TURFING

All people are in truth a kin
all in creation share one origin
if fate allots, a member pangs and pains
no rest for others then remains
if unperturbed another's grief canst scan
thou art not worthy the name of man.
-Sa'adi



Guided By Voices?
So yesterday, I am up a ladder about 25 feet... and not feeling to confident working away on a wall. (I have been steadily losing my appetite for it lately) Mary is to the right of me, and we have a radio playing...

I am about to stretch up, and remove a metal panel off of the wall and I hear a voice say... "Be Careful Up There". I freeze for a moment, and then ask Mary if she spoke to me. "No" is her reply. I am a bit shaken, as the voice I heard doesn't sync up with the one in my head that I get when an intuition or warning comes forth...

"I just heard a voice warning me to be careful up there" says I to Mary. She looked at me, arched her eyebrows and said: "The radio commentator just said 'Be Careful Out There' because of traffic problems..." and she turned away.

Fool on a ladder!... So, when you are guided by voices be a bit more aware of where they are coming from... 80)
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I have been busy on the magazine, and it is going a bit slow at this time. Not all of articles are in yet, and happily the art work is coming in... We have some great artist, Leo Plaw, and Amanda Sage. There stuff is coming in and I am getting there pages set up.

On my side of thngs... I have been doing lots of new illustrations, and trying to findf new ways of portraying what is bouncing around in the old brain box....

If you have work you'd like to submit, or know of a writer needing an outlet, please let me know!
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Good News from Australia: The Undergrowth Collective's JourneyBook Project is going to press! Excellent stuff from our community below the equator! Lots of exciting articles, art etc. The Project are kindly including some of my artwork as well. I am deeply honoured!

More coming on the art front, lots of things are in play... Stay Tuned!

Lots going on the radio... give it a listen at Radio Free Earthrites!

We have lots of new music, and spoken word... check it out!






I hope you enjoy this edition of Turfing...

Bright Blessings!

Gwyllm

On The Menu:
The Links
Natacha Atlas-Leysh Natarak
The Tale of Achmed's Gold
Sufi Poet: Sa'adi
Bio: Sa'adi
A Song Of Peace Shared By Palestinians and Israeli's..
Art: Ernst Rudolph
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The Links:
Emerging from the Drug War Dark Age: LSD and Other Psychedelic Medicines Make a Comeback
“The Heavens”
Vampires: the Celtic Connection
Law restricts hallucinogen
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Natacha Atlas-Leysh Natarak

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The Tale of Achmed's Gold...
-from a tale told in 'With the Riff Kabyles', by Bernd Terhorst

Good Achmed, a devout and honest man, led a life which was good in every way; all that was wanting to crown his days, was the glory of a pilgrimage to Mecca. With this alone, he could die content--knowing that he had lived to the glory of Allah. All his days, he had saved up his gold piece by piece, hiding it away in a little clay pot which he mentioned to no one for fear of robbery. When he had enough to secure his old age, he closed up his business and prepared to go to Mecca.

He had a friend: Ali. To him alone, he entrusted the secret of the pot of gold. "During my absence," he said, "you--who are as my brother--are the only man I trust to tend my possessions, my house and garden. Will you do it?"

"Of course I will," said Ali, "why do you ask?" Then he called a blessing down on Achmed's head.

"Ah, but there's more," said Achmed, "there's gold. Five hundred coins, there are--my life's savings. I have no one else to ask. Will you guard them for me? I'll be gone two years, that is the term of this journey." Ali agreed, pledging his faith to it, and Achmed was overjoyed; he embraced him, brought him the keys of his house, and put the pot of gold into his hands. Ali hid the gold away in a safe hiding-place in his own house, and saw Achmed off to Mecca, saying, "Go with God!"

Achmed rode to the coast, took ship, and came eventually to Mecca, where he kissed the Kaaba and knew his tale was complete . . . but it was not, as events proved. On the voyage home, contrary winds blew his ship off-course, and his return was delayed long beyond the expected time.

In Morocco, meanwhile, Ali waited patiently. Years passed, and more years; Achmed was despaired of, and finally given up for dead. And Ali fell upon evil times. He lost all his own money, had to sell every slave he owned, and wept with sorrow to see his wife reduced to cleaning the house with her own hands, which had never been soiled by such work before. He was miserable, and she was unbearable. And just when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb (and his wife's tongue sharpened to its uttermost) she cleaned in the wrong corner, and discovered the pot of gold.

She brought it to Ali. Their creditors were hammering day and night at his door. Ali tore his hair, walked the floor all night, shushing her while her lamentations rose to the sky. At last he gave in, and opened the pot. "We'll take just a little," he told her, "just enough to pay our debts. When Allah favors me again, I'll put it back."

"Your fool friend is dead anyway," she whined, "and will never return."

Well! Allah failed to favor this unfaithful friend--no surprise, that. Soon enough, the money was all gone, every bit, every last shining coin.

The very next month, Achmed returned.

He was Achmed Hajji now, having been blessed by sight of holy Mecca. Friends and neighbors flocked to see him, marveling. But his very first stop was at the house of his dear friend Ali. Ali hastened to bring Achmed the keys to his house, saying that everything was in order and the garden lovingly tended . . . and Achmed blessed him, waited a bit, then finally asked after his little clay pot.

Ali feinted surprise. "Pot?" he said. "What pot?"

"Friend," said Achmed, "why, you must remember, my little clay pot with the gold in it? My five hundred gold coins?"

"What gold coins?" said Ali. "Why, Achmed, everyone knows you could never save any money." And he called on all the people about to witness: "Look! Poor Achmed has been driven mad by his privations. He remembers wealth he never owned."

Achmed went to the cadi, who judged all lawsuits. But the cadi saw no proof forthcoming of Achmed's claims, and indeed Achmed had never dared to mention his money to anyone . . . that is, anyone except Ali, whom he had trusted. Achmed was turned away, and went sorrowfully back to his empty home and lonely garden. For days he shut himself away, reflecting.

Finally, a frail tune drifting over his gate roused him from his gloom. A single ray of sunlight fell on the street outside, on an old gypsy playing a broken flute, while a monkey danced for coins. Achmed turned toward Mecca, prostrated himself and prayed. Then he went to the gate, and spent his last funds buying the monkey.

From that day forth, he was a changed man. He threw his gates open again, went to work and plied his old trade. He never spoke a word of what had been. Toward Ali, he presented an unchanged face. Ali, overwhelmed by relief, told everyone he forgave Achmed his wild talk, and was very kind to Achmed himself.

Months passed.

In the privacy of his house, Achmed set about training the monkey. He spent hours with Ali, patiently enduring Ali's forgiveness, and all the while he was studying Ali's features . . . carefully, closely. He had always delighted in wood-carving, and now he discovered in himself a knack for portraiture. He carved Ali's likeness in wood.

When his bust of Ali was finished, Achmed set it atop a column--just Ali's height--and dressed it in a man's clothes--clothing that was just like Ali's. This, he put in an empty room. Then he put the monkey in with it. Every day, he would go into this room, shut the door, and spend some time lashing the monkey with a whip. The monkey would fly round the room, trying desperately to escape. It could not climb the smooth walls, and so it would climb the image standing in the middle of the room. When it arrived at the image's wooden head, it would scratch it wildly. Eventually it was so well trained, that all Achmed had to do was to step into the room, and the monkey would fling itself up the image and begin to scratch.

Achmed brought other figures into the room. They were all dressed differently, and every one had a different head and face, cunningly carved. He trained the monkey patiently, until the only image it climbed was the original--the likeness of Ali.

Then Achmed began to spread rumors.

He began to talk about his money again. Five hundred gold pieces, stolen . . . oh, not by Ali, oh no--Ali was Achmed's friend, after all. Stolen by person or persons unknown. And Achmed began to tell people about the magic monkey he had acquired from a saint's tomb. It was a black monkey, endowed with marvelous powers, and would know in a crowd just who was honest, who was a thief. With his monkey, he said, he would be able to discover the true thief.

"Look, he's still crazy," said Ali, laughing behind Achmed's back. "Imagine, magic monkeys!" And the more Achmed talked about his monkey, the louder Ali mocked him. "Monkeys are foolish beasts," he told Achmed, "and your monkey is not going to be any wiser than its cousins."

"Oh," said Achmed, "is that so? If that's what you think, come round to my house and try it for yourself. Or are you frightened?" When Ali refused, their friends all laughed too; they said Ali was nervous. Naturally Ali said he was not, and Achmed dared him to come see the monkey. Ali had to agree.

Achmed went round and spoke to the cadi, asking him to come round too, and to bring a few friends. The cadi laughed at first, but finally agreed.

On the appointed day, everyone gathered at Achmed's house. Ali was dismayed at the size of the crowd, but Achmed took them all into the very same room where he had trained the monkey. All the images had been taken away, of course; Achmed had burned them. "Now, friends," he said, "I'll show you my magic pet. If he who stole the gold is among us, the monkey will know him at once, climb up and scratch his face. If the monkey does not recognize the thief, I swear I'll never mention the subject again."

Ali was smiling.

"Achmed," commanded the cadi, "bring the animal." And Achmed brought the monkey into the room it knew so well. The monkey saw a room full of unmoving men, just as before--and there was one face it recognized--and it knew what it was meant to do. With a scream, it launched itself at Ali, swarmed up his coat and clung with all its claws, scratching and biting. Ali tried to fight it off, he twisted and turned, but it only gripped him the tighter. The cadi marveled at the intelligence of the animal; he went up to Ali, who was now deathly pale and trembling in every limb, and said threateningly: "You thief! Allah has discovered your crime!" upon which Ali fell instantly to his knees and confessed.

Only God knows what is on earth and in heaven; only God knows the secrets we all keep. For he knows the mind of every man, he knows the future and the past. He is the answer to every riddle, and he is the judge every man will have to face in the end.
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Sufi Poet: Saadi


If one His praise of me would learn

If one His praise of me would learn,
What of the traceless can the tongueless tell?
Lovers are killed by those they love so well;
No voices from the slain return.
---

How could I ever thank my Friend?

How could I ever thank my Friend?
No thanks could ever begin to be worthy.
Every hair of my body is a gift from Him;
How could I thank Him for each hair?
Praise that lavish Lord forever
Who from nothing conjures all living beings!
Who could ever describe His goodness?
His infinite glory lays all praise waste.
Look, He has graced you a robe of splendor
From childhood's first cries to old age!
He made you pure in His own image; stay pure.
It is horrible to die blackened by sin.
Never let dust settle on your mirror's shining;
Let it once grow dull and it will never polish.
When you work in the world to earn your living
Do not, for one moment, rely on your own strength.
Self-worshiper, don't you understand anything yet?
It is God alone that gives your arms their power.
If, by your striving, you achieve something good,
Don't claim the credit all for yourself;
It is fate that decides who wins and who loses
And all success streams only from the grace of God.
In this world you never stand by your own strength;
It is the Invisible that sustains you every moment.
---

Have no Doubts

Have no doubts because of trouble nor be thou discomfited;
For the water of life's fountain springeth from a gloomy bed.

Ah! ye brothers of misfortune! be not ye with grief oppressed,
Many are the secret mercies which with the All-bounteous rest.
---

The World my brother

The world, my brother! will abide with none,
By the world's Maker let thy heart be won.
Rely not, nor repose on this world's gain,
For many a son like thee she has reared and slain.
What matters, when the spirit seeks to fly,
If on a throne or on bare earth we die?
---

Wealth consists of talents not money; and greatness is in intellect not in years.

He knows the worth of happiness who has known distress.
Show compassion to your weak subject, that no powerful enemy may trouble you.
---

Whoever acts treacherously should dread the day of reckoning.

He whose account is clear can render it without fear.
Sweep, if needs be your friend's floor; but do not even knock at your enemy's door.
The brother who is self inflated, is neither brother nor related.
---

A beautiful character is better than a thousand silk robes.

No pains, no gains.
A young woman would rather be shot at than put up with an old man.
All may be trained alike, but their capacity will vary.
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Biography: The Persian Poet Sa'adi 1184 - 1283

Sa‘di (in Persian: سعدی‎, full name in English: Muslih-ud-Din Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah) (1184 - 1283/1291?) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought.
Biography of Saadi

A native of Shiraz, Persia, Saadi left his native town at a young age for Baghdad to study Arabic literature and Islamic sciences at Nizamiah University (1195-1226).

He is known as a Sufi thinker, and was a student of the respected Sufi Sheikh Shahabuddin Suhrawardi. Saadi liked to travel, and lived much of his life as a wandering dervish. After Iraq he traveled the region for nearly thirty years. He went to Shamat (Syria), Palestine, Hijaz (Arabia), Yemen,Egypt and Rum (Turkey), which was in Byzantine control at the time. At one time he is said to have been captured by the Crusaders.

Saadi died in his hometown of Shiraz. There is some discrepancy about the date of his death, but he may have died a centenarian. His tomb was greatly elaborated in 1952 and has since became a tourist attraction.
His works

Saadi's writings are held to be among the greatest Sufi classics. He wrote "The Orchard" (Bostan) in 1257,"The Rose Garden" (Gulistan) in 1258. There is also a Divan, or collection of his poetry. He wrote short stories and poems about his adventurous life in both his major works.

Saadi has been translated by a number of major Western poets, most of whom were not deterred by the "transparently homoerotic" [1] tone of much of his work. According to Wayne Dynes, "English translators even in the tamer episodes of the Gulistan turn boys into girls and change anecdotes about pederasty into tales of heterosexual Iove." (Asian Homosexuality p.66)

Chief among these works is Goethe's West-Oestlicher Divan. Andre du Ryer was the first European to present Saadi to the West, by means of a partial French translation of Golistan in 1634. Adam Olearius followed soon with a complete translation of the Bustan and the Golistan into German in 1654. Ralph Waldo Emerson was also an avid fan of Sa'di's writings, contributing to some translated editions himself.

One of his more famous quotes is, "Whatever is produced in haste goes easily to waste." Another famous poem focuses on the kinship of all humans. The same poem is used to grace the entrance to the Hall of Nations of the UN building in New York with this call for breaking all barriers...

"Of one Essence is the human race,
thus has Creation put the Base;
One Limb impacted is sufficient,
For all Others to feel the Mace."
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A Song Of Peace Shared By Palestinians and Israeli's..

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People say, "Don't you think you ought to be able to do it by yourself?" And I love this question because the answer is: You can't do it by yourself. That's the entire message of the last 10,000 years of human history. The self is insufficient. The ego will not suffice...you must humble yourself to the point where you admit that you can't do it unless you have help from someone whose idea of home is a cow flop.—Terence McKenna



Dear Friends,

I attended a talk at the local Hermetic Society last night, given by friend Lyterphotos. It was excellent fun, and informative (of the Entheogenic Sort). A nice welcoming crowd, and I have to say I really enjoyed myself!

Not much to add on the personal note at this point, except I am off to do some work, and to enjoy the cooler temperatures!

More on the way!

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Charlie Chaplin speech from "The Great Dictator" remix
The Links
The Fairy Race
Poet: Lorca...
Maura O'Connell - The Blessing (Live)
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Charlie Chaplin speech from "The Great Dictator" remix

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The Links:

Seattle police seize marijuana patient files
Missing 2 and 4....
This Sand...
Photo Essay: From The Beginnings Of The Spanish Civil War
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The Fairy Race - by Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde



THE Sidhe, or spirit race, called also the Feadh-Ree, or fairies, are supposed to have been once angels in heaven, who were cast out by Divine command as a punishment for their inordinate pride.

Some fell to earth, and dwelt there, long before man was created, as the first gods of the earth. Others fell into the sea, and they built themselves beautiful fairy palaces of crystal and pearl underneath the waves; but on moonlight nights they often come up on the land, riding their white horses, and they hold revels with their fairy kindred of the earth, who live in the clefts of the hills, and they dance together on the greensward under the ancient trees, and drink nectar from the cups of the flowers, which is the fairy wine.

Other fairies, however, are demoniacal, and given to evil and malicious deeds; for when cast out of heaven they fell into hell, and there the devil holds them under his rule, and sends them forth as he wills upon missions of evil to tempt the souls of men downward by the false glitter of sin and pleasure. These spirits dwell under the earth and impart their knowledge only to certain evil persons chosen of the devil, who gives them power to make incantations, and brew love potions, and to work wicked spells, and they can assume different forms by their knowledge and use of certain magical herbs.

The witch women who have been taught by them, and have thus become tools of the Evil One, are the terror of the neighbourhood; for they have all the power of the fairies and all the malice of the devil, who reveals to them secrets of times and days, and secrets of herbs, and secrets of evil spells; and by the power of magic they can effect all their purposes, whether for good or ill.

The fairies of the earth are small and beautiful. They passionately love music and dancing, and live luxuriously in their palaces under the hills and in the deep mountain caves; and they can obtain all things lovely for their fairy homes, merely by the strength of their magic power. They can also assume all forms, and will never know death until the last day comes, when their doom is to vanish away--to be annihilated for ever. But they are very jealous of the human race who are so tall and strong, and to whom has been promised immortality. And they are often tempted by the beauty of a mortal woman and greatly desire to have her as a wife.

The children of such marriages have a strange mystic nature, and generally become famous in music and song. But they are passionate, revengeful, and not easy to live with. Every one knows them to be of the Sidhe or spirit race, by their beautiful eyes and their bold, reckless temperament.

The fairy king and princes dress in green, with red caps bound on the head with a golden fillet. The fairy queen and the great court lathes are robed in glittering silver gauze, spangled with diamonds, and their long golden hair sweeps the ground as they dance on the greensward.

Their favourite camp and resting-place is under a hawthorn tree, and a peasant would die sooner than cut down one of the ancient hawthorns sacred to the fairies, and which generally stands in the centre of a fairy ring. But the people never offer worship to these fairy beings, for they look on the Sidhe as a race quite inferior to man. At the same the they have an immense dread and fear of the mystic fairy power, and never interfere with them nor offend them knowingly.

The Sidhe often strive to carry off the handsome children, who are then reared in the beautiful fairy palaces under the earth, and wedded to fairy mates when they grow up.

The people dread the idea of a fairy changeling being left in the cradle in place of their own lovely child; and if a wizened little thing is found there, it is sometimes taken out at night and laid in an open grave till morning, when they hope to find their own child restored, although more often nothing is found save the cold corpse of the poor outcast.

Sometimes it is said the fairies carry off the mortal child for a sacrifice, as they have to offer one every seven years to the devil in return for the power he gives them. And beautiful young girls are carried off, also, either for sacrifice or to be wedded to the fairy king.

The fairies are pure and cleanly in their habits, and they like above all things a pail of water to be set for them at night, in case they may wish to bathe.

They also delight in good wines, and are careful to repay the donor in blessings, for they are truly upright and honest. The great lords of Ireland, in ancient times, used to leave a keg of the finest Spanish wine frequently at night out on the window-sill for the fairies, and in the morning it was all gone.

Fire is a great preventative against fairy magic, for fire is the most sacred of all created things, and man alone has power over it. No animal has ever yet attained the knowledge of how to draw out the spirit of fire from the stone or the wood, where it has found a dwelling-place. If a ring of fire is made round cattle or a child's cradle, or if fire is placed under the churn, the fairies have no power to harm. And the spirit of the fire is certain to destroy all fairy magic, if it exist.
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Poet: Lorca...



The Faithless Wife

So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.
The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.
Without silver light on their foliage
the trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she too off her dress.
I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.
Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.
That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.
---

Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

1. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

2. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!

The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!

I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world
passed har sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with threading the earth.
No.
I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the cordury and the leather
of a thirsty multiude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Sevilla
who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble toroso
his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliden on frozen horns,
faltering soulles in the mist
stoumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,
no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge og white lilies,
no glass can cover mit with silver.
No.
I will not see it!

3. The Laid Out Body

Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve
without curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms,
to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.

For stone gathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face:
death has covered him with pale sulphur
and has place on him the head of dark minotaur.

All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out
for this captain stripped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
wich will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself
without hearing the double planting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!

4. Absent Soul

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have dead forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever

The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobady knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.
----

City That Does Not Sleep

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.
_____________

Maura O'Connell - The Blessing (Live)

Rowan came back from Country Faire... he loved it, and the tales he has to tell! I will put some in this week if he will but write them up...

Gotta Hop.

Talk Later,
Gwyllm
_______________

On The Menu:
Erowid Fund Raiser
Radiohead - House of Cards
The Goose-Girl
The Poetry Of Marie De France
Marie De France: A Possible Biography
________________

Erowid Fund Raiser



Hey everyone,

I wanted to send a quick message letting you all know about
an event being held in Seattle, WA this weekend as a benefit
for Erowid Center. Hopefully most of you know by now that
Erowid gained non-profit status at the end of last year and
since January 1st is now operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit
educational organization.

A small group of people are holding a benefit party and
auction in Seattle this weekend (Saturday July 18th) as a
fundraiser for Erowid Center.

We'd love to have anyone who's in the area join us (Earth
and I, as well as Jon Hanna who recently joined the Erowid
crew will all be there). It's a "speakeasy cocktail reception"
at the Columbia City Theater and tickets are $25. Ideally,
tickets would be purchased in advance. You're all welcome
and we hope we might see a few of you there so we have friendly
faces to talk to.

For more info and to buy tickets:
http://www.erowid.org/donations/event/event_2008_seattle.php

And for those who have asked recently about contributing now
that we're a non-profit and donations are tax-deductible:
http://www.erowid.org/donations/

________________
Radiohead - House of Cards


In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. ...
_________________


The Goose-Girl



ONCE upon a time an old queen, whose husband had been dead for many years, had a beautiful daughter. When she grew up she was betrothed to a prince who lived a great way off. Now, when the time drew near for her to be married and to depart into a foreign kingdom, her old mother gave her much costly baggage, and many ornaments, gold and silver, trinkets and knicknacks, and, in fact, everything that belonged to a royal trousseau, for she loved her daughter very dearly. She gave her a waiting- maid also, who was to ride with her and hand her over to the bridegroom, and she provided each of them with a horse for the journey. Now the Princess's horse was called Falada, and could speak.

When the hour for departure drew near the old mother went to her bedroom, and taking a small knife she cut her fingers till they bled; then she held a white rag under them, and letting three drops of blood fall into it, she gave it to her daughter, and said: "Dear child, take great care of this rag: it may be of use to you on the journey."

So they took a sad farewell of each other, and the Princess stuck the rag in front of her dress, mounted her horse, and set forth on the journey to her bridegroom's kingdom. After they had ridden for about an hour the Princess began to feel very thirsty, and said to her waiting- maid: "Pray get down and fetch me some water in my golden cup out of yonder stream: I would like a drink." "If you're thirsty," said the maid, "dismount yourself, and lie down by the water and drink; I don't mean to be your servant any longer." The Princess was so thirsty that she got down, bent over the stream, and drank, for she wasn't allowed to drink out of the golden goblet. As she drank she murmured: "Oh! heaven, what am I to do?" and the three drops of blood replied:

"If your mother only knew,
Her heart would surely break in two."
But the Princess was meek, and said nothing about her maid's rude behavior, and quietly mounted her horse again. They rode on their way for several miles, but the day was hot, and the sun's rays smote fiercely on them, so that the Princess was soon overcome by thirst again. And as they passed a brook she called once more to her waiting-maid: "Pray get down and give me a drink from my golden cup," for she had long ago forgotten her maid's rude words. But the waiting-maid replied, more haughtily even than before: "If you want a drink, you can dismount and get it; I don't mean to be your servant." Then the Princess was compelled by her thirst to get down, and bending over the flowing water she cried and said: "Oh! heaven, what am I to do?" and the three drops of blood replied:

"If your mother only knew,
Her heart would surely break in two."
And as she drank thus, and leaned right over the water, the rag containing the three drops of blood fell from her bosom and floated down the stream, and she in her anxiety never even noticed her loss. But the waiting-maid had observed it with delight, as she knew it gave her power over the bride, for in losing the drops of blood the Princess had become weak and powerless. When she wished to get on her horse Falada again, the waiting- maid called out: "I mean to ride Falada: you must mount my beast"; and this too she had to submit to. Then the waiting-maid commanded her harshly to take off her royal robes, and to put on her common ones, and finally she made her swear by heaven not to say a word about the matter when they reached the palace; and if she hadn't taken this oath she would have been killed on the spot. But Falada observed everything, and laid it all to heart.

The waiting-maid now mounted Falada, and the real bride the worse horse, and so they continued their journey till at length they arrived at the palace yard. There was great rejoicing over the arrival, and the Prince sprang forward to meet them, and taking the waiting-maid for his bride, he lifted her down from her horse and led her upstairs to the royal chamber. In the meantime the real Princess was left standing below in the courtyard. The old King, who was looking out of his window, beheld her in this plight, and it struck him how sweet and gentle, even beautiful, she looked. He went at once to the royal chamber, and asked the bride who it was she had brought with her and had left thus standing in the court below. "Oh!" replied the bride, "I brought her with me to keep me company on the journey; give the girl something to do, that she may not be idle." But the old King had no work for her, and couldn't think of anything; so he said, "I've a small boy who looks after the geese, she'd better help him." The youth's name was Curdken, and the real bride was made to assist him in herding geese.

Soon after this the false bride said to the Prince: "Dearest husband, I pray you grant me a favor." He answered: "That I will." "Then let the slaughterer cut off the head of the horse I rode here upon, because it behaved very badly on the journey." But the truth was she was afraid lest the horse should speak and tell how she had treated the Princess. She carried her point, and the faithful Falada was doomed to die. When the news came to the ears of the real Princess she went to the slaughterer, and secretly promised him a piece of gold if he would do something for her. There was in the town a large dark gate, through which she had to pass night and morning with the geese; would he "kindly hang up Falada's head there, that she might see it once again?" The slaughterer said he would do as she desired, chopped off the head, and nailed it firmly over the gateway.

Early next morning, as she and Curdken were driving their flock through the gate, she said as she passed under:

"Oh! Falada, 'tis you hang there";
and the head replied:

" 'Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:
If your mother only knew,
Her heart would surely break in two."
Then she left the tower and drove the geese into a field. And when they had reached the common where the geese fed she sat down and unloosed her hair, which was of pure gold. Curdken loved to see it glitter in the sun, and wanted much to pull some hair out. Then she spoke:

"Wind, wind, gently sway,
Blow Curdken's hat away;
Let him chase o'er field and wold
Till my locks of ruddy gold,
Now astray and hanging down,
Be combed and plaited in a crown."
Then a gust of wind blew Curdken's hat away, and he had to chase it over hill and dale. When he returned from the pursuit she had finished her combing and curling, and his chance of getting any hair was gone. Curdken was very angry, and wouldn't speak to her. So they herded the geese till evening and then went home.

The next morning, as they passed under the gate, the girl said:

"Oh! Falada, 'tis you hang there";
and the head replied:

" 'Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:
If your mother only knew,
Her heart would surely break in two."
Then she went on her way till she came to the common, where she sat down and began to comb out her hair; then Curdken ran up to her and wanted to grasp some of the hair from her head, but she called out hastily:

"Wind, wind, gently sway,
Blow Curdken's hat away;
Let him chase o'er field and wold
Till my locks of ruddy gold,
Now astray and hanging down,
Be combed and plaited in a crown."
Then a puff of wind came and blew Curdken's hat far away, so that he had to run after it; and when he returned she had long finished putting up her golden locks, and he couldn't get any hair; so they watched the geese till it was dark.

But that evening when they got home Curdken went to the old King, and said: "I refuse to herd geese any longer with that girl." "For what reason?" asked the old King. "Because she does nothing but annoy me all day long," replied Curdken; and he proceeded to relate all her iniquities, and said: "Every morning as we drive the flock through the dark gate she says to a horse's head that hangs on the wall:

"`Oh! Falada, 'tis you hang there';

and the head replies:

"`'Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:
If your mother only knew,
Her heart would surely break in two.'"
And Curdken went on to tell what passed on the common where the geese fed, and how he had always to chase his hat.

The old King bade him go and drive forth his flock as usual next day; and when morning came he himself took up his position behind the dark gate, and heard how the goose-girl greeted Falada. Then he followed her through the field, and hid himself behind a bush on the common. He soon saw with his own eyes how the goose-boy and the goose-girl looked after the geese, and how after a time the maiden sat down and loosed her hair, that glittered like gold, and repeated:

"Wind, wind, gently sway,
Blow Curdken's hat away;
Let him chase o'er field and wold
Till my locks of ruddy gold
Now astray and hanging down,
Be combed and plaited in a crown."
Then a gust of wind came and blew Curdken's hat away, so that he had to fly over hill and dale after it, and the girl in the meantime quietly combed and plaited her hair: all this the old King observed, and returned to the palace without anyone having noticed him. In the evening when the goose-girl came home he called her aside, and asked her why she behaved as she did. "I may not tell you why; how dare I confide my woes to anyone? for I swore not to by heaven, otherwise I should have lost my life." The old King begged her to tell him all, and left her no peace, but he could get nothing out of her. At last he said: "Well, if you won't tell me, confide your trouble to the iron stove there," and he went away. Then she crept to the stove, and began to sob and cry and to pour out her poor little heart, and said: "Here I sit, deserted by all the world, I who am a king's daughter, and a false waiting- maid has forced me to take off my own clothes, and has taken my place with my bridegroom, while I have to fulfill the lowly office of goose-girl.

"If my mother only knew
Her heart would surely break in two."
But the old King stood outside at the stove chimney, and listened to her words. Then he entered the room again, and bidding her leave the stove, he ordered royal apparel to be put on her, in which she looked amazingly lovely. Then he summoned his son, and revealed to him that he had got the false bride, who was nothing but a waiting-maid, while the real one, in the guise of the ex- goose-girl, was standing at his side. The young King re- joiced from his heart when he saw her beauty and learned how good she was, and a great banquet was prepared, to which everyone was bidden. The bridegroom sat at the head of the table, the Princess on one side of him and the waiting-maid on the other; but she was so dazzled that she did not recognize the Princess in her glittering garments. Now when they had eaten and drunk, and were merry, the old King asked the waiting-maid to solve a knotty point for him. "What," said he, "should be done to a certain person who has deceived everyone?" and he proceeded to relate the whole story, ending up with, "Now what sentence should be passed?" Then the false bride answered: "She deserves to be put stark naked into a barrel lined with sharp nails, which should be dragged by two white horses up and down the street till she is dead."

"You are the person," said the King, "and you have passed sentence on yourself; and even so it shall be done to you." And when the sentence had been carried out the young King was married to his real bride, and both reigned over the kingdom in peace and happiness.[1]

[1] Grimm.




_________________

The Poetry Of Marie De France



The Lay Of The Honeysuckle....

It pleases me, I’m willing too
To tell you a story plain and true
‘The Honeysuckle’ is its name
Here’s why and how it came.
Many people have told it me,
And much has been written I see,
Of Tristan and of the Queen,
Of their faithful love I mean,
Of which they had many a pain,
Dying for it on the very same day.

King Mark it seems was angry,
With Tristan his nephew, his fury
Because of his love for the Queen:
He drove him out of his country.
He went to the land of his birth
South Wales, his native earth,
And stayed there a year at least,
Unable to cross the sea.
But then again he set his face
Toward his death and disgrace.
That isn’t so amazing,
Whoever’s in love is grieving
Heavy of heart, he’ll perish
If he can’t have his wish.
Tristan was both pensive and sad,
So he left his own land, the lad
And travelled to Cornwall straight
Where the Queen held state.
He hid in the woods, alone,
Not wanting his presence known:
And he only came out at twilight
To look for a bed for the night.
With peasants, among the poor,
He found a welcoming door.
He asked them for all the news
Of what the King might do.
They told him they had heard
The barons had all been stirred,
To Tintagel they must fare
And join the King’s court there,
At Pentecost, among the nation,
In their joy and celebration,
The Queen, and every knight.
Tristan heard it with delight.
She could scarcely go by,
Without his catching her eye.
On the day the King passed through,
Tristan came to a wood en route
By a road down which he was sure
That whole company would pour:
He cut down a hazel bough,
And trimming it, carefully now,
When he’d prepared the same
With a knife he wrote his name.
If it caught the Queen’s bright eye
Who’d be looking on every side
(For on many another day
She’d met with him this way)
She’d quite easily find
His hazel branch: their sign.
So ran a letter to her of old
In which he’d sent and told
How long he’d been lingering
Hidden there sadly waiting
To discover like any spy
A way to only catch her eye,
Since he couldn’t live without her:
They were two bound together
As the honeysuckle binds
To the hazel that it finds.
When it’s caught and enlaced
Around its branches traced,
They can stick fast like glue,
But if anyone parts the two,
The hazel is quickly gone
Honeysuckle then follows on.
‘Sweet love, so it is with us, too:
No you without me, no me without you.’

So the Queen came riding by:
She looked at a slope nearby,
She saw the branch quite clearly,
Made out the letters easily.
The knights ordered to ride
Who all crowded along beside,
She commanded to stop, confessed
She wished to dismount and rest.
They executed her clear command.
While she strayed far from their band,
Calling her faithful maid,
Branguine, to her aid.
She went from the path some way
In the wood found him, hid away,
Who loved her more than all alive.
Between those two what great delight.
He speaks to her at leisure,
She to him all her pleasure:
Then tells him how he may
Be reconciled to the King that day,
And how grieved she had been
That the King sent him overseas,
Because of the accusations made.
Then she left him, in the glade:
But when it came to their goodbyes
Their tears filled both their eyes.
Tristan now returned to Wales
Till his uncle bade him sail.

Because of the joy he had known
In seeing his beloved, his own,
And because of what he’d penned
As the Queen instructed him then,
So he might more easily remember
Tristan who was a fine harp player,
Made of it a fresh new lay:
Whose title I’ll quickly say:
‘Goat-leaf’ is its English name,
‘Honeysuckle’ in French, the same.
Now I’ve told you the true source
Of the lay I sang you here of course.
---

From Lanval....

The adventure of another lay,
Just as it happened, I'll relay:
It tells of a very nice nobleman,
And it's called Lanval in Breton.

King Arthur was staying at Carduel -
That King of valiant and courtly estate -
His borders there he guarded well
Against the Pict, against the Scot,
Who'd cross into Logres to devastate
The countryside often, and a lot.

He held court there at Pentecost,
The summer feast we call Whitsun,
Giving gifts of impressive cost
To every count and each baron
And all knights of the Round Table.
Never elsewhere so many, such able
Knights assembled! Women and land
He shared with all - except one vassal
Who'd served him well; he forgot Lanval.
Lanval got nothing at the King's hand.

For being brave and generous,
For his beauty and his prowess,
He was envied by all the court;
Those who claimed to hold him dear,
If Fortune had brought him up short,
Would not have shed a kindly tear.
A king's son, he'd a noble lineage,
But now, far from his heritage,
He'd joined the household of the King.
He'd spent all the money he could bring
Already. The King gave him no more -
He gave just what Lanval asked for.
Now Lanval knows not what to do;
He's very thoughtful, very sad.
My lords, I don't astonish you:
A man alone, with no counsel - or bad -
A stranger in a strange land
Is sad, when no help's at hand.

This knight - by now you know the one -
Who'd served the King with many a deed,
One day got on his noble steed
And went riding, just for fun.
Alone he rode out of the town,
And came to a meadow - still alone -
Dismounted by a flowing brook.
But his horse trembled now and shook,
So he took off the tackle and let him go,
Rolling free in the broad meadow.
The knight took his own cloak folded
It into a pillow for his head.
---

From Laustic

The adventure in my next tale
The Bretons made into a lai
Called "Laustic," I've heard them say,
In Brittany; in French they call
The "laustic" a "rossignol"
And in good English, "nightingale."


Near St. Malo there was a town
(Somewhere thereabouts) of great renown.
Two knights lived there, no lowly vassals,
In houses that were built like castles.
These barons were so good, their fame
Gave their village goodness's own name.
One of them had married lately:
Polite and polished, such a lady!
She was wise to her own worth
(- Normal in ladies of high birth).
The other lord was a bachelor,
Famed for prowess and for valor,
Loved by all, for he knew how to live:
Joust a lot, spend a lot, what you have give
Away freely. He loved the wife of his neighbor.
He begged so much, and prayed yet more
- And goodness was his striking feature -
So she loved him more than any creature,
Because of the deeds he was famous for,
And because he lived in the castle next door.
Wisely and well they loved, these lovers,
They guarded their love under various covers
And hid it from general sight,
And the lady, at her window, higher,
Speaks, and looks, only desire.
Nights, when the moon her pale light shed,
When her husband had gone to bed,
The lady rose up from his side,
Wrapped herself in a mantle wide,
Went to stand at the window, true
To her friend waiting there, she knew;
For both their lives were just the same,
They waked all night till morning came.
The rapture of looking made them so glad
(That rapture the only one they had).



Marie De France: A Possible Biography

Marie de France was one of the best Old-French poets of the twelfth century. She identifies herself only as Marie who originated in France. Nothing else definite is known about her. Whereas the English poet Denis Piramus (Vie Seint Edmund le rei, after 1170) refers to her as “dame Marie,” emphasizing her noble rank, the scholar Claude Fauchet was the first to coin the name “Marie de France” in his Reueil de l’origine de la langue et poésie françoise (1581). Both the historical circumstances of the manuscripts containing her texts, and linguistic elements of Anglo-Norman, suggest that she lived in England during her adult life, but it seems most likely that she was born in France, probably in the Bretagne. She might have been Marie (I), the abbess of Shaftesbury, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey IV Plantagenet of Anjou, because our poet translated from English into French a collection of fables (Fables) on the basis of those that King Alfred had allegedly translated from Latin into English, though no such adaptation is known today. The convent of Shaftesbury had been founded by Alfred. This abbess Marie, who was also the half-sister of King Henry II (1133-1189), served in her office from 1181 until at least 1215. Marie (II), the abbess of Reading, would be a second option as the Harley manuscript that contains both Marie’s fables and the lais (today housed in the British Library, MS Harley 978) might have been copied at her convent. Marie (III), the eighth child of Waleran II, Count of Meulan, is the third option, as she was brought up in the modern-day French département of Eure wherein is located the town of Pitres. Pitres is mentioned in Marie’s lai “Les Deus Amanz.” This Marie married Hugh Talbot, Baron of Cleuville who had extensive land holdings in Herefordshire which plays an important role in many of Marie’s lais. The fourth option might be Marie (IV), Countess of Boulogne, daughter of King Stephen of England and Marie de Boulogne. This Countess was raised in a convent and later gained the rank of Abbess of Romsey in Hampshire. King Henry II forced her to marry Matthew of Flanders as he wanted to maintain his power over Boulogne. Through her marriage Marie became the sister-in-law of Hervé II, son of Guiomar of Léon. The parallels between the names of Guiomar and Guigemar, the eponymous hero in one of Marie’s lais, are intriguing, yet not completely compelling. Marie de Boulogne returned to a convent sometime between 1168 and 1180, most likely to the convent of Sainte Austreberthe in Montreuil-sur-Mer. None of these four associations with a historically identifiable person are fully convincing, and our Marie might well have been quite a different person otherwise not documented.

Adversus Absynthium (A l'encontre de l'absinthe)

Absynthe, monstre né jadis pour notre perte
De l’Afrique à Paris traînant ta robe verte
Comment donc as-tu pu sous le soleil oser
Souiller ses lèvres d’or de ton âcre baiser
Vile prostituée en tes temples assise
Tu te vends à l’esprit ainsi qu'à la sottise
Et ne fais nul souci aux adieux, laurier
Qui couvre le Poëte ainsi que le guerrier
Hélas ! n’avait-il pas assez de l’amertume
A laquelle en vivant tout grand cœur s’accoutume
Aussi que l’eau du ciel ......
Qu’il ne reste plus rien de ton amer poison
O monstre sois maudit, je te jette à la face
Les imprécations de Tibulle et d’Horace
Et contre toi j’évoque en mon sein irrité
La langue que parlait la belle antiquité.

Fontainebleau, août 1847
Antoni Deschamps
__________


So I awoke this morning, having dreamt of Absinthe for what seems like quite awhile... This dreaming occurs when I haven't ventured down the path for awhile, or when I have been in discussion about a certain subject... Anyway, it seems there is a local absinthe now, from Integrity Spirits I had tried one of their earlier batches last Winter Solstice, provided by our friend Morgan. It was a bit over the top with the wormwood, so I am holding back purchasing a bottle until I get a taste.

I have had several people say that they only get an alcohol effect from Absinthe. I find this strange, as from my first experience (and I was genuinely not acquainted with the mythos of it) matched up with what has been claimed over the past couple of centuries... The light changes, time dilates, and you enter into a realm of colloquy and understanding.

This only seems to be achieved though (IMO), if you don't drink to fast (1 absinthe every hour or so), steadily going for 3 hours or so, allowing the alcohol to work its effects without being overbearing, and allowing the wormwood and other herbs to build up in your system until that magick lever is pushed.... 80)

So kids, take it easy, take it slow and make sure you are with good company that enjoys conversation...!
---
Other Bits... It seems half the known Universe is at Country Fair in Eugene... Rowan is down with friends (photos soon), and as of yesterday had run into his Uncle Peter, Victor (The Lizard Jah), and several friends from school.
_____________

On The Menu:
Absinthe drinker in Paris 1900 (Jean Gabin)
Absinthe Quotes
Absinthe: The Green Goddess - Aleister Crowley
The Green Fairy: Children of the Revolution
Absinthe Poetry
Green Fairy
Art: Absinthe Posters from the Epoch....

Bright Blessings!

Gwyllm

! News Flash: As I was working on this, a package arrived via Fed Ex... Mary had ordered a new absinthe spoon and 4 absinthe coasters from France, done in the old way! Yowza! Dreams do have a way of manifesting! 80)

________________________
Absinthe drinker in Paris 1900...
Featuring Jean Gabin preparing his absinthe in front of the Moulin Rouge in 1900.
From Renoir's movie French Cancan

________________________

Absinthe Quotes:

Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self. The green fairy who lives in the absinthe wants your soul. But you are safe with me.
~Dracula
---
I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
~Ernest Dowson
---
"Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it."
~Ernest Hemingway
---
"For me, my glory is but a humble ephemeral absinthe."
~Paul Verlaine
---
"Absinthe has a wonderful color, green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?"
~Oscar Wilde
---
Come, the Wines go to the beaches,
And the waves by the millions!
See the wild Bitter
Rolling from the top of the mountains!
Let us, wise pilgrims, reach
The Absinthe with the green pillars….
~Comedy of Thirst, Arthur Rimbaud
_________________________

Absinthe: The Green Goddess
by Aleister Crowler

I.


Keep always this dim corner for me, that I may sit while the Green Hour glides, a proud pavine of Time. For I am no longer in the city accursed, where Time is horsed on the white gelding Death, his spurs rusted with blood.

There is a corner of the United States which he has overlooked. It lies in New Orleans, between Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue; the Mississippi for its base. Thence it reaches northward to a most curious desert land, where is a cemetery lovely beyond dreams. Its walls low and whitewashed, within which straggles a wilderness of strange and fantastic tombs; and hard by is that great city of brothels which is so cynically mirthful a neighbor. As Felicien Rops wrote,--or was it Edmond d'Haraucourt?--"la Prostitution et la Mort sont frere et soeur--les fils de Dieu!" At least the poet of -Le Legende des Sexes- was right, and the psycho-analysts after him, in identifying the Mother with the Tomb. This, then, is only the beginning and end of things, this "quartier macabre" beyond the North Rampart with the Mississippi on the other side. It is like the space between, our life which flows, and fertilizes as it flows, muddy and malarious as it may be, to empty itself into the warm bosom of the Gulf Stream, which (in our allegory) we may call the Life of God.

But our business is with the heart of things; we must go beyond the crude phenomena of nature if we are to dwell in the spirit. Art is the soul of life and the Old Absinthe House is heart and soul of the old quarter of New Orleans.

For here was the headquarters of no common man--no less than a real pirate--of Captain Lafitte, who not only robbed his neighbors, but defended them against invasion. Here, too, sat Henry Clay, who lived and died to give his name to a cigar. Outside this house no man remembers much more of him than that; but here, authentic and, as I imagine, indignant, his ghost stalks grimly.

Here, too are marble basins hollowed--and hallowed!--by the drippings of the water which creates by baptism the new spirit of absinthe.

I am only sipping the second glass of that "fascinating, but subtle poison, whose ravages eat men's heart and brain" that I have ever tasted in my life; and as I am not an American anxious for quick action, I am not surprised and disappointed that I do not drop dead upon the spot. But I can taste souls without the aid of absinthe; and besides, this is magic of absinthe! The spirit of the house has entered into it; it is an elixir, the masterpiece of an old alchemist, no common wine.

And so, as I talk with the patron concerning the vanity of things, I perceive the secret of the heart of God himself; this, that everything, even the vilest thing, is so unutterably lovely that it is worthy of the devotion of a God for all eternity.

What other excuse could He give man for making him? In substance, that is my answer to King Solomon.

II.

The barrier between divine and human things is frail but inviolable; the artist and the bourgeois are only divided by a point of view--"A hair divided the false and true."

I am watching the opalescence of my absinthe, and it leads me to ponder upon a certain very curious mystery, persistent in legend. We may call it the mystery of the rainbow.

Originally in the fantastic but significant legend of the Hebrews, the rainbow is mentioned as the sign of salvation. The world has been purified by water, and was ready for the revelation of Wine. God would never again destroy His work, but ultimately seal its perfection by a baptism of fire.

Now, in this analogue also falls the coat of many colors which was made for Joseph, a legend which was regarded as so important that it was subsequently borrowed for the romance of Jesus. The veil of the Temple, too, was of many colors. We find, further east, that the Manipura Cakkra--the Lotus of the City of Jewels--which is an important centre in Hindu anatomy, and apparently identical with the solar plexus, is the central point of the nervous system of the human body, dividing the sacred from the profane, or the lower from the higher.

In western Mysticism, once more we learn that the middle grade initiation is called Hodos Camelioniis, the Path of the Chameleon. There is here evidently an illusion to this same mystery. We also learn that the middle stage in Alchemy is when the liquor becomes opalescent.

Finally, we note among the visions of the Saints one called the Universal Peacock, in which the totality is perceived thus royally appareled.

Would it were possible to assemble in this place the cohorts of quotation; for indeed they are beautiful with banners, flashing their myriad rays from cothurn and habergeon, gay and gallant in the light of that Sun which knows no fall from Zenith of high noon!

Yet I must needs already have written so much to make clear one pitiful conceit: can it be that in the opalescence of absinthe is some occult link with this mystery of the Rainbow? For undoubtedly one does indefinably and subtly insinuate the drinker in the secret chamber of Beauty, does kindle his thoughts to rapture, adjust his point of view to that of the artists, at least to that degree of which he is originally capable, weave for his fancy a gala dress of stuff as many-colored as the mind of Aphrodite.

Oh Beauty! Long did I love thee, long did I pursue thee, thee elusive, thee intangible! And lo! thou enfoldest me by night and day in the arms of gracious, of luxurious, of shimmering silence. III.

The Prohibitionist must always be a person of no moral character; for he cannot even conceive of the possibility of a man capable of resisting temptation. Still more, he is so obsessed, like the savage, by the fear of the unknown, that he regards alcohol as a fetish, necessarily alluring and tyrannical.

With this ignorance of human nature goes an ever grosser ignorance of the divine nature. He does not understand that the universe has only one possible purpose; that, the business of life being happily completed by the production of the necessities and luxuries incidental to comfort, the residuum of human energy needs an outlet. The surplus of Will must find issue in the elevation of the individual towards the Godhead; and the method of such elevation is by religion, love, and art. These three things are indissolubly bound up with wine, for they are species of intoxication.

Yet against all these things we find the prohibitionist, logically enough. It is true that he usually pretends to admit religion as a proper pursuit for humanity; but what a religion! He has removed from it every element of ecstasy or even of devotion; in his hands it has become cold, fanatical, cruel, and stupid, a thing merciless and formal, without sympathy or humanity. Love and art he rejects altogether; for him the only meaning of love is a mechanical--hardly even physiological!--process necessary for the perpetuation of the human race. (But why perpetuate it?) Art is for him the parasite and pimp of love. He cannot distinguish between the Apollo Belvedere and the crude bestialities of certain Pompeian frescoes, or between Rabelais and Elenor Glyn.

What then is his ideal of human life? one cannot say. So crass a creature can have no true ideal. There have been ascetic philosophers; but the prohibitionist would be as offended by their doctrine as by ours, which, indeed, are not so dissimilar as appears. Wage-slavery and boredom seem to complete his outlook on the world.

There are species which survive because of the feeling of disgust inspired by them: one is reluctant to set the heel firmly upon them, however thick may be one's boots. But when they are recognized as utterly noxious to humanity--the more so that they ape its form--then courage must be found, or, rather, nausea must be swallowed. May God send us a Saint George!

IV.

It is notorious that all genius is accompanied by vice. Almost always this takes the form of sexual extravagance. It is to be observed that deficiency, as in the cases of Carlyle and Ruskin, is to be reckoned as extravagance. At least the word abnormalcy will fit all cases. Farther, we see that in a very large number of great men there has also been indulgence in drink or drugs. There are whole periods when practically every great man has been thus marked, and these periods are those during which the heroic spirit has died out of their nation, and the burgeois is apparently triumphant.

In this case the cause is evidently the horror of life induced in the artist by the contemplation of his surroundings. He must find another world, no matter at what cost.

Consider the end of the eighteenth century. In France the men of genius are made, so to speak, possible, by the Revolution. In England, under Castlereagh, we find Blake lost to humanity in mysticism, Shelley and Byron exiles, Coleridge taking refuge in opium, Keats sinking under the weight of circumstance, Wordsworth forced to sell his soul, while the enemy, in the persons of Southey and Moore, triumphantly holds sway.

The poetically similar period in France is 1850 to 1870. Hugo is in exile, and all his brethren are given to absinthe or to hashish or to opium.

There is however another consideration more important. There are some men who possess the understanding of the City of God, and know not the keys; or, if they possess them, have not force to turn them in the wards. Such men often seek to win heaven by forged credentials. Just so a youth who desires love is too often deceived by simulacra, embraces Lydia thinking her to be Lalage.

But the greatest men of all suffer neither the limitations of the former class nor the illusions of the latter. Yet we find them equally given to what is apparently indulgence. Lombroso has foolishly sought to find the source of this in madness--as if insanity could scale the peaks of Progress while Reason recoiled from the bergschrund. The explanation is far otherwise. Imagine to yourself the mental state of him who inherits or attains the full consciousness of the artist, that is to say, the divine consciousness.

He finds himself unutterably lonely, and he must steel himself to endure it. All his peers are dead long since! Even if he find an equal upon earth, there can scarcely be companionship, hardly more than the far courtesy of king to king. There are no twin souls in genius.

Good--he can reconcile himself to the scorn of the world. But yet he feels with anguish his duty towards it. It is therefore essential to him to be human.

Now the divine consciousness is not full flowered in youth. The newness of the objective world preoccupies the soul for many years. It is only as each illusion vanishes before the magic of the master that he gains more and more the power to dwell in the world of Reality. And with this comes the terrible temptation--the desire to enter and enjoy rather than remain among men and suffer their illusions. Yet, since the sole purpose of the incarnation of such a Master was to help humanity, they must make the supreme renunciation. It is the problem of the dreadful bridge of Islam, Al Sirak--the razor-edge will cut the unwary foot, yet it must be trodden firmly, or the traveler will fall to the abyss. I dare not sit in the Old Absinthe House forever, wrapped in the ineffable delight of the Beatific Vision. I must write this essay, that men may thereby come at last to understand true things. But the operation of the creative godhead is not enough. Art is itself too near the reality which must be renounced for a season.

Therefore his work is also part of his temptation; the genius feels himself slipping constantly heavenward. The gravitation of eternity draws him. He is like a ship torn by the tempest from the harbor where the master must needs take on new passengers to the Happy Isles. So he must throw out anchors and the only holding is the mire! Thus in order to maintain the equilibrium of sanity, the artist is obliged to seek fellowship with the grossest of mankind. Like Lord Dunsany or Augustus John, today, or like Teniers or old, he may love to sit in taverns where sailors frequent; or he may wander the country with Gypsies, or he may form liaisons with the vilest men and women. Edward Fitzgerald would seek an illiterate fisherman and spend weeks in his company. Verlaine made associates of Rimbaud and Bibi la Puree. Shakespeare consorted with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton. Marlowe was actually killed during a brawl in a low tavern. And when we consider the sex-relation, it is hard to mention a genius who had a wife or mistress of even tolerable good character. If he had one, he would be sure to neglect her for a Vampire or a Shrew. A good woman is too near that heaven of Reality which he is sworn to renounce!

And this, I suppose, is why I am interested in the woman who has come to sit at the nearest table. Let us find out her story; let us try to see with the eyes of her soul!

V.

She is a woman of no more than thirty years of age, though she looks older. She comes here at irregular intervals, once a week or once a month, but when she comes she sits down to get solidly drunk on that alternation of beer and gin which the best authorities in England deem so efficacious.

As to her story, it is simplicity itself. She was kept in luxury for some years by a wealthy cotton broker, crossed to Europe with him, and lived in London and Paris like a Queen. Then she got the idea of "respectability" and "settling down in life"; so she married a man who could keep her in mere comfort. Result: repentance, and a periodical need to forget her sorrows. She is still "respectable"; she never tires of repeating that she is not one of "those girls" but "a married woman living far uptown," and that she "never runs about with men."

It is not the failure of marriage; it is the failure of men to recognize what marriage was ordained to be. By a singular paradox it is the triumph of the bourgeois. Only the hero is capable of marriage as the church understands it; for the marriage oath is a compact of appalling solemnity, an alliance of two souls against the world and against fate, with invocation of the great blessing of the Most High. Death is not the most beautiful of adventures, as Frohman said, for death is unavoidable; marriage is a voluntary heroism. That marriage has today become a matter of convenience is the last word of the commercial spirit. It is as if one should take a vow of knighthood to combat dragons--until the dragons appeared.

So this poor woman, because she did not understand that respectability is a lie, that it is love that makes marriage sacred and not the sanction of church or state, because she took marriage as an asylum instead of as a crusade, has failed in life, and now seeks alcohol under the same fatal error.

Wine is the ripe gladness which accompanies valor and rewards toil; it is the plume on a man's lancehead, a fluttering gallantry--not good to lean upon. Therefore her eyes are glassed with horror as she gazes uncomprehending upon her fate. That which she did all to avoid confronts her: she does not realize that, had she faced it, it would have fled with all the other phantoms. For the sole reality of this universe is God.

The Old Absinthe House is not a place. It is not bounded by four walls. It is headquarters to an army of philosophies. From this dim corner let me range, wafting thought through every air, salient against every problem of mankind: for it will always return like Noah's dove to this ark, this strange little sanctuary of the Green Goddess which has been set down not upon Ararat, but by the banks of the "Father of Waters."

VI.


Ah! the Green Goddess! What is the fascination that makes her so adorable and so terrible? Do you know that French sonnet "La legende de l'absinthe?" He must have loved it well, that poet. Here are his witnesses.

_Apollon, qui pleurait le trepas d'Hyacinthe, Ne voulait pas ceder la victoire a la mort. Il fallait que son ame, adepte de l'essor, Trouvat pour la beaute une alchemie plus sainte. Donc de sa main celeste il epuise, il ereinte Les dons les plus subtils de la divine Flore. Leurs corps brises souspirent une exhalaison d'or Dont il nous recueillait la goutte de--l'Absinthe!

Aux cavernes blotties, aux palis petillants, Par un, par deux, buvez ce breuvage d'aimant! Car c'est un sortilege, un propos de dictame, Ce vin d'opale pale avortit la misere, Ouvre de la beaute l'intime sanctuaire --Ensorcelle mon coeur, extasie mort ame!_



What is there in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.

But we are not to reckon up the uses of a thing by contemplating the wreckage of its abuse. We do not curse the sea because of occasional disasters to our marines, or refuse axes to our woodsmen because we sympathize with Charles the First or Louis the Sixteenth. So therefore as special vices and dangers pertinent to absinthe, so also do graces and virtues that adorn no other liquor.

The word is from the Greek apsinthion. It means "undrinkable" or, according to some authorities, "undelightful." In either case, strange paradox! No: for the wormwood draught itself were bitter beyond human endurance; it must be aromatized and mellowed with other herbs.

Chief among these is the gracious Melissa, of which the great Paracelsus thought so highly that he incorporated it as the preparation of his Ens Melissa Vitae, which he expected to be an elixir of life and a cure for all diseases, but which in his hands never came to perfection.

Then also there are added mint, anise, fennel and hyssop, all holy herbs familiar to all from the Treasury of Hebrew Scripture. And there is even the sacred marjoram which renders man both chaste and passionate; the tender green angelica stalks also infused in this most mystic of concoctions; for like the artemisia absinthium itself it is a plant of Diana, and gives the purity and lucidity, with a touch of the madness, of the Moon; and above all there is the Dittany of Crete of which the eastern Sages say that one flower hath more puissance in high magic than all the other gifts of all the gardens of the world. It is as if the first diviner of absinthe had been indeed a magician intent upon a combination of sacred drugs which should cleanse, fortify and perfume the human soul.

And it is no doubt that in the due employment of this liquor such effects are easy to obtain. A single glass seems to render the breathing freer, the spirit lighter, the heart more ardent, soul and mind alike more capable of executing the great task of doing that particular work in the world which the Father may have sent them to perform. Food itself loses its gross qualities in the presence of absinthe and becomes even as manna, operating the sacrament of nutrition without bodily disturbance.

Let then the pilgrim enter reverently the shrine, and drink his absinthe as a stirrup-cup; for in the right conception of this life as an ordeal of chivalry lies the foundation of every perfection of philosophy. "Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God!" applies with singular force to the absintheur. So may he come victorious from the battle of life to be received with tender kisses by some green-robed archangel, and crowned with mystic vervain in the Emerald Gateway of the Golden City of God.

VII.

And now the cafe is beginning to fill up. This little room with its dark green woodwork, its boarded ceiling, its sanded floor, its old pictures, its whole air of sympathy with time, is beginning to exert its magic spell. Here comes a curious child, short and sturdy, with a long blonde pigtail, with a jolly little old man who looks as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of Balzac.

Handsome and diminutive, with a fierce mustache almost as big as the rest of him, like a regular little Spanish fighting cock--Frank, the waiter, in his long white apron, struts to them with the glasses of ice-cold pleasure, green as the glaciers themselves. He will stand up bravely with the musicians bye and bye, and sing us a jolly song of old Catalonia.

The door swings open again. A tall dark girl, exquisitely slim and snaky, with masses of black hair knotted about her head, comes in. On her arm is a plump woman with hungry eyes, and a mass of Titian red hair. They seem distracted from the outer world, absorbed in some subject of enthralling interest and they drink their aperitif as if in a dream. I ask the mulatto boy who waits at my table (the sleek and lithe black panther!) who they are; but he knows only that one is a cabaret dancer, the other the owner of a cotton plantation up river. At a round table in the middle of the room sits one of the proprietors with a group of friends; he is burly, rubicund, and jolly, the very type of the Shakespearean "Mine host." Now a party of a dozen merry boys and girls comes in. The old pianist begins to play a dance, and in a moment the whole cafe is caught up in the music of harmonious motion. Yet still the invisible line is drawn about each soul; the dance does not conflict with the absorption of the two strange women, or with my own mood of detachment.

Then there is a "little laughing lewd gamine" dressed all in black save for a square white collar. Her smile is broad and free as the sun and her gaze as clean and wholesome and inspiring. There is the big jolly blonde Irish girl in the black velvet beret and coat, and the white boots, chatting with two boys in khaki from the border. There is the Creole girl in pure white cap-a-pie, with her small piquant face and its round button of a nose, and its curious deep rose flush, and its red little mouth, impudently smiling. Around these islands seems to flow as a general tide the more stable life of the quarter. Here are honest good-wives seriously discussing their affairs, and heaven only knows if it be love or the price of sugar which engages them so wholly. There are but a few commonplace and uninteresting elements in the cafe; and these are without exception men. The giant Big Business is a great tyrant! He seizes all the men for slaves, and leaves the women to make shift as best they can for--all that makes life worth living. Candies and American Beauty Roses are of no use in an emergency. So, even in this most favored corner, there is dearth of the kind of men that women need.

At the table next to me sits an old, old man. He has done great things in his day, they tell me, an engineer, who first found it possible to dig Artesian wells in the Sahara desert. The Legion of Honor glows red in his shabby surtout. He comes here, one of the many wrecks of the Panama Canal, a piece of jetsam cast up by that tidal wave of speculation and corruption. He is of the old type, the thrifty peasantry; and he has his little income from the Rente. He says that he is too old to cross the ocean--and why should he, with the atmosphere of old France to be had a stone's throw from his little apartment in Bourbon Street? It is a curious type of house that one finds in this quarter in New Orleans; meagre without, but within one comes unexpectedly upon great spaces, carved wooden balconies on which the rooms open. So he dreams away his honored days in the Old Absinthe House. His rusty black, with its worn red button, is a noble wear.

Black, by the way, seems almost universal among the women: is it instinctive good taste? At least, it serves to bring up the general level of good looks. Most American women spoil what little beauty they may have by overdressing. Here there is nothing extravagant, nothing vulgar, none of the near-Paris-gown and the lust-off-Bond-Street hat. Nor is there a single dress to which a Quaker could object. There is neither the mediocrity nor the immodesty of the New York woman, who is tailored or millinered on a garish pattern, with the Eternal Chorus Girl as the Ideal--an ideal which she always attains, though (Heaven knows!) in "society" there are few "front row" types.

On the other side of me a splendid stalwart maid, modern in muscle, old only in the subtle and modest fascination of her manner, her face proud, cruel and amorous, shakes her wild tresses of gold in pagan laughter. Her mood is universal as the wind. What can her cavalier be doing to keep her waiting? It is a little mystery which I will not solve for the reader; on the contrary--

VIII.

Yes, it was my own sweetheart (no! not all the magazines can vulgarize that loveliest of words) who was waiting for me to be done with my musings. She comes in silently and stealthily, preening and purring like a great cat, and sits down, and begins to Enjoy. She know I must never be disturbed until I close my pen. We shall go together to dine at a little Italian restaurant kept by an old navy man, who makes the best ravioli this side of Genoa; then we shall walk the wet and windy streets, rejoicing to feel the warm sub-tropical rain upon our faces. We shall go down to the Mississippi, and watch the lights of the ships, and listen to the tales of travel and adventure of the mariners. There is one tale that moves me greatly; it is like the story of the sentinel of Herculaneum. A cruiser of the U.S. Navy was detailed to Rio de Janeiro. (This was before the days of wireless telegraphy.) The port was in quarantine; the ship had to stand ten miles out to sea. Nevertheless, Yellow Jack managed to come aboard. The men died one by one. There was no way of getting word to Washington; and, as it turned out later, the Navy Department had completely forgotten the existence of the ship. No orders came; the captain stuck to his post for three months. Three months of solitude and death! At last a passing ship was signaled, and the cruiser was moved to happier waters. No doubt the story is a lie; but did that make it less splendid in the telling, as the old scoundrel sat and spat and chewed tobacco? No, we will certainly go down, and ruffle it on the wharves. There is really better fun in life than going to the movies, when you know how to sense Reality.

There is beauty in every incident of life; the true and the false, the wise and the foolish, are all one in the eye that beholds all without passion or prejudice: and the secret appears to lie not in the retirement from the world, but in keeping a part of oneself Vestal, sacred, intact, aloof from that self which makes contact with the external universe. In other words, in a separation of that which is and perceives from that which acts and suffers. And the art of doing this is really the art of being an artist. As a rule, it is a birthright; it may perhaps be attained by prayer and fasting; most surely, it can never be bought.

But if you have it not. This will be the best way to get it--or something like it. Give up your life completely to the task; sit daily for six hours in the Old Absinthe House, and sip the icy opal; endure till all things change insensibly before your eyes, you changing with them; till you become as gods, knowing good and evil, and that they are not two but one.

It may be a long time before the veil lifts; but a moment's experience of the point of view of the artist is worth a myriad martyrdoms. It solves every problem of life and death--which two also are one.

It translates this universe into intelligible terms, relating truly the ego with the non-ego, and recasting the prose of reason in the poetry of soul. Even as the eye of the sculptor beholds his masterpiece already existing in the shapeless mass of marble, needing only the loving kindness of the chisel to cut away the veils of Isis, so you may (perhaps) learn to behold the sum and summit of all grace and glory from this great observatory, the Old Absinthe House of New Orleans.

V'la, p'tite chatte; c'est fini, le travail. Foutons le camp!

_________________________
"The Green Fairy" : Children of the Revolution

__________________________

Absinthe Poetry

August Strindberg

Indian summer
From the sickroom's chloral smelling pillows,
darkened by suffocated sighs
and hitherto unheard blasphemes;
from the bedside table,
encumbered with medicinal bottles,
prayer books and Heine,
I stumbled out on the balcony
to look at the sea.
Shrouded in my flowered blanket
I let the October sun shine
on my yellow cheeks
and onto a bottle of absinthe,
green as the sea,
green as the spruce twigs
on a snowy street
where a funeral cortège had gone ahead.

The sea was dead calm
and the wind slept --
as if nothing had passed!
Then came a butterfly,
a brown awful butterfly,
which once was a caterpillar
but now crawled its way up
out of a newly set heap of leaves,
fooled by the sunshine
oh dear!

Trembling from cold
or unaccostumedness
he sat down
on my flowered blanket.
And he chose among the roses
and the anilin lilacs
the smallest and the ugliest one --
how can one be so stupid!

When the hour had passed
and I got up
to go and get inside,
he still sat there,
the stupid butterfly.
He had fulfilled his destiny
and was dead,
the stupid bastard!



Glenn MacDonough

I will free you first from burning thirst
That is born of a night of the bowl,
Like a sun 'twill rise through the inky skies
That so heavily hang o'er your souls.
At the first cool sip on your fevered lip
You determine to live through the day,
Life's again worth while as with a dawining smile
You imbibe your absinthe frappé.
----

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

Get Drunk!

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters;
that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's
horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows
you down, you must get drunk without cease.

But with what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.
But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,
all that which flees,
all that which groans,
all that which rolls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks,
ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
they will all reply:

"It is time to get drunk!

So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk, get drunk,
and never pause for rest!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you choose!"
---
Five o’clock Absinthe - By Raoul Ponchon

When sundown spreads its hyacinth veil
Over Rastaquapolis
It’s surely time for an absinthe
Don’t you think, my son?

It’s especially in summer, when thirst wears you down
- Like a hundred Dreyfus gossips -
That it’s fitting to seek a fresh terrace
Along the boulevards

Where one finds the best absinthe
That of the sons of Pernod
Forget the rest! They’re like a sharp by Gounod:
mere illusion.

I say along the boulevards, and not in Rome,
Nor at the home of the Bonivards;
To be an absinthier is not to be any less a man.
And on our boulevards

One sees pass the sweetest creatures
With the gentlest manners:
You’re drinking, they rouse your nature,
They are exquisite... but let it pass.

You have your absinthe, it’s all about preparation
This is not, believe me,
As the cynics think, a small matter
Banal and without emotion

The heart should not be elsewhere
For the moment at least.
Absinthe wants first, beautiful ice water
The gods are my witness!

Tepid water, none of that: Jupiter condemns it.
Yourself, what say you?
Might as well, my faith, drink donkey piss
Or enema broth

And don’t come on like a German,
And scare her,
With your carafe; she would think, poor dear!
That you want to drown her.

Always rouse her from the first drop …
Like so ... and so ... very gently
Then behold her quiver, all vibrant
With an innocent smile;

Water must be for her like dew,
You must be certain about that:
Awaken the juices of which she is made
Only little by little.

Such as a young wife hesitates, startled
When, on her wedding night,
Her husband brusquely invades her bed
Thinking only of himself...

But wait: your absinthe has bloomed in the meantime,
See how she flowers,
Iridescent, passing through every shade of the opal
With a rare spirit.

You may sniff now, she is made;
And the beloved liquor
In the same instant brings joy to your head
And indulgence to your heart …
---
Sonnet de l'Absinthe - by Raoul Ponchon

Absinthe, oh my lively liquor
It seems, when I drink you,
I inhale the young forest soul
During the beautiful green season.

Your perfume disconcerts me
Aand in your opalescence,
I see the heavens of yore
Aas through an open gate.

What matter, O refuge of the damned,
That you a vain paradise be,
If you appease my need;

And if, before I enter the gate,
You make me put up with life,
By accustoming me with death
the sterile woman's icy majesty.
---

[...]
Déridez-la toujours d'une première goutte...
Là... là... tout doucement.
Vous la verrez alors palpiter, vibrer toute,
Sourire ingénûment;

Il faut que l'eau lui soit ainsi qu'une rosée,
Tenez-vous-le pour dit :
N'éveillerez les sucs dont elle est composée
Que petit à petit.

Telle une jeune épouse hésite et s'effarouche
Quand, la première nuit,
Son mari brusquement l'envahit sur sa couche
En ne pensant qu'à lui...
[...]


Translation:
[...]
Always rouse her from the first drop ...
Like so ... and so ... very gently
Then behold her quiver, all vibrant
With an innocent smile;

Water must be for her like dew,
You must be certain about that:
Awaken the juices of which she is made
Only little by little.

Such as a young wife hesitates, startled
When, on her wedding night,
Her husband brusquely invades her bed
Thinking only of himself...
-Raoul Ponchon

__________________________
Green Fairy

__________________________

Have a wonderful weekend, we are!

Gwyllm

On The Radio: Drift ~ 'Ember (Remember)'




A bit of this and that for Sunday.... Enjoy!

Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Zen Quotes
The Links
War Is A Racket....Part 2
Spiritual Teachings Concealed?: Kate Bush
Art: Ernst Fuchs
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I found this list... Though it says Zen Quotes, it throws a wider net - G

Zen Quotes:

Whatever is material shape, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all material shape should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: "This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self." Whatever is feeling, whatever is perception, whatever are habitual tendencies, whatever is consciousness, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: "This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self." ...Gautama

Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no paintings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path....Bodhidharma

Just think of the trees: they let the birds perch and fly, with no intention to call them when they come and no longing for their return when they fly away. If people's hearts can be like the trees, they will not be off the Way.

One single still light shines bright: if you intentionally pursue it, after all it's hard to see. Suddenly encountering it, people's hearts are opened up, and the great matter is clear and done. This is really living, without any fetters -- no amount of money could replace it. Even if a thousand sages should come, they would all appear in it's shadow....Chuzhen

When you're deluded, every statement is an ulcer; when you're enlightened, every word is wisdom....Zhiqu

The living meaning of Zen is beyond all notions. To realize it in a phrase is completely contrary to the subtle essence; we cannot avoid using words as expedients, though, but this has limitations. Needless to say, of course, random talk is useless. Nonetheless, the matter is not one-sided, so we temporarily set forth a path in the way of teaching, to deal with people....Qingfu

Neither is there Bodhi-tree, Nor yet a mirror bright; Since in reality all is void, Whereon can the dust fall?....Hui Neng

He who wherever he goes is attached to no person and to no place by ties of flesh; who accepts good and evil alike, neither welcoming the one nor shrinking from the other — take it that such a one has attained Perfection. ..."Bhagavad-Gita"

The mind that does not understand is the Buddha. There is no other.... Ma-Tsu.

You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed....Mumon.

No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself....Tilopa.

When you pass through, no one can pin you down, no one can call you back....Ying-An.
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The Links:
Stone-Age Concert Hall?
The evolution of a conspiracy theory
Why Fly When You Could Float?
Gigantic Sand Art!
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I promised to continue with this several weeks ago... duh... here it is-G

G
War Is A Racket....Part 2



CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump a