Self-sacrifice

Oesterdikhoff, Georg W. “Ancient Sun Cults: Understanding Religious Rites and Developmental Psychology.” The Mankind Quarterly: vol. XLVIII, no. 1. 2007. 105.

“According to the worldview of the Aztecs, the first four ages had been destroyed due to the disappearance of the first suns that ruled the cosmos. The starting of the fifth age depends on the creation of a new sun, a work that had to be done by the gods. The gods must be killed as sacrifices for the sun. The killed gods transform themselves into the sun, which means her body consists of their dead corpses…The stability and durance of the fifth age depends on the delivery of an endless row of gods who must be sacrificed to the sun. The Aztecs used the prisoners of numerous wars, called them gods and slaughtered them in order to continuously bring energy to the sun. The smoke of the burnt hearts and blood of the human sacrifices climbed to the sky and nourished the hungry sun….the sun cult is, then, a factory that provides the energy for the sun and the entire cosmos….In the world view of such people there exists a mystical participation between blood and sun: same colour, same substance. While the heart is the motor of the microcosm, the sun is the corresponding motor of the macrocosm. And the microcosm is the motor of the macrocosm. The heart is the motor of the human body as the sun is the motor of the cosmos.”

Wesley vacuums for my sanity while my brain continues to fry over unfinished ideas.

The gods sacrifice themselves so that the people can continue living. The people sacrifice of themselves so that the gods can have nourishment and continue to give light and life to their daily existence. The heart is required: not only the pulsing, bloodied organ, but the symbolic one--the direction giver. What belief (religious or otherwise) does not require sacrifice? Sacrifice is given for the continuation, or quality of something greater than ourselves. Often these come in abstract forms--salvation, truth, life. But not always.

I'm thinking about Hannah's sacrifice of Samuel and how I've never seen its parallel to Abraham and Isaac. How did I miss that for over two decades? Inevitably, considering Hannah makes me wonder if I would be willing to sacrifice my little growing son to God, to the temple, as soon as he is weaned. I want to say yes, yes I would but with every movement of Charles I remember how selfish and proud I am. I want to keep him and hoard him to myself even though he has a life of his own, decisions of his own. I have sacrificed my body to this baby so willingly; I continue to sacrifice my body for him. And when he is born I will literally give my blood and flesh for his survival. I give sacrifice of myself so that he can exist--and I would do it over and over and over.

I can sacrifice myself, but my boy? My son? I don't think I could make that choice. Even if he was willing. I hope that my son grows up dedicated to God, willing to give all of himself. I pray that I will teach him to cling to his Father and say, "Speak, Lord--" even in the darkest moments...I ache already at the possibility that he will not recognize God's voice. But his life is a sacrifice I cannot give.

Which makes the atonement all the more miraculously confusing. How did They do it? Father and Son? And Christ is our continual Sun: the light, the life, the sacrifice so that we might daily live. Does he question if it was worth it? Probably not since He's perfect and loves us and can see the entire plan. Despite my claims, I do not sacrifice. I give nothing, even when asked for a contrite heart. I whimper. I clamor for more warmth. Then the sun lifts and falls, like weeping shoulders, and something in me remembers that my life was allowed because of so much flesh and blood.

February Morning

After James Wright

The dream of spring drapes the Wasatch Front; even the fault lines quiver—questioning their own obviousness contrasted against frozen seeds. No green peeks or hovers: that color beyond the dream, that color of stems and new leaves and scattered laughter. Her baby darts unseen as a fish under the dark ocean. Her baby does not know to dream spring. She tries to hold him—still—but within her he is beyond reach. He whispers that he is more than an idea, draping himself over her faults (so obvious) this thawed green seed.

Light

"The search for lightness is a reaction to the weight of living." --"Lightness" Calvino

We search for lightness, the sun, as a reaction to gravity--our own sense of weight. This would explain why I am so often clunky, over-aware of my heaviness, sink-ability. When I say I'm a "floater" it's a lie (not intentional, just not one I think about, usually).

One of my favorite phrases is "light weight." A jacket is light weight, the wrestler is light (lite) weight, the essay should be light weight--lingering like sunshine, remaining like necessary warmth, pinning you by the shoulders in a surprisingly powerful way. Light weight can also suggest a smallness (a marble, perhaps), but the word "weight" is steely, heavy even for a tiny sphere. Like "heft"--when I say the word I almost feel an obligatory grunt coming on with it.

I'd like my writing to be light weight: accessible but not excusable--not something easily ignored or forgotten. Perhaps I desire this because I want my life to be that way.

The Reversal of History (?)

The cliche states that history repeats itself, so beware. Learn history so you don't have to relive it; not so according to Baudrillard--and I tend to trust him more than the cliche if only because he opens up his thought process to others (not that I would come close to calling him "transparent"). The theorist analyzes the reversal of history as a circle that humans rarely veer away from. History swings back onto itself even as we recreate the past. History is an appropriation and reappropriation of story: there is no history, only infinite personal histories compiled and edited by specific people who may or may not have a particular agenda (Hitler, for example. Or even American history text books--was the Civil War really about slavery in that narrative? Not really). Instead of focusing on the individual exigencies, history demands that it is a general History with athority, parsing down centuries into an endless series of battles, treaties, rebellions, a few plagues, an increasing smattering of inventions. I don't think people really want to move on from history; we enjoy repeating it, we savor the idea that it bears our fingerprints along with the preserved smudges of the past.

If, as Baudrillard proposes, history inevitably curves into itself (there is no past, there is no future--for it is the same as the past--the present is a continual, misunderstood now) we must assert more weight and pressure on this moment--if only to slightly broaden the spaciality of our story, perhaps to create a new line. Sure, history may repeat itself, but we should recreate it in order to form a present. A few days ago I reread Paul Grainge's essay "Theorizing Nostalgia Isn't What it Used to Be"--which will always connect in my mind to Baudrillards "Simulacra and Simulations." Grainge asserts that "memory is now a matter of conscious construction and preservation, rather than instinctive and impromptu feeling; it is artificially hyper-realized in response to our basic estrangement from the past." Nostalgia begins now to create history, nostalgia re-views history, nostalgia reinterprets reality until the realtiy may no longer be essential to the story we follow.

Tie this into Jacques Derrida, whose ideas about the archive have altered the way I perceive life: in literal terms the archive is the place/building where historical and necessary documents are preserved--right? (Think: Declaration of Independence, guarded, in glass, yet displayed as a public symbol). The archons are those who protect and understand the documents in the archive; they are the interpreters (The Supreme Court members serve as the archons of the Constitution). As a direct result of their duties, the archons hold immense power. (Think the Bible or Mass only in Latin--who interprets? Who understands? Translation allows individuals to become their own archons and determine how certain documents will shape who they become.) The archive is a "commencement"--a reference, new ground, a compass--and at the same time a "commandment"--a compass that determines the course of histories, both general and particular--as long as that archive is accepted.

Sidenote on archives: Poetry was the long-established literature--psalms, Homer, Greek plays, sonnets, the works. Poetry formed the archive. Poets were both the creators and interpretors, or the primary archons. In recent generations, poetry has lost some of its power because (in part) people are intimidated by it. They don't believe that they have the ability to interpret it for themselves anymore. Even English major step aside from poetry and often avoid analyzing it. This may be in part due to scholars like T.S. Eliot (an Archon with a capital A) who tried to reclaim the poetry archive in such a way that people no longer desired to turn to the archive. They submitted their sense of direction to it. They stopped caring (to an extend). What a shame. The poetry archive still exists, but is avoided because of its potential hazards. One of my life goals is to invite people into this archive again, to show them that they do own a part of it--whether they are archons or not. (Hence, the battle over Billy Collins: is he dumbing down the poetic archive so that more will enter? Or is he making poetry more accessible so that people can appreciate the treasures stored there?)

All of this can also connect Michel de Certeau's thought that stories create space. More than place a space is like a verb, an interplay of relationships and actions, stories create the reality surrounding the stabilized/static place (such as immoveable walls). Spaces require stories in order to exist (another reason why poetry and literature are essential to the existence and continuance of humanity). More concisely than I can, he writes: "Stories thus carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into places. They also organize the play of changing relationships between places and spaces."

Stories become histories, histories demand literature, people turn to the archive which may or may not be the actual reality--but we need that guiding symbol in order to form our present, to increase our influence, and reverse history in teh direction that we desire or believe. Mortality, then, claims a larger ethical responsibility than I am always perpared to admit.

Literary Lineage

"We like to know the lineage of ideas" --"On the Writing of Essays" Alexander Smith

My friend states that her literary parents are Viriginia Woolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Montaigne might be her grandfather. I'm not exactly sure where he fits in. As far as training goes, I am from the line of Seneca (lost his stoicism: alas) and from Senenca to Montaigne (As from Adam we skip to Abraham) and from Montaigne to Philip Lopate (a much larger leap into modernity) who fathered David Lazar, who raised Patrick Madden, who adopted me. I am a conglomeration of tradition, upheld by poetry, tutored by fiction, guarded by theory, entitled (however much) by the essay. In reality, I am the hybrid genre, the human soul, the release. I realized last week that my "project" is one of combination. I cannot choose between genres because I love them too much, yet because I do not wholly belong to any of them I cannot specialize. I must be my own form. (This is probably true for every creation and creator--so disjointed and yet connected).

This epiphany following a conversation that ranged from Zizek to Carl Dennis to categories of literary shape to constructs of faith. If we learn the rules in order to best break them, do we also honor tradition so that we can best re-form them?

David Lazar, an essayist

"But if essays are works of "reading" they are also works "wrought," a thinking that occurs through the material fabrication of language, a work and a working in language, not simply a working through intellectually or emotionally--language not as a summary of findings but as the inventor of findings" --"Occasional Desire: On the essay and the Memoir" David Lazar

I always wonder if I'm completely honest in the claim that I am a writer. It sounds so presumptuous, so sure of itself, so hopeful...and quixotic. I essay on the page, grappling with language in an attempt to form art. In form, essays invite conversation. They include the reader in an adventure of questions and discovery. Reading an essay is a process of experiencing the work; an essay cannot happen with the writer alone. An essay requires a reader in order to live. Quality art is not a representation, it is. It is an object and experience to itself. Therefore, in order for an essay to succeed it must wave the reader into the flow of an inquiring mind and encourage tangentials from the writer and the reader (hence the habitual parentheticals that scatter across essays like spilled milk. You can always smell them after a few days, lingering on your mind like a pleasantly sour stain). An essay challenges ideas, but it also challenges language--pushing possibility and potential. It cannot be a summary of answers, a confessional narrative, an anecdote on its own--an essay must be a new experience every time. It is both the inventor and the invented. Because essays are art, they must be wrougth (and wrought carefully), but they must be read in order for thought to be discovered.

Inspired by Natasha Tretheway

A few weeks ago I finished Native Guard--worth every bit of her Pulitzer Prize and then some. Read it, then talk to me about it. (I loved the entire book. Of special note are "Myth" which is written in two sections--the second the reverse of the first--and "Native Guard" the title poem written as journal entries from a Native Guard soldier [a palimpset] and the last line of each section becomes the first of the next). I read some of Tretheway's work to Wesley and to my class. Everyone could use more poetry in their lives, and more people with whom to discuss poetry.

Each poem expanded on those around it; the collection, then, wasn't just compiled work but an argument, a cause. Unabashedly she addresses tradition, theory, history, arrangement memory. Using "Theories of Time and Space" as the prologue, each poem feels like a progression. I don't know how she does it. I need to learn.

As I work on my own collection of work, I worry that it will be a bound version of a worked-over compost pile. Who cares what wholeness is there if together it does not amount to anything? I use a quote from Charles Lamb to direct me in my discussion of "belonging," but is that what I am actually writing about? Or do I write the same piece in different shapes? (They may overlap at times, but this is one concern I must desert for my sanity.) I need to decide on a stronger guiding theory to guide this collection--and every other collection that follows.

War and Words

"And so the war had come down to words. It was fought now in terminology across a table. It was contested in sentences. Entrenchments and assaults, drum taps and bugle calls, marches, ambushes, burnings, and pitched battles were transmogrified into nouns and verbs....Language is war by other means." --The March E.L. Doctorow

The "War in Heaven" was first described to me as a war of words. I pictured a drawn-out argument between reasonable intellectuals and whiny dissenters. In my child's mind I imagined a fight similar to those I initiated with my siblings. Not quite.

Language translates our thoughts. It is an attempt to communicate who we are, our culture, our motivations and desires to others. Language (or the lack of it) determines what war will be. In the end, wars are mapped onto history by treaties, journals, and memories. The language preserves the war, the language finishes the war.

I guess that could mean that each conversation balances between war and reconciliation. Will we master language to attain understanding? Each word is a potential weapon or shield, each word an opportunity for peace. Has the world ever been at peace? I know it only in pieces. Perhaps countries and cultures will find a way to unite in language (not necessarily a shared one) through individual willingness to embrace the potential of terminology--to see a two-edged sword as something other than a tool for destruction.