

### Silversex

An Erotic Spirituality for Earthfolk

Francis X. Kroncke

Copyright 2015, Francis X. Kroncke

# Forewarning

Break-through. SilverSex is about breaking-through. As such it is about dying. And about being born. Stop here and think and feel and let what these images evoke settle throughout your body and soul, then,

Continue, forewarned.

Broken. SilverSex is about brokenness. If you have met your madness, been judged an outlaw, wandered around feeling that the body you inhabit cannot contain nor sustain the seething fierceness within, or been so touched by Beauty that the drop of a leaf brings you to tears of joyful sadness, and if with all this you yet hunger for a greater wholeness, a shattering healing, then

Continue, forewarned.

Caged. SilverSex is about imprisoning. The horror of the torture; inflicted upon and inflicting. Especially about the flesh as prison -- this the horror. Yet more, the dream \-- the horror of the dead sleep; the incarcerated dream. If you have been so dead and desire to dream so that eternal presence is yours, then,

Continue, forewarned.

God. SilverSex is about godding. This the absolute rejection of the Biblical Dream -- wherein there is no Goddess. This Biblical mythos of the Lone Male -- which has reduced and reduces all existence to being male, and all maleness to being just cock. Whose totem is the circumcised cock. Lone cock with no companion female, no sacral cunny, no spiritual power sourced in a Goddess or Mother God. The Dream wherein all that is female has been and continues to be Obliterated. If you fear not the screed which denounces this godding: calls you blasphemer, heretic, apostate, liar, evil one; accuses you of sacrilege and pornographic intent; if you fear not, then,

Continue, forewarned.

The Millennium. The End-Time. Apocalypse. A New Heaven and A New Earth. SilverSex is an End-Time Eroticism. As such you become the Cauldron from which new presences are birthed as you transform into your fuller self. This is the End of genital sexuality: the gape at bodily parts as if they summed up all that is and was and is to come. Unless you are ready to lose your cock to become cunny and lose your cunny to become cock, then, do not

Continue, forewarned.

Method and composition

SilverSex is a starting point for imagining. One becomes involved with SilverSex at a moment of peculiar self-awareness. A moment when self-awareness transforms. As such, there are _only_ unusual ways to break-through to SilverSex. There is no easily described Path, no quickly notated Steps, no mechanistic Schematic, not even a rigorous Labyrinth to be conquered.

This book is not even a good starting-point. However, you might be at the proper place where written words, a happy image, or an odd story will suffice as catalyst. In all events, this is a book which, at its best, is but flint to your strike. It is offered as a sharing of a series of imaginings so that you can, in your own way, enhance and enliven the fuller imagining which SilverSex is.

All this said for you to understand why this book has segments which are analytical and hung with academic ropes. Others which are terribly personal and autobiographical accounts, allusions and illustrations. Yet others which are story: tales somewhat fabulous and fantastic. These yet accompanied by Disciplines -- practices, routines and ways of moving through the day. Lastly, even a prophetic poem which invited itself into this book.

The truth or falsity, insight or blindness, reasonableness or idiocy of this book and its component parts can only be manifested through you. In this light or shadow, you are the method and the composition upon which this book keys.

# _Silversex_ : an Introduction & Declaration

SilverSex pivots on the insight that sexual coupling is the creative starting point and moment. It is that embrace which links two bodies and positions them as foci on the spiritual ellipse. Once coupled, the mystery of transformation and transubstantiation occurs. Namely, that while remaining two, a new oneness, a new Presence emerges. It is an emergence which is birthing: the new borning of two, already alive in time and space, as one; and as they uncouple, as never the same again.

Every human can venture forth onto this spiritual journey. Every person can embrace in SilverSex. Everyone can be transformed and transubstantiated. From within the embrace of every couple, a new Presence can flower.

But, first, both must die. Passing through and creating with this dying is what SilverSex is all about. Being reborn in a new Presence: truly new flesh, truly new soul, is what SilverSex is all about. The wonder of the daily moment -- what can accurately be described as an End-Time, a Millennial Moment -- is this blossoming of SilverSex.

But, _What is ending in this End-Time?_ It is a spirituality based upon masturbatory sex. Such is the sacred sexuality of The Warrior. In its present guise, The Warrior is the spiritual incarnation of the patriarchal culture. More, of a particular patriarchal culture which has obliterated Woman, the female and the feminine. The Biblical Judaeo/Christian/Islamic mythos is the vehicle for this Warrior sexuality, but this Obliteration, in general, also bounds through the sacred stories of every other historic spiritual tradition covering just about every sectarian and Gnostic offshoot.

Biblically, there is no Goddess. No Mother. Other current patriarchies may not be so uncluttered in their imagery, but all share the same spiritual truth: that the creative act (the act of birthing, re-birthing, transformation and transubstantiation) is a masturbatory act. There is no coupling. There is only a singular center; isolated; confined, and it is self-worship: idolatrous egotism. The Lone Male.

The Mother Goddess is not only absent, She is Obliterated. Her body is not embraceable. She is not necessary for spiritual birthing. She has no sacred space or time or memory.

With its Biblical costume flung aside, the Creator God emerges as The Warrior King. This is the God of America's Civil Religion. He creates only Warriors. "Onward Christian Soldiers!"

The Warrior is Chosen, and the Warrior's quest is to capture The Enemy. Historically, this Enemy is the object of a Holy War. One in which all aspects of the Enemy's reality is destroyed. This, commonly, entailed slaughter of The Innocent: suckling babes, women, the sick and the elderly, but a more telling practice was the capture of women: true "booty."

Captured women lived only insofar as they bred sons. They were property, true slaves. Genital prisoners. They were not captured as treasure, that is, as bearers of the alien culture's values. Rather, they were captured solely to reproduce, to be a seed-bed. They were to jerk The Warrior off with their bodies.

In SilverSex, the male is the ritual instrument of the female as is the female for the male. It is the male's to become cunny and the female's to become cock. In stultifying contrast, the Warrior understands this ritualization as fucking and sees the female as a fuck-bucket. The Warrior "gives it to her" but in the style of a punch, a poke, a bang and a slam, bam, wham! The Warrior female is feared only insofar as she does birth males -- sons whose cocks will replace the fathering Warrior. The Warrior does not fear the female for her peculiar and special potency -- any manifestation of which is instantly slapped out of her head.

In America's Crystal Cathedral there is no eroticism. Nary a hint, a sniff, a lingering penumbra. All visual and sensory enticements to erotic thoughts have been expunged; disinfected. No bodies float about in pictorial images, suffering crucifixes or daimonic statues.

SilverSex holds that coupling is the necessary secular act which initiates spiritual response. The flesh is the profane cathedral. It is external, the world. To enter the sacred, taboo places, the cock and the cunny must embrace.

SilverSex holds that one can only read the Eternal Story on the flesh of the other. This reading comes into focus as two couple and embrace. Embracing is the holding which issues forth into being held. It is an act and a moment of passing through. The flesh of the other manifests itself as the ribbon of time. On the beloved's flesh can be read the story of human evolution, growth, struggle, hope and faith. The beloved is God or Goddess. The beloved is the one for whom all time has yearned and groaned to create. As one becomes beloved, so does one pass through dying and become born into a flesh, a consciousness, a spirituality which is never-ending.

SilverSex happens as two move their bodies _as_ the ritual of living and dying. It is the acceptance of the multiple faces and the innumerable presences of the other. It happens when one allows the beloved to love them, and when the beloved opens to the touch. It is the penetration of the cock and the enfolding of the cunny. It is the moment when the distinct genital sexual awareness of each blurs and melts into the other. As such it can arise at a moment of fierce, most athletic clash and grunt where numbness of flesh keys the slip into birthing or at a moment of truly simple touch, soft gentle whisper, mere fingertips touching, these conveying all the most electric and ecstatic hunger and satisfaction of the dissipation of the now into the eternal.

SilverSex rises within senescence. This is not a chronological moment as it is a moment of flowering: encompassing blooming, the dispersement of seed and the faithful continuance of life itself. The beloved is embraced within this senescent moment. Bodies which are ore beds embrace, extract from each other's heart and soul, smile and grimace, fear and hope all that is Sterling.

SilverSex worships the profane, so mapping the play of the beloved's sacral power. All that the beloved is, _is_ profanity: the beloved's life story, dreams, illnesses, successes and failures, down and through the blemishes and glories of the instant quality of flesh, all is accepted, read, drunk with the eyes external and internal. In this light, SilverSex is the grasp of the full weight of the beloved's temporality. It does not withdraw from blemish or beauty. All that is blemish is celebrated as peerless. All that is beauty is celebrated as largess. Consciously, the beloveds are canvass and palette each for the other.

SilverSex is shared when the beloveds have moved beyond masturbation, have found it wanting. It events at the moment the beloveds realize that all about them has driven them to live in masturbatory fantasy. They recognize that fulfillment has been preached as "coming," and this "coming" is not a coming forth but merely an ejaculation, a prayer to solely one's pleasured self. Now, personal identity is not wrapped up with genitality. Personal worth is not shaken when genital vigor shifts.

SilverSex arises from a crisis and is drenched in shock. At that moment when one realizes that "it is over": Life as a foraging stud or as a disposable fuck-bucket. Breeding life; ended. Now, no longer does Life with a capital L need one for its survival. One no longer has the young look and one is not looked upon with lust by the young.

For Warrior males there looms the resurrection: that capturing of new booty -- a "trophy wife." As fuckable image, she enables him to have meaning. Though it is not true Warrior meaning in that this trophy is not for breeding. Yet, with such erotic symbolism the aged Warrior enters senility flashing the mask of youth, however beguiling a mask that be.

The Warrior's aging females fare less well. No longer breeding stock, they are empty chests with no milk of life, and, to boot, they are barren. What else but to trash them? Waste them?

SilverSex is the peering at this moment of crisis. And it is a seeing into the fullness of birthing. Not just birthing as something a female body does, but birthing as something males also do. SilverSex is the male flowering and the female empowering. It is the awesome manifestation of female power, a power now expressed sacrally. For what are the beloveds to prepare for but their own passage? Their own birthing into the next dimension? Their mutual flowering into eternal loving?

SilverSex is the adoration of the Goddess in the person of the beloved. It is the worship of the female power of birthing not just in its physical mode as child but in its sacral mode as spiritual healing. Warriors have been blinded to female power. They are impoverished receivers, accepting only that which is genital. They have been blinded to the Goddess in the female and so have not the slightest sight of their own femaleness. Now, through SilverSex the fuller presence of the Goddess both in their beloved and within themselves and so through their embracing becomes manifest.

SilverSex is the sharing of memory. The beloveds begin to weave their Story. They are aware of it consciously and seek to nurture it in submerging-conscious ways through ritual. SilverSex is ritualized living. The beloveds understand each other as co-creators of a common body and soul. They work each day upon the other. They touch, massage, embrace, penetrate and mold the body of their beloved. They enter their private spaces as boats upon their shared desire. It is this privateness which flowers. It flowers through worship. A worship which spreads the beloved as canopy across the sky and celebrates him/her as all that is and will ever be. All this to expand and deepen the beloved's self-centeredness. To center the beloved; provide a boundary to his/her individuality, and so enrich that individuality and make sharp the line of their private self, space and time.

Memory. Memory can only be when another hears and accepts the beloved's personal story. Warriors live together, but their story is only of war and therefore not true story. For the War Story (the _Iliad_ or _The Fall_ or _The Revolution_ ) denies memory. It is Story based only upon the Victor's words. In it the story of the Enemy is lost; vanquished. For it is a story of War; a story of Obliteration.

Memory for the beloved is the rejoicing in the differentness of the beloved. It is a rejoicing exuberant as well as resigned. It taps into sorrow and fear as it does into laughter and hope. For memory is the energy innervating the dynamic link between the two foci of Embrace. It is memory which seeks to heal the Warrior's story of annihilation. For it remembers those slain, the dead, the captured, the least, yes, the prisoner. And in remembering it brings them to life, again and forever.

SilverSex happens when one embraces the fear of death, so dies, and becomes. The beloved is this fear of death. Here, the Warrior provides insight, though not direction. For the beloved will always be other, private and distinct. The beloved

will age and change and pass away, so leaving the other beloved to embrace them beyond the embracing moment. How terrible and terrifying! But so in the most majestic and awe-inspiring, gasping way. In like manner, the beloved will bid farewell to the other as he/she passes away. Such terror! Such beauty! Only SilverSex prepares the beloveds for their coupling beyond the embrace.

SilverSex knows the hag, the crone, the shriveled breasted witch and gives them their due. For there is no denial of the negative, the demented, the sick part of the beloved. It also knows the old man, the wizened coot, and the incontinent husk of former virility. It knows these in that they are moments in the senescence, recognized as forms which life's vitality takes as it prepares to transform.

SilverSex celebrates and ritualizes the male and the female in all their manifestations of God and Goddess. SilverSex is playful in this regard. Using masks and disguises and pranks to explore the numerous expressions of maleness and femaleness.

SilverSex is the fearing of the female. For her southern mouth truly sucks the juice from the male and spits out his seed as children. She is monster; fearsome ravager of his flesh; cannibal in that she eats his body, sucks the marrow from his penile bone and delivers to him death re-born as his children.

SilverSex is the fearing of the male. For his sacral tongue is serpentine. It bursts through her Innocence and calls for her to suffer the blood of the moon. Its furrows her and harrows her inner most self. It is the male which is the instrument of her mobius twisting into child-bearer. For her, he is pain; the thunder of forgotten memories and the hero demanding that she sing her song, step forth from her cave and dance with him under the shadowless brightness of the mid-day sun.

SilverSex is an End-Time act. The embrace is millennial in that it is the blessing of a thousand years of living on Earth as God and Goddess. When two beloveds embrace in SilverSex they are bringing to an end The Warrior's Story. They are ending it by recognizing it, accepting what insight it offers, and then immersing it within memory.

As the chronological millennium approaches, so does SilverSex blossom. Beloveds are becoming increasing aware of themselves as that which Returns as the Millennium closes. SilverSex marks the return of The Embrace: of God and Goddess coupled, of male and female manifest within and ritualized through one another. SilverSex flowers as The Holy Family: mythos of Earthfolk.

# Section 1: BROODING OVER THE DARK VAPORS

### "When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors."

( _Genesis_ 1:1-2, _The Living Bible)_

# Chapter 1: The Lone Male: a personal account

It took me about forty years to figure out that it is all Cock. Forty years of personal wandering -- faithfully following the Biblical Pillar of Fire only to find that it all is just the fury of masturbation. Such words! For most of my life I would have found them repulsive if not impolite. Cock and masturbation are just too, too precise, however, not to be given the respect they are due. They are all and only that which the _Genesis_ Story is.

Creational energy is brooding and volcanic Eros. This is the Fire which boils the Cauldron from which life arises and death descends, only to rise and fall again. Biblically, there is no Fire, rather there is the Void. There is no Eros, rather an attenuated and shriveled aspect of consuming Self-Worship which creates -- no, replicates: "In our image" -- yes, replicates Himself, this Lone Male God. He does not pro-create; He calls it Creation yet it splashes into Memory as only Masturbation: Adam is the Father's Ejaculate. The fearsome power, however, of this Biblical mythos is that such has been done and can be done.

That the Biblical mythos premises its Story upon the Obliterated Cunny is a terrifying insight to one raised as a believing Warrior. But it is an insight which SilverSex does not shy away from Remembering. Indeed, SilverSex's Creation Story is written by the simple act of erotic coupling through which the sacral Cunny is Remembered. But that is where we will eventually arrive. For now the omnipresence of the Cock and the peculiar eroticism of replicative masturbation needs to be described and detailed.

As an apology for these words, I am obligated to expose part of my personal journey towards SilverSex. As you will come to understand, SilverSex equally values your and everyone's personal journey. Simply, everyone who exists when you do is a co-creator and as such a potential partner in SilverSex. Such are you for me, and, I hope, I will be for you. But, for the moment -- in preparation for valuing my analysis of the sacral function, power and place of War and Prison -- I need to show how I moved towards my primary SilverSex insights.

My story is basically one of a fool. That type of fool who is willing to give up the world, his own life, and death itself to be one with all people and with the Divine. It is of a fool who was told the Warrior's Story and who fashioned himself specially chosen to be faithful to his Lone Male God. It is this path of foolishness which, in another guise, leads to SilverSex. But in my own beginnings the foolishness was premised upon the total surrender, more, the total obliteration of my sexuality and its manifest eroticisms. This the Warrior's foolishness.

Such foolishness was summed up by the sentencing judge:

"You men are worse than the common criminal who attacks the taxpayers' pocketbook. You men strike at the foundation of government itself."

Such foolishness lead to fourteen months inside the barbed wired pit of redemption called prison. It was the logical and inevitable pit to catch the foolish Warrior. At the same historical moment, the other Warrior pit was called Vietnam. It was not just a War but a pit, and a pit because it was Undeclared, and as such a foolishness which itself struck at the foundation of government itself -- here being the sacral government, but this is the tale to tell.

The Warrior. The Lone Male. God without Goddess. Father without Mother. Vietnam Undeclared. Prison. All shrinking down to Cock. This is the foolish path which I want to and need to share with you.

In the shared experience we describe as Western and/or secular and/or scientific, many have come to perceive that who they are is only defined by what is _less than_ who they are as a whole. That person and self and mind and soul are defined by and professed to be comprehensively summed up by or within a part. This shrinking experience is grounded in the Biblical Warrior Tradition. It all makes sense if you accept the Biblical mythos -- The Lone Male mythos. It is a mythos and a shrinking experience which has served (and continues to serve) thousands of millions for more than the last handful of millennia. It is the Tradition which SilverSex does _not_ honor or revere.

What is honored is that your flesh is my flesh. My soul, your soul. Our Story. This a negation of the shrinking mythos, and a first premise of SilverSex. Because this is so, I must show you why you imprisoned yourself through me; why the Undeclared War was but suicide.

Grasp that the historical is truly the matrix for the eternal. The historical consists of threads personal and impersonal. I became an anti-war Vietnam Resister and eventual draft office raider as I responded to the Story told me about who I was and who I could become. History is also the nexus of truths and falsehoods. Such I discovered both upon my flesh and as blazoned across the outside world as the Lie which could not live with Truth: this first in protest against the Undeclared War and then as digested by the bowel called Prison.

In this light, it is necessary that you come to grasp how I transformed. Not that the fact that it was me is important, but that you can, hopefully, catalyze your own transforming stories. For -- as you will better understand as SilverSex unfolds -- the Dream Story we presently live within and under, namely, the Biblical Lone Male mythos, is a shrinking potion and power.

The Judaeo/Christian/Islamic tradition has usefully used the Biblical mythos of The Lone Male. Most of us have built our bodies, minds and souls using the Bible as mythic source. As such society, culture and wisdom continue to be developed as sourced in the Bible.

SilverSex is _not_ sourced in the Biblical Tradition. Rather, the mythos grounding SilverSex (that of The Holy Family) is only grasped as one breaks-through the Biblical mythos. At times this breaking-through is inflicted upon, more like being ground up and ground through. It is a breaking-through which accepts its own sacrilegious potency.

Brutal. Breaking-through is brutal. Let me take you one step further: until you grasp that you are caged, incarcerated and a prisoner, you will not grasp the brutality of The Lone Male mythos. Brutality is the characteristic mark of the Biblical mythos. Its _Genesis_ story unabashedly opens with murder -- but not only a homicide, no, a slaying of such brutality that even the Memory of it is obliterated.

SilverSex encounters this act of ghastly Obliteration as spiritual heritage and task. It recognizes how you and I daily continue this act of Obliteration. So, understand that the source for SilverSex is you. Your body, mind, soul and spirit is the ground for SilverSex. You are SilverSex's _Genesi_ _s_ story.

A first moment of SilverSex insight: that right now your Lone Male cock or Obliterated cunny is the ground and source for the continued presence of The Lone Male mythos. The Biblical Tradition is unblushing about this truth; its sacred Word. This Tradition of the circumcised cock and the Obliterated cunny is sourced in a peculiar type of male eroticism -- one that holds itself to be self-generating and in no need of female eroticism.

SilverSex is everything the Biblical Tradition denies, forbids, burns at the stake, exiles, imprisons and Obliterates. It is about you becoming God or Goddess as well as God and Goddess. So, briefly framed, SilverSex is about your cock and cunny. I say "and" with a certain amount of prophetic humor.

Through Vietnam and prison -- much against my conscious desire! -- I realized that all that had been asked of me was to masturbate. Worship my cock, that's all that was being asked.

Pivotal in my anti-war memory and experiences was a query voiced during a public forum, "Are you a fag?" At that time the erotic connection which the asker assumed had not been made in my own mind. But it stayed with me, this question, and it reappeared in another public forum, at my trial, in the sentencing judge's condemnation: for, indeed, it was not what I had done that struck at the foundation of government, itself, no, no, it was who I was; my being; my claim upon that within me which wasn't Warrior, which wasn't the Lone Male -- that sacral and sacrilegious Eros which only prison would unleash.

From the condemnation by secular power to its punishment in the sacral realm of prison, this erotic connection became clearer. The startling revelation and effect of being in prison was that I was shrunk down to just cock: in every way -- physically, emotionally, spiritually, astrally, and in memory. I was "doing time" -- the time of _Genesis_ ; confronting the Void and creating as the Warrior creates; jerking off.

Such are key memories which call themselves forth from the Undeclared War and Prison. Yes, in Prison and in the Undeclared War there is no companion female, no sacral cunny, no spiritual power sourced in a Goddess or Mother God. All that is female has been and continues to be Obliterated. Both verify that the foundation of government both secular and sacral -- as the judge so clearly and precisely, though unselfconsciously, articulated -- is built upon the sacral power of masturbation.

There are two chapters which set the stage for my break-through to SilverSex. The first is

"Prison, Bottoming Out, and The Mother." The gut of this chapter was written and published in the late 1980s. Only as offal, as rejected by Church and State, did I come into the presence of Mother. Following in 1990 I had to speak to my growing sons. "Vietnam Undeclared" was my confessing moment. A small section was published as "The Healing of Vietnam," and such was its affect on me. I knew that I was no longer a Warrior, but I knew not what I was. I wrote to attempt to explain why I had come "to live as if I am no one's enemy." Both are chapters which bridge my Biblical Lone Male and SilverSex experiences. They were written when I had lost my inherited languages of Church and State. Their images, articulations, and visions were vomited, puked, pounded from my head. I wrote them -- and I knew this then, _Fool that I am!_ \-- because I had not committed suicide while in prison ... and I wanted to understand why I had not: what was the presence with me and within me? ... What I hope you can feel and grasp is the embarrassing rawness in the recounting and the bewilderment in the tone which rightly fits my (yours and anyone else's) first movements towards SilverSex.

I wrote these pieces, now I know, so that I could swear absolute infidelity to the Biblical Lone Male Tradition. Writing words, for me, here worked as the first movement towards being able to accept all that I know now SilverSex requires: I had to die. Not just metaphorically. No, don't be mislead by the Warrior belief that dying is a physical act. Or that it is a one time only experience. The Warrior holds this belief as shield against the truth that being born is not a one time experience.

Vietnam -- the Undeclared War -- is pivotal not just for my physical generation but for the clarity with which it exposed the primacy of war as the Biblical liturgy of The Lone Male. Yet, being in Vietnam -- "in country" -- is _not_ a pre-requisite for dying in Nam. In like manner, Prison is a complementary liturgy of The Lone Male, but being inside prison, officially "serving time," is _not_ a pre-requisite for being born. For _me_ it was required that I perform the public ritual and liturgy of draft raiding, and for me it was required to be caged. But, as I know from conversations with you after so many speeches and discussions, what I experienced through the War and Prison was experienced by you in moments of divorce, commitments to asylums, delivered by the cold blade of racial and sexual hatred, in so many demeaning moments and gestures, and especially while kneeling to receive the Host or pass the cup of wine -- and such are SilverSex connections.

_Fool that I am!_ \-- it took staring at the iron web of bars to enter that Space out of ordinary time as it took Time to be stopped as only prison time stops for me to grasp timelessness and to be one with the Biblical moments which War and Prison are. Yes -- I laugh at myself! _Fool!_ \-- only once inside Prison did I, could I come to the shuddering revelation and insight about the erotic basis of the Undeclared War and Prison, itself. Only there that I understood the worship of Cock. And only there -- as will become clearer, later on -- did I first encounter the Undeclared War veterans who endlessly maraud about the streets and suites and prison corridors of America suffering from having experienced their Obliterated cunnies.

I wrote "Prison" and "Undeclared" while dead. I had married, co-birthed two sons, and had begun working in corporate America. It was the marrying and parenting which, I now know, catalyzed my writing. Marrying which was a bridge across The Bottom where I had plunged as I made one last desperate grasp for that magic potion of The Lone Male mythos, that of wine which is blood. Yes, these acts: marrying and parenting are forbidden acts in The Lone Male mythos, and, as such, they are foundational acts of The Holy Family mythos -- but that it where all this will be picked up in later chapters.

For now, come, peer with me at Prison and the Undeclared War and begin to spy the presence of Cock and the Obliterated Cunny.

# Chapter 2: Prison, Bottoming out, and the Mother

What spirit awaits in prison? The question dogged me while I waited, waited six tedious months, for my final appellate decision and inevitable entry into federal prison. During this wait, people -- close friends, family, and just met strangers \-- freely gave advice about what I should do while imprisoned. Their comments ranged from assurance that prison was no harder than the novitiate I had endured with the Franciscans, to assurances that prison, though a satanic hell, was a crucible in which my spirit might be purified. My life had come to a point, however, where I had ceased to trust what anyone said. I had trespassed a boundary and mistrusted even my own thoughts. I would enter prison naked in mind and soul.

By the time I left prison, I had an answer at once deceptively simple and innocently complex. I found that an evil presence stalks the prison corridor. I found that prison is a sacrament of this presence, more specifically, it is a sacrament of the ghastly shadow side of The Male -- a perversion I came to know as The Lone Male. It is sacrament because the institution -- the Place called Prison -- makes real this presence whether one seeks it or not. Indeed, this realization fundamentally altered my Traditional spiritual understanding for it revealed that Prison is the primary sacrament of patriarchal Biblical culture.

Yet, the story to be told is that Prison is also inhabited by a nurturing, comforting, healing presence (though not by invitation). Because of my experience in prison, I would leave as a pilgrim in search of fuller communion with The Mother.

Who I was and how I came to enter and exit prison requires some explanation. More, to grasp my special understanding of prison as sacrament and to value one spirit I met (The Mother) requires an understanding of how I saw while in prison. At some point in the late Sixties, I had begun to peer, that is, I no longer saw things as people normally claim to see. My vision, both physical and spiritual, was altered. Because of this, I acted in a way which made me an outlaw.

Peering: the notion is central to my story. By it I mean seeing in the obvious more than is visible to the naked eye. Peering re-visions, and so re-defines. Through it, the political, cultural and spiritual planes of reality became intertwined in my life. As you yourself begin to peer, the reality of The Mother's presence will become manifest ... and you will understand prison as the sacrament of patriarchal feminization.

I became a peerer between the Winter of 1969 and the Spring of 1970. The Vietnam War seemed without end, Nixon had celebrated Christmas by bombing Cambodia, and students laid slain on the campus of Kent State. It was a watershed. Up to then, I had participated in the anti-war movement as if it were a college practicum. I had not defined myself as being at war. I had become a conscientious objector and then a draft-card burner without deviating from my chosen career path. The war was a political aberration, a dismal chapter in American history; but it would soon end and its policies would soon be righted. Though "politically" a criminal, I felt secure in my moral identity as a "cultural" American. I could ground my civil disobedience within an American tradition stretching from the pre-Revolutionary Quaker John Woolman to Martin Luther King, Jr.

I became a peerer because, during these seasons, the government peered at me. By so doing, they altered the way I saw myself -- and them. In fact, my story can be told in terms of how I came to see, to peer as the government peers.

After my first visit with the FBI, I was amused by the situation and pleased with my performance. It was a rush. They had come to question me -- _me_.

They had questioned me about a draft office raid in St. Paul. This raid, by the "Beaver 55", was the largest in _Movement_ history. The raiders had penetrated the main Post Office skyscraper with its round-the-clock guards destroying forty-five draft offices, and stealing blank draft cards and official stamps. (To this day, no one has been caught.) They questioned me because file cabinets with stationery from my office had been found in an upstate field. Someone had used the files for an experiment in cordite bombing -- a military technique used for destroying sensitive files when an enemy has broken through the lines. The FBI wanted to know how all the pieces fit together. I was evasively cooperative. I played doublespeak with them, and I felt I had played as their equal.

How unequal I was only became apparent when Fred Hampton was murdered. Hampton, a Chicago Black Panther, was betrayed by an intimate, and machine-gunned while he slept. I had known Fred. After several campus speeches which I had arranged, he provoked me to think about and support his racial battle. I fled Chicago because I couldn't handle his world. I justified my flight as a return to my own battle, the Vietnam War. Back in Minnesota, I started my alternative service as a conscientious objector. During that service (as program director at a university Newman Center) the FBI visited me. When I sat in that same office, reading the account of Fred's assassination, it was as if Fred had asked me to be his sponsor in baptism. I had witnessed his life, and the spirit of his journey called upon me to testify.

Fred was more than a challenge to Mayor Daley's political machine. He threatened its cultural undergirding. He had access to political power, however, and he used it well. Society as a whole refused him dignity as a person. Fred's claim to dignity, and cultural visibility, was the reason they murdered him. He fought in the streets of America for the right to be a man. He had said to me, "To them I am the enemy." His death made me shudder. I began to peer at myself as the FBI did. I pictured the scrawled memo: "The panther today...the peacenik tomorrow!" I joined a group in support of the Beaver 55 action and began to speak for their cause on campus, in church, at adult education forums, on radio and TV.

Although I was supporting outlaws, my conscious mission was education. I refused to search out the deeper significance of Fred's death. Yes, I was living dangerously and had accepted the label of Enemy. I walked each day anticipating ambush but the shift was merely from part-time to full-time commitment. I persisted in my efforts to help people understand the causes for which Fred and the Beavers stood. Like many, I placed my hope in "the people." If only they knew what was happening, surely they would rise up, and revolutionize the government. But the thrust of my educational mission was soon radically altered by the revelation of the secret war in Laos. It is difficult, today, to appreciate how shattering this secret event was. Today, government lying is widely assumed. However, the day I realized that the government was deliberately lying, that truth telling was against policy, my identity was transformed.

Previously, I had been a reformer. Even my support of the lawbreaking Beaver 55 was part of an effort to say, "Enough!" -- and to call the government to its senses. Now, I was confronted with an impossible dilemma: if the government was lying, how could I speak to it? I considered leaving the country. I visited Toronto, but was convinced that my challenge was to speak to my People. But how? I pondered what the FBI saw as they peered at Fred Hampton. How had he made himself visible to them? I realized that I would have to redefine myself as an agent of the symbolic. Yet how could I or anyone consciously appropriate symbolic material? As I lost my story -- the version of American history which had grounded me in a shared public morality -- I grew mad.

The thought of being imprisoned or murdered obsessed me. I was no longer amused by the FBI. My antiwar activities became the discipline of my spiritual search. I no longer thought of the future -- of a career, marriage, or getting old. In this state, peering revealed the symbols.

I found a way to speak symbolically: return one draft card, burn the next, refuse induction. I did it in union with others. The government heard us. Destroying a single draft card was desecration: a ritual of alien spirituality; idolatrous allegiance to a strange god. I had been an outsider; I now became an outlaw.

I began to peer at everyone and everything and could not believe what I was seeing. I watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news and saw his cue cards: "Lie! Lie!" I scoured the morning newspaper; the photos exposed the verbiage as lies. I listened with paranoid attention to governmental sermons and, slowly, the Nixon Lie unfolded. Watergate had not yet taken place, but its future servants were already about their mission of converting America.

The haunting chill set in. I feared to walk down the street. My physical and spiritual sight altered. I saw the carnage: Cheerful mothers pushed strollers with mangled bodies hanging out, babies ribboned in flesh. Old women were gored to death on the guitar bayonets of rock and roll marauders. At hip farewell parties suicide squads impaled themselves on hashish sticks and gassed themselves with nitrous oxide ampoules. Parents raced to sacrifice their children, clogging the roads. This is what I saw when I peered. It was worse than I can now recall; but I beheld it. At communion, the bread was a bit of flesh -- I gagged, then swallowed it amidst a taste of vomit.

In the mirror I could see no face. I was a face of death, peering back at me.

On July 10, 1970, I drove with Mike Therriault to Little Falls, Minnesota, to encounter the spirit set loose in the world by those who envisioned me as their enemy. In the Little Falls draft office, I renounced all allegiance to the spirits which had bound me to the government's and the Warrior's America. I destroyed some draft files. Much to my surprise, the FBI was waiting in the wings. They had spied; Mike and I had walked into their trap. It seemed inevitable. In the Spring of 1972, as a captured enemy, I entered Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution.

2.

In prison, things go backwards. Time is tricky, here. I escape, often, yet am always a captive. Constitutionally, I am a slave of the State. Existentially, I am the freest of all humans. Freedom is sung to the rhythm of the chains, the cadence of cell doors slamming, the clang of spoons on grub trays. I can feel that the world is my captive, that my legal dying is indeed a being born again.

In prison I am back at Creation: Genesis. Time goes neither forward nor backwards but is a presence of remembrance, remembering an embrace whose heart has been cut out. Who is the criminal exposed in the hissing indictment: My God, my God why have you forsaken me?

It is a playful experience. Its thrills and pleasures span the macabre, the horrible, the orgasmic, and the spectacular. It is a theater whose rules I partly know; I will never know more.

Prison gives rise to peculiar ways of thinking because it is a sacrament. Its ritual and liturgy deliver me into the alien presence of criminality. Backwards to Cain's confrontation with Yahweh. Backwards to Jesus' sacrilege on breaking the Sabbath. Cain is here. And the condemned, death-row Jesus.

Powerful exterior forces play tricks on me. Things, everyday things, are not what they seem. My name is my number: 8867-147. My clothes degrade rather than express me. The hair under my lips is a privilege, granted by a controller who owns the body that was mine.

My convict's eyes condemn me to see what only God should see -- the play of sin and the repentance of pain. My face is no longer young or old. It is eternally innocent: fresh to the touch and warm as a newly dead corpse. When I look at others, I am denied the comfort of grace. I no longer see them in the beauty of their differences -- shades of skin and shades of bone, gimps and rugged cowboys. I see the self-torturers at the weightlifting pit, their bulging bodies but husks for tormented souls.

Prison's backward jolt throws me into the primal experience of what it means to be a male in patriarchal society. The jolt is sacramental, delivering me into an awesome presence. I am immersed in a darkness, blinded by its stark light: blacks and whites, no grays. There are only He and She.

Most prison stories are wrong. Prison, they allege, is a male stronghold where the most macho and violent males are corralled and beaten into discipline by other males, super-males flexing the glistening muscles of steel death, brandishing the symbols of a potent sexual power. On some days it looks like that; the appearance is illusion.

Prison is changing me into a female. The idealized woman of the patriarchal culture. I am the prisoner of The Lone Male, bride of The Man. My married name -- 8867-147 -- will be mine to the grave. I am chattel and wear the clothing of khaki anonymity -- that The Man finds fetching. He constantly guards me and counts me in the light and in the darkness of my time serving him. Courteous, he opens doors for his lady who waits, keyless, and calls for The Man to unlock the knobless doors. I wait. He is checking out my restrictions. I wait. I wait. He has a lock on the keys to my heart.

And it is his power, the fearsome force of that exterior institutional power, which makes me bend over and spread my cheeks. [Scream: "C'mon, it can't be, we're both men!"] The sacrament takes effect: I, at any moment, am his: night, morning, afternoon delight. At any place: I am walking the hall and he says, "Open your mouth"...he probes my ears, I rake my hair, shake out each shoe...and bend over. And, then the door is banged: it's over. So simple. So quick.

It happens every day, every time I go to the Visitors room. Take the cartoonist eye: behind the wall is arse mouth being inspected; as on the other side the family awaits: sons and daughters, dads and moms, lovers, babies. I emerge not looking raped. I neat up. Primp and pat. But it is done. I am now the trick. His squeeze

It's like that. No intimate space permitted. I am not just possessed, but ravished. (He pauses, waits for my response: Shouldn't I admire his great virility?) I am now feminized. I am now the real presence of the symbolic actions that constitute prison.

To be such a female, is an experience searing in its complexities and contradictions. Questions: Am I afraid of \-- or truly fascinated by -- his terrifying mystery? His power over my time, my space, my flesh? Do I dare confront what I have become? Do I dare admit the security my married identity brings?

The answers have equal yeses and noes. After all, what is his power if it is all playtime? He knows that he can get me to pull down my pants at any time, but he also knows that I am sticking it in his face. I have days when I am relieved that I am in prison -- at least I know who has the gun. But, I recall mashing my face against the Yard's chain-linked fence, envying the insects who flitted between the weeds and the flowers.

It took some time for confession to reach my tongue. I knew that I was feminized, but could not, would not, confess it. The Lone Male, confronted, is ghastly Warrior shadow. Desirous to enslave, not just for the State but for intimate reasons. Indeed, prison shows the grim truth of the slogan: "the personal is political." I first realized its meaning when I found that the government had no conceptual or juridical category for political prisoners. In this way, it could deny my existence. In court, I was charged with breaking and entering -- not with interference with the war in Vietnam. My trial lasted several weeks during which Vietnam Vets, historians, theologians, biological warfare scientists, and I testified. In his instructions, however, the judge directed the jury to disregard everything which I and my witnesses had said. It became clear that the government sees every criminal act, not as a political or economic threat, but as defiance of its spiritual guidance.

The government's Spirit is that of the Biblical Warrior. It lies behind its politics, economics and morality. It is present in its perverted form as shadow, but because the government is so thoroughly identified with The Lone Male Warrior, they believe that it is the Light. Their language reveals what they see when they peer at themselves: War is peace, poverty is wealth; "All men are created equal." (Tough luck for women and other patriarchal females: prisoners of the ghetto, inmates of the Reservation.) They attempt to obliterate anyone who transgresses. They obliterate through sacred sacrifice, offering the holocaust. The government tolerates no myth other than its own, The Lone Male Warrior. It despises the Female. The prisoner must be made impotent. He must be turned into a lady. To achieve rehabilitation, I must accept transformation into a fag.

My experience of this process clarified another unsettling experience. For years a memory had lingered in my dreams because unanswered. I had been asked, "Are you a fag?" From within the prison's darkness, an answer came forth, a whispered answer, buoyed by light...and it came at The Bottom as The Mother embraced me.

Before I can properly talk about Her, I need to bring together two experiences. One, the occasion of this fag question which came early in my anti-war days; the other, my post-prison adoration of The Bottle.

3.

I am back in 1968 Chicago, on a panel discussing the war, at a post-Mass meeting. A bloop-bellied man stands up and asks, "Are you a fag?"

I look at the other panelists and they at me. The question slides into a side pocket of the discussion. My baffled "No" lays the curious matter to rest. Yet, this event defines my memory and casts my experiences into a recognizable mold. It is, I find, The Lone Male's central theological question. It is the foundation question that is never clearly articulated, "Was Jesus a fag?" To hear it clearly asked, to begin to respond to it, to be disturbed adequately with its fear and hope, I had to bottom out.

At The Bottom, in the Summer of 1980, the question wings in again. _I am recovering in a perspiring room. I have just undergone an aversive therapy treatment for alcoholism. I am lying here, having raged through a battle against myself, when he comes back. I hear him shout a word of The Lone Male. From somewhere, he screams: "Are you a fag?"_

_The room is suffocating me, body and soul. Jesus, am I going crazy? I stink_. (I look around: after retching my guts out, they have closed off the room and left empty bottles and drenched rags.) _An evocation of the odor of sanctity. Yes, I physically stink. I am in no mood for this memory, I just want to be alone, to rest. Christ, I have just vomited my soul. For five days I have labored against myself, conceiving a new body within me through this therapy. But, that question stands (is it immovable?)... that invitation. Admit it! I am a Fag! Savor it. I am not The Lone Male. Not now, not ever, can never be. I have failed. I am shit!_

To rise from The Bottom...to move and so to surrender prison -- the prison which I had been unable to relinquish...I am compelled to testify: _Yes, the bottle is my prison sacrament. I carry it with me -- my own private cell. Whenever I feel like a fag, I drink its sacred liquid and commune my God, The Lone Male. And, while in the bottle I can make dreams of power and escape, fly into patriarchal innocence -- justify using women, relish my self-deception._

_"I have been tricked!" "I am the trick!" I adore the bottle: wine and whiskey become the blood of life. The Lone Male's first temptation: that the Warrior can live by blood alone._ As a fag I yielded to a second temptation: I am the authority, messiah, Son of God. _The Lone Warrior turns himself through Jesus into God. He perverts the healing, nurturing and non-violent spirit released by Jesus' submission into crusading force. He proclaims not the Suffering Servant but Christ the King. Jesus' maleness is consumed by The Lone Male shadow. And I confess, "I have imitated you!" I am here with my wine bottle and my whiskey bottle. I will no longer fondle them, suck them, shove them into my mouth or bash them against a wall. I will refuse all male registrations and rituals. No draft cards, no booze. I am a fag, dear Jesus, just like you. Amen._

4.

At The Bottom: clutter of The Lone Male's psyche. I find myself imprisoned within my own prison, fagged and boozed out. The glimmer of Her presence in prison stirs within me. But what is my way out? My daily discipline? How am I to act? ... I will reach the way of The Mother. My passage is through Fag Culture.

Prison, The Bottle and The Bottom have been my ways to The Mother. In each I met myself as Warrior Lone Male shadow, as Fag. My personal experience revealed something about the culture at large.

How are males taught to see the real Male, feel masculine identity? In this media culture -- with its prime time wars: "Am I watching a War Movie or the Movie War?" -- the line separating the fag from the "real man" is simple. If you do not become John Wayne, "The Duke," you are a fag. It is easy to slip-over the line. The Duke's world is starkly black and white, no grays. And only idealized females are allowed into his embrace. Touched by his shadow they bend their necks for his boot.

Eros does not charge the air around The Duke and his ladies. He does not seduce them, nor they he. He corrals them, like so many fillies. His eyes never dance over their bodies. He lusts instead to possess their female power. The inevitable storyline is that of a spunky, strong-willed woman whom The Duke breaks to the saddle. In the end, each of The Duke's leading ladies, as they say in prison, assumes the position: she bends over and is jammed with the magic wand, the redeeming patriarchal phallus of a real man.

The Duke's power is unbridled. There is no Male identity outside his spirit. He transforms the nurturing, healing, teaching and other feminine traits of his women into tools for conquering the frontier of the American spirit, which The Duke has transformed into The Lone Male shadow.

Paradoxically, The Duke catalyzed my cultural deviance and criminality. When I had to "take the beach"-- register for the draft -- I was distressed that he -- my Male messiah -- had not saved me. The Duke's Maleness was transcendental. Though I would not, could not, follow him into bloody battle, I strove to sacrifice vicariously. I fashioned my anti-war activity in imitation of The Duke. I took pleasure in the battle. Flexing intellectual and moral muscle, I fought toe to toe with the war warriors. I took their blows, their taunts and insults, their handcuffs and barred cells, their byzantine legal degradations. I would show them that a non-violent warrior was no wimp, homo, queer. Like The Duke, I rejected the deviance from the idealized male role: I made my stand on being, penis to penis, as totemic as he was.

I slashed and burned my way into prison. They took me resisting to the last. I was impervious to their chains and cuffs, iron cots and mealy grub, loud insults and hissed threats. The years of Resistance had taught me how to use my body to state what could not be directly spoken. My enemies were Warriors ... my companions were Warriors. So was I....I stood naked and proud among them, The Duke of Non-Violence. ... I confess: I am a fag: The Lone Male's "woman." ... Absolve me of my past pretense, of not peering fully! I thought that I could resist evil, counter The Lone Male -- in Warrior style. Now, I confess my failure. "Duke, I'm fagged out!"

This I mentally grasped in prison, but only felt at The Bottom, as I inhaled my puking stink. "Yes, I am a fag!"

5.

At The Bottom, the shrill "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" pierces the desert silence. No answer comes, no salvation from The Lone Male as Father. At The Bottom -- where desperation rules, where we will make any promise in our yearning for rescue -- we face, stunned, the _collusive_ impassiveness of The Father and of Satan. At The Bottom, we crave the easy answer.

But there are only hard answers. There are no answers to the condemned Jesus' cry, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" ... Why? -- Satan provides the insight: "Worship me." Worship me because I am like The Father. I turn stones into bread. I give you authority and glory. I am worthy of worship because I am The Father's equal.

In fact this is Prison's Revelation: its Truth and so its Lie -- that Satan is The Father's Lone Son, not Jesus.

Jesus' satanic temptation was and is mine: to shrink God to Only Father -- to worship Lone Maleness. That as Lone Male and Father I shall be faithful to the Warrior God. At The Bottom, this makes Satanic sense.

I have lived within The Lone Male's illusion: obeying a Church which claims that God is only Father authority and that there is no Goddess: no Mother, no feminine spiritual power .... a State which claims that it can change the stones of war into the bread of peace. I have acted within this illusion: transubstantiated into Messiah. I warred in the name of peace. But Prison shattered all these Warrior illusions. Its many follies were scrawled on the cell-block walls.

At that choking moment when my convict eyes observed myself as fag, as the idealized female of The Lone Male fantasy, a Presence and a Power strengthened me. A Presence which asks no one to become enslaved, no one to become a patriarchal female.

At The Bottom, I met the Goddess who is present as Mother.

6.

How does one now testify to the unnerving calm of metanoia? Of turning to face the person whose presence was as close as an embrace -- an embrace by one whose face one does not see -- The Mother? At the third temptation, I had to respond, testifying as to whom I worshipped. Not the God whom Satan imitated \-- the lonely, solitary confined Father, the patriarchal Warrior Male shadow. But turning from him, testifying to that of God which is not magical and seeks authority over neither me nor the world -- The Mother.

But how is the Mother recognized? At first I didn't see her. _There is no one here. Just empty beds, foursquare for the inspection. Neatness and savagery. At night Prison beds creak with lonely lust and the air carries hissing indictments of The Father's abandonment. "My God! My God!...." Orgasmic surrender, in dreams, in the flesh: I roll over and pull the pillow over my head_. I awoke, ten thousand times, that first year of parole and kissed my bottle: " _...in remembrance of me."_

I felt some presence around me, smelled her, ached with a pregnancy months over due. I sought salvation in female messiahs. _They must know!_ I was desperate. What was within me was feeding upon me and I was withering. _No messiahs! Are there no messiahs of any sex?!_

Jesus. Talk to me, Jesus. Did you understand The Lone Male shadow? Did you hear an answer, however imperceptible to others? I wouldn't be surprised that you heard Her. Yet those who follow understand the Cross as the hilt of the Sword.

At bottle's Bottom, I experienced Her impatience. She laughed at my Messianic urges. She said that there are no Messiahs, male or female. _I surrender Mother, accept me though I stink_. My mother stood by me through prison and my wife through The Bottom. Now The Mother's presence enfolded me.

At my moment of blood lust, She comes. _There are 70 men, inmates in this room. I am being locked up and counted, again. I hate that son of a bitch Matthews. The fucking hack runs mind-games on me. Fucks with my mustache, fucks with my locker, fucks with me standing in line for chow. I wake from my grave with his eyes staring at me, raping me. I must kill him. I am pleased by the thought...I would give anything for the power to crush him, fucking head by fucking leg into a little pile of shit!...."It is consummated!" ..._ Now, I know that I have been rehabilitated ... for I am now Him: Lone Male Warrior.

_At this moment of blood lust, She comes to me. I hide. What shames me? It was only fantasy ... No! I tasted him dying in my mouth. What more need I know but that I willed it?_ And so the startling moment of First Communion. What appears as the dying of pregnancy is the shattering, trembling delivery of a presence from within. _Is this your resurrection, Mother? I know The Father's -- risen to conquer. Is this yours -- conquered to rise? Why tell me about birthpain, are they not but your violences? Your truth is too hard._

Has it come to this? A simple peasant's message delivered by angelic light? Birthing reveals that only by accepting my Lone Male Warrior violence can my life come forth. That being non-violent is a way of creatively imagining one's Warrior violence.

_Where is She within me, Mother? Tell me how to talk with Her, companion Her._ She was there in the post-partum resurrectional glow. Snuggling Jesus, homeless, first among the least. Receiving his slimy body with all the joy she remembered from his birthing. Yes, this is the final transformational crossroad: for me, The Lone Male, to accept being accepted. Being accepted unconditionally, with all of my violences, mad fantasies, and betrayals. _I pray: to live feeling how everyone accepts me. Receives me as She did. To live allowing the feelings of all strangers to be mine. To live as revealed through prison time: with no place, no person more precious than you, here._ It is all queerly strange. Prison is Satan's haunt. Yet it is The Mother's body. As such a sacrament of birthing, of pregnant months, of unfailing embracing.

There are so many prisons of The Lone Male shadow. So many rituals which enslave and degrade. So many minor liturgies to match the major rites of prison and the Selective Service System. Ah, She is wonderful! May I be her worthy child! as I "set prisoners free" with simple kind words and the dismantling of the sacrament of patriarchal feminization.

I laugh, a very, very hushed laugh, imperceptible but to me. "So, this is it!"

At The Bottom, angels come to minister. The task ahead: to carve with a tongue unused to these alien categories, my sacrilegious words. God The Mother embracing God The Father made present through Child: each and everyone one of us ... each and all present, here at The Bottom, my family: Holy.

# Chapter 3: Vietnam undeclared

You ask me about Vietnam, my son, and words die upon my lips. For Vietnam is more than I or my generation can define, describe or express. As a word it is a dictionary entry, a noun denoting a geographical spot ... but beware this simple deception, for Vietnam is more than seven letters. It is seven letters with seven times seventy times seventy meanings. While millions have uttered it, few have heard it with identical understanding. For Vietnam is one of those rare words, one of an awesome few in human history, which is truly spiritual. When it is spoken, the deepest emotions of the human soul are unleashed. When it is voiced, a people dreams. Upon its sound America once again trembles, holds tight its pounding heart, and kneels in prayer. Yes, Vietnam harbors this power. It brings individuals and we the American people to our knees. But to what or whom does Vietnam drive us to worship, to pray? This is why words die upon my lips. For Vietnam has delivered me and the American people into a time and place which is sacred, but of a sacredness outside of our tradition, our history, our religious understanding.

Vietnam is word of incantation and exorcism. As such it draws forth all that is darkly evil and foreboding within the individual and American soul ... while simultaneously calling forth all that is brightly good and healing. My son, Vietnam is scrawled in blood across the corpse of my generation ... yet it is also our anointing for new birth. Vietnam is the last word of our death and the first word of our new tongue. Be patient with what I will say to you. Ponder it, reflect upon it, let it take you to the new sacred ground. Let Vietnam become your tradition, for it is my patrimony. Speak it to heal generations to come.

1

Vietnam was not a war

To grasp Vietnam, you must first understand war. This is requisite because Vietnam was not a war. Yes, it was killing, and murder, rape and pillage, atrocity ... all that describes a war. Likewise, it was heroic deeds, honorable actions and moral nobility, selfless sacrifice ... all that describes a war. But it was not a People's war, it was not an American war. It was neither because it was undeclared.

What is the significance of being undeclared? After all, it can be argued, Vietnam was as described above. Indeed, men dressed in uniforms, appropriations were allocated, military alliances were strengthened, and the Evening News brimmed with footage of carnage, pain and triumph.

The significance lies in the historical singularity of the fact of being undeclared. School books fail to footnote another such American war which was not declared. Of greater

moment, the fact that "Vietnam veterans" as a social type have been outcast and abandoned, rendered socially invisible, and are denied legitimacy as veterans calls for an examination of this singular fact, for plumbing the many meanings of its singularity.

Being undeclared, Vietnam was not liturgized, and war is a liturgy. A liturgy is that which makes whole, which grounds an event of spiritual proportion to mundane time and space; it is that which provides borders, boundaries, in brief, the battle ground. Without declaration, nothing can begin nor end. Vietnam Undeclared is, then, without beginning and without end; it is a reality untethered to time and space. As such, it must be judged either trivial or of a profundity never before tapped.

My son, the word Vietnam is volcanic. Observe but those who speak it. But observe further that it is never received by ear nor loosed from the tongue in weak conversation. It is a word which beckons, entices, erupts; even its triviality addresses the profound.

War is the naming of an enemy

War is a public proclamation of the existence of an enemy. The enemy is proclaimed and named. War is the way in which a people defines itself as unified as it separates from this enemy. The public proclamation is a ritual which initiates the liturgy which unites a people on every level: individual, social, political, historical, psychological and religious. This ritual public proclamation is the clear and distinct beginning of memory. Through this public proclamation the people are made whole, become one people, one nation ... live their common name, Americans!

Under this common name, not their individual identities, war is waged. "America is at war!" shouts the proud citizen; it is not he at war but himself as People. He is not personally responsible for battlefield slaughter, rather it is the People who slay the enemy through him. In this way the public proclamation bares the soul of each individual as it evokes and reveals the collective soul of the nation, of the People. War, then, is primarily a transforming and transcending act. As it transforms individuals into the People, it transcends the moral limitations imposed upon individuals by the collective. It effects this through a specific liturgy of which ritual public declaration is the necessary first step in the naming of the People and its Enemy.

Prior to the proclamation the people were united, after it they are unified. Before they were private citizens, after they are warriors. Before their leader was presidential, after he is Commander-in-Chief. War describes that time when each individual person is intensely aware of and lives his collective identity. While some become soldiers, all become warriors; don the mythic armor. "America at war" means each person at war. During war each is a patriot regardless of the humbleness of task, whether knitting socks for soldiers at the front or dive-bombing from out the clouds. Each individual person is unified in a common pursuit -- the slaughter of the Enemy.

The ritual and liturgy of war

Citizens enter Boot Camp where they become soldiers -- the physical and visual symbols of the transformation into warrior. The soldier's visible alteration -- cut of hair, mode of dress, attitude of walk and salute -- are ritual marks of distinction. While all citizens are warriors, only soldiers are trained to kill. Though covert and spy actions are part of warring, it is the visible battles of the soldiers which are cheered and wept over. How the soldier fares, overcomes obstacles, manifests bravery ... dies ... is how the People emote. It is to them that Purple Hearts are awarded ... to their families distinguished Crosses bestowed. The soldier is the emotional embodiment of the identity created by the public declaration of the war. The soldier is the individual transcending his own morality as he becomes People at war. The soldier is the heart and soul of the People.

The soldier comes into existence through ritual and gains meaning through the liturgy of war. He lives in myth, a creation of the collective soul of The People. He has real existence and spiritual meaning only when war is declared; he has no individual character -- he is as he acts out, creates war, as he kills: this is his liturgy.

When the war is over the liturgy concludes in a set way. As with the Beginning so the End is ritually declared (headline: "Victory in Europe!" "Peace Declared!"). Once declared the soldier demobs. He re-transforms through disrobing. It is a public ritual embraced within celebration. As the soldier returns symbols of new life bedeck him -- flowers are hung around his neck, women (regardless of stature as mother, wife, sister, child) hang upon him, hugging and kissing, a festive atmosphere blooms under swirls of confetti and booming sounds of drum and brass bands ... people dance in the streets.

After the parade, his discharge, his re-transformation is complete. He is forbidden to wear his uniform except on special occasions. He visually assumes current dress and style. At the same time, he is re-bound by personal morality. No longer can he act on behalf of the People. His is an individual, not a collective soul. He ceases to have liturgical meaning; he no longer has meaning in the mythic realm.

Without ritual the soldier cannot be created. Without ritual citizens cannot become warriors. Without ritual neither the individual nor the collective can speak nor hear "War!" ... there is no warrior discourse nor embrace either private or public; no liturgical moment.

War is a transcending moral act

War is bloodshed. Blood is a term used to define a people, "We share the same blood." It is a blood defined by a boundary of time and space, by a history and a nation. Blood is German or Irish or Armenian or African or Vietnamese or American. Blood flows through the veins of the individual and courses through the heart of a People.

To shed blood is a mythic act, for it is the slaughter of a People, not just an individual. Cain was accursed and marked not just because he slew Abel but because in so slaying his brother he was shedding his own and his People's blood. His sacrilege was that he did not transform his brother into Enemy; rather, he slew his own People ... and such is murder, not war. For this he was marked and condemned. There is no morality which makes brother slaying acceptable. Only when brother is named as enemy can his slaying be justified through war's ritual and liturgy.

To shed a brother's blood requires naming him as enemy. It is a naming grounded in a spiritual, transforming power ... in the power of the People in service to their God, for it changes all individual enemies into Enemy. It is a naming drawn against an offense of mythic proportion, against an act judged Evil.

Once named as enemy, the brother's blood is not considered familial. Quite the contrary, its shedding is ritually required for the people to continue to liturgically define itself as a distinct people. Unless the enemy's blood is shed and victory won, the People stand at risk of losing their identity, history, and spiritual ground. As such they would be morally illegitimate; not warriors and soldiers but murderers like Cain.

War's loser must surrender. It is surrender a step beyond submission. It is a spiritual renunciation replete with acts of contrition and implorations for forgiveness, but, more significantly, it is a renunciation ... a sundering of a people's spiritual power. Surrender encompasses the denial by the enemy that his spiritual power was real. Indeed, the loser is accused of war crimes ... adjudged to have acted outside of myth and ritual ... cast outside the spiritual realm and named as criminal, as moral outlaw. Indicted like Cain, his bloodshedding is not redemptive, rather it is murder. Denied the power of his ritual, the loser is deprived of identity, control over his own myth and history, and allegiance to his God, who is now proclaimed a false god.

The loser is forbidden to ritualize the war. Liturgically, he cannot ceremoniously end it. There are no parades. His soldiers' uniforms are badges of disgrace. He cannot frame time within the war's boundaries. Collectively and individually the loser is denied mythic existence as a People and is forced to bear the full weight of his bloodshed ... which is now interpreted solely as a lawless and morally illegitimate act. In brief, the loser is rendered into parts, never to be whole, never to be People again. War's loser ceases to exist on the collective, mythic level. Like Cain, the loser wanders ... cast forth from the realm of the holy and wholly.

War, then, is a set of rituals and a liturgy which morally and spiritually wholes and heals a People through the naming and slaughter of an enemy People. As such it is an act which transcends individual will and act while enabling the individual to transcend his own will and morality.

War is the individual as an act of God

When war is declared (FDR and World War II: "This day shall live in infamy!") men step forward and submit themselves to spiritual reformation. It is spiritual because they now will do what is morally forbidden in normal times. They murder. They enter the sacred zone. They touch the creative power which is, in normal times, reserved only for God. As warrior they render death. They do so by offering themselves as sacrifice. They ready themselves for murdering by a ritual preparation for redemptive dying ... an act of self transcendence.

Once declared, a People hears that its sons and fathers are going to be transformed. They will no longer be citizens -- farmers, teachers, professional athletes, welders -- rather they are to become soldiers. It is the soldiers prime duty to kill. In normal times such killing would be common murder. The murderer would be transformed from citizen into convict ... and himself executed. In war, the soldier is not murderer but Hero. It is his duty, the stuff of his obligation, to kill. His daily identity is grounded in the ritual of slaughter. It is this ritualization -- his murder by consent of his People -- which protects the individual from becoming a cold-blooded murderer. The common murderer is not protected by ritual. In fact, his violation is defined by his assumption that he can enter the spiritual zone occupied by soldier without collective ritual. The murderer's terror is his denial of the necessity for public ritual, for personal transcendence. In effect, he declares _personal_ war ... he mimics the collective act of declaration. He declares as enemy the People itself as he slaughters a citizen.

War is this realm of self-transcending dying. An individual death is given collective meaning. The dying soldier is America dying, yet he is America being born as his death is sacrifice offered in hope of this rebirth. From the war America is created anew. When it comes to tell its Mythic Story, its history, America marks its textbook chapters by these phases of self-transcending dying and new birth. Time is given meaning as it relates to the boundaries of war: post-Civil War, pre-World War I, post-World War II. As such each generation learns that history, the Story of the American People, is set in spiritual terms. Each chapter is marked by sacrificial blood. The overall Story is that of the People being mythically born again as Warrior. Each generation is taught to seek these rituals and to conduct this liturgy: to create its own time of moral transcendence. Each seeks to test its mettle, reveal its spiritual character and strength through the liturgy of war. For only in this realm of moral transcendence can a People live its Name, become Americans. A generation which does not fight a war is a lost generation, one whose worth is untested and unproven.

The spirituality of war

War is grounded in a People's collective spiritual vision. It reveals fundamental spiritual beliefs. For the People war is publicly spoken as holy. It is a primary expression of the relationship of that People with their God. The declaration is an altar call for witnesses who are true to the moral vision, who desire to be standard bearers of God's Truth. Winning a war is interpreted as a validation of the People's holiness. Losing a war blankets them with guilt, a sense of uncleanness (immorality), and a sense of abandonment by their God. A People who has lost a war interpret such a blight in ritualistic terms: as a call to purification -- a return to basic fundamentals beliefs. After losing a war, a People calls itself to revitalization rituals, rituals of new birth or new baptism, rituals of re-confirmation, re-identification encompassing confession, cleansing, exorcism, and anointing. After victory like rituals are enacted though they are rituals to release fullness and blessing; they are rituals of celebration, joy, and triumph ... the exaltation of God. Yet, after victory or defeat the common goal of all rituals is to return to normalcy, to the everyday, to life lived without intense collective emotion -- to the mundane and profane.

When war ends it is urgent and critical that the soldier not linger in the spiritual zone where he will be tempted to become a murderer. The ritual of exiting, of cleansing, of purification must begin. He must be re-formed as father or son, as plumber, executive, dancer, or mailman. He must hear the war undeclared. Not to do so is to jeopardize his sanity for it was men, women and children that he killed and if not re-formed he will continue to kill and become a terror at home. Without the exit ritual, the individual will not be at peace; he will be caught in a timeless and spaceless zone where he is neither person nor warrior. He will be accursed and marked like Cain; condemned, a wanderer never at rest, never at home, without myth or history. He will exist, not live, without time and space; for him the war will never have begun nor ever end.

The rituals and liturgy of war is integrated and adorned with the rituals and liturgy of a People's dominant religion, here Christianity. As such, when the citizen undergoes the soldiering ritual of Boot Camp he emerges endowed with a new moral status. Though Christianity preaches "Thou shalt not kill", the soldier accepts his primary role as killer with moral approbation. His killing is interpreted in terms of God's Will that the Evil One, The Enemy, be slain. Though the soldier slays his human brother, he is not marked like Cain. Rather, the soldier is like God's Son, Jesus, who gives his life in selfless sacrifice that others may be saved. The soldier's slaying is understood and valued in terms of this risk, this sacrifice he is offering. His slaying is the slaying of himself more than of his enemy. Thus, what is, in normal times, murder becomes a healing, whole rendering act. In essence, war as ritual slaying is how the individual transcends ethical and moral limits and enters into the sacred realm, emerges as a spiritual partner with God.

War as liturgy, then, must emerge into Peace to complete its cycle. Peace in Christian terms is the resurrectional peace, that of being born again. Peace is the public proclamation that the War is ended. Peace is the transition to normal times; to the moments of individual story. The leader becomes President and relegates his Commander-in-Chief functions to professional soldiers. The declaration of Peace initiates the transformation from warrior to citizen. The soldier symbolically re-dresses as businessman, teacher, plumber, dancer .... As the soldier achieves peace with himself and immerses his warrior self within his citizen self, so the People come to peace.

_My son, since Vietnam was not declared neither has it begun nor ended. Yet, you and I have fingered The Wall. We have touched this collective marker and held in our hearts our own familial loss. We know that Vietnam existed, was ... exists, is. If Vietnam was not a war, what was it? How can we of "the Vietnam War era" explain and interpret our experience? Surely,_ _something_ _happened ... but what?_

Because it was undeclared I cannot, my generation cannot, speak in traditional ways about Vietnam. We cannot repeat The Call which we did not hear. Yet, though undeclared, Vietnam communicated. And this is where it crosses over into mystery, mystification, bafflement and assumes the shape of specter, haunting and spirits. Vietnam Undeclared is an historic first, an anthropological novelty. For Vietnam Undeclared is People warring denying they are at war; as such Vietnam is a peculiar communication.

More, Vietnam Undeclared is a People warring with itself. "Vietnam" has come to mean the way we in America warred/war against ourselves. It was as much the mindless abandonment of troops in Indochina as it was the mindful battles in the streets of the domestic police.

Yes, this is the connection. "Vietnam" is more than war. It is more than a forlorn peasant country in Indochina. It is more than mass marches on Washington, DC. "Vietnam" is more than Undeclared ... it is a communication of something previously unarticulated, never before grasped.

I tremble as "Vietnam" screeches through my mind, sweats my palms, races my heart, and drags nightmares and visions into daylight.

My son, grasp my hand ... look more closely with me at the ritual of war as it has played itself on the small stage of our family.

2.

Vietnam was not a war because it was not declared; it lacked the key elements of ritual and liturgy. Once said, how do we account for what happened, all the events which we try to capture, wrap up, and market as "The Vietnam War"?

Why did the political leaders -- the Country Fathers -- not declare the war? Why did they send their sons off without ritual? Clearly, _the character of the relationship between fathers and sons_ had changed since the last ritualized war, World War II -- the war to end all wars.

The myth and ritual of World War II

My father told World War Two stories within a framework of time and space. Without stating it as such he set the War's boundaries by the rituals of entry and exit. December 7, 1941 was the date which tethered the ritual. He detailed where he was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He cited the city, described the room and the radio set through which FDR declared the war, and interpreted the day and speech as the moment of his commitment -- he left three children, me in the womb, and a career job to enlist. From that day forward he did not look back; he had no moral doubts; emotionally, he was at war; he was America at war.

While never wavering in his patriotic and moral duty, he hated war. His letters from the Pacific stated: "Dear Sweetheart ... as I walk along and see the rows and rows of white crosses, my only consolation is that in twenty years our sons will not have to go to war." This was more than belief, it was emotion; it was his soul as father. It was a clear and straightforward statement of his connection to his God, a God who would -- through him as soldier -- redeem and triumph; who would -- through hated war -- bring peace, everlasting Peace.

World War Two vets _knew_ that it was the war to end all wars. With their souls they felt the hatred of the Enemy, Adolf Hitler and the German People (the source of the Axis' fascism). Their cause was just, more it was eschatological -- a battle of Final Days where loss meant the obliteration of the moral foundation of Western Christian culture. There was scant discussion of the economic or political benefits of conquering Germany, Italy or Japan. Rather, it was a battle between Fatherlands. It was a battle of truly mythic stature: at stake was the earth, all peoples of every nation -- despite any individual nation's neutrality, the soldier knew that he fought to save all nations from the Enemy.

As they recount their Story, the mythic power of The War is manifest. The familial bond is severed, and the brother is named as Enemy. Consider that many, like my father, were quite ethnic Germans. He spoke German until he was four years old \-- in a second generation home in northern New Jersey. Since he was both college educated and a chemist he was followed by the FBI, until he volunteered. They were seeking an answer to the question: Was he an American? or a _German_ American? or a German? Despite his strong ethnic ties, the power of the war myth distanced him from his Germanic kin -- the brother was named Enemy. For my father, in Adolf Hitler the presence of Evil was personified.

After the ritual of Boot Camp and the affirmation of their soldier status, America become Warrior Nation and the slaughter of Germans (Italians, French, Japanese) by ethnic brothers was done with ardor and heroic charge. (Indeed, like so many families, there were familial German Kronckes to be slain!)

Boot Camp was not just a military experience; becoming a soldier was not just a social status or a career move. Rather, it was a spiritually transforming moment. My father went off to war "for the duration." Time was suspended. Space was altered -- the Home Front was wherever the soldier went. America as geography disappeared to be replaced by Democracy. The defense of the Homeland, then, took place wherever the soldier went. As my father's letters indicated he was "Somewhere in the Pacific" ... and it could just as well have been "Somewhere in Italy" or England or North Africa or the Atlantic. National boundaries ceased to exist, replaced by a sense of "where" spoken of in terms of presence. My father, as all soldiers, was where Democracy fought Fascism; such was the Space they walked upon, cruised towards, and flew over. It was a landscape of Will and Duty; it was a battleground from which they would not, could not, return except in Final Victory or Defeat.

When it did end -- again, moments captured with snapshot detail and accuracy -- "Victory in Europe!" (May 8, 1945) and "VJ Day!" (September 2, 1945) only after these events would (could) their war days be numbered; only then could a calendar be xed and

a number be given to a soldier's "duration"; his "time of service" calculated.

My father came home, paraded here and there and then placed his "Lieutenant, Junior Grade" uniform in mothballs, hugged me (a year old) and resumed his job as chemist. For a time he kept in touch with a few, for a time he told stories \-- always wistful and humorous -- until the specter of The Enemy ebbed in his and the nation's soul. He was home; his family was safe; the world was at Peace.

War had taken him out of ordinary time and when completed returned him. The "call to War" had been answered. With a clear sense of what had happened, when it had happened, and why it had happened, my father joined thousands of other World War II vets and relegated "the War" to collective memory. It was ended, it was over; its reality only relivable on appointed mythic days (Memorial Day, Fourth of July) when social and cultural ritual sanctioned a restricted immersion back into the timeless, spaceless and extraordinary experience called War. These cyclical holidays healed my father. For though War ceases for the collective, the drop out of time and space into the mythic can never be contained by the individual. He has lived as an act of his God; he has been selected and chosen; he has transcended his own ethical and moral consciousness. War has spiritually transformed him, and he exits war struggling to contain his heart, mind and soul in the mundane of the everyday. Within each calendar year, the veteran must have extraordinary days during which he relives and transforms himself, momentarily, into soldier. These are days of memory, replete with the twin release of grief and celebration. They are days when the collective once again issues the Call for War ... recounts the details of battle ... and sounds, with the setting sun, the Call for Peace. Such holidays (true holy days) made my father whole and were testimony to me that I too could be soldier.

The battle of the Gods

My father was empowered by ritual to know and feel the Enemy. Why then did my father's generation not so empower mine? Why did the President and Congress not declare the Vietnam War? The Bay of Tonkin Resolution which apologists cite as the declaration was known to be a sham as it was written. It was a Presidential excuse, a ruse on Congress ... an Executive mandate but an unofficial act. Such a Resolution did not possess the stature of a ritual declaration -- President Johnson acted as an _individual_ , as a _political person_ but not with the stature of Heroic Father. He, paradoxically, usurped the power with which he could have been invested if he had enacted the ritual by moving Congress to declare war and so unify the Will and Spirit of the People in his will and spirit.

The president's usurpation can be explained when one foundational difference between my father's and my time is clearly exposed: _the existence of a "peace time draft."_ After World War II, President Truman did not disband the draft. The professional army not only began to grow, it became stable as part of the economy. President Eisenhower, a heralded soldier president, described this condition as "the military industrial complex." Among the many things this revealed was the acceptance of the fact of perpetual war. While called the Cold War, it was anything but cold; the heart of the People raced in a state of perpetual fear and war readiness. America remained in a never-ending state of war.

By deciding not to end the draft, Truman denied World War II a complete exit ritual, a full return to Peace. _"They shout 'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace!"_ (Jeremiah 6:14) aptly describes the condition. America remained mapped in war terminology as "Democracy"; it never returned to existence as a geographical place. Indeed, Americans continued to live in eschatological tension -- as if time was still suspended and each day was but one in The Final Days. The world was not yet safe for Democracy. This is a critical fact. World War II never brought Peace. Hostility ceased but the ritual reality persisted -- Boot Camp was not broken; the People's Will and Spirit was kept at war's feverish pitch fueled by apocalyptic imagery of nuclear holocaust.

President Johnson's usurpation was possible because the right and power to declare war was not returned to the People after World War II. This right and power is returned when the president puts down his mythic mantle as Commander-in-Chief _as_ Peace is accepted. Truman, by instituting the draft ("a peace time draft") rejected the surrender and submission of the Enemy. Though the visual presence of Nazism and the Chrysanthemum Emperor faded, they perdured invisibly through every anti-Democratic Evil which could be named and numbered. Indeed, Truman dropped the Bomb but he declared that it had only obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it had not eradicated the Enemy and his Evil. In point of fact, the War had not been won! Consequently, instead of a temporary war time draft which was used as an instrument of conscription, _the draft became a permanent part_ of American culture, society and the economy. This permanent draft required a permanent mythic Commander-in-Chief. Historically, the president is Chief Executive in normal times and Commander-in-Chief in extraordinary times, namely, when war is declared. Truman grounded America in a novel mythic structure by the institutionalization of the peace time draft.

Veterans and Americans in general did not assess the significance of what Truman did for it was an historically unprecedented act. To most it appeared trivial. Numbed by the horrors of hot war, few were terrified by this novel Specter which arose. Few thought the draft other than a reasonable and sensible security measure, one taken to ensure that the Enemy did not resurrect and catch America unprepared. Only the name "Pearl Harbor" needed to be mentioned for all questions to be answered and fears calmed. "Democracy must be vigilantly guarded!"

My father and all World War II vets were deceived, and their birthright as warriors was stolen by Truman's act. "Victory in Europe!", "Peace Declared!" ... were lies. They were lies widely believed and ones which the fathers passed onto their sons. The sons were raised in the Cold War ... which was testimony to the incompletion of the ritual and the continuance of the liturgy. We inherited a world at war, not at peace. The Enemy was not vanquished, rather only transformed from Hitler to Stalin. Over time, these personalities became insignificant as Communism and Socialism -- systems and life styles -- were identified as the Enemy. Such were the proper enemy for Democracy.

In this light, President Johnson could only have acted as he did for he inherited the patrimony of Truman. Johnson could not declare war, because America as Democracy was already at war! His Bay of Tonkin Resolution _appears_ as usurpation but in fact he could not usurp what had not been given back to the People. Truman was the first president who subordinated his presidency to his Commander-in-Chief status and who refused to conclude the ritual of war. Johnson was already Commander-in-Chief; he was not a president in need of a declaration to exercise his perpetual war powers.

Truman's act violated the collective Will and Spirit. He refused to return to the ordinary. He boldly and baldly refused to heed the Call to Peace. He resisted his People's God -- the God who warred to bring Peace. Truman refused exit from the realm of the spiritual. His was an act of disobedience fraught with mythic consequence. From that day forward he exercised his presidential powers in terms of his Commander-in-Chief powers. For him, the whole earth, the globe was "America," for he claimed it as the proper battleground for Democracy. America's job was to police the world; he set forth to garrison the earth.

The meaning, function and reality of solider was altered. The Cold War's "Peace Time Warrior" was either its own boldfaced contradiction in terms or a novel mythic oxymoron. It became the latter in light of its source in the oxymoronic "Peace Time Draft." The soldier became an economic unit; a necessity for the War Economy. He ceased to fight Enemy People, rather he slew "isms" such as the "specter of Communism." Boot Camp became installed as a rite of passage for eighteen year old males; a required social experience which validated one's masculinity -- though it was equally sought for its reference on a job application. Boot Camp became a hazing ritual somewhat of the stature of fraternity hazing.

The Peace Time Draft negates the need for the ritual of public Declaration; it assumes the existence of the Warrior's spiritual act, that creative act of perpetual war. A war which is for "beyond duration," so, paradoxically, each soldier serves a pre-set, restricted term. A time he describes not in terms of "war years" but as "drafted for two years!" These are years of ordinary time, not extraordinary; they are years lived in "normal time", calendar time replete with dates ticketed for furloughs and R&R. This is so because all time is Peace Time insofar as Peace is War.

Truman's institutionalization of the draft was a priestly act. By enacting it, he propitiated his _personal_ God -- the God of War.

Why did Truman do this? Why did he turn from the God of Peace to the God of War? Why did he deceive and betray my father and the war's veterans?

No easy answers are forthcoming. Analysts can forward economic, political or social explanations and justifications; but they pale in their attempts to grasp the magnitude of Truman's act -- for he was the instrument of a God's transformation of the earth: War vanquished Peace. In this light, Truman suffered Hitler's curse. Both transformed their People into permanent soldiers cast into a millennial battle. Both replaced the Will of the People with the Will of the State. Both worshipped and sought totalitarian powers. Hitler's vision was couched in non-Christian, pagan terms and imagery. Truman's vision was couched in Christian and Democratic terms and imagery -- but he twisted and perverted them, standing their place and meaning on its head. Hitler espoused a fascist totalitarianism; Truman conjured a democratic totalitarianism. Both were priests in service to the God of War -- whose benediction is "War is Peace." Since World War II, Americans have lived in a perilous spiritual state.

The draft as sacramental ritual

The key to understanding why Vietnam was not declared, then, is the spiritual character of the draft. The draft _is_ the never-ending ritual Call to War. More, it is the sacramental ritual of the God of War, functioning much like the ritual of Christian Baptism.

As a youth I believed that we were at peace, and, at the same time, I was fully aware that at eighteen I was obligated to enter the draft. Like most middle-class white Americans, I anticipated that I would be deferred. There were student deferments, fatherhood deferments, and for me, specifically, a divinity deferment. I approached the draft as a social obligation; I did not give its existence much thought nor plumb the meaning of its historical uniqueness. I defined myself as a Catholic American in harmony with the dominant moral values of Protestant America. Only when I sought status as a Conscientious Objector did the mythic structure and power of the draft reveal itself.

I registered robed as a Franciscan monk. Though my religious status garnered an automatic deferment, I had to register. At that time, there was no Conscientious Objector status granted to Roman Catholics; and even if there had been it too would only have been a deferment. Clearly, my spiritual and moral beliefs, I realized, were defined by the Selective Service System, not vice versa. Any claims I would have made based upon religious belief were to be interpreted and evaluated by the Draft Board. The Board's omnipresence and omnipotence was not lost upon me. Though I possessed not a splinter of political belief, I returned to the monastery awed by the presence of The Draft. Under my monk's robes, I carried the paper symbol of a great power. More, I felt its presence as icon; it made real the touch of a godly power. The flimsy paper -- as thin and frail as a communion host -- was truly sacramental, that is, it made present the God of War.

As the Vietnam War formed -- slowly, bit by bit and battle by battle -- I confronted the God whom Truman worshipped. This was not a bold and abrupt confrontation, rather it was incremental and almost accidental. Immersed in my religious beliefs, I was swayed by the pacifistic interpretation of Jesus' Way. I became one of the first Roman Catholic Conscientious Objectors. In so pleading my case I was forced -- by the accusatory and prosecutorial bent of my Draft Board -- to articulate who my God was. In so doing, I began to see who the Board's God was.

The Board assumed the role of Spiritual Director. They rightly intuited that my claims were blasphemous. They forcefully re-instructed me in proper Spiritual Formation. In brief, they asserted that my training had been faulty, and that I had a malfunctioning moral compass.

Catholic moral theology claims that there can be a Just War. The premise is that religion can, under certain well defined instances, morally permit or condone a war. However, even while in battle the warrior must follow strict moral mandates; war, itself, does not suspend moral judgment and obligation, rather it is religion which sets the conditions for specific moral suspensions. In this tradition, God is a God of Peace; but being a Just God, He allows warring in pursuit of this same Justice.

The Draft Board did not worship this God of Peace. Indeed, they mocked what they termed my naive and innocent view of human nature -- "Pacifism!" More, they intimidated me; threatened me with jail and prison if I persisted in such an unpatriotic posture. They confidently countered my theological claims, insisting that I was twisting and perverting what most Christians believed just to save my hide. The nagging insinuation was of my cowardice -- physical and moral.

What the Board presented -- as shocking as John the Baptist's head on a platter -- was the fact that for me and my generation the draft was not a choice, rather it was a

foundational institution, a male's primary obligation. Consider that every eighteen year old male — regardless of physical, mental or moral stature (paraplegic, mental defective, convict or Joe Jock) — _must_ register with the Selective Service System. If he does not, he will be either imprisoned or exiled. Registration meant salvation or damnation.

Registering for the draft, then, is the baptismal act for the God of War. Non-registrants are denied identity as Americans (and in the Board's eyes as proper Christians). In fact, not to register was interpreted as an act of support for The Enemy. It was clear that to claim identity as an American (more specifically as a male American), I and my generation had to register.

I approached my Draft Board in fear and trembling. I had never considered myself anything but a full-blooded American. Yet, my religious beliefs compelled me to witness to a life of non-violence. Why, I asked, can't the Draft Board let me serve my God and America? After three years of testimony and pleading, the Board, in exasperation and without affirming the validity of my beliefs, granted me Conscientious Objector status. However, they bestowed it as a badge of cowardice; and I retreated into my two years of Alternative Service.

As I was performing my Alternative Service as a staff member at the Catholic student center on the University of Minnesota campus, I had occasion to preach at Sunday Mass. Consequently, many young men came to me seeking moral counsel. Like me, common to this assortment of heroes, cowards, the confused, and saints was the struggle to ascertain Whom they worshipped. Most dreaded that they would have to kill, but it was a dread counterweighted by the fact that not to kill would mean social and cultural death, oftentimes manifest through rejection by their family or self imposed exile to another country.

Amidst the swelter of events which overwhelmed many like myself as the War escalated, I realized that my deferment itself was an act of allegiance to this God of War. By accepting Conscientious Objector status I was validating the moral premise of the God who, in effect, had stated to me that there could be a Just Peace. That is, that peace could be justified under certain strict rules. More, that during this Just Peace, I would be bound by strict moral mandates, namely, to wage peace only insofar as it advances the goal of War -- killing the Enemy.

As I had come to reject the terms of Just War so I rejected its twin, Just Peace. My rejection of both was concretely manifested in my destruction of my draft card. This apparently simple, almost trivial act -- the burning of a piece of paper -- rent the tabernacle curtain of the God of War. If I had ever questioned the foundational stature of the Selective Service System, I was no longer left in doubt. My decision not to carry that piece of paper made me a criminal; worse yet, it made me a blasphemer!

In resisting the draft as I burned my card I encountered the full sacramental import of the act which Truman ritualized. He endowed the tool of conscription with symbolic meaning and power. He redefined the cultural mooring of American Society. No longer was the individual family the anchor of society, rather Society -- in its political form as State -- was the anchor of the family. The family would henceforth exist to serve Society not Society to serve the family. Of greater import, Society, itself, was personified not in the People but in the State -- the political apparatus. Truman's retention of his extraordinary war time title of Commander-in-Chief was a mythic break with presidential tradition. He defined himself as Military Chief, not as Chief Executive. Henceforth, fathers and sons ... all males ... would be bound by and born into conscription. All would be born as children of the Warrior State and raised in worship of the God of War.

I was born into conscription; it was not a choice as it was for my father. More, there was no life outside of conscription, to defy it was to be imprisoned or exiled. The truth of my interpretation was dramatically articulated by the Judge who sentenced me and six others for raiding draft offices. His justification for delivering a maximum sentence of five years was, "You gentlemen are worse than the common criminal who attacks the taxpayer's pocketbook. You strike at the foundation of government, itself."

For my generation, the draft card became our foundational bond as males and citizens. The draft card was symbol of the God of War; to destroy this card was to violate the command, "I am the Lord They God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me."

The spiritual quest of Vietnam Veterans

The soldier in Vietnam believed that he had answered his country's Call to War. He believed that it would culminate in a Call to Peace. But he found neither War nor Peace in their proper mythic mode. Rather, he found himself bewildered by the same reactions I had found as a draft resister. His Cause was judged ignoble, stupid, meaningless -- "not a real war!" He was lampooned as a dupe for oil cartels or as a pawn in the CIA's secret global chess game. Upon return, he became ashamed. The accusations of being "a loser" were heightened by an undertone of cowardly criminality. He was made to feel as if he were a murderer and not a soldier.

The import of the lack of ritual Declaration became manifest and magnified by the lack of a ritual exit, a Welcome Home, a victory celebration. Though the president spoke of "Victory for Democracy," he did not -- could not -- ritually end what had never begun. Many Vets hungered -- a hunger never satisfied, indeed, one that cannot be assuaged -- for "just a simple word of thanks," a gesture of recognition. In effect, they sought and were denied even a moment of mythic redemption and healing; an instance of liturgy.

Vietnam was not a war, rather it was a phase of The War, a series of battles in The Final Solution; the Eschatological Peace Time War. Yet, what the priests of the God of War failed to grasp is the individual's need for ritual entrance into and exit from liturgical war. Though America is in a perpetual state of War, the individual cannot enter the realm of God, become an instrument of God, without ritual. Lacking ritual, the individual can only see himself as murderer, never as soldier.

Why was this individual need not fulfilled? Don't the priests of War understand the importance of ritual and liturgy? As answer, consider that in a totalitarian State, the individual is the means to an end, not the end, itself. Before World War II, as my father believed, America was a People's Democracy where War had to be declared. It was a Society prepared to perform the ritual steps to enter the extraordinary time and space of liturgical War. It was, in brief, a Society in service to the God of Peace, a service which contained a ritual for just warring. It was a Society, my father believed, which held the End as Peace for its individual citizens.

One individual Vietnam Veteran grounded answers to my questions in his flesh. Gary came to me while I was still doing my Alternative Service. He came after Mass to my office and began to talk about the war. He stared at me. He knew that I had not been to Vietnam, but he sensed, he stated, a bond. He began to speak and as he did he transformed me into a draft resister -- because he, too, was resisting the God of War.

Gary was a hero. A small town Minnesota battlefield decorated genuine American hero. He had lied about his age and enlisted in the Marines to fight the Communist. In Vietnam he was a Section Leader and Forward Observer, India Company -- the "Igniting Eye" -- Third Battalion, Fifth Marines.

We burned as many homes as we had matches for. You were a better Marine if you did more fantastic things, if you could burn more hootches ... The meaner you could be, the more gooks you could kill was the whole idea.

He was a terrifying instrument of the God of War. _"We burned every village we went through."_

Animals were killed and rice scattered on the ground during village clearing operations so it would rot. If we encountered any resistance or any possible evidence of enemy resistance, we would destroy the village.

_"We burned every village we went through."_ He had answered the Call, he now sought the Peace. But it was denied. When he came home he continued to burn every village, specifically, his own. He sat three feet from me but we journeyed side by side in spiritual quest. What he wanted to know was why the dreams would not stop. More, why was he beating his wife and kids? Why had his home, his bedroom, his mind and soul become an Enemy Village -- one he burned every night; one he reconnoitered every waking moment?

Gary wanted Peace. He had nobly sacrificed himself to satisfy his God. He wanted back into normal times, the every day, the remembered boredom of small town life. But he could not find his home ... he only found himself as abandoned.

Gary was fatigued. The War had not remained in Vietnam. For him America was Vietnam. Vietnam was America. (As cartoon Pogo proclaimed, "I have met the Enemy ... and it is us!") He was shattered beyond his inability to glue the pieces back together. At one mass rally he had tried to enact the exit ritual \-- he flung his medals over the White House fence. He tried denial, rejection, seclusion, booze, grass ... and prayer; he was unconsoled.

Gary could not get a grasp on "Vietnam." He was beyond accusation. He loved America ... why didn't America love him back? ... I could not answer his questions.

Gary wounded me with friendly fire. He absorbed me spiritually into his suffering and his quest. My response was to battle more fiercely through non-violent witness, and I raided draft boards in protest. At my trial, he testified as cited above. I entered prison ... and he, accursed, continued to wander.

Mythically, Gary was condemned to experience himself only as Cain. His self reflection revealed the face of a fratricidal murderer. I shared his reflection; both of us could only see ourselves as criminals. Neither my non-violence nor his violence delivered us and made us whole.

War as prison ritual

The initial Watergate hearings were televised during my first week in prison. I paid little attention to them. I did not need proof of the history of Lies. The details did not fascinate me. All around me the Lies were embedded in concrete and iron bars. I was "in country." The prison population was dominated by veterans of wars and Draft Resistance.

Prison gave me the final clue to Vietnam. Prison has its entrance and exit rituals -- but they are enacted solely by the individual isolated from the collective. While "inside" ("in country") the individual is at war with the State. Prison is a perpetual state of war. The Enemy is defined as the other convicts. The spiritual direction announced is, "Do your own time!" (A statement repeated and supported by my chaplain's sermons.)

"Do your own time!" means do not form bonds with your fellow convicts. They -- other people -- are the Enemy. To be redeemed, to be rewarded with "Good Time," I was told to isolate myself from others and submit to the State. I was clearly directed to serve the God of War with purity of heart -- renunciation of all my former social and personal bonds, and regeneration through the spiritual discipline of the prison Rules. This advice was akin to that forwarded by my monastic Order. As a monk I was commanded to surrender my will to my Father Superior; I was to take no pains to direct my life, rather I was to submit to his Spiritual Direction. The goal of this quest was to strip me of self-centeredness and self-absorption so that I could serve the People of God.

In prison, the Warden wants me to learn to do my own time as the end itself, not as a means to the end of service to the People. He wants to transform me into a citizen who defines his existence as service to the State. If I undergo this transformation, I am assured, I will be successful in my return to the Free World.

The Warden succeeded. Prison -- a war zone like Vietnam -- overcame me. It drew out all the hatred within me, made me desire to the point of morally willing the death of a guard, and set me about "burning every village" I entered. I left prison a spiritual murderer. I left "doing my own time," totally self-absorbed ... accursed as Cain, and a wanderer.

_"Do your own time!"_ describes the spiritual state where every person is a gook. It is a state of perpetual war.

Vietnam like prison was a sentence. Meted out as is the penalty for theft or rape or drug dealing -- "Two years!" Inside prison I was aware of the perpetual state of war which certain Americans are born into because of skin or economic status. It is commonplace to state that prison is filled with minorities, the lower class, and functional illiterates. It became commonly understood that the ranks of "grunts" were filled by Americans of like description.

_"Do your own time!"_ is all that anyone can do during perpetual war. There is no ritual way to transcend one's individuality and bond with the People. There are no _collective_ rituals of entrance and exit offered. Though prisoners go through a Boot Camp like entrance, they too are never forgiven and reconciled. They are never healed. They can never return Home. They are accursed like Cain and wander.

Gary was told, "You did your time!" He had served his tour of duty. He was told to forget about Nam; not to think about motives and reasons and justifications. He visited me in prison and we stared blankly at each other. We had lost our language. We could only recognize ourselves in the other's face ... and weep alone in our separate darknesses.

My son, in this light, it is clear why Vietnam Veterans can never come Home. There is no Home for a country perpetually at war. There is only the battlefield. What the Veterans have been forced to learn -- though not accept -- is that the State which worships the God of War has no place for soldiers, only criminals. Yes, only war criminals. Not soldiers but marauders; terrorists; assassins -- genocidal maniacs. The totalitarian State wants only to obliterate The Enemy. In its perpetual war there is only one moral rule -- that there are no moral rules! "... burn every village." The State wants the veteran to do his own time; live isolated from his brother, who is the Enemy.

The State which worships the God of War has its self preservation, not that of the individual soldier, as its primary End. Since it defines itself as perpetually at war, its Peace is War. The Vietnam Veteran -- in the State's mind -- must live in the mythic moment, forever. However, the individual cannot live continually in eschatological tension, as if in the Final Days. To do so is to live never whole nor healed. To do so is to live criminally. Denied exit from this myth, the Veteran comes to see himself as Enemy ... and his final act of Duty is suicide -- liturgical self murder.

My son, I, myself, have drunk from this cup. I drank myself into many a stupor of self-loathing. I berated myself for my lack of courage, the courage to slay myself.

Peace that surpasses understanding

Gary was the first to be healed, to find Peace.

"In dealing with myself, coming back and thinking I was right. And thinking that the things I had done were right because it was what I had been taught in Boot Camp, and then viewing it from the other side,

"Instead of a gook, it was a human being. Instead of a hootch, it was a home." That really socked it to my head. It really blew my mind. Because I have never thought of a hootch being a home, it was an old grass hootch. And they were peasants, they weren't people."

_"... instead of a gook, it was a human being."_ Gary stopped doing his own time; he was redeemed and delivered. _"Instead of a hootch, it was a home."_ Gary had come Home.

Inside the ritual-less War, Gary performed his own ritual. Denied the consolation of collective liturgy, he became a priest of a new presence. How this happened, I do not know. I can only celebrate it! ... Gary ceased to look towards the State for ritual and meaning. He stopped asking the Fathers for approval, justification and affirmation. Gary did his own time to the extreme, and found himself in the other's time -- in the shoes of a gook.

_Gary found himself as gook ... and so found his human face._ " ... instead of a gook ..." coursed through him like a calming Gregorian chant, it became mantra, drew down awesome presences like an exorcistic prayer. It was Gary's phrase, his only, what to others was a passing remark, the trivial utterance of one burned out Vet; but it was consecratory, of the stature of "Drink from this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant ..." He realized that as he had treated the Vietnamese as gooks, so had the Fathers treated him. It was the phrase which re-ordinated his relationship as father and as son. He confronted the terrifying fact that he was treating his wife and children as gooks. More, he perceived that this was how fathering had been communicated through the Cold War and now through "Vietnam" -- that he was to be a family destroyer, not builder. With simple clarity it came to him: the God of the State wanted not himself as father of a family, nor his family as sons, but only each and all as individuals, isolated entities doing their own time ... living as criminals. Once he accepted this horror, he could purge it. He found peace.

This was transformation and transcendence. Vietnam was not supposed to be a war possessing the mythic power of Peace; it was not to offer ritual and liturgical healing. It was supposed to be only "No Peace!" for it was perpetual War. Gary was trained to be criminal, ever ready to slay any brother at any time in any place decreed by the State. His soldiering was an economic outlet for his class; that underclass for which the military is "work"; he was to remain marginal. His soldiering was to be criminal, and he was suppose to do only his own time (in parallel and at times at intersection with those formal criminals of prison's world of perpetual war). Yet, he broke through.

He broke through at a fathering moment. Seared by molten anger at his father and Father, he raged at himself condemning himself as bad father; hurting father; murdering father. Father who could not speak; who could not be son nor Dad ... nor, as all this was underscored, as male, "Man!"

Maleness; ironically, the Peace Time Draft turned going through Boot Camp much like the test for one's driver's license -- into a test for male identity. Peace Time Boot Camp had no mythic, ritual boundary, rather it bestowed social identity, granted a guy the right to talk like a soldier, even if he had never been in battle. Boot Camp became a reference for macho barroom banter and braggadocio; a way for generations, fathers and sons, to talk over a beer.

Gary found himself with a fistful of medals, these only to bestow as patrimony ... but they spoke to his son only of his criminal heart, the heart of a murderer. At this point of breakdown -- much akin to the perplexing moment when Abraham halted in mid-strike upon Isaac -- Gary's heart beat with joy. From out the prayer "... instead of a gook, it was a human being" burst an embrace, one which bound him beyond time and space with his son, an embrace of fathering which mothers. Gary found himself consecrated as Mother; as nurturer; as Life Giver; as, in his flesh and breath, the dirt and wind of Earth.

In this time of Perpetual War, with its morality of criminal slaughter, in this time of spiritual death ... what is not to be has become -- Gary found his fatherhood by becoming a nurturing father, one who seeks to heal and whole his son without ritual of slaughter and outside the myth of warrior.

It was and is a peace which surpasses understanding, that "...instead of a gook, it was a human being."

Gary came Home within the embrace of himself as father nurturing his wife and son; building family as a member of Earth's one human and holy family, a family of gooks.

************

It took me years beyond Gary to heal. After his visit in prison, we lost touch. I didn't want his touch. I scarcely knew his whereabouts; I was completely unaware of his healing.

I resisted more fiercely my status as gook. I persisted in doing my own time. The bitterness of prison sustained me as I hated myself as criminal. I abhorred my status as "marginal," it was not for me to live without economic worth and social achievement! But one day, a day I cannot date nor position, I was stunned by a presence which spoke softly that I was "Home."

"Home!" came to me amidst the stench of alcoholic vomit ... it came when I could no longer read or write ... it came when I had gone beyond submission and surrender, long past despair and self loathing. It came when only the wind was my address.

"Home"? Yes, I, in my heart, mind and soul was Home ... hearth and earthly womb for God ... tabernacle for all gooks of the Earth. I was staggered. I had been raised to "Go home!", that is, to go to Heaven. Home was a place out there, in a celestial geography -- to be earned, won through a merit system. Yes, I knew the Cosmic Christ ... and all the mystic terminology of Christianity; but all that had been dependent upon Jesus -- a someone, another son, outside of me who saved me in spite of my wretched self! His was a warrior's gain; Heaven as booty; Home as Spiritual Barracks. This was not what engulfed me.

"Home!" was an embrace, a palpable presence. It came from within me, but from that within which is also without. Simply, I was Home when I received the embraces of others, allowed myself to be embraced, to nurture by receiving.

My son, feel that it is your heart which is only within when it is without. It beats most fully when it is embracing. From within my heart are you born. For we males, it is our heart which is our womb; from which we nurture. This is a sacred space alien to the God of War and the God of Peace. For them the heart must bleed in expiation; its blood must be shed.

But I, male all non-violent, yet ever warrior and Soldier of Peace, had never yielded to the nurturing presence within myself which at that moment I came to know as God. Not the Father God who accepted me because his Son had nobly sacrificed himself for me (in spite of me!) ... no, not that Warrior God; not that God of Peace. Rather, God healing, as mother, as Mother, as that of the Father which is birthing; I became joined to earth by the umbilical sky; I, a dot, a speck, a mere molecule of Soul, yet I, for whom all that is God was to become; me, a healer and life giver; a flowering.

Though the words were Gary's, the transformation within myself was unlatched by the grace of the prayer, _"... instead of a gook, it was God."_ But, more aptly, more piercingly, _"... it was Home."_ The heart of each and every gook is Home, is hearth and womb for God. God, a term which should be a verb, Godding; for Home is where others are received; it is where that ritual which unleashes the power which creates the Earth is enacted -- the embrace of greeting, the pressing of hearts, the hug of family, the kiss of healing. Within one's Home the stranger is no more; no enemy can be named; for all are family. What terrified me and swamped me with awesome enticement as I realized myself as Home was the simple fact: to receive is to give.

Receive as Home means to clear a space and time for another; fearlessly witness to them by sharing intimacy; allow myself to be known, touched, kissed ... it was not a reception meaning my possession of them or taking from them. Rather, it was surrendering myself in Godding, in an act of total openness -- revealing all my dreams and visions, darkly and brightly, myself as slayer and healer, so that, within the Embrace, I and my brother become father and son, parent and child -- we all as Earthfolk.

"Home is where the heart is!" My trite, trivial, personal, burned out anti-war radical slogan. Yet, it is, I have come to know, a brief for Jesus -- just another gook. But it is what I have to offer as patrimony.

My son, though the "peacetime draft" continues; though the president wears the mantle of Commander-in-Chief; though battles are waged in prisons and among nations; though the God of War is worshipped unceasingly ... the Vietnam Veteran, the prisoner, you and I can be healed.

Once you grasp this, my son, there is no Enemy. There is only Family: Holy. There are no hootches, only Home \-- the one Earth, wherein live Earthfolk. There is no place which is not Home; no time which is not shared with another. There can be no War -- time and space can never be suspended. It is our hearts which unite and unify us, all gooks -- each and all Home as God and Goddess.

"Vietnam" is a veil which has been rent. It is an illusion which has been shattered. It is a Lie which cannot stand up to the Truth ... the truth that instead of a gook, he is our brother, she is our sister ... we are all children in the Holy Family ... each of us an instrument and presence of Our Parents who mother and father the one Holy Family, at home here on Earth.

My son, you are all and more than the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle ... you are flower ... within yourself all beauty and seed, all male and female, all human and Godding. You and I will come to full flower and seed anew as we nurture each other, you now the son and I the father; now you the father and I the son; a relationship effusing from our mothering embraces.

# Chapter 4: the Lone Male: a personal account (2)

That it all is Cock, was and is relatively easy to grasp. The Undeclared War and Prison are places and times of clarification. In the Undeclared War everyone is the Enemy, and murder -- de-cocking -- is the clear mode of operation and how Victory is measured. In Prison one is a Slave of the State and the de-cocking is also clear. The peculiar form of homosexuality which worships itself as self-generating is visible in the actions and beliefs of both the Undeclared War and Prison. Both are the Biblical Story-line, unblemished. ... I howled before the totem Cock.

But the Obliterated Cunny? Warrior that I was \-- non-violent soldier, imaginative theologian -- how could I talk about Cunny? Such a word is not just forbidden, it is simply not spoken. In the seminary and graduate school such a word was not part of the language of discourse, research or imagination. Though in Prison it was a word everywhere -- "Fuck you, Cunt!" -- it was only code-word for that peculiar form of erotic homosexuality which prevailed. Its ubiquitous resonance only underscored its meaninglessness: it spoke about men dominating men -- about de-cocking -- and said nothing about women.

As with my "Are you a fag?" experience, so there was a pre-prison sexual encounter which had unnerved me -- and remained with me. It occurred in the markless and boundaryless period as I waited for my appeal to be denied and my prison entry date set. I had already entered what I would come to know as "inside time" -- living in a fog with no sense of a shore and no sense of where or why. It was also the era of early feminist revolution. I remember walking, one evening, into my apartment where my "significant other" was meeting with her women's group (mostly radical feminists) and have them instantly stop talking the moment my presence was felt. They watched me all the way into the kitchen; then the door was closed. I had to laugh -- cynically as well as hopefully -- because I accepted what they felt they wanted to do but also felt that I'd be incarcerated until that door swung open again. But, hell, I didn't know what to do with my cock, so why should they? I was tired; weary after years of Resistance, and in that state of shattered fidelity which accepted that I had been rejected by Church and State but had to just get on with my life -- even if life meant going "inside".

I was at a point which I later phrased as "living as if you are no one's enemy." The one thing I wanted my beloved to feel -- not just hear me say, but feel -- was that I was not her enemy. I doubt if I used that exact phrase but it was such a moment. Later that night, when we were coupled, we slipped into our Cauldron: she became me, I became her; she became Cock, I became Cunny. It was a moment of soul-mating. Of eternal embracing. It was liturgical in that it happened, it was not planned. We couldn't have replicated it if we had wanted because we had no way to talk about it; but we both knew and will forever know.

During that evening I knelt before her prone self and laid down with her cunny as my crown. It was a ritual of SilverSex -- but I had not the words.

When in Prison I kept asking myself, "What _is_ going on here?" I could not figure out just exactly what it was that was really happening because on the face of it prison is like any other institution: seminary, school, the army, a corporation. A History of Religions principle is that religions are based upon illusion ("Maya") — what you see is not what is. This is what peering is about. Prison is so much like "just an institution" that it being an institution must not be its meaning. Or, I had to better understand what the word "institution" meant.

When I left prison my peering had revealed that the most important time of punishment had occurred while I slept. It was then that I was not only Locked-up and Counted, but it was then that they corrected my Dreaming. Yes, Dreaming. For this is what the institution holds -- the Dream. The institution is not just bricks and mortar and cuffs and chains and barred cages and "the hole" -- no, that is like looking at a cathedral and believing that what it is, is summed up in its architecture. What the institution held was the Dream. And as I slept, they corrected my Dream.

This understanding of institutional Dreaming began to fit with the notions a French Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilard de Chardin had forwarded. I had read Teilhard when in college and his thought profoundly shifted my understanding of Catholic spirituality. He posited that there is a psychic envelope with surrounds the Earth -- the Noosphere. As a paleontologist he discovered that the Earth did not just contain dry bones but that it was alive with a psychic neural network. The direct impact is the understanding that everything one does: thought, action, image, gesture and dream is the source for the vitality of the Noosphere. My nascent non-violence commitment was premised upon not wanting to innervate the Noosphere with violence and murder. Teilhard's thought was prominently featured in my courtroom self-defense. He also posited that -- for those who peer -- the Noosphere is a Divine Milieu: that the living Earth, all of us, _is_ the presence of the Divine. Again, for me, this meant that every act, thought, word and deed, no matter how trivial, had a sacral impact \-- that God, the Divine, the Spirit was within each of us and together we "god" or are "godding." While inside Prison the reality of the Noosphere and the Divine Milieu became visible as I peered.

Inside prison, men sleep only with men and dream only with men. The collective heat of their dreaming forges the basis for their correction. The grounding belief is that the experience of incarceration itself will effect the change in Eros which is the basis for living as a Warrior. That is why American prisons are not brain-washing camps or re-education camps. In fact, it startled me -- with my teaching background -- as to how little education is actually provided for inmates. So, again, why were we there? What was happening to us?

Prison is a Noospheric state, what I term a Cauldron. Males soul-mate -- are crowned with Cock -- their broken souls and selves are melted and re-cast in Warrior mould: men dream murder; lust to murder. I, myself, testify to this lust and fact -- for I murdered the guard named Matthews: slayed him and disemboweled him and chewed on his flesh in the dream realm, and so was corrected on the mythic level. Knowing this, I knew the sacral power of the Biblical Lone Male mythos -- I knew myself as back in _Genesis_ ("inside"), facing the Void and creating as Adam created with The Father: cock in hand ("rib") and masturbating -- worshipping through the act of self-creating (though it was an act of illusion, that being masturbation as the Obliteration of Her).

Yes, Prison as sacral space and time. A secular ritual: prelude to the Dreaming liturgy. That secular slight-of-hand which prestidigitates and ... _Behold!: The Communion of Saints!_ Such an awe-filled and awful insight!

But I had coupled with Her not as Rib, not just as Cock, but as Cunny. She was my crown ... this was prelude to my stumbling into Her presence as Mother while "inside." Ha! "Inside" are not just Cocks-without-Cunny but Obliterated Cunnies \-- but I did not have that phrase, that image. And though I had been back at the Warrior's creational moment, I knew myself only as mad and freaked and crazed as a true marauder is.

Needless to say, I left Prison on the run. Once outside the Gate I did not want to think about anything. I spent at least a year wandering in that Desert which only ex-cons know about. Curiously, one wants to be alone -- not isolated, but alone. One wants to act criminally -- not get caught, not go back, but break all the little rules one can. One wants to be an outlaw \-- and the closest thing is getting high and drunk and "fucking around." The year after release is more like hell than the time "inside" -- but that is a telling for a later time.

Oddly, when I moved to San Francisco with a group of ex-cons, I landed a position working for the American Friends Service Committee as a project director for a prison program. What this forced me to do was face, again, "What do prisons accomplish?" -- but this time from the "outside." I worked with "criminal justice professionals" and "criminological experts" only to find that none knew Prison's "Why?" -- its Creation Story \-- that few had even the slightest inkling about when and why the Western form of incarceration occurred. The curse of being a theologian was that I wanted to -- had to -- know about this Creation Story.

So, I entered -- _Fool that I am!_ \-- graduate school. Historical Studies. Theological Studies. History of the Penitentiary. Slavery. Justice. Oppression. Marxism. Capitalism. Anarchy. Four years of unceasing and relentless pursuit. I asked a paragon of American Protestant historical and ethical thought why theologians had not studied prisons -- his answer chilled me with its honesty, "I don't know." I asked a prominent Marxist historian and criminologist, "Why?" -- and he spoke about Class Oppression and the mechanics of history. Then, I read about one locked up in Solitary Confinement for uncountable years who befriended cockroaches -- and I knew that his wisdom, their knowledge and our collective ignorance were all keys.

During this period I had married and birthed my first son. I struggled to practice "living as no one's enemy" not just with my wife but with my son. For the "institution of marriage" is freighted with the Warrior Dream as Prison is. It is the Dream which tempts a man to abandon his wife at every moment. For marrying, as I began to feel, is not one with the Warrior Dream. Yes, I knew that by marrying that I was re-entering _Genesis_ ' space from another direction -- but I wanted to continue to engage this Biblical moment. With my son I faced the Abrahamic Story. From the first moment of birth the Warrior Dream settles -- the lust for the son to rise up and slay the enemy ... and the fear of the son as the slaying Cock. Though I was deep in advanced theological studies, the more I tried to not dream the Warrior Dream and find a new ground for marrying and parenting, the further I drifted away from any contact with my Biblical and Catholic heritage. My wife and I tried to attend Church -- wanting some connection to our Tradition. We wandered into every sect on the Christian spectrum (from Quaker to Anglican, to my exploration of charismatics, fundamentalists and pentecostalists) only to find that there was no Sanctuary anywhere. My wife could not cope with the abusive patriarchal language, and I did not want the apparently "innocent" stories told during Sunday School to pollute my son's dreams. Most poignantly, I had to accept that the spiritual lineage of non-violence which I had claimed existed from Jesus through St. Francis of Assisi to John Woolman and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King and the Fathers Berrigan ... well, it was all but an unintended consequence of the metaphorical language of Warrior Theology and the Biblical Lone Male mythos. The Creation Story I knew that I had to ferret out and fully comprehend in order to move forward was that of the translation of the Biblical mythos into the secular institutions of the millennial New World society called America.

What I instantly discovered during my first year of doctoral research shocked me. Leading members of the Constitutional Convention penned the documents of Democracy in the morning, and gathered to discuss public punishments and create the Penitentiary ("House of Penance") in the evening. They were not just designing a punishment system like that in Europe. No, with the same spirit with which they rejected the key tenets of their political heritage and forged the democratic experiment, so did they reject the key tenets of their criminological heritage and forge the penitentiary experiment.

It was clear: Democracy and the Penitentiary were dynamic foci of a vision and a novel practice of government. Indeed, they sprung from the same imaginative source. That is why Alexis de Tocqueville first came here to study America's novel penitentiary system. He co-authored, "On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France." After that, he traveled about and wrote his more famous, "Democracy in America."

While I researched I also coordinated with community and citizen action groups. I organized academics and experts to testify before governmental agencies. I spoke, preached and lectured, even to the psychiatric staff at Vacaville State prison -- California's special preserve for such as Charles Manson. And I continued to study, plundering America's and Biblical Memory for an understanding.

This research -- both academic and practical \-- clarified the peculiar American melding of sacral power with secular ritual. How institutions as secular rituals are transforming into societal technologies -- permanent infrastructures of the visionary Machine Society, which today might be also termed Cyber-Society. The relationship and distinction between institutions and societal technologies is critical for understanding how the secular has captured the various potencies traditionally attributed to religion and spiritual movements.

An institution is a social form created with the intention of restoring something or someone to a former normative status. An institution is envisioned as temporary, and an entity which can be devolved. When religious mythos carried the power of absolution and redemption, jails and secular punishments were understood as secondary accommodations. The real power -- to bind and loose -- rested in the hands of the priests. In America, the penitentiary -- originated through the mediation of the _Pennsylvania Prison Society_ (whose leaders were secularized Divines) -- is the repository of the power to bind and loose. There are no appeals to religious courts or toleration of justification of alleged criminal acts by appeal to a higher duty or moral calling. (Consequently, in America there is no status for a "political prisoner" or acceptance of the concept of Civil Disobedience.) Around the world, the religious institutions of every ilk have, where the penitentiary has taken root, totally relinquished any claim on the delivery or application of criminal justice. As such, the Church has become an institution whereas it once was a societal technology. As institution the Church in America has served more as a socializing center or dedicated itself in various epochs to the delivery of social services, mental health services, physical fitness or social welfare programs.

The Peacetime Draft is also a societal technology, for it is truly omnipresent in that its Registration is universally required. Every eighteen-year old male must Register. Later, he can be given a deferment, but by law every Joe Athlete or paraplegic or comatose male must Register. Historically, there was to be no Standing Army. And, historically, the Peacetime Draft only became permanent after World War Two under President Truman. No one should be mislead by the inactivity of the Selective Service System during the current period of brush-fire wars and conflicts. Just consider, could any politician seriously propose a bill to _permanently_ abolish the Selective Service System? Not in the Warrior Society. (While the Draft is not currently "hot" it is noteworthy that to qualify for a college loan a student must Register. )

Prison as a societal technology is most blatantly exposed in how "doing time" has become a permanent and acceptable experiential "given" and a rite of passage for young urban Black males. Clearly, Prison has become a way to both manufacture and manage the Underclass. It is chilling to consider how, in the Information Society where an individually is increasingly defined by data, that, as Digitized, everyone will be incarcerated in Cyberspace. This gives a foreboding twist to the phrase World Wide Web.

Yet, what is still more telling is how institutions are transforming and transubstantiating into personal technologies, here, Lone Male technologies -- as places and mechanisms for replacing Her and all feminine spirit. Notably, here, is the genetic and bionic revolutions which will, ultimately, allow The Lone Male to clone himself -- this the perfection of the Adamic moment: The Father no longer needing even the illusion of rib to perfect Himself in endless propagation -- Yes, _Genesis_ realized through the act of cloning.

Time as Punishment

Dostoyevsky is often quoted as saying, "If you want to understand a culture, look inside its prisons." What did he see when he peered at the incarcerated space? That regardless of the rhetoric, ritual and romance of prisons that they are, indeed, primary spiritual spaces. This is most true in America: the New World -- that millennial End-Time state of Western culture.

In the West, it is commonly taught that prison is a non-sacred space; that it is a secular institution and a profane place. It is seen as a dumping ground or warehouse for social offal, scum, losers and misfits. Those who enter are ones who have wasted their lives; have "struck out" and should be ejected from the game. Current opinion holds that prisoners cannot be reformed or rehabilitated, and that they should never get out. Capital punishment is forwarded as the solution for more and more crimes. The underlying and barely concealed sentiment is that inmates are animal waste and that they should be flushed down the social, psychic and spiritual toilet, that is, executed -- "wasted."

However, consider the simple fact that just about every prisoner _is_ eventually released. While sentencing is the arithmetic of law, it also terminates in a hope eternal. In the West, the prisoner is _not_ abandoned, _not_ tortured to death, _not_ forlorn and bereft. In counterpoint, he is "blessed." He is given "time." He is placed "inside" a singular institution where it is anticipated that "time" will work efficaciously. Consider that despite mountains of statistics to the contrary, the prisoner is released with the hope that he has been touched by some transforming power; that he emerges from the prison experience a "new man" -- most often paroled, that is, as its French roots expose, released based upon his "good word."

At its least, parole and release point to the primal acceptance of the fact that prison should be reformative; it indicates, at its core, society's yearning that prison be a place of redemption and re-birth. Peering: it further defines the fact that the secular is but an expression of the sacral. Here, the secular lacks the sacred costume and chant but it preserves the sacral ritual of redemption, the moments of rapture and conversion, and the hope of a millennial return.

As queer as this perspective might seem, consider something which is equally as queer yet so deeply ingrained that Americans take it as a given, namely, that the prisoner is punished with time. For example, two years for grand theft; seven years for rape, and so forth.

Punishment meted out by the stroke of time is a most queer notion. Punishment used to be delivered by the lash against the flesh; it was external and physical. Its goal was to restrain criminal behavior; the reform of the soul was left to the unpredictable Grace and Touch of the Divine. In horrific contrast, punishment by time seeks to capture and transform the soul; it reflects a culture which believes that its secular and profane institutions are redemptive and reformative; indeed, that they are grounded in and wield sacral power -- the power to convert and create a re-born soul. As such it is a millennial belief: that space and time as previously known is no more and that a New Man will walk a New Earth (which is the Lone Male's New World).

Punishment by time is a notion which defines and delimits American culture. It is a bedrock spiritual tenet of the millennial American dream: that Time will End, and with that End of Time, the Reign of God in a Perfect New World. Such ideas give shape to the queer cathedral space which America has also created. America is not the land of Chartres or Angor Wat or Stonehenge. Rather, it is the land of the Crystal Cathedral where there is no wall between the streets and the inner sanctum, between the external "world" and the internal altar, between the sacred and the profane, between the secular and the divine. Its translucent bulwark proclaims that the material _is_ the spiritual and vice versa. Time, as known within traditional cathedral space as eternal, is now shrunk to _Only Now_ , the moment, indeed, the End-Time moment. One lives knowing oneself as more than Chosen, indeed, one knows oneself as Saved. More, one "walks" no longer on Earth but in Heaven; the streets of America's New World are paved with Divine Gold -- but only for the Elect who are Chosen.

Here is the dynamic link between the foci of prison and cathedral: one is Saved and lives knowing that he is Saved. One's life -- Time on Earth -- _is_ Time Eternal. One lives paroled, on one's good word which is the Good News. This secular evangelical hope also grounds prison space and time. It was, moreover, the grounding hope of the "Founding Fathers."

As the young American republic shed the overt and robust Biblical and theological language of the Puritan covenanters, it yet anchored itself to that Tradition through a professed belief in the concept of "one nation under God," "in God we trust," and other tenets of what is called Civil Religion.

Simultaneous with the rise of this republican Civil Religion came the formation of the American penitentiary. This House of Penance was also called by Benjamin Rush, its main exponent, a House of Terror. Initially, this new penitentiary movement held that a prisoner in solitary confinement (not isolation) who had access only to a Bible, a garden and weekly visits from upright citizens would soon be confronted by his own conscience. This conscience would indict him, condemn him, and lead to his reformation. These were views acceptable to the times dubbed "The American Enlightenment" by historians. Furthermore, the (still operating) secular _Pennsylvania Prison Society_ was lead, for forty-five years, by the Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia (Rev. William White) and staffed by an inclusive array of Protestant ministers. Of note is that these Divines secularized themselves, dropping their titles of Divinity when they signed Memorials to the legislature. However, it is apparent that they did not surrender, nor intend to, their sacral powers. Through the efforts of this _Prison Society_ , the legislature was continually memorialized concerning the advance and application of the penitentiary institution, which they termed an "experiment."

While this peculiar belief in the character and power of "conscience" dissipated, the social space called the penitentiary was maintained. What does this point to? It reveals that the institution became a social technology, that is, part of the sacral infrastructure; core to the millennial vision called America. For Democracy to advance, the Penitentiary had to hold as anchor. Furthermore, the retention of the penitentiary space without the founding penitentiary vision of reformation exposes the fact that its vision was other than what was articulated by the _Pennsylvania Prison Society_ members. The secular power which the Divines who staffed the _Society_ inculcated into the penitentiary system fully expressed their erotic sacral power: that of the Biblical Lone Male mythos and the Warrior. The penitentiary became what it is today, a Cauldron.

The character of this Lone Male sexual mythos is as clear today as it was when the first penitentiary was opened in Philadelphia in 1790. Foremost, a prisoner then and today "learns" that sacral power is sexual. This is so simply in that it is the key personal and social power denied to him. Secondly, that social relationships are not keyed to the personal, rather they are institutional. Prison is not an institution for reconciliation with the victim; not for confession and absolution delivered by a sacred representative; not a space wherein one is reformed or rehabilitated through tapping intimate creativity; no, the prisoner must reconcile with the Institution ("The Man"); to it confess and seek absolution of "Good Time" and "Time Served"; shrink himself down to its mechanistic requirements: be "adjusted" in prison terminology. He is to become the loneliest of the lonely.

In this loneliness, what do prisoners learn about sexual power? It is a twisted lesson to which one must close pay attention to grasp its many manifestations and nuances. One sustaining inmate joke is, "I'm in love with my hand!" For what else is left but forms of masturbation? Indeed, the most jarring realization for the first-nighter is that he is now caged inside a homosexual world. It is homosexual in its own peculiar way. Namely, that homosexuality is presented as the _only_ way to release; release: genitally, personally and spiritually.

This masturbatory sexual spirituality is also grounded in the penal wisdom of "Do your own time!" Inmates are endlessly lectured and counseled to avoid relationships -- sermonized to live as The Lone Male. For relationships bode trouble. One learns to live inside the feral cages as a solitary sojourner towards release into The Free World. And only The Man ("Old Man," Patriarch, Father -- Warden) lets you out.

But what does The Man hope will happen to you by the time of release? Despite the chatter about how prisons don't "work," the fact is they do. They create the exact type of person The Man believes will transform into a new person, being or presence. This new being is the Fag who has been feminized in patriarchal fashion. He leaves Prison, so it is hoped, not functioning as a Warrior; fully depleted of his Lone Male Eros -- indeed, its is hoped that he returns to the streets and lives invisibly and in slavish fear and obedience as patriarchal women do. That the ex-con be ever fearful of the Cock, for he now knows himself not as Lone Male but as Slave -- as Obliterated Cunny.

Historically, the timeless profile of the penitentiary inmate was chiseled into the foundation stone granite of the first penitentiary. This inmate is that male who is as mythically cursed as the female, namely, Ham -- Negro Americans, the freed slaves. Continuing to today, Black Americans populate the prisons in numbers disproportionate to their percentage in general society. Kin to these sons of Ham are the males in The Underclass: the economic slave/criminal who survives through the Underground Economy of the Underworld, and for whom there is no redemption -- just the revolving door of prison. In America, Prison is a societal technology with its own economic grounding: it exists for the Underworld and the Underground Economy, while, at the same time, "manufacturing products" -- the Underclass -- for its own consumption. As the Undeclared War has its military-industrial complex, so does Prison have its criminal-justice-industrial complex.

The children and kin of Ham have no right to mythic existence. Practically, this continues to account for the high, and continually escalating, number of State-Raised Convicts. These, who are mythically marked with the curse of Ham, are anathematized with a curse akin to that of Her in that all that The Lone Male wishes for them is Obliteration (a "Final Solution").

Of profound significance for SilverSex is that Prison destroys the family and so the erotic fire which forges The Holy Family. In this way Prison functions in tandem with the societal technology of the Undeclared War. Both effectively extinguish the Embracing Eros which flowers into marrying and parenting. As one peers at the New World and its Millennial Story, the fundamental belief that time is punishment stands out to boldly frame that that the body, that all Eros, needs be caged.

Yet, paradoxically, prisoners are also touted as patriarchal society's Heroic exemplars. They have ventured into taboo space, been immersed in sacred Warrior sexuality, and, been re-born. Historically kin to medieval monks, they are males who have practiced the spiritual disciplines in a most ascetic way. Their Story is told and re-told through Hollywood and the media. This is a perverse glorification only to those who seek to break-through the Biblical mythos.

The heralded Prisoner Story: crime, shoot-outs, murders, bitch beating ... serves to innervate the Noosphere and the Divine Milieu with Warrior Eros. It revitalizes the _Genesis_ tale: women are booty, snakes, subordinated ribs, pieces of ass, and should remain invisible: living through his name and His Name. The Media is a transforming agent for Prison as a societal technology. It is so because it bombards the audience with the spiritual message and Dream that the life to live is the Prisoner's life, namely, a life lived among males alone; a life which erotically premises itself upon self-worshipping masturbation.

Prison's sexual mythos is clearly manifested in the normative sexual practices of those in The Free World. What the prisoner has learned is to live without women, females and the feminine. He has learned "prison's lesson," to wit, that a full, wholing and healthy life can be lived in erotic solitary confinement as The Lone Male. At the basis of all this is the Biblical injunction, "Fear God!" This is a call to live as God's Prisoner; to surrender all to Him; live only for Him; and to live with and through Him for Eternity. In daily practice, this has resulted in people not seeing themselves as Earthfolk but as stuck here in a way station waiting to be taken up "on high." They are passing through this Vale of Tears, this Valley of Death -- and so they must be stoic: become iron machines in body and soul. In sum, the Earth, for them, is Prison ... and the Heaven which is to come will be one in which there is no giving and taking in marriage, rather, union -- a Holy Coupling! -- with the Father ... The Lone Male ... coupling as fagged convicts couple.

The Obliterated Cunny

There is no way to say, "This is the Obliterated Cunny," because the phrase, itself, is oxymoronic -- as all key theological concepts are. The Cunny is fecundity itself. So, it can't be Obliterated. As thorough as the Biblical writers were, they had to let it live -- even if only as a beggarly and disposable male rib.

Yet, when you look inside the Crystal Cathedral and inside Prison you begin to understand what the Warrior's New Millennial Creation Story starts to look like. It is a Story adorned with profane images and secular tongue. It is the Story of the drive to make the New Earth be what the Old was not, namely, a place where She is forbidden to ever linger -- linger because of the need He has for Her for procreation of the flesh. What is most chilling, here, is the rapid production of personal technologies which are aimed at further eradicating any presence of Her -- of eradicating the rib. This refers to the genetic and bionic sciences. At first glance, they seem "neutral" to the erotic Creation Story, but they are not. Hints as to their sacral power lie in accounts of their early history which includes experiments on war prisoners (by Nazis and Japanese alike), experiments on the Underclass (Tuskegee Institute) and experiments on the rural populace (radioactive tests in Nevada and Utah -- Is it of any significance that Mormons heavily populate these states?) Furthermore, with the Digitized Cyber-World, the reality that a private identity might be considered a social right and therefore denied to those who do not conform is not far-fetched.

Personal male technologies express the ultimate violence of the Warrior. The Warrior seeks Slaves, and a Slave is one whose total being is controlled: body, mind and spirit. But historical Slaves (including Eve) have a nasty habit of not surrendering their minds and spirits though their bodies be in chains. Now, societal technologies of violence are being rapidly created on the molecular level. Prisoners are increasingly micro-controlled through mind-altering and mind-deadening drug therapies. "Virtual Reality" digits and visual waves deliver orgasmic masturbatory thrills. Fertility can be controlled: sperm is already banked, eggs already nested. It is not illogical, in light of the secular movement of the Biblical mythos, to anticipate that punishment by time (time being Dream time with The Lone Male) will be replaced by genetic and bionic manipulations and alterations. Consider that hormone therapy will be required in lieu of Draft Registration, thus managing the breadth and intensity of the Warrior Erotic pool necessary to tap when wars erupt. Consider that virtual reality Cyberspace pleasure events (males implanted with emotion controlling chips) will replace the need for actual feminine flesh. Consider that The Lone Male will triumphantly Return in the End-Time as perpetually self-cloning. Is this not what _Genesis_ is really about? A Male who has cloned Himself as Adam?

That the Cunny has been Obliterated is Biblical fact. That the Biblical mythos will last for Eternity is not. This is where SilverSex's Creation Story begins: at the moment of Biblical End-Time as you and you and you couple and flower The Holy Family.

# Chapter 5: End-time eroticism: the holy family

The Millennium approaches. While it is a calendared event, it is actually a temporal Ending more than a chronological Beginning, and, therefore, uncalendarable. One knows a millennium as it closes; during Year One there is no assurance that there will be a year 999. And it is appropriate to term the coming event The End of the Biblical Millennium. Indeed, the Biblical Story is, in definition, a Millennial Story. It is one which looks forward and towards its End. It can justly be said that the Biblical Story as well as the Biblical meaning of an individual life can only be understood as what it seeks to End.

The Story seeks the End of the Fear of God. The End of Spiritual Warfare. The End of The Enemy -- all satanic versions. For the individual it is the End of Fleshly Existence, the Suffering in the Body, the Temptations Human, and, most importantly, the End of Erotic Desire. In _Genesis_ what is sought in the End is clearly manifest. She who Tempts, who is Flesh, from whom Bodies slither -- yes, She who is co-generating. She in the multiples of she; it is this She, Her presence, which, once and for all time, now and forever, will be Ended as He returns to Seal Time and Space.

This Sealing is the Final Solution for the forces of evil, all of which stem from Her; are Her children. In Prison I encountered the secular, technological and architectural version of this Sealing. The End-Time is the transforming moment when the Chosen will rule and those not-Chosen shall be Obliterated. In secular language this is the final transformation of the flesh into the machine, here, Machine. The New Heaven and New Earth of Biblical Revelation is one where there is no sand in the Machine; no blemishes on the flesh; where propagation is unmessy cloning -- where, in sum, the male has transubstantiated into Iron (iron abs, buns of steel, bionic heart, cranial implants, and the like). The Sealing is the final sealing off of the Obliterated Cunny in any semblance of its presence -- the semblance which had been tolerated as Rib; it is now no longer even necessary for this speck of Her to exist metaphorically; no, in the End-Time The Lone Male is, finally, alone ("It is consummated!").

The Undeclared War -- this is the _Genesis_ story fully manifest in the End-Time. _Genesis_ is Spiritual Warfare, the War of Temptation: the female co-generating body against the male self-generating body -- and here in the End-Time, with its macabre humor, returns a truth of this Tradition: that Adam did _not_ have a belly-button ("The Omphalous Controversy"). For, indeed, he was not, need not ever -- more, _could not_ \-- be of or from or by Her, woman, she, Eve: he only and always The Lone Male ... without Mother. As such, Adam Returns at the End-Time -- Adam in the guise of Jesus or any other mythic Christ -- he Returns so that males can now live as he was created -- without Her, without Mother ... all praise the technologies, the Machines, which will Obliterate the need for females to propagate!

The Undeclared War as prison -- that iron webbed womb of The Mother -- revealed to me that all things Biblical shrink to the unabashed and righteous worship of the cock. For inside Prison there is only cock. More, redemption requires that the inmate become cock: live alone, do his own time and live the masturbatory life. So, from this vantage point, how to read the Biblical Story? That it has been unrelenting Armageddon. That personal relationships between males and females is naught but one unceasing orgasmic Apocalypse. ( _"The horror. The horror!"_ )

As the Millennium approaches a constellation of ideas, images, metaphors, contradictions, absurdities, lies and truths lay scattered on my field of imagining: peering, Fag, patriarchal feminization, "live as if you are no one's enemy," the Undeclared War, Mother, The Holy Family, The Lone Male, Cock and Obliterated Cunny, Earthfolk, and The Millennium, itself: The End-Time. I know that these must be gathered up into a Creation Story for Earthfolk, but, I also know -- as peering knows both shadow and light -- that for the Biblical Millennium to End a new Lone Male Creation Story must be being formulated and preached by the Biblical Warriors. But what is its shape?

In the mid-Nineties, I sensed that my Undeclared War and Prison experiences afforded insight as to the nub of this emerging and Returning Warrior Story, namely, that sacral power is -- and _must_ be -- _fully_ manifest in secular institutions and through secular actions. In this version of the Return, the Father triumphs by eternally Obliterating Mother Earth. He conquers through His Apocalyptic War Machine. In this re-newed version, Eros is honored as Military Machine, Prison Machine, and _A_ sexual Cloning Machine.

Yet, I knew -- could tell by how restless and agitated my pen was! -- that I had not fully plumbed the chthonic imagination at the heart of this nascent new Biblical Creation Story.

I realized that insight and understanding would not and could not come forth just from words. No, if my draft raid liturgy -- which had so sacrilegiously rent the veil and shaken the temple that they caged me -- revealed anything, it was that I would have to, once again, expose their Revelation and against this grasp how to initiate the liturgy from which the Earthfolk Creation Story would rise.

_Fool that I am!_ \-- I trembled with the thought of going back "inside" Prison, and I made a zillion excuses for delaying my journey. Yet, what stymied me more was the malingering knowledge that the Presence within Prison could do more than cage me, that it truly could Obliterate me. More, that this Presence was all around and about me: present through every dimension -- physical, psychological, astral and spiritual; that it was the primal stuff and the power of the Machine society. Ah! If only the Biblical God had stayed resident in His Ark or Temple or Mosque or Cathedral, but, no, He was in His Crystal Cathedral -- fully secularized. And I knew that to perform an anti- _Genesis_ liturgy would mean more than Expulsion from the Garden -- it would mean risking total and thorough Obliteration: loss of my marriage, psychological breakdown, madness, social alienation ... suicide.

Yes, I had studied most religions and mythologies and I knew how, at their core, each fed off a peculiar Eros. I would have to suffer the full brunt of the Warrior's Eros: directly, personally, in my flesh encounter: consume and be consumed. I stalled by drinking heavily. After all I knew that I could continue to safely exist in the patriarchy: as white male, corporate salesman -- that all I had to do was feign obeisance to the Obliteration of Her and all would go well! But I was father and beloved of wife and two sons -- I did not want to continue to serve the Warrior's Eros.

Through meditation and study, I allowed the full presence of Warrior Eros to penetrate my personal eros. Re-encountering the presences of the Undeclared War and Prison, my eyes were peeled: the liturgy of _Genesis_ expresses the peculiar homosexual core of the Biblical Eros. It is a non-marrying Eros. A non-coupling. A non-communion. It is The Lone Male and as such it is not The Couple. To find the Earthfolk Cauldron, so it was clear, I would have to move beyond Warrior marriage and couple and commune in a radically unusual way. But how could I proceed? I, the John Wayne of non-violence? I, who told my draft board that if they sent me to Nam that I had no doubts as to how I would act: crazed murderer. I, who had devotedly lived the Warrior Story; knew only this Story as flagellating monk and soldiered theologian: as most dedicated worshipper of the Cock -- how does one such as I move from the Void? Yet, there was a way -- the Undeclared War had forced me to face my violence; taught me that non-violence is a way of creatively handling violence in a non-Warrior fashion. But who was I kidding? I -- Obliterator of Her -- how was I to face my Obliterating Eros?

It all seemed intellectually easy, but it was emotionally impossible. You cannot casually say, "Become reborn!" But what else must happen except re-birth? For the mythic moment was me -- not in the Christic or Messianic aloneness and self-worship of the Warrior Tradition, but me in that I was the Warrior Story enfleshed ... and it was my flesh where I must start.

I was at a liturgical loss because liturgy is not something I or anyone consciously creates (as rituals are so created). Like the draft raid liturgy, it simply happens from a confluence of acts, desires, wills and visions. Liturgy rises from a shared spirit; it is a communal, a fuller Body expression. That I did not know how to proceed to search for the erotic liturgy which would counter and heal this Obliteration forced me to consider that I had not completely plumbed the erotic Biblical imagination which manifests itself in and through America and Prison.

I realized that only when dead, only when cast out into the Void, buggered and enslaved by the Warrior, only then does Biblical Space and Time cease. Such space and time did cease for me. And it can. And it will. It was the Space and Time named Dream. This the liturgical starting point for Her and her.

The longer I was "out" of Prison the more I knew that it was, at its core, the Warrior's Dream: its Noospheric Cauldron. The Prison Dream never ends -- only when inside does one recognize its fullness; its ferocity; its capture of what is termed Clock Time, the time of the Machine: for it serves Time! ... Aaaaggghh!! The old ditty, modified, holds true, that, "You can take the con out of Prison but you can't take Prison out of the con!" ... Dream on!

But for me Dreaming had always been Nightmares. I am notorious for sleep-walking, and waking up fellow seminarians and dorm sharing cons with my cold-sweating, death-throes yells and dramatics. Yes, I withered before the erotic imagery which began to Dream me. But I resignedly knew that this is the vital erotic connection which must be made: that Dreaming is how Obliteration is sustained. The Father in _Genesis_ brooded over the dark vapors -- I must engage the Dark Vapors.

This insight slew me. I was stunned ... but Memory came back: in the monastery, chanting the Divine Office, threading the Hours together -- indeed, _Fool that I am!_ , I had not seen because I had not peered, but there it was -- everyday, twenty-four hours a day, the Dream of Obliteration of Her is sustained through prayer: individual and collective; private and communal -- through the practice of the Divine Office which prepared one to ward off the Evil One who would tempt you as you dreamed: "Brethren, be watchful, for the Devil goes about as a Roaring Lion seeking someone to devour" -- this the last prayer of the day: Compline. Here, was the mechanics of the Noosphere and Divine Milieu: how the Warrior's Cauldron was fired and stirred.

Dreaming. This is what can make marrying a liturgy. Without it, all there is, is mutual masturbation. He and she must Dream, together. Not "do time" together: bedtime. Not just propagate, but truly procreate -- but pro-creation requires that the Earthfolk Dream be dreamt! But _how_ to conjure exactly what the shrinking mythos sought to Obliterate? I was trapped, for I had been trained to peer and only see the Void. Yet it came -- just happened: coupled, as Earthfolk I peered and saw a Fullness -- Her Fullness; pregnant with dying and birthing. Yes, the how is through your and your and my coupling.

There's dying involved, and with dying the acceptance of aging. The observance and acceptance of one's body "falling apart" in the terms of the Machine people, yet flowering \-- yes, how else? -- Senescence: this revealed that I was not Machine, that being Warrior was illusion, and that I was more than Cock. As spouse I first grasped that who I was, was truly more than myself plus my wife. As parent I peered and saw eternity behind (the faces of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles) and eternity ahead (through the healing and creating embrace of my sons).

_Fool that I am!_ \-- I had been living as just a part of myself; living in my Cock. To create the Earthfolk Noosphere (that envelope of memory and presence of thoughts from all time) and Divine Milieu (the presence of all spirits) I would have to be born again as Cunny. I began to peer at and through my daily activities, thoughts and imaginings. My eating and talking and parenting and working -- all activity is within a Cauldron; and this is passioned with heat, the heat of a fury of eroticisms; and from without the Cauldron comes the Heart, and the erotic realization that all thinking and feeling directly forms the Earth ... but, no, more -- it forms the living presence which we all are together, the living and the dead, this The Holy Family.

This is what the End-Time is ending for Earthfolk: ending the Biblical Dream. Yes, it is a Dream -- that is its potency. And I realized that I had to Dream differently -- this the most difficult discipline of SilverSex at the start -- for we have been lead to believe that Dreaming is a trip into the Void: meaningless or no better than psychic cartoons or something that irrationally happens to us ... but Dreaming is how I lived and died, so I came to understand and feel, for I had been Dreamed by The Mother -- this, this is what could not be Obliterated! She Dreamed us, has been Dreaming us, and continues to Dream us throughout this Millennium of The Lone Male. And so it is with Dreaming that SilverSex most concerns itself.

But how to dream? How to become Cauldron? How to approach transformation and transubstantiation? Simply, all this through the erotic embracings of males and females. _You and you!_ \-- who are yet connected to Her in a way which even _Genesis_ could not hide -- though, amusingly, She was hid behind a rib! A rib which was not a too clever disguise for the cock; a boner. Yes -- Fool that He is! -- The Lone God peered at the cock, mystified it as a smudge of rib ... and left the Garden confident that She would no longer be a bone of contention!

So, that is where I found Her. Inside my own corpse. Erotically deceased. Expired. Obliterated. As Obliterated Cunny. Indeed, She Dreamed me and I was Obliterated. I was Obliterated as I became Cunny -- sodden, and at The Bottom; the arse connected to the penile neck of the decanter of sacred nectar \-- Ah! I could smell the Cunny; taste it; for I was becoming it; being Obliterated and becoming a rib. Ha! What a joke -- it was this Obliteration which was how the Warrior believed He had cast me into the apocalyptic End-Time, but it was actually this Obliteration which ended the Biblical Millennium for me and in me and through me -- as it can and will for you and through you and in you.

This is the Millennial Act; Millennial Moment \-- you through your embracing, through your End-Time Eroticism thus finding your Obliterated Cunny and breaking-through the Warrior Story. You becoming Cauldron. You becoming Dream. But it is a you in copulation; communion; linked on every level of erotic desire -- every level: smells, words, images, dreams, willings, intention, dedication. And it is about these linkings which the stories, disciplines and rituals which follow concern themselves.

I had begun -- _Fool that I am!_ \-- to create inside my own intimate sphere -- for what time did I have but only my time; and what space did I have but my only flesh? I created what I could, from out of not a Void but a Fullness, that which I saw and touched in my wife; embracing her, both thrown into the vortex called marrying, and through marrying flowering into parenting, and with children into family, and as the End-Time approached, sighting The Holy Family; imagining The Holy Family through the erotic embrace of nascent SilverSex.

The Holy Family

In the Beginning-Time, the question was asked, "Why are we together?" It was, then, not a question asked by a woman of a man nor a man of a woman. Rather, it was the sacred question, and as such, it was the question asked by created male of his Creator Father. The question pre-supposed and accepted the fact that sacral power, namely the power of creating, was theirs. That all which was and would be rightly came from within their male relationship. Indeed, when a companion was needed for Adam, The Father created woman from Adam's rib. This was proper since creating, back then, did not require embracing a sacral power outside of their maleness. Through the ages -- The Lone Male Millennium, a re-cycling thousand year dominance of the Biblical Warrior mythos -- through this Lone Male Millennium, women have had no basis for asking this question as a sacred question. This was and is so because they have no sacral power, no mythic existence. Nothing is created through them, rather, they are created through; this referencing their bodies as the profane breeding ground into which subsequent Adams planted their Lone Male-creating seed.

In this light, in the Beginning-Time the sacral power of creating was grounded in a male-only eroticism. The lust for life, the desire to reproduce, the gaining control over the non-human world through naming, all these were satisfied by plumbing and forming male-only erotic energy. This is a homo-sexual eroticism but a distinctly peculiar form of that eroticism. It was an excluding homosexuality which premised itself on the obliteration of the feminine. It clearly stated that females, mothers, the Goddess or any other feminine erotic energy is not required for creating and so for the continuance of life, itself. It is a sacral homosexuality which pivots on the dogma that "Males have no mothers." While such a statement wildly flies in the face of every day biological reality -- given that homosexuals have mothers -- it was and is a sacral statement of the first order of the Lone Male Millennium.

For those men and women who do ask the question of one another, "Why are we together?," the Biblical Story has two answers. The sacred answer is: to worship God, The Father, now and through eternity -- not just as The One God but as The Lone God. It is to seek mystical Union with Him as Lone Father in the after-life. This Union is the reward for a life lived denying the body. As such, it is a life lived denying the feminine as a source for sacral power, that is, for the power which transcends and transforms death and dying. A sacral power manifest through the time-vivifying biological birthing of infant life, a power which spiritually weds the union of male and female.

The denial of the feminine as a source for sacral power is a pivotal dogma of the Lone Male Millennium. Namely, that life on earth (Mother Earth, in the body, in the world) is meaningless. Meaning will be granted only as a reward in the after-life. Moreover, to "get there" one must be Saved. And this Salvation is rendered by being re-born through communion and faithful embrace of The Father's Son. Again, all meaning, all acts of birthing, transformation and transubstantiation revolve around becoming one with a peculiar type of homosexual eroticism.

The second answer is profane and rather simple. The Tradition states that men and women are together to breed. Women are male ribs, and through this subordinated imagery the practical sexual doctrine arose stating that it was a sin for a woman to deny her husband sex on demand. On its own terms, women existed for the genital pleasure/satisfaction of males as they fulfilled their creative obligation of creating more sons, _in imitatio dei_.

As the chronological Millennium approaches (in Western guise), a striking End-Time erotic mythos is flowering: that of The Holy Family. It is one seeded in the obliterated mythos of the Goddess and the feminine as a source of sacral power. This is a mythos partially unveiled by the phrase "SilverSex." It is a vitalizing mythic answer to the question, "Why are we together?" That answer being, "Because in union we are God and Goddess manifest and creating."

SilverSex holds that one can only read the Eternal Story on the flesh of the other. This reading comes into focus as two couple and embrace. Embracing is the holding which issues forth into being held. It is an act and a moment of passing through. The flesh of the other manifests itself as the ribbon of time. On the beloved's flesh can be read the story of human evolution, growth, struggle, hope and faith. The beloved is God or Goddess. The beloved is the one for whom all time has yearned and groaned to create. As one becomes beloved, so does one pass through dying and become born into a flesh, a consciousness, a spirituality which is never-ending.

SilverSex pivots on the insight that sexual coupling is the creative starting point and moment. It is that embrace which links two bodies and positions them as foci on the spiritual ellipse. Once coupled, the mystery of transformation and transubstantiation occurs. Namely, that while remaining two, a new oneness, a new Presence emerges. It is an emergence which is birthing: the new borning of two, already alive in time and space, as one; and as they uncouple, as never the same again.

Once The Holy Family, so forever, for time is never but only as the play of dying and being born, again. Everyone is child. Everyone parents. There need not be living parents to be a child; nor genetic children to be a parent. Parenting is a way of SilverSex. It is the coming into fullness of being Father of All and Mother of All. It is the imagination expressed through being an Earthfolk. This a peasant eroticism and spirituality.

The Earthfolk seek not war for they live "as if I am no one's Enemy." It is a living discipline which finds fruition through SilverSex coupling wherein one couples with another to become a presence which is greater and fuller than the two embracing.

# Section 2: SILVERSEX DISCIPLINES
# Chapter 6: Disciplines

After "brooding over the dark vapors," where are we?

At the starting point of the Discipline. To arrive here, you must sincerely affirm that you are all and everything which all creation has struggled to and has playfully created. I state this as the starting point because the Biblical Lone Male Tradition starts with the proclamation that you are worthless, especially if you are female. It hammers home that "You've lost it!" "Get out of the Garden!" And it instills in you the Discipline of Fear. Fear God. Fear your Flesh. Fear the World. Names are given to this Fear: Satan, the Devil, the Evil One ... Eve, and then She whose name is not spoken: Mother.

Once you accept your inestimable self-worth, you should begin to sense that you are so worthy because you are Family. That "creation" is really a way of being Family, here, meaning that-of-you through which you are present to the Past and move into the Future. All that you are is all who have been who have co-created you. All that you will be is all who come from those you have embraced in co-creation. You stand, now, both as Cauldron to be stirred and a stirrer of the Cauldron.

Once so oriented -- ordained -- you are prepared for SilverSex Discipline.

The next chapter will explore SilverSex rituals. Rituals are consciously designed and implemented sensory acts. Rituals are the necessary preparations for that transcending and transforming moment called liturgy. One cannot do a liturgy. One can ritualize, and through ritual lay the ground for the break-through moment. Rituals are, by definition, conscious acts. Therefore, at times, they can become quite boring. They often misfire. For example, the Catholic Mass is an ancient ritual. I attended daily Mass for about half of my current life span. Yet, I \-- and most others -- can count on our fingers the times the Mass actually liturgized us: was a break-through moment. Persistent attendance and practice of a ritual requires a Discipline. Historically, the Catholics lost sight of what liturgy is and the Discipline which must be practiced in preparation for the liturgical moment. Rather, they focused upon the rote practice of rituals whose imagery, Latin language and symbolic structure eluded most everyone, including nearly all priests.

The liturgical moment for SilverSex is that transformative experience and event when two couple and become one. This is not an "egoism of two." Rather, it is the marrying and parenting moment. Marrying in that it is the unleashing of the dynamic sexual Eros which vitalizes the personal relationship of the two who are intimate foci, each for the other. Parenting in that a new presence is imagined and birthed. It is an unparalleled joy when this new presence is a child who flowers from the Now, enfleshing Past and Future in the wonder of their infant face. But, Parenting means much, much more. It means the fullness of being. Of your becoming the Earth and the Sky. It is your flowering through your own and your beloved's surging vitality and dying entropy. It is when you blossom into Eternity -- which often is a blissful moment which shudders you into total self-negation or pounds at your skin like a torrent crashing into and yearning to burst the dam of your flesh.

The SilverSex liturgical moment has ancestral connections to those in the Biblical Tradition -- who despite the Fear -- found rapture in ecstatic union with a Beloved. These connections include what was pointed at by such phrases as Communion of Saints, the Cosmic Christ, the Body, and the most misunderstood phrase of that Tradition -- the Holy Spirit.

We start with Discipline because it requires us to pay attention to what the Warrior does not want us to attend. For example, while in Prison the Warrior Warden and Chaplain pounded at the inmates to follow the rules: "Do your own time!" By following Prison's rules -- its procedural rituals, such as promptly attending to "Lock-up and Count!"; not breaking line when waiting for chow; compromising on what to watch on the TV -- by following these daily shrinking rituals, the Warrior keeps your attention on those things which, in time, he knows will catalyze the liturgical moment of becoming a Lone Male.

What SilverSex attends to are those realities and precences spied when one peers. As such, SilverSex's Discipline involves creatively forming one's invisible powers and faculties, among which are: Intentionality, Memory, Attention, Presence and Dreaming.

# Chapter 7: Intentionality

**SilverSex intends The Holy Family**.

As creator you are faced with the question, "What do I intend?" In the Biblical Tradition, you are not situated as a creator, rather, as a derivative and subordinated presence for whom the question is, "What does God intend for me?" The answer -- as recalled from mastering rote catechetical Q & A -- is, "To know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Biblical intention, then, requires that you pay attention to yourself -- your soul -- and not bother with other humans, rather, focus on your relationship with The Father. SilverSex answers the question quite differently.

When you start with the ordination grounded in your own self-worthiness as a presence of The Holy Family, what you intend is to create. Here, "create" brims with the zesty vitality of dipping into the past and forming the future through the orgasmic present moment of coupling and embracing. You creating is SilverSex's "godding." This again calls you away from Biblical intention where you are Disciplined to "Do your own time!" In contrast, godding describes you embracing and being embraced. It heightens your awareness that everyone is Family, and as Family, we are all "dancing time" together. More, that "time" only has meaning as a collective and communal referent (more on this when discussing Memory).

SilverSex is the intention of godding. When godding you intend to couple with other people for creative expression. This creativity has manifest and multi-fold expressions: working, cooking, dancing, discussing, arguing ... all the way to and through sexual embracing. When godding you avoid the pitfall of the Warrior who has only one lone erotic sexual image: that of the female as fuck-bucket and that of the male as one who needs to be de-cocked: competitively beaten down, conquered, bested, and if Enemy, obliterated. Godding is the investing of Eros into many moments, moments which are by Warrior standards mundane and profane, again, such as working, cooking, dancing, and so forth. Godding is being present in your many and multi-fold eroticisms: wielding creative fires, not just a Sword of Fire.

Intention is how you clear your mind when you catch yourself drifting off into Warrior moods and practices. Remember, the Warrior's sacral Eros saturates the profane and the secular. Be watchful, because it is a most powerful shrinking potion, and it wages Undeclared War upon you. SilverSex godding, then, at this Millennial Moment, pays especial disciplined attention to the shrinking power of the Lone Male mythos. Godding develops rituals which assist one in coping with the Lone Male's power. Through these rituals, one disciplines his or her intention, and re-orients him/herself to their Fullness and the presence of their greater Body and The Holy Family.

Intentionality, at this mythically cataclysmic moment, requires willing the presence of Her, the Goddess, Our Mother. Willing the Obliterated Cunny. If nothing else, _Genesis_ is the willing-into-forgetfulness of Her: the Obliteration of Cunny. So, the Discipline of Intentionality pivots with that of Memory or Remembering. While Intentionality addresses how you focus upon and make present your creativity, none of us has lived at a time when Her presence is assumed, taken for granted, or valued -- when the Goddess was worshipped or the sacral Cunny reverenced. Consequently, males and females must discipline themselves to consciously intend to attend to Her presence. For males this requires the development of numerous rituals. For males have ever to overcome their Warrior practice of ignoring the females they actually see! Yes, how to overcome that myopic cyclopic sight which sees the female and shrinks her to only flesh and from flesh into her anatomical parts: piece of ass, rack of teats, nice box, as well as shrinking her erotic power to cutesy animal images such as pussy and beaver?

All that is around you are Warrior images and mythic Memories. Intending the presence of the Obliterated Cunny is akin to turning your skin inside out -- if you do it, you will die! Yes, none of us know how to ritualized the Obliterated Cunny. Here, you are confronting the most pure creational risk : conjuring up presences and powers which -- disguised or through Warrior trickery \-- have the power to shrink you: body, mind, soul, spirit, dream flesh and truly Obliterate you. Yet, this is what SilverSex knows it must primarily intend. As surfeited with Void as the Lone Male _Genesis_ moment is, so must you stand in the emptiness, the bleakness of imagination which marks that tinniest of sacral spaces not relinquished to Her: the rib -- that metaphor for that of Cock which She has always been and always will be; stand there and wait for the thundering moment of Her nurturing Fullness.

Everything in the Biblical Tradition works against the male intentionally receiving the presence of Her through the female as creative fire. She and her daughters are to be captured: booty, snatch, "my precious treasure." She and all females are to be protected through sub-ordination: as Mrs. Male -- for She/she has no power, no erotic ore, except as She/she receives it from her Male/man. Eve tempted Adam but she was helpless and hapless in Satan's presence -- she did not "fall" having fully expressed her feminine power; no, in _Genesis_ the female is not a vehicle of spiritual authority, insight and power.

SilverSex intends to couple with female power. Creatively, the male searches out the numerous ways this female power can be discovered. Intentionality, here, links with receptivity as ritual method. The male poises himself -- through will and patience -- to receive the female's power. Such intentionality requires that the male position himself on the precipice of being slain. Psychologically, this is an opening to madness, for the male has no grounding in the Lone Male mythos to plumb for coordinates or points of reference. The Lone Male intends only to receive his God, so how does a SilverSex male intend to receive Her and her?

As is obvious, female power does not simply reside in genetically female bodies. Females, themselves, have not been raised with a mythos which intends their creative fire. But, in the main, women possess within their mythic Memory something which laughs -- and has always laughed, dear Mother -- at the shrunken bit of cock called rib with which they were equated ... and are re-membered.

Intentionality desires coupling. It is an openness to the presence of others which allows them to touch your most intimate self. It is living "as if I am no one's enemy." It is the opposite of the Fear which besets the Warrior everytime he encounters a presence, whether human or divine.

Intentionality desires fullness. It is orienting one's self towards the greater Body. It boldly counters the shrinking potion of the Lone Male. Instead of intending to present yourself through your parts, you free yourself to imagine yourself as Mother of All and Father of All. You break-through to the presence of your cosmic self -- which many have discovered through the magic presence of their microscopic and molecular selves!

Intentionality is wondering. That happy dreadful grasp on the fleeting boundaries of the senses and even one's own imagination! Wondering accepts the dying all about: the chaos of creativity! ... Wondering accepts that the smile of the infant flourishes upon the cold kiss of the corpse.

Intentionality is dreaming. Intending not to be caged by clock time, that beat of the Machine Society. Not to cease creating as one slumbers. Yes, Intentionality couples the dreamers. They ritualize the moment of conscious departure and set images and stories loose to map their way back to sunrise kiss and embrace. Dreaming: the most difficult to ritualize for us in the secular world where we are not to dream dreams but rather follow orders: "I was just doing my job!" ... Dreaming is intentionally not dying as does the Warrior when he/she lays down to sleep. It is rather the embrace of the Night; creating by Moonfire; becoming not just two as one, but this one as eternal. For the beloveds intend SilverSex so that they will create beyond their Earthly demise; the fall of their flowers and leaves; the decay of the ecstatic flesh ... Yes, SilverSex intentionality dreams.

SilverSex intends and dreams The Holy Family.

# Chapter 8: Memory

" _Do this in remembrance of me."_

" _... what she has done will be told in memory of her."_

The first quote underscores the chief principle of spiritual Discipline, namely, that you must remember. Re-membering is not just a wistful act of sentimentality. No, it is the core sacral act which vitalizes and unleashes spiritual power and presence. For Memory, here, means making present All that is: it collapses time into Time and space into Space; it translates the Eternal as Now.

In Warrior culture, this Remembering has been shrunk to the sole and simple act of sacrifice: the shedding of fatal blood. Warrior Redemption requires the shedding of blood -- in the Christian story, this is the blood of The Lone Male's only child, His Son. As the blood of this Son is shed he ceases to be the historical Jesus of Nazareth and becomes transformed and transubstantiated into the Christ. The Christ is the Memory of The Father. The Christ is the Memory of The Lone Male. Jesus crucified and dying on the Cross transforms into the Christ who dies daily, and through whose death, the _Genesis_ act of The Lone Male creating is continued. The power of this Remembrance -- done daily by those Christians who celebrate Holy Mass -- is what keeps the Dream alive: the Memory of what has been, and as equally -- but in the present moment, even more -- significant, the Memory of what will be, namely, the Millennial End-Time.

I served for many years at Daily Mass. I've crawled on my knees around the Stations of the Cross till calluses thickened and became carapace. I've meditated in Solitary Adoration till my mind blanked and my unworthiness erupted into ailments visible and invisible. I've flagellated while chanting after communal confession: _Culpa_. All these as acts of Remembering, of reliving the expiating pain of Jesus; of attempting to suffer in my person the redemptive, transforming Pain of the Christ. I left the novitiate without really knowing why. Something, however, just didn't "take." I was still a faithful son of the Church, but all "inside" -- inside the monastic walls -- just seemed dead and empty.

After Prison, when I heard my first-ever Baptist congregation sing I was stirred by their impassioned phrasing of a repetitive phrase: "The power of the blood! The power in the blood!" While most Protestant groups have shrunken liturgies \-- their services being almost all aural: Word and Song -- this image of the shedding of Christ's blood appeared to fascinate them and be fascinating. This moment was like my epiphany when raiding Draft Boards. There I "broke the bread" -- the draft cards -- and blood was shed. Powerful blood. Taboo Blood. Enchanting Blood: because as I shed it, so they chained and caged me. Only when I started "serving time" -- my first non-clock time in the Hennepin County jail -- did it dawn upon me: not the Host broken, but the paper card ripped, this is how Redemptive Blood is shed!

What I had found through the liturgy of the Draft Raid, so the Baptists were finding through the simple phrase of Singing. Ah, a moment dawned which made my long-suffering seminary education worthwhile: the insight that Singing is the most primitive form of Re-memoring. The Bardic Tradition. The primitive Evangelicals -- meaning, Announcers: Publicly Witnessing. Angelic voices. It amazed me, upon reflection, how simply sacrally powerful was just the voiced image: shedding of blood.

The second quote: _"... what she has done will be told in memory of her."_

Shedding of blood. This is naturally a "woman's thing." Moon memory. Genetic memory never-ending. Men do not "naturally" shed blood. But the Warrior is Warrior only insofar as he sheds blood. And Warrior Memory -- tales and history -- is constructed around the chronological shedding of blood, namely, History's storyline beating to the drums of Wars: from the _Iliad_ to the Crusades to the "War to End All Wars." This Memory effecting the Undeclared War: which is sacral war totally profaned and secularized as "National Security policy." Through the Warrior's Remembrance of the never-ending Undeclared War, the Lone Male makes real His erotic dream of creating -- that He can birth without Her.

And so, back at _Genesis_. The Lone Male creating _without_ Blood! Without Her, a Goddess, Mother; Adam is created, "born" -- how? "In our image" -- imago; reflection ... Is this not Replication? Cloning? Bloodless Birthing. ... This is what the Warrior Remembers; what He Dreams. And so what She has done has _not_ and will _not_ be told in memory of Her.

Is it now just so easy to say that the Warrior's _Genesis_ Story is but a Lie? More, not just a Lie which is the betrayal of a Truth, but, more, a Lie which does not in any way (not even through betrayal) affirm the Truth; ever a Lie which claims to be the Truth ... a Lie which Obliterates. For as I read -- as you read -- _Genesis_ where is the Truth? The simple truth of bloodshed? That bloodshed is Moonly; of the Goddess; the Memory of Mother; how females Remember? It is all simply Obliterated.

When I walk around cathedrals -- especially the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. (that center of sacral secular power!), the Shrine which Locks-up and Counts the images of Her from cultures around the world -- when I walk around such cathedrals and shrines, my ribs ache! ... Peering: Her blood has no power, potency or vigor; it is simply a waste product. An organic by-product; something she suffers each month as a reminder that she is not a male: a Biblical prayer, "Thank God I was not born a woman!"

When the Warrior slays, then, what is He Remembering? That Life and Death rise only from his Cock. That you are born from the Cock and that you receive death from the Cock. When the Cup of Wine is raised and consecrated, it is Warrior Blood \-- Blood drawn from Cock: sacral and transubstantiated into His Body -- a Body which self-generates without Her ... and so it is Male Blood, his Seed, Sperm: jerked from the penis.

When I still labored to pinch and twist and wring some non-Warrior thoughts and images from the Biblical Tradition and Catholic liturgy, I would interpret Jesus' shedding of blood on the Cross as a validation of His respect for and positive linkage with His mother. After all, She stood at the foot of the Cross. She received his broken body. She was there at his burial, and her sisters witnessed Jesus' Resurrection as Christ. I spent numbing hours searching for ways to claim that the Tradition did have a Memory of Her. Only when I married and parented did I accept the fact of _Genesis_ ' Lie and the totality of the Obliteration of Her.

Marrying is a discipline of Remembering. Parenting is a discipline of Remembering. This is so because marrying calls for you to orient and ordain your life as embracing. Marrying is the daily ritual of creatively remembering your beloved. Marrying means, among many things, that your time and space will be used in the ritual of embracing, with the hope that the liturgical moment of Parenting will occur. Again, Parenting does not mean simply fertilization. Rather, through marrying you open yourself to the Memory held within your beloved and his/her family: the ageless love and stories of all who embraced to create your beloved. In like manner, does your beloved Remember through embracing you.

Marrying flowers into Parenting. You are parented by your beloved, and vice versa. Parenting, here, means that you open yourself to your beloved's wisdom and power. Marriages flounder and break-apart when they do not Parent. Marriages flower and break-through when they do Parent.

The Warrior does not have Family: his God is The Lone Male. The Warrior does not have Parents: his God replicates; clones. In _Genesis_ there is no Beloved. The Warrior's Revelation is that there is no wisdom and power other than that which comes from Cock. Marriage is not a sacral act for the Warrior. Marriage is, actually, what will be Obliterated during the End-Time -- "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." ( _Matthew_ 22:30)

SilverSex Memory remembers the Obliterated Cunny. In my sexual upbringing, one did not even know the word for "female private parts" except when used by swearers and cursers. Still, hearing the words -- "Cunt!" "Pussy!" -- conveyed nothing about female power, rather, they were code used to humiliate and de-cock another male. Humorously, as the curious Friar Otto, I snuck a volume, titled _Urology_ , from the monastic library and looked at anatomical drawings for my self-education about "what was _down_ there." _Down_ \-- for I did know that between Her legs was the Pit of Hell. It was repetitively and rotely preached that "it" had caused more men to suffer eternal damnation than any other Temptation to Mortal Sin.

When I was in my first year of graduate school and the trumpet of "Free Sex" blared, my virginal Maleness was seduced by -- what else? but -- a Protestant girl (actually, Lutheran young woman also in graduate school) who asked me to, "Slow down, take your time. What about giving me pleasure?" I was totally shocked and perplexed; I had no Warrior Memory with which to answer her.

But, it was not really about "Free Sex." For most of us Sixties males were not interested in freeing female power -- hell, we didn't even know there was such a power. We chanted, ribaldly, when drinking and smoking, "Hail, Pussy Power!" But this was simply code for our macho struttings about how many fuck-buckets we had jacked off into. This is not to deny that there was not love and romance and true soul-mating, rather, that, in the main, such things happened as "unintended consequences" -- as did so many pregnancies.

Until you remember the Obliterated Cunny, you cannot free or create with the power of Her.

As male, remembering the Obliterated Cunny requires great courage. For all the Warrior images of bloodshed will carom and careen, shriek, scream and howl through your mind, and you will be erotically terrified unto the gasp of dying. For the core image which will rise is the slicing off of your cock. Yes, this is what the "rib" will conjure up. Consider that in _Genesis_ Adam is laid down to sleep. He dreams. The Lone Male dreams Adam, and, together they "give birth" to Eve. What even the Warrior cannot deny is that birthing requires blood -- the transmittal of genetic material -- and so Adam's penis is sliced; it bleeds; and from the blood Eve is created. She is that trace remnant, infinitesimal speck of Her without whom The Lone Male cannot create. Adam's rib is Her relic. Understanding this, to Discipline oneself to Remember Her means remembering this Obliterating moment -- transforming and transubstantiating into Adam -- the moment when the Cock bled.

There are several rituals for Remembering the Obliterated Cunny. However, the daily practice of orienting yourself towards Her as Parent is the nub of the Discipline. You and I have not been Parented by Her -- and this is the End-Time Eroticism the Lone Male wants to once and for all Obliterate. Being Parented by Her means opening to Her wisdom: the wisdom of Mother Earth. It is a wisdom premised on the reality of the Earth as Her Living Body. Dirt is Her Flesh. Trees are Her Lungs. The Moon is Her Heart. The Sun, Her Embracing Kiss of Him.

When Remembering Her as Parent, the secular sacrality of the Machine and Cyber-Society becomes manifest. "Expulsion form the Garden of Eden" marks how the Warrior images and understands His relationship with the Earth. The Earth is his Desert; his Prison; the Wasteland. It is everything which Heaven is not -- and that is why the Millennial Hope is for the transformation and transubstantiation into a New Heaven and the New Earth. A harbinger of the Millennial transformation was the claim that America is "The New World." Throughout our history, we Americans have lived as if this claim was and is true. We disclaim and deny the genocidal murder of the Native Americans. We excuse ourselves for chaining the Children of Ham in physical and spiritual slavery. We arrogantly spearhead the reduction of all things to "self-evident truths" and atomic formulae. We proclaim the Virtue of Selfishness. We unabashedly continue to act as conquerors; more, as marauders ready to move on as soon as the Millennial Warrior King Returns.

In general, our American methods of educating \-- of Remembering -- lack any opening to feminine power. We cure, we do not heal. We fix, we do not birth. We manage crises, we do not transform. Ironically, the nation which has proclaimed itself as Progress, has only succeeded in Progressing into more contorted and elaborate forms of self-deception. But, given the Warrior's mythos, this Lie is, indeed, His Truth.

The Obliterated Cunny. "The Power of the Pussy!" ... If it is not just to jerk off the male; not just to enable him to fill up his Sperm Banks for replicative cloning, then, what is it?

When you Parent, you begin to grasp the creative challenge of Remembering. For children are not clones. They are not just a replica of you. In fact, they continually remind you that they are "the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts" (here, parts being sperm and egg). Almost more than being born, they are unleashed! They are Fire: consuming everything and loving to be consumed (embraced). In stark contrast, for the Warrior, children are reminders of His impending death -- for when his sexual potency slackens and is ultimately spent, the justification for his Warrior existence terminates: namely, to raise more Warriors who will slay the Enemy, the Evil One: Her. The Warrior sucks the bitter root of the knowledge that the Heroic deed is accomplished when he is de-throned (de-cocked) by his son. He has raised his son (and the maleness in his daughters) around the motto: "Be a man, kill!" His children are not bred to Parent the Earth, rather they are endowed with the vision of Survivors. Only the strong survive, and it is all, indeed, the survival of the fittest.

Pro-creating for the Warrior is always bitter-sweet at best: "But if you cannot control yourselves, go ahead and marry. It is better to marry than burn with lust." (1 Corinthians 7:9) For the Warrior, it will be better when Time-Ends and the Creative power of replicative cloning -- which defines The Lone Male -- Returns.

Parenting is not something just one person or a couple or even a family can accomplish. Rather, it requires a mythic tradition and the Discipline of Remembering; here, The Holy Family. Marrying is the creation of a Cauldron, and Parenting is how the Cauldron is stirred. Marrying consummates in sexual intercourse, but Parenting arises from the marrying embrace. One becomes Married when as he/she Parents and is Parented by their Beloved: at such a moment The Holy Family dreams.

Marrying and Parenting are Disciplines of Memory.

# Chapter 9: Attention

Intention is more like preparation whereas Attention is like dealing with the moment of arrival. It is the closest Discipline to the creation of a ritual.

Attention is a bit like peeling a cucumber. Cucumber skin is very thin, but unless it is peeled there remains a edge of bitterness around each slice. How we attend to Her is manifest in how we attend to her and to the female within. This attending is a fine tool in the creating process. While it includes "paying attention," it involves more of receptivity than active awareness.

Many Warriors feel that all they do is pay attention to Her through her. They have placed their women and the feminine "virtues" on a pedestal. In the Catholic church, priests would strongly argue that She is all about through the images of Mary. How Mary has been "revered" through the ages by Catholics is indicative of the need for the Discipline of Attention.

In the Catholic Tradition Mary is "The Mother of God" but she is not a Goddess. Dogmatically, she has been declared "Co-Mediatrix." Such a doctrine smacks of the bitter rind of the cucumber. Though Mary is Mother, the Tradition has a contorted and tortured explanation of why she is Mother but yet did not have Divine Intercourse with The Father. On the face of the Biblical Story about Mary's impregnation, one would assume and anticipate that the Holy Spirit is the Sexual Presence of Divine Eros. That when "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of God shall overshadow you" that Mary's dress and person and cunny is fluffed and flustered and orgasmically unlocked! But nothing quite so exciting happens.

The Holy Spirit is more like John Wayne. He just looks at women and they surrender their power, not through intercourse but through submission. Indeed, Mary submitted: "Behold, the Handmaid ..." Yes, this is what Mothering means to the Warrior: submission and subordination of female power. Again, the magical transfer which happens in the Warrior mythos is that the blood of birthing is replaced by the blood of murdering: the Warrior truly believes that slaying his son (as the Father slayed His Son) is redemptive: eternal birth.

When SilverSex attends it is wary of how easily the Warrior within can torture, twist and wrench the expression of female power into subordination to the Warrior. This happens most often through the use of words. In the early years of the feminist revolution it appeared to Warrior males (such as myself) that the concern for Ms. over Mrs. or chairperson over chairman was, indeed, making a mountain out of a molehill. But time has clearly demonstrated how powerful such titles and nomenclature are. For me this became profoundly apparent while in Prison -- that land of triviality! I had no control over how I was called -- and ultimately could be reduced to my number: 8867-147. I had no control over how I grew my hair or my mustache. As an inmate it was clear that I had no right to expect politeness, civility or discourse mediated by the language of common decency. To the Guards I was scum, dogshit, asshole, and an assortment of other demeaning words customarily prefixed by "Motherfucker! or Motherfucking!"

Prison and the Warrior as soldier pay great attention. To an almost paranoid degree. For them anyone who is not paying attention to their ways is suspect. This was, and remains, a revealing insight to the importance of the Discipline of Attention.

However, SilverSex Attention is more inwardly directed than outward. Prison and the Warrior pay attention so that they can control you. They want you to conform to their drumbeat, not march to your inner drummer. What SilverSex is aware of is that how you receive another is as important as how you express yourself to them. So, paying Attention means watching the things you do and say -- verbally and non-verbally -- which do not allow Her to express Her power.

SilverSex Attention marks the difference between doctoring and healing. The traditional Warrior doctor looks at you as "patient." You are charted; shrunk by a range of analyses, diagnoses and invasive technologies. This approach has some merit if it then Attends to you as person, and assists you in participating in the healing process. But to be a healer means to allow the disease to enter you -- an act of transference or sympathetic magic which keys upon Receptivity. SilverSex healing is Her power expressed through birthing which is the healing of Death, and dying which is the healing of Birth. As She births so does Death enter, and as Life dies so does She birth into the fuller Body. As mystical as this might sound, it is a matter of Discipline. When you Attend you express that of Her which Receives and through which Reception Life and Death heal one another.

SilverSex healing means letting your inner power flow into the diseased person. Clearly, this is the healer's most sacral erotic power for it seeks to touch and embrace with the sick person at every level of their presence. SilverSex healing involves embracing the ill person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Many in the "alternative health movement" have arrived at a like understanding of healing. Where SilverSex continues is through the embrace of Dreaming. The healer dreams with the ill/dying person. The healer assists the ill/dying person in dreaming with him/her through their mutual creation of rituals. The healer attends to the Memory of this person and Intends every-day to be present to and with them.

Attention is how the Noosphere and the Divine Milieu is tapped. Attending accepts nothing which impacts interpersonal relationships as trivial. Jokes, titles, images, metaphors, allusions, etc. are all vehicles for Attending. Watchfulness, patience, being-with, carefully listening are all aspects of Attending. But Attention is also paid in an active manner. When degrading words or acts take place -- whether the individual referred to is present or not -- these are instantly exposed and rejected for their shrinking power.

Attention, moreover, approaches Playfulness. It uses humor and laughter to defuse the tense Warrior degradation moments. Attention clears a space for Her to Play, here, meaning express the many aspects and dimensions of Her power. However, since the Warrior does not Play, this is, consequently, the most difficult aspect of the Discipline of Attention. In play, roles are often reversed; imagination leads the way and colors the scene; and, nothing serious occurs. Since the Warrior has carried the day, in Western culture "playing" is seen as childish or even girlish: foolish. "Don't be silly!" is how we try to stop playfulness, and silliness is more than often a word which connotes that "You're acting like a silly young girl!" As such, women have been tagged as playthings or playmates, and females, in general, carry the burden of being light-hearted and playful. Warriors don't play, they compete. So, it is to the thousand ways the Warrior locks-up playfulness; to the thousand way He locks-up His imagination so that roles are not reversed; to the thousand ways He has of shrinking Her, trivializing Her, demeaning Her that SilverSex Attends and pays Attention.

Above all else, SilverSex Attends to the Body through the body. As a creation of The Lone Male Warrior mythos and Dream of the Obliterated Cunny, you do not have Body, and, you hate your own body. The Warrior wants to pound his flesh into a sword. Female Warriors want to diet till their bones clink and rattle. It has often been remarked that the Church has forwarded a theology based upon the hatred of the body. Again, looking at _Genesis_ , there is no body as you know body -- nothing born of Her or slipping from out the cunny; no, it is the cloned Adam. As such, there is no Divine Body. This has translated into a Warrior Discipline of disregarding the body: "Grin and bear it!" "Suffer in silence!" I remember my father admiringly recounting the stoic character of German youths who dueled and who, when cut, sat in silence while they were stitched up without anesthesia. From the pulpit, the companion message centered around the Truth that life on Earth is not worth living. Based upon Catholic theology, the most wonderful thing that could happen would be to be born, instantly baptized, and then expire!

The Biblical Warrior Tradition has made the female body odious. This is not to deny the rituals which effectively protected the health of a tribe or group. Rather, it is to peer beyond that and see that the body of a woman was not to be enjoyed, or, more, that she was not to enjoy herself. Male enjoyment of her did not include pleasuring her and rejoicing in her orgasmic sensuality. SilverSex Attends not just to "getting her off" -- to affording him a kind of voyeuristic cooperation in masturbation -- but it Attends to Her power within the body which, when unleashed in embrace, opens the way for the Cock to become the Cunny and the Cunny to become the Cock. This is Attending to the Cock within the male and the female. It is Attending to the Cunny within the male and the female. It breaks-through as the two play.

SilverSex Attention sights the invisible strings and ropes and chains and locks and bars and cages and other torturing devices which the Warrior uses so that He does not need to Attend to Her. Attention is the Discipline of searching the edge of the Void and peeling away its bitter rind.

# Chapter 10: Playfulness

SilverSex plays. When you play you open yourself to your beloved's full presence. Play is immersion in the shared creativity of imagining.

It is clear when someone isn't playing; their refusal to "get into it" is apparent. It is often stated in Warrior culture that play is a childish thing. And it has been pointed out, over and again, how "being an adult" means "getting serious." Biblically, it is stated, "But when we have been made perfect and complete ... It is like this: when I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I became a man my thoughts grew far beyond those of my childhood, and now I have put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face: now all that I know is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now." ( _1Corinthians_ 13:1-12) While there is a grain of truth here about the difference between childhood and adulthood, what is most significant is that this passage peers through the haze and references how the Warrior will be when he is "made perfect and complete." This presages the state of humankind during the Millennium.

Without romanticizing childhood (not after parenting two boys!), there is a way children are present to the world that the Warrior culture beats down and out. The child must be taught boundaries, that is part of parenting, but, as one comes to know as a parent, the child must also be taught the refined hatreds of historical Enemy, despised races, and with whom not to play. The latter grounds the beginning of the child's social and political identity. The child learns to whom he/she must be present and to whom he/she must not. Yet, an oft heard parental lament is, "Who _taught_ you that?!" This references knowledge and values the parents did not intend the child to adopt, or a memory they did not want remembered, or matters to which they did not attend and so assumed that their child wouldn't. At this point, the parent realizes the power of the collective and communal mythos and dream of a culture.

Cain and Abel could not play together. Cain became quite serious. He could no longer engage his brother's imaginings. Cain could no longer "drop out" of every day time and space and worship. He wanted control, meaning, and to be Number One. These are very Warrior adult concerns.

Freud's remark about a child's "polymorphous perversity" is an amusing phrase which points to a child's "all directions" eroticism. In brief, the child embraces everything -- and learns boundaries: this burns, that taste bad, etc. In the Warrior society, this eroticism is hammered into one direction only: genital Cock pleasure. In time, the male child learns that Cock pleasure entitles him to attack, subdue and conquer. The female learns to fear the Cock. This is hardly penis envy! For the female intuits that she is but an Innocent to be slaughtered. The male chides her, "It's only a game!" And, seductively charming, he calls her his "Playmate." Hmmm.

SilverSex plays, but is acutely aware of how, as Warrior and Lone Male, the Memory of playing has been forgotten. While the steps are not mechanical, the Disciplines build upon one another: beloveds Intending and Remembering and Attending so that they can Play, and, then Dream.

As an adult, playing means "getting outside the box." Since you spend most of your day building the box, getting outside of it requires great courage, strength of mind, and commitment. All that to do what I call "puddling." This is the state of just letting everything go; not holding on; stepping over into an altered state of consciousness. It is ironic that one has to "work at getting there," but this is how things are when everything secular: especially, work, is imbued with the sacral power of the Lone Male. All day we are psychically, emotionally and physically hammered and herded by the shrinking powers of the Lone Male mythos -- so what did you expect? To come home in a playful mood?

Since the Warrior doesn't play -- he's been expelled from The Garden, wherein he once played and where he anticipates he will play during the Millennium -- his sense of Work is deadly. Work is a "job to get done." Work is "following orders." The ultimate example of Warrior Work is the ghastly and repulsive "Final Solution" which shrunk the Jewish people into Enemy and through highly efficient technology (railroad cars, Zyklon B, and smelting ovens) murdered without conscience ("I was just following orders!").

Warrior Work is deadly because it is not an imagining. Most Americans do not go to work expecting that they will return home happy. They expect that their labor will be extracted from them, and, at best, fairly compensated by a wage. In this setting, Work is collective but not communal. The Workers do not own what they produce, either financially or imaginatively. In Cyber-Society, every Worker is seen as a Virtual Worker: one that can be replaced by another with a click of the squeak-less mouse.

In monastic culture there is a saying, " _Ora et Labora_." It means "Work and Pray." It is a slogan which calls the monks to realize that all work is a sacred act, one filled with sacral energy. Prayer is the intention of worshipping through all one's actions; and it is an attending to the greater Body. I believe that the working and praying monks -- as slim as their ranks have become of late -- are the ones who sustain the Noospheric Eroticism of the Warrior Culture. When I was at St. John's University in Minnesota, I often sat in the pews listening to the monks chant the Divine Office. Though they sang in the foreign Latin tongue, I sensed the power of their communal prayer. Without this activity, I believe, the Biblical mythos will expire.

Yet, after Prison, I also came to sense that how the monks pray has its secular counterpart. This came as I became a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. I knew that monks praying was something most people had never seen nor heard, and that such activity would be counted as foolish or meaningless by most Americans. But I knew what the monks were doing -- they were playing. They were slipping away through ritual prayer into that state of erotic dreaming which brought them back to the Biblical moments of Creation: that they were re-vitalizing the moment when She was Obliterated. Now, I was out on the streets trying to make a living. I became aware that selling is the primal act of Warrior Work. As salesman I attacked every home and family that I could, and took their money -- naturally, I gave them something in return, but the salesman's goal is to "walk away with the check" ... by any means necessary!

Door-to-door selling is the purview of The Lone Male. Everyone is Enemy. You must gird yourself with numerous weapons ("Closes"), and the Discipline you adopt is that either you die or they die -- or, in the parlance, "A sale is made everytime. Either the customer buys or you buy the customer's excuses." Hand-to-hand combat: you have only one chance to make the sale. There are no Call Backs! ... Brutal!

When you walk the streets "cold calling," you are The Lone Male. Your only companion is your imagination and your discipline. To get into a home, you must be artful. To sit a family down and make buying a set of encyclopedias an immediate need is a work of magnificent imagination. To close a sale and walk out the door with a check and a contract is to have played the Game and won! When such Warriors gather, they hoop and holler, cheer the victorious, and heap rewards upon their Champions. I remember the first time I and my team won national honors -- over three-thousand people stood and cheered, and I feted on fine food, a bonus check, and took home symbolic trophies. Whew! Definitely, a rush ... and a lot of Fun! -- with a capital F.

I realized that Winning is the secular ecstatic moment. It is the pinnacle. A threshold moment. Epiphany. When you win, you truly step outside the box. You have something, and everyone wants to know how to get it. Actually, they want the "get there fast" version. Few want to Work -- or walk the streets, pounding shoe leather. They approach you like you are Christ Returned exuding Millennial Rapture through a touch.

When I moved from door-to-door sales into corporate America, I peered and saw how threatening were my sales experience and management ideas about how Work should be rewarded. I realized that I had, almost accidentally, fallen into a line of work (door-to-door sales) which retained an element of Play for the Warrior: Fun! This heightened my sense of how Play-less is the general workplace. Yet, I was also pushed to admit that the Play with which I had been rewarded (money, fancy hotels, leisure travel, trophies) was given in expectation that I would up the level of my Work -- actually, work Heroically harder and play not at all. This insight stung me with self-ridicule: I had Won but I had Lost. Now, more was expected. My responsibilities were greater. There would be no time to Play -- in fact, that the reward was Play-time, so I realized, was simply a trick, an illusion. ... I had been conquered! Ah, back in Prison. "Doing corporate time."

Conquered because I was a slave again. Not the Slave of the State, but the Work slave. I was only good as my last week's production. And now this was compared to my prior award winning marks. There was no imagining where this would all end -- except maybe in my own fatigued death. This sense of being conquered is what I found inside the corporate workplace. There, it is telling that the Corporation is a legal person. All Work is Corporate Work -- the individual surrenders his/her rights to their work, their imagination, their Eros. However, it is not some elusive mystical creation of Body, no, it is for the very exact measure of the Corporation as it exists on the stock exchange and is quantified in terms of stock price, return on investment, etc. The Corporation is all about the Play of Money, not about the Play of People. Its Eros is manifest and transubstantiated into Money. Each Worker is called upon to identify with the Corporation ("Share the Vision!") and to partake of, commune with the Corporate Body through the weekly wages they so suppliantly receive.

In the last several decades the workplace has "opened" for women. There was much expectation, initially, that women would change the workplace. That -- somehow -- the "feminine virtues" would have a positive impact on the dominant Warrior male work culture. Yet, what has happened -- and is receiving more comment -- is that women have been masculinized and more enslaved. Since women work and so earn income, more men have seen fit to abandon their responsibilities to build and maintain family. In a parallel move, more married women are expected to fulfill two roles \-- corporate worker and home-maker. But what could the Warrior do but act like The Lone Male?

"Do you want to play with me?" is about as seductively erotic as a woman can get. The question brims with erotic danger and wildness. Yet, for the Warrior it results in an affirmation which leads to "playing" in the sense of not valuing, "just fooling around," and of doing something without responsibility. The Warrior Playmate is someone to screw and not have to wake up to and "face" in the morning. SilverSex doesn't play that game.

SilverSex evokes the playfulness in every situation and every relationship. It does so because it is grounded in the mythos of The Holy Family. The Holy Family plays. This is how family is created, and how personalities are developed. Playing, here, is sharing imagination. It is communal imagining. When playing there is no sense of hierarchy: who is parent and who is child, rather, it is the chase and dance of each one as each becomes parent and child, child and parent. The joy of this playing is that you are never shrunk into being parent or child as a role.

Given the myopic focus of the Warrior on the Cock as the almost sole means of expressing eroticism, SilverSex rituals start from sexual coupling. For it is in the intimacy of sexual embrace where Playfulness may still erupt; surprise you and drench you like a thunder shower. Sexual coupling is also the only danger-zone The Lone Male has not totally eradicated. Yes, humorously, He still plays with The Rib! Though, during the Millennium, this will no longer be necessary: for all then will be cloning and the triumphal consummation of the _Genesis_ liturgy of Obliterating the Cunny.

Erotic Playing is something most Americans, Westerners and patriarchal peoples do not do. Look around at all the extant world cultures and into their dominant religions and mythologies. Where does She play? ... She may be played with; toyed, as mentioned before; but she does not Play. Sexual intercourse, consequently, is toying with the female and her body, most specifically her genitals. Hip and "sensitive males" may be more explorative, but most are looking for a "G spot" or some other orgasmic area, touching which they can intensify her thrills. Few are seeking the Crown of Cunny, nor are they seeking to die and be reborn. Yet, few Warrior females are beyond letting males toy with them; they, too, look upon sexual embrace as a "service" and nothing more than mutual masturbation -- which they find very pleasurable and satisfying.

To Play means to Bodywander. This starts when you peer at your beloved's body and perceive that it is a map. It is a map of mobius pathways; ones that twist and turn you inside-out; ones that flip back and have you wandering yourself. When you Bodywander you attend to the flesh of your beloved with every sense: sight, smell, taste, hearing and on every level: physical, mental, spiritually, astrally -- all combined as the search for the Dream with which SilverSex desires to Dream you.

Bodywandering is a faithful Discipline. It is a way which leads to Play. If you simply attend to your beloved as skin -- touch your beloved as if his/her skin _is_ their boundary and so is your boundary -- then you remain at the Warrior's distance from Her. The concession given to Her by Him in _Genesis_ \-- most artfully disguised as rib and therefore more than likely done to forget Her, not Remember Her -- this concession was to use Eve's skin to enfold male bodies. Consequently, in every body -- male and female -- there is this scent of Her; this tidbit of rib; this forgotten presence which Bodywanderers seeks to discover. And you can discover it if you attend to your beloved's skin as map.

Bodywandering attends the body as a Cauldron. It stirs the Cauldron; pitches in pieces of the beloved: muscles and bones, memories, laughter, tears ... and heats up the Cauldron with erotic desire expressed from every organ and faculty of one's body. Bodywandering is, most often, a careful exploration and slow to boil. It's goal is to wander off the map into ....!

One of the ritual chants of the Bodywanderer is the invitation: "Come play with me!" This chant transforms as its many meanings take the beloveds deeper and deeper into and through each other. Playing is what _Genesis_ is definitely _not_ about! To move beyond the Biblical mythos of The Lone Male you begin by issuing the call -- a true Millennial, Ending of Time invocation -- "Come play with me!"

Once Playing together, you and your beloved will be blessed with Dreaming. This is where the power of the female has been banished, and why the Warrior belittles dreams as meaningless or stories which must be shrunk. Dreaming is the break-through of the erotic embrace. This time and space which the Warrior banishes will become your most desired state of embracing. Through luminous technology the Warrior believes He has banished Night, and that He can live without Dreams. He seeks only an altered state of consciousness. SilverSex is a novel state of non-conscious dreaming.

Dreaming is both ritual and liturgy. It is not bound by secular clocks and machined measures of time and space. It is the Now which is Eternal. It suffuses through the erotic spectrum encompassing working, thinking, playing, attending, intending, remembering and sexual embracing.

Dreaming is SilverSex playing. SilverSex Dreaming is the End-Time Eroticism.

# Chapter 11: Dreaming

SilverSex dreams Her. Dreams Her and so makes Her present. This is the dream of the Obliterated Cunny. Through this Dreaming, beloveds embrace and their Cock and Cunny flower into a communal presence.

Dreaming is the least describable Discipline, for it is the most empowering and orgasmic.

Here is one story of two Bodywandering beloveds.

*************

The following story is the last chapter in a manuscript titled, "We are not here to sing, we're here to kill the Dove." While stories don't always need all their themes and tangents explained, it is helpful to know how the main characters got to "Dreaming."

Aaren and Jepth are anti-war activists who met as part of a group planning to raid Draft Boards. She leans towards the radical property-destroying and bomb-throwing "Weathermen" faction and he is a non-violent, symbol creating Catholic Radical. During their first meeting they have a heated confrontation over her carrying a stiletto. Later, Jepth is caught and imprisoned. He escapes by making an arrangement with a Mafia hood, Davitt, which includes letting the hood's "lady" bang Jepth's back-door. While outside the prison, Jepth -- for reasons unnecessary to understand for this chapter -- decides to return, which he does. Outside, Aaren flip-flops through many changes -- even cooperates with the FBI to fuck over Jepth while he is in prison! When they finally get together, they have been flung through and out every window of the Warrior mythos. Along the way, Jepth has come upon a relic from Hiroshima -- a piece of twisted and gnarled metal given him by a _hibakusah_ : a survivor of The Bomb.

*************

Dreaming

"I am not your Enemy."

"I am not your Enemy."

They stand six paces apart and bow slightly as they say it; he folds his hands in prayerful gesture and then opens his palms; she with hands at her side steps towards him coming to rest within a gaze's space and he lowers his hands to press on her breasts; slowly they move towards each other, he inclining and she topping her toes, they kiss and together bend and stoop, slip legs and settle sitting down touching calf to thigh, she on him, he like small mountain that she like mist has floated upon; her like a bouquet of flowers his arms have swept from out the air.

From nearby she brings in front of them a candle, thick, three of his fingers thick and blood-red, though she has blues and whites and all, today, she selects as she feels, a darkling rose petal of the universe; and in lighting says, "As we see our light so let us recognize that it is but the center of our darkness."

"Yes," and he touches her face, fingers so slightly dipping and dotting her flesh like raindrops in a hard rain, "there is within me a full army of hatred for all that we are about to create. I see within you the Witch ever-present and desirous of my death by fire."

Then he places the _hibakusah_ straight up on a small, round wooden block, one with their names inscribed, gouged in by they themselves into trembling letters, stiletto scared; and against the wall -- as they have observed so often -- is cast the shadow, and when she once said, "Oh, my, Venus of Willendorf!" ... and so it was for them, oddly, strangely, this most abstracted of metals, twisting between dimensions, delivering presences from -- from where? out of the hearts and souls of the _hibakusah_? Whatever, so it fills the wall tonight; She has come; they breathe her shadow.

Breaking their brief meditation, he picks up a shawl which is in arm's reach and stretches it around them; its fibers woolen and damp with smells of past enactments, its roughness matched by its uncolored state, raw wool, "I desire to become you ... and I desire for you to become me," and as she holds its edge she repeats,

"I desire to become you ... and I desire for you to become me."

For an unmarked stroke of time they sit, slowly allowing the other to fill up their senses, he smelling the lilac soap she uses, the faint aroma of her hair from herbal wash, and the dusty odor of her blouse, the residue of her day's work at the pre-school; and for her, it is his size which first floods her, as it almost always does, like a cape hovering above, and then his manly sweat whose acridness she dislikes but adjusts to, finding distraction in his eyes which betray his patience, "He's burning, tonight!"; and for him her foot, still shoed, resting upon his thigh makes him shudder, for he loves its naked line and uprushing arch, which gives her liquid movement as she walks; "Liquid Fire!"; and he sees her walking and as always is flushed from the sway of her, a thing which once was a strut but now a characteristic bounce, not bubbly but as if about to take off, up into the air; animation ... and he moves towards her blouse and unbuttons it, one at a time, pulling the bottom out from her skirt and, having unhooked her, lets his arms fall away for she knows that he wants to watch her, follow her like a detective as she opens her arms, causing the shawl to drop and her blouse to slide, and she, unbraed, ever a mite of flesh in comparison to him, but in her motions the vortex of yearning, the sounding board -- a harp which plucks one by one note ... so she undresses, letting the blouse fall, and he takes it, glides it over his face, rubbing it into his beard and she now rises, stands before him -- "I am candle ... I seek the matchmaker ... for I need fire."

And she slips her belt loose and he kneels before her, and with disciplined hands, hands that now are betraying his restraint, for this day she has been ever on his mind, his every motion finding a rest in a memory of her, he has checked the Sun for strange spots, looked upon the Moon after dinner, and questioned the numerological significance of the date ... only to find himself drowning in juice, as if his toes were ten little cocks ... and his fingers ten medium ones ... and his tongue a larger one ... and his-self so large and gargantuan that he laughs at seeing himself pull it up upon her hill, poised atop her mound like artillery cannon, and ready to blast! ... but he has worked and labored to be here, warded off the temptations to solo flight and fury, and marched the demon; (" _For can THIS be angelic_?!"); down and down, "Wait for the consecration!" he reprimands himself ... and like hot nails he has tortured his pleasure and held the churning, ravenous monster in his belly at bay, "Belly ... yes, I want to eat her! ... I want to be in _her_ belly!"; and so he has come to this night; doing everything that day with the repeated phrase, repeated and spoken as he images her before him, "I am not your Enemy," for he wants what is new between them not old, though the old is always there, as past is ever present and future ever past; and as she has risen so he half disrobes and heart-heaving chest, muscles which twitch and delight her, he kneels before her, undrapes her slip and sways it like alb, ever so the altarboy, folding it and laying it neatly aside, then standing she ungirdles him, assisting him as he steps out of his trousers and they kneel again; kissing, lightly and then into passion, deep and deeper, she pulling back, "Whoa!"

He, "No whoa!"; and pulling her to him he knows that it has been knife in the past, a tongue of violence simply cutting out her breath, the first strike at her person, and he struggles with it, pausing to feel her heart, become aware of her hand on his shoulder, "She is relaxed," so his fear recedes and they set back and play a little; she running a hundred small kisses like skipping stones on the lake around his lips and over his cheeks and down his neck, stopping for a large smacking suck on his neck, "Oooo, a hickey for sure!" ... and he needing to stretch out, to find a more comfortable position, invites her with his left hand to the bed, she flirts with her eyes communicating "Me?" and he with his "Yes, _you_!" ... and as they lay down they complete their nakedness and within the flickering candlelight with its accompanying splashes of moon fragments they are mottled beings, like jigsaw puzzles each by shadow-to-light a fit for the other, and he is stroking her full body, all the length, and she is eyes closed and allowing herself to be washed by the energy flowing from his palms, it removes the tensions of the day and sets loose couriers to parts of her heart and soul announcing that the time is now ready, and he rolls her over and works her, massaging, finding in his kneading a great pleasure, curiously like a stabbing, as he presses a calf hot sluices shoot up his forearm, as he tends her feet, taking each toe by toe and balling his hand to work the small of her insole, a tree of lights snap on inside his chest and he feels connected to her organs, as if moving through channels in her feet, touching from this lowliest of her parts the innards which carry her passion and store her emotions; (" _My sons, the liver, spleen, heart -- all the internal organs, they are the seats of the emotions.") -- ("Jesus, Jesus, wash my feet!"_ ) ... and as she relaxes, lets down her guard his cock has become primed to the point of self-propulsion, and it is here that he looks at her, helpless, vulnerable and knows "One strike!" just one strike and "Take no prisoners!" and into her like a rampaging horde he could dive and from that dive delve into her passions through panic and fear and steal her booty! take her prized womb and spurt all over it with his flags of conquest, ten thousand soldiers of sperm at his single behest ... and he has to turn that violence of capture to capture himself, to let her have her body, not take it as booty, and to feel the fullness of his cock and then slowly and carefully suck it back into his inners, re-deposit it in his Cauldron, let it simmer and brew, like soup, so his crazy self of discipline laughs, "It's better the second time around!" ... but he aches, she is aware ... for her, she has trusted his exploration, become each time increasingly more relaxed and vulnerable, pliable and submissive, submissive to the greater force that they have conjured up; she knows that the simple ritual is what he needs, that it is like threads of grace, that something from beyond himself which puts him in touch with other phases of himself, threads of grace but they function as anchors, hold him steady, for she knows the wind whips around him, and she knows she is the wind, she is not fooled by her howling, that which she once acted out at him with slash of stiletto, that which scarred him on his soul as another had upon his face; this she knows, together they are a terror, and as a terror the vendor of the most stupendous violence, more bombastic than any Weatherman booby trap, they, together, each by one's alone, work towards the moment; drawing the darkness around and within, swirling it as to make fire, and she to him, now, as flint sparking against flint, her flesh is his kindling and he moves to her back, fierce fingers so delicate upon her, she is fully aware that with one snap, "Just a twist of his wrist -- yes, he is _that_ strong," that'd she'd be dead; for she has been murdered within his embrace, finds Sarah in fright glaring at her as Jepth embraces as if she was the Lamb of Sacrifice; and she knows that he knows and that he trembles, knowing that it is he who has the dagger, but always as part of him, his body being the dagger and the bludgeon and the axe ... he an instrument of murder, for this he has found, for they found it together through their ritual and their quests, at the moment before entry.

"What is it that you see?" and he says,

"Your heart in my hands" and together they drip the blood into their mouths, she licking his arms and sucking the drops from his fingertips and together they return the heart, restore it as they enter, "Come touch my heart with your knife of flesh" and he enters her, feeling as if he is slicing her with his cock, entering he sees her halved and her heart throbbing, "Come touch my heart with your lips" and he kisses her heart, "Come fill my heart with your blood" and he sees the connection, himself sliding as penis attaching as artery and coming inside her filling her with sperm and she, "For my heart beat is your cock pulsing" and he cries, at the start but a blurt, like a rusty lock snapping and cracking open, and then his tears puddle upon her breast, his head laying upon her chest, she almost dead from his weight but holding him to herself with soothing pats, long and short, calming wild beard hairs and the Medusa flight of his head hairs ... and he falls quickly into a depth of sleep marked not by time but by sensations, feeling himself bathed, as child in the baptismal font, as back one mystical day tripping in the Minnesota Northland floating in a lake with late afternoon sun and all the world glistening and he the lake, so it comes and he awakes so aware of the immediate, so sharply cut off from her, feeling the full weight of his frame and edge, he bolts away from her ... as such he had reeled the first time, and so it comes every time though not always, actually rarely, in the conscious moment ... and moving towards her head, placing his fully stretched left hand upon her, sensing that he could palm her like a basketball, he works fingertips upon her scalp, moving like a tap dancer stepping this way and that over the long filaments of her raven hair, some matted by perspiration, he dabs at her forehead with his discarded tee shirt and rolls her back to front and kneeling upright, arms raised, he yells, "I am not your Enemy! .... I am your Dreamer!"

And he thrashes his arms about, jumps up and whoops into a wild dance, jumping from one side of her to the other, making unintelligible noises, "Whooos!" and "Booda boodas!" ... and she laughs and he stops, "Funny? This is funny?" ... and then plunges down upon her, faking as if to land upon her, but rolls with her back and forth laughing; for they have slipped through the comic knot, the absurd, the plunge into the giddy and the giggle as necessary moments, as governors and re-directors; it is the pause before the search begins.

The search has to have this prelude; has to work them through lovemaking as it defines its center as fuck; has to have them face what the world outside, their larger body, that _corpus mysticum_ , writes upon them each day, for despite their being in this period of intentional awareness, they are still appendages or organs or senses or whatever of the larger body; and they do not want to deny this body, but to know it ... and move it beyond itself.

They know that such a force can only, will only come from within themselves; for they seek to be cells, brain cells, synaptic couriers, whatever or however they would transform to carry this one sentence of awareness to the larger body, "I am not your Enemy," for it has come to them that all they have sought, and what they have found upon their moments of insight, each at first separate but then shared and commonly grasped, is that even their non-violence has been violent ... for it had grown, been exegeted, principle-ized from Warrior Myths; not just John Wayne as modern Odysseus, but from Jesus Crucified; He who raised suffering from mere test and battle, scars from attestations of manhood, to the essence of the Divine; for in His Suffering Are We Redeemed; (" _Through and By The Blood!_ "); (" _Pie Pelican_ _!_ "); and the Divine Action is Satisfaction -- so Anselm had lead them -- "For Jesus' Death satisfied The Father for our transgressions" .... indeed, Jesus is Ransomer -- the guerrilla fighter infiltrating the enemy camp, to steal souls back from Satan ... but knowing this what could be done?; (" _I can't get no_ ..." -- STOP! STOP! STOP THE PROFANATION!)

For them it means recognizing that the psyche, the mind, the brain -- call it whatever -- is the vortex of the universe; an ingredient in and part of the Noospheric soup, from which silver chords connect everyone; and as such each one, every individual no matter whom, even the alleged "brain dead" ... are Images, as known Imago Dei ... and being such, and being that each can change themselves -- in time of face or breath, glance or hope -- that the archetype _can be_ changed ... and indeed, for Aaren and Jepth and Char and many others, this is what Jesus means -- the transformation, the death of the Warrior God ... his meaning being that every stranger, every child legitimates God ... or as they now speak "the godding," for what being is about, not just human being, but all being: rocks and flowers, laughs and cruelty ... is the coming to be, which is godding ... and they have come to know that what is doctrine and dogma of The Church, Synagogue, Mosque and Mountain Top has come from dreaming that the soul, psyche and person is separate, isolated; (" _Wiseguy, how'd you like The Hole_?!") ... indeed they claim that Jesus did it _for_ you! ... and The Way is in imitation of, only imitation, not being yourself The Way ... this they have come to know as false ... but it means being Cauldron and from that to dream new dreams, chase away the Warrior Dreams ...

( _"Shut off that TV_!" ... or at least " _Change the Channel_ _!_ ")

... and such a twist, such a presence of the negative and the positive, the dark and the light, this they accept like the moon and the sun, as an eternal given; but they know that they each and both want more; have stretched their bodies and souls for more, she through every exercise of sexual violence she could find, deliver and receive; he through the enactment of his inner violence in every form he could find, so he understands why he had imprisoned himself, why he had sought to be slave, why he had had to escape and then return ... why he had to lower his ass for Davitt's bitch to prune him; (" _Ride Sally! Ride_ _!")._

Together they had spied this larger body and in that twist which Mike would have breathed "Karma!" and others fate, astrological intersections, Mission ... "whatever!" so they concluded, not caring about how but seeking to ride the energy, the directional, they realized that where they are at is dreaming; having found this word to be the word to begin with, a venture Inside themselves but something which also lingers on the Outside; dreaming which they find to be what forms the world; came to know is what they have been living.

"Dreams of dead people!"

"Yeah, mostly white males, too!" she pissed; and they struggled at first with the bare embarrassment of the realization; as if sperm and egg had paused for a commercial break during which time they became aware of the other and said, "Oh!" ... but they have come far enough to know that they are instrument as well as agent, and he telling her about TV; (" _Dreams do talk! We are their language. TV is their medium"_ ... and _"The Soaps are everything we must not be_!"); and cathedrals as cosmic transmission nodes ... and they work at it; work and pray; " _Ora et Labora_ "; position themselves for the cutting and the slicing and the dismemberment of themselves by themselves and the other; for they know that it has to begin here, with them, as it will have to with others, in a cell, not communistic, not monastic, but familial -- in that sense of bonding which is not religious, not the _religare_ , but the umbilical; for it all comes back, so they sense, to the Two who are One and through whom the Third comes who is, again, One; (" _See, he has found it_ _!"_ The 12 exclaim, " _1+1=1 ... 1+1=2 ... 1+1=3 ... and so the One is The Twelve which is One as the Thirteenth!_ ") ... and from that foundation, that pulse of affectional bonding, so the world, the larger body, themselves will be renewed ... for this is the dream; and the dreaming.

Jepth has returned to graduate school to work on his doctorate in history, "Actually, the dream of history!" he keeps convincing himself each day at the morning mirror as he steels himself to parachute back into academia; but it is because he wants to tell _a new_ story, realizes that he is one of Thoc's "children" and what he meant was to dream like the child, be a child dreaming; that children are the dream ... and it is this dream which is the story, his and hers.

And Aaren works organizing and directing a small network of pre-schools, "Rich, poor, black and white ... just kids!"; and they move into a rented house in South Minneapolis, "near as to the lake as we can get!"; and are from all external observation "adjusting" or worse as his parole officer writes "rehabilitating" ... and they laugh at themselves with more piercing jabs, "Maw and Paw Midwest!" or "Burned-out Hippie Weirdo Revolutionaries making sponge cake!" -- for they are aware of how much outside of their own media past they are becoming to some "Middle Class" and "Establishment" and "Sold Out" ... but finding with more than less that others are hovering around the same space they are, others from The Movement and The Resistance and The Church who are Inside Inside, a few Outside Inside, and some -- and here is the excitement -- dreaming; here are others, who they call "wild flowers" those for whom "the personal is political" means that "the personal is sacred" and that "the personal is god, godding" ... all coming to "the person as flower" ... but it is difficult, almost impossible to speak, for the language of dreaming is still being formed within the embrace of twos and sometimes a small family ... but they know that others are there; can hear them at the other side of their dreaming; and it is for Aaren and Jepth a great hope, the strength behind their quests to become intentional lovers, for that is what dreaming is.

_Intentionality_. Jepth knows it in is theological guise; knows how it is the necessary fact for conviction of mortal sin, and, curiously, the unnecessary fact for contact with the sacred; " _Ex opere operato_ " -- so it went, "the act acted" meaning that a sinful, even evil priest who performs the act of consecration actually transubstantiates God to earth, effects the Incarnation!; something Jepth has always rejected.

Aaren has known it in its political guise as The Dialectic, and, elsewhere, as the Trickster, that self-fake-out where "what one intends is the opposite of what one creates!"

But together they have discovered it as their "link"; that act which is the basis of their daily discipline of dreaming, of loving; "For men have always said, 'Well, I didn't mean _I loved you_ _!_ ' -- draining their act of love of its intention and reducing it to mere pleasure and sexual gymnastics" ... and Jepth knowing this as the escape from her side also; of the females who emptied their vessel of intention as they expelled his come, "I didn't mean come _home_ _!_ I said _come_ _!_ ... Pack up your marbles; we'll play another day!" Both have sat empty hours bereft of intentionality until that day, one towards the end of the three weeks they had stayed together up in his attic, those three weeks of separate confinement, weeks in which his main floor landlord wondered ghastly thoughts, fearing that Jepth had become a madman and kidnapped Aaren -- whom he did not know, had never met -- and almost called the police upon, and only a thief's morning sneak catching them like two kids sleeping overnight, quietly separated in the bed, he snoring, she restively moving, almost dancing under the blankets, and the room, not tidy, but more ordered than Jepth ever kept it, and noticing shadows of things that looked normal, so he slunk back and down and let them be ... towards the end of this stay, this solitude confined, they had realized they had skirted it, that it had darted up, eagerly, unabashedly and without shame, saying, "INTEND!" -- which is commitment, but more, a bonding, and still further a call for a discipline, a conscious approach to the unconscious, the Mind dancing with the Soul, "even if a minuet ... or a long jazz solo ... it doesn't always have to be rock 'n roll"; and so they stood, and intended .... Jepth is tired, wearied from it all, feeling that he'd like her to go, is confused by this urge to throw her out the window! ... and so he laughs and says,

"I feel like I want to throw you out the window!"

"No kidding?" Then, "Okay, throw me!"

She sounds almost serious, and bends at the waist, as if inviting him to pick her up and cast her out headfirst; encouraging him, "It's okay, I was just thinking how much I wanted to escape ... but what could I do about the bear guarding the cave?!"

"Me?"

"Yes!" ...

"Well, fuck it all," he blows, "you can leave whenever!"

She, resigned, " _That_ I know ... _that_ I know."

Now, he does want her to leave, not to nurse a wound, but to escape himself.

"But that's it, _my_ man, that's it ... we can always escape."

"Another word of wisdom?" he spits.

"Listen," and she walks across the room, pinches his earlobes and pulls him down; he does not resist: "I want to be _here_."

And as she said it, he knew it was the moment and that she had formed the words, he says, "I also want to be _here_ "; and with that they both escaped; and both entered into the Intention.

_Intention_ , so they talk: "Not something romantic like bubbly ooze, not something bug-eyed and stupid ... no, but like awareness, that you are my body and I am yours."

Each day they begin by becoming aware, taking some moments for their private waking and then approach each other and touch the other drawing into themselves the larger body they become together; at times simply brushing the other's body, moving from head to toe and around, encompassing them with an aura, that of their own individuality, like plugging the coffee pot into the greater world of electrical connection, from their minute spot of house back to the roaring hydroelectric plant, so they plug into each other; and then a word, at the least, "Hi!" in that "Hi!" of first morning welcome by the new mother to the babe at breast, welcoming into the world; at others, a snatch of fire, some sticks rubbed together, an "I love you," or on mornings when they awoke still half-dipped in dreaming, "I am not your Enemy", and "Whee!" they'd slide holding hands under the blankets, deeper into each other's Water ... and that phrase being the one they used, knowing it might sometime change, actually were laboring towards its change, but now being the words, the sentence, the image they had to use, "To counter the Warrior dream ... to be one couple not waking to the Warrior dream," for they knew that so they had woken all their life to that Dream: "So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs ..."; that dream of male self-creation, the male as the self-and-only-generated, she being derivative, not Egg or Blood or Flow or Moon Flash ... and, "Who told you that you were naked? ... The Woman ... The serpent beguiled me ..."; her as Enemy, Image of the Enemy, as Betrayer, Liar, as Temptress Who Weakens ... and what is weakened and what does she weaken with? The Serpent .... the Kundalini ... the Ouroboric ... the Flame, the Fire ... Lust and Gasping and Melting and Merging .... the Tumult and The Terror, this being "SEX" ... in capital letters as the eunuchs of God so transmitted it, clerics as souled condoms ... and so the Enemy is Sexual Fire ... the Coupling ... as God The Warrior Father attacks, all His war is sexual ... the slaying of her children, even, pervertedly, His Only Begotten Son ... ah, it had lived for Jepth and Aaren in the recounting of the marker called Mylai:

"A. Told him if he couldn't move the people to waste them, sir."

"A. To waste or destroy the enemy, sir. To go into the area and destroy the enemy that were designated and that is it. I went into the area to destroy the enemy, sir. I never sat down to analyze it, men, women and children. They were the enemy and just people."

... "Mylai Four! You had a woman down on her knees, didn't you. And you threatened her baby." "No." "You opened your pants and you told her to give you a blow job ..." "I object!" .. "and Lieutenant Calley stopped you. Didn't he?"

... and so they knew all this within their bodies; had labored it through themselves, for Adam and Eve are they, and Calley at Mylai, and all Warriors ... she her recounting of her fantasy, and he his fantasy of her fantasy ... for they are to dream anew.

Yet, they know still as they scan the morning paper, pop on a "Good Morning America," and catch so many twists and turns and nuances and inversions of it throughout their day, in the verbal and non-verbal signs of the workplace, the supermarket, the games children play ... know that this is what everyone does -- recites the myth and translates it through their very specific and individual actions -- "Not intentionally, for the Warrior dream has gone beyond intention. No one has to get up and say, 'I am your Enemy,' for now it is dream; and is dreamed by _everyone_ at night, for what is intentional becomes the tender of dreaming" ... And so they have found the first address -- call it prayer, call it mantra, whatever --- of their dreaming; and each day they say it, and during the day they think it, and at night they share it, and so they dream ... dreams of not being each other's Enemy.

... and so the first phase is always "Dealing with the Enemy," accepting what the larger body has spent most of its day doing, "Dreaming the Warrior Dream," and that they too have dreamt it -- more, continue to dream it, or rather it dreams them, and so they retain the stiletto, symbol of their craving to kill, slice, maim ... sacrificial slaughter! ... of each other in their Warrior selves, their Violent/Non-Violent priesthood; a stiletto as straight and perfect in line as the _hibakusah_ is twisted and imperfect on every line; but both now and always essential parts of themselves: as memory and as re-membering, the putting together after the transformation, the transmutation, the transubstantiation of their many, multi-leveled selves ... selves Inside and Inside Inside and Outside Inside and, yes, Outside, only to find again an Inside ... so they take it all into intentionality, like pulling a drowning person up from the depths, at first s/he chokes and gasps, releasing all the sounds of dying, "So, first we must relieve our Warrior bodies" ... and this becomes the dance of peek and flirt, the undressing slowly, as if revealing a golden treasure, and the releasing of the cravings, those little lusts of conquests; (" _Oh, Sally Jo! 'Ride, Sally, ride!"); and_ she being her Witch and opening her fiery Oven so that she can push him in; (" _Sally, meet Steve 'Backdoor' Witson!_ "); and he unlatching her, removing blouse and drooling at each glimmer of treasure which he can steal, "I am the Thief! More the Plunderer and the Rapist!" ... and he feels it all, both working through it, seeking the day and time when they can corral this fierce energy and hold it back, master it, dupe and trick it so that it becomes an agent of their creativity, not they of it; but they have not gotten there, though both have strained mightily tonight; yet tiredness often undoes their bravest acts of intentionality; and he knows that, "All day I just wanted to fuck ya and fuck ya. Jesus Motherfucking Christ, Aaren, you're just one hot fuck bucket!" ... and he says that, could say it, now, after these times, knowing that he was allowed to say it, for she had revealed her own self as "Fuck bucket, yeah, that's right, I just want your hose whipping in and out, I don't care to 'know your name' I just want your hot splash!" ... and each had hated the other for that -- their own _Wargasm!_ \-- and the hate lingers, maybe will always linger ... and so they had stumbled upon the comic, the plunge into the Outside of this their Inside moment, allowing the other to say without saying the words but through action that "I'm fucked up ... can't handle it ... see how crazy I am ... whooeeeee!" ... and they took each other up, "fooling around," sometimes tumbling, sometimes he'd dress in her clothes, sometimes she in his, "Whatever's crazy's okay, okay?" ...and so they both knew that before the bridge was crossed they'd have to honor the Warrior's Dream; and so they did, tonight, not with any condemnation but just knowing that it had to be done, its own _ex opere operato_ ; (" _On your knees! ... for all 12 Stations of the Cross!");_ Via Crucis; and so, he comes to her, swordmouth, and she to joust with tongue and cheek, and they engage, soon to heat of battle, and she enjoys that she is to be enjoyed, taking his thrust, knowing that his wildness is hers to control, and she chases him up the hill and then throws him down again! ... he is panting and his thighs are ever so sweltering and she pauses, his eyes flip open, "Don't stop!" they message, they cry, they implore, she feels his whole being now in his cock, poised at his fons, begging her, "Don't stop!" and she relishes the control, feeling him within her velvet clasp as much as in the delta formed by her cheeks and tongue ... and they do explode, as she brings back the spark which ignites him; and together they jerk, sway, clutch, he bends as if recoiling from a sharp blow, she totters, set off-balance by his tremors, now coursing through her as avalanche, and they both deposit to the floor, he like a balloon pricked and whizzing around the room towards deflation ... and she as if she had dropped a precious gem and was scurrying to find it; that moment, now Moment; dissipated; pleasure and a bonding of flesh, even at the edge of this Dream which they want to dream less, but which has its own joy of fulfillment ... and they roll apart, are quiet, he in his predictable moment of somnolence, almost sleep, but more an erotic nap, an immersion, something she has come to accept as required for his soon re-arousal but which is the opposite of her wide-awakeness; and in that moment she wonders what the room would look like in "robin's egg blue."

When there is time for the search, as there is tonight, they leave the Warrior Dream, cleansing it from them in a shared shower, playfully soaping and rubbing, at times a long time in the shower, now and then another small rustle of climaxes \-- finger firks, sucks and licks, full body shimmy -- calls to those in-between dream fragments, residues which become transformed into warming steps for the search, and tonight, "Man, I'd like to get a hot tub!"

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, but where'd we put it?"

... and they both laugh the answer for their rented house is small -- on his scale, "tiny" -- him displacing so much height and width and depth of body that their bed has no frame; ("Procrustes!"); just a "California King" mattress on the floor, though she has arranged the bedroom and the house with a modicum of middle-class taste and fixtures, but both saving up for a home.

"Maybe the government will give me a VHA loan! ... ya know for being a POW!"; but they go rather quickly through the washing, she with cap protecting her ample gathering of black hair, now which she wears long for it pleases him in the eye with a glance that she always likes, and together -- if pictured from above, a true Mutt and Jeff, the Mountain with the Molehill, he almost cracking doorframe with his head and she so "average" but small in comparison that one would fear he'd mistake her for the soapbar ... and they come out and back; she tidying the bed and he putting on some music, a long, endlessly looping play of Mozart and Beethoven and Bach on a daisy chain with Clapton's "Layla," Moody's "The Far Side of the Moon," and dark, sweltering fantasies of Santana -- plus others who allow for background beauty of listening, no thinking, no taking charge of the beat, the beat which they want to be theirs and theirs only; she lights several candles, he opens and starts a light fragranced incense stick, and the lights are still mostly shadowed, and she with pink robe and he with an "super large" blue towel wrapped around him, together they come, disrobing at they meet, kneel,

"I am not your Enemy" dueted, and she in front, sitting within his legs, and he long arms down hers handing out onto her thighs and they breathe together, slowing to sense the other and working to be in tandem, their natural rhythms on different cycles to serve the needs of their quite different bodies, but now they reach it, in and out, breaths, and allowing their full body to feel the other, belly to back, legs nudging legs, thighs of his encompassing hers and half her calves, and over her he drapes his head, placing it astride her right temple, his chin is almost her cap, and they move ever so imperceptible on the whispers of flesh they have come to hear and allow to speak, the smallish call of skin to skin, "Touch me! Feel me!" and his nipples harden as his hand cups hers, and she is soft, and he presses her, binding her inside his palms and his lips find her ears and he nips her, pulling softly, gathering her cheek within a slight suck, he is breathing her into him, she is falling back as if picked up by a strong gust and she releases into the fall and around her she hears the invitation, "Come!" and up her spine jogs his penis, arriving within a cadence of step and hop, moving faster and faster and thickening, she feels his press, and she settles back, spine to spine, snake entwining snake, and the river gates open, sweet waters flow and she receives a flash-back pleasure to their near distant coupling and he has been upon her with hands and fingers and palms and taps and kisses and snappy hugs ... and his fire is glowing, the settling fire after camp has gone to rest, the hottest of times, almost all blue flame, almost white heat, and he lifts her, as if defying gravity she levitates and floats above his-self, point of demarcation, center of the universe, North to South Pole and joins with him as if saluting, a minor grace of action which expresses respect and honor ... and he is careful to place her so that there is no hurt, hold her -- and for this he is ever proud of his strength, to hold her, grasp her with his wide and long basketball flaps, holds her gently, and lifts her, not pinching nor hurting, under her arms and in that one motion, for he has sensed flight in the wetlands, he brings her upon his-self as calmly and assuredly as if he were settling a peg into its rightful hole; and they are totem; Sky and Earth; Air and Water; _conjunctio oppositorum_ ... and One flashing as Two and shuddering as One; ... and so they work the dream, their motion together is a gentle rocking but one of utmost feeling as if each roll of the chair is a seismic feeler and they search for each other in this calm before the storm, that period of heightened sensitivity, of alertness, for it is their storm that is forming, their deepest yearnings being drilled for; and as inside her he submerges, swimming as they breathe, stroke and breathe, and she offering herself as water, Ocean, pool and lake, calling to her lover, "Swim! Swim over here!"; and they have thought "I am not your Enemy!" and it has faded into a faint echo, for they are beyond the Valley and over the Mountain and at the Shore ... and it is quiet, only the wind of their breathing ... and they are unaware of the room and the candlelight playing and the dying stalk of incense and the savory delights of Mozart ... for they are strolling together along the beach, disappearing into a sunset and returning upon sea gull wings, rising from a burial of sand, playfully scampering after each other and tossing themselves into the Sea ... and they swim and she is porpoise and he seal, blustering lion seal, and they sound the song of the sea, catching their play among seaweed they rise and frolic themselves as cloud and breeze, forming and unforming in shapes, some monstrous, some silly ... and falling but emerging into each other's arms, they feel the hot sun rise and the delightful shout of the moon in response, and he turns her towards him, a pivot quite athletic but effected with a twist, a quick movement backwards and he spins her around, one short twist of the toyish top ... and they are face to face, she straddling him, he undulating her, fused within his thighs, a blessing of his prodigious length, he is rocking chair to her, her softness the rider on his stride and roll ... and they settle into this wave of motion, like an egg attempting to stand on its end, a bit of a wobble, but fastened by his fleshy connection to the earth, he and she embrace in the small of their bodies, becoming as one cell in the larger body, he sperm, she egg, they as one are yoked and yolk; and within the larger body is bursted at that moment Creation; (" _Flash_!"); that stroke and slide, that tap on the door and the wondrous moment of open ( _"Knock and it_ _shall be opened_ _!_ ") ... and the entry, the rise, the Up The Lights, and the Rolling Of The Stone ... from which they are blessed, this night, as One in the other, that coming of themselves which is future and will be past and present, their child, so it begins; they dreaming, he and she; Jepth and Aaren ...; (" _Dreaming you!_ ") ....

# Section 3: SILVERSEX RITUALS
# Chapter 12: Rituals

SilverSex is imagining the creation of all that is through the embrace of Him and Her manifest through The Holy Family. This imagining is the prime SilverSex ritual. Everything else which is used as or within a ritual is supportive of this core ritual imagining.

You are an imagining, and you express the Eros which nets and weaves the Now and the Eternal into Presence. The Biblical mythos imagines you as The Lone Male. It has you express the shrinking Eros. It positions you in the Now, defining your Now as severed from Eternity. It is a Story which defines your Presence as sinful, and means for you to despise your body and to fear for your soul. You are to use its sacral power not to embrace others either in flesh or body, rather you are to subordinate and submit in slavish worship to The Father who, alone, saves you from your miserable self. This Biblical mythos imagines you without Her, Mother, Goddess ... without your Beloved.

SilverSex's rituals, then, start with you and your imagining power. For your power creates the world and links Eternity with your Now through Erotic embracing. All SilverSex rituals reference this primal imagining. Simply, imagine your Beloved -- and do so within Embrace. And from within Embrace live each day as Holy Family: as brother and sister with all Earthfolk.

Yet, sustaining SilverSex imagining is not easy. You live in the Warrior's world. You understand that His sacral power is nested in and is expressed through the secular world all about you. How you greet your beloved in the morning expresses His dream. How you attend to others at work manifests His loneliness. How you worship Cock and Obliterate Cunny in sexual intercourse, so do you Remember _Genesis_ and revitalize the forgetfulness of Her. You know this, and in knowing, need all the aids and props you can use to stay focused: to intend and to attend.

For your imagining, nothing is forbidden. This is said with respectful fear of the Warrior's malevolence. Clearly, nothing from the Warrior's imagination is useful for SilverSex. So, it is not so much that SilverSex forbids, but it has no use for acts of degradation, enslavement, abuse, and others that make present the obliterating power of The Lone Male. What is intended, here, is to free you up to explore your imagining -- and to creatively use any type of props you might need.

SilverSex is playful. This means that it is serious in its intention: namely, to have He and She play -- the act which, in itself, moves one away from the primal act of _Genesis_. Playfulness can take you into almost any situation: humorous, concerned, excited, desert calm, etc. Your only guide is to discuss it with your beloved, and then mutually agree to try it.

When you attend to your beloved as you work on creating rituals, open yourself to be played with. Playfulness requires a disciplined move away from the "in control of everything" trait of the Warrior. For some this will take years. Possibly a whole married life. Remember, a ritual does not have to be elaborate. It does not have to be complex. It does not have to be a "performance." Rather -- in light of the Obliteration -- it might simply be the repetitive act of sitting across from each other and looking; looking until you peer; peer and recognized one another; a foolish moment of exuberance -- _Hi!_ ... This might be the one and only ritual of your life; but it suffices to unleash the sacral eroticism The Lone Male has sought to forget.

This said, no ritual need be permanent. Every day and every embrace can be filled with novelty and random acts of unsystematized ritualizing. But, for most, a few key rituals will be developed over time. You might find it useful to keep a book. Jot down the rituals or aspects of a ritual which worked. In this light, SilverSex becomes a recipe book: you are the ingredients, spiced with your imaginings.

# Chapter 13: Addressing

At any time when you begin to orient, but most especially at morning, noon and night.

_Facing East_ and stretching the body. Image the sun in its power: rising, cresting or waning. Breathe deeply, inhaling its power. Let it fill you and stimulate your fire: blow firestorm into your morning and race up your spine to whack your cobwebs and shake out the shadowy dusts of Dreaming. Praise all who share this sun power. The common brain. The reaching intellect. The awareness which fills all eyes with the light your are beholding. Remember those for whom this light is their newborning and feel your flesh stretch through the presence of their new life; receive their smiles; remember your first moment of Flash! For those at their mid-day, sometimes too busy to even raise their heads to notice the sun, call these to halt and to gaze with you. Feel them in your body: that work-a-day body. Ready to take on all challenges. Bursting into strength of purpose and intent. Then stretch to feel the aches; those limits of your bones and muscles; touch your toes and give praise to all who are bent, never to stand upright again. Then right-up and bend backwards and let the sun settle or float by or drain; whatever is happening.

Account for your body. Check for the presence of Her. Has the Dream left you primed only as Cock? Has the working day tapped into the positive flow of your Obliterated Cunny? As you come to day's end, how are you prepared for the night and dreaming? Image yourself as mirror-souled: He and She present. Take your beloved within you.

_Turn to the South._ Here, remember all who are laying down as you rise up; or who are sleeping as you lunch; or who are squirming near the shore of wakefulness as you settle into twilight. These are all Family. Feel them in yourself as proper to the moment. Stretch aside your legs and bend from your waist so that you touch the ground (or so visualize). Image yourself as the Earth: nestling all; and as Father leading each one by the hand. Rejoice that all are part of the cycle and the flow. That each, as you are, is both seed and flower.

Accept the presence of the Warrior. Sense the breathing of the Lone Male. Be prepared for the snare and the net, for you are His prey. Laugh at your own silliness in having forgotten that your body does not belong to your beloved. Laugh that you have no memory of The Holy Family. Grab your Cock. Cup your Cunny.

_Turn to the West._ Here, all come to moments of joy. Returning home at a day's end. Waking to embrace at first sight. Meeting to share a moment of noonday repast. All in the common dance of working time and space; earth and sky. Stretch your arms out wide. Lift up your head. Let the play of light wash over your face. For those who are starting the day, praise them as fellow creators of the day. For those at mid-day pause, share the laughter of friendship. For those at day's end, welcome them into memory: calling them to sit and discuss with you what the day has created. Open to all that is painful and stubborn; delightful and amusing; mundane and ecstatic.

Bow to the Warden who holds the cell gate ajar. Nod so that the Warden knows you know. You are to enter into secular space and time; be respectful of its sacral powers. Know that they will call you Enemy. With all your being, paint with your Cock that you will strive, mightily, to not Obliterate Her.

_Turn to the North._ Prance in place. Legs dancing on the doorstep of the day; at the joy of meeting a friend or beloved for lunch; or, celebrating that last step towards a deserved rest. Here, turn a circle to the left, for all in the family who live where water flows counter-clockwise. Do likewise to the right for all who live in the clock-wise swirl. Improvise! Spin around. Moan and groan. Shake your body so that the rocks and pebbles which have settled in unhappy places are moved and your fire flows freely.

Drag your Cock across the Earth! Stroke your Cunny and spew fire-sparks to set all on Fire! Breathe volcanically. Peer beyond your myopic sight. Touch with your plastic, oozing skin. Let delirious smells perfume your desires. Be all that you can be! -- heart and soul, anal sphincter and cold dying, "crazy chicken" and prima donna ... rub together the edges of consciousness and dreaming.

All this with ever the image of The Holy Family. Our Parents and all who are Brother and Sister. Permit them to become you. Permit yourself to become them. Earthfolk.

# Chapter 14: Presence

Re-membering means as much the putting back together of members which have been rent asunder as it does refer to mental recall. In the Biblical mythos, the dis-membering of Her body is what is forgotten and not re-called. So, this ritual requires The Book.

The Bible or any of its derivatives will suffice. Respect this Book. It is in your hand, but its weight is the weight of Memory. Before the printed text, this Word existed. It existed in the thoughts and dreams of millions before it manifest itself in words and paper. This said so that you do not deceive yourself and think that the Book, by itself, contains and manifests this Tradition. All that it represents is a secularization of the Sacral Word -- and as a secular technology it, too, could pass away without making the Memory pass away.

But since this Book is everywhere, so to define SilverSex space and time, you must ritually move away from it.

Place the Book on the ground. Walk with your beloved an embracing circle around it. Open to a particular passage which you'd like to move beyond and let it lay. Take a candle, light it, and pass it across the pages, reaching back and forth from him to her. Respect that this Book is source for the Warrior's darkness. Your simple act of passing the light from him to her breaks this darkness. Once this has been done, you may read from the Book and say, "I remember more than this. I remember you my beloved. I remember Her within you. And Her within me. I remember us embracing as Holy Family." Do this as often and as long as you want.

Then, undress and sit down within the circle you have imagined. Place the Book upon your laps and peer at each other. Peer and touch each other's cock and cunny. Say, "I remember my godding power. I remember our godding embrace." Place the Book aside.

"You are my holy word."

"You are my holy word."

In unison, "We are Book, together, never-written, never-ending."

Then, settled within embrace. Couple.

It is good to find each other in all of a beloved's way. Approach and attend your bodies as the parchment of all Memory and all time. Probe and play. Stroke and excite. Couple and shoot fire. But practice the quiet times between. Those times when you must also be Present; those times when the fire recedes and the chill of the room blankets you ... be steady and attend: peer. For you must write more into the Book. More of your erotic imaginings: of your explorations of one another. How you dance for each other, and through the dance set the heart of all humankind racing. How you open every part of yourself so that the unknown mystery of you unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, ever unfolding. Remember, that sexual coupling is not just masturbation, but your imagining. Imagine everything! Imagine everyone!

SilverSex Presence addresses erotic sexuality because that is what the Book claims it addresses. And, indeed, it does quite powerfully address Presence. So, the Book is central to the erotic ritual. In contrast to SilverSex, each night Warriors read the Book and are inspired to raid for some booty. It matters little whether this occurs within their own bedroom; for, in the Warrior's eye, each woman is a daughter of Eve, and so to be forgotten.

To make Present you will find that you must be playful. For many it is erotically helpful to don the masks and cosmetics of the theater. Do so without a moment's hesitation! For what you can be sure of -- what the Book has so successfully revealed -- is that males have not seen females for millennia. So, stimulate your imagination with masks, and paints, and jewelry, and perfumes, and feathers ... whatever evokes the many other parts of you: parts of you which dredge up your serious self; unlatch your silly and buffoon-ish self -- lets loose those corny jokes!; and set the occasion for you to slip on a banana peel and fall into an erotic pool of imagining.

# Chapter 15: Stirring

We lay together like kindling, but with cold spark. Dulled out and blacked-out and night-draped bodies, as if Eros did not play with the masks of twilight and transform us into a thousand faced dreamer. What has the Warrior wrought?! For it wasn't night time which laid Adam down; not the blanket of stars pulled up over her fresh body; no, it was just all emptiness ... and of course She's been called empty-headed ever since.

So, stir. Bring the bodies close. Just close enough, not touching. Feel the magnetism draw. Feel the first wash of warmth from your beloved. Drop the night clothes. And press. Ever so gently. And let your desire stir.

Rustle up a sense. Just one. Take your time. Breathing is always easy. Listen for your beloved's breath. Listen for your own. Come to breathe together. Let your common breath just rise; entwine; twist and curl like smoke and draw you together in a bewitching moment.

Touch. A nose. Tip to tip. Fingers settling from their night flight onto the ledge of your beloved's consciousness. Fingers which touch, and tingle, and start to slowly wash over your beloved's still sleepy skin. Skin which is never-ending; round and round, up and down, so you can go; and as you go, salute the Bodywanderer ... and awaken yourself as you awaken your beloved.

Touch to kiss. Gently. Upon the brow. Upon the eyelids. To a lip. Then wherever the flight takes you. Swoop down and kiss around the swirl of yearning flesh. And remember Her. Pause and respect her southern mouth; listen; does the fire crackle? Is the morning hearth stirred? If so, draw its heat and splash it across your beloved's thighs and down her calves and twine around her ankles. Draw it all up and stand before her and find those eyes.

See together. Look at the phantasm you each are; stumblers from the dreaming pit. Now, to peer. Look not at, but beyond. Working the heat. For she touches you and gently kisses. It is the mirrored journey. One that rises up to peer at you.

When the moment opens, Address together.

Draw your Space. Set your Time. A blanket. A walking of the perimeter. However it is done, respect your individualities and privacies. Gather this time, this space and intend the Cauldron.

Beloveds, there is the spark which ignites. If it takes hold, fling off the flesh on fire and merge spine to spine, mouth to mouth, cock to cunny and enfold each other: embrace. This the morning fire, to purge the night's dross; to melt images so that they can be kneaded into a bread for sharing. It is not so much a moment for words as it is a moment of gesture; of posture and position. The beloveds receive one another. Penetrate as to link; to pivot the night into the day. Night's fire is what you want to stir and share. Let your cock be the totem which links the earth to the sky. Let your cunny be cave which leads up to the clouds. Be gentle. Be fierce. For you are beach and ocean slap. Awake!

If it is nothing else, let it always be Memory. Here, the salutation and greeting of Our Parents in ourselves; and the reverence of Her and Him; paying special attention to Her, She within each of you, for in this time, it is She who has not been seen, for few peer.

From Memory, intend and attend. This the look and feel, taste and smell of each other with which your stir imagination. Who is this person, my beloved, before me? All that life has ever wanted to create, yes, but all life as it is stirred; as I stir; as we stir ... and the imagining of two threading through one another with astral grace: this the imagining which allows for all day attending; the small memories and the minute recalls of one beloved of the other.

When it is time to prepare for the dream, so it, again, is time to stir. Yet, you come all stirred up. Imagined by all about you throughout the day. You bring the looks and gazes, desires and fears, smells and lusts, the endless sensations of a day among the many. It is time to un-stir.

Take off, and as you do, address aspect of garment. A shirt. A blouse. A shoe. Let it spark your imagination. How have you been formed today? Beset by the Warrior Dream? Managed by The Lone Male? For you are not who you were this morning. Respect time; the rubbings of space, the blip of the digital clock \-- for they are there, and they want to remain with you; to dream you. So, as you encounter each other, now under additional layers, now touched by the secular's sacral powers, assist one another in the disrobing. For it is armor that you take off; sometimes it is leaden sheaths; others, concrete boots. These, plus any tokens from the day which have helped you Remember your beloved. A stone picked up along the way: this your beloved. How have you transubstantiated each other today? Share the dross, but also the fire.

When the moment opens, Address together.

Draw your space and set your time. Stones at the edge. Flowers to work exorcism. Water to dip in and cleanse your skin, sprinkling one another. For you have come from the entanglement of the powers. The clash of Reason and Order and Procedure and Obedience ... all the straight lines and looping nooses; come from them -- vitalized and wounded: you know you love life! How else could you have lived your day except exploring all your creativities. Making boxes. Building cages. Setting traps. You know; your beloved knows. It is all Guilt. It is all Laughter. So, struggle with the space and the time; for you know it is a catapult you seek.

Most days you will have been immersed in shrinking water. So, dip your fingers and sprinkle your beloved. Intend the power of Water: its spreading power; seeping power; its unstoppable power. Watch your beloved crack and split open like dry rocks in the desert. Then, light the candle. Focus upon each. Both drawing each other through the flame; wafting the heat and the spiraling smoke onto each other. Intend to melt. Warm the flesh and let the edges loosen. For it is time to exchange bodies. She to he. Him to her. Play with this. Tell your beloved about himself as you become him. Tell your beloved about herself as you become her. Play with the masks: the ones so obviously there, and the ones you offer in surprise and stimulation. Play and laugh. Play and tear.

As key, discover your sound. Each one at rest letting the air which has drawn you like a rope across the river, now, draw from within you what this day has made. Your sound. And your beloved's sound. Listen. Let the vibrations shiver across your body. Let your melding sound draw you, like working the pulley to raise the bucket in the well.

Now, embrace. Lock with arms and legs, hands and feet; draw close by, lying down or sitting on one's lap. Attend to the cunny. Listen with your fingers. Hear her inner thoughts. Stroke her Pillar and watch the smoke steam from her eyes! Understand this her mouth. Hear the ageless voices as they cheer you on. Hear their song. Siren song. Prepare yourself. For you are her stirrer. Stirring her furnace. Casting your desire like dry twigs; blowing to raise her heat; and tempering your flesh within her -- fingers which roam around her cave, fingers which sprint out to splash in her delta ... ah, every part of your body is her ritual instrument!

Kiss her on flight with southern wings. Lick her, drawing her fecundity into your soul. Spread your hands across her body and wipe her lusts all over your hands and wring out the cries of her heart.

She hears you. And attends to your cock. As she catches it spiking from your forehead! There your third eye; but there from where you have not seen her for ages; where you have not been cock. She places her hand upon your forehead and pierces your astral eye with her fingers of promise. Drawing from you that Memory of Her; as you in Adam had seen Her, but which has been forgotten, Obliterated. That of you which is her; that sacral totem of her clitoris which is the Tree of Life; and from within you she draws the serpent, nesting so blindly behind your neck, it is his tongue she spies here flickering with astral fire.

For all of you is Cock, and she wants all of you. A stone she sucks. One you gave her. Offering to you on her tongue. You place it in her belly-button. She is now anchored. She rises and you recline. You now the river and she the owl. Wise and watching you flow. Watching you flow into your dream. Alighting upon your cock as if perching. She with wings now hands calls for you, calls not as for Warrior but as for Magician. For she knows the many magic spells you have cast upon her, and she knows that as Magician your cock is wondrous wand and not murderous sword or bombastic gun.

Magician's wand she respects. Kisses it and stirs the enchanting rocks which roll together and then bounce and clash, each rioting and dashing about trying to find some place to hide. For your touch stirs fear; it stirs hatreds; it causes your beloved to jerk and pitch and activate gears which bear against each other with thundering creaks and groans. But you know that it is all pounding within himself to find deeper water; to strike the well of fire.

You revere and worship the Cock. You revere and worship the Cunny. This the preparation for Dreaming. To grapple and lock and hinge and enfold each other in embrace so that everything physical and emotional and mental and astral has been stirred: now, only with the Cauldron at peak pitch, at its boil, at its gurgling near the edge ... at this moment beyond the orgasmic wake-up of flesh and heart, at this moment, so are you stirred and ready to sleep and so to play the Dream: transform The Lone Male into The Holy Family.

# Chapter 16: Stones

Luke knew she was about. Just the way things sat. Things placed as if in their proper places, like setting little kids around the table, "Charles, you sit here. Selene you there." Knowing that it would always eventually become chaos, but it was her way -- orchestrating the moment before boom and clang and chaos and all that she loved to hear, as if only the preparation could make it truly so. This is what the hand-crafted salad bowls properly guarded by their silver-gripped wooden spoons murmured, "She's here!" As did the spices, those selected for dinner's special flavor and delights, all in a row -- he refused to consider that they also were arranged by color according to the alphabet: when he had at first discovered her regimented and precise ways, he had trembled: instantly knowing never to try and figure out why it was so, that would be too much -- and the glasses, at least the wine goblets: achingly clean and fastidious, these let him know that, indeed, they were alone, would be alone come night, and that her preparation was part of what was their special worship together here in mid-August, a festive occasion on many accounts.

Yes, he shakes his head to focus on her, on what the envelope was not to interfere with, and so he flaps it down on top of the refrigerator, there into a basket where she allowed him to put his unruly things: vitamin jars, watch, the too many pens he always left behind by the phone, and any other items: "I'll need this later, get it from here, don't worry" -- and so the envelope would be unobtrusive. He let it go, knowing that it would stay with him, stuck on his back like a postage stamp; him knowing that it was there, but his fingers let it loose to find its own resting comfort in the wicker basket.

"Where'd you put the stones?!"

Ah, the so many meanings she conveys. Indictment. Frustration. Perplexity. Anxiety.

"Not in the top drawer?" Somewhat more in hope than he cared to reveal.

The small sounds from the upstairs master bedroom: those creaks and scratchy sounds of wood on wood, sliding draws in and out, not slamming them, until, "No." Definitive. Challenging. Commanding. So, Luke goes down to his study. The basement of unnatural light, what he both loves as to its embrace and hates as to its blindness, but, again, this is Minnesota, not California, not his beloved AnoMar ... and within a sweep or two of the room he remembers, "China closet!"

As she appears resplendent, Luke is more than an admirer of Laura's strong beauty -- for how else to phrase it? strength and beauty. Not just muscular, yet she was firm: such from a professional life of therapeutic massaging, rather the sense of her movement, the way her arms broke through the air with the stroke of a hawk as it bounds upward, and her face, how many times has he fallen down, struck by the agony of her beauty ... ha, he has paused more than once while alone to search for another word, but what else but agony, the _agon_ , not just suffering and pain but the insatiable lust for life as it lives in beauty and dies in beauty; how often had he shaken his head at not finding another word in the many ardorous poems he carved out for her from his soul? ... and here she is again, this late edge of early twilight, resplendent in all her intangibleness ... yet, he knows that she is also eager to begin, that she gets antsy as she waits, for waiting forces her to ponder the ingredients for the recipe: she knows, in this moment, that the ingredients are them: she being for him the dough and he the yeast; for her: he the fire, the pit of coals ... ah, her nervousness arouses him, and he spreads out the stones.

Laura picks up a milky pod, one she found on the shores of Mille Lacs, and places it North. Luke scoops up two twin eyes of the night and lays them out South. She moves a fire-stone to the West; he a tiger's eye to the East. The others are taken: metallic glints of granite slugs, aquamarine droplets, beggar plain yellowing remnants of sea's long past, and a few more of color and hue not of the moment: yet each stone had been, at some moment past and so will be in the future, a cardinal point: there to be the anchor pillars for their cathedral.

Yes, they lay out an elliptic pattern, she with as much precision as possible, he with little care as to astronomical rightness, but, nevertheless, it is done and they take their honored places as the points of foci; now standing, she and he face to face, and then they turn back to back, and once again towards each other. With hands raised they fix the sky as dome; with hands turned down they grapple up and tether the floor as ground. She slowly turns full about and with a soft word calls the winds, "Come winds!" and he in like rotation calls the light, "Come light!"

A moment's pause: they take off their shoes and socks. She picks up a rug she laid near the spot and together they unfurl it. This their carpet of connectedness; a shawl through time; a membrane connecting them to the animals which graze and the cotton which is the earth's soft clouds; so they sit upon the carpet, one of many they have obtained over the years, but this one being for the summer more cotton with woolen streaks, a pattern of late afternoon colors, those that come to comfort during rest after a day's full work in the sun-drenched fields ... then he reaches outside the perimeter and brings in a candle: purity white, thick as her forearm, their Candle of Convergence; he places it slightly off-center, then lights it. Its glow is subdued in the flush of the brightly stilled embers of daylight which flare through every room in the upper two stories and most fully here in the living room on the southwest slope; but it is for their attention anyway not for its luminescence, no, the candle knows that it is symbolic, that connector to their inner flames, a smallish _imago_ of the greater flame of this house, this cathedral itself, and so it burns as it must, self consuming ... Laura is ready now for the words but Luke is not; no, he is eager for his gift, this his surprise, what he was conscious this day was for -- though from morning rise he also knew that this day was to be for him its own gift of "Other": and so it came, came today ... but he would not deal with it in this time, nor this place, so he left it in the basket; now was for his gifting.

The bowl was silver at base and a quarter up its side. There it met stone, not clay, but a stone of roseate hue which appeared to be alive with quivers of light, light which became animated and moved, actually shot like disappearing streaks of flame as the lights of candle and rising moon hit upon it; from one side: stone with minuscule rivers of blood; from the other: the lighted side, a pulsating life force, truly animal ...then, atop this, a slight rim, more a collar, of clay, one with symbols and forms but now not to her notice, now only to its color, to its dramatic cobalt blue, a blue so much in contrast to the rose that it was like sky caressing a flower, alien pools of hues at first recognition, a breath of distance, imperceptible, but there, not commingled but fascinated, yearning, yes, as she looks, so it becomes clearer: almost a definite break between them, as if the two parts could not, would never be together, they being of different substances not just colors, yet there was something in the silver, something of groundedness which seemed to reach up and hold the two together, as if by a magnetic force. Laura was stunned, truly as if startled and her breath got lost, trapped inside her chest: so she was captured by the bowl ... and she did not see Luke's grin, his deeply devilish prankster grin, but one this time linked to a greater satisfaction at knowing that before them lay true magic, something as magical as the stones which formed their cathedral, these discoveries of their time together, from walks and hikes up steep hills to splashing down on beach's edge; yes, the bowl: as when he first saw it, was it magical before him, and he sees it work its trickery, its illusionistic playfulness upon her and so he knows upon himself, indeed, senses that he and Laura are being drawn and deposited into the bowl, that they are becoming the bowl ... but not yet, so Luke claps his hands to shatter the silence gathering between them.

_Why?_ registers on her forehead, not spoken; irritated -- like a child told not to play with its new gift.

"Listen." How often had he begun to speak to her with this word? She whose whole body listens through its every pore to the messages bodies send out from the spiral within and receive from the spiral without. But this is a time to stop her; pause her; get her to hear his words ... for it is he who has journeyed from the land where words work their magic; he who has bent his back and thrown himself prone before the Word, as it was manifested in the Abbot; he who followed the Order of Strict Observance in its re-dreaming of the Sacred Words, those stories of Scripture, scripts spoken and unspoken ... and it was the unspoken which had lead him to her, and so now it is the unspoken he wants to gift her.

"Listen," pinched her ear; like a playful grasp of the earlobe -- it drew attention.

"Most of the time this bowl will _not_ be us. It will just sit there on the shelf alongside all the other things that we use. It will just be a bowl. A beautiful bowl, but just a bowl. ... In many ways it is bowl because it waits. It is satisfied to be Other."

She shifts around; hating to lose the feeling she had just been sinking into when Luke began to speak. She works hard to hang-in with him.

"It is always sacred. That I'm sure of. But a sacredness we humans don't seem to have. But that's what I want to gift you with ... what this bowl means to me. ... I'm trying to be _Other_."

His hesitation is like a hand scratching his head; his shoulders shimmy and run to shiver as the words can't settle comfortably his soul's yearning.

_How long have we been married now? Twenty-years come August? And why do I know where he's going?!_ "The Goddess is not enough?"

He smiles: but the starving grin of the condemned.

"She's enough."

Laura knows Luke is lying. True lie. Because he can't tell the truth; can only speak about the truths both he and she have found; not about this yearning, this internal push and overflowing which tells him, "More!" Wakes him at night, so he tells her in the morning, and watches her breathe and so knows how the winds are created. "God, I love him!" is her ever response, quietly spoken to mystical witnesses every time he has such a night. But, it is a lie, just like her looking at him slumbering and knowing how much she has denied him, denied him of birth, denied him of birth because they had only learned how to visit each other's bodies ... and she knows that his lying, this yearning, this overflowing is his desire to give birth, and it is not lost on her that it means, equally, that she must be born, this time, from him: "Oh, having babies, thank the Goddess, thank Our Parents, that it so distracts me!" ... For what she sees in Luke, so she knows, is what they have found as Bodywanderers.

" _You're a Bodywanderer_." He had said it after one of her first massages. Sat up and looked at her -- she had never seen depthlessness before, but that is what his eyes were: depthless channels: to an interior, not just his body, but something so deep that it came out the other side, somewhere. He had said it, then laughed: a hearty laugh of insight to one's own foolishness, and he had pushed himself off the massage table as if the exclamation point to the laugh, grabbed her, spun around -- naked, she was aware he was, he apparently wasn't -- spun around with her two, three times till he banged into the wall, not stopping even a moment, lost somewhere with her: spinning ... "Of course!" he whispers; not that he had to, not that there were others waiting, but she knew that wasn't what he was aware of; no, he was whispering so that the magic of the word would work: whispers, "Bodywanderer."

Whispered it repeatedly in lessening decibels until only his eyes whispered it to her ... and so, in that moment, they had shared the Secret: spoken the Sacred Word ... and she knew it even if she had not, that day, shared his words, his way of knowing, not had his arsenal and his burden of the Catholic Tradition, of the Monastic Brotherhood, of the Disciplines of the Order of Strict Observance (O.S.O.); no, these were intellectual tools and emotional obstacles to come, nevertheless, that day, she had understood; for such an understanding was the first manifestation that they had, indeed, _Bodywandered_.

" _You're a Bodywanderer_." He voiced it because he had heard it; heard it _from_ her, from Laura, and as he instantly knew, from Her. It was spoken as Laura worked his body; wandered up and down his bones and muscles and ligaments, and in so wandering drew the sounds of his body, the many tones of his skeletal connections, the growls and groans and giggles and twitches of himself and drew them into a sound, not just a breathed sound, no, rather one of his spirit, that which holds all of him together; there at once it all rushed up to him and came as the word: _Bodywanderer_.

Word as image; as angelic trumpet ... and so he knew as demon: a word unleashed from the Darkness; that pit within, the one she touched as she massaged him; touched his butt, rolled her fists up and down his spine; set fleeing guardians of the Darkness within him ... and he wandered -- what other word could he use? -- there, back there, with his monastic brothers, wandered through their dreaming: they who dreamed communally -- Brooders ...

:monks Brooding; as Yahweh brooded in _Genesis_ \-- " _When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors._ "-- monks whose communal dreaming tethers the Dreams of God, their God, God of _Genesis:_ Yahweh, Angry and Wrathful God, God of Adam and Eve, no, _just_ of Adam, for Eve is from Adam ...

:Brood on this! -- Eve has no Body; for she is not created from God but out of Adam; from his rib; need Freud enter and grasp the rib as penis?; Brooding on the Nothingness of the Female; no Goddess; no Birthing; just a Male Creating: Only Cock and a little cock; they: He and he as separate from Her and her; a spiritual hierarchy of Dominance: Subordination; unqualified power; in sum, in _Genesis_ , so the Brooding reveals, She is Obliterated; forever within the Dark Vapors; neither visible nor invisible; no body; No Body ...

:and, Luke wandered into the Darkness, the Darkness the monastic Brooders did not want him to wander into: the Void, Dark Vapors; first of the Emptiness of the Sanctuary; so he left, no longer Friar Alfred, O.S.O.; to transform into earthly Warrior and so Plunderer of Souls and Murderer of Bodies and Rapists of All, even himself ... wandered through _Genesis_ ' Dark Vapors: the Darkness of God; as border, edge, defining Otherness -- there, in AnoMar, at the edge of the Dream: California, to find Her, and so her: Laura: in her and through her and with her: so, Her ...

:for Bodywandering is a moment of communal dreaming, of Brooding ... and so he dreamed with her, and they dreamed, Brooding now for some twenty odd years; Brooding and finding Dreaming to not be their end but their Way, a method, a path; they still searching and losing, celebrating and mourning; Questing; but they knew only this: this from their shared Christian Tradition: that where two or more are gathered, so is there Presence; and so they started: two -- chopsticks, matches, strike and flint, anon, anon, but two.

Two: a couple; Sacral Coitus; at first just wandering bodies, gobbling flesh and spitting juice sexual and impassioned; then what they feared, what they blindly sought became theirs: wandering into a Body: an expanded identity; fuller; they became Erotic Partners -- every minute, every moment locked in desire, no matter where they were; eyes, hands, feet, tongues ... and they slurped each other -- only to unleash a terrible hunger: one that rattled their bones and throttled their brains and soul: the hunger _for_ them -- it came for them: as they grasped the godding force as Parents, and as it came for them to be parents.

Parents whose Brooding creates _The Holy Family_ : this their discovery of how the godding force is made present; through their loving; and how the world -- or as Luke termed it, "flat time and space" -- how time and space was created; that togetherness they shared which wasn't just the flat world, not just physical time and location, but where their sacral, godding bonding sent them: into a location, a dimension that was fuller than themselves, their daily lives, more than what they brought to each other: "that whole which is greater than the sum of its parts" \-- yes, something like that.

The Holy Family: wholing and healing and as such Cauldron and Pit; itself conjured by Brooding the Dark Vapors; searching for Her; calling Her forth; and hearing the answer as oneself: as Laura, as Luke; as coupled.

Now, the bowl. First, the stones; now the bowl. The stones were of both worlds: always profane, always sacral. This they both knew. As they held them, they were empowered to speak words and to tell stories. Words which cut and hurt; words which healed and salved. But always a moving forward into each other; stones which they carried as they wandered; stones which they had found, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and which carried memories, but more, which effected story and dream.

The stones were always here; would always be here. They understood that they were the stones' story. They, the humans, are how the stones speak to one another; how they Brood and Dream. For the flesh is the Sacred Word of the stones; for the body is how the stones wander, passing through profane and sacral time and place.

And it is the stones which had revealed to them about "Other." She had instantly understood this at that moment she became pregnant. And when she held their first child, so she knew she was handing Luke a stone: living stone, source of mystery, that transforming presence which wandered out of the Void into the Light, wandered from Past into Future as it creates Present ...and so, when they laid the stones each time for their ritual, so they were connecting, and opening themselves to be pulled, yanked, throttled and wracked: all the pains and pleasures of creativity as it coursed them ... so the stones were their wandering connectors: tethering flesh and spirit and time and space \-- allowing for the Dream to rise, for "Other" to be sensed, spied, grasped for; Brooded.

"This bowl is us. Not us as now. But us as being born. It came from wandering. From you. Part of it is you, is me, is the kids ... I dreamed it, it dreamed me, and I worked with a potter on it and then other crafts-folk: Jim the goldsmith, a ceramics guy up in Hibbing, many people, many months, but Laura it's not just a gift, it's being given _to_ us, both of us, by the stones; it is a vitality of the stones, they created it; all this time, these years with us, wandering -- and _they_ have gifted us with it."

She laughs when he finishes. It startles him a bit, but then he was too gripped by the moment to fully notice. For her it was a laugh of pure idiocy, for what else could this be? \-- they: pure idiots, listening to stones, being stones! ... Luke was crazy, truly a madman, and maybe that's why I love him? ... _God, let's fuck!_ \-- but he was still listening to the stones.

"They believe we're ready. _We._ " So said that she knew it was not his voice.

Laura reaches outside the stones and brings in the milk and water pitchers; small, made by the kids over the years, once just any container at hand, now, carried by the spirit hands of their children: Charles had made the milk pitcher while in second grade, his instinct for the craft was early evident; Selene had formed hers at camp during her seventh year, formed it as she sat before a waterfall, "Mommy, this is the waterfall." She had said it with youthful unawareness ... and so the children join them now as the water and milk are commingled; they placing their hands over the bowl and feeling themselves as bone and blood: solid milk and water of life; knowing themselves in the commingling -- and they sip, hands always upon the bowl, and together they place it aside ... she then pours herself into his bowl; lifts her body and flies high to descend in a hover and settle upon his spout of water; geyser, pillar of desire, himself flowing outward and she settles upon his lap, cunny snug around his cock ... and they begin to wander.

It is such a night, such a moment, undoubtedly because of the bowl, that Laura and Luke, within heartbeat, tumble into and through each other. He is at suck the instant she removes her nightgown; she is flying all throughout him the moment she docks onto his cock ... it is but a few rocking motions and they merge, image themselves as waterfall and hungering cave, he thirsty and she bursting with the wine of desire and lust ... and they wander, are detached from their bodies, actually, attach their bodies so that one is not known as distinct from the other: a moment they had so many times shared -- of merged identity: Dreaming together, truly communal, not obliterated, but of a union which shares a common boundary, here, one of Brooding ... and he is her and she is he ... all her flesh is like candy, and he is giddy with delight; he rolls his hands across her buttock as she presses his lips firmly against her nipples and there is pleasure, that of romping and chasing one another and splashing through a forested stream, and the stream slips over them and they are swimming: fishes darting here and there, soon chased by a dark shadow and this shadow overcomes them and they are swallowed and consumed and lost in a darkness, but soon become the sight of this dark shadow and cast about with it for light, at once spied at the surface and, so, as shadow they flash towards the surface, crash through it and explode into flight, now, two birds, dancing between clouds, and she sets on all fours and he mounts her, but it is nesting, two birds nesting and they break out into song, birdsong, silly stuff, chattering sounds: "I love you" in birdsong, and the song is like a spark, for they burst out into fire, all around them is fire, and he is raging fire, humping her and grasping large clumps of her, clumps which burn like hay, and he is frantic to find the source of the fire -- where is it that she is? -- for he knows she is the source of this fire and he fears that he will burn up, and she cackles and laughs at him, like crows cawing, and he turns to see the snake's eyes, close to him and he shivers with great heat of fear, and the eyes come closer, hypnotizing eyes, and he see them turn into balls, two testicles, and the snake strikes at him, once, twice, three times and he feels the venom flow, but this time out of him into the snake, and the snake is fed, grows fat and long and he knows that Laura is sucking him, licking his balls and getting him hard for another round, that she wants his milk, that she wants his water, that she wants him as bowl.

Early midnight. Candles asleep. They get up, leaving the things here and there, and plop into bed; tired, exhausted, sticky with each other; but they like it like this; balled together ... and aware that the blessing of the Void will be theirs: dreamless sleep ... that nodding off which is almost expiration, almost obliteration: when they have become things to the things they call things, like the stones. Humans now totally profane; scant vitality; no sacral connections ... the stones sigh, the bowl smiles, the candle laughs, the carpet hungers ... and all wait.

"Other." More than transformation. More than transubstantiation. True mystery. True magic. Power and Presence. They sleep. He snores. She grinds her teeth. Luke is stone. Laura is stone. The bowl is the gift from Other. But so is the envelope. Curious coincidence? Karma? Synchronicity?

May I laugh -- raucously?

# Chapter 17: Crowning

For the Biblical Warrior the ultimate crown is the Crown of Thorns. That crown which sheds blood. Gives the right to shed blood. All golden crowns laid upon the heads of Kings down through the Warrior ages is such a crown of blood-shedding.

It is not a full explanation of this Crown of Thorns to perceive that it is a twisted reference to Her bloodshed. Her Moonly issue which expresses the fecundity of all. For we are all born through Her bloodshed. But not shed for our murder as for our borning. Where the Warrior wears His Crown of Thorns to manifest redemptive pain -- sacral violence -- SilverSex wears the crown of Cock and Cunny to manifest never-ending creativity -- sacral imagining.

Your beloved is your crown. Wear her! Wear him!

As she lays prone, approach her with intention and attending to her many mouths and tongues. Approach her attending to her manifest powers: fearsome and awesome and fascinating -- the power of her verbal mouth which calls you name, and which name ties siren ropes around your heart. She tugs and you move forward. Closer. And as you move attend to her non-verbal mouth which calls for your tongue; which speaks to you of union and pleasure and the consummation of your desires. But hold a moment in fear! For her southern self seeks to devour you! ... Be strong. Courageous. Lay down between her legs. Slowly inch your head and so dock upon her cunny. Pause and be still. Listen with astral ears to her story. That of her abandonment by Him; of Her Obliteration. But pay attention, so that you are not seduced, sucked in and spit out! For all that you have ever left here before has been this Memory of Her as rib; small cock; all but the Memory of jerking off. Be strong. Persevere.

Place your hands alongside her buttocks. Press your face upon her cunny. Whisper to her with your soul. Dance with her with your tongue. Praise her as the food of life, as the sustainer, for from her comes the power to reproduce and manifest new life. Speak with her, and impress upon her with your attending that you worship Her presence. Reach and rest hands upon her breasts. Imagine yourself as within Her. Curled up in fetal float. Awash within her. And then unfurling and stretching your body at match to her; here, now you are her spine; twined bodies; and you touch her third eye, drawing its attention to your blindness, that blindness within which only her eye unshutters for you ... seeing yourself as she sees you; at prayer with her ... and so you rest, crowned by her Moonly mantle: She present as you set her atop your head; make your astral eye alive to see what only those so royally crowned are blessed to see.

When she comes to you know that you have never been crowned as Cock. No, you have been armed, primed, had your fuse lighted, gotten her to turn your crank ... but not crowned. You have never been properly worshipped as Cock. So, great courage must be yours to face the fears. For all that Memory holds for you is His slicing of Adam's cock to draw the blood with which He created Eve. This is Memory only of fear of Her as cock robber, ball buster -- the temptress who will get you to shoot your wad so that, in your weakness, you will do whatever she says. But this need not be so.

Lay your hands aside his buttocks. Look at his penis. Stare at it. Work to peer through and beyond it. But recognize it for the Dream it manifests. For sure, as you approach, his cock salutes! (If not, rouse him from his lair!) And as his cock rises, imagine him as root; root growing into shoot and from shoot into tree and from tree into that which links the Earth and the Sky. For the cock is such for you, as it is for him.

Sprinkle some water on his cock. Watch it rise and fall. Laugh at it. Smile. For it is certainly blind when unconnected to you. Reach out from within your Dark Vapors -- all the Memories of the presence of Her -- and press his cock between your palms. Rub him. Arouse him. Draw the fire from his rocky base up to the tip of this sacral tongue. For his cock is sacral tongue. It seeks to send out its message, a message carried by a thousand couriers, each and everyone a message to you: I love you! I worship you! Come to me! Embrace me! ... Ah, his passion is endless.

Hold him and kiss him and stroke him, but be careful to guide him, for his Warrior instincts are ever at terroristic edge. Understand and image that this cock is tongue and must enter your cave to paint its message on your walls. But fear him! For this message can transform; flip your body inside out; unearth the child resting within the recess of your cave.

Point him to your astral eye, and imagine as he has imagined you when worshipping your cunny. For his cock must penetrate on the astral plane and link with your spine, so that the erotic river flows, round and round, cycling from eye to eye, from cock to cunny, over and around and under and through your bodies.

Crown yourself with his sacral fire. Press your head into his sacrum and imagine him as alive upon your flesh as clitoris. Transform him into your clitoris; for that is from where he undocked in Dream.

Both, now, embracing as twinned crowned. Wearing one another. Fully cock and fully cunny. Worshipable. Kingly and Queenly. Empowered. Sacrally erotic.

# Chapter 18: A different kind of fire

1. HEARTHSTONE

The road narrowed, and it began to move as each had anticipated it would, sinuously, a slow writhing so that its motion was barely noticed, like a soft breeze upon the nape, then it dipped and the air chilled, a steep decline as the trees and bushes about rose higher, at times totally blocking the sun and the driver flipped on the lights, this driver, a silent monk who worked the road like a confident blindman, and they reached out to touch one another while their eyes joined in fascination.

"Much longer?"

Did he expect an answer?

"Sunrise," was the unexpected and curious answer. But the voice, it was feminine?

"One of them?" the question drew their eyes together; each smiled. "How long have we been waiting?" was their unvoiced sharing, but before it yielded an answer, sunrise!

Indeed, it was like being on the horizon, that unplaceable place, when the morning lifts its eyelid and "Let there be light!" resounds in images, shadows, glares, disclosures and the thousand gifts of the betrayal of night. So it was as the monk made what only kin drivers knew was the last turn in the road and took a precipitous climb, actually shot up like a fire flashing in the hay, and bounded out of the whorls of darkness onto a plain, more a mesa, yet only a clearing, a field where the ancient mounds of stone were set by some unknown ancestors, but there at the place Frank and Veronica had long sought to be, "Hearthstone."

Cloaked once again in silence the driver swerves and guides the car past obstacles unfriendly to automated traffic and comes to a quick stop by a door, simple in its design but clearly of recent wood, and within a practiced motion leaves their bags, themselves, and a hint of smile from beneath a disguising cowl in a waiting room, alone, but just for an instance for a charming bell is tinged upon departure as the "Rule Concerning Guests" requires and before their question about gender can be voiced or even momentarily reflected upon another, larger monk, this time a middle-aged woman appears beside them, "Welcome! We have been eager for you to come Home."

"Home" is what Frank and Veronica have come to find. Actually, not find, because they have not lost their home. No, rather, it is because they have established such a home, one filled with memories and joys, pains and depths of darknesses, a place where their shadows are permanently wed to their smiles, this they have, a rich material home, one of a successful couple, a place admired and emulated, even envied, yes, their home, a happy place in the main, the nest for their children, the boundary of their thrashing about in each other's heart and soul. From all this they are not leaving or fleeing, but have come to Hearthstone to discover, yes, that was the word which both found one night, a not atypical night, warm in bed, nightcaps imbibed, a glow of flesh and a snap of hungering desire, and it had come through their eyes, "Discover." Frank muttered it first, almost an unintelligible croak, "Discover," and V said "What?" but immediately knew and took the word and sounded its fullness, "Discover."

"Discover" is what Hearthstone is all about. How old the place is few know, contradictory clues baffle the eminent archaeologist who come. Psychics have said, "It is brand new," but that only added to the confusion which inevitably cloaked the words of all who looked at Hearthstone with measuring eyes and definitional quests. Those who came seemed always to find the place, accidentally. At some point in some conversation at some unintended time and place someone would say, "Ya know there's this place Heartstone or is it Headstone, gee, I forgot, never been there, but knew a guy and his wife who said, gee, can't remember what they said, sorry guys, just lost my trend of thought ..." and the peculiar conversation would abruptly jolt onto another track, but the one who was supposed to hear did indeed hear the word, the name however mangled, and it quickly lead to another series of jerky, oddly twisted conversations with a series of people at odd times until the picture came together about where it was, how to reach them ... and so V had written and a response came, "Come Home."

The set of rooms they are given are queerly shaped as if some child-giant's hand had stuck an array of rooms together, slapdashed them with Elmer's Glue, hung them disjointed, together in a conspiracy against gravity, but which together produced a functional living space yet whose individual designs drove the harmonious eye to hard labor. The kitchen was adequate, square and boxy. The living room an A frame with a huge triangular window facing east. Their bedroom a domed chamber, with a wink of opening to the night sky right at top center, and an expanse of small windows rimming the edge so that light was always a visitor. This plus a special room with a fireplace topped by a clear round window facing west. As they moved from room to room they dropped or rose a foot or two here, a twist upward a miniature spiraling stairway there, and an odd 145 degree turn from one doorway to another yet over there. The effect was one that on their last night they would call Escherian, laughing as they recalled the print they loved so well, had gifted to so many others, and it drew them to wonder about their rooms, for when they strolled outside during their month they remarked often "Where is our place?" for they would look at the exterior whole and fail at gaining a comprehensive perspective as if Hearthstone had in some fanciful way hid a wing here or there or was it that the pathways—which the "Rules for Guests" required not be left, a reminder mentioned by whatever monk was at the Door, for there was only one door all were to enter and leave, the only Door any driver ever pulled up to, "Follow the pathways," was the simple injunction, actually voiced more with care and solicitation as if guiding a tike new to walking, concerned that no one fall or stumble—these pathways, "Maybe there are others?" But it never grew to importance for their minds and hearts were heavily elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the landscape of their interior home, the one which they had come to understand, know in that way which can only be communicated in garbled words and gestures but had come to understand as what they had discovered, just a tad, like a foothold, had discovered, the night or day they could not date nor did they care to, for it was a time of awareness which lingered ever since, an awareness of something new which they felt each time they touched each other from that moment on. The words made them laugh, "I love you," for this seemed to be all that the moment could evoke, and as feeble as they knew it was, as much as they realized it indicted them as it released them, so they would laugh, knowing only that they had places to go, that they had yet begun to complete their home.

Hearthstone was as curious in its daily routine as in its internal architecture. There were about thirty other couples there, folks whom Frank and V met while strolling or chatted with at lunchtime, others whose questions after lectures were highly valued, still others who never spoke, then a few here and there, some days different faces who appeared angry or lost, whose faces did not take fine definition but whose feelings seemed to whirl about them, all of these while present seemed yet not present, as if unnecessary for what Frank and V were, themselves, to do, and it never drew itself up as a question to themselves whether they were as unnecessary for these others, for Hearthstone was as if only for Frank and V; all about seemed only for them, as if their singular home.

So when the discovery began, in such a way that they knew they were in an uncharted world, they needed not to know about these others, even realized that the monks who were about, all these were themselves elsewhere; indeed it was just them, Frank and Veronica, back at that moment which was the dot on the map, "X," the treasure hunt map leading in its eager way to Hearthstone, which was only to lead them to themselves.

But it was themselves which they left elsewhere. For from the instant they arrive at Hearthstone what came to them as Home was that they were being received, welcomed not as guests but as proprietors, that each monk was there because of Frank and V's generosity, their welcome. And during the times of lecture and conversation, the various communications, the books and articles read, the moments of meditation which dropped into endlessness, the prayers and chants, all these sharings which covered time in its guise as history and explored the search for the consciousness which was the dance of the shadows of light, these moments were all gifts from Frank and V to them, this they felt, for it became clear that the monks were there waiting, being guided by their Rule and Discipline so that they could, themselves, discover their home, that they had come, male and female, to be at Hearthstone as part of their quest, a quest to receive, not give, and it was not theirs to tell, though it was their role to teach and instruct, but rather to wait, for they were like the crew left on the mother ship at anchor, watching the skiff hit the beach, awaiting either the gleeful sounds of wondrous discovery or the fearful gnash of terrible loss, so they waited as Frank and V jumped ashore.

But where were they when they landed on this shore? Each day which had taken them on another global trip, one either around the mind or transversing the soul or over and beyond the cultures they had known as children, each day was but a journey into a further question, that only question, "Who are _we_?"

Yes, they had ventured forth because they each knew themselves, each individual body and inner world, indeed, it was the fruit of their marriage this knowledge of oneself. When they had paused after the prairie fires of their coupling years they looked back not upon a plain burnt and devastated but rather upon one cleared, scraped clean as if in preparation. And it was all preparation, this they knew, this knowledge of oneself that the other brings. Preparing for: "Love," so they came to a common utterance, "is not the other, but an-other." In the last days here at Hearthstone when they voiced or said this or even thought it, each turned and their eyes, their faces, together they smiled like foolish children caught in a first embarrassing moment. This the moment which defined the beach discovered.

"Who are _we_?"

Then they'd touch, not just the fingers and toes, the penetration of desire, not just the shared laugh but the attention, that which focused like sunlight at shadow's edge, an intensity of that which only exists at the boundaries, that touch of which skin is only the mystery, the celebration. They touch.

" _An-other_."

But it wasn't magic, it was a word; yet it was all that they willed and all that they worked hard for. Attention, not like staring or examination but peering, looking aside to catch how spaces filled and emptied as the other walked about, flying upon the other's gaze outward as the sparrow sung in morning rise, yes, almost merging with intention, that discipline of the totally absurd and random, not a mechanical regimen but the acceptance of the breakdown, of the intrusion of the other into your space, it meant patience, more with oneself, allowing oneself to be the palette, that board of offering colors and watch the other create what you did not know could exist; all this the words, curled and pinned in questioning steps, these just there, sometimes in thought only, at others danced, still others jumped upon as by surprise, yet Frank and V wanted all this, worked at it, and always found it in their moments of forgetfulness and avoidance.

" _An-other_." Sometimes voiced. A clipped chant. A needed point of sound for them to grasp so that they hung together. But the word as their breath, this is what it became. Yet as all need a form, so from the many forms and ways which the monks taught, that of the right hand and the left, those of the biceps and the breasts, from among the ways of wisdom in the books of print, out from these as well as the whispers still startlingly alive on the winds, Frank and Veronica chose what had been given them before they could choose. They took back the prayerful form of the Catholic Divine Office, the ritual of Ora et Labora, that Discipline which vested the flow of Time with Hours, this they took as their form, as a tool for their attention and intention; their form towards an-other.

2. MORNING : MATINS

Attention: "Will you create the day with me?"

Intention: "Will you create we this day?"

Discover: "Let us be an-other!"

Verse and Response. Question and Question. Vision and Promise. But all just one way of forming the question, the one which at the same time queries about attention and intention. For they had come to remember what their life together had told them often, that being married meant weaving a gossamer web of inconsequential acts, half-thoughts and put off actions. Yet at the same time being married was the most glorious of moments, a moment, that state of being for which all life has existed, life with a capital L, Life, for through them it seeks to unfold itself, create itself, terminate itself, move on and through, yet never change. This they had grasped. But there was yet a hunger for more. For another dimension or feeling or, well, for Frank and Veronica the word "presence" felt full upon their lips. They had come to Hearthstone for this occurrence, to encounter presence.

Presence through ritual, Hearthstone's discipline. Small objects of ritual, these were evoked from their past. A candle which Frank had always cherished, a thick yellow monstrosity from his days of restless youth, somewhere somehow it had fallen into his hitchhiker's knapsack, and it remained with him; old and cracked it seemed to burn forever, and when it came close to evaporation, another was sat upon it, sucked down into the gluttonous pit of wax and lighted, and so for Frank it became, is the same candle. This he keeps in their bedroom; now lighted each morning; before bed at night; when with V or alone far-calling for the presence. When together it is a centering; a pit of attention humbled with a flame of intention.

For her the transiency of things are her permanent cloth. Ever the question maker, more through dress and movement than words, V expresses herself through the uncupped words of her flesh. Flowers forever fresh and dying, both stand about her; newly cut and pressed dry, with these she decks the house and every room. For it is upon the smell and the color, the ever-changing form of beauty and death that she weaves her mat, that upon which she lies and upon which she flies; whirling about drawing all to her attention, high above yearning yet flying down towards all with singular intention.

They left Hearthstone or rather they found Hearthstone "X"ed on a map, a map which as things did at Hearthstone was drawn by themselves, on the day which became morning, after Matins.

..................

She had had an inkling for sometime -- was it years? marked from the moment of their first waking together? did it now matter? -- sensed with a lingering touch of wonder, that there was something special about morning. They had had some nights, but without morning, such nights were merely release, not renewal. For as good as the nights had been, exhaustion and tiredness—guardians of dream's gate—had whisked them away. Yes, darkness had singularly captured their light in this room, this dome which settled above them each night; here at Hearthstone light seemed never unfriendly to the dark, and for her so V fell into the moonlight, each night, every night more moonlight, and her dreams were as luminescent as their walks at midday, but there had always only been discovery in the night; now their practiced Morning Call had awakened her, so practiced that it became intention without conscious attention, so much so that he queries it from his sleep, so she rises and leaves him, laying her response upon him like a blanket of trust, speaks in her heart their shared words of discovery, "Let us be an-other!"

He, also, has awaken -- was keyed upon waking many of the last days for the cat to spring, for some lash across his slumbering consciousness, but by the time his heart thumped a sweaty beat, it had fled. He has lain on the pillow, as he now lies, waiting, rather nervously anticipating her turn from behind the bathroom door. All his energy is dispersed, yet the morning does not abandon him, for light drops, in a thousand shafts of welcomed messages, from the navel skylight high above in their bedroom dome. It is light drawn not towards him, though it momentarily calms him, rather it heads towards the candle. Yes, the candle is lit; she is attending.

Yes, he knows that he has to wait. Well, feels it—patience—no, more—long-suffering, resignation. He is a universe collapsing through a black hole; all muscles now leaden—her Iron Man. As such have been the last few mornings, and so this another morning of readiness. Yet until this morning he had not smelled the incense nor seen her masks.

Despite the wash of comforting morning light he writhes. "I'm not a passive asshole!" almost berates him out of bed, but he holds steadfast. "An-other," whispers about. That he wants this, this he knows. He rouses himself, rousts his slumbering mind and calls for morning's attention. Focusing upon the candle, so, he settles into himself. Closes his eyes. Listens to his breathing, and begins to feel his own singular presence from toenail to fingernail to hairtip down and through pubic forest. Intention, it spreads throughout.

He is almost snatched by sleep when her cold slicing fingers, scratching the slightest scars nail by nail, move across the top of his foot, circling his ankles.

_Corpus delicti_ : he fears deeply to blink, to hoist the lids on old memories. He inhales deeply, works to relax himself but his nose is shocked and he twitches—still blindeyed—as a smell fully fragrances the room. It is the scent of camp just broken, of burnt wood, but not acrid, rather moldy, more a heavy earthiness and as it floods his sinuses it is as if a claw has slithered down, cloaked by the fragrance, and clutched his bowels ... a dreaded forebodence seeps and pools in his belly ... "Oh!" he nearly bolts. A madness of emotions, a chaos awhirl with monster eyes and frantic yells for help quickly dies as her presence overshadows all, and he knows she is the enchantress, here with more tricks and treachery ... and he must, so he does, sneak a peek ... and beholds!

It is the majesty of one of her thousand subtle faces. Clean with the slightest of makeup. Lightly drawn shades of eye shadow and the faintest of reddened lips. But it is the elsewhere which fascinates him. She of the wild screaming nights, the cascades of "NO! NO! YES!" ... and the baredness of body, naked in skinny dipping and all her uninhibited freedoms of the flesh, these are now rolled up, balled up and molded in the slight exposure of her breasts. Breasts which have dabs of red and greens, a slightly orange brown, all seemingly but the top of a greater canvas secreted beyond her nightgown. It is this odd simplicity—understatement—which is mask.

"Firm foundation of my strength, pillars of my ascent," and lifting his night shirt as she unbuttons and slips off his bottoms, she plays her crimson tresses up and down from chest-belly to between his calves, dragging them like screaming, wild-eyed children over his ankles, brushing his feet, tickling him—he wiggles but she holds him, gently tethered.

With the slightest of movements, a wink of tongue and a dart of fingertip, she is within his legs, resting them beside her kneeling thighs.

It is her fading glow that strikes him. "Hail the moon!" he utters, totally astonished at his words; embarrassed in this revelation. He giggles and almost dissembles, but she holds him. And as if in response, as if called, she leans forward and bathes him in moonlight: the softness of her breasts, effusing as dawn's slowly dropped cloak unbounds her, blinds him, and he shudders unsure of the danger of this enchantment.

Like a statute with consciousness, like the knowing Sphinx, he is aware of his frozenness, of his capture. It is her scent, now, not the earthy heaviness but herself, not perfumed, but bodily, oddly sweet which is his net of chains. And as if to free him she reaches down and pulls off his night shirt. In companion motion she lets fall the bodice of her nightgown and leans backward, still kneeling, and smiles.

It rises from her navel: the orangish brown line. It breaks off, re-encounters, fragments and rejoins time and again, outlining a field of undefined meaning. Catching itself it supports or flowers, possibly erupts, into the green and red marks, now stars, now planets and universes, possibly seeds ... it is all simply dazzling. And he cannot restrain his merriment.

"You are the slumberer, the forgetter of my nights, the dark charcoal for my fire." And he sees himself as her strike, that against which she must hit for her fire to rise, for the moon to bound down around the other side of the world. He the hardscrabble plain, vast and seemingly undefined, waiting for her disappearance so that the rain may begin, the rain of tears and sighs, of water and dust.

She is the dawn starter. "In your bowels am I. All the stuff of the universe, matter most pure and corrupt. I am manure—spread me! I am cry—bear me as child!" And again his words shock him, make him bounce upon the bed as if electric prods have been thrust into the small of his back. He registers the heat of her: the cool moon heat—the first stirring of morning embers.

She leans forward and slides backwards as wind whipping a sail and the fleeting release of beach. Effortlessly off the bed, standing, all clothing now a crumple at her feet: "You are the runner. My messenger. The snake which flies and stands to hang from trees." And she lifts his legs, moves back onto the bed, and rests them over her shoulders. Slowly she strokes, and for the first time he is aware, though it is an awareness long after fact, of his hardness. She forms his thighs, stroking them both as if to comfort and as if to search for hidden things. And he knows, yes he knows—feels her probings and so guilefully hides the treasure which she is after.

Oh, but he wants to be caught, yes, snared by her eyes! Indeed, could he resist; is there a stratagem which he could unfurl? How? For she is demure, a maiden ever still... yet one so cunningly aware of pirate's places.

Her tongue traces an ancient script and her hands announce amidst the crowd of his heartbeat, clenching biceps and chest muscles the ancient warning, "Take heed! For the Sun of Morning is rushing from the land of Shade!"

Her grip on his hips is ever so slight, for she is butterfly gentle about the nectar. Like her lepidopterous kin, she probes, yet in more varied ways, for it is not just her tongue, the purse of her lips nor the rings of her fingers on his phallus. No, his maypole is hung with other ribbons, those drawn from her inner eye and wrapped about him by her most spectral tongue.

She dips and darts, blessing him with waters of her most passionate mouth, her hungers, and dregs him up out of his leaden bed to rise like soul fleeing a lifeless body, but now to a greater life ... she is upon him in rhythm of heartbeat, in cadence of pulse, moving in all smoothness. And he, flying towards the stars in her hair, rushing out from every crevice of his body, mind and soul, kicking over in eagerness ashcans of sluggishness, is snared by the clarions of horror and beauty as he becomes flame, consuming her as wick to candle, virgin beeswax and raucous flame: he is dancing to her fairy song, so artfully played upon his reed. It is all but the faintest of motions and the daintiest of touches as the moment comes, his awakening, into her dying, sun arising as moon sets.

....................................

And he knows, just being there as she showers, that this is where it had been leading; this is where it must be. The Call and the Salute. (Matin's invocation, "V: O Lord open my lips! R: And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.") ... "How else?"

As he rises from the dew-soaked bed, it is the Earth which awakens with him, through him. He to be the Sun and the Day. All seek to follow and nourish from him as flowers yearn in adoration for his sunrays ... He laughs. Rubs across his hairy chest and whacks the slackened probe. For she now has him, "Stolen? Given?" He shakes his head like a child at first arithmetic. But then it is clear. She has him so that she may be moon. It is his to form again, to gift again, to search out again: this the task of Day. For she is ever-present even as Night is in sunlight; "But the shadow to the hand!"; and he moves towards the shower to dry her with the cool heat of daybreak's ardor.

3. NOONTIME : SEXT

"Ora et Labora," Pray and Work, an ancient spiritual adage, that which ties two dimensions as it pivots one towards others, those which are discovery, so Frank and Veronica find themselves paying attention to the hours of the day, the mere twenty-four or the double-repeating twelves, does it matter?

Does it matter how one knits the swirl together or weaves the flowers' radiance? Labor, work, the churning of the soil, the removal of rocks to another place, the cycle of events so common that they remain every mysterious; work; so Frank and V returned, as their friends would have it, "back to the everyday world"; yet for them everyday is the world.

.........................................................

He couldn't help laughing at ancient wisdom, that "in the middle lies virtue." "Hell, in the middle all is prairie fire and thunderstorm!" He turns left, feels the lurch of his failing alignment, and works the street for a parking spot.

Once out, he double-checks the locks and turns towards her building. He enjoys these moments. It is the stalk and hunt, the tracking of scent, the spying of lures he might use—this day flipping a five spot for a fist of wisteria—one sprig of innocence white within a plum royal shroud of purple.

As he walks the half-block to her spot, he, faintly aware, waves them like a child with wand, but, more, here in emboweled desire as incantation, the incensing of his trail—laying his scent, marking off his spot, his defensive territory.

Rising in the elevator, he laughs at the eagle's view of himself as rocketeer, as space-traveler, being delivered by chute through solid matter to materialize before her. The wizardry of it all fascinates him.

"Hi, Helen, is she in?" needed not to be asked for he knew she was, but it was the required formality. Continuing without waiting for an answer he closes in on her. Momentarily he halts, adjusts his tie, strokes back and pats several stray hairs, and inhales deeply, aware of his capturing of the cosmic energy laying all about, of the unused brute heat emanating from the corporate hallway walls. He widens his nostrils and snorts vagrant sacral smells of the hunt resident in this temple of forgotten pleasures.

Thiefishly, he slips the knob and spies. Her back is to him, all waterfall of the River of Blood, madly Scot-Irish tangle of snakes, and his heartbeat goes tympanic. Like a stalking predator he, reflexively, slides the green hour to "OUT" and a red dot to "2 PM" on the magnetic calendar outside her office ... and fingers the lock button, deftly silencing the door. Then, slowly he, seasoned as he is, thumps the door with the heel of his shoe, two basso raps, dispatching the first signals of his intention. Wisteria arm behind him, he steps—each step restrained so as to avoid leaping—towards her as she turns, phone locked, but waving him in. She smiles. But it is a greeting, not a summons; she gestures, "Mr. Jennings, I presume!"

It is not as if she should be surprised, for she has rounded the world with him before, and she knows from his almost offish stumble towards her that he is with flora again, and before he displays she smells the woody fragrance, and a thousand soldiered turrets resound with warnings ablast, "He comes! He comes!" And she moves, instinctually—feints of retreat—picking up and playing with her letter-opener, a gift from him many Christmases ago, in fact the first Christmas after this present job, but this is not registering, rather she is priestess at the guard, readying herself to die to preserve the sanctus sanctorum, the Holy of Holies.

As the phone clunks into place he is with his right arm around her and the wisteria left in motion of surprise, "But am I surprised?"—for it is all noontime, and the hunger: lunch on the soul ... and she, with practiced motion, slips away, sideling, moving down the beach, stripping her layers of conscious awareness so as to increase her erotic speed, realizing that only by hurtling beyond High Noon's brilliance barrier will she escape him, "Must crack into another dimension!!" ... and she says, "Frank, you're such a romantic, flowers, oh, wisteria!" And all is gathered quickly from outstretched hands to nose and back looking for a vase, putting spatial barriers between them, a desk, footsteps of rug, and visual space, eyeing him, assessing the rise of the tide, and "God, he's juice!" Knowing now that he has come, chalice abrim, not only with blood but testicles dangling, and offering himself to her to be drunk and consumed and absorbed and digested—"Oh!" She freezes; years of fears and miles of protestations prod her, torture her; tears flashflood and it is as if the riot police were out smoking the crowd, and she stumbles, half-way to her settee, but then, in equal instant, she is reinforced, strengthened, steadied as if by arms and hands and shouts of encouragement from crowds, mobs, a cacophony of women—sisters, comrades, allies—"Resist! Stand your ground!"

But he is beyond any of her responses and reactions whether polite, romantic or savage; he is beyond his own juice, now totally sodden, a mere rider upon his own intentions and emotions, for he has come before and they had played: each realizing that they are about to Visit, each moving towards the roles and following the rules they had, over time, determined; each sensitive to the other ... but today is his as others had been hers ... hers when he had walked in, as stooped in spirit as the Hunchback, as despairing as the Hanged Man ... and she had engulfed him in Swarm, her majesty of egging; he had not a chance, not a whisper or a whisker, and before he could feel a thought she had him down, moving upon him as a reversing magnet, up and down, down and up, and then grabbing and hoisting him by his tie she spun him into spider-web. He did not have to have brought desire that day for it was her breasts which fondled his hands; her thighs which sucked his penis harder than he could cry; her stretch and vibration echoing deeply through bone valley that ripped all breath from his heart, cracked him open so that she feasted upon his inner innards and left him a bundle of sexless bones with popped eyes.

This wisteria instant, however, he is the reservoir, the treasure trove; from within him she can find herself, for he is hot cunt and wicked lips, he is the jaunty strut and sway of hips and the twirl of long-nested fingernails scratching sounds from her soul. And in this instant she needs him to be herself, for she is outside, having a day like too too many where her consciousness is relentless master, Corporate Master to the Slave Laborer, and she has dripped herself, drop by precious drop, into a barely humanoid automaton. She, a power broker among the mysteries of the totem Market; she, conqueress of the Material World ... from another perspective she is all aura of Warrior, finishing this telephonic call, right now, as the mighty Athena did in ancient times—vanquishing all enemies with bodies rent, mere oblations to her higher powers, strength and raw dominance.

So, as she rises as he steps towards to sit next to her on the couch, she is at the ready to slay him, to battle him penis to penis, to disembowel and hang his carcass for lunch. Yet it is the sight of the innocence among the lusty, that singular starched-white sprig of wisteria which as offering, halts her lunge, side-tracks and distracts, evokes a perfume of memory. She snatches the clutch from the vase with the casualness of a salesman's handshake and holds it close to her face, hiding herself, seeking a last desperate crack of refuge, just one eternal slip of moment to orient, conceive a plan and survive.

Yes, it is noontime and she is deep within this other body, _corpus materialis_ , and nothing so poetic as innocence lost among lust can long draw her attention, rather it is the scent of him: he the shroud of bloodened purple, she the innocence within, which together commingle and rise, a singular perfume of the two—this the scent of them infests her, as one solitary mosquito coming to inject memories of other days, of mornings, evenings, other noontimes.

"You're looking fit," she says but his eyes shine only on her, not himself, and he sits and slips up close, conspiratorially ... yet she is the first to grab, the first to kiss and peck and brush his hair, incensing him wisterially ... and then he gives her what he has carried from other morns, that part of herself which is him: this is his breathing, the warm stream of his within against the side of her pearl laced neck, rising to diamond-pinned ear and a blow of hair, hair all tamed but now unraveling, and then an annunciatory nip on her lightly rouged cheek, a short pullback so that their eyes lock and the transmission is complete. She remembers herself; he can become himself. So they begin.

The wisteria she places, half drops, onto an endtable where they tumble and skid into auguring motifs neither notices. All in the office now is merely he and she; no consciousness of others, no desire to stifle the screeching phone; no fear of exposure to enraged mobs at the door. Now, within physical and psychic circles of security, they are creators-unbound by time and space.

From hug and kiss, darting kisses, gentle explorations of tongue, to his always painful bear-hug as his juice rises, and he stands them up, lifts her, pressing her breasts, masking his face, impressing like Veronica's Veil, and then, at the doorstep of hurt, he places her down on ground, again. He half-kneels hiding his eyes in her midriff and slides, almost glides, indeed a passionate skating, across and down, unrehearsed figure-eights of free-fall pleasuring, till he rests, momentarily, at her feet, high-heeled, almost alabaster in white hose, he kisses the crown of each foot, being, it appears, propelled upward at the same moment, and she in his arms, now twirling her as if dancing ... and slowly she undresses.

She is a curling wave of shooting stars, revealing the universe as they blaze into nothingness; so she flings her blouse and with a flick she sets free her breasts which come at him like bombarding snowballs heaved over a fence, and he would have laughed if removed as observer, but her ampleness relentlessly snatches him, snaring him deeply in eyestare and some segment of his brain where her teats, dark at tight centers with brilliant reddish crown, kin of her red mane, releases—ah, ancient wisdom of "action at a distance"—a convict band of emotions ... and he is her slave, her eunuch, her devotee, all and everything she wants him to be.

With a slight twist and a quick drop she is without garment and then underthings but radiantly naked in shine of pearls and diamonds and flashes of lavender emanating from nails high and low ... and he, robotically mirroring her, also is shorn. Yet it is nakedness as blindness, for he begins to grope and she gropes back, tearing at each other, ripping up muscles as if to find a hidden message, searching for the braille of the soul, the codes of the spirit ... he flows over her with kisses and it is she who pulls him tighter, biting his lip and then hanging by voracious tooth upon his nipples, and he all filled with a fiery blood wanting to suckle her, and she moving now into that dimension he had brought to her with his mere look at the moment she had turned, no longer phone locked, moving this instant into the common body and voice they both seek.

She is at his quiver, plucking arrows with her tongue, shooting him deadly in loin and penis, piercing his belly with hard shots of erotic jacking, but it is not the morning and she will not raise him through this slaying ... and he wants other, so he is down with her, face to face kissing, surface and submerging, both then towards each other, end to end and a feast of cosmic entry—he parading around her mound, incanting with his breathing, "Open! Open!" ... and she yields but it is not the inch of penetration with his tongue but the tongue of his soul which sprints into her and she feels him sending back totemic messages ... both rush to the brink, and pull back.

Ontop of her, he wants so desperately to fall through her eyes: sweet cherry browns which ripen darkly when tempered with his smithy's skill ... and he strikes her anvil with his hammer, banging and turning, plunging into deeper fires, fires stoked by his incessant babble of invitation and exaltation, "I love you!" "I dream only of you!" "Veronica, you're the sweetest flower, the most delicious fruit ... ah, I could eat you! Suck you dry!" ... and she sprinkles holy oil onto his flames, oil and splinters of relic wood—her so small voiced, "Yes!" and "Oh, darling!" and it is all her beyond-verbal self, blowing a south wind on his hot coals, and he approaching molten, feeling the desire in his thighs: the bolt action in his calves, the power of dominance in his chest and arms, all losing their edge, now commingling somewhere above his belly-button yet almost, at the same time, his astral eye, and he begins to glow, for she has also turned from cradle and rocker, from the great Tree with ripe fruit, into a root, serpentine root, alive root which latches onto him, reclaiming her entrance at his umbilical, and entering him as the high bright sunray of noontime ....

As they dress they laugh. Nothing else is appropriate or, as they have come to experience, possible at noontime ... (Sext, "V: O God of truth, O Lord of might, disposing time and change aright. Who clothes the splendid morning ray, And gives the heat at noon of day.") ... For it is not the time for the chatter as after the quickie; not the same time as that after a frenzied give and take, that blessed wrestling of the male and female; not the same as after a comforting embrace, the one which heals the slights and disappointments or enhances a recent joy or celebration. No, this is the Noontime: the time when they realize that they have Visited ... and been in a place where discourse is sacrilegious.

Noontime, alone the time for memory and future vision; a time to set the Sun on its final lap towards the Moon ... the time to walk as flowers walk, at a pace unknown by humankind.

4. EVENING : VESPERS

At the rest of day, dishes away, children tidied and thoughts on their weary way down, so they sit, plop next to each other. The victory of gravity begins to assert itself. She unclips and shakes the last of the formality from her hair. He kicks a shoe and slips a notch on his belt. Both loose small sighs and deeper breaths of things finally let alone, not to be accomplished this day. Like hands on the clock they approach that hour of the day which signals surrender, not defeat, but the yielding to the turns of time: arms raised above their heads matching the ten o'clock high ... they look, sigh and yawn towards each other with darkly vision.

Small chatter and distraction by television lead to the final rounds of lights out and locking up. She ahead of him to the bath and he forcing himself to tend to small things, checking his shirts and available ties, slapping a brush over his managerial shoes.

Together in weariness they roll into a half-formed embrace, he jacking covers loose for his long legs, she squiggling into a comfort just below his chin. They rest. Like Vesperial time they are markers on another measure, that of the life of the planet, the celebration of the stars and the dimension of dreams ... ("V: Night comes with all its darkling fears. Regard Thy people's prayers and tears.")

At that moment which comes when it should, their togetherness cries electric. At first small staccato voices, molecular and cellular, stand in hope of an echo; then soundings from bone and muscle soon enhanced by song of blood and the roar of thoughts now escapees, these prisoners of the light: savage thoughts, fierce thoughts, sensual and sexual thoughts, all rise in cacophonous echo and roust fresh vision to their eyes, startle ears with wailing glee and shatter the sluggish cast day has molded round their spirit and soul. In that moment, they float high above their bed, dancing on a new landscape, cavorting and romping ... giggling and laughing. In that moment ...

He has seen her, watched her closely, actually tracked each finite moment of her dancing into abandonment many times before, but tonight she is a maiden unsullied by the lessons of experience. She touches him with exquisite fingers, merely the tips, not scratching with nails but rubbing ever so tinnily with her small rounds of flesh. It is as if she is a pointillist, dabbing his body with unblushing colors of notes, she making him music, drawing from him the energies he has stored, buried, stashed away, energies which the day rejected or had no form to receive, these she takes from him touch by most tenderest touch, and he feels maiden, so desired with the purest of desires, but, indeed, it is a purity, curiously, only her most aged knowledge of him empowers her with. But he does not pause to think, neither thinking, neither feeling, rather floating ... both imagining, both creating and sculpting, both blessing the other, "Let there be ...!"

She is at his feet, touching his harsh calluses, tingling his ticklishness, and he turns and she floats and hops and dips and dabs upward and sideways, and withal he is a thousand points of pressure released and a thousand points of new entrances for her energy, and as she finishes her rounds they are tethered, a thousand tethers of kindness and comfort, strands of light and strands of dark latching them each to the other ... and she comes again to rest beside him.

He takes their tethers, grasps them in full large fistfuls, and yanks them loose, ripping them out, popping their astral skins, and from this flood of celestial blood he sprinkles her and then works her. It is as if washing her: he rubs her body, shoulders first and moving down spinal highway and outward to flanks and heels and under to thighs and hillrise stomach, upward to breasts and coming to face, full face to face, he is now agleam with the blood he has squashed and squished from her, the blood he has mingled with his own, now all lathered with each other, he murmurs, "Come to me, come out to me, free yourself from worry and pain. Let me soothe you! Oh, I love to soothe you, for you are my desire, V. I desire to be with you, muscle to muscle, bone to bone. Come and play with me, my love."

Washed by a ray of moonlight they still see each other, but such sight is but a memory, for what is this instant is swirling with, more swimming through the sense of the other, each abandoned in float of the other: she trusting his strength and frightened by his hard breathing ardor yet buoyed by his joy at being with her ... he, at her like potter at a throw, is all boil of desire, hot poke of lust yet a man without a ground for he has fallen through into her, this a pleasure in his bowels, a cracking ache across his groin, a maddened release of not being able to possess ... all this is how he floats—inside her like child, inside her like lover, inside her as herself.

Yes, they are within each's within; she flying around his caged ribs sounding the coo of dove and like nightingale a sweet mournful song of allurement. Both merge and pass through themselves, bodies at mess and meshing, spirits wild with transparency, and souls afire with unisonance of yearning.

All this, they know and understand, is for the greater body of themselves, for their common soul and so for the creating of the universe, the embodiment of the cosmos. For she is through his celebration the eternal Her whose bosoms are the foci of Life's ellipse. She he calls mother and Great Mother, running his fingers through her hair and washing down her body, drawing from her breasts the Milky Way. "You are my all, my everything!" Coarse profanations of his adoration, yet all he disclaims and proclaims in hurried messages, messages which fly like the sculptor's hammer and chisel, forming her: for she rises on his words to this worshipped height, accepts the reward of her fuller being, happily draws the children of light and the children of shade towards her breasts for nurture. She as Goddess aches with the joy of life's dying through him, holds him as her newly born dead, holds his corpse suckling it, ever hopeful for life ... she reads his listless eyes, watches the ever slow dismissal of sunlight from his heart, catches his head as it falls in spasm of surrender, and in this acceptance, this receiving of himself as his true self, a self dead to the world, she finds him emerging from her side, climbing over and out from behind one of her ribs, and standing tall as the eternal male, the Great Father.

He latches her onto him, pressing so that reflexively she grasps him in leg and armlock. He rolls off the bed, she crabbed on him, and he rocks her back and forth, hears her singing, a sirenic song accompanied by his basso reed, and it is her sound that drives him to drive her, to dance and jerk around with her as vestment, striving with each pore and muscle to absorb her, to tattoo herself onto himself and thus emerge at flashpoint beyond this instant.

She is his daughter as he feels her of his bone. His flame is now of the hearth. He wants to build a hearth for her; fire it with the patrimony of seed and have her birth generations of children to sing his memory and weep at his gravestone. He gives her his phallus, it is her wedding gift—his special spirit protector whose power will open males for timeless turns.

The world continues it downward revolution as they uncouple and set back on the bed. A spark of awareness is shared, each knowing that they have been Vespers together, have addressed the Day and laid it as seed to the Night, that emissary of dreams.

Each is forming before the other's eyes, reforming and transforming, voicing the stilted dialogue of lovers, "I love you," "You are wonderful," "I'd marry you again just to bathe in your eyes!" And now that the poles are once again established, the firmament pounded hard into bulwark, it is time for the sharing.

They pause. She walks into the master closet and returns, walks towards him with hands upholding something, a gift? a surprise? Yes, he knows that it is the time, and he rises, stands before her, lifts the cloth and takes from her the silver bowl, one of their choosing, a simple artifact, not of the Old World, not something ancient, but hewed from the ore of the New World, the one not yet here, this he holds as she returns with cup of water, humble tap water, pool of cosmic impurities, and half-fills the bowl; together they place this beside the candle, then kneel; pressing heads at temples they, through habit and intent, reverently dip their fingers into the bowls, draw watercourses upon one another, dripping, dropping and sliding wreaths of blessings, all an eve's ablution, and then draw still, resting fingers upon each other's tongue. They inhale the moisture of their desire.

She turns, falls canopy before him; he mounts her in ancient ritual, hands slowly upside her rump: moonscape hillocks so deliciously fulfilled once child birthed ... and leans forward, grasps her firestorm cradling hips and moves his thighs to touch, ever self-tantalizing, brushing thigh skin against moonskin, broadcasting clear calls to the ready, and she resting, face pressed upon pillowing clouds, almost at the sleep, sucking him in and chasing him out as beach does to wave and wave to the shore ... he is so intense, so purposeful that she stifles a laugh, but then she is awakened, for it is time to march, hand-in-hand, cock in pussy, male with female to that pinnacle moment when all is moon shatter and night cloak and time and space cease to be, that moment of absolute end and absolute beginning where the clock finds no more time to count, space ceases to exist, and dreaming commences. It is that moment of gifting, that stillness which defines movement, the turning of the flower to seed which is yet all that flower is ... he ejaculates, she floods, both are juice, liquid and basic to each other: the fluid of Life; Lovers loving.

Sleep arises from the bed entangling them; limbs akimbo, breathings rushing and calming, souls nesting ... yet, theirs is a journey just begun: the first marking on the passage to the why of their being together. All from morn through eve has been preparation, as they know, as they have shared. All has been time and space, memory and naming—speaking and hearing. Now they slumber but in another land and another time ... ("V: Let us therefore lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.") ... Bedded they are joined like pebbles in the stream, like notes to a song, like kiss to embrace.

Yet they have worked for this sleep: to be in slumber as fragrance is to its molecules, a something here but then beyond.

It is evening at end, but not morning begun. They sleep. All is about to begin ... they dreamslip.

5. DREAMSLIP

At twenty years into the marriage they had located Hearthstone. It had been "found" now they know, five years later, because of their attention and intention. Each had fallen "out" of love as lovers do; for they were no longer just light for each other, no longer the pillar of support, no rather they each had come to feel the other's shadow, the chill of all the inattentions and unintended actions; they had found themselves each betrayed, betrayed by the other and by themselves. So they had journeyed, and so at Hearthstone, sitting arms resting within the other's lap, logs ready for the call of the fireplace, facing the allure of twilight befuddling everything, so there they recalled to each other, took account of all that was plus and all that was minus.

Three kids, a dog, several careers, two West to East and then East to West again transplants, and thousand countless times at each other, exiting and entering each other's life, betraying in small turns but, inevitably it seemed coming to the same stop —"We're a Ferris wheel, I'll be damned V!" Frank said, said it too many times, almost wore out the fading light just by the image.

Embers die before them; yield without protest into the emerging twilight, that mischievous child of Sun and Moon, and as they fade in this cloak of thicker darkness, become less than the star's twinkling light, each recalls, in words spoken and unspoken, through the silence of time and the memory of the other's forgotten presence, so they recall and they become for each other that unfaithfulness which is of the most damaging type. No candles unlit; no bowls of blessed water unspilt; no pretense that the flesh was not present; as such they become all void for each other; the touch and smell beyond death, unresurrected. They recall their betrayals, those acts which were the abandonment of the soul, the stiletto heart-stab inflicted almost casually by the familial torturer: the kind delivered without words, artisans of inattention and the unintended. Yes, they married; yes, they have consummated what had been left virgin, the fullness of their emptiness; they accepted that they are companions traveling a maze, that each is the other's Minotaur, each the other's Ariadne's thread.

They had first met after a short list of other lovers and adventures. Like most they thought that possibly they had met before because each seemed so familiar. But this did not prove true. Neither was linked by any time and space connections. However, they shared a fairly full menu of emotional likes and dislikes, though childhood religion and rebellious student politics had placed them on opposing sides.

But it was their question, that which tonight they understand, a question which was thriving between them and which resounded with a disturbing echo at Hearthstone, which had always been their tether -- "Why are we together?" It worked, through the decades, as their clear-it-all, no-holds-barred axe ... and bandage. For they were quite aware that alternative routes were always available and neither had any qualms about voicing a desire for new direction. The question, as stated, also kept them together, because they could not adequately answer it either positively or negatively, so splitting never seemed the required action. Each wanted to know or at least assemble enough partial answers before, if ever, leaving the other. In brief, each was charmed ... and charming

As the children came, so the question lost its cut, so they eased up by losing themselves in the kids. Yet beneath all ... and this they well understood at each anniversary, at each birthday, at the progressive academic graduations ... they knew it was their truly intimate question, that it was the voice of their definition.

When the last one was out of college and off living alone, and with Veronica back into a career, Frank found that the question became a rogue dream. He'd waken, often, sometimes sequential nights at precisely the same time, with this interrogatory fragment on his lips. He'd look at V, lean towards and lightly touch her hair, twiddle several strands, heave an exasperated sigh, and fall leadenly back to sleep. In the morning, he swears that she knows that he had awoken. For she glances at him as if to say, "Okay, what do you think?" But, for several months, no such morning conversation actually started. But he swears she knows, "Damn, she knows!" he says to himself as she leaves the room to perk breakfast coffee.

Yes, she does know. But it isn't a clear knowing. Rather she awoke blanketed by a terrible sense that she was in danger. She looked at him—for she did know him well, "I know you, Frank!"—but said nothing, simply because it all seemed too foolish. They had never discussed dreams. Oh, yes, fragments of this and that, especially during their early years when they'd relish shocking each other with wild sexual fantasies, using dreams more as tease and allurement than as reflections of themselves from a deeper pool .... It was at the edge of this deeper pool that the question finds them, tonight. Five years deeper; years of ritual and discipline, of the discovery of attention and intention; yet five years which now place them no further than they had come _before_ Hearthstone.

..............................

As soon as she asked it, he knew it had rampaged around her dreams too. He didn't stop to ask about the past days, rather he wants to know "Where do we go with this now?" She says, "You know we've been together so far, really I believe, just for the kids. I mean my whole life here has been to be their mother ... and you Frank to be their Dad. All these other things we've done, or thought we've done for ourselves, well ..." And he picks up exactly on her meaning, "Yeah, I'm feeling that way too." He stands, stretches and then rubs his renegade belly, pausing to articulate "Gees, I don't think I'm ever going to get back in shape!" But it is distraction, only. She stops her nightly preparation and looks at him. "Forty-five and still wanting to be Charles Atlas!" But she keeps the amusement to herself. She wants to move him along, and herself too.

"Look, together what have we done?" He eyes her. "Nothing less than channel the fire, mold the light, draw the Sky to the Earth, isn't that it?" Her words excite him, his mind starts to flutter with images like an old reel-to-reel film askew, shooting images half-formed, some squashed together, others stuck so that the intense projection light melts the screen! "Yes!" is all he can mutter but the excitement in his legs runs like a scatter of slimy insects; he jitters and hop-skips around the room. For a humorous moment she believes his clothes must be on fire!

"Slow down, honey. Come here," she says, and Frank responds like a schoolboy to his teacher. They sit at the bed's edge. "You know when I had our first, you remember, I told you that I felt like I was the Earth yawing and heaving, just about breaking apart to set free the souls of the dead." He nods. "Well, it's something like that, now." He hugs her and starts pecking her neck, she pushes him away, he is all fluster with a hot dose of anxiety. Something within him screams, "Don't listen to her. She's a witch!" And indeed as he looks at her, he can't see her. Her face is every face he has ever seen her with: a face of pain, the face of their honeymoon, a face of resignation, the face of their most sensual moments together ... and he is afraid.

Veronica stands and begins to undress. It is a simple disrobing, nothing sensuous, a becoming naked for comfort, not for anything else. He too feels the uncomfort and quickly unrobes all as he sits, twists and rocks back on the bed. Night garments on the floor they pause—a pause which widens as they look, and it widens their look such that they laugh, each a singular burst, then both together in a giggle and a roll on the bed laughing.

She is watching his eyes. She has always—and she has told so many, many others—loved his eyes. "The rascal, I can't escape his eyes!" And now his eyes become like water and she finds herself athirst, and with each dip and then drop on her tongue, her thirst becomes scorched: his water is fire. And it is this fire that lights their camp, now both squatting affront to the other, looking and longing, awash in the other's delight of being here.

"I want to say and I know it might sound silly or odd but I want to stop only giving you my penis." She listens with a silence. "I knew with the kids that there is more to me than this hard rod, but I haven't, I couldn't ..." And he stumbles again into pit of bafflement. He is now quiet, not silent, for she hears his bones creak and his heart beat; indeed, it is this music of him that envelopes her silence ... Frank looks downward, watches his hands play hopscotch up and down his crossed legs, "What I want to say V. Gee, maybe ... but look, I realized the other day, sometime, I don't know, that you've made _me_ a mother." .... His eyes shut down, a desert air breezes between them, it is harshly dry and biting, an air which brings not just a shudder to the body but a dread, a fear of dying from thirst to the soul .... "But let me say, I wanted all along, I know this now, to make _you_ a father. Does that make any sense to you?"

There seemed to be, and indeed there could be, no discourse which could live in this moment. She unfolds herself and kneels full upright before him. She closes her eyes, lifts her head, and begins to cup and roll her breasts. Slowly, ever so squintingly perceptible at first, she sways, moving from a gentle swaying to a full undulating, working her breasts and her hips as if riding upward on a riff of mournful blues as it releases its inward moaning. Her full breasts she squeezes as when nursing, pushing her nipples into a hardness ... and he is all hard, not just in cock but in spine and muscles, a hardness which makes him rise like a magical tree in front of her. He is all eyes, watching her with his hands, spying her with his thighs, glancing at her with the ten tentacles of his feet. Yes, he is alive within her aura, drawn physically upward on the bed, and she reaches, touching him on hip and drawing his hardness farther, deeper, drawing step by step into her thirst.

She lifts her eyelids as she dips him underwater. And he jerks and splashes, spouting himself within her. As he falls to his knees and grasps her, bracing himself on the shores of her shoulders, she carries himself to him on her tongue. Her gesture halts him, but it is only a moment, for he is free within her enchantment, and he dips his tongue onto hers and they kiss deeply, swirling his sweat of soul in their communion mouth.

As the moment passes, she gathers it into memory and hope, "I eat you, and I am you." Her words catch him and hold him, for she has never spoken at such a moment, and in response his words rush out unchecked, "Yes, eat me! Yes, yes, eat me so that I can become you!" And he throws himself on her, robing her with kisses of gratitude, of praise and thanksgiving, of hope, kissing her on arms and back, hotly whispering, "Yes. Yes. Yes." as he seeks a thousand magical doors to open, a thousand magical doors to dash through and enter her.

As they roll half-across the bed a gusty southwind almost snuffs their campfire. He turns to her with coyote eyes. She who has taken his fire, that of which he has so long been fearful was not fire enough, now she has taken it, the stuff he has labored to impress her with, "Big cock, lady, you like big cock?!"—the charge of life he has been raised to tantalize her with, inform her was _her_ baptismal water—"Man, my balls are burning. I'm gonna make you a real woman, tonight!" Whether actually said at an actual moment, it does not matter, for like his breed he has said it within, been faithful to his training. Now, she has taken and shown back. Shown back not the kids—the mysterious loaves from her oven, loaves whom she has said he was the yeast to—these he in his male mind could accept; it registered, "Babies." But now she has shown back himself: simple semen ... taken himself out from himself and planted him in her mouth. Sure, he had come before, but he never—and she never—focused on it. "Hot blow job!" was normally a semi-drunken cry and ritual, and they had both felt bonded by it as a shared fantasy. This instant she has taken him in full awareness, taken him and then gifted him back—like the coyote in the dark, he waits, assessing the situation: to slink away or pounce for the kill?

She appears unaware of his moment, and rolls on her back fixing a stare at the ceiling, watching the fan rotate ever so predictably and says, "Dear," and she blindly gropes and holds his hand, "Dear, at times, yes I know I'm not the most poetic, but I've felt that you are my child." She quickly hard squeezes his hand, then relaxes. "Not my child, as the kids are," she is not defensive, rather he watches her and all her words float above them like clouds, clouds which form many different images as she speaks, "but, I mean, like to make a child you have to be a child. Do you understand?" He is watching her, now not coyote but a large coon hound, nestled at her side, smelling her, watching the words float like smoke upward, moved to howl but he restrains himself. She slides her arm around the side of his head. "Like apples seed for apples, not oranges. Or you can't plant marigolds if you want roses. Hmm." He sees flowers on the ceiling, them rushing through a thicket, bushes and flowers, back many, too many years, she screams, playful screams, and they tumble to the ground, wet-staining ground, but they are all the burning bush; it comes back that that was when his son was planted.

It is a memory which punctures this moment and floods it with streams of lust. He, in one quick movement, half-rises and rolls between her legs. Her reverie is shattered, the clouds break and all she sees is him, smiling a lusty wicked smile; one immediately remembered. An "Oh!" dies, choked; he is within her with a harsh stroke, a stroke poked as one stabs at a prey during the hunt: it is a wild-eyed, madden stroke, and he delivers it with all the muscle power his knee-levered-thighs can deliver; it is one stroke but he is flushed with sweat and heavy breathing; a stroke which pierces a dam within for she is in the same moment flooded with a lust so savage that she jerks upward and lashes her arms around him, wrestles him to her and they are a common ache—her legs quickly clutch his legs; for one moment they are clasped as tightly as shadow upon a rock ... and they do not move.

His cock is so hard he has lost sense of it. She is so tightly wound around him that she cannot distinguish her movements from his. For a time unmeasured they lie together. He is feeling her more with his total skin as penis than with his rascally member, for, as flashes before him, he desires to absorb her, to melt down her bones into a fiery heap ... the image of a marshmallow too long in the campfire dangles in front of him and he sees her blackened, ooze into a glob and that glob absorbed by the thousand hungry mouths of his skin. Yet as quickly as that came so he as quickly rolls over and has her atop. Without full knowledge of why he urges, "Work me! Work me!"

As if skilled at the task, Veronica moves upon him, but moves with minimalistic touch. Her hips tap his, right to left, now left to right, small pressings up and down, then she in tempo increases her speed until his legs are drawn upward and she is pounding at him, pouncing upon him, flailing him with her body, driving at him with all her strength, and he is the receptacle, the cauldron which is stirred ... all crescendoing into her terrible and terrifying awareness, "Who is the cock now?!" she blurts, a fearful question which only arouses him more, "Yes! Yes!" he screams back, "Fuck me! Fuck me, hard and good!" And she does, working him with her cock, carving out her pathways into his soul, slashing and clawing at the power ever so dormant, ever so cleverly hidden in his loins; this is the moment when she truly becomes him ... and they shiver and shudder and collapse into a most howling orgasm.

By the clock it is a half-hour before they wake. Both awake as if startled by the morning's alarm. Yet it is only mid-night. They have slept deeply, and in sleeping have rolled, each to their favorite side of the bed. But they are aware without looking that the other is also awake. "It's as you said, isn't it?" "Yes," she answers. Several moments, quiet, plain unadorned moments pass between them. "It's incredible, isn't it?" "Yes," she says. He coughs, kicks at the blankets and gets up. He walks to the bathroom and shuts the door. She waits.

Upon his return he comes to her side and sits down. His look is one of wonder, a wonder dashed with embarrassment. He sits for several unspeaking minutes and then reaches for her hands; she elbows up, half-rests against the headboard and places her hands in his. "I guess, maybe, it is one answer. I, well, that what we are to discover ... or be for the other, is the other, or be kids, an-other, something like that, huh?" She has no desire for words; she is content to listen, for she has come from a dream where this has already been spoken between them. But she does respond, lifting the veil of night and testifying before the Court of the Shades. "Yes, sweetheart, it is one of the answers. Just one, however."

6. HEARTHSTONE

It would take other nights, nights ordered and marked in progression by mornings, noontimes, evenings— Vesperial nights, that fulfilling the cycle of Matins with Sext, nights which they came to understand as but preparation for Dreamslip. For they realized that what they had discovered that first night of true communal transubstantiation was that marriage is an opportunity, all yet preparation, to slip. Slip into the other, actually become that person, disrobe not only clothes but the flesh, the material body and put on the other. They came to joke about it, "Help me I'm slipping!" when one wanted to tease the other and Frank would say, mockingly adjusting his bra, "Oh, I'm sure more woman than you are!" And V would, in her turn, initiate a Late Friday Lust Hunt—as she'd call it—by turning over the furniture, picking up sofa cushions, raising the lift on his recliner, poking her hands under this and that throw-pillow, saying, "Where'd I lay my cock. C'mon, Frank, help me. Where'd I put it?"

Slipping is for them how they venture into their dreams. For they see that dreaming is the reality of which time and space is the birth. Veronica grasps it within her recurring simple metaphor—"Like the kids, ya know, they're from where? Me? You? It's amazing. I mean they're from time and space somewhere else. They're part of all those capital letter things like Life and Love and Hope and Future. We certainly don't create them, now, do we? I mean they slipped out of you," she half-giggles and wags a finger, targeting his penis, "and nine moons later they slip out of me. Kabloom!"

Frank finds intellectualizing it quite difficult. Only after many fits and starts, has he found a way to make it work for him. "Yeah, what you and I can do, that is, the opportunity here," and he clears his voice, "is to slip back. Just like the kids slipped forward. What we're doing, I think, is slipping back. Isn't that all this dying stuff? I, well, we are the flowers which have bloomed and seeded in one sense, but we're also all that Life is, in ourselves." He grabs a pen and rapidly doodles on whatever is handy. "We're not dying flames, V, we're just a different kind of fire, now, okay?"

Dreamslipping is something they find is bound by the common flow of the day. Sunrise and Moonrise. Yet, it is marked by hours most sacral, those which bind, ground them in a way which is all charge: electric, celestial and cosmic charge. Both lack what would count as formal religious or theological education, yet what they know seems to indicate how the basic discourse of their new communing should proceed. Together they explore their bodies, each part as a part of the universe, the cosmos.

Frank finds the ancient adage, "As above, so below" quite useful. He is comforted by the fullness, the cornucopia of Veronica's body. He talks of her now, not as "A great piece of ass!" meaning that as he once meant it to mean—as a compliment—rather now he finds her to be, "The Earth, you are the great Tree, bountiful and heavily weighted with luscious fruit." As he comes to her it is as a great explorer and when he discovers her, again and again, he bursts into a joyful, often utterly rambling, sometimes almost nonsensical, gush of praise. Indeed, he finds himself truly awash within her.

Veronica has been moved by all this to present her dreams to him. For her what embracing him now means is a deeper understanding of lifelong dreams and dream fragments which she long hid in half-forgetfulness. Now, she understands that both of them, like Adam and Eve, are the embodiment of dreams, ancient and truly collective dreams. "We're here because others—maybe together we're all god or goddess or something—but we're here because everyone is here. ... We've slipped out of a greater dream!" Then celebration of defiant discovery: "... and it slips out of us!"

So, days are not days anymore, nor time just time. Yes, they continue as before—working, straining to squeeze the camel through the eye of the needle—but they live to have a day in the new cycle, these re-newing hours; a day which touches the border of a dream: a morning or a noontime or an evening which leads to Dreamslipping. ("V: O Ancient Ways of Sacral Time: Matins, Sext, Vespers ... R: Bind! Ora et Labora!")

These new embraces come, sometimes months apart, sometimes only hours ... and with each morning they pause—force themselves on difficult mornings, walk easily towards each other on more blessed days, and begin by saying, "I want to dreamslip you!" ... Sometimes this is all spark amidst the tinder; at others it is but a praiseworthy intention. Yet, it is what they want. How they want to answer, again, the question, "Why are _we_ together?"

At night, they repeat the simple ritual. Most times, words are all the tired, heavy day will permit. Eyelids, most often, fail this world of light ... yet, through these words they yearn to be together more fully, more marriedly—as one in dreamslip.

And as they dreamslip, so is Hearthstone discovered in them, through them, despite them, ever undiscovered as it will always be, yet there, Frank and Veronica, from whom all life flows, all life drains away, both the Day and the Night, the Moon and the Sun, two individuals embraced in slumber, living, being Hearthstone, a different kind of fire.

# Chapter 19: The ouroboric embrace

The Warrior rituals are all genitally shrunk. The Warrior way is to ritualize so as to steal, plunder, rape and pillage on the emotional and spiritual levels. The Warrior believes in and advocates "the battle of the sexes!" The erotic liturgical moment is shrunk to the singular act and moment of "getting off" ... "Shot my wad!"

SilverSex images the body as the cosmos. Each part of the body is imaginatively linked with the Greater Universe. This validates a traditional spiritual saying, "As above, so below." What is imagined and linked is sacral power. Your beloved is the Moon; is the Sun. All that exists within the Universe lives within the brain. When you bodywander and stimulate muscles and organs, you connect your beloved to the Greater and Fuller Fire and Ice which is.

SilverSex peers and hears how the body speaks. SilverSex remembers that your skin is your body's major organ. It is the unifying container of your spirit; a plastic Cauldron where sensate and non-sensate imaginings meet, collide, meld and transform. As such, it is clear that the female body speaks with a male and female organ: the clitoris and the cunny. But what of the male? He with only penis for Cock? Where is his female organ? The Warrior looks between his legs and is embarrassed. Given his own obsession with his genitals (an obsession papally blessed!), he sees nothing ... and so covers his embarrassment with a Lie: "I don't need Her. I can stimulate myself. I can create by myself."

SilverSex peers and grasps that your body is only Full when coupled. Once coupled your body changes. All of your skin becomes your mouth. You speak to your beloved with and through every fleshly aspect and Memory. Your whole body becomes tongue. You taste each other as you lie upon each other. Every fiber of your being reaches out and grasps your beloved. You nibble each other. Consume and inhale. Your combining heat melts and you drip into the Cauldron of Embrace.

As you so attend, you and your beloved approach the most playful ritual. Your tongue slips into her cunny and her legs laurel your head. She takes your cock into her mouth and addresses it as tongue. Your legs halo her. In so many ways can you now twist and turn, slip and slide in and out of each other until the many languages of your tongues speak. Her cunny hears you; reads the desire of your licking; sucks you as you suck and dip into her sweet delta waters. Your cock rides with great courage into her fanged cave. You are steel and overcome the righteous fears of her deep darkness. Yet, like a flower sinking roots, a tree grappling further and further into the soil, so your cock is transformed by her. She inviting you to the stage: there to speak; speak to her of Her and of Him. Your cock in her mouth, your mouth on her cunny ... the ritual of tuning, of discovering your shared vibration, the ritual of listening with your full body and of speaking with your many tongues: this the Ouroboric Embrace.

The Ouroboros has been imaged as a snake biting its own tail. This a symbol of Eternal Recurrence -- for the snake was considered the animal which never dies: this from the fact that it sheds its skin. In time, animal images were vanquished from religious art, and the Ouroboros was translated into the Circle. In Catholic art, the Circle becomes the halo; and it appears as boundary for the Cross. SilverSex vivifies the Ouroboros as it imagines you and your beloved coupled.

The Ouroboric Embrace is catastrophically powerful. The Warrior will snicker, because for Him it is but two at their masturbatory best. In this light, what stands for the ultimate symbol of Warrior genital sex becomes through SilverSex the ultimate symbol of The Holy Family: He and Her in Ouroboric Embrace: God and Goddess coupled: the male and the female in communion.

Since the Ouroboric Embrace is so potent, it is a ritual to be adopted when you and your beloved have bodywandered deeply, after a timely practice of the Disciplines and of rituals which express your intention and playfulness.

Through the Ouroboric Embrace you and your beloved with Remember what The Lone Male wants you to forget: Her coupled with Him. You will discover death in this time, in this space; you will rise from the playful bed as a new presence.

Through the Ouroboric Embrace the End-Time comes, the Warrior Millennium is remembered and transformed as The Holy Family is imagined.

# Section 4: IMAGINING EARTHFOLK
# Chapter 20: Earthfolk

There is truth in the spiritual maxim that, "What is, is not." There is also truth to its converse, "What is not, is." This latter phrasing reflects SilverSex's peering. The dominant Biblical mythos starts with a Story of how things began: _Genesis_. Part of its core message is that what is, namely, the Earth, is not. That this world is passing, and that the real meaning of life is hidden; something only known by the Biblical Lone Male God. As stated before, the Biblical mythos is still the dominant sacral power, though its expressions are primarily secular. You must respect this awesome sacral power. You must be awe-filled and wary when you listen to what it says is, and is not. Only then can you peer.

SilverSex reads _Genesis_ with respect, and hears it clearly present its God's eye view of the world and the purpose of humans. What SilverSex clearly sees is what is not said in _Genesis_. Again, this is Her; the Mother, Goddess ... and The Holy Family.

SilverSex, remember, is a way of imagining. _Your_ way of imagining. It holds that to imagine you must engage your sacral erotic energy. That to imagine you must couple. SilverSex is the imagining of the coupling of Cock and Cunny -- from which a new Presence emerges, namely, you and your beloved as Earthfolk.

Earthfolk peer at the Biblical mythos and grasp that all its references to heaven, hell, the world, and derivative variants like purgatory and limbo or gehenna, that these define not places in terms of celestial geography, but rather sacral spaces and times which each and every person -- you and your beloved -- create as you couple. However, though these geographical Biblical place names have served in its Tradition to separate people from coupling, SilverSex recognizes the spiritual truth to which they point, namely, that you and your beloved do create heaven and/or hell for one another. SilverSex accepts that the Biblical Lone Male Warrior is a pathetic sight and one who is constantly at war with him/herself. As there is a grain of truth in every sacred tradition, so here is there truth in the Biblical Warrior's obsession with evil. However, SilverSex sees this evil as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of fixating on the presence of evil, SilverSex sees evil as but the foci of good: both are acts, wills, presences, etc. to be thrown into the Cauldron which the beloveds stir.

There have been many revolutions of the imagination in the Biblical tradition. Difficult passages in the Bible perplex many people because they seem at odds with the main story. As such, the Hebrew prophets often expose the insanity of the Biblical Tradition. Among Christians, a St. Francis creates like problems for the mainstream. In other patriarchal traditions, you will find a Gandhi or a Sri Aurobindo. Even Teilhard de Chardin has cracked the iron egg of Tradition a bit. Then, there are contemporary thinkers and leaders: many from the Jungian school, or who follow Joseph Campbell, or new theologians like Matthew Fox and some feminist exegetes... a list can be drawn, whose insights and experiences appear to justify reverence for the Biblical mythos. SilverSex understands that, for some, these may still be useful guides. However, SilverSex affirms that these thinkers, to varying degrees, still make present the Undeclared War and validate Prison's sacral power; they are Lone Male Warriors.

SilverSex is a way of imagining, it is not a movement, not a school, not just a technique. SilverSex's imagining makes present your godding self, and that of The Holy Family. As with the Disciplines and Rituals, you and your beloved should seek out imaginative sources. Martin Luther King's Dream; John Lennon's "Imagine," Starhawk's vision; Mary Daly's wildings; Jane Schaberg's exegesis; Wilhelm Reich's genital embrace; Norman O. Brown's Love's Body; William Irwin Thompson's edgy insights; Georgia O'Keefe and Judy Chicago's art magic; Margo Anand's Tantric Sky Dancing rituals ... again, a list can be drawn. But a "Beware!" on all of these ... for the Lone Male is tricky and He will stoop to the dirtiest of tricks to prevent you from peering and being present with Her.

The "Beware!" here is that you will forget that you are the godding presence. This is what the Warrior wants you to forget. SilverSex is a peasant revolution, a peasant theology, a peasant way of being. Peasant is a word freighted with many negatives in the Warrior's eyes. The peasant, however, is close to the Earth. The peasant lives humbly. While the peasant was often seen by the Warrior to be a brute, a slug, and a near-human, SilverSex affirms that the peasant is a godding presence. While being wary of romanticizing this image, SilverSex's "peasant" describes a way of being present, rather than a social or economic class. As such, a peasant is an Earthfolk.

The "Beware!" is also a warning that you will be tempted by the Warrior not to worship your Cock and Cunny. You will be tempted to forsake your body, this Earth, your sacral power and to focus on the other world or solely upon The Father. SilverSex calls you to intend and attend to your presence as coupled with your beloved. In brief, everything sacral erupts from your coupling: Ouroboric Embracing: your are SilverSex's creation story.

Earthfolk are "Earth" folk in that they imagine with what is (sensate reality) and with what is not (non-sensate reality). Until Earthfolk imagination permeates more and more imaginations, the Warrior's use of the scientific way of knowing will not open practical ways of vivifying the Noosphere and the Divine Milieu. Again, there are scientists, today, whose work leads them into mystical insights akin to SilverSex, here, mainly are the Gaia scientists. SilverSex peers and sees clearly how the Warrior creates His Lone Male Noosphere: how the Stories on film, stage and through books and poems vivify the violence and loneliness of this Noosphere. As you couple with your beloved, you vivify SilverSex's Noosphere and its Holy Family Divine Milieu.

Earthfolk peer and grasp that they live forever through various Times and Spaces. That they are present to all sacral and secular Times and Spaces through Memory. As the scientific principle of the conservation of energy alludes, no presence is ever Obliterated. While entropy properly reveals the face of decline and decay, it is but a coordinated energy of Living and Dying. Earthfolk know that their imagining can create many worlds -- even the Warrior's world -- for the Cauldron is both infinite and infinitesimal.

Earthfolk ritualize through their bodies. For the Warrior the body is also a ritualizing entity, but the Warrior focuses solely upon the slaughter and sacrifice of the body to evoke its redemptive bloodshed. SilverSex ritualizes through the coupling of the Cock and the Cunny. While there are innumerable ways in which SilverSex couples can couple, at this historic moment of the dominance of the Warrior mythos, coupling must be grounded in a genital sexual embrace: the Ouroboric Embrace. The Warrior slaughters on many planes: physical, mental, spiritual, economic, etc., but only Undeclared War -- murder of the Innocents -- vivifies and vitalizes the mythos. And since War and Prison focus on de-cocking and effecting the presence of patriarchal feminization, SilverSex must intend and attend to the genital in a disciplined and ritualized way to liturgically make presence Her, so that as couple you may imagine The Holy Family and give birth to Earthfolk.

The Millennium chronologically marks the End-Time of the Biblical Lone Male Warrior mythos. But it will not End simply by the mechanistic tick and tock of the finely machined clock. No, it will End as you couple. So, the following Invitation erupted from SilverSex imagining. Listen to it carefully, because it is not simply an invitation to a specific Time and Space -- though it is that. Rather, it is a call, an invitation for you to Ouroborically couple with your beloved at the moment when the Warrior is imagining His End-Time; when He Remembers His _Genesis_ Obliteration of Her; when He Returns to re-create His New Heaven and New Earth ... at this moment, to Re-member what the Warrior has forgotten -- and so the symbolism of the Anasazi: Ancient Ones, now forgotten -- to remember Her, Mother, Goddess ... remember as you couple and become Her, and as Her couple with Him: becoming Parents, and as Parents remembering that you are children in The Holy Family ... as you couple, so you are present as Earthfolk.

# A millennial invitation

The millennium is an illusion. A trick of time. That is why it is so critical a sacral marking. It is a time, a spot you will stand upon, which is beyond your sight and touch. It speaks of the aeonic, it sounds with the drumbeat of history, and it is all just too non-sensical for any but the mad and the dead to reverence.

So the invitation comes. Transmitted through the stones. In between heartbeats strides the understanding.

It is the now for a new story.

A story which is the song and dance of a new godding.

And I fear to bear this invitation.

For a new story is always a seed sucking the dung of an old. Babe at leathery dugs.

And what is not to be heard again? Never to be spoken? The rhythm laid down in forgetfulness?

With joy and anticipation, I say that it is Fear.

Most murderous and blood-sipping Fear.

The myth of fear. The dance of the warrior. The heartbeat gone tympanic in marauding death.

It's story is simple: Kill.

No need for the exclamatory. No, it is a bedtime story.

Simply told for the ending millennium. From parent to child, child to parent,

children among children, and young to the old. All in unisonance pray, "Kill."

Let me tell this story. Warrior that I am. Child of warrior. Parent of warrior children. I, a godding murderer.

First, there is the Enemy. And it is God, the godding force, the forceful presence.

And it is He. So the story begins. And it will end with only He. For it begins with a murder.

Of Her.

For God is the creator. The creation is not Him. Not His flesh. But other. Distant. So, He creates from out of nothing.

This nothing is both beginning and end of the story. But at this beginning it is not sacral. It is somehow not there by being no-thing. Darkness without Light. So, He begins.

Creation then is the foreign land. To be conquered. The Enemy of He, the God. So, He is its Enemy.

This creation is not a birthing. It is a doing; a conquering.

She, already conquered, bleeds not upon this ground.

No, the ground is spat upon and from it the child arises. One from the God. From Him. As from Him, so Lonely. But conqueror. In need of Enemy and enemies.

Then the sacral liturgy commences. The story begins in memory; so comes the millennium.

From Him and him-child comes Her but not Her, rather only her-child. The trick has been done. Fiat!

The Warrior has emerged. Now with fleshly Enemy. Yes, of great conundrum and mystery, perplexity, for she is from Him and him, so how can she be Enemy? But this is the story. It must be told, again.

It is exactly she who is the liturgical moment. The crisis. The trembling first whisper of Fear. "She!"

Her body is the sacral moment of transcendence. The gasping moment of awe when her presence reveals all that He and he shall ever be; ever want to be.

For she is Enemy and enemy. Forever, the ritual moment of murder. To slay her, Kill Her, forever and forever is the poem of eternal recurrence. She as acceptable sacrifice. She, murdered, as redemptive act.

She and she is only known by her absence. For this millennium, we know no other. Have heard no other. Prayed and accepted no other.

From Adam's rib. At the edge of Abraham's knife. Moses striking the rock. Jesus sliced open upon the cross. The Pope infallibly sacerdotalizing the penis. All metaphors. All the same story, recalled and repeated. All chants and sermons in the Warrior ritual.

_Kill_.

He gives birth. Adam had no belly-button!

Isaac is Her child. Sarah is the ram in the thicket.

Moses struck her with his rod -- stiff spirit \-- and only got water, not blood.

Jesus could not die. Only live forever. Resurrected. Marauding, fearful of time. Bloody, not menstrual.

And The Pope. He in the Eternal City. God, Him ever present. Clarifying all the ambiguity. Making ready the way of the Lord. His Return. The millennial descent. Gonads hanging low and heavy. Warrior ecstasy!

The ritual more daily. Called profane. Yet, oh yet, so sacral. Work. Once dance. Once fire of transformation. Once the potter at the wheel.

Work. Now, Work Is Freedom. Only prison time. Locked and chained, to labor by the sweat of the brow. No bread; only stones.

And so they call Her dirt. And they violate her. Mining her mysteries. Seeking Her genetic power by re-working Her into machine. And machine into money; not without humor called "filthy lucre." It is dirt they trade for work; pretending She is not Earth.

It is done everyday. We live this way. Thrive. Re-tell the story. Without blood and gore. 8 to 5. Do your own time. Take care of Numero Uno. Ain't it a bitch?!

Bitch. So the story forgets itself, and She lives. In the moment of blackout. Stupor. The pangs of hunger to loose Her fat. Yes. We all want to become rib again. Just rib. Skeletons. This is the Warrior's Quest.

Bitch. Life's a bitch. Kill the bitch.

War is hell. War is Peace.

Peace is War. Shiver a little. Maybe cold.

Have often have we heard this story?

Seen this ritual enacted?

Plays. Songs. Dances. And Television.

Television. Far Sight. Cool, ain't it!

Everyday. Stop reading. Flick on the Tube. The story's there.

TV is the daily invitation. How dare my invitation ride such a decrepit vehicle as words? Ha! Lost in the noise of the thunder-clap stadium. Cheers rising to shriek.

_Kill_.

It doesn't have to be so.

But not to be so means listening to the invitation within you, calling.

For you are from Her. We all know that. Know in that eerie way. Know in the terror of the moment of absence that we did not create ourselves. And certainly He and he did not create us, alone. No. The sacral is not masturbatory. We know. We know. We know. But then ...

You'll ask. There is no other way that we have learned to listen but to ask and try to dismiss by laughing at the frailty of the individual. Belittling, shaming and sarcastic cynicism are the Warrior's most fearsome tools.

You want to know about me. It is the mistake of looking at the vessel and not sipping the common thirst; of saying, "That's good!" but only having the bowl to look at.

But, I will speak.

Warrior. Killer. On a scale immeasurable. Truly, from my diapers, I slew Her.

Warrior that I am, I excelled in non-violence. And so was I Master of Ceremonies.

In the spaces which permitted the story to thrive, that's where I have worked.

So fearsome am I that I am convict. Both felon of soul and felon of cage.

Ha! I despise your petty wisdom. I hate you with a hatred so deadly that you have no measure to measure it with.

Behind the altar. Inside the cage. Dutiful to the story. Marauding. Lying to her. Fucking her. Raping the land. Hands dipped in waters of thirsts so dry that no cunt could ever bleed.

Ask me and I will repent! Metanoia.

I, resurrected and so falsely birthed. But, so you asked, and so I tell you: I recite the story with my every breath!

Satisfied?

Now, you.

You are the invitation. That is the invitation I carry.

She is you. Within and Around and Between. Playful.

If you hear Her, the first duty of the Warrior is to kill himself. Kill the Her of Him inside. Whatever gender you are.

But Warrior death is only resurrection. Having to journey again, "on the other side."

So, why go through that, again?

Her. Just say Her. Think Her. Image Her. Touch yourself and say Her. Gaze into your own eyes and see Her.

This is the first step of Her work.

You are child. And as child of Her. From Her within male flesh and from within female flesh. Of Her from within male seed and from within female egg.

As child you are forged from Fire. Fire as the consuming, devouring Death feasting upon the Alive.

As child you are forever Dead. And forever Alive.

So the stones are your children. As are all the birds and all others which hum and buzz and thump within the river of your breathing.

Work is not a conquering but a creating discovery. There is nothing such as no-thing; just things, and you among them.

As child you cannot see the parent in you. Not until they are absent. Gone. Maybe that is why the Warrior story arose; I don't know.

But once the absence shivers through you, then child you become parent.

And all flows from you and through you. All as oneness. A greater self. A smallest of selves. The rain drop. One unseen, unheard, untasted drop slipping from leaf's edge. This is you. And it is mad to be with you. Madly dancing. As is the thunderclap as basso drum. Shaking the earth; making all tremble. The thunder is you.

So, the dirt is sacral because we are it. So, the Warrior had remembered: Dust to Dust. But now a chant of joy -- because you can die, and be worked upon!

But Her. She is not just Earth and Nature and Water and Rock and Birds and Breaths ....

Her is she, and he cannot be without she or Her. Nor He so be.

The invitation. How I digress! So fearful; killing time. Hmmm.

Yes. The invitation is you.

For you are Her. And as Her, you become child as she.

She is there in the female; always there in the most fantastic way. How did the Warrior come not to hear the groan of creation in the moon season? How did the Warrior come to reverence his cock without the ritual of bloody baptism?

Fantastic. So, it seems to the Warrior. But is it so?

Not fantasy. She is not fantasy. Not masturbatory fantasy. Not just the Whore. Virgin and all that. Yeah, that fantasy is fantastic; unbelievable ... at least if you pause to think about it. No more feel it. Can any Warrior, can any he or He, stand up and really believe that sperm is life _sui generis_? C'mon, loosen up!

You carry that handful of sperm and you know it should go somewhere. You grind the sperm of the earth into bread, consecrate it and swallow it. But no children arise. Are you beginning to hear Her?

For the last time, look around you. The story is there. Warrior Story. Whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu ... aboriginal ... wherever, the story is there. But so is the invitation.

You are not alone! Amen. Can I stop now?

Sarcasm. Yes, I am, also, enthralled by aloneness. From her womb was I raised to be alone and so redeem ... but, no more.

You are not alone. You are parent. And child. Parent and child. You are son and daughter. You are mother and father. You are she and he. You are Her and Him.

You are The Holy Family.

Yes, at once individual and communal.

At once a part and the whole which is greater than the sum of the parts.

Your aloneness is the invitation to your communalness.

Your body is Body.

Your dust is Earth.

Your breath is Wind

Your thirst is Water.

Your blood is Fire.

As Warrior you know all this to be false. Untrue. Not believable. Dismissed as poetry. Drivel. For you are you and only you, now and forever and will cease to exist when you die so grab what you can all the pussy you can and fuck them all and grab the dough and blow your mind and suck the bottle and roll the dice and kick some ass!

Whew!

I hear ya.

But the invitation is to ecstasy.

Yourself as ecstatic.

Yourself in embrace.

Embrace, and so you accept.

Hear. Not that you are accepted.

The invitation is for you to accept.

The fear and joyful trembling is that She is within you, and your accepting will become a birthing.

You are the womb.

And as womb the creative fire and suck of all that is.

The womb is because it accepted. Not that it is acceptable.

Become womb and you will fly in raucous laughter from the inept humor of Kill.

As womb you are Death as well as Birth. Not one without the other. Both.

Yes. Womb. It manifests itself through Embrace.

Embrace which runs the risk of holding the other so that you do not see them. You see behind them. Is this the illusion that spun the Warrior into being? The child's fear that the parent embraced was no longer there because no longer seen?

Embrace runs this risk. Brings this insight. Spins this Warrior story. So the child squeezes so hard, terrified that it is alone, and slays the parent ... and rushes about, squeezing the life out of everyone and everything. Killing. Hating parents as abandoners, ones who do die and disappear, and so claiming no one as parent; running amok; pleading, "Accept me!"

But Embrace is accepting others. Allowing them to enter into your intimate space, your fire. Close to mingle breaths. Close to sweat together. Close to be flint and strike, one to the other.

Embrace is the invitation.

It rises upon your flesh's desire.

Accept this desire. This craving for skin. This maddening impulse to couple with others. For this is the beginning.

And, so, She calls. Calls you. Calls you not to accept her, but to accept yourself. Know yourself as you allow others into you. Be womb.

For females, you are the metaphor of womb.

For males, you are the simile of womb.

Embraced, locked in frenzied desire, craving for skin, this then the beginning: He and Her, she and he.

_Story. Now ritual. Now liturgy_.

The Warrior ritual and liturgy is all about. The Warrior discipline is the killing; the slaying act; the conquering motion.

So, of The Holy Family?

Understand, first and once again, that in the Warrior Story females are not metaphors of anything. They simply do not exist. And males are not similes. They simply are. And here The Pope is without blush: the cock is God. There is only a Son of God. No daughters; no Daughter. There is no womb. Only cunt and pussy and snatch.

Yes, the Discipline you are invited to is sacrilegious. Profane in that it no longer has use for the Discipline of the Warrior. No more scourging of the body. No more denial of the flesh. No more hatred of self. No more marauding killings.

She calls forth yourself as metaphor and simile. In your every motion, your every breath, your every thought, your every embrace.

You eat and you become all that is eaten.

You drink and you become all that thirsts.

You breathe and you become the lungs of all living things.

So, you embrace and you re-work the loneliness into a fuller heart.

Accept. Let the world touch you. Explore you. Thrash you about like potter's clay. Let others bound through the howling darkness and burst into the bacchanalian light of yourself.

This is how She will Return.

Return as you return. Turning in the sense of turning towards; turning inward; turning back to return; turning the wood creating a new sacral stick, sacred pole, totem for the coming millennium.

You and me. He and She. he and she.

_The Holy Family_.

Manifest yourself. Sing this song interred in your genes. Breathe! Yes. Eat and talk, dance and game, sing and groan, laugh and lift pangful cry ....

Where? When?

The millennial evening. After embracing. At points sacral to you: you as metaphor and simile; and so sacral to The Holy Family.

Anasazi village, Canyonlands: one spot. All images and stories from sacral pasts and times. They shall be spoken. Received. Accepted by you and us. You shall hear them all. Feast upon them. Lament with them. Repent as they are repented. Yes, embraced shall all they be, for they are you; and you are like the womb, and you are the womb.

At your table. In your backyard. Cordon off the street and invite the block. Attend the sacral spots of ancient ways and of today. Church. Synagogue. Mosque. Temple. Meditation Room. Green Pasture. Wherever. For wherever is where you are; and The Holy Family shall be.

The invitation is you.

Embrace yourself. And The Holy Family becomes.

1999, when is it 2000?

Now, right now, as you embrace The Warrior and emerge into the story of The Holy Family.

But, matters are more prosaic. For you exist as The Warrior story. Yes. It is so. Embracing this story means taking practical steps. Ritual movements. For The Warrior story is all ritual; that of slaying; of murdering; the killing of time ... and to respect it, so you must ritualize it and through that ritual make present _The Holy Family_.

The invitation then is mundane.

You talk to others. Invite them. Find a place. Surround yourselves with symbols of The Warrior Story. Take turns working that Story. Grasp and share what it has been like to live as if not simile, as if not metaphor. Live only as cock: males and females, both. Living in masturbatory fantasy.

Then, explore the story of simile and metaphor. This takes great courage. For you face Death not as outside you but as you. Death and all its absences and abandonments, these you embrace. Embrace as you embrace he and she, and so Him and Her.

Remember, you are child. Everyone is someone's child. Being a child is not a matter of gender! Everyone is child.

Remember, you are parent. Everyone is someone's parent. Being a parent is not a matter of sexual procreation! Everyone is parent.

Work at embracing.

Daily. As you dream.

Indeed, so the invitation ends here.

Dreaming.

It is all an invitation to dream.

Not live as The Warrior claims: only in the darkless light.

But to embrace dreaming; where we are simile and metaphor.

Come to Anasazi. Come to yourself. Come to The Holy Family.

Ever!

