John Burridge

Gym (Thursday): 20 minutes and 210 calories on the elliptical.  10 minutes and 110 calories on the cable row machines.  3x12x60lbs on the pec fly.  3x13x70lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x12 hanging curls on the Roman Chair.  3x12x30lbs barbell curls.  3x12x30lbs reverse barbell pulls.  3x12x20lbs triceps pull-downs.  Assorted random stuff.

I've been viewing archeology and culture films at the Archeology Channel's film festival.  So far The Enigma of the Great Menhir has been my favorite, although I thought Chambord: The Castle, the King and the Architect  was interesting.   Menhir featured standing stones in Brittany (near the "Merchants' Table"), put up in paleolithic times.  The stones followed the shoreline, which has moved depending on how much ice was at the pools, and some (presumably) older stone lines are under water.  Wavy lines on the menhirs are interpreted as currents and whirlpools in the local waters; the most surprising carving is a symbolic representation of sperm whales.  Alpine jade axeheads also appear in the iconography.

Chambord is a French Renaissance castle, financed by Francis I, and possibly designed by Leonardo daVinci.  It had a lot of cool photography and videography, but seemed a little light on the "secrets" of its design.  The design of the castle is very interesting:  a square with a double-helix staircase in the center.  The main mystery seems to be that the north tower's floorplan was flipped to accommodate  and shorten Francis I's path between two of the towers.  There was lots of period costume and scene reenactment, and the film was more historical than architectural.

Other films and shorts have been interesting.  I came away from a few wishing that I understood French so I could focus on the interesting artifacts in the film without being distracted by the English subtitles.   So far, in these films I think it's obligatory to have

• a flame-lit battle scene with metallic clanking
• Autocad Porn featuring reconstruction overlays
• arch looks from courtiers
• elderly elders ritually chanting
• backlit archeologists scuffling through narrow ducts
• a close-up of a 3-D laser scanner shooting lasers
• earnest young techs crouching over mobile tablet devices
• dramatic video from drones as they buzz around a landscape

Now that I think about it, the one short I saw that didn't have these obligatory elements was a kind of whimsical review of Epicurean Inscriptions, which kind of felt more like a cross between Diogenes 101 and a Research Fund Drive.  About half-way through it there was a short segment focused on goats, and after that the lead researcher in the film reminded of the Frank, the Famous Historian from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I kept expecting them to turn over one of the stones of old Oinoanda and reveal an ancient inscription reading "FORTY-TWO", which would then be the object of a chase scene involving Epicureans and Stoics and there would be a shouting match about sex and the greatest good and someone would have to yell, "Nobody expects the Stoics!"


Gym (Saturday): 25 minutes and 250 calories on the elliptical.  5 minutes and 50 calories on the cable row machines.  3x12x60lbs on the pec fly.  3x13x70lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x12 hanging curls on the Roman Chair (I had to stop in the middle because I was laughing too hard at Hearts' "Magic Man" which sounds like it came from the sound-track of a Go-Go Dancer collection, and is right up there with Lead Zeppelins' "Whole Lotta Love" and Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls" as far as songs they play in my gym that will make me drop a barbell weight on my foot because I'm laughing too hard).   Assorted free-weight stuff.

Cookies for breakfast! (Again.) I mean; there I was. It was morning; the cookies were there, and it was breakfast time.... Actually, now that I think about it, I probably had a bagel, too.

Mark and most of his siblings went into The City. I'd opted out in order to have a more relaxed day.

I'd noticed when we first arrived that Grandma Mary's gutters were overflowing and probably needed to be cleaned out. Cleaning the gutters took a little longer than I expected, because I had to take apart the drain pipes and remove all the decomposing leaf material. Taking them apart didn't take nearly as long as trying to put them back together.

Once I finished that chore, I decided that I would have a soak in the tub. And read my newly purchased Atlas of Ancient Civilizations. And eat a Double-Chocolate Klondike Bar. You know, that Cat in the Hat had something going there when he ate cake in the tub.

Heh...

"Do you like Green Eggs and Hammurabi?"

7:25 - On the bus to the MET! I must remember the stop is at the CVS.

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We've just entered the Turnpike. Riding the Shortline Bus must be getting easier because I don't have the nagging fear I'm heading to Ithica or Buffalo.

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When I got to the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal, I had a moment's hesitation as I tried to decide if I should walk to 4, 5 or 6 Metroline or enter the system under the Terminal and take the S line.
I wasn't completely awake, I wasn't sure which way I was heading, and a Very Friendly Person latched right onto me. He was kind of short, he was dark skinned, and he was unkempt.

"Where you going to?" he asked. He was kind of like a concierge on steroids.

It was one of those awkward moments where I was too nice to insist that I knew the way. The next thing I knew, my New Best Friend was leading me down to the subway entrance to the S line. It was then that I noticed the alcohol on his breath.

Once my guide had pointed the way, he got very still and said, "Help a brother out?" I figured, What the Heck, and gave him some money.

He thanked me, I walked through the subway gate, and I never saw him again. I did ponder, as I joined the stream of people shuffling to the S train, what kind of Greek plot I'd stumbled into. Would my drunken guide have been Mercury, or Charon?

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I exited the subway near the MET and started walking in the direction I figured would be correct. In the past, I navigated by the sun's position, but it was cloudy and gray, with what felt like a genuine Pacific-Northwest drizzle threatening.

I knew I was heading in the right direction when I saw La Maison du Chocolat. Unfortunately the shop was closed, or I would have slipped in.

I arrived a few minutes later at the steps of the MET. Before opening. O Bliss, O Rapture Unbounded. Oh... A line.

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Security has tightened at the MET, because my bag, which I've always been able to take in before, is ordered to the hat and coat check. This necessitated some awkward re-shuffling of things like my sketchbook and my contact lens case.

My first decision was choosing which wing to go first, then race to the end of that particular exhibit and work my way back toward the Great Hall. Until I win the lottery and can afford to arrange to spend the night (or a week of nights) in the MET, it's the best way to be in near-empty galleries.

For two hours I wandered the Egyptian wings. I love Egyptian art. It makes me want to twirl around with my arms flung out and sing "The Sound of Music" and then say, "Almighty Isis! (Isis Isis...)" At first I hunted for crisp examples of hieroglyphs that I have not already photographed.

I was aware of my own photography because I kept running into a young woman dressed like Lauraa Croft in tight black; she wielded a mega-zoom extra-clicky camera. Every time she paused in front of an exhibit I expected the Jay Giles band to shout "Freeze Frame!"

This time around the statue of Hatsheput compelled me. The artists communicated a sense of the Hatsheput the Monarch of one of the most powerful empires of the time constrained by her throne.



One of the objects I always seem defeated by is the black sarcophagus. Its glossy surface confuses my camera's auto-focus and the fine hieroglyphs on it come out blurry. At a carving next to the sarcophagus a man and two women stopped to look at the hieroglyphic inscriptions. The man was loud and sounded like a child dragged to culture.

"Look at those chicken scratches," he said. "They look like chicken scratches."

One of the woman said wistfully, "It's supposed to say something."

Since I was photographing right next to them anyway, I leaned over and pointed at the inscription. "This triangle shape is 'given' and this shape, ankh, means 'life' -- so together this means the phrase 'given life.' The wasp and the plant over the half circles is the title 'Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt.' This figure here is a god -- we know he's a god because he carries he rod of dominion in one hand and an ankh in the other. This man here is a king because he's wearing a crown with a snake -- the crown of Upper Egypt. This part in a cartouche is one of the king's names, but I'm afraid I can't read it."

"Wow," one of the women said. "Uh, thanks."

Later, I had more fun being amateur Egyptian docent explaining spirit doors to enthusiastic kids. There's something that strikes the storyteller in me to be able to say (while enclosed in stone passages enclosed in glass) "And this is Perneb's spirit door, where his spirit appeared to receive offerings brought by his family." I could almost smell the incense, and I'm pretty sure the kids could almost see an ancient Egyptian ghost.

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I'd made a list of objects to see, then cleverly left it in the bag. And the bag was in forced check-in. But I found the MET's mark-down clearance sale instead!

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When I'm in New York City, I always hear foreign languages. I like the ones that have guttural CH's or short, nasal E's. I heard a (presumably) father and son speaking as I went into the men's room to remove my contact lenses. I don't know if it's the humidity, or dust, or some funny museum chemical, but I only seem to be able to wear my contacts in the MET for about three hours before they start giving me problems.

As I stood in front of a sink, holding my left eye open and using one of those little plunger thingies to remove my contact, I felt the boy's stare. The scene reminded me of Laurie Anderson's spiel about being "The Ugly One with the Who Keeps Her Jewels in her Eyes."

I turned to the boy. In addition to whatever language he'd been speaking with his older relative, I'd heard them using English. So I said, "I have an astigmatism and my eyes are old. So I have to wear rigid, semi-permeable contact lenses. I can't just blink the contacts out, so I use this to take it out." I removed my contact lens and dropped it in its case. "But they're bothering me, so I'll wear my glasses instead." I removed the other one and put on my glasses.

About this time, the older relative realized that the boy had been staring at and was talking to a stranger in the men's room.

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I enjoyed the Courtyard of American Sculpture and Arts. It's the silver. And the Tiffany's tile work. And the Art Deco. And... This time around I enjoyed the sculpture "Young Artist's Hand Stayed by Death." Perhaps enjoyed is the wrong word -- it communicated a sense of motivation to me.

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I wanted to wander through the galleries of the Ancient Near East, but, alas, there was a huge queue snaking along side the displays. I kind of wished I'd stopped to take a picture of The Assyrian Bulls with the queue snaking between them, but I didn't want to photograph people's backs.

I think all the folks in line were going to see some dresses. This was too bad, because I couldn't really look at the ritual objects from the Levant and Fertile Crescent. They fascinate me -- so many of them seem to be saying something about the chariot (or cart) of the sun. While I didn't get to see examples of early Scythian art, I did get to see the Elomite Cow! Again! (I love the Cow.)

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Walking through the Greek and Roman statuary, I must have hit a sugar crash, because the artwork made me meloncholy, and I wrote bad poetry. What triggered the poetry was a sphinx with no face; I've seen it before, but this time I felt for it and wondered what it might be like to come alive in a gallery some moonlight midnight and have no face. Then I looked around at the other fragments statues missing arms, legs or heads.

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7:50PM - Mark IM'ed me and ... OMG! Will you look at the time!? I had no idea it was so late. By this time I was in the bookstore and I'd become distracted hunting for bargains and gifts.

8:45 - On bus back to Suffern. I've spent almost eleven hours in the MET.

Every now and then I would stumble across the name Matthew Fox, so I finally went to the library and checked out a copy of The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine. I was excited, at first, because Matthew Fox is a former Dominican who became an Episcopal priest after his expulsion from the Catholic Church. Episcopal: That's Catholic-Lite; twice the ritual with only half the guilt! And Starhawk had dropped his name once or twice, so I thought as I cracked the book, "At last, something about male spirituality with some theological teeth in it."

I became uneasy as I read; the paragraphs seemed to be fuzzy and disjointed. Sort of like, "Purple is a color between red and blue. 'The Color Purple' is the name of a book by Alice Walker. Donnie Osmond liked purple socks, and Prince had an album called 'Purple Rain.' As you can see, purple has an attraction to artists of all genders and orientations." Except Fox would have used chakras, Robert Bly, Meister Eckhart, and Native Americans.

I flipped ahead to the chapter on The Green Man, where I read "The Green Man is an ancient pagan symbol of our relationship to the plant kingdom." My earlier vague misgivings crystallized. I checked in the index, and failed to find Lady Raglan, the British folklorist who wrote in 1936 about the foliate heads she'd notice in English church architecture, and who started the Frazerian theory that they were were symbols of pagan fertility and tree worship. There followed some more loosely related paragraphs, ending with Greenpeace.

The Green Man is an icon, and the cultural meaning of this icon has changed throughout the centuries: from ancient Bacchus, through the medieval images of the Tanglewood and renaissance agents of festival crowd control, to Lady Raglan's theories about restored church architecture in the twentieth century. To make assertions about ancient pagan interpretations of the Green Man is about as valid as asserting that motorists in the modern age worship Pegasus because they gather underneath an icon of a red winged horse. Certainly, Neo-Pagans today use the Green Man as a symbol of the interconnectedness of Nature and Humanity, as a male avatar of Nature's spirit incarnate, and as a paragon to emulate.  However, this contemporary use begins with the assumptions of Lady Raglan. I don't mind so much that Matthew Fox wants to imagine new scripts for the Green Man, but I do wish he hadn't grounded them in outmoded folklore theories.

Moving along, I flipped forward to the chapter on Masculine Sexuality. By the fifth paragraph, I read about Toaist practices of controlling seminal fluids (code for "orgasm without ejaculation") and how there's chi stored in the testes. At least Fox did spend some time addressing issues of infertility and male sexuality -- but then out came the berdaches and winktes. This section made me angry because it was titled "Honoring, and Learning From, The Gifts of Homosexuality." It was so old-school-Harry-Hay-elitism: "because we're a persecuted minority we've got special powers." Okay, Fox gets points for saying a Spiritual Warrior must exorcise homophobia, but then he loses points for implying that doing so will give access to, among other things, the homosexual gift of spirituality. Here's a special note for all of you Spiritual Warriors: when I'm having hot, throbbing, man-to-man sex, my primary motivation isn't to bring straight allies a spiritual gift. (And by-the-way: I'm a white guy, not a First Nations person). Muttering "Magic Negro" under my breath, I flipped forward.

By this time my attitude toward "The Hidden Spirituality of Men" had deteriorated into a mix of "Ha, where is your Goddess now?" "Someone is wrong on the internet!" and the feeling of looking/not-looking at a traffic accident. My eyes fell randomly on the end of Chapter Eleven: The Sacred Marriage of Masculine and Feminine. Yep, there it was, a reference to hieros gamos, and the Jewish tradition of Yahweh consummating a marriage with Shekinah, feminine bride. Which is fine, except Shekinah wasn't formulated as feminine, much less a cosmic bride, until probably sometime in the ninth century, and was first written in the "Book Bahir", written around 1185. Earlier writing presented Shekhina as an ungendered concept to enable limited humans to perceive Deity.

As with the Green Man, I don't have a problem with a modern reworking of Shekinah as a Cosmic Bride; but Fox seems to have confused medieval Shekinah with Sophia or ancient Ashera. Shekinah's sexing a thousand years ago by rabbis was done to develop a spiritual toolkit to fix the imbalance in the emanations of the Tree of Life. Fox is looking for a metaphor of the union of two cosmic opposites; but originally, Shekinah was the facade Deity wears so that the Nation of Israel might comprehend the divine.

Yes, I'm knit-picking on this last example, but by now it was too late. I felt betrayed. What I'd hoped for was a Priestly Ronald Hutton or a poetic Margot Adler. What I found was an odd grab-bag of "ancient" and "native" "wisdom," a Frazerian regurgitation of art history presented as archeology, and a kinder, gentler Men's Mythopoetic movement. The symbols and icons of the Divine Male are active and available; use them, re-work them - and if the re-working is a good one, it doesn't need a populist pedigree to justify it. I'm sure Matthew Fox has given us some symbolic gems, and the divine male does need to explored -- but for me, the Spirituality of Men was too well Hidden for this book to be useful.

A while back I read The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, by Cynthia Eller (Chapter One excerpt: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/eller-myth.html).  I keep referencing it, and I realized I hadn't blogged about it much.


The basic gist of The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory is that the prehistoric record is such that no one can say with certainty anything about prehistoric people other than things like, "they left behind these ruins," or "they buried people this way," or "they produced these sculptures and drawings." Eller then goes on a point-by-point argument against the story of a golden, pre-historic age (roughly 5000 to 2500 BCE) where society was centered on women, in which women were revered for their mysterious life-giving powers and honored as incarnations of the great goddess, and which was subsequently somehow transformed into what is called "patriarchy."

Eller concludes that the story of a golden age of woman-centered society (especially a pan-European one spanning over 2000 years) is a myth which should not be treated as historical fact.  As a myth, Eller argues that it is neither helpful as a guide for how women and men conceptualize their self-perceptions of gender and how the genders relate (her view is that the myth engenders sexism by heightening the differences between male and female), nor is the myth of prehistoric matriarchy required as a template from which to model a future society that has reached feminist goals (since it's a myth, it's not a history we're doomed to repeat; let's move on to equality).  She concludes, however, that adherents of the story of a golden age of prehistoric matriarchy are unlikely to abandon their "passionate hope and religious faith" in the story.

Eller's tone is sarcastic in places, and I found myself saying "ouch!" after reading several passages.  I did wonder at times if she was using particularly silly sources (ala Philip Davis in Goddess Unmasked).  However, I would recommend The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and I found it useful for generating the following questions:

• Does Harry Hay's story of the Qeddishim count as a "Golden Age of Male 'Homo-archy'?"
  
• Golden Age stories seem to feed into 'apocalyptic end-times,' 'after the revolution' or to 'boosting self-esteem' thinking; is there another way to incorporate them into a world view?
  
• As someone who is seeking the Divine Queer, is there such a thing as a "divine queer way of knowing?"  How would a story help to weave together our erotic, the spiritual, and mental lives -- and how would my story as a gay man be different from someone with a different gender and orientation?   Or, to put it another way, is a book like "Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-sex Love" (in the Eugene Library, 0974638838) going to be useful?

In applying The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory to my own experiences and observations as a gay man, I came up with the following:

In my experience, gay men have tried to seek myths of how gay men have functioned in various other cultures (for example, Greek, Japanese, First Nations).  The rational behind using other cultures as material for gay myths has been to bolster gay self-esteem by providing modern U.S. gay men with prototype gay ways of being.

These myths are unsatisfying to me because I am neither an aristocratic warrior nor an indigenous pre-industrial native.  And instead of synthesizing new cultural solutions to the question of what it means to be a gay man, it seems to me that there are many "Indian-wanna-bes" trying to heal their self-esteem issues by being something they aren't.

This is not to say that the myth of a prehistoric matriarchy would motivate women the same way that my gay male examples seem to motivate gay men.

There is also a "Golden Age" in American Gay Culture, which would have been around 1980 in New York City (post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS).  This golden age helps support the stereo-type of the urban gay male (think Will and Jack from Will and Grace and the Bravo TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).  As evidence for my supposition that the gay golden age promotes stereotypes, I'd present the movie, Jeffry; and the novels An Arrow's Flight, by  Mark Merlis and Like People in History by Felice Picano.  These are mostly literary sources, and could be biased.

But - like the myths borrowed from other cultures - this golden age (at least as it is represented in cultural and literary sources) is not helpful to me because I am not a Castro Clone nor a Greenwich Village Artist.  The internal push-and-pull about personal identity and big city gay social expectations can be seen in the book Life Outside by Michaelangelo Signorile -- which basically blames Wall Street for seducing gay men into restrictive roles about what is "masculine" and "gay" -- think Tom of Finland. (Unfortunately, Signorile seems to have not read Starhawk, Niomi Wolf, nor an introductory statistics text.)  Signorile's solution was to suggest that gay men move to small cites and find mentors.

I should point out that I'm very lucky - I've never been institutionalized or beat-up physically for my orientation (although 1976 through 1983 were very rough years to be a nerd and perceived queer) .  And I'm very lucky to be maintaining a household with a loving partner.

So, to bring this back to  The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, I can empathize with Eller's written preferences for a history grounded in archeological evidence (as opposed to imagined or intuited myths), although I don't know how easily applicable an archeological history of people can be mapped onto today's culture.  Rather than fetishizing a place (such as Stonehenge or Isreal or Canterbury Cathedral or the Parthanon), focusing on prehistoric cultures seems to fetishize a particular time.

Eller argues that the story of a prehistoric matriarchy comes with strong expectations about what it means to be a woman (and by inference, a man) which set up restrictive gender roles. Given my experiences with the Golden Age of Gay New York City, I would have to agree with her.

But maybe I'm stuck in a pre-Hegelian modality - or perhaps I need to re-read a copy of Godel Escher Bach and practice writing "mu." 

Others have not been so amused as I have been with The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and here are their reviews and critiques:

Review by Kristy Coleman: http://www.cynthiaeller.com/colemanreview_new.htm

 Eller's response to Coleman:  http://www.cynthiaeller.com/responsecoleman_new.htm

 Review by Joan Marler:  http://www.belili.org/marija/eller_response.html

 Comentary by Marguerite Rigoglioso:  http://www.belili.org/marija/rigoglioso.html

 Eller's response to Marler and Rigoglioso:  http://www.belili.org/marija/c_eller_response.html

 Review by Max Dashu: http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html

 Eller's response to Dashu:  http://www.cynthiaeller.com/responsedashu_new.htm

11:40 AM Sunday.  Portland. I'll let you in on a secret. I'm not the world's most assertive person. Even less so when I'm traveling on my own to a city larger than the one I live in. To get around this I rely on costume to either distract myself or fool myself into being more direct. Hence, the Pegasus Ranger outfit. Yes, I like dressing up; yes, Boys Don't Cry was singing "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" in my head; and yes, there were a couple of moments when I squared my shoulders, shifted my body language, and thought, "Don't mess with me, I'm a Pegasus Ranger." And then I smiled; Pegasus Ranger is right up there with Laser Unicorns in terms of seriousness.

I walked a short distance and then found a yellow-line MAX. The disadvantage to having a laptop and a camera in my bag was the weight. And, alas, I'm getting old. Mark would tell me that I should walk more to build up endurance, but I kind of didn't want the balls of my feet to be sore from walking sixteen blocks. And besides, the Museum was opening real soon now and MAX would be faster.

The MAX train pulled into the stop and I boarded. Just before the doors closed, a young woman with a cardboard sign hopped on. "Whoo," she said, "I almost didn't make it." A few minutes later she strolled through the train, saying in a much tireder-sounding voice, "Spare change?" Her sign said something about karma.

"Hey, Joe," she said to a young bearded man who smelled strongly of urine and amonia. "How you doing? I heard you and your old lady broke up." Joe related his woes: a story involving abandoned dogs, Xanax abuse, and wanting to avoid cops. Karma-girl and Joe got off at Pioneer Square; she was giving him advice about lawyers.

I got off two stops later and walked a few blocks to the Portland Art Museum. The great coat received adulation from the check-clerk. But it turned out that my coat spent more time in the Museum than I did, because the Crumpacker Family Library -- although sharing some space with the Museum in the Mark Building next door -- was a seperate entity with its own entrance. So, abandoning my coat to PAM, I toted my bag next door. Past a curt security guard, past a plaster reproduction of two naked Greek wrestlers, through a book security grid, and into... Paradise!

I'll say it again, in my best imitation of Brenda Vaccaro climbing the ladder to George Hamilton's bedroom in "Zorro, the Gay Blade." Paradise!

Imagine the art history room at Powell's books. Add burgundy carpeting to the bare concrete. Now make the bookshelves 1920's library shelves. Add a stage, high vaulted ceilings and carved, wooden beams; an Euro-ecclectic vibe with pillars and red drapes. Now imagine being told by the librarian that the room was once a Masonic Temple. Realize the four thrones arranged in a circle in the middle of this gigantic, vaulted, lofty, sumptuous, quiet, book-filled room are very likely the ceremonial thrones for the masters of the cardinal directions. Restrain yourself from squealing at the top of your lungs like a five-year-old at 4:30 AM Christmas day and running a victory lap around the stacks before collapsing in an ecstatic heap!! It was like being Scrooge McDuck in a bathtub of gold coins. It was like being a cat on catnip. It was like being St. Agnes pierced by arrows. I was in bibliophile heaven.


I'd seen a picture of the thrones on the library's web page, and they were everything I hoped they could be. Sitting in one was a comfortable pleasure, with excellent lumbar support; although I did wish I wasn't looking at a reproduction of a small boy picking a thorn out of his foot. I walked, or rather, skipped, in a daze and found a gigantic, full color illustrated, coffee-table book of paleolithic art. Translated from the French. (gasp) Critiquing the methodology of Abbé Henri Breui. (gasp) With sub-headings like, "The Ideal Paleolithic Sanctuary." (gasp) And that was before I found the old electric magic lantern. (gasp) In the little niche room. (gasp) Hidden behind a half-curtain.

I set out to immerse myself in Every Single Tome in this TEMPLE. A short time later, I was back at a throne, reading a catalog of "The Stuff of Dreams," a Portland Art Museum show Mark and I visited many years ago. I made some photocopies. I learned that squinch is a real term describing multiple layers of arches holding up a dome.

Several books on Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites, woodcuts, angels, and a book called "The Quest for Odysseus" later, I had a Mr. Spock in the City on the Edge of Forever moment. "I am a fool!" I thought. "They've got to have something on the Cult Wagon of Strettweg!" They didn't, or more precisely there wasn't monogram focusing solely on the Cult Wagon. The Librarian pointed me to a survey of world history, and pointed out how the shelves were arranged chronologically.

And this is where I nearly wept on my hands and knees as I searched: Because I found a book on Islamic Art, and another book on Roman art, and then another on Greek art, and shelves and shelves of Egyptian art. Being in the library was like being the proverbial moth consumed by the flame, the guest at the worldly feast or other metaphors from C.S. Lewis's  The Discarded Image: The problem was that I couldn't sit down and just read a book -- every book led to at least three others and I had to read all the other books. In less than four hours. Even if I had four days, or four years, or four decades -- well, maybe four decades -- there would be no way I could read all the books enshrined around me.

And I very much wanted to read them all.

I'd been wrong; I wasn't in Heaven, exactly. I was in a retelling of the Greek myth of Tantalus. I was Moses, stranded on Mount Pisgah, gazing at the Holy Land in the distance -- a Holy Land I would never reach.

After only three and a half hours, I was simply overwhelmed by all the books.  I didn't have a clear research plan (I hadn't been able to connect to the on-line catalog earlier in the week).  And being a Pegasus Ranger -- while probably charming the librarian -- wasn't going to help me. I packed up my photocopies and camera, thanked the librarian for all of her help, and strolled back to PAM, where I looked at actual works of art (silver chocolate pots, and tea sets mostly).

I told a friend I was working on a story set in the first century BCE Mediterranean. Part of my research for the story included an archaeological discovery of an ancient Greek merchant boat wreck. Nailed to the boat -- possibly by pirates -- was a lead curse tablet. Later, she loaned me some of her research books. Included in the loan was a book all about lead curse tablets, or defixiones.

Curse tablets are small sheets or strips of lead with magical inscriptions and figures on them. Most are folded or rolled and pierced with a nail. Apparently, the use of defixiones stretches (at least in the book) from 400 BCE to about 600 CE. The use was sometimes illegal -- banned both by Roman civic bodies and the Christian Church -- but that doesn't seem to have stopped folks from leaving bits of lead on graves, in wells, or buried under racetracks.

The person placing the curse employed a specialist: a scribe with knowledge of magical formulas to write them. Some scribes had a stock of them with blanks left for the target's name.

Defixiones imply that the magician is seen as someone marginal and powerful who mediates between the order of the civil structure of the polis and the chaos of the supernatural world.

A further implication is that throughout ancient Sumerian, Egypt, Greece and Rome the historic role of magic has has been to work against the established authority by placing tools -- for a price -- into the hands of the disenfranchised. Some of these people are the people with nothing left to lose: the slaves, second wives, and the accused. Some of them are, however, not so disenfranchised after all: envious land owners, charioteers, and theatre managers.

From a writing stand-point, at least on the long-term project that I'm working on, this presents a problem. I'm working on a series of stories set in an alternate ancient world. I want to have a different societal use for magic. Specifically, I want to explore two questions: what if magical technique were similar to or a part of the technique of using simple tools like the lever, the pulley or the incline plane? And, what if it were possible to build machines that were able to evaluate the calculus of morality? (Or, think of it this way: how can we build a scale like the one in the Egyptian Hall of Judgement, wherein a person's heart is weighed against Ma'at, the feather of Truth?)

From a modern standpoint, and one that vexes me as a Neo-Pagan, ancient curse tablets are the old-time flip-side to doing spells for sex, money and parking lots. Essentially, one goes to a specialist and pays them to prevent rivals from getting sex, money, or winning chariot races (the ancient version of parking spaces) leaving these resources available for the person paying for the curse.

The difficulty as a modern writing ancient characters is to have them think and react within their own time. My characters might not frame the following question “which is the most moral of spells: a spell to attract health, or a spell to bind sickness?” -- much in the same way I might not frame the question “Is it better to eat fruits and vegetables and exercise, or to wash my hands and wear a face mask?”

And, what exactly is the moral implication of Heron of Alexandria's steam top?

Okay, back to the manuscript.

It's ditch the family day. I wake up at 6:20 AM (because Arthur is kicking me in the stomach). After a fevered night of tossing and turning, wondering if I have enough battery charge for my camera batteries, if my clothes will be unwrinkled by the morning shower, or if I will wind up in some horrible, dark, shady corner of New York City (The Capital of Big Evil Cities), I'm awake and ready to go.

After a quick (for me) toilette, I down a bowl full of cereals and milk, dress, hunt for a belt, and am driven by Mary to the Shortline bus stop.

There's a short moment when I think that the bus I'm on is going to go to the George Washington Bridge and that I'll get to the Port Athority around 1 PM -- but it takes the Lincoln Tunnel and I'm ready to hunt for the subway entrance. I overshoot it by a sub-basement.

Since there's a friendly subway lady helping folks with the FunPass kiosks, I ask her the best way to get to the 6 (and the MET). Her instructions work (take the S to the transfer point to the 6).

I call Mark just before plunging into the MET's depths.

First, it's the new Roman and Greek Sculpture Court. I'd have to say that the piece I'll remember the most is the marble stele of the woman with the huge hair.

I put my contact lenses in in the new sculpture court. It's sad but true; my vision is getting middle aged, so if I wear my contacts I have to hold my camera a short distance away to see the LCD viewfinder, but if I wear my glasses, distant art is blurry. I don't know what's in the air here -- probably a mix of construction dust and cologne -- but my right contact started flipping out a few hours later and I finally took them out again.



I enjoyed some of the Roman and Greek statuary, but I found myself comparing it to Egyptian figures. The Greco-Roman stuff is nice, but it has a mass-produced feel to it that lacks the sensuality of some of the nicer Egyptian statues.

Mmmmmm.... Egyptian sculpture.

Upstairs from the new court is a study room with touch screen stations that allow you to locate items in the forty-some cases. You can select by time-period and material (or see a list of all the cases).

I saw a gallery filled with fine carvings. Probably the oddest was a rosary of medallions that had knights and priests on one side and skeletons on the other; it ended in large beads that were half face, half skull. There was also a skeletal Death on a skeletal horse. And lots of crucifixions. Lots.

11:28 AM: I'm poised with about fifty other museum patrons to enter the Cafeteria. We're all hoping to beat the hordes of school children rushing about the galleries like Visigoths. I could be dining in one of the Museum's overpriced cafes, but I'm cheap. The gates open! Uttering a "Moo!" that is ignored by the other patrons, I surge into the cafeteria with everyone else. For the record, I had a thrifty lunch of poached salmon, asparagus, potato & and Coke.

Noon: Back into the fray!

When I go to the MET I look for griffins, bronze carts and wagons, medusa cameos, fantastical monsters (sphinxes, fauns, and dragons) and I spend time in the Egyptian, Near East, and Mediaeval wings and the sculpture garden. The sculpture garden was closed -- but I didn't figure that out until after I spent 20 minutes trying to get through the American and Portrait wings. So was part of the Egyptian wing, so I didn't get to see my diadem.

They've moved things around, so I had many pleasant experiences finding familiar art in new places and new art in old places.

I kept wandering into galleries about thirty seconds before tour groups -- this could be either good or bad depending on the average age of the group. The kids tended to be loud and squirrelly; the elderhostel groups were large and were led by a docent.

As I wandered through galleries and saw familiar objects, I took some pictures to try to improve my selection of photographs. The banner in the Mediaeval Wing frustrated me once again -- I always think I have an image of a banner of the Virgin Mary in red and it always comes out blurry. I've given up on trying to get a clear image of signet rings because the glare always confuses the auto focus. The other image that eludes my auto focus is the Egyptian frieze of a "Ball Playing Ceremony" where a pharaoh is tossing a ball at the feet of a goddess (probably Hathor). The composition has the goddess's single breast the same size as the ball.

The Special Exhibition, Venice and the Islamic World, left me cold: there was one cool minbar tile mosaic and the rest was portraits and fabrics. The docent wanted to be my best new friend (I think I was supposed to ask her out).

The exhibit Poiret: King of Fashion was . . . interesting; but I wanted something a little more oomphy -- although I must have been a model in a past life because most of the dresses looked like something I would wear. The most educational part of the exhibit was watching how he sculpted bolts of fabric into dresses. The most entertaining part of that exhibit was learning that he'd throw private parties for scores of people and demand that they wear his clothing designs.

3:30 Back in the cafe for another Coke and a cookie.

4:50 In the gift shop for SHOPPING! After looking at expensive, age-inappropriate gift candidates for Arthur, I go downstairs. I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing sadder than a bibliophile on a tight budget in the MET bookstore. I could easily spend $400 on Very Nice Art Books there. I managed to purchase a book on (surprise) Egyptian Hieroglyphs (leaving behind two sale books on Egyptian Calligraphy and Perfume in the Time of Anthony and Cleopatria) just before the museum staff herded everyone out of the building.

When I got out of the MET I gave Larry H a call to see if he wanted anything from Maison du Chocolat. We chatted for a few moments; he said he really enjoyed seeing Mark and me in parent mode. Then the poor thing had to endure a John non sequitour as I caught sight of some griffins outside a brownstone.

I managed to retrace my route back to the Port Authority. The weirdest thing to happen all day happened as I was buying my return bus ticket to Suffern. A guy, maybe a few years older than me, slammed right into me. I'd noticed him out of the corner of my eye about twenty feet away, walking along the wall the ticket booth was set into. I had my wallet in one hand (I'd been counting dollar bills for the fare). I didn't go down and I managed to hang onto my wallet.

I wound up facing away from the ticket booth, facing him. "Oh my, sir," he said. "I'm sorry; are you alright?" His tone sounded more calculated than conciliatory. He held out his hands as if he wanted to help steady me. Maybe he was drunk, or needed the wall for navigation. Maybe he did want to help me, but I recalled a story from some friends in Mexico who were "helped" in a similar way by a pickpocket.

I watched his hands and I probably gave him a "don't mess with me" scowl. He stopped in mid-step, I assured him I was fine and he went his way.

Evil Big City: Zero; John: Four.