Photo by Lux
When dark congeals itself
into forms
eager of young girls, sensual too
and I think of myself pretty and
also taken and owned till to
I can get living spasms of my flesh
and you sleep
on my skin I want you, skin to skin.
You on this my skin to be my spasm
and my comfort
March, 12th 2023
The beast, by Janus Fall
First episode (Lilith part one)
Previous episode (Lilith part three)
1 Lilith – part four
The Woman knelt on the shore and bent over the water, now again smooth and motionless after the start she had a few moments before, and she looked at herself as she used to do every morning.
She was beautiful.
She was really beautiful.
She was herself.
She was her, and who else?
Why was she checking herself?
She was still herself, the same woman, the same usual one.
No!
She gazed better and very carefully at herself. Her hair. Perhaps her hair was less smoothed than usual, wavy, a little curly, with more volume: was this an effect of the long stay in the water? And behold! In a sort of lightning flash she saw, for a very brief instant, two penetrating green eyes looking at her from her own sockets; her mouth twisted into an almost malignant smile.
Above Eve the sun was shining, but behind her reflection everything was black.
Her Shadow moved her arms, extending her hands towards Eve as if to grab her and drag Eve together with her into the darkness, or to cling to her and emerge from the darkness of her dark side. From her unconscious.
The Woman had a new, violent start.
Someone else was observing her from within her deepest soul and claimed life!
A true, own life.
The Shadow was inside her.
The Shadow wanted to definitively take possession of her body.
She wanted to replace her in the real world, in the physical world.
The Shadow was therefore hidden, encysted in her deep beings, but she showed herself.
She made herself known.
She took her body.
This new awareness shocked her. She felt strange and almost fainted. Though crouched, she swayed swinging on her knees and nearly fell unconscious into the pool.
The beast, by Janus Fall
First episode (Lilith part one)
Previous episode (Lilith part two)
1 Lilith – part three
In the sky, a dense veil of clouds suddenly obliterated the sun and a very fine, warm, very pleasant drizzle fell on the garden. The butterflies stopped their multicoloured dance and sought shelter; even the birds hushed up and the cubs gave up their games.
Something dark, perhaps even gloomy yet not so far scary, at least apparently not evil, fell down to the garden and its inhabitants, suspending all their drives.
The Woman closed her eyes and surrendered to the Shadow.
After an indefinable lapse of time, exhausted and sated, Eve opened her eyes and drowned in the sweetness of her companion’s newfound smile. She was completely lost in the dark, dizzying, deep well of those green eyes, with nothing to hold on to.
Without any desire about resistance.
With a light thud, muffled by the soft blanket of grass, a magnificent and fragrant red apple, fell from a nearby tree, rolled up to the two intertwined figures. The Shadow picked it up with her left hand, lazily extending an ivory-painted arm, and brought it to the Eve’s mouth. They both bit it simultaneously, again, again and again, until their lips, impregnated with that sweet taste, found each other and joined together for a long time.
The day passed, the evening came and then the silent stillness of the night came. At dawn, Eve was still lying limply on the edge of the pond, exhausted, her eyes closed, her breathing calm and regular, her head thrown back, the nape resting on a soft flowery rush cushion; her left hand laid on her belly, still immersed in the water, while her right arm rested on the sedges of the shore, her hand with the palm facing up towards the sky, as if to request or wait something.
The weight of her legs was supported by that of the water, so that her toes and the top of her knees emerged in the air.
When the Woman woke up from the intoxication of that recently passed delirium and opened her eyes, it was no longer raining and the clouds had disappeared.
The sun was splendid, as always.
The sky was clear again, deep as a sapphire, but at the same time there was something distant in it.
The butterflies had returned to their light and graceful dances.
The birds had resumed their songs.
Hinds, foxes and wolves suckled their cubs.
The cuckoo insisted even more strongly on its cry.
At first Eve, although still pervaded and lulled by an indefinite pleasant sensation, did not remember anything, but almost immediately she shook herself violently and jumped to her feet, disturbing the stillness of the pool.
She wasn’t there.
She was gone.
Where was she?
The other had vanished, seemed to have vanished or, rather, the Shadow had returned to being only the shadow of the Woman, yet something was wrong and something did not balance. That did not make sense.
Then, after a while …
… Eve remembered everything.
Eve remembered everything now.
The snake.
The Shadow.
The Shadow of her.
She had been devoured by the Shadow made a snake.
She had been preyed upon.
She gave herself up to that being.
Her flesh was satisfied.
So, a new awareness came: the Shadow had returned to the intimate of the Woman and now it…she… that being was hidden deeply into Eve’s innermost and more secret self.
She was confused: nothing seemed to have really happened. It was only an absurd dream.
Yet …
… Yet, now, Eve seemed like someone else.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope – Eve Tempted by the Serpent (detail)
The beast, by Janus Fall
Previous episode (Lilith part one)
1 Lilith – part two
That day it happened that while Eve slowly plunged into the pool, she noticed a strange phenomenon, which she thought was due to the heat. The air above the pond flickered and refracted messily in the sun light, bending and altering any outlines of the images that seemed almost to be mixed. Her shadow was strange and seemed almost to move, or rather to wriggle on the ground without following slavishly and mechanically all the movements of her body.
Finally, the Shadow broke away from her, as if it had reached its true own life, completely ceasing to replicate the movements of Eve.
The Woman, now very intrigued by that very strange phenomenon, lay down on the soft clay bottom, plunging up to her navel in a pleasant coolness, her shoulders resting on the bank. The Shadow had now reached the diametrically opposite end of the pool, had stood upright, and was taking on a consistency of its own, as if it were physically concrete, as if something other than Eve was, so to speak, filling it from inside; at the same time, it was tinged with a fleshy colour, until it was covered with a pale but rosy, clear complexion. It was beautiful.
The face of that second Eve was very similar to that of the first one, with the same long, soft and flowing hair; however, the new face was not exactly the same, like a mirror reflexion: the eyes were green, not brown, set under very dark eyebrows and surrounded by black and long eyelashes. Eve had a very lively and naive gaze, but it was replaced by another, which showed independence and self-awareness, mixed with a note of malice and lasciviousness.
The Shadow’s chest was magnificent, more tense and swollen than hers, with straight, almost sharp ends.
Nothing, in the aspect of the Shadow now made person, indicated submission or docility.
Two black horns, knotted like those of an Ibex but gracefully twisted as if they were a complicated hairstyle, branched off her head just above her ears.
Inside the Woman’s mind a voice began to whisper “Lilith”, whatever that meant.
The Shadow sat right in front of Eve, on the dry side, on the opposite side of the pool. She was staring at Eve straight into her eyes with a piercing gaze and expressing something imperative. She was sitting on the bank, her hands resting on the ground, her legs immersed up to the middle of her calves in the water, under the round leaves of the water lilies. She seemed to moved her legs alternately back and forth, jaunty, as in the distracted game of a child. She seemed lost in thought, as if she really wasn’t looking at the Woman.
Then, the Shadow slipped with a dart into the pond; while her head resurfaced among the flowers, about a meter away from Eve, the latter saw for an instant a long sinuous tail swimming at the water’s edge: now the Shadow had no legs and just below the groin her body was that of a lithe and muscular snake; her back and flanks were coloured like those of a leopard-like beast, pale yellow with thick black spots, small and round. Her belly was creamy white and, except for the length, resembled that of a slender greyhound.
The Shadow was now smiling, with a strange light into her eyes, and she slowly approached close to the Woman, almost touching her.
The slight ripples produced by the sinuous movement of the Shadow on the surface of the pond had preceded her; they reached and caressed Eve’s body with determined impulses. When this happened, an irrepressible wave of desire never felt before filled the Woman deeply into herself, reverberating in her bowels; her skin quivered and her lips barely parted, quivering. She was almost hypnotized by the gaze of the other, now so close that she, Eve, could feel her breathing.
Something warm, below, started to move even closer to the Woman’s body and with an almost unbearable, maddening slowness, it clung to her legs, upsetting her, wrapping her, squeezing her and climbing her whole body up to her pelvis. While Eve’s mind was agitated, almost sensing that she was lost, her flesh was filled with ever more intense shivers, when finally her partner encircled her in a shocking but at the same time very sweet embrace. The Shadow voice spoke again: “Let yourself go, abandon yourself.”
Eve had not yet known the pleasure of her flesh. Her predominant feelings were fear of the unknown and desire to totally immerse herself in it.
As in a dream, in a dark corner of her mind the scene of a great python swallowing a defenceless prey: a prey that wanted to be taken.
Everything became silence, but not peace.
John Collier – Lilith
Sylvia Greenberg – ‘In Trutina’ and ‘Dulcissime’ from Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’. Israel Philarmonic Orchestra, Tel Aviv, 1994, Dir. Zubin Metha.
Last days are very weird ones for me; maybe it’s so cause I’m writing a weird short novel about first time Eve made love. The stuff I post here is something embarassing for me, but I wrote it in English, a language I do not understand very well.
;P
Oh! I’m back!
Thanks to my so cute friend River Moonstone for some of these words.
Thanks to my Love to bear me.
Dulcissime Totam tibi subdo me
(Sweetest Love, I submit all myself to you)
Hidden under my black secret hair
there’s a Pink Calla Lily:
it’s my flower for you, it’s my gift,
charming flower that no else can see
Sweetest Love, I submit all me to you
Be slow, gentle. Be slow, foremost
take your time to explore.
take your time…
poke around, fumble me everywhere
For a while, my breath shall be the only
sound and movement: that’s all
and you, Love, you shall be
just my breath, in my breath
Sweetest Love, I give my all to you
Touch each inch of my skin.
I’ll get crazy, I’ll be as a great spasm
all my body will be as a cry
Tingling and shivering
We will merge our souls as well as
our fleshes together, to one
and to universe too: to each thing.
Put your lips everywhere on my skin
Sweetest Love, I am slave of your wish
So I’ll be my own skin
soft and warm: you can gently
bite me where you want: even there
while my mind starts to spin
Thus, my room will explode and in it
you and me, body and soul
and souls through our skin.
See the night changing into sunlight
Sweetest Love, own me now
Hidden under my black secret hair
there’s a Pink Calla Lily:
get it now as my gift
free me into wild cry
SL, Elven Forest, August, 27th 2022
Word
S.Quasimodo
Pic from here
You laugh at me, flaying myself for words,
bending around me in the straining elms,
the blue edge of skies and hills
and quivering waters’ voices,
wiling my youth
with clouds and hues
the light submerges.
I know you. Waylost in you
beauty lifts your breasts,
scoops to your hips and in gentle sweep
spreads over you shy sex,
flows down in harmony of forms
to the ten shells of your lovely feet.
But wait; if i take you,
you too become word to me, and sadness.
Salvatore Quasimodo – Traslation by Jack Bevan
This is one of the best poems I ever read. Better: one of my favourite poems.
So sensual and so sad both. Almost densperated. That “I know you” (Ti so in the original Italian version) bring us into a deep intimacy and meantime into an immense sadness.
Those two last lines are almost unberable and filled with a so great pain… Well, rereading it in these so strange days makes me understand better the poet and feel a sharp melancholy.
Original version (Italian)
Parola
Tu ridi che per sillabe mi scarno
e curvo cieli e colli, azzurra siepe
a me d’intorno, e stomir d’olmi
e voci d’acque trepide;
che giovinezza inganno
con nuvole e colori
che la luce sprofonda.
Ti so. In te tutta smarrita
alza bellezza i seni,
s’incava ai lombi e in soave moto
s’allarga per il pube timoroso,
e ridiscende in armonia di forme
ai piedi belli con dieci conchiglie.
Ma se ti prendo, ecco:
parola tu pure mi sei e tristezza.
Paint by Stefania Nicolini
I feel softness and urge takes my chest,
need to see your skin and to touch you
without fabric in between; dismay
into your gloomy eyes could calm down
I still crave love from you and your flesh
even modest I want lead to tense
up to a powerful shiver; your hands
come onto me, to frisk me everywhere
I am yours. Without veils I await
you, your lips cover through all the body
I give you. You drive me to that spasm
I yearn for, so maybe anguish breaks
My breast gives itself to you as well
my mouth and my round navel and my
narrow hole that makes female your wife.
You fill sweetness with love
We came to our evening, yet I
want you as when I gave myself to
you first time and we were really one:
body, soul, eyes and I was twenty
My first embrace was clumsy because
inexpert, we discovered flesh.
Our life then mutated its course.
Bring me to God again: I love you
Give me peace, restore me again, more;
I’m more wrinkled respect at that time
but expert. Love gasp takes me indeed;
You give me only each thing and we
will be concert
May, 29th 2022
She, Judy, that place, that day
Light and air made you as a cute sylph,
golden matter and diaphanous too
warmth to hug to not sense to be alone.
Trying to love sometimes seems to hug ghosts
There’s a knot between right and left side
There’s a knot bounding your light thin silk
There’s a knot hiding shy female things
where your body becomes left or right
Into a knot there are sweet secret things
that knot makes walk and dream my poor mind
so I feel weak and silly my heart.
There’s a knot before intimacy
I need places to rest, putting face
in safe soft friendly warm alive place
as a child, as a pet looking for
a nice and pleasant shelter to sleep
I perceive a knot into my flesh
rooted there, where I need love and breaths,
a knot rooted so much into me
to force my soul to think sinful thoughts
I’ve a knot deeply into my deep
I see a knot hiding shivers of love
I’m a knot between heaven and hells
Solve that knot, let me walk on safe ways
Light and air made you as a cute sylph,
gentle matter and diaphanous too
warmth to hug to not sense to be alone.
Dreaming love sometimes is as hug ghosts
SL, Elven Forest, May, 13th 2022
I got this photo here.
Well: this is Wish 2, (very!) less serious than the previous one. It’s only a play, a joke. Is it?. Please, refer to the pic to fully understand its title. LOL.
I wish to be wish
as a witch you can catch
in a wood, near that birch
which loves a hard, tall beech
while we can see a bitch
going fast to a beach
I’m emotions and skin, I’m an itch
and my body wants twitch
among your hands: bewitch
me.
My flesh is like a glitch
as an old broken kitsch.
Take me, fill my deep niche:
I want feel that sweet stitch.
You can make me to switch
so my joy grows so rich
Helpless, I’m part of us.
Don’t you let I unhitch
February, 18th 2022
As I told in my main Italian blog, Terry built a very interesting and moving art installation in Second Life: Rain. It is dedicated to her mom and shows us something about Terry’s memories and thoughts about her and her death.
If you are interested to know more about Rain, see this post by Inara Pey. Here I underline only that a previous Terry’s similar work, Empty chairs, started considering the death of Terry’s dad yet after it went on applying feelings and extending considerations, emotions and sensations more widely, on the theme of the absence itself.
Well… another dear friend, Kristine Blackadder, liked Rain so much that she shot one of her beautiful machinimas in the garden made by Terry, after it was modified: also Kristine’s work shares her feelings about the absence theme.
This machinima is much more complex than it seems. It is beautiful, up to make shiver.
Kristine perverted the white or coloured Terry’s flowers to crimson, blood ones, and turns on herself in a tiny space drawn by a column of light. Nothing around it.
She shook up those pale yet somehow gentle flowers made by Terry, those flowers that after their so pale and cold beginning in Terry’s work get beautiful colours, as hopes have. Here those flowers are too much big, too much red, too much upsetting.
Here those flowers aren’t a landscape but only a narrow scene in which Kristine and only Kristine dances her pain. She’s alone, even without memories: that’s the absence.
This is a strong and hard reflection about herself, filled with that obsessive crimson: blood and rose, rose petals becoming blood, her bloodlike coloured dress (she always is black dressed in her machinimas) and those so upsetting blood flowers. There’s a bad red scar on her face.
Terry with her work told us something about her blood: her mother. Kristine keeps her eyes on her pain due to the absence, as a monster detail and everything becomes a real blood flow.
If you pay attention, at time 2:47, there is a voice citation from Mulholland Drive, where the anchor-man (a terrifying one) on the stage of a theatre says “It is an illusion”. Of course, this consideration could change definitively the meaning of the whole machinima, as to say “Well, I’m only joking”. Really, in my opinion, it is not so: Kristine tells us that also pain can be something like play, acting, a recital: in such cases we live in a so little and perverted space and we can only feel pain.
Yes: this is pain. Yet, please, we must not be defined only by it.
Another prompt: if that absence were truly absence of sense for our way, work, moving, living?
February, 5th 2022
The skin of the angels 
