William Blake Month: “The Divine Image”

Robert Demachy. “Mignon.” 1900.

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our Father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is man, His child and care.

via smokeandacoke on the tumblr.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

Cairo, Egypt, photgraphed by Philip-Lorca diCorcia for W.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.


(William Blake, “The Divine Image.”)

“All must love the human form — there God is dwelling too.” We say things like this all the time, but consider that Blake wrote in the 1700’s. He prefigured all the poseur Romantics and social reformers, but transcended their work, too. And he really was disgusted by the inequities of life on earth in the Western world at that time.

Ryan McGinley, “Jake.”

Blake writes all the time about how his visions lead him to see that people truly, genuinely, are the same beneath, that plants and animals and even handmade objects hold a universal grain of likeness to people, being all made directly or indirectly by God and inhabited by a hierarchy of spirits, demons, and angels — that everything around us, ourselves and nature and all the things we make, are reflections of God because of our being made in His image.

Ryan McGinley, “Hysteric Fireworks.”

Logically, it followed to him that to raise your hand against these fellow creations was wrong and could not be God’s will; therefore all systems that enforced human governance over one another or intrusion in to nature was against God’s plan and was a sinful conception of man which had nothing to do with redemption — this included most organized religion, education, and politics, all of which he felt were offensive, grasping human attempts to control and oppress one another, which was the same as to try to bully God.

McGinley again — a Morrissey concert.

He really saw with the eyes of his heart: and almost more than anything else he truly did not understand why there would be starvation, child abuse, and especially war. And he knew well enough that he was unlike his countrymen in that way to write poems reminding them that violence and injustice were not the right paths. They all assumed he was crazy, of course. But look at his message, especially his emphasis on religious tolerance (an easy jump for him since he believed all people were equal plus his visions told him all religions had it all jacked up to begin with). It pretty obviously is still relevant and resonant today.

Ryan McGinley, “Fireworks.” He’s my new fave, if you couldn’t tell.

It is a reasonable enough message. If God created us and all things, then we must be peaceful and loving to one another and the animals and natural resources around us, and love them for being reflections of God. It is the only right way to be. So why is it such a challenge, again and again? Everyone claims to want it, so why it is always out of reach is depressing and mystifying. Kind of like how “the one thing we’re all waiting for/ is peace on earth and an end to war” to quote Queen’s “The Miracle.” I know I just went from Blake to Freddie Mercury, but I’m a maverick! Good people quote the Beatles. Great people quote the Beatles, Billy Joel, and Queen. Take it to the bank.

Mean Girls Monday: “Sex ed” edition

It feels weird to put “Monday” up because I’m actually cobbling this together late Sunday night after finishing cleanup from a family barbecue, and will be gone tomorrow (today) to my aunt’s for a jazz festival and another barbecue.

Anyway, I took these screencaps a bit ago and wanted to use them to illustrate one of many Awkward Moments that fills up E’s wonderful life.

I was on my first day of a long-term sub job in the fifth grade at the private Catholic school where I’ve been working. I love those kiddos now and I call them the Scamps. More on that when I have more time cause it’s spun out in to a buttload of unexpected summer work. Anyway, I was glancing over the frankly shoddy lesson plans that’d been left for me and wondering why the teacher had noted on the agenda for Science in the afternoon, “Boys will go to room 8 with Mr. V—, girls will stay with you. Video is cued up.”

“Video? What—” I had not even finished thinking it when I realized, oh, man. It was That Day. I think you remember That Day, you know, the day when you split in to gender groups and learn about Each Other’s Bodies. First it is all menstruation and growing leg hair, and then you switch tapes and learn about the boys’ testes and why their voices are changing, and the kids are ten and this is mainly the first they’ve heard of all this, so absolute hell is on the verge of breaking loose with every nuance of the voice-over and tick in the animated shot of the vas deferens.

I only remembered that day from the girl’s side of it. A flickery screening of some kind of Reader’s Digest, “I am Mary’s Fallopian Tubes,” type-film, a stumbling conversation about how periods don’t hurt and it’s really no big deal, the assurance that boys are changing too, nobody breathes a word this first time through that all this body stuff is in preparation for SEX, like it is totally absent from the conversation, and at the end everyone gets a single pad. THAT DAY.

I was in charge of That Day!

It was a session every bit as nerve-wracking and filled with giggles and shaky, mumbly questions as you might imagine and at the end I felt like I’d been hit by a truck and I wasn’t really sure if any of the things I’d said in my answers to their questions had laid their nervous minds to rest, but at least I knew I tried, even on pretty much zero preparation.

Keep it under your hat but I actually love my job. (“I am Joe’s Soaring Job Satisfaction.”)

Talk nerdy to me: Inaugural edition feat. Legos, Stormtroopers’ Picnic, and Sesame Street

“1, 2, 3 — 4, 5, 6 — 7, 8, 9 — 10, 11, 12
Stormtroopers came to the Stormtroopers’ picnic…”

Photograph by Mark, aka smokebelch on the flickr.

The counting song “Ladybugs’ Picnic” was written and recorded in 1971 for the Childrens’ Television Workshop masterpiece Sesame Street. It was written by Bud Luckey with lyrics by Dan Hadley, and sung for the show by Muppeteers Richard Hunt (R.I.P., wonderful you) and Jerry Nelson. The first episode in which it aired was marked 0416 and appeared as Season 4, Episode 12. Original airdate December 11, 1972.

Though most of the Sesame Street content was usually filmed/animated at the same time in good-sized chunks in various studios after long brainstorming and writing sessions, individual segments could often languish on the shelf for awhile, until just the right spot in the exactly perfect episode was found for them. Such is the case in the gap between the writing of “Ladybugs’ Picnic” by Luckey and Hadley, its recording with vocal track by Jerry and Richard — you know them better as Waldorf and Statler, among the many characters they voice — and its eventual appearance almost two years later on the show.

I have much more to say about wonderful Richard Hunt a different day. That’s one that I won’t be forgetting.

Movie Moment: “The Story of Menstruation.”

I am Mary’s poorly drawn ovary.

“The Story of Menstruation” is a Kotex-sponsored ten minute animated short intended for educational uses (Walt Disney, 1946).

It is narrated by an extremely serious but I think a little bit cranky older woman, who kind of sounds like Lady from Lady and the Tramp, or the dark-haired fairy in Sleeping Beauty: you know, that two-pack-a-day husk to the voice and sort of lecturing, grousy delivery, like she is about to threaten not to tip the waiter at a Chinese restaurant because he has not come back to refill the water, just generally kind of crabby and lightly gravelly in that weird old-people-racist way. Does this make sense? I think you know what I mean.

For the record, I’m not presently on the rag, I’ve just been organizing my bookmarks in to folders and I stumbled over my youtube link to this gem. Did a googly-moogly for screencaps cause I didn’t much feel like capping the whole thing myself, and found a set that were pretty much what I would have done, although I have supplemented with a couple stills of my own.

Why is nature always called Mother Nature? Perhaps it’s because, like any mother, she quietly manages so much of our living without our ever realizing there’s a woman at work.

Try not to throw yourself off-schedule by getting overtired, emotionally upset, or catching cold. And if your timing goes seriously wrong, or you’re bothered by severe cramps or headaches, you will want to talk to your doctor.

Are you getting this? Stop crying and don’t even think about sneezing — you might delay your menstruation, which makes you a failure. Don’t you dare trouble your doctor with your uncleanly shenanigans. (Clapping hands for emphasis) Timing! Is! Everything! You bleed right or you go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

What they are looking at is, like, this weird black puppy thing that floats up from the carpet, I think it is supposed to be a metaphor for all-women-share-this-secret? or some such likely chicanery.

The booklet [Very Personally Yours, provided by Kotex and meant to be passed out concurrent with the film’s screening in health classes] explores, among other things, that old taboo against bathing during your period. Not only can you bathe, you should bathe!

I have never heard of a taboo against that, because that is stupid and also gross. Unless they are referring to that murky, veiled crap in fucking Leviticus? Yeah, there is also shit in there about piercing the heart of a dove if you eat non-Kosher pork, and making a bunch of animal sacrifices for, like, pretty much every imaginable offense (where you would even get the number of animals necessary to slake Leviticus’s bloodlust is beyond me).

But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness. (Leviticus 15:28-30)

Turtles? Really? So every Israelite woman, if she was a woman of faith and law-abidance, is being told by Moses and Aaron that God said she should be going through 24 turtles a year? And she had to do this, follow through, sacrifice effing turtles? And every woman did it? Where are you even going to have that many turtles in the desert?! Doubt it. I’m coming right out and saying it: doubt it. Long story short, thanks for the concern about the taboo, Kotex-sponsored narrator, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been ignoring Leviticus for quite some time, ma’am.

Some girls have a little less “pep,” a feeling of pressure in the lower part of the body, perhaps an occasional twinge or a touch of nerves. But don’t let it get you down: after all, no matter how you feel, you have to live with people.

I have to what?! But these wolves are like family! “People?” I just don’t know about that.

(Damn near killed ‘im.) According to the wiki, Disney hired gynecologist Mason Hohn to make sure all the science was accurate. I take it he blinked during this drawing. I am not a stickler for biology, but I’m pretty sure my rectum is not just a tube with no discernible placement or beginning and ending, and I am almost positive my bladder and uterus are not shaped like golf clubs. Also, question: where is the vagina in this drawing? Why is the rectum even important to show? A tacit endorsement of anal, I say.

Menstruation’s relationship to readiness for sexual reproduction is absolutely never even once mentioned; you may imagine that sex itself also does not come up. But the production is, most film historians agree, noteworthily forward in its script — it is likely the first movie to use the word “vagina.” Too bad a crabby Virginia Slim smoker was the utterer and not someone more exciting and significant, like Bogie or Orson Welles. Wow, I now have to search every audio source possible to see if Orson Welles has ever been recorded saying “vagina.” Project! Anyway, like I said, the subject of exactly how babies get made is not broached, but the goal of getting a boy and making some in order to be all-growns-up is still endorsed.

I hope you have enjoyed and learned from “The Story of Menstruation.”

Most caps courtesy _sargasso on the lj. Thanks!