John Gielgud (Oberon) and Peggy Ashcroft (Titania)
cheese wedge

When a nea­rly in­tact tomb be­long­ing to egyp­tian royal­ty was dis­cov­ered in 1922, for­eign cor­re­spon­dent John L. Bal­der­ston was there cov­er­ing it for the New York World. The world then be­came some­what fa­mil­i­ar w/ the an­cients’ be­lief in im­mor­tality as well as the sci­ence of em­balm­ing, an op­era­tion tak­ing 70 days to achieve and pre­si­ded over by Anu­bis. Bal­der­ston was later hired to pro­duce the screen­play for a fan­tas­ia based on a fic­tion, fash­ioned from a back­story by Nina Wil­co Put­nam, on the life of 18th-c. french hyp­no­tist Cali­os­tro. The re­sult dipped ro­mance into un­god­ly goo that only Holly­wood could con­coct.

  1.   The Mum­my (1932)    As the 1921 field ex­pe­di­tion sea­son opens in Egypt, mem­bers of the Brit­ish Mu­seum dis­cover a coffin and a body in­side. “The gods of Egypt still live in these hills, in their ruined tem­ples.” Boris Karloff is the mum­my Im­ho­tep, awak­ened by tomb-hunt­ers and pur­su­ing the rein­car­na­tion of his prin­cess Anck-es-en-Amon – in flap­per-era London.

  2.   The Mum­my’s Hand (1940)    Fol­low­ing a map, ar­chae­ol­o­gists find the tomb of the prin­cess Anan­ka, and by break­ing the seal of the seven jackals un­leash a ter­ror that has wait­ed 3,000 years to be reborn. “We search for the tomb of a prin­cess, and all we find is the mum­my of a man.” Tom Tyler is the re­ani­mat­ed Kharis – im­part­ing to the role his famous lurch and one dead arm. Eduar­do Cia­nel­li plays the high priest.

  3.   The Mum­my’s Tomb (1942)    Open­ing his eyes for the first time as the mum­my Kharis, Lon Chaney Jr will seek ven­geance for the tomb des­e­cra­tion of his prin­cess Anan­ka. “The curse on that tomb ex­tends to the blood re­la­tions of all who en­tered it.” Tur­han Bey is Mehemet Bey.

  4.   The Mum­my’s Ghost (1944)    Ram­say Ames is the amer­i­can re­in­car­na­tion of the prin­cess Anan­ka, and Lon Chaney Jr again plays the mum­my Kharis, cross­ing the Atlan­tic Ocean to court her. “First it’s the Mum­my. Now it’s a re­in­car­nat­ed woman!” John Car­ra­dine plays You­sef Bey, and George Zuc­co is An­do­heb.

  5.    The Mum­my’s Curse (1944)    Lon Chan­ey Jr is re­vived a third time as the mum­my Kharis, and finds rea­son to wade into the Lou­i­si­ana bayou where a crypt holds dead prin­cess Anan­ka, his be­loved Vir­gin­ia Chris­tine. “I can nev­er get too much sun.” Peter Coe is Dr Ilzor Zan­daabm, and Den­nis Moore is Dr Halsey.


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James Garfield
lab vials

Based on sight gags and stage­craft, The Invis­i­ble Man and its sequels helped nudge thea­tre to keep up w/ the matur­ing motion pic­tures be­he­moth. Based on a vic­tor­ian fan­ta­sia on the con­se­quen­ces of scien­tific fron­tiers.   1.    The Invisible Man (1933)     A scien­tist’s un­holy ex­pe­ri­ments into in­vis­i­bil­i­ty is real­ized, and now he regrets it. Claude Rains is the Invis­i­ble Man, slow­ly turn­ing homi­cidal due to the for­mu­la’s side ef­fect. “… a few mur­ders here and there.” Glo­ria Stu­art as his fiancée, E.E. Clive is the con­stable, Una O’Connor the inn­keeper.   2.   The Invis­i­ble Man Returns (1940)    In an al­truis­tic mo­ment, the mad scien­tist’s brother re-creates the invis­i­bil­ity for­mu­la in order to re­lease a man on death row and to find the real kill­er. “I can’t find peace in the un­der­world.” Vin­cent Price is the broth­er who be­comes the sec­ond Invis­ible Man, w/ Sir Cedric Hard­wicke, Alan Napier, Nan Grey.   3.   The Invis­ible Woman (1940)    Kitty Carroll answers an ad to be a sub­ject in a science ex­pe­ri­ment, and is bom­bard­ed by an invis­i­bil­ity ray. “I’m noth­in’ but a nothin’.” Blackie and his gang get word of this mira­cle and be­come in­ter­es­ted. John Barry­more is the mad scien­tist, w/ Oskar Homol­ka, Shemp How­ard, Maria Mon­tez, Anne Nagel.   4.   Invis­i­ble Agent (1942)    When axis agents ar­rive to steal the invis­ibility for­mu­la, the grand­son to the sci­en­tist runs off w/ the note­books. Jon Hall then in­gests the for­mu­la and para­chutes into Ber­lin, to bring the war home, as the Invis­ible Agent. “I can’t tell you peo­ple apart.” Screen­play by Curt Siod­mak. With Peter Lorre, Sir Ced­ric Hard­wicke, Al­bert Bas­ser­man, Ilona Mas­sey, J. Ed­ward Brom­berg, Key Luke.   5.   The Invis­ible Man’s Re­venge (1944)    A mad sci­entist suc­ceeds in sta­bi­liz­ing the invis­i­bi­lity for­mu­la and turns ghoul­ish. John Car­ra­dine is Dr Drury. “Pio­neers have al­ways to con­tend w/ fools.” Jon Hall re­turns again as the invis­i­ble one, w/ Gale Son­der­gaard, Les­ter Math­ews, Halli­well Hobbes.


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Susan B. Anthony  “Finish the Fight!”

The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony


In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the daughter of Quaker abolitionists, walked into a polling station in Albany New York and voted. She was fined $100 on the charge of illegal voting, and she refused to pay. Four years earlier, together w/ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), she had founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her examples made possible the eventual adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, fourteen years after her death.


FIRST DAY

THE PROSECUTION
D.A. Richard Crowley:

May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ...
• • •
Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman.

THE INSPECTORS’ TESTIMONY
Q: Did you see her vote? A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ...

Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted? A: No, sir.

Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden.

Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made? A: Yes, sir.

Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry? A: Yes, sir.

Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter? A: She did.

Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote? A: There was.

Q: On what ground? A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote.

Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen? A: She was not a male citizen.

Q: That she was a woman? A: Yes, sir ...

Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter? A: Yes, sir.

Q: And she was registered accordingly? A: Yes, sir ...

Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration? A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States.

Q: Did she name any particular Amendment? A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment.

Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote? A: Yes, sir...


SECOND DAY

THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Judge Henry R. Selden:
The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman. “If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...”
THE JUDGE
The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty.
Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case.
The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ...


Susan B. Anthony after casting her first vote, she was a 26 year-old school teacher in upstate New York, the year was 1848.

THE NEXT DAY

The Court: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and-
JUDGE Hunt: The court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

MISS Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury–
JUDGE Hunt: the prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow it.

MISS Anthony: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even that I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. ...
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’ s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same manmade forms of law declared it a crime punishable w/ $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he is tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got ther freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word

MISS Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis - that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice - failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers - I ask not leniency at your hands - but rather the full rigors of the law.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - [Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony arose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.


SUSAN B. ANTHONY NOTES:
[1.] From A Patroit’s Handbook (2003): songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. [2.] On November 26 2017, the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony was reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany New York. Starting time was 6pm, and it was hosted by the Federal Court Bar Association of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
Susan B. Anthony
     2017 San Francisco Women’s March


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-|  January 2022  |-



  WHAT SHE SAID Virginia Woolf quote: The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. Air above, air below. And the moon and immortality.  
  HOUSES OF THE HOLY 
  In the aftermath of the trojan war, olympians carried on the fight w/ each other.  This brief theo­machia roused mother Earth, once more, into open revolt. Egypt dis­ap­peared into a ‘scream­ing wind’. Ge then vomit­ed out the con­tents of her vaults. Most were pris­on­ers kept there by Zeus. These freed-again mon­sters (fourth class) then attacked Olym­pus to set in motion the sec­ond gigan­to­machia.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Up north, an­oth­er aesir-vanir con­flict was brew­ing when Rag­narok 5.0 was trig­gered by this near­by havoc -- send­ing nine worlds and twelve hells top­pling into a win­now­ing worm­hole.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Ge then picked up Mount Olymp­us and threw it at Ouranos -- giving father Sky his famous black-eye. Per­turbed unto his hydrogen heart, first-gen titan Hype­rion left of his own voli­tion, and in 1948 the solar god would cede the gravity:throne. First, it went to that ‘con­tain­er of multi­tudes’, complex god Apollon, then to Helius.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
And long be­fore that the Earth had al­ready curled up and suc­cumbed to cata­tonia -- atom­ic bomb test­ing done dur­ing the 20th cen­tury did her fur­ther harm.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
What didn’t climb out of mother Earth was final­ly shak­en off in spasms, clearing out her cav­erns and empty­ing all of the hells that she knew about. The last to depart Tar­tarus w/ the keys were Haides and Hekate, mak­ing sure all gates were left open and un­guarded.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Nereus had ac­tual­ly felt little when the Earth per­formed her cos­mic cough, and so the ‘Med­i­ter­ran­ean’ had re­mained placid. His ab­orig­i­nal root mat­ter be­ing H-two-oh, ‘the old one’ soon be­gan splash­ing some of it over the ex­posed parts of Ge, ini­ti­at­ing a tidal rite to soothe his be­lov­ed, his grand­mother, his only home.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Marooned on a chunk when Pan­gea broke apart -- then be­gan to drift south, indi­genes clung on and end­ed up on anoth­er shore under anoth­er sun. Looking at sum­mer skies w/ wintry eyes, these orig­in­als saw the physi­cal, spirit­ual and mor­tal planes clear­er and earli­er than most of their lost breth­ren. Now they are Ge’s best friends and help pre­pare her bed­ding every evening.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Before going separate ways, Hy­per­ion held a meet­ing w/ dog-head­ed death god­dess Hekate. The senior sun knew that she was the real ruler of Tartarus, and sought advice from the god­dess of necro­man­cy on the next aeon. Together they con­jured up a hypo­thetical heaven search­able by tax­on­omy. Each spher­ical body pay­ing heed to the gravity:throne is a ‘wan­der­er’; and the rest, ‘drfiters’. Then the ‘dwell­er on high’ and the ‘crone of the under­world’ took their leave.




Gravity:throne
❝ To ensure no favored location in space, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is Edwin Hubble’s way of saying the universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions. ❞

– Ronald W Clark  (1971)

 ❡  As the latest geomachia be­gan to sub­side, tum­bling thrones had to be stead­ied. Some need­ed a hand, oth­ers just a mend. Wrecks got tossed. Soon enough, a four-dimen­sion­al myth­o­log­i­cal map of the sky be­gan to make clear­er sense. Where­as the ancient order had ad­hered to the ‘in­var­i­able plane’ when pay­ing homage to the Sun, new­comers need no longer do so. Estab­lished courts were delighted -- or not, to locate kin, meet odd­balls, greet faded god­desses, share secret hand­shakes w/ pro­gen­i­tors, gawk at their car­bon copies.








 •❚-❚-❚•  In the begin­ning was love, so this house tour be­gins w/ Aphrodite. Stung by the treat­ment mother Earth meted out to her brood, the love god­dess had no re­course but to leave, be­com­ing the last olym­pian to do so.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘one who post­pones old age’ moved her foam:­throne closer to Helius and, in 2002, gath­ered mothers to graces Eury­dome and Euan­the to her love:­court. Now they share advice and guid­ance w/ the sex god­dess and sit on the ancient:­throne and mir­ror:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Their neice Pasithee had previously awok­en to a planetary party still in full swing. She had called her aunts seek­ing some peace and quiet. Pasithee was mar­ried to Hypnos, and the grace of relax­a­tion al­ways carries sachets of day­dreams. Know­ing this, Euan­the and Eury­dome said Yes, come over.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kale had be­come un­hinged by the ex­pul­sion from Earth, and so the tender:­throne was of­fered to the grace to beauty until she can find closure. ­  •❚-❚-❚•  Taking baby steps is Eros-x4, the first form to step out of obliv­ion and greet Khaos. The love god’s name is spelled dif­fer­ent­ly by dif­fer­ent scribes.
His latest iter­a­tion is a jig­saw puzzle of four asteroids. Shattered like he’s shat­tered hearts, the ‘first born’ mutters sweet-noth­ing rites while rest­ing his golden wings sitting on the soul:­throne, in hopes of achiev­ing a home once more in mortal breasts.

House of Aphrodite
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1999, Lem­po returned to the nektar:­throne. Of un­deter­mined sex, this fin­nish love deity was seen to pass near Aphro­dite, mur­mur “once bit­ten twice shy” in her general direc­tion.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘hand­some one’ had set up a love:­embassy. Adonis in­sist­ed, even though sci­en­tists say he’s a po­ten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous aster­oid and his exes claim that he is an ex­tinct com­et and a source of meteor show­ers, but that was before Helene came in 1980, a dione trojan gone awol.









 •❚-❚-❚•  Known to ancient sky watchers, during a time when the hard-to-spot ‘guide’ was eas­ier to locate, his elus­ive nature suits Hermes’ well as the near­est house to the Sun. The ‘trick­ster god’ is awash in sul­fer w/ a tem­pe­ra­ture hot enough to melt lead, fin­ish­ing an or­bit every 88 days while pirou­et­ting every six­teen, long enough to cause seasons.  •❚-❚-❚•  As cyclope lensii scan the skies w/ rain­bow eyes (and sees machines of every shape and size), the ‘shepherd of men’ hosts a missing-divine bureau, staffed w/ refus­niks from IAU’s minor planet center, and sprouting degrees in dark mat­ter 3.0, arti­fi­cial atoms, time leak­age, littor­al lin­guis­tics, the roots of rap. Prow­ess shown by these latter-day saints allow ‘mes­seng­er of the gods’ to roam and see every­one, meet every­thing; the ‘patron to the home’ is sel­dom at home.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jennyblue has run the bureau since 1982. She is the gazet­teer of plan­etary nomen­cl­ature for the Inter­national Astro­nom­i­cal Union, and the pub­lish­er of Who’s World.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Icarus surfs outer space w/ glued-on wings finding ‘drifter’ not yet cata­logued, and look­ing for star shep­herd Hes­perus, who van­ished while on assign­ment.

House of Hermes
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  Sec­ond-gen titan Atlas lifts up worlds to look be­neath. Bro Epi­me­theus likes to re­hash stuff to sift out clues, and Sisy­phus re­traces steps to glean origin stories.  •❚-❚-❚•  Since 1999, none can assign a proper myth to an am­ne­si­ac. Until then, Sete­bos is their sole “way­find­er of wan­der­ers and drift­ers”.  •❚-❚-❚•  A piece of Hermes came back in 1937 as an apollo asteroid.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Paying heed to the measure of duration and the reel of the zodiac, the moon:­crown current­ly rests on the brow of Artemis, grant­ing mor­tals a glimpse and gar­gling “how the air un­lit be­fore glows”.  •❚-❚-❚•  ‘She of the wild’ had to fill three (ro­tat­ing) place­ments: full:throne, old:throne, and new:throne. The ‘virgin god­dess’ cuts the lunar deck and picks faded lunar god­dess Phoebe. Arte­mis cuts again and un­covers cretan har­vest god­dess Carme. A third pick pro­duces Diana. There was a small prob­lem. The vis­i­ble moon god­dess is cur­rent­ly locked in Time and can­not be de­tect­ed – she is un­detect­able as a new moon and con­sid­ered a phased phan­tom.  •❚-❚-❚•  The breach is cur­rent­ly filled by Eos, the wing­ed dawn god­dess who pulls back the cur­tain of Night. Bring­ing to an end the lat­est balanc­ing act that is life in house of a triple-mooon god­dess.  •❚-❚-❚•  A vis­cuous veil has draped the purity:­throne when in 1845 inno­cence god­dess Astraea sat down.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ideal ar­rived in 2002, ascend­ing to the triple:­throne on four legs. Tarvos is (sole) male car­bon to the triple-mooon god­dess. He is also a divine bull, among other eye­brow raisers.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pan spent the wan­ing days of the 20th-c. check­ing out the house of the Moon and now the rus­tic god is very much at home. Delir­i­ous w/ desire, sur­round­ed by dwarf moons, moon­lets, moon­moons; sport­ed w/ by packs of ring shep­herds hold­ing hands w/ sheph­erd moons. “Where the bee sips there sip I. In a cow slip’s lips I die.”.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1610, Gany­mede came out as the largest sate­ll­ite in Neopo­lis, and there­fore a shoo-in to run the moon:­embassy.
In his down time, the dei­fied son of Tros will take a walk w/ Skoll, to re-ac­quaint the norse wolf to night.


House of the Moon
+


 •❚-❚-❚•  The were­wolf:­throne went to moon god Tarqeq; he’s good to ani­mals, sweet-na­tured, and knows a lot about inuit fer­til­ity.  •❚-❚-❚•  Sit­ting on the bow:­throne since 2000 is Mun­dil­fari, father to the norse moon god.  •❚-❚-❚•  In soli­dar­ity w/ the hexed and mighty vexed Diana, em­bassy in­vites always go out to her niece Pasi­phäe, cousin Hekate, and BFF Hera.  •❚-❚-❚•  Each eve­ning Artemis dons a mono­tone-&-mot­tled body­suit shim­mer­ing w/ crater rays. Be­fore step­ping on the moon:­chariot, she puts on a sheer cape w/ an upside-down water­fall per­pet­ual­ly shed­ding dust.











 •❚-❚-❚•  Under an in­jured sky mor­tals had clung on to mother Earth and prayed for mercy. She must have re­lent­ed be­cause the human race sur­vived, too in­sign­ifi­cant to be shak­en off.  •❚-❚-❚•  Reso­lute­ly re­imag­in­ing how tem­ples looked and restor­ing im­por­tant altars first, elder god­dess Dione was the first to be enticed to come back. The second-gen titan­ess and oak god­dess laid out the house of Ge in 1684, and sits now on the oracle:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Faded jöt­unn Bestla was rea­soned w/ to also come back and sit on the mountain:­throne, while the anx­ious one awaits news on miss­ing son Odin.  •❚-❚-❚•  Nereus, who in­vent­ed hydro­ther­apy, is now plain tuck­ered. The ‘first man’ has been tend­ing to the re­hab­il­i­ta­tion of Ge and can often be seen splayed on the aborigine:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  All the while, para­mount pan­theon pharaoh Amun gleams and twits un­ob­tru­sive­ly on the dust:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Sedna had hes­i­tat­ed to sit on the winter:­throne on­ly ’cause the in­u­it sea god­dess had to come clos­er to the Sun. Al­ready her skin of tight­ly-grouped nitro­gen ici­cles and reflec­tive meth­ane scales, fixed w/ dark tho­lin thread, has turned beet red.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pros­per­i­ty god­dess Ortho­sie is some­times busy, some­times not, shed­ding tawny seeds from the autumn:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Dio­ny­sus knows there’s hope for Ge. The mad god is now a binary-being and sits on the serpent:­throne, the “price of a bend sin­is­ter many gen­er­a­tions back”.  •❚-❚-❚•  Per­seph­o­ne would rather be w/ her mom than here at the 4seasons:­court. But the vege­ta­tion god­dess would rather be here on the spring:­throne than w/ her hus­band in hell and be known as ‘queen of the damned’.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Wey­wot stepped out of the Kui­per belt in 2007. Now this native-amer­i­can sky god gets to tak­en in an ex­po­nen­tial view from the summer:­throne.


House of Gaea
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 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1980, ‘first woman’ came back home and set up the 4seasons:­embassy. Twelve years later, ‘first man’ of the north joined her. Theirs is a mobile of­fice, so Pan­dora and Ymir can go quest­ing to veri­fy a site map they were giv­en by He­ka­te and Hy­pe­ri­on.  •❚-❚-❚•  Moth­er Earth spends her days out­doors and nights on the chthon:­throne. She seems okay, and oc­cupies her­self build­ing a gen­e­al­o­gy for Aither and wrting a bio on at­mo­sphere.










 •❚-❚-❚•  First her roman-half came in 1867; then a greek-frag­ment fol­lowed in 1917. At that point Athene went ahead w the ac­cre­tion rite and, w/ Minerva and Pallas, whol­ly the ‘gray-eyed’ god­dess of wis­dom. The god­dess of crafts calls her house the Olym­pia Acad­e­my, grad­u­at­ing space cadets since 1953 in dis­ci­plines of mind, body and soul, w/ em­pha­sis on tech-chthon­ics, the emer­gent meta­verse, and why ob­scure dimen­sions lurk.  •❚-❚-❚•  Skill re­quir­ing dex­ter­ity is taught by Dactyl, a fused pres­ence able to sep­a­rate back into ten sib­lings – broth­ers and sis­ters adept in metal­lur­gy and magick.  •❚-❚-❚•  Lutetia was in­sub­stan­tial when found, orig­i­nal­ly sent to the morgue for parts. Un­til a proble re­vealed ‘pri­mor­dial paris’ un­der the man­tle. Now this asteroid houses the library, found­ed in 1904 by golden age his­tor­ian Himalia.  •❚-❚-❚•  ‘Father of history’ Hero­dotos is some­where in the stacks; some­times he“s a crater, some­times a lunar moun­tain.  •❚-❚-❚•  Faded sun god Hy­per­ion still has his star:­throne, yet the patron saint of as­tron­o­my pre­fers it here, shed­ding light into ob­scure pas­sages and un­tan­gling con­jugal con­jec­turals.  •❚-❚-❚•  With eyes wide shut, dream god Morpheus wan­ders the library, nev­er bumps into any­thing.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Patro­clus stopped by in 1906 to build and run the gym­na­sium; then Men­oe­tius was out­ed as his satel­lite in 2001.  •❚-❚-❚•  And may­be it’s true that Jarnsaxa rose in rank by sleep­ing w/ Thor, yet her prow­ess as a war­rior is sec­ond to none; the jötunn now teaches war­cracft.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hylo­nome was re­cruit­ed in 1995 to give les­sons in arch­ery and horse­back rid­ing.  •❚-❚-❚•  When Hideo Ito­ka­wa showed up in 1998, no one paid much heed. Now the roc­ket sci­en­tist has a launch­pad and a lab on the roof.  •❚-❚-❚•  Scholar Zhong­guo ar­rived in 1928 tot­ing moun­tains of chin­ese scrolls and oc­cu­pies a wing.  •❚-❚-❚•  An amor­phous cradle court found har­bor in a for­got­ten nook stacked to the rafters w/ old globes. Grant­ed se­clu­sion while these river dei­ties ad­just to their new sit­ua­tion are Eu­phra­tes and Ti­gris, gleam­ing still from the em­bers of the 20th-c.









 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1884, nymph to a baby god Ida was ad­mit­ted to the infir­mary, injured and living a half-life. When Zeus found out his nurse was alive he went to fetch the moun­tain maid, now mend­ed, seat­ed her on the oak:throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Then the thunder god came across wife Juno and they made up and now the sky goddess has agreed to return to the marriage:throne and resume her title as ‘queen of the gods’.  •❚-❚-❚•  But before that Zeus stumbled into Eu­ro­pa, floating by aimlessly. Promising not to transform in front of her again, Zeus persuaded the princess of Tyre to claim the azure:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Callisto estab­lished the sky:­embassy in 1610. Elder muses Ao­ede and Thel­xi­noë showed up, 400 years later, to clear up back­logs and stuffed in­boxes. Seas­ons spirit Sponde joined in 2003, im­posed lunch breaks.  •❚-❚-❚•  They are joined by mother to wine god Dionysus, who sits on the rain:throne when not lending a hand. Born mortal, Thy­o­ne is now a goddess who presides over dionysian displays.
 •❚-❚-❚•  A tempestuous sky:court re-opened in 1979 when faded goddess of wisdom Metis convened the first meeting from her blessed:throne; now the first wife to Zeus has fallen into a trance.


House of Zeus
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Zeus has a complex ionosphere tuned to his liking while sitting on the eagle:throne, where a planet-encasing electric field ratchets up the magnetic field to produce 400,000 electron volts. In 1988 a chunk of Zeus buzzed the earth, and 5731-Zeus has now been identified as an apollo asteroid.










 •❚-❚-❚•  This house is a court­house, and Kronos is its chief justice. Consort Rhea is now a binary being, sharing the mountain:­throne w/ her roman half Cybele. In 1966, they warm­ly wel­comed roman god of good be­gin­nings Janus to the duty:­throne. The twin-faced god who gave his name to the first month opens the judi­ci­a­ry sea­son.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hold­ing degrees in truth and zoro­as­trian light, galaxy god Mithra was brought to the seasons:­throne in 1987. It only took Themis 34 years to find her roman-half Justitia and perform the accretion rite. Now the god­desses of divine justice share the seed:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Elder mem­ory muse Mneme came out of re­tire­ment to run the law libra­ry, as­sist­ed by Her­mi­one, mor­tal daugh­ter to Helen of Troy and Men­e­laus.  •❚-❚-❚•  Fate god­dess Tyche got her law license in 1886, for precision god­dess Praxi­dike, it took much longer.  •❚-❚-❚•  Young aten as­ter­oid Ra-Shalom, spif­fy in a smooth car­bo­na­ceous out­fit, in­terns as law clerk.

House of Saturn
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 •❚-❚-❚•  The time:­embassy dis­penses legal coun­sel, and staff con­stant­ly jug­gle worn vol­umes for titles and pars­ing multi-culti edits, looking up one-offs, and ‘misc’.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kronos hosts 62 sat­el­lites and it makes him a grump on the flint:­throne. The king of the titans wears a gi­nor­mous stole of froz­en hel­ium and iced hy­dro­gens, hid­ing lash­ings by wet met­hane winds and sea­son­al hur­ri­canes of meth­ane mists.











 •❚-❚-❚•  Wounded in a mini­machia be­tween Zeus and Kronos, Ouranos hoard­ed san­ity and had sense re­main­ing to locate com­plex Hathor and bring the de­stined one to her sky:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  The egyp­tian sky god­dess has smart dial, and that is how moth­er to Atlas Kly­mene came to the dome:­throne, while venez­ue­lan rain god Huya hov­ers nearby on the cloud:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Before fully suc­cumb­ing to his malaise, Ouranos man­aged al­so to locate Ar­ro­koth for the empyrean:­throne, know­ing the pow­hatan per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the sky can sum­mon clouds, the least of his ae­ther abil­ities.  •❚-❚-❚•  Ouranos has been un­der phy­si­cian care since 1781. His house has no em­bassy. This doctor com­mis­sioned magi­cian Pros­pero to de­vise a ther­a­peu­tic play for his pri­mor­dial patient.  •❚-❚-❚•  Which led to father to Loki Far­bauti being im­pres­sa­rio of the pro­duc­tion, hir­ing Ixion as light­ing direc­tor, even though the ex-king was caked in tho­lins and ice.
 •❚-❚-❚•  An end­ing con­jur­ation required a dual-voice. Director Didy­mos will per­form the role, guid­ing post-poly­phonics gently back to roots in tragic theater.


House of Ouranos
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Puck and Ariel designed the spe­cial effects, while Syco­rax and her spawn Cali­ban han­dled all sub­ter­ran­ean spells. This for a play that takes 84 years to per­form.









 •❚-❚-❚•  Poseidon chose the date of his re­sur­fac­ing in­to history by send­ing a dream, in 1846, to a sleep­ing mathe­ma­ti­cian. The woke mortal entered a new set of co­or­di­nates into the New Ber­lin Ob­ser­va­tory and found the liq­uid liege sitting on his trident:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  It was first-gen titaness Tethys, though, who first ar­rived, in 1684. And in her role as female ‘sover­eign of the sea’ Tethys es­tab­lished the sea court. The an­cient marine god­dess sits on the sea:­throne and is semi-retired, run­ning a cell of nep­tune tro­jans be­hol­den on­ly to her.  •❚-❚-❚•  Prime­val marine god­dess Siarnaq, moth­er to all in­u­it sea life, now rests on the whale:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aegir swam by to take “on­ly a peek”. He was then per­suad­ed to stay by Tethys, by Siar­naq, by the en­tire em­bas­sy staff. The ger­man­ic god now holds a set of hur­ri­cane keys and is on the storm:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Triton runs the sea:­embassy. The mer-god first sur­faced in 1846, en­crust­ed in bar­na­cles, show­cas­ing cryo­volcan­ism and can­ta­loupe-col­ored boils, spewing nitro­gen five miles into space from frig­id finger­tips of meth­ane.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘mes­seng­er of the sea’ is sick w/ an un­known mal­a­dy. But Sala­cia does. Since 2004, the ‘queen of the sea’ has been test­ing and cor­rec­ting local salin­i­ty levels, bring­ing much need­ed know­how to demi sea­god­dess Ly­si­thea to get it just so since 1938.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Day-to-day is hand­led by by demi sea­god­dess Her­mip­pe, ocea­nide Te­les­to, and river spir­its Io and Cal­lir­rhoe.


House of Poseidon
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Nereid glim­mered under the sur­face of Night, in 1949, a drop only 210 miles, clad in neutral-ices and sili­cates. Troub­ling then to know that this amal­gam of 50 sibling sea god­dess­es is also a po­ten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous ob­ject head­ed for im­pact w/ the sea:­embassy.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Like Ouranos, Haides lies on his back; un­like his great-grand­father, the king of the under­world is in com­mand of his senses; he reigns once more from the black:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Show­ing off a young man­tle, as be­fits his status as the first trans-nep­tune ob­ject, the ‘great renew­er’ goes about in a liq­uid-cape of froz­en nitro­gen stained w/ land­scapes of rud­dy pinks and moldy yel­lows.  •❚-❚-❚•  The dead:­throne be­longs to fury Tis­i­pho­ne, she of the scor­pion whip. Of­ten awol, the prim­i­tive ven­geance god­dess likes to visit BFF Hekate.  •❚-❚-❚•  Haides had spared two broth­ers from their fate in the after­math of the gigan­to­machia, when a hun­dred broth­ers at­tacked Olym­pus. Now En­ce­la­dus en­cased in com­plex organic molecules, and Mimas – fit­ted out in dreams, have re­paid the king of the dead by run­ning the death:­embassy, con­struct­ed from the sub­struc­ture of space and hav­ing capac­ity for many-sid­ed folds.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jug­gling w/ pul­sar power since 2000 is in­u­it Ijiraq. When not on the wealth:­throne the shape­shift­er is elus­ive in a sul­phur­ous smoke jac­ket, bound­ing from comet to aster­oid while fling­ing out mir­ages left and right.  •❚-❚-❚•  Charon only became ap­par­ent in 1978, the god of hell lounges on the blood:­throne.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Com­plex deity Osiris, silent and still on the shadow:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Fenrir crouches at the foot of the black:­ throne, munch­ing on tha­na­tos leaves.


House of Haides
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 •❚-❚-❚•  An aeon in Tar­ta­rus had caused a set of sib­lings, as they were hurled in­to space, to begin a meld:­rite and, in 1655, re­turn as a colos­sal com­pos­ite. Now back in com­fort­able sur­round­ings again, Titan has grown star-fat and nova-lazy. This slov­en­ness van­ishes when his secret name is ut­tered. Then the fused thing sits up­right on the unseen:­throne; and re­sumes his role as mon­ster third-class.












 •❚-❚-❚•    The pond of Pontos is a multiple axis in­ert spacial facil­i­ty   where ser­pent spawns from water worlds can find safe harbor – and malev­o­lent vipers suit­a­bly penned.  •❚-❚-❚•  Its long­est in­hab­i­tant is Medusa, marooned on a spit since 1875. Her nurse is demi-serpent Herse, who gets to milk the gor­gon. Medusa’s blood is taken back to the in­fir­mary where it is an in­gre­dient for end-of-life syrups.  •❚-❚-❚•  The egyp­tian car­bon to Khaos had es­caped during the early dawn of the 21st-c. That was when ‘un­creator’ as­sumed in form an aten aster­oid. Now Apo­phis is threat­en­ing to in­vade Ge in 2029 be­fore at­tack­ing the Sun again. To bring back this sand ser­pent supreme, the house of Egypt dis­patched lion­ess fire god­dess Sekmet (who’s preg­nant), and magick god­dess Selquet.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aegaeon has been pond shep­herd since 2008, this mon­ster fourth-class (although some claim he’s really first-), has now poured all his wealth into Sea 2.0. The prim­i­tive marine god over­sees “Force;­4”, staffed w/ post-fledg­lings from ste­llar kinder­gar­tens and poly­gon-flight schools.  •❚-❚-❚•  The pond is a fav­or­ite haunt of Hippo­camp. Driver to the sea char­iot, the binary:­beast pays visits w/ Hydra and seems to do the many-head­ed ser­pent some good. This ani­mal amal­gam has gone mad; harms on­ly it­self, hops on claws then slith­ers, un­der­go­ing a chaotic rota­tion w/ a flip every ten hours.  •❚-❚-❚•  The new­est in­mate is duck­taped w/ re­verse-rela­tiv­ity ad­he­sive, pre­vent­ing Gonggong 龚工 from pow­er­ing up his malig­nant core. This metal-head­ed mon­ster was caught try­ing to knock moth­er Earth’s axis off cen­ter -- again. Now the chi­nese marine god is the sub­ject of study by atomic-physics.  •❚-❚-❚•  The wan­na­be plan­et kill­er has been guard­ed since 2007 by husband-&-wife team Phorcys and Ceto. He grey-haired and fish-tailed, w/ a crus­ta­cean-cape of crab claws. She daugh­ter to Pon­tos and crone god­dess to sea mon­sters.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2018, an under­sea ex-palace was req­ui­si­tioned as the un­offi­cial house of Pon­tos. Diamond-shaped w/ good japa­nese bones, Ryugu is capa­cious enough to have offices, guard quar­ters, pri­vate apart­ments.


House of Pontos
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Draped in sea­weed, crowned w/ tur­rets and tow­ers, a rud­der his staff, Pontos is sea­water’s root mat­ter. He now stirs Sea 2.0, con­coct­ed w/ a thim­ble of his blood, the en­tire Aegean sea, a steady drip from the river of hate, a healthy pour of un­adult­erat­ed rep­til­ian con­scious­ness; and tric­kles from the river Styx.  •❚-❚-❚•  To en­sure safe­ty, the pond is pot­ted w/ skel­e­tal time cham­bers. To nice things up, in­fer­nal god­dess Styx had trained a rib­bon from her river of oaths to fol­low her and so be­came patron to the pond of Pontos.
















House of Hekate
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 •❚-❚-❚•  After the meeting w/ Hyperion, Hekate took her leave, drag­ging ‘darkness’ be­hind. The supreme god­dess of magick only stopped when the gravity:­throne was bare­ly glimpsed. She flung Erebus be­neath her, un­fold­ed the crone:­throne and set it down on the dark prim­i­tive god.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hekate is dark­er than Tar­tarus, where she had lived, is in­vis­i­ble at night, can see in pitch black.  •❚-❚-❚•  Ananke came first, in 1951, swathed in ‘con­straint’, ‘force’ and ‘neces­sity’. ‘One be­fore time’ un­coils her lux­ur­iant ser­pent tail and gets to wind down on the po­ten­cy-throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  A son to Loki perches on the ghost:­throne. Narvi is father to norse night Nótt and has re­turned as dark mat­ter of in­de­ter­mi­nate size.  •❚-❚-❚•  Tot­ter­ing on the spindle:­throne is night god­dess Nyx, whose star-spang­led man­tle can­not hide a ban­dage-wrapped form w/ ob­vious an­cient red stains. Some­thing is wrong, now un­famil­iar gravity floods the daugh­ter to Khaos and causes her to twirl back­wards every 45 min­utes.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2004, etrus­can in­fer­nal god Orcus showed up to claim the victory:­throne, oblique in faint tho­lins, sewn w/ iced crys­tal water and fea­tur­ing a high col­lar shoot­ing dew drops of amo­nia up.
 •❚-❚-❚•  When the three-head­ed hell hound saw Ere­bus, his dear­est dog­house, be­ing dragged off, Kere­be­ros trot­ted be­hind; now he pa­trols his new home every 32 days, flips ev­ery five, in vain ef­forts to shake off fil­a­ment fleas.










 •❚-❚-❚•  As Ge shook and coughed, Aἴtnē sur­vived, as befits one of nine foun­da­tion­al moun­tain nymphs. She’s been host to an ab­orig­i­nal fire god for a long long time. Hephaistos had suf­fered some di­min­ish­ment other­wise is un­harmed.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2006, Surtur, wielder of the fire sword, showed up. Fol­low­ing note­books and us­ing lega­cy tools, the jötunn worked w/ He­phais­tos and got the forge go­ing again. Now the norse behe­moth tends to busi­ness from his spot on the foundry:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pasiphäe is daugh­ter to the sea and the sun, and is only one of the rea­sons the mis­tress of herbal magick can keeps busy on the cauldron:­throne.







 •❚-❚-❚•  The geo­machia had cas­ual­ties, but Hestia was not one of them.   The pri­mal fire god­dess gin­ger­ly cupped ‘first flame’ w/ her palm, slipped into sen­si­ble shoes, and stepped off the face of the Earth.    •❚-❚-❚•  In the Asteroid belt she found her sis­ter Ceres, who was seed­ing the sec­ond Gar­den of Apol­lon, and Hygiea, per­form­ing triage by her­self. So this was where Hestia sat her charge down and soon enough kind­led a fire.  •❚-❚-❚•  Togeth­er the three god­dess­es set up a clinic; by 1807 it had grown to be­come an in­fir­mary. Then, in 1992, while live cov­er­age of the first space rock found in the Kui­per belt was broad­cast, Hestia took a closer look and recog­nized Albion. The domes­tic god­dess then went and fetched ‘mytho­log­i­cal britain’ back and that was how she found a foun­dation to a house, w/ her­self its ad­min­is­tra­tor, medi­cine god­dess Hy­giea its nurse, and agrarian god­dess Ceres its grounds­keeper.  •❚-❚-❚•  Resi­dent chap­lain duties falls on the shift­ing shoul­ders of fic­tion-into-fact inuit sha­man Paaliaq.  •❚-❚-❚•  New­ly dis­lodged norse fire god Loge was ad­mit­ted in 2006 for hypo­ther­mia. Therapy w/ ‘first flame’, his root mat­ter, en­sured re­cov­ery and the norse fire god has stayed on as a ther­a­pist.  •❚-❚-❚•  Asclepius was ad­mit­ted as a wound­ed apollo as­ter­oid in 1989; now the med­i­cine god is part­ly re­paired and can as­sume head phys­i­cian, allow­ing daug­hter Hy­giea to fuse w/ her roman-half Vale­tudo as well as re­sume re­search into evo­lu­tion­ary vac­cines.

House of Hestia
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Celtic child­birth god­dess Bebhionn showed up in 2000 and now there is a mater­ni­ty ward.



 •-❚-❚-•    Eight of Poseidon’s satel­lites are in in­ten­sive care.  Faded sea god­dess Thalas­sa wob­bles and paces her bed every eight hours, know­ing her form will end up as a rub­ble ring.  •❚-❚-❚•  Galatea and her water-nymph sib­lings are all of un­reli­able form; they’ve re-accret­ed once too of­ten, and now Sao, Neso, Lao­me­deia, Heli­mede, Psamathe might all end up as rub­ble rings too.  •❚-❚-❚•  Priest­ess Despina is miss­ing parts, and has set aside mys­teries of arka­dian cults for now.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hawai‘ian birth god­dess Haumea and her daugh­ter-moons were ad­mit­ted in 2004. This ‘col­li­sion­al fam­ily’ has reached the dan­ger point of off­ing each other.  •❚-❚-❚•  The first patient was ad­mit­ted in 1983. Phaethon had fallen off his father’s sun:­chariot.

 •❚-❚-❚•  Found­er of mod­ern nurs­ing Florence Night­in­gale came back in 2017 to set up the nurses station. Eager to learn mod­ern meth­ods are ancient nurses to baby gods Cyllene, Kalli­cho­re, Helike, and Kalke.

 •❚-❚-❚•  The grounds of the sec­ond Gar­den to Apol­lon, begun in 1801 to sur­round the infir­mary, now has pas­ture enough for goat nurse to a baby god Amalthea to retire in tran­quility since arriv­ing in 1892. Her mind­er is moun­tain nymph Daphnis.  •❚-❚-❚•  Come autumn they will help sea­son­al god­dess Carpo and native-amer­i­can corn god­dess Atira as­sess the bounty from Nature 2.1.  •❚-❚-❚•  And when the gran­ar­ies are full autumn grace Hege­mo­ne will moan the clos­ing rites.  •❚-❚-❚•  Har­vest was pos­si­ble be­cause Flora had first tend­ed to every petal and abun­dance god­dess Euporie to every stalk.

 •❚-❚-❚•  Creator god Quaoar was help­ing out in 2005 when he caught a flu. Now the father to the native-amer­i­can sky shiv­ers and tosses every seven­teen hours, wrapped in red rocks ribbed in car­bon mon­ox­ide sewn w/ meth­ane threads, but­toned w/ nitro­gen and stud­ded w/ stalag­tites of iced ethane.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aitolian prin­cess Leda over­sees the garden. Other­wise she has been helping Deme­ter run tests, since 1801, to gague, exact­ly how many sea­sons now exist.  •❚-❚-❚•  A fused nation of fresh­water nymphs, Naiad, main­tains the water fe­atures on the grounds, while demi sea god­dess­es Isonoe and Sinope swim in its boun­dary.  •❚-❚-❚•  Frost giant Suttungr will wait un­til he”s brewed enough mead of poetry to fill a thous­and space ships be­fore com­ing by to re­plen­ish the well.

 •❚-❚-❚•  An un­recog­niz­able queen of Egypt came to the Inten­sive Care Unit in 1880, and after Kleopatra was put back to­geth­er she re­mained and, w/ her moon-children Cleoselene and Alexhelios, set up a phar­macy.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pharaoh Khufu came in 1984 and claims he’s watched enough priests grind gold and think up im­mor­tal­i­ty tinc­tures to con­sider him­self a phar­ma­cist too, and stayed.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pan drops by and sings w/ Aretha Franklin, who ap­peared in 2018 w/ a piano. The queen of soul also duets w/ spirit of lamen­ta­tion Linus in find­ing clos­ure notes.  •❚-❚-❚•  Poetry muse Erato used to wan­der the cor­ri­dors strum­ming; now she has an of­fice and bet­ter hours.

 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1980, a morgue was found­ed by Prometheus as a lab­ora­tory to devel­op human:­being 2.0. The titan of fore­thought was at the time delv­ing in­to mystikal graeco-egy proto-chem while prac­tis­ing old-school alche­my; he tink­ers now w/ two corpses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pri­meval sky god­dess Theia has been dead a long time and miss­ing parts. The first-gen titan still has bits of Ge im­bed­ded in her body.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jötunn Greip came in 2006 and is good only for parts.  •❚-❚-❚•  Assist­ing is young frost giant Bergelmir, de­scend­ed from ab­orig­i­nals. The grand­son to the first norse man knows about creat­ing new life.  •❚-❚-❚•  Home to Proteus since 1989, the marine god donates his root matter for parts, even though the shape­shift­er has parch­ment skin con­tain­ing trans­pa­ren­cies and pock­marked w/ poly­hedron-shaped ices and pink­ish-red boils.



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 •❚-❚-❚•  Beginning in 1918 and spending the next 14 years per­form­ing an accretion:­rite, Helios had at­tract­ed suf­fi­cient ma­te­rial to return as the apollo asteroid named Apollo, the first of his kind. The ‘sun’ then con­tin­ued to evolve and has now as­cended to the gravity:­throne as the ‘eld­est flame’.  •❚-❚-❚•  Gal­axy being Varuna spends 282 years on an or­bit rite while on the blind:­throne, piv­ot­ed out­wards to greet vedic cos­mic creed.  •❚-❚-❚•  When this myth­ic bird flew down to perch on the arrow:­throne in 1999, Bennu was still an apollo asteroid; now he’s the nexus be­tween. egyp­tian rebirth, crea­tion and the gravity:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Com­plex easter island dei­ty Make­make arrived in 2005 to oc­cu­py the sin­gular gold:­throne, and was seen tot­ing a char­coal-dark sat­el­lite from his space­craft.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1998, aten as­ter­oid Akhe­naten opened the sun:­embassy. Compe­tency in dusty dynas­ties shows – he con­tin­ual­ly posts wel­comes to un­ex­pect­ed dei­ties show­ing up to greet the gravity:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•    The post-pharaoh can pro­nounce the Sun’s name in gallic and celtic, in­uit, san­skrit, fin­nish, man­da­rin and egyp­tian-arabic, his native tongue.  Soon a course in japa­nese and span­ish, a brush up on latin. He’s onto rumors of a pan-oceanic family co­a­les­cing around the 2016 dis­covery of Kamo‘oalewa ‘os­cil­lat­ing frag­ment’. Still figur­ing Ven­ez­ue­la out.

Sun

House of the Sun
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Akhe­naten is lucky to have found Arche in 2004. The origins muse knows where the skele­tons lie – and where they lived).  •❚-❚-❚•  Norse wolf Hati ac­com­pa­nies her, mak­ing sure all skele­tons be­have.  •❚-❚-❚•  Second-gen titaness Leto has the sun:­throne, and since 1861 the moth­er to a sun and a moon has en­act­ed a solar rite, every fif­teen hours, to the ‘the su­preme light’.


Ares Albiorix







 •❚-❚-❚•  The House of Mars defends the celestial court and is re­spon­si­ble for   Fortress Pallas,  sited on the cir­cum­fer­ence. At the “crown” is a co-com­mand of gallic and roman mili­tary gods. Albiorix will make a 783-day patrol guard­ing the Sun, clad in ghost-red armor. Ares turns and patrols inter­stel­lar space. The for­tress faces outer space.

 •❚-❚-❚•  “Trunks”  watch the four qua­drants. Hoary frost giant Fornjot. The sire to norse im­mor­tals, scans the un­known dili­gen­tly every sev­en to nine hours for missing kin.  •❚-❚-❚•  Eris has a lone­ly patrol last­ing 558 years. The sis­ter to Ares is large enough to fit all on the As­ter­oid belt in her man­tle; is easy to spot in her white-white frig­id meth­ane armor caped w/ trail­ing gasses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Humon­gous jötunn Thrymr, king of the norse giants, has a sense of humor. He likes to share a good joke w/ Cruithne, tini­est of space rocks but whose stature in pict legend is also humongous.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Barks”  handle logis­tics and co­or­di­nate the day-to-day. Hyr­rok­kin is cap­able of launch­ing a thou­sand probes be­fore break­fast, if the norse giant­ess so wishes.  •❚-❚-❚•  Freya, BFF w/ the val­kyr­ies, rides in­to war on a chariot drawn by cats. On the battle­field the love god­dess claims half the fallen and is a fav­or­ite among the troops.  •❚-❚-❚•  Prime­val gaul Erria­pus oversees a quiet qua­drant in a pale-red battle­suit; while god of the norse north wind Kari howls into his por­tion of the void.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Branches”  explore, and a special team now is following magnetoplasma pulsing back to its source. Battle-tested sons to Ares be­gan ser­vice in 1877 high­er up in com­mand, but chaf­ing at peace­time en­nui have been demoted. These bad-boy bros wear their com­bat wounds proud­ly.  •❚-❚-❚•  Dei­mos looks spi­ffy clad in smooth rock but it’s to pro­tect his por­ous frame; he knows one day he’ll go awol. Pbo­bos is slow­ly dy­ing; wear­ing noth­ing but rub­ble held to­geth­er by the thin­nest of man­tles.  •❚-❚-❚•  Their cou­sin anarchy god­dess Dys­no­mia wears a dark-red battle­suit blending well w/ her back­ground. While norse win­ter god­dess Skathi gets to patrol the most frig­id corner.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Twigs”  tra­verse the meta­verse, per­form data re­duc­tion, com­pile cross-gen­eal­ogy reports.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kiviuq has been con­front­ing crea­tures since be­fore 2000; and is knowl­edge­able in i.d.-ing un­knowns. Twins Romulus and Remus have brought along notes in order to finish a user’s guide to roman ways.  •❚-❚-❚•  The founder-bros of Rome are a tad weary of Poly­deu­ces, greek car­bon to Remus, whose voice echo in space hits too close to home.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Leaves”  cover the territory and carry the colors, led by two trojans and a pair of centaurs.  •❚-❚-❚•  Can­ter­ing into view in 1977, mar­ried centaurs Cheiron and Chariklo led a comet corps of some 44,000 cen­taurs: each on a scat­ter­shot orbit, all try­ing to achieve es­cape velo­city using near­by grav­ity as sling­shots. Sport­ing ir­ra­di­at­ed armor under high-col­lared ices crink­ling and shed­ding dew; each cen­taur has a life­span last­ing a few mil­lion years.  •❚-❚-❚•  Clad in wine-red uni­forms strung along two elon­gat­ed curves, trojan aster­oids marched into view in 1906 behind Achilles and Hektor.  •❚-❚-❚•  For­tress Pallas has a “seed bank” in the Olym­pia Acad­emy, and a “root sys­tem” into various houses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Harmonia is daugh­ter to Ares and runs his house, hap­py to be near cousin Dys­no­mia, broth­ers Dei­mos and Pho­bos, and aunt Eris.









 •❚-❚-❚•  The cyclopes were not flung in­to space, hav­ing in­stinct enough to cling on. The sec­ond race of mon­sters born to the ‘primordial couple’ flour­ished by evolv­ing the craft of lens-pol­ish­ing. At the birth of the 21st cen­tury these three one-eyed broth­ers down­load­ed their DNA into arti­ficial intelli­gence vats. Now the cyclopes race exist main­ly as rows of lensii ar­rayed in pat­terns and spend­ing time in­side tele­scopes.   Tele­scopes sit on an equa­tor­ial mount, where a clock-drive moves the tele­scope at the same rate as plan­et­ary ro­ta­tion. 
 •❚-❚-❚•  The house of the ‘round eye’ has been run by its blind­ed host Poly­phe­mus (long story) since 2013.  •❚-❚-❚•  A unique egyp­tian sun disk came in 1976, after rehab­i­li­ta­tion by He­phais­tos. Now Aten is fully re­hab­il­i­tat­ed from a stony sub-mile space rock to a source of in­tel­li­gent light.  •❚-❚-❚•  Muse of as­tron­o­my Euka­lade ar­rived in 2003 e­nsure qual­i­ty con­trol and have a web pres­ence. ... Then, de­velop­ment of lens tech­nol­ogy led to a vast­er view of the “mys­te­rious uni­verse”.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1924, using the 100-inch tele­scope at Mount Wil­son Ob­ser­va­tory, as­tron­omers Edwin Pow­ell Hub­ble and George El­lery Hale ob­served indi­vid­ual stars some 800,000 light-years away; then bil­lions of light-years away.

  HYPOTHETICAL  HEAVEN  






•❚-❚-❚• Leaving mother Earth had pro­ven trau­matic for Ares, so he un­leashed his rage and demol­ished the nearest planet. The mili­tary god buried the remains in the back­yard, the cem­e­tery known as the   Asteroid belt  (1801).

•❚-❚-❚•  By 1845, four of these remains had been spotted by tele­scopes. Each was dubbed a plan­et at the time. Then their tiny size, less than 500 miles wide – smal­ler than the Moon, lead to a new clas­si­fi­ca­tion of such irregular space rocks as an   asteroid.

•❚-❚-❚•  Another kind of irregular space rock whips through space on a a unique orbit around the Sun, iced rocks en­vel­oped in dust and trailing gas, the nimble   comet .

•❚-❚-❚•  An as­ter­oid or a comet caught in Ge’s grav­ity field be­comes a   meteor  ‘high in the air’. It re­mains a meteor if it doesn’t land, and be­comes a meteor­ite if it does.

•❚-❚-❚•  In 1950, Hekate and Haides showed up at the house of the Sun and told everyone there what they had seen in their backyards in 1992.   Trans-neptune ob­jects, billions of them. The rulers of the underworld had come to the gravity:­throne to an­nounce the demise of the old order. A new aeon was de­scend­ing and the adam­an­tine age was over.

•❚-❚-❚•  Quite by ac­ci­dent Zeus had a spat w/ Kronos over throne place­ments. This mini-machia flipped Ouranos on his back and caused the trident:­throne to rock and roll. Cas­ual­ties from this tus­sle all have miss­ing chunks and bloody cuts. They are the ‘froz­en for­gots’, mar­i­nat­ing in blue-grey bruises and strewn about in a region called the   Kuiper belt   (1992).

•❚-❚-❚•  As Ouranos top­pled over Posei­don threw out a life line, but it was too late. The ‘earth shaker’ instead whipped wave­lengths into a froth and the re­sul­tant fury crashed against his trident:­throne, carry­ing what flaked off into a sparse province inhab­ited by un­stable iced comets called the   Scat­tered disc  (1966).

•❚-❚-❚•  Haides had been exploring his backyard as early as 2004. In his golden chariot drawn by four black horses, the in­fer­nal god crossed the Kui­per belt and en­coun­tered ter­mi­na­tion shock -- before set­tling in­to a (brief) standstill dur­ing helio­pause. The king of shadows then un­sheathed his sword to cleave the hydrogen wall to get to the other side. Then was stunned by bow shock which sent the god of wealth plunging through the   Inter­stellar med­ium   (1904) until the Oort cloud began to cush­ion his landing.

•❚-❚-❚•  As the trident:­throne was tossed about it had smacked into some­thing sub­stan­tial and shat­tered this ob­struc­tion. Parts now pop­u­late the Kui­per belt, frag­ments share room in­side the Scat­tered disc, and the bits, froz­en fila­ments of water and meth­ane, flew even fur­ther out and is cred­it­ed as the   Oort cloud  (1950).

•❚-❚-❚•  A space rock that is spher­i­cal and con­tain­ing grav­i­ty and an elec­tro-mag­net­ic field is a   planet . Most planets host a sat­el­lite or more, and eight planets fol­low the 'in­var­i­able plane' and constitute ven­er­able houses rep­re­sent­ed at the celes­tial court.

•❚-❚-❚•  Made of am­bi­ent mat­ter and hav­ing no def­i­nite boun­dary, Helius the   Sun  is a star w/ the capac­i­ty to shed root mat­ter as en­ergy, re­leased rapid­ly enough as to seem solid, and can as­sume diverse forms. Earth’s Sun un­der­goes on­go­ing com­bus­tion, and has gra­vi­ta­tion­al sway over a small swad­dle of space, it’s   helio­sphere.

•❚-❚-❚•  2012-VP113 nick­named   ‘Biden’  is a dwarf planet in the Kui­per belt locat­ed by a dark energy cam­era mount­ed on a tele­scope in Chile, en­larg­ing the boun­da­ries of the celes­tial court over­night.


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  PROSPERO’S  PLAY 
❧  As­trono­mer Wil­liam Her­schel spots fairy royal­ty through his tele­scope and tries to catch them all w/ his butter­fly-net, TITAN­IA and OBER­ON, Queen MAB, others.



1808
Act I Scene 1 – Forest, day­light
❧  Al­though it is 1948, MIRAN­DA isn’t aware be­cause she’s lost in Time, and she ab­sent-mind­ed­ly per­turbs a ro­ta­tion rite be­ing ini­tia­ted by ARIEL, PUCK. A cos­mic cave ma­ter­ial­izes in the low­er air; in­side the witch SYCO­RAX and her spawn CALI­BAN are seen to mum­ble and hum.

1829
Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twi­light
❧  Fashion-plate BELIN­DA strolls on in 1986 to intro­duce a caval­cade of stars. Venetian heriess POR­TIA is shar­ing a joke w/ ROSA­LIND , daugh­ter to a ban­ished duke; COR­DELIA and OPHE­LIA are link­ing fingers, touch­ing fore­heads, laugh­ing softly; BIAN­CA is being prac­ti­cal watch­ing her step while giv­ing life tips to CRES­SIDA; DES­DE­MONA and JULIET whis­per and act dis­traught. Slow­pokes MAR­GARET and PER­DITA bring up the rear.

1850
Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening
❧  Male voices from 1990 ap­proach. Shy in­qui­ries are prof­fered by prince of Naples FERDI­NAND and his lord FRAN­CISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Mean­while jester TRIN­CULO is lend­ing sup­port to drunk-asleep STEPH­ANO, who now wants to min­gle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cos­mic cave as the Sun starts to sink.

1871
Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight
❧  Both par­ties are now asleep. Sprites and fair­ies flit across the air. A glint “no big­ger than an agate-stone” ar­rives w/ news for the pained plan­et Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the sig­nal for Puck to be­gin match­ing Ariel’s tra­jec­tory and speed be­fore tak­ing charge and bring­ing the rotation:­rite to its con­clu­sion. SET­EBOS begins a slow de­scent on­to stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDY­MOS in­tones the con­clud­ing con­jura­tion. Bring­ing the cur­tain down on Prospero’s Play, writ­ten as a medic­i­nal for an ailing ab­orig­i­nal, pre­scribed by the patient’s phy­si­cian Asclepius.

  PANTHEONS 
Norse Court
 •❚-❚-❚•  The latest Ragnarok was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the Ge’s cos­mic cough. When the dust set­tled, out of an im­pres­sive wreck a chasm ap­peared, and Nifl­heim once more took a peek at Mus­pel­heim.  •❚-❚-❚•  In the first moments of the 21st century, Mundilfari, father to a sun and a moon, slowly shifted inside the froz­en depth and took a good gulp of space vacuum. Then he hoist­ed him­self out of the cre­vice, he man­aged to al­so yank out root-mat­ter Ymir from his pris­on. Break­ing up enough ice to ex­pose chief-giant Thrymr. Snow god­dess Skathi and frost giant Suttungr were harder to make out; they them­selves were made of frozen water.  •❚-❚-❚•  Then these rem­nants of the long-un­seen norse court pre­sent­ed them­selves at the house of Kronos, seek­ing shel­ter, and were im­me­di­ate­ly given a wing. In 1886, the god of time depu­tized fate god­dess Tyche to set about free­ing the oth­ers. She led a rescue team of ring-shep­herds carrying their own satel­lites and re­turned, in 2019, w/ 14 alives and 17 parts.

  MACHIA FILES  
Aesir-Vanir War







Ouranos battling Themis, detail of the pergamon altar.







Gigantomachia





Typhomachia







Theomachia







Geomachia







Ragnarok




1 ... The first war ever waged in­volved norse gods battling each other at the dawning of time. The root cause could well have been lax magick cap­i­tal­iz­ing on au­gu­ries to deter­mine an end result for one’s des­tiny. Truce end­ed the   Aesir-Vanir War   and result­ed in a pooled pan­the­on span­ning nine realms.

2 ...   By the time Ge and Ouranos, the pri­mor­dial couple, drew close and birthed their third brood, mother Earth had been nurs­ing re­venge on father Sky for nix­ing her pre­vious two lit­ters. Now the ab­orig­i­nal earth god­dess took the young­est under her tutelage, bestowing on Kronos his destiny to perform the dirty deed with a sickle and take over the ada­man­tine throne. After com­mit­ting patri­cide, Kronos mar­ried sister Rhea and the union pro­duced three daugh­ters and three sons -- who would over­throw their par­ents in the ten-year   Titan­o­machia, fought along­side earth­quakes and vol­ca­noes -- and pre­quel to the age of Olympus.

3 ...   When Saturn cut Uranos w/ the sickle blood splashed onto Gaia, trickled down to Tartarus and birthed one hundred giants, w/ serpents for feet. They climbed out of their mother and warred against Olym­pus. For­mid­a­ble and cap­a­ble of hurling en­tire moun­tains into the air; by so doing formed a lad­der to the top. Break­ing off oak trees and using them as torches, these giants climbed up and flung them at Zeus, ig­nit­ing the   Gigan­to­machia . One by one, the olym­pians put down their gigan­tic sib­ling’ revolt, off­ing or im­pal­ing them w/ mountains.

4 ...   Upset her giants were de­feat­ed, Gaia rubbed Tar­ta­rus and soon birthed Typhöeus, tall enough to graze the stars, sport­ing wings which blot­ted out light, having a hun­dred dragon heads spew­ing flames w/ mouths that yelled out human curses or shriek­ing and hiss­ing as ani­mals. Two hun­dred hands all ending in snake-fingers. Loose snakes slith­ered and cov­ered the final mon­ster’s frame, from the thighs down this sin­gu­lar ser­pent was noth­ing but trunks and feet of coiled snakes. Alone, the larg­est mon­ster ever born launched   Typho­machia  and attacked Zeus, who de­feat­ed him in single com­bat and chained the volc­ano demon, belch­er of ven­om­ous fumes and all-round trou­ble maker to sky dei­ties, in deep­est Tartarus.

5 ...   As the trojan war un­spooled Olym­pus took sides and soon a battle be­tween the im­mor­tal fam­ily had erupt­ed. This brief   Theo­machia  end­ed when the war hap­pen­ing on Earth did too, and every dei­ty sur­vived the ordeal.

6 ...   Fracking was driv­ing Ge bonkers. She could bare it no more. Swal­low­ing rocks and im­pris­on­ing monsters she had performed in the primi­tive past. Now mother Earth had a fever and required a deep cleanse. She coughed, eject­ing her bowels and flush­ing out her bad blood, in her latest   Geo­machia.

7 ...   Foretold as a repeat­able occur­rence, the twi­light of the gods arrives when sev­er­al severe bliz­zard storms one after the next are loos­ened on the world. Norse sun goddess Sól’s brief re-emer­gence will signal the begin­ning of the end as   Ragnarok  com­mences. The mid­gard serpent will then crawl from hell fol­lowed by her brother the wolf Fenrir. Soon, Surtur’s flame sword will have set the uni­verse ablaze, “the sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps high about heaven it­self ”. In time a new Earth. An­other Sun. Differ­ent stars. Same pantheon.

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  BLACK COUNTRY ROCK 

“As revealed in the song Ziggy Stardust, Ziggy was not a spider - he was the fly.”
     -- Steele Savage







Outside the musical world he inhab­its, David Bowie can usua­lly be found in the com­pa­ny of artists. These ad­ven­tures in the art world found ex­pres­sion in the 1990s when, fool­ing around on his com­pu­ter, Bowie ended up w/ a short piece con­cern­ing blood and art. This, hav­g recent­ly chat­ted w/ Brian Eno on fin-de-siècle malaise and what that might involve. They went on to pro­duce a con­cept album con­cern­ing “this rather dark, satir­i­cal idea of where art could go”. Musi­cians take cues from Eno into which meadow the sound ought to roam in, while Bowie stitches words in­to the result, seek­ing fits or juxta­position until a con­cept coheres. Eno fid­dles w/ the elu­sives and im­bues pro­cee­dings w/ more prop­o­si­tions. Lyrics then sep­a­rate to be­come dis­tinct voices, then charac­ters. A murder victim has been turned into art. An assort­ment of suspects. A detec­tive follow­ing a lead. A minotaur.

What emerges from the labyrinth is the album 1.Outside, a disjointed and dispirited dystopia featuring violence and death, sex and rock ’n roll.

★  David Robert Jones died from liver two days after his 69th birthday, on January 9 2016. His ashes were scattered on the island of Bali, in a buddhist ceremony. He left behind wife Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, daughter Alexandria, son Duncan Jones, Duncan’s ex-nanny Marion Skene, and long-time personal assistant, Corinne Coco Schwab.


-|- FIVE YEARS 

The cosmic Chameleon and the chance Corinthian lash themselves together, in the lab – on the slab – and bring forth “… a gothic drama hyper-cycle”.

Bowie photoshoots for album

❝  [Brian and I] had al­ready started a whole set of im­prov­i­sa­tions in the studio around March, 1994. Out of that came dia­logue and land­scape that was tied together, not even ten­u­ously. All the elements were fairly dis­parate. This is a once-in-a-life­time chance, by a narra­tive device, to chron­i­cle the final five years of the mi­llen­nium. The over-ambi­tious inten­tion is to carry this through to the year 2000.

❝ What Brian and I are try­ing to do is devel­op a series of albums. [Out­side] is the first in this cycle of albums. [The diary is] only the sub­ject mat­ter, it’s not the con­tent of the album. The con­tent is very much the atmo­sphere and tex­ture of the music, that strange place that music in­deed puts you which can­not be artic­u­lated. The story itself is semi-linear, so if you want to, follow it in a linear fashion, but it”s not abso­lute­ly nec­es­sary. The pieces them­selves can be auton­o­mous, they are pieces of music on their own.

❝ Well, Brian, very clev­er­ly, be­cause of being what he is, which is basic­al­ly a con­cep­tual­ist, turned every­thing into a series of games once we got into the studio: To al­low the musi­cians to not be who they are for short periods of time.
❝ As for musicians, it was impor­tant to choose those who were not weighed down with musical cliché, who had ter­rif­ic con­trol over their abil­ities. Yet were a bit loony.

❝  A piece that shows the ex­treme it could get to is “A Small Plot of Land”. That piece in par­tic­u­lar was a first class indi­ca­tion of what hap­pens when you put peo­ple in a strange place like that.

❝ Eno would create little flash cards for them in the mor­nings. He would cre­ate situ­a­tions they would have to put them­selves in men­tal­ly, intel­lec­tual­ly, and then start play­ing from that point of view. On each one, a charac­ter was writ­ten, like (You are the dis­grunt­led mem­ber of a South Afri­can rock band. Play the notes that were sup­pressed). ... Be­cause that set the tone for the day, the music would take on all those ob­scure areas. And it would very rarely lapse into the cliché. So we changed the status of the begin­ning of these pieces and they came in­to them like aliens from an­oth­er place. It opened up a whole area of im­prov­i­sa­tion. ... It’s very hard to ex­plain [laughs], you should have been there.

❝ The lyric writing itself was fairly hazar­dous. What I did, I took a lot of areas of sub­ject mat­ter I’m inter­ested in and wrote short para­graphs or pieces of poetry around those sub­jects and fed them in­to this Mac­in­tosh compu­ter I have. I have a ran­dom key on it and it will ran­dom­ize what I have writ­ten. So it was basic­al­ly the Mac­in­tosh’s choice that it was New Jer­sey. But it was also a bit of Eng­land, too, with New Ox­ford Town. [Then de­cide] wheth­er I was go­ing to sing, do a dia­logue, or be­come a charac­ter. I would im­pro­vise with the band, real­ly fast on my feet, get­ting from one line to an­oth­er and see­ing what worked.
❝ There’s no in­tent in it, there’s no mean­ing. I’m not a mean­er. I don’t have this great thing that I have to say. It’s a collec­tion of frag­ments of infor­ma­tion, of ideas, that are assem­bled and pro­duce a cer­tain atmo­sphere.

❝ Next year, we’ll devel­op a whole new slew of other charac­ters or may­be re-intro­duce some of these or even negate some of them. May­be we’ll never find Baby Grace. May­be [Detec­tive Nathan] Adler will become the next victim. I don’t know. And that’s what’s kind of inter­es­ting. May­be we’ll just get bored with murder as art and move in­to an­oth­er area of our society. It’s all up for grabs. So I‘m quite inter­ested in the future of this thing.

❝ I think [the album is] a con­flu­ence of events. First, we def­i­nite­ly per­ceive mur­der now as enter­tain­ment. It’s used to a mas­sive ex­tent in cinema. And pret­ty much it’s a space fill­er in TV. There’s the whole gladia­torial arena spec­tacle of some­how appeas­ing gods or look­ing at the fears and anxie­ties of the public.

❝ [Brian and I] were both inter­ested in nib­bling at the periph­ery of the main­stream rather than jump­ing in. We sent each other long mani­fes­toes about what was miss­ing in music and what we should be do­ing. We de­ci­ded to real­ly experi­ment and go in­to the studio with not even a gnat of an idea.

❝ The momentum gathers as we ap­proach the end of this cycle of 100 years, a huge anguish that every­thing will change. I wanted to make a rec­ord that reflec­ted those anxie­ties, a state of moral, spiri­tual and emo­tional panic. With peo­ple break­ing off into small groups to feel some sense of com­munity.

❝ Plus this growing momen­tum in body art, which has been pre­cip­i­tated over the last 15 years or so with peo­ple like Kiki Smith and Damian Hirst and Ron Athey and Chris Bur­den. The idea of us­ing the body as yet anoth­er medium, like wood or metal or glass or stone – al­most the polit­i­ciz­ing of the body itself. Almost ex­trap­o­la­ting on that in an alle­go­ri­cal fash­ion to have this rather dark, satir­ical idea of where art could go.

❝ Dalí ... knew exactly what he was do­ing. He knew what all the objects meant ... The at­ti­tude that says the artist should paint on­ly things the pro­le­ta­rian can under­stand, I think, is the most de­struc­tive thing pos­sible.

❝ About 20 per­cent of what I put in [the al­bum] are fic­tion­al and the rest are real, but it’s very hard to tell the dif­fer­ence. But the most sur­pris­ing one, like the Korean cut­ting off pieces of him­self in the late ’70s in New York, was not apocry­phal. I checked back with Art Forum.

❝ I’m sure you know a writ­er, Thom­as de Quin­cy. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s, his Con­fes­sions of an Opium Eater was a kind of bible. At that time, in 1820, he wrote a small piece for Black­woods, a Lon­don maga­zine, called Mur­der Con­sid­ered as a Fine Art which laid down exact­ly that theory.

❝  Sort of that clas­sic idea of tak­ing a life as some­thing sort of ritual­ized. Lots of things came in­to it. It wasn’t a sim­ple, direct jour­ney. Even the sur­real­ists, like André Breton, who said in the ’20s, prob­a­bly one of the great­est acts of art would be to go out into a crowd and shoot a revol­ver into it.

❝ ... the other things that went into [Outside], Brian and I are both fans of a form of art known as Out­sider Art. I, for the last 15 years, have lived next to the holy shrine of out­sider art, an art museum in Swit­zer­land called Le Brut, set up by Dubuffet. He set it up be­cause he felt he was ter­ribly in­flu­enced by the kinds of art that were made by peo­ple who lived an un­struc­tured life – in insti­tu­tions, or her­mits, or were os­tra­cized by society for one rea­son or another. He col­lec­ted the art that they made and to­ward the late years of his life opened this museum and put their work in it. That actual­ly was a source of inspi­ration when we went in for our last three albums in the late 70s. ... The les­son to learn from out­sider art was that the artist should be primal. Tech­nique or virtu­osity didn’t matter; that which was un­formed and scream­ing inside of you, wait­ing to be released, was the real essence of the crea­tiv­ity. ... The idea of work­ing with­out knowl­edge or judge­ment, either self-judge­ment or of how the out­side world per­ceives what you’re doing.
❝ I’ll tell you some­thing which hap­pened sub­se­quent­ly to record­ing the album which was dis­tur­bing in it­self. There’s a Dutch artist, Rob Scholte, who’s pret­ty well-known in Europe. One day, in Decem­ber 1994, he came down from his apart­ment and got in his car w/ his wife and he heard a tick­ing sound. Need­less to say, his car seat blew up and he was left with­out legs. With­in a week fol­low­ing that, one of his con­tem­po­ra­ries had been down to the attemp­ted as­sas­si­na­tion spot and filmed the wreck­age, the crash area, and was using it as a per­for­mance piece in a gallery in Am­ster­dam. That’s not a hair’s breadth away from what was satir­ical. And of course now Rob Scholte is doing per­for­mance shows where he makes great play over the fact that he no long­er has a pair of legs. They still haven’t found out who blew him up, but there are all kind of theories rang­ing from a drug con­nec­tion to a jealous artist.

❝ The morality of any society is quite strange. In the final­i­ty, it’s deci­ded by law what hap­pens. Peo­ple change their net­work of com­fort by chang­ing laws to make things accept­able or un­accept­able.

❝ I think that our religious philos­o­phies trail so far be­hind the way that we actual­ly live today that we find our­selves in a spiritual void, and I think it affects the young very much indeed. ... We con­tin­ual­ly try and find ritual, but we have no religious order to con­nect that ritual to. ... So we have to re­invent God, I think, in our own new way of life to give our­selves anoth­er form of spir­itual sus­tenance.
❝ Oh, I’ve got the fond­est hopes for the fin de siècle. I see it as a sym­bolic sacri­ficial rite. I see it as a deviance, a pagan wish to appease gods, so we can move on. There’s a real spiritual starva­tion out there being filled by these muta­tions of what are barely remem­bered rites and rituals. To take the place of the void left by a non-author­i­ta­tive church. We have this panic button tell­ing us it’s gon­na be a colossal mad­ness at the end of this century.

❝ I think the idea of becom­ing com­for­table with the idea of chaos is how we are pro­gress­ing – that life and the uni­verse are ex­treme­ly untidy. Any­thing that pulls back the veil on that chaos is a step near­er a more realis­tic under­stand­ing of what our state is – so I em­brace chaos. I’m a child of the ’70s, re­em­ber. I’m plural­istic by nature. I always had the un­for­tu­nate facility of being able to see both sides of every pic­ture. It wasn’t a ques­tion of not being able to deter­mine which side I was on, but see­ing that things didn’t have sides. It wasn’t as sim­ple as that. ❞





    |  EXTRAS:   Diary   Lyrics   Credits   Photos
footnote heading


▶ [1] William Burroughs The concept album Outside is based, in part, on Bowie learning on his new computer. Coming across an app à la The Cut-up Method, the cosmic chameleon stitched together digital words, becoming “virtually the entire genesis” of his nineteenth album and fourth collaboration w/ Brian Eno. Bowie had just stepped away from finishing the soundtrack to 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia mini-series for BBC Televsion. -|-

▶ [2] Contamination Outside was just one of several albums, a set, that Bowie started to work on w/ Brian Eno. The next one was to be Contamination, peopled w/ “17th century characters”. The day after Bowie’s death, Eno recalled: “About a year ago [David and I] started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that.” -|-

▶ [3] Album -|- Producers: David Bowie, Brian Eno -|- David Richards (co-producer) -|- Mixing and additional treatments: David Richards, David Bowie -|- Mastering: David Richards, Kevin Metcalfe -|- Assistant Engineers: Ben Fenner, Andy Grassi, Jon Goldberger, Domonik Tarqua -|- Album Design & Image Manipulation: Denovo -|- Photography: John Scarisbrick -|- Stylist: Jennifer Elster -|- Recorded at Mountain Studios, Switzerland. -|- Mixed and additional treatments by David Ricahrds, assisted by David Bowie. -|- Mastered by David Ricahrds and Kevin Metcalfe at The TownHouse Digital Mastering Studios, London. -|-

▶ [4] Musicians -|- David Bowie: vocals, saxophone, guitar, keyboards -|- Brian Eno: synthesizers, treatments, oblique strategies -|- Reeves Gabrels: guitar -|- Erdal Kızılçay: bass, keyboards -|- Mike Garson: grand piano -|- Sterling Campbell: drums -|- Carlos Alomar: rhythm guitar -|- Joey Baron: drums -|- Yossi Fine: bass -|- Tom Frish: additional guitar on “Strangers When We Meet” -|- Kevin Armstrong: additional guitar on “Thru’ These Architects Eyes” -|- Bryony, Lola, Josey and Ruby Edwards: background vocals on “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” and “I Am With Name” -|-

▶ [5] Outtakes Includes, among others: “Enemy is Fragile” – “I’d Rather Be Chrome” – “Dead Men Don’t Talk” – “Inside the Motel” – “Baby Fingers” – – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 1” – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 2 – “The First Time” – “Hello Leon” – “OK Riot”. -|-

▶ [6] Tour On the Outside tour, Bowie and his band would come onstage while opening act Nine Inch Nails was finishing, and both bands performed “Subterraneans”, “Hallo Spaceboy” and “Scary Monsters”, followed by 2 NIN songs (“Reptile” and “Hurt”), after which NIN decamped and Bowie’s set played on. -|-

▶ [7 Lyrics] Leon Takes Us Outside: Leon Blank Valentines Day - 25 - June - 16th - Wednesday - July 6th - 20 - 0 - 20 - 15 - Martin Luther King Day - June 18th - June 6th - Wednesday - August 18th - 9th - 1999 - 12 - Nicholas - August - Wednesday - 13th - Sunday - 5th - March - October - January - October 13th - Wednesday - Martin Luther King Day - Afternoon - In view of nothing - 20 - 0 - 1 - Late winter - Martin Luther King Day - 12 - 16 - August - Wednesday - 13th - Friday - 7 - June. -|-

▶ [8 Lyrics] Outside: Prologue Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday, not tomorrow. It happens today, the damage today. They fall on today - they beat on the outside, and I'll stand by you. - Now. Not tomorrow. It's happening now, not tomorrow. It’s happening now. The crazed in the hot-zone. The mental and diva’s hands. The fisting of life to the music outside, to the music outside. It happens outside, the music is outside. It’s happening outside, the music is outside. It’s happening now, not tomorrow. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. The music is outside. It’s happening outside. The music is outside. Outside. -|-

▶ [9 Lyrics] The Heart’s Filthy Lesson: Detective Nathan Adler (Heart’s filthy lesson) There’s always the Diamond friendly, sitting in the Laugh Motel. The Heart’s filthy lesson, with her hundred miles to hell. Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us, other than our clothes. Something in our skies. Something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy, who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes? It's the Heart’s filthy lesson - falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Oh Ramona, if there was only some kind of future. And these cerulean skies: Something in our skies - something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy? Paddy, oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. (Heart’s filthy lesson) I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Will you carry me? Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss. (Heart’s filthy lesson) It’s the Heart’s filthy lesson. Tell the others. -|-

▶ [10 Lyrics] A Small Plot of Land: Citizens of Oxford Town Poor soul. Spit upon that. Poor soul, he never knew what hit him - and it hit him so. Poor dunce. He pushed back the pigmen. The Barbs laughed - the fool is dead. Poor dunce. He’s less than within us. The brains talk but the will to live is dead. And prayer can’t travel so far these days. The talk of your life, standing so near - to innocent eyes. Poor dunce. Swings thru the tunnels and claws his way. Is small life so manic? Are these really the days. Poor dunce, poor soul. -|-

▶ [11 Lyrics] (Segue) Baby Grace (a Horrid Cassette): Baby Grace Blue Test, testing, testing - This, hmmm, Grace is my name - And and I was...um... - It was that photo... a fading photograph of a patch..., a patchwork quilt. - And they’ve put me on these ... - Ramona put me on these interest drugs - So I’m thinking very too bit too fast like a brain hatch - And ah they won’t let me see anybody - If I want to sometimes ... and I ask - I can still hear some pop...popular musics and aftershocks. (Ahhh-choo) See I’ve been watching a television of um... in the homelands - That’s the new homelands and um that’s all I can remember - And now they just want me to be quiet - And I think something is going to be horrid. -|-

▶ [12 Lyrics] Hallo Spceboy: Paddy (Hallo) Spaceboy - you’re sleepy now - Your silhouette is so stationary - You’re released but your custody calls - And I want to be free - Don’t you want to be free - Do you like girls or boys - It’s confusing these days - But Moondust will cover you - Cover you - This chaos is killing me - So bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - This chaos is killing me - And the chaos is calling me - Yeah bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Good time love - Be sweet sweet dove - Bye bye spaceboy - Bye bye love. -|-

▶ [13 Lyrics] The Motel: Leon Blank For we’re living in a safety zone don’t be holding back from me. We’re living from hour to hour down here and we’ll take it when we can. It’s a kind of living which recognises the death of the odourless man. When nothing is vanity nothing’s too slow. It’s not Eden but it’s no sham. There is no hell there is no shame. There is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and it’s lights up, boys. Lights up boys. Explosion falls upon deaf ears while we’re swimming in a sea of sham. Living in the shadow of vanity - a complex fashion for a simple man. And there is no hell and there is no shame and there is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and the silence flies on its brief flight. A razor sharp crap shoot affair and we light up our lives. And there’s no more of me exploding you. Re-exposing you. Like everybody do. Re-exploding you. I don’t know what to use. Make somebody move. Me exploding. Me exploding you. -|-

▶ [14 Lyrics] I Have Not Been to Oxford Town: Leon Blank Baby Grace is the victim, she was 14 years of age. And the wheels are turning, turning, for the finger points at me. All's well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well no I have not been to Oxford Town. Toll the bell pay the private eye. All’s well - 20th century dies. And the prison priests are decent, my attorney seems sincere. I fear my days are numbered - Lord get me out of here. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is your shadow on my wall. This is my flesh and blood. This is what I could’ve been. And the wheels are turning and turning, as the 20th century dies. If I had not ripped the fabric, if time had not stood still, if I had not met Ramona, if I’d only paid my bill. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is my bunk with two sheets, this is my food though foul, this is what I could have been. -|-

▶ [15 Lyrics] No Control: Detective Nathan Adler  Stay away from the future, back away from the light, it’s all deranged - no control. Sit tight in your corner, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. If I could control tomorrow’s haze, the darkened shore wouldn’t bother me. If I can’t control the web we weave, my life will be lost in the fallen leaves. Every single move’s uncertain, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. I should live my life on bended knee if I can’t control my destiny. You’ve gotta have a scheme, you’ve gotta have a plan, in the world of today, for tomorrow’s man. No control. Stay away from the future, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. Forbidden words, deafen me in memory - no control. See how far a sinful man burns his tracks, his bloody robes. -|-

▶ [16 Lyrics] (Segue) Algeria Touchshriek: Algeria Touchshriek My name is Mr. Touchshriek, of Touchshriek, with mail over and fantasy. My shop sells egg shells off the shesores and empty females. I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop to a Mr. Walloff Domburg - a reject from the world wide Internet. He’s a broken man; I’m also a broken man. It would be nice to have company. We could have great conversations. Looking through windows for demons, and watching the young advance in - all electric. Some of the houses around here still have inhabitants in them. I’m not sure if they’re from this country or not. I don’t get to speak much to anyone or that sort of thing. If I had another broken name - oh, I dream of something like that. -|-

▶ [17 Lyrics] The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty): Artist / Minotaur I shake - at the mother’s brutal vermin. I shake - and stare at the watery moon. With the same desire, as the sober Philistine. And I shake (turn and turn again) worm, the pain and blade - turn and turn again. The screw is a tightening atrocity - I shake. For the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell. The need to have seen it all: the voyeur of utter destruction - as beauty. I shake - turn and turn again - I shake - turn and turn again - I shake. Research has pierced all extremes of my sex. Call it a day - call it a day. Needle point life blinds the will to be next - call it a day. Today. -|-

▶ [18 Lyrics] (Segue) Ramona A. Stone / I Am With Name: Ramona A. Stone + her Acolytes I was Ramona A. Stone. I started with no enemies of my own. I was an artiste in a tunnel. But I’ve been having a mid-life crisis, and I’ve been dreaming in a sleep. And ape men with metal parts, I’ve spat upon deeply felt age. I’ve hid my hearts in, and I hate the funny colored english. We’ll creep together you and I, for I know who the small friends are. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. A night fear female. Good timing drone. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. (She should say: twitch & stream - it’ll end in chrome - night of the female - good time drone.) A person who loses a name, feels anxiety descending. Left at the crossroads, between the centuries - a millenium fetish. (Give it to me one more time!) Anxiety descending. -|-

▶ [19 Lyrics] Wishful Beginnings: Artist / Minotaur Cruising around me - the flames burn my body. Wishful beginnings - does this remind them again and again? You’re a sorry little girl. You’re a sorry little girl. Please hide - for the pain must feel like snow. You’re a sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. Please hide from the kiss and the bite - shame burns. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in only doubt - the pain must feel like snow. I’m no longer your golden boy. Sorry little girl, I’m sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow, there you go. Cover me, cover me. We flew on the wings. We were deep in the dead air, and this one will never go down. We had such wishful beginnings, but we lived unbearable lives. I’m sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. So so sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow. There you go, there you go. -|-

▶ [20 Lyrics] We Prick You: Members of the Court of Justice White boys falling on the fires of night (I wish you’d tell). Flesh punks burning in their glue. Revolution comes in the strangest way (I wish you’d tell). I’d rather be inside you. Tell the truth - we prick you. (You show respect even if you disagree - you show respect.) Mama can I kiss you daddy can I ***you (We wish you well). Innocence passed me by. Wanna be screwing when the nightmare comes (I wish you well). Wanna come quick and die. All the little rose-kissed foxy girls - shoes, shoes, little white shoes; where have all the flowers gone? All the little fragile champion boys - toys, toys, little black toys; dripping on the end of a gun (Even if you disagree). -|-

▶ [21 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler Old Touchschriek was the main nameserver. Suspected of being a shoulder surfer, but he didn’t know from shit about challenge response systems. Now Ramona A Stone we know was selling interest drugs. She got males all hung up on her mind filters. She was if you don't mind me saying so an update demon. Now Leon, he couldn’t wait for 12 o’clock midnight. He jumps up on the stage with a criss criss machete and slashes around cutting a zero on everything. I mean a zero - in the fabric of time itself. Was this a suspect? I says to myself - Woa! “Quelle courage!” - Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to when it all began– -|-

▶ [22 Lyrics] I’m Deranged: Artist / Minotaur Funny how secrets travel, I’d start to believe - if I were to bleed. Thin skies, the man chains his hands held high. Cruise me blond cruise me babe. A blond belief beyond beyond beyond. No return no return. I’m deranged. Deranged, my love. I’m deranged down down down. So cruise me babe cruise me baby. And the rain sets in, it’s the angel-man - I’m deranged. Cruise me cruise me cruise me babe. The clutch of life and the fist of love - over your head - big deal Salaam. Be real deranged Salaam, before we reel. I’m deranged. -|-

▶ [23 Lyrics] Thru These Architect’s Eyes: Leon Blank Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? Looking across at Richard Rogers, scheming dreams to blow both their minds. It’s difficult you see, to give up baby, to leave a job, when you know you know the money’s from day to day. All the majesty of a city landscape. All the soaring days in our lives. All the concrete dreams in my mind’s eye. All the joy I see thru these architect’s eyes. Cold winter bleeds on the girders of Babel. This stone boy watching the crawling land. Rings of flesh and the towers of iron. The steaming caves and the rocks and the sand. Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? It’s difficult you see to give up baby, these summer scumholes, this goddamned starving life. -|-

▶ [24 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler

▶ [25 Lyrics] Strangers When We Meet: Leon Blank
All our friends now seem so thin and frail. Slinky secrets - hotter than the sun. No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé. I’m with you, so I can’t go on. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m bewildered for we’re strangers when we meet. Blank screen TV, preening ourselves in the snow. Forget my name, but I’m over you. Blended sunrise, and it’s a dying world. Humming Rheingold, we scavenge up our clothes. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m resentful for we’re strangers when we meet. Cold tired fingers, tapping out your memories. Halfway sadness, dazzled by the new. Your embrace was all that I feared. That whirling room, we trade by vendue. Steely resolve is falling from me. My poor soul, all bruised passivity. All your regrets ride rough-shod over me. I’m so glad that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m so thankful that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m in clover for we’re strangers when we meet. Heel head over, but we’re strangers when we meet. -|-

▶ [26 Credits]
Based on re­ports from, among oth­ers, Nick DeRiso, David Fricke, Kev Geoghe­gan, Paul Gor­man, Edna Gun­der­sen, Larry Katz, Peter–R. Koe­nig, George A. Paul, Chris Rob­erts, Emma Saun­ders, Steele Savage,. And In­ter­net searches, thank yous to: bowie­songs; The National; Jason Lund­berg; One Half of the Bow­lettes; lo-fi noise makers; wn; john b; Mauro B. C.; sonya­kossta; Time­takes­a­fag; Sense­Of­Doubt1; bowie­chick; Beco­2103; the­Music­of­my­Life1; BOWIE­lover; Jorge Gago Lopez; Matt Cham­ber­lain; joy­marr; KyOdar; BlueM2012; Hal­lo­ween­jack84; An­na Den­nis; david bow­ie tin ma­chine.


▶ [28] The Diary of Nathan Adler
aka   THE
ART-RITUAL
MURDER
OF
BABY
GRACE
BLUE
A
non-linear
Gothic
Drama
Hyper-cycle
          |- -|  It was at precisely 5:47am on the morning of Friday 31 of December 1999 that a dark spirited pluralist began the dissection of 14-year-old “Baby Grace.” The arms of the victim were pin-cushioned w/ 16 hypodermic needles, pumping in four major preservatives, colouring agents, memory information transport fluids and some kind of green stuff. From the last and 17th, all blood and liquid was extracted. The stomach area was carefully flapped open and the intestines removed, disentangled and re-knitted as it were, into a small net or web and hung btw. the pillars of the murder-location, the grand damp doorway of Oxford Town Museum of Modern Parts, New Jersey. |- -|  The limbs of Baby were then severed from the torso. Each limb was implanted w/ a small, highly sophisticated, binary-code translator which in turn was connected to small speakers attached to far ends of each limb. The self-contained mini amplifiers were then activated, amplifying the decoded memory info-transport substances, revealing themselves as little clue haikus, small verses detailing memories of other brutal acts, well documented by the ROMbloids. |- -|  The limbs and their components were then hung upon the splayed web, slug-like prey of some unimaginable creature. The torso, by means of its bottom-most orifice, had been placed on a small support fastened to a marble base. It was shown to varying degrees of success depending upon where one stood from behind the web but in front of the museum door itself, acting as both signifier and guardian to the act. It was definitely murder – but was it art? |- -|  All this was to be the lead-up to the most provocative event in the whole sequence of serial-events that had started around November of tha same year, plunging me into the most portentous chaos-abyss that a quiet lone-hacker like myself could comprehend.

|- -|  My name is NATHAN ADLER, or Detective Professor Adler in my circuit. I’m attached to the division of Art-Crime Inc., the recently instigated corporation funded by an endowment from the Arts Protectorate of London, it being felt that the investigation of art-crimes was in itself inseparable from other forms of expression and therefore worthy of support from this significant body. |- -|  Nicolas Serota himself had deemed us, the small-fry of the division, worthy of an exhibit at last year’s Biennale in Venice, three rooms of evidence and comparative study work which conclusively proved that the cow in Mark Tansey’s “The Innocent Eye Test” could not differentiate btw. Paulus Potter’s “The Young Bull” of 1647 (exactly 300 years before I was born, incidentally) and one of Monet’s grain stack paintings of the 1890s. The traditional art press deemed this extrapolation “bullshit” and removed itself to study the more formal ideas contained in Damien Hirst’s “Sheep In a Box.” Art’s a farmyard. It’s my job to pick thru the manure heap looking for pepper­corns.

Friday - 12-31-99 – 10:15a |- -|  As in any crime, my first position is to peruse the motive-gag. The recent spate, thru ’98-’99, of concept-muggings pretty much had me pulling breath for an art-murder. It was a crime whose time was now. The precedents were all there. It had probably its beginnings in the ’70s w/ the Viennese castrationists and the blood-rituals of Nitsch. Public revultion put the lid on that episode, but you can’t keep a good ghoul down. |- -|  Spurred on by Chris Burden’s having himself shot by his collaborator in a gallery, tied up in a bag, thrown on a highway and then crucified upon the top of a Volkswage, stories circulated thru the nasty-neon of NY night that a young Korean artist was the self-declared patient of wee-hours surgery in cut and run operations at not-so-secret locations in the city. If you found out about it, you could go and watch this guy having bits and pieces removed under anaesthetic. |- -|  A finger-joint one night, a limb another. By the dawning of the ’80s, rumour had it that he was down to a torso and one arm. He’d asked to be left in a cave in the Catskills, fed every so often by his acolytes. He didn’t do much after that, I guess he read a lot. Maybe wrote a whole bunch. I suppose you can never tell what an artist will do once he’s peaked. |- -|  Round this same time, Bowie the singer remarked on a coupla goons who frequented the Berlin bars wearing full surgery regalia: caps, aprons, rubber gloves and masks. The cutting edge. |- -|  Then came Damien Hirst w/ the Shark-Cow-Sheep thing. No humans, palatable ritual for the worldwide public. The acceptable face of gore. Meanwhile in the US, 1994, I was in town on the night of the Athey scarifications.

Thursday - 10.27.94 – 122 E. Village, Manhattan |- -|  Ron Athey, performance artist not for the squeamish - former heroin addict-HIV positive, pushes what looks like a knitting needle re­peat­ed­ly into his forehead, a crown of blood, must hurt like hell. Stream red dribble-dribble. No screams. Face moves in pain. Carried upstage and scrubbed down in his own blood. Then water. Now dresses in nice suit and tie. Now in the black T-shirt and jeans, carving, w/ a disposable salpel, patterns, into the back of Daryl Carlton, a black man. Bloody blotted paper towels then hung on a washing line suspended over the heads of the audience. Blood-prints from life. An extremely limited edition. When it was first performed back in March, “Four Scenes in a Harsh Life” exploded contro­versy shrapnel through-out the National Endow­ment for the Arts. “We have taken every precaution w/ our disposal systems,” An Athey spokes-person said. “The towels containing the blood are im­me­di­a­te­ly depos­ited in hazar­dous-waste bags. Each evening, the material will be driven to a hospital for final disposal.” Athey says he is dealing w/ issues of self-loathing, suffer­ing, healing and redemption.

Friday – 12-31-99 – 10:30a – Museum of Modern Parts |- -|  I’m drinking up the Oxford Town. New Jersey fume. Salty and acid. Maybe I can get a handle on this thing back in Soho at the bureau. It used to be Rothko’s studio, now the playground for all us Art-Crime folk, AC’s or “the daubers” as we’re dubbed. Rothko himself, in a deep-dark-drunk one night, carefully removed his clothes, folded them up neatly, placing them upon a chair, lay upon the floor in a crucified position and after several attempts, found the soft blue pump of his wrists and checked out He’d held the razor blades btw. wads of tissue paper so that he wouldn’t cut his fingers. Deep thinker. Always was.

11:00am - “Dauber” HQ, Soho |- -|  The only names the Data bank can associate w/ Baby Grace are Leon Blank, Ramona A. Stone and Algeria Touchshriek. The rundowns are brief but not to the point:
|- -|  RAMONA A. STONE: Female. Caucasian. Mid-40s. Assertive maintenance interest-drug dealer and Tyrannical Futurist. No convictions. Contacts: Leon Blank, Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|- -|  LEON BLANK: Male. Mixed race. 22 years. Outsider. Three convictions for petty theft, appropriation w/ plagiarism w/out license. Contacts: Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|- -|  ALGERIA TOUCHSHRIEK : Male. Caucasian. 78 years. Owner of small establishment on Rail Yard. Oxford Town, NJ. Deals in art-drugs and DNA prints. Fence for all apparitions of any medium. Harmless, lonely.

|- -|  Small cog, no wheels. Not much to go on but R.A. Stone weighs heavy on my memory. No problem, it’ll come back. Best thing to do now is feed all relevant pieces into the Mack-Verbasiser, the Metarandom programme that re-strings real life facts as im-probable virtual-fact. I may get a lead or two from that. ... 11:15a |- -|  Jesus Who. I hate typing. Anyhow, we’ve got some real inter­es­ting solvents from Mack-random. How about this! Verbasiser down-load, first block: No convictions of assertive saints believed Caucasian way-out tyrannical evoked no images described – Christian saints questions no female cristian machine believed no work is caucasian assertive saints believed female described christian tyrannical questions – R. A. Stone convictions martyrs and tyrannicals are evoked Female described sado-masochist questions – I am suicide described the fabric machine – Slashing way out saints and martyrs and thrown downstairs.

|- -|  Now the swirl begins. Now the image stack backs up and takes center stage. Ramona A. Stone, I remember this thickness, this treacly liquid thought. But wait, I’m ahead of myself. 6-15-77 – Kreutz­burg, Berlin |- -|  It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep for the screaming of some poor ostracised Turkish immigrant screaming his guts out from over the street. His hawking shriek sounds semi-stifled like he’s got a pillow over his mouth. But the desperation comes through the spongy rubber like a knife. It cuts the breeze and bangs my eardrums. I take a walk past the fabric machine, turn left onto a street w/ no name. The caucasian suicide center, naked and grimy, silhouetted by fungus yellow street lamps female slashing way-out saints for a dollar a time thrown downstairs if you can’t take any more. Pure joy of retreat into death, led by the shepherdess. Anti mixed-race posters pasted upon their altar of pop-death icons party people. |- -|  A zero w/ no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says “in the future, everything was up to itself.” Yea. |- -|  I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. She must have overseen more than 30 or 40 check-outs before the local squad twigged what was going down.

10-28-94 |- -|  New Yorker magazine, advance copy celebrating fashion. It’s a first of its kind since Tina Brown took over as editor. One look is all it took. It took the look and wrote a new book on what sophi-staplites would take and bake. Guy Bourdin featured heavily in this new eDISHion. Since the advent of AIDS and the new morality, and, of course his death, his dark sexy fatal style had fallen out of Vogue. |- -|  An uncompromising photographer, he had found a twisty avenue through desire and death. A white female leg sticking gloomily out of a bath of black liquid enamel. Two glued up babes covered in tiny pearls. The glue prevented their skins from breathing and they pass out. “Oh it would be beautiful,” he is to have said, “to photograph them dead in bed.” |- -|  He was a French Guy. He had known Man Ray. Loved Lewis Carroll. His first gig was doing hats for Vogue. He’d place dead flies or bees on the faces of the models, or, female head wears hat crushed btw. three skinned calves heads, tongues lolling. What was this? Fine Arts? The surrealists might even think his work passé. Well, it was the ’50s, that's what it was. The tight-collar ’50s seen through unspeakable hostility. He wanted but he couldn’t paint. So he threw globs of revengeful hatred at his nubile subjects. He would systematically pull the phone cord out of the wall. He was never to be distrubed. Distrubed. Never. Everything and everyone died round him. |- -|  One shoot focusing upon a woman lying in bed was said to be a reconstruction of his estranged wife’s death. Another picture has woman in a phone booth making some frantic call. Her hand is pressed whitely against the glass. Behind her and outside are two female bodies partially covered by the autumn leaves. His dream, so he told friends, was to do shoots in the morgue, w/ the stiffs as mannequins. I don’t know. I just read this stuff. Now his spirit was being resurrected. We’re mystified by blood. It’s our enemy now. We don’t understand it. Can’t live w/ it. Can’t, well ... y’know?

Friday - 12-31-99 - 11:30a |- -|  After surgery and investment in a bullet-proof mask, Ramona turned up in London, Canada as owner of a string of body-parts jewellery stores. Lamb penis neck­laces, goat-scrotum purses, nipple earrings, that sort of thing. The word on the street, how­ever, suggested that it was not in the best of interests to become one of her clients as occas­sion­ally, a custo­mer would step into her shop and not come out again. |- -|  The whistle blew after a much-loved and highly respected celebrity, known for being known, failed to show for a gallery-hang­ing of her mirrors. Other celebrities, equally known for being known, some only to each other, thought it the most profound exhibit in years and couldn’t take their eyes off the works. All the pieces sold within an hour, many for record prices. |- -|  When the critic for Tate maga­zine asked for an inter­view w/ the celebrity-artist, the gallery owner re­called that he hadn't seen her since earlier that day. She’d men­tioned that she would be going shop­ping for a diamond-en­crus­ted un­bilical cord as a celebra­tory thing to announce her pregnancy. She would be back in an hour. Just a quick stop at the “Gall­stone.” |- -|  1986. That preg­nan­cy would have been produced a being that would be around 14 years of age. If it was still alive.
|- -| 
To be continued...
-|- Also,
The Annotated Diary of Nathan Adler


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lab vials

Based on sight gags and stage­craft, The Invis­i­ble Man and its sequels helped nudge thea­tre to keep up w/ the matur­ing motion pic­tures be­he­moth. Based on a vic­tor­ian fan­ta­sia on the con­se­quen­ces of scien­tific fron­tiers.   1.    The Invisible Man (1933)     A scien­tist’s un­holy ex­pe­ri­ments into in­vis­i­bil­i­ty is real­ized, and now he regrets it. Claude Rains is the Invis­i­ble Man, slow­ly turn­ing homi­cidal due to the for­mu­la’s side ef­fect. “… a few mur­ders here and there.” Glo­ria Stu­art as his fiancée, E.E. Clive is the con­stable, Una O’Connor the inn­keeper.   2.   The Invis­i­ble Man Returns (1940)    In an al­truis­tic mo­ment, the mad scien­tist’s brother re-creates the invis­i­bil­ity for­mu­la in order to re­lease a man on death row and to find the real kill­er. “I can’t find peace in the un­der­world.” Vin­cent Price is the broth­er who be­comes the sec­ond Invis­ible Man, w/ Sir Cedric Hard­wicke, Alan Napier, Nan Grey.   3.   The Invis­ible Woman (1940)    Kitty Carroll answers an ad to be a sub­ject in a science ex­pe­ri­ment, and is bom­bard­ed by an invis­i­bil­ity ray. “I’m noth­in’ but a nothin’.” Blackie and his gang get word of this mira­cle and be­come in­ter­es­ted. John Barry­more is the mad scien­tist, w/ Oskar Homol­ka, Shemp How­ard, Maria Mon­tez, Anne Nagel.   4.   Invis­i­ble Agent (1942)    When axis agents ar­rive to steal the invis­ibility for­mu­la, the grand­son to the sci­en­tist runs off w/ the note­books. Jon Hall then in­gests the for­mu­la and para­chutes into Ber­lin, to bring the war home, as the Invis­ible Agent. “I can’t tell you peo­ple apart.” Screen­play by Curt Siod­mak. With Peter Lorre, Sir Ced­ric Hard­wicke, Al­bert Bas­ser­man, Ilona Mas­sey, J. Ed­ward Brom­berg, Key Luke.   5.   The Invis­ible Man’s Re­venge (1944)    A mad sci­entist suc­ceeds in sta­bi­liz­ing the invis­i­bi­lity for­mu­la and turns ghoul­ish. John Car­ra­dine is Dr Drury. “Pio­neers have al­ways to con­tend w/ fools.” Jon Hall re­turns again as the invis­i­ble one, w/ Gale Son­der­gaard, Les­ter Math­ews, Halli­well Hobbes.


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cheese wedge

When a nea­rly in­tact tomb be­long­ing to egyp­tian royal­ty was dis­cov­ered in 1922, for­eign cor­re­spon­dent John L. Bal­der­ston was there cov­er­ing it for the New York World. The world then be­came some­what fa­mil­i­ar w/ the an­cients’ be­lief in im­mor­tality as well as the sci­ence of em­balm­ing, an op­era­tion tak­ing 70 days to achieve and pre­si­ded over by Anu­bis. Bal­der­ston was later hired to pro­duce the screen­play for a fan­tas­ia based on a fic­tion, fash­ioned from a back­story by Nina Wil­co Put­nam, on the life of 18th-c. french hyp­no­tist Cali­os­tro. The re­sult dipped ro­mance into un­god­ly goo that only Holly­wood could con­coct.

  1.   The Mum­my (1932)    As the 1921 field ex­pe­di­tion sea­son opens in Egypt, mem­bers of the Brit­ish Mu­seum dis­cover a coffin and a body in­side. “The gods of Egypt still live in these hills, in their ruined tem­ples.” Boris Karloff is the mum­my Im­ho­tep, awak­ened by tomb-hunt­ers and pur­su­ing the rein­car­na­tion of his prin­cess Anck-es-en-Amon – in flap­per-era London.

  2.   The Mum­my’s Hand (1940)    Fol­low­ing a map, ar­chae­ol­o­gists find the tomb of the prin­cess Anan­ka, and by break­ing the seal of the seven jackals un­leash a ter­ror that has wait­ed 3,000 years to be reborn. “We search for the tomb of a prin­cess, and all we find is the mum­my of a man.” Tom Tyler is the re­ani­mat­ed Kharis – im­part­ing to the role his famous lurch and one dead arm. Eduar­do Cia­nel­li plays the high priest.

  3.   The Mum­my’s Tomb (1942)    Open­ing his eyes for the first time as the mum­my Kharis, Lon Chaney Jr will seek ven­geance for the tomb des­e­cra­tion of his prin­cess Anan­ka. “The curse on that tomb ex­tends to the blood re­la­tions of all who en­tered it.” Tur­han Bey is Mehemet Bey.

  4.   The Mum­my’s Ghost (1944)    Ram­say Ames is the amer­i­can re­in­car­na­tion of the prin­cess Anan­ka, and Lon Chaney Jr again plays the mum­my Kharis, cross­ing the Atlan­tic Ocean to court her. “First it’s the Mum­my. Now it’s a re­in­car­nat­ed woman!” John Car­ra­dine plays You­sef Bey, and George Zuc­co is An­do­heb.

  5.    The Mum­my’s Curse (1944)    Lon Chan­ey Jr is re­vived a third time as the mum­my Kharis, and finds rea­son to wade into the Lou­i­si­ana bayou where a crypt holds dead prin­cess Anan­ka, his be­loved Vir­gin­ia Chris­tine. “I can nev­er get too much sun.” Peter Coe is Dr Ilzor Zan­daabm, and Den­nis Moore is Dr Halsey.


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Susan B. Anthony  “Finish the Fight!”

The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony


In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the daughter of Quaker abolitionists, walked into a polling station in Albany New York and voted. She was fined $100 on the charge of illegal voting, and she refused to pay. Four years earlier, together w/ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), she had founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her examples made possible the eventual adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, fourteen years after her death.


FIRST DAY

THE PROSECUTION
D.A. Richard Crowley:

May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ...
• • •
Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman.

THE INSPECTORS’ TESTIMONY
Q: Did you see her vote? A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ...

Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted? A: No, sir.

Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden.

Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made? A: Yes, sir.

Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry? A: Yes, sir.

Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter? A: She did.

Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote? A: There was.

Q: On what ground? A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote.

Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen? A: She was not a male citizen.

Q: That she was a woman? A: Yes, sir ...

Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter? A: Yes, sir.

Q: And she was registered accordingly? A: Yes, sir ...

Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration? A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States.

Q: Did she name any particular Amendment? A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment.

Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote? A: Yes, sir...


SECOND DAY

THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Judge Henry R. Selden:
The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman. “If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...”
THE JUDGE
The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty.
Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case.
The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ...


Susan B. Anthony after casting her first vote, she was a 26 year-old school teacher in upstate New York, the year was 1848.

THE NEXT DAY

The Court: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and-
JUDGE Hunt: The court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

MISS Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury–
JUDGE Hunt: the prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow it.

MISS Anthony: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even that I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. ...
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’ s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same manmade forms of law declared it a crime punishable w/ $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he is tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got ther freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word

MISS Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis - that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice - failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers - I ask not leniency at your hands - but rather the full rigors of the law.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - [Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony arose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.


SUSAN B. ANTHONY NOTES:
[1.] From A Patroit’s Handbook (2003): songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. [2.] On November 26 2017, the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony was reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany New York. Starting time was 6pm, and it was hosted by the Federal Court Bar Association of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
Susan B. Anthony
     2017 San Francisco Women’s March


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-|  January 2022  |-


  WHAT SHE SAID Virginia Woolf quote  
  HOUSES OF THE HOLY 
  In the aftermath of the trojan war, olympians carried on the fight w/ each other.  This brief theo­machia roused mother Earth, once more, into open revolt. Egypt dis­ap­peared into a ‘scream­ing wind’. Ge then vomit­ed out the con­tents of her vaults. Most were pris­on­ers kept there by Zeus. These freed-again mon­sters (fourth class) then attacked Olym­pus to set in motion the sec­ond gigan­to­machia.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Up north, an­oth­er aesir-vanir con­flict was brew­ing when Rag­narok 5.0 was trig­gered by this near­by havoc -- send­ing nine worlds and twelve hells top­pling into a win­now­ing worm­hole.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Ge then picked up Mount Olymp­us and threw it at Ouranos -- giving father Sky his famous black-eye. Per­turbed unto his hydrogen heart, first-gen titan Hype­rion left of his own voli­tion, and in 1948 the solar god would cede the gravity:throne. First, it went to that ‘con­tain­er of multi­tudes’, complex god Apollon, then to Helius.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
And long be­fore that the Earth had al­ready curled up and suc­cumbed to cata­tonia -- atom­ic bomb test­ing done dur­ing the 20th cen­tury did her fur­ther harm.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
What didn’t climb out of mother Earth was final­ly shak­en off in spasms, clearing out her cav­erns and empty­ing all of the hells that she knew about. The last to depart Tar­tarus w/ the keys were Haides and Hekate, mak­ing sure all gates were left open and un­guarded.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Nereus had ac­tual­ly felt little when the Earth per­formed her cos­mic cough, and so the ‘Med­i­ter­ran­ean’ had re­mained placid. His ab­orig­i­nal root mat­ter be­ing H-two-oh, ‘the old one’ soon be­gan splash­ing some of it over the ex­posed parts of Ge, ini­ti­at­ing a tidal rite to soothe his be­lov­ed, his grand­mother, his only home.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Marooned on a chunk when Pan­gea broke apart -- then be­gan to drift south, indi­genes clung on and end­ed up on anoth­er shore under anoth­er sun. Looking at sum­mer skies w/ wintry eyes, these orig­in­als saw the physi­cal, spirit­ual and mor­tal planes clear­er and earli­er than most of their lost breth­ren. Now they are Ge’s best friends and help pre­pare her bed­ding every evening.
 •❚-❚-❚• 
Before going separate ways, Hy­per­ion held a meet­ing w/ dog-head­ed death god­dess Hekate. The senior sun knew that she was the real ruler of Tartarus, and sought advice from the god­dess of necro­man­cy on the next aeon. Together they con­jured up a hypo­thetical heaven search­able by tax­on­omy. Each spher­ical body pay­ing heed to the gravity:throne is a ‘wan­der­er’; and the rest, ‘drfiters’. Then the ‘dwell­er on high’ and the ‘crone of the under­world’ took their leave.




Gravity:throne
❝ To ensure no favored location in space, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is Edwin Hubble’s way of saying the universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions. ❞

– Ronald W Clark  (1971)

 ❡  As the latest geomachia be­gan to sub­side, tum­bling thrones had to be stead­ied. Some need­ed a hand, oth­ers just a mend. Wrecks got tossed. Soon enough, a four-dimen­sion­al myth­o­log­i­cal map of the sky be­gan to make clear­er sense. Where­as the ancient order had ad­hered to the ‘in­var­i­able plane’ when pay­ing homage to the Sun, new­comers need no longer do so. Estab­lished courts were delighted -- or not, to locate kin, meet odd­balls, greet faded god­desses, share secret hand­shakes w/ pro­gen­i­tors, gawk at their car­bon copies.








 •❚-❚-❚•  In the begin­ning was love, so this house tour be­gins w/ Aphrodite. Stung by the treat­ment mother Earth meted out to her brood, the love god­dess had no re­course but to leave, be­com­ing the last olym­pian to do so.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘one who post­pones old age’ moved her foam:­throne closer to Helius and, in 2002, gath­ered mothers to graces Eury­dome and Euan­the to her love:­court. Now they share advice and guid­ance w/ the sex god­dess and sit on the ancient:­throne and mir­ror:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Their neice Pasithee had previously awok­en to a planetary party still in full swing. She had called her aunts seek­ing some peace and quiet. Pasithee was mar­ried to Hypnos, and the grace of relax­a­tion al­ways carries sachets of day­dreams. Know­ing this, Euan­the and Eury­dome said Yes, come over.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kale had be­come un­hinged by the ex­pul­sion from Earth, and so the tender:­throne was of­fered to the grace to beauty until she can find closure. ­  •❚-❚-❚•  Taking baby steps is Eros-x4, the first form to step out of obliv­ion and greet Khaos. The love god’s name is spelled dif­fer­ent­ly by dif­fer­ent scribes.
His latest iter­a­tion is a jig­saw puzzle of four asteroids. Shattered like he’s shat­tered hearts, the ‘first born’ mutters sweet-noth­ing rites while rest­ing his golden wings sitting on the soul:­throne, in hopes of achiev­ing a home once more in mortal breasts.

House of Aphrodite
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1999, Lem­po returned to the nektar:­throne. Of un­deter­mined sex, this fin­nish love deity was seen to pass near Aphro­dite, mur­mur “once bit­ten twice shy” in her general direc­tion.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘hand­some one’ had set up a love:­embassy. Adonis in­sist­ed, even though sci­en­tists say he’s a po­ten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous aster­oid and his exes claim that he is an ex­tinct com­et and a source of meteor show­ers, but that was before Helene came in 1980, a dione trojan gone awol.









 •❚-❚-❚•  Known to ancient sky watchers, during a time when the hard-to-spot ‘guide’ was eas­ier to locate, his elus­ive nature suits Hermes’ well as the near­est house to the Sun. The ‘trick­ster god’ is awash in sul­fer w/ a tem­pe­ra­ture hot enough to melt lead, fin­ish­ing an or­bit every 88 days while pirou­et­ting every six­teen, long enough to cause seasons.  •❚-❚-❚•  As cyclope lensii scan the skies w/ rain­bow eyes (and sees machines of every shape and size), the ‘shepherd of men’ hosts a missing-divine bureau, staffed w/ refus­niks from IAU’s minor planet center, and sprouting degrees in dark mat­ter 3.0, arti­fi­cial atoms, time leak­age, littor­al lin­guis­tics, the roots of rap. Prow­ess shown by these latter-day saints allow ‘mes­seng­er of the gods’ to roam and see every­one, meet every­thing; the ‘patron to the home’ is sel­dom at home.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jennyblue has run the bureau since 1982. She is the gazet­teer of plan­etary nomen­cl­ature for the Inter­national Astro­nom­i­cal Union, and the pub­lish­er of Who’s World.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Icarus surfs outer space w/ glued-on wings finding ‘drifter’ not yet cata­logued, and look­ing for star shep­herd Hes­perus, who van­ished while on assign­ment.

House of Hermes
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  Sec­ond-gen titan Atlas lifts up worlds to look be­neath. Bro Epi­me­theus likes to re­hash stuff to sift out clues, and Sisy­phus re­traces steps to glean origin stories.  •❚-❚-❚•  Since 1999, none can assign a proper myth to an am­ne­si­ac. Until then, Sete­bos is their sole “way­find­er of wan­der­ers and drift­ers”.  •❚-❚-❚•  A piece of Hermes came back in 1937 as an apollo asteroid.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Paying heed to the measure of duration and the reel of the zodiac, the moon:­crown current­ly rests on the brow of Artemis, grant­ing mor­tals a glimpse and gar­gling “how the air un­lit be­fore glows”.  •❚-❚-❚•  ‘She of the wild’ had to fill three (ro­tat­ing) place­ments: full:throne, old:throne, and new:throne. The ‘virgin god­dess’ cuts the lunar deck and picks faded lunar god­dess Phoebe. Arte­mis cuts again and un­covers cretan har­vest god­dess Carme. A third pick pro­duces Diana. There was a small prob­lem. The vis­i­ble moon god­dess is cur­rent­ly locked in Time and can­not be de­tect­ed – she is un­detect­able as a new moon and con­sid­ered a phased phan­tom.  •❚-❚-❚•  The breach is cur­rent­ly filled by Eos, the wing­ed dawn god­dess who pulls back the cur­tain of Night. Bring­ing to an end the lat­est balanc­ing act that is life in house of a triple-mooon god­dess.  •❚-❚-❚•  A vis­cuous veil has draped the purity:­throne when in 1845 inno­cence god­dess Astraea sat down.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ideal ar­rived in 2002, ascend­ing to the triple:­throne on four legs. Tarvos is (sole) male car­bon to the triple-mooon god­dess. He is also a divine bull, among other eye­brow raisers.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pan spent the wan­ing days of the 20th-c. check­ing out the house of the Moon and now the rus­tic god is very much at home. Delir­i­ous w/ desire, sur­round­ed by dwarf moons, moon­lets, moon­moons; sport­ed w/ by packs of ring shep­herds hold­ing hands w/ sheph­erd moons. “Where the bee sips there sip I. In a cow slip’s lips I die.”.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1610, Gany­mede came out as the largest sate­ll­ite in Neopo­lis, and there­fore a shoo-in to run the moon:­embassy.
In his down time, the dei­fied son of Tros will take a walk w/ Skoll, to re-ac­quaint the norse wolf to night.


House of the Moon
+


 •❚-❚-❚•  The were­wolf:­throne went to moon god Tarqeq; he’s good to ani­mals, sweet-na­tured, and knows a lot about inuit fer­til­ity.  •❚-❚-❚•  Sit­ting on the bow:­throne since 2000 is Mun­dil­fari, father to the norse moon god.  •❚-❚-❚•  In soli­dar­ity w/ the hexed and mighty vexed Diana, em­bassy in­vites always go out to her niece Pasi­phäe, cousin Hekate, and BFF Hera.  •❚-❚-❚•  Each eve­ning Artemis dons a mono­tone-&-mot­tled body­suit shim­mer­ing w/ crater rays. Be­fore step­ping on the moon:­chariot, she puts on a sheer cape w/ an upside-down water­fall per­pet­ual­ly shed­ding dust.











 •❚-❚-❚•  Under an in­jured sky mor­tals had clung on to mother Earth and prayed for mercy. She must have re­lent­ed be­cause the human race sur­vived, too in­sign­ifi­cant to be shak­en off.  •❚-❚-❚•  Reso­lute­ly re­imag­in­ing how tem­ples looked and restor­ing im­por­tant altars first, elder god­dess Dione was the first to be enticed to come back. The second-gen titan­ess and oak god­dess laid out the house of Ge in 1684, and sits now on the oracle:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Faded jöt­unn Bestla was rea­soned w/ to also come back and sit on the mountain:­throne, while the anx­ious one awaits news on miss­ing son Odin.  •❚-❚-❚•  Nereus, who in­vent­ed hydro­ther­apy, is now plain tuck­ered. The ‘first man’ has been tend­ing to the re­hab­il­i­ta­tion of Ge and can often be seen splayed on the aborigine:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  All the while, para­mount pan­theon pharaoh Amun gleams and twits un­ob­tru­sive­ly on the dust:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Sedna had hes­i­tat­ed to sit on the winter:­throne on­ly ’cause the in­u­it sea god­dess had to come clos­er to the Sun. Al­ready her skin of tight­ly-grouped nitro­gen ici­cles and reflec­tive meth­ane scales, fixed w/ dark tho­lin thread, has turned beet red.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pros­per­i­ty god­dess Ortho­sie is some­times busy, some­times not, shed­ding tawny seeds from the autumn:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Dio­ny­sus knows there’s hope for Ge. The mad god is now a binary-being and sits on the serpent:­throne, the “price of a bend sin­is­ter many gen­er­a­tions back”.  •❚-❚-❚•  Per­seph­o­ne would rather be w/ her mom than here at the 4seasons:­court. But the vege­ta­tion god­dess would rather be here on the spring:­throne than w/ her hus­band in hell and be known as ‘queen of the damned’.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Wey­wot stepped out of the Kui­per belt in 2007. Now this native-amer­i­can sky god gets to tak­en in an ex­po­nen­tial view from the summer:­throne.


House of Gaea
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1980, ‘first woman’ came back home and set up the 4seasons:­embassy. Twelve years later, ‘first man’ of the north joined her. Theirs is a mobile of­fice, so Pan­dora and Ymir can go quest­ing to veri­fy a site map they were giv­en by He­ka­te and Hy­pe­ri­on.  •❚-❚-❚•  Moth­er Earth spends her days out­doors and nights on the chthon:­throne. She seems okay, and oc­cupies her­self build­ing a gen­e­al­o­gy for Aither and wrting a bio on at­mo­sphere.










 •❚-❚-❚•  First her roman-half came in 1867; then a greek-frag­ment fol­lowed in 1917. At that point Athene went ahead w the ac­cre­tion rite and, w/ Minerva and Pallas, whol­ly the ‘gray-eyed’ god­dess of wis­dom. The god­dess of crafts calls her house the Olym­pia Acad­e­my, grad­u­at­ing space cadets since 1953 in dis­ci­plines of mind, body and soul, w/ em­pha­sis on tech-chthon­ics, the emer­gent meta­verse, and why ob­scure dimen­sions lurk.  •❚-❚-❚•  Skill re­quir­ing dex­ter­ity is taught by Dactyl, a fused pres­ence able to sep­a­rate back into ten sib­lings – broth­ers and sis­ters adept in metal­lur­gy and magick.  •❚-❚-❚•  Lutetia was in­sub­stan­tial when found, orig­i­nal­ly sent to the morgue for parts. Un­til a proble re­vealed ‘pri­mor­dial paris’ un­der the man­tle. Now this asteroid houses the library, found­ed in 1904 by golden age his­tor­ian Himalia.  •❚-❚-❚•  ‘Father of history’ Hero­dotos is some­where in the stacks; some­times he“s a crater, some­times a lunar moun­tain.  •❚-❚-❚•  Faded sun god Hy­per­ion still has his star:­throne, yet the patron saint of as­tron­o­my pre­fers it here, shed­ding light into ob­scure pas­sages and un­tan­gling con­jugal con­jec­turals.  •❚-❚-❚•  With eyes wide shut, dream god Morpheus wan­ders the library, nev­er bumps into any­thing.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Patro­clus stopped by in 1906 to build and run the gym­na­sium; then Men­oe­tius was out­ed as his satel­lite in 2001.  •❚-❚-❚•  And may­be it’s true that Jarnsaxa rose in rank by sleep­ing w/ Thor, yet her prow­ess as a war­rior is sec­ond to none; the jötunn now teaches war­cracft.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hylo­nome was re­cruit­ed in 1995 to give les­sons in arch­ery and horse­back rid­ing.  •❚-❚-❚•  When Hideo Ito­ka­wa showed up in 1998, no one paid much heed. Now the roc­ket sci­en­tist has a launch­pad and a lab on the roof.  •❚-❚-❚•  Scholar Zhong­guo ar­rived in 1928 tot­ing moun­tains of chin­ese scrolls and oc­cu­pies a wing.  •❚-❚-❚•  An amor­phous cradle court found har­bor in a for­got­ten nook stacked to the rafters w/ old globes. Grant­ed se­clu­sion while these river dei­ties ad­just to their new sit­ua­tion are Eu­phra­tes and Ti­gris, gleam­ing still from the em­bers of the 20th-c.









 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1884, nymph to a baby god Ida was ad­mit­ted to the infir­mary, injured and living a half-life. When Zeus found out his nurse was alive he went to fetch the moun­tain maid, now mend­ed, seat­ed her on the oak:throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Then the thunder god came across wife Juno and they made up and now the sky goddess has agreed to return to the marriage:throne and resume her title as ‘queen of the gods’.  •❚-❚-❚•  But before that Zeus stumbled into Eu­ro­pa, floating by aimlessly. Promising not to transform in front of her again, Zeus persuaded the princess of Tyre to claim the azure:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Callisto estab­lished the sky:­embassy in 1610. Elder muses Ao­ede and Thel­xi­noë showed up, 400 years later, to clear up back­logs and stuffed in­boxes. Seas­ons spirit Sponde joined in 2003, im­posed lunch breaks.  •❚-❚-❚•  They are joined by mother to wine god Dionysus, who sits on the rain:throne when not lending a hand. Born mortal, Thy­o­ne is now a goddess who presides over dionysian displays.
 •❚-❚-❚•  A tempestuous sky:court re-opened in 1979 when faded goddess of wisdom Metis convened the first meeting from her blessed:throne; now the first wife to Zeus has fallen into a trance.


House of Zeus
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  Zeus has a complex ionosphere tuned to his liking while sitting on the eagle:throne, where a planet-encasing electric field ratchets up the magnetic field to produce 400,000 electron volts. In 1988 a chunk of Zeus buzzed the earth, and 5731-Zeus has now been identified as an apollo asteroid.










 •❚-❚-❚•  This house is a court­house, and Kronos is its chief justice. Consort Rhea is now a binary being, sharing the mountain:­throne w/ her roman half Cybele. In 1966, they warm­ly wel­comed roman god of good be­gin­nings Janus to the duty:­throne. The twin-faced god who gave his name to the first month opens the judi­ci­a­ry sea­son.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hold­ing degrees in truth and zoro­as­trian light, galaxy god Mithra was brought to the seasons:­throne in 1987. It only took Themis 34 years to find her roman-half Justitia and perform the accretion rite. Now the god­desses of divine justice share the seed:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Elder mem­ory muse Mneme came out of re­tire­ment to run the law libra­ry, as­sist­ed by Her­mi­one, mor­tal daugh­ter to Helen of Troy and Men­e­laus.  •❚-❚-❚•  Fate god­dess Tyche got her law license in 1886, for precision god­dess Praxi­dike, it took much longer.  •❚-❚-❚•  Young aten as­ter­oid Ra-Shalom, spif­fy in a smooth car­bo­na­ceous out­fit, in­terns as law clerk.

House of Saturn
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  The time:­embassy dis­penses legal coun­sel, and staff con­stant­ly jug­gle worn vol­umes for titles and pars­ing multi-culti edits, looking up one-offs, and ‘misc’.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kronos hosts 62 sat­el­lites and it makes him a grump on the flint:­throne. The king of the titans wears a gi­nor­mous stole of froz­en hel­ium and iced hy­dro­gens, hid­ing lash­ings by wet met­hane winds and sea­son­al hur­ri­canes of meth­ane mists.











 •❚-❚-❚•  Wounded in a mini­machia be­tween Zeus and Kronos, Ouranos hoard­ed san­ity and had sense re­main­ing to locate com­plex Hathor and bring the de­stined one to her sky:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  The egyp­tian sky god­dess has smart dial, and that is how moth­er to Atlas Kly­mene came to the dome:­throne, while venez­ue­lan rain god Huya hov­ers nearby on the cloud:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Before fully suc­cumb­ing to his malaise, Ouranos man­aged al­so to locate Ar­ro­koth for the empyrean:­throne, know­ing the pow­hatan per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the sky can sum­mon clouds, the least of his ae­ther abil­ities.  •❚-❚-❚•  Ouranos has been un­der phy­si­cian care since 1781. His house has no em­bassy. This doctor com­mis­sioned magi­cian Pros­pero to de­vise a ther­a­peu­tic play for his pri­mor­dial patient.  •❚-❚-❚•  Which led to father to Loki Far­bauti being im­pres­sa­rio of the pro­duc­tion, hir­ing Ixion as light­ing direc­tor, even though the ex-king was caked in tho­lins and ice.
 •❚-❚-❚•  An end­ing con­jur­ation required a dual-voice. Director Didy­mos will per­form the role, guid­ing post-poly­phonics gently back to roots in tragic theater.


House of Ouranos
+



 •❚-❚-❚•  Puck and Ariel designed the spe­cial effects, while Syco­rax and her spawn Cali­ban han­dled all sub­ter­ran­ean spells. This for a play that takes 84 years to per­form.









 •❚-❚-❚•  Poseidon chose the date of his re­sur­fac­ing in­to history by send­ing a dream, in 1846, to a sleep­ing mathe­ma­ti­cian. The woke mortal entered a new set of co­or­di­nates into the New Ber­lin Ob­ser­va­tory and found the liq­uid liege sitting on his trident:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  It was first-gen titaness Tethys, though, who first ar­rived, in 1684. And in her role as female ‘sover­eign of the sea’ Tethys es­tab­lished the sea court. The an­cient marine god­dess sits on the sea:­throne and is semi-retired, run­ning a cell of nep­tune tro­jans be­hol­den on­ly to her.  •❚-❚-❚•  Prime­val marine god­dess Siarnaq, moth­er to all in­u­it sea life, now rests on the whale:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aegir swam by to take “on­ly a peek”. He was then per­suad­ed to stay by Tethys, by Siar­naq, by the en­tire em­bas­sy staff. The ger­man­ic god now holds a set of hur­ri­cane keys and is on the storm:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Triton runs the sea:­embassy. The mer-god first sur­faced in 1846, en­crust­ed in bar­na­cles, show­cas­ing cryo­volcan­ism and can­ta­loupe-col­ored boils, spewing nitro­gen five miles into space from frig­id finger­tips of meth­ane.  •❚-❚-❚•  The ‘mes­seng­er of the sea’ is sick w/ an un­known mal­a­dy. But Sala­cia does. Since 2004, the ‘queen of the sea’ has been test­ing and cor­rec­ting local salin­i­ty levels, bring­ing much need­ed know­how to demi sea­god­dess Ly­si­thea to get it just so since 1938.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Day-to-day is hand­led by by demi sea­god­dess Her­mip­pe, ocea­nide Te­les­to, and river spir­its Io and Cal­lir­rhoe.


House of Poseidon
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Nereid glim­mered under the sur­face of Night, in 1949, a drop only 210 miles, clad in neutral-ices and sili­cates. Troub­ling then to know that this amal­gam of 50 sibling sea god­dess­es is also a po­ten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous ob­ject head­ed for im­pact w/ the sea:­embassy.










 •❚-❚-❚•  Like Ouranos, Haides lies on his back; un­like his great-grand­father, the king of the under­world is in com­mand of his senses; he reigns once more from the black:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Show­ing off a young man­tle, as be­fits his status as the first trans-nep­tune ob­ject, the ‘great renew­er’ goes about in a liq­uid-cape of froz­en nitro­gen stained w/ land­scapes of rud­dy pinks and moldy yel­lows.  •❚-❚-❚•  The dead:­throne be­longs to fury Tis­i­pho­ne, she of the scor­pion whip. Of­ten awol, the prim­i­tive ven­geance god­dess likes to visit BFF Hekate.  •❚-❚-❚•  Haides had spared two broth­ers from their fate in the after­math of the gigan­to­machia, when a hun­dred broth­ers at­tacked Olym­pus. Now En­ce­la­dus en­cased in com­plex organic molecules, and Mimas – fit­ted out in dreams, have re­paid the king of the dead by run­ning the death:­embassy, con­struct­ed from the sub­struc­ture of space and hav­ing capac­ity for many-sid­ed folds.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jug­gling w/ pul­sar power since 2000 is in­u­it Ijiraq. When not on the wealth:­throne the shape­shift­er is elus­ive in a sul­phur­ous smoke jac­ket, bound­ing from comet to aster­oid while fling­ing out mir­ages left and right.  •❚-❚-❚•  Charon only became ap­par­ent in 1978, the god of hell lounges on the blood:­throne.
 •❚-❚-❚•  Com­plex deity Osiris, silent and still on the shadow:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Fenrir crouches at the foot of the black:­ throne, munch­ing on tha­na­tos leaves.


House of Haides
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 •❚-❚-❚•  An aeon in Tar­ta­rus had caused a set of sib­lings, as they were hurled in­to space, to begin a meld:­rite and, in 1655, re­turn as a colos­sal com­pos­ite. Now back in com­fort­able sur­round­ings again, Titan has grown star-fat and nova-lazy. This slov­en­ness van­ishes when his secret name is ut­tered. Then the fused thing sits up­right on the unseen:­throne; and re­sumes his role as mon­ster third-class.












 •❚-❚-❚•    The pond of Pontos is a multiple axis in­ert spacial facil­i­ty   where ser­pent spawns from water worlds can find safe harbor – and malev­o­lent vipers suit­a­bly penned.  •❚-❚-❚•  Its long­est in­hab­i­tant is Medusa, marooned on a spit since 1875. Her nurse is demi-serpent Herse, who gets to milk the gor­gon. Medusa’s blood is taken back to the in­fir­mary where it is an in­gre­dient for end-of-life syrups.  •❚-❚-❚•  The egyp­tian car­bon to Khaos had es­caped during the early dawn of the 21st-c. That was when ‘un­creator’ as­sumed in form an aten aster­oid. Now Apo­phis is threat­en­ing to in­vade Ge in 2029 be­fore at­tack­ing the Sun again. To bring back this sand ser­pent supreme, the house of Egypt dis­patched lion­ess fire god­dess Sekmet (who’s preg­nant), and magick god­dess Selquet.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aegaeon has been pond shep­herd since 2008, this mon­ster fourth-class (although some claim he’s really first-), has now poured all his wealth into Sea 2.0. The prim­i­tive marine god over­sees “Force;­4”, staffed w/ post-fledg­lings from ste­llar kinder­gar­tens and poly­gon-flight schools.  •❚-❚-❚•  The pond is a fav­or­ite haunt of Hippo­camp. Driver to the sea char­iot, the binary:­beast pays visits w/ Hydra and seems to do the many-head­ed ser­pent some good. This ani­mal amal­gam has gone mad; harms on­ly it­self, hops on claws then slith­ers, un­der­go­ing a chaotic rota­tion w/ a flip every ten hours.  •❚-❚-❚•  The new­est in­mate is duck­taped w/ re­verse-rela­tiv­ity ad­he­sive, pre­vent­ing Gonggong 龚工 from pow­er­ing up his malig­nant core. This metal-head­ed mon­ster was caught try­ing to knock moth­er Earth’s axis off cen­ter -- again. Now the chi­nese marine god is the sub­ject of study by atomic-physics.  •❚-❚-❚•  The wan­na­be plan­et kill­er has been guard­ed since 2007 by husband-&-wife team Phorcys and Ceto. He grey-haired and fish-tailed, w/ a crus­ta­cean-cape of crab claws. She daugh­ter to Pon­tos and crone god­dess to sea mon­sters.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2018, an under­sea ex-palace was req­ui­si­tioned as the un­offi­cial house of Pon­tos. Diamond-shaped w/ good japa­nese bones, Ryugu is capa­cious enough to have offices, guard quar­ters, pri­vate apart­ments.


House of Pontos
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Draped in sea­weed, crowned w/ tur­rets and tow­ers, a rud­der his staff, Pontos is sea­water’s root mat­ter. He now stirs Sea 2.0, con­coct­ed w/ a thim­ble of his blood, the en­tire Aegean sea, a steady drip from the river of hate, a healthy pour of un­adult­erat­ed rep­til­ian con­scious­ness; and tric­kles from the river Styx.  •❚-❚-❚•  To en­sure safe­ty, the pond is pot­ted w/ skel­e­tal time cham­bers. To nice things up, in­fer­nal god­dess Styx had trained a rib­bon from her river of oaths to fol­low her and so be­came patron to the pond of Pontos.
















House of Hekate
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 •❚-❚-❚•  After the meeting w/ Hyperion, Hekate took her leave, drag­ging ‘darkness’ be­hind. The supreme god­dess of magick only stopped when the gravity:­throne was bare­ly glimpsed. She flung Erebus be­neath her, un­fold­ed the crone:­throne and set it down on the dark prim­i­tive god.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hekate is dark­er than Tar­tarus, where she had lived, is in­vis­i­ble at night, can see in pitch black.  •❚-❚-❚•  Ananke came first, in 1951, swathed in ‘con­straint’, ‘force’ and ‘neces­sity’. ‘One be­fore time’ un­coils her lux­ur­iant ser­pent tail and gets to wind down on the po­ten­cy-throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  A son to Loki perches on the ghost:­throne. Narvi is father to norse night Nótt and has re­turned as dark mat­ter of in­de­ter­mi­nate size.  •❚-❚-❚•  Tot­ter­ing on the spindle:­throne is night god­dess Nyx, whose star-spang­led man­tle can­not hide a ban­dage-wrapped form w/ ob­vious an­cient red stains. Some­thing is wrong, now un­famil­iar gravity floods the daugh­ter to Khaos and causes her to twirl back­wards every 45 min­utes.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2004, etrus­can in­fer­nal god Orcus showed up to claim the victory:­throne, oblique in faint tho­lins, sewn w/ iced crys­tal water and fea­tur­ing a high col­lar shoot­ing dew drops of amo­nia up.
 •❚-❚-❚•  When the three-head­ed hell hound saw Ere­bus, his dear­est dog­house, be­ing dragged off, Kere­be­ros trot­ted be­hind; now he pa­trols his new home every 32 days, flips ev­ery five, in vain ef­forts to shake off fil­a­ment fleas.












 •❚-❚-❚•  As Ge shook and coughed, Aἴtnē sur­vived, as befits one of nine foun­da­tion­al moun­tain nymphs. She’s been host to an ab­orig­i­nal fire god for a long long time. Hephaistos had suf­fered some di­min­ish­ment other­wise is un­harmed.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 2006, Surtur, wielder of the fire sword, showed up. Fol­low­ing note­books and us­ing lega­cy tools, the jötunn worked w/ He­phais­tos and got the forge go­ing again. Now the norse behe­moth tends to busi­ness from his spot on the foundry:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pasiphäe is daugh­ter to the sea and the sun, and is only one of the rea­sons the mis­tress of herbal magick can keeps busy on the cauldron:­throne.







 •❚-❚-❚•  The geo­machia had cas­ual­ties, but Hestia was not one of them.   The pri­mal fire god­dess gin­ger­ly cupped ‘first flame’ w/ her palm, slipped into sen­si­ble shoes, and stepped off the face of the Earth.    •❚-❚-❚•  In the Asteroid belt she found her sis­ter Ceres, who was seed­ing the sec­ond Gar­den of Apol­lon, and Hygiea, per­form­ing triage by her­self. So this was where Hestia sat her charge down and soon enough kind­led a fire.  •❚-❚-❚•  Togeth­er the three god­dess­es set up a clinic; by 1807 it had grown to be­come an in­fir­mary. Then, in 1992, while live cov­er­age of the first space rock found in the Kui­per belt was broad­cast, Hestia took a closer look and recog­nized Albion. The domes­tic god­dess then went and fetched ‘mytho­log­i­cal britain’ back and that was how she found a foun­dation to a house, w/ her­self its ad­min­is­tra­tor, medi­cine god­dess Hy­giea its nurse, and agrarian god­dess Ceres its grounds­keeper.  •❚-❚-❚•  Resi­dent chap­lain duties falls on the shift­ing shoul­ders of fic­tion-into-fact inuit sha­man Paaliaq.  •❚-❚-❚•  New­ly dis­lodged norse fire god Loge was ad­mit­ted in 2006 for hypo­ther­mia. Therapy w/ ‘first flame’, his root mat­ter, en­sured re­cov­ery and the norse fire god has stayed on as a ther­a­pist.  •❚-❚-❚•  Asclepius was ad­mit­ted as a wound­ed apollo as­ter­oid in 1989; now the med­i­cine god is part­ly re­paired and can as­sume head phys­i­cian, allow­ing daug­hter Hy­giea to fuse w/ her roman-half Vale­tudo as well as re­sume re­search into evo­lu­tion­ary vac­cines.

House of Hestia
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Celtic child­birth god­dess Bebhionn showed up in 2000 and now there is a mater­ni­ty ward.



 •-❚-❚-•    Eight of Poseidon’s satel­lites are in in­ten­sive care.  Faded sea god­dess Thalas­sa wob­bles and paces her bed every eight hours, know­ing her form will end up as a rub­ble ring.  •❚-❚-❚•  Galatea and her water-nymph sib­lings are all of un­reli­able form; they’ve re-accret­ed once too of­ten, and now Sao, Neso, Lao­me­deia, Heli­mede, Psamathe might all end up as rub­ble rings too.  •❚-❚-❚•  Priest­ess Despina is miss­ing parts, and has set aside mys­teries of arka­dian cults for now.  •❚-❚-❚•  Hawai‘ian birth god­dess Haumea and her daugh­ter-moons were ad­mit­ted in 2004. This ‘col­li­sion­al fam­ily’ has reached the dan­ger point of off­ing each other.  •❚-❚-❚•  The first patient was ad­mit­ted in 1983. Phaethon had fallen off his father’s sun:­chariot.

 •❚-❚-❚•  Found­er of mod­ern nurs­ing Florence Night­in­gale came back in 2017 to set up the nurses station. Eager to learn mod­ern meth­ods are ancient nurses to baby gods Cyllene, Kalli­cho­re, Helike, and Kalke.

 •❚-❚-❚•  The grounds of the sec­ond Gar­den to Apol­lon, begun in 1801 to sur­round the infir­mary, now has pas­ture enough for goat nurse to a baby god Amalthea to retire in tran­quility since arriv­ing in 1892. Her mind­er is moun­tain nymph Daphnis.  •❚-❚-❚•  Come autumn they will help sea­son­al god­dess Carpo and native-amer­i­can corn god­dess Atira as­sess the bounty from Nature 2.1.  •❚-❚-❚•  And when the gran­ar­ies are full autumn grace Hege­mo­ne will moan the clos­ing rites.  •❚-❚-❚•  Har­vest was pos­si­ble be­cause Flora had first tend­ed to every petal and abun­dance god­dess Euporie to every stalk.

 •❚-❚-❚•  Creator god Quaoar was help­ing out in 2005 when he caught a flu. Now the father to the native-amer­i­can sky shiv­ers and tosses every seven­teen hours, wrapped in red rocks ribbed in car­bon mon­ox­ide sewn w/ meth­ane threads, but­toned w/ nitro­gen and stud­ded w/ stalag­tites of iced ethane.  •❚-❚-❚•  Aitolian prin­cess Leda over­sees the garden. Other­wise she has been helping Deme­ter run tests, since 1801, to gague, exact­ly how many sea­sons now exist.  •❚-❚-❚•  A fused nation of fresh­water nymphs, Naiad, main­tains the water fe­atures on the grounds, while demi sea god­dess­es Isonoe and Sinope swim in its boun­dary.  •❚-❚-❚•  Frost giant Suttungr will wait un­til he”s brewed enough mead of poetry to fill a thous­and space ships be­fore com­ing by to re­plen­ish the well.

 •❚-❚-❚•  An un­recog­niz­able queen of Egypt came to the Inten­sive Care Unit in 1880, and after Kleopatra was put back to­geth­er she re­mained and, w/ her moon-children Cleoselene and Alexhelios, set up a phar­macy.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pharaoh Khufu came in 1984 and claims he’s watched enough priests grind gold and think up im­mor­tal­i­ty tinc­tures to con­sider him­self a phar­ma­cist too, and stayed.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pan drops by and sings w/ Aretha Franklin, who ap­peared in 2018 w/ a piano. The queen of soul also duets w/ spirit of lamen­ta­tion Linus in find­ing clos­ure notes.  •❚-❚-❚•  Poetry muse Erato used to wan­der the cor­ri­dors strum­ming; now she has an of­fice and bet­ter hours.

 •❚-❚-❚•  In 1980, a morgue was found­ed by Prometheus as a lab­ora­tory to devel­op human:­being 2.0. The titan of fore­thought was at the time delv­ing in­to mystikal graeco-egy proto-chem while prac­tis­ing old-school alche­my; he tink­ers now w/ two corpses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Pri­meval sky god­dess Theia has been dead a long time and miss­ing parts. The first-gen titan still has bits of Ge im­bed­ded in her body.  •❚-❚-❚•  Jötunn Greip came in 2006 and is good only for parts.  •❚-❚-❚•  Assist­ing is young frost giant Bergelmir, de­scend­ed from ab­orig­i­nals. The grand­son to the first norse man knows about creat­ing new life.  •❚-❚-❚•  Home to Proteus since 1989, the marine god donates his root matter for parts, even though the shape­shift­er has parch­ment skin con­tain­ing trans­pa­ren­cies and pock­marked w/ poly­hedron-shaped ices and pink­ish-red boils.

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 •❚-❚-❚•  Beginning in 1918 and spending the next 14 years per­form­ing an accretion:­rite, Helios had at­tract­ed suf­fi­cient ma­te­rial to return as the apollo asteroid named Apollo, the first of his kind. The ‘sun’ then con­tin­ued to evolve and has now as­cended to the gravity:­throne as the ‘eld­est flame’.  •❚-❚-❚•  Gal­axy being Varuna spends 282 years on an or­bit rite while on the blind:­throne, piv­ot­ed out­wards to greet vedic cos­mic creed.  •❚-❚-❚•  When this myth­ic bird flew down to perch on the arrow:­throne in 1999, Bennu was still an apollo asteroid; now he’s the nexus be­tween. egyp­tian rebirth, crea­tion and the gravity:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•  Com­plex easter island dei­ty Make­make arrived in 2005 to oc­cu­py the sin­gular gold:­throne, and was seen tot­ing a char­coal-dark sat­el­lite from his space­craft.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1998, aten as­ter­oid Akhe­naten opened the sun:­embassy. Compe­tency in dusty dynas­ties shows – he con­tin­ual­ly posts wel­comes to un­ex­pect­ed dei­ties show­ing up to greet the gravity:­throne.  •❚-❚-❚•    The post-pharaoh can pro­nounce the Sun’s name in gallic and celtic, in­uit, san­skrit, fin­nish, man­da­rin and egyp­tian-arabic, his native tongue.  Soon a course in japa­nese and span­ish, a brush up on latin. He’s onto rumors of a pan-oceanic family co­a­les­cing around the 2016 dis­covery of Kamo‘oalewa ‘os­cil­lat­ing frag­ment’. Still figur­ing Ven­ez­ue­la out.

Sun

House of the Sun
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 •❚-❚-❚•  Akhe­naten is lucky to have found Arche in 2004. The origins muse knows where the skele­tons lie – and where they lived).  •❚-❚-❚•  Norse wolf Hati ac­com­pa­nies her, mak­ing sure all skele­tons be­have.  •❚-❚-❚•  Second-gen titaness Leto has the sun:­throne, and since 1861 the moth­er to a sun and a moon has en­act­ed a solar rite, every fif­teen hours, to the ‘the su­preme light’.


Ares Albiorix








 •❚-❚-❚•  The House of Mars defends the celestial court and is re­spon­si­ble for   Fortress Pallas,  sited on the cir­cum­fer­ence. At the “crown” is a co-com­mand of gallic and roman mili­tary gods. Albiorix will make a 783-day patrol guard­ing the Sun, clad in ghost-red armor. Ares turns and patrols inter­stel­lar space. The for­tress faces outer space.

 •❚-❚-❚•  “Trunks”  watch the four qua­drants. Hoary frost giant Fornjot. The sire to norse im­mor­tals, scans the un­known dili­gen­tly every sev­en to nine hours for missing kin.  •❚-❚-❚•  Eris has a lone­ly patrol last­ing 558 years. The sis­ter to Ares is large enough to fit all on the As­ter­oid belt in her man­tle; is easy to spot in her white-white frig­id meth­ane armor caped w/ trail­ing gasses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Humon­gous jötunn Thrymr, king of the norse giants, has a sense of humor. He likes to share a good joke w/ Cruithne, tini­est of space rocks but whose stature in pict legend is also humongous.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Barks”  handle logis­tics and co­or­di­nate the day-to-day. Hyr­rok­kin is cap­able of launch­ing a thou­sand probes be­fore break­fast, if the norse giant­ess so wishes.  •❚-❚-❚•  Freya, BFF w/ the val­kyr­ies, rides in­to war on a chariot drawn by cats. On the battle­field the love god­dess claims half the fallen and is a fav­or­ite among the troops.  •❚-❚-❚•  Prime­val gaul Erria­pus oversees a quiet qua­drant in a pale-red battle­suit; while god of the norse north wind Kari howls into his por­tion of the void.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Branches”  explore, and a special team now is following magnetoplasma pulsing back to its source. Battle-tested sons to Ares be­gan ser­vice in 1877 high­er up in com­mand, but chaf­ing at peace­time en­nui have been demoted. These bad-boy bros wear their com­bat wounds proud­ly.  •❚-❚-❚•  Dei­mos looks spi­ffy clad in smooth rock but it’s to pro­tect his por­ous frame; he knows one day he’ll go awol. Pbo­bos is slow­ly dy­ing; wear­ing noth­ing but rub­ble held to­geth­er by the thin­nest of man­tles.  •❚-❚-❚•  Their cou­sin anarchy god­dess Dys­no­mia wears a dark-red battle­suit blending well w/ her back­ground. While norse win­ter god­dess Skathi gets to patrol the most frig­id corner.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Twigs”  tra­verse the meta­verse, per­form data re­duc­tion, com­pile cross-gen­eal­ogy reports.  •❚-❚-❚•  Kiviuq has been con­front­ing crea­tures since be­fore 2000; and is knowl­edge­able in i.d.-ing un­knowns. Twins Romulus and Remus have brought along notes in order to finish a user’s guide to roman ways.  •❚-❚-❚•  The founder-bros of Rome are a tad weary of Poly­deu­ces, greek car­bon to Remus, whose voice echo in space hits too close to home.

 •❚-❚-❚•    “Leaves”  cover the territory and carry the colors, led by two trojans and a pair of centaurs.  •❚-❚-❚•  Can­ter­ing into view in 1977, mar­ried centaurs Cheiron and Chariklo led a comet corps of some 44,000 cen­taurs: each on a scat­ter­shot orbit, all try­ing to achieve es­cape velo­city using near­by grav­ity as sling­shots. Sport­ing ir­ra­di­at­ed armor under high-col­lared ices crink­ling and shed­ding dew; each cen­taur has a life­span last­ing a few mil­lion years.  •❚-❚-❚•  Clad in wine-red uni­forms strung along two elon­gat­ed curves, trojan aster­oids marched into view in 1906 behind Achilles and Hektor.  •❚-❚-❚•  For­tress Pallas has a “seed bank” in the Olym­pia Acad­emy, and a “root sys­tem” into various houses.  •❚-❚-❚•  Harmonia is daugh­ter to Ares and runs his house, hap­py to be near cousin Dys­no­mia, broth­ers Dei­mos and Pho­bos, and aunt Eris.









 •❚-❚-❚•  The cyclopes were not flung in­to space, hav­ing in­stinct enough to cling on. The sec­ond race of mon­sters born to the ‘primordial couple’ flour­ished by evolv­ing the craft of lens-pol­ish­ing. At the birth of the 21st cen­tury these three one-eyed broth­ers down­load­ed their DNA into arti­ficial intelli­gence vats. Now the cyclopes race exist main­ly as rows of lensii ar­rayed in pat­terns and spend­ing time in­side tele­scopes.   Tele­scopes sit on an equa­tor­ial mount, where a clock-drive moves the tele­scope at the same rate as plan­et­ary ro­ta­tion. 
 •❚-❚-❚•  The house of the ‘round eye’ has been run by its blind­ed host Poly­phe­mus (long story) since 2013.  •❚-❚-❚•  A unique egyp­tian sun disk came in 1976, after rehab­i­li­ta­tion by He­phais­tos. Now Aten is fully re­hab­il­i­tat­ed from a stony sub-mile space rock to a source of in­tel­li­gent light.  •❚-❚-❚•  Muse of as­tron­o­my Euka­lade ar­rived in 2003 e­nsure qual­i­ty con­trol and have a web pres­ence. ... Then, de­velop­ment of lens tech­nol­ogy led to a vast­er view of the “mys­te­rious uni­verse”.  •❚-❚-❚•  In 1924, using the 100-inch tele­scope at Mount Wil­son Ob­ser­va­tory, as­tron­omers Edwin Pow­ell Hub­ble and George El­lery Hale ob­served indi­vid­ual stars some 800,000 light-years away; then bil­lions of light-years away.

  HYPOTHETICAL  HEAVEN  






•❚-❚-❚• Leaving mother Earth had pro­ven trau­matic for Ares, so he un­leashed his rage and demol­ished the nearest planet. The mili­tary god buried the remains in the back­yard, the cem­e­tery known as the   Asteroid belt  (1801).

•❚-❚-❚•  By 1845, four of these remains had been spotted by tele­scopes. Each was dubbed a plan­et at the time. Then their tiny size, less than 500 miles wide – smal­ler than the Moon, lead to a new clas­si­fi­ca­tion of such irregular space rocks as an   asteroid.

•❚-❚-❚•  Another kind of irregular space rock whips through space on a a unique orbit around the Sun, iced rocks en­vel­oped in dust and trailing gas, the nimble   comet .

•❚-❚-❚•  An as­ter­oid or a comet caught in Ge’s grav­ity field be­comes a   meteor  ‘high in the air’. It re­mains a meteor if it doesn’t land, and be­comes a meteor­ite if it does.

•❚-❚-❚•  In 1950, Hekate and Haides showed up at the house of the Sun and told everyone there what they had seen in their backyards in 1992.   Trans-neptune ob­jects, billions of them. The rulers of the underworld had come to the gravity:­throne to an­nounce the demise of the old order. A new aeon was de­scend­ing and the adam­an­tine age was over.

•❚-❚-❚•  Quite by ac­ci­dent Zeus had a spat w/ Kronos over throne place­ments. This mini-machia flipped Ouranos on his back and caused the trident:­throne to rock and roll. Cas­ual­ties from this tus­sle all have miss­ing chunks and bloody cuts. They are the ‘froz­en for­gots’, mar­i­nat­ing in blue-grey bruises and strewn about in a region called the   Kuiper belt   (1992).

•❚-❚-❚•  As Ouranos top­pled over Posei­don threw out a life line, but it was too late. The ‘earth shaker’ instead whipped wave­lengths into a froth and the re­sul­tant fury crashed against his trident:­throne, carry­ing what flaked off into a sparse province inhab­ited by un­stable iced comets called the   Scat­tered disc  (1966).

•❚-❚-❚•  Haides had been exploring his backyard as early as 2004. In his golden chariot drawn by four black horses, the in­fer­nal god crossed the Kui­per belt and en­coun­tered ter­mi­na­tion shock -- before set­tling in­to a (brief) standstill dur­ing helio­pause. The king of shadows then un­sheathed his sword to cleave the hydrogen wall to get to the other side. Then was stunned by bow shock which sent the god of wealth plunging through the   Inter­stellar med­ium   (1904) until the Oort cloud began to cush­ion his landing.

•❚-❚-❚•  As the trident:­throne was tossed about it had smacked into some­thing sub­stan­tial and shat­tered this ob­struc­tion. Parts now pop­u­late the Kui­per belt, frag­ments share room in­side the Scat­tered disc, and the bits, froz­en fila­ments of water and meth­ane, flew even fur­ther out and is cred­it­ed as the   Oort cloud  (1950).

•❚-❚-❚•  A space rock that is spher­i­cal and con­tain­ing grav­i­ty and an elec­tro-mag­net­ic field is a   planet . Most planets host a sat­el­lite or more, and eight planets fol­low the 'in­var­i­able plane' and constitute ven­er­able houses rep­re­sent­ed at the celes­tial court.

•❚-❚-❚•  Made of am­bi­ent mat­ter and hav­ing no def­i­nite boun­dary, Helius the   Sun  is a star w/ the capac­i­ty to shed root mat­ter as en­ergy, re­leased rapid­ly enough as to seem solid, and can as­sume diverse forms. Earth’s Sun un­der­goes on­go­ing com­bus­tion, and has gra­vi­ta­tion­al sway over a small swad­dle of space, it’s   helio­sphere.

•❚-❚-❚•  2012-VP113 nick­named   ‘Biden’  is a dwarf planet in the Kui­per belt locat­ed by a dark energy cam­era mount­ed on a tele­scope in Chile, en­larg­ing the boun­da­ries of the celes­tial court over­night.


| Back |
  PROSPERO’S  PLAY 
❧  As­trono­mer Wil­liam Her­schel spots fairy royal­ty through his tele­scope and tries to catch them all w/ his butter­fly-net, TITAN­IA and OBER­ON, Queen MAB, others.



1808
Act I Scene 1 – Forest, day­light
❧  Al­though it is 1948, MIRAN­DA isn’t aware be­cause she’s lost in Time, and she ab­sent-mind­ed­ly per­turbs a ro­ta­tion rite be­ing ini­tia­ted by ARIEL, PUCK. A cos­mic cave ma­ter­ial­izes in the low­er air; in­side the witch SYCO­RAX and her spawn CALI­BAN are seen to mum­ble and hum.

1829
Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twi­light
❧  Fashion-plate BELIN­DA strolls on in 1986 to intro­duce a caval­cade of stars. Venetian heriess POR­TIA is shar­ing a joke w/ ROSA­LIND , daugh­ter to a ban­ished duke; COR­DELIA and OPHE­LIA are link­ing fingers, touch­ing fore­heads, laugh­ing softly; BIAN­CA is being prac­ti­cal watch­ing her step while giv­ing life tips to CRES­SIDA; DES­DE­MONA and JULIET whis­per and act dis­traught. Slow­pokes MAR­GARET and PER­DITA bring up the rear.

1850
Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening
❧  Male voices from 1990 ap­proach. Shy in­qui­ries are prof­fered by prince of Naples FERDI­NAND and his lord FRAN­CISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Mean­while jester TRIN­CULO is lend­ing sup­port to drunk-asleep STEPH­ANO, who now wants to min­gle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cos­mic cave as the Sun starts to sink.

1871
Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight
❧  Both par­ties are now asleep. Sprites and fair­ies flit across the air. A glint “no big­ger than an agate-stone” ar­rives w/ news for the pained plan­et Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the sig­nal for Puck to be­gin match­ing Ariel’s tra­jec­tory and speed be­fore tak­ing charge and bring­ing the rotation:­rite to its con­clu­sion. SET­EBOS begins a slow de­scent on­to stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDY­MOS in­tones the con­clud­ing con­jura­tion. Bring­ing the cur­tain down on Prospero’s Play, writ­ten as a medic­i­nal for an ailing ab­orig­i­nal, pre­scribed by the patient’s phy­si­cian Asclepius.

  PANTHEONS 
Norse Court
 •❚-❚-❚•  The latest Ragnarok was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the Ge’s cos­mic cough. When the dust set­tled, out of an im­pres­sive wreck a chasm ap­peared, and Nifl­heim once more took a peek at Mus­pel­heim.  •❚-❚-❚•  In the first moments of the 21st century, Mundilfari, father to a sun and a moon, slowly shifted inside the froz­en depth and took a good gulp of space vacuum. Then he hoist­ed him­self out of the cre­vice, he man­aged to al­so yank out root-mat­ter Ymir from his pris­on. Break­ing up enough ice to ex­pose chief-giant Thrymr. Snow god­dess Skathi and frost giant Suttungr were harder to make out; they them­selves were made of frozen water.  •❚-❚-❚•  Then these rem­nants of the long-un­seen norse court pre­sent­ed them­selves at the house of Kronos, seek­ing shel­ter, and were im­me­di­ate­ly given a wing. In 1886, the god of time depu­tized fate god­dess Tyche to set about free­ing the oth­ers. She led a rescue team of ring-shep­herds carrying their own satel­lites and re­turned, in 2019, w/ 14 alives and 17 parts.

  MACHIA FILES  
Aesir-Vanir War







Ouranos battling Themis, detail of the pergamon altar.







Gigantomachia





Typhomachia







Theomachia







Geomachia







Ragnarok




1 ... The first war ever waged in­volved norse gods battling each other at the dawning of time. The root cause could well have been lax magick cap­i­tal­iz­ing on au­gu­ries to deter­mine an end result for one’s des­tiny. Truce end­ed the   Aesir-Vanir War   and result­ed in a pooled pan­the­on span­ning nine realms.

2 ...   By the time Ge and Ouranos, the pri­mor­dial couple, drew close and birthed their third brood, mother Earth had been nurs­ing re­venge on father Sky for nix­ing her pre­vious two lit­ters. Now the ab­orig­i­nal earth god­dess took the young­est under her tutelage, bestowing on Kronos his destiny to perform the dirty deed with a sickle and take over the ada­man­tine throne. After com­mit­ting patri­cide, Kronos mar­ried sister Rhea and the union pro­duced three daugh­ters and three sons -- who would over­throw their par­ents in the ten-year   Titan­o­machia, fought along­side earth­quakes and vol­ca­noes -- and pre­quel to the age of Olympus.

3 ...   When Saturn cut Uranos w/ the sickle blood splashed onto Gaia, trickled down to Tartarus and birthed one hundred giants, w/ serpents for feet. They climbed out of their mother and warred against Olym­pus. For­mid­a­ble and cap­a­ble of hurling en­tire moun­tains into the air; by so doing formed a lad­der to the top. Break­ing off oak trees and using them as torches, these giants climbed up and flung them at Zeus, ig­nit­ing the   Gigan­to­machia . One by one, the olym­pians put down their gigan­tic sib­ling’ revolt, off­ing or im­pal­ing them w/ mountains.

4 ...   Upset her giants were de­feat­ed, Gaia rubbed Tar­ta­rus and soon birthed Typhöeus, tall enough to graze the stars, sport­ing wings which blot­ted out light, having a hun­dred dragon heads spew­ing flames w/ mouths that yelled out human curses or shriek­ing and hiss­ing as ani­mals. Two hun­dred hands all ending in snake-fingers. Loose snakes slith­ered and cov­ered the final mon­ster’s frame, from the thighs down this sin­gu­lar ser­pent was noth­ing but trunks and feet of coiled snakes. Alone, the larg­est mon­ster ever born launched   Typho­machia  and attacked Zeus, who de­feat­ed him in single com­bat and chained the volc­ano demon, belch­er of ven­om­ous fumes and all-round trou­ble maker to sky dei­ties, in deep­est Tartarus.

5 ...   As the trojan war un­spooled Olym­pus took sides and soon a battle be­tween the im­mor­tal fam­ily had erupt­ed. This brief   Theo­machia  end­ed when the war hap­pen­ing on Earth did too, and every dei­ty sur­vived the ordeal.

6 ...   Fracking was driv­ing Ge bonkers. She could bare it no more. Swal­low­ing rocks and im­pris­on­ing monsters she had performed in the primi­tive past. Now mother Earth had a fever and required a deep cleanse. She coughed, eject­ing her bowels and flush­ing out her bad blood, in her latest   Geo­machia.

7 ...   Foretold as a repeat­able occur­rence, the twi­light of the gods arrives when sev­er­al severe bliz­zard storms one after the next are loos­ened on the world. Norse sun goddess Sól’s brief re-emer­gence will signal the begin­ning of the end as   Ragnarok  com­mences. The mid­gard serpent will then crawl from hell fol­lowed by her brother the wolf Fenrir. Soon, Surtur’s flame sword will have set the uni­verse ablaze, “the sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps high about heaven it­self ”. In time a new Earth. An­other Sun. Differ­ent stars. Same pantheon.

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  BLACK COUNTRY ROCK 

“As revealed in the song Ziggy Stardust, Ziggy was not a spider - he was the fly.”
     -- Steele Savage







Outside the musical world he inhab­its, David Bowie can usua­lly be found in the com­pa­ny of artists. These ad­ven­tures in the art world found ex­pres­sion in the 1990s when, fool­ing around on his com­pu­ter, Bowie ended up w/ a short piece con­cern­ing blood and art. This, hav­g recent­ly chat­ted w/ Brian Eno on fin-de-siècle malaise and what that might involve. They went on to pro­duce a con­cept album con­cern­ing “this rather dark, satir­i­cal idea of where art could go”. Musi­cians take cues from Eno into which meadow the sound ought to roam in, while Bowie stitches words in­to the result, seek­ing fits or juxta­position until a con­cept coheres. Eno fid­dles w/ the elu­sives and im­bues pro­cee­dings w/ more prop­o­si­tions. Lyrics then sep­a­rate to be­come dis­tinct voices, then charac­ters. A murder victim has been turned into art. An assort­ment of suspects. A detec­tive follow­ing a lead. A minotaur.

What emerges from the labyrinth is the album 1.Outside, a disjointed and dispirited dystopia featuring violence and death, sex and rock ’n roll.

★  David Robert Jones died from liver two days after his 69th birthday, on January 9 2016. His ashes were scattered on the island of Bali, in a buddhist ceremony. He left behind wife Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, daughter Alexandria, son Duncan Jones, Duncan’s ex-nanny Marion Skene, and long-time personal assistant, Corinne Coco Schwab.


-|- FIVE YEARS 

The cosmic Chameleon and the chance Corinthian lash themselves together, in the lab – on the slab – and bring forth “… a gothic drama hyper-cycle”.

Bowie photoshoots for album

❝  [Brian and I] had al­ready started a whole set of im­prov­i­sa­tions in the studio around March, 1994. Out of that came dia­logue and land­scape that was tied together, not even ten­u­ously. All the elements were fairly dis­parate. This is a once-in-a-life­time chance, by a narra­tive device, to chron­i­cle the final five years of the mi­llen­nium. The over-ambi­tious inten­tion is to carry this through to the year 2000.

❝ What Brian and I are try­ing to do is devel­op a series of albums. [Out­side] is the first in this cycle of albums. [The diary is] only the sub­ject mat­ter, it’s not the con­tent of the album. The con­tent is very much the atmo­sphere and tex­ture of the music, that strange place that music in­deed puts you which can­not be artic­u­lated. The story itself is semi-linear, so if you want to, follow it in a linear fashion, but it”s not abso­lute­ly nec­es­sary. The pieces them­selves can be auton­o­mous, they are pieces of music on their own.

❝ Well, Brian, very clev­er­ly, be­cause of being what he is, which is basic­al­ly a con­cep­tual­ist, turned every­thing into a series of games once we got into the studio: To al­low the musi­cians to not be who they are for short periods of time.
❝ As for musicians, it was impor­tant to choose those who were not weighed down with musical cliché, who had ter­rif­ic con­trol over their abil­ities. Yet were a bit loony.

❝  A piece that shows the ex­treme it could get to is “A Small Plot of Land”. That piece in par­tic­u­lar was a first class indi­ca­tion of what hap­pens when you put peo­ple in a strange place like that.

❝ Eno would create little flash cards for them in the mor­nings. He would cre­ate situ­a­tions they would have to put them­selves in men­tal­ly, intel­lec­tual­ly, and then start play­ing from that point of view. On each one, a charac­ter was writ­ten, like (You are the dis­grunt­led mem­ber of a South Afri­can rock band. Play the notes that were sup­pressed). ... Be­cause that set the tone for the day, the music would take on all those ob­scure areas. And it would very rarely lapse into the cliché. So we changed the status of the begin­ning of these pieces and they came in­to them like aliens from an­oth­er place. It opened up a whole area of im­prov­i­sa­tion. ... It’s very hard to ex­plain [laughs], you should have been there.

❝ The lyric writing itself was fairly hazar­dous. What I did, I took a lot of areas of sub­ject mat­ter I’m inter­ested in and wrote short para­graphs or pieces of poetry around those sub­jects and fed them in­to this Mac­in­tosh compu­ter I have. I have a ran­dom key on it and it will ran­dom­ize what I have writ­ten. So it was basic­al­ly the Mac­in­tosh’s choice that it was New Jer­sey. But it was also a bit of Eng­land, too, with New Ox­ford Town. [Then de­cide] wheth­er I was go­ing to sing, do a dia­logue, or be­come a charac­ter. I would im­pro­vise with the band, real­ly fast on my feet, get­ting from one line to an­oth­er and see­ing what worked.
❝ There’s no in­tent in it, there’s no mean­ing. I’m not a mean­er. I don’t have this great thing that I have to say. It’s a collec­tion of frag­ments of infor­ma­tion, of ideas, that are assem­bled and pro­duce a cer­tain atmo­sphere.

❝ Next year, we’ll devel­op a whole new slew of other charac­ters or may­be re-intro­duce some of these or even negate some of them. May­be we’ll never find Baby Grace. May­be [Detec­tive Nathan] Adler will become the next victim. I don’t know. And that’s what’s kind of inter­es­ting. May­be we’ll just get bored with murder as art and move in­to an­oth­er area of our society. It’s all up for grabs. So I‘m quite inter­ested in the future of this thing.

❝ I think [the album is] a con­flu­ence of events. First, we def­i­nite­ly per­ceive mur­der now as enter­tain­ment. It’s used to a mas­sive ex­tent in cinema. And pret­ty much it’s a space fill­er in TV. There’s the whole gladia­torial arena spec­tacle of some­how appeas­ing gods or look­ing at the fears and anxie­ties of the public.

❝ [Brian and I] were both inter­ested in nib­bling at the periph­ery of the main­stream rather than jump­ing in. We sent each other long mani­fes­toes about what was miss­ing in music and what we should be do­ing. We de­ci­ded to real­ly experi­ment and go in­to the studio with not even a gnat of an idea.

❝ The momentum gathers as we ap­proach the end of this cycle of 100 years, a huge anguish that every­thing will change. I wanted to make a rec­ord that reflec­ted those anxie­ties, a state of moral, spiri­tual and emo­tional panic. With peo­ple break­ing off into small groups to feel some sense of com­munity.

❝ Plus this growing momen­tum in body art, which has been pre­cip­i­tated over the last 15 years or so with peo­ple like Kiki Smith and Damian Hirst and Ron Athey and Chris Bur­den. The idea of us­ing the body as yet anoth­er medium, like wood or metal or glass or stone – al­most the polit­i­ciz­ing of the body itself. Almost ex­trap­o­la­ting on that in an alle­go­ri­cal fash­ion to have this rather dark, satir­ical idea of where art could go.

❝ Dalí ... knew exactly what he was do­ing. He knew what all the objects meant ... The at­ti­tude that says the artist should paint on­ly things the pro­le­ta­rian can under­stand, I think, is the most de­struc­tive thing pos­sible.

❝ About 20 per­cent of what I put in [the al­bum] are fic­tion­al and the rest are real, but it’s very hard to tell the dif­fer­ence. But the most sur­pris­ing one, like the Korean cut­ting off pieces of him­self in the late ’70s in New York, was not apocry­phal. I checked back with Art Forum.

❝ I’m sure you know a writ­er, Thom­as de Quin­cy. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s, his Con­fes­sions of an Opium Eater was a kind of bible. At that time, in 1820, he wrote a small piece for Black­woods, a Lon­don maga­zine, called Mur­der Con­sid­ered as a Fine Art which laid down exact­ly that theory.

❝  Sort of that clas­sic idea of tak­ing a life as some­thing sort of ritual­ized. Lots of things came in­to it. It wasn’t a sim­ple, direct jour­ney. Even the sur­real­ists, like André Breton, who said in the ’20s, prob­a­bly one of the great­est acts of art would be to go out into a crowd and shoot a revol­ver into it.

❝ ... the other things that went into [Outside], Brian and I are both fans of a form of art known as Out­sider Art. I, for the last 15 years, have lived next to the holy shrine of out­sider art, an art museum in Swit­zer­land called Le Brut, set up by Dubuffet. He set it up be­cause he felt he was ter­ribly in­flu­enced by the kinds of art that were made by peo­ple who lived an un­struc­tured life – in insti­tu­tions, or her­mits, or were os­tra­cized by society for one rea­son or another. He col­lec­ted the art that they made and to­ward the late years of his life opened this museum and put their work in it. That actual­ly was a source of inspi­ration when we went in for our last three albums in the late 70s. ... The les­son to learn from out­sider art was that the artist should be primal. Tech­nique or virtu­osity didn’t matter; that which was un­formed and scream­ing inside of you, wait­ing to be released, was the real essence of the crea­tiv­ity. ... The idea of work­ing with­out knowl­edge or judge­ment, either self-judge­ment or of how the out­side world per­ceives what you’re doing.
❝ I’ll tell you some­thing which hap­pened sub­se­quent­ly to record­ing the album which was dis­tur­bing in it­self. There’s a Dutch artist, Rob Scholte, who’s pret­ty well-known in Europe. One day, in Decem­ber 1994, he came down from his apart­ment and got in his car w/ his wife and he heard a tick­ing sound. Need­less to say, his car seat blew up and he was left with­out legs. With­in a week fol­low­ing that, one of his con­tem­po­ra­ries had been down to the attemp­ted as­sas­si­na­tion spot and filmed the wreck­age, the crash area, and was using it as a per­for­mance piece in a gallery in Am­ster­dam. That’s not a hair’s breadth away from what was satir­ical. And of course now Rob Scholte is doing per­for­mance shows where he makes great play over the fact that he no long­er has a pair of legs. They still haven’t found out who blew him up, but there are all kind of theories rang­ing from a drug con­nec­tion to a jealous artist.

❝ The morality of any society is quite strange. In the final­i­ty, it’s deci­ded by law what hap­pens. Peo­ple change their net­work of com­fort by chang­ing laws to make things accept­able or un­accept­able.

❝ I think that our religious philos­o­phies trail so far be­hind the way that we actual­ly live today that we find our­selves in a spiritual void, and I think it affects the young very much indeed. ... We con­tin­ual­ly try and find ritual, but we have no religious order to con­nect that ritual to. ... So we have to re­invent God, I think, in our own new way of life to give our­selves anoth­er form of spir­itual sus­tenance.
❝ Oh, I’ve got the fond­est hopes for the fin de siècle. I see it as a sym­bolic sacri­ficial rite. I see it as a deviance, a pagan wish to appease gods, so we can move on. There’s a real spiritual starva­tion out there being filled by these muta­tions of what are barely remem­bered rites and rituals. To take the place of the void left by a non-author­i­ta­tive church. We have this panic button tell­ing us it’s gon­na be a colossal mad­ness at the end of this century.

❝ I think the idea of becom­ing com­for­table with the idea of chaos is how we are pro­gress­ing – that life and the uni­verse are ex­treme­ly untidy. Any­thing that pulls back the veil on that chaos is a step near­er a more realis­tic under­stand­ing of what our state is – so I em­brace chaos. I’m a child of the ’70s, re­em­ber. I’m plural­istic by nature. I always had the un­for­tu­nate facility of being able to see both sides of every pic­ture. It wasn’t a ques­tion of not being able to deter­mine which side I was on, but see­ing that things didn’t have sides. It wasn’t as sim­ple as that. ❞




    |  EXTRAS:   Diary   Lyrics   Credits   Photos
footnote heading


▶ [1] William Burroughs The concept album Outside is based, in part, on Bowie learning on his new computer. Coming across an app à la The Cut-up Method, the cosmic chameleon stitched together digital words, becoming “virtually the entire genesis” of his nineteenth album and fourth collaboration w/ Brian Eno. Bowie had just stepped away from finishing the soundtrack to 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia mini-series for BBC Televsion. -|-

▶ [2] Contamination Outside was just one of several albums, a set, that Bowie started to work on w/ Brian Eno. The next one was to be Contamination, peopled w/ “17th century characters”. The day after Bowie’s death, Eno recalled: “About a year ago [David and I] started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that.” -|-

▶ [3] Album -|- Producers: David Bowie, Brian Eno -|- David Richards (co-producer) -|- Mixing and additional treatments: David Richards, David Bowie -|- Mastering: David Richards, Kevin Metcalfe -|- Assistant Engineers: Ben Fenner, Andy Grassi, Jon Goldberger, Domonik Tarqua -|- Album Design & Image Manipulation: Denovo -|- Photography: John Scarisbrick -|- Stylist: Jennifer Elster -|- Recorded at Mountain Studios, Switzerland. -|- Mixed and additional treatments by David Ricahrds, assisted by David Bowie. -|- Mastered by David Ricahrds and Kevin Metcalfe at The TownHouse Digital Mastering Studios, London. -|-

▶ [4] Musicians -|- David Bowie: vocals, saxophone, guitar, keyboards -|- Brian Eno: synthesizers, treatments, oblique strategies -|- Reeves Gabrels: guitar -|- Erdal Kızılçay: bass, keyboards -|- Mike Garson: grand piano -|- Sterling Campbell: drums -|- Carlos Alomar: rhythm guitar -|- Joey Baron: drums -|- Yossi Fine: bass -|- Tom Frish: additional guitar on “Strangers When We Meet” -|- Kevin Armstrong: additional guitar on “Thru’ These Architects Eyes” -|- Bryony, Lola, Josey and Ruby Edwards: background vocals on “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” and “I Am With Name” -|-

▶ [5] Outtakes Includes, among others: “Enemy is Fragile” – “I’d Rather Be Chrome” – “Dead Men Don’t Talk” – “Inside the Motel” – “Baby Fingers” – – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 1” – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 2 – “The First Time” – “Hello Leon” – “OK Riot”. -|-

▶ [6] Tour On the Outside tour, Bowie and his band would come onstage while opening act Nine Inch Nails was finishing, and both bands performed “Subterraneans”, “Hallo Spaceboy” and “Scary Monsters”, followed by 2 NIN songs (“Reptile” and “Hurt”), after which NIN decamped and Bowie’s set played on. -|-

▶ [7 Lyrics] Leon Takes Us Outside: Leon Blank Valentines Day - 25 - June - 16th - Wednesday - July 6th - 20 - 0 - 20 - 15 - Martin Luther King Day - June 18th - June 6th - Wednesday - August 18th - 9th - 1999 - 12 - Nicholas - August - Wednesday - 13th - Sunday - 5th - March - October - January - October 13th - Wednesday - Martin Luther King Day - Afternoon - In view of nothing - 20 - 0 - 1 - Late winter - Martin Luther King Day - 12 - 16 - August - Wednesday - 13th - Friday - 7 - June. -|-

▶ [8 Lyrics] Outside: Prologue Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday, not tomorrow. It happens today, the damage today. They fall on today - they beat on the outside, and I'll stand by you. - Now. Not tomorrow. It's happening now, not tomorrow. It’s happening now. The crazed in the hot-zone. The mental and diva’s hands. The fisting of life to the music outside, to the music outside. It happens outside, the music is outside. It’s happening outside, the music is outside. It’s happening now, not tomorrow. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. The music is outside. It’s happening outside. The music is outside. Outside. -|-

▶ [9 Lyrics] The Heart’s Filthy Lesson: Detective Nathan Adler (Heart’s filthy lesson) There’s always the Diamond friendly, sitting in the Laugh Motel. The Heart’s filthy lesson, with her hundred miles to hell. Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us, other than our clothes. Something in our skies. Something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy, who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes? It's the Heart’s filthy lesson - falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Oh Ramona, if there was only some kind of future. And these cerulean skies: Something in our skies - something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy? Paddy, oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. (Heart’s filthy lesson) I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Will you carry me? Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss. (Heart’s filthy lesson) It’s the Heart’s filthy lesson. Tell the others. -|-

▶ [10 Lyrics] A Small Plot of Land: Citizens of Oxford Town Poor soul. Spit upon that. Poor soul, he never knew what hit him - and it hit him so. Poor dunce. He pushed back the pigmen. The Barbs laughed - the fool is dead. Poor dunce. He’s less than within us. The brains talk but the will to live is dead. And prayer can’t travel so far these days. The talk of your life, standing so near - to innocent eyes. Poor dunce. Swings thru the tunnels and claws his way. Is small life so manic? Are these really the days. Poor dunce, poor soul. -|-

▶ [11 Lyrics] (Segue) Baby Grace (a Horrid Cassette): Baby Grace Blue Test, testing, testing - This, hmmm, Grace is my name - And and I was...um... - It was that photo... a fading photograph of a patch..., a patchwork quilt. - And they’ve put me on these ... - Ramona put me on these interest drugs - So I’m thinking very too bit too fast like a brain hatch - And ah they won’t let me see anybody - If I want to sometimes ... and I ask - I can still hear some pop...popular musics and aftershocks. (Ahhh-choo) See I’ve been watching a television of um... in the homelands - That’s the new homelands and um that’s all I can remember - And now they just want me to be quiet - And I think something is going to be horrid. -|-

▶ [12 Lyrics] Hallo Spceboy: Paddy (Hallo) Spaceboy - you’re sleepy now - Your silhouette is so stationary - You’re released but your custody calls - And I want to be free - Don’t you want to be free - Do you like girls or boys - It’s confusing these days - But Moondust will cover you - Cover you - This chaos is killing me - So bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - This chaos is killing me - And the chaos is calling me - Yeah bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Good time love - Be sweet sweet dove - Bye bye spaceboy - Bye bye love. -|-

▶ [13 Lyrics] The Motel: Leon Blank For we’re living in a safety zone don’t be holding back from me. We’re living from hour to hour down here and we’ll take it when we can. It’s a kind of living which recognises the death of the odourless man. When nothing is vanity nothing’s too slow. It’s not Eden but it’s no sham. There is no hell there is no shame. There is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and it’s lights up, boys. Lights up boys. Explosion falls upon deaf ears while we’re swimming in a sea of sham. Living in the shadow of vanity - a complex fashion for a simple man. And there is no hell and there is no shame and there is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and the silence flies on its brief flight. A razor sharp crap shoot affair and we light up our lives. And there’s no more of me exploding you. Re-exposing you. Like everybody do. Re-exploding you. I don’t know what to use. Make somebody move. Me exploding. Me exploding you. -|-

▶ [14 Lyrics] I Have Not Been to Oxford Town: Leon Blank Baby Grace is the victim, she was 14 years of age. And the wheels are turning, turning, for the finger points at me. All's well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well no I have not been to Oxford Town. Toll the bell pay the private eye. All’s well - 20th century dies. And the prison priests are decent, my attorney seems sincere. I fear my days are numbered - Lord get me out of here. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is your shadow on my wall. This is my flesh and blood. This is what I could’ve been. And the wheels are turning and turning, as the 20th century dies. If I had not ripped the fabric, if time had not stood still, if I had not met Ramona, if I’d only paid my bill. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is my bunk with two sheets, this is my food though foul, this is what I could have been. -|-

▶ [15 Lyrics] No Control: Detective Nathan Adler  Stay away from the future, back away from the light, it’s all deranged - no control. Sit tight in your corner, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. If I could control tomorrow’s haze, the darkened shore wouldn’t bother me. If I can’t control the web we weave, my life will be lost in the fallen leaves. Every single move’s uncertain, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. I should live my life on bended knee if I can’t control my destiny. You’ve gotta have a scheme, you’ve gotta have a plan, in the world of today, for tomorrow’s man. No control. Stay away from the future, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. Forbidden words, deafen me in memory - no control. See how far a sinful man burns his tracks, his bloody robes. -|-

▶ [16 Lyrics] (Segue) Algeria Touchshriek: Algeria Touchshriek My name is Mr. Touchshriek, of Touchshriek, with mail over and fantasy. My shop sells egg shells off the shesores and empty females. I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop to a Mr. Walloff Domburg - a reject from the world wide Internet. He’s a broken man; I’m also a broken man. It would be nice to have company. We could have great conversations. Looking through windows for demons, and watching the young advance in - all electric. Some of the houses around here still have inhabitants in them. I’m not sure if they’re from this country or not. I don’t get to speak much to anyone or that sort of thing. If I had another broken name - oh, I dream of something like that. -|-

▶ [17 Lyrics] The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty): Artist / Minotaur I shake - at the mother’s brutal vermin. I shake - and stare at the watery moon. With the same desire, as the sober Philistine. And I shake (turn and turn again) worm, the pain and blade - turn and turn again. The screw is a tightening atrocity - I shake. For the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell. The need to have seen it all: the voyeur of utter destruction - as beauty. I shake - turn and turn again - I shake - turn and turn again - I shake. Research has pierced all extremes of my sex. Call it a day - call it a day. Needle point life blinds the will to be next - call it a day. Today. -|-

▶ [18 Lyrics] (Segue) Ramona A. Stone / I Am With Name: Ramona A. Stone + her Acolytes I was Ramona A. Stone. I started with no enemies of my own. I was an artiste in a tunnel. But I’ve been having a mid-life crisis, and I’ve been dreaming in a sleep. And ape men with metal parts, I’ve spat upon deeply felt age. I’ve hid my hearts in, and I hate the funny colored english. We’ll creep together you and I, for I know who the small friends are. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. A night fear female. Good timing drone. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. (She should say: twitch & stream - it’ll end in chrome - night of the female - good time drone.) A person who loses a name, feels anxiety descending. Left at the crossroads, between the centuries - a millenium fetish. (Give it to me one more time!) Anxiety descending. -|-

▶ [19 Lyrics] Wishful Beginnings: Artist / Minotaur Cruising around me - the flames burn my body. Wishful beginnings - does this remind them again and again? You’re a sorry little girl. You’re a sorry little girl. Please hide - for the pain must feel like snow. You’re a sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. Please hide from the kiss and the bite - shame burns. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in only doubt - the pain must feel like snow. I’m no longer your golden boy. Sorry little girl, I’m sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow, there you go. Cover me, cover me. We flew on the wings. We were deep in the dead air, and this one will never go down. We had such wishful beginnings, but we lived unbearable lives. I’m sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. So so sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow. There you go, there you go. -|-

▶ [20 Lyrics] We Prick You: Members of the Court of Justice White boys falling on the fires of night (I wish you’d tell). Flesh punks burning in their glue. Revolution comes in the strangest way (I wish you’d tell). I’d rather be inside you. Tell the truth - we prick you. (You show respect even if you disagree - you show respect.) Mama can I kiss you daddy can I ***you (We wish you well). Innocence passed me by. Wanna be screwing when the nightmare comes (I wish you well). Wanna come quick and die. All the little rose-kissed foxy girls - shoes, shoes, little white shoes; where have all the flowers gone? All the little fragile champion boys - toys, toys, little black toys; dripping on the end of a gun (Even if you disagree). -|-

▶ [21 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler Old Touchschriek was the main nameserver. Suspected of being a shoulder surfer, but he didn’t know from shit about challenge response systems. Now Ramona A Stone we know was selling interest drugs. She got males all hung up on her mind filters. She was if you don't mind me saying so an update demon. Now Leon, he couldn’t wait for 12 o’clock midnight. He jumps up on the stage with a criss criss machete and slashes around cutting a zero on everything. I mean a zero - in the fabric of time itself. Was this a suspect? I says to myself - Woa! “Quelle courage!” - Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to when it all began– -|-

▶ [22 Lyrics] I’m Deranged: Artist / Minotaur Funny how secrets travel, I’d start to believe - if I were to bleed. Thin skies, the man chains his hands held high. Cruise me blond cruise me babe. A blond belief beyond beyond beyond. No return no return. I’m deranged. Deranged, my love. I’m deranged down down down. So cruise me babe cruise me baby. And the rain sets in, it’s the angel-man - I’m deranged. Cruise me cruise me cruise me babe. The clutch of life and the fist of love - over your head - big deal Salaam. Be real deranged Salaam, before we reel. I’m deranged. -|-

▶ [23 Lyrics] Thru These Architect’s Eyes: Leon Blank Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? Looking across at Richard Rogers, scheming dreams to blow both their minds. It’s difficult you see, to give up baby, to leave a job, when you know you know the money’s from day to day. All the majesty of a city landscape. All the soaring days in our lives. All the concrete dreams in my mind’s eye. All the joy I see thru these architect’s eyes. Cold winter bleeds on the girders of Babel. This stone boy watching the crawling land. Rings of flesh and the towers of iron. The steaming caves and the rocks and the sand. Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? It’s difficult you see to give up baby, these summer scumholes, this goddamned starving life. -|-

▶ [24 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler

▶ [25 Lyrics] Strangers When We Meet: Leon Blank
All our friends now seem so thin and frail. Slinky secrets - hotter than the sun. No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé. I’m with you, so I can’t go on. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m bewildered for we’re strangers when we meet. Blank screen TV, preening ourselves in the snow. Forget my name, but I’m over you. Blended sunrise, and it’s a dying world. Humming Rheingold, we scavenge up our clothes. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m resentful for we’re strangers when we meet. Cold tired fingers, tapping out your memories. Halfway sadness, dazzled by the new. Your embrace was all that I feared. That whirling room, we trade by vendue. Steely resolve is falling from me. My poor soul, all bruised passivity. All your regrets ride rough-shod over me. I’m so glad that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m so thankful that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m in clover for we’re strangers when we meet. Heel head over, but we’re strangers when we meet. -|-

▶ [26 Credits]
Based on re­ports from, among oth­ers, Nick DeRiso, David Fricke, Kev Geoghe­gan, Paul Gor­man, Edna Gun­der­sen, Larry Katz, Peter–R. Koe­nig, George A. Paul, Chris Rob­erts, Emma Saun­ders, Steele Savage,. And In­ter­net searches, thank yous to: bowie­songs; The National; Jason Lund­berg; One Half of the Bow­lettes; lo-fi noise makers; wn; john b; Mauro B. C.; sonya­kossta; Time­takes­a­fag; Sense­Of­Doubt1; bowie­chick; Beco­2103; the­Music­of­my­Life1; BOWIE­lover; Jorge Gago Lopez; Matt Cham­ber­lain; joy­marr; KyOdar; BlueM2012; Hal­lo­ween­jack84; An­na Den­nis; david bow­ie tin ma­chine.


▶ [28] The Diary of Nathan Adler
aka   THE
ART-RITUAL
MURDER
OF
BABY
GRACE
BLUE
A
non-linear
Gothic
Drama
Hyper-cycle
          |- -|  It was at precisely 5:47am on the morning of Friday 31 of December 1999 that a dark spirited pluralist began the dissection of 14-year-old “Baby Grace.” The arms of the victim were pin-cushioned w/ 16 hypodermic needles, pumping in four major preservatives, colouring agents, memory information transport fluids and some kind of green stuff. From the last and 17th, all blood and liquid was extracted. The stomach area was carefully flapped open and the intestines removed, disentangled and re-knitted as it were, into a small net or web and hung btw. the pillars of the murder-location, the grand damp doorway of Oxford Town Museum of Modern Parts, New Jersey. |- -|  The limbs of Baby were then severed from the torso. Each limb was implanted w/ a small, highly sophisticated, binary-code translator which in turn was connected to small speakers attached to far ends of each limb. The self-contained mini amplifiers were then activated, amplifying the decoded memory info-transport substances, revealing themselves as little clue haikus, small verses detailing memories of other brutal acts, well documented by the ROMbloids. |- -|  The limbs and their components were then hung upon the splayed web, slug-like prey of some unimaginable creature. The torso, by means of its bottom-most orifice, had been placed on a small support fastened to a marble base. It was shown to varying degrees of success depending upon where one stood from behind the web but in front of the museum door itself, acting as both signifier and guardian to the act. It was definitely murder – but was it art? |- -|  All this was to be the lead-up to the most provocative event in the whole sequence of serial-events that had started around November of tha same year, plunging me into the most portentous chaos-abyss that a quiet lone-hacker like myself could comprehend.

|- -|  My name is NATHAN ADLER, or Detective Professor Adler in my circuit. I’m attached to the division of Art-Crime Inc., the recently instigated corporation funded by an endowment from the Arts Protectorate of London, it being felt that the investigation of art-crimes was in itself inseparable from other forms of expression and therefore worthy of support from this significant body. |- -|  Nicolas Serota himself had deemed us, the small-fry of the division, worthy of an exhibit at last year’s Biennale in Venice, three rooms of evidence and comparative study work which conclusively proved that the cow in Mark Tansey’s “The Innocent Eye Test” could not differentiate btw. Paulus Potter’s “The Young Bull” of 1647 (exactly 300 years before I was born, incidentally) and one of Monet’s grain stack paintings of the 1890s. The traditional art press deemed this extrapolation “bullshit” and removed itself to study the more formal ideas contained in Damien Hirst’s “Sheep In a Box.” Art’s a farmyard. It’s my job to pick thru the manure heap looking for pepper­corns.

Friday - 12-31-99 – 10:15a |- -|  As in any crime, my first position is to peruse the motive-gag. The recent spate, thru ’98-’99, of concept-muggings pretty much had me pulling breath for an art-murder. It was a crime whose time was now. The precedents were all there. It had probably its beginnings in the ’70s w/ the Viennese castrationists and the blood-rituals of Nitsch. Public revultion put the lid on that episode, but you can’t keep a good ghoul down. |- -|  Spurred on by Chris Burden’s having himself shot by his collaborator in a gallery, tied up in a bag, thrown on a highway and then crucified upon the top of a Volkswage, stories circulated thru the nasty-neon of NY night that a young Korean artist was the self-declared patient of wee-hours surgery in cut and run operations at not-so-secret locations in the city. If you found out about it, you could go and watch this guy having bits and pieces removed under anaesthetic. |- -|  A finger-joint one night, a limb another. By the dawning of the ’80s, rumour had it that he was down to a torso and one arm. He’d asked to be left in a cave in the Catskills, fed every so often by his acolytes. He didn’t do much after that, I guess he read a lot. Maybe wrote a whole bunch. I suppose you can never tell what an artist will do once he’s peaked. |- -|  Round this same time, Bowie the singer remarked on a coupla goons who frequented the Berlin bars wearing full surgery regalia: caps, aprons, rubber gloves and masks. The cutting edge. |- -|  Then came Damien Hirst w/ the Shark-Cow-Sheep thing. No humans, palatable ritual for the worldwide public. The acceptable face of gore. Meanwhile in the US, 1994, I was in town on the night of the Athey scarifications.

Thursday - 10.27.94 – 122 E. Village, Manhattan |- -|  Ron Athey, performance artist not for the squeamish - former heroin addict-HIV positive, pushes what looks like a knitting needle re­peat­ed­ly into his forehead, a crown of blood, must hurt like hell. Stream red dribble-dribble. No screams. Face moves in pain. Carried upstage and scrubbed down in his own blood. Then water. Now dresses in nice suit and tie. Now in the black T-shirt and jeans, carving, w/ a disposable salpel, patterns, into the back of Daryl Carlton, a black man. Bloody blotted paper towels then hung on a washing line suspended over the heads of the audience. Blood-prints from life. An extremely limited edition. When it was first performed back in March, “Four Scenes in a Harsh Life” exploded contro­versy shrapnel through-out the National Endow­ment for the Arts. “We have taken every precaution w/ our disposal systems,” An Athey spokes-person said. “The towels containing the blood are im­me­di­a­te­ly depos­ited in hazar­dous-waste bags. Each evening, the material will be driven to a hospital for final disposal.” Athey says he is dealing w/ issues of self-loathing, suffer­ing, healing and redemption.

Friday – 12-31-99 – 10:30a – Museum of Modern Parts |- -|  I’m drinking up the Oxford Town. New Jersey fume. Salty and acid. Maybe I can get a handle on this thing back in Soho at the bureau. It used to be Rothko’s studio, now the playground for all us Art-Crime folk, AC’s or “the daubers” as we’re dubbed. Rothko himself, in a deep-dark-drunk one night, carefully removed his clothes, folded them up neatly, placing them upon a chair, lay upon the floor in a crucified position and after several attempts, found the soft blue pump of his wrists and checked out He’d held the razor blades btw. wads of tissue paper so that he wouldn’t cut his fingers. Deep thinker. Always was.

11:00am - “Dauber” HQ, Soho |- -|  The only names the Data bank can associate w/ Baby Grace are Leon Blank, Ramona A. Stone and Algeria Touchshriek. The rundowns are brief but not to the point:
|- -|  RAMONA A. STONE: Female. Caucasian. Mid-40s. Assertive maintenance interest-drug dealer and Tyrannical Futurist. No convictions. Contacts: Leon Blank, Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|- -|  LEON BLANK: Male. Mixed race. 22 years. Outsider. Three convictions for petty theft, appropriation w/ plagiarism w/out license. Contacts: Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|- -|  ALGERIA TOUCHSHRIEK : Male. Caucasian. 78 years. Owner of small establishment on Rail Yard. Oxford Town, NJ. Deals in art-drugs and DNA prints. Fence for all apparitions of any medium. Harmless, lonely.

|- -|  Small cog, no wheels. Not much to go on but R.A. Stone weighs heavy on my memory. No problem, it’ll come back. Best thing to do now is feed all relevant pieces into the Mack-Verbasiser, the Metarandom programme that re-strings real life facts as im-probable virtual-fact. I may get a lead or two from that. ... 11:15a |- -|  Jesus Who. I hate typing. Anyhow, we’ve got some real inter­es­ting solvents from Mack-random. How about this! Verbasiser down-load, first block: No convictions of assertive saints believed Caucasian way-out tyrannical evoked no images described – Christian saints questions no female cristian machine believed no work is caucasian assertive saints believed female described christian tyrannical questions – R. A. Stone convictions martyrs and tyrannicals are evoked Female described sado-masochist questions – I am suicide described the fabric machine – Slashing way out saints and martyrs and thrown downstairs.

|- -|  Now the swirl begins. Now the image stack backs up and takes center stage. Ramona A. Stone, I remember this thickness, this treacly liquid thought. But wait, I’m ahead of myself. 6-15-77 – Kreutz­burg, Berlin |- -|  It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep for the screaming of some poor ostracised Turkish immigrant screaming his guts out from over the street. His hawking shriek sounds semi-stifled like he’s got a pillow over his mouth. But the desperation comes through the spongy rubber like a knife. It cuts the breeze and bangs my eardrums. I take a walk past the fabric machine, turn left onto a street w/ no name. The caucasian suicide center, naked and grimy, silhouetted by fungus yellow street lamps female slashing way-out saints for a dollar a time thrown downstairs if you can’t take any more. Pure joy of retreat into death, led by the shepherdess. Anti mixed-race posters pasted upon their altar of pop-death icons party people. |- -|  A zero w/ no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says “in the future, everything was up to itself.” Yea. |- -|  I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. She must have overseen more than 30 or 40 check-outs before the local squad twigged what was going down.

10-28-94 |- -|  New Yorker magazine, advance copy celebrating fashion. It’s a first of its kind since Tina Brown took over as editor. One look is all it took. It took the look and wrote a new book on what sophi-staplites would take and bake. Guy Bourdin featured heavily in this new eDISHion. Since the advent of AIDS and the new morality, and, of course his death, his dark sexy fatal style had fallen out of Vogue. |- -|  An uncompromising photographer, he had found a twisty avenue through desire and death. A white female leg sticking gloomily out of a bath of black liquid enamel. Two glued up babes covered in tiny pearls. The glue prevented their skins from breathing and they pass out. “Oh it would be beautiful,” he is to have said, “to photograph them dead in bed.” |- -|  He was a French Guy. He had known Man Ray. Loved Lewis Carroll. His first gig was doing hats for Vogue. He’d place dead flies or bees on the faces of the models, or, female head wears hat crushed btw. three skinned calves heads, tongues lolling. What was this? Fine Arts? The surrealists might even think his work passé. Well, it was the ’50s, that's what it was. The tight-collar ’50s seen through unspeakable hostility. He wanted but he couldn’t paint. So he threw globs of revengeful hatred at his nubile subjects. He would systematically pull the phone cord out of the wall. He was never to be distrubed. Distrubed. Never. Everything and everyone died round him. |- -|  One shoot focusing upon a woman lying in bed was said to be a reconstruction of his estranged wife’s death. Another picture has woman in a phone booth making some frantic call. Her hand is pressed whitely against the glass. Behind her and outside are two female bodies partially covered by the autumn leaves. His dream, so he told friends, was to do shoots in the morgue, w/ the stiffs as mannequins. I don’t know. I just read this stuff. Now his spirit was being resurrected. We’re mystified by blood. It’s our enemy now. We don’t understand it. Can’t live w/ it. Can’t, well ... y’know?

Friday - 12-31-99 - 11:30a |- -|  After surgery and investment in a bullet-proof mask, Ramona turned up in London, Canada as owner of a string of body-parts jewellery stores. Lamb penis neck­laces, goat-scrotum purses, nipple earrings, that sort of thing. The word on the street, how­ever, suggested that it was not in the best of interests to become one of her clients as occas­sion­ally, a custo­mer would step into her shop and not come out again. |- -|  The whistle blew after a much-loved and highly respected celebrity, known for being known, failed to show for a gallery-hang­ing of her mirrors. Other celebrities, equally known for being known, some only to each other, thought it the most profound exhibit in years and couldn’t take their eyes off the works. All the pieces sold within an hour, many for record prices. |- -|  When the critic for Tate maga­zine asked for an inter­view w/ the celebrity-artist, the gallery owner re­called that he hadn't seen her since earlier that day. She’d men­tioned that she would be going shop­ping for a diamond-en­crus­ted un­bilical cord as a celebra­tory thing to announce her pregnancy. She would be back in an hour. Just a quick stop at the “Gall­stone.” |- -|  1986. That preg­nan­cy would have been produced a being that would be around 14 years of age. If it was still alive.
|- -| 
To be continued...
-|- Also,
The Annotated Diary of Nathan Adler


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