“mow tall, mow often.”
Met floor plan: Yellow highlighted galleries have been viewed, 11/22/19
I have visited 43 times and viewed all galleries up to 399 (~300 out of ~900) – one-third complete.
“The one-third rule means that when you mow, you want to cut off the top one-third of your grass blades . . . Mowing more than a third of the total height of your grass can stress the plant and make it more susceptible to common turf problems.” – https://lawnpride.com/one-third-rule/
The remaining two-thirds will find their own rules.
The Letter (an indivisible sound)
Top: Babylonian translation of “Met Percent” into the Cuneiform Alphabet
Bottom: Cuneiform tablet: Sumerian dedicatory inscription from Ekur, the temple of the god Enlil, Mesopotamia, ca.16th–15th c. B.C, not on view.
These writings are some of the earliest found. The “origin of writing” documents both the origins of the world and the first symbolic capture of emotions and thoughts “on paper”. Cuneiform is by far my favorite alphabet.
The seven Sumerian debate poems (below) are world origin myths. When something was recognized as important, its origin became important, and it was given a myth. “The earth first appeared barren, without grain, sheep, or goats. People went naked” (Debate between Grain and Sheep).
Debate between bird and fish
Debate between sheep and grain
Debate between the millstone and the gulgul-stone
Debate between the pickaxe and the plough
Debate between silver and mighty copper
Debate between Summer and Winter
Debate between tree and the reed
These myths are not universal and have significant variations throughout the regions and eras. No continuity, no Biblical standard, no problem.
“It becomes evident that he (Ring Lardner) was deeply concerned that the vast majority of mankind had no idea, earthly or otherwise, where it was going or for what reason”. – Buford Donald Fisher, Ring Lardner as Dadaist, 1970.
“How can you write if you can't cry?”
- Ring Lardner
“An Archeologist of Morning”
Cuneiform tablet: a-she-er gi-ta, balag to Innin/Ishtar, ca. 2nd–1st c. B.C., Seleucid or Parthian, not on view.
“This tablet contains a lament by Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility, over the destruction of her cities and shrines, and contrasts her present humiliation with her previous power.” – MetText
Left: A page from Melville’s “Marginalia”. His constant annotations were studied in depth by Charles Olson. Right: summary counts of the words marked by Melville in his Set of Shakespeare. Decoder rings come in many forms.
Charles Olson described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning."
Assyrian Beards
Relief Panel from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. ca. 883-859 B.C), gallery 401.
Cover photograph of Melville on Call Me Ishmael, Charles Olson, City Lights, 1966.
Detail, “The Artist's Studio, a real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life.” – Gustave Courbet, Musée d'Orsay, 1854-55. “Myself painting, showing the Assyrian profile of my head.” – Courbet.
Speaking of Olson: “Not since Gustave Courbet grew an Assyrian beard has any Western artist attempted such a sweeping rejection of the roots of Western civilization and identified with the Ancient Near East ‘beyond Homer’ and ‘beyond’ the Bible. For him the Sumerians were crucial to the attempt.” – John R. Maier, Charles Olson and the Poetic Uses of Mesopotamian Scholarship, Journal of the American Oriental Society.
“You're too much influenced by Greek and Latin already. Go beyond that, to the Sumerians, and before. Break the hold time has on you; get outside it . . since Western civilization has gone awry, we had better work with what we have from before the degradation.” – Olson quoted by Ralph Maud in his Charles Olson’s archaic postmodern.
Trotsky, Custer, Zappa and Baraka
Rebellious generations often look forward but go back in time for hair styles. I know great beards when I see them.
Rock and Clay (Emergent Figures)
Relief Panel from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. ca. 883-859 B.C), gallery 401.
If I free associate, as Montaigne did, I must include my forbearers of influence. I cannot see these ancient bas reliefs without a ghost of the magnificent emergent prisoners by Michelangelo . . . or the Rock Men and the Clay People from Flash Gordon who appeared and disappeared into earth. I connect them, by their nature, their symbiotic relationships with the mineral world.