William Blake Month: Fathers and Friends; Mothers & Infants; Kings & Warriors

Photographed by Giasco Bertoli. Ladies’ Gun Club. The term is “Firearms enthusiast.” Never “Gun Nut.”

Forth from the dead dust rattling bones to bones
Join: shaking convuls’d the shivering clay breathes
And all flesh naked stands; Fathers and Friends;
Mothers & Infants; Kings & Warriors;

The Grave is a woman in Blake’s vision. cf: Kali, Shiva, Sekhmet, feral cats who eat their kittens, bathtub ladies from Texas making little angels to be the stars in their hellbound crowns — the Mother/Destroyer, yes? Just like Earth. Just like life.

The Grave shrieks with delight, & shakes
Her hollow womb, & clasps the solid stem;
Her bosom swells with wild desire;
And milk & blood & glandous wine,
In rivers rush & shout & dance,
On mountain, dale and plain.
The SONG of LOS is Ended

(William Blake, excerpt from “The Song of Los.”)

“The Song of Los” is the last of Blake’s so-called Continental Prophesies, where he shared his visions of the future for America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The excerpt just quoted concludes his prophecy for Asia and Africa.

Golly, good thing Blake was wrong, am I right. Agony and apocalypse, with naked children and flames and howls and shivering clay? In Africa and Asia? What a nut. How off base.

Ugh. Sorry, but as much as I enjoyed putting together DeDe Lind’s post, her comments about the Vietnam War and my subsequent reflections on those words with the ramifications of her centerfold’s popularity has resulted in a chain of thought about the twentieth century and where we’ll go next that has put me in kind of a foul mood. I will try to improve.

Catholic Charities donations for aid to orphans in Asia, wherein if you click through you can specifically target children in Vietnam. (It is very difficult to provide accounted-for aid there due to the corruption of many alleged non-profits run-roughshod-over by the government in their headquarters of what is now called Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — but I know from long interactions that this branch of this particular outfit is trustworthy.)

The International Red Cross/Red Crescent, click through to see about making donations to help efforts to feed the starving children in the Sudan.

Is your guilt assuaged? Mine’s not. Not just yet.

Daily Batman: Nolite te bastardes carborundum repeat by way of bookfoolery

Originally posted on October 13, 2009 at 12:33 pm.

Attaboy. Roll just as fly as you please and fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

by Eliza Gauger.

Sorry for the re-tread on a Sunday and not on a Flashback Friday or Take-two Tuesday, but I’m nearly through my major June series which I have done every summer for nine years because of that there ol’ deathiversary due to my crushing unbearable survivor’s guilt and repressed rage, then snap! it’s almost time for my much-more-voluntary-and-less-moody yearly re-read of The Handmaid’s Tale, and then over Fourth Of July I do The Tommyknockers. I must reach the part where Ruthie McCausland blows up the clock tower on Independence Day on the Fourth of July in my own time for true Summer synchonicity to occur, and the times I haven’t done I’ve felt all kinds of crawly about it, so why invite trouble? Then I will wind things down with the Doomsday Book, which, entering my life in 2004, is a comparatively recent addition to my duties.

Librarian-type girls are hot. I’m saying that I’m hot.

Also somewhere in there I’m to become at least glancingly conversant with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work on grief because my aunt said it’s time we try facing up to how we feel Ways About Things and try to let go. I’m all like, “Okay! if you think that’s best,” but really I mean, “WE’LL SEE,” or even, “NO.”

When I’ve attended to all my obligations, which should be done in about a month, THEN I am hoping to get started on this awesome book the Gentleman is loaning me about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires, which is appropriate because as we all well know vampires suck and werewolves are going to the dogs.

See? Hot! The Bookworm knows. (Another retread; you may remember this picture from the “Enter the Bookworm” post a bit back.)

Christo brought the vampire hunter book down for me the night I went to the house to watch the finale of Lost with Gorgeous George, but I declined, telling him to loan it to someone else because I knew I’d be tied up for a while. But soon! I’ll let you know how it is!