Found on the porch 9/30. Transcribed below.
Chronicle Ephemeris
June 3, 1982[1] – I make these notes as my memory is shattered or non-existent. My earliest memories are echoes of glorious times, my storerooms filled with treasured objects of glittering significance, my cupboards of the skulls of the mdemifiji[2]. Perhaps they bore those treasures to me.
And then memories grow faint and scanty. Something went amiss, and I faded. I leave this barren cave tomorrow, summoned as I am. The hollow I laboriously scratched out is too small now. Tonight I refuse to contemplate other troublesome aspects, for I tire.
June 4 – To the North it is, then. I flew high, flinging my wings into their task, feeling the cool dampness of occultation battling the heat of the everlasting sun on my alien hide, and, aware of both my pride and current weakness, subtly avoided the sky-riding metal monsters of the interlopers.
Yes, I remember them now, if dimly. As I slept one season away, half a millenia ago, bathing in the glow of adoration, they came across the deep blue sea, their hands out, their gifts of weapons. They, too, were mdemifiji, but of another, and mine melted away, and so did I.
But at midday, as I glided, I felt it, the hot rush of my bravery, that giddy rush of mdemifiji’s red essential fluids, fountaining high as some mdemifiji summons me, his knife doing its sacred work again. I land, and I am larger and harder to conceal than before, but even this land, teeming with ignorant interlopers who are like lice on some casual running bite, has its areas free of their presence, and there I can hide.
And muse on my malformations.
June 5 – The land flowed below me today as hot liquid rock overtook the lush lands of my youth, consuming all before it, its essential greenness, of which I’m so perpetually enthralled, tainted, and pocked with the pride of the interlopers, and their constructions afflict my sense of propriety as if their pride were claws, piercing my eyes and forcing me to stare in horror.
Can I stare in horror? I shouldn’t think so, yet I am afflicted with it even as I present this. Why do I, of all the divine, possess claws? Are these not ludicrous, the very denial of my identity?
I am Quetzalcoatl[3]! My beautiful form is marred by these appendages. Why am I deprived of my essentials and ornaments and slashing fangs? I sicken at the thought of some mdemifiji glimpsing my dingy gray hide, so alien to my sense, bereft of the jewel-like multi-hued feathers I deem essential to my very being.
Or are my mdemifiji so degraded they know not what they summon? Am I not divine? Yet, this, this form forced upon me, I cannot change it! Am I not divine? Am I not divine?
Am I not a god?
June 6 – This call upon me, now I dread and hate. The mdemifiji continues his sacred work with his hungry knife, and naught may I do but continue. I rest now within sight of a great pile of interloper constructions, thrusting their pride into the air like some monstrous expression of reproductive lust, overburdening their world with their numbers in limitless pride. Such are they.
And I wonder, now. My mdemifiji of old knew slaves, bent under tasks for which their owners cared not. For what does this mdemifiji call me? If it is because I am, and must be again, then all is well and pride is unscathed. But if the mdemifiji wants some act, then am I still a god? A slave?
An enslaved god? Is this a concept even to be considered? I cannot understand it.
As I wait for the sun to escape from my grim mood, I contemplate the assemblage of glowing constructions on the horizon from my hiding spot. Hiding spot grinds on my nerves as I write it. City, the teeming lice call it. That’s easier to write.
Writing. It’s for the weak and vituperative. My other thoughts are nuncupatory, unsavory and unworthy of any but mdemifiji. I hate them.
June 7 – Tempestuous. I am worn out. I am woven into this hiding spot (some cruel part of me whispers lair), but I scratch this out as a reminder of indignities.
Night, in the times of glory, unjustly concealed my beauty and that of my sacred squash and corn from the eyes of those who did adore, but I am no longer such a creature, and so I welcome its embrace as I submit – submit – to the call of the hungry knife and its wielder, cursed mdemifiji, slashing his willing offerings into fountains of chains to compel and hold me.
From high above this city, in this alien, filthy glow obscuring the unconscious beauty of the stars even I cannot reach, I sought an eyrie, for I tire of the caves and suspect those of the city will be damp and inhospitably dominated by loathesome carrion eaters. I knew an eyrie millenia ago, and soon found a suitability in a high, older building in which the top levels had been abandoned – or perhaps never were meant for use. Battering my way in, I confirmed its rough adequateness and prepared a simple nest for my contemplative ease.
And then an indignity heretofore unknown was thrust upon me, unimaginable and infuriating. With no control, I found myself desperately distending my hips and veritably rendering my sacred viscera for all to see, and to my shock – I nearly choke writing that phrase even now – I birth an egg.
An egg.
I, who have never dallied, never deigned to engage in this act, have had it thrust upon me. Is this sacred, profane, a crime? A baffled, violated divinity? The concept is absurd, and yet it weighs heavy on me. Now, I rest, the egg taking pride of place in my nest. I feel nothing for it.
June 8 – The profane act of the night burdened me such that even the mdemifiji could not enliven me, and so I thought to hunt. This was simple, as the interlopers, the inhabitants of this hellhole, display themselves openly in their worship of the sun. As an amusement, I plucked a head from one clinging to the side of one of their structures, evidently harassing the occupant, and found the contents flatulent. Next, a swoop, some screaming from my hapless prey, a happy balm to my being, but a traditional, if quick, dispatch through the eye socket, and I soon dined in my new home.
Once finished, I found myself belabored by postprandial morbid thoughts, and took again to wing, this time to observe these horrid creatures at their trivial lives. Acts of consumption like mine, reproduction, even primitive entertainment flitted through my perceptions as I glided high above. A collective act of aggression raises psemiffi[4] in me; not that this was unknown in my mdemifiji, but was a reminder of this primal facet of all existence.
June 9 – Another morsel, this time, for my amusement, taken from a company of them. Their horror was delectable, a fine accompaniment as I crushed the creature’s rib cage and rained gore upon those below. Let them clean it, such is the task I assign them.
Then the mdemifiji’s knife drinks again, and even as I vitalize, I inwardly cower. What will this creature desire? How shall I fulfill the implicit promise of the mdemifiji’s actions? The chains of his desires tighten around me.
June 10 – How can a god be surprised? Yet, here I am, having dined in usual fashion upon two victims, but not having hunted them down. They were lured here by one of those aggressors of which I spoke earlier. Some inferior drama occurred, and the most inferior’s survival depended upon my snapping jaws, as if I were little more than an animal. Insulting, yet filling.
I think they call it room service. How droll.
But I meditate upon this connection, and wonder about the psemiffi involved.
June 11 – It happened. Again. I do not understand it. I shall not speak of it, nor think of it.
But I wonder at something. These creatures and their mechanisms. I ignore them, they are not adulatory of me, but I wonder a little at their function. After I left that other place, they came with those machines and pointed them at my issue. How did they know? Why do they do that?
June 12 – I am more and more aware of these creatures’ mysterious motives. They hold these mechanisms and seemingly point them everywhere. I am now aware that even my first morsel taken in this city was witnessed, despite my fast strike, by such a mechanism. Other forays may also have been captured.
The mdemifiji continues his bloody ways, yet makes no demand upon me. Is resurrection enough for him? Today’s meal appears to have outraged the inhabitants, for they ignored my divine status and stung me with pellets like a swarm of bees, but it was for naught, as I still lunched easily.
June 13 – I barely scratch this out. I am shattered. Why remember it? I am driven. If you are divine, you will understand.
An empty hunt, but the pleasure of the wind in my wings, came to a fateful end as I found these creatures, these loathesome termites, had invaded my nest. I swept by the tall building on wing and glimpsed through the openings I had made, the shattered fragments of egg and the dead bodies of my offspring, destroyed by these northern barbarians. My anger betrayed me, for though I took sacred vengeance upon several of these worthless creatures with skillful attacks, again they sent the bees to bloody me, likely flung by the invaders of my nest. They clung and dug deeply, and, enervated, I crashed to the ground.
Even as I did so, though, I glimpsed a ghost, a veritable flying mechanism of mechanical wings, and from it hung more of the creatures, silently pointing those other mysterious mechanisms at me. They are beyond me.
Their victory rid them not of their terror, and before they could come to visit upon me horrid vengeance, I crawled into their sewers. From there, I felt the desperation of that depraved mdemifiji, bane of my divinity, ready once more to wield that sacredly wicked knife, but upon whom? In grim humor, I laughed, as he found the creature who had led my attackers to my nest, but that had no interest in being a mdemifiji, and so the sacrifice would be for naught. During remonstrances, another surprised and killed the mdemifiji, condemning me to extinguishment. In that moment of malicious humor, I honored the promise of the mdemifiji’s knife and returned the mdemifiji to life, momentary life once again ended by the vengeful.
His momentary dismay was sweet. I laughed. I expire. Once again.
Received while contemplating Q (1982, aka The Winged Serpent and Q – The Winged Serpent). A wretched little monster movie, suggesting that the gods of the vanquished are violent and inferior to those of the vanquishers, a quetzalcoatl is summoned to New York, where it makes snacks out of the locals.
The connection between Q and this transcript is fleeting and imaginary.
1 The translator’s (or perhaps translators’, as the identity of translator is not revealed) commentary, hurriedly scrawled, indicates the dates are somewhat problematic, but thought to be close to accurate.
2 The translator’s commentary indicates mdemifiji is a concept which begins with our notion of worshiper, but extends it to suggest that a mdemifiji also contributes to the creation of that worshiped. To my knowledge, English has no single word for such a concept, but the concept itself is not unknown; for a fanciful treatment, see Strange Evil, Gaskell, J.
3 Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Maya and allied Central and South American empires. Incidentally, we used a plush quetzalcoatl on a string to finally charm an inherited cat to join our family, years ago. She has since passed on, and the plush quetzalcoatl has been returned to storage. Now I wonder.
4 Psemiffi, the commentary suggests this is a wholly untranslatable concept. Make of it what you will.
