Polytheist Ramblings: Nisaba

Polytheist Ramblings: Nisaba

I was going to title this “Finding Sanctuary”, but I think this fits with my little series better.

I talk a lot about other gods, because their influences are many-layered. It’s easy to talk about a goddess of the mountains when you live there, or a god of the furious sun when you’re melting. But how to talk about a goddess you’re sworn to? There’s something about the relationship that just won’t out with words, which is ironic considering.

My Lady Nisaba colored like the stars, whose body is the flecked barley, She who holds the Book of Names and who had a hand in the creation of her scribes, the goddess I revere and adore, is... as I said, words fail. Except for the part where she literally IS the written word. And then I’m laughing at my laptop screen again.

But my mind was wandering the other day, and I started mentally constructing a hypothetical temple. Something small and unobtrusive, but interesting. Maybe someplace busy, like New York, with the old back-alley surprise shops and classy old courtyards surrounded by sprouting skyscrapers. I’m rather attached to America, but I could see something similar in London. Either way, some sort of divot in the walls of glass and steel, a high-walled courtyard with a heavy door. But the door is left open, and the walls are soft with vines. It’s guarded by twin stone lions. The same ones you sometimes see in the yards of people trying too hard to look regal, maybe. But it’s an old practice. Probably inspired by the New York Library. Possibly a reflection of the statues that guarded kings and old polytheist temples. Either way, there would be lions, and maybe a carving of the Anzu Bird over the lintel.

In this hypothetical little sacellum, no if ands or buts about it, there would be a public bookcase or two. I’ve seen them around town, and they’re absolutely brilliant. The paving stones would be covered in all sorts of book quotes in as many languages as I could convince a mason to try, including Braille. At the back there would have to be a statue, and some of my thinking is probably inspired by when I wandered Granada and would stumble on an aljibe with a mosaic of the Virgin over it. In my head this looks a little bit close to the Madonna, and I’m not sure what I think of that. But there’d be a little plaque on the wall explaining who she is, and a basket or two for whatever a person might want to offer. I like the idea of a prayer box, I’ve seen those before, where you write on a slip of paper and it stays in the box as a secret. Or the papers are burned. Either way, both fit with the goddess of the written word and the old ways of burning offerings to lift your prayers skyward.

I have a lot of ideas, and no real means or resources to focus on them, but ideas are nice. I was thinking about this temple idea, and I wondered to myself what her sacred animal would be. There’s no record of one. Lions and bulls and dragons are all staple parts of the old hymns, but... I wanted to see if anything had developed over the years. In America we’ve developed this idea of giving teachers an apple, which is why I offer them to her. We associate twin lions with libraries because of the New York Library. Maybe there was more, hiding away with the book curses and scriptoriums.

I typed “Ten Most Iconic Libraries” into Google.

A good percentage of them are related to monasteries, which makes sense. Some of them had royal sponsorship at one point or another. There’s nods to their local history, the obvious relish of architects given room to play, some modernized and some stately old monuments. But there was one little detail that kept popping up in the descriptions: quite a few of the oldest libraries had a... symbiotic relationship of sorts with resident bats.

Bats and small birds like to hole up in unusual places, true. Check out your local mall food court and keep an eye out in the airport as you drag your suitcase down the moving sidewalk to see for yourself what I mean. But apparently your friendly neighborhood pest control has a taste for bookworms.

(For the record, the term ‘bookworm’ refers to any insect with a taste for literature. This extends to moths who eat cloth bindings and beetles who tunnel through the paper like wood, as well as the beetles after your leather tomes.)

In ancient Sumer, bats and birds were associated with Nanshe, especially pelicans. More specifically, owls were associated with lilitu-demons and possibly Ereshkigal. But then, their libraries more closely resembled the cooling rack at your local college pottery class. Not something many bookworms wanted to nibble.

Cultures change and religions evolve. I think I’ve found my answers, at least to this question. Especially considering how sometimes the endless shelves remind me of a quiet crypt (Seriously, my first time in a proper old crypt that was my first comparison). Maybe I’m obsessive and seeing connections, maybe bats are my favorite animal and I’m biased. But it’s interesting, to see the evolution of the gods. It’s interesting, to run the thought experiments, to ask the “what if”s, to make yourself at home on the outskirts and then see places where society has already met you in the middle, unnoticed.

For that matter, colophons are pretty cool too.

Nisaba za3-mi2-zu dug3-ga-am3

Look, if Richard Parkinson can translate the entirety of Peter Rabbit into Middle Egyptian, I can translate the Spongebob Squarepants theme tune into it too.

Plus I used a Conditional phrase. My former advisor should be proud of me.

When you go to a haunted house, it may seem like you’re being funny by trying to scare the actors or jump out at them when you go through a second time, but guess what? ITS NOT FUNNY.

You pay us to scare you. It is your choice to go, so don’t fucking go through if you’re going to ignore the rules and get too close to the actors as a ‘joke’.

These bruises happened because over the course of 4 hours, several people ignored the instructions that CLEARLY stated that they were to wait in the front room until told otherwise. Rather than listen, they ran into the next room and slammed into me- effectively throwing me into the wall. This didn’t only happen once. It happened ten times at LEAST.

Then we had this asshole who thought that once I ‘died’ for the haunt, he could pretend to kick me to see if I’d moved. I, being used to people abusing me- jumped back and slammed my head into the concrete wall.

YOU ARE NOT FUNNY BY BEING RUDE AT A HAUNTED HOUSE. WE ARE PAID ACTORS THAT YOU CHOOSE TO COME AND SEE PERFORM. YOU PAY US TO SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU, SO DONT HIT US WHEN WE DO

I feel that this is relevant considering it is October and more Haunted Houses are opening up. I know it seems funny to scare the ‘monsters’ but all you do is hurt real people. So stop.

I feel like I am caught

Betwixt teeth

If I crack I die

[A crunch of bone and spray of red

To pick gingerly from the cracks]

If they crack

Then split like marble tombstones

Rotted with sugar and neglect

The tender bits spill out

In strangling shadows 'round my neck.

It hurts to touch

They scream as they brush me

Agony

Agony

But it's sensation

And senses are life.

Give and take

Brace and break

Crumple and crush

A tin can to firm boots

[And if a lone scrap of metal screams

With no one around to hear,

Was it ever in pain at all?]

Vanishing, vanishing,

Varnish and lace,

Veneer and revere

Touch up your plastic face.

Pull back the hood and bare sparking wires

Belching pipes

Smoke and soot

Grit and fire.

[Pour the coolant,

Cap it.

There are no strings on me.]

I lick my teeth

[Drink my own blood]

And breathe.

When we speak of love

It is in crushed roses

Smoldering embers

Black-thick blood

The part of lips

Love in image is such a physical thing

Full of sap and sugar

Drifting smoke

Dimmed lights

Damp heat

And yet here I stand, red as any mortal

Beneath this thorn-scored hide

To tell you that my love

Has eyes like a crooked painting

That eternally slopes to the left

But frames a blue-green sea

In hacked-off strands

Of frayed fur.

My love is the purple

Of twilight whispers

And the black night between us

Breached by the gold of a bracelet around my wrist.

My love is the orange

Of streetlights and detour signs

Caution and warnings

And yellow eyeshadow.

My love is duct tape and cat fur

Asphalt and dappled leaves

Beauty and terror

And stretch marks

Like the imprint of lightning on my eyes.

We trace forgotten scars

In the bitter quiet

And laugh into the bubbles

Of a sugar rush.

My love

Is the feeling of a head tipped onto my shoulder

Hair against my jaw

Laying my hand on strong, bruised knees

And realizing that this wild panther

Does not slip away from me like smoke,

But would rather solidify to listen to the sound of my heartbeat

My heartbeat

And no other.

(And so,

When she stirs restless,

I let her go.)

Round and round the butcher’s block,

The dog chases her own tail.

The master said ‘twas all in good fun-

Hissing, the wheel grinds.