Did you know you can generate and download your own symbolic calendar each month (for free)?  Visit our MysteryArts.com/magic site, scroll to the bottom of the page, and give it a try.

Prof. Oddfellow's excellent Spooky Pagoda palette lit a fire in my brain as I struggled to remember a spooky pagoda I've seen before. Then I remembered: there's always a fantastic light display in the local botanical garden at Christmastime; unfortunately, in the Japanese themed garden, they forgo the Christmas lights and use large red and green floodlights instead. The result is creepy as all get out. Seeing a bare-limbed Japanese maple under blinding red light gives one the idea what the shrubbery in hell must be like. Anyway, thanks to Prof. Oddfellow for reminding me that interesting colors can be found in creepy photos and not just the "beauty shots."

When spoken, the word "silence" contradicts its meaning. Gomringer's concrete poem [below left] creates a new and better word for "silence": the void in the middle. That space, that absence, is now filled with an eloquent presence. So then what is the better representation of a dead person, a photograph displayed or no photograph available?

Each one of the pictures below is entitled "Unknown Fisherman."  Is an Unknown Fisherman some sort of archetypal figure?  He is symbolic by his very nature, for we know nothing about him.  What does his appearance suggest?  Is he a manifestation of the Fisher King of Arthurian legend?  And/or a Christ figure?  Does he hold the Salmon of Wisdom from Irish mythology?

Here's an anecdote by a person who carried an Atlantic salmon fly from one corner of Europe to the other, with the sole purpose of giving it to an unknown fisherman.  The quest sounds like some sort of pilgrimage, and the gift sounds like a tribute to a deity.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I am against the pestering and/or killing of fish.)