John Binder: 'UFORIA' (1981, 1985)

John Binder's UFOria, a low budget gem made in 1981 but not released until 1985, somehow fell through the cracks of mass consciousness. 

I was lucky enough to see the film many years ago on video, and never forgot it. It hasn't to date been released on DVD or Blu-ray, nor has it been chosen for salvation by the Criterion Collection, but it sticks with me. In fact, rather magically, I was able to see it again recently! 

UFOria makes up in dialogue, good-natured satire and an excellent cast of characters what it lacks in budgeted technical virtuosity. All the actors fit their characters seamlessly, whether they have a lot of lines or just a choice few. These include Cindy "I am gonna be Noah" Williams (Laverne & Shirley), Fred "get the net, boys" Ward (Henry & June), Harry Dean "I believe I'll have a drink" Stanton (Big Love, Twin Peaks: The Return) and Hank "just for playsure" Worden (Twin Peaks).  The whole script is quotable -- I could still remember many of UFOria's juiciest lines years after last watching it. And: the soundtrack is perfectly attuned to the characters. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Allen Ginsberg: 'The Best Minds of My Generation' (2017). Finale

Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan. New York: Grove Press, 2017. Foreword by Anne Waldman.

On Gregory Corso. "He's dealt with truth,  god, love, hate, hope, beauty, so it's actually very interesting. He's taken what he would call the biggies, the big themes, and dealt with them in one or two lines each. Appreciation, but nonattachment, not getting addicted." (p. 341)

William Blake. "The Eye Altering Alters All" [circa 1803.] (p. 347)

William Carlos Williams, 1953: "For man and poet must keep pace with his world." (p. [359])

Ginsberg: "I was high on grass and so it was triply awesome or doubly awesome, the realization that the mind could be spaced out and then come back and focus. . . an aspect of the notion of a gap or jump from one phase of consciousness to another, one unconscious daydreaming to a real place, a focus on the external phenomenal world." (pp. 364-365)

". . . I started looking . . . to ordinary-mind observations for visionary perceptions." (p. 366)

William Carlos Williams: "'. . . make a coordinate point where others can see, compare their perceptions with your perceptions.'" (p. 367)

Ginsberg: "We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak, seen from Denver in the summer dark . . ." (p. 372)

"Old love and remembrance -- I resign
All cities, all jazz, all echoes of Time . . ." p. 381)

"As in movies, the poignancy or charge or visionary aspect or satori or sunyata or mental electric comes from setting up one pole of thought form or word or picture and then setting up another pole. Then the mind has to fill in the space between by connecting them. . . like an electric charge between the two poles . . . One minute it's somebody talking, the next minute it's a tombstone." (pp. 388-389) 

"Naturally there's going to be a little brain pop." (pp. [390]-391)

". . . the constant awareness of setting something down which other people will read." (p. 393)

"Howl." "The precursors to this were things like Apollinaire's poem "Zone." The parallel texts . . . in addition to . . . "Zone . . . were Christopher Smart's "Rejoice in the Lamb," which has the same construction."  (p. 395)

Surrealistic method. "Hop up your image with some totally opposite zonk. You zonk the image with something so weird that people will ask, 'How'd you get to that?'" (p. 396)

Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: Possessions.

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive / Mulholland Dr. (2001). Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Martínez Herring/Harring (Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen) and Justin Theroux. 

After having seen everything David Lynch at least once, it's easier to go back and reconsider Mulholland Drive.

In short, what a cool, weird film!  Watts is also in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), and Harring has since enjoyed a strong turn as a lawyer in the FX series The Shield (2006), among other things.  

What is Mulholland Drive?  Are we delving into alternate realities, psychological realms, dreams, feeling-driven memory distortions, alternate state consciousness, hallucinatory experiences, floating through the bardo, a limbo-like state, or a blend of such elements with off-kilter surrealism?  You tell me. The final response will be: "Silencio."

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Sally Rooney: 'Conversations with Friends' (2017)

Finished Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends (London, New York: Hogarth, 2017; originally published by Faber & Faber, 2017) and Normal People (London: Faber & Faber, 2018) back-to-back. At the conclusion of the latter, my mind remained absorbed with it throughout the night. Both novels look closely at -- feel closely -- the intricate workings of social relationships.  

In Conversations with Friends, the main characters are Frances, Bobbi Connolly, Nick and Melissa. Other characters include Philip; Frances' divorced parents; Evelyn; Derek and Marianne. Much of the action takes place in Ireland, but not all of it. 

In the swirl of her intense relationships with Bobbi and Nick, Frances sometimes recoils. "I was a very autonomous and independent person," she tells herself, and her readers, "with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived." (page 275)

Sometimes Frances seems to be Waiting for Godot. "Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen . . . Things went on." (page 276)

Bobbi is sharp, "an active listener" (page 289) and engaged thinker/doer: "Who even gets married? said Bobbi. It's sinister [there are no quotation marks to delineate dialogue]. Who wants state apparatuses sustaining their relationship? (page 291) . . . Calling myself your girlfriend would be imposing some prefabricated cultural dynamic on us that's outside our control. You know?" (page 292). 

Exactly! Who, indeed? Rooney makes her writing seem simple, and maybe it is. But as in war, in writing even the simplest things are complex (see Marie and Carl von Clausewitz).

Today's Rune: Journey. 

John Coltrane, 'Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album' (1963, 2018)

Anyone even remotely a fan of John Coltrane and/or jazz will dig Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, tracks recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on March 6, 1963, and just recently released. 

On the jacket of my double CD version of the release, there's an apt quip about it made by Sonny Rollins: "This is like finding a new room in the Great Pyramid." (Original in all caps)

This was recorded in the same studio -- Rudy Van Gelder's -- that Coltrane used to record A Love Supreme on December 9, 1964.

The main players (The John Coltrane Quartet) are the same on both recordings, too: Trane on sax; McCoy Tyner on piano; Jimmy Garrison on bass; Elvin Jones on drums. 

Track listing on CD1 and CD2, from "UNTITLED ORIGINAL 11383 (TAKE 1)" to "ONE UP, ONE DOWN (TAKE 6)." Some will sound more familiar than others.

I've listened to this about a dozen times so far, and will give it another hundred spins before my next birthday, no doubt. 

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Yann Demange: ''71' (2014)

Yann Demange's second film, White Boy Rick, is set in Detroit in the 1980s. In advance of checking it out, I had the opportunity to see his first film, '71, which is set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during The Troubles.

Starring Jack O'Connell as British soldier Gary Hook, '71 is harrowing and absorbing, with an on-the-ground feel. Riot scenes in the Catholic sector are particularly exciting, followed by various chase scenes. 

The extra winning aspect is that one might be inspired by the film to learn a little more about British and Irish history. 

Sectarian fighting occurs just about everywhere, to varying degrees. 

Though Northern Ireland is no longer embroiled in The Troubles, trouble has, since the turn of the latest century, found plenty of other homes to wreak havoc in. 

In '71, Demange keeps one on edge, as befits the theme. His visceral, sometimes frenetic style feels somewhat akin to that of Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Sharp Objects), Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You), Sean Baker (The Florida Project), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and others.

Notate bene: 

David Bowie gets a mention in '71 -- and in Spike Lee's latest film, BlacKkKlansman (2018), too. 

Did you ever wonder what the anagrams in Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK" (1976) stand for? All but the first tie directly into "The Troubles."

"Is this the MPLA
Or is this the UDA
Or is this the IRA
I thought it was the U.K.
Or just another country
Another council tenancy"

MPLA = Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola
UDA =  Ulster Defence Association
IRA = Irish Republican Army
UK = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 
Council tenancy = public housing unit

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Ryan H. Walsh's 'Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968' (2018)

Ryan H. Walsh, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

A kaleidoscopic time portal into trippy Boston centering around 1968, but opening out into the 1960s and 1970s. The possibilities for further study of its phenomena are wide and deep. 

The biggest revelation for me was musical, with Boston bands like Ultimate Spinach (a sort of psychedelic Doorsy head band); and interesting historical context for powerful music with which I was already quite familiar (James Brown, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison).  

And you get all sorts of crazy details about the local music scene, clubs, musicians, cultish and political activism (particularly "the Lyman family"), underground newspapers, Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), the freaky What's Happening, Mr. Silver? show, Howard Zinn, Timothy Leary, Steve McQueen, the Boston Strangler, Tony Curtis, Aerosmith, Maria Muldaur, astral projection, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Barney Frank -- and more! 

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 probably syncs well with an altered state, too, or so one can imagine. Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: The Self. 
   

Mary Karr: 'The Art of Memoir' (2015, 2016)

Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016; originally published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2015. 

Karr is primarily known as a poet and memoirist; she also teaches, which is how this tome originated, through years of teaching experience. One of the book's "takeaways" (in the shady parlance of our day) is her list of "Required Reading - Mostly Memoirs and Some Hybrids" (pages 221-227). The core text is more pick-and-choose -- whatever may help.

Mary Karr's advice on how to get going with the writing process: "The idea is to unclench your mind's claws . . . don't judge how your thoughts might jet around at first. Eventually you'll start identifying . . . with that detached, watcher self and less with your prattling head." (page 31).

On voice: "The voice should permit a range of emotional tones -- too wiseass, and it denies pathos; too pathetic, and it's shrill. It sets and varies distance from both the material and the reader -- from cool and diffident to high-strung and close." (page 36).

Keep it real: "You'll need both sides of yourself -- the beautiful and the beastly -- to hold a reader's attention. . . Sadly, without a writer's dark side on view -- the pettiness and vanity and schemes -- pages give off the whiff of bullshit." (page 38).

On revision: "the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality." (page 211).

"For me, the last 20 percent of a book's improvement takes 95 percent of the effort -- all in the editing. . . In the long run, the revision process feels better if you approach it with curiosity . . . Writing . . . means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world . . . you do that by fighting for elegance and beauty, redoing or cutting the flabby, disordered parts." (page 215). Amen to that. 

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Xan Cassavetes: 'Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession' (2004)

Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004). 

This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).

Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films. 

Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch. 

When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.  

We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.

Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!

In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060?  Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?  

Today's Rune: Movement.  

María Paz Moreno's 'Madrid: A Culinary History' (2018)

María Paz Moreno, Madrid: A Culinary History (Big City Food Biography Series). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.

"Matrice, Mayrit, Magerit, Madrid. The city's many names over the centuries bear witness to its long history and rich cultural heritage. Madrid has seen a fascinating succession of peoples come and go, from prehistoric inhabitants to Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and Christians." (page 7).

"'[M]uch of what we think of today as being typically Spanish were, in fact, the staples of the Roman diet. Bread, cheese, olives, and olive oil, wine, and roasted meat . . . were the standard fare of the Roman soldiers in Hispania.'" (page 13).

Jewish and Islamic cuisine has survived, also, despite the expulsions from 1492 onward. "[T]he use of mint and spices such as saffron - an essential ingredient to paella, the iconic Spanish dish -- cinnamon, cumin, coriander, and caraway is common in many Spanish recipes and reflects a distinctly Arab touch." (page 22).

Moreno's progression through Madrid's food history is fascinating and hunger-inducing. She discusses cookbooks written over the centuries, tabernas, fondas, tapas, the impact of war, mercados, recipes and various eateries and marketplaces that are still operating after one or two hundred years - astonishing. 

The Big City Food Biography Series looks to be rewarding in the spirit of Anthony Bourdain. There's already a baker's dozen of these either already available or soon to be published, ranging from food biographies of New Orleans, San Francisco, New York City and Paris to upcoming tomes on Tapei and Seattle. 

P.S. "María Paz Moreno es poeta, ensayista y crítica literaria." See her website here.

Today's Rune: Strength. 

Jaroslav Hašek, 'The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War,' Part 2B

Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War / Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války / Los destinos del buen soldado Švejk durante la guerra mundial / Les Aventures du brave soldat Švejk pendant la Grande Guerre / aka The Good Soldier Švejk / (1921-1923).

"During the whole time since Senior Lieutenant Lukáš first became commander of the Eleventh march-gang, he found himself in a state called syncretism, that is in a philosophy of striving to equalize the conceptual contradictions with the help of compromising all the way to a commingling of views."

~~ Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, Book Two. The Samizdat edition of the new English rendition, translated by Zdeněk "Zenny" Sadloň, AuthorHouse, 2009, page 196. 

I understand where Oberleutnant Lukáš is coming from. Living in the world, I find myself occasionally (often) having to "equalize . . . conceptual contradictions with the help of compromising all the way to a commingling of views." Another word for this is diplomacy. And, melding. Or grokking. 

An example of cultural syncretism follows. Hard to believe, but I first wrote this in the year 2006 -- twelve years ago!

Saint Lucy / Santa Lucia /Sankta Lucia presents an excellent example of syncretism. A dual saint to both Catholics and Nordic Protestants and also to some Eastern Orthodox communities, St. Lucia (traditional dates 283-304 A.D.) was a Greek Sicilian martyr killed during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian. Some versions of her death have her stabbed through the throat; others have her eyes gouged out (she is, among other things, Patron Saint of the Blind).

So how on Earth did Santa Lucia become a Swedish / Nordic saint?

In Viking days, the Norsemen traveled, raided, and created outposts all over Europe and, to the West, in Greenland and even in what is now Canada. They sailed into the Mediterranean and landed in Sicily, among other places, where they mingled with natives and absorbed local traditions, including that of Santa Lucia, who in Swedish became Sankta Lucia. The Swedes adopted Catholicism along the way, and remained Catholic until the Protestant Reformation and the infiltration of Lutheran beliefs. Sankta Lucia's feast day survived, rather miraculously, this second conversion.

Under the Julian calendar, Lucy's feast day was commemorated during the winter solstice (December 21-22), syncretized wherever celebrated with non-Christian belief systems. As with Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, "everybody be happy." Much later, during the Gregorian calendar reforms, St. Lucy's feast day was moved from the solstice to December 13th, where it has remained on the calendar for the past three to four hundred years.

In addition to being Patron Saint of the Blind, Saint Lucy of Sicily is also a patron saint for writers, salesmen, and stained glass workers.

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Sean Baker: 'The Florida Project' (2017)

I first learned about Sean Baker's The Florida Project (2017) because one of its stars, Willem Dafoe, received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in it. 

The Florida Project zeroes in on some of the people attached by work or residency to the Magic Castle and Futureland motels on the ragged Kissimmee periphery of Disney World. 

We see things largely though the perspectives of circa six-year-old kids, particularly Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince), Jancey (Valeria Cotto) and Scooty (Christopher Rivera); their mothers/guardians Halley (Bria Vinaite), Ashley (Mela Murder) and Stacey (Josie Olivio); and Bobby, the manager of Magic Castle (Dafoe).  

This film is a gem. The milieu and performances are right on. The perspectives are so evocative that The Florida Project unleashed a flood of memories for me, from when I was six years old! It's so true!

When I was six, my immediate family was living in an apartment complex in Justice, Illinois, about nineteen or twenty miles southeast of Chicago by car. We resided there for a couple of years as a transit point between Pennsylvania and Minnesota, based on my father's job trajectory.

There I had friends and acquaintances named Boatsie, Pic and Misty -- pretty close to names like Moonee, Scooty and Jancey. We would run around the area, in and nearby the apartment complex, exactly as they do in the movie -- it was a most excellent thing being a "Free Range" kid, sometimes on the dangerous side.

We occasionally got into the same kinds of trouble the kids do in The Florida Project, but much more dramatic events for us included seeing the devastation brought by tornadoes ripping through the nearby landscape, a huge building fire in our complex, and helping out afterwards. 

Where were you when you were six years old?  The answer may inform your response to The Florida Project. What you bring may translate into what you see reflected. So, at least, it was for me. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.           

Mary Harron: 'I Shot Andy Warhol' (1996)

I Shot Andy Warhol  (1996), director Mary Harron's (b. 1953) first film, centers on Valerie Solanas and her fringe relationship with Warhol. Harron's prior experience as a punk rock journalist probably gave her an insider's perspective -- certainly she recreates the Factory milieu with precision of detail. She orginally envisioned a documentary on Solanas and her infamous works, The SCUM Manifesto, Up Your Ass , and her attempted assassination of French publisher Maurice Girodias (she tried to shoot him at the Hotel Chelsea, but he was out) and Andy Warhol, but after discovering that there wasn't enough archival Solanas footage and few who would speak for her, opted for a dramatic account.

Lili Taylor portrays Solanas as a damaged soul. She's been abused and neglected growing up, and is on her own in the world for the most part, street hustling. But she's smart, and very frustrated. A lesbian turning tricks with men, she is drawn into the Warhol crowd through meeting transvestite Candy Darling (played sympathetically by Stephen Dorff), and tries to interest Andy in her writing. His open door policy lets all sorts of weird people into an already weird Factory scene -- open until she later shoots him, which changes everything.

I Shot Andy Warhol  is an interesting exploration of how commercially successful artists and aspiring artists interrelate. Solanas' feminism plays an important role, too -- her SCUM Manifesto cries foul at men and men's power. A la James Brown's 1966 song "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," Solanas believes it, and thinks the world needs a reverse shakeup. Ideally to her, all men should die. 

Though demented in many ways, Solanas has a point. Why are there so few high profile women equivalents of Andy Warhol? Indeed, even by 2018, why have there been no women presidents in the USA? Why is such a crude and brutish man the current American president, beloved (and also hated) by millions? 

Harron herself, as a woman filmmaker and writer, is rare -- only something like seven percent of directors are women.

The actors put in good performances. Taylor (HBO stalwart on Six Feet Under  and The Notorious Betty Page ) is edgy, scary, mouthy and believable. Jared Harris (Mad Men, &c.) plays Warhol with appropriate cool and nervousness. Donovan Leitch (son of the singer) is fun as Gerard Malanga, and Michael Imperioli serves up Warhol's sidekick Ondine with bitchy camp -- and strong hints of his Sopranos' character, Christopher. Mark the scruffy Revolutionary is played by Justin Theroux in his first movie (Joe from Six Feet Under; Mulholland Drive ): it's his Beretta that Solanas uses to shoot Andy.

After I Shot Andy Warhol, Harron went on to write the screenplay for American Psycho (2000), which she also directed. She also worked on HBO's Six Feet Under  ("The Rainbow of Her Reasons," 2005) and made The Notorious Betty Page (2005). She did The Anna Nicole Story (2013), too. There is continuity in all of her work so far -- exploration of gender issues, fame and notoriety. All interesting stuff. And unsettling. Some of it's funny, some of it's gravely serious, not unlike Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, with whom she clearly feels an affinity for women and mystery.

Today's Rune: Gateway. 

Karel Zeman: 'Baron Prášil' / 'The Fabulous Baron Munchausen' (1962)

Karel Zeman's Baron Prášil / The Fabulous Baron Munchausen / The Outrageous Baron Munchausen (1962), a strangely smooth film that may help put you in an altered state, stars the fabulous Miloš Kopecký (1922-1996) as Baron Munchausen, and the also fabulous Jana Brejchova (born 1940) as Princess Bianca. Tonik / Tony (aka Moonman) is played by Rudolf Jelínek (born 1935). 

Which reminds me of: "They've got a moonman on the telephone / Project X, hey Houston control . . .."  ~ Iggy Pop, "Houston is Hot Tonight" (1981)

Nothing quite like The Fabulous Baron Munchausen. Go where the magic ink flows . . . 

Princess Bianca writes a letter. Hey kids, do you know what a letter is? Do you know what writing is? 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Federico García Lorca, 'Poet in Spain' (2017): Part I

¡Ved qué locura! ~ Isn't it wild? Last night, I finished reading Sarah Arvio's new Spanish-to-English translations in the bilingual Federico García Lorca, Poet in Spain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). Spanish is on the left of the main body of text, English on the right. Fun and fascinating in the sun or under the moon or even by electric light, it is. 

Arvio has chosen representative samples of Lorca's Spanish poetry and his play, Bodas de sangre / Blood Wedding (1932). His New York City poems are not included.

Things that popped out at me follow. He makes it seems so simple.

Imagery in"Claro de reloj" / "Space in the Clock" -- "where the stars / struck the twelve floating / black numbers" (page 3).

First and last line of "Pan:" 
"¡Ved qué locura!" that Arvio translates as "How wild!" (pages 12-13). Machine translation: "See what madness!"

From "Serentata:"
Lolita lava su cuerp / con agua salobre y nardos (page 24) =
Lolita washes her body / with white nard and brine" (page 25).

What, pray tell (I thought upon first reading), is nardos / nard in this context? Apparently, Spikenard, incidentally a part of the heraldry of Pope Francis, a flowering plant that has a Phoenician trace as "Indian narde," originating in the Himalayas. 

Nardostachys jatamansi / Nard

Lorca likes the word and the image.  

From "Segungo aniversario" / "Second Anniversary:"

"Oh you alone  wandering / in the last room of the night" (pages 48-49).

This is cool, from "Nocturnos de la ventna" / "Window Nocturnes:"

"Los instantes heridos / por el reloj . . . pasaban" 
"The moments wounded / by the clock -- went by --"   (pages 70-71). 

I'll aim to wrap this up in the next post.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. Illustration of nardo: Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) - Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Vol. 107, series 3, number 37, table 6564. Wiki Commons.