A vast ocean. Deep blue sky enriched with sunshine. Sounds of wind and water. The light hits the waves with a million fragments of brilliant, piercing points of radiance. They dazzle and bewilder your vision. The sparkle on the waves, reminds you of the sparkle in your father’s eyes…

Down, now. Silently, diving beneath the surface. The water carries muffled echoes. Deeper.

Deeper. Darkening gloom rushes up to embrace you. There, at the border of the deepest, an enormous shadow looms near, a dark eye glinting at you. Closer it approaches. Opening its yawning mouth, a sudden current draws you in, rushing toward the ever widening darkness, white teeth shining like rows of pale birch-trees. In dusty books, far away in another world, pictures of this great beast have the caption: WHALE.

Down here, it goes by a different name: LEVIATHAN.

FEAR ME, it calls, echoing mind to mind. AS ALL DO. SWALLOWED UTTERLY INTO ME, YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK.

A wailing cry reaches your ears, thin and wavering. The teeth now tower below and above you, caught by a swirling of the current for a moment, poised at the edge. Distant shapes, long nosed, sleek, with rounded foreheads, swim and circle not to far away, to each side.

ENTER AT YOUR PERIL. THE PEOPLE OF THE SONG CALL YOU BACK. I CAN HOLD BACK THE ABYSS NO LONGER.

At that moment, you realize you’ve hunted this monster for long years. The Great King of the Abyss has appeared before you at last. Your own hesitation has caused you to pause at the brink of absolute sundering.

Adding salt to salt, your tears fill the watery void. Then the great drums of the beast’s heart reach your ears, and riding the back of your of your own death-song, forgetting everything that ever came before, lost to everything true and untrue, the current swells with a mighty rush, and the blackest belly of night swarms all about you.

Silence, except for the great rhythm of a drum, organic in its thrumming, like a great heart.

Your eyes open, drowsily. A room…people….a bed…

“Welcome,” intones a deep voice.

“Welcome, to the S.S. Palingenesia.”

Once upon a time, there lived a man, down on his luck, travelling the roads of the world looking to increase his fortunes. He had worked for many years as a farmer, but his land had dried up. So, cast out of his simple life, he had begun his search for a new manner in which to make his way in the world.

One day, on a particular road, leading to an unfamiliar town, he passed a sign on the side of the road. He stopped, and read its message : “I PAY GOLD COINS FOR COPPER PENNIES”. Well, though quite skeptical, he nevertheless thought to himself “I better at least hear this person out. If true, I increase my fortune, if false, I continue on none the worse for wear.”

So, seeing a faint path beside the sign, he followed it into the forest.

Soon, he came to a cliff. A narrow bridge six inches wide crossed a wide chasm and ended at the other side. There he could see a small elf, dressed in green, resting on a bed made of many bags of gold. “Hoy there!”, said the man to the elf, “Hoy!”

The elf jumped up immediately. Squinting at the man, he shouted back, “You’ve come for the gold? Wonderful! You see I collect copper pennies, and as an elf I have plenty of gold. However, nobody seems to believe the offer, and I get so few takers! Why, I haven’t given a bag of gold away in months!”

“I wish to hear more about the deal,” said the man, “it sounds good, but what’s the catch?”

“No catch!” exclaimed the elf, “Just one small logistical matter. I will pay you one gold coin for each of your copper pennies, but you have to meet me half way on the bridge. I will not cross to your side.”

The man rubbed his stubbled chin and said, “You won’t, eh? Why should I have to cross all that way to meet you!”

The elf made a grimace. “Look, either you see value in what I have or not. I very much want to add your wonderful pennies to my collection, and in former times, I would cross all the way over to that side, but I’ve had more than one person take advantage, using force to take my gold and keep their pennies, and leaving me to make the long walk back over the chasm!” he huffed. “So I came up with this system where we both have equal risk, and neither of us has to endure crossing the bridge twice.”

The man paused in thought. Looking at the precarious nature of the bridge, noticing a slight wind blowing across it, he began to question this deal. “I can see plain enough that the gold looks real. But what if it isn’t?” He began to finger his purse of pennies. “And, I could just as well lose what I have by dropping it into the chasm!”

The man looked up. “Okay, you little imp, I will get onto the bridge with you.” At this the elf smiled happily, picked a bag of gold and began to cross. His smile faded however once he reached the middle of the narrow, windy bridge, and realized the man had done no more than (with one foot still on land, and the other snaked out on the bridge) stretch out his hand with the purse of pennies to somehow reach the elf far out in the middle.

“This does not equal meeting me halfway,” frowned the elf, “you must leave your side and meet me in the middle in order that we both get what we want.”

The man stepped back off the bridge, and his face went red. “Listen you little demon, you want me to risk everything I have for this gold! I have met you as far as I will, and in fact, I demand you come all the way over and prove to ME that you even HAVE real gold!”

The elf sighed, and turning his back, sadly returned to the other side, laying back down on the bags of gold.

This angered the man, and shaking his fist at the little person, he returned to the road, smugly thinking to himself, “What a blowhard! Asking ridiculous things of me, and wouldn’t even prove to me that he had REAL gold for my lousy copper pennies. Fortunately I kept my wits about me, instead of playing the sucker to whatever scam he had going.”

And with that, the man reached the road, resuming his dusty journey to the next town.

Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Num, who had stopped feeling.

As a child, Num had a cruel stepmother, who would often tickle him until his eyes bugged out and tears streamed down his cheeks. He would beg for mercy, but received none. This treatment commonly occured in his land, where the government saw the merciless tickling of children as a brutal necessity to keep them aware of their lowly place in the order of things.

Most simply accepted this peculiar brand of torture, but Num impetuously decided to do something about it: he constructed a special protective suit, that covered every inch of his body, making him almost impervious to the sensations of the outside world (and most specifically to the savage tickling of his stepmother). Now of course, like a snug-fitting pair of boots, he could still feel things somewhat, but it all felt dull and remote, and thus easier to ignore.

In this way, he endured the cruel attacks of his stepmother for many years, until the day arrived when he came of age and left his home to find his own fortunes in the world. He had become so used to his protective clothing, that he had forgotten that he even wore it. He bathed in it, he ate in it, he worked in it. And so when he left the cruel domain of his stepmother, he continued to wear his protective suit, although he no longer needed it. Travelling through his muffled world, he got by, and experienced success in the trade of beekeeping. And though his clothing prevented him from ever sharing any real feeling with another, he did manage to find a bit of dulled happiness through all the layers that protected him.

One day, a time of revolution came to Num’s land. The populus had begun to criticize the governments many harsh habits, its pollution of the sky and sea, its policies of death and domination. They wanted to live in a new way. And then a most terrible secret came out: the government at last admitted to its aggressive extermination of the Tutch, the people who had once dwelled in this land, before it became annexed for the growing population of Num’s people. They had easily wiped out this former culture, for every last member of the Tutch had no eyes. This ancient people simply felt their way through the world, and became easy targets for weapons that could kill from a distance.

Soon after this startling revelation came another one: the government had long hidden a fantastic tome written by the Tutch, called “The Book of Life”, a book that revealed an ancient and wonderful way to live, a way that excluded the abusive tickling of children, a way that supported happiness of the people. Some magic property of the book prevented anyone who read it from explaining it to anyone else; it became clear, to learn the teachings of the book of life, one had to read it for oneself.

And so Num heard of the book, and excitedly traveled to the museum where the government, after much public outcry, had finally conceded to put it on display, under guard. There he joined the bustling queue of hopeful readers. At last, after long days of waiting, the person in front of him stepped aside, revealing the magical book of life. Greedily Num opened its heavy cover, and looked at the first page. Confused, he flipped frantically through the book, until he got to the end.

“My god,” he said, “It’s BLANK!”

Moments passed. Impatient noises drifted over from the line behind him. Looking up at the scholar who sat nearby, he said angrily “No wonder no one can adequately explain this book…it has nothing in it!”

The scholar looked at him carefully. “Citizen, a book with blind authors will of course have no letters which you can see. You must FEEL the surface of the pages with your hand…only by feeling the the message of the book can you learn it.”

Num felt the page of the book with his thick gloved hand. “Poppycock! I feel nothing!” he said.

The scholar grimaced, saying “Take off your glove. You can’t feel the subtle bumps on the page through all that.”

Num grimaced back, and replied “Perhaps you’ve gone as blind as the Tutch. I don’t wear gloves. And any teaching worth knowing would lie in plain sight, for only with the power of sight can we adequately evaluate such a teaching from an objective distance. I see now that the government has simply masked one conspiracy with another…you can keep your silly blank book!” Annoyed, offended, and thoroughly disappointed, Num turned around and marched off.

The shocked scholar sat for a few moments, deep in thought. Then, recovering, he turned to the head of the line and spoke.

“Next, please.”

“They’ve stolen the Sleeping King! The King has disappeared!” called out the Captain of the Royal Guard, as bells clanged and the sound of scattered stamping boots filled the air. Panic consumed the castle grounds, shouts and alarm swirled and rang. At the door to the King’s Bedroom, the Captain had found the bodies there, both night guards slain, blood staining the flagstones, the sound of babies crying and lullabyes seeped from one of the dead men, as all his futures that might-have-come slowly drained with his spirit. The other man’s corpse oozed a distant chorus of bittersweet unwritten songs, rising to circle about the Captain’s head as he swatted and waved the disorienting, departing spirits away, trying to stay focused on the matter at hand.

Beyond the wide open doors, the royal bed lay empty, blankets tossed aside.

After sealing the front gates and securing all the entrances and exits (that he knew of), the Captain called the various Ministers to the Throne Room.

“Disaster has struck,” he growled, looking around at the assortment of Very Important Persons: the Minister of Grounds (looking very collected and alert), the Minister of Intelligence (managing a sinister glint through a half-awake haze), the Prime Minister himself (eyelids sagging, moustache drooping), and the rest of the overabundant band of administrators. “Someone has slain the King’s guards, and he himself no longer sleeps in the Royal Bed.”

“Good god man, what will we do? What if he wakes?” choked one of the crowd.

“Then he’ll damn us all, damn us all to oblivion of course,” retorted the Minister of Intelligence, “But of course he hasn’t woken yet. And we may yet retrieve our precious King before that happens. I assume our Captain has sent out a hunting party…?”

“Not only have I sent out a hunting party, but every tracker, dog, and messenger too.”

“Excellent!” barked the Prime Minister out of his quickly departing haze of sleep. “Then we have as good of a chance as any. Whyever would someone want to kidnap the poor chap anyhow?”

“If you’ll remember, Prime Minister, we have discussed this very scenario before,” said the Minister of Intelligence, “Regardless of the danger, someone else may feel they have better things to whisper in the King’s ear while he slumbers.”

The wind moaned around them, pulling at their ears, throwing up their coats, as the small dark group of figures crossed the short space between the castle wall and the hilly, broken landscape that stretched to the horizon. Hooded and cloaked, they trotted at a fair pace, flowing with the lay of the land, staying down, scanning the sky, ears perked for danger. One of the figures carried a large blanket-wrapped bundle against its chest. The sound of baying hounds, carried on the wind, caused more than one head in the band to whip back towards the castle.

“Onward, onward, you rogues! Let the hounds eat our wind-scoured tracks! Onward!” shouted the shortest of the kidnappers.

They serenade her
in the little wild places
those bands of folk
their faces open to the weather
wandering the faery paths and highways
making the Map with each step, sonnet, and hushed glance
those singers of love songs
those seekers of holy places
they eat the food she sets before them
they drink from cups she has filled
and make merry by her Moonlight

*** Disclaimer: I use both the graphic novel and the movie for this new way of seeing SIN CITY. So If refer to an event you don’t remember, check one or the other of those sources. For the sake of brevity (too late?), I keep to one storyline, that of Marv and Goldie, known as “the Hard Goodbye”. One last thing, I haven’t asked Frank Miller’s artistic opinion about any of this; best to consider this a “what if?”. In the end, if it clicks for you, then I feel glad to have shared something meaningful to me. Onwards. ***

One can watch the entire movie Sin City, without having a single moment of reflection. It doesn’t ask you to do any deeper thinking than you feel inclined to - the action rushes by fast and furious, the characters barking and purring lines, one after another.

Yet something stirs, underneath the surface. Something worth a more thoughtful look, for Sin City (the derogatory slang for “Basin City”) really contains two worlds: a world dedicated to Sincerity, and another to Cynicism.

Throughout Sin City, you see the same repeating visual message, over and over: bricks, bars, cages, gates. The Prison that we all live in, the Prison of our culture. And yet within the Prison, certain beings refuse to give in, refuse to cease making their beautiful drama of life, love, fury, and death.

The character Marv, a man somehow both ancient and in the prime of his life, a walking wall of muscle, embodies an intentionally anachronistic kind of masculinity. He comes from a primordial time when male purpose sat clearly in the open: to protect and provide for the goddess (our wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and the earth herself).

[I see Marv as] Conan in a trenchcoat… - Frank Miller

He drunkenly wanders the line between those two cities, unable to find the entrance to Sincerity, unwilling to submit to the world of Cynicism and Lies, lost, alone, without any meaning to his days. And then it happens.

…she falls against me…dripping with that angel sweat of hers…the perfect woman. The goddess. Goldie. -Marv

The goddess touches him, asks him to protect her, shares her divinity with him, making love at the heart of the center of the universe, the origin point of the big bang, surrounded by the infinite darkness preceding creation.

Afterwards, upon waking, he realizes something terrible has happened. The goddess has died in the night. Someone has killed her. The snake has entered the garden created by the union of the god and goddess. But Marv can find no wound, no sign of damage. Almost as if she did not receive a physical wound, but a spiritual one.

And he spends the rest of the story trying to get back to that blissful origin point, back into the embrace of the goddess. And the only way there, lies on the other side of redemption. He can only get back there, by protecting the goddess after the fact. By redeeming his failure and protecting what remains of her – her daughters, her sisters. In our culture, after the first sunrise of the Universe, men wake up having failed already. Upon waking, into their laps and before their bleary eyes, they receive the bitter gift of this culture: a world created upon the enslavement of the goddess, a world choking and poisoned, where (in America) one out of four women is sexually assaulted, in a long tradition of patriarchal vengeance upon the bodies of those who remind us most of what remains ever outside of the full control of our science and machines: the earth mother herself.

When his eyes go dead the hell I send him to will seem like heaven after what I’ve done to him. I love you Goldie. – Marv

Before he had met the goddess again, and reunited with his original purpose, before she had touched him with her sacred power, the simple, everyday, miraculous power of her body, he had lost his way, lost his moorings, forgotten where he had come from.

…hell is waking up every god damn morning and not knowing why you’re even here. Why you’re even breathing…but I’m out. I know exactly why I’m breathing. I know exactly what I’m doing. – Marv

She had saved him. She gave him his purpose back. He had failed in saving her. She had died for him. Now he would die for her, but only after redeeming her death.

First, he obtains the aid of priestesses of the goddess, his parole officer who can get his elixir of confidence (anti-psychotic drugs that seem to have no more than a placebo effect) from her girlfriend the psychiatrist. Only women who love women will help him out at this moment.

Then he gets more support, from his mother, sneaking into her house, retrieving his pistol from his childhood room. He has named his handgun Gladys, after a nun from his primary school days. Another woman who will support him. His mother discovers him, worried.

Mom, I feel better than I have in years…I met a girl. Her name’s Goldie. She’s really nice. – Marv

Marv continues on to set a trap, by going to Kadie’s, yet another safe haven for him: a joint of “booze and broads”, run by the transvestite (a man who embraces the ways of women) Kadie, never seen, but who has extended a permanent welcome to Marv…yet another source of the Goddess’ help.

After some bloody detective work, he manages to obtain a confession from a priest: the all powerful Cardinal Roark has his hand in this somehow. This goes all the way to the top of the rotten patriarchy: the Church, the twisted and enslaved masculine power under the corrupt Cardinal, a power opposed to the ancient protector spirit of Marv, has murdered the goddess. The Church denies and stigmatizes everything having to do with the goddess, with any wisdom women have. And Marv stands on the outside of things. He finds himself the outcast. The Church has all the power.

Marv: It can’t be that big.
Priest: Find out for yourself! …and ask for yourself if that corpse of a slut is worth dying for.
Marv: Worth dying for. [BLAM!] Worth killing for. [BLAM!] Worth going to hell for. [BLAM!] Amen.

He follows a lead that the Priest gave him. It takes him to a very bad place, and almost destroys him. He meets somebody wholly new, somebody dangerous of an order above and beyond the everday cruelty of Sin City’s patriarchal powers. He meets Kevin, the Consumer of the goddess. And Kevin has powers that Marv didn’t even know existed.

…Impossible…nobody can sneak up on me…nobody…my fingers die…I go blind…nobody’s that quiet…nobody except the one who snuck into that hotel room two nights ago…”…It was you, you bastard! You killed her! You killed Goldie!” - Marv

With the face of cherub, the whirling and untouchable Kevin smiles his way through beating Marv unconscious. Blackness.

Marv wakes up locked in Kevin’s cellar, his trophy room. Several heads sit mounted on the wall. Women’s heads. Lucille sits nearby, also trapped.

He eats people…It’s girls he eats as far as I can tell… - Lucille

Marv has met, and temporarily lost to a force completely alien to him, a force that even the Church fears. The new power of young men who don’t just deny women, don’t just beat them, don’t just consider them second class humans. We’ve done that for long millenia enough. But these new ones do something altogether new: they consume them, with a smile, with an inexhaustible hunger, with angelic youthful faces, with a matter-of-fact everyday sociopathy that leaves Marv stunned. He didn’t even know you could do this to women. He’s seen them beaten, caged, humiliated. But eaten?

He didn’t just eat their bodies, you pig, he ate their souls! He loved them in a way that was absolute and clean and perfect! – Cardinal Rourke

And truly, Kevin’s masculinity has a catlike quietly, he rakes with his claws, all serpentine speed and grace. He does think he has consumed and stolen the dark powers of the goddess, and wields them savagely. He worships female power in a way no-one would wish themselves worshipped, like a vivisectionist awed by the complex, functional beauty of a cat’s exposed organs, using the knowledge gained “for the greater good”.

After escaping Kevin’s hellish cellar, Marv must head to Old Town, the sanctuary of the goddess, to get the help and knowledge of the women there. He sees Wendy, Goldie’s sister. Of course, you can’t kill the goddess any easier than you can kill Life itself. Wendy stands for the continuation of that goddess in the face of her spiritual suffering. As daughters of this same goddess, at first Wendy and the others don’t trust him – they believe the lie of the Police and Church, that Marv killed the goddess. What greater trick than that, if the Patriarchy can convince the daughters and sisters of the goddess that the ancient warrior, scarred and intimidating, with his antique protector ethic, killed the Divine Female. Yet it doesn’t stick. Sincerity wins through. The goddess runs Old Town as best she can, and her sincerity saves her daughters from killing their champion. Wendy, Goldie’s sister, realizes she almost made a terrible mistake.

Wendy: You sat there and took it—when you could have taken my gun away from me any time you wanted to—
Marv: Sure, but I thought I might be able to talk some sense into you. And I probably would’ve had to paste you one getting the gun—and I don’t hurt girls.

Marv feels terrified at the task ahead of him, as he gathers his wits, with the help of Wendy and the daughters of Old Town.

[looking at his reflection in a mirror]…Feel the fear and get past it…go ahead…shake like a junkie…you’ve got some people to kill, and if you do this right…you’ll go to your grave a winner. – Marv

With renewed conviction, Marv faces Kevin again, the Warrior against the Soul-eater. Because Marv now no longer doubts Kevin’s power, because he understands Kevin exists, no matter how alien, he fights fully aware, and though savaged by Kevin’s claws, he pulls him in and embraces him, clicking on the handcuffs.

Yeah, that’s right…get up close and personal…I can take it… - Marv

No longer denying that this alien thing in front of him is a man just like himself, Marv has beaten Kevin. Marv now understands what before he could even imagine.

Try to hop around now you bastard. - Marv

Looking at this poor soulless thing with the body of a Man, Marv does the only merciful thing. He disassembles him, piece by piece, like a robot.

Marv deals Kevin the killing blow at last, the cherub smiling peaceably all the while, his empty pleasantness ever reflecting the unfillable hole inside him. A thousand goddesses would not have sated his need, trapped by the addiction for something he could never get. Perhaps Kevin finds relief in his death, at last freed from his helpless sociopathy. Desperate in his lonely emptiness, completely estranged from the Mothers and Sisters and Girlfriends to whom, from his training growing up in Sin City, he could only see as objects of his unattainable satiation. He could only receive the goddess’s love and blessing when she gave it willingly, not by consuming it. By hiding this from himself, Kevin has lost himself to all that matters in this world, more completely and perfectly than any of us. And his mentor, the Cardinal, envies him terribly. Such perfect meaninglessness.

Finally. Roark. Patrick Henry Roark. – Marv

Marv takes it all the way to the top. Confronting Cardinal Roark, he learns the Cardinal had taken him under his wing, at first shocked by Kevin’s eating (something new to even him!), but then finally seduced by it, seduced by Kevin’s perfection of the absolute annihilation in himself of the capacity to live, feel, love, or see any speck of the goddess left in the world…like a true scientist of this mechanistic age, the world now appears a dead thing to him, for playing with and finally consuming.

…in time, I began to envy him…I could no longer stand to the side, while he touched heaven. – Cardinal Roark

In a strange kind of feedback system, the Patriarchy of Sin City gives birth to a creature it has never seen, but then learns from it to become more and more terrible, consuming ever more completely the goddess, violating too the soul of the Divine Male until nothing remains but tatters. Until nothing remains but Marv, the last scrap of the ancient warrior left.

…it’s beautiful Goldie…it’s just like I promised only better…and when his eyes go dead the hell I send him to must seem like heaven after what I’ve done to him… - Marv

Caught with the Cardinal’s dead body in his hands, gunned down and then resurrected on the operating table, charged with all of Kevin’s (and Roark’s) crimes, thrown into a cell on Death Row, after all his work, all his waiting, he finally receives, in death, his prize: a reunion with the embrace of the goddess. Through confusion, and fear, and pain, and violence, Marv has clawed his way back to a reunion with Goldie, on the heart-shaped bed at the center of the Universe. And the explosive power of that reunion starts it all over the again, as they once more create the Universe for the very first time, in the infinite darkness before sunrise, every single day.

So many layers ask for a telling here: the Marv in us, will save the Goldie in us, if we ask him. He will fight the Kevin and the Roark, the part of us trained by our culture to eat women’s souls, to hate them yet worship them. Actual men can also “save” actual women by honoring the goddess, the Goldie, in these living, breathing women all around them. By refusing to consume her. By coming together with her at the center of all things, on a heart-shaped bed, before time began, and create the universe again.

A great feathered dragon sleeps, hidden amongst the sprawling urban landscape. Not well hidden mind you, but hidden well enough for most eyes, dull and glazed over, clouded as the mind behind them.

Periodically it reveals itself in all its invisible majesty - cars crash, mothers give sudden birth, winds blow, pets whimper and hide, the world fills with terrible and wonderful things. And then the power ebbs, shrinking and withdrawing into out-of-the-way places: under beds, into attics and cellars, sewers, empty warehouses, condemned buildings, untrod and wild corners of parks and backyards, repelled by the predatory, analytical scrutiny of the human gaze and the painful grinding noise of human thoughts. It waits for the moments, when chaotic beauty rampages unchecked, often coinciding with defiant and unstoppable sunrises that hammer creation with the celebration of heat and light, shrinking the night into a patchwork of shadows, a scattered army of jigsaw puzzle pieces, hiding discreetly from daylight, behind and beneath whatever cover it can find, waiting silently for the night power to grow and piece itself together again.

In the beginning, Coyote created the universe. Or so many of the old native stories go…

The Joker, Batman’s archnemesis, a madman, born from an accident at Batman’s hand, reborn as he emerged from a soup of industrial chemicals in a Factory vat…

What does Coyote represent, anyway? Some say chance. Some say transformation. The Trickster, who tricks even himself at times. A Fool? A Sage?

The schizophrenic Green Goblin, throws bombs left and right, creating chaos and fear, as Spiderman desperately tries to stop him…

What do many in our culture see, when they picture the living world before the emergence of humans, the world newly made, by Coyote. The jungles, teeming with life. Not a human in sight. What does that look like to modern eyes?

Chaos.

The Riddler giggles and cackles, another mad plan coming together as Batman struggles to solve the newest riddle against the clock…

How does our modern civilization feel about Chaos? To what work would we put our superheroes, if we had them? And what mask would we put on Chaos, to demonize it, to make it an acceptable enemy.

…They called me MAD at the University, but I’ll show them, I’ll show them all! -Anonymous Mad Scientist

Well. We’d call it crazy, wouldn’t we?

Mwahahahah! Nobody can stop me now! Hahahahah! -Anonymous Supervillain

And truly, when our superheroes don’t have these colorful and insane archvillains to fight, they have to satisfy themselves as glorified cops and EMTs: stopping bank robbers, purse snatchers, putting out fires. But what about corporate polluters? What about enslaved workers at sweatshops? What about inethical and illegal logging practices? Fishkills from oil slicks? Well, we don’t employ them for those things. Their real work lies somewhere else.

Our superheroes don’t serve the world of life. They serve the prison that we all live in. They protect civilization [if you have any doubts about the prison-nature of civilization, I recommend you follow that line of inquiry, starting with the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn]. Of course, some of their archvillains can seem no more than glorified bank robbers. But we all can observe our superheroes reaching their pinnacle when a worthy enemy comes to threaten the integrity of the prison they guard…

Yes, my pretties, yes! Attack! Oh, my beautiful rodent army, no one can stop you! Kill, kill! -Anonymous Supervillain

…Magneto returned to his attempts at global conquest, being opposed time and again by the X-Men and a number of other heroes. In his most audacious attempt to conquer the world he threatened the governments of the world with earthquakes and volcanic activity…

Always our greatest enemy, insolent in her defiance, never submitting to our control, Mother Nature. She attacks our crops with insects, our cities with rodents, throwing hurricanes and floods our way. But Mother Nature…we like her when she behaves. So let’s blame Coyote. He never behaves.

The Green Goblin, poisoned by his own scientific experiment…the Hulk, chased and hounded, his powers the result of military research…the Joker and his chemical soup…the Riddler, victim of his own machine…

Our villains and our superheroes quite often seem born from the same womb: the arrogance of modern science. Its arrogance to study whatever it wishes, though the tools may injure and scar. To go wherever it wants, though it may threaten our lives, our children’s lives, our grandchildren’s lives.

So, if any of this does describe the stories we tell our ourselves, what do we do with this knowledge?

Well, we can start by firing our superheroes. Or putting them to new and better work. We can start by writing new stories, knowing full well what we do: that these new stories amount to nothing less than a vision of the world, and our place in it. What do we want that place to look like? Do we want it to make a future with great-grandchildren possible?

For we know one thing. As our superheroes zoom from one earthquake to another, from one robbery to another, stopping counterfeiters and mass-poisoners and mad arsonists, great-grandchildren really fall low on the list of priorities. With all this Chaos to control and stop, who has time for thinking of a seventh generation?

He walked, tall as a titan, to the circle’s center. His ancientness glowed fresh and new in the Dawn’s light, as if born just a moment ago, in the dark beginnings before time, before word or memory. With a face of polished marble he faced the assembly and spoke in words made of deep distant sounds, a language born of the romance between whalesong and earthquake. My ears went deaf from his voice’s relentless slow momentum, as sure as the turning of the earth, but I could still feel and hear the sounds vibrating in my belly. I could somehow understand it, in the same way mosquitos and crickets sense the weather changing, buffeted by the changing air pressure.

Murmurs filled the assembly. We felt resolved to carry the message onward.

In the Shinto Creation Myth, the primordial divine man and woman emerged at the beginning of time. The man dipped his spear down from the clouds and stirred the world into activity.

Decked with flowers, painted with colors, spirals, and dancing designs, he approaches. Craggy and ancient in one moment, as if chiseled from rock, young and glowing the next, like an emerging bud in springtime, he sets himself before the monster. An Ogre more powerful than a flood, more indiscriminate than a hurricane, with a volcanic belly full of fire.

Many cultures tells stories of a first man and woman, the divinity or sacredness of masculine and femine, instructing their maturing grandchildren how to perceive their own bodies and minds as men and women. And in turn, it instructs them how to perceive the dance of life and death in the world in a loving, compassionate, and ultimately useful way.

In our own cultural tradition, many of us struggle to find our way, to fill our lives with satisfying purpose. Perhaps a path that leads us there, lies through the song our own bodies sing…

A smile spreads across his face as he spreads his flower-hung arms. His heart racing, courageous not from lack of fear but from embracing it, he knows no exit, asks for no way out. What greater purpose than this, could one find?

What if the functions of our bodies as men and women told beautiful stories, stories of meaning and purpose? To wound a heart, you bring forth salty tears, speaking of our ocean-salted origins in the great churning watery belly of the Earth. In our mother’s belly we recapitulate the origin of our uttermost ancestry. We exit the internal ocean, accompanied by its waters, in the same place as the emergence of a woman’s menses. Women bleed monthly, from wounds that never heal, wounds meant to stay open, sacred wounds that give birth. In their time of bleeding, they can feel emotions especially keenly, speak especially profoundly, and grieve deeply, often without knowing why. For them, by the very nature of their bodies, they keep their hearts open, wounded, bleeding, so that life may continue, healing may flow.

What if grief sourced all beauty? What does it mean when we feel so happy, we cry? When we see something so beautiful, tears run down our cheeks? Do we call that a wound? Do true wounds create life, along with injuring it?

As a young teenager, I thought I had it figured out: with the help of the stories of my culture, heroes such as Mr. Spock, Robocop, and others, I decided that feelings themselves caused my pain. I need not to feel, and then the daily surging whirlwind of hurt, humiliation, suffocation would go away. I never quite succeeded, but then again, I did myself damage that I still continue to recover from…

When you grow up, your heart dies. – Allison, the Breakfast Club

Does a heart die when it can no longer grieve?

For men, we have a sword, that touches that wound, that encourages its openness. A flowering sword of life. Though one can wield a sword with violence to protect, at perhaps its highest purpose one can wield it simply to create beauty, to wound a heart, to bring forth the saltiness of tears. The saltiness of birth, life, and the original mothering ocean. Like the great poets, and characters such as Cyrano de Bergerac, a masculine heart thumps and thrums, aching to wound with beautiful words. To wound and receive wounds in turn, men dance, whether in the beauty of violence or of poetry, they care not.

And of course, in each one of us, a piece of the other exists: men have their own inner Sacred Wound, and women have their own Flowering Sword. Men and women, dancing their dance, touching inside each other, opening for each other, blossoming and birthing, sacrificing and dying.

The Ogre belches, and annihilating fire bursts forth. It smashes with its fists, and the ground splits. The flowering man burns to a cinder, his ashes scattered into the cracked earth. The sweetness of his perfume, mixed with the char of his demise, smells like birth and death all rolled into one. And there where he died the herbs will grow ever more greenly with his sacrifice.