Dear Readers,
I climbed up on the powerlines and Selmers' roof to see Mr. Chazokov and his telescope. Had I obeyed mom, I wouldn't have been able to go stargazing!
Mr. Chazokov said I could've knocked on the door below and it was impolite to be on other people's roofs. He said it in his jolly way of course! The porch guy was less jolly, saying next time he was gonna call the cops and I said whatever. Mr. Chazokov laughed. He's pretty cool :)
Mr. Chazokov was happy in any case that I accepted his invitation to go stargazing. He said he was hunting for dusk stars. I asked "What's dusk stars?" and he explained they were stars that only appear at dusk during spring and autumn, stars that didn't appear during the night. He offered me a look and I said "Yeah!"
I got a blinding shock of light and he put the filter on, explaining what was going on. Nice bit of banter here :) I looked around with the telescope and the lines got all wavy. I looked at a faint circle and found a dusk star. I showed him and he identified it as "Dohr the Murderer". A picture came up of a guy holding a sword and a severed head. He told me all about him and the head belonged to King Behrn. Dorh was silent during the king's procession and this offended him. I asked "Why?" and he replied that royalty is strange. What happened next was that the king insulted Dorh's... everything; his village, his family and even his chickens. I said "Damn." Dohr then went on to murder Behrn's chickens, ancestral village, family and when he got to Behrn, he was silent. I was so impressed I said I was gonna get a tattoo of this guy. Mr. Chazokov asked if he was a hero and I said "I dunno", that if you were told you were nothing, then a story like this didn't make your situation seem so bad. At least... that's what it seemed like. Mr. Chazokov said it was a true story and real people died and that I should feel terrible. I was taken aback by this and he chuckled.
I found another one, "Castys". It was of a woman upside down in some kind of strait jacket with bubbles coming out of her mouth. I asked "What's Castys?" and he said it was a woman who built a tower up to heaven. The gods punished her by sinking her into the sea but she refused to die. I agreed with her and he asked if I was never gonna die either. I said "I dunno." He went on to say that the gods here were only stand-ins for things we couldn't control, like floods or cancer or something. I said no to all of them.
Mr. Chazokov said that was it for today. They were the only two stars visible now. He asked if I would come back to him in two days time and I said "Yeah if I remember!" He said no one can resist the stars forever with a chuckle, which sounded cool and spooky.
I doodled these in my journal, opposite the page with Bea's stalker statue webcomic. I drew Dohr holding his glowing sword and wearing a crazy expression on his face. I wrote his name "DOHR" and gave it a blood dripping effect. Underneath him I drew Castys with a fish swimming by, looking all upside down and bound and all defiant about drowning, along with her name "CASTYS". I drew some stars around them too.
Definitely fables of old... full of all kinds of brutality. I asked Mr. Chazokov if those star stories had morals or anything and he said I was gonna have to figure that out for myself. I asked him that if they only had meanings that suited me, then they didn't mean anything, right? This made him pause before saying he'd have to think about that one for a bit.
Gosh... so this was my teacher in school. I wonder if I ever made him pause and think about something before? I wonder if I ever felt that teachers had all the answers? And if I did, when did I find out that they didn't? I wonder if now was the first time for Mae.
Also, I love the idea of continuing to be friends with teachers and still learning the odd thing or two about life. That is of course, if they were good teachers and good people to begin with. Mr. Chazokov seems really nice.
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