twentieth night

four more nights until the feast of the epiphany.

epiphany is often called theophany, "vision of god." a divine appearance of a god to a mortal. the burning bush. the pillar of cloud and fire by night.  

one tale of theophany concerns semele, a priestess of zeus, who slaughtered bulls for him. one day, zeus looked and saw her swimming in the river to clean the blood from her body and fell in love with her. he appeared to her as an eagle and impregnated her. the ever-jealous hera convinced semele that it might not have been zeus, though, so semele requested a boon from him. zeus stood on the river styx and declared that he would give anything to her - so she requested to see his true form. zeus was forced to reveal himself and the thunder and lightning of his body incinerated her when she looked. 

and we celebrate the appearance of god. the vision of god. something so incomprehensible that if we were to see its true appearance, we would burn away.

during the time of dying cats, when my brother was still my brother, i saw the golem when it was small. it was growing bigger and it managed to open a small tear to babel. it was too small to go through, but i could still see it: the true form of the golem, the vision of god.

i did not burn away. i saw it and did not burn. perhaps i did not see all of it, but it was enough for me to now how small i was. but i did not burn. i hope that means something.

nine.

seventeenth night

today is the sixth night of christmas. and i am still running. i have not stopped and he has not stopped chasing. in any case, by the twelfth night, it will be over.

there is a fairy tale from greece about the kallikantzaros. the kallikantzaros is a mean, mischievous race of creatures, like goblins or trolls. the difference is that the kallikantzaros is dedicated to sawing down the world tree, the tree that holds up all of existence. all of the kallikantzaros saw at the bottom of the tree, underground, away from all light, until december 25, christmas day. on christmas day, it is said that when the kallikantzaros finally start to saw the final part of the world tree, they realize that they can go to the surface now. something about christmas means that they can come up to the surface and play their tricks on mortals. they live on the surface for twelve nights - until the night of the feast of epiphany, when they are forced to go underground again and find that the world tree has healed itself in their absence. and so they go back to sawing, again and again and again, year after year after year, never tearing the world down from its anchor. 

there is a pattern. the golem has a pattern. it appears as a small toy. perhaps a doll or a globe or even a compass. but it is none of those things. it is a golem. and it will grow bigger. it absorbs other things into it. metal. meat. bone. it grows and grows until it is bigger than we are. and then it rips the sky apart and travels back to babel. 

perhaps it is adding to itself, trying to saw down the world tree, but it can't. it can't grow forever. it always returns to its tower, its babel. 

why hasn't he returned?

six.

tenth night

he follows me. he has the golem inside. he should be dead. he is dead. he should have gone back to babel. decomposed into the tower. and yet he follows me.

once upon a time, there was a young man who didn't know what fear was. his mother recommended he stay at a local graveyard, so he did. there, a hand grabbed him, but he merely kicked it away. he went to the gallows, where seven men swung in the wind. he went to a haunted house, but he told all the voices there to be quiet. he went to the place where death held sway and was not afraid. he did not know fear. 

but then a sickness came upon the city where he lived and around him the bodies piled higher. and one day, his mother caught the sickness and she perished and he was left with no one. and as he coughed and waited for death to take him into the cold night, he realized that fear was not a ghostly hand or scratchy voices in darkened corridors. fear was not dead men or black cats or graveyards in moonlight. 

fear was waiting. and as he sat there and slowly died, he felt fear for the first and last time.

once more on the run. go go go.