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So I'm in mah bathtub, reading She: The Book of the Goddess, mainly because I figured if I was going to sell it off, I might as well read the damned thing. It really pissed me off a coupla years when I got it - Amazon's review made it sound like a coloring book of Goddesses. Now I can't even find it on Amazon, & the book is in the bathroom & I don't feel like going in there just to get the frikkin ISBN off it. What it turned out to be was a book of Goddess myths cut into ADHD-friendly blurbs with some truly gorgeous graphics - in full color.
As I read, I noticed a similarity between Amaterasu's myth & that of Demeter - the feminine Sun Amaterasu & Demeter as Summer - hiding Her light & warmth from humanity. Still feels very odd to think of the sun, old Sol, as feminine. If I had to pick a definitive Pagan pantheon, it would be Greek/Mediterranean that I pull most of my deepest beliefs from. I also thought of another way to see the battle of Marduk and Tiamat... Tiamat knowing it was time to birth the world & Marduk being the only God able to sacrifice His own mother to do so.
My kitchen is a mess. I have really let it go. A lot of it is just because I've been so tired, & there's school & WoW when there's not school, & being on this diet means I have kind of changed my cooking paradigms, and we've been eating out a lot more lately since I've gone to steady-extra due to the wonky shifts I've been working. But my kitchen floor is gaining elevation in some areas, like around the fridge & stove & under the sink. Yes, it's my house, and it's a pigsty, and it's starting to gross me out. I am nothing near a neat-freak. I think four years of indentured servitude to Penny and Aunt Liz sort of did me in as far as being obsessive about my surroundings cleanliness, and the general futility of trying to keep Jody's & Terry's homes clean while I lived w/them. I'm surprised and deeply grateful to the scorpions in a way, because scorpions = no cockroaches. Since we stopped maniacally spraying toxins in the yard, the balance of nature has shifted to where the crickets are coming back, but the scorpions are apparently staying outside to eat said crickets & not hunting inside for them. Been seeing an inordinate amount of silverfish, but there are inordinate piles of books and paperwork for them to eat, so it's not an inordinate surprise. I don't like 'em because one bit me one time - otherwise I have no beef w/the silverfish.
I digress. What I was getting around to there, with the filth in mah kitchen & the shocking lack of insect infestation was this - modern people who don't need to wait for lightning or random opportunities lended to them by spontaneous human combustion in order to make fire sort of take it for granted. In the book, it mentions how a fire was maintained at the Temple of Vesta in Rome even after Catholicism had taken roots. There were sacred fires in Ireland, and even in the states, an eternal flame marks the tomb of JFK. By letting goop build up on my stove, I am falling prey to that same modern taking-fire-for-granted mentality. I've lost sight of fire as a living being. I take it for granted because I can push down and turn a knob that electrically ignites a ring of flammable gas to cook food. I don't think of the mysterious alchemy that transforms raw dead chicken into something safely edible. By not keeping my cooking area clean, I am dishonouring the fire that lives in the stove, and I do plan on remedying that in the next few days. I talk about wanting to steal fire when I already have fire at my fingertips - in a lighter, in my stove, in the matches in my bottom drawer. I don't have to go out & steal, or even borrow, fire from a friendly neighbor. "Hey, can you spare me some fire? Mine seems to have gone out."
Shortly before Thanksgiving, I was watching t.v. in the breakroom & I think it was King of Queens (the big dude was Kevin James, so it must've been KoQ - if anyone ever wondered what Josh looked like, he looks like that guy) that was on. Some guy, who just happened to have one eye, knocked on the main characters' door & asked if he could use the phone. The big main guy invited him in, even though the one-eyed stranger looked scruffy & disreputable, & let him call his friend - who just happened to live in Baltimore, which was some four hours away. The main woman of course freaked out because her husband had let a disreputable guy in to use the phone - and she had a big Thanksgiving get-together planned. So she ends up making Big Main Dude tell the Stranger with One Eye to wait out on the porch. All these people came to their Thanksgiving feast, which was pretty much ruined because they're all watching the SwOE freeze his ass off out there on the porch. I never got to see the end of it because my break was over, but... I got chills thinking about it. Did the show writers do it on purpose, did they know Who they were writing about, or were they just making the guy look as seedy and dangerous as possible? Or am I reading too much into a modern sit-com?
Would you let a one-eyed stranger into your home on a feast day, or would you make him stand out on the porch while you ate, warm and comfortable, inside?
Even Rob, with his ultra-paranoia and xenophobia, knows you don't make a one-eyed man stand on the porch while you eat. The laws of hospitality still hold true, even if we don't remember them. I asked Rob, too, if he'd make a one-eyed stranger stand out in the cold, and he hemmed & hawed, and I could tell he wanted to say no, which was what he expected me to expect him to say, but he knew it wasn't right - and he knew Who would be ffended.
Can anyone lend me some fire? Mine seems to have gone out.
As I read, I noticed a similarity between Amaterasu's myth & that of Demeter - the feminine Sun Amaterasu & Demeter as Summer - hiding Her light & warmth from humanity. Still feels very odd to think of the sun, old Sol, as feminine. If I had to pick a definitive Pagan pantheon, it would be Greek/Mediterranean that I pull most of my deepest beliefs from. I also thought of another way to see the battle of Marduk and Tiamat... Tiamat knowing it was time to birth the world & Marduk being the only God able to sacrifice His own mother to do so.
My kitchen is a mess. I have really let it go. A lot of it is just because I've been so tired, & there's school & WoW when there's not school, & being on this diet means I have kind of changed my cooking paradigms, and we've been eating out a lot more lately since I've gone to steady-extra due to the wonky shifts I've been working. But my kitchen floor is gaining elevation in some areas, like around the fridge & stove & under the sink. Yes, it's my house, and it's a pigsty, and it's starting to gross me out. I am nothing near a neat-freak. I think four years of indentured servitude to Penny and Aunt Liz sort of did me in as far as being obsessive about my surroundings cleanliness, and the general futility of trying to keep Jody's & Terry's homes clean while I lived w/them. I'm surprised and deeply grateful to the scorpions in a way, because scorpions = no cockroaches. Since we stopped maniacally spraying toxins in the yard, the balance of nature has shifted to where the crickets are coming back, but the scorpions are apparently staying outside to eat said crickets & not hunting inside for them. Been seeing an inordinate amount of silverfish, but there are inordinate piles of books and paperwork for them to eat, so it's not an inordinate surprise. I don't like 'em because one bit me one time - otherwise I have no beef w/the silverfish.
I digress. What I was getting around to there, with the filth in mah kitchen & the shocking lack of insect infestation was this - modern people who don't need to wait for lightning or random opportunities lended to them by spontaneous human combustion in order to make fire sort of take it for granted. In the book, it mentions how a fire was maintained at the Temple of Vesta in Rome even after Catholicism had taken roots. There were sacred fires in Ireland, and even in the states, an eternal flame marks the tomb of JFK. By letting goop build up on my stove, I am falling prey to that same modern taking-fire-for-granted mentality. I've lost sight of fire as a living being. I take it for granted because I can push down and turn a knob that electrically ignites a ring of flammable gas to cook food. I don't think of the mysterious alchemy that transforms raw dead chicken into something safely edible. By not keeping my cooking area clean, I am dishonouring the fire that lives in the stove, and I do plan on remedying that in the next few days. I talk about wanting to steal fire when I already have fire at my fingertips - in a lighter, in my stove, in the matches in my bottom drawer. I don't have to go out & steal, or even borrow, fire from a friendly neighbor. "Hey, can you spare me some fire? Mine seems to have gone out."
Shortly before Thanksgiving, I was watching t.v. in the breakroom & I think it was King of Queens (the big dude was Kevin James, so it must've been KoQ - if anyone ever wondered what Josh looked like, he looks like that guy) that was on. Some guy, who just happened to have one eye, knocked on the main characters' door & asked if he could use the phone. The big main guy invited him in, even though the one-eyed stranger looked scruffy & disreputable, & let him call his friend - who just happened to live in Baltimore, which was some four hours away. The main woman of course freaked out because her husband had let a disreputable guy in to use the phone - and she had a big Thanksgiving get-together planned. So she ends up making Big Main Dude tell the Stranger with One Eye to wait out on the porch. All these people came to their Thanksgiving feast, which was pretty much ruined because they're all watching the SwOE freeze his ass off out there on the porch. I never got to see the end of it because my break was over, but... I got chills thinking about it. Did the show writers do it on purpose, did they know Who they were writing about, or were they just making the guy look as seedy and dangerous as possible? Or am I reading too much into a modern sit-com?
Would you let a one-eyed stranger into your home on a feast day, or would you make him stand out on the porch while you ate, warm and comfortable, inside?
Even Rob, with his ultra-paranoia and xenophobia, knows you don't make a one-eyed man stand on the porch while you eat. The laws of hospitality still hold true, even if we don't remember them. I asked Rob, too, if he'd make a one-eyed stranger stand out in the cold, and he hemmed & hawed, and I could tell he wanted to say no, which was what he expected me to expect him to say, but he knew it wasn't right - and he knew Who would be ffended.
Can anyone lend me some fire? Mine seems to have gone out.
