“And you have fixed my Life – however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze… Someday, I must tell how we sang, shouted, whistled and danced through the dark lanes through Colinton; and how we laughed till the meteors showered around us, and we felt calm under the winter stars. And some of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time. And seeing it so far above us, and feeling the good road so safe beneath us, we praised God with louder whistling; and knew we loved one another as no men love for long.”
— Letter from Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon, November 1917.
I’m back with my knight-monk dynamic agenda, but this time I’m here to sell you on (checks notes) the stigmata and the intimacy of uhhh wounds. with knights. also the delightful gender fuckery of franciscan monks.
Habitual Gender: Rhetorical Androgyny in Franciscan Texts, Christina Cedillo
Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte DArthur, Kenneth Hodges
and finally, penetration. stigmata. same thing.
Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West, Lynda L. Coon
Sulla, Crassus, in the aftermath of the battle of Colline Gate, surrounded by bodies who can act as a witness.
It’s. something?? about Crassus pushing forward through everything and grabbing victory in his teeth, and the kind of power dynamics that cut through you in spite of it. the awareness that you’ve given someone everything and they might want to dig their fingers into the gore of your body to see what else you’ll give up.
