One winter evening, I was starting a fire in the living room fireplace. I'd put music on, soulful music, when Mary suddenly danced in from the next room. She glided smoothly, but it wasn't because of her stockinged feet nor the well-buffed wood... it was she - her arms and legs, her breasts and her hips - which danced across and around the room, back and forth, suspended in air, suspended in time - not heedless of me, but regardless of me - around and back and forth, like a satyr.
If I wasn't already in love by then, I fell in love with her in that moment, when she surprised me with her dancing - she was a 51 year old mother of 3 grown children who danced like a wood sprite, a nymph - who made me want to be a puddle of melted ice water rippling at her feet, who made me as happy as I will ever be, that evening...at least. After the day's chores and travels were done...she danced for me...she danced before me...like a garlanded queen of times long gone.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
In ancient Mali the people told stories of the great deeds of the legendary (though once very real) King Sundiata. In these tales Sundiata faced seemingly overwhelming challenges, and through wisdom, bravery, cunning, and strength, he always won out, usually over tremendous odds.
Mostly of the time the telling of these tales was idle recreation, but in times of trouble or indecision, the griots (a role akin to bard or shaman or shanichee) would gather the people and ritually recite one particular tale or another, as it fit the situation. The ritual tales of the griots were mostly true, though they also contained "additional" and sometimes fantastical embellishments, and they evolved over the years (Sundiata lived, I believe, in the 14th centuryCE). These tellings were treated as virtually sacred, and often took several days, with competing versions of details being offered, and with considerable debate also.
Such part-real, part-embroidered tales would, in such times, help to inform the people about what the wise and great Sundiata might do in such troubled times, and how they might follow his example. In a non-literate society this process played a legal and/or political role; the tales were a sort of "constitution" to be guided by.... Read More
I think stories like those above play a similar role for us today - in that they give us an almost idealized - though true enough - role model to follow. If the times in the stories weren't tragic or troubled, they would have less to teach us.
Mostly of the time the telling of these tales was idle recreation, but in times of trouble or indecision, the griots (a role akin to bard or shaman or shanichee) would gather the people and ritually recite one particular tale or another, as it fit the situation. The ritual tales of the griots were mostly true, though they also contained "additional" and sometimes fantastical embellishments, and they evolved over the years (Sundiata lived, I believe, in the 14th centuryCE). These tellings were treated as virtually sacred, and often took several days, with competing versions of details being offered, and with considerable debate also.
Such part-real, part-embroidered tales would, in such times, help to inform the people about what the wise and great Sundiata might do in such troubled times, and how they might follow his example. In a non-literate society this process played a legal and/or political role; the tales were a sort of "constitution" to be guided by.... Read More
I think stories like those above play a similar role for us today - in that they give us an almost idealized - though true enough - role model to follow. If the times in the stories weren't tragic or troubled, they would have less to teach us.
late last night I watched a documentary on the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Though no one's behavior was inexcusable, the men involved acted in sometimes animalistic ways...RFK, LBJ...all of them. The women, on the other hand, were all the paragons of class.
Though Kennedy's shattered body was in a casket in the rear of the same plane, with Jackie sitting nearby still wearing clothing stained with her murdered husband's blood and brains, Lyndon Johnson refused to allow Air Force One to leave Dallas until he had been sworn in as President. He also wanted Jackie standing next to him as the oath was being administered (he may have been cold and calculating, loose-limbed and shambling, but he was anything but stupid). Despite her sorrow, when an aide told her of Johnson's request, Jackie responded, "Of course, it's the least I can do."
After the plane departed Lady Bird Johnson walked past all of the angry and suspicious Kennedy staffers gathered in the plane's rear and sat with Jackie, comforting her in a way no other person present - perhaps no other person in the world - could have at that moment.
When Johnson called Rose Kennedy - from Air Force One flying from Dallas to Washington - to offer his condolences, Mrs. Kennedy answered the call by saying "Hello, Mr. President..." Though he'd been surrounded by hundreds of people in the past few hours, she was the first person to call him that. Though she must've been inconsolable, at that moment she remembered who he was now - and, more importantly, who SHE was.
When JFK lay in state at the White House, a military honor guard was stationed around his catafalque. When Jackie saw the men arranged with their backs to their dead commander (thereby symbolizing their place as his guardians in death, though they could not protect him when he was alive), she asked them to turn around and face the casket, so her dead husband wouldn't be so lonely. Though it represented a unique and immense contradiction of protocol, of course they did as she asked.
These things symbolize why, if forced to choose, I'd prefer the company of women to that of men at almost any time. They are simply more humane.
Though Kennedy's shattered body was in a casket in the rear of the same plane, with Jackie sitting nearby still wearing clothing stained with her murdered husband's blood and brains, Lyndon Johnson refused to allow Air Force One to leave Dallas until he had been sworn in as President. He also wanted Jackie standing next to him as the oath was being administered (he may have been cold and calculating, loose-limbed and shambling, but he was anything but stupid). Despite her sorrow, when an aide told her of Johnson's request, Jackie responded, "Of course, it's the least I can do."
After the plane departed Lady Bird Johnson walked past all of the angry and suspicious Kennedy staffers gathered in the plane's rear and sat with Jackie, comforting her in a way no other person present - perhaps no other person in the world - could have at that moment.
When Johnson called Rose Kennedy - from Air Force One flying from Dallas to Washington - to offer his condolences, Mrs. Kennedy answered the call by saying "Hello, Mr. President..." Though he'd been surrounded by hundreds of people in the past few hours, she was the first person to call him that. Though she must've been inconsolable, at that moment she remembered who he was now - and, more importantly, who SHE was.
When JFK lay in state at the White House, a military honor guard was stationed around his catafalque. When Jackie saw the men arranged with their backs to their dead commander (thereby symbolizing their place as his guardians in death, though they could not protect him when he was alive), she asked them to turn around and face the casket, so her dead husband wouldn't be so lonely. Though it represented a unique and immense contradiction of protocol, of course they did as she asked.
These things symbolize why, if forced to choose, I'd prefer the company of women to that of men at almost any time. They are simply more humane.
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