In the mood for something different

Theology
Ted Hughes

No, the serpent did not
Seduce Eve to the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.

Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.

The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise --
Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling.


-----------------------------

Found out my Classics essay (on self-abjection in Sophocles' Philoctetes) isn't due til next week--woo! Only have Archaeology midterm tomorrow night to worry about now. Did a Greek test this morning--over and done with. Only have Greek translation to hand in on Thursday now, on Herakles. Fun!

Still living in surreality... result of spending 8 hours on a commercial set living a false reality. How strange it is to return to the real world sometimes. Felt the same after the 3 week run of Glass Menagerie. Wait, what the hell am I doing. I have to study for my midterm.

Then why do I want to read Charles Olson all of a sudden? Archaeology is interesting damnit! I need to tell my brain to calm down. It will be sated with some Olson, soothed, later on. Now, to work on stylobates and ionic orders, geometric designs and archaic sculpture. yay!

Maple Leaf Provigo Commercial

Did a commercial yesterday with Maple Leaf foods--will be appearing in Provigo stores across Quebec, others in Ontario. If you're grocery shopping, stop by the fresh/meat/food section. Check out the video of me and my "family". Product called Maple Leaf, Simply Fresh.

An issue I've been concerned with that gets little attention: childhood sexual abuse. There isn't much in terms of support for such things as society tends to think it taboo to even speak of, regardless that over 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused during childhood. In that group, a high percentage (85-90%) of the abusive situations involve a perpetrator that is known to the child.

The effects of this abuse in adulthood can have a varied range of responses such as:

-passive and withdrawn from social interactions.
-fear.
-self-neglect.
-feeling abandoned.
-afraid of intimacy.
-feeling extremely angry or lonely, pushing people away.
-feeling silenced by family, friends, society.
-trying to tell oneself that the abuse did not happen or that it was, in fact, normal.
-difficulty forming trusting relationships-especially with people who are of the same sex as the abuser.
-difficulty forming satisfying sexual relationships.
-possibility of getting involved in abusive adult relationships.
-sometimes can blame oneself for the abuse because have the feeling of having done something to provoke it.
-use drugs and alcohol to cope with the pain.
-thoughts of hurting oneself.
-do not feel positive about body.
-sometimes have flashbacks and nightmares about the abuse.
-never talk about the abuse.
-sometimes one cannot account for chunks of time.
-experience oneself and surroundings as unreal.


I am about to enter an intensive 10-session therapy to finally deal with my own experiences in childhood. In one instance, the perpetrator was jailed only for 3 months. I was 5 years old. It is unjust. We simply need a better system of prosecution for these people. I was rescued by a friend calling out to me, in this case, otherwise I might have been snatched away in his still running car. This man who did things to me did them in broad daylight, near a busy road. No one intervened.

Encourage anyone you know who has experienced this type of abuse to either seek therapeutic help, or take on a guided healing instruction. Meditation and talking with a friend, writing in a journal or exercising/walking, tea with a warm blanket can all aid toward the progress of leaving it behind and moving on. Too long I've been feeling like I've been involved in withdrawn, uncertain, and fearful situations not knowing how to remove myself from them, protect myself. And so, onward! May we all be fearless.

Sad News

Montreal poet Artie Gold has died. So long I've adored his poems, so gentle, so deliberate, so shy.
In memory of his chosen words, a poem of his from the collection The Beautiful Chemical Waltz, 1992.

untitled

hearts in their mouths discovered
they beat like small pianofortes
they scram to the ground headless

and heedless of their small
breakable limbs:       for this is death
the large claw extended up to

the highest bough climable:     it
is where they steal from, they load
six cherries not white absolutely

three in each small pocket and they
begin the descent all wrong:     like
a cat goes too hastily up the pole

of a telegraph, they run away from
the hand that threatens, by running
first towards it:     backwards like a cat

but they will not leap at the eyes
of that voice, they stand there
sensing a human punishment finally.

Artie Gold

Had a very nice memory today. After playing an emotional show to an Ottawa Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie (my last theatre performance in Ottawa), I was walking onstage to reach the exit and go home when appeared a crowd of high school students getting a backstage tour who then suddenly burst into applause for me.

Sometimes I really miss the theatre.

I am having crazy dreams! Last night one was centered in Alabama. Visiting with a poet there, who I know doesn't happen to live in Alabama, and while there I had a racial encounter which was surprising and saw my cousin who also doesn't live there. Too, I was in the same house I dream of again and again that I've never actually seen. I also drove there (I often have driving dreams where I estimate length of time it takes me to drive--last night was 6 hours, ended up getting "home" in 1 hour) Does this indicate my deficiency with time? Definitely surreal.

My cats are sick. One throwing up, one having trouble with the peeing. Been giving the latter an herbal concoction of my own--little slippery elm bark powder, parsley juice, ursa urvi powder. Going out again today to pick up some goldenseal. It's good for infections, apparently. Cat's doing a little better. Maybe I'm meant to become a naturopath vet. Best news is, it's cost me $20 so far, as opposed to around $100 if I'd taken her down the vet's "antibiotic" route.

Hey, people have been taking my picture. I feel like I look nothing like this. Strange.

Isn't this an interesting post. Why am I even writing this. I have another idea. Here's a recent poem:


matches

am I to be all things for you? youth, maturity; excellence in gait, occupation. interiors of steel guts?

there are colours that fool the eye. at night, an auburn blonde. (we argue). later still, the
                ash felt coat. did it belong to her?

aftermatinees, aftermating. aftermath. length begets length, and so our speech is destroyed by time. your language indecipherable through interrogation (mine).

it appears simplicities, selected at random, are no more than dull investments (our mature years). the whys have surpassed the hows.

                we pause to eat.
the strength of a decision.

the city's edges are small. you say trapped.
there are streets with names of
Saints who've yet to bare themselves to me: I seek,
                                I seek.

                                                oh men.
                                                we belive the things you tell us;
                                                be sure to tell us right.

once more
we lie over each other like melted rubber,
little ponds of icing freeze our lungs:
the end of breathing.

                                a terrible beauty
                                matches this narration
                                in death, only.