The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Eight: Discordia

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears 
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe
Across the Universe - The Beatles - Lennon & McCartney

Good evening. Apologies for my tardiness. Sunday was spent nor sermonising but being potential vomcano while at work following a wild night on the Welsh borders while simultaneously planning a rather magnificent wedding in the castle grounds this Saturday (and watching Downton Abbey). Monday was Cheshire Constabulary's Traffic Light Re-education Camp (and XFactor).

Today is the day. I write this on the train to Liverpool. I'm off to the Northern Tate. Today's sermon was going to be entitled 'Pillow Talk.' It was going to play you Doris Day singing the film's title and wax lyrical on the two leading men in my life.  As I lay in bed last night, I had mused on the solace of the spinster and how my two best friends in the Shire are both 12 years my junior and male. They are also polar opposites. One shall be named Middle Wallop, after the army ball he invited me to. The other, Minimal Techno, due to his preference for such sounds, preferably in Germany where his big gay mohawk stands out less. I was going to extol their virtues. How Middle Wallop rescued me from an incestuous, crossbow toting, crack house with no heating in the snows of February. How Minimal Techno performed the same function in less dangerous but equally revolting cat litter mixed with hair extension hell, flat of filth, but no!

This must wait, perhaps for some emotional, misty, nostalgic sermon when I've gone. Today's sermon is DISCORD.

The Judgement of Paris - Rubens

Paris ran off with Helen of Troy. That's the famous bit. The one with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and a Trojan horse. But was what it's cause? Helen's beauty? Ish. The actual cause came from Eris or Discordia (the Roman version). She'd been snubbed from a party and was not amused. So, she arrived at the party, and as all wonderful baddies do, introduced an apple to the proceedings. It was not any apple however but a GOLDEN apple from the Garden of Hesperides (a very nice garden which was known to have lots of apples and lots of snakes). Upon this apple was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest one").

Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera with her peacock, Athena with her owl and Aphrodite with her dove. They then engaged in a somewhat misguided beauty contest, seeing as Aphrodite was the Goddess of love and beauty. They asked Zeus to judge which of them was fairest, and eventually he, reluctant to favour any claim himself, declared that Paris, a Trojan mortal, would judge their cases, for he had recently shown his exemplary fairness in a contest in which Ares (Aries) in bull form had bested Paris's own prize bull, and the shepherd-prince had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the god.

Each goddess wanted to be judged the fairest, so they each undressed and presented themselves to Paris naked, in hopes of appearing more sexual than the other two. While Paris inspected them, each attempted with her powers to bribe him; Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite, who had enhanced her charms with flowers and song, offered the world's most beautiful woman. This was Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Paris accepted Aphrodite's gift and awarded the apple to her, receiving Helen as well as the enmity of the Greeks and especially of Hera. The Greeks' expedition to retrieve Helen from Paris in Troy is the mythological basis of the Trojan War. 

This is why Eris is also known as Discordia, the upsetter of apple carts, the giggler, the chaos causer.

She's my favourite Goddess.

She doesn't toss that golden apple about for nothing. She's upset and angry and is balancing the scales. She wasn't invited to the party. The world is in imbalance and must be righted. An Old Testament eye for an eye. Tooth for tooth. Hurt for hurt. Not terribly New Testament or Buddhist. No turning of cheeks or feeling compassion for the suffering that caused the behaviour. Just good old fashioned smiting. With an apple.

Disney understands. In Sleeping Beauty, Malificent wasn't invited. If the organisers of the christening had simply popped a welcome in the post, all the later pricked finger, blind prince episode could have been averted. Cause and effect. Flora, Fauna & Merryweather could have saved their magic.

According to the star stories, I was born when a new dwarf planet named 2003 UB₃₁₃  was right besides the sun if you were to look up from my bed in Stepping Hill Hospital. This heavenly body was only found 7 years ago and was called Xena for a while. There's lots of discussion about the how and whys of how scientists name things here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet) I'm glad she kept her Greco Roman title. It may only be a dwarf planet, but it's important to me. As you can imagine. I have Erisian tendancies.

As much as last week at Burning Man was all about the love, this week has been throwing those apple bombs and asking people how they like them.

On Monday, I resigned. Upsetting the castle applecart. I have new dreams to follow. This morning's discord was brought to you by the letter M and the number 9. 

Mother enjoys arriving early with 10 minute buffers around each activity. I told her last night, that I would meet her at the front door at 9am. I hadn't slept til about 3, musing Pillow Talk sermons, so I was snoozing when I heard her march up the stairs to militant strains of Classic FM.

'Have you decided not to bother?' says she.

'No, I'm going to stay in bed all day............

I'm only joking........

I thought we said 9 o'clock'

'I need to buy tickets and a coffee'

'It's a ten minute walk to the station'

'It's quarter to nine already!'

'I learnt how to tell the time a number of years ago.'

'Do you want to go on your own?'

Complete silence for the following 15 minutes. At 9, I'm at the door with mother waiting as a impatient bull. She's a Taurean Ox. Immoveable. Immutable. A mighty monument. 

We set off. I put my headphones on. She walks 5 paces infront. At 9.05, she says she'll rush ahead to make sure there's time to collect tickets. At 9.12, I arrive and meet her at the gothic railway entrance. At 9.13, I'm buying my breakfast coffee and muffin. Train arrives, on time, at 9.24. We are on the move.

'I don't know why you're always so angry with me,' says she.

'Because you nag me all the time!'

'No I don't.'

'You do.

'I don't.'

'OK. You are wisdom and reason and perfection. I am irrational and wrong.'

'Good.'

'Good.'

Our lovely day out begins. No spinning wheels required.

A trip out does you good

A new British band called Bastille will sing us out with a perfectly apt song named Flaws.

'You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve
And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground
Dig them up. Let's finish what we've started
Dig them up. So nothing's left unturned.'

Peace be with you

x

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Seven - The Burn

Hello and welcome and a good Sunday to you all, spinster or otherwise.

We are gathered here today to celebrate the Bacchanalian Fiesta named Burning Man and best understood through myth and faerie:

Titian's Bacchus & Ariadne - Wild men & dryads dancing to the flute & horn

Paton's A Midsummer Night's Dream - Victorian's excuse for naked ladies nibbling one another

'Let us read and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world!' Voltaire

So this year, it was not all dubstep and the need to be rescued by a burly American, it felt more like this:

The affection began with beloved friends from Hong Kong and flowered as I met their friends and my heart opened and expanded, making room for just about everybody. The Hawaiian Thundercat. The EastEnd Unicorn. The Suave Eurotease. Friends would bring fairytales to me. The faerie. The elf. The dwarf. The mythical creatures. I may have begun dancing on my own but soon my arrival was heralded by inhabitants of Narnia and my bellini in the horn was known across the land.

The happy couple

Singing Rick Astley, Never Giving You Up, lying on couches glowing with liquor and soft blankets. Brushing lips. A Titian painting. Rich and opulent. Redolent with sunshine. Men with flutes. Men with fur legs. Men in leopard print. Horns. Excess. Bacchus. Ariadne. To be wiped clean again by the grey of playa sand. Pulling everyone into soft focus. As children. Horny, deviant children. The island of lost boys. Carefree and smiling. Sometimes skipping. Pandora’s dressing up box swung wide open, allowing hope and depravity to fill the air.

Pandora's Breakfast

Meanwhile, in tents, and RVs and deep playa orgiastic delights await. A young man resplendent in raven feathers and sequins thrusts into a young Adonis with supposedly legal ID.  A tent door falls down to reveal a lusty ringletted maiden’s maidenhead being brought to rapturous spasm by a tall, dark, handsome stranger. In the deepest playa, a hand is broken following a misjudged Icarus flight to the sun via an unexpected perimeter fence. His beloved tends to him in way all husbands must when in the deepest playa.

Aslan rabbit hybrids

Lay on giant marshmallow pillows, a seductive sun god delights in watching nymphs swoon as he pours wicked delights into their ears while filling their vessels with intoxicating nectars and laying no finger upon them. A goddess dreams of sensuous oil massage followed by feather light kisses for an hour and a day that build to orgasm that rumbles through the dusty desert air.

Of Unicorns & Men

A leopard skin wearing Moor warrior with whirling planets in his eyes battles rhetoric and philosophy with a goat-faced Hun in the shade of the camp’s storage. Erotic mosquitoes flash their golden pink eyes and head valiantly into the sandstorms. Mystical monkey juice is sipped and mind bending forest gifts are nibbled.

Plato

Dogs & Mozzies

Nibble. Gulp. Snort. Lick. Swallow.

The moon itself is intoxicated and pulled by strange gravity to land, moments from the earth itself. There to be transformed to her red warrior brother, Mars or so her glowing ruby orb would suggest.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned

Amongst it all, a noble creature appears, a magical vision. He approaches, looks into a heroine’s eyes with deep pools of obsidian and utters the age old prayer, ‘Oi, rutress! We should totally make out!’

Oi! Rutress!

Mermaids draw pearls from their deepest parts as the play dust creates these rare gifts usually only found in the sea. Lesser souls’ feet and hands crack in the face of the storm. Mermaids know how to use their materials. Pearl strands adorn every tent.

Transformations abound under this red moon.

Maidens return as snow queens. Altered by sights of seawitches tipping the velvet as they devoured tiny sapphists and muppets losing their minds.  The desert is a dangerous place at night. Simple travellers may fall prey to deaf impersonators when asking directions. Particularly when sampling the forests’ bounty of magical mushrooms. Sampling unicorns is imperative to keep oneself safe. As are talismen worn in the safety of camp, ‘If you can read this, I will lick you!’

The things I saw that night whilst lost in the wilds...

One must not be surprised if a flaxen haired Legolas appears at your tavern, nor muscular Thor. Even Absolutely Fabulous finds purchase in this land, with star appearances from Saffy’s cousins, the Swahillihotties.

Gimli commits to BM

Elven & 21 last week

Absolutely Fabulous Cousins

To reach this mythological, high fantastical tableau, Herculean tasks have been completed. People have travelled across many seas and through many skies. Some have used parachutes. Mighty structures have been erected. One of these closest to our camp is Anubis, the God of the Underworld, the Pluto, the Hades, the shadow side. Anubis holds the scales which weigh the heart against a feather. One must remain light hearted or risk soul destruction. He reminds us of renewal. Of death to be reborn. He was met at the beginning of our trip and then again as we left Reno. We pulled our RV into a small reststop to see signs banning the feeding of animals. To the far right we saw an animal, a dog, and laughed at how ineffectual the sign had been. As we got closer we realised it was not a dog, but a coyote. The American equivalent of the Jackal, or Anubis. The trickster animal. The scavenger. The one to remind you not to take life too seriously. To laugh at it before it fools you.

Anubis burning

You can just see the coyote's eyes to the right. Mirroring Anubis.

Or maybe it’s all a reverie. A hysterical fantasy induced by falling 13,000 feet through the Nevada skies. I’ll allow the pictures to speak for themselves.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Puck – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Remember to keep flying. Keep adventuring. Keep questing.

‘My life has been the poem I would have writ.

But I could not both live and utter it.’

Peace be with you. May all your horns be filled.

Lady FF

xxx

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Six

Fascinating first reading. In essence, when the dust storm rages in at 4pm and you're probably off your face, here's how you protect your lungs, your eyes and your body. With Particulate respirator, hipster scarf and goggles... Sweet Jesus. The horror!

Last year's Burning Man was a bit more this:

Dawn at the Temple

and this:

Lady Flamingo Faun

and this:

Tent exploration

Needless to say I am a little terrified. My ladies who lunch on acid look could take somewhat of a beating.

My precious

Perhaps we best break for a song. Or even better, a movie clip:

Aha. So elegance can indeed save the day. If Rachel Weisz can handle it, so can I. You may trip out a bit and see imaginary faces in the sandstorm, but as long as you kiss the first man you see it all goes away... Smashing advice. I'll let you know how it goes in THREE weeks when I return to the land of normal. The castle of Wales. I hope it is a less bumpy ride than last year. So the sermon begins...

It's all very well going down the rabbit hole but how do you come out the other side? Fairytales deal with this magnificently. The prince saves the princess. The dragon is slain. And you all live happily ever after. Unless you're the dragon, or the wicked witch or the evil stepmother. As I slope further and further away from princess opportunities due to lifestyle choices, I realise I am more inclined to side with the villain than the heroine. I recognise Ursula the Seawitch and Malificent. I find Ariel and Snow White a bit slow and a bit whiny. Maybe it's the ageing process, or the Spinster growing within, my own silent passenger.

Part of me likes this deviation. I like the friends that side with it too. The wild raucous ones I play with who encourage the badness. Those who find me positively prudish due to their wilder sides or reward my tales of excess. There is a part of me however, that struggles with this abandonment of meeting a nice man and settling down and having babies.  It affects family relationships. I found myself spitting venom at my brother for some seemingly long forgotten slight about me swearing too much and having little in common with him. It seems sides begin to be taken. 

I feel guilty for not fulfilling the princess role, for not finding my prince, for being too much to settle down with. Is it my perception or how my family really sees me? Perhaps it is a case of learning to live with this person I've become, of embracing the Elphaba, green faced misunderstood witch and realising my ruby slipper days are behind me? Or maybe I'm just ramping up for the wedding of the century when my beautiful, best friends Andrius Paskus & Janis Latvels get married at the Bellagio in 6 days time? And I jump out of a plane, and go fight dustdemons in the desert?

In summation. At present, I work in a castle and pretend to be a Princess while living in a desert of my own making. Next week I'll be in the actual desert, where the wild things are. Then I must return and pretend to be normal again. It perturbs me. Fuck it. Let's look at pretty things instead :)

Sunday worship is brought to you by the groom and the groom.

My beautiful boys - Janis & Andrius

BOBFOC? Oh no, he's pretty up top too. Mr Janis Latvels :)

I know this is the campest follow up to that statement, but I can't resist. To defying gravity :)

Peace be with you.

See you on the other side.

xxx

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Five

Hello. Sorry to be so unSunday in my approach but this spinster has been living it up with a 4 day weekend full of sugar and spice and all things nice. Still Untouched but full of plans and high fallutin ideas. I hope you enjoyed the Veronicas, this track's a cross between Don Henley's Boys of Summer and Divinyls' I touch myself. J'adore. Spinster anthems.

I'd now like to read you a short excerpt from Angels & Insects by A.S.Byatt, one of my favourite authors, as she so concerns herself with Victorian art and poetry. It is a wonderfully bumbling spoken piece by a Mr Jesse to Miss Tennyson (sister of Alfred Lord).


.....................


'You don't seem to understand. I didn't mean to speak so much so soon, but there I go, rushing on, like the North Wind, can't stop - have you ever felt that someone was to do with you, when you saw them, quite simply, just that, that there are people all over the place with noses like dough-buttons and eyes like currants and other people like Roman busts, you know, and then suddenly you see a face that's alive - for you - and you know it's to do with you, that that person is a part of your life, have you ever felt that?'

'Once,' said Emily. 'Once, I believe.' Had she? They stood in the street and looked at each other. Richard's bland, amiable brow was crumpled with his puzzled attempt to make her share what was perfectly plain to him. He made an awkward movement with his arms, half a salute, half the prelude to enfolding her, and drew back.

'I'm crowding you, Miss Tennyson, I'll go now, I hope you'll talk later and not hold my awkwardness against me. If I'm right, we do have things to say to each other, and if I'm not, it will become clear enough, no bad feelings, wont it? So I'll bid you goodbye for he present, Miss Tennyson. It's been a pleasure.'

And he strode off, very fast, down the street, leaving her not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

.....................

It's no 50 shades of grey, but I much prefer to hear talk of dough buttons, currants and Roman busts than strong men, weak women and bad porn.

I had my photo taken with this book on Sunday. Other books titles strewn around included: The Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert A Johnson; The book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould; Basic Bhagavad Gita by Sravaniya DiPecoraro; John Keats, The Complete Poems; Mythology by Edith Hamilton; The Dictionary of the Occult by Andrew Nataf; Guenevere, the Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles; Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy and Tales of Power by Carlos Casteneda.

I hadn't heard of this link yet http://hotgirlsreadingbooks.tumblr.com/ but I think that's the general gist. Sunday was photoshoot day. My ego had been supremely flattered when I'd been offered a free photoshoot. I hadn't really thought through the likelihood that I'd be encouraged to buy photographs afterwards. After spending an hour in make-up and being told the shoot would last about 5 hours, I figured there was likely to be an element of sales pitch. There is NO sales pitch. There is just wonderfully clever lighting and make up and your vanity does all the rest. I want these photos so bad. I want them over my imaginary kingsize bed. I want selections of some in my imaginary study. I want a giant coffee table book made with them placed on my imaginary coffee table. Alas, or luckily, depending upon your perception, I have no rooms of my own, so have no place to put these pictures, so am not purchasing. For now... But they're out there. About 50 lovely photographs. I'm strewn across a fake fur on the floor with green satin gloves and black veils. I'm pouring Chambord as if a wicked love potion into a gilded vessel. I'm twirling a parasol in a pastel sheath dress with an overstated hello boys wink. I'm Pre-raphaelite wicked with curious books, statues of buddhas and peacock feathers fresh from the castle lie in my wake. It was egomadness. I was in heaven. I was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. I recommend you all do it. Boys included. With beauty being in the eye of the beholder, having professionals help you control your image is quite wonderful. Of the many photos taken. The photographer has posted 3 on his site. If I want to revel in my beauty once more I must pay for the privilege. Nifty business model. Relying on the seven deadliest of sins.

Here are the three I can share:

Elaine, my beautiful friend who came to join the egotrip.

Me looking somewhat jilted

The pair of us, busy subverting the male gaze, or posing :)

So Sunday was pretend to be a model day. Saturday was pretend to be a sailor day. This lucky little spinster was picked up at the castle by the House Steward in his smashing red sports car and whisked off to Lake Vernwy to get my Wayfarer on. I was imagining self as Lynne from Howard's Way. The epitome of grown up cool. Alas, as the grown up on the boat was used to racing yachts, I spent three and a half hours getting bruised while exposing my knickers due to far too much tacking and far too little drinking. Fun though.

Monday was yoga nidra with friends, which led to yoga snoring with mat and waking up late in the afternoon. I then drove to Blackburn to visit the faery wood.

Faery writing pod where pacts were made

By Tuesday strict covenants had been drawn up to ensure the blogging grows to novelling and then it was time to go home, back to teenworld at Hope Cottage, Number one Cleveland Street, Cherry Orchard, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, Great Britain, Europe, the Earth, the Milky Way, the Universe, Infinity and beyond. Which is where I am now. Which is why it is bedtime. I leave you with the dulcet tones of the theme tune to the finest drama before Sunset Beach.

Oh and your Sunday worship, in honour of Tom Daley and his bronze...

Peace be with you

xxx

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Four

Hello and welcome to the fourth in the series of Sunday Spinster Sermons. 


We open today with the 1988 hit, Need You Tonight by INXS. 


Most of today's sermon will focus on that year. As it's the year I was 12. A children's TV programme in the UK uses this as a format to look at history through the eyes of celebrities. Some speak of the perfection and freedom of being 12, usually the ones who were good at PE while others talk of the realisation they were different and escape into a more creative world of music, literature or art. As discussed last week, I'm not one of life's PE winners.


I was inappropriately reading Riders by Jilly Cooper and dreaming of being fabulously rich and successful and a million miles away from Wilmslow, the off licence I lived above and All Hallows Catholic High School. I was enjoying getting turned on by Michael Hutchence with his raw sex appeal and George Michael with his new album, Faith, and his declarations that he wanted my sex. I didn't quite understand yet that really he didn't.


Not that I was much of a Lolita. I was hiding behind my glasses and curling up with my nose deep in a book. This was the year Matilda by Roald Dahl came out, I would have enjoyed her every bit as much as the strong characters in Riders, here was a little girl who could outdo her teachers and perform magic. Wonderful. At the cinema, I was watching Tom Hanks in Big, working magic through the mighty Zoltan. Dreaming of being a grown up and controlling my destiny.


This was the year Kylie Minogue and Bros bounced onto the pop scene so I was singing along about being so lucky and dropping boys, all the while desperately seeking a hat with no top on so my hair could poke out like Kylie's album cover, the ultimate pineapple. 


I wonder what 12 year old me would make of 36 year old me? She wouldn't be amused by the fact I still live at home. She would probably tut that I still bit my nails and ponder that maybe that's why I wasn't allowed to wear a sparkly engagement ring? She'd be happy that I'd been on adventures and had written and had fallen in love and had sex with strange men in strange places. She be surprised that so much remained the same. That the same yearning would exist, dreams of another life and the constant escape to the arts. 


Caliban sums it up rather well.


Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.


I leave you with Sunday Worship. Olympically themed of course. The first is safe for work. The second. Depends where you work.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-tom-daley-gifs-of-all-time


http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/olympics-or-gay-porn?fb_ref=recbar


Enjoy Caliban's song.


Peace be with you.


x