History’s Mysteries.

I draft so many of these things. Sometimes even more than one a day.

I look at people. Doing what they’re doing. It makes me tired.

Makes me sad? Definitely lonely.

Because even though I’m never not doing something I want to be doing, I’m never doing something else either. It’s backwards and incorrigible.

Lately the only real fulfilling thing for me has been diving balls-deep into history. You know, the good kind? Civil war, typhoid, yellow fever, the consumption yatta yatta… but people were closer back then. Communities were more tightly knit.

I like how in some ways the town I grew up in just barely eaked past that stage and that there’s still plenty of reliable, generous, plentiful history to be had. It literally keeps on giving and we make more of it every day.

I feel like a big part of my love for history stems from the fact that… well okay. If you were unaware, I like to dabble in the Tarot…

(I’m laughing really hard now, because instead of “tarot” my autofill suggested “shower’…)

The significator card is the one you choose from the deck and lay down first that represents yourself. I usually choose Queen of Cups.

I’m really the fool.

My life’s passion is to make people smile. Or laugh. General merrymaking at my own expense is what I live for. You can’t take life too seriously, nobody gets out alive after all.

That said, the divine duality to such an existence is is that I revel and thrive in a very dark place.

Kind of like mold actually.

I digress. I’m the fool. And the fool typically likes the darker side.

History is FULL of awful things! It’s relentless, and is a never ceasing treasure trove of misery. The clowns are usually the most miserable.

All that having been established, history is most certainly not without humor of it’s own. Twisted and strange, Victorian photography is one of my very favorite things. I particularly love the “photoshopped” or edited and otherwise manipulated photos the best.

I found this large cabinet card at an antique store just a few miles down the road from me.

It caught my attention because I thought it was odd that a seemingly wealthy man and wife would orchestrate such an ornate display all for the sake of having a photograph taken with their “help”…

Then I looked closer.

Some of them have seams. Like they were cut out and pasted into the negative. Ha, that’s pretty weird, but okay. I hauled it home and stuck them in with the rest of my fake family.

I pulled it out again yesterday and gave it another look. I wanted to see if I could identify the backdrop/display they’re posing in front of to figure out a time period or if they were at an event.

Not only is this photo mocked up, but none of those people are even standing in front of a backdrop at all! They are all copy+pasted onto a pretty piece of paper, set on a table, and then that was photographed!

Look at the far left, that man’s arm is just hanging out… ha.

Look at the far right. See the tablecloth?!

Photo-ception. A photo of a photo of photos.

19th century bullshittery…

“Oh yeah, I’m so important and successful! Look at all the people I own! Oh, but don’t look too closely though…”