Bring in the squid cap. You must be shaved, sir
And then how suddenly we’ll make you sleep.
Traditionally, the “squid cap” placed on countless hapless heads consisted of a mixture of raw squid tentacles, milk, honey, rice, and wine, contained within a poultice. Relatedly, to have a “head squid”
means to have a head cold — an apt metaphor since a cold could often feel to the patient as if a squid had reached its arms down into his or her skull. Alas, the squid cap has never been touted as a cure for the common head squid. Alas, too, some folks have a more serious, permanent case of squid head. (Not to mention “squidlick,” a badly curled haircut.)
Actual squid recipes have been around for many hundreds of years, as exemplified by this children’s rhyme taken from the
The Ambergris Gourmand Society has recorded 1,752 squid recipes originating from Ambergris alone.
Many squid-related words have entered the Ambergrisian vocabulary. While “ambiloquent” still means to be dexterous in doubletalk, to be “squidiloquent” is a much higher compliment. A “squid wife” sells squid. A “squidler,” as opposed to a “squider,” is one who handles squid for entertainment. Bauble would have been a good example of a squidler. A “chamber squid” is a common Mud Squid placed in a hotel room during the Festival for luck. A “squidpiece,” no longer much used now that Cappans do not rule Ambergris, used to refer to what can only be termed a kind of ornamental protective gear worn outside of the clothing, covering the genitals. An “obsquidium” would refer to an act of compliance in squid cult orations.
Of course, squidanthropy is the most famous aspect of squidlore.
SQUIDANTHROPY
Squidanthropy is not, as some have misidentified it, the domain of squid philanthropists but, rather, a form of supposed insanity in which a man imagines himself to be a squid. This may result in the subject taking to the waters in an attempt to rejoin his squidkin, with often fatal consequences if one wants to be honest about it, or simply a confused physiology: the subject may believe he or she is drowning while on dry land or feel the absence of gills or a mantle, or lose the ability to walk and find oneself swimming around in public fountains.
The most committed of amateur squidologists will always empathize with the underlying urge toward squidanthropy. It is no empty promise, no empty threat of a cure. It is simply one way in which to fulfill the dream known since childhood: to understand the squid in all of its manifestations. What squidologist has not thought of what it would be like to have a mantle? What squidologist, while spraying water on his boyhood friends, many or few, has not thought how much more fun to have a funnel? It is inevitable that in the quest to get under the King Squid’s skin, the squidologist learns to think like the squid. Like the detective who, in investigating a murder, loses himself in the identity of the murderer, the squidologist may, at times, lose himself in the identity of the squid (which, admittedly, has committed no crime). That some few do not come back out the other side to “sanity” is to be expected — and, perhaps, applauded.
Those who follow a singular obsession their entire lives should not be castigated for achieving the object of that obsession. Would we punish an artist for, through one last burst of genius flecked with insanity, creating the masterwork for which the world had been waiting since the beginning of the artist’s career?
For make no mistake — in squidanthropy, the amateur squidologist longs to make the final, synergistic leap that separates observer from observed, patient from doctor. The doctor studies the thing the patient has become, whereas the patient longs to study and understand himself. The correlation and the corollary are clear…
NOTES
1. Ironically, my mother loved the Festival for its colors and its spectacle. She truly believed theTruffidianChurch ’s proclamation that the Festival had been “reclaimed for God.” My father, on the other hand, found it frivolous and dangerous — he forbade me from going at first, although he would never tell me why.
2. Sometimes, one’s freedom, as any squidologist knows, depends on the patterns a squid’s ink makes as it lingers in the water.
3. The situation is not without humor, for it closely resembles the situation that exists within a mental institution: in tight quarters, in similar garb, dissimilar minds attempt to build a consensus reality that, with a monumental effort of empathy, cannot — can never! — take concrete form. (If you do not like this new tone I have adopted, O Reader, remember that tone can change depending on the mood of the day and the amount of medication.)
4. Better that I be deprived of the “Festival” as practiced
5. Alas, young squidologists, you are unlikely to see a woman in the places you’ll be traipsing through in your waterproof boots. Only a female squidologist will truly understand you — and they are few and far between; not every Furness finds his Leepin. You may find some comfort in documenting the sensual activities of the female King Squid, but danger lies therein as well.
6. Issues of Festival violence and the involvement of Ambergris’ subterranean inhabitants, the gray caps, lie outside of this section’s purview and therefore I have chosen to ignore such unpleasantries for the moment.
7. See: Cane, Albert.
8. At least at the level of drought-like fact, one may make statements about the history of the Festival that, while boring, could be sworn to before a board of inquiry.
9. As do, to be brutally honest, half of Ambergris’ current stuporstitions, including raw, chopped-up rabbit as a cure for eating poison mushrooms and the enchanting thought that lying in a pool of blood extracted from deer livers will bring back the dead. Believe me, if I thought it worked, I would have tried it first. (See: Stindle, Bernard.) At least the modern welt that is psychotherapy cannot be laid at the Dogghe’s door.
10. Written by a madman, if you can believe that, and yet still read today.
11. Unlike many human beings. Some, like my mother, could not stop preying off the local help.
12. Squid baiting has never been a popular sport.
13. These silent, solitary men must be of the sternest and calmest disposition while pursuing their work.
Many, in fact, left the employ of the squid mills to become solo squid hunters, or “squidquellers,” and were often found in remote parts of the River Moth, waiting patiently on their squilts for the slightest ripple of squid.
14. My mother was a devout Truffidian. My father and I would spend an hour at night with her, praying.
Although I did not, as a rule, get to go out — as now as then — mother did insist we go to church: that stale and perfunctory place where all the cattle sit like people in the pews.
15. I feel a great (s)urge, suddenly, to wax autobiographical, but shall contain the impulse until once again among my ancestral books. (Is this the “breakthrough” in my personal development long promised by the resident gods? Strange. It feels more like a death knell. I sense a great abyss opening up beneath me, a vein of deep water
