Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Castor and Pollux


As I sit down at Bojo’s table,
and he shuffles the pack of Serbian cards, he tells me
“Such and such will be your destiny”
along with the rules of the divination game.
I notice the paradox of using the future tense referring to fate,
and can’t help but remember that Crowley had said this before,
even though on a quite different but also easily-toppled castle
- “you’re nothing but just another bunch of cards”, you could add -
that these are only possible paths to pursue, a set of ideals, and not
as many half-wit trendy shadow-mongers pretend:
dictators of happenings and will-binding.

The rules, then:
dispose the 36 plastic-wrapped squares on the table, facedown.
It’ll draw up a bigger map-whole of 6 x 6. Now turn them over.
As you can see, each individual square has four half-images,
from well-known North Hemisphere constellations to Christian symbols, from these to other
omens, pleasant realities, and portents.

Now, check to see if there’s already any connected image.

If not, try again, up to three tries.
You can’t manage to link anything?
Don’t worry, it’s just not your moment:
you are not ready for the cards, the cards are not ready for you.
You can cut your ties to the past that would rule you,
but not the opposite. It shall not quit from its grip on us, these Pasts.

If there are connected, complete images, then try to connect even more images, by turning the single cards on themselves
in order to make one particular piece a whole.
Now, turn on to the explanation sheet (in Serbian…translate it to me, will you, Bojo?).
4 modes: upwards, downwards, leftwards and rightwards, each a subtle nuance of the other,
the same undertow of grievance or victory.
You can read the images in the boardmap as you wish,
orderly or not, as westerners read or as the Japanese do,
- I’ll stick to boustrophedon, for an obscure-loving (and presumptuous) quality of mine –
and then add up the results (or, Crowley-like for that matter, "goals-to-achieve").

From what I read,
long life, new responsibilities and to-dos, some shortcomings, but not that fatal,
some self-shaping achievements.

“You know how many people that I’ve done this to,
explaining the inner rhythms of their own life and paths,
disclosing the mysteries with the cards,
proposed the unveiling of tomorrow
in the past thirty-five years
- and I’ll tell you that there was an incredible lot o’them –
I have failed?”
Asking me this, he waits for no reply,
answering his own thoughts by putting his thumb and forefinger together
in a big, round, hollow figure
and smacking also his lips together
producing a loud, unnerving sound.

Yet again and again I tell myself
and anyone who really cares, that I don’t believe in all this.
Yet again… a strange thing occurs:
a conundrum of beliefs awaken by even stranger coincidences.

The card(s): Castor and Pollux.
Bojo: “You have a friend, or better still you had a friend.
Something happened. You don’t talk anymore.
Nevertheless, you are the one who kept the best part,
(- am I? -)
in the end, the gain’s on you.”
Castor and Pollux.
One mortal, immortal the other,
Two hands grasping their fingers tightly in each other’s, brother’s wrist.
You can almost feel the trembling beneath the grip.
One is pulling the other up from oblivion, disgrace, a hell,
something that deadly bounds them
to the beginning, perhaps a goose silvery feather, perhaps…

Castor and Pollux.
Brave heroes, divine brothers, post-mortem stars,
prevailers of the Holy Father’s heritage.
A friend who was a friend but from whose friendship,
I am told,
I kept the best part.
Prevailing, winning.
Is it true?
Losing the friend, I can’t see where’s the gain... what’s the catch here?

Dear sir, poor sir, only and last sir,
do you believe in God?
Probably less than then. Do I?
Probably so, for I can glimpse new strokes emerging from the slate I’ve erased before.
Thus, detours and swervings to fulfill the so-called kismet plan?
Doubt it.
Forget about losing face and admit you miss me.
I do.
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Friday, February 10, 2006

An origin myth.

There was a mystical virgin princess (we were not sure what was mystical in the beginning, if the princess herself or her virginity) to whom an angel made of blazing sun glory fire with a string stringing his guts together descended upon her and said: “truly you are the mother of the gods”, to which she replied, passionatelessly, “I’m a virgin”. The angel, vexed, fled back. A small bell made a sound and swallowed its victory over the pretty young ladies the most holy of the lords owned. Terrors went through surgery but never recovered, so the princess took up her wings and faced the storm that brewed under the snow. That was the beginning.
As for ourselves: the small metal bell kept the sounds of ringing tones over our heads, even though we had no heads (no bodies for that matter). Stoop as low as you might, you’ll never catch a glimpse of these characters.
We went back to the future inside an ark, but ended up falling in an aquarium of living poetry, which fluttered about like butterflies made of words, half-understandable, half-gibberish, making thus gibberish only. Then we proceeded to the ritual of focusing on the princess’ image to return home, but we couldn’t, because the whole path was flanked by bark trolls and they moved a little to the sides and changed places and grinned in our backs, and the path we had committed to memory was no more. So we put up our killer-becoming masks and sculpted a rod made out of wind. We fell asleep, the princess found us in the hospital and we returned.
This is how the light of stars only reaches us after years of travelling.
She did not gave up her virginity (both the mystical, we found out, and the fleshy one).