Stories and Bocce

Mark decided that we should stay up until midnight every night so that we wouldn't be going to bed at 6 PM when we returned to the West Coast.  The only problem was that sleeping until 8 AM felt both slovenly (from an Eastern Time point of view) and masochistically early (from a 5 AM Pacific Time point of view).  Getting up at 7 was a little worse, but required if one wasn't going to lose the morning. 

Our routine developed into get up, perform our ablutions, drive to a coffee roasting cafe (located within an old bank), order coffee and tea, then drive to his mother's house.  

Monday morning was a continuation of the previous day's party, only more laid-back and with fewer people.  Mark's mom is recovering from various medial issues related to being in her eighties; she was doing much worse back in May, and looked pretty good in August.  

We gathered in the TV room and listened to stories from her childhood.  She was a wild Catholic girl, and told us how she used to dress in a Catholic school uniform in the morning, throw jeans out of her bedroom window, head to a friend's house, change into the jeans, go to school, and then reverse the process going home so her parents wouldn't know she was wearing pants to school.   She also used to tell ancient and maidenly aunts who hosted her over summers that she was going to go play basketball with friends when she was really going to Coney Island to kiss boys.  There were other stories of 1940's and 1950's social life:  young boys being shipped off to pre-seminary school; wearing fancy hats and gloves to watch polo games; and fussy aunts who literally would run a finger over one's furniture and inspect the digit for any resulting dirt.  

It was all interesting -- and I consumed at least two clever little eight ounce cans of Pepsi -- but I was overcome with the desire to nap, and passed out, before 11:30 AM, masked up, on a couch in another room.

Monday evening, there was another party, this time with a game of bocce.  Mark's out-of-town siblings had left, but the Virginia Dwyers were still around.  I pulled out my camera to take some more photos of folks.  One team gathered together, and to get good photos of them, I had to climb up to the tallest part of the yard. 

Mark saw me in the distance, but -- because of the way my hair was falling over my shoulders, and because my COVID mask covered my face, and because I was crouching down -- he didn't recognize who I was or what I was.  

So he came over to take a photo of the troll hiding in the vegetation, realized as he got closer that it was me,  and started laughing.  

Dwyer Family Gathering

Most of Sunday my body had no idea what time it was.   Suffern is at about the same latitude as Eugene, so the sun's more or less in the same altitude.  But I unconsciously expected the sun to be three hours, or forty-five degrees, behind where it actually was.   Also, we were eating at radically different times.  Mostly, I tried to not think about what the clock said on the west coast and not nap at weird intervals.

Tropical Storm Henri sent bands of rain to deluge the Dwyer Family Party.   This was both good and bad.  The good part was that the day wasn't like a sauna, and the rain pulled dust and pollen out of the air.  The clouds were a welcome change of place after months of arid skies in Oregon.   The bad part was that it kept everyone inside, which made face mask usage An Issue.

Mark and I (and The Child a week before us), had decided that we'd wear masks around Mark's mom so we didn't expose her to the Delta Varient if we'd picked it up flying.   So wearing a mask wasn't a problem for us. 

Once a vending pop-up tent was deployed in the back yard, it was easier to social distance, and The Issue went away.   Between rounds of deluge, tipping out the water which had collected in the folds of the pop-up became a kind of bonding experience.  Folks rotated between the smoking lounge in the opened garage, the pop-up tent in the back yard, and the living room where Grandma and a metric ton of potato chips, cake, potato salad, mini sandwiches, soft drinks, and varios dips were.   The bad-mitten game planned for the day was cancelled on account of the storm.

What I find interesting about Dwyer Family Gatherings are the sibling dynamics.  Also, a number of the Dwyers smoke; so the garage/smoking-lounge turned into the place where people processed their truths as trails of smoke wreathed their heads.   I'm the oldest, only brother in my family, and my sister is the only youngest sister;  this plays out in a straight-forward fashion between us.  Mark's two older brothers, and his mix of four sisters -- two older, two younger -- creates a more dynamic dynamic, with folks trading off on older-sibling-to-younger-sibling relations depending on the parties involved.  Mark is the youngest brother, which means that he frequently invokes youngest-brother-nuclear-deterrent strategies.   I'm pretty sure that no matter how old one gets, when one is dealing with one's siblings, one reverts back to about twelve when is confronted with them.  

The award for most scary story goes to B, a family friend from Ireland, who related a couple of tales growing up during The Troubles, the most traumatic being the time he was eight, watching "Lassie" at home, when soldiers knocked down the door, held a rifle to his mom's head, and wanted to know where his dad was.  

Scary in a different way was the World-Famous Dwyer Butter (this example is very early stage Dwyer Butter, as there are no crumbs embedded in it, and it isn't partially melted).

Flying to Suffern

Mark and I flew to his Mother's home in Suffern, New York.  The Child had gone a week prior, on Mark's Birthday, and we had a week alone at home, doing what most parents do when their child goes away on a week-long vacation:  we slept a lot.  Okay, and other things.  

Normally, we visit Mark's family about once a year.  Frequently, there's a family gathering of some sort that involves the brother from Virginia, and the sister from Pennsylvania, and occasionally the other brother from Buffalo converging on Mark's Mother's House.  Mark's Mother is a Great-Grandmother, and it is not uncommon for grand-children and their families to vist, too.  

Covid put the kibosh on travel last year, and various health issues dictated a smaller gathering this time around.

The morning of our travels, Mark took Aoife to Doggy Daycare.  She knew something was up -- probably from the suitcases -- because early that morning, she crawled into my lap and pressed herself against me.  Mark reported that she uttered a Dolorous Cry when he drove away, leaving her in the care of the Doggy Daycare Ladies.  

The cats were delighted that we were leaving. 

When we got to the Portland Airport, it looked like everyone in Oregon had decided to get one last flight in, despite the Covid Delta Varient going around.  The signs to the parking lot lied when they said there were spaces available, and it was only after a lengthy search and some creative decision-making processes on Mark's part that we were able to locate an empty spot the car would fit in.  

Luckily, we'd left in plenty of time. 

The terminal was packed.  An ocean of travellers serpentined through the security check line.  Social distancing was a joke.   Mark had anticipated this situation, and we managed to expedite the TSA lines by going through pre-check.  It was like a Disney Fastpass; we sailed through empty lanes up to the check point and were through it in about five minutes.  Considering how much my cary-on baggage's strap was biting into my shoulder, I am very grateful Mark had the foresight and we had the means to arrange dodging the non-socially-distanced masses.

The flight was mostly uneventful.   

I had a window seat -- it's always interesting to me to see the calligraphy of the canyons in the mid-west, the exclamation points of wind turbines, and the regular  patchwork grid of roads once you are flying over Illinois.

Mark sat next to a woman who ordered two beers and a lot of snacks.  The moment of irony was that the very nice flight attendants were forced into tech support and spent ten minutes handling her iPhone so she could connect to the plane's WiFi, activate her credit card on the airline's app, and participate in the contactless payment method for her food and beverages.  Mark double-masked when her first beer spritzed out of the can and onto him.   

Despite all this he managed to get far on his knitted socks.  

The sun set while we were somewhere over Chicago, painting the trailing edges of the wings with red gold.  Later, the full moon rose and turned everything silver.   I was struck by how many times we've been travelling on a full moon; I can can think of three other instances.  Our wedding ceremony seventeen years ago was on a full moon, so this was technically a lunar anniversary.  

As we began our descent, we flew below the cloud deck. 

Tropical Storm Henri threatened to give us a bumpy landing, but our pilot got through it smoothly.   We must have been between storm bands when we landed.

A car rental, a trip through some really heavy rain, and about ninety minutes later, and we were at our hotel room.   I'm pretty sure we fell asleep quickly. 

Hieroglyph Magic

The last Intro to Hieroglyphs Class was the other week, and I've been spending some time writing various words in hieroglyphs, making flashcards, and going through Sir Alan Gardiner's "Egyptian Grammar, edition three."  "Egyptian Grammar," is interesting and informative (and funny in some places), but I did have a moment about two days into it where I had to admit to myself that I had secretly hoped it would be filled with Ancient Egyptian Spells (cue DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy asking High Priestess Natira of Yonada about The Book of The People concealed within an obelisk, "Don't you long to know its secrets?").  

While I have found a section to a "spoken offering" frequently carved in mortuary temples, so far there hasn't been a Middle Kingdom version of "Oh Zephyr Winds / which blow on high: / Lift me now / so I can fly!"  

What is intriguing about hieroglyphs to me is that their use of unvoiced determinatives, which are frequently ideograms, at the end of words. Written English doesn't use them, but the closest thing I can think of that would be like them was if we wrote the word "stop" and then added a red octagon at the end. Or, I suppose, the word "poop" and then added the poop emoji (eye roll).   Ideograms and determinatives give Egyptian hieroglyphs an appealing graphic design element.

One word I thought I would like to try out is "ḥekꜣ," or, to give it's English translation, "magic."  It's spelled wick, ka, vulture, man pointing to his mouth.  The wick is a twist of flax used in oil lamps.  The ka is a soul or spirit.  The vulture is a vulture.  The determinative of the man pointing to his mouth ends words related to voice, eating, or the mouth.   

I went to the Unicode web site, found the hieroglyphs, arranged them in InkScape, then imported the InkScape SVG into Blender.  After a while fiddling with Blender meshes -- I need to re-import the SVG and close up holes in the individual meshes -- I had some objects I could render.  Unfortunately, importing the unicode characters, especially complex characters with lots of loops and holes, results in confused meshes that aren't manifold (or "air-tight"); so I couldn't use what I'd created to engrave hieroglyphs from a solid block using a Boolean difference function.  Oh, well; only embossed figures for me.  

I'm ambigious about the result.  On one hand, it's cool to see the Ancient Egyptian word for "magic" glowing on a computer screen.  On the other hand, there's room for improvement.  The unicode characters are great for sending Tweets, IM, or e-mail messages; but they don't scale up well.  The way the characters are constructed doesn't give me much room to play with stroke weight, so some hieroglyphs look chunky.  Granted, this is a typeface and not graphic art, but because they're designed for an 8 or 12 point, there's no option for fine details like fingers or eyes, and so things look utilitarian and over-simplified.  I'm thinking that I might improve this render if I'm able to bevel the hieroglyphs so they don't look quite so blocky.  Finally, these simply might look better engraved instead of embossed. 

Perhaps I can use photos of the Sarcophagus of Harkhebit for more finely crafted examples 

Accidental Grotto

Last night it rained.  A marine system must have blown in, because today has been overcast, with thick grey clouds lazing across the sky -- it's like a late September day, only it's mid-August.  Not that I'm complaining:  I much prefer partly-cloudy mid-70's to clear (or hazy) 100's.   If I had been awake, most likely I would have gone outside and held my palms over my head to receive the rain's touch.

Over the summer, the fort in our yard has turned into a kind of grotto.  Originally constructed about a decade ago with some help from my dad, the fort was supposed to be a tree-house without a tree for The Child to play on.  Mostly it's used by the cats as a scratching post--or at least it was until Aoife came to stay and the cats abandoned the back yard.  Sometimes it's a good spot for astronomy for when one needs a boost above the neighborhood rooflines; but it does shake a little, which is not so good for astrophotography.   Mark planted grape vines that scale up the west side of the fort and this year I've trained them along the railings so that the deck of the fort isn't completely overgrown.  Various objects d'art have found places to hang from on the fort:  wind chimes,  a folate head, little bells, a putti head, op-art LED stars, a bronze bat with a polished heart, and, most recently, the old wrought iron dragon sconces we bought almost twenty years ago (and which required newly-purchased Moroccan lanterns).  

It's too low for me to stand up straight under, but I took a cue from Frank Lloyd Wright and place a low, ergonomic gamer-chair and a small side table, and voila! it's a shaded place from which to write.  At least in the spring and summer.  In a few weeks the grape leaves will yellow and fall off, and -- hopefully -- the rains will return, and then the regular deck will be the go-to outside place to write.  

In slightly related news, in addition to hummingbirds, a flicker and a raft of different types of finches have discovered the fountain.  Mark and I watched four finches congregate on top of the flat granite and flutter into the upwelling.

Christmas with the Dead

This morning I dreamed that Mark and I were on a road-trip that ended up at my Aunt Joanne and Uncle Ron's house.  Their house was more a location, because it was located on the Dream North Side of Ridgewood (which in real life is getting developed).  Both have passed away, but that didn't occur to me during the dream -- in fact, I recall noticing that Aunt Joanne looked younger and fitter than my mother currently does.

It was Christmas time.  There was a dream-conglomeration of "extended family members," but Joanne and Ron and Mark were the most clearly there.  My cousin Kevin was there, I think.  The recall is fuzzy, but I suddenly realized that they were setting up altars of some sort.  They were made out of cardboard boxes, a little larger than shoe boxes, decorated with paper and felt.   I want to say they were red, blue, and green, with crosses, stars, and filigree -- kind of like stain glass windows, only with fabric.   There was a main altar set up on a serving buffet, and then a kind of low communion rail about five feet away made up of more decorated boxes lined up on the hardwood floor.  Everyone had their own personal box.  I want to say the boxes were stacked up into a low wall (sort of like cardboard bricks in a preschool), and that there were some larger boxes cut on a diagonal as a form that the smaller boxes could slide into.

The family had gathered to assemble the boxes into a display, and were lined up at the rail.  It was some sort of family ritual, sort of a cross between singing Christmas carols and saying grace.  (In real life they aren't particularly religious.)  I had a few moments where my clothes kept changing--I'd look down and notice I was in a bathrobe, or naked, or that I needed to dress up a little bit.  There was a sense that I needed to wake up and join the party.  Eventually I managed to have the appropriate attire and joined everyone.  

I'm guessing some of this dream comes from last night's discussion of my parent's monster Christmas Tree decorating and a general focus this week on Ancient Egyptian writings to deceased ancestors (spoken prayer offering of a thousand bread and beer, a thousand beef and fowl, and all that is good and pure for a spirit to live on).  It does seem strange to me that I'd dream of my maternal Aunt and Uncle, and not my fraternal Aunt (who has passed the most recently).... but then again, I'm thinking the Family House in the Woods typically involves my mom's side of the family.  

Anniversary Canoe Trip

Sunday the First was the day that Mark and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.   I can hardly believe that we've been together seventeen years.  I'm not even sure what that is in Gay Years.  We planned to eat dinner at the Local Nice Restaurant, and I suggested that we go for a morning's canoeing on a canal off of the Willamette.

The Child declined to join us on the canoe trip.  The last time we went canoeing on the canal was about three years ago.  This time it was just Mark (navigating in the back)  and me (rowing in the front); if I had been thinking ahead, I would have brought a picnic.  We started a little north of Alten-Baker Park in the Autzen Canal, followed it past the stadium and dog-park, past the Cuthbert Amphitheater, and continued along to the Patterson Slough.  At first, there were two osprey in the sky; one had a fish in its talons.   When we floated under bridges, we saw where swallows had plastered their adobe nests to the underside. 

There are many large mansions along the shore where the canal meets the slough.  I think Mark's favorite yard had the two fake coyotes glaring out over the water.  We couldn't decide if they were supposed to scare the geese (no goose poop here) or intimidate the raccoons or nutria.    

As we paddled upstream, we passed groups of ducks standing on their heads and geese preening on logs.   We had to port the canoe in two places, but managed to float underneath I-5 -- where there's a cool mural of canoeing Native Americans -- and all the way to the gate separating the slough from the Willamette.  We caught a quick sight of a heron before it flew up stream and out of sight.  

Floating back was nice (well, okay, there was that one probable meth-user under a bridge who was so obviously drug impaired that he couldn't figure out how to take off his shirt); I got to turn around and actually look at my husband as the lilies, maples, pines, and grasses passed by.  Small jeweled dragonflies like sapphires and emeralds flew along side us, and sometimes larger ones with clear windows in the middle of their wings.  

We saw more and more people on or along the water as we went on; in some ways it was too bad that the canoe rental doesn't start until 11 AM, because it would have been nice to be on the water during the cooler part of the day and have the it more to ourselves.  On the plus side, we saw three dogs with their owners on paddle-boards; so that was cool.

Mathematical Art and Full Moon

The latest distraction in my life is a program called iOrnament.  It's a doodle-pad that has some automatic graphic symetry built into it.  Paint a line, and it's instantly reflected, glided, and tessellated into one of seventeen different patterns -- it's kind of like drawing with a kaleidoscope.  

It's very easy to get Moroccan tiles out of it, and I think if I choose the right settings and place curves carefully I can get Celtic knots out of it.

I'd say for the most part it's relaxing, but it runs on my mobile, so I'll have to watch out that I don't get a kink in my neck from hunching over a notecard-sized drawing area while I swipe lines with my fingertips. Like most art tools, I think you get what you put into it.  

I may or may not have gotten a kink in my neck working on the fiddly details of green scarab legs in an Egyptian-inspired design.  

Last night was the Full Moon.  It became visible above the hills and trees around 9:45 PM.  The geography of our back yard means that it can be difficult to site the Moon in the Summer time -- especially if the Moon is hanging out below the ecliptic, which makes a low summer moon even lower.  

Last night was also the night "Jefferson Starship" performed at the county fair, so strains of "Jane," "Somebody to Love," and "We Built This City" kept floating over the hill and ricocheting off of the neighbor's houses.  Luckily for the mystic vibes, by the time the moon rose high enough in the sky to be visible, the concert was finished.  

I wasn't in the mood for a Full On Solitary Neo-Pagan High Ritual, so I set up the Four Cardinal Patio Tables, got a chair, and quietly harped in the shadows and dappled moonlight.  Many of the tunes I play are traditional ballads in the key of A-minor, and I tried to focus on songs in C-major instead.  There was a lot of improvisation, but I did manage to pluck out "Center of the Sun," which I always imagine hearing the old Seattle a cappella group, "We Three" singing, but comes out nicely on the harp.  

The reflective moment was a grounding end to an obnoxious week.

Scintillating Wednesday

Wednesday was a low energy day.  It started out fine, but then a little after 9 this morning I started getting a blind spot in my vision, and then the flashing dots appeared.  There wasn't much of a headache, but the strobing did make it difficult to read anything.   I'm not sure what triggered it -- I hadn't had a chocolate snack yet (or that much tea), and the last one had been the previous night.  I'm wondering if my mobile phone might have been the culprit, but I really won't know.   I was mostly fine after a two hour nap, but not at my best for the rest of the day.   The only thing good about these stupid migraines is that they're mostly flashing vision problems, so I'm thankful that they don't feel like someone's driving nails into my head -- but I do wish if I were going to have scintillating spirals in my vision that some sort of mystic Hildegard von Bingen experience would come with them.  

Saturday, Mark and I went to the beach with Aoife.  We ended up at Muriel O. Ponsler Memorial State Scenic Viewpoint and beach.  I am trying to remember the last time I was at a beach, and it must have been before the COVID outbreak.  The sky was mutable, with patchy clouds blowing overhead; at one point a thick cloud bank blew southward over the coastal spurs.   The strong wind blew little tendrils of sand along the dunes and reminded me of a dream I had back in the 1980's where blowing coastal wind indicated a spirit gull's displeasure.

I brought my sand compass, and also the anchored string for making spirals.  Aoife wanted to eat the stick I used to make arcs in the sand, but I managed to create a thirty-two foot diameter pattern of arcs and concentric circles.  The anchor stayed put more securely than I'd hoped, and it would be very easy to use it to make a spiral path in the sand.  As long as the dog doesn't help too much.  Next time I'll have to bring some plywood for a straight edge. 

There were a few times when we could let Aoife off leash--she loved running back and forth in the sand--but as it got later, it seemed prudent to keep her leashed.  Also, we didn't want her harassing the sea gulls too much.  Aoife didn't want to be more than about two blocks away from us, so we had to stick together on the beach.  Mark held her leash while I drew; I held her while Mark went exploring on the low tide rocks.  

We didn't find any agates, but there was a nice basalt stone that feels good in the palm, and also a stone that looks a little like a worn Egyptian cartouche with mysterious, suggestive strokes within it.  

On the way back home, Mark stopped the car at a scenic overview and we managed to see four whales spouting.   On the way back home, Aoife slept and slept and slept.  

Group Dancing Dreams

Dreamed I was on top of a mesa.  I think I was in a rectangular, fenced area.  On the other side of the fence, there was a group of people dressed in white:  white pants, billowy white tank-tops.  They ran along the side of the fence, leaping over logs and rocks.  It occurred to me that they were dancers, and that they were dancing a herd of cows running along the fence.  

There's a break in my recall.

I was with a large group of people.  I'm thinking that possibly a wedding happened earlier in the dream, and the group was gathering in a large stoney cave (? underneath the mesa ?).   I think we were gathering to get on a bus or train.  In any case, the cave floor was a rough square, and I have an impression of benches or rows of seats.  There was a block and tackle in the cave, and (I don't recall if I started it or someone else) it was swinging from one side of the cave in a large, circular arc.  Folks had to duck to avoid getting whacked by it.  

A discussion of sorts started, with someone commenting that there was lava beneath us, and this would be a bad place for a secret lair.  I chimed in, "I would totally build a nuclear reactor here!"

There's another break.

The group of people and location had changed, but I was still in a largish group inside a large room. It might have been Library Story Hour.  A speaker or teacher or instructor appeared, he wore bulbous, reflective sunglasses that gave him an insect-look.  He had a soundtrack... I guess hip-hop?  And he started leading a dance-exercise routine.  I got close enough to him to notice that he wore reflective plastic around his eyes (sort of like a mask, only there were two pieces of plastic), which extended the reflective area around his eyes. 

Art Imitating Egyptology

For the longest time, I've always enjoyed the love duet sung in Philip Glass's Akhenaten.  I'm not sure if my favorite lines are "I behold thy beauty every day," or "it is my desire to be rejuvenated with life through love of thee," or, "give me thy hands, holding thy spirit, that I may receive it and live by it," or "call thou my name unto eternity, and it shall never fail."   Okay--it's the last line with its image of a lover invoking their beloved's name and the sound rippling through time and space in a sustaining wave that speaks to me the most.   

The opera's libretto notes that this is a love poem found in a royal mummy of the Amarna period, from Journal of Egyptian Archæology, translated by Sir Alan Gardiner.  I imagined that a strip of poetry was wrapped up with other amulets and talismans, maybe even written by the surviving partner.  

Fast forward--for fun I'm taking an introductory class in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and I thought, if I'm learning how to actually read the things I'm seeing at the MET, I should see what the original love poem looks like.  If Gardiner translated it, that implies he worked from hieroglyphs.  And maybe I could reproduce the hieroglyphs into a translated piece of art for the home.  So I started to search.

I wound up on JSTOR, and spent what felt like six hours trying various searches of Journal of Egyptian Archæology AND Gardiner, or Gardiner AND "love poem", or Amarna and poem (it was here that I discovered the libretto I was working from had spelled Amarna "Armarna").   The problem was that the Journal spans over a hundred years of articles, and the libretto didn't specify which volume it was referencing.  It looked like I was going to need the services of an Honest to Horus Reference Librarian.

When I told Mark, and he realized I was working from an opera, he said, "Uh, John; maybe they made the poem up.  You know, it's art."  I protested that the journal and Gardiner were real, but Mark just smiled. 

I went back to JSTOR and figured that I had to do a different kind of search.  Somehow, I hit the right combinations of Akhenaten and Glass and came up with a Egyptologist's review of the Philip Glass opera.  While he didn't quote the poem, he did mention in the footnotes that it was from the King's Valley Tomb 55, and that Gardiner had written an article, "The So-Called Tomb of Queen Tiye" in the Dec 1957, 43rd volume of the Journal of Egyptian Archæology.   I would have never found it using the keywords I had been using.

I skimmed the article... old French archeologists..., haphazard tomb..., so-and-so can be forgiven for..., souvenirs..., this translation is gibberish..., is it a man or a woman in this sarcophagus, ... and I got to a description of bands of gold foil that had been affixed to the inside of the sarcophagus but had fallen onto the mummy... very likely Akhenaten's name had been removed from the gold foil and someone else's name replaced... and Gardiner's actual translation.  

Which was similar to the English words in the libretto.  But some phrases from the original had been omitted in the libretto, and the libretto's transliteration in general was short, present-tense declarations, instead of a long future-tense affirmation.  The result is that Glass's wording is more ambiguous, whereas Gardiner's translation is more firmly a prayer from a woman (probably Nefertiti) to a divine being (the Aten, or Akhenaten as the emissary of the Aten). It wasn't even wrapped in the mummy, the gold bands of a funerary prayer or spell had fallen off of the inside of the lid of the sarcophagus and onto the mummy.  

"It's not the real grail?!?!" I said, quoting Micheal Palin as Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Mark was right, sort of, Glass had taken artistic license with the poem.

Oh well.  I've got the original hieroglyphs now, I suppose I can work with Gardiner's scholarship and see what design I can come up with.

Sunday Morning Writing

Last night I stayed up way too late reading old "Dykes to Watch Out For" (the moving van volume).  As a result, I had some weird dreams about moving into an old house that had its front end on a fraternity row (in the dream it was a cross between 26th Street between Monroe and Tyler Streets in Corvallis and a mashed-up quad from Carleton College and the UO), had its middle in a New York City Times Square shopping mall, and its end and garage near an ocean (which required a twenty minute drive through winding coastal hill forest roads just to get around to the front).   I remember liking the house's interior, but other than a vague recollection that I was starting a new job with academia, I don't remember much.  

The yard is blooming in a haphazard way.  Mark would like more formal plantings, but neither of us has the inclination to plan that far ahead.  It doesn't help that our soil has a high clay content and probably has orchard chemicals in its past.  Mark does have many bonsai and other potted plants outside, and he did build a raised bed, but the effect is more like the back-side of a gardening store than an actual formal garden.  Oh well... Mark has some plans for arbors, so that will be nice.

Mark has taken Aoife on a hike, so I'm writing in the garden circle.  We'll see how long I last before the pollen overcomes me.  Since the dog is gone, I've opened up the garage for cross-ventilation and have just been visited by Cicero's brother, Spencer.  It remains to be seen if our cats will actually venture into the yard -- oh!  and here comes Smokey now, to sit on my keyboard and shed all over everything.  

(On cat session and tea-refresh later)

I'm continuing to study Egyptian hieroglyphs: I've got the uniliteral "alphabet" ones down and I'm slowly adding bi- and trilteral signs to my pile of flashcards.  𓆣 is a trilateral sign pronounced (by Egyptologists, at least) as kheper, and has the same phonetic value as   𓐍 𓊪𓂋 .   I've got a few more on-line classes, and by the end of them I should be able to do a translation of an offering formula.   I'm hoping that I can find the siting of a love poem from the Journal of Egyptian Archæology, translated by Sir Alan Gardiner, and used in Philip Glass's, Akhnaten, (I breathe the sweet breath that issues from thy mouth / I behold thy beauty every day...) but so far I haven't located it (reading ninety-year-old oh-so-polite arguments of how to translate three-thousand-year-old poetry is amusing, however).  Thinking about it some more, I suspect the original is in hieratic and not hieroglyphic, but it would fun to see the original and see how "call thou my name unto eternity, and it shall never fail" was written:  was it "give voice" to my name ?  or "invoke" my name ?  or "speak" ?   Given the ancient Egyptian attitudes toward magic and the written word, I'm curious how how much of the poem is a spell.  

Hieroglyph Flashcards

As part of my Intro to Hieroglyphs class, I've made some flashcards as a memory aid to the uniliteral phonetic hieroglyphs used during the Middle Kingdom period in Egypt.  Between visits to the MET and various books I've picked up over the years, I seem to have about half of them memorized already.  For the ones that I don't know, I've had to make up little stories to remember their sounds.  

𓄡  is a mammal's belly (and tail), and makes the "ch" sound in the German word, "ich;" so I had to come up with the rhyme, "We want a pitcher, not a belly "ich"-er.   Not to be confused with

𓍿 which is a rope hobble, and makes a "tch" sound, like in "itch."  

𓐍 is something Egyptologists debate (is it a loaf of bread or a placenta?), and makes the "ch" sound in the word "loch", so I pretend this is Nessie's (the Loch Ness Monster's) eye.  

𓂝  looks like a Boston valet's arm and hand as they offer to "park the car", and it makes the ayin sound, which is broad "a" sound.

I'm not sure if I have a favorite hieroglyph.  It would be something like 𓀆 (to purify?) or 𓇽 (star) or 𓇱(night?) or  𓇰(storm?)  or 𓆈 (a gecko) or 𓆣 (scarab; to manifest ,to become)

I'll have to make flashcards for bilateral and trilateral signs next.

July Dragonfly

The dragonflies have been patrolling our yard.  This one seems to be a regular.  I'll have to look up what kind it is--they're common in this end of the valley--it's probably a flame skimmer.  

The cats haven't been in the yard much because of the dog.  However, they're venturing into it more and more, which will probably make things harder for the small flying creatures that have had a cat-free spring.

 

Researches

It has been a slothful Sunday morning.  I woke up a little sore, and elected to transition form sleep to waking in a hot bath.  Further indulgences included an outside breakfast of half an avocado, black tea, and Pop Tarts.  

Mark, ever more industrious than I am, especially in the early mornings, has already varnished a new bench he is building, planted lavender seeds, reduced a pint of raspberries for a desert topping, harvested some poppies and foxglove seeds, and done general weeding.  

Spurred to some action, since breakfasting, I've photographed some new sunflowers, photographed some violet flox, trained stray grape vines back onto their "arbor," spread a few poppy and foxglove seeds, and now I'm writing while finishing up the last remains of the tea.

On the writing front, "Doors of the Past" has been released at Abyss and Apex Magazine.  So far the reader feedback I've gotten has been very good, and I'm pleased that the story has found a home.  

On the NeoPagan Readings Front, I picked up a copy of Storm Faerywolf's Betwixt and Between (2017).  No Hot Gay Male Pagan Secrets so far--and it may be a bad assumption on my part, based on Faerywolf's orientation, that there are.  Some of the "poetry is truth" and pedigree statements about Feri in the introductory chapters in B&B prompted me to dig up my old copy of Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition (1994), by Cora Anderson.   I'm not the biggest fan of the testimonial style in Fifty Years, (although it does remind me a little of the cloak and dagger insinuations of Dion Fortune) and Anderson has a whole pile of axes she grinds in her sixty-three page book.  But it does explain some of secret traditions and midichlorian count faerie-blood claims (and in turn reminds me of some of the writings of William Butler Yeats on Fairy Doctors).  I'm also tempted to contrast and compare with Starhawk's Spiral Dance (1979).  B&B appears to pick up in chapter three; I really appreciated the part where Faerywolf brings up time management as a skill witches should have in their toolkits.  

In other news, I'm taking an on-line introductory course in reading Middle Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs.  I'm telling myself it's Story Research, but really, it's so I can have a better idea what is written on various artifacts at the MET.  The biggest insight so far (which I should have realized before the class) is that Middle Kingdom Scribes had a C.S. Lewis-Discarded-Image-esque symbolically mystic relationship to their written language that is different from the modern, Western, information-revolution, scientific tool of description relationship with our modern alphabet and written English.