“We are many sets of eyes staring out at each other from the same living body” — Freeman House, Totem Salmon
We are many sets of eyes, staring out
at each other from the same living body.
We are ears listening to each other
across valleys of skin.
Heat of the other’s blood
warming the air we breathe,
air that filled the other’s lungs
not long before, and will again,
ruffling our hair, rippling this field
of frost-gray grass.
We touch earth that touches each other,
life-print curling at our fingertips and lips,
world (a piece of it) digesting in our bellies,
swept along in blood and spit,
spice of it in our marrow,
essential you in everything
I eat and love and do,
essential me in you.
/|\ /|\ /|\
So there’s a poem provoked (I say “provoked” rather than “inspired” because that’s the sensation — I encounter a piece of language not my own that becomes the grain around which oyster tries to form a pearl. It won’t let go until I respond, and try to shape the sensation into something in words.)
Nano update: I’m catching up at 13,527 words and counting, but still a little more behind than I’d like. We’ll see what 2 and 1/2 cups of coffee this morning helps me accomplish. I don’t usually drink it, since I’m hypersensitive to caffeine and it keeps me up most of the night following the day I drink it, but I was cold this morning, and the smell! … well, anyway, I’m caffeinated and writing.
Found an interesting passage in a medieval author yesterday, Walter de Mapis. (If you’re gonna procrastinate, I say, why not procrastinate tangentially? I researched historical refs to succubi.) So now I know something about rumors surrounding Pope Silvester. The pontiff flourished around the year 1000, and his legacy includes the story of a certain succubus, who was said to give him advice, and who was reputed to be his lover. Supposedly he repented on his deathbed. Traitor. I’m expecting my succubus main character Alza will have something to say about that. Who knows — maybe she was there. Maybe she was the succubus …
Just discovered she has a mantra or prayer or verbal talisman she recites frequently. Maria, one of her worshippers (from her “cult” phase), overheard her this morning talking quietly to herself, and asked about it. Here are the words Alza said (part of the charm is to speak about oneself in third person):
Alzakh ne utayal gashem muk dafa.
May Alzakh grow in this surrounding fire,
may Fire know her for its own,
may Fire fill her in all she does,
burning away what blocks her,
burning toward what is native to her,
what is or will become or has been Fire,
time the Fire that moves all things into being.
Always fun to get a piece of the original in Harhanu. You need to know: among my other odd hobbies is conlanging. So I hear bits of languages, like I imagine musicians and songwriters hear snatches of songs and musical phrases. Here are the italicized words phonetically, as I heard them from Alza’s mouth: ahl-zahkh NEH oo-tah-YAHL gah-SHEM mook dah-FAH. [Literally, Alza this surrounding fire-in grow-imperative.]
Alza’s name in Harhanu is actually Alzakh, with the kh the raspy sound in loch and Bach — a voiceless velar fricative, to be all linguistic-y and precise about it. Alza’s name got truncated over the years, to match what people thought they heard, or thought it should be. Much as men around Alza imagine the woman they want, which she can then use to seduce them. Most men are, frankly, pretty seducible, she learns. So that part’s easy.
You want Druidry? Find it here, or go bother somebody else. (Now maybe you have some idea why I don’t overdo the caffeine. It makes me all cranky-creative and snarky and stuff.)
A Druid Way 