Progression To Acceptance, Since I Have No Choice!

Here is where I find myself, aging, suspicious, and thoroughly aware that I am the King of the Wood, and my time draws near.

Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.

                                                  Macaulay.

Because I cannot find a succinctly written article about this, I need to say that the King of the Wood was a runaway slave who was King of a grove sacred to Diana, by Lake Nemi near Rome.  A challenger had to break off a bough of one of the trees.  It is unclear if this was a ritual formality or whether the King sought to prevent him from doing so.  I would guess that until the bough was broken the upstart's life was forfeit, giving both men a little motivation.  As long as the King could defeat all comers he was the man that was desired.  I also assume that the King had to be virile anytime, under any conditions.  Caligula reportedly interfered in the succession once.  My theory is that the body of the old King was planted along with seed of some sort.  Planted, not buried.  Of course maybe these people went as far as the so called Aztec priests, those wonderful people, in their worship of Xipe Totec, but I doubt it.   The challenger became the new King when he killed the old one.  Presumably the King lived in luxury.  This is the basis for Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough.  For most of our existence humans have ritually killed kings, in reality and then symbolically, as a fertility spell.  One only has to think of the act of communion to realize how ingrained this belief is.  Tom Tryon hit one out of the park with Harvest Home, which is based on this belief.
After all, what is the whole Easter thing about? (Death and rebirth of the King, for those of you who may be wondering).

Xipe Totec.  The priests would flay the sacrifice victim and sew their skin over their own bodies.  The rotting away of the skin symbolized the decay of a seed before it flowered.  Do you think anyone believed this bullshit?  The 'Aztec' religion was propaganda designed to cow their neighbors through sheer terror, and was the excuse used for industrial technique cannibalism of a unimaginable scale to benefit the warrior and priest's caste.  The only time I have ever approved of colonialism was when Cortes kicked in the door of this extremely nasty culture.  Cortes was a sorry bastard also and him and the Tenochans (Aztec) deserved each other.

http://www.heretical.com/cannibal/mamerica.html 

Rogue Roman, detail, by Frank Frazetta.  I like reading about renegades and those that Would Be Kings.  When I was a kid I wanted to be a scout for the Army.  I thought then and I think now they had the best of both worlds.  All the fun, challenge, and no enlisted man bullshit.  And they got paid more.  My model was the Medal of Honor winner Billy Dixon, all five foot seven of him.  He was a lion and was treated shabbily by the government, who took away his award for a century.  It took me some time to realize that the days of frontier scouting were long over.  (ditto buccaneering, arctic exploration, romantic travel, colonialism, edged weapon warfare, and any other adventure movie topics I grew up with).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Dixon

 Michael Biehn in the movie Aliens.  Between the armor, his magnetic personality, and his physique, I think he is one of the coolest looking men of all time.  Well, I got the biceps if nothing else.  But now he is older too.  I saw this 3 days in a row when it came out in 1986.  It never occurred to me that something as mundane as old age would creep up on the both of us.  Film freezes age.  I hate having my picture taken as I hate the way I now look.  Getting older is fantastic.  Aging sucks.

My mimicry has always been perfect.  The regular guys think that I am one of them.  There is safety in anonymity.

El Beso De Muerto, The Kiss of Death.  Llaudet family, Problenou Cemetary, Barcelona.  Sculptor unknown, although I do not believe that.*  I cannot even find the boy's name on this tomb.  1930.
Anyway, you get the idea.  Some folk say that this is eroticism but there is nothing erotic about being  kissed by Death himself.  Eroticism is the ultimate expression of pleasure, and there is no pleasure without life.
Someone knows who carved this.  Franco could not have shot everyone who knew the guy!  (Although Franco would certainly have tried had he felt he needed to, he was a Beso de Muerto himself if there ever was one).

*The sculptor was Jaume Barba, although some think it was conceived by Joan Fontbernat.  Whatever.

There was a weasel lived in the sun
With all his family,
Till a keeper shot him with his gun
And hung him up on a tree,
Where he swings in the wind and rain,
In the sun and in the snow,
Without pleasure, without pain,
On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a crow who was no sleeper,
But a thief and a murderer
Till a very late hour; and this keeper
Made him one of the things that were,
To hang and flap in rain and wind,
In the sun and in the snow.
There are no more sins to be sinned
On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a magpie, too,
Had a long tongue and a long tail;
He could both talk and do –
But what did that avail?
He, too, flaps in the wind and rain
Alongside weasel and crow,
Without pleasure, without pain,
On the dead oak tree bough.

And many other beasts
And birds, skin, bone, and feather,
Have been taken from their feasts
And hung up there together,
To swing and have endless leisure
In the sun and in the snow,
Without pain, without pleasure,
On the dead oak tree bough. 

The Gallows, Edward Thomas.

Killed at the battle of Arras, Easter Sunday, 9 April 1917.

Descent From The Cross, Peter Paul Rubens -  c. 1614

This entire micro-essay is pointless and just so much free association.  Now you know.