The Hammock Papers: Enchanted.

14 October 2022

Enchanted.

W. M. Beauchamp's "Indian Corn Stories and Customs", from The Journal of American Folklore, July- September, 1898 ...

The great magician called Masswaweinini, or the Living Statue, remained on the Manitoulin Islands after his friends had left. While hunting one day, he came suddenly to a wide prairie, across which he proceeded. There he met a small man, wearing a red feather on his head, and they smoked together. A wrestling match followed, with doubtful fortunes, but at last the small man was thrown. As directed, the victor cried out, "I have thrown you; wa ge me na;" and his opponent at once disappeared. In his place there lay on the ground a crooked ear of mondamin, or Indian corn, with a red hairy tassel at the top. A voice was heard, directing him to strip the body and throw the fragments all around. The spine, which gave these parts support, was also to be broken up and scattered near the edge of the wood. In one moon he was to return. This he did, and found the plain filled with growing corn. From the broken cob grew luxuriant pumpkin vines. At the end of summer he was on the wrestling ground again, where the corn was in full ear and the pumpkins of great size. Of these he gathered a good store, and the voice was heard again: "Masswaweinini, you have conquered me, and thus saved your own life. Victory has crowned your efforts, and now my body shall forever nourish the human race." Thus came the gift of corn and pumpkins, and the gift of wampum followed closely, brought about by the good fairies of that enchanted land.

CONNECT

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL