I  Creation 

II  On the shore stands a majestic ageless tree rescued from a thousand seasons. From the entrails of this tree arises Driftwood Lady, a new blazing and fresh fire.

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III  Upright, facing the ocean, this Tree of Life (1) harvests whispers of the waves, this crackling lace slips in her ear. She bowes then glimpses roads taking shape and caressing her feet. In front of this liquid and fertile field, the call of life...

(1) Here, it is the metaphysical meaning of the Tree of Life that interests me. Because metaphysics links the physical world to the spiritual, the Tree of Life here symbolizes the creation of an ephemeral unity of chaos and cosmos. It reveals the links between the human and the non-human, and erases any boundaries that may exist between life and death.

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IV  Driftwood Lady inquires about these eloquent bones, those of our ancestors, roots in our hearts. Reminiscences of Man, a dive into ancestry...

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V  The dryad of Driftwfood Beach plays and dances with her invincible protector. This anamnesis keeper teaches her strength in osmosis with the magic alchemy of the elements.

(2) Dryad (from the Greek word dryas: oak): nymphs who presided over woods and forests and were their guardians and souls. They were free to wander and dance around the oak trees dedicated to them. A dryad did not survive the death of the trees she protected. The union of Eurydice, the best-known Dryad, and Orpheus (34) proves that these nymphs could marry.

(3) Driftwood Beach : Located on the northern tip of Jekyll Island, this beach of contrasts stretches for about a mile. Also known as the "boneyard tree" due to the presence of driftwood from mainly palm trees and "live oaks". Many men, women and children of different races and nationalities have walked this beach. This place made me wonder about the biological mimicry between man and nature, in this case these trees. Hence my renewed interest in animism. This beach with its supernatural echoes, in the meeting with all these creatures and beings, sometimes reminded me of the Garden of Eden described in Genesis - the source of eternal life. And...John Milton's poem Paradise Lost, set in Hell, Paradise and the Garden of Eden.

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VI  She grows on the arm and blooms into an isthmus connecting earth to sky. Even she happens to be alone on the bridge, she will commit herself daily.

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VII  The time has come to discover this world and leave my mark. Can you hear Zephyr (4)? He blows his tufts of ineffable secrets along the coast... Listen... Between the noises lies the unspeakable...

(4) Zephyr (Zephuros in ancient Greek): personification of the west wind in Greek mythology. It's a gentle, fresh and light wind, sometimes with a raging heart. He is the son of Astreos (Aeolus), Master of the Winds, and Eos (9).

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VIII  Abracadabra! (5) "Art is the Tree of Life." (a) 

(5) The Aramaic origin of the formula speaks to me more than others. It is pronounced "Evra Kedebra" by the father of all their gods, EL the Canaanite, and means "I will create according to my words". 

(a) William Blake, The Laocoon, engraving from 1815 - view here: https://blakearchive.org/copy/laocoon.b?descId=laocoon.b.illbk.01  "Art is the Tree of Life. God is Jesus. Science is the Tree of Death."  In this excessively imaginative engraving, he reveals Jesus not as a moral theorist or prodigious philosopher, but as the very embodiment of the "poetic", as a being endowed with supreme creativity, above all dogma, logic and morality. According to Blake, Jesus represents the symbol of being, of the vital, unified, as a non-dualistic relationship between the divine and the human.
I created this work, with its poetic and mystical dimensions, based on my own ideas and reflections, and inspired by Blake's vision of God, his mythology illustrated by his own engravings, and the creative energy transmitted through his writings.

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IX  This young woman was contemplating the silver waves, unwinding a future from the horizon of bronze. She was taking a breath in the limpid light and the so soothing air. Skin against bark, she was dozing strengthlessly in these sharp spears, daggers and swords, the mighty brazen arms of her loyal army. In a premonitory dream, she was seeing herself assaulting this sea of work, this ocean of battles, and sometimes, taking feverish lays in howling strides.

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X  O Sun! O Light! Star of the stars, Eye of Zoroaster (6), you Helios (7), gaze of gold that honors me in the sparkle of dawn.

(6) Zoroaster: "He who is close to exaltation" in Avestic, an Indo-Iranian language that appeared over three thousand years ago - zaraθ = gold and uštra = star, "golden star". He is the religious reformer who introduced monotheism to Persia around 700 B.C. He insists on the dualism of light and darkness. Zoroastrianism, revealed to be the oldest of the monotheistic religions, and perhaps the most misunderstood, is at the origin of the myth of the End of the World. The Judeo-Christian faith was largely inspired by this Persian religion.
Zoroaster's teachings, so ancient yet so modern - which inspired Nietzsche's famous Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) - insists on the importance of prayer, humility, self-giving and good humor, the essential keys to a harmonious spiritual life.

(7) Helios: In Greek mythology, he personified the sun. Not a god like Apollo, god of light, but a Titan, the son of Hyperon and Theia.

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XI  New forces welcome her in these celestial hours. Her soul listens to Ouranos (8). She prepares to leave in search of the gods who will inhabit her heart and forge her spirit.

(8) Ouranos personifies the lower sky and the demiurgic spirit. It's worth noting that the Greeks imagined the sky as a brass dome, decorated with stars, whose edges rested on the outer edge of the earth's flat disk. This primordial divinity was thus engendered by Gaia (28).
Nikola Tesla, a remarkable inventor filled with love for mankind, said: "The gift of mental power comes from God, the Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on this truth, we become in tune (like an instrument) with this great power."

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XII  On that day, open your eyes wide, read the sky, look where few look and prepare to go where few go... as long as you can adapt to any change, whatever you undertake will succeed! 

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XIII  Helios stops in his run to join Driftwood Lady. He slips in and takes her in his arms. The young lady revels in her rays, while Eos (9), silently steals away under Nyx's (10) jealous glance.

(9) Eos: Titanid and sister of Helios, she is the Goddess of Dawn. Nicknamed by Hesiod "the rose-fingered goddess dressed in saffron".
(10) Nyx: Primordial goddess of Night. According to Hesiod, she and her brother Erebus (Darkness) are among the primordial gods born of Chaos (see Hesiod's Theogony).

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XIV  Nyx, born of chaos... her face lights up in the halo of Selene (11), who waits patiently for her. Nyx is watching the scene from the far reaches of the west...

(11) Selene: Goddess of the Full Moon, sister of Eos (9) and Helios (8).

 

XV  Helios warns her to beware of Theotormon (12). He cultivated nothing but jealousy and lust, and ended up losing his head lying on the sand soiled by all those infecund mugs.

(12) Theotormon: brother of Rintrah (22) in Blake's mythology. He lived a confused life filled with vain and incessant desires, jealous and envious of everything. He is also seen as a ruthless torturer.

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XVI "Know yourself" (b), slowly but surely, because sooner or later you could cross paths with one of these evil characters...

(b) "Gnothi Seauton" (Ancient Greek) - The Socratic origin of this formula "Know thyself" is, however, questionable, as Heraclitus had earlier asserted: "One must study oneself and learn everything by oneself."

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XVII  Ares (13), This rival, this curse, this bad lover? Ares declares, filled with gall: "War takes place on this land that I trample and hide my kingdom! War is the sea that I drink in battle, it is the air in which whistle the arrows of my victory. War... was born in the flames of the sacred fire! Prometheus (14) stole my father's lightning to save you men, I tamed it to reduce you to nothing!"

(13) Ares: A bellicose and impetuous god of war. Despite this, he is one of the twelve Olympian deities. His father Zeus retorts: "I hate you more than any of the gods who live on Olympus, because you only dream of discord, war and fighting".
(14) Prometheus: the far-sighted, the one who thinks ahead. Son of the Titan Japet and the Oceanid Clymene, who, according to Hesiod, stole "the eternal fire" and offered it to the human race, much to the displeasure of Zeus, the sole owner of fire from heaven. Prometheus wanted to help humans by passing on the secret of fire. In so doing, he initiated a change in the profound relationship between gods and man, becoming the most human of the Greek gods.

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XVIII  The war creates monsters, like the terrifying Deimos (15). if she goes ahead, he retreats. Resistant you will remain, fair-minded you will be and as a woman of integrity you will stand.

(15) Deimos: Son of Ares (13). Personified spirit of terror.

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XIX  She'll also have to deal with the frightening Phobos(16) designed to lose us in the labyrinths of fear, the ruins of sanity, these abysses of hubris (17). These tyrants hinder and kill all self-fulfillment.

(16) Phobos: Divinity of panic, confusion and fear. He is the second son of Ares.

(17) Hubris (ancient Greek) commonly means excess, a characteristic of modern man, according to his cult of the self (individualism), his amoral and boundless ambition (arrogance and over-expressed ego). Hubris is embodied in the victory of individual interest over the common good. Prometheus, in his day, was overcome by excess when he offered fire to mankind. Today, is AI a form of hubris?..

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XX  Her destiny, or what must happen, will happen, if she so decides.

The philosopher Carl Jung inspired me to write the above title when he wrote: "I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become."

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XXI  On the paths of existence, which sometimes look like a labyrinth, a valiant young woman fights the Hydra of Lerna, a monster of vanity, anger and villainy.

(18) Hydra of Lerna: Born of Typhon and Echidna. Multi-headed snake that sowed terror in the swamp of Lerna. Heracles (roman Hercules) defeated the Hydra in the second of his twelve labors.

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XXII  Suddenly, Driftwood Lady comes face to face with her Chimera. Its claws planted in this mirror of water, eager to leap like the hurricane rumbling inside her... could it be the harbinger of an inexorable disaster?

(19) Chimera is an evil creature and the sister of Hydra (18). This monster embodies the strength of three animals, with its lion's head, goat's body and snake's tail. The Corinthian hero Bellerophon killed it by throwing a block of lead into its mouth with the help of Pegasus. The lead melted and burned Chimera's entrails.

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XXIII  Vision of a Leviathan (20) : 

"Now the sneaking serpent walks in mild humility.

And the just man rages in the wilds where lions roam."

(20) Leviathan: "Originally, Leviathan was a monster from Phoenician mythology representing primitive chaos, a sea serpent capable of destroying everything, and later evoked many times in biblical tradition. According to the apocryphal Book of Baruch, Leviathan, a horrible sea creature, appeared on the fifth day of Creation at the same time as Behemoth, a gigantic creature reigning over the land (...)" Les Grands Mythes (2017), by Lucien Fauvernier.
(c) W.Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793), I. The Argument (excerpt).

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XXIV  Between shadow and light, in the fleeting lull, she recalls Eurydice(21) and her fate...

(21) Eurydice: From the ancient Greek Eurudíkê, meaning "wide, vast, boundless". A beneficent divinity and protector of youth, personifying the living forces of Nature. Originally, she was one of the three Dryads (2) united with the forest, and the oaks particularly. She married Orpheus (33). (see the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus).

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XXV The shadow settles into the silhouette of a darkening vision. She still ignores what lurks in the dark...

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XXVI  She's caught in the whirlwind of uncertainty. "Rintrah (22) roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air, hungry clouds swag on the deep." (e) Whereas at the teenagehood, Arges (23), points his swords towards the scorching air and suffocating firmament...

(22) In Blakean mythology, Rintrah incarnates the righteous anger of the prophet", representing the raging spirit of revolution. Later, in the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake makes him one of the four sons of Los (the sun), the supreme energy.

(23) Arges: Uranian Cyclops born from the union of Gaia and Ouranos. Cyclops means "round eye". He wears this brilliance (etymology of Argès) in the middle of his forehead, representing the luminosity of the lightning he symbolizes. It can also be likened to the "eye of heaven" and, by analogy, to the eye of the sun.

(e) W.Blake, another excerpt from The Argument, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

 

XXVII  In the unreal eclipse of dusk, inside a veiled minute, on the keeper's belly, a secret entrance could be seen, his ephemeral navel...

          

XXVIII  "When her sight wants to penetrate too far into darkness, it happens that in imagining she goes
astray." (f) Irresistible scarlet gleams attract her, entice her, smile at her and tempt her... In these somber echoes of an obscure fire, a candle burns, alone and cold, at the bottom of the well where you will find Hades (24)...

(f) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXXI.

(24) Hades: Son of Chronos and Rhea and brother of two other Olympians, Zeus (Heaven) and Poseidon (Sea). Hades is destined to rule the Underworld (not the Christian realm) in the bowels of the Earth with his wife Persephone.

 

XXIX  Tombs take shape on the walls of Tartarus lamenting. Her body never-quenched casts its anchor in the stream of blood that sees and feels her. In this flesh- covered river, she metamorphoses into a roaring arborescence, then outwits the gloomy spectres in this torrent of tears nourishing the Styx (25). The drums of Thanatos (26) thunder in the bosom of this Inferno. These beatings that we don't dread until we know what heavy strokes are as they fall like axes on the trunk of hope, on the chorus of fate... But the righteous woman keeps on walking, come what may, to reach that bright light, the paradigm of infinity, over yonder, behind the cliffs of vertigo, where men and women live in peace.

(25) Styx: marsh and river of the Underworld. The waters of the Styx rushed down in a huge cascade, in the middle of a desolate landscape. According to Hesiod, "the water of the Styx forms an underground stream always covered by a dark night. It flows into Tartarus."
(26) Thanatos: Son of Nyx (10) and personification of Death. He is the fundamental enemy of mortals.

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XXX " Eye of Zeus " 

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From the infernal urn this pearl crawls

And tunes itself up in a farewell roll

Delivering her ritornello in disguise
To this ocean of sharp ears that rise

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Clear water preserves the thirst of an endless night,

The wind does not silence the flames, but feeds them right

Once in the eloquent fire I saw this desert of  I

Fear planted there, with its insidious eye...

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XXXI  The Instant of Eternity
"Nothing is born and nothing perishes, but things that already exist combine and then separate again." (g) 

(g) From a quotation by Anaxagoras of Clazomena (500-428 BC). Here are his thoughts on the subject, taken from Fragment I: "The Hellenes speak badly when they say: birth and death. Because nothing is born and nothing perishes, but things that already exist combine and then separate again. To speak correctly, then, we should call the beginning of things a composition and their end a decomposition. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to settle in Athens. In his relationship with the small, he believed that there is no minimum and that there is always something smaller. Unlike many Greek thinkers, he despised the political sphere. It was this philosopher who said that the seed of all things is contained in the wind.

 

XXXII                                                                        

            Pearl exploding in yesterday's mute shadow,

            Shimmering behind its aquatic mask and glow,

            Vivid bubble multiplying in this ray of light,

            Sparkling to the rhythm of the elastic tide.

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            Immaculate beauty blazing in a frothing ribbon,

            Subtle bead superbly enrobed in such a warm cotton.

            From this mammary gleam springs a new opal age

            Born from the first mist escaped from the maze.

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XXXIII  In the foam of the new day, Eosphoros (27) marvels at Driftwood Lady's rebirth after she escaped from the underworld. Aphrodix florishes (28) on the quivering moor of Gaia's (29) merry tears. 

(27) In Greek mythology, Eosphoros is the bearer of the "light of dawn", and the Romans called him L u c i f e r . Eosphoros represents a face of our planet Venus, visible just before dawn; while its brother Hesperos represents the same planet Venus, visible after dusk. When the ancients realized that Eosphoros and Hesperos were one and the same planet, Venus, they disappeared and lost all meaning.

(28) Aphrodix: fusion-creation of the name Aphrodite and the first name Alix, based on their respective etymologies. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite symbolizes celestial as well as physical love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. In the Theogony, she was born of foam (aphros) after Gaia ordered her son Chronos to cut off the reproductive organ of his flighty father Ouranos. Alix comes from the Greek Alexein, to repel or protect, and andros, man. A word close to warrior, meaning "she who repels the enemy" or "she who protects men". Alix, originally feminine but now epicene (mixed first name).

(29) Gaia: One of the primordial deities among Chaos (origin), Eros (Love), Nyx (Night) cf.(10) and Tartarus (the entrails of the Earth). Gaia is the personification of Earth in Hesiod's Theogony (126-154), and is the maternal ancestor of divine races and monsters.

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XXXIV  Aphrodix and Cerberus (30) 

She brings back Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, and tames him. Aphrodix has grasped how to change things: to make herself heard, distilling her essence with opposition, when needed, and being true to herself. 

(30) Cerberus: Guardian of the kingdom of Hades. Often described as an enormous dog with three heads. Each of his heads can represent youth, adulthood and old age, or the past, present and future. Cerberus was chained by Heracles (Hercules) during his last and twelfth labor. 

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XXXV  Beauty and The Beast

- The Beast (31) bows down to Beauty and confesses: "You are whiter than Hera's milk (32), you are sweeter than saffron powder, fresher than the pure water I've longed for. Your eyes shine more than a thousand of diamonds and has lowered all my weapons."

- Beauty bends down and whispers: "Observe what is beautiful and you will also become beautiful."

(31) Beauty and the Beast : inspired by Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast ), itself adapted from Mrs. Leprince de Beaumont's fairy tale. "The major lesson of this tale is that the true foundation of love lies in goodness. In the midst of the realist period, the poet intends to re-enchant the world with the "ink of light" that, for him, are the images of the cinematograph, and to show viewers that beauty can emerge from ugliness. Wonder gives everyone back their childlike soul." Excerpt from https://www.bande-a-part.fr/cinema/dossier/ belle-bete-de-jean-cocteau-magazine-de-cinema/

In the same perspective of opposing and transforming ugliness to beauty, David Lynch created the unexpectable inspired by a true story had happened end of the 19th century, "The Elephant Man". 

(32)Hera: daughter of the Titans Cronos and Rhea, she was Queen of Heaven and Olympus.

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XXXVI  By facing, learning and understanding each other, they became true friends. Friendship is the only cannon from which love can flow!

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XXXVII  She rides the plateaux of salt in the company of her guide, an infallible intuition that will lead her to the beaches she needs to tread. Accompanied by her two best allies: salvation and self-confidence.

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XXXVIII  Her Daïmôn (32) reminds her: "Say, write, paint, sculpt, play, dance, sing what you believe in, what you're made for. Keep the faith and never give up on your dream! Never!"

(33) Daïmôn: genius or mediator between gods and humans, not linked to any cult. In my work, he represents the figure of the guide who sets Aphrodix on the path to self-knowledge.
"Every culture has its daimonology, i.e. a theory and experience of supra- or infrapsychic powers (spirits, angels, archons, archangels, genies, demons, demiurges, fravartis, djinns, cherubim, eons, fairies...) whose appearance can signify for human beings an encounter with their own destiny: salvation, temptation, fall, oracle, advice, guide, initiation, loss, omen... This polymorphism (the ability to present itself in different forms) does not, however, imply illogicality. On the contrary, a phenomenology of these experiences shows that they are an essential human dimension. Whether daimonic irruptions into the human world occur spontaneously or through a metapsychic technique, it seems that these powers (H. Corbin speaks of "energies") always manifest themselves as more or less autonomous psychic entities. They are accompanied by a characteristic set of visions, voices, semantic traces such as wounds, burns, haematomas (or, on the contrary, insensibility, as in firewalking), premonitions, anamnesis, leaving the body, levitation, etc." writes Alain Delaunay, researcher at the Collège International de Philosophie.

 

XXXIX  Under the millennium axis, Aphrodix is tasting this fruit gorged with light, which teaches her this: to love oneself leads to love the world!

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XL  Inspired by his new muse, Orpheus (34) makes Aphrodix the magical string of his lyre. Melody spreads in harmony and fills her with a gorgeous energy. She vibrates, rises and will never stoop!

(34) Orpheus : Mythical artist from Thrace, also known as a zither player (and inventor) and singer. He was renowned for his enchanting melodies. He was also the founder of Orphism in Athens, inherent in the religion of the mysteries (...) Apollo gave him a seven-string lyre made by Hermes, which he transformed into a nine-string harp (dedicated to the nine Muses and especially his mother Calliope, one of the Muse). He fails to bring back his beloved wife Eurydice from the kingdom of Hades - who previously allows Orpheus' beloved to return, on condition that she follows him in silence, and that he neither turns nor speaks to her until they have both returned to the world of the living. As Orpheus prepares to leave the Underworld, no longer able to hear his beloved's footsteps, impatient to see her and afraid that his love will escape him, he recklessly turns back, losing her forever. 

 

XLI  "No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings." (h) 

(h) Proverb from Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake.

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XLII  "You're not born a woman, you become one." (j) 

Her grace lies in her harmony with sovereign nature. A woman whose beauty is sculpted by time in the places that have made her, often welcoming, sometimes hostile. By gaining her independence, she can savor her freedom, the power to live the life she chooses. To embody one's name is to embody one's life! This is the message and precept of Lady Liberty.

(j) Written by Simone de Beauvoir in her novel that made her a household name: "Le Deuxième Sexe", Tome II, Gallimard, 1949.

"Unlike what you might think, this doesn't mean that femininity or masculinity are the result of a pure construction that can be interchanged. As an existentialist, she always starts from the subject's experience of his or her body, in this case an irreducibly feminine body. But for women, this experience of the body is first made through the eyes of others. From a very early age, they are expected to be pretty, polite and helpful, to arouse admiration, pleasure and desire. In this way, women are relegated to the status of objects, settling into an irresponsibility that they both suffer from and enjoy. The woman is therefore born radically free (as is every human being), but she is not encouraged to exercise this freedom and ends up donning one of the prefabricated costumes presented to her, becoming then the woman expected of her". From : https://www.philomag.com/philosophes/simone-de-beauvoir 

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XLIII  She is growing as Lady Liberty now. Look at her as a woman who is and will remain free, so that others may be free and understand that is an endless battle.

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XLIV  To freedom, blood of democracy! To equality, bond of living together! To fraternity, heart of this world!

This world is in my head, my body is in this world! (i) It is in me... in me... Lady Liberty walks with the wind and the fire walks with her. This is a woman who represents what tomorrow must be: resistant and free... free!!!

(i) From Essais et Entretiens between Paul Auster and Gérard de Cortanze, titled La Solitude du Labyrinthe (1997): "The world is in my head, my body is in the world (...) We inhabit our thoughts, the life we live is in our head, physically in our head. But we don't invent the world, we're surrounded by things and our bodies are steeped in this reality, and it's this experience that I want to communicate." 

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— The end before a new beginning, the opus#2:

Announcing the second chapter of this life of a woman facing herself as the whole change of a sometime worrying world we are living in... Driftwood Lady will incarnate what the modern society call the "adult age" and its responsibilities... Her way...

"Big City Vision", the second opus, will happen again in Georgia and other states as unexpected travels of Driftwood Lady could occur...

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