Myth of Arrival

Here is the secret I want
to give to you because I
give out secrets. I like
you here and give the way
the Fates give, soothingly,
dear, smoothingly.

You knew you could put
honey in your mouth to
sweeten all this and you
did. You knew the legend
here that says the goat
moon marks certain of us,
dear. Certain of us like you.
And me. Marked. You knew
the story of the apple. Not
that apple but this apple.

You knew the song I
sing in these hills. You
sing it too. Softly.
Softly. No words.
No tune. But softly
since the Fates say
some of us must rise
and some of us must
wait with secrets. Wait
with a secret. This song,
song of the apple. This
apple and its promise. It
is a promise I want to talk
to you about. A promise
to bite hard here, dear,
and into this promise
I shall arrive.

"into desire I shall come"
– fragment 96. Sappho. translated by Anne Carson (193)

Desire, like promises, are weighing heavily on me today. Not desire as carnal, but desire as in action. My friend Katya sent me a new photograph this morning. She wrote in her letter:

I made [this photo] after watching the movie "Da Vinchi Code," the idea of the movie influenced me much, especially, the idea of the Rose, that it is a sign of some help for all the suffering people who are officially neglected and restricted from their rights (Middle Asian women included). But - this particular work is not actually about the movie's idea, I was just still wearing the costume, and decided to make some other shots, so ended up with this apple…and I thought about those Greek myths about the goddess of beauty,Afrodita…and that this fruit was the case for argue among some other goddeses.

I spent some time thinking about that. For all of us not restricted by others. For all of us who can do things to help others, who should but don't. Then there is Aphrodite's apple. The apple has many functions in mythology (there is the Fall in the Garden of Eden; Paris in Greek myth is suppose to give a golden apple "to the fairest" of the goddesses, oi vey!) but to me the apple is a promise. A promise to remember where I am in this world. The privileges I take for granted. The directions I need to go.

I am leaving for Chicago for several days. For several days I will be away from all this — this blog, these poems, all these photographs — it is the time of giving thanks. It is good to give thanks, though I have friends who argue it is hypocritical. Today on NPR the headlines read:

* The United Nations reports that more than 3,700 Iraqi civilians were killed in October;

* A Marine investigation into the killing of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha is almost done.

Considering all of that. Considering Katya's calling us to remember all "who are officially neglected and restricted from their rights (Middle Asian women icluded)" I think giving thanks for these little islands of peace we might find in this terrible storm is an obligation. Otherwise the fates will hear you, the fates will know when you're taking the mickey out of them. It's a scary world. This is a scary time.

Here is the secret I want
to give to you because
I give out secrets. I like you
and give the way the fates
give, soothingly,
smoothingly.
You knew you could
put honey in your mouth
to sweeten all this and
you did. You knew
you could read all this
and you did. The ego
says "i" and underneath that?
You knew the legend says
the goat moon marks
certain of us. Certain
of us like you. And
me. Marked. You knew
the story of the apple. Not
that apple but this apple.
You knew the song
I sing in these hills.
You sing it too. Softly.
No words. No tune. But
softly since its the fates
who say I must rise. You must
wait with a secret. This secret
song, song of the apple. This
apple and its promise. It is a
promise I want to talk to you
about. Bite hard and into
this promise I shall arrive.

Work Cited

Carson, Anne (trans). If Not, Winter: fragments of Sappho. New York: Knopf (2006)

To be fascinated with the myth of Icarus is to be fascinated with executions. Perhaps your mythology text book does not call it such but that is what it is. An execution. The myth goes like this:

Icarus was imprisoned, with his father, in a tower on Crete, by the king Minos. Daedalus contrived to make his escape from the prison … so he set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son … when all was prepared for flight, he said, "Icarus, my son, I charge you to keep at a moderate height, for if you fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too high the heat will melt them. Keep near me and you will be safe" … the boy, exulting in his career, began to leave the guidance of his companion and soar upward as if to reach heaven. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together, and they came off. He fluttered with his arms, but no feathers remained to hold the air. While his mouth uttered cries to his father, it was submerged in the blue waters of the sea, which thenceforth was called by his name. His father cried, "Icarus, Icarus, where are you?" At last he saw the feathers floating on the water, and bitterly lamenting his own arts. (from Wikipedia)

I began thinking of this because my friend, Erin, wrote in her blog, The Exquisite Corpse, the following:

Fact (yes, we'll call it that): Icarus fell to earth immediately following what was probably the most terrifying & rapturous moments of his life — his body alight, suspended by wings his father fashioned for him, fleeing Minos's mounting rage, the waters deep & swimming below. And then he fell.

But the question still remains, "who killed Icarus?" The only answer for the Greeks in a world where the world-father rules all is Zeus. Zeus sentences the boy to die for his hubris. Zeus makes the sun melt his wings and he plummets from a great height into the sea. That is the myth as I understand it.

However, what artists continually paint is not Icarus in flight but his fall. In other words there is an acute fascination with the moments leading up to his death. It is like someone painting the moments leading up to a hanging, or a lynching. Marc Chagall shows this. So does Brugel and Matisse. A body is about to die and we are watching it. There is something profoundly disturbing about that. And yet no one turns their eyes away.

It occurs to me that the myth of Icarus parallels that of the fall of the rebel angles in Paradise Lost after Lucifer and his band of warriors are defeated. A burning streak across the sky. A terrible shame we cannot look away from. Why is that? Why are we fascinated with punishment so? And still a body is about to die and we are watching it again and again and again.

Hubris and compulsion. Give me
motive. Give me compulsion; that
terrible knowing. That rising up
to fall. That rising to fall. Do you
not hear me? To rise, our dull bodies
at rest, in flight,

flecks of spittle, fear flecking
the eyes. Never once a why.
We do not look at the grace
of rising, the joy of escape,
surging and pushing and
pull of terrible wings. Never

a why only the disgrace. The shame
to be cast down. Lucifer's long burning
arch and Icarus screaming. What
was that? A curse? A name? "father"?
"gods"? "i"? — We love all those aflame.

A blur of motion at the window
that lures us to watch. We call
all sacrifices beautiful; we dumb
voyeurs. Watching as the boy,
the morning star, spins round and
round and round. We love
those few seconds before
impact. We call them all
beautiful.

For years I have been having trouble with sleeping. If I could get to bed by 1:30 or 2 in the morning and be awake at 5:30 or 6 to start my day I would consider it a good night's rest. As a result I had trouble recalling any dreams, since my REM sleep was so poor. However, I have had one dream recently I could recall.

As a small child, I lived for a while in a little cabin in the mountains of Pinos Altos (Tall Pines), New Mexico, located about six miles north of Silver City. Even though most of the town has been turned into a trailer park for retirees (a fate that seems to be spreading everywhere in the Southwest) there was a time when the population of the town was less than 150 (including the packs of roving dogs) and the idea of other people, including neighbors, was just that, "an idea."

The cabin we lived in, three rooms I believe, was at the edge of the forest that came down off the mountain and ended where the tall grasses began. None of this is important to the poem I wrote this morning except for one thing. Sometimes at night, as I lay in my little bunk with my brother sleeping near by, I would look out the dark glass and swear there was some large animal on its hind legs moving about only a few feet away. A bear, most likely. I woke up this morning thinking about that. What was it? I do not recall telling anyone about it and I am sure if, at winter, there had been any tracks in the snow my brother would've been the first to spot them. He was an avid collector at the time and wanted to go out and collect "footprints" of my father and I walking to the bus stop for me to go to school.

It is hard not to attribute my own fears and phobias of adult life to my small wondering self, looking out at the great beyond. It is hard not to want to reshape whatever it was outside into my own nightmares: "and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" Indeed. What rough beast?

Indeed, I ask no one in particular, what rough beast?

the poem at the root of
the world is the unfurled
poem the night bull
breathing is the curled
lightning is the uncurled
grassland in the plateau's

pasture let it be that
one the mesa's
tableland let it be
the one you cannot tell
who is there at
the root? before
the war poem. before
the famine poem.
before the poem
that rounds up your people
for market. there was
the root. the bull
paused and
began to speak.

So …

… you like new things, I like new things, let us make some new things, lettuce. But where to start? The French Decedent poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote in his letter to Georges Izambard, "je est un autre," "I is another." I is an/other, somebody else. I cannot speak for you but the sensations of myself, all that makes me up, there are splits I feel, so deeply inside, as if I were alien to myself. I do not mean to say I am in pain, rather in moments of deep depression or joy I feel at times as if I was outside myself.

I have taken many of the tenants of Art Brut and tried to turn them inside out; instead of seeking answers in others I hope to find them inside. Thus:

* seeing that Western artists have spent the last 150 years seeking the Other when in fact the Other is the Self;

* seeing that we all have fire inside ourselves though we might forget how to control it;

* seeing that the only crudeness is the Crudeness of the Psyche;

* seeing that the only primitivism is the Primitivism of the Soul;

I am seeking a new Raw Art of the Self, Neo-Art Brut; once we get beyond the center from which events are controlled, that is, the ego, we can begin to use that fire again and see what is going on. Why waste your time pretending to be something other than you are not? If Indigenous peoples hold truths, then so do I, so do you. If we cannot find what we are seeking inside ourselves we will never find it.

I am seeking the Bullgod, what are you looking for?