Saturday, May 16, 2009

53. The Mountain of the Skulls of the Anointed (Georgian (ex-SSR) Folk Songs 1920-1947)



Upon reaching the acme of the Mountain of the Skulls of Anointed Forefathers, I saw that the horizon was filled with yet more skulls, that indeed we had made our dwellings within, that we sailed the seas in them, that we filled them as they sailed through the air, that they were full of flowers and walls of glass. I looked down and found my shoes had become skulls, and i fell down the Mountain, I fell down, I fell down.

On certain days the skulls sing, each skull singing something different, with voices sweet and rough, madrigals and hymns. As the Mountain of the Skulls of the Anointed reveals itself in the dawn, one imagines that the Mountain is singing one song, one word, one tone. The word is "cras" and as the sibilance of that last letter fades the sun becomes brighter. Some believe that the Mountain sings the sun into being, but this has not been proven.

One woman has made her home on the slopes of the Mountain of the Skulls of the Anointed. Her name is Kelly and she works as a receptionist at Bullis and Sons. She enjoys greeting. "Hello and welcome. It's good to have met you," she says. She has been a recpetionist for seventy-four years, but looks as young and fresh as she did when she left Iowa, those many years ago. She disagrees with the common theory as to what the skulls are singing. She posits that they are singing "hodie."

Their lungless voices reverberate in each others' cavities, so song comes not only from lipless mouths but also from the eye sockets, from the nasal passages. The overtones mix with the songs, and as one skull sings it changes and adds to the song of its neighbor. We, with our meat and gristle filling the holes behind our faces, are unable to replicate such song, though many have tried and their attempts are quite sweet.

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