Pithoigia

Leading up to Anthesteria I was very emotional and filled with uneasy anticipation.

After setting up the festival altar and doing some opening ritual, I head back to the mountains I visited on Lenaia, drinking wine as I hike.  It could not have been a more beautiful day.  Cool but not yet warm, with a slight breeze, clear skies.  It is not yet the riot of flowers I was hoping for, but there are hints here and there.  So small and unassuming, you might not notice them at all if you were weren’t looking.

I see a patch of wildflowers that have yet to bloom, the sunlight hitting them in a particularly glowing way.  I wonder at the force which brings them up from underground, and I hear, “I will bring you up from underground, too.”  My eyes fill with tears. I drink more wine.

Shouldn’t things seem more real, out here, outdoors in the sun and in nature?  Things seem slightly out of focus, slightly unreal, even if I stop and take a moment, the feeling intensifies. I’ve noticed this before, but never quite verbalized it to myself.  It’s as if the whole scene, from the details of the tiniest weed to the stretch of mountains before me, is a shimmering mask.   I’m reminded of my birthday in 2011 where everything was so incredibly real and unreal at the same time (the vibration beneath things, as I phrased it then), although I’ve had little wine at this point and nothing else mind-altering.  If I let it, this realization could be a bit terrifying, in a whole “If this isn’t real then what is?” sort of way.  I suppose I’m used to it, but I wonder if this is a common experience… (Maybe my Khoes experience from tomorrow is echoing backwards.  That happens sometimes.)

I gather creosote while I’m out, and once I’m home I scatter all the branches onto the festival shrine, and it all smells like rain and loveliness...

Continuing my tradition of creative endeavors on Pithoigia, but deviating from the usual mask-making, I did some painting with cheap acrylics.  Nothing special, but I had fun doing them while drinking and listening to music.

Lovingly titled, respectively, “The God with Marigold Eyes” and “Fuck, There’s a Flower in My Snake Garden”.

I should mention, that I actually FOR ONCE got my playlists in order before festival hit. So that was nice (and when it came to Khoes, absolutely essential to that experience).

I love feast day food.  I had gone to the farmers’ market and gotten organic produce, homemade bread and hummus, even edible flowers!  The only time I make lamb is on Anthesteria, and so that was also part of the feast, slow cooked in wine and honey with root vegetables and fresh herbs.

In the late evening I watched an Eddie Izzard DVD I’d never seen before, and laughed quite a lot.

I forgot to take a picture of all my wine bottles before they were spent, but here’s a picture of what it looked like later…  Two were local ones (Page Springs and Tombstone), one was from Greece and had flowers on the label, and one was called Cult.  Yeah, I just liked the name.  Also this is the order I drank them in, because I’m weird and that seems important.