Two Early Roman Scott Works

Hide Behind a Tree Fast: 1978, pencil, ink

"Snow" comics panel: probably early 1980s, ink

Mount McKinley Denali

Camp Dodge, Iowa, Thanksgiving, 1918

Menu and Roster for Thanksgiving Dinner, Camp Dodge, Iowa, 1918, Company H, 14th U.S. Infantry. A relique of my grandfather's World War I era service. The courses sound vastly fancy and delicious -- oysterettes soup and cluster raisins, and other rich food. I relish the little caricature of the 18th century-style server guy. And why not follow the repast with a stogie or coffin nail? Also an unusual photo of a HUMAN STATUE OF LIBERTY, composed of 18,000 soldiers (give or take) arranged just so, from Camp Dodge in 1918 -- was my grandfather a part of, say, the torch, the crown spikes, or the "feet"? Judging from the appearance of the ground, and from the fact it was staged at all, I'd gather the photo was taken in 1918 sometime well before November, and possibly before his arrival at Camp Dodge, but one can't be sure. I suppose it would make more sense to post this on or around Thanksgiving, but I've never let such considerations stop me.

An anniversary that is nigh is the 43rd one of the faked landing of Apollo 11 on the moon -- and a good hoax it was. Altamont, Woodstock, the Manson Family murders, AND (alleged) men on Luna, and Vietnam, communes, all happening in the same year -- "as above, so below."

Microscopic Giants, Desricks, Gnoles

In the now time I re-read the superb anthology, Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, which I first read (at least once or twice) at the age of ten or so. Earl E. Mayan's unique illustrations, compounded of painting and what appears to be clip art from some ad-man's 1960s era portfolio, and the wonderful stories make for a powerful duo. (The Obitulog blog, which I have linked to my own, also has a good entry on Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, dated Sunday, November 20, 2011.) The Alfred Hitchock visage and brand were in its way at least as important for me as his auteur-stamped films, such as Vertigo or Spellbound. "Hitchcock," for me, stands as much for the minimalist profile sketch of the director on the early television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, coupled with softly ominous timpani strokes, or for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (and the paperback anthologies of stories from the magazine), which at one time I read a great deal of, as for, say, The Lady Vanishes, Psycho, or The Birds.   I also read with enjoyment some of the books in the Alfred Hitchock and the Three Investigators series in childhood.

Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum has a mix of well-known and more obscure writers. Many stories, such as Theodore Sturgeon's "Shadow, Shadow on the Wall," (Mayan's illustration shewn -- this one, and the others scared the crap out of me when I was a youth) are excellent examples of Poe's dictum of every word in a short story counting toward a single effect. Guy Endore, aka Samuel Goldstein, author of "The Day of the Dragon," was a riveting individual without even considering his written work, as one can readily find online. "The Day of the Dragon" is one of several apocalyptically-themed stories in the collection -- another is "Doomsday Deferred" by Will F. Jenkins, with Brazil standing as an exotic Other. I remember being stymied by the word "Deferred" when I first read this one in childhood.

Were-cats and werewolves (or, say, cat into man or man into dog), transformation, are another running note, in such pieces as Miriam Allen DeFord's "Henry Martindale, Great Dane," Jerome "It's a Good Life" Bixby's "The Young One," and Stephen Vincent Benét's "The King of Cats." Paul Ernst's (Max Ernst's brother?) "The Microscopic Giants" is exceptionally eldritch. With other writers such as Ray Bradbury, Joseph Payne Brennan, and Manly Wade Wellman joining in, this anthology is nostalgic for myself -- and still resonates today. I'll have to re-read Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery as well, which had good whimsical illustrations itself, though not as potent as Mayan's. I read this initially about the same time as my first reading of Monster Museum.

New Mexico Pictographs

Riders on the Storm

Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa

A giant insect reels under me.  Whilst this goes away, the symphony of nature's god cataclysm goes on

And I dream of an Antarctic whirling snow, blasted reefs and cracked Cthulhu gongs, antediluvian ice monsters, plateau far off of Leng and crooked teeth pulled with a huge explosion from the rocket floor.  Grey brick and tenement rotten face, blind eyes sunken, blue lips and grey-splattered white vein cheeks, pupils revolting in the ghost wolves running softly,  the tongue swallowing the absolute wastes.

Moist, Victorian castle leaf garden raindrop wind butte steppe-racing horse flying mane in the breeze, howling ancient windgods beneath the ColumbiaGorge, cascading anubis flattened area heaving river and campus dropdrain imbecile canals on Mars, trembling, bobbling moron head with bright green eyelids, collapsed cheeks and hollow laughter rolling over the first rocks on earth, a joke designed by God, his flushed face shaking with worn pockets, on his throne with a twelve-eyed lamb, the vegetable immediately unfolding in the copper-coloured sky.  Adam and Eve hierosgamos ivy gaping dark shuttered woods, spirit shelter elephantine organic intestinal oceanic underneath lightning bursts of orange steam, testicle green-matted idol under tropical antique unknown and unguessed SUN.

JF 1985

Published in The Worker Poet 11,  1987, published by Michael R. Hill, Franklin, Pennsylvania.

Rumpus Room

Culture War

Photograph of my great-great-great uncle, Adalbert Falk (one, but not the only one, of the people after whom this blog was named). I can see a certain physical resemblance to a few relatives.

Here is a brief biography of the man, taken from the Wikipedia entry, itself taken from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Paul Ludwig Adalbert Falk (10 August 1827 – July 7, 1900) was a German politician. Falk was born at Metschkau (Mieczków), Silesia. In 1847 he entered the Prussian state service, and in 1853 became public prosecutor at Lyck (Ełk). In 1858 he was elected a deputy, joining the Old Liberal party. In 1868 he became a privy-councillor in the ministry of justice. In 1872 he was made minister of education, and in connection with Otto von Bismarck's policy of the Kulturkampf he was responsible for the May Laws or Falk Laws against the Catholics. In 1879 his position became untenable, owing to the death of Pope Pius IX and the change of German policy with regard to the Vatican, and he resigned his office, but retained his seat in the Reichstag until 1882. He was then made president of the supreme court of justice at Hamm, where he died in 1900."

Railroad Nocturne

A stander, cremains, clairvoyant wanes

Jung's crisper a sigil infarction remains

Outside Venus' transit sextant zenith sliced in space
of remote kneecaps a lone motorcyclist shivers the lanes.

Scotch broom huffs, rains, shade through lace
Waste piles humble, awake vision to arctic range,
Eclipse koto partial longest shortest days of the night year, rings of spruce chant humble,
Deranged Denali and Hood over suburban neon and melange.

JF  8 June 2012

Image: The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Saint Sebastian by Alfred Courmes

Card sent from my father to me when he was in Paris, with a painting by the surrealist painter Alfred Courmes; I can't quite decipher the Parisian postmark but the second one it received stateside is dated 5 January 1987, Richmond, California.

Text: Dear J, Spent most o'day in the Georges Pompidou Museum which is in a rather startling bldg w large curved ventilators, enclosed plastic walkways, escalators & various other machinery all on the outside of the bldg. Many of the large steel girders are visible. There are no exterior walls but nonetheless it is a good modern art museum wi Dali and other greats. To fully appreciate the picture one must have seen the dozens of other St Sebastian pictures all over Europe, most wi a vapid expression. I laughed heartily on seeing this one. Its getting cold here and looks like snow-ice on water standing (?) Tried to get in the Henri IV hostel which is on an isle but was full so am in the famous hostel which serves a piece of bread and bowl of coffee for brkfst. Its not too bad though -- heard about it from some German kids elsewhere. Have a good room-mate John who is to start his career as a doctor in England in a couple weeks -- also some other nice types and a rather dubious Moroccan Arab. Came on nite train nonstop from Barcelona to Paris and was rather groggy on arriving. Its nice here tho. Good food & charming. Dad

Lagos de Moreno Cathedral

Thanks to Rob from Amersfoort for identifying the cathedral on this stereoscopic card as the one in Lagos de Moreno, Mexico!  I'm not clear if the first letter in "Lagos" in the caption is a misprinted "S" or an antique "L."

Music News from Prague

The front page of Music News from Prague, 8/89; and a Chinese edition of a work by Engels. The newsletter was a solid source of information about Czech (and other nationalities') classical music, and performances and recordings of the works of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Bohuslav Martinů, and others. There were few, if any, overt political overtones to the publication -- but it was free, had no ads, and was printed with an appealingly old-fashioned press and type. I saw a notice in some pen pal magazine about getting a gratis lifetime subscription to Music News, and sent a letter to Prague, in the Czech Socialist Republic, reading something like, "Sign me up." As transpired, the subscription, which I had for a few years, was for the lifetime of Marxist-Leninist Czechoslovakia. This issue may well have been one of the last, if not the last, I received, for the Velvet Revolution was only a few months off.

Although the tensest period of the Cold War was in the 1950s and 60s, the anxiety remained strong in the 1970s and 1980s, and through Gorbachev's tenure, right up until the 1989-91 period (and in a lesser way, some of the rivalries still go on now).  Had the Cuban Missile Crisis exploded into a war, the whole circus might have closed down; At the least we would be living in a considerably different world. But there was no general sense that the USSR and its satellite states, and outliers such as Albania and Yugoslavia, were in any way weak or about to collapse, right up until the abrupt end (complicated by the survival of a few Communist lands today, some more nominal than others). The ending of an ostensibly bipolar world (leaving aside the Sino-Soviet rift) had an almost religious aspect to it.

The Inner Harbour, Victoria, B.C.

This card manages to convey a most uninviting bureaucratic 60s dreariness to it, which would make one NOT want to visit the depicted scene. Despite this, Victoria, the Inner Harbour, and the Royal Museum are all terrific places.

Photographs of the Subject Property

A few photos of one of my homes of youth, with descriptively cold captions from an appraisal. I dwelt in several homes before this (that, due to my age at the time, I only have a few memories of), but this was the lengthiest and most significant.

John F. Kennedy Birthplace, Brookline, Mass.

Text:

Dear Kay, Frank & all

We are leaving to go to New York tomorrow -- It's hot & humid here like I never felt before. No coolness at nite. We're done mostly visiting and a bit of sight seeing.

Love, Phil & Mary

The Roosevelt stamp dates from the late 1960s, so the postcard must have been written and sent in that timeframe. I saw a clip of David McCullough on tv saying he believed the "Kennedy curse" is not real. I disagree -- with the recent, apparent suicide of Mary Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s estranged wife, one more instance, the statistics are meaningful beyond coincidence.

The Past is never dead

Seemingly, in the late nineteenth century, racialism was seen as somehow enhanced when rendered in 3d. Whilst patronising, this 1897 stereoscopic card by B.L. Lingley (or B.L. Singley?), printed by the Keystone View Company of Meadville, Pennsylvania and St. Louis, Missouri, is actually fairly tame when compared with a lot of material from previous eras.

The Bourn

The Bourn

At the panes and walls of the intolerant houses begins there the cranberry marsh.
The set oak and fir wood distant beyond; Deer stirring and crashing the topped salmonberries, to the West.
Limbs winding in gulph of riven rock. Red patches in the arid, thro' the jungle.
Vines, unfallen trees, clear hollows, the night-canopy of the woods, dogwood, elm, pine, corn leaves, vast slopes, mounting floor of moss-topped rock. Low deliverance of the grey and hollow sea-water, ending at once beyond the cliffs.
A band before the dell, paradisiacal expirations of mist, beyond green and wet walls, with organ tones.
New mountains, apparent and sharp in the wintry and bright rim.

JF early 90s

Plenty Coups, Crow Chief 1880

Hunkpapa Sioux Chief Rain-in-the-Face

The Standard Speakers

A cutting (or tearing) I turned up not long ago, detailing a talk by Graham Chapman, British comedian and member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, on 25 July 1987. Among the "several hundred" people attending his presentation that evening, at what was then a Masonic Temple (now part of the Portland Art Museum), were myself, a friend, and someone else I knew at the time. I wish that at the time I had noted down my impressions, reporter-style, as I have done with some events in later years. I have only the vaguest memory of the warm-up act, "Waggie and Friends," and little recollection of the character and content of Chapman's utterances as described in the article. I chiefly remember the film clips from the Dangerous Sports Club. One thing I remember the Pythonite mentioning, not brought up in the article, was an remark (whether  serious or not) regarding what he saw as the low level of Terry Gilliam's intellect.

As so happened, it would also be our last possible chance, for all purposes, to see Chapman, as he had only a little over two years to live. On 4 October 1989, he "ceased to be." We can be soothed by the knowledge that, in 1987, entertainers from Canada were "still" pouring across the U.S. border, eh? Julian Cope, and Dharma Bums were playing at the Pine Street Theatre on August 2. On the obverse, we can learn a little about the song "La Bamba," in conjunction with the movie, and we can discover that one could see Full Metal Jacket on its initial release for $2.50 (I saw it for the first time around then). The tenor of lecturers and poetry readers seemed to be quite high in the period of 1985-90 or so. In that time, I saw Hunter S. Thompson, who shewed up an hour or so late, bearing a mysterious amber glass of potion.   I got little out of what he said:  His speaking style that evening could be described as an incoherent mumble. I spoke with and saw Allen Ginsberg on several occasions. I saw Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, twice each. One I regret missing was William S. Burroughs, who read in Portland in 1988. Robert Anton Wilson was memorable in Portland, offering one liners such as: Anyone of us could have been a Nazi death camp guard. The Pope is the greatest mind of the 14th century, and so on. With the first statement, Wilson suggested something important, which is that: Time precedes and undergirds culture and space. The explanation for the fascinating qualities of this crop of speakers is that a lot of the colourful characters from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s were still active and touring in the 1980s. All whom I have mentioned are dead now.

The Edification of Halfdan Egedius

Back cover of Mowjib, 1987

Wine of the Kingdom of Rey

"But, what does 'blob blob blippity blob' mean?" Inside back cover of Mowjib, 1987, published by It's the Mind, which later became Terata Publications.

That was your Outside Voice

Mowjib, 1987, page 5

What would Heðin Brú have to offer?

Mowjib, page 4, 1987

Not the First Rodeo

Mowjib, 1987, page 3

Mime in the Box of Eryx

Mowjib, Page 2, 1987

Maebashi Hanseatic

Mowjib, 1987, page 1

Mowjib, 1987

The grey flame of Rasputin

Collaborative poem/ drawing by myself and Roman Scott, 8 February 1988.

The poem reads (italics are my portions):

The grey flame of Rasputin
& mountain tops flooded with the fingerpointing of elderly ladies
& rising segments of cheeks,
in sand for the winter
sand out of which bubbled orderly egg-carton shapes

A dell in Utah
under a scandinavic sun
I bend down, and find that the ground is hollow beneath, caked rocks held by tree-roots
a dead hulk of a black whale tree buried in sand
The crab, a withered hand, becomes a club
Bavarian wrinkles
kindly face
Red hair & blue eyes they have

War Memorial -- Pantheon of War, 1918

From what I could gather on a web googles search, this postcard is one of a series of cards by French painters P. Carrier-Belleuse and A.F. Gorguet memorializing the Great War. The cryptic letters or initials M and L are the only mark left by a former owner of the card.

M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud and Fridtjof Nansen

Lower two images added 5-1-20.

A day or two ago finished reading, and taking something away from, the revised 1930 version of West Indian/Irish author M.P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud. (Besides being an author, Shiel also spent time in the old Grey Bar Hotel, for reasons illuminated in the Wikipedia article on him.)
I tried to read the novel once before. I cracked the "last man" epic open and read a bit of it when on a train trip from New York City to Portland in April 1997, fanning my eyes back and forth between the pages and, perhaps, North Dakota or Montana horizons. However, I abandoned the book after the journey, not completing it until now.

The novel, as with Shiel's prose in general, is grotesquely eccentric and lush, overflowing with arcane vocabulary and Ciceronian abundance. In addition, the writer was prescient (or at least tapped a kind of synchronicity) in several ways. He creates an apocalyptic scenario, with humankind fleeing a doom unleashed from the Arctic. In the wake of the Purple Cloud, the protagonist, Adam Jeffson (Adam from Genesis, and Thomas Jefferson?) finds all of humanity, save for him, dead, and the blended Middle Eastern, Asian, African, European corpses reflect the global migration patterns of 2012 more than that of 1901 or 1930. Then, take the phrase: "and how I went to Nagasaki, and burned it" -- written not in 1945, but in 1901.

With influences from Poe and Jules Verne, Shiel is at the same time unique.
Richard A. Lupoff described him as resembling a satanic scripturalist on a methamphetamine jag (Updated and corrected, May 1-2, 2020 -- see comment from Derrick H. I shall add an image of the page from the 1980 Arkham House catalog, where I originally read the remark.) H.P. Lovecraft praised Shiel and The Purple Cloud in Supernatural Horror in Literature. While, according to Wikipedia, the original 1901 Purple Cloud is regarded more highly than the 1930 revision, both have merit. I prefer the use of assonance and cosmic imagery in the following sentence from the 1930 version: "On we pressed, wending our petty way over the immense, upon whose loneliness, from before the old Silurian till now, Bootes had pored and brooded." 1901: "On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had watched."

Consider the following passage from the initial section of The Purple Cloud, describing the return from a fictional expedition to the North Pole: "A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where there was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo den for the long Polar night.
I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in the neighbourhood of C. Fligely (about 82° N.), and though it was so late, and getting cold, I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen that year, by alternately sailing all open water, and dragging the kayak over the slack drift-ice."

The description of a winter buried alive on Franz Josef land would seem to be inspired by, or borrowed from, Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen's and Hjalmar Johansen's similar winter in 1895-96, on their own return from an attempt to be first at the Pole. The expeditionaries spent eight months mostly confined to a dugout. In addition, when Nansen finally emerged, by extraordinary coincidence, he ran into British explorer Frederick Jackson in the Arctic desolation, an event reeanacted on a television show.

I was first made aware of Nansen's top-of-the-world inhumation from a show called Voyages of Discovery, broadcast on PBS a few years ago. The special, presented by Paul Rose, was part of an excellent series which also included episodes on the expeditions of Captain Cook, Magellan, and Charles Marie de La Condamine. The latter's trip to Equador, and its ultimately successful attempt to measure the circumference of the earth, seems to be from the world of Werner Herzog. Then, Nansen himself is well worthy of attention. I toured the Fram (the ship Nansen, and later Amundsen and others used for expeditions) and its museum, in Oslo. Unfortunately, I got there not long before closing, so had to rush through the exhibits and ship. The story of the long voyage which started on the Fram is also detailed in Nansen's book, Farthest North, 1897. Shiel seemed to take some of the descriptions of Arctic celestial phenomena from Nansen's book, along with the Franz Josef Land episode.

At any rate, The Purple Cloud is a fantastic, rich, and complex work of imagination.