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Towards a schizomythology of ritual (XI). Divastigations,
a small tri-monthly multilingual journal of arts, writing, philosophy, natural history, and sundry cultural stuff.
Divastigations
A small tri-monthly multilingual journal of arts, writing, philosophy,
natural history, and sundry cultural stuff.
Put out by Ouida Willoughby Johnson, Sub-Top Form, Tiliar Boarding School,
Tixpu, NL.
Nº 6 | Fall 1998
A Chanson in Two Idioms
by
Atoca Inhart
Lunch at Manowar Gingoons
With a lot of gusto, in dark tights of lilac silk, I slunk down
That duskward day through what you might call
Most luscious air — not so much was I in my own body.
What was that distant lotion stinging my bald crotch?
What hymn did buzz so lightly in my auricular organ?
What was that briny main’s surf crashing against my body?
Out of my own mind, I think, that saffron lotion stung,
And out of my own auricular organs that hymn did spring.
I was, in my own body, that briny main’s total compass:
I was walking to him in high significant fashion, and what I saw,
Or how I hurt, or whom I had just laid — I was still my own body,
And in my body I found my own curious truth, my own odd charm.
Almorxar al Palaxo di Manowar Gingoons
Kon muto kuxto, arravatta nix pantix aguxtatox ti pattola morata, bako
A do dxorno bagatto paxaddo di kwa d’ai ditto
Arya la max lumaka — ni kon tatto kuxto xto no mi korpo propyo.
Kwa xta d’olyo lokkano aghikaddo mi xorka kauba?
Kwa kanta xubbò tan libya nox mi òrganox d’oìdo?
Kwa xtan ox olax ti ta mar ki tokkan kontra mi korpo?
Di mana propya, pintxo, xta ka d’olyo amaliyo pikò,
I d’òrganox d’oìdo propix mix ta kanta xaltò.
Xto, no mi korpo propyo, toda la brùkula di ta mar:
“Xto, no mi korpo propyo, toda la brùkula di ta mar...” Atoca at Manowar Gingoons, Playtoy Bay, Owlstain, FZ. Photograph by Dado Udidi (Hamiltonian).
Kamiddo a lui na una faxòn motx alta, motx xiñivikata, y kwa vo,
O komo dolo, o ki akkabo di katar — todabìa xto mi korpo propyo,
I no mi korpo trobo a pura kuryoxità, a kattarìa xtrana propya mìa.
Ouida Chats with Atoca
Autoportrait No. 10. Charcoal and ink on muslin, by Ouida Willoughby Johnson.
Ouida: Such a curious canzo! First off, Atoca, may I ask you, What is “Manowar Gingoons”?
Atoca: Manowar Gingoons was a Tagma sailor and savant idiot grown rich from trans-arathu trading in various things, you know what I’m saying? who built a gigantic casa, a sort of Locus Solus, at Playtoy Bay — dit Playa Toya, you know, avant la war — in Owlstain, Flouziana, in I don’t know which anno mirabilis, Ouida. Following his disparition, Gingoons’s family laid plans for his castillo’s total transformation from library and laboratory into a sunny coastal vacation spot, a fabulous Gasthaus including casino, ballroom, lunching patio, dining hall, lupanar, and a glorious solarium looking duskward toward our own mountainous land across yon Arathu you simply must glom a snatch of, Ouida! Now that Owlstain’s public transportation authority has built a stop in its vicinity, Manowar Gingoons is not so solo a logar as it was! I think my distant lotion, my olyo lokkano, puts all that notion, all that history and location, into a singular — and individual — conchoid glyph, don’t you think, Ouida?
Ouida: A sort of summary of all your fair parts, no doubt, Atoca. Did you jot it in Appalachian, your song, or in Tixputo first? Was translation —
Atoca: No, Ouida, I think in both idioms without strain — translation qua translation was not a part of it at all, at all. Though in truth, I thought of scribbling my chanson with both hands at a singular swoop, as both idioms sung concomitantly in my brain, I put down a stanza in Appalachian, and a stanza and a half in Tixputo, and so on until I laid my writing tool down atop our lunch tablón. Both constructions flash a slight variant as to luminosity and signification. Ductility is not lacking, Ouida, nor, do I think, is lucidity.
Ouida: Right. Atoca, could you supply us with a quick background as to your lyric’s inspiration and — though I’m loath to ask it — what it’s, in a word, about?
Atoca: I had just put out for a cabrón or two in Gingoons’s top-floor lupanar, Ouida, glomming fast cash so that my polololito, Dado, waiting a tavola downstairs, would not, dit-on, hang us both by, as is his wont, copping but a poor tip to our patron post-lunch. My tight young cooch was raw, my thighs a bit shaky, my brain a-buzz from all that vigorous plural ravishing in which my soul, in a way, was still wading, still wallowing, still splashing and frolicking, and, oh, virgin Ishtar, holy star Io, was I hungry! But you know what? By that stairway’s bottom rung my charming body was glowing and tingling as if from an inborn frisson of song and I was as strong as any convivially conniving lusty looks any old goon could wink my way. Truth is, I could fuck anybody, in any position, taking it up, down, in, and around any of my body’s most privy parts and still want to do it again and again and again, Ouida! As long as I’m paid for it, that is, and paid lavishly.
Ouida: Gotcha. And how was lunch?
Atoca: Totally fabulous, Ouida, totally fucking fabulous. Oxtail soup con haricots amarillos; pulpo rôti à la Akbar Nod; bison loin with saucisson d’agouti, palm shoots, and wild mushrooms (funghi di bosco); il palazzo’s own brand of Waldorf salad with spinach, radicchio, avocado, apricots, figs, and macadamia nuts; banana flan clinging to a thin crust of cinnamon, raisins, and masa; a clit-sizzling magnum of Cliquot to wash it all down.
Full-Frontal Matriarch (1984, B/W and Color, 26’). A film by Ada Kidjaki. Now showing as A Tara T Dirty™ at Glamporium, in Owlstain, FZ, as part of Tara T’s Sighs and Symptoms: Pataphysical Roots of Sociophysiological Filmmaking. Original placard and birthworks by Ada Kidjaki.
This graphic scantling of what its author dubs “Imagistic Birthworks” shows a turgid vagina flaring to admit a child from womb to world. As that child crowns out into a coaxing, cajoling hand waiting to catch it, our
Full-Frontal Matriarch, squatting, moans, not from pain — or not only — but from a profound joy auxiliary to soft digit-points stroking and rubbing in smooth circular motions a prototypical clitoris. Guttural warblings and throaty ululations accompany various pans, cuts, and tracking shots to and from and along thighs and stomach slick with birthwork; milk-bursting bosoms and lust-slit orbits; a furry orchid’s blossoming corolla; a syrup-loving fly’s viscid palpations. Of such rhythmic dilations and contractions, spasms as if waking from passion into odium — a spiral harmony of matrix and font striving in mutualistic concord to attain a common goal — you cannot distinguish which obtains from parturition, and which, from orgasm. Two final convulsions rack that bloody portal, spitting forth, knot by drooling knot, an umbilical rosary, a chorionic root — and with such sighs and symptoms as bind human to worm still trailing, this caul-child (Succubus, you ask, or incubus? — but this film that shows so much will not, alas, show this) of turbid skin and puffy lids curls within pious, cradling arms and works its pouty lips to drink down primordial succor, looking, for all of that, as guilty as a rapist, as complicit as a pimp. Which is possibly why, at this film’s first showing, in back of a Tixpu bar, a faction from our city — our city notorious for allowing just about anything! — put this film loudly down as immoral and pornographic, so loudly, in fact, as to push a mob (among whom you might, if using a magnifying glass, spot Rick and Djuma Kidjaki, Ada’s dual douloi who, though spurning our star’s ruddy rubra, did not shirk assiduous mammary duty so as to kick start oxytocin-induction of yummy milk flow) toward lynching and burning its author. That is, our
Full-Frontal Matriarch. In addition, this film’s offspring, a child alors of two or four or six, was thrown into Tixpu’s infamous sacrificial pit — not without first, though, having its unwilling stomata thrust into and almost totally burst by our
Film still from Ada Kidjaki’s Full-Frontal Matriarch.
city’s most upstanding patriarchs. How do I know? I was that child. I was that child brought into this world through a woman’s crying and coming, and crying and coming into this world I brought that woman such joy. I fail to fathom why any critic could dub this lovingly wrought sociophysiological study of birth, “dirty.” Actually, I don’t. First, as I just said, our city is notorious for allowing just about anything, including author-lynching and -burning, and sacrificial child-violation and -tossing into pits without bottom. Concomitantly, as I fully admit, I was guilty, I was complicit. But what, you ask, is wrong with a woman’s joy? As a hand-out from our city’s No Joy During Birth (NJDB) faction proclaims, “A woman who has an orgasm during parturition is fornicating with a child, is committing a brutal, unnatural, animalistic act that blights our familial and social fabric at its most basic foundation. To put a stop to such a possibility from occurring during birth, NJDB doctors will conduct full clitoral ablation (FCA) on any woman who wants to follow a virtuous path of natural, moral humanity.” And what about joy during nursing? NJDB again: “What cannot last is unnatural and unvirtuous. As joy is always passing, joy cannot last, and so is not natural, is not virtuous. Only pain lasts. It follows, thus, that a natural, virtuous, lasting bond uniting lactating woman and nursing child can occur only through, from, and with pain. As it is known that milk-flow stimulation has a possibly unnatural sub-abdominal corollary involving oxytocin and such, FCA will short-circuit this risk of pushing child and woman apart, so maintaining natural family and social unity, and a virtuous, moral humanity.” So much is at play in this conflict of polar antagonists! And though many a timorous soul would shy away from it, no impartial schizomythologist can afford to slight it. At point A squats our
Full-Frontal Matriarch — by turns disgusting, vulgar, salacious, but always intriguingly titillating, vastly informational, and unflinchingly poignant — in a display of vagino-clitoral function during childbirth, of how masturbation not only assists, but is primordially part of, parturition. At point Z — masking body and mind in sallow shawls of spurious salvation, in haggard cowls and hollow habits of hortatory hymns and psalms — stands our city’s NJDB faction, handing out fantastical, fanatical squibs and various vicious propaganda promoting, advocating, and trying to justify “virtuous” pain and most drastic surgical mutilation of womaninity. Truly a rich stratum subducts from A to Z — grab your picks, schizomythologists, and start digging!
— OWJ
Lamb in Moonlight. Charcoal and ink on muslin, by Ouida Willoughby Johnson.
Wan Light
23 Shards of a Short Story
by
Sagarch Flawndol
1.
Daily. Hiding is not an option. Don’t know at what rhythmic fold of waking. But it’s
bound to occur. Occurs daily. A kick to your ribs. A rodilla in your groin. Fist to skull.
Split lips. Black occhii. Various abrasions, cuts, and contusions mark your skin. Various
wounds too profound for common vision. But rising up today or tomorrow. Who can say
to what fathoms within your body pain will sink and stay dormant. A rotting wound of
boiling rapid profound within that icy brook’s corazón. Waiting to rip snow-bound skin
apart upon first glom of rancid sun. Who can say at what rhythmic fold of waking. Or
how.
2.
Blood slips from your nostrils. Down your throat’s back. Daily without fail. You put that
first foot out your shack’s front door. On your way to any sort of location. To a bus stop.
Or possibly your job. You thought that trying to vary your daily map of coming and
going would limit that pain, but to no avail. Brutality still found you. Following, tracking,
hunting, running you down. So now you don’t try to avoid it. Along that soft bosky trail
full of roots and dry crackling husks you pick your way. As a sharp ax falls swiftly
without sound to split your skull’s back, brutality is upon you. Fist to jaw. Iron boot tip to
ocular orbit. How much pain, how long it will last, and how profound your wounds, vary
from day to day. But always its tight small rump trots off with you writhing and moaning
in bloody mud. Blind with pain. Aphasic with ruddy ruth. Lacking capacity to fix any
sound’s location but that of this dark fistulosity boiling constantly past you as you fall.
3.
Without sound of footfalls, chancing upon him, a girl. Walking this rocky muddy road
without sound of footfalls, full moon shining. Possibly sound of boots scraping slightly,
crunching slightly, sand. That’s all. And a bit of wind, softly, softly, through spring’s
cold hard buds and blossoms. For about thirty clicks of a wind-up watch, through harsh
rasping gasps of anguish, fading, fading, that girl was walking. Thinking, Did that
actually occur an hour ago? Did I walk all of that off by now? I forgot what I was
walking away from. No. That full moon’s harsh lamplight cast, crackling moonlight
casting crackling shadows. Shadows of an hour ago not so crackling, but soft in
comparison to this, my shadow, now.
4.
Good thing that bastard didn’t try to follow. I wouldn’t know what to do about that. That
is what I’m most afraid of. Don’t follow, goddamn you, you bastard, don’t follow, I
thought, frantic and supplicating. Thank god that bastard didn’t follow.
5.
Without sound of footfalls, chancing upon him, a girl. Following a good half of a half
hour of aphasic shock; ditto for running crazily full of anguish, dry midnight throatburning
air; a good half hour of moonlit walking along this road of rock, mud, and sand,
slightly scraping, occasionally crunching. Fix that sound, glom a snatch of staring. A
body, gray in moonlight, now many, body and body and body, all gray, calmly standing
against this moonlit world’s gray horizon. Away from that ovid fold a bit, solitary against
that gray sky, a solitary lamb. With a start now that rising atop it a tall human body.
Stopping still, abrupt, along this mortal track. Still this pounding corazón and without
sound of footfalls, to back up into this willow’s shadow. But it’s him. Knowing his curly
hair, his thin slouching body. It’s him! Four joyous strutting, almost jumping, footfalls along this road of rock, mud, and sand, scraping boot bottoms, crunching, only to stop
still and abrupt along this mortal track. What’s that boy doing? But knowing what that
boy’s doing is plain for any to glom. Pray that his lusty occupation, his own pounding
corazón and braying moans, put a wall around his ability to fix sound. Without sound of
footfalls, to back up into this willow’s shadow. Stoop down in shadow to watch him in
amazing disgust. To call back a rumor that such actually did occur, but to actually watch
it going on, now, without any gaps in vision or thought, without wanting imagination to
fill in rumor’s blanks: this is what it is to watch a man fucking a lamb. Him down on his
rodillas, shirt off, brown corduroys and front-slit boy’s shorts down around his thighs,
arms and hands pulling forward to grasp ovid limbs, burying his smooth bosom in oily
wool. Pumping away at it. Lamb braying, his own braying moans harsh and choppy with
his coming.
6.
Watching him finish. Lamb trots off to go back to fold. Couching his body down now,
first along his right ribs, and roll onto his back. To look at stars and moon with
satisfaction, or to call back that lamb’s vagina with cringing ruth. Crying. Or joyous.
Standing slowly to pull, first his boxing shorts, and now his corduroy pants, back up,
back up. Stooping now to find his plaid shirt, looking, finding it, putting it on, slouching
as always, possibly a bit too much, button by button strapping it around his body. Got it
wrong at first, unbuttoning now and starting again, huffing slightly, and now, finishing, to
watch him walk back along this road of mud, rock, and sand, slightly scraping, slightly
crunching, or slipping on a slick crown of mud, his tall gray thin slouching body moving
off back toward town slowly fading until nothing but this willow’s shadow, this
lambfold, and no sound of footfalls scraping or crunching along mud, rock, and sand.
7.
Thinking, That boy’s a lamb-fornicator. Tomorrow I’ll go lunch with him at Manowar
Gingoons and I’ll lack any ability to look at him sans thinking, I saw you fucking a lamb
last night. I saw you fuck that lamb. Lamb-fornicator, fornicator with lambs, fornicator of
lambs. Why? What awful abyss of pain lurks within you? Lurks within all of us?
8.
Its vagina. Glossy wan lips sluicing down and slightly forward from its tight dark anus.
Short tail lifts to show, sinks to block from sight. That’s what I lust for most of all. Lift
and sink, show and block from sight, pumping blood into its labia until coruscatingly full
and shiny. Woolly stomach curving away amid gray gigots. Its many black tits dangling
down. My own body shaking as I watch that soft animal walk. Haunch and haunch of
ivory trim grayly down to finish in tight black wool at its hocks. Swoop of thorax back
from cou along ribs till soft stomach and its many black tits soft so soft dangling moistly
down. My own body shaking to watch it walk. Almost as good, almost as good. But as
that tail lifts to show, sinks to block from sight, that’s what I lust for most of all. Flaring
as a cyclopic giant’s solitary orbit would, that vagina. Waking gummy from dormition.
Contracts. Flaring again now. A skulking cloak of muscular contraction pumps out
strongly a thick flow of spicy piss. That’s what I lust for most of all.
9.
Lay down again this tool of writing, this haggard nib. Clinch lids tight against that acrid
fulmination. Wind boiling about your auricular organs. Coming back, coming back again,
all of it. Why must it want you just as you thought you had lost it all, put it all out of mind? Why can’t you find a way to say it sharp, without falling into phrasal languor?
Clutch graphomanic claw atop this writing block. Can’t unclutch it.
10.
At a particular gap dividing boy from girl, both shun to look. As if striving for any
possibility of sanctuary, any way to stay unhurt by what girl knows of boy, by what boy
would wish to stay unknown. Spanning that gap now and both must look. To look away
now could only signify incivility. But both want to look away. But both want to look
toward. Looks catch. Shyly smiling girl says, “Hi, Sagarch.” Shyly smiling boy says,
“Hola, Kali.” Passing by, passing by. What did girl want to say? What did boy want to
say? If only boy could say it. If only I could jot it down. But what is this compulsion to
jot it all down, to say it?
11.
What did girl want to say to boy? Did girl want to say anything in particular to boy at all?
What did girl’s “Hi” signify? Did it imply anything past a simplistic civility? Was girl
mocking boy? What did boy want to say? What do I want to say now? What is this
compulsion to jot it all down? And what, this compulsion to say anything at all? Or to
stay mum for days and fortnights and months? To stay so mum that I don’t think any
pupil in any class could say if I was in class or not. But why say anything? Why must I
think in any particular idiom, in words at all? Can’t I think without words, know without
words, grasp a notion in its totality without having to map it out logically, rhythmically
and syllabically, syntactically and phrasally with a particular idiom or combination of
idioms? To transform a notion into words is to jar that notion far from its origin, to
smirch and twist its original form past any saving. To think without words: that is what
knowing truthfully is. Words and idioms can only distort. I will stay mum. What is
important is that which is not said, that toward which you cannot approach, but only skirt around slantingly, lacking any possibility to grasp and clutch it, to claw and crush it.
Words form a path to follow, a snaking path from a distant point to a distant point, far
from truth’s aphasic hub. Words do not, cannot, contain truth; any word is simply a
crinoidal knot in truth’s fur. To approach truth’s body, you must vary your articulation.
Say it, sí. But also jot it, play it, paint it, sculpt it, film it. Construct it with symbols and
signs, with avatars and artifacts. But also try to touch it, to run your hands across its crisp,
soft, oily fur. Oh, fuck it.
12.
Simply living will confront you with many goals. That myriad of goals you can attain far
outstrips that handful you cannot. But only this last is worth striving for.
13.
On that dumb horizon a fog bank clings to this alluvium’s bald clitoris. On a bosky
nimbus, on a snowy limina of grass and rock wall. A high dumb sky, a clinging mist low
along brook and willow. Moon, too, hanging low. Burnt half moon of this cold month’s
night, sallow snowdrift moon. Moon of sand and snow and burnt grass drifting against
this prolongation of a low rock wall that conducts to this alluvium’s bald clitoris.
14.
It is said that a rhythmic accounting of our works and days has commodity worth.
Worth’s foundation, thus, consists of constant flux and passing away, for what has most
worth as a commodity is what is most inconstant: a rhythmic accounting of our works
and days.
15.
So that’s it, alors. Bah ouais, Johnson was right: You start at that point on which you
stand and go backward, randomly picking apart that living carrion you call your own
body’s viaggio through spatial dynamics. It’s only an hour or so, a span of falling rhythm
wound into clock-ticks which you think of as moving forward; a constant juxtaposition of
this backward flow of calling back what was and that continual onslaught of hours and
days and months you strap to your wrist; rhythm bound to this crackling world’s prisonshadow;
your own body, rhythm’s capital convict lacking any possibility of pardon. Sí,
Johnson was right: this act of calling back to mind and trying to construct a sonata of
living out of your own vida’s rhythmic variations is an act fit only for burning.
16.
A calm night without sound of that howling north wind (though blowing all day long, it
finally put to port around dusk). A sky without cloud; luminous mist and starlightobscuring
moon. A shard of platinum sky high up: on this point I’m standing. Shaking
from cold, my body; cold thick lung-mist hangs in air, dissipating slowly; air vibrating
with a rhythmic calling back of so many cold moonlit nights such as this, nights in which
this thin lamplight cast of crackling moon-shadow sounds its dumb ostinato of howling
ghosts.
17.
Ostinato of howling ghosts: night’s oscillation: rhythm, thought, forms of mind in
vibration, a sounding out of thoughts floating, drifting across spatial dynamics of back
and forth, back and forth: this cosmic shadow crumbling: rubbing mounting moaning
against alluvium’s bald clitoris: rhythmic touch of smooth hands draws forth a cry of joy
and pain, a harmonic juxtaposition of cyclic lust: for birth, for growth, for crumbling
back into dirt and dust.
18.
An hour of living fit only for burning, commodification of that rhythmic accounting of
your works and days. What’s it worth for you to call back to mind again, to pick apart
randomly your body’s living carrion, that scat that marks your trail through mud and
bosk? Bury it without mourning. What is rotting will blossom only into wound, wind, and
buzzards. Without words I stand watching crackling wood burn.
19.
Curving round towards that plot of savannah, sand and mud and rocks crunching against
boot bottoms, ogling his way forward from friability of moon shadow along this road to
that rock wall and grass, a distant patch of willow and poplar against that brook-bank
horizon, and back now, vision contracting back across snow and brown stabbing grass
stalks snapping against his boot bottoms.
20.
Climbing across this rock wall now to walk across crunching stabbing stalks of grass
toward that far brook flooding in spring as that fold of lambs and rams and rams’ consorts
fulfills its pastoral rhythm crossing that span of rock and wood into lush viridian fruit of
past rain until towards autumn that grass burns brown and blond in sunlight and clicking
a rhythm of dust on up into or down from I forgot which occurs during which annual
span must look it up high mountain rock huts to and from savannah that fold clicks and
brays past barns and across brooks to fulfill its pastoral rhythm against that wintry
horizon’s cusp.
21.
It’s all coming back now, no, nothing is coming back. I cannot call anything back to
mind. I don’t want it coming back at all. All I can think is, “I don’t know anything,
Knowing anything is a total impossibility. Abandon it. This ill pitch of loving sham
contriving to fill this dull cavity with a bright hollow pain. No, not thinking at all, I know
this dumb gray humming that stays lost within my dark lusts, without form, without
rhythm, as of a dog barking in a shard of crackling moonlight that blinks out against
cloud and snow.”
22.
You walk across this plot of savannah, snow crunching against your boot bottoms. You
trip on a solid clump of snow-bound grass. You kick a chip of icy dung. Crashing against
your throat-grip hollow of what longs to stay unsaid, this choppy surf of calling back
unwillingly voids its rhythmic innards, wiping away words and longings and visions.
Walk on to that patch of poplar and willow atop brook bank’s rim. Wincing barbs of
falling snow, icy shards of cold rain, a slight bluff, mist, moonlight, a span of wood and
rock by which to cross a burbling brook. Crouch slightly and couch arms down along rail
and think. This road of rock and mud and sand conducts back to town, past barns, and
lambs, and rams, and rams’ consorts.
23.
Tomorrow I will board an Owlstain-bound yawl and go back to ISOCPHYS. Four days
of sailing, possibly six. Johnson and Kiko will wait in a bar in that city’s Old Port. During
lunch at Manowar Gingoons it will all start again, this annual rhythm of calling back that
day Kiko said your body was found at your old barn’s stairway’s foot and an autopsy had
said that it wasn’t that fall’s impact that took you from us but a blood clot in your brain.
Snow falling, boots crunching across icy stalks of grass, crouching slightly and couching my arms down along this rail to think, “Tomorrow I will board Djuma’s yawl and sail
back to Owlstain and go lunch with Kiko and Johnson at Manowar Gingoons and I will
call back that rainy dusk-bound day that spring I was walking around Owlstain solitary
and sad and I first saw you far down along a brook bank in a saffron skirt and in that wan
light I mistook you at first for a sulfurous marigold blossom or sphingid moth of gold
flitting about a mustard bush, but finally I put my bifocals back on and I saw you sticking
your hands and arms into thorns to pull luscious crimson and black bulbs of mora out to
put into a fold of your saffron skirt.”
—
Sagarch Flawndol is a visiting scholar from ISOCPHYS,
an Institution of Sociophysiological Study in Owlstain, FZ.
Fukari Rainbow Snail (Nimloidu nyctonostici Strick. var. spitmarkxius, 1845). Known also as “Tlaatlata’s Limaçon.” Common along rapid mountain rills in Wyoming and Flouziana. Shown in its sprightly, though dull, aparasitic nocturnal form. In autumn of 1843, H. A. Strickland saw an “abnormally sluggish and diurnal sport having bright rainbow colouration,” which was, in fact, an allomorph, acting “as if drunk from an unusually cumbrous lading of parasitic fungi” (actually, Oosdoli spp. of polar cnidosporidian protoctists). Illustration by Abra Chan.
My T is G for S but C A of M
A Hypochanson™
by
Cathy P. Monnósh
- Catholic Accounts of Myth. — I also do not find in any way alarming such sanguinary allusions, satanic arcana, scatological anagrams, and scabrous apocrypha as I was told by Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s silly but classy principal posing as a swank schizomythologist privy to all sorts of stodgy but cultural acquisitions, as I sat crossing and uncrossing my slim, squamous thighs.
- Charismatic Affirmations of Mysticism. — I was a smirking, scowling, cynical agnostic couching stagnant but critical assumptions of mortality until, at my scolding (or scalding) but catalytic (or causal) assignation of matriculation with Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s shamanistic but cool principal posing as a sly but colorful charlatan advocating soporific but compound acclamations of monism, I cast off all my simplistic but callous abstractions in a sobbing but cautious admission of mistrust and sought contrition through spiritual fondling and soulful giggling. As for his ticklish prodding of my snorting lungs, that did not hurt at all.
- Clinical Auscultations of Malignancy. — In particular, I’m taking of this bosom-clinging thing of bright, sporty cotton so that Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s sparing but chary principal posing as a spurious but civil oncologist, can try to spot anything wrong with my thyroid. A thorough diagnosis, I’m told, commands that my mustard skirt of slack but crisp, smooth but cushy muslin, must go too.
- Curious Appropriations of Matriarchy. — Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s strict but complaisant principal posing as a champion sociophysiologist, aims to root out sapphic but cyclical attributions of morosity toward which any young girl’s fancy may slant, to dig up any stupid but concomitant aspirations of monasticism as may obtain, and to bury again in a subconscious but congruous location symbolically far far away any succinct but contiguous acrostics of misanthropy as you or I might brandish in, say, a slam or burn book circulating almost somnambulistically throughout our school’s hallways, bath-, wash-, and classrooms.
- Climactic Applications of Masturbation. — On two chairs in front of him, Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s salivating but calm principal posing on all fours as a shady clinician with a vagino-clitoral avocation, I splay my stubby but concordant tibias, and on a third chair I sit to act out my slow, soft, solitary acrobatics of monomania.
- Chivalrous Ambassadors of Masochism. — Scantily but circumstantially clad, apropos of our sultry but comforting situation, in classic black dominatrix tack of slinky goatskin, iron chainmail, and platinum studs, I crisscross his stolid but carnal back with light, dancing flicks of my cat o’ six tails (a trio of that tool’s thorns got put paid by too vigorous a whipping not so long ago), or, with him, that is, Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s staid but cosmopolitan principal posing as a sociopathic satyr, slicing away at my slightly chubby and protruding sallow stomach skin with his faux armadillo claws and, stooping to sniff and kiss my sacrosanct blood, binding my snarling lynx body in shoddy constraints of alloy and liana so that, with my thymus pounding and his slavishly chanting cohorts watching avidly from our joyful agony’s margins, I am out and on him in a blink, pricking his crotch with my sharp raptor’s talons and with a sibilant squat I pin him, sink his chunky bodkin up to my nombril’s hilt, and, slumping hungrily atop my splotchy albino monarch, sloppily suck his chubby lips into my mouth as, moaning, my swarthy Adonis stays his loinfruits from wantonly spilling, and through that doorway to our passion his paranymphs knock skulls acoustically, scarify admiringly, croon accordingly... I could go on, but I won’t.
- Charming Avatars of Manhood. — I’m saying this not just about Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s schmaltzy but chummy principal posing as a supplicating but cordial companion of my hours, but about any man who will not snootily dismiss my opinions on art, music, and microscopy (my major), who will not snobbishly (Author, I’m running out of words!) complain about sharing my many albums of nostalgic photographs with — Arrggh! My molar hurts.
- Capacious Attractions of Masculinity. — So I told Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s skulking but capital principal posing as a slangy liar. My shaggy scruff is dripping, shiny, and squishy for all sorts of mammals, in fact. Your normal salts might think I’m shy and sluggish, but actually I am voraciously carnivorous, and mighty damn cognizant of my saucy charms, and this sluttish but chary playtoy’s gonna want to go down hard on just about any sailor that can hold his chin abov — Arrggh! That tooth again.
- Connubial Affairs of Mutuality. — According to Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s smug but commanding principal posing as a sagacious man-about-town, choosing to marry is not just customary but condign. Conjugality is not in any way confining or limiting to but a solitary pair, but is, in fact, admission into a spooky but convivial club, ubiquitous in its multiplicity, involving subsidiary but communal adjuncts of amorous modularity. In short, a solicitous but combinatoric supply of marital analogs, if you catch my drift!
- Crucial Acts of Magic. — So marry him I did! I am now Mrs. Dr. Avílano Bimkov, spousal consort of our school’s shifty but constant principal posing as a suspicious but candid author of marginalia about rainbows and gravity, waxing maxily on about lots of dicks and dicks’ crying v’s, as in, “That day, Vivian’s young vagina was vivaciously crying against Victor’s up-curving dick which was slowly figuring out how to stab through into what warm and moist rainbows of fun lay in wait for him around that g (for gravity or gravidity?) spot.” And though I’m sarcastically mourning two or four or six abortions — stiff but compact additions to our rapidly growing fictional family — Scandalous! Shocking! — I’m still, as our good pal Ouida says, “Constantly losing my virginity.”
- Conspicuous Apparitions of Mania. — As Mrs. Dr. Avílano Bimkov, our school’s shadowy but clairvoyant co-principal posing as a squinting but conniving top-bottom form pupil, I lurk about looking for signs of nymphomimicry and cryptosatyriasis and coax any boy or girl showing such symptoms to casually join our sprawling but circular abrogations of common morality in holy matrimony!
— Cathy P. Monnósh, top-bottom form, is now Mrs. Dr. Avílano Bimkov.
Strickland’s Macaw (Anodorhynchus latratus Strick., 1845). Known also as “Barking Parrot.” Found throughout coastal tracts of karst woodland and savanna of Wyoming and Flouziana, this garish aratingid with iris of gibbous mango, jowls of dashing hussar’s crimson, circular frontal top-knot of cyanic damson, wings of livid plum, body of chloral viridian, and tail of fulvous carnation, is an altitudinal migrant that commonly roosts in cliff hollows and lightning-struck hardwoods. In spring of 1847, naturalist Hugh Alvin Strickland (1811–1853) caught an instar of this garrulous nut-, fig-, palm-, and pawpaw-munching psittacid of our prolific bailiwick in what is now Port Astri Bay, Wyoming, and put its dry skin among mss. of his unsung work on Arathu natural history. Illustration by Abra Chan.
Autoportrait No. 11. Ink wash on cotton, by Ouida Willoughby Johnson.
What I’m Working On Now
A(n) (un)usual column of our tri-monthly in which Ouida (and occasionally Co.) pay(s) a visit
to a far-flung alumna or alumnus of our school to find out just what sorts of things
our (un)willing hosts still find worthy of pursuit.
Darling Ouida,
I found your parting oblation of plaid hair — or should I say houri? — ribbon (to that tan, burgundy, mango, and ivory band still cling(s) a strand or two of your lustrous, insouciant, indigo curls); artisanal potpourri of marigold, tansy, hyssop, and arbutus; charcoal and ink drawing of us riding wild stallions in Wyoming (or was it across Flouzianian foothills? Com’ una criatura mansa di sogno / Mio, mi corazón, tu fai dilatar / Todo lo spaccio dov’ i’ t’ ho bisogno); and fisty scrawl of squib wound into a scrap of your saffron skirt and thrust through my mailbox’s slot about two hours postcoïtum. As a viridian and ruby hummingbird will guard a hoard of lilac blossoms, alighting warily on a high branch and darting down now and again to ward off any froward wasp, moth, fritillary, or dull oppugnant colibri that strays into its vicinity, so too will I guard your gift. I’m writing this in that quaint Poldavian bistro in cour du Coq où nous avons fait l’amour aux [sic] WC and I’m gazing, now off toward that far wanton door, now down at this papaya Rhodia pad, and now I’m lifting your aromatic wrap up to my nostrils (and in my imagination, up to your chin) to sniff an abiding saffron artifact of our ardors past... Tony says you caught a tramp ship from Arcachon to Matagorda, from which shabby port you found a coast-hugging cargo train to carry you gratis back to Tixpu. Is that so? I’m so happy, Ouida, that you took Tony’s pitch and will, this autumn, sail off to Owlstain — that stangy city, I avouch, will not soon lack for my visits, nor will you moan for my lack (as you did avant your visit to Paris), but for what you and I both will affirm is much, much lack’s antinomy! As for your lunging inquiry, “Quant à ton travail, was machst du nun?” I will parry that as follows:
What I’m working on now, Ouida, is a polynodal articulation of my abiding faith in God’s myriad masks. A dynamic construction consisting of two pairs of duo–trio dyads (or two duos of dyad–triad pairs) pivoting about a fulcral singularity S (voir diagram), my faith’s articulation borrows scriptural (and scriptorial) inspiration from such absorbing works of spirit-craft as Arno Mayr’s limpid magnum opus, Toward a Psycho-biological Philosophy of Humanity’s Unchanging Soul; April March’s uplifting didascalicon, Sociospiritual Rough Drafts; Sigmund About’s oblational nonad, Au jardin du corps divin; and my own aunt Agatha G. Strickland’s gordonian (as in knot) study in goodsamaritanism, Promiscuous Paths Toward a Spiritual Romanticism. Aptly, I must humbly but proudly avow, I call my construction, Transfigurations of a Scholastic Rosary (TSR), as its swinging combination of tauto-vibratory jigs, jags, joints, and joists stand in for (fill up with) (attach to) (support and conduct) so many mixing and matching stations on faith’s always imbricating path toward a conscious, knowing, loving, and omnivorous spirituality. You may hang my TSR from a hook in your plafond, as I do from my study’s vault, and with just a light touch, put it spinning into action, thus (to pitch it slackly from a wall-slung hook might possibly amplify its catoptric functions, but will drastically curtail its dynamism):
At singularity S obtains my bacchic bark’s ballast, History-Making Words (HMW), a transfixing list of faith-inducing bons mots and koanic palabromas such as this catchy coconut of a rut-slogan you may savoir that your illustrious illustrator and quondam co-pupil Abra Chan was fond of crafting, to wit, “Today’s scrofulous Labrador bitch might howl infamously, but tomorrow’s pustulant lapdog will purr stridulously atop futurity’s pussy.”
At D1, a bobbling spring-and-ball motion as of a slow-flung bolo shows that my thumb-and-pinky duo (or dyad) of Variations on Faith’s Mountaintop (VFM) and Proposals and Corroborations (PC) inhabits robustly its two-fold slot in conjunct opposition to and with T1, my slothful bradyfustian trio (or triad) of A Compass in a Frog Pond (CFP), Vast Divagations of Divinity (VDD), and Marjoram and Galangal (MG). Shall I unball this fistful of rogational digits? I shall:
In VFM, I chub about* God’s volcanic upthrust of a snowclad rift — call it Kailash, Himavant, Ararat, Aconcagua, Spitmarkx, or whatnot — from which soul’s churning cauldron of hyoid- and larynx-lacking magma spurts out spilling down as a prolix jawwagging flow of lava and though it may totally blow apart, still it marks its passing with basaltic outcroppings of tufa or tuff, a crumbly brown rock.
In PC, I put forth a proposal that ritual absorbs any act you do again and again such that a rhythmic staking out of all sublunary things obtains, including hourly pissing, daily shitting, fortnightly throwdowns, bi-monthly publications, and annual birthday cards, and so on and so forth. It thus follows as a corroborating corollary (and for which I supply many supporting suppositions) that no ritual action lacks for godality — that is, holy signification — nor will going down hard on godhood nix giving rim to hard knocks and blowhats. Glass of rum, s’il vous plaît.
CFP is a slim child’s book purporting to contain an account of first and last things as told by a frog in a frog pond. Un jour, traipsing lackadaisically along from firth to frith, Rana, pulchritudinous spawn of a witch-magician cross, spots, far down on that pond’s accumulation of mulch and rot, among torrid lotus roots and glitzy caddisfly nymphs, a compass. With a gracious curtsy involving two thin, smooth, downy soft, warm, tan but not too tan, youthful, muscular but not stout at all, in a word, languid, thighs and an abundant quantity of plush, lavish, swishing skirts, Rana squats down and, as if to turn a thin flat rock on its sundrunk back so as to catch what’s hiding in its dank shadow, scoops away algal pond scum, haphazardly spooking a timid frog, Bufo, into plunging with a limpid splash and scissor-kick down, down, down to float and sink in amphibian fashion atop said compass. This nostalgic arc of causality — curtsy and squat, scoop and spook, swish and splash, float and sink — spurs a spiritual simulacrum, a brain-hot calling back, of that invidious midnight long ago in which, owing to a sardonic shaman’s allo-uxorious machinations, Rana’s magician of a dad lost his woman and his compass both. This, in short, thought Rana, was that compass! And so Rana follows Bufo’s train of action and, trimming away aquatic distortions of sunlight and shadow with binocular pruning hooks of human vision, swims down and grabs that long lost compass. And up, up, up Rana frog-kicks, gasps now for air, shouts triumphantly, “I found it, Pa! I found your compass in a f— p—!” But, alas, what in cool dry air was a frilly, light, flowing, diaphanous thing, is now, following gravity’s hydraulic crush, crash, and crunch, about thirty, stiff, awkward, downward rushing kilos of hydrophilic silk and chintz! Drown, thus, our willowy Rana did, and amidst that turbid turmoil grown calm now, two skulls and two sacra mimic a twig-witch drift of silt and mud; and lotus roots spiral up towards sunlight; and caddisfly nymphs construct hollow, conical, patchwork husks out of giltwork and goldbraid and small chunks of ruby and lapis unwound from a patrician woman’s shift; and slimy, timid Bufo jumps in and scissor-kicks down, down, down to alight in amphibian fashion atop a putrid fist still clasping its long lost patrimony, a compass in a frog pond. Summary: Pond is God’s iris; frog is God’s pupil; compass is grain of God’s dust; girl is God’s thumb. Moral: If it don’t hurt, don’t stick it in, and if it do hurt, don’t stick it in, also! Back in a jiff!
I’m back now, Ouida, from a visit to that magical spot of our privy amours, our inspirational WC in which you did squat as I shat [sic!] and thrust up in toward your gasping diaphragm, your own aromatic somatic fluids discharging warm and abundant, a syrup-slow tropical rain, and swirling down and around and truly gripping my organs in a most captivating fashion, and sipping from a third or fourth or fifth glass of rum — no, no, no, how about a pastis? Si, I shall plow on with this account of what I’m working on now, and, knowing as I do what sort of constraints your small journal must stick within, I’ll try not to unbolt as much wind, or unwind as many bolts of colorful yarn, as I did in that last synopsis. Un otro pastis, s’il vous plaît, signor Barman (this lugar’s patrón, actually).
In short, VDD charts a plurality of God’s many miraculous incarnations and intromissions into this world’s plump moist lunation.
MG is a spiritual cookbook chock full of many a good thing you could put in your mouth and out your ass, which good thing, natürlich, on its way down, is most nourishing to both soul and spirit, body and mind. How ’bout a vodka tonic, sir? It is approaching that hour, you know, l’ora di pranzo?
I am now sitting at una piccola tavola, and turning to my spirituality’s combinatoric stations’ fourfold division’s sororal half and unpacking its rotund labiality of D2 and T2 so that this sinistral pančaśāstra may display its boon-granting palm, I unfold and tuck my napkin in, thus:
Contrition (C) is just what it says it is: Contrition (Si, j’ai choisi) as a path (Pollo asado con insalata y pomodori) to salvation (Say again? Ah, boisson. Un litro di Brouilly, por favor).
In Spring Plain City (SPC), a group of waylaid pilgrims (WP), forlorn and pitiful, finds a spring (S) with which to allay its wayward thirst (WT), and founds at that spring’s location (SL) a small city (SC), consisting of a church (C) or sagradu (S) in that group’s natural idiom (NI), along with zoning laws (ZL) providing for allocation of plots (AP) of land (L) and ways to partition and pass down (WPPD) grazing rights (GR) and various patrimonial and matrimonial chatchkas (VPMC) and trucs (VPMT) and crap (VPMC) and shit (VPMS) — in short, a spring (S) on a plain (P) turns into a city (C) which is a spiritual microcosm (SM) of God’s city (GC) on God’s plain (GP) in God’s wondrous spring (GWS). I foist, mind you, no allusion to Proust (P) in all of this.
In Malodorous Trio (MT), I show how criminal fiction (analogous to Shiva) is homologous with both sacrificial rituals (analogous to Brahma) and passion plays (analogous to Vishnu) and thus why all six (or half of six if you subtract what’s analogous from what’s homologous) stink up our high holy cosmos! This is a moral work.
In A Quintal of Ruth, A Fifth of Quiddity (QRFQ), I show that pity is psalm, and compassion, antiphon, of faith’s harmonious introit, and that no amount of hard living, wild partying, raucous goings-on, and, in a word, any fifth of quiddity which is as but a drop of owl scat in our grand cosmic pail of a God pond, can add to or subtract from this quintal of ruth which is constant, gracious truth of God’s oligarchy.
Lastly, my Not So Much (NSM) is about how not doing too much is both salubrious and salutary. Fondant au chocolat con chantilly suivi par un cognac, if you don’t mind, patrón.
That’s it, Ouida, that’s what I’m working on: a holy communion of word-trails forming a glorious imbrication of spirit-paths upon which I, M. S. Strickland, Tiliar Boarding School, Class of ’84 — an inquiring soul who is always yours (and to think that my anno of graduation was yours of birth!) in passion, lust, faith, and spirit — and now living in Paris, ninth division, villa Ballu — am traipsing from bathroom back to this bistro’s bar. I want a Scotch, now, patrón, straight! Try a drop of grappa gratis, too, with this pudgy Habana? Mais pourquoi pas? Slivovitz also? Why not?! Aussi, un vaso von rhum, un vaso von rhum, un vaso von rhum! Say it as fast as you possibly can, darling Ouida, and it sounds as if a chainsaw is going “Vavavarroom! Vavavarroom!” in your brain.
*To chub about, as you know, Ouida, is to climb a mountain and gambol gaily high about its top in nothing
but wool socks, hiking boots, and oilskin parka.
—
M. S. Strickland,
TBS Class Clown of 1984, submits this brouillon
of his on-going work from 23 villa Ballu, Paris, 9th arr.
§ 250.
§ 251.
Suppository duty. — And should I up this gambit’s hazard? Assiduous study will show that cantos 1, 6, and 11 of Patrolius’s
Ionis Astra form that dithyramb’s most archaic stratum. To start with, this fulcral triad of aristocratic Ityalian quatrains disavows any comparison of Norlia’s mythic bard Dudu to that Anatolian Sufi from Balkh in Bactria, Rumi (1207–1273), in contradistinction to, say, canto 2 in which “Rumi’s lyric plays dull mirror, lacking, / In that dusky land [that is, Babylonia, Anatolia, Sogdiana, Bactria, much of Transoxiana, and so forth], lupanar joys and six strong strumming bards.” At which point I find it not unfit to plot a curt divagation into chirographic history. I harbor no illusions vis à vis this rundown topic, but this ludict’s not at all satisfactory, missy! I won’t marry him anyway. Tradition has it that, during his sojourn as ambassador to Babur’s court in Kabul from spring of 1505 to autumn of 1506, Poldavian dragoman Patrolius (1464–1559) nightly sought succor from diplomatic travail by submitting to such charming ministrations as a particular court houri was bid by Babur to sanctify bridally for our paradoxically monogamic polyglot — and I say paradoxically, as it is known that plurilingual ability charts most commonly a promiscuous path from cama to lit, from yatak to takht, but such inconstant firasht-hopping was not, so it is thought, our faithful author’s way. To think that such thalamic duty could pardon omission’s sin. Morality making stupid custom. Though any unspoilt vision of this singular bondswoman’s triangular nostrils flaring with passion, moist full lips ditto, and khol-dark lotus lids squinting two-thirds ditto must always, in truth, stay lost to us in a constant shadow of onomastic obscurity, in a manto, you might say, of anonymity, rumor has it that Patrolius’s orphan succubus was fruit of a Norlo-Tagmic cross known throughout Kabul as Nirusa (a sort of apricot-plum hybrid growing only in Nuristan) da Norlia, or simply Nirusa, though, oddly, in that child of Ishtar’s fistful of Patrolius’s journals still privy to us, as Norlia. Complicating scholars’ ability to plumb this rhapsody’s lyrical mirror’s origin is Patrolius’s account of hunting oryx with Babur (1483–1530) in a location known as Nur-i-lah, Oak Mountain, from which bosky hillock — now a suburb of Kabul — Patrolius, mistaking lah for ktar, acidic oak for basic basswood, thought his handmaid must hail, but historians insist that abundant circumstantial indications confirm that Patrolius’s Nirusa’s Norlia was in fact high in Hamiltonia and that, by combining carnal praxis with oral prolixity, this wanton child of Ishtar inhabiting lord Babur’s court would, whilst busy applying, usually by skillful hand but occasionally, it is said, by simian foot, various soothing and invigorating potions and lotions to Patrolius’s drooping, court-worn soul, this ravishing minion would also chant a lyrical improvisation or two or four or six, in this way concomitantly inflaming with syllabic instars sprung from a rich tributary of custom and tradition, a rich corpus, in fact, of schizomythia, whilst his palpitating soul stood to, sumptious and compliant — in this way inflaming Patrolius’s spirit — a spirit hungry for agglutinating grammars and thirsty for stray words bristling with diacritics — forcing his own hand to dart forth, as from a turbid cloud of haptic distraction, and claw haphazardly among tumbling books and folds of silk for a sharp moanzy quill, clutch it at last, thrust it sighing into a dark pot of gastropod ink, and with its drooling tip jot a cryptic transcription of Norlia’s orphic idiom, just as his soul, now turgid with plum sap and sticky with apricot pulp, sonorously burst, and Nirusa’s glottal locution was dissolving, dissolving in a slurry of aphasic moans and sibilant gasps of asyntactic inarticulacy... Prior to which doffing of all formality, though, Nirusa, donning a corybant’s mask, had sung of dark moon’s transformation from swart Atta’s growing luminosity to waxing Io’s dancing sigmoid horns, tauroral wings matching in form that bicornous
ktar (a sort of oud) capo to which Dudu, avatar of Saturn — that nomadic astral body taking thirty of our world’s solar orbits to accomplish a singular orbit of its own — had strung his trio of twanging ram’s guts — an allusion to how, on cold, dry, limpid, mountain nights, it looks as if Saturn is flashing or vibrating as a kind of play of light against rapidly strong ringing in bright crimson, lapis, and ivory (Skt.
guṇá गुण = Nr.
dudu, ‘ring, strand, string, sting’) — so as to sing of wayward girls baring torsos and limbs and gamboling lustily, on nights of gibbous (gravid) and full (promiscuous) moon, among thick stands of tall hardwoods surrounding that city on high, Norlia, that honors not virginity, that awards not constancy:
Dancing did Io birth that city, Norlia, wood-strong son
Whom craft-avid, mouth-lush young girls would fain sing admiring of
And famous Dudu snatch a storm of strumming from his triply
Strung ktar: swart Atta’s wing-bright gift no pavid virgin could match [1].
And so it was that, upon parting from this Afghan idyll, Patrolius idly took with him, not just your usual oxcartful of consular loot, but a full yak-load’s worth of scribbling on various supports and topics, both courtly and common, out of which holographic morass of skin, pulp, bark, husk, and clay upon his arrival in Poldavia’s capital On (Finnish Onra, Slavic Ongrad) six months on, Patrolius would, by toil or crash unspun, start to wring out various works of his opus, including not only his famous biography of Babur (On, 1510) put down in prosaic Poldavian, but also his
Ionis Astra (c. 1517, known from a manuscript found in a manuscript found at Saragossa, c. 1813, by J. Potocki), a confabulation, or distillation, if you will, of much, but, alas, not all, of what Nirusa da Norlia (b. c. 1492, d. in childbirth 1506) had wrought into his spirit as a smithy might work platinum and gold into an iron dirk’s hilt, transforming an ordinary arm of parry and attack into an inlaid tool of lurid fancy:
Vain again that dull mirror to catch sight of this wholy bard’s
Catoptric birthsong vaunting irid fancy of rainbow snail,
Portal scorpion sting, and wood-strong Norlian huts in which
Isthar’s hand avidly crafts Oria’s lush lyrical mouth [2].
Catoptric birthsong pivots profoundly Io’s vulvular
Altar’s languid hollow ktar-cup — bibulous young lupanar
Girls born of Ishtar’s singular ravishing await that snail’s
Rainbow-strung string-pairs, wood-strong, to birth our city, Norlia [3].
Patrolius’s fulcral, or sixth, canto, along with his last, map variations on a mythic untwining of a schizomythic umbilicus discharging out of his first, constituting an approximation of a soft thick lap-spill of Nirusa’s black hair humming catoptric birthsong (a notion not lacking for a myriad ways of translation: from mirror-song of birth to mirror-birth of song, from song-mirror of birth to song-birth of mirror, from mirror of song-birth to birth of mirror-song, and so on) with Oria’s full moon of promiscuity, of plural ravishing, illuminating nocturnal group goings-on, and Ishtar’s gibbous moon of monogamous mating, of singular ravishing, gazing down on a bibulous bard’s quick, painful sting, as of a portal scorpion, to wound and scar, to pardon and anoint, a woman’s only sin — that of virginity — whilst rainbow snails crawl from lowlands to high, and all drink that spicy liquor,
ktar, from a cassidiform cup cut from
ktar-wood, a sort of basswood which is chock full of sosigonic alkaloids (and it is known that, in association,
ktar (liquor) and
ktar (wood) function, not just as a strong aphrodisiac, but in an antimicrobial, antiviral capacity, and thus it is plain that “wood-strong” is an allusion to both font and sign, to both origin and symptom, of this loin-girding (in man), birth- and abortion-inducing (in woman — that is, if you add a particular amount of scorpion-stung rainbow snail infusion to it) concoction of
ktar in
ktar — a potion Nirusa would not, by all accounts, shy away from plying Patrolius with) whilst upon that lunular arc of altar (also cut from
ktar-wood) found in your typical lupau (Patrolius, tranquilly translating in On from his rough transcriptions put down frantically in Kabul so many autumns and springs prior, hung an n from u’s hook, thus miscasting a prim, traditional Norlian “hut of womaninity” as a sultry Ityalian casita with vulgar Ronish connotations) a woman, in an assisting quorum’s company, communally splays thighs and lifts skirts, both to author a child, and to birth a child: vulva of intromission, vulva of parturition: bard’s inspiration, bard’s production: Dudu’s ktar, too, is cut from ktar-wood, and so too was that broad, smooth quirt-stock which Nirusa, donning a bard’s cap and gown, would on occasion, it is said, apply to a most quizzical part of Patrolius’s anatomy. A glass of rum, first, if you don’t mind, sir.
§ 252.
§ 253.