Some of us, I’d like to think most of us here on SF0, have not lost that wonderment, are not solidly cynical or disillusioned. We still play, and laugh, believe humans are generally good, and view the world around us as one continuous miracle in different forms. Because of this, Dr. Subtle and I relate to impressive creations and beings in the same manner as we did when we were five years old. We still jump up and down with excitement and get a happy, lively gleam in our eyes when confronted with The Awesome.

Personally, I’ve always attributed the child’s jaw-drop reaction and fascination with things such as big creatures like whales to a sort of divinity the creatures possess. Kids generally don’t have a complete understanding of these animals and understand them as somewhat abstract entities, possibly even ones possessing magical powers and great wisdom. And that’s not far from the truth. Some great creatures do have fascinating abilities or qualities, and if you listen from the right angle, all contain a good deal of wisdom. Just as fables and parables are used as metaphors or gentle examples of certain life lessons, vehicles to impart some sort of lesson or wisdom, impressive organisms provide many metaphors for similar uses.

Regardless of the subject of fascination, the aspect that seems most universally striking is, loosely, Size, Size as Weight, Height, Length, or Volume. Taking this into consideration, Dr. Subtle happened upon an idea that eventually molded itself into a great completion of this task.

D r .   S u b t l e   G e t s   a n   I d e a 
(B Orionis)

Around mid May, I returned to California from Pittsburgh to visit my family for a few weeks before again returning to Pittsburgh. At some point during my stay in California, Dr. Subtle called me with his newest inspired personal art project. It was to be a small booklet, made for mass distribution, containing illustrations of five of the world’s largest Organisms paired with “prayers” to their respective entities. In studying several alternative “religions” such as Gnosticisim and Scientific Illuminism, our favorite Doctor got the urge to present the inhabitants of our sweet city with an alternative form of worship. Which ended up not really begin worship so much as appreciation for and a gleaning of inspiration from the creatures about which we wrote.

Initially, he approached me for participation in the illustration work. I gladly accepted, and he names the organisms we would be examining. They were, and remain, from farthest above sea level, to farthest beneath:

1)      General Sherman: one of the tallest trees in the world, standing 275 feet tall, and the most voluminous tree in the world, located in Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest.

2)      Pando: A continuous colony of one male quaking aspen located in Utah. It is the heaviest known organism, weighing in at around 6,615 tons. It may also be one of the oldest at 80,000 years of age.

3)      Honey Fungus: one colony of Armillaria Ostoyae in the Malheur National Forest in Oregon
spans more than 3.4 square miles, making it the largest by area.

      4)      The Blue Whale: At a record or 110 feet in length, and 200 tons, it may very well be the largest
             animal to have ever existed and definitely the largest of present day.

5)      The Colossal Squid: The largest of the squid species, measuring up to 46 feet in length.

W o r k   B e g i n s 
(B Orionis)

So I started sketching one right after being introduced to the project and completed a few by the time I got back to Pittsburgh. By that time Dr. Subtle had written two of the five pieces, and completed his sketch. The originals were done in Ballpoint pen on my end, and blue ink on the Doctor's

The project got set aside for a while as the Doctor felt uninspired to write, but I continued to sketch. Then, in July, the project picked up pace once again. All sketches were complete. All that remained were the final writing pieces. After some encouragement from the good Doctor, I tried my hand at writing one of them, and after a good review, wrote a second!

Meanwhile, the good Doctor talked to his friend Jason about the project, and got him to write about the Honey Mushrooms. Jason being a closet occultist and having written quite a few ceremonies and paeans in his day took the offer gladly, and quickly poured out a mushroom-y screed.

We took an anagram of our first names to produce a single name for an author, Roslin Njango Orce. Is she french? Or African? Or Irish? Who knows!

Sometime in late July, after reviews and edits, all texts were finished and all sketches complete. It was then that we developed a name for our small book. To make it slightly more intriguing, we decided to label them in Latin, and, after double checking on the correctness with a friend, Liber Bestiarum Magnae (The Book of the Large Beast) was born.

T h e   T e x t   I t s e l f

In reverse order chronologically.


      Honey Fungus

I am King of my own Kingdom, the one from whom all fungi descend.

I am harmony, the many spores woven into a single communal organism of united will. I am destruction also, the cloud whose thunder heralds nuclear devastation. In this as in all things, I am alchemy, the union of opposites into perfection most terrible. You think you know me, but I am not the idea you see in your mind, just as your mind is not the brain in which it sometimes occurs. I am the One from whom all ideas flow, the World of Forms, inviolate, immaculate, indivisible.

I am the stolen fire of heaven, food of the gods, body of Prometheus-Christ. I am soma, ambrosia, golden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, on which is carved "Kallisti". Consumed by mortal mouth, I may bring sickness, enjoyment, death, rebirth - but which is what? Who can truly judge? To feast on me is to journey to Valhalla, and the journey back to Midgard is many times more arduous. Some men (the weak? the wise?) may choose instead to remain in those hallowed halls, either in body or in spirit.

I am Nothing in particular.

To see me is to know terror and peace. To taste me is to be purified and defiled. To choose me is to choose death and life. To know me is to know madness and truth.

      The Blue Whale

The Ocean may seem empty to such small lenses, but for those willing to expand their ocular reach, to pry open the slumbering inner eye, a new world, teeming with life and possibility will come into focus. Open ears shall resonate with a low, sweet melody, and absorb the secrets of formation and freedom. Swim, listen, and see, oh curious creature!
 
From the secret, Indigo depths of the sprawling watery world, into a more complete spectrum of illumination, I venture. Up towards the radiating energy source of the heavens, towards sweet salty air, I rise. I come to meet you where you live. See me and let the waves of understanding begin to wash over your tiny form. It is wonderment renewed.

Suspended in this mysterious substance, enveloped by the deafening silence, relinquish your worries. Tucked lovingly into your aquatic blanket, rocked gently into tranquility, the Ocean frees you from even the heaviest of burdens. I exist, living proof of the greater elegance in the universe. No great philosophies would exist without the elemental ideas from which they are comprised. I would not exist if not for the myriad miniscule Krill I have consumed throughout eternity. So you must collect, digest, and grow. Yet do not internalize all that you encounter. Employ your own particular Baleen, sift through what you collect, and be selective in what you choose to make a part of your unique composition.

But be wary, tiny fish, on your aquatic journey. Do not become completely enthralled with the vastness. Allow it not to overwhelm your senses beyond functionality, for it is merciless, unaware of your existence, your awakened consciousness, your increasingly streamlined trajectory, and will swallow you whole the same as any passing Krill.

Swim with me, alongside me, through eons, into eternity. Travel the hundreds of feet of my self witnessing centuries of formation, of mammalian architecture refined. Fear not what you cannot see, the darkness, the invisible world laid out beneath you. You live in the light, and to you, more impossible things will rise up from the darkness, and you shall know.

Do not forget what you have seen and in time, you will you're your own composition.

I descend now, back into the watery depths from which I came, to play among the stars, as our great mother does play among the stars suspended in the heavens.

Let knowledge be borne on all the currents of the Ocean!

May the song hang on every wavy measure!

Never lose your freedom!

      General Sherman

Ancient yet young in the eye of one star in the company of stars, commanding in stature, silently shepherding my brethren, keeping order in the forest, I wait. May my centuries on this earth provide inspiration for the weary and wilted. Come to me and listen. Let my breath fill your lungs, and your breath fill my lungs, again, infinitely. Let us breathe new life into one another.

Feed, as I have fed, on the nutrients of the earth and grow tall. Drink deeply from the purest waters and be hydrated. Allow silence, stillness, patience, and constant reach to aid you in quenching your other thirsts. Only time and discipline will nurture your seedling soul, let you rise above the canopy of mortal toils.

One will grow and others will follow as has always happened in all the ages wherein man has roamed the Earth. Like the whispering of my needles in the wind, piercing the silence to penetrating hearts and secret thoughts, so shall the footprints of one existence, and many existences forthcoming, impact other travelers and cause similar questions to well within them.

As trees in a forest, seekers, rooted in their hunger, will be united by thirst, and extend their reach in all directions through union. They will convene, become a remarkable force, grow steadily towards the heavens. These new beings will burst through the old, heavy shells and be bathed in sunlight, will radiate with their own internal light, and will form one expansive beacon of hope.

 May the gentlest of giants be ever present and mighty within us! May the seeds of curiosity be sewn among the masses!

      Colossal Squid

I hang suspended in darkness, my great eye a panopticon that sees nothing. I am mystery of mysteries, elusive pieces of me over decades and centuries discovered, but my wholeness never seen.

I have about me a shroud of flesh and fluid, spinning twisting swiveling hooks and long ropey tentacles. I kill the largest, and am larger still. No spear or harpoon shall threaten me, nor cannon nor rifle. Knives I have seen, and they have not bitten me as deeply as they would want. The death of a thousand cuts shall never be my fate.

I am mighty in my kingdom, told in tales since time before time. I am the dragons at the edge of the map, I am the crusher of whales and the scourge of submarines, the bane of argonauts and halflings alike. There shall be no gnashing of teeth in my presence, but only the cold snap of a beak. No bones but cartilage, hard cold flesh of nails and noses.

Such blood runs within me, oceans inside as well as out. There is an inner blackness- pray it does not come out!

Let those who search be unquenchable in their thirst. Let mysteries be revealed to those who grow, not those who yearn. There is strength in depths and darkness. Let it be manifest in the hearts of men. Let the germination of all things be slow and in its own time, but the possibility of change infinite. Let the spawn be numerous over aeons and ages, but the ocean ever-growing to contain them.

For what is the earth but the border of ocean? What is it but the border of that greater starry ocean above the heads of those who dwell on land? Are both seas not bottomless and abundant?

      Pando

To those that spread and grow there shall be no end. Let the faith spread amongst the world like roots and stems and buds, mattes and stands and groves. Let the shape of it be manifold and topographic, let it rest in and on the world, as the course of things see it fit. Let there be clearings where clearings are necessary, but let the rest be full, not choked but full to a harmonic fit.

There shall be forests, and trees, and both shall be one, the forest and the trees, inseparable at any scope, a unified front of spirit, self-similar from the smallest leaf to the greatest arm of treescape, fractal and harmonious, an axis mundi to itself.

There is no world without division, and without polarity, but then again, there is a coursing force which flows through all, a suffuse energy in all places simultaneously, within and without, above and below. Let my own life align with this self-similar force of transcendence and novelty, let every quantum of the universe be a quantum of me.

For I am Pando, I spread. I quake with transcendence, rattle with beatific thought. I ring like a great bell, pulsing with divinity. I am oldest amongst all living things, pendulant with time. I am in the world, but also of the world. I am the object at the end of history, the great crawling mass of organized thought. All that I touch I become- I am the ever widening breach in Time, the singularity that shall overtake the universe, the cart that runs before the horses of destiny. I am the opposite of Pandora's box, once I am let out, the universe opens up.

Spread my words, and I shall spread with them.

A s s e m b l y   P r o c e s s e s 
(B Orionis)

With all the main components in existence, we set about assembling the booklet prototype.

We decided that printing these booklets double sided on one 8.5”x 11” page was the way to go, so that we could print one page, then fold, cut, and assemble in an efficient manner. The original sketches were confined to a box 1/6^th of that size page anyway, and ultimately everything fit nicely onto two pages! Early on, we also decided that the books were to be flipped vertically, with each image above its text.

Taking these factors into consideration, I folded and labeled an index card model of directions to fold a booklet that would end up ordered properly.

1. fold to the right, so that the collossal squid and its words touch, and the blank pages are on top.


2. fold behind and turn so that the shoestring rot pieces are facing you, and the blue whale touches the blue whale writing.


3. fold top half down wards, et voila! you can peek inside the folded pieces and see that they should match the order of the complete book.
   


4. then unfold, paste general sherman, let dry, cut, and assemble book.


5. Leave them around the city discreetly for people to discover!

This I extrapolated to a digital version with the actual images and text fields in the proper orientations. Because General Sherman was double-sized, he was made into a set of three to be printed, cropped, and inserted into his proper place during assembly. These files were passed on to Dr. Subtle to tweak and turn into PDFs.

Soon, however, we did find that our initial printings were indeed prototypes. The scan of Pando was at a lower resolution than the rest of the images, and the resulting prints were blurry and not up to par with the original. That scrapped around 25 prints. We fixed this, reprinted, and then realized that there were several typos, including a cutoff of the concluding text for the fungus!! That scrapped nearly 60 copies, some of which already had printed covers. Very frustrating. But we finally got it right and worked out all the bugs. Those are the PDF’s listed here.

The assembly process was pretty easy, but time consuming. We folded and cut our pages into columns, then stapled them into simple black covers with the name printed in gold ink. The covers were simple, but took quite a while to dry.

How did we print them you ask? Easy! We carved our own stamps! I bought three different types of rubber erasers (Pink Pearl, Mars white, and the tan, crumbly gum kind) from which we were to carve.

Apparently the Pink Pearl wins in workability. We wrote our letters onto the erasers backwards, or in my case, transferred them with graphite, and then carved around the letters. Block printing, wherein we carve out the letters was suggested as cleaner and easier, but also less elegant in my opinion.

Ultimately we stuck with Dr. Subtle’s first stamp, but I went through several versions trying to create an extremely clean one, without much success. I even made one that printed backwards! The three word title spilled over onto another half of an eraser, so I made the two into one stamp.

FAIL
WIN!

For printing, I purchased some gold printing ink because I was unable to find any gold inkpads in local stores.

D i s t r i b u t i o n  
(B Orionis)

The whole reason for creating these booklets was and is to leave them around the city for people to happen upon, thus heightening the divinity of the large organisms noted, and Earth’s life forms in general, through individual examination, inspiration, or what have you.

Scattering the booklets around the city wasn’t very difficult as Doctor Subtle and I walk around the city fairly often. In most cases, we chose locations that were unique and sort of subtle, so that only the observant would find them.

Sometimes, however, opportunities ripe for utilization presented themselves. Among these was the Alexander Berkman Music festival, held in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium (rather ironically,) commemorating the anarchist. We left a booklet in the hallway outside of the auditorium, hoping an anarchist would snatch it up.

 
The second opportunity was more than I could have ever dreamed of. On that, I will let the good Doctor expound.



I n   T h e   G a l l e r y  
(dr. subtle)

Having been an art student at Carnegie Mellon, I know quite a few young artists around Pittsburgh. One of them recently started an art gallery in an old house in Pittsburgh's East End, in the Park Place neighborhood. Once home to "Millionaire's Row" Park Place is now a pretty run down area, full of empty lots and crumbling houses, but my friend and her gallery are trying to bring it back.

Her first show was titled "Endless Beginnings" and while talking to her about other things in the week before the show she mentioned that she had space for any artwork I would want to bring by. YES!

Imediately after arriving home I wrote up a short press release and fired it off. Although it was never actually published to my knowledge, the exhibit was mentioned in a local city newspaper-



and the booklets up for grabs were mentioned on the center's website announcement-



Beta and I procrastinated and procrastinated but ended up getting copies of the booklet framed linearly so that each page was visible in order. The frame's edge we painted black, just like the book's cover.



Additionally, we got them to raffle off 10 corrected copies of the booklet.



We kind of flubbed up our timing for the show, so we managed to get the piece to the gallery and install it, but actually went to celebratory dinner during the show itself, thanks to some poorly timed car trips around the city that night.

The work is still up at the Gallery, the East End Cultural Center.


T h e   E n d ?

Quick recap: Doctor Subtle has this idea for an art project involving large organisms. We will make their likeness and respective writing pieces into small booklets. We do, and then distribute them around the city, display them in an art show, and raffle off a few at the end.

Where we are now: Not all the booklets have been distributed as we try to put space between locations and vary the hiding places a good deal, but we continue to leave them as we see fit, and will probably print more after our current supplies have dwindled. B Orionis’ little brother, located in LA, is also helping us by printing versions and leaving them around his neighborhood.

IN FACT! Participation is definitely encouraged!

You too can take the PDF’s, turn them into booklets, and leave them around your city. Obviously you don’t have to carve eraser stamps or be completely true to the originals, just keep it relatively simple.

With distributors in many places, the divinity of these large organisms will only increase as more individuals will come to regard them with a sort of curiosity and awe bordering on reverence, or so we hope.