the stormy leather god, estrogen, and vietnam

It was a very long time ago, but I just got jolted by it again.

He, the Vet, had walked into my office. There was already a student in there and she overheard him say, "I could have killed you ..."

I think it opened the conversation. But before I knew it, the student had told the Chair, and the Chair had told Campus Police, and the Chief of Police went undercover in my class, day one. A clear misunderstanding. It was a class on Gender and Anthropology. The cop was a pretty good student; raised his hand, took notes, asked interesting questions. I think the whole thing was just a great excuse for the Police Chief to take a class on gender...

The Vet wore army fatigues every day, camo pants, and T-shirts all with references to the war, like "Vietnam, Take One" with a picture of a movie camera filming the horror. Loud noises made him jumpy. He sat by the door, in case he had to run out at any moment. It didn't happen too often. But it did happen.

He had an arsenal. But so, apparently did a lot of other students.

I liked him instantly. We swapped war stories. Only my war was only six days long. And I hadn't killed anybody. All we'd really done was commandeer an empty bomb shelter (with wall-to-wall mattresses), lock ourselves in and fuck like bunnies the last three days. That one became a rabbi. Or a psychologist. Or both. I think both. Point is, it wasn't Vietnam. Far from it.

I remember one year the Vet and I traded outfits. I got to wear his old dress uniform. He borrowed my Stormy Leather for a while. He got me a belly dancer for my birthday once. It was a friendship based on exploring the potential for transformation. And an appreciation of the power of mythology. And on the search for the ritual that might reverse the rage, ease the warrior's pain and make things right again.

So, when I wrote about embodying God, he really has had a lot more experience in this regard — in the other sense of God. The Stormy Leather God.

Here's what he wrote:

"I was God when I was 20 years old. I ripped and I tore. I did decide who lived and who died. 20 year olds should not be God, though I am still being told that others 'would follow me into hell' — no shit, old team mate really said that and it is being taken as a compliment.

"However, for me being God it is not what it is cracked up to be. I was not very good at it — it really fucked me up..."

Right. So I stand corrected.

That's the other kind of God. The one I wasn't talking about. Makes me sound so warm and fuzzy speaking mommie-god, garden-god... But that's not how men embody God, is it?

He found an antidote. Estrogen. Estrogen and belly dance. And years later I got to see her transformation. And what I'd like to say is, in my book, that was God. He Created a Her he could live with. She could calm the rage. And she could dance. And I was jealous.

He could have killed me. But he didn't.

"My cardiologist," he said, "took me off Estrogen because it was beginning to weaken my blood vessels. Unfortunately, the more it diminishes in me, the more I am returning to a creature I do not want to be again, [that kind of] God. So, I finally decided to say screw it... I've been living on borrowed time for years, so if the Estrogen is going to kill me, let it ... at least I will, I hope, return to a place of semi-peace before it or something else takes me down."

So, here's to our warriors, and a remembrance of what war does to them. And how hard they struggle (if they do struggle) to undo all the harm. I salute you, and I salute what you've become. And I honor your bravery when that war is finally done.

And here's to the Estrogen God, the mommie-gods, and yes, the gardeners too. I'll stick to my story, after all. To Herakles, warrior-slave of Omphale, here's to you.

on not wanting a 'conversation with god'

Last night, I had another tetragrammaton moment, where all the elements — the yud, the hei, the vav, and the hei — come together, alchemically bound and perfect in every way. Well, it wasn't that. There were only three of us, and I was the only hei, but never mind that. It's not what I wanted to say; it just made me remember what 'it' is all about.

A friend posted a link the other day to a piece called 'Conversations with God' and it was pithy and clever and delightful and even invoked one of my own personal divine beings, Isaac Asimov, for which I'll give it ten points. (Forget that. I just accidentally slipped into grading-mode)...

And because I had a delightful night, I woke up delighted as well. I also woke up knowing what my problem is with all this talking-to-God stuff. It's not that it's nonsense (I mean, even apart from the whole non-existence of God bit). No, I'm willing to go for metaphor, being in a good-tempered and generous mood at the moment.

I had an epiphany. Not sure if it's major or minor. And I'm not sure it's really anything new exactly, it's just that I understood it in another context.

Conversations with god/God are all about getting answers. We know that. All about trying to live with misfortune, getting comfort, or dealing with the anguish of not-knowing. And so we invent this all-knowing-God so we can ask, and if we're lucky, get some response. A response we can live with. And that asking is not really interesting to me.

Why take all the fun out of discovering things for yourself? Getting answers from an All-Knowing-God is just plain boring. And certainly not as compelling as, say, the scientific method and empiricism. Or just plain playing with possibilities.

But I think that's what 'most people' want: answers. And that's not the most interesting thing about 'God.'

Instead, why not focus on Creation? And Creation is something I know something about. I know, for example, exactly how it feels to grow a living creature from scratch and have it manifest into the physical world. I've done it. And not just twice (a boy and a girl), but over and over again. In my garden.

Which brings me back to the other concern (apart from getting all their questions answered) so many folk worry about when they think about God. Being 'good' enough to qualify to be a resident in some post-mortem garden. You want a garden, grow the damn thing yourself.

Go ahead. Create something.

Being the Gardener is so much more fun than waiting around till you're dead to live in someone else's Paradise (along with billions of others you don't even know). Remember 'heaven on earth'? Well, why not manifest it? Although, to be sure, being the Gardener also entails activating one's sadistic impulses (for 'the greater good' as Gellert Grindelwald would say). Come out of the supernal S/M closet, and go ahead and prune. Weed. Cut those limbs off, and rip those others right out of the Garden. Choose who lives and who dies, and who loses a branch or more.

Don't talk to God—be God. See what it feels like to have that kind of power. And just how judicious you have to be with that power to not risk ruining the Garden as a whole.

Pruning and weeding. Big difference. While pruning looks like a more major big deal, conceptually weeding is the more drastic measure. With weeding, we want that thing entirely out of our Garden. Right down to the roots (if we're being not lazy). Otherwise, the Garden might look like it's thriving, but it's just teeming with discord right under the surface. Pruning, on the other hand, might seem extreme, especially what I call 'radical pruning' but what we're doing is more akin to just plain good grooming. A major haircut, or better yet, having let it all grow, now it's time for a major waxing of the whole body at once. Ouch! But such a yummy good looking pain—that makes us glow afterwards.

The weeds, we know, will come right back. So what does our vigilance and care get us? It gets us the gift of being active in the garden. The gift of paying attention.

The ancient Near Eastern pantheons distinguish between two types of gods, the passive and the active. The passive gods are the Creators, who created the world and the living beings within it, and then lost interest. Like that guy (maybe you know him/maybe you are him), who, once he's come is dead to the world. The Creator gods are exactly thus. And the next generation of deities rebel, destroy them and replace them. They are the active gods, the gods who take interest in the world.

We Mothers know better. If you lose interest, your Creation is lost.

We Gardeners know better. Lose interest, and everything goes feral...

So. Conversation with God? Boring! Or just plain self-serving, and not creative at all. A conversation with God is kind of like a little kid wandering alone at ToysRUs. He's hit not only with sensory overload, but with a bad (and sometimes incurable) case of the gimme-gimmes—selfish, and impulse-driven.

So. My vote's for embodying the gods. Less talk. More action. And a whole lot more fun. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Oh, and PS— great to do in a group. Being part of a pantheon, being one-fourth element of the Tetragrammaton, for example, is even more fun than being a single-parent deity trying to work Creation out all on your own. Oh, and remember the lessons of those ancient Near Eastern Pantheons (from Egypt, to Ugarit, to Mesopotamia...) the passive gods get creamed in the end. Active Gods rule...