the retirement of the graven images

For those of you who missed the announcement, I am retiring the totem-muses. That's roughly on a par with Picasso retiring people with their noses in the wrong place or Peckinpah declaring he's going forward on bloodless action sequences. Y'know, sort of a distinctive feature, if not a trademark.

I took my cue from a chapter in the Bible, I Corinthians 13, often referred to as the "love chapter". Depending on the translation you are into, the actual verbiage changes a bit, but courtesy of the King James Version, the passage that beings at Verse 8(which refers to there no longer being need of prophecy or speaking in tongues in a fulfilled Gospel) states:

"Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they will be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
When I was a child,
I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man,
I put childish ways behind me.
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully,
even as I am fully known."

That struck me. All this time I had used the concept of the totem muse to add dimension where there was some needed, or to obscure things that, were the love real, would not be needed to be hidden. Some were given their totems to just level the playing field when they felt they deserved a totem, some to keep their real identities a secret.

But in my new love, I found someone who has aspect, who has talents and dimensions all her own, and is unafraid of confessing her love and having me confess mine.

Now, I am a man. I fully know, even as I am fully known. Several of the totem-muses used the mask of their totem to hide behind when they grew weary or frightened of the readers who sometimes judged them. There is no room, in love, for cowardice, for love makes you strong and vulnerable all at once.

I have found my gospel of love fulfilled.