¡десятизначные леса!: Osiris is the voice of the dead king

in a meditation class recently I was reminded that recollection is literally re- con- lectio, to be gathered & bound back together.

take out the con-, I first thought, & you get religion.

well, maybe. there's a debate about the etymology of the word religion, & it's really, really old. what is not in dispute: our word religion comes from the latin religio, meaning supernatural feeling of constraint, taboo or obligation originating in awe, superstition, piety.

but what is the origin of the latin religio? one school has long held that it comes from the latin religare, meaning 'to bind'. Lucretius in de rerum natura, circa 58 bc, uses the phrase religionum animum nodis exsolvere ('to loose the knots of religio from the mind'), which Augustine & co (following the thought of, originally, Lactantius in 313) read, persuasively, as a pun on religare. what can bind can be knotted. & the idea of binding the daily to the eternal, the human to the divine, conduct to duty, becomes central to the senses the word takes on, until by the 8th century religio can also mean monastery.

on the other side of the debate are Cicero & longtime friend-of-the-blog Aulus Gellius. In de natura deorum, Cicero, twelve years after Lucretius, writes qui... omnia quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent diligenter pertractarent et tamquam relegerent sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo..., 'those... who have devotedly pondered all the duties of honoring the gods, practicing every one, even, so to speak, repeating (relegent) them, are called religious from all this repeating (relegent)...' here, the sense of periodic activity, of rituals consistently re-observed, texts reread, interceding moons, remains prominent.

by the mid-second century, Aulus Gellius writes in attic nights that religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas, usually translated 'a person should be religious, not superstitious'. but religious in the ciceronian sense, performing (always again) some necessary rituals, re-observing rites at the appointed times. anyhow, the root has by this time clearly ramified into two contrasting words.

& if it isn't clear here, my thoughts tonight are to Trayvon Martin. or, more accurately, they're to George Zimmerman. I like all of us have been hearing a lot of clamor about 'justice for Trayvon', & have seen a lot of friends exult in George Zimmerman's arrest. & I was there we all stood around in our hoodies, a commercial for outrage.

the first thing I want to say is, of course, it is a good & an important thing that he has been arrested. this country, with its dripping red sky, its conspiracies of gentleman pederasts, its hills of teeth, & also with all of us sitting hugely & dumbly in its preposterously nice geography, this country, & all of us, need, I think, to see that a white person can no longer kill a black person in the benign, knowing shadow of the law. in an america that permits barbarity on so spectacular a level, we are all a smirking sheriff & the pain is intolerable. of course it is right that he be arrested. George Zimmerman is a murderer. he has acted, as the peculiarly beautiful language of the common law had it, with an abandoned and malignant heart.

but George Zimmerman's arrest does not achieve justice for Trayvon Martin, any more than any number can be thought a fraction of the infinite.

the only morning such a country can know is despair, I think. masks burning. George Zimmerman -- oh I mean fuck that guy & heartily, but. but -- no fury we exact on him can at all reduce the ghastliness of what's happened, wake the opened human being in the street in florida, impossibly remote, unbearably close. we cannot go deep enough into George Zimmerman to recollect Trayvon Martin's plainly speaking voice, piece this ash together into that vanished book. the incredibly terrible thing has already happened.

& there is a difference between being bound together with something & being forced to repeat it.

Robert Kelly wrote:

The abyss
was syntax
& we lost our way.

I am terrified of hatred. it's annoying when people focus on the skittles & the iced tea, because all that is is a way of not saying that George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin because he was black. part of the history of genocide against black people in america has long been the giant blind eye of police to horrific violence that white people committed against black people. arresting George Zimmerman is important because of that.

but it's american people murdering black people that killed Trayvon Martin, & I feel heartsick at how quiet a part this has been of all the honest, caring, horrified things people have been saying. we have this uproarious depravity tearing in us. we need to cross the streams, or something.

or, I don't know what freedom is, but god do I want it.

music to accompany these thoughts, hm. I got so serious, ha ha! got to find some serious music!

well, one song that's really beautiful & funny & sad & has a anti-racist trajectory is bilbo is dead by Andy Tibbs. Bilbo was indeed dead, but, as who Bilbo was was the proudly racist kkk-member mississippi twice-governor once-senator & author of take your choice: separation or mongrelization, the lugubrious tone is a bitter put-on. also the band is so completely great & Andy Tibbs has a voice that responds to everything & it's really beautiful. & plus, death to racism!

& mostly because it is beautiful, also this live recording of the song eden blues by Georges Moustaki. besides its great & gentle loveliness, let's include it for the sake of bringing this: