no silence in the graveyard

"... as silent as a graveyard," the English reader read.

"What is this?" my student asked underlining the word 'graveyard' with his finger.

I started explaining speaking clearly and carfully spacing my words: "It is a place where dead people are buried, where funerals are held when they die. Do you know the word cemetery?" And I knew he knew.

"Ah." He read the line again. "But in a graveyard..." reading the word slowly, sounding the syllables out with due care "... there is many noises and lights."

fate of the ill handed messenger

Recent translations of a New Kingdom sarcophagus inscription, dating early in the 11th century BCE gives an inciteful glimpse into the religious life of ancient Egyptians.

"lo Anubis held the feather aloft, placeth upon the balance scales that only Thoth may read, that weigheth the heart of the deadman according to the life lived and if crimes were made against the goddess* in life, the man that never returned messages of text even when credit was owned his heart outweighed the feather of ma'at/truth and lo it was thrown into the mouth of Ammit the bone eater to die a second death."

See ancient wisdom bastards! So if someone text messages you it's only polite to reply. Be here warned.

*the goddess - Ma'at or truth, both a goddess and idea who is represented by a feather.

other moral prescriptions for a good life

more on my dreaming 2

Sick again and while I am blaming the latest dream on the fever that I am running, I do sometimes wonder why my dreaming life is far more exciting and imaginative than my waking one. I mean last night's dream reads like a Tom Clancy novel.

Here I am a CIA undercover agent operating in Africa who is ordered to sway a particular civil conflict in a way that is favourable to the US government. To do this I travel to of all places Havana, Cuba to recruit mercenaries that will fight and train local troops.

I could never ever admit this rather realpolitikal geopolitical fantasy to my lefty friends. They'd be all like "man" and I'd be all like "I know man but it's just a dream and it's not like I love the US, I hate them and think George Bush is stupid" but they'd be still like "man".

It'd be like admitting that I had a nocturnal emission about Alexander Downer... and I didn't... really... seriously.

the last I dreamt

more on my dreaming

I dreamt another fantastical dream last night:

War had visited us once more, poking another of its ugly little hydra heads through the crust of the earth to breathe foul flame and death and destruction upon creation, upon the cities of this fair land. Hmmm … this is all a little too dramatic perhaps (and a little inappropriate) so I will endeavour to tone down the literary flourish just a tad and try to siphon off just a little of my own bathos if you will permit. And I am sure you will. Suffice to say the cities were not safe and while no declaration by our distant enemy had been made they had made veiled threats and my city had been on the top of the list of targets. So the atmosphere at home was palpable, thick and heavy-laden with fear and foreboding.

My apologies: there I go again with the over-acting prophesising end-of-the-world routine, I really must desist.

I absconded my responsibilities and took a little sojourn into the Victorian countryside and admitted my self into the best mental hospital money and privilege could buy. And while the title mental hospital is technically correct it is perhaps a little misleading, a term like Healing Farm might be more accurate and fitting at least in terms of the hospital’s marketing strategy. The Farm was built on a small Gippsland property not so far from Churchill and the staff were experienced and supportive, the facilities warm, friendly and very open; trips into town were frequent and encouraged so we spent our time there watching movies, doing chores, and of course talking about ourselves and our problems whether it was in group or over cake and coffee in town.

It’s not that I wasn’t sick as I’d been depressed for years and quite frankly I fitted in there better than I had anywhere else in all the days of my life but there was something not right…. and then I was woken by my mobile phone feeling a little unsettled.

the last I dreamt

dead flag blues

Heard a tune by God Speed You Black Emperor called The Dead Flag Blues today and I scrawled this down on a series of receipts that I had in my wallet. Apparently the dialogue is part of some film one of the band members efrim has been working on. So if your feeling like you just wish the world would end now now now, like I am, then as Molly Meldrum says: "Do yourself a favour, check it out" and revel in it.

Transcription:

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
and we're all on so many drugs with the radio on
and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death
the sun is fallen down and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this
the buildings topled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies
picked throught the rubble and pulled out their hair

The skyline was all beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said kiss me you're beautiful
these are truely the last days
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or fever

Oh my gay Lord!

Now despite some genuine and heartfelt attempts by some on both sides of the picketed fence of the sexual divide, gays and lesbians are not generally accepted let alone catered for in contemporary mainstream religion. Now there are those amongst the faithful who would take me to task on this telling me that they readily accept homosexuals but—I would ask them—do you really? Do you accept them but not their sins or some other idiotic mantra? I personally would be hard pressed to think of too many faiths that don’t place some form of moral restriction upon gays and lesbians, from celibacy and guilt-ridden self-denial to out-right heterosexual conversion aka ex-gay ministries but don’t get me wrong there are plenty of groups out there that are bent on challenging the establishment like the Metropolitan Community Church and Al Fatiha but they’re just that: challenging, fighting the system line by line, verse by verse so that G-d, Jesus and Allah open there arms and welcome us into heaven so that talk of smashing sodomite heads on the sides of mountains all becomes resigned to history as a bad and unhelpful interpretation (and there have been many to go that way), that they are viewed as an insignificance to be absorbed by a greater understanding of the word of God. But alas this is not how things are going. The way things stands most religions are pretty uncomfortable with same-sex couples and as the Anglican church threatens to schism, their conservative elements use the gay-card to wrestle control of their church back out of the hands of the more liberal elements, fundamentalists in the Moslem world (among others) describe homosexuality as a western disease to be stamped out and decree horrible punishment for those found practicing it.

But who are we to pray to then? Are we then a godless bunch, the unchosen children, the un-inheritors of God’s kingdom? I downright refuse to accept that I am the willing servant of Satan as some have labelled me so then what are we to do? Surely there is in the great pantheon of heaven one god who will stand up and be counted to protect the gays and lesbians amongst us. Surely!

It is fine to say that God loves us despite our sins but who is willing to say God loves us because of our sins, or who sees love between two men or women as a beautiful thing? Who is it then that I ask for divine intervention when I want to go to bed with this really cute guy that I met the other night? What ceremony do I perform upon a prophylactic so that its latex skin stays true and unbroken and then what words of thanks do I utter when he calls me the next day?

This is my project.