Tom Foran Clark

Frederik had this idea or notion that, beyond his art, his ticket to celebrity, fame, and immortality would be as a screenwriter. He had this notion he would join Emery in visiting his parents in Los Angeles and would get a script of his done up into a great big blockbuster Hollywood movie. The world, he saw, was a vast fabric in which diverse elements were intermingled -- and reconciled. It was useless, he said, to look for a thread that remained pure and virgin. He saw a new humanity was on the rise, renewing the ancient body. Over and over and over again, Frederick spoke of "magic triangles."

In alchemic symbology, the triangle was the symbol of the fire and the heart. Pythagorean philosophy was based on immortality of the spirit, its transmigration from one body to another, and the cyclical reappearance of these events. Three was the mysterious number for excellence, the symbol of the earth, the number of the harmony composed of unit and diversity. The triangle was the ground of the spiritual world, the first conception of the divinity, the vehicle of the invisibile divinity. The triangle was the foundation on which the pyramids were built. The triangle was the symbol of Fire; it was also a symbol of the heart. For Frederick, all procreation proceeded from an equilateral triangle.

"If you draw a line from here" (Loutro) "up to here" (northmost western Crete, Diktyna, on the north-rising peninula that looks like a huge erect phallus) "then over to here" (to Venetian Hania, or Chania) "what do you see?"

"A triangle."

"Exactly. A delta triangle, the triangle of fertility -- the triangle of a woman's underbelly -- the pubic triangle. Is it not magnificent?"

"Interesting," Emery had to agree.

"I've poured over maps for years and years," Frederik said. "I've found four sacred triangles. Look here," Frederik pointed out a second triange. "If you draw a line from here" -- Venetian Hania, or Chania -- "up to here" -- Aarhus, Denmark, where Frederik stemmed from -- "where do you suppose the point falls, making a triangle that echoes, in reverse, the triangle shape I just showed you? Look -- here." Frederik pointed to Venice on the map. "Do you see it?"

Emery could see. Frederik looked like he was on the verge of exploding, over-pregnant with the keeping of this -- which he saw as a hugely significant truth, part of some incredibly inevitable, ultimate truth, as he saw it -- within him. "Have you ever noticed," Frederik asked, "how when we pray, we fold our hands so that the palms touch?"

"Okay."

"Think. Originally, the hands were folded in prayer so that the palms didn't touch -- between was openness. An oval was formed. That is how Christ himself would have prayed. In adoration of women, in worship of his wife."

"The Goddess. Fertility. The Great Mother. Man prayed not to God, but to The Goddess."

"Right. Man formed the womb before his eyes and, in deepest awe and reverence, climbed in --went home. That was prayer."

"Do you know, Frederik, I've never seen you pray."

"I am praying all the time. I pray about everything, continually. What time is it now? 'Greenwich Mean Time'? -- so-called 'real' time? Actually, Greenwich Time is based on the arbitrary geographical division of hemispheres. Though not 'real' at all, it regulates time all over the world. Look at the line: zero degrees longitude runs to the east of London, dividing the entire Occident from all of the Orient. That map proves the 'East' is just a man-made concept -- one reflecting only British Imperialism, the colonial authority. But human beings are embedded in nature, not political authority. We only wear the garments of culture. Our lives aren't historical and political," Frederik insisted. "Primarily, we are in the world as it is -- whatever it is -- and only secondarily in civilization.

"A complete transformation of our original human nature is required-- rebirth, renewal, revival -- a real world! -- in authentic present time! I resist domination. I resist repression. I resist restraint. I want my primal and original wildness -- I want! I want! I want gratification. I want the pleasure principle fulfilled! You saw the magic triangles -- the ultimate reality. Johnm Trerra, can't you see it? You can't stand on the sidelines! You have to understand home is everywhere -- and nowhere -- and climb in. Not only can you go home again, you have to go home again!"

Emery agreed with Frederik that home was basically everywhere and nowhere. He had a vision of being "perfectly homeless in an open world."

"The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner," said the twelfth-century European monk from Saxony, Hugo of St. Victor; "he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his."

It would turn out that this resembled Frida's notions of the relations between men and women. Parallel to Hugo of St. Victor, she could have said, "The woman who finds one man alone sweet is still a tender beginner. She to whom every soil is as her chosen husband is already strong; but she is perfect to whom all men are as strangers. The tender soul has fixed her love on only one man in the world; the strong woman has extended her love to many; the perfect woman has extinguished completely any notion of a certain single 'Mr. Right' at all."

"Look at male penguins," Birgitta said. "They exhibit dignity and class -- we humans say -- all dressed up, waddling around in what looks like formal wear. Look at female penguins -- cunning thieves."

"Prostitutes!" Frederik blurted out, opening a bottle of beer.

"Cunning thieves," Frida said again. "They steal pebbles from other nest builders, in order to fortify their own."

"The female penguins peddle their bodies in exchange for the stones," Frederik declared.

"Every year, at the end of October, two million penguins leave their ocean home to trudge over miles of pack ice to the rocky breeding grounds. Hundreds of pairs nest in one breeding site, their nests spaced only a couple feet apart. Previously attached males take up residence in their old nests. Single males build new nests. When the females return, they choose mates from among males on nests, perhaps re-joining their companions from the previous year -- if possible. About half the females hook up with new partners."

"They peddle their bodies in exchange for the stones," Frederik said again. "The females waddle over to a male stranger's nest to get a stone. Normally that would bother him -- but not after just getting laid. One out of every ten females has sexual encounters with males other than their mates."

"To get stones for their nest -- that is the reason."

"The male penguin flirts with the female. He gives her a sidelong glance, then bows his head. The female does the same. Then the male, hoping for sex, steps off his stones, to let the female waddle on. She promptly lays face down on the nest and, as eager as Pasiphae, the Cretan queen who strove to have a horny bull mount her, puts her butt high in the air. The male penguin obliges. After hurried intercourse, the female departs -- first picking up a stone with her beak -- and returns to her own nest."

"To her partner."

"The arrival with a stone justifies the female’s mysterious absence. The female wants to keep her doings a secret. The males don't want to see what their mates are up to! But if I were a male penguin," Frederik said, "I'd ask, 'Honey, where in the world did you get that great big stone'?"

"Her current mate may die before the next breeding season -- it happens to more than a quarter of the males. The female keeps an eye open for potential future mates."

"And keeps her legs open, too."

"No, in fact the female may or may not return to the same single male for a second stone -- she may return for as many as ten stones -- but, in either case, she will not copulate with him again. She has only wanted to start up a relationship with him which could be valuable to her down the road. A clever female, having opened the door, so to speak, may go back to get as many as sixty more stones in the following hour, without having any further sex with the provider."

"Who's probably zoned out after the sex."

"Females have need of their wiles and means," Frida said.

"Yes. Penguins aren't the only ones who trade sex for goods. Insects practice similar sexual arrangements. Where is the female that will not prostitute herself for food? Where is the woman who will not prostuitute herself for jewelry?"

"The encounters are negotiations -- simple exchanges."

"Sex for goods! Just to get sex, man has become woman's slave."

"Just to get by, woman has become man's."