Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
A Lucky Day for Lapis Lazuli
Friday, June 27th, 2008
The Queen of Egypt sat on the steps of her House, watching her father’s boat start across the sky. She thought she could almost see the oars flash.
Maybe she would have them take out the barge today. The river would rise soon, they would move the household, and it would be pyramids, pyramids, pyramids all summer, with letters from her husband Pharoah, off in Libya, saying, “How goes my monument?”—before he asked after his children.
She thought about the golden treasure of barley sinking level by level in the granaries; she heard the servants in the night, when she walked and rocked her youngest son in her arms. She liked to carry him herself. She felt they had not succeeded with her other sons, who had a “How goes my monument?” look to them.
The High Priestess of her sister Bastet came down the steps, bowed, and sat at her feet, resting one hand on her sandal.
“Do you remember,” said the Queen, “when we used to get up this early to run around the garden?”
“I remember,” said the Priestess.
“What is this day lucky for?”
“It is lucky for conceiving a great ruler,” said the Priestess.
“One who will keep the granaries full, listen to his people, stay home where he won’t waste young men who ought to be farming and fathering…and who—this is important—won’t bother with a great fat pile of rock more than he has to?”
The Priestess turned to look at her and smiled.
“It’s worth a try.”
“With my husband far away.”
“The gods might step in.”
In the hot afternoon, while her younger children ran around the garden and her older ones drank beer and designed chariots, the Queen climbed the wall and set her goblet down. A falcon hunted over the eastern wing of the palace. She watched it circle and backwing. She looked beyond, where her father’s boat continued slowly, above the flashing river. Then the falcon flapped above her, gilded eye turned to hers, wings fanning her face—there and gone. Something fell with a splash into her goblet.
“If you’ve crapped in my beer, I’ll go get my bow,” she told the vanished falcon. But instead a seed of lapis lazuli blinked in the depths. She looked at it and raised her cup, saying, “Bring me a good Pharoah,” before she drank it down.
Found on a Scrap of Paper Inside a Library Book (an Anthology of Persian Poets)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
Here you go—worked well Tuesday—best of luck:
2 cups pastry flour
1 teaspoon sulfur dioxide
Complete works of Aristotle
Complete set of clothing for a size 10, shoe size 8 (women’s)
1 liter whiskey
3 tablespoons butter
1 fresh egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ tablespoon blackberry jam
Soak Aristotle in whiskey. When words are well dissolved, remove books. Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl, leaving clothes aside. Heat whiskey, butter, and blackberry jam in a saucepan until reduced to a cup of liquid. Allow to cool. Politely mix in egg, vanilla. Do not under any circumstances beat. Preheat oven to 360°. Stir in dry ingredients carefully with clean glass stirring rod. Bake in soufflé pan for one hour. Leave to cool in deserted clearing under light of waxing half moon. Return at sunrise with clothing. Be cautious, respectful. Do not expect to succeed with her.
Notes:
-single malt whiskey works best, very little wit otherwise.
-recipe unavoidably produces redheads, regardless of ethnicity, unless you leave out “On Dreams,” in which case a bland personality results.
-Aristotle most effective text for recipe—ironic, considering how little he liked women.
-use Simone de Beauvoir if you wish to produce man. Results butch but sweet.