Sunday, August 2, 2009

a literary walking stick

A literary meditation on sticks (walking sticks/staffs, like the writer suggests, feel good in hand, no?)

As the World Tree stands, so stands its child, the sanctified stick. Shamans climb it. Maidens dance around it. Men use it for pointing. It points to thunder, to comets, to the migrating herds. Sometimes it points to you....

Stick is the magic penis. When waved, it sows sons and daughters. Stick is also lethal. It cracks a skull nicely.

Guns have been called "magic sticks," but guns are only half magical: they take life but can't create it.

If a stick is twirled under proper conditions, it makes fire. If rubbed against another stick, it makes fire. Once a stick is painted, however, it is assigned to other duties.

Sigmund Freud observed children rolling hoops with sticks. Freud made notes in his journal.

T.S. Eliot wrote:
Crossed staves in a field
Behaving as the wind behaves

In a deck of card, there are four suits: diamonds, spades, hearts, and sticks. The card stick was both the rod of the peasant and the wand of the magi. Whip the donkey. Stir the moon.

Like a sword, or a phallus, it feels quite good to hold a stick in your hands. If held correctly, with maximum consciousness (and that is difficult to do), the stick may suddenly flower.

There is a sense in which a painted stick is a stick in bloom. This stick points to the hidden face of God. Sometimes it points to you.

From "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins