He moved forward through the darkness towards the light of the chariot.  But as Enkidu moved, he remained doubtful.  Was this another illusion?  Is this the right thing to do?  What will the result of this be?  Will I lose myself as I know it?

These doubts and questions there born, changed his trajectory and led him away from the chariot and towards a staircase.  Schismatic thoughts confined to conflict served as a remembrance of the unsolved.

Being moved to the top of the lighted staircase he heard the voice of a woman calling to him.  He passed through the doorway at the top, being lit as it was with brown and green hues, seemingly shimmering across a liquid to be reflected upon the door.  

The scene dissolved and he found himself starting to make out the edges of a forest, a place that he felt a certain resonance with.  

“Why is this so familiar?”

He wondered....Instant realization took hold of his form as he saw the place of his birth....but not from the same time that he lived.  There seemed to be an overlap between the realms of the jeweled garden of the gods, with the cedar forest.  

This was a place untouched by time,
as though its vegetation aged and made wine.

The wilds had been  ushered towards instant life and growth after the creation of it.  The woman's call to him gained a lower octave of tone, as if a man was joining in the song.

A thought spawned from elsewhere initiated recognition within Enkidu.

Humbaba had a consort!  

The voices were so similar, as if from the union of anima and animus with the exception that the male voice was half as dense as it was supposed to be.  The thing giving most of its weight seemed lost, as if trying to come from a place that wasn’t.  

It was the death song of Humbaba, as sung along by his consort's chorus.  
        
The environment changed
its form once again to replicate the moment
Gilgamesh slayed the great monster Humbaba.  

This however was actually a transgression of the divine order of things, the demon being a way to help keep humanity from putting the world out of balance and destroying or forgetting about nature.

A large many armed and many winged being with a leonine face appeared.

*“Do you remember why you died hero?...Yes, it was because you incurred the wrath of the gods, and the unseen womanly wrath of me.  You took my consort before he could plant his seed in me.  You took my present and my future, so we, the divine, did the same for you.  You broke my union and yet you know nothing of union...Of a sacrifice of self?  You know nothing ...but I can teach you.  In order to learn though I need you to do but one thing...The only fitting thing.  Join me, lose yourself in me and empty yourself of yourself of fear and into my womb. Be the other side in a divine love circuit, and in this way I may birth another protector of the realm, one born of the originals murderer, and one of divine order.  Fitting no?”

Gilgamesh--two-thirds god, one-third man--was the despot of Uruk. He treated his subjects cruelly. To ameliorate this abominable situation, the gods create Enkidu, who was reared by animals. At first, Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, but then become friends. They want to cut down a cedar forest that is off limits to mortals. The forest is guarded by a monster, Humbaba, who serves Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air. With the help of Shamash, the sun god, the two **** Humbaba, then cut down the trees to make a raft. They float back to Uruk. Ishtar, the goddess of love, falls in love with Gilgamesh, but he rebuffs her. Angered, Ishtar asks her father, Anu, the god of the sky, to punish Gilgamesh by bringing down the Bull of Heaven that creates seven years of famine, but Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and **** the bull. The gods seek revenge and **** Enkidu. Gilgamesh is forlorn, and in his grief begins to wear animals skins. He wanders through the wilderness. Gilgamesh finally meets Utnapishtim to whom the gods have given immortality, but he won't tell Gilgamesh how to gain immortality for himself. Gilgamesh therefore continues his travels, this time through total darkness, until he finnally reaches the sea with its beautiful surroundings. It is there that he meets Siduri. He tells her about his quest for immortality. She responds by telling him to abandon this quest and to learn how to enjoy the pleasures of what remain of the rest of his natural life. Men would die, but humankind would persevere. Gilgamesh is a changed man. He returns to Uruk and sees the city and its people in a different light. He will find meaning and gratification in the years he has left, and humanity will endure.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Take your first steps and do not refuse the heart taurus calling of of this journey.

Enkidu contemplated for a moment [seemingly eternal, but flowing into itself for a new moment of ‘now’ as it continues] how could there be a before in this equation?  He couldn’t remember.  “You have died, but are not yet done Enkidu,” The chorus continued  His name, those voices, all of them coagulated into a recognition of the past in a weighted epiphany.  

Welcome to the Divine imagination, it is here that you will truly be tested.  Your life on earth, that was simply the practice period, here is where you literally put realization into action.  This may be a place of light, but you are in a transitory period.  In order to find yourself you must achieve the wholeness that you were unable to achieve in life.  However, You are not alone in this journey there will be guides as there always have been.  IT is up to you to not miss them, it is up to you to truly listen and realize, it is up to you alone to act.

“You may have thought you were a hero once,” the voices sang, “but this is the true forge of heroes.  This is the cosmic smelter through which you will be folded and folded in such a way that you might fulfill your potential and help others to do the same.”

Instantly visions of Enkidu as a King welled forth from the surroundings.  The environment began to take on a similar substance to whatever he was thinking about.  Concepts became steps and Enkidu saw himself standing once again with Gilgamesh facing the Great walled city of Uruk, the masses chanting the brother’s names, and in his hand a rather grotesque piece of the great monster Humbaba!  

He wanted to look Gilgamesh in the eye, to cry to his brother how much he missed him, but...he forgot why.  Had he been gone?  Surely, this was the present moment as it is, and presently Enkidu and Gilgamesh were showing off their Great accomplishment.  A serpentine whisper projected from what sounded like Ishtar made itself heard, soft and clear though the crowd’s roar was shaking the foundation of the city.  

“Look what you have done!  Look how you have succeeded.  Gaze into the eyes of these assembled adorers.  Can you not feel the power that such recognition brings?  You can have all this and much, much more.”

The lure of accomplishment lingering in the air quietly preparing to harpoon Enkidu with the its’ concrete & possessive tendrils.  Something innately prompted him to not look into the eyes of the roaring crowd or to the eyes of his brother, Gilgamesh. Instead he squinted through the pupils as portals to the truth of their being.  In each of the eyes he saw a subtle poison.  In each was a yearning to possess the power of Enkidu, the aching delusion that they too could own such an experience as felling a demon and the riches that would follow from such an event. 

A lone pair of eyes shimmered behind the crowd’s edge.  They were the only pair of eyes empty of delusion empty of desire for what he had.  He was confused by this.  WHY would someone not want what he had?? They alone in the crowd saw the truth as it was.  They eyes spoke to him as a voice never could,

“Let go of these delusions.  You have already finished your journey for accomplishment, this journey is for truth.  This is your duty.  Remember to do your duty and let go of the results, if you hold onto the results you will be lost in your own hell and we will be unable to find you, let alone save you.”

As soon as this was understood the poised and now scorpion and serpentine tendrils of accomplishment made to strike at Enkidu’s heart and eyes.  To take his chance at immortality.  Enkidu became still and saw that the city, the people, and his accomplishment were illusions; complex, detail laden illusions, but illusions nonetheless.  Sand paintings which were constantly created and blown away.  

Understanding manifested as a chest piece of armor and a helmet both crafted from the light of the heavens.  The hooks of the tendrils found no hold on Enkidu’s spirit armored as it was.  And the light of understanding poured through the armor to foil the strike.  The illusion was thus illuminated through understanding. The environment faded back into the infinite light that was his existence before his journey back towards delusion....

The only thing that remained after the experience were the pair of eyes that had instigated his realization.  What appeared around them was a resplendent chariot with an infinitely beautiful being making itself manifest, first its structure shown through a light-lattice grid, then its frequency fell into form.  Krishna spoke to him through his eyes.  The speech was an invitation.  

**“Join me on this path of authenticity and duty.  Be a true hero and come aboard the chariot this moment.  Do not refuse this call my love.  This is a call to see yourself as you have yet to witness it.”

Mother spinster’s sporcy spindle spaed a specious spider splenetically spinning a sparkling specimen of the spired and spherically eggish; still though spinose although sporadic, seemingly soft, deceivingly so, sacred, secret special place to stave off such besetments!

  Her enchantment’s curse, no less the worse, arachnid terse in webs of verse, or plainly verse we shall rehearse from high above to stage below or thought to hanging from strangely gallows, the sickly web a trap thus cloven of heaven’s weaver said to woven in all her life never betrothen, she cast aside all such resentments!

And so Old Mother Hubbard then went to the cupboard speaking her cursed ways…

  Along came Ariadne, the spider beside thee, winding her spinning, pointing thus pinning upon her the blame for all days. With no voice to speak, evading flood did she seek, a way up from the sea on the laurels of Mother’s uprooted tree. So was it ended, uprooted, upended, the guilt, blame and controversy. Umun-Hubbur, Humwawa, Humbaba, star-weaver and Hubbard and Ariadne!

The evidence reviewed, this  a half time later.
"a man can
make up his"
own mind, my, me mine
myme mine mymemine nine iterations,

expand the basic concepts of topological
space time, in the neighbourhood
south of all three bridges into Saigon, on the roof

Make it up, make it all up, and wait fifty years.
Whiteface.
And the mime in the street keeps the beat
silently reciting Kerouakoan streams.
'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom.

Canned Heat, sterno still, sip it,  get back
Beatles became something akin
to a window left open now
fifty years, since January 1969, Radioman
and Tom Green on the Panasonic
music from the other side… the joke
'Look Fred, that man by the road'
Some *** fiend got in print in 1968

Get back, Jack. And that

started the whole world crying,
from the commonwealth to common woe,

-- Interesting times upon us, oh yeh

A hook, in a song,
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong
- ah, allusion, get back, prophecy
- right, fifty years ago today, soon
- Ringo says Forty Million Churchills, back then
or late, lately as the topo-logical-ournearity
gets back to optimum
later there, we were, on the roof
of that old fishnet factory
dangled there before, me,
the deal, if you want it, come and get it
better hurry cause it's goin fast,
ping
ricochet -
Highschool History, 1963,
Forty Million Frenchmen can't be wrong?

What does that mean? I asked
Miss Dinas, who was plump, and cheery,
and she lived with Miss Some-name
I forgot
to notice, due to, the clue
in the way Miss Dinas winked, that one time,
not
at me, when she said
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong.
-- look away
Some squared away artist cries, stop the lies!
Gray-ace, go fish
Wordsworth,
happy soldier character- no, Fernando- a bull
ABBA , not winking - snorting
at me, when she said
feed your head,
autistic community, com-unionize AI
timeandspace
re-
alize the musical, a means of saying things,
silly, silent
hints of splendor in the grass,
and weeds, and black-eyed suzannes,
growing in the road,
Tobacco Road,
down at the end of town, where
skid row hits the river,
long and wide,

milk and Hohner on t'othaside
sharp hone mama
Sioux wee, Sioux e- baby, be my baba now,
Humbaba, guard
my forest
sein, mein, wine and rosy days being wise
in thine own eyes,

as we warned, eh/ wahrrmmmnned edu
mcate edumacation, the deal was…
I was to learn to
become a maker of papermoney clips
from plastic straws on a trus'line, about to rupture
and spill guts
on gumption swallowed whole.
-------------------
Koans and Cohen and all
-- If it had been my will
I'd a been so dead, so long ago, I'd be
as if I'd never been,
-- If it had been my will

True rest, needs a weary mind,
to weigh its worth,
hangdown yo' head, Tom Green, duely done
do tie yer Jimmie Lee Jackson
Bronc Rider Trophy Buckle to m'line
let it out
come think a mile with me, let's
see what come to mind.

--whistle break
-- heads abobbin, we rock on, Sisyphus
the first,
agreed we got the message in the medium
evolved by will worship alone,
rock on, roll on un
aided, no doubt by the spirit advisor
to old Abraham Lincoln's jot on the margin
"a man can
make up his"… hmmm, his own mind, hmmm

wouldjaremind me, what was I thinkin'
"a man can
make up his mind to be as happy as he is…"

Free to be. I think free to be alive, maybe,
Lincoln was athinkin'
as a we, the people agree we do have title right
to life, awe
ja,
and liberty, I suppose, we must define, to refine,
down to the gilt around the frame,
on the back side, wasted glitter, thin film of actual gold
well
I'll be, did you ever see the like, a
con-
jurer or a presti-digital simulacrum truckin' on and on
sayin' come on
sing old songs, ones we ever
learned again
today
what you never thought possible, just a minute
ago,
as we ponder the effect of a silly millimeter longer
rising in a ribbon
past lips of an apple green shade,

Oh great Enkidu, as you lay upon the arid earth
To never arise of lifeless state, may the peoples of grand Uruk
Forget not your complexion heroic, nor nature intrepid
When faced with perilous forthcoming.

So recall I your conjuring at the behest of my subjects;
At the mercy of Anu and Aruru, the great gods of creation.
But a feral beast were you then upon your conception,
One who roamed, and hunted, and dwelled amongst savage brethren.

Stranger to the vices that so consume humankind.
Nature ****** was your dwelling till appeared the beauteous Shamhat.
By her features so enraptured, her nigh perfection, that unto her you conceded,
And in time renounced your erstwhile beastly ways.

And became a mighty man, who abandoned me not when I took to slay Humbaba—
Ogrish beast entrusted by Enlil to safeguard the cedar forest—
Enkidu, ***** fierce yet wise, how you solaced me as I woke many days
And shared the dolorous dreams I had received.

Fearful had I grown of Humbaba, of the wrath of Enlil,
Though your patience and guidance inspired in me the strength
To renounce not my true ambitions.
O divers gods of Sumer

Wherefore the Death of my beloved companion?
Perchance, ‘tis the ire engendered by the felling of Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven?
Tho, for many days I weeped and wandered the varied land,
Hither, do I now stand with a message to impart.

Aye, the path that lay ‘fore us will oft be creviced and cragged,
Our foes await ahead, arms in hand, in hopes that we regress,
Yet we, the valiant, will fall not to their attacks
Nor let difficult terrain impede our advance.

Yea, Enkidu, departed gallant,
Bestow your wisdom and courage upon all!
For with these our city will forever stand tall.

humbaba-house
torn down
for ill-gotten cedar

and other spoils of
war