The Muse's Advisory typed & spellchecked by Tom Riordan
A Delicate Matter - Muse's Advisory, April 17 – Curator Chiklis to Zeus
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A Delicate Matter - Muse's Advisory, April 17 – Curator Chiklis to Zeus: I didn't want to make a scene in front of anybody so I waited until closing. This is contractually your quiet time but grant me a few minutes please. There've been complaints. You know how tourists are— especially the Germans, right? But we've complaints from Japanese and even Finns! Please understand I'm sympathetic to the working stiff but I'm still management. They claim that someone's making— how to put it delicately?— πορνογραφικό προτάσεις?— pornographic suggestions. The children love to pet the dog's three heads but when the parents say, It's time to go and look at pottery, their kids start spewing things like Fuck that shit! and Vases suck! I reply, Why point the finger at a godwho's been dead several thousand years? His dog, yeah, he's a little ghetto-looking with those fangs and bit-off ears— but teaching children dirty words? I understand: your little boy simply adored Westminster Abbey. Still, you're positive you never left him unattended with the cabbie? But every one insists it's you. They have these inklings and if I enquire whence, without exception each one points directly at your head. I don't want to draw this out. It's 7:30, my vilana's waiting at the Fres Taverna. So I beg you, and I'll only ask it once: please stop it, if you're being a bad influence. Bird, Depressed - Muse's Advisory, April 18 – St. Paul the White-Crested Cockatoo: Thank God that fucking Cretan left! Poor thing missed out on half a glass of wine, when I've been pent up in this silly nest since 8 a.m. without a chance to stretch my wings or legs or piss! What can he do to us– the storage room? I'd welcome that. This being on display is like a thousand little deaths. If only Miriam could take me when she visits Cyprus. What I wouldn't give for fruit nobody else has chewed on yet; a chance to wrap my feet around a living branch again. Still, Lazarus's second tomb is not high on my must-see list. I hear he was a bastard once he rose– too grim to smile– unslakable his thirst– got so disgusted at one Cypriot he turned his farm into a small salt lake. Why won't he just stay dead? Yeshua raised him first; then Emperor Leo dug the second corpse back up to showcase in Byzantium; then the Crusaders hauled it off again; and where it's been since it last surfaced in Marseilles is anybody's guess. Why can't Hephaestos turn me into stone, like Zeus? Being alive alone, a stowaway inside this mausoleum of assorted former VIP's, is simply hell. What air, or food, or scratch is sweet? But I can't leave since I can't fly. I'd be a stray cat's toy, then treat. What's wrong with death? I'm ready. I've had longevity. I've tasted what the senses had to offer, more or less. No, not had sex, but it's too late for that. That's probably my one regret. "...she bore nine daughters, of one mind..." (Hesiod) - Muse's Advisory, April 19 – Memory: I've held my tongue.
People wag their heads: a country mother with nine kids. But they've forgotten what I'm like in bed, the way I sing through thick and thin at those big moments when it's sink or swim. Over-protect my girls? The only thing I kept from them (a couple drops of milky ouzo in their bottles) was what happened on the night Zeus left. He can't remember either, the white Pierian mists that overgrew the moon's gray eyes as he bent down to kiss the nine of them goodbye, and for a moment cried. I didn't want them to remember that: I knew he wasn't ever coming back. Sestina - Muse's Advisory, April 20 - Urania: A cast stone said My arc's path from the hand of a parent is illusion. The illusion's stone said I am the true path from the hand of a parent. The parent of the illusion's stone said The path of a child's hand rises from the hand of her parent. Illusion is mother's milk. The young stone said I am my own path. My path baffles the hand of my parent and the illusion yoked to arc. The young stone's god said The blessed son banishes the path from the hand of a parent. Illusion can't yoke stone. Hands arc stone but the cursed illusion of path is the parent. Self Sonnet - Muse's Advisory, April 21 – Zeus to Miriam: I take a lot of heat for what I didn't do and little credit for the things I did. I fell in love with you, gave you a child. Now I'm a friend in your advancing age. It's true I didn't cleave to you like white on rice or give Yeshua the most prudent guidance as he grew up— but he grew up. He followed his own muse, and you and I now stand here almost holding hands, while Kastrinoí slip out into the cool of night. It seems to me my sin resides in fending off the claims of sorrow and regret, in feeling free to come and go, in leaving children safe inside their mothers' loving arms and charging out to keep the brain-Huns from the door. I'm not asking for awards, only the same respect due beasts who carry out the tasks that they were made to do, though failed to write a War and Peace or plant trees in the desert—living by my own lights. I've both suffered and caused pain, but don't owe anyone apologies. My name is Zeus. My style is independent. That's what I offer you. Kicking Some Ideas Around With Pop - Muse's Advisory, April 22 – Yeshua to Zeus: They haven't left too much for me to do, my apparitions far less popular than Mom's, the pope in total charge of Dogma, Policy & Operations: I'm not more than a figurehead. I volunteered to write a weekly inspiration, blessing, or whatever but they talked me out of it— so diplomatically, of course— and made it clear my contribution to the movement ended on the afternoon of my Ascension. I'm allegedly on tap to come again, but every time I ask about a date they say As soon as His consilium's complete. I say Whose His? He isn't Me? Then they expound ad infinitum on the mechanisms of the Trinity. Just kick back, kid, I hear the harp in heaven is sublime, advises the monsignor they assigned to me as liaison. If you need anything at all, I'm at your beck and call. My cell is always on and your speed-dial's #1. They think I have no saving left but I feel like I just began. I've tons of things I want to do. I'd never have agreed to die so young if I had known. If I go back and freelance now, they'll call me heretic or falsh moshiach. Nobody says so in as many words but I can read the writing on the wall. When they press, Prove you're Him, what can I do? Say Nail me to the Cross again? Cajole another stinking corpse to rise, like some two-dollar voodoo houngon? I've been a persona non grata and it's no fun: I'd end up rotting in the pope's asylum underneath St. Peter's where they pound all the ecstatics and loose cannons with stigmata. The Church itself amazes me: the papacy, the curia, the diocese, how all of that elaborates from thirteen Galilean vagabonds. I'd think it science fiction if I didn't have a ringside seat. I wouldn't want to have to drive that rig— and I'm not sure I want to hitch my name to it. Should I re-brand myself, shear off the facial hair and launch another start-up? Rome wouldn't notice if I disappeared. I'll dial up my flack and say, Yeah, what you said the other day makes sense. I'm kicking back to bask in heaven's ambiance. I have a few ideas: an open-access walk-in spa where people with afflictions or the blues can get a quick pat on the back from— Jesus Christ belongs to Rome— what do you think if I adopt one of those one-name monikers like Thornz or Bethleheminem? Or dance with the girl I brought, go walk the earth again dispensing pita, bromides, cures, but this time give my people teeth, so when the Swiss Guards come to peg me to a cross, this time, let Peter stuff their sliced-off ears right up their arse! I know what he'll say if I ask.Tell me your thoughts. Be frank.
I'm not cut out to lounge on clouds— like some people I know— and watch the Lilliputians thrash about, below. I want to help. I want to get into the act. In the Wilderness – Muse's Advisory, April 23 – Yeshua to Zeus: No, I'm not about to go shoot up a school or smash tectonic plates, but yes, from time to time I have these thoughts that I'm not proud of, which disturb me. Once, an idea popped into my head of opening the wound below my ribs with one of Mom's serrated carving knives. Another time, I lay my hand upon this blond kid's head and it occurred to me if I just pushed... The Demon offers choices I don't want. The clever way he words them, they appeal to me when I imagine for a moment saying yes. Each time, I feel a little dirty afterwards. Dad, when you call me Kid,it's distancing. Son's bad enough. You call Mom Dear, but me, it's Kid or Son. It seems like you're annoyed to even have to talk to me: as if I'm interfering with your standing there and contemplating Miriam, and Cerberus whom you keep close. Is it a style thing? I'm being over-sensitive? I know: Accentuate the positive. You haven't tried to eat me once. You haven't fed me to the mutt. I'm sorry, yes, I it would be easier if I brought up one topic at a time. The devil's always in the doing it. I have the kind of mind that wanders; you, a personality devoid of tact. The Tempter often brings your name up as he lays out his proposals. I thought that asking you about it might increase my strength resisting. I was wrong, and he was right: you've no intention of assisting. Primrose Path - Muse's Advisory, April 24 – Satan: “No!" Calliope forbids her Byron imitators. "Every two-bit hack with quill or Bic since Milton made and broke the mold has written Satan a soliloquy! Then the Pacino movies— please, don't ask!” "See Muse run," I tease. "So now a censor comes?" “Don't try your wiles on me—!" she hisses, “— I, the labor nurse who led you from a blind man's tongue to the amanuensis! Do you mock me now? I'll have Tom turn you back into a fawning fop!” "No, it was I who told your mother Fuck that guy. She did and wept. I said Again. She did and wept. I said Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. She did and said I'll cut my wrists. I said Again. So you tell me who authored who." You Have Received a Birthday Greeting from... - Muse's Advisory, April 25 – Satan to Tom: It's your birthday! Muses, thin as crepe,
How old are you? I know, but ask because I want to rub your nose in it: an age when selfishness sheds all its fancy bows and pops out of the box like Jack. You want to know how old I am? Where I was born? Of whom? You'll find out soon. A woman's got to keep some sanctity, some secrets for her bedroom. Your decay? My porn. The crusty spots you're burning from your face with gelled diclofenac? I can already taste what's underneath. Horny Loser - Muse's Advisory, April 26 – Miriam: The devil is so full of shit. He tries to make a big name for himself but it's all talk. He has no realm, he has no underlings, he has no way to walk the walk. You know the little jerk in middle school who brags he'd like to grab that low-cut blouse's filler by the neck and make her suck his dick but always sits off by himself? That's Nick. Chicken and Egg - Muse's Advisory, April 27 – The Schoolteacher Títyros: You fall right into Satan's trap when he beguiles you to think he's full of crap. He's not the tallest tree; that's never been his strategy. He's a 15-square-mile fungal growth that lives—except to fumigate receptive trunks with ivory spore— entirely underground. The theology is definite: without the threat from Satan there's no ministry for Christ; without Him, there's no Trinity, and our whole Faith falls flat. As John epistolized in Ephesus: "The devil sinned in the beginning, and the Son of God was manifested only to destroy the devil's works." So, children, trust in Satan just as strongly as in Christ. He wants your faith in him to die—for then, you're his. Love Song - Muse's Advisory, April 28 – Marble Zeus to Marble Miriam: There were several times at your place on Koressos when the nighttime lights in Ephesus glowed dully underneath the winter fog and we just couldn't force ourselves to go inside even to passion's arms. On other nights, a galaxy so loud we couldn't hear the crickets, and you'd rise so suddenly and whisper "You had better come to bed"— and there would be a witch in you who wanted nothing but hard love. My favorite nights: those clumsy ones with you or I maneuvering to get a little something going, but the other stuck because of wine on some uninteresting topic, or feeling mischievous and playing hard to get. The scenery was often lovely and the sex sometimes great but what gave pleasure every single day was all the psychological give and take. And you? When you think back to when our life was just the way we wanted it, does anything stick so tight in your craw, you want to say, "I can't adjust to this. I can't be happy anymore"? Beloved—
across the room? Before her impudence gave way, she was a slim and jade-eyed pixie with a snaking grin to jolt the kidneys of its prey to soup. What shadow fell upon her whitecapped sea? Had her ribs harbored furtive Greeks from birth— was there a mis-flown arrow of cupidity?— the slow disgruntlement of unappreciated age? The gleam sank in her eye. We didn't play it safe. We've taken and inflicted greater wounds than most survive at all and now we have to raise our game and stare down cocky black yeasts, undergraduates with sketchpads and the mockery of mice. Love Song II - Muse's Advisory, April 29 – Miriam to Zeus: I'll settle in, I will. Right now I'm trying to figure out what this thing is in my right hand, which I can't lift to get a better look— I also need to see the hand itself. The tourists cry, Those fingers are so huge! One kid compared it to The Hulk. Is it so vain to wish I could at least see my deformity? I can glimpse you from the leftmost corner of my eye. You're looking good. That's more than I can say for your three-headed dog down there. I feel the hilt of something in my left hand that I fantasize a knife. You know how I detest dogs, and he doesn't look like the pick of the litter. Your sweet thoughts go a long way, yes, but don't forget I'm human. That means lots of stuff can bother me that needn't. I'm hard-wired to ignore the forest for a few dead trees. Jews fret a lot. We don't like helplessness. Nobody does— but when something oppresses us, we're not as predisposed as most to let it go. I can't see the lotus or whatever it is perched on my head, but I assure you that your organ-grinder monkey shako's really quite ridiculous! Whoever first said we should wear hats just for decoration should be shot! If I see one more pelican cadaver on some empty-headed woman's head, I might be forced to sic that dog on it. Of course I loved Koressos, every night of it. We still have many things we should be thankful for. Proximity and memories are number 1 and number 2 in what produces happiness. But pity these poor tourists, come so far to look upon the likes of us for inspiration, when they could be at the beach or up on the sierra picking orchids, asphodel, pink spearlike Cretan tulips! No, you're right, we mustn't pick them— one or two at most, and only with a lover handy, someone worth an indiscretion. Preservation has its place but so does the besotted's gasp, the child romping like a pony. Zeus, oh I'm afraid I'll never reconcile losing the outdoors! Besides your pluck and faith the only thing that keeps me semi-sane is going out occasionally on apparitions. The appearees view it as they will: for me it's really just a chance to get away and finally get outside— to look at something new! And then those peasants look at me as if I'm vibrant, marvelous. What woman can resist that? You do too, Zeus, you do too— I love it, yes. But still it's good to hear it fresh. The Arkalochori Axe - Muse's Advisory, April 30 – Labrys: we wil crak yur fuking heds suner than luk at yu how dar yu raggid greeks think we minoans arent warlik my twin blayds wil split yur skuls first in tu then in fur but yu cant reed wut dum barbarians yu ar May Day - Muse's Advisory, May 1 – Miriam: Greek Presidential sashes over drab green uniforms, Communist Girl Scouts gathered in front of the ancient beaten bronze of Artemis. The Matron herding them—bizarre in a brown car-mechanic's jumpsuit underneath a white exomis with a gathered elastic waist!—asked if the girls could sing their hymn. "No, Miss!” the docent laughed delightedly. “It's a museum! This Artemis is thin bronze sheets nailed onto plane wood— a sphyrelaton,” he told the troupe, “from Driros, just an hour's drive— a temple for Delphinios Apollo, ninety centuries back.” One girl cried out, “Comrade! Stone goddess with Socialist Realism hand is wear your same dress! And look! Capitalist dog with three heads!” “Sisters, we know why we're here!" the Matron said. In unison they raised their fists and broke out in the “Internationale.” Forward, ye damned of the earth! Slaves of hunger, forward! Right explodes from the crater! Like thunder! like lightning! The docent frantically waved his arms and tried to hush them. Gaping museum visitors relished this typisch kretischen Szene. Some took out cameras, prohibited too, but film of matter turned spirit—disapparition—won't develop. Now, it's all I can do not to laugh. How did they find out we were there? I can still feel that vile dog's blood bulging in its necks—I love it so! So many sharp teeth. So many toothsome little Reds. But too, too bad. Spirit to Stone - Muse's Advisory, May 2 — Earhart to Miriam: You—driven from your home and severed from your son— endure that silly cap, fat lobster hand, and constant threat from an infernal triple-snouted dog. Me—forced to deal with being lost, although you know I like thin air, have yens for what's outside the box, dislike all quotidinity, i's dotted and t's crossed. A hundred million women—in captivity. I didn't bring this single-breasted mob
after Achilles, for love of that fierce white naked corpse, necrophily on her committed, Penthesileia paused before dissolving into air to thank him for avenging her insulted womanhood when he caught Thersites' obscene snigger and with one vengeful buffet to the jaw dashed out his life. Now Penthesileia stands again outside re-armored and re-armed, like-minded with Hippolyta, Melanippe and Antiope; warlike Camilla, Cleite and Antandre; Derimacheia, Thalestris, Polemusa, Clonie, Derinoe, Bremusa and Evandre; dark-eyed Harmothoe, Antibrote, spear-loving Thermodosa and Aella; Prothoe, Philippis, Eriboea and Celaeno, Alcippe, Phoebe, Deianeira, Asteria, Marpe, Eurybia, Tecmessa, Ocyale, Dioxippe, Iphinome, Xanthe, Glauce, Laomache, Theseis, Iphito and Agave; Clymene, Euryale, Polydora, Harpe, swift Ainia, Thoe, Menippe, Aegea, Lyce, Cyme, Anaea of Samos, Amastris, Queen Antianeira the Crippler, Queen Eurypyle Anti-Babylon, Lyssipe, Marpesia, Gryne, Lampedo, Molpadia, Mytiline, Myrto, Orontea, Pantariste, Queen Orithyia the Conqueror, Areto, Hippothoe, and Myrina's commanders, brave Pitane and Priene—here to ask if you will lead us, be our queen. You're the greatest goddess left. Let flesh amalgamated from these warriors' sacrifice replace—redeem— your bloodless stone. Revive and lead us against Rome. bad rap - muze's advizory, may 3 – yes.hU.a to mir.I.am: yo, dem pope & cardinalz you hatin', dey my homies! my niggaz! dey okay! why is dey bodderin' yo ass so bad? chill-ax! dey jus' some ol', ol' men! dis gig is keepin' bof' of us in bread! tell yo' posse dey kin go on back to bed 'n' suck on dey own titties & pussies! nobody mean no disrespect to ho's! we de good guyz! we de holy menz! dis caf'lic church love all de womens! Gripe - Muse's Advisory, May 4 – Miriam to Yeshua: Zeus says your popes are nincompoops: the good ones through the years could pull up chairs around a single cafe table. He thinks it will work wonders for your church to one day plant a woman St. Peter's seat. You like our— in our place and out of it. But these old men who run your church are fearfully traditionalist. St. Paul—the man, not bird—was clear: "Woman's head is her husband." But where would you be now if I had gone along with that when Yusuf said, "That boy needs reining in. I say we bind him to the smith. He won't take any of his lip." I stood my ground and just said, "No." I stood my ground, Yusef stood his, and I'm not saying who was right but none of this Messiah business would have ever take place if you had been apprenticed to Haddad. He brooked no nonsense— looked at life the way ditch-diggers view the stony earth. I used to bring salve to his boys: "Let's get to work" was half of all he spoke, the other half "You're here to spill your sweat, not flap your tongue!" But now they dare say I and every Christian with a cunt are barred from leadership? That's hardly true to you. There's not a misogynist bone in your whole body, Son. Indecision - Muse's Advisory, May 5 – Yeshua to Miriam: No, leave the Latin Church alone. I could march with you on Rome, but oh, the bloodshed. I didn't mount my ass to cut Sadducees' throats— why murder their successors? Yet, what a troop you martial ladies make! From now on, play your apparitions as you really are, Ma: warrior, mother, lover, thinker! Tell your stricken peasant, I'm an Amazon— and then unleash these Harpies on the priests who rush to silence her! Dad has his little talks with kids and thinks up games to keep you sane: it's like he doesn't struggle anymore. Since time began, how many gods have impotently faded into gray by saying, No, this battle's not important— now anonymously shuffle past tugging a donkey down the road? Yet, how boring it must get to raise arms again and again. Warm Greeting - Muse's Advisory, May 6 - Calliope to Zeus: "Performing a 101-live-gun salute for the Grapes of Wrath Pulitzer Prize the Nazi-hating Honor Guard fired high into the Hindenburg while off flew Roger Bannister on a 4-minute mile to Crazy Horse's Corregidor surrender. John XXIII—one of the best, it's said— raised Martín de Porres to sainthood. Freud, Valentino, Willie Mays are born and Frank Baum, Marlene Dietrich die." That's what Clio writes, Father— human deeds the literature of gods. But this is your day only: nothing at all has happened yet. Lift your right arm and the sun comes up, the saga starts; open your breast and air descends like animating incense. Or is it what you want to view such myths as if you were a man? Pressing His Suit - Muse's Advisory, May 7 – Marble Zeus to Marble Miriam: "...Glittering stone from quarries of seagirt Proconnesus Expelling clouds of care and cheering even the sailor Guiding his bark on the billows of raging Pontus Who drops his eyelids to the verdant hill Yearning to see blue calmness skimmed By dripping oars along the Golden Horn With flowers on each side of ripening corn! "Some marbles are like new-dropt snow, and others Black with dappling milky distillations here and there— Thine, roses fused in whitened air While Libyan sun makes golden yellow glory On the foothills of the Maurusian height— Thine, whose rendered tints fair emeralds use, With sombre purple also in its varied hues..." Hey! Don't crinkle the corner of your eye like that! Paulos Silentiarios is very well-respected. So are Lethaby, Swainson & Browning, who translated it. Being likened to Hagia Sophia is a big compliment! A bit flowery, I admit, but honestly, recite contemporary stuff to press love's suit and half the time you wind up talking a perfectly complicit young lady right out of it. On Line - Muse's Advisory, May 8 – Mike/Tom: Excuse me, I've got half a sonnet here and someone said unfinished stuff's your specialty. Of course I'll look. A half a sonnet just might cure what ails me. Feeling bad? Depressed. And you? Just call me Mike. I only use one name. You see, Mike, that's why I'm depressed. You're too depressed to tell another guy your name when he sticks out his hand? It's Tom. I'm sorry, Mike. I have a second name but what's the point? Go on, read me the seven lines. 'I live for sin, live dying to myself: my life consists of only misery. God invented good, I invented hell; my will dissolved, I am not free. Liberty enslaved, my soul has made me mortal. O wretched state, the continent I was born to inhabit!' Sounds deep. No wonder you can't finish it. What's scribbled on the back? My day job's sculpting high-end tombs: I wrote the half-a-sonnet on the flip side of a letter from the guy who quarries stone for me. His name is Sandro, in Carrara. But the object of the sonnet is...Gherardo. Ah, you love him. Yes. You think it sinful. Yes. You're young, in love, employed— but worrying about a poem? You've talent as a carver. Dawn and Dusk, who pine on Duke Lorenzo's tomb, are everyone who longs but cannot reach. Forget the goddam seven lines. Take this Gherardo to the beach. Vaunt - Muse's Advisory, May 9 – Thor: Another god who's big and strong enough to lug both whale and whaleboat on his back Then eat a fattened ox for lunch or dent the full moon on a drunken dare Might feel ridiculous as helmsman of a goat-cart even though drawn by Tanngnjóstr Teeth-Grinder and Tanngrisnir Teeth-Barer But after I devour them too and my hammer Mjöllnir stuns them back to life Away we ride to Bilskirnir Þrúðheimr, or to Þrúðvangr where Þjálfi Marrow-Sucker and his sister Röskva gird me with my belt Megingjörð Bury my hands in Járngreipr my iron gloves Hand me Gríðarvölr my stave to battle once more with the serpent Jörmungandr to dare the Götterdämmerung! Let me make one thing very clear My life is not like yours whoever you are You may have fierce blue eyes or a long red beard You may have cheered when Anglish Boniface forded from Büraburg Dramatically cut down the Oak of Geismar Hewed the lumber into Dom Sankt Peter and proclaimed his Christ superior to me His retinue of Franks superior to Chatti But you know nothing about Thor What he does with his hammer What do you know about lightning and thunder? What do you know about childbirth and murder? Go read your hidebound tome of do's and don'ts for timid souls and leave the work of gods to those who care for nothing more than masterminding gore. Spare - Muse's Advisory, May 10 – Thor to Euterpe: You want to know about my softer side? Put a finger to my heart, will I smile? No. This is the north. We scorn emotion as the meanest of guile. Eyeballing Thor - Muse's Advisory, May 11 – Miriam: I won't ask a moment more of your attention than I have to. All this vaunted "eerie frozen beauty" strikes me as a euphemism. Social niceties are not your thing. You've seen the rise and fall of many other gods, their different characters, theologies, and what-not, but you calmly go about your business murdering or maiming any man or beast you feel the slimmest urge to, without warning, without explanation. You could well pick up your hammer as I hover here in front of you and hurl it for no better reason than you think you have the brawn. I don't really have a question. I just wanted to lay eyes on you, to judge if anything I might say had an outside chance to alter things when my son's followers come blazoning their new religion. Based on what I read upon your face, I'd have to say the answer's no. Daddy - Muse's Advisory, May 12 - Thalia: Out, out, damned candle— tirelessly walking shadow— bankrupt player who won't leave the stage— long monologue expounded by a furious and pointless idiot! And yet— who would have thought the old man to have had so much of blood in him? Pragmatic Manifesto - Muse's Advisory, May 13 – Hephaestos to Melpomene: Once we accept we won't amount to much— accept there isn't any much— and so, accept that craft, amusement, corporal comfort are enough, and learn a trade, stock up some good computer games, learn how to cook and maybe meet someone who'll hold us close without demanding too close of a look— we're on our way not to nirvana but a fairly decent day. Did your mom really tell the nine of you the whole truth of who jilted whom, and why? Do I want to understand the parallax that misconstrued and crippled me? I would. I vividly recall my plummet toward Aetna but before and after, everything is black. My mother said I tried to set her free from ankle cuffs, and Zeus in retribution hurled me to the earth and left me lame; Zeus said my club foot was congenital and Hera cast me from Olympos in disgust. Who to believe?—your mother Memory rubbed mine as clean as yours. Still, neither parent flew to pick me up so nothing really is at stake except the factuality of what I paint on vases, etch on breastplates. I know the cosmic tit has no more milk and I expect you know it too. So no, I don't think we should climb back in that can of worms because a poison curiously gnaws our brains. What's done is done. The past is gray, and thinking that our futures will shine rosier for burning off its mist is purely pop psychology, cliché. It's not that I believe in sights set low, but setting them on game with pulses, and not umbras hoed up from the past. Water Under the Bridge - Muse's Advisory, May 14 – Melpomene to Hephaestos: Half-brother, half-green pup— nobody bird-dogs Memory! She has three powers, laws of nature, fixed, defying even Zeus: she plunders what she pleases from the atheneum of the mind, she slips her telling vapors into any room she will, but she herself is utterly impossible to find. She comes sometimes at night and pours a humid episode into my ear while I'm asleep— but is she ever there at daybreak asking if her gift has pleased? has terrified? or caused to weep? No wonder muses make a living out of shimmerings and glints! You and I are on our own. We have to use our wits. We have no choice but doubt our mothers' innocence, mine infamously unreliable and yours as vicious as Medea; yet who can doubt that nothing's out of character for Zeus, except submissiveness? If he could set nine bawling infant girls adrift amid the bulrush of belles-lettres, he surely could have dropped you in the Styx: abandoned both our families with no fare-thee-well. But let's keep dry now, just as you suggest. One parent's oak, one elm: who cares which of the two of them was prow, which helm, the day our natal ships were wrecked? Like moon-calf Caliban you toiled afterwards in bitterness to build yourself a life, while I, I tasted love just once, and tried to bear a life, but lost. A Long View - Muse's Advisory, May 15 – Shangdi: In a land as old as China, gods and humans long ago became as acclimated to each other as a couple married fifty years: the wife says something but the husband has less interest than he would in listening to a table leg. Even I, the primal light-bringer to mountains, rivers, seas— my name's so seldom spoken, children ask their teacher, "Who exactly is Shangdi? What's his importance in a land where Jīnxīng's nighthound never even once dragged down dawn's hind?" Nor have I been moved for as long as I remember to make any more adjustments to the world-lamps I invented. Still, seeing all things clearly as I do, these past millennia I sometimes wonder what it was I wanted to see more of in the first place. Flight Plan - Muse's Advisory, May 16 – Zeus Marble to Miriam Marble: I'll get us out of here. I know you hate the frost; and almost everyplace where temperatures are warm is overrun; but I've got sleight-of-hands tucked up my sleeve and friends I still can call on in a time of need. How about a second honeymoon, a trip to Galilee? I know we never had a first, but let's pretend. You have some issues there. Me too–I'll tell you all the dirty details on the way. The gerontologist on Oprah said, we have to face our pasts if we expect to keep the dogs of age at bay. A visit to the Holy Land might just be what the doctor ordered for these blues. Escape from Iraklion - Muse's Advisory, May 17 - Gabriel García Márquez: The curator sipped his kafés—such a beautiful morning, noplace on earth more lovely than Kríti and no one on Kríti more lovely than the cinnamon and balsam-scented classical beauty whose hip pressed up against his on the crowded bench, creating the most monumental erection! He might have spent a moment longer at his kafés than was usual, might have arrived a moment later than was usual at the Museum— although at his termination hearing, he swore up and down he hadn't. Uncontroverted was the fine mood he arrived in, how he greeted the sole patron waiting at the entrance with exuberance, as she reported to the astynomikós who responded to the curator's 1-0-0 call to the Dikaiosyni station. A trail of briny-tasting slime led down Ariadnis, past the Ilaira, past the Lato, all the way to the Venetian Harbor, at the edge of which the archigós nodded slowly and uttered something that sounded a lot like "Poseidónas." Downhill - Muse's Advisory, May 18 – Zeus: Poseidónas, ho! We have a lady here! Please beg your ippókampous and delfínia to breast the waves as if their cargo was sea-lace for Benthesikyme, fair Rhodos or loud-moaning Amphitrite! Ten thousand years ago I spent time, Miriam, not far from Nazareth. I haven't mentioned it because I feared—I still fear— you'll think less of me. But fearful thinking is self-fossilizing. Love, if such a thing is possible, has pith. My home then was a cave in Kfar HaHoresh whose lime-kiln factories made waterproof baskets an everyday item— lime and gray ash packed in all the crevices, then fired—whiteware, yes. Today they call it proto-pottery. It made us kilners rich. We also ran a mortuary, mostly young men struck down suddenly in war, their families ill-prepared to part with them so quick. Two aurochs or gazelles, a wild boar, seven goats, or several fluff-tailed fox would buy you something we called modeled skulls. First we buried corpses just about a month for natural excarnation, then retrieved the heads, and rearranged the bones for an artistic reëntombment. The faces we rebuilt with a fine lime plaster we invented; painted them as lifelike as we could; brushed asphalt on the skulls to reattach the hair; then mounted them on burnt-clay stands with cockleshells for eyes. Today's dull echopraxis is the marble bust. Like many businesses ours had its shady underside: we earned a little extra from reselling the projectiles pried loose from the dead— Jerichos, Byblos, Helwans and all kinds of naviforms; bifacials; even some Amuqs with the Abu Gosh retouch. You name it, we had it. So while the mother wept her sad tale upstairs in the workshop, in the sub-basement the very warrior shopped who bought her grief. We knew that this was wrong the same way we instinctively knew boiling kids in ewe's milk was, but there was meat in it, and meat trumps morals every time. It proved a slippery slope. A corner cut in commerce paved the way for other morals to elope. Confession in Poseidónas's Chariot - Muse's Advisory, May 19 – Zeus to Miriam: Our drudge— whose job it was to climb each dawn into the smelly kokh and roll the headstones back to check if any of the stiffs were ripe enough to disarticulate— he slipped one day, his left foot crushed and lamed when one stone jumped its shallow flute and dropped on it. We did our best. Our resident hydrophoros hemp-washed and blessed it seventy times seven times with lustral waters and commanded Fly, impurities! infecting sprites!— but it would never heal. It grew proud flesh I tried myself to trim away with our best burins, but it just got worse and then gangrene began to settle in, and that was that. His name was Idra—fig tree. He had come to us when he was six, his father and his elder brother dead, an addled mother parting with her final auroch and the boy himself in hopes of finding peace in models of her man's and firstborn's heads. We should have said no then: we knew the grimaces we offered were no substitute for Idra's living smiles, but— as I said, the meat spoke louder than the ruth, and our preliminary look-see gave us reason to believe the stone points in the corpses' skulls were rarities. So we said yes to boy and ox, and took our chances with unease. You have to understand, this was the very olden days, the dawn not only of technology but reasoning. We were feeling our way toward a distinction between right and wrong. These things are not inborn, less simple than they seem now to identify or carry out. And so—
we told the hobbled drudge to excavate his father's and his brother's ossuary plots and make room for another set of bones; and when he had, I put his lights out with a compact bolt of energy straight to the head. Then, with a modest ceremony, we fitted him to join their headless skeletons beneath their coverlet of sand and white kaolin clay. Brother, please. Please slow down.Affiance - Muse's Advisory, May 20 – Miriam to Zeus: You neither invented death nor defeated it. My people rose from Assyrian graves and have billowed violence ever since. Witness the day they led Yeshua to a cliff all passioned-up to throw him off because he brushed aside a rude demand to heal their sick. When the Parthians swept in, Jews killed as many Christians as they could. The ones they missed took their revenge— the blood goes round and round. Nor did you invent religion: what to do about the dead. This outcaste colony of clay and light's as good as any way to be alive, but when the sentence ends, the peas roll back into the pod and hungry lupine memories howl for flesh and blood to ornament the ground. Who's less equipped than a divinity to walk the narrow line between philosophy and masculinity? What arrogance to hold gods to a standard of behavior we can't meet ourselves but at the same time hemmed with our small-mindedness? Take me with you to the soiled site where things that you've regretted for ten thousand years still breathe, still sting your eyes. I'll stand with you, my own eyes smarting. I'm content to be your counterpart. Back in the Day - Muse's Advisory, May 21 – Poseidónas: Old times, isn't it, Zeus? Remember bodysurfing that big quake in 1700 BC when we both wound up ass-skywards on a hillside in a grove of pistachio trees? Miriam, you should have seen this guy when he was in his prime! We were a team: he cracked his thunderbolts, I sent my tremors through the ridges undersea— et voilà!— tsunami like you wouldn't believe! We had a sense of freedom then. We did exactly as we pleased and no one thought to box us in theology. Whole empires rose and fell on games we played but that was just the order of things, as good a way as any to give history its impetus, the birth of ten or slaughter of a thousand Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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