TEMPERANCE

Improbable angles and necessary angels.

The grief is showing up in my heart space, draining up into my lungs. Thursday night post basketball run, I was feeling short of breath with a little wheeziness maybe. I sat with it and I’ve been sitting with it. I don’t know what to make of the sensations except they’re there and so far, the emotional feeling is like an faint echo of something needed but not wanted. Yet, I know it’s grief with the potential of forgiveness peeking through dark clouds of anger. Perhaps it’s more akin to metallurgy. Control of time and temperature in the forging of a sword in order to achieve a greater toughness by decreasing the hardness. Increase of ductility, decrease of brittleness by applying precise control.

A big part of me just wants to wail. I feel numb aside from a recent bout of diverticulitis accompanied by internal hemorrhoids; bleeding from my asshole.

Spring is here in the Southern Catskills along with the relief of renewal after a grueling winter. Venturing outside I began the process of prepping the garden for planting. The garlic and spring onions are coming up. Forsythia, lilac, daffodils, allium, magnolia, lemon balm, strawberries, chickweed, cleavers, rhubarb, peach, parsley and even a hearty kale stalk reminding me how this cycle keeps perpetuating itself despite the constant attempted self-sabotage / suicidal tendencies of homo sapiens. Yesterday I turned over the soil in half the garden, got my hands clean with dirt. My late October mulching and pruning was more than satisfactory, even impressive, akin to revisiting one of my finer pieces of writing. Did I actually do that?

Then there’s my grand project, the outdoor stage. Recently I laid claim to eighteen oak church pews that provided me with the impetus, and now obligation, to follow through with my vision. With help, my goal is to present a first something in late August. So far, it’s looking like all the pieces are falling into place. Occasionally, I wonder why I’m pursuing this but then again, everything feels somewhat precarious these days.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

In my mind, that statement sounded like an unconscious call for renewal. So let’s begin with the end of distorted thinking. As we watch the budding flowers, why don’t we polish our eyeballs with awe and remember we are a part of nature not apart from it. Yes, let’s enter a new civilization, one that works for all of us.

Haven’t we seen enough insanity? If you’re tempted to ask AI for the answer to that, then I don’t know what to say.

Or you could call your representatives and remind them that the world might be incinerated tomorrow. The overloads would have a good laugh at your expense.

We’ve been conned yes. Ensorcelled is more accurate.

Every Wednesday night I join a Zoom call led by Sam Perry and his memory palace. It’s called The Earthlings and we’ve been deep diving into The Tarot, looking primarily at the Major Arcana. Last week we arrived at card fourteen. I like to write notes as Sam speaks and then create word distillations. It helps me understand the teaching. Temperance feels like a healing card. We can apply it to metallurgy and the potential to make something new out of the rotting culture. I have this vision for a vessel to bring music, theater, film and lectures/workshops to my land. Somehow the process requires temperance. It also requires angels and pouring at improbable angles.

TEMPERANCE

The rainbow emerges after the rotting

Peacock fan post-nigredo

Dissolve and coagulate

Wolf-tone tempered

Lining up the notes

Tempering the wolf

Card fourteen / seven sins + seven virtues

Forge and crucible metallurgy / Temperance

Making new / music spirals up and out

24 keys / 24 hours / the well tempered clavier

“There is no birth of all mortal things, nor any end in wretched death, but only a mixing and dissolution of mixtures”

Empedocles threw himself into Mount Etna / mixing himself with the elements

Thinking feeling sensation intuition / introvert extrovert & hybrid

4 + 3 = 7 triangle within a square on the angel’s chest

Blood bile black bile phlegm

Choleric sanguine melancholic phlegmatic

Yellow black blue red

Hot dry cold wet

Fire Air Earth Water

Put the bridle on yourself / move through the rhythms

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem

Visit the interior of the earth and purifying you will find the hidden stone

Purify your self with VITRIOL / the secret acid that dissolves all things

Temperance renamed Art / two coming together as one

Hermes Venus Mercury Aphrodite

Love and Strife and everything in between

Purify what you found there Alice

Rilke says all angels are terrifying

Bacchus is actually the god of tinctures / a mixologist

We are psychopomps and symposiarchs

Mixing water with wine, turning water into wine / unani medicine

We cannot ever truly be tempered said Alyssa with a laugh

We are always moving

Angels / non gendered/ move between realms and the elements

Death first, then the angel Temperance

Braided pouring at an impossible 45 degree angle

Death rebirth resurrection / road leading to a new day

One foot in the water / one on the earth

Iris is Greek for rainbow / 7 colors, or infinity really

Peacock fan on the wings / purple toe (fire and water)

Angel is Greek for messenger

Iris is a messenger

Feelings thoughts sensations all messengers

The Angel is a protector / “attaboy Clarence”

We are multitudes / a mixture of many parts

The full catastrophe / Zorba-like Bacchae

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”