January 13 - Malfeasance of Children

When is the child born, why does the child die?

Is the child born on its mother’s tears?

Does the child die in her secret smile?

The child rose from its bed of play,

saw the shy world hiding, said, Come here,

I’m a princess and you’re a crocodile.

The world said, Sure, I was bored anyway,

but you be the croc and I’ll be a deer;

let’s rickshaw to China then skate on the Nile.

The two friends wandered that day,

ate rabbit delight and elephant ears,

composed a petunia and put broccoli on trial.

It wasn’t as if their mothers or they

hadn’t heard of textbooks, ethics or years,

but that that diet wasn’t their style.

You possibly haven’t or possibly may

have heard of a place where everything’s weird;

it’s not very far--just none or woo miles.

The world said, Well, it’s time to go away.

I’ve got commitments, I need a beer,

my voicemail’s ringing, which makes me feel virile.

The child lay down on a bed of grey,

saw shadows fighting her electric fears,

dreamt that night of God, gold and guile.

The child is born on the wing of a word.

The child dies when it first denies.

January 10 - Saint Thomas and the BCPs

Agnes Hatfield was a virgin of the highest order; with both her biological and spiritual hymens intact, she longed only for the fiery phallus of God to fill her core.  She imagined God’s member as the pillar of fire which led the Israelites by night through the Egyptian desert--8100 cubits high, with the density of a Pharaoh and a temperature that made the sun an ice cube.  One night during Complin, on her knees and filled with thoughts of God, the candle by her bedside grew in wisdom and in stature and spoke to her, saying, Agnes, get thee on thy bed and raise thy petticoats; I shall fill thee with manifold Tongues of Fire.  And Agnes, being pious, obeyed, and the night unfolded according to the candle's counsel.  The substance of her desire was Thomas Cranmer, brought into the world in great pain and peril in 1489.

St. Thomas was educated at Cambridge from the age of 14 and, in 1530, became Archdeacon of Taunton, during which tenure he had a tryst with his lifelong muse, Catherine of Aragon.  He wrote one of three texts that decided the future of a world language and for this primal contribution he suffered agony and anguish in doubts and compromises, he wavered like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed, he reluctantly sacrificed the blood of many lesser Englishmen, he was marched, deathly pale, to the stake outside Balliol College, Oxford, on a wet and blustery Saturday in March 1556.

His text reached forward to an age of English domination and vernacular democracy, reached backward to the cadences of faith, down to the roots of human imperfection, it reached up to the destroying flames of God.  Such is the spirit and substance of all holiness.  We honor the saint today for this is the day of his first conjugal relation with his muse on the windowsill of the Second Turret of the King’s Guard and the dictation of The Order for Copulation; the Council of I elevated him to sainthood on May 22 1980.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.

The Mantis, the Bedbug, and the Spider

A mantis, a bedbug, and a spider lived with reasonable camaraderie in the House of If, a dilapidating castle in the south of France.  Each had her own specific task, which complemented the others, and gave meaning to her life.  The bedbug gathered food every night, the spider prepared the food the next day, the mantis prayed to the gods for good health and peace, and they all dined together every evening, promptly, at 1800 hours, in the lower east kitchen.

One meal, somewhere around the seventh of May, the conversation went something like this—

Good spider, said the bedbug, rubescent, notwithstanding, ripe (this is the way the three friends spoke with one another):  this curdled curry from lower fibula is stunning.

Beneficent spider, said the mantis, thick and leggy and not of wings, the wise and crunchy bedbug has spoken justly:  the curdled curry from lower fibula is indeed the best of curdled curries from lower fibulae.  I swoon.

The bedbug and the mantis waited patiently for the spider to prepare her response.

Diverse and fast friends, said the spider after some minutes had passed, you who eat and trample time, oh future gods of all the present lords of earth:   I am unworthy of receiving this, the highest praise, from two such worthy culinaires.  Pray eat your curdled curry from lower fibula and do not make me eat your praise.

Nay, said the bedbug.  Your appointed task is high, higher than the other tasks:  my task, the task of Mantis.  It’s true—I gather the food, Mantis prays, and these are not without their substance in the eyes of the ancient darkness.  But you—you, create the great digestibles of which we all partake and swoon, the great creations of spectra and squish that we daily shove into our hungry mouths.  Mantis and I have been talking.  We know it to be true.

A few threads of silk escaped from one of Spider’s spinnerets.  She caressed them lightly with her fangs while raising two of her other, hairier legs.  You have been talking?  Spider tightened her spinnerets, her hairlets tingled.  We all know the eyes of the ancient darkness—we talk together or not at all.  We all know the eyes of the ancient darkness—our tasks are equal; we walk together or not at all. 

The remaining curdled curry from lower fibula cooled as the friends sat slowly in the new information, as they listened to the distant sounds of the humans preparing to become horizontal and offer themselves in their eternal destiny as nightly sacrifices to the bedbug’s rounds.  Bedbug and Mantis glanced at each other through their many eyes, a spectacle that was not unnoticed by Spider.  Time fermented slowly and the table was silent.

Things are not the way they were, said Mantis after long digestion.  The eyes of the ancient darkness grow dim and horny lips cast the shadow of our table aside.

Things will be not the way things once were, said Bedbug.  Things are never ways.

Ancient friends.  Raw and toasty members of the ancient order, said Spider.  Mantis has her praying paws, this is why she prays; Bedbug has her bloating belly, this is why she feeds; I have my web and sputum, this is why I cook.  What strange and stranger strangeness would you have us do?

We will not retreat, said Bedbug.  This is the mouth of all the futures, time’s extended tongue.

We have consulted ourselves and we shall be what we once were no more.  There are no ancient eyes, said Mantis.

Spider paused to contemplate some silk and then, seeing things as they had become, said, The way of the future is the way of the past.  That is why we are bugs.  Nevertheless.  We are kinswomen in The Great Kingdom of Bug.  My kinswomen have spoken.  What shall we do?

Bedbug and Mantis made various sounds they were inclined to make and Bedbug said, Mantis shall prepare the meal.

And Mantis said, Bedbug shall pray.

And the two said together, And you shall gather the food.

And Spider, spinning silk and thinking deeply, said, Nay. Mantis shall gather the food. Bedbug shall prepare the meal. And I shall pray.

More sounds were made, more awkward motions, more knowing glances from the many eyes.  

I do not find reason to dispute, said Bedbug.

Spider has joined us in the spirits of the ways, said Mantis.  She should therefore have her simple way in this.

You are equally and both the friends I have imagined, said Spider in response.  Let us take our new tasks and hold them firmly in our guts forever.

Not forever, said Bedbug.

Until such time, said Mantis.

Not forever, said Spider.  Until such time.

And the three friends departed, each scrambling her new and separate path, into the night.  Mantis disappeared and Bedbug disappeared and Spider wove a vast elaborate web and prayed—

Oh Eyes of the Ancient Darkness, be far-near.

Time touches time and eyes are eyes and shall be evermore.

And she stayed still and prayed long into the night and she did not move but only watched and prayed through her many eyes.

The first eve of the newly assigned tasks, at 1800 hours, the three friends gathered once again in the lower east kitchen.  What spottled sweets might be our delight tonight? asked Spider.

Gangled toejam of geriatric, said Bedbug.  With oofed baloog.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The second eve, the three friends gathered again in the familiar kitchen and Spider said, What spottled sweets might be our delight tonight?

Miffted earpoof of aging ponderousity, said Bedbug.  With poodled noof.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The third eve, once again at 1800 hours, the three were gathered and Spider said, not entirely without surprise, What spottled sweets might be our delight tonight?

Sligs of middling middles, said Bedbug.  With granch-granch.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The fourth eve, at the appointed time and in the appointed way, the lower east kitchen found the three friends gathered and Spider saying, What spottled sweets might be our delight tonight?

Mashley klabb-frigg of upandcomings, said Bedbug.  With melly ondiments.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The fifth eve was not unlike the others in gatherings and space and time and so it was no misfortune to anyone particular when Spider asked, What spottled sweets might be our delight tonight?

Long lineaments of lustables, said Bedbug.  With lollilols and slolillol and olilsloll.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The sixth eve, notwithstanding much or once, at 1800 hours, at the height of gathering, those present in the present kitchen heard the question that had been asked before.

Biggon of gabette, said Bedbug.  With many floopy iths.  And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.

The seventh eve, with the ancient sun spinned and spun and nothing really new, those destined in the kitchen waited for the question but there was no question and in its absence Bedbug spoke.  Old Friends. Tonight, to celebrate our buggy flexibilities, a delicacy of ofty tofness:  veltmeats of crambled tenderosities. With elfovers.

And Mantis and Spider said yumyum and many other fineries and the three friends talked in ways that old friends do.  And on that same night, not long into digestion, on the seventh night after the newly assigned tasks, full of prayer, the spider ate the bedbug and the mantis and clambered back to her web and lived alone in the House of If in the south of France and prayed without ceasing until she died.

January 7 - Saint Publius, Mythmonger

Tantus Noblesse Siphilus was furious with the Viagra-Scorpios.  Spurius Gallus, the bastard son of that debauched old goose, Priapi Senecus, had deflowered Fabula, Tantus’ sister, in the slave quarters on the maiden voyage of De Politica, the Siphilus’ yacht … when he should have been fraternizing on deck to aid the impression that the two families were on speaking terms, diminishing doubt that funds should be diverted from the proposed aqueduct—providing the squalid Roman suburbs with water—to the expansion of the families’ shared bath and amphitheatre.

In return, Tantus sought to seduce Spurius’ sister, Aquila, known to be as desirable, remote and chaste as Atalanta, and whispered breezy stratagems in every orifice on her pretty face:  your breasts are like the thoughts of Aphrodite¾made for exposure; your buttocks are like the Roman hills when Romulus and Remus first discovered them¾designed to be plundered; your legs are like barbarians’ temples¾meant to be toppled; your nest is like the home of eagles’ eggs¾created for eating.  When his honeyed arsenal failed to sway her, he removed the honey, ripped away Aquila’s coverings and had her until she bled to a stupor.  He then skinned her alive, fed her tongue to cats, hacked off the limbs she had refused to give him, and left her to die in the bleak silence of her own leaking blood.

An overreaction?  Sure.  But human passion doesn’t thrive on balanced scales.  Fortunately, the gods redeem such violations when they can, and Diana, after overhearing Persepina and Mars discuss the incident, took Aquila’s rotting flesh, turned it to seed and planted it in Saturnina Ovidus Naso’s womb, which on March 20 43 BCE released its holy charge into that portion of the world known at the time as Sulmo.

St. Publius was a prince of distilled passion, who suffered intensely from the loss of his beloved city and third wife, from his banishment to edgy desolation.  He loved flesh and the social games that clothed it, power’s center and words’ hot decree.  He knew despair from betrayal, isolation, and the clash of art’s power with the power of the sword.  From these loves and agonies, he provided one of the major sources of ancient mythology and a register of the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an age.  His stories sing with suffering creation, his words ring in the bellies of us all.

In Tomi on August 13 17 CE, St. Publius was savagely attacked by a wayward Cretan bull and gored to death on the rim of the Empire, where he was transformed to two tonnes of phyllophora crispa and cast into the sea.  The Council of I elevated him to sainthood on April 23 1564; we remember St. Publius today as this was the day of Corinna’s first infidelity to him, when she, from lust, revenge and boredom, stole from their matrimonial bed to rut with a forgettable lictor by the tomb of Caecilia Metella.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.

Sisters in Wonderland: An Explanatory Note

The Secular Sadoo, Pariah Diaper, Bianca Gerald Calamine, and the griffin who lives in the muck of muliebrity, regret that The Sisters in Wonderland cannot be posted due to the incompatibility between its peculiar techno-graphic requirements and the peculiar confines of Blogger and/or our ignorance.


If ever time, money, and opportunity converge, the Artist Colony would like to mechanically present The Sisters in Wonderland in three dimensions--but such convergence, as those steeped in the tea of god well know, is unreliable ... and not necessarily benevolent.


Most respectfully on this fifth day of January in one of the years of the many apocalypses,


Bianca Gerald Calamine
The Griffin Who Lives in the Muck of Mulebrity
Pariah Diaper
The Secular Sadoo

Fred and the Lost Penis

Some dreamy Tuesday on his way to school, Fred lost his penis when leapfrogging over a fire hydrant, but didn’t notice until afternoon recess.  He said to Ms. Sluzzlewuss—

Ms. Sluzzlewuss, I’ve lost my penis.

With your grades, Fred, your penis is the one thing you can’t afford to lose, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss, sniffling and snorting into a dirty handkerchief.  We’ll have to go to the principal’s office.

The principal’s office was a mess.  Vast reports were piled like skyscrapers all over the floor.  Pens, pencils, markers, paperclips, and smeared table knives stuck out from the reports like wanton planes.  The desk was covered with liverwurst sandwiches, gherkins, cheese sticks, and mostly full pop cans.  Various pieces of technology, most of them dysfunctional, lurched and burbled around the room.  There were no books.

But if his office was a mess, the principal himself was messier.  Wearing two twisted ketchup-stained ties, ketchup-stained polyester pants barely maintained by threadbare suspenders, ketchup-stained ripped socks stuffed in second-hand ketchup-stained shoes, and—dare we mention it—20-year-old underwear stained with almost everything, Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt was not a pretty man.  He was stroking some liverwurst and humming an ugly tune to himself as Ms. Sluzzlewuss and Fred entered, seeking counsel.

Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt, it is I, Ms. Sluzzlewuss.  I have a student here who’s lost his penis.  Ms. Sluzzlewuss snuffled.

Oh Ms. Sluzzlewuss, Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt said, licking the liverwurst off his fingers and appearing from behind some skyscrapers, How very very very very pleasant to see you.

Only one very is necessary, Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt, Ms. Sluzzlewuss said.

Yes yes, right, of course, said Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt.  How veerrrrrry pleasant to see you.

We have a problem.

Yes yes, we all do.

Fred here … you see Fred?

Yes yes, the little thing there.  The little thing there beside you.  Nice boy.

Yes, this is Fred, he’s lost his penis.

Oh dear oh dear, what shall we do, oh dear oh dear?

That’s why we’re here, Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt, to ask you what we should do.  Fred has never lost his penis before … have you Fred?

No, Ms. Sluzzlewuss, it’s the first time.

Fred has never lost his penis before, I’ve never had a student who’s lost his penis before, I don’t have a penis, you’re the principal, you have a penis, we thought you might be able to point us in the right direction.

Oooh.  Oh.  I see.  Aaaah.  Yes, excuse me for a moment please, yes.  And Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt disappeared behind some skyscrapers and consulted the liverwurst.

I think we should call your mother.  Fred, you have a mother?

Yes, Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

Call her and ask her to come immediately.

My mommy’s at work.

Where does your mother work?

Birdseed.

What do you mean, birdseed?

Mommy works at Birdseed.

It doesn’t matter where she works … call her.

Fred took out his cell phone and called his mother.  Mommy?  … It’s Fred.  … I lost my penis. … Ms. Sluzzlewuss wants you to come in. … Ms. Sluzzlewuss is my teacher. … She wants you to come in. … I lost my penis. … It’s Fred. … Mommy?

Fred’s mother arrived in a hideous grey pantsuit, talking on her phone, birdseed everywhere—fingernails, hair, eyebrows and nostrils, teeth and rings and shoes and pantsuit.  No, you can’t count on the Slovaks.  … Try the Koreans. … The Koreans must have millets.  … Millets, not midgets, you moron, millet. … Tuesday, it must be Tuesday. … You won’t have a job. … The Chinese … even the Nigerians if you have to. … Whatever. …

Ah, said Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt, appearing, Birdseed.

Ah, liverwurst, said Fred’s mother.  And Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt and Fred’s mother disappeared behind the skyscrapers.

Do you have a father? asked Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

Yes, Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

Call him and ask him to come immediately.

Daddy? … It’s Fred. … School. … Ms. Sluzzlewuss. … I lost my penis Daddy. … No. … Yes. … Yes. … No. … No. … Ok. …

What’s happening, what happened? asked Ms. Sluzzlewuss.  And she threw her nose violently into a very unclean handkerchief.  What happened, what’s happening?

Daddy’s coming.

Daddy came, with Tatiana, Xing, Frascuelo, LaVaughn, Jaagup, and Mwanyisa, plus 12 or 13 of Fred’s near and distant relatives.  Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt appeared from behind the skyscrapers.  Yes yes, anyone like a birdseed-liverwurst sandwich?  Also available are liverwurst-birdseed sandwiches.  Yes yes very good.  Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt disappeared again.

Mr. Fred, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss, Fred has lost his penis.

I lost my penis once, Ms. Sluzzlewuss, said Fred’s father.  I too had been leaping over … not now Frascuelo … just after we had moved to … Fred, would you get Jaagup the juice … the curious thing, you see, was not that … Xing, Xing, it’s going to be all right … it’s linked, I think, to the problem of … Aunt Froozelda, that’s not appropriate … where’s LaVaughn? … the more general problem with …

We are not interested in your personal history, Mr. Fred, we’re interested in the facts.  And we don’t appear to be getting them.

A skyscraper toppled in the distance and Fred’s mother appeared, harboring much less birdseed.  What I’d like to know is—what’s going on? said Fred’s mother.

This is everyone’s concern, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

Call the mayor! Call the pope! cried Aunt Froozelda.

Yes yes, I’ll call the mayor, right, yes yes, fine idea, yes yes, just what we need, said Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt from below his desk.

In no time at all, the mayor and the pope entered, holding hands.  What what? said the mayor.  What what! said the pope.  What what, said Aunt Froozelda.

It is time, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss, to hold a council of those with counsel.  Let us hear from those present who have counsel for the council …

Yes yes, said Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt.  Very very very very very very.

… with something to say pertaining to the issue at hand, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

I lost my penis, said Fred.

The councilors and I have met, said the mayor, and we have met and we have met and we have met.  We met with the trustees and the members, we met with the task forces and the representatives, we met with the committees and the committees.  We met with the people and the myriad creatures and the multitudes and the mistresses and the spouses and the exes and the future exes and we met with ourselves.  We too met with ourselves.  We too met.  With ourselves.

The cardinals and I have met, said the pope, and we have blown the smoke and we have examined the words of The Hippo of Bishop and the Common Doctor and that Scottish Dunce and we are still awaiting the Magisterium.  What is a penis?

What what, said Aunt Froozelda.

Mwanyisa and Tatiana, stop that, said Fred’s father.  Fred, could you please get Xing’s bottle?

Everything is unfolding according to policy, said the mayor.

Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium, said the pope, and rose to the ceiling on a cloud of himself.

Birdseed, said Fred’s mother.  Not the Slovaks.

Yes yes, said Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt, and fell asleep.

Then, all of a sudden, without being invited, the Empress of the Universe walked in.

What good timing, said Ms. Sluzzlewuss.

Shut up, said the Empress.  Aunt Froozelda, look after the children; Mayor, go wake up Mr. Ogg von Titt-ratt; all you relatives, get chairs; Mother and Father, clear some space; children, go play but be quiet; Pope, get off the ceiling; everyone, arrange the chairs in a circle and sit down; I call this meeting to order, I am the Empress of the Universe and I am I and I am the One to Make Things Happen and Let Things Happen.

The skyscrapers began collapsing and many munched on horrible sandwiches and Ms. Sluzzlewuss blew her nose and blew again and the mayor and the pope stood on the desk and slowly danced and the Empress of the Universe told everyone to shut up and Fred’s mother went to the washroom and Mr. Ogg von Titt-Ratt followed her and the children made birdseed and liverwurst castles and Fred’s father tried to clean up with no success whatsoever and Aunt Froozelda said What what! and What what! again and again and the many relatives ran around and around and wouldn’t listen to anyone and overall absolutely nothing happened.

But in all the kerfluffle, Fred slipped unnoticed out of the principal’s office, out of Titt-Ratt’s Elementary School for the Gifted, down the broad avenues that businesspeople sped down, to the right and the left and the right and the right until he reached the street with the fire hydrants, which he leapt over until a little girl came up to him and asked, Did you lose your penis?

Yes, said Fred.

Is this it? said the little girl, holding out his penis.

Yes, said Fred.  Thank you.

You’re welcome, said the little girl.  I found it in a robin’s nest.

Do you want to come home with me and make eggplant-brie open-faced sandwiches and stare out the window at the trees? said Fred.

OK, said the little girl.

And Fred and the little girl went to Fred’s house, where it was quiet for a while, and made themselves eggplant-brie open-faced sandwiches and stared out the window at the trees.

Quaff Quail

Bianca Gerald Calamine, after getting a double Ph.D. in Neonanophysics and Old English, had three nervous breakdowns and gently retired to a woodsy cabin somewhat eastnortheast of Minneapolis.  There she gave birth to herself and wrote four very short stories:  Quaff Quail, Sisters of Wonderland, Fred and the Lost Penis, and The Mantis, the Bedbug, and the Spider.

The Secular Sadoo is pleased to present these four little jewels of innocence during Proper of Saints interludes, in whatever installments please it.  We begin with Quaff Quail in its entirety.

Quaff Quail

One day Quaff Quail, unexpectedly, was made god of the turnips.  Quaff immediately went out and began doing the sorts of things she thought gods were supposed to do—she went to Mexico and drank lime margaritas and married a Mexican mojito.  But the turnips did not want a god like this and said so—

Quaff, they said, We like you.  You’re one of the better gods we’ve had.  But you’re not behaving the way you’re supposed to.

So Quaff crossed the Atlantic and went to India.  There she met with fennies and drank largish mugs of neera hadia and married a Chuak Chhaang or two.  But the turnips were displeased and said to Quaff— We like you.  You’re a decent sort of god.  But you’re not behaving the way we expect you to behave.

So Quaff parted the monsoons and headed southeast to Thailand in a haberdasher’s cart.  She sat underneath a Sang Som tree and bathed in satho juice and married three Mekhong whiskeys, who dumped her for a bowl of curried cat.  But the turnips hummed and hawed and said to Quaff— We like you.  You’re kind of all right, for a god.  But we’re not satisfied and you have work to do.

So Quaff said to herself, Quails are strange and gods are stranger but turnips are the strangest of them all.  So she headed through heat and insects to the dark cloudy passages of the north and found herself in Hotel Gulden Draak in Antwerp, where five beautiful Westvleterens passed her by while she swam in the Rochefort Sea and ducks were snow shovels and flowers were a song.

But the turnips waved their little pointy bottoms and said to Quaff— We still like you.  We don’t know why.  When we consider all the jots and tittles of all the gods in all of time and not, you’re not unwelcome.  But you don’t quite get it and you need to get it.

So Quaff took the long watery road to Columbia and spoke with whales and did the chichi.  She slept on aguardiente beds and married twelve cañelazos, only one of whom sort of kind of liked her.  But the turnips read in strange turnipy voices from the ancient books and did not refrain from riddles and said to Quaff— The way was not what is and blue is green and twelve are sometimes one but gods are puzzled dark.

So Quaff rented a bicycle and, after many disasters and hullabaloos, arrived in The Republic of Newfoundland, where it was cold.  She screeched and she screeched and she screeched, night after stormy night, day after windy day, night after stormy night, day after windy day, and she married an old fisherman who smelled of cod and curses and something like the beginning of the world.  They moved into a shack together and things could have been worse.  But the turnips twirled around like dervishes and said to Quaff— We like you, maybe even a lot.  We’ve told you time and time again that you belong where you belong.  But what has to happen isn’t happening and that means something.

So Quaff shrugged her weird shoulders, breathed a very deep breath, left the fisherman and went across and through and down until she eventually passed signs that read—

Welcome (maybe) to Atlantis

and

Where did you “come” from?

                       And “Why”?

Immediately, a forced mistletoe tried to eat her and some willow night chained her mightily for almost forever and she fell in love with a magenta speckled fuzzypuss.  She might have stayed there for a long long time, but the turnips gathered all the force of their turnipness and said to Quaff— This is it.  We love you.  We’ve told you over and over that you’re a good god, maybe even a great one, but you’re not doing things right.  You have to change and you have to change now and the time to change is now.

But Quaff said, Look you turnips.  You turnips, you.  I’ve tried to be the best god I can be and you don’t like it.  I can’t go back to just being a quail again.  What do I do?

Well, said the turnips, you can become a turnip.

So Quaff became a turnip and that was that.

January 2 - Saint Battista of the Holy Recurso

Giovanni Battista Vico was born in Naples, Italy, June 23 1668, to a rottweiler and daughter of a marriage broker.  He received his formal education at local grammar schools, from various Jesuit tutors, and at the University of Naples, from which he graduated in 1694 as Doctor of Sibyl and Cabal Law. 

While it is unnatural, even in the case of saints, for animals and humans to mate, Redicolus, Roman god of Return and Absurdity, took it upon himself—in what is known to us as the late Middle Ages, when the gods were more given to take the guise of animal form—to possess the canine of an Abraham Crijnssens and sneak upstairs above the marriage broker’s shop where the lovely daughter lay lounging en dishabille and dreaming of a tryst with Reynard the Fox in his prison cell in Maupertuis, clutching Reynard’s glossy orange fur while she rode him to a distant luscious land.  At that very moment of incarcerated pitch and glory, the rottweiller leapt into the room and onto her bed and she was overcome and gave herself over to him utterly.  Thus Saint Battista was born.

Throughout his life, he devoted himself with melancholy and irritability, such as belongs to saints of ingenuity and depth, to his recursive vision of imagination, society and science.  He was misunderstood, unknown, and lived as a stranger in the world of men.  He suffered great poverty, prolonged, intense and recurring bouts of boils and dysentery, and failed in all his worldly ambitions.  His children were mediocre and unpleasant to look at.  His wife was likewise.

We honor St. Battista because of his foundational contribution to the creation of another world and his significant impact on a wide range of great saints.  We honor St. Battista today because his illegitimate ancestor, Adeline De Walt Reynolds, famous for her role as Madame Queen Zimba in Son of Dracula, died today in 1961.  Never before, reverting as we are now to a world of false poetry, virtuality and vampirism, have St. Battista’s words been more apt and inspiring.  St. Battista was carried to Heaven on the back of a rottweiler on January 23 1744 and the Council of I elevated him to sainthood on April 28 1945.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.

Proper of Saints - Preamble

Religion has been weary for centuries.  Sainthood has been misnamed.  Religion, once lusty for the world, virile and verdant, has gradually become one of the gray divisions of culture, with all the attendant privileges, smells and limps.  Saints, still chosen by Roman pomp and its damp English shadow, are drawn from too specialized a section of society, from a narrow sticky strip of the soul.  Sainthood has not been modified for 2000 years; it still flops in the mud of asomatous bifurcation.  The criteria for sainthood have not been discussed in any meaningful way by those who name the saints; neither have criteria evolved to coincide with the evolution of God.

Sainthood is not a hermitic solitude, a selfless suffering, a sexless martyrdom; it's where the action is¾the deepest action.  And this is the problem:  this space, so deep it defies us¾we, who are its substance¾is not restricted to those of ecclesiastical bent, especially since those of such bent are not aligned with the world's present arc¾art¾but wear a particular belt of righteousness:  branded, blessed, by papal paps.  What is this deep space of purity, where saints of all descriptions dream and sometimes live¾saints so heterogeneous they make the Devil look united?

No saint is pure.  The difference between the saint and the sinner is not that the latter sins and the former doesn't, even that the one sins less, but that the former dreams of purity and the sinner doesn't particularly care.  The sinner is a pragmatist, bound solely to the world of sense.

But what is purity if it is not sinlessness, and only a dream?  What does one dream of and how does it feel to dream it?  If one cannot be pure, if one cannot even dream purity since it doesn't exist, if no one knows what purity is, least of all the saints, what then does the saint inhabit?  what does she breathe?  While the saint is neither pure nor knows what purity is, this lack of knowledge is the backbone of her dream life and she envisions her waking life as a path toward this dream of dreams.  I call this path purification and the one who walks it a saint.

I accept without question that purification's element is fire and the paths of fire, while they have many starting points, all descend to the same land, the home of fire, what saints and sinners alike call Hell.  It matters little to me how literal this land is, whether it's external, physical, whether it exists in circumstances, imagination or society's cruel children.  It matters little to me whether you call the land of fire Hell, hell, something descriptive¾that space in which saints are produced through fire's purification¾or something faintly lexical¾the name given to eternal perdition by the righteous.   What does matter is whether you believe in this space; if you do and desire to live in it more than anything else, you may be a saint.

You have heard that saintliness is renunciation, the loftiest human attitude, human creation of beauty, or turning pain to good account.  Yes, sainthood is all of these.  And who does these more than the artist?  Who renounces more than the artist, for who accepts more, and only she who is capable of great acceptance is also capable of great renunciation?  What attitude rises above all others so high it cannot help degrade them, for does not art degrade even compassion by including it, its opposite, and all other possible attitudes and values?  Who, from the bondage of the human spirit, creates more beauty than the artist in her home of the nothing of herself?  Who is so acquainted with suffering that suffering itself becomes the fuel that both threatens to engulf and effects transformation to the unimaginable goodness of the artist's longing?

The saint as defined by those purple birds, that servant of servants¾isn't he in his worthiness just one color on the palette of the artist's holiness?  Isn't he just one ingredient in the artist's dreamy stew of purity?  Isn't he just one of many inputs into the artist’s global factory, an input she must understand and not just understand as an outsider but in herself … whereas she's irrelevant to the saint's mission and demise?  What I am saying is that the artist includes the saint, but the saint excludes the artist.

Yes, I’m saying to you that the artist is the saint raised by the power of desire to be not purity, but purity's incarnation¾which the laws of flesh forbid to be pure.  That God today demands fleshy saints, bloody, reeking of imperfections, acquainted with his nemesis¾the Devil¾possessing résumés rife with amputations, and so longing for purity that their lives are nothing next to this longing.

Fire and purity can only be separated by artificial means, after which fire is comfortable, purity’s achievable.  This is the domain of those metaphysical scientists, so abundant today, who actually believe that ease and goodness are compatible.  They have succumbed to the putrid artificiality of plastic; they think it is beautiful, they would take it as their lover.

The world was created by fire and fire will end it.  We long for these two equal moments, when time and eternity mate, so much so that the priestly class of scientists sacrifice thousands of their scrawny members each year in the futile effort to claw back to the first spasm of time in their attempt to expose the universe's raw industries.  But there is only one way to travel to creation, to experience firsthand the fire that destroys and enlivens, to realize the knowledge that this fire can equally create nothing, something or anything, and that the observer of this knowledge, this strange time traveler, is but a venal puppet in fire's overwhelming purity.  The one so situated, who observes and knows she is nothing but a speck of ash in the great primal heat of creation, is the saint … the saint who is the artist.

A more prosaic comparison exists.  In the Middle Ages, when priests were more common than trees and indulgence was the intercourse of spires and squires, the saint in his thousand and one disguises was the aspiration of the commoner.  Almost everybody, if not a saint, was at least a monk or nun or had a relative who was one.  So today, when artists are more common than telephone poles and indulgence is intercourse, the artist in her thousand and one disguises is the commoner's inspiration.  Almost everyone's an artist or wants to be, but like the saints of old, where few were of any worth, few artists today are worthy of the name they claim.  An artist must be a saint before she is an artist.  She must long for purity and this longing must be prior to her art, the material from which her art is made.  Art emerges from the wound that opens between the dream of purity and the consciousness of its impossibility—the greater the wound, the greater the potential for art; this is why purity must be retained¾without it, art diminishes.  Artists are the guardians of this dream and the explorers and tongues of this wound.

How can a classical saint be saintly?  He cheats.  He lives off the suffering of others; he doesn't travel to Hell himself, but lives vicariously from the travels of sinners.  He attends their travelogues and murmurs exorcisms.  He is a piranha, a leech, a bloodsucker, in love with demonry but unable to consummate his love.  But the artist lives in Hell herself; she descends daily, daily lifting herself out; this continuous descent and ascent is her purification¾ authentic, potent, a totality of opposites and so a mirror of the terrible holiness of God.

The new saint fulfills God by futilely attempting to become Him.  This is the saint’s worship and rebellion, her challenge, her stake in the spiritual heart of the cosmos, which is nothing other than her own dark and reeking heart.

I, thus, to evolve with God and please Him, to please the dead, who are the arteries of God, to inform the yet-to-be, who require instruction in the ways of fire, to maintain the dialogue among the spirits of Hell, to uphold purity as the only object of desire, I revise, and by my revision transform, the record of the saints placed into time's incarceration, what has been in the record of the Church known as the Proper of Saints.

I recommend that interested readers continue to refer to that older document for historical and archaeological purposes, but that they refer to mine for the present and the future.

An issue of nomenclature arises.  Is it proper, considering the evolutionary movement I have described, to retain the ecclesiastical name in full, or is it more appropriate to revise it along with the content and call it the Proper of Artists?  This has the merit of retaining the traditional liturgical meaning in the first noun and updating sainthood according to our necessity in the second.  But then, would it not be better to make the revision full, acknowledge the impropriety of our aesthetic rebellion, this rebellion that is more conformance than rejection, and call our calendar the Improper of Artists?  This turns the original title on its head, accentuates our new position, one required by the progress of humanity, and boldly cuts the tie with anachronistic Roman circumstance.  Yet, as we push this further through the intestines of thought, the question arises whether it would be most apt to entitle our noble arrogance the Improper of Saints, thus clearly upholding the artist as the new saint while recognizing the efficient novelty of our action.  However, almost as soon as this new title surges through our brain, a new one arises, one that is not new but old, yet is made new by imbuing the old words with new meaning.  Yes¾new wine in old wineskins, which I fill and leave to age … and age … into the new age of artists, this age of saints.

Therefore, I title my calendar the Proper of Saints.  I recommend it to all who would be edified by the accounts of those who have taken the path of purity into the deepest regions of Hell, who have survived the Devil’s deadly lechery, who have renounced all by accepting all, who love the world by despising it and despise it by loving it, who create beauty for our redemption, who do not shy from suffering but turn it to good account, these men and women who lead us forward into the dark spaces of righteousness … these artists, these saints.

  

Note on Selection

The saints in this Proper have been chosen by the Council of I.  The workings of the Council have been explored elsewhere and its process of selection outlined in the Bavarian Code.  The saints from literature significantly outnumber the saints from music, the visual arts, dance, film and architecture.  Literature extends over 2500 years to Homer, as a named individual phenomenon, whereas the other categories (except for film, which is still in its infancy) can claim only about 20% of literature's time.  It may be true that literature is giving way to film on purity's path, but the millennia-old jewel still retains its supreme qualities and precedence.  Sainthood began with the word, and writers have labored longest in Hell’s darkest pits to mine flecks of holiness from deep within God's guts.  Thus we honor them not more than others, but we do honor more of them.

All this aside, the Council's standards, while necessarily shadowy, are high, arbitrary and final.