the golden light stole her attention, as per halted her forward motion, as per the Sun’s set would be the first without Her, earthside she took some photos, as per,
/but also, to remember that very first one/
she then acknowledged that the Sun, Moon and Stars herald no one’s birth, announce no one’s death and perhaps that’s why the Star of Bethlehem and a midday eclipse
the first night, the long night the first sleep sobbing or wailing into oblivion eyes forced shut by swollen lids eventually the mammalian body succumbs to the exhaustion from the metabolic expenditure of emotional agony and adrenaline
the next morning the first sweet seconds of confusion of time and place as the tender light or familiar sounds of daybreak breach the senses a suspension of forgetting the devastation of yesterday
those must be the most ephemeral moments in human consciousness
then a stirring a shifting in bed to adjust position breaks the magic of sleep
the anvil of non-specific grief returns to the chest the coils of hopelessness entwine the limbs
was in the late afternoon of the 18th of September the Year of Our Hearts, 2023
that same evening She would spend the last night together alone with her only child, her son, in Their house on Adams Street
he had already stopped at Chik-fil-A – or Quesabroso? for his dinner
he, sixteen forever, for Her, not even licensed for a year yet
She thought, then said aloud to him
“pasta. i want some pasta.”
and so She very slowly set about
choosing saucepans, boiling water, sautéing a little ground beef with a bit of diced onion, and minced garlic from a giant container from Costco, adding in a half jar of Rao’s Original, some dried herbs — nothing too spicy or fancy now, cooking her favorite gluten-free rigatoni,
or was it penne, mostaccioli?
She ate, rinsed the pots, loaded and ran the dishwasher, put the combined leftovers in her fridge
and at dinner time the very next day,
She told her oldest and dearest friend about it
her friend listened, and watched Her plate, reheat, and sit down to eat those leftovers — She wanting to do all that for Herself, still
She taking the smallest and most intentional bites possible,
every delicate swallow and cough amplified in the too-big-for-two, unusually quiet house, the parade of Her friends and visitors gone until tomorrow
“i’m not supposed to drink with these meds, but lemme have just one lil’ sip of your wine”
In this piece, which is an interpretation of one of many universal myths which impart the water crossing and trek we all are to embark upon after death,
most of the departed climb up the steep, barren embankment and enter the tunnel individually, while a child and a dog are tenderly escorted — led by the hand or carried by chthonic monks into the tunnel leading to the
Underworld
the tunnel appears under geological strata — presumably the surface of Earth, with blue sky and forest in background above it
interestingly, the artist’s limited use of perspective also allows the sky and forest to be viewed potentially as the Great Beyond itself — as a Northern or Alpine “paradise,” a Valhalla, beyond the sojourn in and through the tunnel
a high, solid, wooden fencebisects the river, embankment and tunnel and prevents arrivals from observing the exiting monks — only one-way vision and traffic for the dead
and while the monks do not cast shadows, the human figures continue to be accompanied by their shadows; for those who subscribe to Jungian analytical psychology or gnostic texts, the physical shadow depicted may be interpreted symbolically as the anima/animus of the person — which would ultimately disappear during the tunnel upon the full reintegration of the Self/Soul/Spirit
through re-unification with one’s divine twin (which is sometimes also called the cosmic/celestial twin or daimon) after having been separated during human incarnation and birth.
author’s note:
i often and prefer to call the underworld aka afterlife “The Great Wide Open of the All” — which in my liminal gleanings is a supremely contented blackness of universal consciousness, devoid of thought or sensation — a perfected existence in the dark cosmic fabric of nothingness,
there may be levels in the afterlife which may manifest our own personal imaginal constructs of paradise — far beyond what our limited sensory perception and experiences of life on Earth are - such as, an Alpine Paradise upon emerging from the tunnel -
i know full well the breathtaking beauty and feeling upon exiting a scary and lengthy mountain tunnel where my heart and eyes are stunned by a grand vista of forest, peaks and sky — from my many road trips in the Western U.S.
yet, i truly prefer the former — when i die, i want to rest for all eternity — although with just one desire, one sensation: warmth.
she sips a glass of wine and admits, agrees she too, doesn’t want to be
on this prison planet under these archons, guided and insulated by sadistic angels, both, in servitude to the demiurge
no escaping it, Them
even in Bucolia
she’s still plagued by the 24-hour news cycle, contemplation that often veers off into nihilism,
and, by bouts of suicidal ideation — but to go back around, back to another false birth in this Samsara, to start over? — no thanks //
perhaps crying in the wilderness, then.
where is that, exactly? the mountains, buttes and canyons also betray us — those ancient Watchers, the petroglyphs warned us of — and of shapeshifters cloaked in feathers, fur and scales ///
she knows she can’t save her Self, preserve her Pneuma and reunite with her Daimon, solely with an Earth-based practice of resistance
and, so begins the invocation, the genesis of her mission,
she supposes the element of surprise may be compromised by Their so-called omniscience
but who knows – what They actually know
even gods have blindspots even gods sleep and fuck — or mindlessly scroll and binge
we, Their creation, create Their content, after all
yes.
she will go to Them
traversing the liminal terrain
to find and kill Them in their confident repose in the Kenoma
i entered the following directive and multiple variations of that general concept into the photo/art application that i subscribe to:
A carnival at night featuring a Ferris Wheel with a sign reading "Ouroboros" and a roller coaster with a sign reading “Life" - with fortune teller / psychic booth in foreground
ai has trouble with words, specific compositional and artistic directives – although its rogue mashups are sometimes weirdly gorgeous
i’ll need to commission an artist in order to get closer to the carnival scene i’ve experienced in my liminal imagination and that has been living and lodged there for more than a decade
you think: if I just bury the bitch one day she may raise up again //
haunt not your nightmares, but surface in your dreams and worse, his
instead, you two dismember her together on your walks at your coffee table in your marital bed // until she’s dead
you cremate her in your pristine oven collect her charred bones, grind them to ash with your mortar and pestle from Sur La Table dissolve a spoonful into your wine in secret, and drink it the rest, you feed to your lilacs //
you think: she’ll never again be whole //
yet, her linger slowly poisons you and your home
and, she waits
like Isis
to collect her relics that you thought you could transmute and possess
her essence migrating into the strands of your wiry, brittle hair
and into the fragrant beautiful blooms and heart-shaped leaves just outside your door, that school children are so tempted to pluck
one night, as you sleep,
she clips and carries them off — clumps and bouquet — in a pouch fashioned from your favorite silk dress — made from the bodies of one thousand worms — to break the curse
while his phallus pulses crimson, like a beacon, erect and dripping with life from his dreams of her
as he sleeps,
she spits in his open, parched mouth before she soars out
leaves him with an eternal, wet, delicious taste of her
"[S]he said that a [hu]man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that [s]he wished [s]he lived in a desolate place like this where [s]he could see the [S]un go down every evening like [the] [g]od[head] made it to do."
~ Flannery O’Connor
Deer and Bird and Frog People in the Limineen of light and dark as witnessed in The Great Lakes of the North american continent April 11, 2023
noun: the time and space of the thresholds; attendance to or presence in, the in- betweens, the interregnum — of becoming and nonbecoming; of beingness and nothingness; of the material and ethereal; of sacredness and profanity; of love and hate; of calm and rage; of the authentic and the engineered; of inertia and energy.
limineen is both mood and State of this author, an Earthling, human, woman and entity, who finds her self present within and attendant to the thresholds of the corporeal, incorporeal and surreal.
from liminal / lim·i·nal /ˈlimənəl/ adjective
occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.
relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 