The Seminary of Praying Mantis Publishing

In Ancient times before a tree was cut down a prayer or ritual was performed. To alert the living thing or spirit or elemental which lived there that change was coming.

I also think we need such a prayer or ritual before a tooth is extracted.

A tree and a tooth are similar in that they are living and deeply rooted. The tree in the earth and the tooth in our flesh in our being. They are part of an ecosystem. On the whole of a community of living things. A tree is a home to birds, bees and maybe an owl or possum and the elemental that lives there as a vital living substance. As ancient people knew…

“The Plane of Elemental Mind (A) comprise the state or condition and degree of mental and vital development of a class of entities unknown to the average man but recognized to occultist. They are invisible to the ordinary senses of man, but, nevertheless, exist and play their part of the Drama of the Universe. Their degree of intelligence is between that of the mineral and chemical entities on the one hand, and of the entities of the plant kingdom on the other.”

The Kybalion, Hermetic Philosophy. Page 78

Not to forget to mention the more subtle elements of a tooth.

Dental records are used sometimes to identify a person. Such as when the Iceman, a ruthless gangster killer, was brought to justice. Do to this very fact. A person killed was identified by their teeth records which broke a long case of killings.  

When a tree is cut there is weeping in a community or ecosystem … when a tooth is pulled our being weeps. Our psyche questions this Lovecraftian horror. I know because I have experienced three teeth extrusions so far in my life. It is like a rape of the body and perceptions. Our bodily organs shiver and the bad wasps of our bacteria go in for attack. Pure trauma.

How does a prayer for a tree or tooth work you ask?

With good foresight it alerts a trees body or tooth that death is coming. Time to flee and move on. The aura is bound elsewhere or peepers the environment for change.

For a tooth it may be saying,

“Attention white blood cells.”

“Though we have been with you all of our life together. I am dying and am leaving the comfort of my home.”

Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual alter ness!”

An awesome responsibility. You see each tooth has a good relationship with a certain organ or place within our individual ecosystem. This is a process that a prayer or ritual must do! Preparing a trees spirit and our tooth, our psyche, for an experience like rape. To pull a tree or tooth from its lovely home rather quickly and with much force.

The prayer or ritual before having a tooth extracted!

Tooth

You are dying

You will be seized.

You have been with me

Since our creation together.

Made up from generations

Of ancestors.

From star dust and good foods

Of calcium and DNA

We are one

Yet separate.

Your roots will be pulled out

I honor days of chewing.

And glowing smiles

To good conversation, candy, and pizza.

To your body soul and spirit

I release you from my mouth

my loving tooth friends!

Bless you,

To the hormones which inform you

To your root, neck, and crown

To nerves, blood, and vessels.

I release you.

A good amount of time, years, has passed since I first saw the upside-down praying mantis shadow on my computer desk. I looked up and there she was looking in at me. And so, a partnership began. I took her little image as an inspiration for the eventual name of my publishing company.  

Often, she came to visit on her tree. It is now since died and been cut down, yet the original bush is still there in front of my computer room office. Once the bush was an arbor hanging over the tree. A lovely purple and green mosaic. My place of creativity always seems to be a bedroom converted into an office. So much dreaming, creating and inspiration… and dancing has occurred here.

So, on this day of the Summer Solstice 2021 I honor her…. Golden Big Mama Mantis…

The Seminary Of Praying Mantis Publishing.

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The 99 Cent store had our Figgy Newtons which came in many flavors. Some of my best memories with my little son made those challenging days exceptionally good indeed.

Picture by papa John Cornell

After the Punk scene, after the east coast, and getting married again and having my first babe, was the time I went to Los Angeles Valley College. I had a few courses under my belt. Yet Valley College had an opening for childcare. So, I enrolled. After this I transferred as a junior into CSUN.

Valley college was exceedingly difficult for me. I was older than most students and I found many of the professors my age or younger. Incognito and acting dumb to get a humanities degree was not worth it. Yet in time as I entered higher learning one must have all the accredited courses.

One course was a journalism course. Having a 21-year-old ask me if I could answer the phone and take notes boiled my blood or having a journalism professor reach into the bottom of her big bag to find my ungraded paper was a wonderment, where the torching of her body came to mind. I waited half the semester for a grade on that paper to pass her course.

Nevertheless, the worst was the power play by a 20 something photographer who thought he was the guy. He would stand behind me in class and smell my newly washed hair. It was long and red back then.

He said he liked what I wrote,

“But it does not go well with my image. I will have to take hers instead.”

As she sat in his lap. He looked up at me as if he thought I was going to take on this sex challenge.

I realized I was dealing with children and walked away. It was a strange juxtapose of power… once having my good share of power to having none.

As having a child. I thought I would be treated with due respect and honor. I loved every second of being a mother of two babes. Yet I was treated like the worst of the worst by most people. All this holy mother crap melted my being. The only sacredness was how my babes and me loved each other.

Walking down Van Nuys Blvd. with my oldest in the front seat of a shopping cart made my days of cruising the same Blvd. as a teenager seem surreal.

_______________

And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes— “with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.

As a child of a Fallen Angel of World War II, I am opposed to Nazism and Fascism, I am also a pacifist. Which made for poor conversations with my dad. Who actually had to fight in a real war against those “isms.” Let’s face it, if he did not survive, I would not be here. When then could we have fights over Jesus and war?

On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn’t much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin—who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (p. 215). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Which is why I hold the above book as one of our greatest testimonies against war. It is filled with UFOs and life and death.

There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn’t smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas. So it goes. The Maori Billy had worked with died of the dry heaves, after having been ordered to go down in that stink and work. He tore himself to pieces, throwing up and throwing up. So it goes. So a new technique was devised. Bodies weren’t brought up any more. They were cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were. The soldiers stood outside the shelters, simply sent the fire in.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (p. 219). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Kurt Vonnegut survived because of “Schlachthof-fünf.” (Slaughterhouse-Five) and like my dad he had children and told and wrote stories just like I am now.

I have never found answers to life’s mysteries better than I have in this book…. I am still learning from it too.

the war against all Native tribes through out the USA… sucks too…. terrible history …

all wars everywhere… all The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a science fiction infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut,

Wagon Train, Oh baby, oh baby!

The Sacramento Story (s1, ep39)

At the end of a long journey, lives were lost. Some made it with their dreams intact. Flint tries to help one of the passengers and almost bites off too much. Politics are involved as well as unsolicited trips to the Far East.

Wagon Train is an American Western series that aired on the NBC television network (1957–1962) and then on ABC (1962–1965).

When watching The Sacramento Story, I was happy to see two of my favorite actresses on this episode. I have not reviewed all the episodes. As a kid I most likely was not allowed at the time. I was in bed.

I am enjoying them now. Great acting, in depth stories imbued with real history. I love them.

The two actresses on this episode are Linda Darnell and Marjorie Main.

Linda Darnell was at the peak of her career in A Letter to Three Wives and greatest of them Film Noir Fallen Angel. In this episode she was giving off the fire and shining like a star. What a pleasure. A real treat.

Marjorie Main was of course the Ma of Ma and Pa Kettle, but I loved her in the original 1939 film The Women. She is down to earth beautiful and sings one of my favorite drinking songs. In this episode she is sassy as ever. Telling the young man, he is too young and the old man he is too old. Yet goes up the stares with the man she just married. He is just right.

“If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck, I’d dive to the bottom, and never come up. Oh baby, oh baby, I’ve told you before, the more I drink whiskey, I love you the more! Oh baby, oh ba…”

Darn it was a double fudge Sunday for me. Even my Doppelganger was happy cause later that evening it was mentioned in Perry Mason.

Perry Mason

The Case Of The Two-faced Turnabout (s6, ep18)

When a Balkan dictator with ties to an American businessman dies, the race is on to destroy papers belonging to him that may implicate the businessman in corruption.

To sum this up … METV is my favorite channel these days. I watch it on and off through the week, but Wagon Train and Perry Mason adds something special to a long day’s work.

Reading Gary Tovar’s story, I am shocked. I had no idea at the time of his history as a drug smuggler. A youngster when he started. Yet what overcomes this is the money he spent to bring music to a growing punk culture. I may have looked the other way at the whispers … Gary never pushed anything on any one of us at Flipside. In the 1980s we drank beer. Yet I think I had more of a sweet tooth for Polly’s Pie in Whittier California then smoking pot.

I did notice a change in the band Charged GBH. They stopped drinking whiskey and by their second tour their energy changed. I think many bands did indulge in the smokey stuff. Yet, it was the music and the freedom to do as you please, including us, which rules this generation. The straight edge and other perspectives were an ongoing conversation too. It could be very heated at times.

What Goldenvoice became is beyond my imagination. I just do not like festivals and big shows. I like more intimacy in my punk scene experience. Working backstage at the early Goldenvoice shows, I probably reeked innocence to many. My drug days ended 16 to about 19, by the time I hit the Goldenvoice days I was pretty much over that. With only a few experimentations.  Reading the Wikipedia news about Gary does not change my good feelings for him or I believe our mutual respect for each other, or our love of a good live song….

Looking back, one finds things… unanswered things… and so the puzzle comes a little bit more towards completion.  The sources here are sound. A good story.

https://hudleyflipside.com/2014/10/22/gary-tovar-interivew-1980s/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Tovar