He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

[jacktellslies]

Now, earth, hold what earls once held
and heroes can no more; it was mined from you first
by honourable men."

From Beowulf,
translated by Seamus Heaney

The street in North Philadelphia on which The Wagner Free Institute of Science is located is half abandoned, but the houses and their shells are bold things: bleeding reds, bricks in all the warm browns of living flesh, and the trees on the street dressed to match: brilliant yellows, oranges only a touch off from the red. Cities are my favourite old dandies. They've been turning plants into pocket squares since before the old men I so admire could manage their own ties. It's a brilliant block, bits of the Broad Street Victorians still holding on, not quite rotting yet.

In the museum itself one can find case upon case of mounted things: bugs, butterflies, bees, shells, squid, stones. There are skeletons of horses, fossils of ancient fish, and stuffed things, crows, owls, big cats, apes, bears. It's a Victorian museum, and it hasn't been much altered since its creation. The cards were mostly hand written by the first curator. It's still trying to prove Darwinism: the specimens increase in complexity as one moves through the isles, as if each creature were only a step in a path that ended with the viewer. Huzzah. Humanity. Success. The cases are arranged by scientific classes, but this has the secondary effect of creating magnificently subtle shifts in colour palates: the wings of moths fade from the silvers and creams of antiquities into pale purples and back into aging lace again. It moves in soft gradients through one hundred wings, and happens again in the next case, art manifested as an accident of science. And the taxidermy is magnificently incorrect. Alas, much of it is actually just fine, but some of it is aging perfectly, a seam showing here, a patch of fur worn down there, and some, even better than that, was sown with personality. A stuffed lynx holds a stuffed rat in its mouth and grins like a devil. An ape rages. A fox flirts. A raven is quite clearly disappointed in you. It's nature as performed by man. Any other creature on this earth would find a dead thing and see meat. We see fiction.

I spent today in shops with stones. I met mother of pearl set in silver and shaped like a blind girl's eye. There was a bit of tiger's eye, heavy, and rich, and red. It would look dangerous on a woman, as if she could catch a piece of you in it. Really, one of the finest pleasures in life is selecting jewelry for a beautiful woman. One must consider her colouring, the drop of her neck, the way that her hair falls, and what she means in relation to all of the jewels in the world: what could possibly be worthy of her? And how lovely to consider these things, to be surrounded by jewels and to think of a girl.

There were ammonites, too, and more mounted butterflies. Their wings burnt like the fall, or held the sky when the sun has set but the night hasn't followed: a wave of cerulean and little moons on the edges, closest to the blackness. There were stones whose name I didn't know and can't remember: if one could freeze fire, crystalize it as it flickered and burst, one would have this. The earth, simply by way of being the earth, can cough up such geometries. Beauty can exist as an accident of chemical and pressure and heat. All that's left to us is to seek it.

What I decided upon, however, was a three inch sphere of labradorite. Choosing a girl's jewelry is quite the solemn task, but choosing her oracles is a devastating responsibility. One must not only honour her form and some playful idea of what she means, but all of her, and of what she needs, too. In this case I chose dark, with shining moments in the depths. I've never experimented with this particular art, but this ball holds remnants of the conflict between the complicated mathematical forms in which stones dress themselves and the roundness that was imposed upon it. It felt as if such a struggle would lend itself well. Stones speak so clearly. I don't work with many tools, but that such crystals should be born of a living planet, through no art, through no intent, simply as a matter of course, seems the far stranger thing than that they should have strength, that they should have meaning and the power to convey it.

Comments

[chronographia.livejournal.com]

Oh very excellent. I hope one day when I am old and grey to open a lapidary shop, equal parts natural and unnatural history.

Having amassed a small horde of gemstones myself, I can only approve of your choice of labradorite. It is dark and earthy to behold, murky and unclear. The dark fissures wind their way through it like some complex cypher and then suddenly there is a flash of green witchfire all unexpected. More beautiful than opals, I often think.

(Moldavite's firey entrance into this world is also worth noting, and its departure almost as rapid and turbulent.)

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

I've always hoped to open an historically accurate brothel when I'm an old man...

How lovely!

[chronographia.livejournal.com]

I've always hoped to open an historically accurate brothel when I'm an old man...
In that case, I would be pleased to supply you with strands upon strands of pearls and all the stuffed crocodiles such an establishment might ever need.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

You're a wonder! I'll tell the girls to look after you.

[fasterpussycat.livejournal.com]

I bought that Beowulf version for my father, but I've not read it myself.

The first dog I ever owned I named Beowulf the Weathergeat.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

I've been a Seamus Heaney fan for ages. He's magnificent.

That's amazing! What was he like?