The Cincture That Binds (Pawn Takes Bishop------Mate!)

As Ramona tells it, the bishop called the convent/brothel, demanding to talk directly to “Signore Yarez.”

“ Pedro was a bit angry on the phone saying only, ‘Señor, we will do what we can.’ It seems someone had recommended Francesca and me to the bishop for a special act he preferred. But Felix Culpa had called maybe ten minutes early, and Pedro had promised us to him as a sign of high friendship, a point of honor with Pedro.

No sooner had Pedro left to grab a tequila at the bar down the street, then Bassanni burst in the door of the convent, demanding to have Francesca and me pointed out to him. He grabbed us roughly by the arms and pushed us down the hallway, ordering us into an empty room.

Once in the room, he pushed us to the corner and told us to ‘divest.’ He had to explain that he meant for us to take off our clothes. While we did this, he produced from his coat pocket a long, white, braided rope [ note: This is called a “cincture” and is tied around a priest’s waist when vested for Mass.] and tossed it to us. We had heard what we thought was every request, but this was new: As he lay on the bed, he wanted one of us to tie the rope tighter and tighter around his throat, cutting off more and more of his breathing and blood, while the other manipulated his sexual part.
At the last moment we were to loosen the rope, resulting in an added rush to his orgasm.

This we were doing: Francesca tied and tightened the rope while I did the massaging. The bishop was getting closer and closer to climax, when suddenly the door swung open, making a horrific din, and in rushed Pedro and Felix along with half of the employees and clientele of the evening. As Pedro began to yell and swing a small revolver in the air, he suddenly clutched his chest and fell to the ground, the gun firing into the floor. Everyone, including Francesca and I, rushed to Pedro’s assistance. All efforts to revive him proved fruitless. To this day I remember the slow “blueing” of his lips. We were all crying for this truly gentle man, when someone, I don’t know who, yelled “The bishop!!” We had completely forgotten about him. His face was completely ashen, the vein in his neck having burst, blood all over. We loosened the rope, but it was far too late. The only irony was he had achieved what he wanted: down around his sexual organ was residue of an ejaculation (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!)

We heard the sound of police sirens drawing closer. (The rectory housekeeper had heard the shot and called 911.) Felix was in a state of panic. Explaining he was in the country illegally and wanted by the authorities in Italy, he asked for help avoiding the police. Francesca showed him the exit through the sanctuary of the church next door and he was gone. We never saw him again. I swear! They saw him at the school’s rehearsal the next afternoon. But he was standing in the stairway, and then he was gone. No one saw him leave. We expected to meet up with him at the estate, but he never showed.”



(This account varies greatly from the report Ramona filed with the Chicago Police, many of whom were frequent guests at the establishment. The official report had Bishop Bassanni committing suicide at the “Retreat Center.” The Archdiocese of Chicago, as well as the Bishopric in Italy, both already weary from widespread clergy scandals, did not dispute the findings.)



There was a brief memorial service for the bishop at St. Joseph's, following which his body was shipped back to Italy, where he was buried near the Cathedral in Calabria. People on both sides of the Atlantic pretty much said " good riddance."All except for Maxine, who was not quite ready to say good bye.

Sonata Appassionata

“Sebastian, you know who she is. As the two of you embrace and sing I shall be with you and the wave of pleasure the three of us will ride will attract even the attention of the Trinity.”

** *** **** ****** **** ****** *****
In the middle of the moonless night, Felix took Esperanza by the hand and led her to a hillside where the fieldstone excavated by Emilio’s workers seemed to form a natural grotto. They embraced and began to sing softy, moving slowly: at first a Largo
then an Adagio,
then Allegretto con Amore, then Accelerando!
Allegro con moto,
Crescendo!



Then another voice was heard singing, a third body embracing the two lovers. There was thunder and lightning though no one else heard it,
And in the sky that was moonless, three brilliant full moons, with glowing halos appeared.

Crescendo!
Allegro con brio, con brio!
Then furioso
!Vivace con fuoco!




Finally, Appassionata and Volante!!!!

Toward morning,
Ritardano and Diminuendo,
became Lento,
Dulce and Languidamente.

As dawn appeared, just the two --- or was it three?--- humming voices:

Pianissimo Cantabile

The sun began to rise and Felix had completed his mission: to bring Sybian back to earth and make Esperanza and Sybian one. Heaven and earth were indeed wedded to one another.

As Felix fell back asleep, Esperanza walked softly back to the estate, bathed in the morning sunlight, ready to lead others in the pursuit of the father’s pleasures, ready to carry the torch of passion into the eternity that is the present.



"Now is Eternal" --- St. Sybian




Felix returned to Chicago; he had music to compose and rehearse.

Smoke, Perfume, and Hearts Beating...

Felix visited the estate often that early summer, teaching music to the novices and assisting Maxine in the initiation process. In mid-summer, just before he disappeared, Felix, assisted by Maxine and Esperanza, performed the most stunning rite, the final induction of the novitiate. It was at the end of a sensuous weekend which culminated in Felix spinning a web of chants and intonations that transformed the novices forever into priestesses of St. Sybian.

Wisdom's Feast/ Sybian's Dance

She threw a party and nobody came.

Wisdom had the table set with the best of the harvest
Her daughters danced to crush the grapes,
Her sisters brought the spices to mull the wine.
Carefully the fires were stoked and tended.

She commissioned poets to write odes,
Musicians to sing anthems,
Carvers shaped marble, bronze and alabaster.

She threw a party and nobody came.

And Sybian sent out the call:
“Come eat of Wisdom’s food and the wine she has mixed.
Forsake foolishness that you may live
And advance in the way of understanding!"

And she invited them all:
-----The Baptizers and Evangelists,
-----The Prelates in their robes of scarlet and sable,
-----The Generals, on their armored steeds,
---- The Merchants at their counting table.

But the Generals could not rest from their wars,
The priests would not leave their altars,
The merchants, their accounts.

The children were forbidden by their parents,
The students by their teachers,
The servants by their masters.

It was rumored that Pleasure would be there,
The muses and the sylphs,
Maybe even Truth and Desire,
as they went everywhere as one.
It was they that the generals, priests and merchants feared the most.

She threw a party and nobody came.


The food went uneaten, the wine was untouched,
No one heard the music and danced.
Foolishness reigned over all the land,
And war was the order of the day.

Wisdom’s daughters extinguished the candles,
The musicians put away their instruments.
It grew dark and a chill was in the air.

She threw a party and nobody came.

And Wisdom turned to Sybian
“I have drawn a map to the father’s love in your heart.
Anyone who will follow you will break your heart.
This is the sweetest agony,
And this pleasure I have saved for you.”

Wisdom looked back in pity
And sighed as the moon turned cold,
And disappeared in a cloud.

She threw a party and nobody came
And so Sybian danced alone through the night
The saddest of pavanes.





(Found among Felix Culpa's papers at his hotel, but it is not in his handwriting.)

Canto cum Bocca Chiusa (Felix's Humming Tune)

“Sing, Sebastian. Repeat these melodies with me, Sebastian. Grow with each phrase, rise with each melody, move back and forth to the rhythms. We are creation. The moon triumphs, and all time is now.

You must learn these melodies and teach them to whomever you have relations with. Sing gently in your wooing and in your parting. When entwined, you must both let your passions run unbridled. That is the time for roaring and shouting and panting, not humming! But your lover must be brought back gently. Begin and end with these melodies, they are the cool center of your passion, from where your hearts speed up and then slow down again.





Sing gently, but with strength, Sebastian. Remember my first lesson to you:
Music is a most voluptuous muse, and through it heaven and earth are wedded. Sing with moonlight in your voice and you will always be the second beat of my heart. “

Humming Tunes.mp3

Esperanza

Francesca’s younger sister, Esperanza, began to evolve as the leader of this new group of revelers and worshippers of Sybian. Her attitude toward spirituality and sexuality, life and pleasure was the closest to Sybian’s, and Felix said she even resembled the holy one who had appeared to him.




It was not long before Felix began to personally teach Esperanza the "Humming Songs" of Sybian. Soon she would go with him to retrieve a half-keg of Bergamot essence in a grotto of fieldstone.

Scenes from the Estate

Maxine had succeeded in converting Pedro and his ladies to Sybian’s Vita Volupta. Pedro quit the drug trade altogether, and a new code of conduct for the clients took effect.( Not that this way was forced on people; as Maxine and Felix both knew, Sybian’s philosophy of enjoyment of self meant appreciation not abuse of others. Pleasure was inclusive not exclusive.) The younger sisters and cousins of the ladies of the Casa de Amor worked as hostesses and attendants.

With his profits from selling drugs, Pedro’s brother, Emilio, had bought an abandoned estate just outside the forest preserve south of Chicago, and it was there in the summer that a new order of Sybarites took root, As the older girls became priestesses, the younger ones became novices and acolytes, learning to appreciate the Father’s gifts of life, love, nature, and one’s body.

Felix Goes to Church (well, the convent...)

The Summer Solstice and Felix's birthday were approaching, turning Felix's thoughts back to when he was thirteen, when St. Sybian had revealed to him the sacramental side of carnal relations. Lately he had been feeling that both the saint and sexual relations had deserted him. Maxine remembers:

" It was late June in Chicago, really humid. Felix said Chicago in the summer smelled like a wet dog. The old wiring in Felix’s transient hotel could not handle air conditioning except in the lobby, and all Felix had was a single window fan. He called me at the theater. The school was performing his music the next night and he was anxious, plus he told me that lying naked on the bed only turned his thoughts to women. I told him to take Pedro up on his offer of a free night at his Casa de Amor. It was air conditioned, the cervesa was cold, and the girls young and pretty.(Many of them, including Francesca and Ramona, danced with me at the Admiral.)
(Francesca and Ramona outside the old convent)



Pedro rented the old convent from St. Joseph of Cupertino Catholic Church, which had closed its school. No Money. They had even agreed to rent a wing of the rectory to an Italian Cleric, the notorious Bishop Bassanni from Calabria. (We did not know this until later.) But it was Pedro’s generous monthly rent payment that helped balance their books. If the pastor knew what Señor Yarez used the convent for, he didn’t seem to object. If the pastor knew about the Bishop's past and how he had lost his ring finger, he certainly didn't care.Both brought in more money than bingo and bakesales.

(The convent gangway)

Felix showered, shaved, and put on clean clothes. Looking briefly at his new set of "Musical Humlets", he unchained his door and left for Pedro's.
It was about this same time that Bassanni, self-gratification not being that gratifying, also thought of Pedro's business and found the phone number on the back of a holy card in his breviary.

The Primavera of The Neo-Sybians

“The Primavera of the Neo- Sybians”

Following the two world wars, when fascism and death roamed Italy, a certain calm and a calm certainty returned to the Calabria region of Italia.
Like flower bulbs breaking forth from the once frozen ground, people who had kept their devotion to St. Sybaris hidden began to come forth and connect with each other. The gardens of pleasure were refurbished, rituals revised, novices recruited, all this in time for the “Days of New Wine.”, a custom the Sybians revived. The children of the war had become the young adults of peacetime, eager to explore forbidden pleasuresand topics kept from them. Into this fertile atmosphere came Felix and Maxine.
Through Maxine, Felix’s childhood friend, the news began to circulate about Felix's music, his visions and initiations and, among the women of the villages, his physical and metaphysical prowess. Many a signora was heard on her way to the midday market singing softly Felix’s “humming tunes.” Through the music which Felix composed and the dances Maxine performed at her garden gatherings, Sybian’s vision of theVita Voluptua began to take hold among the young. While the women greatly admired Felix Culpa, the older men of the village were concerned along with those younger ones who were too physically inadequate to join in the rituals .These outcasts often retreated to the seminaries. Among them was a soon-to-be priest and bishop, Alberti Bassanni.

Alberti Bassanni, like many of the adolescents of Sybaris, was attracted to the “New Sybian” group. Sensual initiation, leading to full sexual membership, offered youths a chance to escape the guilt driven church and political organizations. However, Bassanni’s inability to perform the complete initiation led to embarrassment and mockery of his peers. He sought refuge in the Catholic seminary in Calabria.
Bassanni, lured by the chance to accrue wealth and power, entered the priesthood where he quickly rose to Monsignore, and then Bishop. He never passed up an opportunity to use his position to harass the most vulnerable of his subjects, particularly sexually.
Maxine, who was his mistress for several years, believes Bassani never gave up his devotion to Sybian, although his rituals of self-gratification were practiced only late at night, when he believed Maxine to be asleep.

"The Ecstasies of St. Sybian":The Sound of Seduction from The Organ Loft!

In “Ecstasies of St. Sybian,” Felix Culpa took the themes of Sybian, the unusual melodies and intoxicating rhythms through which she revealed the voluptuousness of creation, and developed them into harmonic adventures with waves of tones and tempi that ebb and flow in intensity, with bursts of exuberance paired with dark, modal eddies.

In Chicago, working on an arrangement of “Ecstasies of Sybian” for brass quintet, Felix confessed to Maxine that he was having nightly visions of Mia dancing erotically over the bloodied body of Bishop Bassanni, while this music played. Thus, while “The Mausoleum at Rosarno” is about Death and Love, “Ecstasies of Sybian” seems to be about Sex and Revenge.

Ecstasies of St. Sybian...

"The Art of Life Lies in Taking Pleasures as They Pass"

"The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass,
and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral."
(Aristippus)
Aristippus was a follower of Socrates, and the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy. He taught that the ultimate goal of all our actions is pleasure, and that we should not defer pleasures that are ready at hand for the sake of future pleasures. He was willing to break the social conventions of his day and engage in behavior that was considered undignified or shocking for the sake of obtaining pleasurable experiences. The Cyrenaic school developed these ideas further and influenced Epicurus and the later Greek skeptics.
Like other Greek ethical thinkers, Aristippus' ethics are centered around the question of what the 'end' is; i.e., what goal our actions aim at and what is valuable for its own sake. Aristippus identified the end as pleasure. This identification of pleasure as the end makes Aristippus a hedonist. Most of the pleasures that Aristippus is depicted as pursuing have to do with sensual gratification, such as sleeping with courtesans and enjoying fine food and old wines.
Xenophon, a hostile contemporary of Aristippus', reports that Aristippus rejected delaying any gratification. Aristippus advocated simply deriving pleasure from whatever is present, and not producing trouble for oneself by toiling to obtain things which may bring one pleasure in the future.
In his pursuit of sensual gratification, Aristippus showed little regard for the standards of propriety reigning in Greece at the time. Although many of the sensationalistic stories about Aristippus are probably false, they depict a man who is willing to engage in activity that is shocking, undignified, and callous for the sake of his own pleasure, and who displays disdain for conventional standards as being mere societal prejudices.
Such a life would be branded by most Greeks as being enslaved to pleasure. Aristippus, however, thought that his willingness to do anything whatsoever for the sake of pleasure, his total flexibility, brought him a kind of freedom. Aristippus was able to do whatever the circumstances demanded of him, and his single-mindedness and disregard of social conventions made him master of himself. Aristippus said that he possessed the courtesan Laïs, but was not possessed by her, and that "what is best is not abstaining from pleasures, but instead controlling them without being controlled." That is, as long as you are clear-headed and single-minded in your pursuit of pleasure, it is not as though pursuing pleasure in this way is making you do anything unwillingly, or making you lose your self-control.

(Intenet Encyopedia of Philosophy)