March 19, 2009

• I’m the One Who…. eats words for breakfast

  Honestly, when I saw this Featured Grownups topic, I immediately thought of a song (I’m the Man Who Murdered Love by XTC) which really has little to do with my post, but which popped into my head like Superman’s little extra-dimensional nemesis Mr. Mxyzptlk.
  
  As you can probably tell, I’m the one with some kind of weird sense of humor. I realized a long time ago, when I was more apt to cry than smile, that sometimes if you don’t laugh, you cry. I’m not an optimist by any stretch of the word, nor am I pessimist. But like Wednesday Addams, I am a morbid little ray of sunshine, unerringly finding something humorous in even the grimmest circumstances. I have a bit of the gallows humor about me, digging at the grumpiest people until I win a smile. I have a way of twisting words around, warping their intended meaning or stringing things along until the original intent of the speaker or writer is lost or more fully revealed. I pick things apart and slap them back together in a collage of inference.
  
  So more accurately, I am the one who loves words…. reading them, writing them, tracking them down and pinning them to paper like an exotic insect collection. I fear for the structural integrity of my room with all the bookshelves, packed to capacity with my book collections, old pulp weird fiction and new horror, science fiction and fantasy, occult, mysticism, mythology, history, religion… and some hard to classify topics. I’m the one who loves new ideas and written wit. I’m the weird girl who sits in a corner alone in a crowded room or cafe, chortling at some bizarre series of events set down in a book. I’d rather read than converse with anyone in that crowded room, because let’s be honest, an engrossing conversation is hard to find, but a good book can be revisited indefinitely.
  
  I’m the one who finds adventure between the lines. Every sentence read or written is another step in a journey of a hundred thousand words. A new idea is like another lens added to a jeweler’s magnifying glass, not creating a new perspective so much as revealing it. Given a choice between eating or reading, it would be a long time before I chose food. When I was a child, I passed up many meals and even sleep in favor of finishing a book. Words fill places food and rest cannot. Words are like seeds. No one knows what they will eventually grow into or how they will alter the jungle of your mind until the moment of epiphany, when an idea suddenly pops into bloom. Even dead and forgotten ideas fertilize future meme blossoms. My mind is a riot of color and growth, unpruned by close mindedness. Words are like rain and sunshine to the garden of my mind.
  
  I am the girl who consumes the world like alphabet soup, letting tendrils of thought twist and flower into new ideas on a whim.

  
  Gallery 13 -Linda Brunker Gaia’s Garden Head
  

  
  
  

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  March 19th
  

  
  Akitu is a ten day long Babylonian festival held in memory of the marriage of heaven and earth.
  
  
  

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  In Greece, this is known as the Micra (lesser) Panathenaea in honor of Athene. This became the Quintania or Quinquatrus in honor of Minerva in the hands of the Romans. The Panathenaea is the most ancient and most important of Athenian festivals. The Lesser Panathenaea is celebrated every year, with the Megala (greater) Panathenaea held every fifth year and in the third year of every Olympiad. Only later was the Micra Panathenaea moved to spring, perhaps by Roman influence to make it correspond to the Quinquatrus of Minerva. The date of the Micra Panathenaea in the earlier Greek period was May 5th.
  
  In the lesser festival, there are three games conducted by ten presidents. On the evening of the first day, there is a race with torches. On the second, there is gymnastic combat and trials of strength and bodily dexterity. The last is a musical contest, instituted by Pericles, and concerts are performed. The poets compete in four plays, called the tetralogia, the last of which is a satire. The victor in any of these games is rewarded with a vessel of oil and a crown of olives (which are sacred to the goddess), which grew in the grove of Academus.
  
  Other ceremonies were added, such as a procession in which Minerva’s sacred peplos, or garment, is carried. Woven by a select number of virgins called ergazika, from ergos, “work,” the peplos is white or saffron and sleeveless with gold embroidery detailing the achievements of the goddess. Two of the arrephoroi, young virgins between the ages of eleven and seventeen, attend the ergazika. The arrephoroi wear white with ornaments of gold.
  
  In the ceramicus outside the city near the Hill of Ares, a ship is built. From this, Minerva’s peplos is hung as a sail. The ship is taken to the temple of Ceres Eleusinia and then to the citadel where the peplos is placed upon Minerva’s statue. The statue lies upon a bed (plakis) woven or strewed with flowers.
  
  The Quinquatrus or Quinquatria in honor of Minerva continues for five days. The first day of the festival commemorates her birth and the founding of her temple, the Minerva Capta. All those whose employment fall under the protection of the goddess celebrate Quinquatria. Students have a holiday during the festival, and begin a new course of study when it is over. Teachers receive their yearly stipend at this time – the minerval. Women and children (as spinners and weavers), artisans and artists, and poets and painters observe the festival of Minerva.
  
  
  

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  Eyvind Kinnrifi is a martyr for Odin, remembered today.
  
  
  

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  The Elizabethan statute against witchcraft was enacted in 1563.
  
  
  

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  • 1:46 pm
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