Preface

​Thys boke is not wretyn in ordyr, euery thing aftyr other as it we don, but lych as the mater cam to the creatur in mend whan it schuld be wretyn, for it was so long er it was wretyn that sche had for-getyn the tyme and the ordyr whan thyngys befellyn.  And therfor sche dede no thyg wryten but that sche knew right wel for very trewth. ​

     The Book of Margery Kempe,
ed. By Sanford Brown Meech 

This book was not written in order, one thing after another as it happened, but as the matter came into the creature's mind as she was writing it, for it was so long before it was written that she forgot the time and the order of when things befell her. And therefore, she wrote nothing down except for the things she knew well to be the actual truth.                                                                                             

 Translated by Lynnea

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In Media Res: Descent (June 2009)

Hymn to Innana:  
​High Priestess of Heaven
On the seventh day, 
when the crescent moon
reaches its fullness, 
you bathe and 
sprinkle your face 
​with holy water.

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June 13, 2009.  17th Anniversary.  It did not start with anyone screaming in the shower.  It never does. It always starts with a frog, swimming around in a clear part of the pond, scooped up into a pot for someone about to boil water for cleaning, for making something clean and hot and comforting.  

Boiling the water is not a bad thing, and being a frog is not a bad thing either.

It's just that nobody knows.  The boiler of the water doesn't mean to cause pain, and the frog doesn't know she's not in Kansas anymore, so to speak.  

The water feels cool and then tepid and then maybe even pleasantly warm. And then a threshold is crossed into unpleasantness--the warmth feels oppressive, and it is hard to breathe easily or to move and wiggle.  But frogs get used to unpleasant warmth, and this frog lives unpleasantly for a while, in a small, uncomfortable, too-warm place.

There is life in the pot, after all; and life is so terribly sweet.

But then the water gets really quite warm--hot in fact--and it boils, and it is her 17th anniversary, and she walks into the house.  She has just dropped off the boy called Wolf for a week of youth service. She has arranged for the girl called Harper to play with a friend.
 
The frog walks into her house and smacks into the storm emanating thick from the office where her husband sits in his despair, and she recoils from her own cheerful intention to greet him.  This is their anniversary, and she is about to shower and change, and they will soon walk to the Loop and choose a restaurant, and look into each other's eyes, and this will be their 17th anniversary.
​  
But after she strips and steps into the spray, and the water is lovely and soft and warm, she finds her mouth opening wide into an O and is shocked to hear the sounds of someone screaming!   Not just once, but over and over and over again, and the relief is so great that she begins not to care that the neighbors might hear, and she gives herself up to the screams the way you would give yourself up to an orgasm or the pounding rhythm of a drum or the fact that you really are out in the rain without an umbrella, and your clothes are no longer able to keep your skin dry, and it doesn't matter because skin is supposed to get wet.

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