ruinous numinosity
Sunday 25 March 2007 | I like a cookie
The Brujo’s concert Duology was Friday night, and he played like unto one possessed—six improvisational duets, six artists with whom he’d never played piano before (one of whom he’d never even met) and each piece with its own tightly contained energy, led to its place by the fire flickering up and down the length of an indifferently voiced Yamaha grand. Glasses off, eyes closed, the Brujo carried the god for all of us for over an hour and a half without a break, wringing tones from that Yamaha that had probably never been elicited from it before, drumming on the strings inside the box, plucking them, assaulting them, slamming elbows and hands and arms along its keyboard (in a savagely brainy combative/competitive duet with C’s saxophone) and then picking out pure individual intervals with pearling spaces between, gaps like gasps for air (ice-drops highlighting the warm timbre and sensual ripples of J’s oud). And about two minutes into his startlingly coordinated voice/movement duet with actress Ruth Zaporah, I could practically hear them both realizing simultaneously that they have much more work to do together, like people who think they’re only having a one-night stand and then unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.
Last year, when I was still reeling from the Young Monk’s departure, the Brujo, still just a work friend, emailed me compassionately about how painful it is when a former lover who’s au fond just another human being still somehow shimmers with such “ruinous numinosity.” I promptly forwarded his message to Mandarin, and the phrase almost immediately entered our private lexicon. Since the beginning of all this grad-school indecision, I’ve noticed my affection for the B. turning afflictive, myself feeling anguished and lorn (”goopy” we call it) and my mind seeking information packets to bolster such an unrequited conclusion. “It’s just numinosity right now,” I told him Saturday morning over toast; “it’s not ruinous, but that’s only because….” “Because I’m still around,” he finished comprehendingly. “So how can I begin to undo this before….?” I wondered aloud. “You can’t. There’s nothing you can do to manage it.” I assented, reluctantly.
But last night we went again to the meditation meeting and with no effort on my part, sitting quietly by the blue light of candle flame, certain realizations coalesced. I can begin to retrieve my numinosity by choosing behaviors that place the god back within me where she belongs. Right now I’m not playing or singing or writing songs, so when the Brujo catches fire and makes incendiary music, I figuratively give him my lyre and then gaze after it moonily. And while practically every other night I break out the massage oil and work on his wiry, tense back muscles (”with my body I thee worship”), I seldom if ever give thanks to my own skin and flesh, touching it only glancingly in the shower to soap it with Dr. Bronner’s and rinse, with about as much worship as if I were scrubbing a dinner plate. (Actually I wash the dishes with more courtesy and attention.) So now he’s carrying my Apollo and my Aphrodite—no wonder he seems increasingly numinous. Not that I want to stop admiring or adoring or touching him—just that there’s an imbalance, when I only see myself as imperfect, fattening and flawed, gaining weight and hand-injured, obsessed with skin blemishes, imperfections and refined carbs, physically and lyrically leaden. How to turn back inward and find or remind myself of the skillful means to support the flower above me?
Weirdly enough, after I wrote that bit to Thorn deconstructing the Flower Prayer, I came across this on Valerie Walker’s comprehensive Feri website:
This is the first prayer to do in any daily practice. According to Victor Anderson, it is derived from Huna, and it is the first step in defining what we wish to accomplish, and to what end. If you look at it closely, it is a paraphrase of the Grail question which Perceval failed to ask, and which delayed his finding of the Grail for so long: “What do these things mean? And who do they serve?” This is significant because it means that every daily practice is a microcosm of the Vision Quest, the search for our own personal Holy Grail, (as above, so below) and that only continued attention to our own self-work will keep us on the path of our True Will.
The “flower above me” is the beautiful vision of your own Godself. If you can truly see that there is a part of you which is also a part of the Goddess, that you are partly divine, it will lead you to live a life which is respectful of yourself–and others, because you aren’t the only god in the room. And knowing that you are also partly human and mortal, you will not be carried away with your own wonderfulness and begin believing your own PR, as has happened to all too many on the spiritual path.
“What is the work of this God?” Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Constant self-examination, constant attention, constant nurturing of yourself in the physical, mental, and spiritual realms, leads to…what? Not merely a healthy, well-fed, well-exercised, happily-sexed body, an interested and interesting mind, and finely-honed talents (though these are good things), but a means by which the Goddess can do her work on earth. This phrase reminds me of Victor’s saying that “God is Self and Self is God and God is a person like myself.” The work of this God is the work of this human being, whatever that might be, yet another reminder of the transcendent nature of the ordinary. If I clean a floor, and do it for Hestia, more than the floor gets cleaned in the process. As Cora once said when someone saw her chopping vegetables with the same knife used in ritual, “I’m not deconsecrating the knife; I’m consecrating the vegetables.”
I swear I’d never read this before; another uncanny case of parallel evolution.
I have a strong intuitive sense that I’m running off beloved faithless readers by being not merely my chronically unreliable self, but also with all the recent Jung/Feri/polytheistic palaver. But if I am to be honest, I have to admit that this is how my brain has long parsed the world, experienced and made metaphor its valences, its intrinsic multiplicity. Not only as above, so below; but as without, so within. And I think it only fair to warn that if it’s too woo-woo for you now it will probably only get worse, so caveat lector.
When I get to watch the Brujo unfurl his own flower in all its fierce beauty, I also feel a strange, almost archetypal anger that he doesn’t allow or isn’t allowed to have himself be seen like this more often (that I don’t allow…etc.). But how can I even contemplate dragging him to another cultural backwater? At least this one has, for some unknown and mysterious reason, half-a-dozen or more world-class jazz and improvisational musicians. If he refuses to be in New York or Paris, he should at least be where he gets to play with C. every six months. Duology II is already in the works, and his children’s operas debut Tuesday and Wednesday nights; but my stubborn belief is that he should be playing weekly with grown-ups and, even more to the point, composing and recording. Translation? I should be composing and recording too…my father even gave me the mixer and the interface to make this very Mac absorb and rearrange sounds; I have Maman’s piano and speakers, and a very nice microphone. And sheets of stave paper littered with scraps of song. But when I play for more than fifteen minutes, my hands and wrists spasm with stabbing pain. Maybe you have to choose your keyboard in life, and I seem to have chosen this one, with its 26 letters and numerals and punctuation and diacriticals; my fingers tend to fly up and down it so fast they practically scatter sparks. Maybe if I can choose a graduate program that will support rather than entrap me, there could be a space made for music again, maybe even a course or class. Certainly if I cohabit with the Brujo, we’ll have a music room, dammit, and set up the recording studio which currently lives packed in cardboard boxes above the kitchen stove. Holy moly—did someone just type “cohabit with the Brujo”?! Inconceivable. (”You keep using that word….”)
Now to check email, and see if Tucson coughed up—nope. Nothing. Bugger.
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