The World Looks Like This

In the teeny-tiny economy of the baby, the world looks like this:

I get milk.
You get shit.

Think of that overwhelming joy of the infant when it finally is able to give something to The Breast! To give something "back." Indeed, the only object it can give. I made this for you! I love you!

This is why Freud so perceptively equated shit with gifts and money. And, of course, vice versa.

The Ninth of August

Linda Maestra! "Pretty Teacher!"
Francisco Goya, circa 1819-23

The Ninth of August

Having a smoke outside,
It lightens tonight in
Ohio, in a rainless
Cloudsky. This puts one in
Mind of Goya's witches,
Flying correctly, naked, with the
Business end of the broom
Forward, nothing like Margaret
Hamilton. By the pricking of
My thumbs, indeed. I'll
Show you something wicked.
It comes like the Trinity, ice-
Cold, one for each
Orifice, and Goya's ever-bored
Face of the Devil.

L. Steve Schmersal, The Ninth of August, August 2016

Aquelarre, "Witches' Sabbath,"
Francisco Goya, 1798