The Talk

My head is throbbing, my eyes are burning, my stomach is queasy and I overall feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I am operating on barely three hours of sleep, and very restless sleep at that. Roro and I had the infamous talk last night. I started out by apologizing to him for saying that I didn’t need him and explained that I had said that to disabuse him of the notion that I was trying to trap him into a relationship or have a baby just to get money from him. I told him that I never meant to make him feel like he wasn’t important or that I didn’t want him to be around. Then he asked what else was on my mind, and I said I wish you would tell me what you want from me. He was quiet for a minute and said what do you want me to tell you… DUH! We started talking and he said that he wasn’t happy with himself and that he knew he couldn’t make anyone else happy and that he frequently took out his frustrations on others and that he couldn’t be in a relationship right now, he rambled a lot, and also said that he wasn’t just using me for sex and that he wasn’t trying to lead me on. I told him that I can understand that but if you can’t give me what I want (he interjects here… you’ll find someone else who will) and I said no, if you can’t give me what I want I need you to back off me. I said to him, we are not two strangers/acquaintances who are just hanging out and having sex, we'll never be able to go back to that casual kind of relationship. We have a baby and a history and I care a lot about you. I explained that there are two different kinds of relationships – a relationship where two people care about each other and are committed to each other and then there is the relationship where two people just fuck. He asked me what relationship I was in, and I said I am in a relationship with someone and we just fuck and that’s not the relationshp I want to be in. He said that he wouldn’t bother me that way anymore, and I asked him if he realized how many times he’s said that to me? I explained to him that he is really the only person I’m comfortable spending time with right now because Halle is so little and Tyler is so grown and my time is so limited, and that it was a very lonely time for me and that it was very hard for me to say no to him and that by putting me in that position, can’t he see that just by approaching me he is leading me on? And then I told him that I don’t want to have these kinds of feelings for you where I have nightmares about busting you cheating… and then we got into a discussion about this recurring nightmare I’ve been having ever since he came back from England where I walk into a room and catch him having sex w/another woman. He got defensive because he's never cheated and I got frustrated because he's not LISTENING to me or making any effort to understand how insecure I am in this situation, so I started listing all the things that he shouldn’t have done which escalated into him throwing out his “American women are never satisfied” and “if you want to go to court we can go to court” (I have NEVER in the 14mos of our parenting relationship said I wanted to go to court… but “all” American women do so we can if I want) and that all American women want is child support anyway. I threw in a few statements about him taking responsibility for himself and stop using the fact that he’s made some crummy choices in women as an excusefor everything that hasn't gone right for him and that he might want to wake up and realize that he didn’t live back home anymore. And of course once I started bringing up his mistakes he didn’t want to “talk about this shit anymore because it’s in the past”. I took a few deep breaths and said I knew that I’d brought this up before but that I really feel like it’s time for us to start separating Halle’s visitation… he asked me to explain and I said I think you should start spending time with her here at your house and not at mine. He said that’s a good idea. Then he said “anything else” and I asked him not to call my house after 10PM anymore and not to stop by without calling. He said fine, and I started to get up and leave and he throws out… don’t call me unless it’s an emergency. I said fine and kept going, and he added don’t call to tell me when she does something, only call if it’s an emergency. I said OK and left. I heard him open the door so I know he was watching me leave. I don’t know if he was expecting me to come running back, or probably thinking I’d break down in tears as soon as I got outside but I’ll be damned before giving him the satisfaction. I waited till I was pulling out of the parking lot ;o) Anyway, that was the talk and I am mourning now too. If he chooses to be unhappy with his life that’s fine, but I’m pretty happy with mine and I’m not going to let him drag me down with him. So now I have to find my DIVA self. But first things first I need to have a REALLY good cry. {sigh} I’ll just have to find the time.

Tiamat, Mummu and the formless creating Sea

Among the ancient cuneiform poems that have been discovered in the last century and a half, the Babylonian Creation Epic (dated about 2500 BCE) caused excitement among biblical commentators in our late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were able to use this poem to show extraordinary similarities with the Genesis creation story. Today feminist theologians use it to review material that until recently has been overlooked or discounted. The creation myth, named the ‘Enuma Elish’ (When on high), like Genesis begins with an account of pre-creation.

When on high were not raised the heavens
And also below on earth a plant had not grown up
Alone there existed primordial Apsu, who engendered them
Only Mummu and Tiamat who brought them all forth
Their waters could mix together in a single stream
In the depths of their waters were the gods created.

There are references to ‘the chaos Tiamat’ who was ‘the producing mother of all of them’. She is referred to as a sea monster, a chaos monster and ‘the deep’. There is a Babylonian depiction of her as a dragon.

The Epic describes her story. Creation of the gods comes first, from her body; then there is dissension between them. Eventually her descendant Marduk with his various friends manages to kill her and tear her apart. He gives the various divisions of her body to his friends and each of these becomes master of some part of the universe created from Tiamat.

Whether Tiamat ‘alone’ created the world, or with the help of Mummu, an enigmatic figure – sometimes female sometimes male – and with Apsu, god of the sweet waters as engendering father, depends on the text. Mummu, whose name is related to the word for mother in almost all languages, appears to be an aspect of Tiamat described as a ‘chaos monster’. The primeval sea, her home, has been understood by numerous ancient writers to be the origin of life.

The concept of Tiamat as a dragon indicates a vision of totality, thus encompassing the four elements 0f a dragon is amphibian, living in both sea and on land; it breathes fire and air. The formless deep which is the body of Tiamat contains everything within it necessary for life – and she herself creates various forms and monsters during the battle with Marduk.

In addition to this totality – a wholeness without form – Tiamat is described as ‘holding the Tablets of Destiny’ which appear to symbolize supreme knowledge of the world and its future.

The Enuma Elish describes how the god Marduk assembles a force to overcome Tiamat and Mummu, in order to become lord of the universe and possess the Tablets. After a horrific battle he is successful. How he kills Tiamat and the way he disassembles the various parts of her body and builds the different areas of the universe from them have been widely commented upon, as has the possible relationship of Tiamat to the Hebrew Tehom (the ‘void’, Genesis 1:2), and the idea that she was an alternative source of creation which must, in the Hebrew bible, be shown to have been vanquished.

Until recently, there was a general consensus among scholars that the dismembering of the ‘chaos dragon’ brought about what Jacobsen (1946) called ‘the fundamentals of world order’. The separation of her various parts and labeling them, as areas of the world, and putting them under the dominion of various lords has, Jacobsen suggests, contributed to the orderly control of Nature. Today, this is no longer a unanimous view, owing to the reappraisal by female scholars. Mary Daly (1979) uncompromisingly names the Tiamat-Marduk story as a ‘sado-ritual syndrome enactment of goddess murder’. Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt (1977), documenting the consolidation of the state into the hands of a male elite in Sumer during the fourth millennium BCE draws attention to the relevance of the murder of Tiamat and its methods to ways in which force and violence were used to enslave women of the period.

In fact, Tiamat stands out not, as Jacobsen believes, as a symbol of passivity and inaction, but of wholeness and totality. She is the creator goddess from whom all beings emerge, and further, she is the keeper of the tablets of destiny. The later Babylonian priest Berosus, naming her as the ‘woman Omoroka’, praises her as Mistress of Incantations and Mistress of the Moon. ‘The Coil of Tiamat’ is part of certain Kabbalistic doctrines, reflecting echoes of ancient mysteries. N K Sandars 91971) points out that the Babylonian hymns, whilst recounting Tiamat’s defeat, also intimate that she is never really destroyed. The Hymn of Praise exhorts Tiamat to ‘recede into the future…till time of old’. Durdin-Robertson (1975) reflects that the zoomorphic beings of Tiamat’s creation are probably considered to be prototypes of the present Western zodiac, and connect with the well-known Chaldean (Babylonian) skills of astrology and astronomy.

Thus Tiamat comes well within the definition of a Wisdom goddess; creator of the gods, possessor and keeper of the Tablets of Destiny, repository of magical and intellectual powers, and with even a hint of immortality. That she lives in, and is goddess off, salt water gives the idea of the sea as the source of life.

Excerpted from : In a Chariot Drawn by Lions, Wisdom Goddesses in the Ancient Near East, Ch. 6