O Sun Egg in the Sky Womb

Where is your Spermatozoon?   Where is the Fabulous Being who carries the rare possibility of your fertilization?

To reach you that Spermatozoon, flagellating its tail, must not only fight through others like itself, but unlike those others it must have wings to flap free of mortal spunk. It would have to be exceptional, a never before seen deviation, the seed of a god.  But even then it may never reach you.  Without clouds for cover and protection in the sky, it would likely dry up the closer it flew to you, eventually catch fire, then smoking fall spiraling back to earth.

Down below, sweat and dewdrops trickle down to the nesty brow of a swollen Bulb-Head about to split open.   This Bulb-Head’s dome where a crack opens and begins to reveal its tender parts is aligned with the Sun Egg hanging above in the distant backround and with the Mystic Disc lodged below in the near foreground.  The moon like a holy host swallowed remains whole and still glows within.

Hey, Diddle, Diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow and the little dog have vanished.  A sheep dissolves, its innards pulled through its mouth, out across the Mystic Disc, lunar-surfaced vomit petrified to bone.

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Bound to the landscape are two male figures, primal and general and of similar proportions, perhaps twin brothers.  It’s a mystery how they came to be there.   It could be that deeper underground they are conjoined.  They could be the result of an alchemy experiment gone wrong.

Legend has it that their father, a demigod obsessed with his own image, grandiosely deluded himself into believing he was the Chosen One who could bring about the fertilization of the Sun Egg.  High above the clouds, arriving after the long journey, he envisioned himself being caressed and stimulated by the wavy rays of fiery heat, pulled into an ecstatic swoon, dissolving in sweet oblivion.  He envisioned a goddess beautiful and glorious, arrayed in gold and with the Sun Egg pulsating within her, appearing for him alone, smiling down on him, and waiting for him with open arms and longing in her eyes.

He couldn’t wait to be with her.  Running as fast as he could, off a steep cliff he dove, catching his fall by unfurling and flapping his wings.  After hovering and looking around, he took off on his long flight up to his beloved.  For hours he flew, fluttering through pockets of still air, pushing through turbulence.   Up and up he flew, until his wings began to tire and his limbs became heavy.  But still he pushed on, never losing heart, doing everything he could to conserve energy.  When the wind blew strong and steady, he held open his wings and glided upward in a spiral.   He rode the currents.  He was reinvigorated when he approached a group of fluffy white clouds, because they appeared to promise a place to catch his breath.  But when he entered those clouds he immediately realized that such a promise was an illusion.  Yet still he pushed on, never giving up, huffing and puffing as he flapped his wings, in not unlike the heave-ho rhythm of a sailor pulling a rope to hoist up an anchor.

Then the unexpected happened, so sudden that any shock was quickly absorbed by what was inevitable.  Once he emerged and soared above the last and highest clouds, his wings burst into flames, and he tumbled out of the sky.   He fell end over end, back down through each layer of clouds, leaving a corkscrew plume of smoke behind him.  He whirled and spun with such violence and speed that he lost consciousness.  He died as he fell, and when his burnt corpse finally hit the ground, charred beyond recognition, his guts splashed out of its smoking shell and his nuts split open, scattering seeds all around.  Some of those seeds landed in moist cracks in the earth.  Even of those seeds, most died.  Of those that took root underground, embryos developed into fetuses, strange and hybrid, bound to the earth as they emerged human in form but not quite human in nature in the light of the Sun Egg they instinctively despise.

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From the fallen demigod’s splattered remains, liquified guts flowed rippling with fire, a scorching stew which moved like lava and burned a crater in the earth.  Pores opened and vital fluid was sucked underground not far from the catastrophe, most being diffused and cooled by surrounding dirt and rock while the remainder, still sizzling, oozed down into an enclosure not much larger than a heart, where it was contained, boiling and bubbling as if in a retort.   Remarkably where this vital fluid began to distill was directly below where a couple of the scattered seeds had fallen next to each other and taken root.

From the build-up of intense pressure in the enclosure, new veins were forced into being, branching open in the lungs of the two growing figures, steam and vapor escaping through their nostrils and mouths, followed by smoke.  For some time the figure on the left belched as much smoke into the air as his nearby brother.

But one day the smoke stopped coming for him and he was left exposed and vulnerable.   The Sun Egg whose rays burned his skin and penetrated his flesh seemed about to set his bones on fire.   As his skin loosened around his shoulders and chest, peeling away and revealing earth-blending layers, a sinewy and blood saturated cross-section, he feared at any moment he might collapse from within or catch fire and burn to ash.   He thrashed around, but in vain because his body from the beginning had grown fused with the earth.  When he inhaled deeply and then blew out to generate a protective cover of smoke overhead, he now only wheezed and coughed in sharp, angular bursts.

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Moon white foam then began to bubble from his lips, which as it increased didn’t dribble off his chin, but as if in reverse slow-motion, it came out of his mouth in all directions, spreading with a life of its own over his face.  When it soaked into his skin, absorbed into his bloodstream and reached his brain, it wasn’t long before he started to hallucinate.

Out of the shifting forms and colors that played on the back of his eyelids he saw himself of all things as a fat, warty toad, squatting on a flying saucer which flashed around in the sky and then settled, hovering, over a crowd of lesser toads hopping for cover below.  He saw himself as their undisputed King, the fattest and therefore the grandest, with the most disgusting secretions, with tremendous bags under his eyes which had the irresistible pull of two black holes, and in his belly was a magnificent jewel.

He believed his vocal sac could inflate so large that when air-filled and he held his breath he could leap off the flying saucer, and safely float to the ground, or be carried up by the breezes.  By pursing his lips and narrowing his croak’s vibrations he believed he could penetrate boulders and explode them, that if he so willed he could cause an earthquake, or by a single directed croak he could shatter the bones of an approaching enemy.   On the creative side, by reducing its volume and subtly modulating its tone, bringing it down to an hypnotic drone, his croak he believed helped flowers to open, stimulated the roots of plants and trees, soothed and enhanced the well-being of all kinds of lifeforms, and if fully mastered could even cure diseases.

But the vapors of hallucination were soon exhausted by his brain, and in a sense – the vocal sac popping, the flying saucer evaporating – he fell back to earth like his father.  Pale and sick, tumbling into sobriety without aid and transition, when he collided with reality he threw up, a narrow stream which at first could be mistaken for a darting out toad’s tongue.  But the emission kept coming, hot and gooey, some spurting out of his nostrils and burning away his nose:   It was the vital fluid which had been boiling and bubbling in the enclosure deep below, and though still burning with hidden fire it now forced its way up to fulfill its purpose, distilled and purified.   When it landed on the surface and cooled it not only had the strength and elasticity of silk but also contained properties of a generative nature.  It grew all around, fused with nerves and organically took shape, and thus became the Bulb-Head, which bears a resemblance to the demigod as he was before his downfall, a mocking reminder in retrograde form.

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The son now resides in the mouth of his father whose substance, still throbbing with desire, strives to return him to the demigod he once was, fusing into an entity which one day may sprout new wings, pull free of the earth, so he can attempt again the long flight up to his beloved.  But as yet the large glazed eyes which seem to stare up while also looking inward are the bulbous tips of antennae extended from the crown of the much smaller head within, transmitting data more by feel than by vision.   The large fleshy ears serve also as an extension, amplifying sound by a kind of seashell resonance.

O Shroud of Turin, he doth protest from within that cave, grimly looking out, false messiah crowned by teeth, framed by hanging folds of skin-veil and flesh-curtains.

His brother back to the right may soon experience the same grueling process, fluid already like melted candle wax flowing from his mouth and down his neck.  But for now, in a parody of his damned condition he protrudes from a chimney as from a stage-set volcano, his head cocked back, and since he has no fists to wave, black smoke spews out of his mouth, rising to soil the white clouds and to cover the Sun Egg in the Sky Womb.

Welcome to my Alienated Mind

The Guardian by the altar steps, eyes displaced and in blindness seeming to see, is the hybrid spawn of Deities past, an amalgam outcast of earth, sea, and sky.

In what deceptively appears to be an Aztec warrior headdress, a poisonous stinger may be hidden, or maybe it lurks behind the Guardian’s back, the tail having pushed itself free from underground, coiling up, ready to unravel and strike any who without question tries to pass.  Maybe that’s what the incarnate Whimsy full of mischief and fear who seems about to point is tip-toeing toward, and attempting either to sneak around or grab hold of in a bold effort to yank out the stinger for its collection of rare and strange things.*

The head of the Guardian acts as pivot and transition, upper body attached through it to the lower, the whole entity both parasite and host of itself like Ouroboros, the mouth at the intersection stretching and contorting, held together and blossoming through constriction into a new kind of mouth, as if mocking any ordinary mouth as unfit for expression.   What the eye sees in this region cannot be adequately explained.

Out of a nest of hair which atop the Guardian’s head flickers like flames, a serpent’s body rises like a King Cobra from a basket, but it emerges tail first, a dragon shorn of wings and limbs but whose tail continues to be whipped around with uncanny control and precision.

Above the Guardian’s temples, the brow noble but honestly less so than that of Neptune or Jupiter, horns uncoil which actually are lively and muscular tentacles becoming long and slender at their ends, the thin and sharp tips surprisingly having feeling as fine and keen as nerve endings.  When relaxed they undulate freely like streamers which flutter in the wind; but when willfully directed by the mind of the Guardian from whose head they come, they move in a mesmerizing rhythm around the serpent’s whipping tail, rising upward in a bizarre and ritualistic celebration and waving and whirling around like some primitive dancer in a trance doing crazy arabesques to the accompaniment of music never before heard.

Passing down through the mouth and seemingly emitted from it, the lower body of the Guardian resembles human form.  The pelvis and legs, hidden from view, are planted firmly like the trunk of a tree.  Since the stream winding into the distance has run dry but some water has been absorbed, on the torso fungus grows in places, little abnormal growths, while the skin in other places is worn quite through, revealing a tight network of veins and arteries which are more like the intricate roots of certain plants and herbs with magical properties but which in large doses are sickening and even fatal.

The Guardian holds and plays the word “ALIENATED” like an accordion, which when pushed closed seems like a breath drawn inward, and when pulled open arches like a bridge, an exhalation, the overall effect taunting and seductive.

In the foreground at the top of the altar steps, having just been buzzing all around, impudent and irritating, a Fly lands on the side of the altar itself, the slightly curved and elevated, sky-facing word “MIND”, while along the length of the altar’s curved top step, traveling from left to right, a Snail with horns extended, a kind of alien creature in its own right leaving behind a slimy mucous trail, creeps toward the edge barely faster than the hands on a clock face.

     *A little backround story and description of the incarnate Whimsy tiptoeing in from the right side, sneaking around behind the Guardian:    As an adult having evolved human features it bears some resemblance to “The Ghost of a Flea” which William Blake depicted in his marvelous miniature painting.  In its first incarnation this Whimsy lived as a flea within the lines of the big spiral on the chest and belly of King Ubu.  Nocturnal in habit, it spent much of its youth exploring the hills and valleys of King Ubu’s body, the funky nooks and crannies, often sliding down into the crack of his rump for fun; and as the sun rose it climbed back up to spend its days sleeping under a warm and sweaty roll of King Ubu’s fat or in the greasy depth of his bellybutton.  One evening, so the tall tale goes, while itching and scratching himself and unable to find relief, King Ubu discovered down in the wild tangle of his pubic hair the young Whimsy lying on its back with one leg crossed over the other like some kind of poet looking up and contemplating the stars.  This droll display of mimicry so infuriated King Ubu that he yanked out a clump of his own hair to get at the young Whimsy, which he then pinched up by its pollen-ball producing kilt and flicked like a booger into the world.

Since that time the Whimsy has survived in curious ways.  It has learned to disguise itself in adaptation to the absurdity of existence on the shadowy margins.   Tusks, or misplaced fangs, now extend out of its shoulders and curve up toward its head, the tips arching and pointing forward.  In appearance now a gnomish nosferatu, its digits have grown long and slender with sharp little fingernails; and its face like a sarcastic joke in search of a punchline peers and sneers out from between parted layers of what appears to be a hollowed out onion worn like a cross between a bonnet and an old-fashioned aviator hat.  Pointing upward from the top of that head-covering, stem-like and comprised of organic filaments with a string coiling around them, twisting and tightening them to a point, is some kind of horn, which provides direction and guidance to the Whimsy like some kind of pataphysical compass needle or divining rod.

Furious Divine Spits Fire Through the Needle Eye

Carried in the heart of the artist is a golden thread, vital and alive, which moves through one work after another, coiling and twisting like a snake, connecting spaces and bridging gaps in the weaving of an unseen but intuitively perceived tapestry.  The golden thread seems at times to break off and be lost, but it’s there, often deep within and on the nether side of consciousness, burrowing and seeking its next looping and connecting link, which once found may swell into a leviathan swimming in the deep or flare up into a dragon flying in the air before narrowing back down to the thinness of a hair.