Battlestar Galactica

WE WANT THE WOLD

& WE WANT IT

NOW!

Virgin Mother of Exiles

Revelation 17

Babylon, the Prostitute on the Beast

¹ One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. ² With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”

³ Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. ⁴ The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. ⁵ The name written on her forehead was a mystery:

BABYLON THE GREAT

THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES

AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.



<sup>… … …



18</sup> The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

The New Colossus  (by Emma Lazarus, 1883)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Bad Romance

The Problematic Night

The problems of the night

   are too numerous to invite

The biggest problem of the night

   being the utter lack of light

Another problem with the night

   is the requirement to fight

I’d rather lay in the light

   than struggle thru the night

But light skin burns

   and all smart men know

      we all need a little night

         in order to glow

 

The night is costly

   and blind as a bat

to all you’ve lost

   and all It’s cost

The day gives and gives

   but the night sucks it all up

Squeezes your dry

   and spits you up

      like a baby

         with a belly ache

Opposable Thumbs

Interlude by William Ernest Henley

O, the fun, the fun and frolic

that The Wind that Shakes the Barley

scatters through a penny-whistle

Tickled with artistic fingers!

…

Grinning, in herself a ballet,

Fixed as Fate upon Her audience.

…

Splinted fingers tap the rhythm;

And a head all helmed with plasters

Wags a measured approbation.

…

…. …

… …. …

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

… …

… … …

It maters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Freak on a Leash

Haunted

King’s Carrie was a girl

though her mother

thought more like a whore

Little Carrie liked to twirl

In her head she liked to whirl

And her story

we all know well

how she rose

and up rose hell

Dearest Prince,

(Epilogue of Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye by Madonna Kolbenschlag)

the legend

The frog is an amphibian . . . that is an animal with two types of life, a fishlike life as a tadpole and a (predominantly) land life as a frog. This animal, therefore, is an excellent symbol of the gradual metamorphosis from one world to another, or for a messenger from the sphere of the more fluid soul-world to the solid, material world.

--- Julius Heuscher, Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales

My guilts are what

we catalogue.

I’ll take a knife

and chop up frog.

Frog has no nerves.

Frog is as old as a cockroach.

Frog is my father’s genitals.

Frog is a malformed doorknob.

Frog is a soft bag of green . . . 

At the feel of frog

the touch-me-nots explode

like electric slugs.

Slime will have him.

Slime has made him a house.

--- Anne Sexton, “The Frog Prince”

In a way this story tells that to be able to love, a person first has to become able to feel; even if the feelings are negative, that is better than not feeling. In the beginning the princess is entirely self-centered; all her interest is in her ball. She has no feelings when she plans to go back on her promise to the frog; gives no thought as to what this may mean for it. The closer the frog comes to her physically and personally, the stronger her feelings become, but with this she becomes more a person. For a long stretch of development she obeys her father, but feels ever more strongly; then at the end she asserts her independence in going against his orders. As she thus becomes herself, so does the frog; it turns into a prince.

--- Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment

 Youth Knows No Pain

Integration of S.B.

So much has changed since 1979. For starters, I’m like twelve times heavier and three times as long! Not to mention the annihilation of the nuclear family, the disappearance of the modest girl as well as the search for something more than resources: i.e. food, clothing, shelter. Modern man finds himself in search of something he took for granted for most of his human existence: meaning.

And modern woman fights for the right to be equal to her male companion, to have her pronoun as the generic form of human, or at least to be recognized as part of the human race.

But what is it we really want? To be less than? To be something we are not? To leave behind the complications of being a woman and jump on Dick and Harry’s boat? To tell the guy’s what losers they are? They’ve been telling us since the beginning of time.

Women claim to have surpassed the status of their grandmothers. They see their predecessors as softies who never fought for their independence like modern girls. They fail to see how their fight for their families was in fact a fight for themselves. They fail to see how the current rebellion against everything and for nothing is a clumsy waste of resources, a mistake their grandmothers would not afford.  

And in the irony of the tornado we find ourselves spinning in, women have in fact become their very own worst enemies, attacking themselves first and each other next. Practically forgetting about the boys altogether until he becomes the one who leaves one for another one.

Some might argue the world has changed too quickly in the last century, especially the last several decades, and that a book about women from three or four decades ago is too out of touch with modern women. I would argue, first and foremost, “Where IS Modern Woman?!?!?!?” and secondly, the complicities of modern times make it necessary to dig deeper to our roots, our core, our beginnings.

Fairytale