The Muse's Advisory typed & spellchecked by Tom Riordan
Zeus at Delphi - Muse's Advisory, April 7 – Calliope
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- Art - Muses Advisory, April 8
- At the Heraklion Archeological Museum on Xanthoudidou Street - Muses Advisory, April 9 – Zeus
- Inside Palazzo Sisto V - Muses Advisory, April 10 – Il Papa
- Review - Muses Advisory, April 11 – Miriams Statue
- Under-Dogs - Muses Advisory, April 12 – Statue of Cerberus
- Utility of Cerberus - Muses Advisory, April 13 – Statue of Zeus to Miriam
- Anthrax - Muses Advisory, April 14 – Statue of Zeus
- Down, Down, Down - Muses Advisory, April 15 – Clio
- Idle Afternoon Chit-Chat in the Antiquities Room - Muses Advisory, April 16 – Miriam
Zeus at Delphi - Muse's Advisory, April 7 – Calliope: Miriam climbs too, on foot, the white bird on her shoulder cursing at the thick soot and bright-shooting cambered embers that remind them both of things they'd rather not remember. In the swirling smoke she glimpses Zeus's makeshift chariot careen, a basilisk's forked fire darting from his brow and dark steam rolling off his bright chimeric hair. "Look!" she exclaims. "Look there!" The priest and gorgon gallop his swift chestnut
"Ye poets listening to my advice," derisive Clio interrupts, "don't ever underestimate the great authority of tripe!" —amidst charred weeds, stavesacre, fallen poppies, the Ionian columns, weeping cypress, half an amphitheater, half a racetrack, less still of a temple; but intact, the great rock where each Pythia, before and since the shrine was sacked, rose to recite! The ancient Magissa knows to stand erect, her shoulder-blades tucked in and arms spread to enun ciate, project— she knows the protocols, she knows her strength, she sets her gaze on him— and in an instant, Zeus, now quieted, attends. “ It is the seventh day of Bysios.If you have business with the oracle, then state your name! Why have you come? What do you bring to us?” “Great Pythia,” Zeus speaks, “the adyton, Apollo's tripod where your predecessors sat, was almost ripped in twain when my son Hercules had mind to steal it. It was I who intervened between the two: you know already who I am, though why I've come is not so easy to divine. My gifts? Three weary, foam-flecked horses, an exhausted mule.” “ Propose your question, Zeus.”“It is the same as asked you by the priest
While the Pythia sought her pronouncement, Miriam drew nearer with the bird, and for the first time since his cleaving by the ax, St. Paul took wing, although unprettily, and flittered to the sky-god's shoulder where he gave his earlobe an affectionate nip. The Pythia sang: "The self-pitying God must put two Asses To the Cart he brought; must take a Virgin Back to Crete; let him who has no Heart Cause Harm no more; be always Stone!" Zeus thought about it: splitting her wrinkled face in two with a razor-sharp lightningbolt, then lifting the offending boulder up to drop upon her scrawny little spine; but, simultaneous, he knew she had not named her heir and so his effort would have been in vain: she would survive. And Miriam was watching; and the cockatoo. And even if he gave vent to his rage, he still had no idea what he should do. So he did something no one ever, ever would have guessed: he nodded pointedly at Miriam, and acquiesced. Art - Muse's Advisory, April 8 – Zeus's Statue: She didn't say
as literal. It means be cool; be smooth; don't let things get to you; be elegant, and inspirational. I get it. I can do that. I just have to figure out what kind of inspiration— what my message is. I've got technique; I just need biz. I've asked around to learn about my brand. What does it stand for? What's it worth? Scholars have said I represent autocracy and irresponsibility— bad government. Yet am I indisputably the father of democracy? To Cretans, I'm a boy and definitely not the God of Rules! Perhaps the schoolkids running up to rub my marble penis will be dragged away envisioning ideals more fun than prudery and antiseptic cleanness. Light's light, as Joseph Campbell says. The sun, the thunderbolt, the pearly sheen of marble skin. Why can't I exercise my fullblown might by standing here in this museum? I am omnipotent, a master of disguise who works in unseen ways. – Miriam's Statue: I totally agree. I saw that
they will have to call him Zeusa—and that goes for sinful boys who hold their penises as toys. We try our best to teach the human race some common sense but those with any brains at all don't listen and the ones who do just want to christen everything that's any fun a sin. That's what they lost in the translation from Olympian to Hebrew god. Oh, what a grinch! If Yahweh had an ass at all I'd give it a good pinch! Yeshua's a wet blanket too. And what they've made of me. Why can't we Christians be a little less like Virgin Mary and a little zestier and more red-blooded, more like Zorba's Bouboulina? Fuck the meek! Fuck the long-suffering wife! No wonder they invented the Arch-Fiend. Somebody's got to represent the 95% of life they spurn. Let's put our heads together—you, me, and the cockatoo— let's dedicate ourselves to put the toot back in Teutonic, romance back in Rome, juice back in Jews! I'm sick and tired, myself, of channeling some spinsterish old muse. At the Heraklion Archeological Museum on Xanthoudidou Street - Muse's Advisory, April 9 – Zeus: They say I'm Serapis disguised as Hades posed beside three-headed Cerberus at heel but any fool with eyes can tell it's really me with a silly basket balanced on my head, now St. Paul's nest. I'm draped in robes and missing half an arm, but a tall smooth staff and thick-wooled beard proclaim a comfort in my own physique and doughty willfulness. Miriam stands just past the electric socket with something that looks like a sea scallop fixed to top of her head— ever comely, graceful, but watch you don't get in the way of that brick of a right hand! Dr. Chiklis reconstructed us in too much haste. She gazes away from me, looking embarrassed. I did train the tri-celphalous mutt. After killing its father, what else could I do? I thought it fitting, then, to give it to my own son for a pet, but Hades said, Little brother, I'm going to make it a sentry instead. I've always had a way with what they call “dumb” animals. What tames them quick: plain, run-of-the-mill respect. Emperor Frederick II and bodhisattva Guanyin also kept white cockatoos, but tethered. Regard binds me and mine together. That they've mislabeled me— and Miriam too, as Isis— doesn't faze us in the least. Better that way, really, so His Grace the bishop doesn't feel he has to break my limbs off like he did last century, then sink the pieces in the bay. If Dr. Chiklis has to pay for divers one more time, he's liable to just say To hell with archeology. It's peaceful here, 1000 foreign visitors a week, plus every school on Crete, on average, once a year. Our statues aren't striking to the unassisted eye but I can see our strategy is working since His Grace comes once a month and sits there on that bench mistrustfully, unsure. Doubt crops up in his flock and something tells him that it's me transmitting skepticism, like a router. He's too old-school to guess my web's worldwide. The energy I used to waste in bolts of lightning now I put to better use securing malleable young minds. No, Eminence, not pedophile like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates— though you yourself bless dread-filled schoolboys you've exhorted to their knees. Miriam's torn about all this. Infiltration—she shoots me daggers if I call it inspiration— of children's intelligence strikes her as insidious. She says it's less so if the influencer has a face and children can at least evaluate the messenger. I think the opposite: face lends abusers more authority. What I transmit are pure ideas recipients are free to take or leave. The Pope expounds...Mufti proclaims...High Priest decrees... Zeus Thunderer offers his thoughts without moving his lips, without leaning on clout. Inside Palazzo Sisto V - Muse's Advisory, April 10 – Il Papa: I'm the Pope, goddammit. Wherever these subversive ideas are emanating from, put the kibosh on them! Who do these rebels think they are? Were they picked by a conclave of old men? Even own a tiara? The special grace I have enabling me and only me to understand Luke 19:3— a sine qua non, capisce? Why aren't my eggs runny? Didn't I ask for runny eggs? Are runny eggs so difficult? Take these back. Review - Muse's Advisory, April 11 – Miriam's Statue: Who are these busybodies who won't let Yeshua rest? I remember my first apparition, John's brother James in Zaragosa weeping. He was so glad to see me. He scolded, "You sneak! you're still alive! A letter I got just last week said they hid you on Koressos above Ephesus!" Why was James in Iberia at all, forlorn, alone, depressed? Were there no tree-worshipers any closer to home for him to convert? I said, "James, you're the apparition! Get thee back home to Galilee where Herod Agrippa longs to personally claim thy head. Here's a wooden idol of myself, and a jasper pillar, to sell for thy passage. When ye arrive, give Herod the idol and tell him Miriam happily offers her head too." Did a shortage of women or of fish prevent them from settling down as husbands like their fathers had done? Or were they simply on the run, their zealotry strengthened by the authorities' persecution? I wish they'd just gone home after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the coming of the dove at pentecost, and said "That's that. We're done." Inspiration comes in many forms so what's the need to follow a star too far instead of sitting home and opening a book of psalms? That's why I frown: such sturm and drang. Diocletian persecutes Christians, Constantine pagans, Julian Christians, Theodosius pagans. One sect prays facing heavenward, the other facing down. Zeus's mission is free thought. Mine seems to be the kindly ear, the blessed mother no one had. Still, wouldn't supplicants do better with a fellow sinner steeped in flesh and blood? When an Aussie vicar asks what's in the ancient goddess's hand, the Irish docent tells him, "I dunna know much but it looks like the rubber armpit pillow of a crutch." Under-Dogs - Muse's Advisory, April 12 – Statue of Cerberus: Mind's made, not born: unnatural Nurture dealt us quirky Fate and numerals to count our lucky stars. The good news, Dr. Chiklis didn't glue a monkey shako or a bird's-nest to our heads; the bad, we sit at Zeus's feet as if his hound. But see our dripping jaws? blood-blackened claws? eyes bleached by Hate, rolled back into our heads? his right arm missing from the elbow down? Zeus tore our ears off yet we venged the Murder of our hundred-headed father Typhon! We burn as One but sinned as Three, a Trinity that celebrates the masses here in Hell. Face us. Left to right our names are Innocent III, Pol Pot and Jesse James: ecclesiastic, angel of equality, executioner without portfolio. Utility of Cerberus - Muse's Advisory, April 13 – Statue of Zeus to Miriam: Let the six-lipped cur charge otherwise— his father lies beneath Mount Etna quite alive, though he once tore the sinews off my bones and leather-bagged my limp cadaver, leaving me to die. Nor has my missing forearm ever swum in Cerberus's craw. It's tickled now by hermit crabs, anemones and possum shrimp on the bottom of the bay where the Orthodox dumped it. His third mouth's claim? Oh yes, I did. I bit the mongrel's six ears off and spit them to the dirt whereon there sprouted by the gism of my lips garigue of downy ophrys— five aristolocthic birthworts that entrap flies overnight and verse them in the songs and scents of Hades to be piped into fresh corpses. Each family has its mad dog. Cerberus is ours. I know you fear him, feared the rabies epidemic in your native Bethlehem. I'll keep him close to heel. Still, he has use. He draws the schoolkids surely as my nudity. Their happy fingers fly from his fangs to my dick. That's when I drop my question in their heads. "What if the Christ was just one of those mountebanks in Grecian gowns, and the epískopoi as two- or three-faced as this grisly hound?" Anthrax - Muse's Advisory, April 14 – Statue of Zeus: Let's call the demon Boredom. It's a sure sign something's dead or deadly in the room. At school, at church? Look at the teacher, at the priest: the blowflies spiral from their lips. Hold your breath, plug your ears, mask your eyes. Children, the dust oration coats you with is dangerous. Down, Down, Down - Muse's Advisory, April 15 – Clio: Abraham Lincoln, Titanic, Garbo,Big-League Baseball's color barrier and Pol Pot sink today. The Fates are flipping cards out in the schoolyard of the gods and these five randomly come up. There are appeals and protests. One goddess gripes, It's not enough. A bell rings and they all return to class. This afternoon they have a hippie sub who raises eyebrows with his beard and funky paisley shirt. Sandburg calls Lincoln captain of the ship, he says. Then President Garbo's shot when Pol Pot signs a contract with L.A. A SWAT team bursts into the room at exactly 1:11 and opens fire: time to go the Math Enrichment. Clotho palms her yawn. Again?The Computation Specialist asks Lachesis to analyze the Quechuan abacus and Atropos fiddles with scissors. Idle Afternoon Chit-Chat in the Antiquities Room - Muse's Advisory, April 16 – Miriam: “....Juan Diego saw me on Tepeyac Hill, an adolescent ringed by light. We spoke in Nahuatl and he mixed me up with his own virgin goddess Tonantzin, whose shrine the hill had been. I said, 'No, I'm the Catholic nantli.' When Zumárraga the arzobispo sent Juan back for proof of my identity, I said, 'Go gather flowers at the summit.' He said, 'Tonantzin— ay, discúlpeme—Católica María— it's mid-winter! Nothing blooms now.' I said, 'Look with faith-filled eyes,' and then arranged the blossoms in his cloak. Zumárraga was stunned to see the bounty of Castilian roses and my image in a mollusc-like striped vulva set indelibly in Juan's ayate. The Franciscans called it superstition—just an icon by a local artist named de Aquino— but the Dominicans attested it miraculous.” “Okay,” Zeus says, "for sake of argument, you were enclosed in glowing light. But did you have one blessed thing to say?" “You talk theology in Nahuatl, Mr. Polyglot! No, I didn't wow him with great intellect. He just thought I was prettier than Tonantzin and felt that someone greater—European, omnipotent—exalted him in his own tongue! You wouldn't understand. You pretty much talk only to yourself. You think you're slyly beaming thoughts into the Cretan children's heads but maybe it's them molding you.” “Metaphysics—not your forte! Energy, especially ideas, has inclination. Acorns never fall from ground to tree and snot-nosed, puddle-headed kids can't teach philosophy to me.” "Dear Zeus, your pride is hurt! Don't cut yourself with shards of former grandeur, indispensability!
if you don't mind a partner with one ear half-tuned to her devotees' prayers. Yes, I know it doesn't really make a difference if I listen! And yes, I know my cult is primitive, subliminal, psychotic, sexual. But don't you think it helps them just a bit to feel they have my ear? Must weak be doomed to carry the same weight of truth as strong? You be the god of might— I'll be the mother of despair. You be correct—I'm able to be wrong.” “One of the feminine prerogatives is always being right, or wrong in a superior way. I bow. Besides, I like the thought of bridge— each ace a lightning-strike, sharp combat where the best mind and the best hand wins.”
Do we have any other partner possibilities around the room?
clay king and queen with bug-eye nipples raised their hands!
“Ah, we'll make mincemeat of the lot of them! We played round-robin for a while on Olympos.
and Aphrodite took her shirt off once when she was dummy—poor Hephaistos lost count of the trumps and went down three! Oh, that year, everything was according to Goren! Then, of course, along came hula hoops, air hockey...."
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