Object No. 14 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Joe Wenderoth, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $24.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Up for your consideration is this Antique Icelandic Menstruating Judgment Bird. Early Icelandic Judges used these birds to determine the outcome of all serious arguments. It was also used domestically—with considerably less ceremony—to resolve smaller household arguments. It works like this: in an outdoor space, bricks are stacked—two stacks; between the two stacks, a yarn is pulled tight and secured beneath the top brick on both sides. Next, a Birdman (a native Icelandic priest) tries to balance the Menstruating Judgment Bird on the yarn. If the Bird remains balanced for the next 10 seconds (in the Birdman’s head), the Bird has become ripe for Pronouncing Judgment. After ten seconds (in the Birdman’s head), which way the Bird falls decides the argument. All of the Judgment Bird’s verdicts are understood to be completely just. The Birdman is responsible for watching the Bird so long as it is ripe for Pronouncing Judgment. Should a Birdman fail to believably witness the Pronounced Judgment, he is expected to weep for the rest of his life. In domestic situations, those in disagreement must find someone to stand Birdman for them. These pseudo-Birdmen are not held to the same standards as actual ordained Birdmen. If a pseudo-Birdman does not see which way the Bird fell, he has certainly brought some degree of shame down upon his family, and he is replaced on grounds of ineptitude, but he is only expected to weep for a week or so. This is a great item. Scientists have suggested that the peculiarity of the contemporary Icelandic countenance quite probably stems from this practice, and the arbitrary boundaries of power it insists upon without explanation. No one has yet advanced a plausible reason for the bird’s Menstruating quality, except maybe it’s a mature female who is not pregnant.

Object No. 12 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Mimi Lipson, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $24.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

She’s Jewish, so why does she insist on giving me Christmas gifts? For that matter, why is she giving me a hippie bear Christmas tree ornament? I’m not a hippie. She’s certainly not a hippie. There is no hippie of our mutual acquaintance to whom this could be a fond or winking allusion. But it’s a long tradition: last year she gave me an enormous salmon-colored sweatshirt embossed with a puffy vinyl seagull, and the year before, a two-gallon tub of caramel popcorn. With her unerring instinct for soul-free objects, she’s naturally drawn to the microwavable, the Navajo-patterned, the vanilla-scented. There have been cake plates shaped like snowmen, eye-watering potpourri satchels, decorative jars of multicolored pastas, candles of every description. These things will not mellow or acquire sentimental cachet. It is not their destiny to become vintage. To look upon one of her gifts is to see its future in a free-box and, ultimately, a landfill.

Does that sound harsh? It isn’t meant to be. I know that, for her, to love is to give. But I’ve also seen the closet where she hoards piles of gift-wrapped junk, replenishing her stock on regular trips to the mall like a squirrel gathering inedible, mass-produced nuts. It’s a compulsion, and a lonely one. She doesn’t go to Goodwill, either; I know she’s spent good money on this bear — money she could have spent on bingo cards and Virginia Slims.

For something so bland, this hippie bear ornament is chockablock with signifiers that are hard to ignore. I can only assume it spoke to her of me in some way, or spoke of the connection between us, and I think that’s what depresses me most of all. This thing has nothing to do with us. It occurs to me that a shapeless lump of putty-colored plastic would have expressed more. Each one of the carefully rendered details — the blue jeans, the flowers, the peace signs, the tasseled string that laces its leather vest — each one subtracts a bit of meaning, until all that remains is a sucking hole of negative significance.

On the other hand, it’s the thought that counts.

Object No. 89 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Maud Newton, has ended. Original price: 59 cents. Final price: $24.50.]

This astonishing “Cracker Barrel” artifact appears to be a souvenir of modern vintage, representing a down-home North American restaurant-and-country-store chain that upholds Christian values by refusing to hire gay people. In fact, the object dates to the Bronze Age and was unearthed last week in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, on what is believed by several prominent archaeologists to be the site of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Alongside the artifact lay a charred cuneiform tablet that listed all five towns of the Pentapolis (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar) that were destroyed by the Lord with fire and brimstone while Lot and his family fled.

As scholars at the site quickly translated the tablet, they discovered a parable that directly contradicted the reasons given in Genesis for the devastation God wreaked on the inhabitants of those late, sinful cities. The Sodomites, in this account, were punished not for gay sex, but for for failing to offer the proper hospitality to several strangers, who were homosexual men, and for trying to force their daughters on the men. The Sodomites had barred the visitors from their homes, bars, and restaurants, engaged in discriminatory hiring practices, and invented and frequently employed the insult “faygele.” Same-sex unions, under any name, were prohibited.

Enraged that the people had apparently failed to apprehend the full meaning of the rainbow promise he had made to Noah after the flood, the Lord waved His hand. Volcanic lava rained down, killing everyone but Lot and his family — and a few Cracker Barrel employees, who escaped, carrying this artifact with them.

On initial inspection, strange markings on the underside of the cuneiform tablet appeared to tie the Cracker Barrel escapees to The Illuminati, but this linkage could not be verified, for, although it was handled with utmost care and in accordance with the strictest archaeological preservation methods, the tablet turned to salt the moment the initial transcription was complete. Then a ram began to baa nearby, its horn caught in a bush. Seconds later a rainbow appeared in the sky. Fundamentalist groups in the United States have now denounced the rainbow as a sign of the End Times. They continue to frequent Cracker Barrel, however.

Object No. 70 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Charles Ardai, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $20.50. ]

The telegram arrived too late. The morning mail had brought the box, wrapped in a double thickness of brown paper and covered with fibrous packing tape I’d had to dig out the heavy Wüsthof cook’s knife to slice through. Inside, upon a bed of cotton batting, lay a ceramic ball painted with images of flowers in a wicker basket and tiny, gold-bellied birds. There was a plastic stopper in the base, a loop of ribbon at the top, and a diamond pattern of pinholes on either side. I looked at the return address on the torn and crumpled wrapping: Gabriel Hunt, Trebišov District, Košice, Slovakia.

The illustrious Mr. Hunt, a centimillionaire and renowned world traveler…why, I wondered, would he send me this oddity? I had recently completed co-authoring a book with the man (by which I mean that I wrote all the words the book contained, save three: ‘by,’ ‘Gabriel,’ and ‘Hunt’), but that hardly explained the appearance in my mailbox of this rara avis.

The explanation arrived an hour later, in the form of a half-size sheet of paper bearing the logo of Western Union. “Charles,” the message read, “you will receive a package from me shortly; do not, repeat do not, open the object you find inside. I send it to you for safekeeping, so I beg you, keep it safe. Hang it, please, in a cool, dry place, away from noise and direct sunlight. Do not listen to it. Do not attempt to peer inside.

“You will be curious as to what the piece contains. I will tell you, so that you might avoid accidentally doing irreparable harm. This innocent-seeming container is the handiwork, Charles, of the renowned Slovak metaphysician and sculptress Mária Gruska. She fashioned it with clay from the basin of the Tisza River, the burial site of the great Hun chieftain, Attila. Some incantations followed – I don’t know the details, Charles, and since Gruska has recently passed on (rather violently, I’m afraid) I doubt we ever will. But incantations there were, and a pentacle inscribed on the ground, and certain other bits of ritual that resulted in the ancient chieftain’s soul being drawn back from whatever midnight realm it had so long inhabited and stoppered up in this spherical chamber.  The art on the outer surface is functional: as anathema to the inhabitant as holy water to a vampire, it keeps him penned inside.  The holes permit communication, but not escape.

“Gruska had it hanging, Charles, from a cast-iron hook in her cellar.  Her mansion was aflame when I found and rescued it, escaping mere instants before the building collapsed into a heap of rubble.

“Now it’s in your hands. I realize you may not believe that Attila is in there.  Humor me at least. I will take it off your hands when I return.”

I would have done as Hunt requested – very gladly. But by the time I read this I had already slipped a thumbnail beneath the stopper’s edge and, with a tug, removed it. It had come free with an audible pop and I’d felt a strange breeze, as though there’d been a window open nearby. There was a scent in the air as well, like roasting meat or burning wood. But it passed, and I’d thought nothing of it – until the telegram.

On his return, Hunt was inconsolable.

I have used the container ever since to hold salt.