OK with that one out of the way here are a few others which leapt off the page so to speak.

Ha. Truth is there were too many and I had to cut myself off. Might have been here all night making vignettes which horrify parents and science teachers hoping to avoid just this sort of thing. On the other hand they must see so many of the same things over and over again that a good “nutritional value of cannibalism” project might be just the thing.

The “Teats” project though… I mean come on! Why did I do the boring ol’ heart one year and bones another when there were teats to be studied?

P.S. My sincerest apologies to the parents of the kids whose images I used here. But they were just so darned cute! Plus they were pretty much all I could find.

Another after effect of mega-fires like London’s was Fire Insurance, and it was these Insurance companies that actually formed the first private fire brigades to protect their client’s properties. The naming of streets in London at this point was haphazard at best, and private homes were not numbered,  so as a means for the Insurance Brigades to distinguish their properties, each company adopted a distinctive emblem, and began attaching it, in the form of brightly colored metal plates, to the sides of their policy holder’s buildings. These were called “Fire Marks” and their use was widespread for about two hundred and fifty years all across Europe, in Russia, and eventually the U.S.

Practical and utilitarian as they were, they also happened to be pretty damned gorgeous. See below for a sampling and links to some sites where you can see more.

Most of the marks pictured above originated at Roy Addis’Firemarks.co.uk and Dmitry Nikulin’s Old Russian Fire marks pages. Both of which are chock full of beautiful pieces. If you have any interest in Fire marks I’d recommend these sites as your first stops. Believe me when I say what I’ve shown here is only the tip of the iceberg. All but the last of the extra-large images are taken from Clarence P. Hornung’s Treasury of American Design (incredible book!) published in 1950.

A couple of other destinations to see more are: Vicasa, Firemarks.net, Hammerdown,  Erie Insurance, and Iicfiremark.

To read more in depth info on their history I recommend The Fire Mark Circle’s history pages. Also American Fire Marks, A Good Story.

Hope you enjoyed.

It does not surprise Dave in the least to find no one standing there, what with the ventriloquism school next door. That sort of thing happens all the time, especially in the can, where at least once a month he has to re-hinge a stall door, after some shit-faced guerilla kicks it down thinking he’s being propositioned with dirty knock-knock jokes. Seeing no one Dave just stands there, doing what all fictional bartenders in empty bars do- cleaning a cocktail glass with a dirty rag, staring into space.

From the floor Yorick’s skull stares up at him wondering whether he’s dimwitted. It is one of the most impatient and judgmental skulls of a dead jester you are likely to come across. Death has a way of diminishing the excellence of one’s fancy and dimming the flashes of one’s merriment it seems.

The skull looks at Dave’s faded Megadeth t-shirt which reads “Youthanasia” below an image of a cloaked skeleton holding a baby, and manages, without a tongue, to “tut.” Yorick’s skull is now officially irritated. Whether at the shirt, with its artless wordplay and stereotypical depiction of skeleton as death-bringer, or simply at being ignored while thirsty… again, it’s hard to say.

Shifting its eyeless gaze from the t-shirt back to Dave’s blank face, Yorick’s skull decides Dave is almost certainly a simpleton (standing there as he is endlessly wiping the edge of a glass) and tries again, this time less jovially, to get the simpleton’s attention. “God’s Teeth man! Fasten thine belly cheat and pour my bouse.”

Dave is able to better pinpoint the voice’s location this time and leans over the bar. There is Yorick’s skull, half-grinning up at him, three teeth to the wind.

Dave’s not nearly as put-off by seeing a human skull at the base of his barstool as you might expect, what with the magician school only just upstairs. He actually laughs. “Ha! Good one guys.”

More than once a magician’s prop has materialized off its mark and in the bar. Once he lifted an overturned bowl of pretzels to reveal a cotton-tailed bunny and its attendant pile of turds. Another time he turned on the tap only to find himself pulling from the nozzle an impossibly long handkerchief.

He assumes the skull staring up at him is just another flubbed trick by an amateur magician with navigational problems. Until Yorick’s impatient skull begins talking again that is.

“Carl, thine is a bousing ken is it not?”

Dave does not even think to answer (which is not to say that he even understood the question) but just looks down at Yorick’s skull, blankly, the amusement fading from the corners of his eyes.

“By the Rood!! Are thou beef-witted? Shake thine ears! Mine is a thirst!” (If the bone-dome had even a thimble-full of blood, and a patch of skin for it to rush to, it’d be red with annoyance, of this you can be sure.)

Looking at that skull, hearing those words issuing from somewhere inside the dry, cracked cavity, a none too pleasant thought occurs to Dave: “This is not right.” He thinks, “A voice in the john? Sure. A cascade of playing cards from my shirt-sleeves, of course. But a voice AND a magician’s prop together? No. No no no.” 

You see it just so happens that the Ventriloquists and the Magicians are bitter rivals, a more theatrical version of the Crips and Bloods, decked out in sequins and velvet rather than blue and red bandanas. Each year the new class of students clashes, weaponizing their tawdry little stage miracles, and turning them on one another. There had already been a severe charlie-horse and a spate of fraudulent pizza orders attributed to this year’s feud. Point is there was no way the two would cooperate to materialize a talking skull.

Something was “rotten in Denmark,” as they say, and Dave was finally catching a whiff. He grabs hold of the closest whisky bottle, holding it by its neck, arm half-cocked, like a top-shelf glass hammer.

Misinterpreting this defensive reflex as affirmation that the dimwit has finally grasped his request for a drink, Yorick’s skull wobbles back and forth to gather some momentum, then digs a tooth into the wooden bar-side.

Dave is startled to see the skull move and feels a shot of panic as he watches the first tooth dig into the wood-grain, but his condition deteriorates rapidly into a state of good old-fashioned pants-shitting terror when understanding dawns. By digging one canine in, pivoting, then digging the other canine in, the skull is climbing the bar. 

Seeing this Dave ceases to think and ceases to breathe, frozen by the awful improbability of it. A skull is shimmying its way up the bar-side toward him like a giant beetle with a sclerite of browning bone. What can you say? Dave is predictably petrified. He forgets his name, forgets his bottle bludgeon, forgets to wet himself, and forgets to run. He just watches the scull’s ascent like a deer…  looking over a sheer cliff… er… caught in the glare of a rock climber’s helmet-lamp.

Upon finally reaching the top of the bar, Yorick’s skull is disgusted to find there is no drink awaiting him there. It angles itself directly toward Dave’s frozen, grimmacing face and croaks, “Od rat it! Fie upon the vessel then, thou recreant geck! Pour that bouse into mine eye socket directly!”

And, well, that was that. The skull’s angry demand to have whiskey poured directly into its eye socket was just too much, it was the straw that broke the bartender’s back, and alas, poor Dave fainted, falling over backward, bottle still in hand, like a tobacco store indian in a hurricane; the contents of the smashed bottle soaking his own eye sockets instead.

Exasperated, its nonexistent gorge threatening to rim its nonexistent throat at the spectacle of the dimwit passed out amidst the drink (which ought to be swishing between its teeth right now!) Yorick’s skull curses under its lungless breath and shimmies its way back down the bar-side. The night is young and death is long, so out the door it rolls to search elsewhere for some much needed fuel- Infinite jest begets a damn near infinite thirst after all.

First, from the accompanying essay by Geoffrey Bensusan:

“Hella Basu’s calligraphy shows itself apt, varied and assured; its fitness for purpose unquestionable, its deployment as one might say most inventive, the execution impeccable; it has a lineage clearly honorable but not trad and while accessible, as communication should be, it remains exciting.”

Also (speaking well before the computer typography boom):

“It is the prized consistency of machine-made lettering that generates the demand for contrasting forms, inventions not provided for on transfer sheets. For in the hands of the skilled designer-lettering-artist-calligrapher the alphabet is almost as flexible and expressive a medium as illustration itself in evoking a mood, creating a feeling, reinforcing a fact.”

Aside from her birth date and place (Germany) the only other info I found was a single quote purported to be from Hella:

“In making any object, the philosophy behind its creation is ‘art,’ the planning is ‘design,’ and its execution is ‘craft.’”

Hope you enjoyed.

This, however, is not a history lesson, and the particulars of each of these items does not interest me as such. What I’m interested in here is rather a result of their intersection, a confluence of forces, which though set in motion way back in the 1870’s, is as near to we moderns as the ground beneath our feet or the sky above our cities. I’m speaking, of course, about Ground Stars.   

Let me explain.

The proliferation of electric light, typified by our big cities, has created a phenomena called Skyglow. Essentially Skyglow is simply Rayleigh scattering of artificial light, which is to say its the same atmospheric effect which makes the natural light of the daytime sky seem blue, only in this case diffusing and redirecting the light of our cities back down at us. The ultimate effect for we urban earthlings is, lamentably, a starless (though not bible-black) sky.

In the relative-dead of a New York City night, looking up (and in this city to see a patch of sky you need to look damn near straight up) is an effort with precious little reward. You can count yourself lucky to see the lights of a passing plane, or the underbelly of a helicopter, because even the brightest stars are washed out and absent. Forget about connecting the dots in your minds eye and seeing a giant scorpion, or bull, or lion. There are no dots. 

As I’ve said here before this strikes me as a real shame. Especially in a city such as New York where where all manner of dreamer, goofball, curbside philosopher, and artistic-minded lout have chosen to congregate. We are effectively as divorced from our universe as we are from the suburbs and geographical armpits most of us fled from. We are people who could use the sense of natural scale a few trillion super-massive nuclear reactions in the sky would provide. We need something bigger, more crowded, and more charged with energetic possibility than ourselves. 

Which brings me to Concrete and Chewing Gum.

While electric light was proliferating and radiating outward to blot our stars concrete and chewing gum were quietly spreading throughout the city as well, exhibiting their own unexpected side effect. It seems concrete and chewing gum have a natural attraction to one another. They stick together and stay together. Whether it is love or just a physical thing I can not say but their century old union offers us a solution, of sorts, to our star poverty.

When a piece of spit-out gum takes the gravity-assisted leap to the ground it gets rolled over, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted. We sometimes curse at getting its sticky guts on our shoes, but more often than not we don’t even notice. Over time what was once a chicle-based, flavor infused, treat becomes nothing so much as a single dark point in the firmament of sidewalk. Now multiply this by millions, perhaps billions, and I think you’ll see where I’m going. 

A century of this process has provided us with something huge and ambiguous we can call our own; if not a moody sparkling light by which to worship our lovers and unsheathe our knives, an endlessly shifting menagerie of single points all the same, between which we might string the iconography of our hopes and fears.

Think of it! Anti-Stars: small points of light-absorbing darkness dotting a reflective silica-mixed concrete field. Billions of DNA enriched points, all of indeterminate, time-lost origin, waiting only for the connecting lines which would infuse them with meaning; waiting always at perigee to feel the press of human imagination upon them rather than simply that of our boot heels. Look below your feet at any time while walking the 301 square miles of the city and it’s likely you trod upon a constellation, just waiting to be recognized and named. 

In short what electric light hath denied concrete and chewing gum hath supplied. Ground Stars, Urban Constellations, a galaxy worth for our interpretation, in which we can do what we love best- see ourselves reflected.

“Sounds all very well in theory” I can hear you mustache-twirlers harumphing, “but does it work in practice? What might such replacement constellations look like?”

I’m glad you asked. I have taken it upon myself to explore this embryonic field of research a bit. Trips into the field have yielded some promising observations which I’m all too happy to share with you.

Below you will find a small cataloging of my findings thus far. I will name, describe, and illustrate the 10 Urban Constellations I’ve identified, and will even offer some slight illumination on each in the form of related quotations. What being born above these signs, or what their position in relation to your own may portend for you, your character, or your future, I will leave to the “geologers,” “odologers,” “topologers,” “despuologers,” or “humusologers” who will surely follow.

Behold!

Status Somnus (The Standing Sleep)

You see them, standing in the road, nodding, body never quite toppling, never quite standing straight. It’s like slapstick and tragedy mixed. You wonder, “Where can he/she be right now that’s so compelling it overrides the innate need to stave off death? Are they on a planet without cars? Are they floating weightless through space? Are they balancing on a pile of white spaghetti? What are they seeing?” You wonder, but are not curious enough to prick the skin and stand asleep in the road yourself.

Mercator Pudor (The Shame Trader)

You spot them from a block away, if you’re lucky. The fresh-faced guilt-trippers. Their questions like a slap. “Do you care about the environment?” “Do you have a second for gay rights?” “You don’t support animal cruelty do you?” “The children’s ribs are showing!” You look at them and despise them for trading in guilt. They ask every loaded question but the honest one you hear in your head instantly.

Sepulcretum Umbellae (The Umbrella Graveyard)

The wind howls, the sun is gone, the rain hammers your brow. You turn a corner and see it. Mangled, torn, broken, abandoned. It’s a graveyard and you know it, even with your head down and your eyes half-blinded in the storm. You shiver to spite yourself.

Dissaepio Indocilis (The Rude Barrier)

The sidewalk so wonderfully wide. Room enough for street gangs to dance their grudges away. And yet here he/she comes. Straddling one edge, dog straddling the other. Between is a leash, strung taut across the entire walking width. You look at the leash and you yearn to tear it apart with your hands and stuff in his or her mouth, yelling, “Choke! Choke you self-involved misborn ass!” They must know you hate them, but they come ever closer. “So it’s a game of chicken is it?”

Porthmeus Odiosus (The Hateful Ferryman)

You see it’s yellow flank flashing in the traffic. The light is on. You are about to be scooped up! You imagine the seats cradling your tired ass. You raise your hand, perhaps whistle through your teeth, or call out, “Taxi!” But the ferryman rejects you and rolls right by. “Why?” you wonder. “WHY!?” You swear, you doubt, you raise your fists to a deaf God, “Bastard!” Then shuffle on.

Belua Cloaca (The Sewer Monster)

And what is under there anyway? Is it a filth-encrusted albino playground? Is it a dark orgy of disease and blindness held over the sewage-soaked bones of our forefathers? Are the stories true? Is it all alligators, and giant rats, and mole men? Walk a little faster and avoiding the wobbly grates.

Mendicus Beneficiarius (The Privileged Beggar)

Young and sound of body. You look at them and their sign, scrawled with pleas for beer-money or bus fare. You look at their clothes, their accessories, their hair. You make a snap judgement and far off, on some tax sheltered-island, their trust funds accrue interest.

Aquatoris Indifferentis (The Indifferent Water-Carrier)

It’s 8 AM. Foot-traffic rush-hour on a weekday morning. No one smiles because making it to your destination is painful enough. Another day of wage slavery is beginning and no one’s exactly thrilled. Everyone knows this. You know it, the old lady you just elbowed knows it, and so does the guy with the fucking hose. He sees you coming. He does not care. The water flows like your own shin-level Potomac.

Cumulus Arcanus (The Mysterious Pile)

It is waiting around damn near every corner. It is horrid and putrid smelling and the color is indescribable. Flesh colored crayons melted over spinach linguini and scabs. It is nebulous and gut wrenching and even the thought of it’s origin makes your skin crawl. It’s a pile and you must not look at it too closely!

Hostis Dementis (The Demented Stranger)

He approaches. Perhaps you smell him before you see him. Perhaps his madness digs into your ear. It’s one of that most feared tribes, the demented ones. What will he do with his grill fork? What’s that poking out of the hole in his clothes? Is something moving in his bag? Nothing frightens the rational, time-obsessed, grid-walking, metropolitan mind like the demented ones staggering toward you.

There you have it my friends. I hope I’ve inspired you to connect the dots, or brought even a sliver of relief to your poor, addled, star-starved mind.

If you identify any urban constellations of your own feel free to pass them along. The adventure continues.