The Big One

“I feel the earth move under my feet



I feel the sky tumbling down



I feel my heart start to trembling








Whenever you’re around...”









— Carole King

A senior Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, has recently been quoted in Iranian media as saying: “Many women who do not dress modestly... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity, and spread adultery in society, which, consequently, increases earthquakes.” I can hear the scoffing of Western readers, and feel the ripening of their disdain. But let’s think about it for a moment.

Consider the experience and power of sex: The quake, the shake, the tremble. Consider the spewing forth of hot molten liquidity. Consider the formation of new universes out of the nothing of germ cells.

As above, so below. The quaking below of the anthropomorphic above is like the below of the great mother Earth. Let us go deep inside her, to the core, to her underGround hot spot.

We find there her amazing core. The deepest spot is her inner core. This inner core is almost 4,000 miles below the earth crust. Although it is hot to the tune of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the inner core is solid. It never melts because it is under the stress of such extreme pressure.

The outer core surrounds the inner, in total embrace. This outer core is molten hot liquid. And it spins around the inner core. It is this spinning that creates magnetism. And it is by this magnetism that sailors have found their way on the seas for thousands of years.

This movement deep inside her also creates currents of heat that in turn cause the movement of the tectonic plates of the crust. It is the edges of these plates that are the sites of the building of mountains, the eruption of volcanoes, and the orgasm of earthquakes.

So in these degenerate times, we look for the Big One. That could mean the earthquake of the century.

Or sometimes we use the phrase to refer to a death-dealing heart attack. Perhaps these two meaning attributions are not so different.

The microcosmic Big One, heartbroken open, cardiac containment failure, is a fractal valentine sent below from the macrocosmic Big One.

In the text of the Emerald Tablet, the great ancient magician philosopher Hermes Trismegistus wrote: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.”

The real Big One is the One Thing.

Remember how cardiologist Herbert Benson brought mysticism to Harvard? By merely repeating the word “one,” one could generate the relaxation response. The relaxation response is the physiological counterpoint to the fight/flight response. This stress antidote lowers metabolic rate, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and changes brain waves. Really. Mind over the heart of the matter. And not in the la-la land of magic, but in Harvard herself.

But really: The degenerate pirate prefers another question. Would we find the magical Emerald Tablet in L. Frank Baum’s Emerald City? The green of Oz came to be out of the green glasses locked onto the heads of all entrants at the city gates. Here the green is merely in the eye of the beholder, even if this truth is forgotten and obscured. The forces of ignorant habit of mind dissolve memory and understanding of the spectacles.

And when the eye of the beholder sees the spectacle of hot fleshy concupiscence, does not the earth itself tremble?

We find the One Thing closer than our own inner heat, the Big One of planetary core and fleshy heart.

And we find that we are always embrace in total union, core belief knowing beyond forgetfulness and fractals and other funky alliteration.

I feel it. Whenever you’re around. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.