Old King Tut

 

No, he wasn't old, at all, since he was a boy king, thought to have been 19 in 1324, B.C. when he died, having reigned for nine years. That was 3350 years ago, if one can fathom that time-frame, and in that sense it makes him old. But although chronologically he was not old when alive, physically his condition was that of an old man, having to get about with the use of a cane, and suffering severe degenerative conditions, along with a club foot.

He cannot have been too sprightly in the prime of his life, poor Tutankhamen. When his royal tomb was exhumed by Howard Carter in 1922, it was a sensation, because of the condition of the site, the splendour of the items found with him, and the exceedingly beautiful gold-worked death mask that topped his sarcophagus. The find was a sensational one awing the world, mesmerized by the legend of the boy king.

And the mystery of a curse said to have afflicted many in attendance at the excavation made everything surrounding the legend and the reality of King Tutankhamen a thrillingly fascinating discovery. Now, a team of scientists from Egypt, Italy and Germany making use of the most advanced DNA techniques has reached the conclusion that the king's physical disorders weakened his immune system making the health-vulnerable man susceptible to malarial-caused death.

His genetic endowments were grimly inappropriate for a long and healthy life. He is thought, through the tests, to have been the son of Akhenaten, the pharaoh whose paeons to the sun-god made him known to have been the first monotheist, and whose legacy of sacred buildings dedicated to Aten, the disc of the sun, were destroyed by those who followed him. The boy king's parents and grand-parents too have been identified.

Akhenaten was known to suffer from severe genetic problems caused by a disease that damages the body's connective tissues whose symptoms include a short torso, long head, neck, arms, hands and feet; pronounced collarbones, pot belly, heavy thighs and poor muscle tone. The six daughters he had with his wife Nefertiti all exhibited the same physical characteristics as their father. Unusually tall, likely to have weakened aortas easily ruptured leading to death.

Akhenaten never had artists copying his image for posterity alter his physique, and he was proud of the outstanding beauty of his wife Nefertiti. Nefertiti is thought also to have been a very close relative of her husband, further reasons why genetic problems surfaced in their offspring. Brother-sister marriages were common enough in early societies, particularly among royalty. Cleopatra was said to have married her brother.

Consanguinity in marriage does not produce healthy specimens; genetic vigour is irremediably impaired. Even much later, among European royalty throughout the later centuries up until the 18th Century, intermarriage in families was common. Charles Darwin, the great expositor of natural selection might have been thought to know better, but he married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

King Tutankhamun's need of assistance in perambulation was verified by the discovery of over 130 walking sticks found in his tomb. The genetic tests recently completed, headed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, concluded that his and perhaps four other mummies from his family were infected by a parasite causing an often-deadly form of malaria.

 

Inheriting Genetic Memory

It is an unspeakably vile thing to destroy

a soul with the vile contempt of viewing

human beings as commodities, dispensable

whose value lies in their usefulness to others

living devices lacking full humanity whose

lives and labour have the capacity to bring

leisure and riches to those who own them.

Little wonder that descendants of those who

were taken from Africa writhe in pain at the

inherited memory of suffering in the depraved

and obscene misuse of human lives tormented

enslaved, raped and deprived of their freedom.

There are those who deliberately fail to recognize

the magnitude of this venomous barbarism which

the enslaved of all ages were forced to endure

or perish.Yet there are others of ancient lineage

who well know and recognize this assault on

human dignity for what it is for they too have

suffered endlessly from antiquity to the present.

African slaves were traded for profit by other

African tribes, the intermediaries Arab slave

traders.Yet confoundingly these historical facts

of duplicity and cupidity are brushed aside in

favour of placing responsibility for historical

and current misery the inheritors of those bleak

memories prefer to believe were caused by that

other people whom history and human failure

have chosen to represent with the very traits

most held in contempt deserving of blame and

the violence of slander and misrepresentation.

The Skewed Formula

It is clear enough that humanity is
still an evolving species for whom it
has taken tens of thousands of years
to recognize the utility in civilization
as co-dependent inhabitants of a planet
whose natural resources are not infinite.
Yet there is the unforgiving and deeply
inherent qualities with which nature
endowed us all, engrained in our very
subconscious; the will to survival and
the territorial imperative, two essential
partners in the formation of our values
not readily surrendered to the greater
wholesale bid to refine our sensibilities
and extend to others the courtesy of
acknowledging their rights to existence.
In the process the lessons of humanity
have succeeded in part within some
segments of enlightened society while
others remain deeply steeped in the
original encumberments functioning
as tribal divisions evading the inner
demand to generosity of spirit in favour
of traditions mandating suspicion, fear
hatred and deadly conflict despite the
opportunities proffered to allay those
emotional spurs to continual adversity.
That which nature designed in mapping
the neural network of the human brain
is a permanent fixture of affliction barely
balanced against human enlightenment.
One an aspiration the other a reality.

The River Remembers

The historic river where the raucous
shouts of coureur des bois once rang
loud as they encountered riotous rapids
runs deep and wide. It is a river where
great fighting sturgeon and carp can still
be found, ancient fish too skilled at
evading those whose hunger for fame
in the world of fisherfolk reeks of
urban legends.  Great pine forests once
bordered the shores of that wild river
harvesters sending the felled giants
on their journey downriver, the river
bottom deep in their shed bark leavings.
Now it is small pleasure craft that ply
those waters, their white sails shining
in the sun. At this winter season though
nearby residents await the freezing up
of the river for fishing huts to spring
into presence, hopes of catching one of
the legends still uppermost in mind. On
this early winter day, a weather anomaly
crests over the river; above the sun 
gleams through the clouds as snow falls
in a squall that obliterates sight lines as
an ice fog wraps the river in recollection.

The Humbug in Christmas Cheer

The Humbug in                                         Christmas Cheer

The anticipation is as electrically
palpable as it is contagious, beginning
with the onset of winter weather and
people feverishly setting up their
Christmas decorations, festooning light
sets over their houses, the trees on their
property, frantically shopping and baking
in excited preparation for the cardinal
holiday of the year, a celebration of
light, and song and goodwill toward all.
As Christmas Eve nears, people amble
in urban parks and woodlands, transfixed
with nature's winter gift freshly fallen
transforming the ordinary into a white
wonderland where greeting others with
traditional shouts of !Merry Christmas!
comes readily in heartfelt affection for
life and all who inhabit this earthly sphere.
Beyond the public parks and the urban
forest there are vast multitudes of shops
and consumer emporiums for whom this
most especial holiday gifts with the
imperative of commerce hawking its
irresistible wares. And there, in packed
shopping centres and parking lots, ill
will raises its miserable head, altering
attitudes in a display of disagreeableness
a sullen wretchedness of taut facial
expressions and impatient rage as sad
societal pressures to conform to the values
of a community steeped in a culture of
acquisition sidesteps Christmas cheer.

Displacing Nature

Over the decades that the urban forested
ravine, a prized natural landscape
whose geology ensures that no building
will take place there though existing
within a municipal environment of 
nearby housing tracts, a succession of 
beaver colonies has arisen, each one
dismantled, the beaver carried off to
areas where disgruntled citizens will not
complain of their presence. Latterly
the beaver have returned, built their
dams, one here, another there, and 
have been busy stocking their lodges
with a pantry-full of winter forage, in
the process harvesting poplars like
there's no tomorrow, a species of tree
expendable, serving a good purpose as
far as the beavers are concerned. Each
day in succession more poplars, striplings
and mature alike, fall to their razor-sharp
teeth, the falls unerringly in the direction
of the waterway coursing through the
forested ravine. Evidence of their
industrious predation is seen in the
ubiquity of the glaring white stumps of 
the heartwood in its cone-shaped death
agonies, splintering to the forest floor
awaiting dismemberment and usefulness.
Complaints abound among those clearly
resentful of nature's blueprint for survival
while among those appreciative of the very
presence of these creatures so close to
the unnatural world of civilization argue
for their preservation, the very symbol of
industry. Guess in which camp lie the teen
offspring whose favourite pasttime is to
destroy living nature wherever they encounter 
it, snapping immature branches, pulling down 
saplings, setting fires with the assembly of 
tinder-dry woody detritus? Yet for the area 
beaver there may be no tomorrow.

 

Canada Day

In a flighty display of humanity's
envy of the casual ease of avian
flight, the formation of warplanes
roars through the cloud-littered sky
in an impressive flyby, a jaunty
braggadocio display of power
sound and elegance of an entirely
different quality of the creatures
that the creative genius of nature
bred and cultivated. Given to the
mechanical science of minds to
whom engineering a vessel to
break the bonds of gravity was a
gift by nature to the precocious,
emulation of her bipedal creatures
dissatisfied they were not also 
blueprinted with hollow bones,
wings and aerial aspiration. Now
they fly and nature looks the other 
way as a nation celebrates its nod
to one hundred and fifty years as a
country which nature endowed with
endless lakes, forests and mountains. 

Nightmares

So what is it then that we fear like 
children screaming in the dark of 
lurking monsters, when we find
ourselves immobilized and terrified
deep in the dungeon of a nightmare?
Is it the result of a collective inheritance
that has its genesis in our common
primordial memory that from time to
time surfaces prepared to drown our
cerebral foundation in a writhing pit
of serpents? How to explain our night-
wandering soul in a passage to some
places unknown by our minds leaving
us trembling and aghast? When beasts
slaver and pounce and we fear impending
death, recoiling from the danger and from
the message, relieved to finally awaken.
There was no wakening for those who
suffered the nightmare of human beasts
intent on extinguishing the lives of
Europe's Jews, not in a miasma of 
night horrors, but in an agonizing and
extended solution to cleanse Europe of
a human pestilence reduced to that
status by the overwhelming disinterest
that consumed minds of neighbours 
swiftly accustomed to witnessing familiar
families packed onto cattle cars pleading
for help only to see their neighbours
turn nonchalantly away since it was no
business of theirs, this ugly genocide.
In a fit of remorse the world vowed
that never again would such a horror
be mounted, and yet, and yet. In Europe
the moment is reborn and those who
espouse a re-enactment of the Holocaust
express so freely, carrying their signs
and shouting their slogans once again
of wholesale extermination. Time has
blurred the pity and compassion of
man's inhumanity to man, the victim
become the oppressor: death to Jews!

Is This Irony?

He, among others like him, inheritors
of an ancient creed whose heritage
bound its tribe to their forefathers and the 
land flowing with milk and honey
had the misfortune to be named a
pestilence upon the face of the Earth
their presence an affliction, an assault
on the refined sensibilities of a cultured
people whose leader decreed they be
exterminated as one would threats to
civilization. Vast resources were thrown
into the resolution to rid the world of
their presence, a refinement of technical
resources capable of 'processing' those
whose charred and powdered remains
were destined to fertilize the fields of
Europe, their ashes seeping into the
crops that those who preferred to become
oblivious to the carnage would so
greatly appreciate in a time of scarcity.
But this man, a maker of sweets, somehow
survived the far-reaching solution of
annihilation of his people, to live another
day, while mourning the passage to death
of all those he had loved. Now, he lives
in the land of his ancestors, claiming a 
new life, his tormentors quiescent for
the moment, while he is feted as the 
oldest man in the world, outliving the
vast calamity that was the Holocaust.

 

Yiddish Gothic

Shtetl-born, the era of the
transition from Polish pogroms
to the Aryan Nazi Third Reich
establishing its death camps where
no inconvenient furor of protest
was anticipated, the presciently
few sailed off to America and
there finding no streets paved
with gold, men took humble
employment in the trade of
peddling; broken furniture,
trinkets, schmata, and live
chickens from farm to market.
Hard work for pittance pay,
while women laboured in
sweat shops now exploiting
poverty-stricken women in
the Philippines. He was the stern
unbending paterfamilias their
children enraged easily and at
their own risk. She was the gossipy
meek balabusta vainly stretching
hope to make ends meet. Their
struggle to survive taught their
offspring what the parents knew
by experience; the world was an
unlovely place with few beckoning
opportunities. The second generation
adeptly grasped those elusive
chances fatalistically inuring
themselves against failure
attracting to their worldly success
the envy and the enmity of the 
latest crop of anti-Semitic haters.

 

Heritage

This is Canada, after all.
In the nation's capital where
among the crush of highways
commercial zones, office
towers and housing accommodate
a thriving city, its boundaries
also embrace forests and
wetlands, farms and rivers
passing through with green
parklands proudly sharing
space alongside hotels and
apartment buildings, stretching
to the near horizon, where
islands perched within waterways
whisper of indigenous mysteries
and legend speaking of logging
enterprises, the famed wilderness
exploits of the fearless and
hardy coureurs des bois, the
fur trade and Hudsons Bay
opening up the country's far
northern regions, from sea to sea
to sea, the northern boreal
forests to the western mountain
ranges, this land we love.

 

Here And Now

Perhaps it can be regarded as 
a family affair. The family in
question comprised of a species
recognized for their efficient
industry, an admirable trait shared
by lesser creatures like bees and
ants, but it was beavers and the
historical relationship linking
them to Canada's foundation
that led to their selection
symbolic of Canada itself,
built on the industry of its
indigenous peoples and its
settlers, its vast forests and
pristine lakes, the minerals and
varied natural resources expressing
a plenitude of wealth and enterprise.
That symbol settles in pairs in
the wooded ravine nearby our home
one generation following another
damming the stream running
through the ravine, building their
lodge and feasting on the poplars
plentiful in the adjacent woods
reminding us that the past is
reflected right here, right now.

South Thormanby Island, B.C.

Getting away from it all. From Vancouver with kayak and tent and enough fuel and food for several days, just paddle about and enjoy nature's wilderness solitude and beauty.



For company, you can commune with river otters, in the bay where you're camped, curious about your presence, who will perform their rambunctious antics finally oblivious to your presence, another of nature's creatures who turn up on occasion.



The ocean lapping at the shore will lull you to sleep. The wide open sky above, the heavens as dark as they get without city lights cast above, so the theatre of the firmament as prehistoric man saw it presents for your viewing pleasure.



No ancient hominid saw the regular cycle of a space station circling Earth, in a technological mimic of nature's clockwork symmetry in the vault of heaven, nor the passage of communications satellites, however.



Photos courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld

 

Portrait of the Artist

He imagines himself to be
speaking with the sharp edge
of knowledgeable authority
as he confidently and earnestly
plies the museum visitors with
the background he has so
assiduously gleaned from avid
perusal of the literature and fame
extolling the authentic vision of
the artist whose paintings and
sculptures chronicled the
American opening of the
Western frontier, coping with
all the raw and lethal challenges
inherent in wresting a land
from its original inhabitants
zealously defending their place
in time and history, becoming a
legend in the process, even in
inglorious bloody defeat. There
is little neutrality in the art
portraying those massively
destructive clashes of
'primitivism' and civilization
the natural world and the
constructed, decidedly unnatural
one, but the skill in portrayal is
what commends the art to us now,
not the moral judgement that
gags one's viscera, and we most
politely accede to the docent's
portrait of the artist revealed.

 

Revelation

I really did see it coming,
slowly unfolding, my gradual
transformation from daughter
becoming my own mother. There
she is now, where I thought I
was. But the me I thought I was
appears to have dissolved. I
recognize her quirks and her
mannerisms, her frowns and 
her exhalations, her pains and
her fading presence. All somehow
assembled in my being. Was a
time my nimble fingers 
threaded her needle. When I
read for her the fine print with
careless ease. Even mothered her
late-born last child. Now that
child prepares for his retirement.
And I, regarding the face
confronting me in the mirror
marvel at seeing my mother, but
cannot explain to her enquiring
eye where her daughter is.

 

The Glorious Past

Ah, how one pines for days
gone past, when a pioneer spirit
motivated our sturdy predecessors
to embark on long sea voyages to 
newly discovered lands, in escape
from the suffocating poverty and
class struggles of the old land so
grimly abandoned, high expectations
of diligent hard work in land clearing
a beacon of future prosperity. Free,
free at last in a new country beckoning
with its siren song of forests and lakes,
arable land and plentiful game -
and yes, as neighbours, indigenous
people who intimately knew the
land, knew winter cold and survival
techniques. Knew to follow the
wild herds in seasonal migration.
Knew the quality of botanical specimens
as medications, knew constant conflict
with competing tribes, knew they
would have to share access to fishing
and hunting, growing of crops, and
of course, exposure to dire seasonal
elements of climate, disease and
privation; above all, competition
for scarce resource entitlements. All, 
all this and more in the glorious past.

Pacific Rim National Preserve, B.C.

Two kayakers, two beautiful summer days, one quizzical seal, whales spouting equals perfection.

Photographs courtesy J.S. Rosenfeld