a moment too long
swells
time opens its jaws
and swallows me
alive and unsure
skewered on pangs
a moment too soon
passes
leaves my ribs
compressed still
beating against arms
late but lingering
a moment too many
crumbles
at my stand I
watch a wheel
wobble tentatively
in and out of true
Here’s the latest insane email I’ve gotten from this guy — I’m being too lazy to remove his name (and secretly suspect he’d appreciate the attention anyway), so try not to spam him or anything.
Hi, Mike —
You may remember that I once sent you an email about idiom-formation via transliteration … such as “kick the bucket” which is probably related to 3aGaV B’3aiDeN = make love in paradise. You will note that Hebrew 3GV is probably a reversal-cognate of Germanic FCK, presumably borrowed into Hebrew. Tomatoes are 3aGVaNiot in Hebrew because this is a translation of “love apple” or French pomme d’amour. Long ago, tomatoes were thought to be an aphrodisiac… as in Aphrodite = Afro-deity :-)
Which brings me to the topic of this email … anthropomorphic maps. The attached file contains a limerick that describes the map of Aphrodite.
I learned about anthropomorphic maps from the linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford (deceased) and the anthropologist Stan Knowlton. They described the maps of Napi, the creator of the Blackfoot Indians (aka The Old Man) and his wife (The Old Woman) in Alberta, Canada. I “found” similar Phoenician maps of a male body (Hermes ?) in west Asia and a female body (Aphrodite) in north Africa.
Anthropomorphic Maps
Anthropomorphic maps were generated by configuring the body of a god or goddess over the area to be mapped. The name of each part of that body became the name of the area under that part. This produced a scale 1:1 map-without-paper on which each place name automatically indicated its approximate location and direction with respect to every other place on the same map whose name was produced in this way.
You are cordially invited to join the BPMaps discussion group on this topic, a very quiet list that averages about 1 message per month. The URL is: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/
The Challenge: To produce computer software that will find additional body-part maps elsewhere in the world. Available inputs:
- geographic databases with ancient place names (e.g., the Perseus project).
- body-part names on Swadesh lists. Unfortunately, the navel is not included.
Attributes of Anthropomorphic Maps
(1) The navel is the center of the body, the center of the map, and usually the center of the map’s language community.
(2) Place names (toponyms) may be reversed, metathesized, misspelled or euphemized for various reasons:
- The same part in the same language exists on another map of a different body. Cranium > Mo[n]rocco because Ukraine existed? Aphrodite is looking backwards over her right shoulder. She is bent at her waist (Misr/Mitzraim = MoSNaiM).
- The left (sinister) part is altered in names for left-right pairs (arms, legs, eyes, ears). DoFeN = side reversed to Nafud in north Arabia. SHvK = thigh with a T-sound for the letter shin = TvK reversed to Kuwait. BeReKH = knee metathesized to Bahrain.
- Names that represent taboo body parts or funcitons are reversed or euphemized:
— Semitic PoS (female pudenda) reverses to yam SooF = sea of reeds (Red Sea).
— Mare Rubrum (Latin for Red Sea) represented Aphrodite’s menstruation
— CaNa3an (3 = aiyin with a G-sound as in 3aZa = Gaza) is a reversal of Greek gyneco-
— Sinai = “snatch” is spelled SiNi in Hebrew. The aleph=CHS is intentionally missing.
— ZaYiN = weapon (a euphemism for his male member) is in Sinai as the desert of Zin.
(3) Names may be loan-translated due to conquest or language-change.
- Roxolania (Semitic Ro[chs]SH = head) => Rus *(Ro@SH) => Ukraine (Greek kranion, not Slavic u kraina = to/at the border) … caused by a change in the sound of the aleph from CHS to a glottal stop.
- Libya (Semitic LeB = heart) => Cyrenaica (Latin cor = heart, compare coronary) => Libya
(4) Rivers and bodies of water may be named after bodily excretions:
- Milk River in Alberta, Canada
- Red Sea (Latin Mare Rubrum) is Aphrodite’s menstruation.
- Gulf of Aqaba (Semitic QaVaH = digestion/defecation)
- Indus (NiDah = woman at time of menstruation)
(5) Internal body parts may represent subdivisions of external parts.
- Arabic Misr / Hebrew Mitzraim (< TSaR = narrow) = waist (Hebrew MoSNaim). Egypt (< Greek hepato- = liver). Goshen (with a T-sound shin < Semitic QiTN = bean) = bean-shaped kidney. Goshen exported Arabic QuTN = cotton => Latin Gossypium (English gossamer = cotton-like)
- Atlas mountains < atlas = first cervical vertebra that supports the cranium.
(6) Islands near a body’s hands may be named for weapons.
- Trinacria = trident (< Gk tri = three + Semitic NaKaR = to pierce) => Sicily (< VL *sicila < Latin secula = sickle to harvest wheat; compare Semitic SaKiN = knife). The trident was in Neptune / Poseidon’s right hand (Italy, like Anatolia < N’TiLas yad = arm being washed by the seas).
- Greece = reversal of Semitic S’RoG = (weighted) net, held in his left hand.
- Crete = reversal of targe = small shield (compare English target) also in his left hand.
Aphrodite
The map of Aphrodite is in north Africa. Her face [PaNim] was lost during the 3rd Punic war. The rest of her is still there. She is looking backwards over her right shoulder, so her CRaniuM is reversed at Morocco. It still has a Fez. Her chin [SaNTir] is reversed at Tunisia. The Atlas (anatomy: first cervical vertebra) mountains support her head. Her hair [Sa3aRa] is the Sahara desert. Her backbone [amood SHiDRa] is the Gulf of Sidra. Her heart [LeB] is Libya. Her breast [SHaD] is Chad. Her narrow [TZaR] waist is Misr / Mitzraim. Her liver (Greek hepato-) is Egypt. Cotton (Arabic QuTN, Latin Gossypium) was exported from Goshen, her [QiTNit = bean]-shaped kidney. Her side [TZaD] is Sudan. Her other side [DoFeN] is Dafur. Her left [SMoL] leg is Somalia.
[NeGeV] is a reversal of vagina and may be related to [NeKeV] = aperture. [CaNa3aN] was her Latin cunnus (and a reversal of Greek gyneco-). Its name changed to [YiSRa@eL] at the time when [Ya3aKoV] / Jacob “fought with god and men” [Gen 32:29]. This represented a change in sovereignty from Africa to Asia minor.
[YiSRa@eL] is that body part that gives [@oSHeR] = delight to [@eL] = god when it is [YaSHaR] = straight, upright. Changing Jacob’s name from [Ya3aKoV] = “ankle; curved, bent” to [YiSRa@eL] = “straight, upright + god” represents an interesting physiological process.
Hermes
The body-part map of Hermes is in Asia minor. kHermes [kHoR = hole + MoSnaim = waist] lived at Mt. kHermon before he moved Mt. Olympus (Greek omphalos = navel). Later his name was reversed to become Latin Mercury. Compare Amerigo Vespucci and America.
His head [Ro@SH] was at Roxolania/Rus, south of Belarus. Its name changed to the Ukraine (Gk kranion = cranium, *not *Slavic u kraina = to/at the border). His throat [GaRGeret] is Georgia. His left shoulder [KaSaF] is the Caspian sea. His right shoulder/axle [@aTZiL] was Euxinus, now the Black Sea. His right arm/hand is being washed [NaTiLat] at Anatolia. His upper arm (Sanskrit irma) at Armenia, biceps (Greek pontiki = muscle) at Pontus, elbow [KiFooF yaD] at Cappadocia, wrist [m’FaReK] at Phrygia, and thumb [BoHeN] at Bithynia were in Anatolia. His heart (Greek cardia) became Kurdistan. His narrow [TZaR] waist is Syria and his navel (Sanskrit nabhila) reverses to LeBaNon.
South of Lebanon is the male member (Greek phallus) named Philistina. See [CaNa3aN / YiSRa@eL] above. His buttocks [YeReKH] is Iraq. His thigh [shin-vav-kuf] sounded like TvK and reversed to Kuwait. His knee [BeReKH] is partially reversed in Bahrain. His right [Y’MiN] foot is at Yemen.
These two bodies are connected, literally, at Sinai (with an aleph that is not written in Hebrew, compare “snatch”, a reversal of [K’NiSah] = entrance), a part of her body that contains the desert of Zin, his “zaiyin”.
Best regards,
Israel “izzy” Cohen
Petah Tikva, Israel
Oh, and a link to the document that came attached to that is probably worth a read too: Aphrodite as an Anthropomorphic Map
Though really, I didn’t take nearly as many photos as Amanda, whose tumblr you should really visit to catch a glimpse of some more mischief in the making.
Tumblrize doesn’t like to cross-post galleries, so click here for the actual photos
Is there a word for when you’ve been thinking about something for a while, trying to formulate your own thoughts on a topic, only to run into something someone else has said that seems to encapsulate the essence of what you were trying to get at? This happens to me quite often. It is a conflation of serendipity and kismet.
In this particular instance, I’ve been thinking a bit about how certain shorthands, certain terminologies, to describe a collocation of symptoms — or perhaps more neutrally, behaviors or observations? — can become externalized in such a way that it is thought of as an independent entity in of itself. So let’s say we notice the observations A, B and C within a significant population of people. For a quick shorthand for this juxtaposition of observations, we could call it %. However, it’s not as if % itself is necessarily something that exists in the world, but is rather a categorization mnemonic for us to access some collocation of a certain set of observations: A, B and C in this case.
I was thinking of this at first with regard to the diagnosis of certain medical conditions (which, for the observant ones of you out there, might see where the forthcoming amalgamation of serendipity and kismet comes from). There is no doubt, of course, that certain %’s do exist independently in the world and are the source of the set of observations/symptoms that they denote. One can, for example, isolate a certain virus that causes AIDS and say, this is HIV.
However, once we get into the territory of psychological disorders, things seem murkier. To put forth a disclaimer, I am not necessarily denying the existence of any of these disorders, or the afflictions of those that suffer from such things. But in any case, if the DSM’s protocol for diagnosis of a disorder, %, is a loose (partially ordered?) checklist of symptoms, A - n, then there is the possibility for the symptoms to derive the disorder, rather than the other way around. So, for example, it was not too long ago that women were diagnosed with hysteria, based on some list of symptoms. However, unlike the above example of AIDS, hysteria doesn’t seem to necessarily denote to anything in the world other than the symptoms that we have defined it with in the first place — I cannot point to something and say this is hysteria like I can with a virus. And of course, we now do not believe hysteria is a real disorder at all, or at least have relegated its symptoms to newer, and hopefully more precise, diagnoses. But it’s not as if the symptoms themselves were never real, it is just that the grouping, %, of such symptoms was not accurate in some appropriate sense.
There are implications for other psychological disorders, of course, but I leave it to the many people working on rewriting the DSM to iron out those kinks. What I find more interesting, and where my thoughts have mostly dwelled is how these mechanisms function in the creation of social roles, with special regard to sexual identity (and after all, it wasn’t too long ago that homosexuality was listed in the DSM as mental disorder).
To apply these labeling-externalization mechanisms to something such as being gay is to say that the individual behaviors or observations, A - n, of being gay have always existed, but that the grouping and collocation of these things into a discernible thing % has not always existed, but when it was created, it became externalized into something that exists in the world as the primordial axiom that derives the theories A - n. Or put another way, what it means to be gay has always existed, but being gay has not, and was invented at some point (likely by the attempt at clinically treating certain stigmatized behaviors, but we’ll get to that shortly). I think, underlying, this sheds some light why certain cultural artifacts such as pederasty have been observed in various cultures, but these individuals were not considered gay in the modern sense: it is precisely because this modern sense of being gay was creation, which was then externalized into something that we could search in the world for and say yes, it is this thing in the world that derives these observations.
Or to put this another way, let’s use another loose cultural stereotype such as being American. What does it mean, crassly, to be %) American? Let’s assume simply that our observations are A) being overweight, B) being ignorant, and C) being noisy. Clearly there have always been people, even groups of people, that have exhibited these characteristics, let’s say Ancient Romans, but we would not call them American; the %) American concept in this case cannot retroactively apply to before the inception of the nation and consequential national identity. In this case, it is clear that % does not derive A, B and C; yet with other %, such as being gay, there seems to be an attempt to invert this and find out what is the underlying root of that identity. Even the common argument that being gay is innate and something you are born with makes me cringe a bit, if only because there is still an underlying desire to pathologically justify an imaginary externalized thing % that lies at the root of what it means to be gay, when, once again, I think that though what it means to be gay has always existed, being gay is a recent invention.
So at this point, the clever and/or well-read ones of you out there should see where this is all converging in terms of my serendipitous kismet:
“The new persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of perversions and a new specification of individuals. As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away [emphasis mine]” (pg 42-42)
-Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1
Sometimes I wonder if I’d just be better off doing more reading in the first place, and save myself some time apparently re-deriving certain ideas already put forth by others more insightful than me, but I suppose that would take all the fun (and benefit) of it.
