kali, ma' bast cat

this was the one for the sick girl who's cat called kali died and she had more or less a mental collapse. now she keeps hooking paul up with girls he really likes. :shrugs: true story. don't ask me.

i'm sure you're all familiar with kali, the dark feminine force (destructor/creator/mother) in hindu mythology, as Shiva's Shakti. in this explanation SHE'S the kundalini serpent, or in paul laffoley's terminology the motionless energy generated when life connects to death - prana or chi would be this same thing. interestingly enough the word 'kali' means dark or black (the absence or rather the ABSORPTION of all colors), and it comes from a word meaning 'time' (kala) in the sense of time as a process towards death. she is depicted in this aspect standing over or dancing on Shiva's corpse. there is a pun in the image that she 'removes Shiva's eye', and if you remove the 'i' in Shiva's name the word becomes Shva, or corpse. the indication in this glyph is that she (death) IS life, or that they are literally inseparable.

appropriately the 'death of kali' the cat occurs immediately preceding KATrina's (a word meaning 'pure) onslaught at new orleans (where i had my first memories as a child), meanwhile i'm having to move backwards in time and begin to find ways to resolve issues in my psyche involving my only two 'real' (meaning extended, or 'serious') relationships, both with girls named kathryn and kathrine (one went by kat, one went by kate, and i didn't find out til much later that her actual name was identical). mary ellen's SISTER's name is KAThleen and both my father and my mother's replacement for my father are both named KEiTth, which you might think is stretching it, but, well, fuck off. you don't know what you're talking about.

anyway, to work further with the pun i made her the picture that i did. i extended the connection to Bast, the egyptian cat goddess. the picture is both the 'spirit' of her dead cat rising and being 'honored' as she had asked, a visual poem to Bast, and thus to the positive aspects of my past female counterparts, and a present image of THAT ENTIRE SET OF CONCEPT stomping all over me. and there's a couple more layers at the very least but i'm not talking about them.

i really wanted to associate it with isis, but for some reason i could only get there through batman the animated series. in fact bast and isis connect, as far as i could find, to EVERY OTHER FEMALE GODDESS in the egyptian pantheon EXEPT EACH OTHER. very strange.

it may be interesting to note that Sufjan Stevens refers to 'the carpenter's spirit' as a 'she', and Karl Blau calls 'creeping jesus' (in a song that seems explicitly about this same stuff) a 'her' as well. or it may not be interesting at all. both are examples of exceedingly prolific artists. and while perhaps it is too soon to consider myself 'prolific' (but i've certainly got my start), i have certainly talked about Her myself on MANY occasions, and i draw 'Her' often, from some perspective I ONLY draw Her, in what seems to be a similar context or understanding. which is why i mention it.


"Is Kali, my Divine Mother, of a black complexion?
She appears black because She is viewed from a distance;
but when intimately known She is no longer so.
The sky appears blue at a distance, but look at it close by
and you will find that it has no colour.
The water of the ocean looks blue at a distance,
but when you go near and take it in your hand,
you find that it is colourless."