See what fun we are missing with our humorless sloans?

Alright I take it back, we lost nothing, the invention of the toilet was a win-win.

For a bit more info on the “potty” check out:
Musings of a Privy Digger and 1earth’s page on chamber pots.

Again, If you’d like any more information please feel free to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) me. Note that the image I used to begin the post is no longer available.

Language is at once both a banal standardized system which requires work to master and a numinous corpus saturated with abstruse power. Though it lives in our mouths, coils like a parasite in our minds, and though we use it nearly as often as our own lungs, nothing about it seems to encourage intimacy. Scholarship? Sure. Respect? Yes. But a simple and warm familiarity? It wouldn’t seem so. To some degree this makes sense in that its roots are so deeply buried in our past that it might as well be a force of nature ⊕. And yet, be this all as it may, each and every mind is an incubator of language and each household a nursery. In these private places, cut-off from the ears of society, we giddily break the rules and bend language to our whims, compulsively coining new words, and naming things as though it were the first day of creation.

It seems to me that every household has its own private lexicon, filled with obtuse usages, alternate grammars, and esoteric slang. Am I mistaken in this? I know that in my household language is constantly morphing with new words being invented or co-opted, becoming prominent or falling out of use. It’s as if language was a kinky sex act, our enjoyment and particular proclivities something to be kept private and out of general ear-shot. I’ve occasionally found myself using a word or phrase from my private lexicon only to stop myself short or else be met with blank faces. It’s embarrassing somehow when one slips out.

It would appear a quite complex strata actually. There are the notions which float around in the primordial ooze of our consciousness never quite coalescing into words. There are the words so peculiar and intimate that they never actually reach our mouths but which none the less enjoy regular usage in our minds. ⊕ Then there is the language which is shared between lovers, private words, often whispered like incantations, which define in some way the intimacy of a bedroom but hold no power beyond those walls or moments. Then there is the language of family or the language of a household. This is simultaneously shared and private, displaying in its microcosm the same ability to evolve and proliferate as language at large, but which remains cut-off like a Galapagos of wild syllables.

I think great catalysts in household languages are pets. It seems as though every pet owner calls his beloved little friend by a myriad of names, any name, in fact, but the one they initially chose. ⊕ For example my cat’s are named Newton and Henry. What do my girlfriend and I actually call them?

Newton: Newtie, The Newts, The Belly, Lemon, Little Bull, Dew Beard, Dewbie, Ankle-Head, Nappy Dread, The Dust Brother, Chunk, Stankly, The Stink, etc, etc.

Henry: Fluffkin, Fuzzlet, Fuzzy-Pants, Manatee, The Griz, Gristle(e), Gristle-bee, Grozells, Grizbane, Hiney, Heinz, Heinrich, Doodie, The Doods, Martha Washington, etc, etc.

These of course do not in and of themselves constitute anything approaching a secret language, I only share them as an aside, there being a whole shorthand used in place of common nouns, verbs, and concepts used in my household. I’ll share just a couple of minor examples to illustrate-

Stoony

This is a word which is related to the pet names above but is altogether more versatile. It sums up in two syllables any delighted surprise at seeing (usually on the television) some furry creature of interest. So rather than saying, for instance, “look honey! A very cute / strange / noteworthy member of the animal kingdom has made an unexpected appearance on the television, stop picking your nose and take a look for yourself.” Either of us can simply call out, “Stoony!” and the other will know instantly that our attention is required, front and center. Likewise the word can be used in plural form to note the appearance of a whole herd / pride / cete / litter / troup / etc. Dropping the “y” and adding an “s” at the end denotes familiarity as when it’s used for one of our own pets, or on occasion, one another, e.g. “Hey Stoons.” Lastly this word forms the root of further mutations such as the ever popular “Stoonhauser.”

We have a whole gamut of words which can substitute for saying “I love you.” We’ve co-opted three from Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall ⊕. These are–

Lurf
Loove
Lurve

I use all three fairly often. Other substitutions are–

Elephant
Olives

Both of which are shortened versions of longer phrases since “elephant shoes” and “olive juice” are famously observed to so closely mimic the lip movements of saying “I love you.” After 8 years of expressing that sentiment the words can feel almost meaningless, so this little bit of differentiation (both from the norm, and from other instances of its use) adds something. When leaving the apartment in the morning I might say “Elephant” and be treated, in kind, to the response of “Olives.” No more need be said. Our household shorthand accomplishing in two words what would otherwise take 7, and with added value to boot thanks to its exclusivity.

As I said these are only a couple examples. It would seem that in my household at least the language which has emerged was guided by two main evolutionary factors: economy and amusement. If a word makes expressing ourselves simpler it sticks ⊕ or alternately if something makes us laugh it sticks. What the factors are in other households I have no idea.

I have to imagine every home, everywhere, has its own strain of language subtly different from the norm, guided by its own principles. I imagine that when a word or peculiar usage actually makes the leap from a person’s mind into this testing ground of the home that perhaps .05% might make it out into the world and language at large as slang. That leaves a lot of playful and weird wordage which we keep behind closed doors away from the ears of our neighbors. It boggles the mind. If we marched out into the day using these mutated versions of our mother-tongues we’d all look at one another as if we were speaking nonsense, but it wouldn’t be true. Any word which has an intended meaning, agreed upon and understood by even two people, can’t be properly called nonsense can it? What we’d be speaking would be a billion subtly different dialects.

Admittedly I may be imagining all of this. Perhaps every household is not like mine. Perhaps other people put their energy into finding the most precise and perfect existing words to express themselves ⊕ rather than just coining their own willy-nilly. But as monolithic and as much like work as language can feel when we are first introduced to it, as careful and polite as we are taught to be with our words in public, I can’t help but assume that, at home, people are as naughty and playful and weird with their words as they are with everything else.

Am I mistaken? You tell me.

These are perhaps not the best examples to illustrate the included text, there are many more photo montages, bizarre scenes, saccharine babies, naughty bits, etc, but, well… (see the first image at very beginning of post again.)

Interesting notes: Though the printing technology existed in the 1860’s it took nearly 30 years for the various post office regulations of Europe and America to synch-up in such a way that sending postcards in the manner which they are still sent today (from far flung vacation spots, etc.) became feasible. It wasn’t until the 1900’s that people were actually allowed to write on the backs of postcards (that space being reserved for postal information only), until which time senders were forced to cram whatever messages they could onto the fronts. After all this shook-out postcards quickly became ubiquitous. As the introduction puts it: “The privileged stronghold of the articulate and the well-to-do on letter-writing was broken, cards and their postage were cheap and at least a greeting, X X X, was easy for anyone who could write a name and an address.”

X X X.

During his 9th year he began hearing voices. They were clipped whispers which in the perfect silence of the walled world echoed like a Sybil’s fiat. At first he was terrified; His bull’s brain bred to fear the hunter. He crouched deeper into his chosen shadow, hyperventilating, his tongue lolling and slick. He hid and he listened and for weeks kept still as a stone.

Slowly, one by one, the voices quieted until the only sound remaining was that of a single pair of sandals, their light steps tapping out a confused staccato once or twice a day. Emboldened by familiarity and hunger he began venturing out in their intervals of inaction.

The first body he encountered was thin and small. It laid face down in a corner, its knees bent, its hindquarters in the air. The smell of blood from its scraped knees and cheeks was faint but enthralling. He emptied his bladder dramatically, snorting and stomping and dropping his horns low, then, satisfied that the body was submissive, he sniffed carefully about its edges. It was dead and it was the first meat he’d seen since the voices invaded. He choked it down looking again and again over his shoulder.

He found 12 more bodies in as many days; All dead. 7 were large and 5 more, like the first, were small and soft. He dragged each to the center of the world and stacked them in a pile. He’d never seen so much meat in one place at one time, and were it not for the staccato sandals which still made their ragged music occasionally, he might have been… happy. He wasn’t bored any longer, nor was he hungry. What was happiness if not that?

The last body he found was also small and soft. It lay in the middle of a hall with a little sack clutched in its arms. At the sound of his water smacking the floor it moved, its sandals scraping two lazy parabolas in the dust. It was not dead but neither did it run. When he jabbed it experimentally with his horn it did not cry out. He dragged it to the center of the world but did not drop it on the meat pile.

For months he shared his meals with it. He shared the water which arrived via Daedalus’ hidden shoots and ladders. He inhaled its smell deeply, he mated with it, and he watched daily as it moved an ivory stylus across one of the tablets from its sack. He’d never known companionship, never known the pleasure of watching another empty their bowels, never known that rattling sobs and wet eyes could be so beautiful.

Learning to read had been a wonder. Once he was made to understand that the symbols in the wax tablets held meaning, were connected each to an idea outside itself, he wanted to lay eyes on little else. Meat was plentiful and mating was easy, but reading! That was different. It revealed to him existence beyond his confused hallways. She explained and explained again, every day for months. His first hard-earned moments of comprehension, when they came, were like a long dawn over a new world. Everything was transformed. The walls no longer seemed so infuriatingly uniform. The shadows seemed half as dark and simultaneously twice as deep.

But, alas, these were merely quiet contentments before a gathering storm of anguish.

One day, after mating, his female lay down in the corner where he threw his marrow-sucked bones, and never got up again. He poked at her bruised flanks with a gentle horn but knew instinctively that he was alone once more. He thought of her weeping face, her pink parts, the days of sounding out words between sobs. Though he snorted nervously and his fur bristled, his spirits were not completely broken. “I have the sack of tablets” he thought wanly as he moved her battered body to the meat pile.

He spent the next months plodding through every tablet in the sack, those which he’d read before as well as those which his mate had kept from him. (She’d always say of these “They are too difficult for you.”) It was here, reading alone in the heart of the labyrinth, that the sun set on his new world. In its dusk he learned the truth of things, of men, of gods, of his parents, and of himself.

He read of Poseidon’s agreement with Minos. He read of Pasiphae’s lust and of Daedalus’ means of assuaging it. He read of his own birth and the construction of his world built for amusement and agony. He read of Athens’ defeat and Aegeus’ bargain to send 7 youths and 7 maidens every nine years into the labyrinth. He learned his own name – Asterius – and turning finally to the tablet his mate had written, was impelled for the first time in his life to sound out the word “minotaur” in his mind.

This last tablet was an account of life in the labyrinth. It was filled with bitterness and horror, made up as it was of words like “monster,” “revulsion,” and “misery” flanking the ever repeating phrase, “I wish to die, please Gods let me die.” Had he but known how Asterius would have wept like the soft one who so despised him.

Epilogue

The Athenian meat eventually ran out and though it might seem masochistic Asterius just sat reading and re-reading the tablets each day. There was nothing else but his hunger pains and the silence. By turns he became sullen and angry. First brooding over his own newly realized miseries, then imagining, in great detail, what he would do to the next batch of children who dared drag their sandals into his darkness. He shat on the bone pile and slept clutching the sack of tablets.

More Athenians did come in time, 7 youths and 7 maidens, whom he watched from the darkness, his snorting anger tempered by longing. At first he approached them submissively with a tablet in hand, but each time they only shrieked and cursed him and fled into the darkness. Finally he lost patience and began hunting them, tearing with his horns and mating with their corpses. Even with a full belly and empty balls, however, his life as one with knowledge was a misery.

Eventually the realization struck him that he might take up the ivory stylus himself and write his own words into the margins of a tablet. It took much trial and error, but after nearly a year he set down that stylus having written a single message to the world above with its cruel men and capricious Gods:

“Had I only been born opposite of what I am, with a bull’s powerful heart and a man’s cunning mind, I might have been a beloved hero among you. Instead I find myself with the weak heart of a man and the dim mind of a bull, a monster, who you’ve trapped in the dark and universally despise. – The Minotaur.”

Theseus would find him brooding over this very passage 9 years later.

Truth: The Minotaur Reading

In that I can not not find any information specific to this piece I will instead offer a pertinent section from a review written by Roddy McDevitt from Queen Street gallery:

“Carters’ work is fresh and authentic. It is both daringly simple and deeply resonant. This is a result, of course, of her subject matter. She poeticizes the figure by creating eerie composite creatures. Whether cast in bronze or drawn in charcoal, the work, it seems to me, breaks down into either the lyrical single figure or the dramatic interaction of two or more figures. Her single figures, naked men with perfectly integrated animal heads: bull, horse, bear, fox, rabbit, all seem lost in contemplation of the mystery of their own existence.

The dramatic configurations are fabulous and thus exotic. We are like Alice through the looking glass, propelled into a dreamworld overflowing with marvelous creatures thoroughly absorbed in their own encounters with each other. This ‘Carter world’ is exciting, magic-fueled, utterly mysterious yet completely realized. The bold and beautiful visions of Beth Carter help us dream the mythology of our own existence.”

For my part all I’ll say is I came across this piece by accident but was, in fact, oddly moved by it, as I hope the extrapolated story above testifies.

For more of Beth’s work see the following:

Queen Street gallery.

Picasso Mio.

Badcocks.

A gallery.

For a pervious “extrapolation” see:

The Old Musician.

For previous alternate mythologies see:

The Myth of Ironus.

Hope you enjoyed.