Last night, Friday the 13th...I went to the 14 Karat Cabaret, haven't been down there in a while. In the basement of a building on Saratoga Street, a venerable venue for performance art and the more avant-garde sort of music and film.
I had forgotten that they have a swing hanging from the rafters -- a simple chain and wood plank swing, adorned with plastic flowers. It suddenly reminded me of my grandfather, the child's swing he set up in the basement when my brother and I were young boys. I don't think I'd though of it in many years. Perhaps it came up because the whole family-kids-what am I doing with my life question is close on my mind recently, between the recent romantic tangle, my best friend's son's first birthday party tomorrow, and my own odometer-turning birthday approaching. Still, odd what tweaks the memory.
Tonight, I'm at the Windup Space for the Telesma show, featuring a lecture and live painting by "symbolic" artist Bob Hieronimus. Hieronius's art is on display, and there's a program for the exhbit explaining (to some degree) Hieronimus's work.
I opened up the booklet and had to laugh -- according to it, "Former Secretary General of the United Nations U Thant also saw the importance of Baltimore when he introduced Hieronimus to his spiritual teacher U Maung Maung Ji, a Buddhist scholar, statesman, diplomat, and disciple of the Master Koot Hoomi."
The laughter was due to tripping across yet another "Koot Hoomi" reference. Koot Hoomi keeps turning up in my Pagan historical researches -- he was the foremost of the (semi-?)fictional "Mahatmas" or "Secret Chiefs" that Helena Blavatsky, fraudulent Spiritualist and founder of the Theosophical Society, claimed as the authority behind her work. Authorization by these Secret Chiefs were later claimed by MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, and even by Ernest Thompson Seton -- one of the founders of the Scouting movement who also has an interesting connection to the birth of Wicca.
So, now I have a Koot Hoomi - Baltimore connection. That alone was worth the price of admission!