I’m a little tea pot

“…but many a thorn without a rose.”

Same fly, too.

“M stands for magical, miraculous, mystical … mad.”
- Colin McGinn

A Ratha Yatra is an annual tradition in some of the many Hinduisms. To put it in the most respectful terms, devotees make two or three figurines redolent of anime characters, stick them on a peaked cart and pull them down the street like pack animals. Then some funny little brahman gets word around that if one is crushed by a cart wheel, the wheel of dharma will fall from its tracks, releasing one from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Some hapless Dalit’s smell a good deal, and stick their heads under the wheels. The ensuing sound, to the surprise of everyone, sounds remarkably like a man stepping on a snail.

Thus the word “juggernaut” (ultimately from Sanskrit Jagannatha and the cart festival at Puri) was introduced into the English language by an observer guilty of comparing an overwhelming and unstoppable force with an event physically equivalent to a tricycle mowing down a kitten.

Two carts bearing a Jagannath murti. Venice, CA: the Calcutta of the southland. Be careful where you step.

I would like to congratulate ISKCON on the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Ratha Yatra. The people of your organization found it in themselves to create a dignified carnival atmosphere, which at times also reminded me of a circus; your personnel resembling the players of a sideshow.

Though I am a friend of the faith, I have some suggestions for future functions, which I hope you will not take as jab from a repellent contrarian, but as a loving offering at the god’s red feet.

But first, the auspicious mantra for help in the endeavor:

HARI KRISHNA HARI KRISHNA
KRISHNA KRISHNA HARI HARI
HARI RAMA HARI RAMA
RAMA RAMA HARI HARI

The first observation and suggestion concerns the layout of your function. I often find it useful to prepare for formal criticism by imagining the subject and then abstracting from all content, almost as if I am contemplating a mandala.

The problem with your layout was that you had crap scattered all over the place. When you have a rug and you are treating it with a brush, it is usually helpful to apply strokes in a single area and work outward, to thoroughly shake off the dust. Substitute curious visitor for rug,
baldheaded minion for brush, and gelt for dust. You have grasped the very idea.

ISKCON arranged a number of educational displays for review by acute members of the public. This one is about how dudes turn into different things, or something.

Some sophisticated Socrates once posed a question about reincarnation: “If the only thing that floats through the reincarnational ether is the sum of all souls, how the fuck do you explain population explosions?”

Answer: Insects and microbes! Since around the 19th century, humans have taken great strides in the sciences of agriculture and medicine. As time passes, medicine annihilates an increasing number of microbes and other tiny buggers. Agricultural pesticides take care of the relatively big, juicy buggers. Insects and microorganisms are then reborn as human babes.

This explanation is very elegant because it accounts for the decreasing quality of human beings while firmly cementing our queer Eastern dogma.

This display questioned evolutionary theory. I could not read any of the panels in depth because I was chased away by a stocky man with a sloping forehead and enormous brow ridges.

Low right: an extant example of Cro-Magnon man.
Special comments: Odor like curry, but definitely not curry.

Jagannatha is represented by the black face (right) set on the green ribbon. I haven’t a clue as to the identity of his buddies, but they are probably some obscure north Indian gods with relatively few worshipers.

ISKCON, in its usual scrupulous fashion, seems to have transformed Jagannatha into a mode of the ghee-eating Krishna. I imagine this served as ISKCON’s excuse to put on this ridiculous fund-raiser, which depressingly lacked the gore of its Indian predecessor.

My grandfather (center) returning from service in the Pacific (New Guinea). 1945.

I stow entries for a number of reasons. Chief among them are sloth and irresoluteness. Sometimes, though, I find myself composing an entry which cannot conceivably interest a reader, perhaps because the subject is so extremely pigeonholed and tedious that it could only be pursued by an autistic. Some entries are just stupid.

But on Sunday, I found that behavior that is ordinarily boring may become captivating by turning attention to the mania which causes it.

The previous Wednesday, I purchased a South African succulent known as Stapelia gigantea. I selected a plant with a large, diamond-shaped flower bud redolent of a Chinese paper lantern, knowing well that the bud would not emit light, but the dank stench of carrion. I noted, however, that like the Chinese lantern, which is known to attract throngs of children, the bloom would attract a swarm of iridescent flies.

I placed the Stapelia in my solarium, and left the house for the better part of two days, checking in every morning to see if the “egg” had “hatched”. I received a phone call on Thursday night confirming a bloom.

“The egg has hatched. It is very beautiful.”

“But does it smell like rotting flesh?”

“It is stinky, but you have to put your nose inside of it.”

I remembered reading earlier that the traits of S. gigantea have been called “highly variable”, and I realized that my sought after stink had been drowned in the sea of genetic variance. I was so disappointed. U.S.S. Stapelia floundered in my murky memory, to decay in some chasm like a rusty trombone.

Yet as everyone knows, there is much in the seas: they tend to hide disturbing oddities under a poker face of familiarity. Seas will take the crustiest and most interesting denizens of any realm into their welcoming arms, because no practical amount of filth can poison them, save for tons of phosphorus leached from leaky poo plants and storm drains.

The same holds for the sea of genes, which has given us those fruits of the race: Corky and Caligula. Novel phenotypes are hidden in a jumbled sea of genotypes! They wait, intensely frustrated, for an outlet of self-expression! And sometimes they are not even noticed.

* * *

On Sunday morning, I caught the cat squeezing a hirsute octopus, digging with its claws for squeaks of pain to oil the wheel of play.

This is not the first time the cat has dragged in an exotic animal, I thought. But this is more novel than the time the cat brought a baby opossum into the house, which the dog summarily scooped into his mouth and swallowed, I thought.

I seized the hairy mollusk from the cat, which hissed at me in fury.

“I’m going to drop an anvil on you. Get out of here before I put you on a rotisserie.”

And it did, with every ounce of defiance one would expect from a fat, swaggering yellow cat.
(Miraculously I was able to drive myself off the spit before the cat had a chance to light the fuel in his great earthen pit.)

I turned my attention to the octopus once again. I will now admit that it was a complete shock to me, that the “octopus” was not a sea creature at all, but something much more mundane. It was the shriveled bloom of the aforementioned Stapelia, which had fallen from the plant and into the playground of the fat cat.

Without thinking at all, I began to pet the flower eagerly. I found its surface pleasantly fuzzy and mammalian, but regretfully unpleasant to the sight, because it resembled the purple-veined noses of the elderly with its lavender bands and jutting hairs.

I resolved, then, to close my eyes, and explore its exotic surface with my fingertips.


After several minutes of such exploration and without conscious effort, I began to draw analogies between the surface of the flower and the organs of the human body. I noticed, particularly, that the ridges on the flower’s external surface were much like human wrinkles.

And then with my fingers, I breached a sort of canal holding a mass of black pollen, all of which, I found, had been jumbled up into a kind of button surrounded by a mane of erectile hairs.

At this moment, it occurred to me that to only indulge my sense of touch was to indulge myself insufficiently and to limit myself unnecessarily. I then took it upon myself to insert my nose into the canal.

The scent entered my nostrils and, dare I say, extruded a memory from some part of my brain. It was a memory of a text which concerned itself with the “irresistiblity of a piece of rancid cheese”, and while its source escaped me, I thought immediately of that agreeable character, Président de Curval.

After exhaling (and perhaps in a state of intoxication) I thought, You, fine flower, do not resemble an octopus at all, but a languid starfish. I will call you Curval’s starfish. In time you will wither away, and I will build you a tomb. You can be sure I will never forget you. And you, dear starfish, I hope you will never forget me.

For a moment, possessed by Curval’s spirit, I reasoned that if to touch but not smell was an excessive restriction, then to indulge only the tactile and olfactory organs was to do great injustice to my other senses. I resolved, again, to indulge those senses.

And in the passion of enjoyment, it occurred to me that such order, such an agreeable correspondence between my senses and the sensual properties of this flower could never in any probability spring from the Darwinian sea our scientists have postulated.

On the contrary, the beauty of this complementary union could only have been created by a great Demiurge; an Intelligent Creator.

After realizing that I had reserved a number of photographs from my trip to Chicago and noting the incoherence of their subject matter, I found myself tempted to title this entry “Chicago danglers.”

Fortunately, I have resisted the temptation to make a tasteless joke.

A framed illustration of a Turkish man being treated for elephantiasis. From the collection of The International College of Surgeons, Chicago.

The image below pictures an aluminum jacket (brace?) manufactured by A.M. Phelps at the turn of the 19th century. According to an attached caption, A.M. Phelps touted this jacket as tidy, lightweight and durable alternative to the other clunky duds on the market.

It would be very interesting to see this modeled by a woman with a slight excess of flesh.

If the oddities you have been witness to have not been overwhelming, it is time to drop another chip on the table. It is true that this image of an adorable underground musician is innocuous. But the fumes in the Chicago subway tubes certainly are not.

At first whiff, one thinks that one has simply passed through a pocket of bad air. At second whiff, one realizes that the entire subway tube reeks of urine. At third whiff, one wonders if the subway tube is a urethra. At fourth whiff one marvels at the fact that the subway tunnel does not merely smell of urine. No, the odor is more complex. It also smells like a urinal wafer.

Foul smells aside, the Chicago subway system may be one of the best in the country, excluding of course, the semi-frequent occurrence of a blue line train derailing and bursting into flames.

I ended my trip to Chicago watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan. It was my pleasure to enjoy the company of a family which celebrated the occasion by throwing large bottles of malt liquor into its waters. After the festivities, they declaimed the wonder of that rising astral body in a heartwarming verse of Ebonics:

Woooop! Woot woot! Yea! Wooop!

Poppy harvesting tools from Northern Thailand.

Pictured above: A scoring device encased in soft wood. The tool becomes accessible after one draws the woven hold and turns the case on its hinge. This scorer is composed of three closely placed blades fastened to a single handle by a copper ribbon and a rivet.

Below: A brass spatula used for scraping raw opium gum from the poppy capsule.

Perhaps of Hmong origin. Early 2006.

A modified Soviet helmet of Uzbek origin, painted black and crudely embellished with old coins and cow horns. In all probability a flashy Uzbek craft without traditional significance.

An amalgam of Soviet utilitarianism and Turkic earthiness; an icon of Turkestan.

Purchased in Istanbul from rose-faced youths. They also fitted me for a brown pakol and expressed a distaste for Wahhabism. Late 2004.

*

After posting this, I consulted with Nathan Hamm of Registan.net about the traditional significance of the helmet. I have reproduced his response below:

I’ve never seen anything like it! I think you’re right about it being
modified Russian surplus.

That said, it’s an interesting piece!

The International College of Surgeons operates a museum in a Gold Coast mansion. Standing outside the building, looking at the facade, I wonder whether the institution is of any consequence. I glance to my left, at a statue of a physician holding an ailing victim, and put the doubt to rest.

My ass follows suit, parking itself on the ancient Gold Coast curb. I flip my laptop open and seal some kind of union between old and new, type in the name of the grand old institution while taking a moment to meditate upon the words in the hope of opening a channel with Hippocrates or Galen.

The College mission statement glows on the screen at mid-day! Galen squeals through the channel that my mind has hewn through the bedrock of the ages. Unless this is a case of bad ear, and what I hear is in fact a trumpet blaring for the College creed.

This mission statement is told through what I think is a minimalist graphic of an inverted tree called “Missions”, which seems to be held in place by the roots of “Teach”, “Research”, “Communicate”, and “Lead”. I’m amazed that such men of science are equally skilled in the art of allegory. But I confess that I’m far too dull to understand this tree. The whole situation reminds me of the time that L. Ron Hubbard contacted me about the 12 Rundowns of Superpower, which would, according to Hubbard, herald in the New Flag Mecca.

Below the tree, we have a burned orange triangle called “Goals”, which has been superimposed on a Venn diagram. The first class is “Explore New Horizons”, the second class is “Active Participation”, and the third class is “One World, One Organization”.

“Using our vision and missions, we reach our goals. We explore new horizons. We ensure active participation. We create one world, with one organization.”

I think that before involving oneself with an institution, one ought to become familiar with its philosophy. Because, with that multifaceted, luminous, and heavenly kernel, one holds the key to the institution’s life and workings. Since men smart enough to draft a philosophy are always strong enough for unwavering consistency. One necessitates the other like the two heads on the double headed dong.

Actually, I pulled all of that from a William James lecture. You see, I prattle on in this tone, and then I pontificate. I wag my jaws (fingers?) some more, and then I pontificate.

The museum lobby is cramped and drab. A wheelchair ramp leads to a marble platform, which connects to three flights of stairs. In an alcove to my right, a homely secretary pecks away at a keyboard. Her friend, a girl in an untucked oxford shirt, emerges from the office appearing to have swished a mouthful of dish soap. She takes the fee from me like a swaggering Alsatian dominatrix, shakes her bushy tail back into the secretarial alcove and barks something at her companion.

The first floor exhibit is devoted to snake oils of old. This replication of a 19th century pharmacy is explained to visitors by a robot with oscillating eyebrows. The pharmacy room is highly educational and I think that it snuffs the reputation talking robots have as special education teaching aids.

I climb a flight of stairs and reach a cute little display on Eastern medicine.

I remember that on a visit to Thailand, I overheard another American doting on the architectural abilities of the south Asians. He remarked that if the Thai’s had concentrated on rocket science instead of pagoda building, they would have beat us to the moon by one hundred years.

As I look at what appears to be a diagram concerning acupuncture, I can only nod my head in agreement.

As long as we concern ourselves with heads, here’s a trepanning drill.

Anxious? Depressed? Maybe you need to take your brain for a breather. For those in the dark, trepanning is the time honored process of drilling a hole into the skull to give the poor brain a little sunlight. Historically, this seems to have been motivated by the belief that evil spirits could become trapped in the brain and cause mental illness.

Today, trepanning is making something of a come back among so-called “modern primitives” and other morons who hold that the trepan hole allows for a release of pent-up skull pressure. This release is a putative avenue toward child-like “well being” (i.e. retardation). This is all based on the analogy that: i) you feel good when you’re a kid because ii) kids have craniums that are still “closing” and therefore permeable, so iii) you should make your skull permeable again.

History becomes a joker by making what was once a cure a symptom.

A security guard points to this trepanned skull.

“Lo, the author of our mission statement,” he pauses reflectively, “a writer of great humanity and originality. What is more, a thinker so involute that perhaps one or two could really follow him.”

A large painting of an antebellum or Civil War amputation. This reminds me of domestic plane flights in a number of ways. Particularly, the contents of the five dollar snack box.

But anyway. I hope this communicates the unenlightened brutality of a former age and the great strides we have taken.

What isn’t there to like about calcium oxalate deposits taken from the human body? The stones on the low right resemble a beautiful gem like tiger’s eye. One formation on the top left resembles the yolk from a hard boiled egg, while that on the top right is the spitting image of oceanic coral!

Imagine that. To be so fecund as to have the beginnings of a reef growing inside of you!

Perhaps it is unfathomable Nature reacting to the destruction of her reefs by unscrupulous sea go-ers? She refuses to be hampered by the petty ways of man and curses their race by turning them into living sculptures of gradually ossifying torment!

Vaginal and anal specula from ancient Rome.

23 June 2006

It is a wonder that the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) is not more widely cultivated in American regions that will sustain it, as it is a resilent plant of rarely paralleled beauty and amazing utility.

But do not mistake this for a complaint. Unimaginative gardeners ease our pursuit of novelty by granting us great frontiers, and as long as the mass of them subscribe to insipid Martha Stewartism, they also make it very easy for us to seem like badass motherfuckers, which is the sole aim of horticulture.

Lotus seeds are roughly the size of an almond and tend to resemble petrified olives. They are sheathed by a dark outer shell, the surface of which is very similar to a jawbreaker in solidity and texture. This shell is impervious to water. In addition to this protective coat, the seed contains a preservative enzyme, which has been found to potentiate viability for centuries.

Germination requires that we breach the seed coat.

Many gardeners saw a channel into the seed coat, working down to the pale inner contents. It does not matter where one saws this channel provided that one does not drive too far into a vital part of the seed embryo. As a preference, I always saw a single end off with a sharp serrated knife. Some people use power tools, but this is ludicrous and unnecessary.

The image below (courtesy of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew) depicts numerous cross sections that provide a good idea of just how much shell must be removed.

I try to tamper with as little of the tan bit as possible by cutting along the yellow indicators marked on the far left seed, though one may cut or chisel away any part of the dark brown shell. Simply bear in mind that the entire purpose of this operation is to allow moisture into the seed.

The seed must now soak in water sustained at a temperature of 77-80° F. Obviously this means that most gardeners without heating pads are practically confined to a summer germination attempt.

I suggest starting seeds in two liter soda bottles because they will capacitate a large number of seeds. Yet it would be equally possible and perhaps beneficial in some cases to start seeds in a shot glass or a whisky barrel. A general maxim for this plant is that it is very hard to botch the germination process. Possibilities abound.

Over the next two weeks a series of juvenile shoots should grow to the top of the starting vessel. Upon reaching the surface, these shoots usually unfurl into small floating pads. This marks a good time to transplant into a permanent container.

Prepare this vessel by adding roughly two inches of plant media. Heavy clay garden soil is ideal, but commercial aquatic mixes are readily available if you should so choose.

The roots and meandering rhizomes of the lotus will completely colonize a container of this size (4 gallons) in about a year. After this period, it is advisable (but by no means necessary) to place the system of rhizomes in a larger container.

I have noticed that this is best done in winter, while the plant is dormant (not applicable in the tropics).

During the dormant period, one may drain the existing container. After pouring off the water, it should be easy to dislodge the plant by flipping its container. The rhizome system should flop out like a pancake.

Embed this ‘pancake’ in the new container’s media and place the vessel in full sun.

A year old plant after one month of active growth.

High culture.