The Brier Patch

Headless Horseman: The Galloping Hessian by Marcelo Gallegos.

Graphite on Strathmore Bristol with digital color, 10 x 10″, 2015.

“There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!”

Figure of Bastet

Romanized Anubis

Marble statue of the jackal-headed god Anubis (Hermanubis), associated with mummification and the afterlife, holding the Caduceus of Hermes in his left hand, dating from the 2nd century. 

Several people gathered at the base of the Great Pyramid, others climbing 1880

“Seemed to.”

“Suddenly.”

“Crisp and golden as an apple.”

Someone I Find Attractive: *tells me what to do in a semi-stern voice*

Me:

The men are so tender.

They cry, and kiss each other’s foreheads, and hug, and call each other ‘my friend’ and ‘my dear’; they’re respectful to women and faithful to their partners; they have banter without being creepy and sleazy, and literally none of that stops them from being considered “manly”.

It’s the same thing that creates a dark and depressing sense of humor- naming the rats eating your friends corpses (too dangerous to try to dispose of them) after the friends. Or shaking a petrified hand still sticking up from the rubble of a blast.

Tolkien saw these things in the war. He knew and understood: peace doesn’t make tenderness. War does. Seeing the worst of the worst is what creates empathy and softness.

When the mummy of Ramesses II was transported to special laboratories in France in 1974 to assist in preserving its condition, a passport was required. Under French law, anyone who enters the country, alive or dead, must hold a passport. So the Egyptian government issued a passport to King Ramesses II, labeling him as “King (deceased)”. Just as interestingly, when the mummy arrived in France, it was received with a funeral procession of full military honors, as was fitting for all members of high rank.