I turn up in times of decline
by Paul Gregoire
At its base there is nothing to the whole treasure chest of life. In the East the knowledge of this brings liberation; in the West it breeds disenchantment. I am an agent of Shiva; it’s the left handed way. Shiva, Lord of Destruction, brings relief to the world of Maya, illusion, through the dissolution of this world of appearance.
Benares is the city of Shiva; it is the city of Death. The ancient and decrepit city lies on the banks of the Ganga, at a point where the river turns back towards its source and flows in that direction. The Mother Ganga is the most sacred of waterways. Bathing within cleanses the decay from one?s soul that comes from residing within the samsaric, cyclic, existence.
The air is thick with mystery over the city of Benares. Few places in the world evoke such an awareness of the fleetingness of existence. The river is lined with bathing ghats where practitioners arise in the morning to take their ablutions. Looming over the ghats are the many brown and greying buildings of old as well as a myriad of temples. Monkeys run across the roofs of these edifices, vultures glide in the sky overhead and in the waters if you spy correctly you can catch the back of the endangered dolphins coming up for air as they swim the depths of the putrid Mother Ganga.
At Dasawamedh ghat, where Lord Brahma sacrificed ten horses, one can see in the mid-afternoon sun a throng of people in the market place; many men offer a massage, your future read or the sweet flavours of hashish. I have sat on top the hospice on Manikarnika ghat while below the bodies burn upon funeral pyres. Here as you are engulfed by the thick sandalwood smokes of death the beauty of life, its ephemeral nature, is truly prevalent.
In the evening as the sun drops over Benares a sadhu sits upon a platform above the Mother River in his saffron robes. His gaze takes in the whole of existence; his gaze is that of Shiva. Shiva walks with erect phallus. His hair long, matted, unkempt. His body smeared with the ashes of the dead and draped in animal skins. He is the God of outcastes, the sick and forlorn.
Shiva, in the form of Natraj, dances in the universe at the beginning of time. At each moment his motion brings about the destruction and the moulding of all that is. Four arms waving, ever present, beyond the forms of the world of Maya. Majestic, his hips gyrate in time to the eternal rhythm.
Shiva rides upon his bull Nandi, the sickle moon sits in his dreaded hair, skin of shining blue, a naga draped across his thick hardened body. He is followed by his entourage of Ganas: fickle crew of horned spirits. A procession dances through the streets to the sounds of drumming and horns. Shiva is to be wedded to his consort Parvati.
Parvati, the Lady of the Mountains, is the most beautiful goddess of the heavens. When anger overcomes Parvati, she takes on her wrathful form, Kali. He skin is the colour of midnight; around her neck hangs the heads of men.
Tongue protruding, she dances on an unconscious Shiva; her man beaten down. Kali rips through the fabric of time: annihilating all that comes before. Her bleeding vulva draws you in; a thick scent emerges. She is a hard woman to please. All life flows from the sacred hole of Kali’s cunt. I wants to immerse myself there, my tongue thrust into her crevice.
The Mother Ganga flows from Shivas matted hair. I worship Shiva. He is a heavy master to behold but there?s never a dull moment. In the West I work for Dionysus, God of Ecstasy, Lord of Wine. When I fuck it is with his member I do so.
Dionysus reclines in the fields of Arcadia with a jug of thick red wine in his hand. He throws back his head, the wine flows down his gullet like a sweet nectar jism. His hair is long and curled flacks of brown. His face is olive tinged. The most chiselled form eternity has known. A long flowing robe hangs round his body; it falls down to the side at his hips revealing his erect cock. His mind is misty from the wine but sharp as a bull’s horn it still shall be. In the distance the soft and sultry sounds of Pan blowing on his pipe flow through. All across the naked forest nymphs sway in rabid search of the Lord of the Decadent Night.
The Lord of Excess hangs with the satyrs, the half men-half goats. Together they dance with the nymphs in the forest, cloven hooves hitting the ground causing dust to cloud in the air. They are hot, they are sweating to the beat, horns erect upon their heads. They are sneering at the passerby. They laugh, dance, turn; looking for a hole to stick it in.
Growling out a nymph, coming up and coughing up a fur ball. The night is old and thick. The full moon hangs overhead, heavy like a mountainous bosom about to drop down but hovering just the same. The sticky, protruding forest is alight and they are coming; they are wandering. Darkness of the night, that melts it all together: this is Dionysus ever present.
They are coming the Maenads.
Maddened, frenzied women running through the forest in praise of their Lord. Drunken upon the fruits of the vine; they seek to give homage to the Night. Hair wild, unkempt; nails razor sharp. They are there to let blood. They have a bull. They hold the thrashing bull upon ropes. The bull is gnashing, digging at the earth with its hooves. Frothing, frothing, frothing at the mouth is the bull, are the women.
Their eyes are glazed over, they are eager, they are desirous, wanton. They draw near, closer, closer to the bull. The beast is throwing back its head in the air, grunting, trying for escape. Thick, wet, snorting at the nose. The women draw closer to the bull. Dancing, gyrating closer. They draw into the bull. They are salivating, teeth bared like nastiest razors, eyes wide, wide open with jaded expression. The palms of their hands upon the beating, hot, molten skin of the beast.
The Maenads nails are long, sharp. They dig their nails into the skin of the bull, ripping at the flesh. The women are not individuals, they mould into one entity. Egos have draped into the night. The darkness is Dionysus joining them all together in sacred collusion. Identities are fried. They are tearing at the flesh of the bull. It shouts out screaming with pain. The cry echoes through the valley. The laughter of Dionysus can be heard. The bull is falling to the ground in eternal suffering. The women tear out pieces of flesh bringing the bloodied, pumping chunks nto their mouths, devouring the flesh.
Another night, in a future time, another moment joined to this ancestral time by the blinking of the Eye of the Universe. We find women in a nightclub dancing beneath the flashing lights, bashing to the time of the electronic drums. They are overcome by the caps of MDMA they have consumed.
The drug comes on in waves overtaking their bodies. They are moving in time; they are lost to themselves. They no longer exist apart: one molten body of thick flesh upon the dance floor, moving to the one motion of the eternal, struggling, suffering existence. Atop the hill, above the valley where the Maenads frolic, three Buddhas sit in yogic positions. Their eyes are slits of quiet contemplation.
They are at one with all. The pain of the bull is their pain. The frenzy of the woman is within them. A serene smile sits upon the face of their forms; the festival revolts below.
The women are tearing at the flesh. Gnawing the meat, blood trickles down their chins. They laugh, howl, cry. They are no longer bound by the chains of mundane Self. The great sacrifice of Lord Dionysus takes place; the bull drops and lies still. The women feed and become drunk on the blood. They drop to the ground in climatic motion. A mammoth molten clitoris rises up above all; a slight breeze brushes against.
Nietzsche recounts the story of the meeting of King Midas and Silenus. Silenus is the oldest and wisest of the satyrs. His belly is fat with the hedonistic pleasures of an unbearable existence. He is the companion of Dionysus. The two of them used to mainline smack in the backroom together.
King Midas did hunt down the wild Silenus for sometime. His veins ran thick with the regal blood of some alien bloodlines that still run screaming Earth. Blue blood to be precise. After the capture of Silenus, Midas had him summoned to the Court. The Beast trotted in amongst the people of the court; his stench left them aghast.
The dizzy King asked the satyr just what was best for men. Silenus stood silent, staring at the King until a vulgar roar of laughter began to erupt at his bloated belly. Shaking then pulsating up and out of his vicious mouth. “Fools,” said he, the lot of you, wretched and blinded fools. What is best for you humans is beyond your comprehension and better for you not to know. Since asked though, I will tell. What is best for your race of beings was never to have been born at all, not to be, to be nothing. Since that fault has occurred, he sniggered,”what is second best for you is to die soon”
Both my taskmasters are born of the same make. Shiva and Dionysus are same, same but different. They are both of the bull; erect phallus afloat. They are both of the moon: frenzied insanity. They are both of the feminine and indeed at their inception, they are both the left hand man of the Mother. The Goddess whose haze is once more on the horizon, at the beginning, at the end of time. Scorching labias abound. And what of my Lords in this Gregorian Twenty First Century?
Shiva’s blue form still writhes in ecstatic motion over the East. It is the Kali Yuga, the Age of Conflict: the last age of the Hindu calendar. It’s drawing near at every moment. Shiva still hangs placid over the last moment of a time that will be lived yet again and yet again.
In the West, the Christian plague took over. Dionysus, Pan and all that they represent were cast under the banner of Evil, centuries ago. The Devil replaced what was. Later, the Christian God died and all stood by as they watched the Decline of the West; and still it goes on?