Cosmic muffin
In honor of the Taurus New Moon - and ever hopeful of increased prosperity and other cosmic bon-bons - I decided to perform the Venus Santeria ritual that Dana wrote about this month. It sounded so simple; a piece of bread, a smallish candle, a running body of water. But it took me a bit of running around yesterday to collect the right size candle, the right shape roll. Finally, I had everything. My thought was to actually perform the ritual today, Friday, which is Venus' day.
So just before lunchtime I wrote out my wish list and prepared my little roll (although just as I'm writing this, I realize I left out the nickel - dammit!), and lit the candle. And it took forever to burn down, so I had a good lunch and then changed my guitar strings, which seemed kind of Venusy. Finally the candle burned itself out, and we were ready to - well, roll, so to speak. The question was, where to release my Venusian offering into the wild? I had been thinking of taking it over to Coronado and tossing it into the ocean, but then I reread Dana's article and realized salt water was out of the question.
Finally we remembered a spot down in the Valley where we might be able to get close enough to the bank of the San Diego River to surrender my cosmic muffin therein. We parked in a nearby lot, trundled down the street a piece, and found a likely - if rocky - spot. We picked our way cautiously a few feet down, where I perched on a rock and hurled the bun. At first, I was dismayed; the roll fell just at the edge of a kind of breakwater thing and just sat there for a minute. And then I noticed that the wind was blowing the water toward the breakwater, and despaired of my little offering to Venus getting very far at all.
Then, I was rescued: a group of four ducks descended on the roll, pushed it into the river, and began eating it. "That's... good, right?" I asked Jonny. "I mean, nature participating in the ritual, and all." "Well, think of it this way," he pointed out. "That roll is going to get a lot further down the river in the stomach of that duck than it would have on its own."
Now that I think about it, I guess maybe it's a good thing I forgot that nickel.
So just before lunchtime I wrote out my wish list and prepared my little roll (although just as I'm writing this, I realize I left out the nickel - dammit!), and lit the candle. And it took forever to burn down, so I had a good lunch and then changed my guitar strings, which seemed kind of Venusy. Finally the candle burned itself out, and we were ready to - well, roll, so to speak. The question was, where to release my Venusian offering into the wild? I had been thinking of taking it over to Coronado and tossing it into the ocean, but then I reread Dana's article and realized salt water was out of the question.
Finally we remembered a spot down in the Valley where we might be able to get close enough to the bank of the San Diego River to surrender my cosmic muffin therein. We parked in a nearby lot, trundled down the street a piece, and found a likely - if rocky - spot. We picked our way cautiously a few feet down, where I perched on a rock and hurled the bun. At first, I was dismayed; the roll fell just at the edge of a kind of breakwater thing and just sat there for a minute. And then I noticed that the wind was blowing the water toward the breakwater, and despaired of my little offering to Venus getting very far at all.
Then, I was rescued: a group of four ducks descended on the roll, pushed it into the river, and began eating it. "That's... good, right?" I asked Jonny. "I mean, nature participating in the ritual, and all." "Well, think of it this way," he pointed out. "That roll is going to get a lot further down the river in the stomach of that duck than it would have on its own."
Now that I think about it, I guess maybe it's a good thing I forgot that nickel.
posted by April at 3:44 PM
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