Catalogue of the Mundane #19: The Mirror

Most people take mirrors for granted (if they’re vain) but you must realize that the modern glass mirror was only invented in 1600 by Venetians (of course). However, it took another three hundred years before mirrors were actually affordable enough for all households, and these were often quite small. And now? Mirrors, mirrors everywhere.

It has been said that to break a mirror will bring seven years of bad luck. And I’m sure “they” said it, because we’ve all heard of this hazard. But it’s actually much worse than seven years of bad luck. No. Anyone who breaks a mirror will die a horrible, horrible death. No shit.

Have you ever seen something in a mirror—some color or movement—that you know wasn’t on this (the real) side of things? If not, good. You’re not insane.

If only Narcissus had a mirror! He could have looked at himself all he wanted without the threat of nymphs.

Mirrors are said to ward off evil, since evil can’ t stand to look at itself. So people put mirrors facing the front door. It’s perfectly logical and actually works. However, evil often enters through a window.

Inside each mirror is another universe much like our own except everything is spelled backwards.

There are still many primitive people of the world who have never seen a mirror, and the best thing they can come to is a still pool of water, or a dark bowl of water—and even then, they’re always leaning down. Miles Peterson, the renowned anthropologist, was visiting a remote tribe deep in the Amazon when his mirror became anathema. Peterson had taken out a hand-sized signal mirror to shave and the village priest—inquisitive—leaned over Peterson’s shoulder. The priest saw his own face in the reflection and somehow thought Peterson had stolen his head. The villagers killed Peterson, smashed his mirror to bits and later all died horrible, horrible deaths.

A mirror reflects light at an angle particular to its surface, and the reflected light preserves most of the characteristics of the original light. That is to say, that what you see in the mirror is just refracted light, but nothing that is truly real. You see the image of reality, spun 180-degrees on a vertical axis. To see things in the truest light, one would need to look into a mirror facing another mirror and view the second reflection.

Some early mirrors used mercury or lead applied to a bit of glass, and the manufacture of such mirrors resulted in high mortality rates. Mirror-maker was once the most dangerous occupation in the world.

Mirrors have also been used as weapons. Ancient warriors of Mongolia wore mirrored armor to protect them from evil and to ward off the enemy by dazzling their eyes with light. The Persians stole this technology and improved upon it so well that some of their warriors could not even be seen unless they moved—otherwise they would appear as a shimmering reflection of their surroundings.

On that note, we all know that a concave mirror can concentrate the sun’s energy so well that a hand-sized version can ignite paper. But consider what the international space station’s true goal is—and that is to install a concave mirror a mile in diameter, positioned in low orbit. The mirror could be turned or configured to generate weather patterns, illuminate a city at night, or focused into a ray of death approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit—capable of turning any object we can imagine into ash in a nanosecond.

Funhouse mirrors are not fun, and they’re barely mirrors. Polished metal can never refract light with the same precision as plate glass backed with silver. To look into a distorted reflection can bring about madness and other psychological afflictions.

Many early mirrors were made of polished stone or great pieces of mica. No wonder people back then didn’t look as good as we look today.

Three mirrors! Now we’re getting somewhere. If you ever have the opportunity to have three mirrors before you, play with their placement to give yourself multiple torsos, or to see your reflection in reflection in reflection in reflection all the way to infinity. If you brought a telescope and looked into the furthest reflection, it would be a much younger version of yourself since light can only travel so fast. No matter how fast you look, you’ll never see the “now” of reality, but only the past. DeSelby, the famous philosopher, drove himself to madness with three mirrors on this very concept.

Another less-famous madman and philosopher was Ambrose Delasco, who taught for a time at the City College of New York. Delasco became infatuated with DeSelby’s work with three mirrors, so took it to the next level. Delasco found that each successive reflection in a mirror not only occurred in the past, but images would get successively older each time refracted. To this end, he created a device that started out with a two small mirrors in front of the eyes that reflected what was reflected from a slightly larger mirror, which in turn reflected what was reflected by a slightly larger mirror until a total of forty-seven reflections would enter the eye at the smallest mirrors nearest the wearer. His contraption was limited by size and weight, as Delasco intended to walk the earth “seeing in the present what had already occurred in the past.” You can imagine the looks he got when tromping around Harlem with his two-hundred pound refraction device strapped to his body, the great arcs of mirrors looping on metal hoops some ten feet into the air. On his second outing, Delasco was struck by a city bus while wearing the mirrors because he didn’t see it coming, which not only put him in the hospital, but made him abandon his experiments with mirrors since “the past and the present cannot coexist.”

If you look sideways in a mirror, how come you can still see things in periphery that aren’t facing the mirror? Please do not try this at home, since it can cause dislocation and madness.

A stupid little shit named Tommy Phelps, of Alton, Illinois, didn’t believe in the bad luck associated with breaking mirrors. When, at the feisty age of fifteen, he said that breaking a mirror is just like breaking anything else, everyone stepped back a few paces. He was said to have broken over a thousand mirrors by the time he was in college. He argued, and this is where things get strange, that to break a mirror is actually to create more mirrors since each shard is capable of reflection. He went into physics and was widely published in the 1940s. His groundbreaking study on the positive aspects of smashing mirrors titled, “To Increase and Multiply,” shook the foundations of what we know of luck and evil. The highlight of the study was when he took large dressing mirror and broke it into thousands and thousands of mirror fragments, some the size of a pinhead. So much for all that bullshit about bad luck, right? Wrong. Thomas Phelps died by strangulation, amputation and drowning after he was shot, stabbed, poisoned and buried alive in burning oil—all at the same time. A pretty fucking horrible death, if you ask me.

Have you ever looked in a mirror and seen a different face looking back at you in surprise? That would be pretty weird.

Many people remember their first kiss with another human, but forget all the practice they had kissing themselves in the mirror to see what it will look like to another. In his own experiments, the author didn’t French kiss until the age of twenty-seven due to the trauma experienced when French kissing himself in the mirror and the ensuing horror. The horror.

One-way mirrors are also called two-way mirrors. There is no explanation for this, but it is well known that to look from behind a mirror (into what the mirror is reflecting) is to see another reality entirely. This is why one-way (or two-way) mirrors are used so often for dubious purposes. Any public mirror is likely a one-way (or two-way) mirror. What you’re looking at is a reflection, certainly, but the reflection is also being looked at from behind by a camera or government agent. The only way to know is to smash the mirror, but then you die a horrible, horrible death. Much better to just realize that you’re always being watched and act accordingly.

It has been predicted that the next, and perhaps last, great invention of mankind will be a mirror capable of accurate reflection… that is, a reflection that is occurring simultaneously as that which it reflects, and doesn’t spin everything reverse on the vertical axis. However, this technology is beyond our comprehension at the present. For now, one can only hope.

Catalogue of the Mundane #3, Time

Time has become linear. In earlier incarnations of humanity, time was thought to be circular in nature. Personally, I think it’s a spiral—twisting downward or upward, depending on individual disposition.

We live and die and others come. This much is known. Still, what made us unique from the animals was our ability to conceive an existence that transcends death, be it Valhalla or Heaven or the Elysian Fields. We perceive time marching on, with or without our intervention and permission, and know it will continue long after our passing. Faith is nice, if you have it, because no one really wants to go into the All and Everything naked and alone. With faith, you can sleep at night knowing there is something beyond your own time alive when there really isn’t squat. Sorry.

The first “clock” didn’t measure time at all. I’ll let you guess what it measured.

When the Sun goes into decline on the western horizon, we look at it due to the gravitational pull on the water of our bodies. Daily, the Sun pulls the ocean into time-delayed swells of gravitational pull, and the earth bulges outward toward our life-giving star. The same thing happens to us, since we’re made of so much water—the Sun pulls upon our bodies in a subtle play of gravity. Time is not immune to gravity, so it can swell and recede too, depending on the forces at play. When we look at sunsets, we’re stealing time that is expanded and bulged ever-so-slightly. This is the best moment for making love.

Head West! Time is not constant. At different altitudes, speeds and emotional states, time can vary quite a bit. A person traveling against the rotation of the earth ages much faster than a person traveling with the rotation of the earth. This is why many airplane pilots, who routinely travel west, live much longer lives.

The water clock of ancient Babylon, perhaps our first time-keeping device, was basically a bowl with a hole in it. As water drained into another bowl below, marked with lines or ridges to measure time’s passage, you could tell if it had been nearly a gallon since you last checked. A gallon! Oh, if only we could control time in such a manner… which is what an ancient slave by the name of Baaldar did in service to his provincial king. By always keeping the palace’s water in the upper bowl low, the water had less pressure and would flow more slowly into the second bowl. Thus Baaldar is credited for keeping the province “untouched by time” as one historian put it, where people lived beyond four or five hundred years of age, and a day could last many weeks.

When did humanity decide how long a second would last? In 1206 A.C.E., during the international summit on time, weights and measures. The meeting took place in what is now known as Ceuta, Spain—on the tip of the African Continent. In the end, the second was determined by how long it took the average heart to beat. Since it was in the summer, the attendees’ heart rate was a bit high to compensate for the heat. Just imagine: If the summit had taken place in winter, a second would be one and a half times as long as it is now.

Time is slowing down. Due to the expansion of the universe, a current hour is about ten seconds longer than an hour 1,000 years ago. You might not think this is a big deal, but once the universe reaches its fullest size and contraction begins, then time will run backward and you’ll think it’s a pretty big deal. Why? Because you’ll have to live your life over again, only in reverse.

An hourglass is the worst possible measurement of time. Since tied to gravity, it is highly unreliable. An hourglass on a high mountain will take much longer to run out of sand than one at sea level. Yet hourglasses remained popular for a very long time and are still in use today. The very first watch was not worn on the wrist, but was an hourglass suspended from the neck.

The elephant clock, a wonderfully complex and accurate device invented by Al-Jazari, was both beautiful and complex. About the size of a small car, these clocks were highly decorated in Hindu fashion, and boasted a rider on top of the gold-bangled elephant. Basically, it used water in much the same manner as the water clock, only in reverse. When a bowl with a hole in it (hidden inside of the elephant’s body) filled with water, it would sink and cause an armature to maneuver the elephant’s little rider to bang a drum to indicate an hour. The movement of the rider’s arm would reset the bowl to slowly start filling again. If things had gone a little different, we’d probably all use elephant clocks today. However, after the many deaths that occurred in trying to make one small enough to wear on the wrist or about the neck, it was given up for the simple candle clock.

Mark a candle and as it burns you can note how long it has been by studying the highest mark. The first alarm clock was a nail stuck into the bottom of a candle that was then placed on a metal or ceramic tray. When the candle burned all the way down, the nail would tip over and strike the tray with a little “tink” sound. Good morning! So much better than the terrible “whah whah whah” of our current digital alarms. Plus, just try to use the “snooze” function on a candle clock.

The inventor of the “snooze” button, a lazy but resourceful engineer at Westinghouse Electric, was named Walter Dunlop and he is worse than Hitler. In 1952, he made a snooze button for his personal clock at home. When discovered by his manager, who had come to see why Dunlop was again late for work, the snooze button came into play at the national level. It is estimated that the snooze button is the worst invention by mankind, resulting in a loss of 490 billion man-hours of labor, consciousness and lovemaking to date.

A man-hour is two minutes shorter than a woman-hour.

We die of time. It accumulates in our very bones. That is why it is appropriate to say, on your deathbed, that you are “Too full of days” right before you croak. If you die violently or by accident or disease, it’s still time that gets you. Time is just not working to your advantage. That’s where we get the notion of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” etc.

Many souls are born out of time. Meaning, they should have been born in another era but, due to some cosmic fuck up, are born when they are. This can lead to a life-long feeling of disconnect with current life, mental health issues, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Time is not on anyone’s side. Actually, time is against us all.

If you really believe that life can be measured in little ticks and clumps, seconds to hours to years, then you’re a perfect tool in the mass hallucination that is our current reality. Once the notion of time and gravity are eradicated, we will once again live forever and be able to fly, just as we did 17,000 years ago. What happened? We started to measure time, which cannot be measured, and slowly closed off our former reality which was unbound by measurement or physics or Newtonian Laws.

The time is always right… for anything and everything.

Catalogue of the Mundane #70 Sandcastles

Sandcastles

Have you ever built a sandcastle? If not, stop reading this and go find a suitable beach to build a few. And since it may take several weeks to develop your own style and aesthetic, I suggest you act immediately and leave right away. Go now.

 

It’s impossible to argue that white sand is best… but listen, do not make the mistake of the Sons of Georgia Sandcastle Association (SGSA) and go making the dubious assertion that the shade of sands and their properties act as a metaphor for race relations &c. White sand is preferred because it is the most abundant for our purpose. Brown sands, usually composed of aggregates and crushed shell, are far too coarse for any but the most rudimentary constructions. And besides, the black sands of Kaua’I are said to be have the best sandcastling properties due to the association with the god Pele. That said, unless you’re in Hawaii, go find some white sand.

 

If you’ve never constructed a sandcastle, you might want to watch a few being made. This is one of those occasions when roles can be reversed, when adults can learn from children. Watch and observe a few kids and notice what they do. See how they fashion the sand into shapes that resemble structures? Good, now stop watching the children. They can’t teach you much more than that—they’re children after all. What do they know of tensile strength or the venerable rule of thirds? Nothing. Plus, it’s no longer socially acceptable to watch children at play, even if done in the name of science or nature.

 

Now you’re ready to begin sandcastling. Will you use small buckets designed and sold for the sole purpose of sandcastles by the vast sandcastle-construction industry, an industry that secretly supports the suppression of workers and a submissive role for women? I hope not. Will you use nothing but your own body and hands? If so, be ready for some sour disappointment… the human body has its limits. I suggest using discarded cups and other vessels that can serve the purpose just as well, and by recycling these objects for one more use you’re doing your part for the environment.

 

But what is all this talk of buckets and cups and vessels, you might ask, when I just want to build a sandcastle? Listen here– I know what I’m talking about and I’m trying to help. If you don’t want help, just walk away right now and go back to your bitter, sandcastleless life. Besides, why would you ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer? Asshole.

Anyway, the vessels are utilized in order to actually construct the structures of a sandcastle. Here’s how it works: fill up a cup or bucket or vessel with wet sand (preferably white, of course, though white sand turns a light brown when wet). Flip the vessel over, upside down, and then very gently lift up on the vessel. If you do this right, the sand holds the form of the vessel and stands on its own. Your first structure stands!

 

Okay, the basics are over. Now you’re ready for the Big Time. It’s very important to scout a suitable location; you don’t want to just go sandcastling all willy-nilly. You want to avoid high-traffic areas where people might be inclined to damage your sandcastle either inadvertently or with malice. Ideally, you want to construct slightly above the current tide line and in a relatively calm area. A bunch of screaming kids or a loud stereo blasting the latest canned pop song is not the best medium for the spiritual experience of constructing a sandcastle. And never ever build a sandcastle near another sandcastle because the temptation to compete against one another would be too great, and that’s just not what sandcastling is all about. (1)

 

 

Finishing elements to a sandcastle can include items and implements used to scrape away layers of formed sand, to add textures, to make indentations that resemble windows, to cut away unnecessary buttressing, or to mimic stone and brick lines. However, nothing can be added to a sandcastle that is not made of sand, or it fails to remain a sandcastle in the pure sense. If anything, a small stick with a paper flag may be inserted on top of the castle, but that’s about it.

 

Some people make other things out of sand at the beach, like a snake or the bust of a person or something like that. Such things are not sandcastles, nor should they ever be referred to as such.

 

When a person builds a sandcastle, it can be a mirror of the soul. Sandcastles can be lumpy, graceful, simple, ornate, efficient, or ludicrous… just like people. A sandcastle can reflect the inner self, but don’t be fooled by this maxim because it just doesn’t hold true for everybody. I once saw a beautiful young woman building a fantastically wondrous sandcastle and when I complemented her on her design, she told me to “fuck off” in a really mean way. And her breath stank really bad, like old milk and hobo sweat.

 

No matter how tempting it may seem, never try to incorporate a moat into your sandcastle design. This is an advanced technique and takes years and years to master. But if you don’t believe me, go ahead and try.

 

And just what is your motivation? Do you want to participate in the circle of life and create a sandcastle that will be destroyed before your very eyes by the rising tide? Do you desire to build a permanent sandcastle, one that will last forever and ever and ever? Well, good luck. In every society there are people that only get pleasure by destroying the work of others. Actually, these people compromise the majority in most societies. And they wait, watching your labor of love, and as soon as you’ve decided to move off and leave your creation for the night tide, they come out of hiding like jackals and slink toward your creation. Then, with the suddenness and might of a hundred camels, they kick at the sandcastle with all their might.

 

Did I mention it’s often funny to put a brick in the middle of your sandcastle?

---

(1) On vacation in San Carlos, Mexico, I once began constructing a sandcastle near a group of friends. Now, I’ll get into the philosophical strata of sandcastling in a moment, but suffice to say that I originally began the sandcastle with a quick destruction in mind. A friend of mine (who for the purposes of anonymity will be referred to as “Sarah”) decided to build a sandcastle too, but she began constructing hers less than six meters from my own! I tried my best to ignore her, and when I completed my sandcastle she was about halfway through the architectural diagrams flying through her tequila-addled brain. It was at this point that she declared a sandcastle-building competition which, due to the vast reservoirs of emotions entailed in sandcastling, should only be attempted by professionals. However, my friend’s sandcastle was clearly situated higher up the shore than my own (originally slated for immediate destruction). Needless to say, I’m still affected by that day: I watched my sandcastle dissolve in the rising tide while my one-time friend danced and laughed as her (vastly inferior) castle survived another twenty minutes. Though I never had any intention of competing, the effect of the competition is still embedded within my psyche and, even now as I write this, can feel my blood pressure rise at such a gross neglect of good taste, manners, and sound judgment.

Catalogue of the Mundane #43 The Toilet

The Toilet

For millennia, people have just squatted on the ground or over some sort of hole much like a cat or any other animal. Indeed, most of the world still does this for the most part, except those of us lucky enough to endure the wonder of the modern toilet.

Industrialized societies use things like toilets to prove just how advanced the really are. However, sitting on an apparatus to defecate can remove one from the pulse of life, from our more animal parts.

Many things have been flushed down toilets that shouldn’t have been. Keys, toys, kittens, tampons, tears, food, fetuses… the list is endless and growing every day. It’s important to realize the toilet is a place of damnation. When you flush something, it better be for good. Unfortunately, the toilet is limited. It can flush only small objects. However, a toilet can also flush away ethereal things like anger or fear. Just put it in and pull the handle and watch it vanish.

The longest anybody stayed on a toilet was eighteen weeks. Cassadra Blythe of Westbury England, stayed on an ancient but brightly painted Twyford toilet (the first one-piece design of a toilet) during the fall of 1946. Mrs. Blythe claims constipation as cause for her extended meditation, but family members have always thought otherwise and claim she was merely depressed over the marriage of her childhood love, Edmund Cheeks, to that tawdry Johnson woman.

 

Strange and often profound thoughts often come into our minds when sitting on a toilet. Einstein had some of his first revelations after a night of eating cheese and bread. Sonnets have been written, odes and epics. It is said that Immanual Kant could only think properly while on the toilet, that he came up with all his greatest ideas there and merely fleshed them out while properly clothed and sitting at his desk. The same was said of Aristotle, that he spent a third of every day sitting on a chamber pot. While there is much speculation on the thoughts that occur while defecating, perhaps it is a rather simple matter.

Look at the shape of a toilet, especially the bottom parts— the sensual curves, the sexy S-shape of the pee trap. Touch the smooth surface of a clean toilet—how cool and collected as if waiting.

Hugging a toilet when sick is a truly singular experience; it’s so strange to be so close to the apparatus, to have your face so near to where your ass usually is. You take on the perspective of your own anus. Notice the moist odor, the cool sides of the bowl–round like the hips of some motherly woman, smooth beneath your hands and so cool.

At least once a month, every individual should take a shit outside, beneath God and the Everything. When doing so, look up at the sky; if night, the heavens. Think about how you’re only alive for a little while and POOF, you’re gone and forgotten.

Catalogue of the Mundane #17 Elevators

 

Elevators

Elevators are transcendental apparatti, a temporary home between destinations, ever moving, purposeful and deliberate. Where is an elevator most truly at rest? When in motion.

The worst thing for an elevator is to have all its buttons pushed, perhaps by an errant child wishing to be mischievous, to exact his or her will upon the universe. But what these children don’t often realize is that their little fleshy fingers thwart necessity and determination, and participate in entropy and the destruction of All Things Good. Some of these children know this and do it anyway. When adults, they act very much the same.

Though the Romans didn’t have an elevator at Masada, they sure wish they did. But a ramp is not as good as an elevator. Case in point: When the elevator went out in his building last year, Jorge Castano of Chicago tried to build a ramp of boards and furniture from the alleyway to his third story apartment. Friends say he did this in jest, but the result was not so funny. Mr. Castano broke both his legs in the fall.

How many people have died in elevators? Thousands. How many have been conceived or born in elevators? Tens of thousands. The elevator is a place of life.

The elevator is a place of lust. Luis XV had a counterweight lift constructed at his apartment at Versailles in order to link his rooms with those of his mistress, the stunning Madame de Chateanrouge. They are rumored to be the first to have intercourse in an elevator.

There is much talk and speculation about sex in elevators, and how can we blame such talk? When the doors slide close so smoothly, how can we not think of skin? When hemmed in such squareness, how can we help but feel the roundness of our flesh? Most people, even the most reserved and dried up, feel a strange arousal in elevators. Our eyes search the hopeful bodies among us, and even if alone the hunger awakens. This is why elevators are often warm.

Tragedies still occur, of course. There are the amputations, the beheadings. The Chinese deliveryman trapped for three days between floors in a Manhattan apartment building lost his voice from screaming. Perhaps the people of the building wrote off his screams as normal screams, even though if you were to hear them you would be chilled to the bone. Around the second day, when his voice no longer worked and the elevator was filled with the smell of his own excretions, he made peace with his god and resigned himself to die. When the doors finally opened and the engineers stood before him with sheepish smiles, he didn’t even get up. He looked at them and said, “This going down.” But nobody understood him.

When elevators are very crowded, strange things can happen. Odors become amplified and people have been known to suddenly become very gassy. Angers can flare. Women, and some men, are often fondled against their will. And people in the back of the elevator always need to get out before people in front. Some say it just happens this way, but perhaps there is a reason.

When confronted with the choice between a screaming infant or a talkative old man, of 2,346 people polled, over 73% stated they would rather be stuck in the elevator with the infant.

In 1875, the Western Union Telegraph building in New York City clocked its elevators at speeds reaching one hundred miles per hour. After researching various possibilities of padding, harnessing, and other safety implications, they slowed the elevators to a more reasonable rate of ascension and descent. However, on weekends the operators would disconnect the regulators and race each other until the inevitable tragedy of 1879.

The French are known for many things, but few people know about their ground-breaking use of asspower. At the seacoast Abbey of Mont St. Michel, a treadmill hoisting machine was constructed in 1203 using four asses harnessed together. They used this primitive elevator to convey various staples, including the holy cheeses.

Some say the elevator is an attempt to reach unto the heavens, to defy God, to tempt fate, &c. But mostly the elevator is just for lazy people who don’t like stairs, for the transportation of cargo, and to ascend tall buildings. Without elevators, we would not have so many skyscrapers. Without elevators, the people living in skyscrapers, after walking up two hundred flights of stairs, would not come down very often. And if they forgot to pick up milk on the way home…

When the Otis Elevator Company invented the ‘signal control’ in 1924, attendants were no longer needed in elevators and many of these attendants, seeing that their usefulness and purpose in life had been usurped by mechanization, committed suicide.

There is much contention between Americans and the English over the terms ‘elevator’ and ‘lift.’ What both sides often don’t address is the fact that both words are flawed. These devices do not only elevate or lift things, but also descend and lower as well.

Awkward conversations often occur in elevators, conversations that would not, could not, happen under any other circumstance. The first such awkward conversation occurred in 233 B.C.E. when two slaves were suspended in a block and tackle contraption designed by the venerable Archimedes. While attempting to untangle the lines, the conversation went something like this: “So, the bread was not too hard last night at supper,” said the first slave. “No, no, the bread was just right,” said the second. There were a few moments of silence and they watched the lines being played with and noticed it might take a while. “I hope the bread is that good tonight,” said the first slave. But the second slave didn’t reply, even after they were moving again.

The next time you find yourself in an elevator, look at the people sharing the space with you. Know that their eyes show the same recognition of death as your own.