For the will to power, to purchase and own
With resolute gall, oh he'd have us all swallow
parthenogenetically virgin birth
to cover his own tenacitus girth
or recite "There once were three ladies from Perth..."
Percy [from perthein, “to waste, ravage, sack & destroy”]
incanting his auto-divinity, decapitates leaderless society,
twixt bosom and throat, with a nip & he bellers:
"Girls should be girls cause boys will be fellers!".
When confronting homophonic morphs with dialectically opposed semantic reference, etymoligists routinely pick one and announce t'other "origin unknown"., forgetting, and hence, censoring the natural proclivity that aesthetics, like free association, is slanted toward relativity.
MORE GULA POLYPHONY ARE RED WORDS THAN BLACK,
if the color of blood is red and black is when it's dead:girlish: youthful and vigorous fecundity;
antonym of sluggish masculinity
ghoulish: morbid, hideous and cruel,
ghostly in the baddest sense of smell
gaolish: prison-like for the gaelic criminal,
otherwise the gulag for a spell
gullah: second class citizen confined to poverty;
guelphling in Canada's bigger city
goulash: archaic pastoralist's meat in a cauldron, (now "stew")
or an uncoordinated eclectic mixer set to rapid brew.
gules: the red in a riding hood or a Persian rose
gullet: throat, groove or gulch for swallowing meat or stones
if you are a bad wolf or Roman wearing a Pinocchian nose
gullible: easily tricked or deceived
guilty: red-faced wrongdoing by the gilty,
a verdict most well to achieve
on pealing away a thin, if shiny sheen of secrecy– from The Dictionary
Archaeologists point us to neolithic villages and we are prone to think them permanent settlements (the buildings and gravestones, after all, are), but in all human groups up to citified ones (and even here, it only applies to privileged classes), the village (or neighborhood) is not a container but a node in a shifting or nomadic context. The camp is a portable arrangement but the village is not. This doesn't mean the people don't still come and go on a regular or even irregular basis (see June Helm, Horde, Band & Tribe: Northern Approaches).
Another assumption we make based only on a familiarity with the city, town and state is that the groups themselves are fixed and identifiable in membership rather than demographically shifting, again regularly or irregularly. Regardless of the size of the range or territory, one's home is the range itself rather than a starting point or destination, that is, until one leaves it. This is not to say there is no fond spot one feels most at home, but this is an experiential or aesthetic association and not a measurably tit for tat demographic or a part-to-whole relation.
Then what constitutes the "bearer" of culture and its transmission among the uninstitutionalised or free-moving?
Assuming that most research into neolithic, matrilocal societies is on the right track when it suggests traditions were handed down trans-generationally from grandmothers to mothers and thence to daughters or granddaughters: the females are logically the core of the group or regional ethos or illustrative stories relative to it, particularly when the mother's brother (wherever he now happens to live) is most involved in a young boy (at five or seven)'s training – the avunculate in official jargon. Newly attached (we would call them "married") men then move in and out with the woman's family and the local continuity is intact until something happens which would bring dire militancy and possibly birth the seven-year itch. That is the theory: it should not imply that women were likewise not free to come and go, but they are the cradle and well-spring of the umbilicus or community, at least until they are made to settle down into the permanent relationship – that is always a euphemism for death or infantile disorder.
Among pastoralists the decisions are easier,
as community sheep, goats n' cattle decide the maneuvers.
Like with hunters, navigation's at stake
when the livestock or quarry happen to escape
or the alarm's not in tune, the calendar's off,
and folks fail to wake or get lazy and soft
like in cities where the veggies and meat come to you
all cut and wrapped and packaged with glue.– from Taste, by Mip
Where men are seen as protectors or providers to the core, and are under attack by encroaching states (directly or indirectly), the coming and going is disturbed, traditional movements are no longer free but contingent on the headway of possibly (and at times probably) hostile others. Bands of friendlies coalesce for defensive purposes; the warriors consolidate; patrilocal residence takes precedence the more involved direct actions become, if only as a tactical maneuver, on the 'lam' or run-in with encroaching law – girls have traditionally gone for bad boys in legally based societies, if only for the chance at travel. Historical Amazons were bands of sisters who kicked ass untill Alexander overran the gullied plains of Scythia. Either way, ecology plays second fiddle to necessity only after mal-nourishment becomes a secondary consideration to self-defense against marauding groups or armies infringing on the home front, which itself may have to move. Unfortunately, patrilocal residence leads to uncertainty all around unless or until residence becomes a permanent confinement, that is, one settles down and flies straight, which is the direction everyone else seems to be going nowhere in a righteous fashion.
What has always been the prime patriarchal concern? The removal of uncertainty with the imposition of linear order (a regimented ligament and then again, religion) and accumulation, a legion of orders so everyone is in the proper position (and stays there) and that is the origin of the evil empire, aka today, the modern, taxing state. When we check our etymology, we find virtue always comes in the shape of a rod, the very instrument suitable for measuring or prodding, poking or beating. Like, someone has to pay for all our new conveniences from Rex and working revolutions as if lady fortune or genderless Rhea wasn't here first, from chaos before Ouranus was kicked by Oedipus Alpha and son, the bad boy Zeus and his rapatious zeal on mount olympus or capital hill.
– see also Blood & Farming
No comments:
Post a Comment