Stonewalking

I'm sure an oceanographer or geologist who had thought about the matter could come up with an explanation for why most of the stones on one stretch of beach would be rough and irregular while a few hundred yards away, just around a little rocky spit, there would be a collection of smooth and sometimes strikingly symmetrical cobbles, but I'm happy just to take it for granted. Some of these stones look like they could have been shaped by human hands; others look like bird's eggs (and you can see why some shore birds have evolved to lay eggs that look like stones).

After a stretch of cold weather and an accumulation of snow, yesterday the weather was fine and we went for a walk when the tide was out. A wide expanse of sandy flat came up from the water's edge, with a band of stranded seaweed at its upper margin, and then the ridge of stones where only the highest tides reach. I picked up a couple of the smaller and more perfect ones to bring home as paperweights or curios, but they were best appreciated in situ.

I spotted one well-worn brick that had undergone the same process as the natural cobbles and had long since lost any trace of the markings of its maker. And although most of the shapes were abstract, the stone below, which melded two different types of rock, reminded me of a ram's head in profile.

Eventually these stones will erode away or will be buried deep in the sand, never to be seen again, mixed in with twisted scraps of broken lobster pots, gull feathers, and the empty carapaces of crabs. But for now they seem to offer a quiet witness to something, though what it is isn't clear or lies beyond our ability to understand.

Ogreweed Day

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the artist and author Edward Gorey. As it happens, I can pinpoint my first encounter with Gorey's work quite exactly. It was June 1974, I was graduating from high school, and two friends and I went to a local stationery and book store in search of a collective teacher present for a woman who was not only a favorite teacher but also the mother of three friends of ours. (As it happens, I would later work in the same store, but that was several years in the future and another story.) We spotted an oversize book with an inscrutable title — Amphigorey — and upon opening it found a collection of amusing, vaguely Victorian drawings, mostly in black and white, accompanying a series of tales and rhymes, sometimes droll, sometimes sinister, but generally both. The book included an assortment of relatively clean limericks (some in French), an abecedarium cataloguing various horrible deaths suffered by small children, a poem narrating the abduction and ritual sacrifice of one Millicent Frastley at the hands of giant insects, a wordless, enigmatic story set in the west wing of an enormous mansion, and on and on. I at least had never encountered anything like it, nor had I heard of its creator. We bought the book and presented it, and as far as I know it was a success.

I didn't know at the time that Edward Gorey was a well-known figure in the book trade, that his slim individual volumes were avidly collected, and that he had illustrated children's books and created paperback book cover art for Anchor Books in its heyday. In time I would learn all that and come to keep an eye out for his distinctive style whenever I was browsing at a book sale or in a library. I saw him in the flesh at least twice, once browsing in the old Gotham Book Mart, with which he was closely associated, and once striding impassively up lower Fifth Avenue in his familiar fur coat, being cajoled by a young woman who was apparently assigned to capture him for a photo shoot. His theatre designs, his opening sequence for the old PBS Mystery! series, and his illustrations for Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats would eventually bring him at least a modest bit of renown, but I don't think he cared much for any of that. He died in 2000 and his house on Cape Cod is now a museum dedicated to his work.

There isn't much, outside of Mexico perhaps, that can compare with Gorey for innocent delight in the macabre. There's no sadism in his work, but neither is there any tolerance for sentimentality or piousness. (Nor does he smirk.) If the Beastly Baby meets a beastly end (he explodes), that's only as it should be, and even the ghastly fate of inoffensive Millicent Frastley is more satisfying than disturbing. I don't think anyone who can appreciate Edward Gorey can ever be capable of real harm.

Every winter, when the nights get long, I break out a jigsaw puzzle of his book cover art. The silly title of this piece, by the way, is my feeble tribute to Gorey's fondness for anagrams of his name. I have, for instance, a little flip-book autographed by "Dogear Wryde."