In A Nutshell

"You and I are just two nuts:

Two single nuts, same single shell..." 

From Omar Khayyam (where is the original?) 

Happy Holidays!
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The Crooked Thing | The rolls of duty: The very uncollected stories about the Not So Special Agent Salmon Wild

The rolls of duty
The very uncollected stories about the Not So Special Agent Salmon Wild 

The Crooked Thing 

For five hours straight (straight!) agent Wild played with his toplap and got no luck.
He tried:
"I am a pretty pretty little girl."
"I like to travel."
"Where is my big white (or black) knight?"
"I want to explore."
"I am curious."
 "I am a pretty pretty little boy."
"I need someone to teach me what the big boys do."
And still no luck. Just some pervert came up on line, one-eyed pirate in Napoleon's hat.
"What are you, a girl, a boy or hermaphrodite?", he inquired obnoxiously.
"I am a girl", decided agent White.
"You are crooked. And nasty!" After the pirate came up with his diagnosis he disappeared forever.
"Why am I so unlucky, mused agent Wild; maybe I really am crooked..."
And he was.  That what the bureau psychiatrist told him, because his mother was pulling his leg too much. That's how he became crooked at his toplap.
"Maybe I should become a girl, he contemplated deeply. This crooked thing is too ugly anyway."
And suddenly he felt excited.
"This is my inner girl", he guessed. And suddenly the epiphany descended upon him.
"I am a transgender", he realized. "Big-trance-fat-chance-gender".
And now everything fell into place.
"They will transform me from not so special into the regular, and then into the trans-special agent. I will be a trans-made man. It is a trance-formation time now. They will trance-appoint me a director one day and I will trance-rule America!"
The not so special agent Wild started to feel a little dizzy, like really going into a trance. Now, when he found out who he really was, he did not need to play with his crooked toplap. He disassembled and transformed it into a Stingray device.
He decided to spy on his girlfriend Marsha Bilderbrandt. She was not a not so special agent like himself but she was somewhat special to his heart and his crooked thing. And much to his surprise agent Wild detected some strange noises coming from Marsha's bedroom via his Stingray device.
"Ah, Marsha screamed and panted, ah! Ah! Ah!" She was having sex.
"How strange, thought agent Wild, Marsha is having sex! And without me! But with whom?!"
Blood flushed into his big round square jawed face, his heart was pounding and pumping like the overworked motor, his arms and legs were turning in waves from cotton into wool, into steel and back into cotton. He punched the clock, slammed his supervisor over the head with his toplap-Stingray and ran out to the street.

"FBI!" announced agent Wild at Marsha's door; loudly and with the self-assured sense of righteousness that only the FBI agents have, especially during the important operations. "Open that damn door or I will blow your brains out!"
His gun was ready and pointing at the door. It was not crooked, it was a top gun.
"Oh, it's you, darling", Marsha said, opening the door. "What's the matter, what happened?"
She was wrapped in a colorful beach towel and was quite red in her face and upper body. Hiding behind her was something shady and hurly-burly and also very hairy. This something was also wrapped in a towel but white and short one.
"And what's that?!" exclaimed agent Wild pointing to the hurly-burly thing which started to swirl around, grimacing and making strange unintelligible sounds under the penetrating gaze of agent Wild.
"Oh, it's just a plumber, darling. I called him to fix my shower head", said Marsha, trying to lift her hair by blowing up at it towards her forehead and pulling up her towel.
"Just a plumber", repeated after her agent Wild, incredulously and ironically. You didn't have to call some plumber to fix your shower head, you have me for that!"
"But you are so busy, darling, with your G-things, just like all of you, G-men. I didn't want to bother you with some small and tiny shower head, you are good for big jobs. It's just some little, good for nothing plumber, he doesn't even speak English and I am not even sure if he has a license. Betsy recommended him, she said, "he's g-o-o-o-d"...
"No eeglis, no lices..." confirmed the hurly-burly thing jumping into his dirty jeans and waiving a screwdriver, just in case. "Agua, agua, mucho agua..." He tried to explain his need for a towel.
"Well, anyway, he has to go now, he needs some parts. Right, Jose?" said Marsha regretfully.
"Gazkit, gazkit", nodded "the plumber" somewhat mysteriously.
"What?! What casket?! For whom?!" Agent Wild got suspicious.
 "Gaskit", repeated the hurly-burly, giggling and making a diagram with his fingers: two in a ring and the index one inside. "Oh, Dios", he screamed, apparently sincerely disappointed with agent Wild's lack of understanding and jumped out the door, cursing and murmuring.
"Relax, darling, I am with you, your good old Marsha..." She embraced him tenderly.
"I don't know if I can trust you", said agent Wild. He still felt suspicious. It probably was a professional thing.
"I need to talk to you, Marsha. I think I want to be a girl."
"You think, you think. What is there to think about? You think too much. Look at me: I am a girl and I never think about this. I take it as it is, as it comes and as it goes..."
"You don't understand, Marsha", it is a transgender thing, it's deep... It's almost spiritual..."
"Don't worry, you'll get over it... We all go through our phases. I wanted to be a boy too at times. It's natural. It's like self-searching. And then you are under a lot of stress. It is not easy to pretend on line seven hours a day. Maybe you've got a post-traumatic stress disorder. Many people have it. Like, Betsy, after she broke up, she started to eat all the time and to mingle with all sort of garbage, like plumbers, movie men and hell knows what. What if you try some Prozac? It helped her a lot."
"No Marsha, you still don't get it. It is deeper. It is a career thing. I could become a trans-special agent one day. It's like a life calling. We have to part, Marsha. We grew apart."
"To part?! What are you talking about? It's impossible!"
"Why not?"
"Because... I've got accustomed to your face..."
"Hmm", said agent Wild and looked at himself in the mirror. It was the same fat, broad jawed and small eyed face, but it was something romantic and touchingly melancholy about it.
"I've got accustomed to your voice..."
Agent Wild could relate to this: he had a nice, pleasant melodic baritone of a voice and sang karaoke better than any one in his class.
"I've got accustomed to us going out on Fridays and having a fun."
Yeah, he liked it too.
"Let us sleep on this, darling and we will discuss it in the morning."
"No, Marsha; it is crooked and ugly, and I want to get rid of it!"
"It might be a little crooked but it's not that ugly, and the main thing is that it is mine. Mine! And I need no dirty plumbers."
Marsha was resolute and that did it. They slept on it and had wonderful sex, deep and passionate.

The next morning, when agent Wild showed up in the office, his supervisor, with his head bandaged and his fists clenched, declared in a staccato voice, constricted with a hundred years of asthmatic rage: "Fired! Outta here! Good for nothing psychopathic pervert! Put your gun on the table!"
That's how agent Wild got transferred to a counterintelligence division with the demotion in rank to a sub-special agent. His next desk buddy Pinchas Stern, after passing through a sex change transition, was promoted to a preparatory para-special agent and appointed a head of zoophilia department with sub-specialty in goats and sheep . And such is life. It's never fair. Not for a straight white man in our days.

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Jim Hall - Concierto (Full Album)

Jim Hall - Concierto (Full Album) | jim hall

The Dark Lady, my love

The Dark Lady, my love
I see your eyes filled with rage
I hear your screams that nobody hears
You're turning gray, you're ageless, I will always love you

The glass is always full, you fool

The glass is always full, you fool
The brawn and brains are just the tool
The life is life; it's always cool
And love in potion makes you drool

I am not a leftist, I am not a rightist

I am not a leftist, I am not a rightist
I am just "agnostic" Judaeo-Christian scientist

Classical Music Playlists

Prokofiev - Dance Of The Knights And Juliet's Dance

TheMultimediaDude - Published on Oct 7, 2012

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times.

Please enjoy this classical masterpiece to the fullest!It deserves nothing less...

The picture is a late 19th century engraving depicting the interior of the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan.

classical music playlists - YT

La Noche Oscura, The Dark Night Of My Soul

La Noche Oscura Del Alma, The Dark Night Of My Soul

In the Dark Night of my Soul,
With passion burning; oh, lucky me - 
I went away in secret and unseen, 
My being joyful and at ease 

In the darkness and invisible 
I climbed the secret ladder up; oh lucky me - 
In darkness, in disguise, 
My being joyful and at ease. 

The night of joy, 
In secret, unobserved, and shouldn't be; 
Without light or guidance 
But the one inside 

The midnight sun lead me, 
Sun brighter than at noon
To where He, I knew; I knew it well, 
Awaited me, and nobody else. 

The night lead me, 
More perfect than the dawn
The night of love: 
We merged, we mixed, one in another

My yearning breast, my breath 
Was only for Him and Him alone
He slept, I touched Him,  
And the cedars with breeze us cuddled... 

His breath - my healing breeze, 
His pure golden hair, 
Sweet wounding touch, both gentle and exciting - 
And, senseless, I was lost, 

And consciousness dissolved, 
His cheek by mine,
And all the world abandoned,   
I've lost my troubles there, I've tossed them into lilies... 

M.N.

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Dark Night of The Soul - Interpretation

My (sudden) understanding was that this little, very simple and very complex at the same time, poem is the concept, symbol and the celebration of the organic unity of the Love earthly, human, sexual (in this particular case, and this is explicitly and deliberately clear from the text, the physical love of one, relatively young, with his intensity and abandon, man for another) and the Love spiritual, religious, heavenly, eternal, pure and just as intense: the love for and of God, in Christianity, for Christ. 
This poem affirms the notion of the deification of the Beloved by the Lover (in old, traditional and somewhat misleading terms) and the attempt at transformation in closeness and merger with the Beloved - the God. 
The love of ancient Hebrews for their God was just as intense, overwhelming and almost physical, single minded and exclusive in their devotion to their "one and only" Beloved-God, probably a defense and a substitute for the earthly and real Beloved(s). 
The love of deeply religious and spiritual Christians for their Beloved, Christ, has the same intense and mixed physical-heavenly quality. 
The physical, earthly, sexual component is the emotional font and engine which feeds and embodies the pure, spiritual, religious love. 
This poem discovers that there is no contradiction between them, that it is rather natural and organic continuum than artificial and cruel dichotomy. 
What is the better case, notion and the example for the wise acceptance of gay sexuality and lifestyles on the part of the Christian Churches, than this little poem, which breathes with life and truth still, half a millennium after it was created? 
Judaism, this practical and living sociology, so to speak, did accept them, quietly and without much hullabaloo. 
Furthermore, for anyone, trying to understand the origins of Christianity, it should be undeniable, that historically, spiritually, conceptually, philosophically, aesthetically, it is rooted in a preceding homoerotic (and much more than simply "homoerotic") cult of Antinous based on the undoubtedly real historical figure. This proto-Christian religion was appropriated, (perverted?), broadened and transformed by fusion with Judaism and aesthetically-spiritually framed by the Hellenistic mythologists ("myth-maker, myth-maker, make me a myth!"). For Alexandrian Jews, the compilers of Septuagint, and by extension, Early Christians, the idea of "gay God" was blasphemous and absolutely unacceptable, just like the idea of living Emperor-God. This idea is still treated in the same terms by many contemporary religious thinkers and figures. 
Christianity, in a way, was and remains the Judaeo-Hellenistic religion of "common sense" (inspired by "Common Aphrodite", as Socrates would have put it) and intense, "gut-reaction" protest against the homoerotic cults and "gay Gods" and by the nature of this relation is rooted in them. 
Mithraic cults is another example of the rejected early pre-Christian religious movements.
The Greek mythologists, who had no problems with these issues in their Olympic Pantheon, readily obliged and produced their magnum opus, a new religious paradigm, better suited for their historical time and place, under the restrictive (Early Rabbinical Judaism) and fanatical influence of their Hebrew literary-religious brethren.
The true Beloved is God, and the true God is The Beloved. Now it remains to determine what makes them "true", how to separate it from "untrue" and how to find this "truth". I think all of us, of all orientations and religious and non-religious persuasions are engaged in this life-long, mysterious and not always meaningful search. 
Keep searching, and do not talk about it with your psychiatrist: it will destroy everything. 
Place a smiley here. 

M.N.

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dark night of the soul poem | dark night of the soul poem text | analysis of noche oscura

Dark Night Of The Soul

The Dark Night of the Soul

St John Of the Cross

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my
heart.

This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–
A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Links

(Christian Mystics)   (St John Of The Cross)

Commentary on Dark Night of the Soul
by St. John of the Cross

“He soars on the wings of Divine love . . .”
“It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the verse and prose works combined of St. John of the Cross form at once the most grandiose and the most melodious spiritual canticle to which any one man has ever given utterance.
The most sublime of all the Spanish mystics, he soars aloft on the wings of Divine love to heights known to hardly any of them. . . . True to the character of his thought, his style is always forceful and energetic, even to a fault.
When we study his treatises–principally that great composite work known as the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night–we have the impression of a mastermind that has scaled the heights of mystical science; and from their summit looks down upon and dominates the plain below and the paths leading upward. . . . Nowhere else, again, is he quite so appealingly human; for, though he is human even in his loftiest and sublimest passages, his intermingling of philosophy with mystical theology; makes him seem particularly so. These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the theological truth that graced far from destroying nature, ennobles and dignifies it, and of the agreement always found between the natural and the supernatural–between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest manifestations of Divine grace.”

Translated and edited,
by E. ALLISON PEERS
from the critical edition of
P. SILVERIO DE SANTA TERESA, C.D.

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La noche oscura, por San Juan de la Cruz

POSTED ON MARCH 13, 2012

This is a classic poem, originally written in Spanish by Saint John of the Cross (the English translation is below but it is not as pretty).  The dark night of the soul refers to a period of spiritual crisis, where the believer finds it difficult to believe.  In the poem, the narrator resolves the crisis and finds himself at peace once more in the garden of his beliefs.


La noche oscura

En una noche oscura,
con ansias en amores inflamada,
(¡oh dichosa ventura!)
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
A oscuras y segura,
por la secreta escala disfrazada,
(¡oh dichosa ventura!)
a oscuras y en celada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
En la noche dichosa,
en secreto, que nadie me veía,
ni yo miraba cosa,
sin otra luz ni guía
sino la que en el corazón ardía.
Aquésta me guïaba
más cierta que la luz del mediodía,
adonde me esperaba
quien yo bien me sabía,
en parte donde nadie parecía.
¡Oh noche que me guiaste!,
¡oh noche amable más que el alborada!,
¡oh noche que juntaste
amado con amada,
amada en el amado transformada!
En mi pecho florido,
que entero para él solo se guardaba,
allí quedó dormido,
y yo le regalaba,
y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
El aire de la almena,
cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía,
con su mano serena
en mi cuello hería,
y todos mis sentidos suspendía.
Quedéme y olvidéme,
el rostro recliné sobre el amado,
cesó todo, y dejéme,
dejando mi cuidado
entre las azucenas olvidado.

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Dark Night of the Soul

Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest
Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead.
O, night thou was my guide!
O, night more loving than the rising sun!
O, night that joined the Lover to the beloved one!
Transforming each of them into the other.
Upon that misty night
In secrecy beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
Than that which burned as deeply in my heart.
That fire ’twas led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where He waited still
It was a place where no one else could come.
Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely for Him
He fell into His sleep
beneath the cedars all my love I gave.
From o’er the fortress walls
The wind would brush His hair against His brow
And with its smoother hand
caressed my every sense it would allow.
I lost my self to Him
And laid my face upon my Lover’s breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the morning’s mist became the light.
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair.