#*holds up dead featherless chicken*

[twinkletwinkletruly]

Important philosophical question that will probably be my death:

Is a brownie a brownie, when it doesn’t have nuts, and which nuts are preferred, if any?

I’ll go first: I can’t consider a brownie a brownie without nuts, specifically walnuts. If they do not have walnuts, I just see them as very dense cake squares.

I need the nuts to balance the textures, or I get overwhelmed.

[super-chaitea]

let's talk about the man, the myth, the legend himself, Diogenes

this man was kicked out of sinope for debasement if currency and lost his citizenship and all his possessions - declared himself a citizen of the world instead of sticking to one place

went to Athens and made it his personal goal to challenge established customs and traditions

as soon as he got to Athens, his slave, Manes, ran away and he said "if manes can live without diogenes, diogenes can live without manes"

supposedly asked antisthenes to mentor him, but antisthenes beat him with a wooden stick. Diogenes came back and told him that not even the hardest wood could get rid of him because he'd always come back if he thought antisthenes had something to say.

lived in a jar and threw away his singular wooden bowl after he saw a peasant drinking water from his hands because it was "superfluous baggage"

ate in the market, which went against Athenian customs, because he was always hungry in the market

walked around during the day carrying a lamp, saying he was looking for an honest man - and found nothing but rascals and scoundrels

when Plato referred to a human as a "featherless biped," burst into the room with a plucked chicken and said "behold, a man!" (yes, that was Diogenes)

sabotaged socrates's lectures and ate food to distract the listeners

captured and sold as a slave in cornith and supposedly continued to live in a jar there

Met Alexander the Great - exchange apparently went something like this (paraphrased, obviously):

a: is there anything I can do for you?

d: yeah get out of my sunlight ya dumfuck

a: if I weren't Alexander I would wish to be diogenes

d: yeah me too ya dumbfuck

another exchange:

d: *staring at a pile of bones*

a: hey whatcha doin

d: looking for the bones of your dad. i keep mixing them up with the bones of slaves.

multiple accounts to how he died, including, but not limited to: dying peacefully in his masters house, getting an infected dog bite, holding his breath until he died, or eating bad octopus

when asked how he wanted to be buried when he died, said "throw me over the city wall and let all the animals feast on my corpse." 

when asked if he minded animals eating his corpse, said, "i don’t mind as long as you leave me a stick to defend myself"

when asked how he would defend himself if he lacked awareness, said, "if I lack awareness why would I care if I'm dead?"

forget Beyoncé I want to be like diogenes when I grow up.

[adventuresloane]

The Wanted (Revised Hurloane Fic) -- Ch. 4

“They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them. Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short ‘n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids.”

Hurley’s a bounty hunter, the Raven is an outlaw, and the desert is a lonely place.

(The 50k+ Old West Hurloane AU Where Hurley Becomes A Thief Too that no one asked for. Updates every Friday. Edited and reposted from an old version of the story–more significant changes to come in later chapters. T for non-graphic violence and discussions of death/injury/trauma.)

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"Absolutely no way."

"Oh, yes."

"Nope. Nope. You can't possibly hit that thing."

"Bet you anything I can."

Sloane snickered. "I'll take that bet. That bird is at well over a hundred meters away, faster than shit, and you're going at it with a goddamn revolver instead of a proper hunting rifle. Not possible." 

"Shh, don't let it hear you." Their heart pounded against the ground like a closed fist as they lay flat on their belly, fixed on the roadrunner. Without thinking about it, they did what they always did, tilting the gun up an inch for every twenty meters. Just like hitting clay. They aimed for the question mark-shaped neck. Next to them, Sloane, meanwhile, had rolled onto her back with her hand flopped lazily over her stomach. Her neck was arched all the way back to look at the bird with a droll grin. She was looking at the thing upside-down. What did she know anyway?

"It's not gonna hear shit from this distance, which is, I'll remind you, very fucking far," she said. 

"It could! You don't know!"

"You manage to hit that thing, I'll eat my ha--"

They shot, and the bird dropped with nary a squawk.

Hurley popped up from the ground. First they smiled at the still dark lump on the ground very fucking far in front of them, then, without changing their expression, turned to a gaping Sloane. When she glanced their way, they raised their eyebrows and swung their revolver by the trigger guard, back and forth, on one finger. Admittedly, they made a show of milking it. 

She snapped her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes. Then, without so much as a sigh, she removed her hat, walked over towards the unlit fire pit, held it for a moment over the skillet sitting nearby, and, with a certain solemnity, dropped it. 

They laughed. She didn't, but she smiled in this particular way they had come to recognize, where she wrinkled her nose, as though it were a grin repurposed from a failed sneer.

"I'll go grab the bird," they said.

She watched them the whole time they were walking back. When they got close enough, they could see the studying glint in her eye, her head cocked. 

"Hey," she said. A second later, she tossed an empty can into the air. They drew and picked it off, hearing the satisfying tang as the bullet connected. 

They took a moment to watch it fall to earth, diverted from its original course, before looking back at her. "Whoo!" They pumped their fists in the air, despite the fact that a carcass still swung from one. 

She chuckled. "Damn." Holding her hand out toward the bird, she said, "Give me that." When they handed it over, she started plucking the feathers. 

"You don't have to do that."

"It's fine. You ever had roadrunner before?"

"Nope. Have you?"

"Oh, a few times. It's alright."

"So you've shot them before!" They sat beside her cross-legged to watch her work. "Why were you giving me shit about it just now?"

"No, I've only trapped them. Just a few times, when I'm away from any towns for a good long while."

"Isn't that harder?"

"Yes, which is why you should be impressed." She glanced at them, then went on, "Also, I'm a terrible shot. Things look blurry to me when they're at that distance away, so there wasn't much point in learning." 

"Really?" As her words sank in, they felt their previous excitement congeal in them like a blood clot, stopping them up. They wondered if she might be lying, but they weren't good at spotting that kind of thing in anyone, least of all her. She had not tensed or looked away as she had spoken, at least that they had seen. She just kept pulling the feathers. Anyway, it would have made for an odd thing to lie about in this moment. 

The number 113 flashed through Hurley's head over and over. Abernathy had been shot from 113 meters away, the distance from the door of the bank to the general store's porch. Her bad sight and the clean gun and the fact that--they could tell--she hadn't thought to shoot when she had gotten caught. Her reaction to simply hitting Hurley in the nose. Would the law know all that? Would it care? It wasn't what one would call hard evidence, certainly nothing capable of proving her innocence, but it didn't add up. What did it mean to bring her back to a Goldcliff unaware of such things?

They didn't ask all that. Instead, they pushed past the stewing in their guts to ask, "Are you often out here for a long time?"

She shrugged. "Depends. Sometimes I have a harder time getting some sheriff off my trail, and I have to hide out here a little longer before I go back to a town. I can be here for a few weeks without much of a problem." She cocked her brow at them and jabbed, "When I'm prepared."

They flicked a spot of dried mud from their boot. "That sounds lonely," they said in the most neutral way they could, which was probably not very.

She snorted. "No. The quiet's nice out here."

Hurley looked around. "I think I agree. It's funny. I didn't like that about it when I first got out here, but being in a place that's sort of...stuck out of time, that's a nice distance to have."

"You can disappear, yeah." She passed the featherless carcass to them, and they began to slice its belly.

"I wouldn't want it all the time, though. Eventually I think I'd want someone around."

"I don't like answering to anybody."

"I'm aware of that," they said with a grin. 

"Well, do you? 'Cause you seem like you'd rather be the person people answer to."

"Do I?" They paused when their knife was partway through the thin, shining muscle under the skin as they held the bird over the dead charcoals. The blood rose up out of it and dribbled onto the ashes, so that it would be soaked up. "I don't think it has to be about answering to anyone. You can just be with people."

"Where'd you learn to shoot?"

"Well, when I was young, maybe seven or eight, my mother--"

"Oh, gods."

"Hey, do you want to know or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's just I should've known you'd make it something sentimental." She gave them a flippant wave while still looking down at the roadrunner. Hurley chose to be optimistic and assume that was her version of a joke. "Go on."

They huffed. “Well, I’ll make it quick for both our sakes, I guess. I was gonna say that my mother always told me I thought with my belly.”

“Huh. Rude.”

“No, she didn’t mean it like that. She meant I listen to my gut before anyone else, including her, or my own brain. Like how I’d go running out the door in my underwear to frighten off the foxes if I thought I heard them near the chickens. I was maybe three when I did this, I should mention.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Anyway, finally Mom decided that if I was going to keep running into things without thinking about them, I might as well figure out how to protect myself while I did it. I started off with a slingshot when I was maybe seven, but I wanted a gun before long. She managed to put off giving me one until I was, oh, twelve or so.”

Sloane chuckled. “Very irresponsible. I love it.”

“Hey, at least she found someone to teach me before she let me lay my hands on the thing myself. I’ve been practicing ever since.”

“I can tell.”

“Yeah.” 

It was some time before either of them spoke again. Several times, Hurley took in a big breath to speak, held it and let it grow hot and tight inside their chest, and then let it all out. The sun had melted into a band of fading yellow on the horizon. 

Finally, they said, “Hey, let me switch out your shackles.”

They went to chain her ankles so that they could remove the irons around her wrist, but she rolled out of the way at the last second, flopping onto her back. “Nah, don’t feel like it,” she answered, playing up the lazy tone. 

Hurley snorted. “Don’t be an ass, come on.”

This time, she flipped over onto her belly, still skirting just out of reach. Her head was in her hands as she fixed them with a playful grin. “You gotta catch me first if you want to do that, Red. I thought you were good at that.”

They stared her down and made a point of being unsmiling. “Sloane, it’s got to happen eventually anyway.

The smile slid from her face fast. She cast her eyes down to the ground. When she finally let them approach, it was while she was turned away from them and looking out to the fading light. She had closed. 

Over the nearly three weeks that they had been on their own together, this was what Hurley had come to dread far more than the dark of the nights and the heat of the days. It was the feeling of collapse, of having to knock down something that they had built up themself. Because they could almost pretend, before they remembered the chains again. It seemed, sometimes, that she almost forgot them as well. 

They had been sleeping closer together lately. On a particularly cold night, Sloane had even conceded to being under the same blanket with them, so long as Hurley kept their hands curled up against their chest. But it wouldn’t be tonight, regardless of how much either of them shivered.

[space-blue]

Angel Plague

Theme: image prompt.

The old bird says they came on a ship. And she's that: old. Her wings huddle featherless behind her warped shoulders, twitching as we pull the story out of her. She claims to be old enough to remember the messenger who passed through her village to tell of a ship like a city, come to Dieb in splendour, and that was before rumours of coastal Gamar and Drasel falling to a plague, before the plague itself came to dispel the rumours.

'So many places burned along the coast that month, people forgot where it started. It wasn't like knowing who died first would save your life.'

I nod in agreement. To this day there is no deciding which city had burned first, which village turned into a charnel before its neighbours.

'I remember suckling my mam till I was twice over the age of weaning, because corpses were the only crop around. People always jabber about Dulik since that's where the first angel came from. Before that poor girl it was just plague, and then it was angel plague. But it was them strangers on their death ship that came to Dieb with it.'

Nobody likes the idea of riding to Dieb, even if it is our most solid lead. Some grumble the word of old harpies isn't proof enough.

I flap my wings angrily, rounding on my men.

'What other rumours would you have us checking first? Whether the dead princess Mia lost her virginity to the Devil? Whether Carusians were sinning with their chickens?'

'No, Alessar, we only mean–'

'You mean you're terrified of going cross-country. Your nannies told you it's full of ghosts and entire villages dead and unburied, with bones scattered by animals and the wind.'

God knows it's the truth, for the bones at least, if plague-country is half as bad as what we've seen so far in the borderlands. I pitch my voice to sound reasonable, encouraging.

'Yes it's plague-country, and nobody knows what goes on further down the road, but finding this ship, its people, are our orders. It's the rumour our King believes in. We will go and be safe, because the plague won't touch us. And if men try...'

I raise my spear up and look sternly at each of my men: four angel-born like I, and three plague survivors of middling age, Damian the only one among them changing, the bony stumps growing out of his back hidden under leather wrappings. All soldiers, handpicked.

'Don't lose heart now.'

I mount my horse, a deep-chested stallion very willing to take me in any direction so long as he can gallop there.

'We ride to Dieb,' I say, and my men follow, putting up a show of enthusiasm that is more for their own sake than mine.

The map says that the road–really a trail we barely make out through the encroaching wilderness–passes through several villages on its way to Dieb. In the first, everyone is winged. The children look up in wonder and the adults flock to us, eager to trade for news, but they can't tell us what lays further down the road. There are open-air ossuaries, but we expected them. The real blow to morale comes from the hamlets where, more and more often, half naked farmers turn the tools in their hands into weapons and give chase without a word, without a shout of warning. When the scouts spy a village without an angel in sight, I send Lud and Mallory through, human as they look, with instructions to make themselves perfectly agreeable while the rest of us give it a wide berth. They rejoin us with provisions strapped to their saddles and a grim set to their mouths. We avoid all the villages after that. Finally there is salt in the air, and the murmur of the sea beyond the swishing of palm tree leaves. There are more ruins of old farms too, as we near whatever is left of Dieb. So when Damian is taken by plague-fever, I'd consider calling it a day, but the men are having none of it, reeling with impatience, several of them going ahead to scout the shore. He lays on his belly, to accommodate the bony slabs that one day will form useable limbs. Maybe. His eyes, bloodshot, the irises slowly splitting three-ways, are starring into whatever inward hell the plague crafts for him.

Bruno squats by me, giving me a hand unwrapping the wing stumps.

'Alessar, let's strap him to his horse.'

'I don't know,' I whisper, waving at the spasming muscles, the snarling lips revealing bleeding gums. Soon his teeth would need filing again.

'Well, he'll hurt either way. Plus, look,' Bruno says, waving his hand in front of Damian's face. 'There's nobody home.'

I scowl at the feeling of burning flesh and sickly sweat under my fingers, an unwanted reminder that we are the product of disease, but we saddle him up like a bag of potatoes and move on. We're too close now.

We come upon it not in the main harbour, but beached in the cove south of it. The masts, which guided us from afar, should have prepared us for the sight of it, but even presented with all its broken splendour, I struggle with the size of the thing. It is a monster beyond my wildest dream. As if I had gone out to the beach with a stick to poke at jellyfishes, only to stumble on the carcass of a whale.

It's gutted, split in half, its seven great masts lolling haphazardly, connected by the last remnants of rotting rope and shreds of sails long lost to the wind. People made a staircase out of driftwood, going up and up, into the great wound itself. Still, several thousand people could hide in this wreck without crowding its crumbling decks. And yet, most noticeable is the figurehead: a gigantic woman, winged like the angels of lore, holding forth objects whose meaning I cannot guess. Her beautiful form bitter irony.

'Alessar...'

I look to where Lud points at a lone fisherman pulling traps out of shallow waters, not far from the much smaller wreck of what must have once been a dinghy. We ride down to him, holding hands in signs of peace, but the man welcomes us with a bout of spitting.

'You gulls lost or something?'

I laugh.

'Quite the opposite, fisherman. We come from the new Altan court, in search for the ship that brought strangers to our shore. This boat,' I say, pointing up over my wing at the behemoth eating half the sky.

'Is that so?' the man says, looking vaguely amused. 'The ol' king's still kicking?'

'His son,' I correct, 'Altar the second. He believes the people came to our shores carrying angel-plague with them, and so maybe they know of a cure. We were sent to investigate, seek their healers–'

The fisherman laughs then, in disbelief or mockery, I can't tell, but it shakes his whole body, sends crabs rattling in the trap he's clinging to.

Bruno flaps his wings in irritation, making the horses dance nervously.

'Are the ship people still alive? Tell us man! This is no joke.'

'Oh, aye,' the man whizzes, 'they don't really like birds like you though, so good luck talking to them. They first settled on top of Akram,' he says, pointing at the tall cliffs that cut the northern horizon, 'and resettled a lot of Gamar. But they come here often enough, especially the young ones. Kind of a pilgrimage, maybe? Not like they'd tell old Beko here.'

The men cry out, calling out to each other about our good luck, and I feel a hand slapping my shoulder, but I only have eyes for the little man whose own eyes have gone up, past my wings and into the sky.

'Well, aren't you gulls lucky!' He exclaims, pointing. 'Here's one of them now, and no kid either!'

So I look up too, just as a shadow passes over us.

It is an angel, and it isn't. It is more, like the ship is more than a ship. Maybe three times my size, with a far larger wingspan, its arms are human enough, holding a bag to its broad chest, but the legs are disjointed, ending in terrible talons. It flies over us without slowing or looking down, uncaring for the humans floundering in the shadow of a ship whose size suddenly makes more sense. Whose figurehead is nothing more than a herald of her species, and no angel at all.

'Still want to go ask the cure for bird-plague?' The old fisherman asks, smiling sadly. 'They call themselves something chirpy. Sounds like 'Titwak'. Usually they kill people like you, so we do the same. When a little gull is born, we offer it up to the sea.'

He shrugs, turns around to empty his trap.

'Go home. No point in you dying for a cure that doesn't exist.'

~~ November 2018

[ciathyzareposts]

Rex Nebular – To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

Written by TBD.

Rex Nebular’s Log: Stardate – The Day The Music Died.3: I’d sometimes dreamed about what I’d do if I was a woman for a day. But in none of those dreams did I just wander around picking stuff up and solving puzzles. At least I feel a lot more welcome on this planet now. Now, let’s find out where these teleporters go…

When we’d last left our hero, she’d just come out of the gender bender with a brand new gender. I’d found the gender scanner to the south, but first I continue following the carnage my friend had made on his way to the teleporter.

I find another dead guard, and her arm half a screen away. I also find a tape player. Having gotten a tape from a dead body back in the hospital, I do the obvious.

My attempts to put my tape in the tape player showed me one of the quirks with the game’s interface.

Both of these are generic descriptions I get by clicking on random things.

Guessing that I could only put the tape in the player if I had both items in my inventory,  I took the tape player, and then the game let me insert and play the tape.

Whoever put someone called ‘Professor Pyro’ in charge of something called ‘Project Kablooey’ was just asking for trouble.

I take the dead guard’s separated arm and use it on a hand/fingerprint scanner to open a cupboard and get all my confiscated inventory back.

I also find a lamp in the cupboard, but don’t seem to be able to take it or do anything with it. It might be important later.

Off another dead body I take a credit chip (a credit card, basically) so now I have money if I ever need it.

I entered the teleporter, and noticed that the number above the keypad was the number I used to get to this teleporter. So presumably I can teleport to any location if I know the number of the target teleporter. I test this theory by pressing the number that had been on the surface teleporter, and it works – I end up on the surface. I go back to the village where I’d previously been kicked in the man-region as soon as I went north. Seeing as I no longer have a man-region, I figure I’ll be safe.

Last post I wondered if the game gave me different descriptions depending on my current gender. I think I have my answer.

The next screen contains a woman (who didn’t kick me this time), some chickens and a stream which blocks the way west.

I take the roasting chicken and try to cross the stream.

I should have listened to Spengler – the thing in the water is me being ripped apart by piranhas.

This is the second game I’ve played in a row which had a school of piranhas in a stream by a small village. I’m feeling nostalgic already.

I try to give/put/throw my chicken at the piranhas, but the game won’t let me. After picking up a new twinkifruit, I also fail to feed that to the animals.

Out of ideas on the surface, but armed with a new roast chicken, I go back through the teleporter to the underground and do some more exploring.

The southern area of the base had been off limits to me before due to my gender, but now I can pass the scanner safely and find some more rooms. This section is in a U shape, with the gender scanners on each upper section. I start at the western section.

The first door is the entrance to a bar. It’s ladies night (every night is ladies night) in the bar so I enter and take a stool. The woman on the seat next to me is a repairwoman, and she starts complaining about the teleporters. I consider using the bar’s teleporter until I see what happens to the lady who appears there.

Maybe she entered the other teleporter while holding her pet wallaby.

I didn’t understand what the giant flashing arrows were at first. Yes, I’m an idiot.

I eventually worked out (after leaving the bar and coming back later because I’m extremely unobservant) that the repairwoman had a list of broken teleporters in her back pocket. For some reason I thought the arrows had something to do with the dance floor.

For now, I buy some alcohol with my stolen credit chip and continue my exploration lap.

In the south section, I find the armory which I can easily enter with my security card.

Glad to see the word ‘humbled’ used correctly, rather than when somebody wins something for being the best in their field.. You can’t be humbled by winning an award, people!

I find a TARGET MODULE, which, according to its description, should allow me to ‘hit anything hard and fast if I attach it to a ship’s fire control computer‘. I take it and assume I’ll get the opportunity to upgrade my weapons with it later.

The other thing in the room that looks like it can be used is a blimp’s loading ramp. The ramp is currently blocked by a tank which I’m not able to drive. Perhaps I’ll find some instructions somewhere – or perhaps it’s just there to give the game an opportunity to tell another joke.

I think I’ve found ACME’s warehouse!

There’s a few more doors in the southern section. There’s a teleporter room, a lab and a storage room.

Trying the lab first, I find it’s the recently exploded Professor Pyro’s lab – I can tell by the large scorch mark on the floor.

I take some chemicals and check my old screenshots for the instructions for the bomb Professor Pyro had been making. I could have just played the audio tape again I suppose, but who has time for that?

Following the instructions, I make some explosives. I try to take them.

I laughed out loud at this one.

The teleporter room has, surprise surprise, a teleporter in it. (Actually it probably is a surprise – it’s not actually called the teleporter room, that’s just what I called it after looking inside.) I take note that this teleporter (4229) is past the gender scanner so if I need to enter this area as a man this is likely how I’ll do it.

In the storage room I find some empty charge cases, which are used to pack explosives. Not a very subtle hint, seeing as I’ve already tried to take the explosives, but I’m not going to complain. I also find a tar bucket.

For some reason I thought tar-and-feathering would do something here. That was before I realised the chicken I had was featherless, dead and cooked.

To the east is a door I can’t enter for now, so I return to the lab.

I put my explosives in the charge cases and try to blow stuff up. First, I try it on the door I can’t open.

Then on the tank blocking the blimp’s loading ramp.

Then I try throwing them at the piranhas.

Don’t ask me why piranha have a shark fin – I don’t know either.

I even try making an explosive piranha meal.

With disappointment that I can’t think of anything to blow up with my new explosives, it was at this point that I went back to the bar and worked out what the giant arrows had been pointing to earlier. I snatched the repair list from the woman’s back pocket and I now have a lot of teleporter codes.

The codes are:

2644 – off-line pending repairs

9853 – off-line pending repairs

4580 – off-line pending repairs

2116 – off-line pending repairs

8384 – recently tuned (this is the teleporter on the surface)

9113 – recently tuned (this is the teleporter I arrived in at the base)

1058 – need minor adjustments

0576 – need minor adjustments

4229 – due for gender-security maintenance (this is the teleporter that is in the base past the gender scanner)

That last item makes me even more confident that I can use teleporter 4229 to get to the women-only area as a man.

Seeing as teleporter 1058 is in need of minor adjustments, and I haven’t been there yet. Let’s see what’s there.

Okay. Minor adjustments needed. Understood.

I try the other location that needs minor adjustments and cross my fingers.

I’m alive – and in an exciting new area!

I’m now in an abandoned city and find a car, a car complete with moldy sock, empty soda cans and a long-expired air freshener. In other words, a man’s car.

Actually, in my experience men’s cars are usually tidier than women’s cars. It’s houses that men keep messy.

The car won’t activate because I’m a woman, so you can guess what I’m going to do next.

Hm. 9 potential locations. The possibilities are… well, nine.

This seems like an appropriate time to stop, so I’ll explore the locations in man-town next time.

Session time:  1 hour 15 minutes Total time: 3 hours 45 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please…try not to spoil any part of the game for me…unless I really obviously need the help…or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I’ve not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/rex-nebular-to-boldly-go-where-no-man-has-gone-before/

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Reflections of Ourselves: Ron Mueck at MFAH

Ron Mueck, “Couple Under an Umbrella,” 2013.

  Ron Mueck opened at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston this past weekend, an exhibition that’s been years in the making.  Mueck’s work is known around the globe for its haunting and hyperrealist figures trapped in frozen moments of contemplation.  His subjects hold an essence of displacement and discomfort, bringing the viewer in to explore these expressions.  “Ever since I saw his show at the Brooklyn Museum his work has been under my skin. For almost 20 years I have been provoked and impressed by Ron Mueck’s balance of the real and unreal,” states Alison de Lima Greene, Contemporary curator at the MFAH. Mueck didn’t hit the ground running as a contemporary artist.  The Australian born native began his early career working as the Creative Director for a children’s TV show, Shirl’s Neighbourhood, where he also made, voiced, and operated the puppets on the show.  In TV and film he eventually began working as a creator and puppeteer with such greats as Jim Henson on projects including The Labyrinth and The Storyteller. It wasn’t until 1996 that Mueck began working as a fine artist and began collaborating with his mother-in-law Paula Rego.  It was Rego that introduced him to Charles Saatchi, who immediately took a shining to his work and began commissioning and collecting his latest creations.

  Mueck employs a very interesting process that compels me to his work. Surprisingly, he does not compose his pieces based on real people.  Seeing his work and the attention to detail, you might think that he at least works from photographs of his subjects, but that’s not the case.  His works spawn from drawings and contain no real ongoing narrative.  The relationships to the figures are ambiguous. Mueck captures moments, while isolating himself from the world around him during creation, often times spending a year on a figure. The subjects tend to stand still in an ambiguous place in time, remaining in a limbo.  His ever changing scale from large to small, small to large presents a disjunction while pushing unrealism to realism.  I found myself as close as I could possibly get to the sculptures to investigate the features, the distressed facial expressions, the pores, the complections.  The choice of size is not random and even the pedestals are mandated with specific heights as to lead the viewer to see as Mueck wants you to see.  The pedestals are presented in such a way that although many are very close to walls, there is just enough space welcoming you to walk around them.  Interestingly enough, even the lighting and wall color is chosen specifically for each show to ensure the proper element is set to appropriately display his works.

  Ron Mueck, “Woman with Shopping,” 2013.

  The exhibition lacks chronological order and not intended to be scene with a theme or story line.  In fact, as de Lima Greene states, “The show is as satisfying walking in from the exit as it is entering from the front.”  As you walk through the show you feel heavy, very much like the people Mueck presents.  Many of them stare at the ground or with a thousand yard stare, unless the viewer breaks this site line, which only passes through them.  There are only two of his 40 pieces that he has made that actually came from real life.  One of his first pieces, entitled “Dead Dad,” was a miniature of the body of his deceased father, and even contained Mueck’s own hair, with this being the only piece to do so.  “Women with Shopping” features a woman Mueck saw on the streets of London looking blankly waiting to cross the streets.  She is loaded down with groceries and a child is stuffed into her jacket, with only the head popping out of the collar.  Dressed monochromatically she is almost embedded, standing for an eternal amount of time.  As individuals or pairs, they merely remain in a mystery of emotion.

  It’s apparent that in many pieces, things are not exactly as they appear.  This can be seen in one of the anchor pieces, “Mask II,” an oversized self portrait of Mueck’s own face.  Beautiful as it lays heavy and half squished for those to creep in uncomfortably close, like watching someone sleep inches from their face.  The face remains unconscious and unaware of your presence. Walking around the piece you see an empty shell of a man’s head.  There is no back to it and you as the viewer are to become aware of this.  The mask, as it is called, is not just an ironic description of his face, but a literal one.  With “Young Couple,” the work presents a teenage couple, standing close to each other, dressed ordinarily with almost pained faces.  As no preset narrative is given to you, it appears the boy is consoling the young girl, as if they are both sharing this unpleasantry.  The girl hangs her head with the boy, who is much taller, almost as to resting his head against hers or deciding whether to do so.  The girl does not grasp or hug her partner, but has her hands dropped to her sides.  When you decide to walk around the figures, you see the boy is grasping her forearm, although their bodies obstruct this fact.  This made me feel immediately uncomfortable.  It is as if seeing your friends from across the park engaged in a tantalizing conversation only to hear upon approach they are involved in a heated argument.  One gets this feeling from many of the pieces in the show.  The Mueck ‘people’ certainly wear the perfume of loneliness, but there is certainly a darkness with each piece.  “Couple under an Umbrella” depicts two elderly beach goers lounging under the warm glow of a colorful umbrella.  The woman sits with a slight hunch about her as her male counterpart lays flat on the floor with his head resting against her.  He reclines with a clueless tranquility as she stares down upon him.  As one approaches these large beach giants, you think, “oh well look at them having a nice holiday in the sun.”  However, she isn’t beaming with joy. The both of them are not much of anything.  Upon walking through the exhibition with London’s Charlie Clark, who has been a long time friend and has worked closely with Ron Mueck for years, he stated, “We don’t even know if they are together or if she cares for him at all.”  So it comes not as a projection from myself, but from Mueck himself.  There isn’t one smiling face in the collection. Its as if they have all just awoken from a deep sleep and they are taking that minute to get their bearings.

  Ron Mueck, “Mask II,” 2001.

  Moments of tranquility are present in a few of the works.  By tranquility I mean the expressions are not entirely pained, but there certainly much to think about as you walk around with a furrowed brow. “Youth” displays an African American youth standing as he pulls up his shirt.  Looking down, he peers at a wound in his abdomen.  His shirt is slightly bloodied, but the wound is substantial.  He stands barefoot and doesn’t seemed to be bothered by it at the moment.  The didactic tells a story of resurrection and relation to Christ.  Perhaps he is Christ after he arises and looks over his body only to see the laceration.  Even the height of this pedestal is similar to that of a religious statue posted in a church or holy place.  This may be one of the heaviest pieces in the show.  It is also the only figure that is physically wounded.  Maybe he has fallen off his bike or maybe the injury was inflicted upon him?  There is more to ponder about, for instead of feeling an emotional pain as the others, you feel both physically and emotionally over his wound.

  The entire collection of Mueck’s work has depth to it and doesn’t just rely on his ability to create lifelike people of the everyday.  European art history flows strongly through the works giving moments of Lucien Freud and Albrecht Durer as you review his pieces.  His work “Still Life,” an enormous featherless chicken, hangs lifeless as if about to be added into a Dutch painting surrounded with flowers, glasses of wine, and a strange looking feline. It’s clear there remains an embedded thought process with all the figures we see of Mueck’s creations.  More than just the making process and welcoming our interpretations.

  As you make the final conclusion through the exhibition and into the final room you are sent on your way by “Girl,” a room sized infant. The viewer is forced upon this piece and into the environment. The new child is still covered in blood and awaiting that slap on the back to bring air into the lungs.  A few times around the child you take in all the details of this little-large body sprawled with its still-attached umbilical cord. Mueck provides a deep look into the time in between moments. Viewing his subjects not as objects of portraits but as a means of exposing an accurate in-depth window into human essence. Mueck’s figures are elaborate puzzles, each one with a different message to be uncovered. Within his reality, much like our own, first glances are deceiving and misguided. There are many instances of loneliness throughout the exhibition, but the individuals populating the show are far from still and alone. It’s the reflection of ourselves in the subjects that give them motion.

  Ron Mueck will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through August 13, 2017.

Reflections of Ourselves: Ron Mueck at MFAH this is a repost