ishtar or 48 hours later

Despite how well the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh establishes and wields all the classical reverberating hallmarks of myth, the story of a tyrannical king sent a wild man by the gods to curb his oppressive-tendencies—is really strikingly unknown compared to other influential works of cultural heritage. Only really rediscovered and promulgated to audience of any size after World War I, I guess it should not be surprising that the only cemented reference to the friendship fostered between King Gilgamesh and Enkidu I really ever encountered until recently was in that brilliant episode of Star Trek the Next Generation (“Darmok” it was called and perhaps the literature of ancient Sumer might not gain wide-spread status until the twenty-fourth century ) where CPT Picard encounters an alien race whose language muddles the Universal Translator. Finally realising that their speech is drawn from their native mythological canon, using allegory and allusion, CPT Picard reaches out to his fellow captain through the story of Gilgamesh. As a post-script, Picard reads a bit of Homer and wonders—never quite knowing the context or what the fallen alien captain was trying to tell him, if better understanding of his own mythological legacy might make them better explorers. As a foil to the very photogenic but committed bachelor and demi-god Gilgamesh, the gods fashion the savage Enkidu, whose disruption to the countryside seems almost as repulsive to the beleaguered subjects of Uruk as the king’s persecution within the city walls.
Hoping to civilise and tame Enkidu, Gilgamesh arranges for him to be seduced by a temple harlot—and the marathon love-making session seems initially to have worked, as Enkidu cleaned up pretty well too and the animals seems to reject his company afterwards. The former wild scourge dispatched, Enkidu even settling down and becoming a shepherd, Gilgamesh was free to continue his reign of terror more or less unabated. Learning of the king’s deportment while tending his flock, Enkidu resolved to intervene all the same. After a long battle, the two realise that they are of equal strength and sort of a buddy cop movie relationship ensues. The two go off questing together and Gilgamesh is transformed and forgets his old ways on their adventures. Eventually the pair encounter the goddess Ishtar, who has a reputation as somewhat of a vamp to compliment Gilgamesh’s former rakish but reformed ways, and when the king begs off her advances, the scorned goddess demands the Bull of Heaven be visited on Uruk to dealt the land with earthquakes, droughts and plagues. Ishtar’s contingency plan (if the king of the gods refused to unleash this Kraken) was to raise a zombie army to devour the living. Enkidu and Gilgamesh, however, are able to slay the beast—further enraging the gods, who decide one of them must pay for this transgression with his life and Enkidu wastes away, ageing rapidly for weeks, denied a warrior’s death and only a bleak, dusty afterlife to look forward to. Inconsolable, Gilgamesh gives his companion full funerary honours and resolves himself never to die—especially not to succumb to the ravages of old age and dotage (mortal himself despite his divine parentage), and embarks to find the immortal couple, rumoured to have ridden out the Great Flood, and learn the secret to eternal life. Wandering the wilderness, still wracked with grief, Gilgamesh adopts the habit of his departed friend and wears animal hides and is admitted into this Garden of Eden where the couple has taken up residence, rather grudgingly as they try to dissuade him from seeking this lot. Possibly to prove that their immortality was a unique gift and perhaps a curse, the couple Utnapishtim (meaning the Far Away) and Siduri (the patroness that gave mankind beer, rather as a consolation prize) put Gilgamesh to several impossible tests—like staying awake for a week straight or fetching the sprig of a rejuvenating plant from the bottom of the ocean only to loss it later. The king grows more sorrowful when he realises his efforts are in vain. The couple summons Enkidu’s ghost which restores Gilgamesh’s mood and makes him more receptive to their lecturing, which includes the advice to be the best ruler that he can be and create a legacy for himself so that he’ll always be remembered for his good deeds. This is the sort of immortality that man can aspire to and over-reaching can only end in heart-ache. The themes and the architypes of course pervade all myth and legend to follow but this foundational work I think deserves more exposure and study.

unobtainium

Though seemingly a human construct and just an arbitrary but satisfying stopping point, the once toothiness of the Periodic Table of Elements that is no more is a significant subject and the arrangement and ordering of the possible chemical components hang on the non-negotiable properties of physics and nature.
The columns correspond to the valances (shells) of electrons that can “orbit” a given atom of a given heft and proximity is predictive of characteristics and foretold of all the gaps decades prior to their discovery. Even though there was no surprises found in the missing cells, it’s pretty keen to have all that apparently ironed out. Chemistry is not some tin-pot dictator whose managed to complete one more row of medals and ribbons of some uniform that he is wont to prance about in but rather this—guardedly, could represent all normal matter in the Universe, with no new additions to follow. Structurally, we cannot expect to find anything bigger as the mobil would not have a state of equilibrium, although most of the heavier elements with more than one hundred protons exist only in the laboratory as a smattering of atoms that quickly decay.  Normal, experiential matter however does just comprise some fifteen percent of what’s out there with the overwhelming surplus of the Cosmos made of hypothetical Dark Matter, which only shows itself in its gravitation wake and could be made out of a completely different set of elements.

5/5

The ever-intriguing Kottke shares an interesting look on how emoji data labels can be effective, subjective tools for prompting the formation of better sleep-hygiene. Immediate instructions such as the routine presented in the interview at the link can be habit-forming, it seems, and is reflective of the presence this iconography has as a complement to language.
Ages ago, I developed my own system of short-hand and employed this vocabulary (which struck me as a quite memorable hieroglyphics) for note-taking and felt my retention was better for it and still think in those symbols from time to time. Beyond personal rankings and pet-use, there’s also apparently a trend in critics’ circles that gravitating away from “stars” towards more expressive pictorial scale. We’ll see how long this approaches lasts and hopefully it will have run its course before a Rosetta Stone is needed to decipher what two moai and one Great Wave off Kanagawa means for a restaurant. What do you think? Do you defer to the experts in the first place? Maybe simpler is better.

fingerhut

It never occurred to me to me that that vestigial “pepper” dangling off a tomato pincushion had a special purpose—I thought maybe it was just to segregate the pins from the needles, but it’s really pretty keen I think that it’s resonant and gets people talking and maybe appreciating the neglected knitting-basket in the corner.
The Victorian Era design (introduced as seamstresses and tailors became more common and pins less dear—being kept under lock and key in prior ages) invokes a belief that a tomato on the mantle (as was the fashion at the time) of a new home would ward off bad luck. If no tomato was available, the new occupants would improvise with something of that general shape and colour and the sampler work of making a tomato pincushion served a dual purpose—as did the composition of the hassock itself—the tomato being stuffed wool wadding to prevent rust and the little strawberry was filled with sand to sharpen the pins, though superfluous now due to the way pins are manufactured and treated so as not to dull and are considered disposable now. I wonder what other sorts of surprises are lurking in the design everyday, maybe antiquated things.

tonic and toil

Archaeologists and ethnographers trying to reconstruct the inaccessible past (though there are plenty of cultural references to curse and toil—like in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden) have questioned why humanity moved from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculture and division of labour and have puzzled over this apparently rash decision, as a sustenance way of life is far less taxing and obligates far less of an individual’s free-time to earn one’s daily bread, as it were.
Giving into such incursions—alienation from labour that’s unfolded down intractable paths as civilisation, does seem to be quite a harsh punishment and we’re given to wonder for what award. Such advance is certainly not something to be taken for granted in the march of progress—other models are possible and farming and herding can be as capricious as scrounging for nuts and berries and game. One does not see other primates rushing towards cultivation—and not just despoiled wheat and grapes, and deferring one’s harvest to some unknown date. Some think, however, that the compulsion and motivation, perhaps the toxic knowledge, lie in fermentation. Humans would have never entered into such a social-contract without the accidental discovery of beer and wine (succour, according to other traditions)—or however one might name the libation. This does seem like a rather thunderous, not to invoke later protestations after that support structure was already well-established, revelation that can’t be unseen like the knowledge of Good and Evil, Drunk and Sober, and demarcating that free time sacrificed. That’s a little bit of magic, with primacy over bread, manna and other crops, that could elevate one from dull cares for a little while at least, even if that comes at a very high cost with equally high returns.

6x6

tactile: using ultra-sonic puffs of air, researchers in Japan have created holograms that one can feel 

odeon: a tour of the documentation and preservation project sponsored by the Goethe Institute to catalogue the classic movie houses of Africa

nasa-eames: 1970s conceptions of the future of space colonies, via Puppies and Flowers 

mâché: beautiful and inspired paper reliquaries  

potnonomicaphobic: though holiday left-overs are nearly spent by this point, here’s a nice celebration of words for acute food phobias

procrastination: tsundoku is Japanese for letting books pile up on one’s shelves without being read