THE FEATHER OF TRUTH AND THE WHORE OF BABYLON

The Feather Against Which My Heart Will Be Weighed

The crow feather I found was not an idea.

The crow feather was a black slash on the green lawn.

It was a way of counting. One. One. 

The crow feather seemed to be waiting for me.

It rested, abided, as though placed just so

for the one time I would walk to its threshold. 

I believe the crow feather when it is in my hand.

I know that it is a feather in my hand,

black quill, inkless, for writing out the gospel.

~ Michael Chitwood, from Poor Mouth Jubilee

**

JUDGMENT DAY

I saved a drowning dragonfly,
with a canopy pole I hoisted him up

from the pool. Without pausing to dry
the stained glass of bronze-veined wings,

he took to the air, a weightless shimmer
zigzagging across the dazzled backyard.

Perhaps this buoyant brilliance
will save me on Judgment Day –

on one scale, my heart
filled with darkness;

on the other, like the Egyptian
Feather of Truth,

a translucent dragonfly wing.
   
~ Oriana Ivy © 2013

In both poems, I’m astonished by the human ability to see far-reaching pattern and meaning in almost anything. Of course we have thousands of years of culture to draw on, including various mythologies. There are patterns and symbols that those mythologies have in common. Black birds like crows are typically messengers of death. The souls are weighed against something that is practically weightless: a feather or one tear from the eye of the goddess of mercy (if we are dealing with a benevolent mythology).

After a friend read my “Judgment Day,” she asked with dismay, “But what if there is no Judgment Day?” “It doesn’t matter,” I replied. Of course there won’t be any literal Judgment Day or the Second Coming any more than my heart will ever be weighed against any feather or an insect wing. “Judgment Day” is every day, if we stop to think about our actions and whether or not we are helping or hurting living things. Then why this persistent use of worn-out mythologies in literature and in the arts in general? 

The earliest manuscript of the Gospel of Mark (“Mark” was a name made-up later; the early texts of the gospels were anonymous)

Generation after generation of writers, why this constant revisionist return to the old mythologies? My answer is that we can’t help it: we are wired to seek meaning and modulate that meaning to serve us now. Finding a meaning is uplifting. It brings us comfort to think (without literally believing) that a crow feather we found is a quill for writing the gospel, or that a weightless dragonfly wing can tip the scales in favor of paradise. Now, you may object, Michael Chitwood’s crow feather is “inkless,” so perhaps the only gospel he could write would be blank -- a fit image of modernity, it could be argued. But this is outweighed by the very fact that the speaker sees a purpose in finding the crow feather, and feels himself chosen for a special task precisely because he found that feather. It was “waiting” for him.

Does he literally believe that the feather was waiting for him? Do I literally believe that the wing of a dragonfly I rescued will open for the me the gates of paradise? Of course not. If we did, we’d probably be on a mental ward, zombified with drugs that are supposed to suppress delusions. Only a schizophrenic would believe that everything is a secret message, an omen, a crow feather a sign that one is chosen to write a new gospel.

But a writer can get away with saying the wildest things because some more general meaning is intended, along with the universal human yearning to be needed, to have a purpose.

And there is beauty in the fact that feathers were once used as quills for writing.

We know that myths often stem from cognitive illusions, e.g. the illusion that everything must have a purpose, or that good actions will be rewarded . . . . And yet, and yet . . .  There is a beauty to mythic stories, and it’s a joy to play with possible symbolism. As long as we are not willing to kill or die for the “truth”and as long as we are thinking symbolically for private joy but don’t try for force others to see what we see (though of course, like Whitman, we invite the reader to believe what we believe), there is no harm. If the poem of this sort is well-written, it gives intellectual and esthetic pleasure of the sort that makes life worth living.

And ultimately, perhaps, it’s the memory value of stories and images. Myths give us both. Daphne changing into laurel is so transformed by beauty that we don’t think of in terms of “sexual harassment” -- though this rescue from unwanted closeness also teaches a subtle lesson that any choice comes with a price. Aphrodite arising from sea-foam is likewise a transfiguration by beauty of the gruesome violence that precedes it. Thanks to this beauty we can rest a bit from the incessant crucifixions and last judgments of religious art, the naked bodies of the damned falling headlong into the flames.

Mythologies can also be non-supportive and anti-life -- at least in some interpretations. Here are five indelible lines from “Blue Stones” by Larry Levis:

My father thought dying
Was like standing trial for crimes
You could not remember.
Then somebody really does throw
The first stone.

This is the result of toxic theology that derives its power from threats of punishment. The message of compassion is lost, and punishment is coming -- even though we can’t even remember our sins. Imagine a mother of six on trial for losing her temper. This is the absurdity we get with anti-human, anti-life religion. 

For historical reasons, on the Hebraic side, ours is a mythology of exile and punishment -- the alternative was to admit that Yahweh was powerless to protect his people, or simply did not care. Better to see each disaster as divine punishment rather than accept impotence or indifference. Better a cruel god than empty air.

Fortunately that’s not the only mythology out there. I like what Joseph Campbell says: “A myth is the dynamic of life. You may or may not know it, and the myth you may be respectfully worshiping on Sunday may not be the one that’s really working in your heart.” Campbell goes on to say that we need to “filter out of the inheritance of traditions those aspects that support you in your own inward life.” 

Some say no, we have to accept the whole package, the cruel and the nasty together with the compassionate and supportive. Those people tend to believe that the whole package  somehow dropped from heaven rather than got created by culturally evolving humans over many centuries. Once we know the human origin of this amazing compilation, once we already ARE being selective -- the bible tends to be quoted VERY selectively -- I say let’s be even more selective. Let’s take only the best and most supportive from each tradition -- that which helps us live. Life should be a joy: not a ledger of sins and failures to live up to impossible standards, but an iridescent beauty like a dragonfly.

*

By the way, biblical scholars -- who study the manuscripts of the gospels in the original Greek -- have discovered that the story of the woman taken in adultery, the origin of the expression “to cast the first stone” -- does not exists in the earliest versions. It was added in the margin by a scribe copying a manuscript, and incorporated into the body of text by a later scribe.

 This indicates that there were stories floating around in the oral tradition, and this one in particular found itself added to the text held to be inerrant and unchangeable. Some would call it a forgery. One of the most revered gospel stories, foundational, of utmost importance to the ethical teachings of Christianity -- a forgery?

Everyone loves this story. Removing it would cause an uproar. Considering the lesson it teaches, does it matter if it’s invented -- a myth, a legend that just happens to fit the teachings better than anything else?

*

DARK AND DARKER

There are many dark passages in Larry Levis. This one speaks to me in a very personal way:

Each day at noon
I used to close my eyes,
And lie alone in the dark, listening.
And you never spoke,
Never uttered the thin prayer that was me.

In the poem Levis is addressing his own “spirit.” There is a poetic tradition of addressing one’s own soul. Now that many don’t believe in having a soul (unless as a synonym for the ever-shifting mental life), such addressing of the soul is almost bound to come up empty. The soul will not speak to us. It doesn’t care about us at all. No surprise.

But I react to this passage for a different reason. Once a year or so, I decide to “give god yet another chance.” I lie down and send a humble supplication into the air: please give me a sign that you exist. I don’t expect a voice from the whirlwind. I don’t expect the clouds to open to reveal the “eye in the sky.” Any subtle sign will do. The shadow of a twig moving across a corner of the wall. Some faint music. A rustle or a barely audible whisper.

I turn into total attention. And the result is, at best, only the steady hum of the refrigerator. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I realize that a theist would object to this exercise. Never mind my attentiveness: the divine reveals itself only at its own choosing. So far it has not chosen to. I may not be a worthy vessel: an intellectual and not a simple housewife, the kind who tends to get abducted by aliens.

There is a sadness about this silence of the missing god, but also a challenge to name something else that helps me live. What’s interesting is that this “something” also responds only when it’s ready. I mean that which is sometimes called the “cognitive and creative unconscious.” I have a private name for it, but it shall not be revealed. In public, I also call it “the other self.” This too is a bit awkward, since it’s a process, not a static entity: the mysterious processing of information that the brain does “on the back burner.” I pose a question; the answer will come when it’s ready. 

You could say I trust my brain. I trust that in time it will find that one-in-a-million missing pieces of information -- as long as at some forgotten time I put it there. I trust my brain not because it’s infallible, but because on the whole it’s reliable and performs amazing (to me at least) feats.

I’ve come to trust my brain, meaning I trust myself. I am not a fallen creature bent on evil except if I go to confession and cleanse my dirty soul (car wash images intrude here). I trust myself to be kind to others, relying on the empathy I was born with and developed later without any conscious effort. I trust that my intricate brain can grasp complex ideas and enjoy metaphors. I trust myself, and not the “prophet” who stands in the busiest corner of downtown with a sign that the world will end before the year is over. I very much enjoy the description of the Whore of Babylon and the Catholic Encyclopedia’s attempt to refute the argument that the Vatican is the Whore of Babylon. I enjoy it all, but for the perception of reality, I trust myself. What a concept. 

(A shameless digression: Even when I believed in god, I didn’t trust him. He was not to be trusted. “Where were you when I needed you?” is for me a religious anthem. God does not protect children from abuse and misfortune, as Ivan Karamazov brilliantly points out before stating, If my entry to paradise is bought with one tear of a tortured child, I return the ticket.

One of the first things a child learns about god from experience rather than from catechism is that god doesn’t answer prayers in any reliable fashion, and he permits dreadful things to go on. So what use is he? He keeps you scared. He is the ultimate judge and executioner. It was said that if not for the fear of god, people would lead a life of sin, and even crime. What I saw was that criminals went to prison, so apparently that fear of divine justice didn’t work too well: we needed human justice after all. Later I learned that people were good or bad apparently in proportion to the amount of empathy they felt for others; social and economic factors also played a role. Empathy, universal in all social species of mammals, is another reason I am so impressed by the brain.)

(Another shameless digression. A reader asked me, in what I imagined a shocked tone of voice: “But Oriana, what if after you die you wake up and discover you are fully conscious and accountable for your life?” I replied that I hold myself accountable for my life right here, on earth. But if I found myself fully conscious after dying, what a wonderful surprise! And knowing that I haven’t done anything that would merit eternal damnation, what is there to fear? But if god tosses into eternal fire all those who because of an accident of birth did not hold the correct belief -- millions of Hindus, for example -- then he is worse by far than Hitler.)

But I know I will not “wake up” after death. Only a living brain produces consciousness. I’m amazed by both the conscious and the unconscious processes. I love the way the brain can make some use of whatever comes its way: accidental discovery of some old notes, for instance, or passages in books opened at random. Sometimes this could be called inspiration, and it can be fairly complex. Sometimes it’s simply recall of something long-forgotten: what is the name of that California tree that’s like a poplar, but with a thicker trunk, and grows near streams, in the ravines? Paper tree, my consciousness instantly suggests, but I know that’s wrong. I think my answer may be in a poem by Larry Levis. I get out of bed (it’s past my bedtime), find the book, and start reading Larry Levis. The word is stubbornly missing. I drop the book and turn off the light. And instantly I know: cottonwood. I get out of bed to scribble “cottonwood” on a slip of paper, but know it’s not really necessary: I’ll remember it when I wake up.

And I do. I also decide to use some of Larry Levis for the blog post you are now reading.

And here is his Daphne -- the ending of the poem “The Two Trees,” in which he is so starved for connection that his only friends are two trees on campus. In springtime, one of the trees, not the sturdy oak but the one that seemed more feminine, “sleepier, more slender”

that seemed frail, but was really

Oblivious to everything. Simply oblivious to it,

With the pale leaves climbing one side of it,

An obscure sheen in them,

And the other side, for some reason, black bare,

The same, almost irresistible, carved indifference

In the shape of its limbs
As if someone's cries for help

Had been muffled by them once, concealed there,

Her white flesh just underneath the slowly peeling bark
—while the joggers swerved around me and I stared—
Still tempting me to step in, find her,

                           And possess her completely.  

DRAGONFLIES VERSUS JUSTICE

Now, just for the joy of it, some interesting facts about dragonflies:

The dragonfly can move at an amazing 45 miles an hour, hover like a helicopter fly backwards like a hummingbird, fly straight up, down and on either side. What is mind blowing is the fact that it can do this while flapping its wings a mere 30 times a minute while mosquitoes and houseflies need to flap their wings 600 and 1000 times a minute respectively. The dragonfly accomplishes its objectives with utmost simplicity, effectiveness and well, if you look at proportions, with 20 times as much power in each of its wing strokes when compared to the other insects. The best part is that the dragonfly does it with elegance and grace that can be compared to a ballet dancer.

The dragonfly has a 360-degree vision.

The dragonfly exhibits iridescence both on its wings as well as on its body. Iridescence is the property of an object to show itself in different colors depending on the angle and polarization of light falling on it.

Dragonflies have inhabited our planet for almost 300 million years.

The dragonfly is such an intricate and gorgeous little being that it’s easy to understand our bedazzlement when one appears while we are thinking about justice, perhaps, and how there are two kinds: justice meant as punishment, vengeance; and justice as fairness, as in equal pay for equal work. Anne Carson’s suggests that a dragonfly is much more interesting than ideas.

God’s Justice



In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.

On the day He was to create justice

God got involved in making a dragonfly



and lost track of time.

It was about two inches long

with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.



God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows

as it set about cleaning the transparent case of its head.

The eye globes mounted on the case



rotated this way and that

as it polished every angle.

Inside the case



which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank

God could see the machinery humming

and He watched the hum



travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail

and breathe off as light.

Its black wings vibrated in and out.



~ Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God


Charles:

Your dragonfly poem reminds me of the haiku about the dragonfly (“a dry stick: put on wings: a dragonfly”). They are both uplifting at the end.

So much wisdom in Judgment Day being every day. I love that.
You blog and your poems "give intellectual and esthetic pleasure of the sort that makes life worth living."

..."people were good or bad apparently in proportion to the amount of empathy they felt for others": Yes!

Love the information on dragonflies and the final poem by Anne Carson.

Oriana:

I know others too have said that every day is Judgment Day. We have to be accountable at a moment’s notice: here is the good I’ve done; here’s what I regret having done -- without dwelling too much on either.