The First Seventeenth

Today is the First Seventeenth of the new year, which is as good an excuse as any to celebrate Buzma-vannu-vudurrol, the demalion for the number 17. Yost made this portrait mask back in 1985, but it was never intended for publication during the usual course of events in the Geranium Lake Properties comic. I believe this mask made its way onto a greeting card for the January 17th holiday.

There is a well-established myth in the Inultaru culture that jackalopes are the descendants of seventeen original tribes. The names of those tribes has fluctuated over the centuries, and the list has never included more than fifteen names (and sometimes less) because at least two tribes are always Unknown or Lost.

In some years, the First Seventeenth occupies the same day as the great coffee holiday known as Kopje Modder Dag, or Cup of Mud Day in English. Kopje Modder Dag is always on a Sunday, so in 2026 it will happen tomorrow, but no jackalope waits for a holiday as an excuse to drink coffee.

Coffee is a daily miracle.

*Here is the mask of Buzma-vannu-vudurrol for you to download and color while you are enjoying freshly-made coffee – and perhaps a favorite baked good – on Kopje Modder Dag.*

Two Poems 8

Nothing Infinite

Your children never
dreamed or deserved this hissing sky
of vast aluminum overlooking
scarps engulfed in squall-streaked smoke,
or the tiny chalk stars burned black
in their hands and against
each shark-colored eyelid.

Water swathes and illuminates
acid-stained stones in the thick ancient belly
of the river—
thirsts are drenched,
desires evaporate,
fears twist and narrow—
all are blind as ossified fortune.
Flesh clings briefly to porcelain frames,
then falls into the delicate sleep of ash.

All Posts in the Two Poems Series

Needful Magic, Nos. 75, 76 and 77

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today…

At the bottom, at the beginning, it is all black and white. Black ink on white paper. The line. The mark. The tip of the pen touches the surface of the world.

Mourning the loss of what was never there

When I first found these mask portraits of Icon Number Thirty-One, I thought they were variations on the mask of Uruburza Yennildi. I assumed these two masks were unchosen alternatives to the mask that was printed by the Bureau of Yeltik Imbarrahju, much like the other candidates for Icon Number Fifty-Six, a mask of the demalion for absinthe. The Bureau of Yeltik Imbarrahju, under the editorial guidance of Haarukka Yazimyek and Upfield Airman (with less input than you might assume from the Geranium Lake Properties archives) began printing the Icon series five years after Wm. Yost disappeared off the coast of New Zealand, and four years before he was declared dead by the courts (at the behest of Ha Kim Ngoc and Roma Austine Yost, who were the executers of his estate).

These two masks are not evidence of Yost’s varied artistic interpretations of a demalion named Uruburza Yennildi; there is no single entity by that name. It took me a while, but I have learned that the Uruburza Yennildi are a trio of goddeses¹, much like the Erinyes or Gorgons in Greek mythology, and the demalion named Ackur-arzygattura is the one depicted here.

There is some evidence that Yost began planning the Icon series as far back as 1991; in eight years he had created at least 86 designs, maybe 112, for masks of demalions, deities, fantasies, eidolons, and other fellow travelers.

¹Also somewhat like the Annsugamfe, a group of demalions connected by happenstance and locality. From legends of the Toh-inen-wa. Watch for the tale in future posts here at Vraicking.

Two Poems 7

God is a Metaphor

Verethragna is Verethragna. Victory and its personification have the aluminum sheen of aggressive triumph. God of gray birds and black frosts, ghosts in the Vrahran fire, the most sacred round song above woods without wheeled suns, the oversound of all fires of conquest. Each old song now stands before a heart-stamping sea, and the manifestation of aggressive light pours blazingly on their words. With remnant apparitions, Verethragna appears in many shapes, glowing against the laughter of bear, bird of prey, bull and shark.

Where are those who believe in tone and canopy? The pillowing goddess, glistening Eve, can also create a god. She feels the incongruous tears of attainment and incantation lost in a world shouted into the stone of overpowered ascendancy. Where can she come scratching home? Does she ever think she can write something here? Does she ever believe her own poor growing eloquence sweetens the core?

God of the faithful wind in the Vrahran fire, the most sacred highway rises far upon the mountain of parchment. Match the immured disturbances of Eve, of her body’s ancient query. Search for books related in grasses and leaves sewn in her pure breath. Know that the thumb-headed birds whispered to her at sunrises, at the river, where soft algae shuddered below rich fruit. They search now to carry the gathered chariots of the lords, the sons of their great estate, their sweet chords aloft in the same voice fabricated in a description of the lavender breath of the god Mithra. Verethragna is Verethragna.

All Posts in the Two Poems Series

Chisel Marks in Sandstone and Chalk

First, do no harm.

Don’t be evil.

Those two statements, and others like them, come from a place of complacency, arrogance and ego that is the grandiose culture of American individualism. I am not especially familiar about growing up in other countries, but children in the United States are taught from a young age to believe that they can, and will, change the world for the better. And they will do it by doing nothing remarkable. The citizens of this nation, of this renegade experiment in a thing that was supposed to be a democracy, believe that any little bit of effort they attempt will make a difference.

For the good of the world and all mankind.

They do things like buy electric cars, recycle plastic and cardboard, listen to podcasts, watch PBS, vote in every election, plant a tree in a foreign rainforest, feed a child in a foreign country, save unborn babies, scold, scorn and instruct strangers on the internet, give money to a good cause, give money to a better cause, give money to the best cause for world peace and the preservation of the environment. They believe with absolute confidence that they have added their drop to the great worldwide bucket of over-brimming goodness.

And it never occurs to them that every single thing they did actually caused more harm than good.

Continue reading →

Typical Jackalopian Capriciousity

Class is in session for Uncommon Inultarumek 1.1A to 1.8D. Let’s eavesdrop for a few minutes on a lecture given by Professor Boromir Fandellacken¹ as he begins his introduction to the Six Naming Languages of the Inultaru:

“The languages commonly used by the cultures of the Inultaru – by the jackalopes of the Second House, by the Toh-inen-wa, by the Moss Folk, and others – are held together under the umbrella of Inultarumek, a linguistic designation proposed in 1931 by Arnolda Inley and Peter Housmire, which was accepted within the general academic population by 1954. Also under that umbrella are the Unknown Tongues, which are grouped together in a loosely-regulated, anfractuous mess of typical Jackalopian capriciousity known as Kilbola thawn Atlorned-kot Arrumek. It is our great good fortune as English-speakers – God bless the Queen – that we may simply call them the Six Naming Languages.

Continue reading →

Future World Now

“A hundred million voices silenced by a formula, a hundred million visionaries blinded by industry. Your children will know no art except that made by machines.”

Thus spoke Jack Loki on the first day of the new year, after a night’s sleep troubled by prophetic dreams. This quote is from an unpublished short story by Wm. Yost, probably written during the decade between 1987 and 1997.

If you read “the algorithm” in place of “a formula” you might realize that Jack’s prophecy is perilously close to coming true in your own reality.

The Plumb of Midwinter

Seasons Without Purpose

We are pretty darn sure that Yost created these two unpublished Geranium Lake Properties comics to be part of the frequently psychedelic Fifty Cent Trip. We do not know why they were not included and published on the dates indicated, but in December of 1988 our favorite protagonistic bryologist was in the midst of “The Very Bad Plan”. Which included the first occurrence of the ongoing dilemma that GLP fans like to call “Tumbay-Ketta and Lady Jane Have a Baby”.¹

I am including these comics here in today’s post because they remind me of the four seasons (autumn and winter in the first example, summer and spring in the second) and I want to write about the Inultaru concept of appishal saumdey-vareen.

Continue reading →

Two Poems 6

Peripatetic

Today I walked
across a moment to tomorrow,
always towards tomorrow…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across the tundra,
across a glacier in Peru…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across the palms of my friends,
across the roses of my enemies…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across Jupiter’s eye,
across the surface of the sun…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across native goldenrods,
across wood and false nettles…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across gravel flecked black, white and orange,
across emeralds flecked gold…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across the diameter of the foreseen horizon,
across the point of the harried wheel…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across breathing stones,
across the wind’s fascination with books…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across rain black streets,
across white grass hills…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across the graves of children we gained,
across candles lit for worlds we lost…

Tomorrow I will walk one hundred miles
across laws written in pencil,
across blood spilled in ink…

This poem has no ending.

All Posts in the Two Poems Series

A Story Retold

The word nostalgia is a neoclassical compound derived from Greek, consisting of nóstos, a Homeric word meaning “homecoming”, and álgos, meaning “pain”; the word was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Source: Wikipedia

The Ghost of Christmas Past is the sweetest ghost in the Muppet version (made in 1992) of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.¹ The saddest song in the movie, “When Love is Gone”, occurs under the spell of Christmas Past. You will cry if you watch the uncut version of The Muppet Christmas Carol. The song was cut² from the American theatrical release of the film by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Disney, who apparently could not imagine that American children might be able to handle a bit of emotional complexity in their entertainment.³

For millions of people, Christmas can be “the happiest time of the year”, but that phrase diminishes the holiday under the pretense of celebrating it. Look around you – how many of our Christmas stories include sadness, grief, anxiety and terror? Christmas is one the most nostalgic times of the year – the experience of looking back, of remembering what is gone and lost forever comes with its fair measure of pain and tears.

*This could be Jacob Marley’s name, No. 258*

¹The Ghost of Christmas Present is the merriest ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the scariest. The Muppet movie made the best movie versions of the ghosts.

²The song was restored in the home video release of the movie (on VHS tape! Wow, we owned so many movies on VHS, we had whole cupboards and bookcases dedicated to their storage. It was wonderful.) My version was the uncut version, my sister Susan’s children grew up with the uncut version, give us our sad song! We need our sorrow with the sweet.

³I would call him a stupid man, but a lot of people are stupid in that exact same way. It’s not stupidity, it’s professionalism.

Too Many Christs for Christmas

I may be wrong, but I believe the above design became the last Christmas card made by Wm. Yost. There was no Christmas card from Yost in 1998 – and of course, he had been missing for almost two months by Christmas 1999. In December 1998, he was fairly deep into his Month of Solitude¹, which lasted through the 4th of January – he emerged on the 5th for an interview with a writer from the Ventura County Star. From that interview we learned that Yost’s discipline of setting aside one month for strict solitude every year was erratic; some years he could not manage it, or could only manage a few weeks. He usually scheduled it for February, but some years he chose March or May. 1998 was the only year he did it in December.

Continue reading →

These are poets who service church clocks

“Many people have already speculated about the relationship between play and the sacred. The light of reverie, let us note, is a dim light. The near darkness of old churches and old movies is that of dreams. Our memories are divine images because memory is not subject to the ordinary laws of time and space. Making deities is what we do in our reverie. Images surrounded by shadow and silence. Silence is that vast, cosmic church in which we always stand alone. Silence is the only language God speaks.”

Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell