Uncommon Tapestries: Scene 1
Alexa St. James, Visiting Scholar
Scenes of desire, fear, history, current event, myth, legend, fable, poetry, charm, and story intermingle freely here threaded by fate with the strings of will. Each tapestry can stand alone, but together they make a wondrous treasury of days.
Uncommon Tapestries is a work of fiction: Click here for a Brief Introduction.
Handwritten Note to The Caretaker
15 November—
I am delighted to be contributing to this project. The Uncommon Tapestries are rather extraordinary. In some ways, not what I expected, and in other ways, very much exactly what I expected.
Please find attached1 the beginnings of what will become a general overview of the first tapestry for the visitor’s guide, an incomplete catalogue of beasts and botanicals, key figures, and historical context.
If you have any questions or concerns about the direction of the work, my conference line has been listed in the castle directory, and I am always available to discuss. Alternatively, I am on-site and my drop-in hours coincide with the exhibit’s open hours.
Sincerely,
Alexa St. James
Visiting Scholar, Lead Folklorist
Uncommon Tapestries Project
Personal Correspondence
Dear X—
You must visit.
The tapestries are intelligent2 and interactive, and while one might choose to browse them in any order, for the best experience, it is important to begin with the first. The Lady of The Tapestries3, who is the central figure across all of them, appreciates a reverent approach and is likely to bestow a deeper gift on those that give it. In addition to her role in the narratives, she ensures that viewers and visitors receive a unique introduction or initiation into their mysteries as she sees fit. In other words, everyone has a bespoke experience. While that admittedly adds some complexity to my role as folklorist, it is wonderfully immersive, and I would have it no other way.
My initiation into the tapestries was an intensely personal one4, and it made me uncertain about prying into the experiences of castle visitors, something I am encouraged to do in order to enhance the study. But I soon understood that most people have a more removed introduction, reflecting the attitude and the mood with which they approach The Lady. Those that do not have a previously established connection with her are welcomed and greeted warmly, but not invited into intimacy with her or with those in her entourage. Whereas those that do have a connection with her, are. She is, of course, being a tripartite syncretic religious figure, nonbinary, and shifts into any gender she may like. Thanks to the technological interface, viewers may do the same, should they wish to, and within the tapestry, I prefer to be a man, at least for now, and so I am.
Surrounding the scene at the center, which always features The Lady, are smaller scenes. The first tapestry has 15 such smaller scenes bringing the total number to 16, if one includes the center. The smaller scenes are stationary, like the tapestries and the paintings of old, unless and until one gains access to them via The Lady, at which point they become fluid. They remain contained, like small time loops or short—very short5—video recordings.
This week, I focused my time on a general overview cataloguing the many wild and cultivated plants and the many animals, both wild and pastoral, in the background6. After making a respectable dent for the encyclopedia, I turned my attention to the scene in the upper left corner, the narrative opening.
A person of unknown sex or gender is sitting naked on the ground, knees bent to chest and arms hugging their knees, tears streaming down their face, despondent, not anguished. If you can make eye-contact with the figure, you will see them as they were moments ago, beneath a magnolia tree in the pouring rain with a large knife, stabbing the muddy ground beneath their feet, again and again, as though searching for something that cannot be found. Stay with it a while, and once the figure exhausts themself in their search, a jar made of transparent glass and sealed with black wax is revealed beneath the surface, not to them, but to you. There are rusted nails, oils, herbs, and urine in the jar, submerging a small, disintegrating box. Within the box is a perpetually burning stone, and on top of the stone, the incorrupt remains of a Junebug, a common beetle during the era. Once you see the beetle, you are brought back to the stationary start, where you might move on, or you might look further.
Three golden chalices have been knocked over by some force that is not pictured in the frame. Is the figure crying over the lost contents, their fruitless search for the buried jar, or both? Each chalice has a symbol etched on its surface, and upon gazing at the symbol, if The Lady grants the viewer access, and in most cases, she does, the symbol will begin to shine, at which point, the water puddled on the ground swirls, key historical figures surface and then disperse, and a story unfolds. There are two upright chalices behind the figure, making five in total, but they seem unaware of them.
On the first cup, a medieval court jester is etched. His eyes are closed, he has the ears of an ass, and wears a cockscomb, that is to say, a rooster’s comb, and his cap is fringed with nine silver bells. When this symbol begins to shine, the water on the ground before it reveals first a daisy, then a daffodil, and then prominent chaotic figures of the period immediately following the 2024 US presidential election before settling on an image of Donald Trump as he opens a cabinet of atrocity and horror7. There is a woman dancing beside him proudly presenting the decapitated head of St. John the Baptizer on a platter, a reference to the Biblical story of Salome8 and Herod9. The decapitation is also a reference to a now classic piece of commentary, “Decapitation Strike: Preserving America from Trump’s Appointments10,” by Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny11 who wrote Thinking About12 on Substack, a popular platform for writers, independent columnists, and digital journalists during this age. If the viewer makes the connection between the Snyder article and John the Baptizer, a voice will read out the following lines from the relevant article:
[C]itizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes. This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too.
—Timothy Snyder, Thinking About
And then the viewer is returned to the stationery surface image. The second cup has an onion etched into it and the third cup, a DOGE crypto coin. And each of those contain their own compelling scenes. First, about the roles of identity politics, misinformation, disinformation, legacy media narratives, and independent influencers, and then, the role of changing economics, personal finance, new currencies, public perceptions of government spending, and emerging technologies on the election outcome13.
The final two remaining chalices, the upright ones, both feature an etched image of a cat within a square14. The cats each have a small ‘x’ in the place of one eye, but not the other, indicating a state of being that it is currently neither living nor dead. The implication is, of course, that reality is unsettled until it is part of an observable system. The contents of the upright chalices are not viewable to tapestry visitors until the crying figure chooses to look within them, and even then, at least for now, they are viewable only to the figure within the scene.
I was at a loss trying to persuade them to have a look inside. In the end, it was necessary to simply sit with them for a long time as they wept. Eventually, they rose and peered into the chalices, first the one, and then the other, and then turned to me and said: “My name is Zoen.”
You really must visit! I have been here only one week, and I can categorically say that the tapestries are the most uncommon artifacts I have ever encountered. You will love them. My quarters here are small, modestly outfitted, but perfectly adequate. There is a comfortable blue velvet loveseat in the sitting room that converts easily into a chaise longue or a sleeper bed for overnight guests, and you are welcome to it.
Much love,
Alex
Alexa St. James, Visiting Scholar
Alexa St. James is a visiting scholar at The Castle of Angers15 located in the heart of Old Town, Three Rivers16, Texas in the North American Lowlands17. In 2314 they established the Societas Amantis with Luke Friedman and Ontaria Mathiesen to further scholarship in the history, texts, traditions, folklore, folkways, mythology, spellcasting, spirit-working, herbalism, witchcraft, and traditional healing of the 21st and 22nd centuries during the global upheavals widely known as The Fragmentations. They are author and editor of several esteemed works including Meditations on Our Lady of Biological Impossibilities: An Annotated Anthology; Remnants of Rising Heat and Drowned Cities: Compilation, Notes, and Chronology; and co-author of Pandora Uncorked: Legacies of 21st Century Tech Bros. They are the lead folklorist for the Uncommon Tapestries project, acting in the capacity of compiler, editor, writer, and digital reference resources archivist as needed.
This material is with The Caretaker and currently unavailable to readers.
Intelligent is the word used to mean that a hands-free, interactive technological interface is present. It can also be used to refer to animacy, but the animacy of objects is not disputed in the same ways in the 23rd and 24th centuries as they are in the 21st.
The Lady of The Tapestries is also known as Our Lady of Biological Impossibilities. She is a 22nd century syncretic deity-saint and trans icon. Due to US North American late 21st century religious syncretism, within the lore of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Protectress and Intercessor of The Faithful, one also finds (among others) clear traces of Hekate, Goddess of Intersections, Thresholds, Crossroads, and Witchcraft, and Pan, God of The Wild, Shepherds, and Flocks. The lore of the Blessed Virgin blossoms and contains multitudes.
St. James does not recount his experience with The Lady here, but record of it can be found in the near future. See texts that are not yet written.
More like a GIF than a reel, but not necessarily silent.
From daisies and daffodils to spring lambs and forest wolves.
This is a reference to Trump’s proposed administration appointments in the days following his 2nd election as US president, but before his inauguration.
Salome is unaware of the complicated relationships between the parties with political power in the story. She acts out of blind trust and loyalty but she is willing to take a life on her mother’s word and with Herod’s empowerment to do so, and she becomes an instrument of strategic violence concerning matters that are deliberately kept beyond her knowledge.
Artistic expression often included heavily Christianized imagery during this era, for obvious reasons.
Timothy Synder. “Decapitation Strike: Preserving America from Trump's Appointments.” Thinking About, Substack, 2024.
Timothy Synder. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown, 2017.
Timothy Synder. Thinking About. Substack, 2024.
St. James does not recount the onion or the DOGE narrative threads here, but record of them can be found in the near future. See texts that are not yet written. The onion seems to be a reference to The Onion, a newspaper that produces satirical journalism, buying InfoWars, a right wing media source widely known for fake news, outlandish, often harmful, conspiracy theories. The dogecoin is a crypto coin, which was a new currency at the time. Reference to it on the chalice indicates a narrative about Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
See Schrödinger's cat.
The Castle of Angers is modeled on the Château d'Angers in the Loire Valley in France which houses the Apocalypse Tapestry, a set of six medieval tapestries consisting of 90 scenes. Angers, however, is pronounced with a US American or British English accent, significantly altering the meaning conveyed through the word.
Three Rivers is indicated on the Map with a large arrow. Note also, the map was originally designed by Neahga Leonard, “No Glaciers - Eastern and Southern USA: If All Glaciers Were to Melt Sea Levels Rise by 70 Meters,” 2020.
The North American Lowlands is a republic established in 2219 on the North American continent formed during the regional fragmentation of the former United States of America. It is made up of the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas and was once widely known as the Southwest region of the United States.