What IS the Pastel Nose?
Jordan SC
was dated 1983. There is little identifying information in the manuscript
itself. The penmanship (written in a fluorescent pink) reveals the machinations
of a perverse mind most noticeable in the heart-shaped dots of the "i"s.
"There have been many whisperings about the Pastel Nose. It has been mentioned,
always furtively, in conjunction with an underground postal service, an Islamic
sect of assassins, with illicit substances, with Bavarian intelligentsia. Some
have identified it with Vehmish daggers, mystic symbols, and secret alliances.
Some claim that, within the Vatican's library of forbidden books, there is a
tome entitled 'The Pastel Nose,' penned in blood by one Heironymous Joaquim, a
Catharist monk burned at the stake. Others, less cautious ones, have traced it
back to Atlantis, Lemuria, Thule, Mu. The fanciful have pointed to the stars,
or within the hollow earth, or even to such ill-starred places as the Plateau
Leng. Madmen have shouted it over and over in the darkness, gibbering of a
glittering substance from Saturn, a twilit terrace, and an abominable
proboscis. It is said that Jack the Ripper could be seen in the dead of night
from the unnatural shine of his nose. In the far Orient, some claim that
Nirvana, or enlightenment, is often accompanied by luminescence of the
nostrils. In ancient Sumer, brightness of the nose was associated with royalty
and handsomeness. Even our celestial brothers, as channeled through New Age
gurus, have been rumored to wear gleaming nasal gear on their earthly visits.
Amid this flurry of misinformation and conjecture, there is still a dark
portent. In many a corridor has a swarthy, cloaked figure walked slowly,
deliberately, to hiss into an increasingly pale ear those words: 'Pastel Nose.'
"
Jordan SC
1972], had this to say:
"It is said that the Pictish warrior, when slathering his comrades with woad
dye, paid particular attention to the nose. This blue, nearly pastel, color was
once described by Julius Caesar himself, 'Omnes vero se Britanni vitro
inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem.' [1] This dye was believed to be a
sort of spiritual armor, acting to toughen the skin against enemy blows as well
as to scare off more cowardly Romans. By dying the nose, in particular, they
believed that they were facilitating the soul's metempsychosis in the next
life: the life's breath would flow from the nasal passages with a coat of this
blue paint and thus become spiritually fortified for its transmigration. Of
course, modern historians have quite a different theory. It has been theorized
that, by lathering the nostrils, the Picts were, in effect, forcing their
warriors to sniff paint. The subsequent high resulted in a foolish bravery, a
loss of brain cells, that allowed them to run naked into battle without fear.
[...] In subsequent centuries, certain romantic societies have sprung up around
this cult of Pictish heroism. In particular, the Hybernian Society of the Azure
Beak spent evening after evening chatting about ancient British megaliths and
daubing bits of near-toxic paint on their vibrissae. More than one of these
amateur anthropologists, classicists, historians, archeologists, and occasional
freemasons died of poisoning as a result of this foolish practice. Thankfully,
this practice more or less died out, like so many others, after World War One.
There have been movements to start up a similar society under the unlikely
title, 'Albion League of the Vibrant Proboscis,' but this author believes this
to be more nostalgia for turn of the century anthropology than a call for
widespread drug abuse.
[1] Gallic Wars Book V"
It should be noted that the term "pastel" comes from from Italian pastello,
which, in turn, comes from Late Latin pastellus woad. The plot, indeed,
thickens.