The maidenhair or ginkgo tree is described as a 'living
fossil.' It is the sole survivor of an ancient group of trees that is said to
be older than dinosaurs.
30 November 2015
Transform.
I set out to
discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.
Charles Baudelaire
Marvel.
I have often wondered
at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many
heads, on which Nature seems to have inflicted the curse of barrenness, should
teem with voluminous productions. As a man travels on, however, in the journey
of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding
out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I
chanced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a
scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft, and
at once put an end to my astonishment.
I was one summer's day
loitering through the great saloons of the British Museum, with that
listlessness with which one is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather;
sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometimes studying the
hieroglyphics on an Egyptian mummy, and some times trying, with nearly equal
success, to comprehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. Whilst
I was gazing about in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant
door, at the end of a suite of apartments. It was closed, but every now and
then it would open, and some strange-favored being, generally clothed in black,
would steal forth, and glide through the rooms, without noticing any of the
surrounding objects. There was an air of mystery about this that piqued my
languid curiosity, and I determined to attempt the passage of that strait, and
to explore the unknown regions beyond. The door yielded to my hand, with all
that facility with which the portals of enchanted castles yield to the
adventurous knight-errant. I found myself in a spacious chamber, surrounded
with great cases of venerable books. Above the cases, and just under the
cornice, were arranged a great number of black-looking portraits of ancient
authors. About the room were placed long tables, with stands for reading and
writing, at which sat many pale, studious personages, poring intently over
dusty volumes, rummaging among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of
their contents. A hushed stillness reigned through this mysterious apartment,
excepting that you might hear the racing of pens over sheets of paper, and
occasionally the deep sigh of one of these sages, as he shifted his position to
turn over the page of an old folio; doubtless arising from that hollowness and
flatulency incident to learned research.
Washington Irving, from "The Art of Book-Making"
Washington Irving, from "The Art of Book-Making"
Untranslatable.
52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of
my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the
shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
Divine.
And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a
sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a
careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could
fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make
me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills,
and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I,
at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied
nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it.
Charlotte Brontë
Happy birthday, Twain.
Mark Twain was born on this date in 1835.
Be good and you will be lonesome.
Mark Twain, from the opening page of Following the Equator
Simple.
Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not
simpler.
God's Fingerprint: The Fibonacci Sequence ...
Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension ...
Prefer.
Rinehart, Omaha Dance Bonnet, 1899
I prefer not to.
Herman Melville, from Bartleby, the Scrivener
I prefer not to.
Herman Melville, from Bartleby, the Scrivener
Happy birthday, Palladio.
Palladio, Study for Baths of Agrippa, 1550
Andrea Palladio was born on this date in 1508.
Beauty will result from the form and the correspondence of
the whole, with respect to the several parts, of the parts with regard to each
other, and of these again to the whole; that the structure may appear an entire
and complete body, wherein each member agrees with the other, and all necessary
to compose what you intend to form.
Andrea Palladio
PALLADIO: The Architect and His Influence in America ...
27 November 2015
Well.
Wyeth, Jamie, Pumpkinhead, 1972
Sonnett 73
That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
William Shakespeare
26 November 2015
Elevating.
Claesz, Still Life with Musical Instruments, 1623
The title Telemann gave his publication, “Table Music,” may
lead us to believe that the work only served as pleasant background to various
gastronomic activities. Apart from the fact that the music, as was often the
case with chamber works, may have performed such a duty, a title such as
Overtures, Concertos or Sonatas would have probably had less impact from a
publicity point of view. Indeed, musical works written and published with a
reference to the table had been legion since the beginning of the 17th century.
The Taffel-Consort published by Thomas Simpson in Hamburg in 1621,
the Partitas of Heinrich Biber’s Mensa sonora (1680) or the Simphonies pour les
souper du Roy of Michel-Richard Delalande, among other examples, were all
written in accordance with the idea, typical of Baroque aesthetics, that all
human activities should coincide and that life’s delights should meet, but were
also conceived with the aim elevating the arts to princely heights.
Experience.
Thomas Merton
25 November 2015
Scarecrow.
Walt Disney's Scarecrow of Romney Marsh is an adaptation of
a series of English stories featuring "Doctor Syn," aka Christopher
Syn -- a Vicar by day, and the fearsome Scarecrow by night. The Scarecrow
series of novels was written by Russell Thorndike.
Richard Vobes is the Bald Explorer and in this episode he is
searching for the free traders on the south east of Britain. The Romney Marshes
were notorious for ancient tradition of smuggler because of its close proximity
with Europe.
Earthy-tasting.
Hard to find outside the districts where it is produced,
with a name that is often mispronounced, marc is a heady, earthy-tasting French
relative of moonshine. It makes some people gag. A few nuts like me love it.
CONNECT
CONNECT
24 November 2015
Watch.
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,
Don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play.
Put the brishwood back again - and they'll be gone next day !
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more !
If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you " pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been !
Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -
You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie
They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by !
'If You do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
A present from the Gentlemen, along 'o being good !
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,
Don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play.
Put the brishwood back again - and they'll be gone next day !
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more !
If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you " pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been !
Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -
You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie
They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by !
'If You do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
A present from the Gentlemen, along 'o being good !
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
Rudyard Kipling
Splendid.
Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sense.
Van Allsburg, Third Story Window, 1984
Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact
& reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated
verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of
remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would
perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of
Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
John Keats
Happy birthday, Toulouse-Lautrec.
Toulouse-Lautrec, Simpson Chain poster, 1896
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born on this date in 1864.
I paint things as they are. I don’t comment. I record. In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature. I have tried to do what is true and not ideal.
Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec
_-_LP-track_details.jpg)
23 November 2015
Cameras.
Artist David Hockney reveals startling evidence which
suggests that cameras have been a secret tool for artists since the 15th
century, a discovery that solves century-old mysteries surrounding famous paintings.
Part 1
Part 2
Wreckage.
Throwing toilet paper requires force and finesse, arch and
accent, the power of a Hail Mary and the touch of a fadeaway jumper. It also
takes speed. Within seconds of us pulling onto the grassy shoulder in front of
Erin’s parents’ place, the trees paralleling the road at the property bottom
were turning white.
The moon was up. No one who had wheels was home. What rolls the wind didn’t slap across the two-lane unspooled quick fast from our red fingers, looped over bare branches, and rappelled down the flip side in long, taut, unbroken belts. We dressed trunks. We scribbled in tissue along the front yard all manner of stall-wall worthy enjoiners. The wreckage was compact but not inconsiderable. The tree row had become a mob of resurrected mummies.
The moon was up. No one who had wheels was home. What rolls the wind didn’t slap across the two-lane unspooled quick fast from our red fingers, looped over bare branches, and rappelled down the flip side in long, taut, unbroken belts. We dressed trunks. We scribbled in tissue along the front yard all manner of stall-wall worthy enjoiners. The wreckage was compact but not inconsiderable. The tree row had become a mob of resurrected mummies.
Any serious, midnight-running prankster knows ... corn is better.
- Ed.
Astonishingly.
The universe is an astonishingly big place, with everything
moving in different directions at different speeds. With all that going on, the
movement of a single planet a tough thing to get a grip on.
Lovable.
One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance,
after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.
J.M. Barrie, from Peter Pan
20 November 2015
Techniques.
Caravaggio was extraordinarily secretive about the
techniques he used to create his ingenious and revolutionary art. He didn't
employ assistants and hardly let anyone into his workshop. Although jealous
rivals offered rewards to anyone who could discover his trade secrets, he took
them to his grave. Or so everyone thought.
In this documentary, experts examine his life and the artistic techniques suggested by the revealing inventory.
In this documentary, experts examine his life and the artistic techniques suggested by the revealing inventory.
Persistence.
Calvin Coolidge
Secret.
Williams, Emerald Pool, 1906
To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it. What
we usually try to do is capture any joy that comes our way before it can
escape. We try to cling to pleasure, but all we succeed in doing is
making ourselves frustrated because, whatever it promises, pleasure simply
cannot last. But if I am willing to kiss the joy as it flies, I say,
'Yes, this moment is beautiful. I won't grab it. I'll let it
go.' And I live with a mind at peace and a heart untroubled.
Pleasure comes and goes. When it goes, we don't need to cling to memories
of the past happiness or dwell on when it may come again. When we turn to
the past yearning, we are running away from the present. When we propel
ourselves into the future in anticipation, we are running away from the present.
This is the secret of the world's spiritual tradition called detachment:
If we don't cling to past or future we live entirely here and now, in "Eternity's sunrise."
Eknath Easwaran
Parrot.
Wyeth, Long John Silver leading Jim Hawkins, 1911
Ever since Long John Silver clomped around on a wooden leg
with a parrot on his shoulder, the literary and pop-culture conception of
pirates has involved the parrot. But at this point, fact is very hard to
separate from fiction. What, exactly, about a classic pirate Halloween
costume—the parrot, the peg leg, the eyepatch, the bandana, the snarling
vaguely Scottish accent—is actually real? Is any of it real?
“The parrot trope is almost certainly grounded in reality,”
says Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and
Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down.
Long John Silver, the star of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island,
was the first major fictional pirate character to walk around with a pet
parrot, but this, according to Woodard and other experts in the field of
classic piracy I spoke to, was based on real truths. And the reasons why the
parrot became associated with pirates actually give us a pretty good glimpse at
the real, true-life existence of a pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy.
18 November 2015
Sensible.
I entered from the inner court of Westminster School,
through a long, low, vaulted passage that had an almost subterranean look,
being dimly lighted in one part by circular perforations in the massive walls.
Through this dark avenue I had a distant view of the cloisters, with the figure
of an old verger in his black gown moving along their shadowy vaults, and
seeming like a spectre from one of the neighboring tombs. The approach to the
abbey through these gloomy monastic remains prepares the mind for its solemn
contemplation. The cloisters still retain something of the quiet and seclusion
of former days. The gray walls are discolored by damps and crumbling with age;
a coat of hoary moss has gathered over the inscriptions of the mural monuments,
and obscured the death's heads and other funeral emblems. The sharp touches of
the chisel are gone from the rich tracery of the arches; the roses which
adorned the keystones have lost their leafy beauty; everything bears marks of
the gradual dilapidations of time, which yet has something touching and
pleasing in its very decay.
The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal ray into the
square of the cloisters, beaming upon a scanty plot of grass in the centre, and
lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of dusky splendor. From
between the arcades the eye glanced up to a bit of blue sky or a passing cloud,
and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey towering into the azure heaven.
Washington Irving, from Geoffrey Crayon's Sketchbook
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15
Murray Perahia performs with the the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir George Solti ...
Child.
van Gogh, Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Paul Hospital, 1889
The Wind
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass--
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all--
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass--
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all--
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
Robert Louis Stevenson
17 November 2015
Precision.
Ortelius, Islandia, 1590
... [I]t seemed to me the height of arrogance to mock people for not knowing what we do now. How much do we take on faith today? Living five hundred years ago, I would surely have trusted the scholars who made these maps, who wrested some idea of the world from others who had sailed for weeks and months and kept charts with all the precision they could muster.
CONNECT
15 November 2015
14 November 2015
Listen.
November Night
Listen.
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Adelaide Crapsey