Maenadic Aftermath

sore in strange places, hands shaking, skin raw and spirit pricked,

whole body spent as with lovers exhaustion

lungs fold and unfold like bird wings with whatever you smoked, whatever you confessed.

Io Bakchos, Io Bakchos

you feel like an inspired incident, something that happens to a room or a time --

a storm that, once passed, is only notable in its wreckage.

moments return in infrequent flashes

pantheric pacing

a rumble of music shaking your core

dancing and falling

into some chasm of sorrow

was there a logical progression?  you can’t remember,

but after some strike, you were suddenly weeping, from the deepest part of you,

pleading and begging for the god to take your heart  

JUST TAKE IT!!!

and you kept diving back in,

mumbling maniacally, “I must be crazy…”

and then the hit came where your body fell away,

and you didn’t feel your heart, didn’t feel anything at all --

certainly not afraid,

in spite of being forced without form through teethed corridors

with their guardians and serpents and many-fanged questions.

your voice was clear as a bell, as if your voice was always the most real part of you all along--

(strangely beautiful, the way it rang incorporeal)

“I am a child of earth and starry sky. Bakchos himself has set me free.

Let me drink from the well of memory.”

you didn’t remember until you said it, but yes, you were quite thirsty indeed,

and then you fell--back into the thrust of life

back into the god’s embrace, back to the surface, this time...

That was nothing. There’s so much deeper to go.

I know.

you’re still talking to yourself like this, because it’s all too fresh.

you lick your lips, bitter remembrance

(so that’s what happens when you drink your past)

sometimes your hands seem so old

So did you learn more about yourself, like you wished?

the question hangs like a girl in a tree, mostly motionless

in the dissipating smoke and an inhaled breath.

ghostly memories of strange images and sensations still flicker around your periphery.

Not really, to be honest.  I have a lot more questions.

I’ll drink to that.

exhale.

Evohe.

Madness begins in Exile

Since we just observed the Melinoeia, it seems appropriate to post this.  It's one of my favorite poems that I've written.  I wrote it in a particular state of madness, several years ago.  In fact, as you might notice from the title, I'm pretty sure it preceded and spawned the "in Exile" concept of my blog's title.

Isadora in Exile

hair raises

skin crawls

the ghost within is writhing

and she’s wanting nothing  (not)

more                                  (true)

than a drink, or a few

and the sweet sharp symmetry

of skin, broken for ink

(I do)

it well/s (up), it’s fine

she counts on state of mind

--onetwothreefour--

Oh, Isadora! you’ve lied

while you lived and

you burn when you hide –

he replied, “In deed.  And in sanity.”

yes, the soul may divide

it self hope full and hope less,

while it’s daydreams for breakfast

(they taste bitter in the un-

                    rest)

where peace battles numbness

it is, it is this

and it’s

this

and it’s this and it’s

night again, so we meet

where saltwater creeps

and she’s chanting (chant-chant-chanting)

for sleep

      (for a sign)

begging Stars

     to align

she knows, contemplating constellations

is the only (sure) explanation

to keep her (name) from changing

or raging and/orating, and poetry-making

so she can House herself

between liminal

unreliable sunrises

    (and regards)

            little else

she wants nothing more

than her blue, bruised eyes

to be kissed,

one at a time/to be kissed

one, at a time

she wants nothing more

she, Isadora,

(excepting your) wants (is)

nothing

(any) more

On the Melinoeia...

I dressed in black and white.  Silver and black eyeliner.  Fake pearls around my neck, twined with my wedding rings.  I read aloud some hymns and poetry to Melinoe, burned myrrh and peppermint, and offered a plate of foods that were a mix of dark and sweet, pungent and aromatic.  Dates, concord grapes, ginger preserves, dark chocolate, sprigs of fresh herbs, raw cheese, red wine mixed with cardamom syrup.

I also asked Melinoe if there was a devotional activity she would have of me, and drew from my Pithos.  “Write a hymn or poem to today’s spirit”.  Made sense.  Melinoe is one of only two of the Thiasos’ deities/spirits that I have not contributed to the communal hymns for.  (The other being Apollo, because he still escapes my understanding for now.)  With Melinoe, though she is arguably enigmatic, it was more because I was hesitant. I have been through grief-caused madness a couple times, and the worst and most recent felt too fresh, and I wasn’t sure how approaching Melinoe would provoke the sort of rocky equilibrium I currently have.  In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been worried.

On the way to go dancing, I stopped spontaneously at a grocery store to buy a pomegranate, which I felt would come in handy later.

Once at the club, I used some of The Witch of Forest Grove’s Toad flying ointment and drank pomegranate flavored liquor.

There were some amazing moments on the dance-floor.  Although, I remember little of them now, which is typical.  Such memories are sacrifices to ekstasis.  I do remember actively manipulating energy and dancing in doorways for the dead (like on the Hekatesia). I remember feeling an emotional madness overtake me into a particular frenzy where I was manically pulling on my own hair. How crazy I must have looked?  Not crazy enough that I wasn’t approached towards the end of the night by two women on the dance floor, asking me questions.  They might have been flirting with me, but I’m a little immune to that sort of thing.  But I did have an inkling earlier in the night that if anyone approached me tonight they were going to have some repercussions of what I was doing — so when it happened, I just smiled.  If that smile had words it would have been saying “So you need some of this transformative stuff, do you?  I am somewhat sorry, but then I am just a vessel…”

I can’t recall what prompted it exactly, but one of them said to me, not without playfulness, “Anyone who comes to a club by themselves has issues.”  I smiled even more wickedly and replied “Oh, I’ve got issues- of a whole other variety.”  You have no idea.

When the night was over, I went home and took my pomegranate outside.  It seemed obvious what to do with it.  I tore it into little pieces, with my hands and some with my teeth.  I had no particular grief in mind when I did this, just thought of Melinoe and started tearing it apart – but as soon as I began the tears suddenly came — a real deep almost angry weeping.  My mind was completely blank.  I don’t even know what I needed to cry about, something unnamed or something residual perhaps.  But I didn’t feel the need to name it, I just threw the last bits of seeds and red flesh with particular vehemence as the juice dripped down my arm.  (I noticed later with curiosity that the juice dried in the shape of veins down my forearm to my elbow.)

I paced a little and breathed through it, but the emotion seemed to clear and then disappear completely once I splashed some water on my face.  I tried to watch an episode of my favorite ghost show, but I passed out almost immediately.  I had dreams within dreams.  One of a spider crawling on me while I slept.

I remember you, Melinoe.
You are the violence between Earth and Sky,
your lightning-scream so bright
that the resulting silence is as profound as negative space.
Melinoe, phantom queen, tear down the veil between
what the mind has lost and what the heart cannot forget,
so we may be pure of spirit.

[Cross-posted at the Boukoleon]

Khoes & Aiora (A True Story In Poetry)

I weave in silence.

Purple string and sticks for the Hanging Girl,

Her sorrow is mine. God, it hurts so… the whole hopeless stretch,

one tragedy after the next, knots and hopes like crushed fruit,

screams to the heavens in the weary winding circle,

around and around, fiber to finger to form,

a head and a torso, a lasso and a name,

Oh Erigone, I never knew, I never knew.

We swing with particular passion, we graveyard girls…

Always towards the moon,

except on the downturn.

I enter the labyrinth again, wine on my lips.

It’s a choice, you see, one path or no--

You walk or you don’t.

My heart skips--

I’m already remembering the future, when I trip

on a snake...

Memory in the lake,

My yearning meets your ache.

In the ivy, oh in the ivy!

we conjure shimmering syllables, coming together

in Your cavernous name.

I am a cup overpouring, wine and blood and tears,

What all Art hopes to hint at, I stare straight in the face.

There are layers in your mask, whiskers on my cheeks,

How pantherine...

petals dilate, my eyes bloom.

You laugh.  I weep.

The music plays for keeps, landscapes and leaps.

I am the metronome of this piece.

The god in the shed. I remember my death.

In these games we play, he lets me win,

just by a breath.

Silly maenad, dear...

You’ve given away your heart to a God beyond time,

Even in your most quiet moments, you are lightning-lost

Even in your motionless moments, you

are already terribly vine-tangling mad,

suckling the sacred at your teat,

blood on your flowering honeypetal hands,

the shadows of the deepest wood in your cradlegrave eyes,

wildness in your wishes, lullabies in your limbs,

all of this, never in stillness,

both heart and heartless.

(you are my favorite braveness.)

My love, you asked for this epiphany.

I did?

This is the work of Memory.

I do.

This is the Truth.

For you.

My life is a single bloom.

I’m back to walking the labyrinth again, the circuits turn at each star,

Of course Ariadne hanged herself -- of course she did!

Surrender. Choice. Surrender. Choice.

To the tree,

to your fate,

and to all its terrible gravity,

You must choose to surrender--

Sorrow is just another sort of ecstasy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

ETA notes scribbled down in ekstasis:

"I need you to trust that your suffering is important and it's all for a reason."

"I let you see it sometimes - the whole picture. So you remember to dance, so you remember to laugh."

We are amplifying the Gods.

More esoteric questions have been on my mind, as I look towards Anthesteria

If dreams can be just as vivid as life, what does that say about death? 

Is experience more important than memory? 

While planning for Anthesteria I was looking back at my first observation of the festival in 2011, where I had mentioned being grateful for having written down what I could of my experience of Khoës. I had totally forgotten the existence of these notes, so I went looking for them and found them. I had not only forgotten the notes themselves, but forgotten the details of the experience as well. I suppose at the time I had it in my head as the experience being too intimate or revealing for a public blog. But what the hell. Life is short, hopefully shorter for me. Lately I've been feeling like a circuit with too much input and no output. So I'm going to try to put out more. (Ha.) 

Khoës Night 2011: 

Dionysos mask. [Intoxication.] I called the god as my lover and husband. I made love to him. Madness and consciousness became a perception of space and proximity. Time slowed to nothing. Sex and death and madness were intertwined. But even as I thought of describing it that way as it happened, I knew that was a pale, pale description for what I was feeling. To say I made love with my death comes close to the feeling but it isn't complete either. I wept, not out of sadness but out of epiphany. In that space there was not "good" or "bad", "happiness" or "sorrow", there was just the knowledge in the vehicle of sensation, caressing my body. The vastness! Being my Self and being with the God in the Vastness was Truer. As I thought of my life, of A------, of my home and work and family, they all seemed so bizarre in their specifics and limitations. Sunbathing in the music. Narcissus in the mirror. Eyes reflecting silver, seeing my own beauty and the stranger within. Dancing, dancing, in and out of space. Tarot cards on the bed. Shuffling chaotically to the music. Queen of Swords flips first... Temperance is there. A King. The Hanged Man, last.

Old journal fragment

What is it to have a Dionysian experience?  One could argue that any experience is Dionysian.  What I mean by that is allowing yourself to be completely immersed in the *experience* of the experience, regardless of what that experience is.  It could be dancing, acting, singing, celebrating, breathing, looking at the stars, making love, walking or running, standing in the rain, or having that moment of perfect drunkenness where you just ARE...whatever, it doesn't matter.  What matters is that the experience is ALL, and the mind falls away -- to be "out of your mind", by engaging every sense you have into it completely.  In that sublime moment of experience, your soul touches eternity and the God Himself.  At the same time, you come home to your Self, as the masks fall away.

Speaking of madness, and music...

Don't Worry About the Sugar Planter!  (He's out of his mind.)

These guys are one of my favorite bands, and they have a kickstarter campaign at the moment too.

Madness

Someone I know went crazy yesterday.  Like out of his head, take off all his clothes, run down the street naked kind of crazy...

Literally.

An intoxicant was involved, and perhaps more than the one we know about, or even in combination with some mental health problems or breakdown.  But what we do know does not explain the severity of it or the duration.  It doesn't add up. 

I wasn't there, but I happened to hear of it when it first happened.  I said some prayers for his safety, focused on sigils of protection and finding.  In my concern, I prayed to Dionysos, thinking of him as a god of madness, and even protector of the mad.  (Thinking of the madness of the maenads, or the protection I've felt when I've felt mad with grief or intoxication.) 

But later I realized, in addition to that, he is also a god who strikes with madness, as a punishment or consequence of hubris, denial or wrong-doing.  The person in question, I'm afraid, was guilty of all three.  And although he suffered no serious injury, he did not escape the consequences.  He was found, arrested, and (to sum up) a whole lot of shit, all of his own making and responsibility, caught up with him.  Am I saying that he was divinely punished?  I don't know.  You could also chalk it up to karma, entropy or inevitability, I suppose.  I have no problem with holding all possibilities, even conflicting ones, as equally true.

So even though in compassion I tried to reach out with prayers and magick, it was way out of my hands.  I spent a lot of time today comforting my friend who is really close to him. But it all hit so close to home that I feel nearly shell-shocked with the strangeness and implication of it, how sudden and inexplicable it was, how one's life and plans can turn on a dime, and especially... how much worse it could have been, for him, or for the people around him.

It's a sobering reminder (pun intended) to check yourself, your true intentions, and your weaknesses and limitations.