indigenous people greeted the newly excavated Goddess by lavishing her with candles and flowers. They burned incense. They sang songs.

The Europeans, followers of a pastel colored religion that pretends there is no death ,  wasted no time re-burying  the fearsome and repellent monument. They re-interred Coatlicue where she could not be seen. They built a massive patio over her, so that denizens of the surface of Earth would no longer be disturbed by so grisly a statue, and by the inevitable end to mortality she promised.

And in the ground she stayed....for 13 years, until curious anthropologists dug her up again..., briefly.  Upon viewing her loathsome visage, they immediately re-buried her yet again. 

The statue of Coatlicue was dug up again in 1823.
A cast image of the stone was sent to London where it was publicly displayed to thousands of  English Ladies and Gentleman.
The English (followers of the palest of pastel gods)  came to no quantifiable harm from viewing Coatlicue's horrid visage.

The great stone of Coatlicue has been allowed to remain on the Earths'surface , in full view.....for now.

She resides in the National Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More about Coatlicue later.  She is complicated.

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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Tiger

I had occasion to meet a Tiger.

A large Siberian kind.
Amur.
It was love at first sight.

He was born in captivity, but he was not domestic. Not anything like domestic.
When I met him , he was un-caged. He needed no cage anymore. A fatal dose of phenobarbitol had only 30 minutes before, stopped his large heart.  He was still very warm, and very soft, and looked like most of the life was still in him, though his un-caged tiger soul hovered just above, looking around the room, for another gig.

I asked him to come in.
My thorax is hollow and could use a Tiger's soul.  Theres plenty of room in there, if the tiger doesn't mind the company of a few snakes.

A year or so past, one of the Amur Tigers at the Boise zoo (Yes. It was this very Tiger) came out of his enclosure and wrapped his huge Catchers' mitt paws around a woman's leg, and began to aim his very large teeth at an especially soft spot.
There was a policeman, and a gun. Shots were fired. There was confusion, and loud noises. The tiger retreated back into his enclosure. The woman was treated at a local hospital for her injuries, which, were principally from a gunshot wound to her leg.
Everyone survived the day.



Tiger, I love you, and I wouldn't mind sharing souls.
If you were still living, I might like to have made love to you.
Not really. It would not be right. Issues of consent come up , and besides, I dont want to make love to anyone.
But I would WANT to want to make love to you.

Please be with me , always.
Like Jesus, only tigers are real.

And,edited to add this : Tiger feet smell exactly like dog's feet.