Freya's Day Martini Blogging

Goddess, the market sucked today.

Why? Why? Why Didn't I Riot In The Streets In 2000? Why?

OK, now he's just fucking with my liver and going na-na-na-na-boo-boo I can give you cirrhosis and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sweet Mother of the Gods, where's that gallon jar of olives, that tablespoon of vermouth, and that truckload of Stoli?


Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Dirk Gently Said.

The Carrot Or The Athame?

Travel

I had dinner with two of my very dearest friends in the whole world last night and I remembered just how liberating it is to sit and talk with the people who really understand you, who provide you with endless reasons to admire them, who will call your name at Samhein when you are gone. Once, in my wicked youth and childhood, I must have done something good.

At one point, we got to talking about: Where would you travel to if money and time were no object? Both E and S are better travelers than I, and they both had lists of more exotic places than I have. With my moon in Taurus, which S kept insisting was no excuse for me, I like to stay home, living my well-ordered life, among my lovely things. But if money were no object, which, I admit, can make travel much more palatable, there are two places that I'd like to go to before I die.

I'd like to be in Sweden, home of my maternal ancestors, on Litha, when the sun shines all day and all night long and people hop in boats to go across the water to Denmark to buy beer, when they go to small cottages in the mosquito-infested woods and entertain their neighbors.

And, I'd like, in deep midst of deepest winter, to see the Aurora Borealis when the dancing sky is at its peak, which apparently happens every 17 years.

Where would you go, if you could go first class, if money and time were no object, if the urge to travel overtook your love of staying home, tending your garden, drinking a cup of tea?

Since He Kissed Them And Put Them There

FISA - Surveillance State Enhancements Act

Clinton - NO
Obama - YES.

I believe this calls for a poem.

e.e. cummings - Buffalo Bill's
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death?

I admit that I am surprised. I expected Hillary to vote as he voted, in order to show that she's supporting him, in an effort to get him to continue to pay off her campaign debt. Instead, as she so often, although not always, does, she did the right thing.

But she was shrill. She cackled. She was a "ball-buster." Marc Penn! The announcer in her commercials sounded too much like an announcer! She said, "Not as far as I know" the fourth time she was asked if Obama was a Moslem! She's likeable enough! People were "just more comfortable" with him.

In reality, she had a vagina.

/with apologies to Eugene Fields

Read A Nice Poem

The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press


Image found here.

Cleaning Up

What I love is what an unconsciously feminine take this is on alchemy. But then, my Moon is in Taurus.


Art found here.

Ivan Kupala

Jumping the bonfire, bathing, communal dancing. So many elements that appear and re-appear.

Picture found here.

Watertiger Nails It

Go. Now.

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

Sweet Mother, Dems, Could You Just Please Ovary Up?

And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day.

We are but warriors for the working day.

Of course, Digby.

My New Name For A Blog

What the Mad Melancholic Feminista Said.

Also, Skippy.

The Middle Finger Of The Invisible Hand

Juicy

Lunaea, as per generally, is right. There is something madly subversive about public dancing.

Friday Cat Blogging

The More That Things Change! The More That They Stay The Same

You know what, Barack Obama, you can fucking bite me, OK?


It is my fucking body. If I take a whim to tattoo it, I will. If I take a whim to shave my head, I will. If I take a whim to cut my toenails, I will. If I take a whim to get an abortion, I will. On a whim. Because it is my fucking body and there's just no compromise between you, who apparently believes that my body can become state property for the use of the state's interests, and me, since I believe that, well, that it is my goddess-damned body and not the state's. One could have hoped that someone whose ancestors were considered property might have had an understanding of this point, but, turns out, possessing a penis make that point irrelevant.

You stupid, naive fucktard. The fundies won't vote for you no matter how fast you sell me down the river. And I, I am going to have to get v drunk to make myself vote for you. And you'd better hope that John McCain starts gaining on you, or my checkbook, well, I won't be in a hurry to open it. You stupid, arrogant, male asshole.

Picture found here.

The Meaning For The Dancers Of The Dance

He Has Obstructed The Administration Of Justice

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Happy Independence Day

The Ophelia Cantos By Theodora Goss

Lilies tangle in her hair: green stems

Like water-snakes.


A disembodied hand

Floats on the surface. So much has been lost

Already: toes, the lobe of her left ear.

But this remains, a damp, immaculate

Sign, like a message saved from the dark current.


She wandered through the courtyard in her tattered

Dress distributing wild violets.

She called us whores—your son ma'am, not your husband's

I think—and knaves—the taxes sir, your cellar

Is stocked with sweet Moselle. We called this madness.


Indicia of her innocence: to be

A maiden floating dead among the flowers.


She will become an elegant and mute

Image: the sodden velvet coat, the sinking

Coronet of poppies, virgin's bower,

And eglantine. The replicable girl.

(A blob of Chinese white becomes a hand.

The artist puts his brush in turpentine,

The model pulls her stockings on.)


And yet,

Surround by the water-lily stems,

Her face appears an enigmatic mask:

A drowned Medusa in her snaking hair.

The lilies gape around her like pink mouths,

Telling us nothing we can understand.


Her eyes stare upwards: dead and not quite dead.

***************

We're heading for the harvest, the time of dead things, the time when alive things are cut down dead and used to feed alive things. It's all (the Dark) Goddess pouring (the Dark) Goddess into (the Dark) Goddess.

Image and lovely patterns here.