Transmission 01 · Field notes · Drowned Moon IV
A Practical Field Guide to Beard Tentacles
They are not a beard. They are a committee. The committee has suction cups and a foreign policy.
People ask how I style it. The honest answer is that I file a motion and wait. There are six of them. They vote. I own the glasses; they own the lower half of the meeting. This is what in Warsaw we call a coalition government, and in R'lyeh they call Tuesday.
If you have recently acquired tentacles where a perfectly ordinary Slavic beard used to live, congratulations. You are now a habitat. What follows is not medical advice. Medical advice fled the room in 1926 and left a note that said do not.
On water
Baltic water is preferred: brackish, slightly insulted, full of industrial memory. Tap water makes them sulk. Distilled water is an act of war. I keep a brass bowl on the windowsill and call it a font, which has upset two priests and one plumber.
After a rinse, do not use the good towel. The good towel will become a relic, and relics are difficult to launder. A sacrificial tea towel from Biedronka is theologically sufficient.
On dinner
Assign jobs. One tentacle for the napkin, one for the glass, one to point accusingly at the person who said “calamari” as a joke. The remaining three may lobby for potatoes. They will lobby for potatoes anyway. This is Poland.
Never let them near the barszcz unsupervised. Red is a dialect they speak fluently.
Dating requires disclosure. I recommend the second drink, before dessert, after they have already decided you are interesting and before they have decided you are a cryptid. The line I use is: I have six dependents and they all live on my chin. It is accurate, and it weeds out people who wanted a simpler mythology.
On spectacles
The glasses are load-bearing. They tell the room that someone in this arrangement still files taxes. The tentacles have never fogged them. They have standards. If a tentacle ever reaches for the frames, cancel your appointments and check whether the stars have filed a change-of-address.
Combing is a negotiation. Start from the suckers and work toward the philosophy. If you meet resistance, apologize in Polish. They find English brisk. They find R'lyehian try-hard. They find przepraszam almost enough.
Addendum, later the same aeon: one of them has learned to operate a zipper. We are not ready. The field guide will be updated when I am.