At night I listen to the light outside the window

[sovay]

The day was so brilliantly autumnal that I braced myself for a sudden squall after sunset, but instead I spent two hours once the moon and the relevant planets had cleared the treeline adjusting the right ascension and the declination on the telescope and it was wonderful. First the sand-colored bead of Saturn in the ellipsis of its rings and a kind of dim glitter we eventually determined were its brightest moons. Then an interlude of our moon as crisp and weird as a monochrome matte painting which sent me to the National Audubon Society's Field Guide to the Night Sky (1991) because I couldn't remember the name of the enormous crater exploded across its western face which turns out to be Aristarchus. Finally Jupiter banded like jasper in a line of its own moons, Ganymede, Io, Europa, Callisto. The field of vision was so small with the Barlow lens on that they would all slide off down the plane of the ecliptic as the night kept turning over us—the clock drive is still out of commission. I had the afterimage of the moon across my eyes even after I came inside.

Earlier in the evening I attended my first lecture in three years, Lorelei H. Corcoran on mummy portraits of Roman Egypt. I took no notes this time except for e-mails exchanged with selkie who was also virtually in the audience, but I loved that Dr. Corcoran opened with no time for the persistent misconception that the portraits should be viewed as assertions of essentially aristocratic Greek identity in Egyptian colonial surroundings, as if their subjects were expatriates keeping up the traditions of home in some sort of Greek Raj; she used the next hour to demonstrate instead that elements of design in the portraits acting as visual complements to the text of the Book of the Dead attest to the complex, fluid and hybrid, but quintessentially Egyptian identities of the people who commissioned these images in continuity with funerary rites as old as the Predynastic period. I appreciated an analysis of the costs assuming that one might save a lifetime for a funeral or the entire family might chip in to pay for it, meaning that the ability to afford a portrait is no longer considered the gotcha marker of social class any more than hairstyles provide an infallible guide to dating, since the ancient world was just as prone to vintage crazes as the modern. I had not known that out of thirteen hundred portraits, we have only twenty whose subjects are named, although I was delighted that the one in residence at Girton College inscribed Ἑρμιόνη Γραμματική was proud enough of her literacy to carry it as an equal identifier into the afterlife. I had not known it was called proleptic dress to furnish a child untimely dead with the painted accoutrements of the adulthood they never lived to attain. I loved the description of the composition of mummy portraits as "passport-like," the cards and papers of the underworld. (I had a nightmare once where that didn't work, but maybe that was because it wasn't mine.) It makes sense that painted jewelry should track not necessarily to actual grave goods but to the post-mortem aspirations of the deceased. The last question from the audience was whether Corcoran has a favorite mummy portrait, to which the answer seemed to be a young girl in Cairo with gilded stucco and an Isis crown and the Horus child in the intaglio of one of the gems that frame her face. She said firmly that despite the conventional image of the Greeks bringing civilization to the rest of the world, the rest of the world was doing very well, thank you.

Earlier in the afternoon I went for a walk around the reservoir and did not remember to bring a camera, but I borrowed my father's phone a couple of times.



I liked the sudden yellow of the leaves.



Taken by my father, obviously.



The depth of field is nothing to write home about, but the tiny daisies asters were full of bees.

I had started the day in too much pain to make it to an appointment, but I have filed the rest of it under accidental vacation and regret nothing.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Wonder if Dr Corcoran gets known as 'Stalky'? :o)

[troisoiseaux]

Earlier in the evening I attended my first lecture in three years, Lorelei H. Corcoran on mummy portraits of Roman Egypt.

I don't really know anything about them, as a practice or art form, but I love Roman Egypt mummy portraits so much. They're so incredibly vivid! They look like people, which isn't a very good description but it's the best I can come up with?? I also get a sense of family reunion, from them— like, I'll see my aunt's eyes in one, or my cousin's nose and curly hair.

[selkie]

We took all the BEST notes! It was lovely to have a parasocial virtual lecture experience; and the subject was so humanizing and so cool.

I didn't hear back from the hippo, though.

[asakiyume]

Oh wow, thank you so much for this! I didn't know any of it, and I'm delighted to know about the woman who wanted her literacy celebrated after her death, and about painting fancy jewelry on a portrait even if you can't quite manage to give the deceased said jewelry for-real for-real to take with them into the afterlife.

Those tiny daisies are actually a type of aster: probably, from the photo, Symphyotrichum laeve, or smooth aster--there are so many asters that bloom in these parts in the fall. The ones that grow on our shady roadsides are Eurybia macrophylla, or large-leaved white wood aster, but the really gorgeous one, that also grows wild, is the New England aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae , which can be an amazing deep purple. (Some asters are also called Michaelmas daisies, so really "daisy" is as good a word as "aster" for the flowers, but I wanted to share about them under the aster name...)

To jump back to your actual post, I'm very glad that you were able to seize joy from a day that was marred by pain.

*

[minoanmiss]

ughghghghghg I HATE the idea that the Greeks "brought civilization" to people such as the Egyptians, who were building their civilization before the Greeks were even in Greece. Rant thus ranted, I absolutely adore both the chronicles of planetary observations and the writeup of the mummy portraits lecture. So much to look up!

[genarti]

Oh, that lecture sounds fabulous and fascinating! I love mummy portraits, but I know very little about them beyond the basics of what they are. (One more on the long list of subjects I keep meaning to read up more on when I get around to it...)

These are glorious autumnal photos all around, but you look like a rusalka in that picture by the pond, and I'm very much digging it.

[pameladean]

Oh, I'm so glad everything finally cooperated for the productive use of the telescope. That's a grand photo of you, and it looks like a splendid walk was had.

The tiny daisies are asters, I think. I'd love a cultivar called Tiny Daisies, though.

P.

[thawrecka]

That sounds like an awesome lecture.

[viggorlijah]

I have such understanding for people in the past who believed in sympathy magic of if this plant looks like that, it will do something similar to that rock because there is so much beautiful pattern in the universe - your line about Jupiter looking like jasper is so true, and to hold a piece of polished jasper and imagine an entire planet is very beautiful.

[nineweaving]

Thank you for sharing the stars and the travellers in the stars with us.

Nine

[alexxkay]

The picture which includes you -- I thought at first it also included a flock of birds over the lake. But on closer examination, there was just a branch with dry leaves. But the birds are still there, somehow.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, so glad you were able to attend a lecture - and that it was good! <3

Also those photos are deeply autumnal indeed - and you look great there!

[ladymondegreen]

In an odd parallel I actually spent a day among Egyptian grave goods at the Met about two weeks ago, and was struck by the highly patterned flat dolls that were common in the Middle Kingdom period in child burials, and how they resemble the violin shaped idols commonly found in the ancient near east.

I was also really taken by the eyes painted on the sides of the outer coffins.

I'm really glad you got to go to the lecture!