Momento Vitae by Alexander Beeching

Temperate Tuesday greetings, collector friends. Today's clear skies are a welcome change after last night's freaky-deaky NYC weather: thunder! lightning! ba-zonkers hail! (No, seriously: hail.) Turns out it's not only the weather that's been unpredictable 'round these parts as of late; I've been dealing with some freaky-deaky back stuff that's kept me from sitting down and away from writing for a few weeks, so being back in front of the keyboard is also a welcome change.

Plus: there's so much goodness to share! Today, we cast our eyes towards the stars, and next week: superstars! Before I get into today's celestial doings, I want you to mark your calendars for next Monday, October 18th at 11 a.m. sharp. That's when we'll be introducing an edition by none other than David Byrne, to benefit our fabulous friends at Creative Time. Once you're done reading about today's edition, head on over to the 20x200 blog for the scoop on his Tree Drawings print.

Today's edition--Momento Vitae--our fourth from Brit Alexander Beeching, was proofed and queued months ago, with Halloween and one or two of my skull-obsessed friends in mind. It joins our two other editions from his Constellation series: The Constellation of the Elephant and The Bison Constellation, which was introduced by a star-struck Sara in the waning days of our recently past (sniff!) summer. I was off at the beach back then, where the night sky got dark enough to allow for some cosmos contemplation.

Trying to remember the constellations as taught to me as a child was relatively fruitless--I think I got as far as the Big and Little Dipper--but it did afford me the opportunity to recall that feeling of being young and curious and safe against the inky darkness with a grown-up beside me who knew practically everything. And even then, like our Mr. Beeching, I had the urge to connect those dots to create a mythology of my very own.

I haven't met Alex in person yet, so I've been connecting the dots to conjure up an image of him as well. With each new edition I get a clearer picture of who he might be--creative of course, and what with his star-gazing ways and all, a bit of dreamer--and based on his choice of phrase for this edition, momento vitae rather than the more familiar momento mori, I think of him as a glass-half-full sort of fellow. With momento vitae the exhortation is to remember you're alive, which is really a far more encouraging take on the "we're all going to die" message of momento mori, wouldn't you say?

Beeching isn't the first dreamer to give the heave-ho to others' ideas about the heavens. Walt Whitman cast a gimlet eye upon the learn'd astronomers of yore, way back in the 1800s. I'll leave you (till tomorrow!) with his witty words:

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

--Walt Whitman