geese

The card is done now it needs a cover.

The back of the card that gets glued to the cover and bound as a book has little slices cut into it with tabs pushed trough, bent and glued to it all over the place that are holding the mechanisms in place. Hidden tabs. They'll be sandwiched between the cover and the back of the card. Multiple layers for extra heft.

I need practice with the form of geese. I cannot find any intriguing pictures of geese. They're all basic shapes. Geese don't do anything interesting. They honk and they squabble, they lay on their nests, they fly, they look different taking off and landing. They flap upward and flap downward. They spread their tail feathers and dangle their feet backwards and hold their legs forward. They float. They eat, and that's about it.

Audubon considers a goose honking their most interesting aspect, and he's a pro.

At the end of it I must accept the Egyptian hieroglyphic depiction and the art on their walls covers all that well as anything. They are blobs. With curved necks and a bulging head. Sometimes their wings are spread. That's it. Very basic shapes.

One time when I was pre-teen and hung around a ceramic shop, a place for G.I.s to stay out of trouble, the shop was closer to them than to me, a grandmotherly woman who barely tolerated my presence and my constant and annoying interrogations, said, "You know, Bobby, I have to raise some money for the shop." Her idea was to fashion little birds on the potter's wheel.

The idea didn't appeal to me. She threw about fifty small bulging vases, big bulge and little bulge. She brought the small bulb to a point. Then off the wheel she pushed over the head one way or another. Poked a hole or two for the eyes. Fired them, spray painted them, and sold them at her open house. She sold all of them readily and ended up making more. Women bought them in multiples. I didn't see the attraction but I admit they were cute.

Birds are blobs. They're like drips. I didn't find an intriguing picture. Just blobs. And their legs really are like Egyptian geese legs.

Maybe I should consider a different cover. It's a condolence card. The guy was a hunter. He had smoked goose all the time.

In hieroglyphics, the flying goose with both wings showing on the diagonal is a uniliteral sign that stands for the sound, "pa," and as a word it means "fly" and the definite article "the." 

The goose with both wings behind its back and drawn on the diagonal with its feet extended forward for landing is an ideogram meaning "halt" sometimes "create," "alight," and "throw." 

The standing duck with its head held upright and looking stately is a phonogram meaning "sa" and an ideogram meaning "son." It's seen all the time in front of cartouches for the kings nomen, the duck sign with the "sun" sign behind it meaning "Son of Re" then the king's name inside the cartouche. 

Better than that are the pictures drawn on tomb walls including many hunting scenes with birds flying all over stylized after the hieroglyphs, while also famously natural as the Geese of Meidum a plaster frieze  nearly six feet long with six geese of two species, with posture resembling the duck "sa," as above, and with two picking for seeds on the ground, as above.