Take this cup away from me: blood sacrifice

Burnt offering

She came slippery and she came dark. She came along a stone place hollow with echoes. Smells of animals lurked, and moaning. She came dragging. A handful of hair.

This was the sacrifice, the Blood Sacrifice. It was time. Time to put it all down, to skin the dog and hold up its flesh. She was not good at hunting but knew when it was time to dismember prey.

The temple was dark and full of moisture and praying, moans. It was a dark and terrible God they appeased. Every day, every week the sacrifices. He was merciless. He had no name, because they were afraid to name Him. They were afraid to look Him in the eye.

If you come face-to-face with God, if you see God in person, stand before God, you will die. This was why Moses went around with a veil, for an ungodly light streamed from his face and blinded everyone as if they were looking directly at an eclipse.

Eclipse. Sacrifice was an eclipse, was it not? A raising of talent. A skinning, a hairing. A giving up. A lifting. The smell of blood was everywhere, and as she raised the head of the bull the dark thick blood slimed down the drainway into a hole in the floor.

The blood had to be captured in a certain way. It reminded her of menstruation a little, but that would be her own blood, and forbidden. Deeply forbidden. With blood everywhere, why couldn’t you touch a woman? But this is about talent, is it not? Burnt offerings, sacrifice?

Singed hair, gutted dreams?

Giving it all up for the sake of peace?

Take it out of me, take it out of me, takeitoutofmetakeitoutofmetakeitoutofmeGOD. Just remove it. Whatever desire I had to please Thee with my inborn gift, rip it out. You made a mistake, see? God DOES make mistakes, look at that two-headed calf over there. You call that perfection? Yes, sometimes you DO make mistakes, such as instilling in me the dream. The dream of fulfillment such as I saw around me. As if that were a sin, too.

Lift high the head of the calf, slit his throat, catch the blood in the chalice, lift it high. No, don’t drink it, that would be too theatrical. And you’re guessing at this, aren’t you? This isn’t any Charlton Heston movie. This is sacrifice. Burnt offering.

Given up, given up for You! For You, God, you big son-of-a-gun, my Destroyer. You shatterer of dreams. You who giveth with one hand and taketh with the other big, suffocating hand.

Here. Here have it back. Right now rightnowrightnow. Have my dream.

 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Jesus, that's funny!

This is the way my mind works, when it works at all.

I started watching a six-hour documentary about Monty Python. SIX hours. I couldn't believe I was sitting through it all, and at several points was going to ditch it for Dateline or Hoarders or something esoteric like that.

These guys just look so bloody old now, and one of them is dead. John Cleese is unrecognizable, as if he belongs in a home. Eric Idle looks like George Harrison if George Harrison had lived to be 100, Michael Palin and Terry Jones still look alike, ha ha ha. They gabbed and they gabbed like tiresome old men, which they are. There were a few welcome clips, but mostly it was people blathering on and on and on about what their favorite "bit" was. Half of them I didn't even know, but I guess their opinion mattered, or they were cool or something.

They all liked stuff like the parrot sketch, Lumberjack Song, fish slapping dance and Upper Class Twit of the Year. The ones everybody likes. Why was this show even made? Why wasn't it edited down to a nice pithy hour and a half?

I liked the one about the fatal joke, but it wasn't just a sketch, it was a whole episode that brought in World War II (the group was obsessed with World War II) and Hitler with funny subtitles:

Hitler: I cut my dog's nose off.

Crowd: How does he smell?

Hitler: Terrible!

Mostly the six-hour endurance test made me realize how much time had passed, and how uneven the several Python movies were. There were some really disgusting passages I'd forgotten about, such as the Holy Grail scene where Sir Whatsisname got his arms and legs chopped off and was hopping around gushing blood. Blecccch. The Meaning of Life was the worst, though, with someone's liver being carved out, and then that scene with the fat man exploding, just about the worst thing I've ever seen.

But I did like Life of Brian. I thought Life of Brian was profound, and at times bordered on the reverent. I don't think they were dissing Jesus so much as dissing all the pompous assholes who pretend to know what he was about (if he existed at all: might he have been just the distillation of all our most aching desires?).

That got me going on a post I did on a former blog, the blog where I was chased out of town. It was all about drawings and paintings depicting the Laughing Jesus. There are dozens of them, seemingly, all along the same lines, as if the artists traced them.

Then I started wondering about St. Margaret and the Dragon. When I looked up St. Margaret, there were about 14 of them, so I got discouraged and quit.

Eric Idle still goes around milking Python with a show called Spamalot, though the rest of them don't seem to mind (maybe he bought them out). He must be a fucking millionaire by now, so this must be an attempt to recapture his glory days.

I think Graham Chapman had the right idea.