Cthonic creation contortions

Quite a few years ago when the kids were still at an age when reading bed-time stories was perfectly acceptable, we embarked on family readings where we all assembled in the living room and a chapter was read nightly from some book of classical literature. We worked our way through Swiss Family Robinson, Lost in the Barrens, Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Frankenstein in this way. The Robert Louis Stevenson books were great, as was the Farley Mowat. These were real adventure stories that we could all enjoy. The Johann David Wyss just seemed to underline how far we have come in our appreciation for ecology and species preservation. I simply hated the way the father and sons �ransacked� the nature of the island upon which they were shipwrecked. But the book that made the most impression on me was, of course, Mary Shelley�s.

Melomane is going to be reading and studying this book in her lit class, and confessed that she thought she would be the only one who felt sorry for the monster. For you who don�t know melomane, she is a 16-year-old cancer patient who has a very complicated family situation which requires that her mother move households sporadically to keep her out of the clutches of her father, who would like to kidnap her and take her to Alaska where she would die in two weeks. At least, that is what melomane�s mother is afraid of. As soon as melomane relocates to a new city, she finds employment in a coffee shop as a waitress and volunteers at a shelter. One of her recent entries dealt with her frustration at the way in which some children are neglected by their alcoholic and/or drug-addicted parents, and her conclusion that such people should not be allowed to a) have children in the first place, or b) keep said children.

Mary Shelley was obviously trying to make the same point: Victor Frankenstein created life and was morally obligated to act as a responsible �parent� should, no matter how repulsive he found his creation. The creature even called him �Father�, and he turned away in disgust. I do not think that melomane need worry that she will be the only one in the class who pities the monster. This is exactly what Shelley was trying to get us to do. We have to ask ourselves: Would the real monster please stand up?

I have decided on my long seminar topic for my goddess class. While researching Medusa, I realize that her snake and bird-like aspects are very important, connecting her to the whole earth/sky, traveller-between-realms persona, and that these characteristics are very important in the whole goddess study. So my topic is exactly that: the importance of snakes and wings to goddess religions. We�re looking at slides of upper-Paleolithic cave finds, including �Venus� figurines and other �fetish� items. The vulva was really big (not meant literally) in cave art, and disks have been found with stylized vulvas carved in them. I look at these paintings and think that they are no different from the giant penis and testicles one sometimes sees spraypainted on the sides of buildings, and I wonder if this was just not another form of pornographic grafitti. Apparently these troglodytic people were no different from us, so why should they think differently about sex than we do? There must have been sexual taboos in their society, as there are in ours, and teenagers would still paint caricatures of sexual organs on cave walls.

Actually, this brings me around to one of my favourite theories about sex. I believe that the more clothing one is required to wear because of climate or other environmental factors, the more of the body that is hidden, the more sex will be �dirty�. In the 18th century when a man would faint dead away at an accidentally revealed ankle, women were dressed so completely from their necks down that an unmarried (or otherwise inexperienced man) would have no concept whatsoever of female anatomy. In tropical countries where people go with next to nothing on at all, I�m sure that Dave Barry�s �breast-induced brain freeze� is not an issue. In the upper-Paleolithic, during the ice age, people necessarily wore skins and other fabrics to keep warm. So the reproductive organs would have been hidden, and thus a mystery, or at least a source of titillation. I�m going to suggest this in my next class. I don�t know how welcome it will be.

And speaking of bodies, belly dancing started up again last night. I drove Patsy into Sherbrooke to the studio there, and we had a great time. Lise is a much better teacher than Lisanne (try not to get confused here). When she demonstrates something, it is absolutely perfect. Wow! I found that there were a few things I didn�t have down from last session because Lisanne simply couldn�t explain them well enough. Lise is much better in that department. There is one girl from my Bushop�s class in this one, also Patricia. We had great fun. The bodies are all shapes and sizes. Some are young women, maybe even teenagers, with thin waists and flat stomachs, others are middleaged, like me, with flabby abs, and there are a couple who are downright overweight. Patsy and I were discussing how belly dancing has made her more accepting of her body in general, and I said that I thought it was because it was all about sex, really. If you could do pelvic rotations that were frankly rather arousing in front of a mirror in a roomful of other women, you could accept your body in a whole new way. She agreed with me. And on that note I will go.

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