OMG! Gargoylz!!!!11!!Eleven!!Eleventy-one!!!

Last Sunday, when my parents were visiting, my mother requested to see the National Cathedral. I confess that this had never been high on my "to visit" list, mostly because it made me nervous. I like the Gothic architecture and the stained glass and the craftsmanship and artistry and all, but when it starts becoming too explicitly Christian, I get uncomfortable. I'm not really up to unpacking that, so let's leave it for another time.

My parents themselves aren't particularly religious. As I've written before, the main tenant of their spiritual philosophy is, "we generally believe in a Christian God, but we don't get up before noon on weekends." So, this visit to the National Cathedral stemmed more from my mother's desire to see the art. My father, on the other hand, would have been happy to skip this site; but, since my mother had sat through the Air & Space Museum the previous day (literally, after a while, she found a seat and played Tetris and some sort of sheep-flinging game on her iPod), it was his turn to endure her choice. I've noticed that this is how many marriages endure.

Meanwhile, I suspected that the Cathedral would have gargoyles. I also figured that they might have a good gift shop. So, I went for the gargoyles and the gift shop.

The problem with gargoyles and grotesques, however, is that they live so high up on the building:
I tired to zoom in with my camera to see them better:

I tried to think of how one might satisfactorily see the gargoyles and could only come up with some sort of jet pack or, more reasonably, rappelling down the side of the cathedral. Both would be cool. Most people, however, go for binoculars. In fact, even inside of the cathedral, a pair of binoculars would help to see much of the artistry in the details.

The gift shop did not disappoint. They had the exact book that I had hope they would have, Guide to Gargoyles and other Grotesques, which includes close-ups of the gargoyles on the cathedral.

They also had something approximating the tchotchke that I had hoped they would have: Miniature versions of some of the gargoyles, except they were repositioned to look like grotesques. I purchased the second one from the far left on the bottom row. He -- and this one is, for some reason, a "he" to me -- looks like this:

He is supposed to represent "Evil closing its ears to good." To me, however, he represents the gargoyle in my head that shuts my ears to all of the bad voices. He seems to be saying "fuck you all of you bad ideas!" That's why he sits on the window sill above my desk.

This being a gift shop, and me being me, I had to scope out other gargoyle items that ranged into the kitsch category. Indeed, I didn't so much have to "scope" as to just look around.

I really wanted this one:

That's a gargoyle hand puppet. He, however, fell outside of my rules for purchasing tchotchkes: must fit into my hand, and must be no more than $10 (I admit to fudging a little on that last requirement by a few dollars from time to time).

The puppet was in the adult section. In the children's section, they had plush gargoyles that, frankly, were downright frightening. Here's a red one from the side: Here is a flock of green and blue ones:
I must confess, that green one on top in particular (he's the one at the very top on the right, for those of you who are color blind) reminded me of the Flukeman from that X-Files episode. (Between that and the Blair Witch Project, all of my Girl Scout camping nightmares were fully imagined on screen.)

Then, there were these:

Gargoyle pencil tips -- or whatever you would call these rubbery things that aren't erasers but that you can stick on the ends of your pencil. Pencil-puppets? In any case, at 50 cents each, my nephews are now in possession of one each.

By the way, one of those nephews can make a face that should be reproduced on a grotesque. I'd show you, but he's getting old enough that I don't want to put him on display that way.

I now have another mission should I ever actually get to Europe: to see more gargoyles in their natural habitat!

One last thing: for the record, since my parents qualify as physically disabled, I had the experience of learning that the National Cathedral has ADA issues due to the very pre-ADA design.