Old days in Chateaugay

Tags

1819, Chateaugay, circus, Ellenburg, Malone, Plattsburgh, Wood Stove

WOOD STOVE IN 1900

CIRCUS IN 1819

A DEVINE TRAGEDY: 55. (Book 50 The End of the Circus)

Tags

A Devine Tragedy, Abnegation, acrobats, Anxiety, Arrogance, automatons, beings, bowels, brothers, Brothers of Personnel, Capitulation, Captain, chariots, circus, circus acts, Cloistered, Corona, corsairs, Craps, creative man, Creativity, dark of night, Dice, doom, dungeons, Education, equines, Ever Onward, Failure, Frederich Nietzsche, Gluttony, Human bodies, labor, loathing, lust, Machinations, Mail Call, Mankind, measuring devices, Mess hall, Microcomputers, misery, money changers, Money Lenders, Mortared Walls, Nepotism, Originality, Overman, Panoptics, Passion, Perseverance, Personnel, Petier Bruegel the Elder, Pharisees, Phenomena, Poker, Pride, Priest of Personnel, repeated spasms, revelry, searching, Secret Society, seeking, Self Respect, Shylocks, sisters, sloth, smoke, Snake Eyes, spouses, sweat, tax collectors, tears, the body, The Horses, the mind, the seducer, The Seven Somambulists, The State, Time Clocks, Toil, tools, triumph, trumpets, truth, underman, vengeance, vipers, walking wounded, wisdom, Wrath, Zombie

Sunlight on a Stormy Sea, c.1640s Bonaventura Peeters the Elder (Flemish, 1614–1652)

 

That particular circus found a new ringmaster and survived, albeit not quite the same show.

Frogs continue croaking in various ponds. Donkeys and asses still bray in various corrals. Fickle birds warble amongst the dark hemlocks. Dogs howl in the night. Other beings make their selves known in other ways, except for the worms. They are not to be seen or heard unless you dig in the dead leaves, muck, and dung piles.

FRED SPOKE NO MORE.

A link to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s selected works

 

A DEVINE TRAGEDY: 54. (Book 49, Verse 6 The Conflagration)

Tags

A Devine Tragedy, Abnegation, acrobats, Anxiety, Arrogance, automatons, beings, bowels, brothers, Brothers of Personnel, Capitulation, Captain, chariots, circus, circus acts, Cloistered, Corona, corsairs, Craps, creative man, Creativity, dark of night, Dice, doom, dungeons, Education, equines, Ever Onward, Failure, Frederich Nietzsche, Gluttony, Human bodies, labor, loathing, lust, Machinations, Mail Call, Mankind, measuring devices, Mess hall, Microcomputers, misery, money changers, Money Lenders, Mortared Walls, Nepotism, Originality, Overman, Panoptics, Passion, Perseverance, Personnel, Petier Bruegel the Elder, Pharisees, Phenomena, Poker, Pride, Priest of Personnel, repeated spasms, revelry, searching, Secret Society, seeking, Self Respect, Shylocks, sisters, sloth, smoke, Snake Eyes, spouses, sweat, tax collectors, tears, the body, The Horses, the mind, the seducer, The Seven Somambulists, The State, Time Clocks, Toil, tools, triumph, trumpets, truth, underman, vengeance, vipers, walking wounded, wisdom, Wrath, Zombie

Limbo: by Jan Mandijn

 

 

The ringmaster never appeared.

The circus acts continued to become more ghastly and weirder with each passing minute. There was howling and braying, croaking and hooting. The din was unbearable.

The acrobat-nun reappeared from time to time. She would take bows for the audience and then disappear just as quickly.

The clown-owls ran faster and faster around the ring. Their big red flat shoes kept slapping the floor and raising a cloud of sawdust. The faster they ran the more smoke poured out of their briefcases. And then it happened!

One of the briefcases flew open and the flames inside ignited the sawdust cloud. It exploded and caught the sheep on fire. The leader of the sheep leapt on his tiny motorcycle and exited the circus tent.

The dead acrobat awoke due to all this commotion. He climbed back up the rope ladder, where upon, and once again, he purposefully fell to his death.

The bleachers finally caught fire and several hundred members of the audience perished in the flames.

Some members escaped and found respite in other venues of show business. They remained however, only audience members.

Well, that is not quite true. A few found respite as puppeteers and one or two became resident ringmasters (that means that they showed up to direct the circus).

FRED REMAINED SILENT

Tomorrow: “The Circus Acts Continued, Book 50, The End”

 

A DEVINE TRAGEDY: 53. (Book 49, Verse 5; Dead Fish and Sacrificial Worms)

Tags

A Devine Tragedy, Abnegation, acrobats, Anxiety, Arrogance, automatons, beings, bowels, brothers, Brothers of Personnel, Capitulation, Captain, chariots, circus, circus acts, Cloistered, Corona, corsairs, Craps, creative man, Creativity, dark of night, Dice, doom, dungeons, Education, equines, Ever Onward, Failure, Frederich Nietzsche, Gluttony, Human bodies, labor, loathing, lust, Machinations, Mail Call, Mankind, measuring devices, Mess hall, Microcomputers, misery, money changers, Money Lenders, Mortared Walls, Nepotism, Originality, Overman, Panoptics, Passion, Perseverance, Personnel, Petier Bruegel the Elder, Pharisees, Phenomena, Poker, Pride, Priest of Personnel, repeated spasms, revelry, searching, Secret Society, seeking, Self Respect, Shylocks, sisters, sloth, smoke, Snake Eyes, spouses, sweat, tax collectors, tears, the body, The Horses, the mind, the seducer, The Seven Somambulists, The State, Time Clocks, Toil, tools, triumph, trumpets, truth, underman, vengeance, vipers, walking wounded, wisdom, Wrath, Zombie

Gods and Monsters: Persius

 

The dejected leader of the sheep remained sitting on the oak curbing of the circus ring. His motorcycle continued sputtering and the wheels were still slowly spinning. Without warning he leapt up and shouted “Hallelujah brother” as if he had just remembered something.

Reaching into the small saddle bag on the tiny motorcycle he pulled out a piece of oil paper with something bundled inside. A white string was tied neatly around the package, crisscrossed in the shape of a cruciform, and then tied around the package in the other direction. At the top of the tied string was a fine example of a bow. The man carefully placed the package on the sawdust of the circus ring floor. He deftly pulled on the ends of the bow and the string fell to the ground. He then loosened the string and un-wrapped the remainder of the oil paper.

A ghastly sight was beheld by the audience. There, lying in the middle of the unwrapped oil paper was a dead fish. A fish, which by its odor, had been dead for quite some time. Covering the fish were hundreds of little white maggots. They wriggled and crawled on each other to no apparent ends except to escape the dead fish. The maggots knew that this was only a circus act in their own minds, so they had quit being maggots. They failed in their basic being. Realizing their failure before it had actually happened (or may not have happened had they not planned to fail) they decided to make a sacrifice. One by one, all following each other, they crawled up the wooden legs of the frog cage. It was there that they made their sacrifice without a word. For maggots, like predestined failures, are silent. Worms do not bray, do not croak, do not howl, and surely do not hoot. The frogs had a decent meal but decided not to jump any higher because someone may always expect them to jump higher – – – forever after.

FRED REMAINED SILENT

 

Tomorrow: “The Circus Acts Continued, Book 49, Verse 6, The Conflagration”

 

A DEVINE TRAGEDY: 52. (Book 49, Verse 4 Lamenting Frogs)

Tags

A Devine Tragedy, Abnegation, acrobats, Anxiety, Arrogance, automatons, beings, bowels, brothers, Brothers of Personnel, Capitulation, Captain, chariots, circus, circus acts, Cloistered, Corona, corsairs, Craps, creative man, Creativity, dark of night, Dice, doom, dungeons, Education, equines, Ever Onward, Failure, Frederich Nietzsche, Gluttony, Human bodies, labor, loathing, lust, Machinations, Mail Call, Mankind, measuring devices, Mess hall, Microcomputers, misery, money changers, Money Lenders, Mortared Walls, Nepotism, Originality, Overman, Panoptics, Passion, Perseverance, Personnel, Petier Bruegel the Elder, Pharisees, Phenomena, Poker, Pride, Priest of Personnel, repeated spasms, revelry, searching, Secret Society, seeking, Self Respect, Shylocks, sisters, sloth, smoke, Snake Eyes, spouses, sweat, tax collectors, tears, the body, The Horses, the mind, the seducer, The Seven Somambulists, The State, Time Clocks, Toil, tools, triumph, trumpets, truth, underman, vengeance, vipers, walking wounded, wisdom, Wrath, Zombie

Orpheus Taming the Animals

 

Finally one of the clown-owls walked behind the curtain and returned with a large wire-mesh cage full of frogs. The cage was attached to a table with three legs.

He shoved aside a few of the sheep and the dead acrobat so that he could place the cage in the center of the circus ring. As he stood back the frogs awoke from their lethargic stupor. One by one they would look around to see who was watching. As each individual frog was sure that he had an audience (even one clown-owl would suffice as an audience) he would jump into the air. Typically the frog would only jump to a moderate height. He would look around to see if his audience pitied him for this very poor showing.

A lamented croak would escape his bulging throat.

The audience did not react.

One by one the cage full of frogs repeated this mournful act of pitiful jumps. And the audience continued its bored look because, of course, they could not determine what these poor beings were attempting to do.

The croaking became sorrowful and everyone wished that it would stop. It did not.

It almost sounded like a human phrase; “poor me, poor me, poor me.” One of the clowns walked around the circus ring with a large cardboard image of a crying moon. It added a nice touch of sadness.

FRED REMAINED SILENT

 

Tomorrow: “The Circus Acts Continued, Book 49, Verse 5, Dead Fish and Sacrificial Worms”

 

A DEVINE TRAGEDY: 51. The Circus Acts (Book 49, Verse 3 The Nun and the Acrobats)

Tags

A Devine Tragedy, Abnegation, acrobats, Anxiety, Arrogance, automatons, beings, bowels, brothers, Brothers of Personnel, Capitulation, Captain, chariots, circus, circus acts, Cloistered, Corona, corsairs, Craps, creative man, Creativity, dark of night, Dice, doom, dungeons, Education, equines, Ever Onward, Failure, Frederich Nietzsche, Gluttony, Human bodies, labor, loathing, lust, Machinations, Mail Call, Mankind, measuring devices, Mess hall, Microcomputers, misery, money changers, Money Lenders, Mortared Walls, Nepotism, Originality, Overman, Panoptics, Passion, Perseverance, Personnel, Petier Bruegel the Elder, Pharisees, Phenomena, Poker, Pride, Priest of Personnel, repeated spasms, revelry, searching, Secret Society, seeking, Self Respect, Shylocks, sisters, sloth, smoke, Snake Eyes, spouses, sweat, tax collectors, tears, the body, The Horses, the mind, the seducer, The Seven Somambulists, The State, Time Clocks, Toil, tools, triumph, trumpets, truth, underman, vengeance, vipers, walking wounded, wisdom, Wrath, Zombie

Hans von Gersdorff. (Strasburg, 1528). ((Field book of surgery. The wounded man).

The sheep and the motorcyclist had hardly finished their act when four acrobats walked out into the dusty and smoke filled ring. There was hardly room for all of them. Their leotards were a bright yellow color with purple piping. The piping was so defined that it clearly could be seen by the most distant audience member. A rope ladder dropped down from somewhere near the top of the circus tent. One by one the acrobats climbed up the ladder to reach a dimly lit platform. The audience strained to follow their moves. A trapeze could be seen swinging back and forth.

The acrobats appeared to be arguing about something. This was not good for the pendulum like movement of the trapeze. The arc it traveled became smaller and smaller as they argued. It was apparent that one of the acrobats would be required to leap onto the slowing trapeze to give it momentum. Suddenly one acrobat ripped off his leotards only to expose a nun’s habit underneath. From beneath the skirt the nun deftly removed the white cap of a novice and donned it. With that she forcefully shoved a fellow acrobat off the platform and towards the trapeze. The unbalanced acrobat fell backward. His head hit the trapeze bar as his arms flailed wildly in the air. He fell straight downward and landed on top of the sheep. The nun leapt at the wildly swinging trapeze bar and successfully grasped it in both hands; habit swinging to and fro.

The two remaining acrobats discussed something in earnest and then climbed back down the rope ladder. One went to the left. The other went to the right. Both avoided the dogs. They whistled and warbled as they departed only to return a few seconds later. Then the one who departed to the left apparently changed his mind and departed once more; this time to the right. The remaining acrobat looked upward at the nun who was slowly losing her grip on the trapeze bar. This remaining acrobat walked over to the poor acrobat who had been pushed. He lifted him up and asked if he was all right. The response was a weak “yes.” With that, the remaining acrobat placed the injured one directly beneath the nun who promptly fell from the trapeze. He/she landed on the recovering acrobat and broke his neck. He died immediately. The remaining acrobat and the nun bowed their heads in memoriam, pointed at each other, curtsied, and exited; stage left.

The audience, clowns, dogs and mini-cycle rider all remained silent and stunned.

FRED ALSO REMAINED SILENT

 

Tomorrow: “Circus Acts Continued, Book 49, Verse 4, Lamenting Frogs”