Tales From The Zymoglyphic

Jim Stewart is a lucky man, but not just because he has a Root Worm living above his garage. This is Portland. People are pouring in and rents are unaffordable and a lot of folks are falling through the cracks, and if you have a room above your garage, odds are you're going to get a Root Worm in it sooner or later. And all of its friends.

Mr. Stewart is the chief instigator of the Zymoglyphic Museum, located in a room above his garage, in which are displayed numerous examples of artifacts from the Zymoglyphic region, such as that root worm. In fact, Jim probably has a corner on the market. The Zymoglyphic region exists at the intersection of the whole world and the space between his ears. He apparently began collecting museum-worthy items as a boy, and the discovery of glass eyes and glue set him on his current path. The thing about the Zymoglyphic is it's real easy to overlook, for most people, until you start noticing it. And that's what makes Jim lucky. Noticers are acquainted with joy.

He's lucky because he can go anywhere and find Zymoglyphic curiosities, and most people can't. Some people can get a little bump out of life by trolling the thrift stores for salt-cellars, or tin boxes, or thimbles, giving them that narrow but true joy of the collector, but Jim is a generalist. Which makes his joy broad in the beam.

I remember going on scavenger hunts when I was a kid, and it was a gas. It's hard to understand why it's so exciting to find and check off the items on the list--a feather, a rubber band, a clothespin; after all, many of us spend large parts of the day trying to find crap we know we put down somewhere and we can get pretty cranky about it. But scavenger-hunt items are random and irrelevant to anything but the hunt itself, and it forces us to look, and to see. To notice.

We have wonders all around us, yet many of us maintain a tedious existence merely by failing to notice them. Noticing is a habit we can develop, though. That's what birders do, after all. These are merely people who have learned to pay attention to what is all around them, and any minute, anywhere they go, a choice rarity might drop by. Feather! Rubber band! Clothespin! If you're not somewhere with a lot of birds around, you should really move. It's not good for you.

Wandering Burial Urn

Unfortunately, many people believe it costs money to enjoy yourself, and what with one thing and the Republican party, that means they're out of luck a lot of the time. But the best things in life have always been free, and certainly everything in the Zymoglyphic museum was. Dioramas of creatures from the Age of Wonder; conglomerations from the Rust Age; all Zymoglyphic artifacts began as noticed objects, requiring some assembly and reanimated by intuition. Here's a fungus that is lacking only its eyeball; there's a swashbuckling lichen two seed-pods and a leaf gall away from full sensibility. When you're scouting for your museum, you're not wondering what's wrong with your knee. You're not worrying about the performance of your portfolio in a downturn. You're alive. You're curating your own enthusiasm.

And in the Zymoglyphic Museum, even the dust is archival.

Calm And Collected

I've always thought it would be cool to collect something. Collectors have fun everywhere they go. They'll pop into junk stores looking for salt cellars, or old toys, or movie posters. Their houses are cluttered with pigs, or frogs, or owls. Sometimes people give you stuff they're sure you're collecting, which is why I have a number of lizards that they mistook for salamanders. I do like salamanders, but I don't collect them.

I don't collect anything. If I could collect something, it would be Birds I Have Seen. I would have my own Life List Of Birds. Unfortunately, I can assemble a Life List about as well as I can build a house with Scotch tape and toilet paper. I don't have what it takes. I can't remember the field marks of a bird for as long as it takes to put down the binoculars and check the field guide. Later I can't remember having seen it at all.

So when I'm out birding with people whose brains are in working condition, sometimes they'll point out some marvelous feathered item and I get all excited, and they say "Is that a life bird for you?"

How the hell should I know? The other day I got my new debit card in the mail and had the opportunity to change the default PIN to one I'd be more likely to remember, so I did. Next time I used the card, I punched in the old number, then my address, my birthday, and my anniversary, and the machine ate my card. It wouldn't give it back until  I described its field marks. I was screwed.

I don't recognize my neighbors if they're not standing under their house numbers. I look up "oligarchy" at least three times a week. I've played piano for 55 years and have no repertoire. I still hold my cell phone up to my ear and wait for the dial tone.

I had to buy a new camera because last week I put it on a little patch of moss for a second and thought "Don't forget you left this here" and that was that, and then it rained.

We got a dozen gulls on this coast and they're peas in a pod. I'm not going to be sure I've seen a life bird unless it's threatening me and looks like a Victorian lady's hat.

That's why it was so cool that I just saw a life bird all by myself, and I knew it. I didn't know what it WAS; I had to look it up. But I knew I'd never seen it. It was a woodpecker. But not a hairy, or a downy, or a pileated, or a red-bellied (because it has a red head: yeah, screw you, new birder), or a black-backed, or an acorn. Them I has seed. This one was different. I was crowing, as it were, about my life bird later.

"What was it?" my friends asked.

Well, shit, you had to go and ask. I'd just looked it up, and now I can't remember what it was called. Let's see. I know it had a white head.

So I looked it up again.

It was a White-Headed Woodpecker. And possibly an Oligarch.