objet trouvé \AWB-zhay-troo-VAY\ noun
: a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value
I have found several of these these exciting objects, recently. So I wanted to tell the world wide blog-o-drome about these albeit not so much aesthetic, as funny finds.
First. While on vacation I found the burnt remains of a book in a cave on Kauai. Strangely (or not, depending on you personal quotient of strangeness) it was the bottom third of the last seven pages of Stephen King's Different Seasons. I say strange because I didn't recognize it as first. But also because some of King's best writing is in Different Seasons, most of his other work is too long and well... not very good - or scary. Three of the stories from Different Seasons have been made into movies. The third movie "Apt Pupil" which shares its title with the story by King stars a child actor that grew up near where I did. I remember his mom coming into the convenience store where I worked, bragging about her child the actor (who has since vanished from whatever notoriety he had, or maybe I just never really cared). I figured out it what book it was by Google searching the phrase:
an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic called the "novella"
Second. I found one of those Jesus freak comic tracts last weekend called "Party Girl." I took a few photos of it, but if you want, you can read the entire thing at Chick.com. Let me start by saying "party girl" is hilarious and disturbing, much like looking at a picture of Karl Rove. What I love about it is that Satan is a corporeal being out to actually murder people. Jill is singled out to be personally murdered by Satan himself because God warned her grandmother Rita Jones, about the devils plans to murder Jill (way to go God). Well some how Rita Jones makes the 3000 mile journey to the Hotel Orleans where Jill is at, just in time to stop her from drinking a toast to long life (does that qualify as irony or just reallllyyy bad writing?) which was poisoned by the bartender with several pills (pills? in a drink, are we sure he was going to "murder" her). And the best part is no one at the party knew that Satan was actually a bartender trying to kill them all because he was wearing a costume, disguised as ... you guessed it! Satan! I mean how clever is Satan to go around killing people wearing a clownish satan disguise?
Pretty damned clever.
But what's weird is that these Christian writers can take all sorts of licence with "Satan" who they claim is real. Depicting him doing whatever the most evil thing you can think of is. But Jesus, and God well thats a different story, actually a very old very boring story. That they don't seem to be able to break from, because it would destroy their faith, because it's so full of nonsense, that without an "ancient" text as referent the whole illusion / story would be even more suspect. So, no, we can't make up our own stories about Jesus (unless your Joseph Smith).
Third. I found two Tarot decks and Tarot books in the free store. One of them is the 1980 printing of the The Hermetic Tarot: based on the Esoteric workings of the secret order of the Golden Dawn version by Godfrey Dawson, which is entertaining to play with and scare people who distribute bible tracts (very demonic). Which reminds me of a book by Aleister Crowley (Mr. 666 himself) which I bought recently at a used book store while on vaction. Now the book is rare. And when I went to buy it they (the owners?)looked at me with smiles, and talking about how "special I must be for recognizing this rare book", and "Crowley was such a genius", and "we'll just give you that other book for free, and yeah you can have that really rare mint condition 80's video game for twenty dollars"... with a oh you believe in Magick with a 'k' just like we do undertone. After which I spoil all their fun by letting slip that "I find Crowley interesting because he and a hand full of people pretty much authored everything we think of as new age/occult/earth religion during the first half of the 20th century."
(Awkward silence creeps in as they realize I just called the entire new age book case a highly derivative work of fiction)
Wife quickly chimes in with a, "you mean he ... uh ... put it all together?" Myself noticing the change on the store owner/clerks faces respond with, "huh? oh yeah it's not like he made all that up... he traveled all over the world." And then we made our quick getaway. Honestly though, if those two truly were magickal adepts, they'd be more amazed and inspired with Crowley's work as fiction rather than the plundering of secret knowledge of Qaballah, Acetic Buddhism, etc. and all the other macho over achiever blah of his life.
Cheers ! - Anybody else find interesting stuff in caves?
