Καλάμια

..combing colours in the air

The Indians have a very
pretty legend about the leaves and the birds.
They say that long, long ago when the Great
Spirit was busy making the earth beautiful,
that everywhere he stepped, there the trees
and the plants and the flowers began to grow
at once. The leaves of the trees were very
happy and sang songs all the day. But one
morning the wind came along and told the
leaves that very soon they would fall from
the trees to the ground and would wither
and die and be forgotten.

This made the leaves very sad and they
forgot for a little to sing. But by and by,
when they thought how happy it made the
old tree to hear them, they began to sing
again and forgot all about what the wind had
said.

But sure enough one day in the Fall it
became very cold. The wind blew and the
leaves began to loosen their hold on the tree,
and to fall to the ground. The tree had to
give them up one by one till there was not a
single leaf left on the sad old tree.

As they lay there the Great Spirit came
walking along that way. He saw the beau-
tiful, many-colored leaves on the ground,
and thought to himself, ” What a pity to let
those lovely things go to waste” So he de-
termined to make them live again. He gave
to each leaf a pair of wings and taught them
to fly, and they became the birds. The red
oak leaves became the robin-redbreasts, and
the yellow willow leaves became the yellow
birds, and the brown leaves became the spar-
rows and the swallows. What a flock of
them there were ! And they flew off up into 
the trees again. The trees had had to give
them up, but they got them all back, and
they were so much more beautiful than they
were before.

                                                                                     Charade

I came into the inner cavern, after groping painfully on all-fours up the stairs, and saw the Sibyl, more like an ape than a woman, sitting on a chair in a cage that hung from the ceiling, her robes red and her unblinking eyes shining red in the single red shaft of light that struck down from somewhere above. Her toothless mouth was grinning. There was a smell of death about me. But I managed to force out the salutation that I had prepared. She gave me no answer. It was only sometime afterwards that I learned that this was the mummied body of Deiphobe, the previous Sibyl, who had died recently at the age of one hundred and ten; her eyelids were proped up with glass marbles silvered behind to make them shine. The reigning Sibyl always lived with her predecessor. Well, I must have stood for some minutes in front of Deiphobe, shivering and making propitiatory grimaces - it seemed a lifetime. At last the living Sibyl, whose name was Amalthea, quite a young woman too, revealed herself. The red shaft of light failed, so that Deiphobe disappeared - somebody, probably the novice, had covered up the tiny red-glass window - and a new shaft, white, struck down and lit up Amalthea seated on an ivory throne in the shadows behind. She had a beautiful, mad-looking face with a high forehead and sat as motionless as Deiphobe. But her eyes were closed. My knees shook and I fell into a stammer from which I could not extricate myself.

                                                             Peter Graves’ “I, Claudius”

If every woman is a singular entity, then, undoubtedly, redemption is to be found in Hell! *

That, of course, only goes to show why since the early begining of Aryan religious tradition - further to the encounter with the matriarchal societies - the only acceptable enlightenment procedure has been for the man to leave his wordly surroundings - namely the women - and start on an internal quest - to some far off place - for the divine truth!

Now, divine truth is a euphemism for finding an explanation that he - and the rest of the men - would find plausible, and basically make him able to prove that there’s one path leading to salvation and then there’s another one taking you to damnation (away from God’s will). For that, he needs to show there are two very different - opposite, in fact - resting places,  or ideas (Heaven and Hell, fr exmpl) - for the bewildered - and apparently inmortal! - soul, and the heavy burden that carries on its shoulders in its way across this world: why are we here? where the hell (?) did we come from ? Are we going some place afterwards ?

Women teach quite the opposite - should anyone care to study and be honest about it: Heaven and Hell are right here and they’re together .. inside me! And probably inside you too, only since you are unable to identify it in yourself - hence all this quest thing - but do see the human mirroring you that I am, you prefer to ostracize me as impure, demonize me and exclude me from your superior perspective on Life, the Universe and Everything (hey, Douglas!)

Thousands of years later since this - the holy process as it were - was sanctified, there are still major religions in this world who can’t bare the thought of women priests ..

* I have some doubts on the first half of the original hypothesis, though ..

And if, by any chance, some of you are not sure why women represent both Heaven and Hell for us, listen to this gem by C.M. and pay attention to the lyrics - when even a genious ’ cry is confused!

(Just some thoughts while away, far away from the woman in my life)

I see your picture
It’s in the same old frame
We meet again
You look so lovely
You with the same old smile
Stay for a while
I need you so, oh, oh, oh, oh
And if you take it easy
I’m still teethin
I wanna love you, but
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

That’s mighty kind of you Ms Virginia.

But I reckon you’d have written some mighty fine dark blues lyrics yourself, had you lived 50 years later ..

Right up J.C.’s alley!