Thursday, February 22, 2007
Tar Pits
Another excursion! Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the George Page Museum, otherwise known as The La Brea Tar Pits. Such glorious remnants of a time we were not present for! Dedicated archaeologists spend every day excavating bones from the sticky pits of tar – mice, birds, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolves and mammoths. I spoke with one of the docents to find out if any human remains had been recovered from the tar – in particular, remains that suggested a post-deceased existence – but the docent referred me to the desk manager, who referred me to the security guard, who suggested I might take a turn in the gift shop. In any case, I now have a wonderful little keychain that reads STUCK ON FOSSILS! I think J. will get a kick out of it. My spirits are high.
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July 24, 1974
New York Times
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Archaeologists today linked a severed head, circa 1700, belonging to the court of Louis IVX, to a headless body found in the Anyang province of China. The body and head appear to be of Eurasian origin, but not specifically Chinese.
“It’s probable the body was that of a migrant traveling through an overland route to China,” Bill Eastermand, a historian at SUNY Purchase, said. “The emperor Khang Hi may have had him executed and then sent the head to the King of France as an example of his might, or as a gift.”
“The head and the body have been carbon dated to be two centuries apart,” Erica Johansson of the University of Pennsylvania, which has been displaying the headless body for the past twenty years, said. “Though there is a resemblance between the two, there is no possibility that they belong together. Who sends a severed head as a gift?”
“The carbon dating is troubling,” Eastermand admits, adding that the head and body are undergoing additional dating tests to confirm their compatibility, “But DNA tests don’t lie.”
What treasures you have squirreled away in your archives, Papillonnoirs!
I do have lots of treasures. This is what comes of spending one’s time among the people rather than holed up in libraries, no matter how international. The people and I understand each other.
Your comment, though unexpectedly barbed, is to the point. I have lost something through my cloistered studies. My life has been a lonely one, pursuing this “swirling dark void.” This is the reason I decided to make an effort to go public at this point.
It can be nice to connect, but relationships can be disappointing. You cross paths with someone else with similar interests and momentarily you can be in that void together. But then you realize your flesh is rotting and you are disappearing and the person you love and whom you believe loves you is only a figment of your imagination because you carry your grave around with you—six feet of isolation.
One must not be tempted to give in to isolation. One can find solace in work—in considering the civilizations that have come before and the smallness of one’s own problems.
If I am to enter into a relationship with another individual, it will be in the mutual understanding that the relationship exists solely to satisfy certain material needs. I cannot become entangled in relationships of a more abstract nature.
That’s exactly the way I would have put it. This is the only way we can avoid doing harm to ourselves and others.
I confessed our relationship to my advisor and he said that, while not severe enough to merit expulsion, our relationship could severely jeopardize my study and therefore my candidacy. I am sorry to have mislead you. What happened between us can never happen again. You may be confused by the status of our relationship, which I must now define as strictly between interviewer and subject. I regret that my behavior was not as professional as it could have been and resulted in confusion.
What?
Do we really have to go over this again?
Mathilde?
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