She-Noah

On the third floor of a medium-sized residential building there is a door through which only creatures – birds, fish and beasts, as well as some beings of diminutive size – are permitted entry. The long-haired, spectacled person at this door has a clipboard, on which is clipped a list against which she checks and ticks with a blue ballpoint pen. And with this same pen she counts their heads as they shuffle in, trot or wiggle, though to perform this she has to crouch down or kneel, since if she bended at the waist she would tower over them and a panic would ensue. The tiniest among them would scatter in all directions in fright and it would take hours to retrieve them from cracks in walls and from under doormats outside other doors.

All come in with their heads bowed, as if giving thanks for being saved. All that is, except the Greek gods who look straight ahead or up at her with a fixed stare, for though small in stature they only kowtow to their own kind, and then only sometimes. Usually if they have something to say, they do it with bolts of lightning or thunder, but of course when you're Borrower-size, these powers too are smaller and have far less dramatic effect. Really, they're gods in name only and are actually just a couple of shepherds herding the flock or driving the horses into this room that thinks it's an ark, in spite of the fact that it's not moored on water nor has the shape of a boat.

There is no flood and this exodus has not been caused by any demi-god. The rains of the sort to be feared have not come to this part of the world, yet the owner-collator has this delusion that if there's a threat of any kind – natural or man-made – where height is not advantageous that somehow her flat will break off from the rest of the block and be safe. It will float or be held aloft by the mere force of air. Rationally that could never be the case, but fears are as irrational as their remedies. I don't believe this owner has heard of gravity, and well, some boats have been known to float on clouds. The sky is just the sea upside down. Or some such nonsense, but her thoughts are so hard for a dispassionate observer to dissect and follow.

This stockpiling is, however, of a different nature, almost akin to purloining and hiding works of art from enemy hands, except these creatures come of their own volition and choose what position they wish to take up. Some jump into framed prints and hang on walls, others sit or stand as figurines on tables; only a few stay floor-bound.

None of these creatures are anywhere near the size of their life-size counterparts, but neither are all what could be called miniature. Raj the elephant is 17.5 inches tall and 10 inches wide. This, too, the owner-collator has to record on her clipboard and these measurements are often the cause of many an argument, since they will vary depending on whether for instance a trunk or tail is flaccid or extended. Obviously if a piece hasn't been sculptured that way i.e. certain parts of the creature's anatomy cannot be moved then the argument is invalid, or should be, but then we all know those that like to argue for the sake of it; the owner-collator was one of those, even though in doing so she pitted herself against herself, some other aspect of her, for she shared the 'ark' with no other full-grown human being. She was Noah. And Mrs. Noah too.

Confusion, as you can imagine, reigned in this boat-that-wasn't-a-boat-household, and yet still the animals came. Hur-rah! Hur-rah! For to get out of the rain; the acid rain that hadn't come, although according to the environmentalists would. Any day now. Or next year, or the year after that. Sorry, they couldn't be more specific.

So, this owner-collator (in her role as a She-Noah) has thus far given shelter to, excluding those aforementioned: a red bull; a mermaid; a heron; a dolphin; two teams of horses – one for land and one for sea (they have webbed feet); some geese; a seagull; an owl; a little Japanese girl; a snake; a sitting Buddha; 4 goldfish; a troll; 3 goats; 4 monkeys; 2 peacocks; 7 camels; a hippo; a dragon; a sea-horse; and a robot.

The whale that should been have the pinnacle of this menagerie was regrettably (and irretrievably) lost in the Great Washing Machine Flood of '87.

Picture credit: Noah and His Ark After Charles Catton, 1819, Charles Wilson Peale (source: WikiArt)

This post was penned in 2019.

Stupidity and Bad Noise and Cruelty: An Elaborate Retelling of Aesop's The Man with Two Mistresses

Stupidity had two women; Bad Noise, the older of the two by twelve years, was his common law wife, and Cruelty, his younger mistress.

All three lived under the same roof, on the top floor of a poky, damp house divided into lodgings. Stupidity and Bad Noise shared a room, and Cruelty had her own room next door. This way Stupidity and Cruelty could hear and speak to each other through the walls, or tap if a private signal was required. The last was necessary because Bad Noise was such a harridan that voice and ears were often quite useless. Bad Noise of course knew about the taps (and Cruelty too) but not the code, yet out of spite would sometimes knock, confusing Cruelty into thinking she was urgently wanted when she was not. Cruelty would rush next door to find Stupidity not in and instead have a volley of abuse hurled at her.

Cruelty, despite her name, never seemed to catch on to this game, or maybe she did but liked it, for after all she was beautiful while Bad Noise was, and always had been, plain, and was now fading fast. Her waist had thickened and her hair, instead of the rich gold it used to be, was more white than yellow, while her face at least had retained its soft plumpness and was one of the few remaining attractive qualities about her.

Yes, being married to Stupidity had prematurely aged Bad Noise, and made her into what she was. A nag. Although from her mother's point of view it had been a good match. A very good match. For Bad Noise had money behind her and Stupidity, though very obviously lacking in intelligence and a bit of a rascal with the ladies, was a handsome chap, with locks like Samson.

However, Stupidity was too extravagant; too good at mismanaging funds and losing money, which Bad Noise, with, at first, displays of weeping, and then a sharp tongue, couldn't curtail. But from then on, from when his character became apparent, she scolded him whatever he did or didn't do.

These fell on deaf ears - all ears will go deaf after a time if that's all they're subjected to – and made Stupidity fall into the paths, or arms, of other women. Most of whom were younger and quieter and owned more beauty than Bad Noise.

Oh, she was a miserable and put-upon wife, dealing as she had to with Stupidity's affairs and creditors, and determined that, in spite of their reduced circumstances and tattered reputation, this should change. A wife and a mistress, rather than a succession of interchangeable mistresses, should be enough for any man, particularly a man like Stupidity. So to that end she worked that idea into Stupidity's head, and, after some time, it took.

Stupidity had by then aged, but aged better. For he'd had none of Bad Noise's stress and all of the pleasure, and age, as all ladies know, becomes a man, so attracting a maid wasn't too difficult. Beauty though often has a cruel, capricious and manipulative heart.

Stupidity was the one, who from the beginning, did all the running and Bad Noise was, as you can imagine, not best pleased. So again she whispered into Stupidity's ear and settled that he should go on journey and return with Cruelty, pretending she was his sister, so that then they could all live together with a semblance of decency.

This they did, though it wasn't, as it turned out, a harmonious arrangement and was of course talked about.

Cruelty was not as docile as she, in public, appeared, and Bad Noise was as noisy as ever. Stupidity, still stupid and vain, was desirous of peace, or some at least, and so he let both, in the evenings and in the presence of each other, comb and dress his hair. This placated the two women for a while, though didn't diminish their individual sense of injustice or competitive spirit, which gently, under the surface, simmered.

Between them they gradually took away the source of his pride. First it was cut, and then it was plucked – Bad Noise plucking out the dark hairs and Cruelty the grey – until he was bald.

Picture credit: The Man with Two Mistresses Fable, Sebastion Le Clerc, the younger.

This post was pennned in 2019.

The Hyenas

I was given to understand I was to apprehend three hyenas.

This lady accosted me on her way to Le Steak de Paris muttering something about hyenas in a bookshop and Balzac. I hadn't the foggiest what she was going on about – I wasn't very literary-minded in those days – though I gathered she seemed to think just from looking at me that I was a, a New Yorker and b, a plain clothes officer or somebody that could at least uphold the law or whatever the etiquette is in bookshops.

I was neither. Just an English tourist visiting New York in the fall of '63. I had to tell her that. She was naturally crestfallen, but welcomed me to the city and invited me to partake of some sardines and plain bread. I accepted gratefully, being newly arrived. Although I didn't know her from Adam and really couldn't be sure she wasn't a nut. A person escaped from an institution or something, let out for the day to associate with 'regular' people. I mean this was New York, right. And anything goes in New York, so I'd been told.

But hyenas? Balzac? I couldn't find the connection, but then, I thought, not being familiar with Balzac, maybe there was one...and anyhow I had come to New York expecting, no, wanting adventure and so in that spirit I should humour anything the city offered up.

This lady was it. Though she was, as I found out, Irish-born. And proud of it, too. I wonder that I hadn't noticed the accent because there were hints of it there.

So, on a sleepy Saturday afternoon, over the luncheon table, we spoke further on Balzac and mashed sardines and hyenas. Or rather she spoke and I listened, for her brush with 'these horrors' had really quite rattled her.

She told a good yarn, like she was practised in it or spent a lot of time observing people and listening in to their conversations. I wanted to ask her if the city did that to you: made you curious about the people around you, but I found her, now we were a little acquainted, quite formidable; I didn't like to interrupt, just in case she took off her glasses (as she'd done with the hyenas) to get a better look at me. Impressionable young men, as I was then, can't bear being scrutinized, particularly by a woman somewhere in her mid-forties who to them all of a sudden seem worldly-wise. And inwardly I was embarrassed, too, for in those first seconds of our meeting hadn't I presumed she was mad?

She wasn't, as some of you might now be thinking, a Mrs. Robinson either.

For some reason we didn't exchange names. It didn't come up or we didn't get around to it; it didn't seem to matter. Company is company and talk is talk, I guess. And the sardines were very good, even without whatever ingredient Balzac was said to add to their paste. That's what the lady had been reading of, in the bookshop, when her 'ears were insulted', and now couldn't recall just what it was he added. It was obviously a puzzle to her that she meant to solve. She hadn't purchased that book; that book was still in the shop, where she'd also left the hyenas to their antics.

The hyenas, I should explain, had human form: a man and a woman and another. A bookcase hid the third from her. The lady didn't give much of a description of them, as to their physical appearance, but their hard voices, 'squawks of laughter' and puns had stirred her into a quiet rage. She had even bestowed on them names: Cruelty, Stupidity and Bad Noise, which I saw from her eyes she was testing out on me, to gage my reaction. Well, I almost choked on a piece of crusty bread, though I couldn't say if that was the effect she hoped for, to say nothing of my manners. And I only tell you this so you get a better idea of just who I was sitting across from. She seemed to me a Muriel Spark type; in fact, it's Ms. Spark I see whenever I now try to picture her. But then the years since that chance encounter are long. I turn eighty this year, though still compose my thoughts like a boy. Funny what you remember and what you forget...

The lady and I parted on good terms, but, as with our names, no exchanges of addresses were made, nor did I run into her again (or she into me) during my stay. However, I did pay a visit to her bookshop on Forty-eighth Street. All was calm; no hyenas were present.

Picture credit: Woman in a Bookshop, Aubrey Beardsley.

Article Recommendation: Balzac's Favourite Food by The Long-winded Lady (AKA Maeve Brennan).

This post was penned in 2019.

The Real McCoy

Exploration. Of the mind. Of the world. Of space. Because where does it begin and where does it stop. What is exploration and what is it not.

Does a psychiatrist not explore? Does an anatomist not investigate the human body? Does an artist – a writer or painter – not explore unseen worlds or, if concerned with the present, expose the detail that most of us miss in this reality?

Does exploration have to involve travel? To, and within, foreign countries with equipment? With teams of people, a team being led, or following on behind, as back-up, in case the expedition should not go well?

But, can it not mean also being still? Doing, but not, for example, climbing a mountain or covering a vast distance, but examining something at close-range, like a plant or a body part, or a people?

And are these feats more heroic if they are the accomplishment, or the conviction, of one man or woman, rather than a team effort? Though women explorers seemed to be more easily forgotten about; consigned to a dusty record of history while the men are canonised, even if what these women did at that time was all the more remarkable because women's capabilities were questioned.

Even now, we're so predictable with our short-list of icons, across diverse fields, because still it's the men, and the most notable of these, that come out on top.

My questions, though, are too big for me to attempt any answers, so I won't.

All I will say in regards to exploration, if you expand the term as I've done above, is that it can mean and encompass many different things to many people. Whereas if you just consider it in the 'old' way it's rather limited, because it does then, in my view, have to include movement. And possibly a conquering, too, of, for example, unmapped terrain or a fear. And to do that you need to be a special sort of person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Tender is the Night (Book Two), has Dick Diver make an observation about a woman-artist, a patient at his clinic in Switzerland presenting with nervous eczema (it later turns out to be neuro-syphilis):

Exploration was for those with a measure of peasant blood. Those with big thighs and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took salt and bread, on every inch of flesh and spirit.

-Not for you, he almost said. It's too tough a game.

His phrasing is of its time (1934), but is he right? Do you need to have come from a certain stock, be of a certain temperament?

I think Fitzgerald has something there: that to be an explorer you need to have a toughness about you. Even if it's not always felt but for show. Very few of us have that, or can put it on convincingly, and with it also demonstrate the resilience and determination that these feats often call for.

And those that do manage to put on a tough exterior, tougher in manner than their natural character, and sustain it with each subsequent attempt, to, for example, break a record, be it of speed or distance on land or water, or something that's never be done or since replicated, whether they succeed or fail, do so at a great personal cost. A psychological cost. It's not unknown, nor unheard of, for such types to crack up.

But maybe exploration didn't always come with that strain. Maybe only those born to it made these voyages, across seas to be warmed by other suns or nourished by other soils, while those who weren't (and knew they weren't) were content to dream, to read of them – of these adventurers and their exploits, which often seemed incredible, even dangerous and ridiculous, according to the judgements of the era and how they later came to be regarded - as their own tidy or messy lives passed by.

Picture credit: Daydreaming Bookkeeper, 1924, Norman Rockwell (source: WikiArt)

This post was penned during 2019.