really I did learn something today.

This bibliotheque is quiet, and I'm downloading openoffice to type my paper, trying to get this paper started, feel like I'm talking about bones an awful lot. 11,000 virgins' bones for that matter, because I want to combine my love of Hildegard's tuneage, morbid churches, weird old stuff, and swank art into one fine piece of 8-page scholarship. Or something.

So in class today we were talking about relics getting tricked out, and saints, and everyone getting really into the Virgin Mary and the God of the Universe being so intimidating that we needed to make him a cute little baby to deal with it better, and the construction of giant cathedrals that sometimes fell down when they were trying to one-up the town over, which led to sundry absurd scrawlings in the margins of my notes along these lines.

ugly renaissance babies, yo.

some martyr holding his intestines wrapped around a stick. Can't find a photo but it looked like his inside were some kind of carnival food.

and of course Lee Dorian how could I forget you

hibernatia

Family functions fun, too much good food, the perfect amount of snark and conversation, lack of sleep now attended to, scares of the hope-they're okay kind at 2 in the morning, a crashed computer at the station meant I probably pissed off my sludge loving listeners with ample medieval chantish spooky noochies Christmas music, playing the same Arvo Part and Anonymous 4 CDs in rotation with a dash of Lanegan and Kristin Hersh, no cars on the road, no one called in. My mom asks why I bother because it's so deserted, but it's always deserted at 5 in the morning there.

No regrets on jettisoning epic travels, I've spent the snowy days drinking tea with neighbors and old friends. I have no need to really go anywhere, the hibernating feels good after the masses of people. I come home, listen to tunes, drink more tea, read, repeat. This is a true vacation. There is peace, and it is good.

hildegard

Ironic enough that it was finally my colleague, a Noted Pagan of Distinction who finally got me into her, much thanks homie, because I have some strange affinity with proto-renaissance chicks who commune with the divine. 

Praise to you
Spirit of fire!
to you who sound the timbrel
and the lyre.

Your music sets our minds
ablaze! The strength of our souls
awaits your coming
in the tent of meeting.

There the mounting will
gives the soul its savor
and desire is its lantern.

Insight invokes you in a cry
full of sweetness, while reason
builds you temples as she labors
at her golden crafts.

But sword
in hand you stand poised
to prune shoots of the poisoned
apple --
scions of the darkest
murder --

when mist overshadows the will.
Adrift in desires the soul is spinning
everywhere. But the mind
is a bond
to bind will and desire.

When the heart yearns to look
the Evil One in the eye,
to stare down the jaws of
iniquity, swiftly
you burn it in consuming
fire. Such is your wish.

And when reason doing ill
falls from her place, you
restrain and constrain her as you will
in the flow of experience until
she obeys you.

And when the Evil One brandishes
his sword against you,
you break it in his own
heart. For so you did
to the first lost angel,
tumbling the tower of his
arrogance to hell.

And there you built a second
tower -- traitors and sinners
its stones. In repentance
they confessed all their crafts.

So all beings that live by you
praise your outpouring
like a priceless salve upon festering
sores, upon fractured
limbs. You convert them
into priceless gems!

Now gather us all to yourself
and in your mercy guide us
into the paths of justice.

To the Trinity be praise! God is music, God is life that nurtures every creature in its kind. Our God is the song of the angel throng and the splendor of secret ways hid from all humankind, But God our life is the life of all.

Fiery Spirit,
fount of courage,
life within life
of all that has being!

Holy are you, transmuting the perfect
     into the real.
Holy are you, healing
     the mortally stricken.
Holy are you, cleansing
     the stench of wounds.

O sacred breath O blazing
love O savor in the breast and balm
flooding the heart with
the fragrance of good,

O limpid mirror of God
who leads wanderers
home and hunts out the lost,

Armor of the heart and hope
of the integral body,
sword-belt of honor:
save those who know bliss!

Guard those the fiend holds
imprisoned,
free those in fetters
whom divine force wishes to save.

O current of power permeating all
in the heights upon the earth and
in all deeps:
you bind and gather
all people together.

Out of you clouds
come streaming, winds
take wing from you, dashing
rain against stone;
and ever-fresh springs
well from you, washing
the evergreen globe.

O teacher of those who know,
a joy to the wise
is the breath of Sophia.

Praise then be yours!
you are the song of praise,
the delight of life,
a hope and a potent honor
granting garlands of light.

ezio anichini

Can't find much Englished info about him on the Internets, but the pictures are fabulous.