Category Archives: Meditations

The Marriage of Hilpa, part two

While Dan is away celebrating the holidays, I’ll type in the ending of “The Marriage of Hilpa.” Part one may be found here. The story comes from an old, old volume of astrological lore that I have in my possession. — Isaac Bickerstaff

The boy-twin ran off to the great City, and presented the letter to Mishpach. Mishpach dictated this reply to his scribe: “To the great Hilpa, Mistress of the Valleys [etc.], Greetings. I, Mishpach, shall wait upon you at the eastern edge of your realm, on the road that leads to the great City, on the fourth day of Solmanthur [for they used the old Northern names for the months], at noontime.” And Mishpach applied his seal to the sheet of parchment, and sent the boy back with his reply to Hilpa.

The girl-twin ran up the mountain path to the mountaintop aeryie of Shalum, and presented the letter to him. Shalum wrote out this reply to Hilpa: “To the great Hilpa, Mistress of the Valleys [etc.], Greetings. I, Shalum, shall wait upon you at the western edge of your realm, on the path that leads to the top of Mount Tizrah, on the fourth day of Solmanthur, at noontime.” And Shalum applied his seal to the sheet of parchment, and sent the girl back with his reply to Hilpa.

The two twins arrived at the sacred grove, where Hilpa awaited them, at exactly the same moment. As twins will sometimes do, they fell into step with one another, and with identical motions handed their respective parchment sheets to Hilpa.

Hilpa read first one, then the other of the replies. Her face grew stern, and then her anger burst out like a sudden violent thunderstorm. She uttered terrible imprecations against these fickle men who would ignore the dates and places she had assigned them to meet her; but in the end, there was nothing for it but to acknowledge the dilemma she faced.

Now it so happened that one of her retinue was a woman who looked so much like Hilpa that many could not tell them apart. This woman, named Goab, agreed to impersonate Hilpa, and when the fourth day of Solmanthur drew near, Hilpa and Goab cast lots, with the result that Hilpa went west to meet with Shalum, and Goab went east to meet with Mishpach. Hilpa took the boy-twin with her, and Goab took the girl-twin to accompany her.

When Goab and the boy arrived at the appointed meeting place, Mishpach was already there. Goab presented herself to him, and it was obvious to all present that each found the other attractive. But Mishpach whirled and pointed his finger in the girl-twin’s face, saying, Is this Hilpa? Surprised, the girl-twin shook his head, saying, No, her hame is Goab. Satisfied, Mishpach nodded, and said, This is what my astrologers told me, that she would attempt to deceive me. And he turned to Goab and said, You may either choose to be beheaded, or to accompany me to the great City and be my slave; my astrologers tell me there is no other choice for you. But the girl-twin, with great presence of mind, grabbed her hand and pulled her away, and they both ran to safety within the bounds of Hilpa’s realm.

When Hilpa and the boy arrived at the appointed meeting place for Shalum, he was already there. Shalum uttered this speech: The mountains in my realm are rich with cedar-tree and oak; the food is good and plentiful; the cool mountain air calms the soul; won’t you come with me and reign as my equal at the top of Mount Tizrah? But Hilpa spurned his offer, called him terrible names, turned on her heel, and returned to her realm.

When Hilpa got back to the sacred grove, she found Goab there. Goab told her tale, and Hilpa saw that her subterfuge was uncovered. Just then, a messenger from the east came, saying that Mishpach was massing his armies along the border. And another messenger came saying that Shalum was gathering his troops. Hilpa called her astrologers, who told her that all was lost; there was only hope if she would abdicate and leave the realm. So Hilpa left in the dark of night, never to be seen again in the Valleys. It was said that Mishpach’s armies caught her as she tried to escape, killed her and cut out her heart, and sent the heart to Shalum. Whether this be true or not, it is only certain that both Mishpach and Shalum withdrew their armies after Hilpa’s departure, and the three realms were ever after at peace with one another.

Once Hilpa was gone, the people gathered at the sacred grove. Hilpa had appointed no girl to be her heir. By common acclamation, the girl-twin was chosen to be the new ruler, for she had told the truth and had shown great presence of mind in fleeing with Goab, thus saving her life.

Of this strange tale, there is little that can be said, except that it must be true. For if it were a fable, there would be a clear moral to draw, and there is none. And if it were a tale to teach us morality, again there would be a clear lesson to be drawn from it, but there is no lesson. It is only true stories from which no particular moral or morality can be drawn, except whatever the author imposes upon them. As an astrologer, I look at the stars to find connections between earthly events, and the movement of the stars; but the stars reveal no particular symmetry, offer no moral guidance; they simply exist, and we observe them. — I. B.

Doubt and confusion

Usually by the end of the work day, I’m eager for a walk, but not today. I managed to walk over to Fish Island, to Carol’s new office there, but that’s as far as I got. I’ve been fighting off a cold for a couple of weeks, and it seems to have gotten worse over the past two days. I have little energy, and my thinking has gotten fuzzy:– I’m not capable of sustained thought without a real effort. Or maybe it’s not a cold — knowing me, it could be simple exhaustion stemming from overwork. What is interesting is how physical factors affect one’s thought processes. A cold or exhaustion can slow down your thinking; worse diseases can do worse than that….

I think I was headed towards an interesting point, but I suddenly lost my train of thought. When doubt and confusion set in, it’s time for a nap.

New moon

A tiny sliver of the new moon shone overhead. I stood at the end of State Pier not watching the sunset. Instead I watched a barge loaded down with gravel, well out in the middle of the harbor. The gray gravel on the barge shone faintly pink.

The barge was dead in the water, the tow rope between it and the tugboat slack. I could see someone at the stern of the tug doing something to the rope; then the faint sound of a big diesel engine growling, the water between the tug and the barge churned with prop wash, the barge slowly started to move forward; the person standing at the stern of the tug waved madly at the pilot house, the sound of the tug’s engine dropped, the rope went slack, the barge slowed and stopped. Some kind of readjustment of the rope. The tug’s engine rose into an audible growl again, the water churned between the barge and the tug, slowly the barge began to move behind the tug, gradually they got up to speed and headed towards the hurricane barrier.

I watched for several minutes. The pink light on the gravel got fainter, the tug’s running lights grew brighter in the gathering darkness, tug and barge grew smaller. I got bored watching them, and turned to head home. Overhead the sliver of moon shone bright silver, the sunset nothing more than a red glow on the horizon.

The marriage of Hilpa

Isaac Bickerstaff, astrologer, writes:

I came across the following in a curious old volume of astrological lore, bound in leather, and (according to the title page) “printed privately in Tremont Street in Boston” — the date unfortunately is obscured, but it appears to be an old book; what is printed here comes from the last chapter of the book:

Hilpa, fairer and wiser than any other woman on the Isle of Z—-, was the ruler of the Valleys, which lay in the center of the island, and ruler of all the groves therein. On one side of Hilpa’s realm stood Mount Tizrah, greatest of the mountains towering over the middle of the island, splitting it north to south from shore to the other; Mount Tizrah was ruled by Shalum. On the other side of Hilpa’s realm, just beyond a low range of hills, was a vast plain bisected by a river, and on that river stood a great City, at the farthest reaches of the tidewater inland. This City was ruled by Mishpach, who was a mighty man known throughout the surrounding countryside.

Now one day Hilpa took it into her head to marry, which was unheard of for the ruler of the Valleys; for Hilpa determined that she would like to have children of her own, rather than choose a child from among those who were brought to the sacred grove. For generation upon generation, into the distant and hazy past, rulers of the Valleys had always been women, women who lay, not with men, but with other women; thus the rulers of the Valleys chose their heirs from among the common people. Hilpa wanted offspring of her own flesh and blood, but she felt the old tradition strongly enough that she recoiled at the thought of lying with a man from her own realm. Continue reading →

Autumn watch

Alianthus altissima, known as the “tree of heaven” or Chinese sumac, grows everywhere in our neighborhood. Alianthus is an invasive species that grows incredibly quickly, and can reach twenty or more feet in height in two years. It will thrive in places where no other tree will grow: it will spring up in the narrow bands of rank weeds that grow between dreary parking lots; it will sprout along chain-link fences; it thrives along the trash-strewn edges of busy highways. I remember reading one field guide to trees which described alianthus as a “coarse, malodorous tree,” but that’s not an entirely fair description. It is fair to say that alianthus tends to grow in coarse, malodorous places — sometimes a stray alianthus will be the one oasis of greenery in some blasted post-industrial wasteland.

On my walk today, I passed the alianthus altissima that has been growing up near the pedestrian overpass that crosses Route 18 in downtown New Bedford, growing right next to and choking out a fir tree. Yesterday, the alianthus was still covered with green leaves; but today, suddenly it has no leaves left. The leaves never turned red or orange or yellow or even brown, they just fell off. A mature alianthus altissima can become a beautiful tree, with masses of creamy white flowers in the spring, and in the winter with its many branches reaching up towards the sky. But it adds nothing whatsoever to the autumn landscape.

Hurricane season

The weather wasn’t nearly as wild as it could have been. The National Weather Service had warned that Hurricane Noel could bring winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour, but here in New Bedford the wind gusts never got above 39 miles per hour — enough to bring down small branches and tear some flags to shreds, but really not all that bad. And the National Weather Service had warned of the possibility of thunderstorms with heavy rains and a total accumulation of two to four inches, but so far we haven’t even gotten an inch of rain since yesterday.

I stayed in most of the day because of the severe weather warnings. I didn’t take my usual hour-long walk. The barometer kept dropping, down to 992 millibars, and my bones ached. By the end of the day I was feeling so cranky and antsy that this evening I actually lifted weights. I hate lifting weights, but after I was done I felt much better. But oh, how I wished I had taken a walk this afternoon, instead of believing the weather forecasters and their dire predictions.

I was still cursing myself for being stupid enough to listen to the weather forecasts when I checked the weather observations for Nantucket, just fifty miles east of here. The weather station on Nantucket recorded wind gusts of over 70 miles per hour (that’s hurricane force) with steady winds above 50 miles per hour, and they’ve had over three inches of rain so far. It wouldn’t have taken much — just a little twitch in the hurricane’s track — for that wind and rain to have hit here.

Autumn watch

I had to go to the gum doctor again today for another check-up, and on the way back I stopped at Verrill Farm, the farmstand Carol and I used to shop at when we lived down the street from it. They still have lots of fresh local fruits and vegetables: butternut squash, Hubbard squash (big and blue and warty), acorn squash; bags of curly spinach, and bunches of lacinto kale and curly-leaf kale; a few last tomatoes; parsnips (creamy white gnarled roots tied in neat bunches with the greens still attached), carrots (long gloriously orange blunt-tipped ones, and crookedy pointed yellow ones); Jerusalem artichokes; Brussels sprouts; bright bunches of red radishes and red-and-white radishes with rounded green leaves; Yukon gold potatoes, little wooden boxes of expensive German fingerling potatoes, Green Mountain potatoes (oddly-shaped with deep eyes), red potatoes, big long Russet potatoes; big yellow rutabagas, and this year they’re growing the white Macomber turnips that originated down here in Westport; and of course there are the native apples: McIntoshes, Spencers, Empires, Macouns, and Cortlands (although they had none of the older varieties that keep better and cook better).

As I picked up a box of Jerusalem artichokes, a woman asked me if you had to peel them before she cooked them, adding, “They look like they would be difficult to peel, they’re so small.” I said that I peeled them and ate them raw, but I knew some people ate them with the skins on. “What do they taste like?” I said they tasted nutty and, well, good. She was about to ask me something else when one of the cashiers who has worked there for years overheard our conversation, ignored me, bustled up to her and said, “You’ll love them, one of my customers doesn’t peel them, she just gently scrubs them and cooks them.” “Gently scrubs — you mean like mushrooms?” “Yes, just like that,” said the officious cashier, who obviously knew nothing about Jerusalem artichokes. Jerusalem artichokes are nothing at all like mushrooms: you do not wash them like mushrooms, you do not prepare them like mushrooms, and they do not taste like mushrooms. Under the cashier’s onslaught, the other woman put the box of Jerusalem artichokes in her shopping basket, and slunk away.

That officious cashier made the sale, but I wonder how happy that woman will be with her purchase. Scrub them gently? If she doesn’t want to peel them, she’d be better off scrubbing the hell out of them, then trimming off the unappetizing bits. Mostly, we North Americans eat a very limited number of foodstuffs these days, and most of the food we eat comes out of plastic containers or cardboard boxes. It’s hard to change the habits embedded in us by all that prepared food. You can’t change those habits by telling someone Jerusalem artichokes are “like mushrooms.” Tell them that Jerusalem artichokes are a gustatory adventure, like nothing they’ve ever tried before: nutty, sweet, with a lovely crunchy texture when you eat them raw. Tell them the truth about the food they’ve never eaten, and maybe they’ll be too intimidated to buy it this time, but you will have planted a seed in their imaginations, and they will realize that there’s a whole world of food out there that they haven’t tried — a whole world of local food that they have been shut out of because, for all the immense floor space, supermarkets actually have very little variety.

As for me, I bought a big bag of Cortland apples, ten pounds of orange carrots (which taste nothing like the California carrots you get in the supermarket), Brussels sprouts, ten pounds of Green Mountain potatoes (which are firmer, whiter, and taste different than the limp potatoes you get in the supermarket), lacinto kale, and some of that late-fall spinach (which tastes different from the plastic-wrapped spinach you get in the supermarket because of the soil and the weather, and because it’s much fresher). I also got some Jerusalem artichokes. I think I’ll go eat one right now: peel it, and bite into it raw.

Freighter

The freighter Green Honduras (a reefer out of Nassau, Bahamas, 420 ft. length overall, gross tonnage 7,743) is in port right now. Looks like they’re unloading fruit, perhaps citrus from Africa. I spent some time this afternoon just standing there watching them unload the cargo, and I made this video to justify wasting all that time spent doing nothing. (2:16)

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Gulls and crab

A few days ago, I was walking on Pope’s Island near the marina, seeing if any of the recreational boats had been taken out of the water yet. I happened to be watching as an adult Herring Gull suddenly swooped down and landed on the water right next to the rocks that make up the shore of the island. The gull stuck its head down in the water, balanced itself with a flurry of its wings, and came up with something in its bill.

The gull flew right in front of me, and landed in the marina’s parking lot about a hundred feet from where I was standing. It had a fair-sized crab, and it appeared that the crab was still moving. The gull lifted up its head, dropped the crab on the pavement, and quickly picked it up again. As far as I could tell, that drop was the coup de grace, and the crab no longer moved after that.

The gull shook its head with the crab in its bill, put the crab down, turned its head on the side, and pecked at the joint between the upper and lower shells. I walked a little closer as it repeated this maneuver several times. By now, it was pulling little bits of flesh out of the crab and gulping them down.

A second gull flew over, gliding in and landing a safe distance away, and watching the first gull eat. A third gull flew over to watch as well. But the first gull was very adept at eating the crab, and the other two gulls quickly gave up and flew away, either to search for food on their own or to find a clumsy gull from whom they could steal food.

Then a first-year gull flew over, awkward, with its drab brown plumage, and landed fairly close to the adult Herring Gull. It landed clumsily, hunched its shoulders, and gave the keening cry that baby Herring Gulls give when they’re in the nest asking for food from their parents. The adult gull shook the crab very hard a couple of times, and a couple of the crab’s legs flew off. The adult let the first-year gull steal one of the crab legs, which it quickly swallowed whole.

Pretty soon, it looked to me as though the adult had finished all the meat in the crab shell, so I ran over and chased the two gulls away to see what kind of crab it had been. All that was left was the top shell of a Green Crab (Carcinus maenas); its shell measured nearly six inches from point to point.