Poetry from The Literary Review
Observations on the Ubarian Calendar From (The Books of Ubar)
Amy England
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Wheel of Shadows A wheel whose spokes are intersecting figure eights, marked with oval pegs that are topped with eyes painted inauspiciously open or auspiciously shut—what does it reveal to us? First, the two types of infinity—the finite infinite and the infinite infinite, knotted time and plumed time. Second, the months in which it is wise to set forth, sit down, sail off, see more, suit oneself, store figs, stay home, strike a goatherd, strangle the milkman, stone itinerant peddlers, stuff cushions, stew lentils, and stoop to folly, and the months in which it is not. Thirdly, the wheel delineates for us the shape of a year. This year might consist of the familiar three hundred and sixty-five days, but how oddly they are disposed of! Each of the twenty-two months (digits) lasts sixteen point six days, or ribs, completely unbroken by weeks, let alone weekends. Each day is named for an ordinary object (key, bowl of rocks). Only the partial day, at the month's end, is a nameless, unspeakable time––the rest is all thoroughly accounted for. (The new month following this partial day begins thus fourteen hours and twenty four minutes, or three Ubarian limbs, later than the last month). Picture it: sixteen interminable days, the day's five hours/limbs horribly wrenched from the places that one only just became accustomed to them holding, all leading up to that fourteen-and-a-half hour black-out of shuffling and desperate reorientation. No wonder they require that up to ten elevenths of their year be spent in vacation. Astrology and Astrology Further Revealed Horoscopes are based on the month, day, and hour. Twenty-two months, sixteen (namable) days, and five hours means that there are 2,260 individual possible horoscopes, requiring column inches far in excess of the surface area of the Daily Pyramid. Most must content themselves with the vague and generally unhelpful hour- or limb-based horoscope––for example: Spicy: You will travel, then travel again. This is quite misleading when read against the specific horoscopes in the spicy group, for example: Spicy black bowl of rocks: Turtles will nibble on your finger-ends as you stare sprawling at the bottom of the wine light sea. So how does one acquire one's specific, helpful horoscope? My friends, people are the same everywhere. Money, sexual favors, black market vacation souvenirs––so obvious, so uninteresting. Here we call an astronomer an astrologer by mistake and then profusely apologize. Not so in Ubar, where only astrologers have real telescopes. An astronomer must make do with a cardboard tube and a convincing expression of frowning authority. But the astrologer's telescope! First of all, it is very, very long, like the Washington Monument. Second, it bristles and festoons itself with excrescences of gears and pulleys and dials and meters, most having no function except to delight the heart. And third, it is intensely decorated with pictures of naked people. Religious subjects are favored, but the figures are always naked. A typical subject of religious Ubarian claymation might be the presentation of the holy headdress to the first heresiarch before his extended family and the multitudes. The same subject might be depicted on the telescope, except that the multitudes are naked, likewise the sisters and cousins and aunts, likewise the heresiarch (grey and lined of face but robust of body), likewise the heavenly messengers, whose genitals have pages like books do. As if to rifle those pages, the astrologer's hands pass gracefully over the scene as she or he adjusts the telescope to exactly the right position, using a wrist-worn positioning device (not a device on the telescope, for I told you that those don't work). This done, the world-weary lens inspector steps up and does his bit, and then, then, the viewing of stars. Why view the stars? To check the accuracy of the calender. Is this necessary? No. The Ubarian calender is very accurate, and doesn't need adjustment more than once in a thousand years. But it is part of the mystique of astrology, the setting of the eye to the cold silver of that carefully positioned, fully inspected eyepiece, like setting a coin to the eye of a corpse, but amid a riot of nudity. Most astrologers insist on traveling through this grandiose ritual every night. Would you forgo it? Astrological Types sweet maroon lamp: swarthy feverish tyrant salty indigo abacus: pallid verbose scholar bitter blue potted plant: florid artful heretic sour peach souvenir thermometer: sallow valorous bureaucrat spicy brown spatula: freckled languid purist salt lavender oven: pale elegant virago sour yellow kettle: sallow virginal vagabond sweet green broom: dark high-principled hedonist salt grey block of tea: pale wealthy lout bitter red plastic recorder: red-faced slothful sentimentalist etc. National Lament of Cosmas Ubarbarubababuuraburubabu Burabubruhabrahuabaru Arubabaruaubaabuabarua a Uburuurubauraburubuua Ruraruaraburubaruabura Ubabuuburabubabarbuaruau Despite a surface resemblance to the dialect of Cosmas, the lyrics above were not composed in any tongue, but in a special glossolalial utterance reserved for expressions of rabid patriotism. The Cosmasian ethic sensibility requires extremes of patriotic feeling to carry the bearer beyond the realm of intelligible speech, although it is by now taboo to express these paroxysms in any but the most formulaic and ritualized ways (see Ubar's great epic, “The Battle of Souvenir Thermometers”). Traditionally, celebrants sing Ubarbarubababuuraburubabu with the eyes crossed or, during the month of Coupon, with the eyes rolled back into the head so that only the tattooed whites are visible (see Baba Ganesh on Eyeball Tattoos, see Baba An Ya on Inaugural Fainting). Author's Note:These prose poems are from The Books of Ubar, a collaborative project with Rikki Ducornet and Catherine Kasper. |
