Fabeltier, Franz Marc, 1912

This is a really big week for birthdays: Bob Marley on 6 February (1945) ["it takes a revolution to make a solution"] and Saint Thomas More on 7 February (1478). More and more scholars agree ...the New Isle Called Utopia is a true socialist manifesto and I  concur!

Most importantly though, 8 February  (1880) is the birthday of painter, writer, animal sanctuarist, soldier, and millinery fashion icon Franz Marc.

Fabeltier (1912) is a plate from Der Blaue Reiter. Is the image a tiny (Italian Greyhound-looking) fanciful creature by a regular-size strawberry, or a giant strawberry with a little dog, or something else? I don’t know; it’s just fun and mysterious. Marc made a few illustrations like this called various iterations of Fabeltier but like gargoyles the animals resemble dogs, horses, lions…I especially like this one but they are all fantastic.

Chapter 2

Something very evil had clutched the residence at 704 Howser Street. Something that hung over the little home like a black widow’s veil. Indeed, something hideous. Sure, it had happened before, but not in Astoria. This was spooky.

Inside the home, she could feel the presence of the evil force as it hovered over her. She could feel it. None of the appliances were working properly, the children had taken up the practice of walking through solid walls while chanting “Go Wisconsin!”, and sirens were piercing the air, their source unknown. This was most definitely frightening.

Actually, this evening was not unlike the previous few.

Only too clearly came the images of the hamsters in the bathroom, and the sailors in the atticway. She also knew the house still reeked of cheap beer and nachos. The smell was overbearing.

Her mind reeled back a few days as she tried to recall the event that might have triggered all of this, but all she could remember was the fight she had with her husband after he replaced their conventional front door with a paper barrier.

As she thought of the incident, her husband, coincidentally, came crashing through the barrier. The tearing of the paper was loud enough that it could have been a truck driving through the door.

Next came THAT voice.

“Hey! I caught that ball!” He exclaimed.

Immediately she knew that Frostie’s Angels had lost the big ball game. Her husband kept babbling about the outcome of the final play, but when he settled down, he asked her where his supper was. She pointed to the recession of the ceiling/wall above the refrigerator. There he saw a drooping wad of spaghetti, clinging for its survival.

“What’d ya do dat fer?” He asked, pointing his finger at her. There was a brief pause.

“I think we got ghosts.” She said, erupting into tears.

“What have you been smokin’?” he retorted.

With those words, the kitchen floor began crackling and crumbling beneath him. Through the crevice that developed, a little green man burst onto the scene. Was this an alien visitor?

No. It was Gumby.

To be continued…

4 Tesems (bas) et 3 hyènes (haut), origine: tombeau de Ptah Hotep à Saqqara.

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