Slice an opening at the top, then gently pull the halves apart with your hands.
A line from a letter by a former lover, my pen pal, a fellow student of Foucault. Attached to a gift, a pair of pomegranates, sent to me in the mail from Anglesea. These bold letters are instructions for opening the fruit that lies within; a program for building a BwO; and words of wisdom for the would-be newly found lover. Every word is an opening. The temptation of Persephone, a story from the Greeks, lies in diametrical opposition to the story in Genesis of the Fall from the grace of God. Unlike the Fall where the woman tempts Adam with the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge Between Good and Evil, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, attempts to keep Persephone from her mother, Demeter, in Hades with a few succulent seeds from the pomegranate.
Two halves of the same story? There are many ancient pagan tales incorporated into the Christian religion. The philosophical arts of ek-sistence became reified and deified in the Church. The Christian Church as the Bride of Christ – the ascetics of nuns, for example – comes from pagan notions of the Earth goddess, Demeter (now the feminine is bound in wedlock to the figure of the Christ-Dionysus). Unravelling the threads of mythology entwined about History’s tree, I find more of myself and free my belief in the ecstatic and divine nature in mankind. The Christian religion I followed for so many years (I used to preach the gospel to my friends in high school!) can be put into the perspective of one of many, a creative evolution in the community of men and women celebrating the spiritual aspect of our collective being. Sexuality is not the most important part of that collective being but it does play a vital and lascivious role. In other words, the Christian religion is one spiritual form among many. The idea of the “One” though is deep-rooted and unconscious.
There was a cool change in our relationship the day before I left Point Roadknight. She had decided upon a path of solitude. She had the human expectation in inviting me down to the coast, hoping it might work out. The experiment didn’t turn out as either of us had hoped and expected. After a painful conversation and an awkward departure from Anglesea, I left feeling despondent, cursing myself as one with an inadequate idea of one’s self does when you feel pain. I punished myself for being seduced by her billets doux and my own wild and unrestrained imaginings, and for not talking about her recent past but choosing to believe I was making a clean break for S. to re-invent herself. Another letter I received later in the week confirmed the extent of the misunderstanding, extolling me to look life in the eye and to “be proud for fighting the toughest of competitors.” She would not be put on a pedestal.
Now I have met another woman. I dreamed of her three nights in a row this week and she was my first thought in the morning. When I saw her a few days ago, I had to get a hold of myself to actively converse. The fear now pinned me: do I have the courage and the strength, the cool celerity, to attract this woman?
The weather can be unpredictable – no-one knows what the skies hold in a couple of weeks – but the world, as always, keeps turning. Persephone rises up from the Underworld, Demeter returns to the earth and spring is here again. It’s the not knowing that destroys me; it is the “love of a woman that creates doubt in us.”
What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Does he not display precisely the condition of fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable? – This condition itself is a high desideratum: he who knows it bestows on it the highest honours. He communicates it, he has to communicate it if he is an artist, a genius of communication. Bravery and composure in the face of a powerful enemy, great hardship, a problem that arouses aversion – it is this victorious condition which the tragic artist singles out, which he glorifies. (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)
Taken from an aphorism entitled “L’art pour l’art” it is the conditions for art to take place that concern me here. I failed to make my intentions towards S. clear and played the part of a wounded heart on the morning of my departure, powerless to attain my desires and feeling every bit of the naive nineteenth century romantic that Nietzsche wrote so scathingly of – a Rousseauist.
Still, Nietzsche hardly wrote a philosophy to live by. All this talk of fearlessness and the tragic artist – with chapter titles like ‘The Hammer Speaks” – come across as romantic and metaphoric. Anyone who followed his writings to the letter would indeed go insane, burning with ardour, as Nietzsche himself, ending up in a catatonic state for the final decade of his life. Nijinsky wrote Nietzsche went mad because he grew afraid of people. Nietzsche became trapped on the path of solitude. But there remains a challenge in his writings to live the live the life of the philosopher of the hammer, to become “hard as diamond.” This does not mean one has to be cruel. In fact, that could be the weakest interpretation, the figure of the tyrant, dominated by his or her desire to rule over nature like some evil mad scientist controlling the environment. We are the environment, the cosmos experiencing itself subjectively. I detest the gravity of the situation, the ponderous weighing of hearts and values. In time, I will laugh and learn the Ars moriendi. Its absurd. The “tragic artist” lives and loves for the burning question, learns and evolves, without regret. The doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same – the (perhaps poorly named) “will to power” – is a peaceful and joyous notion. How can I forget?
To put it in the simple way it came to my mind, I would say that it was like this: everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself. (Henry Miller, Sexus)
Time perhaps to ex-doctrinate myself and enjoy the fruits of H.Y. labour.
Use a little pressure but not too much or you may bruise the fruit inside. It’s most likely you will have juice all over your hands by now, but no matter getting sticky is never a bad thing. Work the beads out with your fingers and once in your mouth burst the sweet drops between your teeth, being mindful not to swallow the pips. Sweet, sticky syrup. Yum.
