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From under his fingernail [the water-god] Enki brought forth dirt. He fashioned the dirt into a kurgarra, a creature neither male nor female. From under the fingernail of his other hand he brought forth dirt. He fashioned the dirt into a galatur, a creature neither male nor female. … Enki spoke to the kurgarra and galatur, saying: "Go to the underworld, enter the door like flies. Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, is moaning with the cries of a woman about to give birth.” … The kurgarra and the galatur heeded Enki's words. They set out for the underworld. Like flies, they slipped through the cracks of the gates. They entered the throne room of the Queen of the Underworld. No linen was spread over her body. Her breasts were uncovered. Her hair swirled around her head … Ereshkigal was moaning: "Oh! Oh! My inside!" They moaned: "Oh! Oh! Your inside!" … Ereshkigal stopped. She looked at them. She asked: "Who are you, moaning … sighing with me? If you...

                                        when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,                                         the earth, ever so slightly, fell                                         toward the apple as well.                                                                                                Ellen Bass       ...

                       The stone woman gives birth in the middle of the night.                                                                                Attributed to Dongshan (Tung-shan)                       The mother of the Xia was Tushanshi, the Lady of Mount Tu.                        One day she turned herself to stone, and the stone split open                       to give birth to a child whose name was Revelation.                  ...

       A fierce wind blew the ship off course and set it drifting toward the land of the flesh-eating demons.          Entangling Vines , Case 39        Cultural complexes structure emotional experience and operate in the personal and collective psyche        in much the same way as individual complexes … [they] tend to be repetitive, autonomous,        resist consciousness and collect experience that confirms their historical point of view.         Thomas Singer        I have this nagging idea that at each major site something aberrant … happened and        a cultural liberation converted to a cultural complex.         Craig San Roque        [The etak navigational system is not a birds-eye view, but] occupies a “real point of view        on the real local...

                                   After every war                                    someone has to clean up.                                    Things won’t                                    straighten themselves up, after all.                                    Someone has to push the rubble                                    to the side of the road,   ...

                                 The darkling way, the bird path, the open hand.                                                                            The Record of Dongshan In the first few days of the month, pallid cuckoos arrive, and fantailed cuckoos, and shining-bronze cuckoos, calling, calling all day, and at night after moonrise – See?See?See?See?See?See? See. Here. Their host birds rush to bring out a first brood from eggs laid before the cuckoos arrived, or to complete their nests if they themselves have only just returned from migration – satin flycatchers! Swallows make reconnaissance flights over dams, checking for insect life, and skirl in and out of the sheds and under eaves where they build their ...

                         Sickness and medicine heal each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?                           Blue Cliff Record , Case 87 I come from a place of creeks and rivers, and subtropical downpours that feed them. Here, even though rivers run out of the wet forest across the valley, this side is already in the rainshadow of ranges to the west and there’s not much running water – farms rely on dams, and pump through the summer to fill troughs and keep crops growing. When I first arrived I was always listening for water, always looking for its signs. The first few years I was here seemed parched to me. I remember lying awake, sick with longing for the smell of rain, for the sound of it on the roof. Feeling that if it came, softening the air and the ground, it would answer me as well, like a promise that my life too could mollify and ...