Once a soul arrived in the hall of judgement, Horus led it by the hand to the awaiting Osirus, seated upon the throne.
—Christine El Mahdy, from Mummies, Myth and Magic
I fell ill recently. Don’t worry, everything is fine. Merely a touch of the Influenza. I hadn’t been taking care of myself very well, and one night all I had for supper was an enormous piece of chocolate cake. It was tasty, but not very nutritious. The next day I felt a bit “under the weather”. When I got home, instead of the ham steak and scrambled eggs I was planning to have, I made some chicken soup and drank orange juice. But, alas, it was too late. As I was preparing for bed I caught the chills so badly, that I didn’t have time to get the proper afghan. I grabbed the one I had handy, curled up and fell asleep shivering. Then, I died.
The Egyptian Bureaucrats
I found myself watching a group of ancient Egyptian bureaucrats examining the contents of an ornate golden crate. Their strange heads shook from side to side on their human bodies. They had opened it, and were peering inside. A guide was standing beside me and said, “They’re looking at you. That’s you in the sarcophagus.”
The bureaucrats were shuffling about, trying to decide who I was, and what to do with me. When I told them who I was, they didn’t believe me.
“If it is you, where is the cloak of blue lightning?” they asked.
It’s true. If I am very ill, which is rare, I often put a particular afghan on the bed to keep me warm. But I hadn’t used it, and therefore I was unrecognizable to them. This wasn’t the way I was supposed to arrive according to the papyrus work.
The guide and I stayed in a corner of the office (which was a deep red stucco), and I could see a bureaucrat pulling files, examining the body, sitting at his desk and scratching his crocodile head. I kept pleading them to ask somebody higher up the chain of command. They ignored my request and continued to fumble.
Eventually Thoth somehow found out about the confusion, came down to the offices and confirmed my identity. The papyrus work was signed, stamped, dated, and they moved me along to the next step in the process. They buried me in the cold ground like a seed.
Later I felt someone digging me up. Farmers, peasants, and midwives were unfolding the seed which now resembled a strange nut, with wooden rose-like petals. Layer by layer they peeled, until they found me, curled tightly into a ball, and in the center was a black cat. And as I awoke, I found that I was curled tightly into a ball, still shivering, and at the center was Püs, the cat that lives with me here at the Shop. She was radiating as much heat as she could from her little black body, and she was the only thing keeping me warm.
A City in Ruins
When I fell back asleep, I was in a city made from gelatin and meat. Loudspeakers were blaring, and my guide had become a gibbering newsfeed, broadcasting nonsense from a communications station damaged by the raging illness. The city had suffered a massive attack. The devastation was like the scenes of cities after a bombing, but structures were more membraneous, more organic. Some buildings had lost their façades, and exposed floors drooped dangerously. Towers slid more than crumbled, in slithery chunks.
I realized that I was the city, or, more accurately, the city was part of a world which was an ambulatory biological megasystem, which is me.
So I had descended from the subconscious level, down to the cellular level, like Meg into her brother Charles Wallace, to save his mitochondria. I commanded three times loudly for the gibbering newsfeed to keep quiet, to cease the maddening confusion and disinformation. It stopped. Soon Medieval knights arrived with their standard bearers from many different regions, sporting their individual insignias, and their coats of arms. They were in rough shape from the battle, but they brought food and supplies for the city, and vitamin C glinted off their armor like golden sunlight.
The Feast of Pluto
The next dream I remember took me to the cold, yet opulent cosmic nether regions of the solar system. I was in the dining hall of Pluto, Lord of the Underworld. He was enormous, and towered over the black oak table. His cloak and the walls were the same glittering emerald green, and it billowed, so it was difficult to see where the walls ended and he began. His robe, however, while green, was curiously covered with wavy hair like an Irish wolfhound, and upon his head he wore a triple crown wrought of iron.
As in ancient days, pigs were sacrificed to the Queen of the Underworld during the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, so Pluto commanded me to feast on a ham steak—and also eggs, which are a symbol of regeneration. The knights from the previous dream arrived for the feast. Large studded wooden doors groaned as they were thrown open, and dazzling sunlight flooded the room. I awoke to a bright, warm morning, and I arose and cooked myself a breakfast of ham steak and eggs.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”One may have noticed my interest in things that don’t exist, but are made real by someone’s (and maybe our) belief in them.
—The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland
Lieutenant Kije was to be a film set in the court of Czar Paul I, son of Catherine the Great. As the story goes, the Czar misreads the report, and an aide, unwilling to correct the Czar, goes along with the error. The entire court now undertakes the task of falsifying documents to create a paper trail to confirm the existence of a fictional Lieutenant Kije.
Prokofiev wrote the score for the proposed film in 1934. However, like Lieutenant Kije, the film doesn’t exist, as it was never made.
Here one may find a more detailed report on the story of Lieutenant Kije.
And here one may listen to a sample of Prokifiev’s music of Lieutenant Kije. Track 11: Troika is a particularly lovely bit of music. A troika is a Russian sleigh, and the music sends us on an exhilarating ride through a winter snowfall. And anyone who remembers back a couple of decades or so will want to play track 9: Romance. You may recall during the end of the Cold War was the release of an album called Dream of the Blue Turtles by ex-Police front man Sting. He borrowed a phrase from Prokofiev and used it in his song, Russians.
In 1885, in the town of Jericho, Vermont, one man built a contraption made from an adapted microscope and a bellows camera, and took the world's first photograph of a snowflake. His name was Wilson Bentley. It is through his research and photography that we know that “no two snowflakes are alike.”
For children, there is a wonderful children's book that was published a few years ago called Snowflake Bentley. It won the Caldecott medal, which is awarded to only the very best children's book published that year.
To see the endless variations of snowflakes for oneself, one could purchase the book of Bentley's photographs.
Both children and adults alike have lost a great friend. Two, actually.
As you may have heard already, Bob Keeshan has passed away.
Some remember him as Clarabell from Howdy Doody. Some remember his short stint as Mr. Mayor. Some know he wrote the Itty Bitty Kitty book series. But nearly everyone remembers him as Captain Kangaroo.
Captain Kangaroo was a live-action television show, although “action” isn’t quite the right word. To combat the over-stimulated pace of other children’s shows, Keeshan deliberately kept the show tranquil and languid. The show took place in the Treasure House, which was home to many wonderful characters like Mr. Greenjeans, Grandfather Clock, Dancing Bear, Mrs. Mouse and Mr. Lion (who lived in a mousehole in the baseboard), and of course the pair who made us laugh the most—Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose. An obituary may be found here.
Another children’s television host passed away on Wednesday, one Ray Rayner. Rayner was the host of the show “Ray Rayner and His Friends”. It was a show that was only broadcast locally in Chicago, and so he wasn’t known nationally, but Rayner was loved by children growing up in the Windy City. Even though it was filled with cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Clutch Cargo, or The Funny Company, the show’s heart was Ray. He wore colored jumpsuits with little pieces of paper stuck to them (this was before Post-its) to remind him what the next segment was. On Wednesdays Dr. Lester Fisher from Lincoln Park Zoo would visit with some animals, and on Fridays Ray would read viewer mail with a big stuffed animal/dog puppet named Cuddly Dudley.
These two men brought warmth, imagination, and genuine affection to children’s programming, traits that seem to be lacking in the overproduced committee-smothered kids shows of today. The passing of these two men truly signals the end of an era.
Has anybody seen this trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow?
I was visited by an old friend recently. Old Joe was the court painter for the Emperors of Prague back in his day. And certainly one of the most inventive, imaginative, and fanciful. I must say that he’s looking good for someone who’s been dead for over four hundred years. He was kind enough to sit still while I dusted off my special photography equipment. I think it turned out quite well.
To find out more about him go to Olga’s Gallery, where one can view the exquisite detail of the work from the incomparable Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
The night is my pond. I count stars. I can look out the window and tell you in a deuce how many stars I will see within the Great Square of Pegasus when that constellation rises an hour from now. Tonight it will only be four.
—Chet Raymo
As I mentioned a couple of Novembers ago, I find that winter is the best time of year to view the constellations. Yes, yes, it is cold out, but the winter constellations are so much more impressive than the summer ones (and, yes, they are different). Cassiopeia—the vain, up-ended queen, Perseus—the hero who carries the head of the Gorgon, Taurus—the bull, and the Pleiades—the seven fairy-like daughters of Atlas who ride on the bull’s back. These all may be found in the sky this time of year (as long as one happens to be in the northern hemisphere, of course). Here you may learn more about the Winter Constellations.
And on a similar note, one of my favorite books is The Soul of the Night written by astronomer and naturalist Chet Raymo. It isn’t about astronomy or the stars as much as it is about the love of astronomy and the stars. The book isn’t filled with coordinates, radial velocities, or charts of absolute magnitudes. Instead one is swept along by the whispery-quiet poetic musings about the night from a philosophic stargazer who shares enough knowledge so we comprehend, and enough humanity so we understand the serene majesty of the soul of the night.
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s the one
Cuz she needs somebody to tell her that it’s gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really - really really ever loved a woman?
—Bryan Adams
I rented a video that I must recommend to you called House of Fools. Andrew O’Hehir from Salon called it one of the best movies of last year you’ll never see.
The movie takes place in a mental hospital at the start of the first Russian/Chechen war. The hospital is on the border, and when the shooting starts, the patients are left to run the asylum. The plot revolves around Janna (Julia Vysotsky), a patient who tries to brighten her world with music, and has delusional fantasies about pop star Bryan Adams. Who appears in the film. Truly.
Chechen rebels soon take cover in the hospital, which becomes a battleground. While one watches the film, one begins to wonder who is more insane, the patients on the inside, or the world outside?
(The) cardinals meet in the pope’s apartments, in the antechamber of which the scarlet zucchetta, or skull-cap, is handed to them; thereafter the scarlet biretta is placed by the pope on the head of each.
—The Catholic Encyclopedia
The Cardinal came to visit. He judged the berries to be good berries. And then he ate them.
Hold your hats, the roof is ‘bout to tumble in
Holy cats, the walls and floors are crumblin’
Hellzapoppin’, hellzapoppin’, hellzapoppin’
The whole gang’s whoopin’ up the whoop-de-doo
—Hellzapoppin’ by Marian Grudeff / Raymond Jessel
On Sunday afternoons, this is where it’s at, and where you should be too. Three hours of Jazz with Dick Buckley. It swings.
While lots of things are always happening at the Mercuriosity Shop, here are some of the highlights of the previous year (in case you missed them).
Of course, I started the year with a little something about the passage of time, along with a photograph I’m quite proud of. This is the story of Chronos, Father of Time.
We also got a visit from French author and illustrator Frederic Clement who left us with a smile.
Photographer Chip Simons showed up in time for March with his hares.
While ruminating about a fog, I accidentally wrote this little dissertation. I may be a fogologist after all.
We all got a huge dose of Faerie Month, which ended with the death of a sabotaging Gremlin.
I got to see my favorite author/illustrator Maurice Sendak speak, and then I ran off to New Orleans for a while.
And another bit of lovely writing (if I do say so myself) about the end of summer.
Some troubadours were lost, and some mermaids were saved in September.
Santa wrote another letter to my niece.
And we ended where we started—with time.
So who knows what this year may bring, but I hope that we may continue to visit here, in the Mercuriosity Shop.