Today, Elizabeth Taylor went out of this world, leaving souvenirs of herself behind.

A beautiful woman.

A great life.

A poetic death: in the end, her heart gave out.

Fly north, little bird.

If we hear one more thing about melting nuclear reactors in Japan, firefights in the the streets of Tripoli, the rape of American workers in Wisconsin, Tea Party freakouts over the black skin of our president, we are all going to go around that final bend.

Feet first, right out the window.

Let’s bring some occult light, some earthly hope, some fatevision in on this. Let’s steel ourselves to contemplate –you’re going to hate me –The Tower card. There it is at left. Gruesome, isn’t it.

In the 16th card of the Tarot, the tower shatters, the crown tumbles, the royal couple falls. Their names, Vanity and Pride.

We are at the end of a zeitgiest that has reigned for the last 7 years, that began roughly with Hurricane Katrina, ushering us into tired wars, a worldwide financial crash, and national shame over our secret motives and methods.

We are witnessing the toppling of this zeitgeist’s last moribund illusions. Notice that this tower was built on narrow, perilous ground much like those nuclear reactors built on earthquake faults, not only in Japan but along the earth breaks in our own country, built on wishful assurances that we could manage the damage should that 9.0 strike one Hiroshima morning while we slept, that we could find higher ground should that tsunami go rip-roaring through our quiet dawn streets with none of the frail Asian poise of Katsushika Hokusai’s famous Great Wave, but with all the fury of irrational nature.

Hold on now! Don’t grab your hat. Wait for the good news. (more)

The world is
holy!
The soul is
holy!
The skin is
holy!
The nose is
holy!
The tongue and cock and hand and asshole
holy!

Everything is
holy!
everybody’s
holy!
everywhere is
holy!
everyday is in eternity!
Every man is an angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim!
The madman is as holy as you my soul are holy!… (more)

And so they fled the garden. Evicted, trembling, soaked. Clinging to each other under a thundering sky.

And though they had lost paradise, they planted a garden as close as they could remember in a second wood. Young creatures, they were, making young mistakes.

Adam never blamed Eve. He had eaten the fruit of his own free will. And with it he had gotten, as she had, wisdom of the great sadness of death but also the fragile beauty of life. No longer mute wards of a guardian god, they knew only the rough comfort of their dependence on one another.

And out of this, they invented love.

Mother Eve, Father Adam. They found whatever they could of paradise in each other.

Robert Frost writes of the impact Eve had on Adam in his poem
Never Again Would Bird’s Song be the Same.
(more)