Franklin Booth

He grew up on a remote farm and copied famous illustrations out of Harper's and Scribner's unaware that the "drawings" he copied were actually engravings.
"His drawings are marvels of tone created in line. The textures of the world, faces, clothing, atmospheric effects, sweeping skies, roiling clouds, the vibrance of forests and fields, are created from thousands of precisely placed pen lines, spaced and arranged to blend in the eye into optical tones of grays. Actually, “tones” and “grays” don’t do Booth enough credit, his black and white drawings suggest colors in the the mind, in much the same way as Van Gogh’s wonderfully textured drawings; or like the “colors” of the grays in Chinese ink painting."

"on boring works"

In the dead of night I am sent an essay from Kazakhstan to edit:

Name of essay: Destroying of rocks by high-frequency blasting

On open and underground rock extractions of GUS countries during long period of time was upgraded and implemented only one type of method, explosive material, scheme of explosion and equipment. All this made special prerequisites for realization of upcoming hip in blasting complex. It was supported by results of long lasting implementation idea of A.V. Budko in the beginning of 1960. The idea of mass and power increasing of technological charges by their concentration in the groups of parallel approached wells, that was further researched and developed in RSD after A.A. Skochinskii. On this basis were risen scientifical and applied branches on plosive
destruction of rocks and other possibilities of control of energy of blasting in the
breaking array. In IPKON RAS have been made researches in huge-scale breaking (KMO) and developed its theoretical base, some results were presented in the works of S.D. Viktorov, V.M. Zakalinskii, that were published in the "Mining journal of Kazakhstan" #7 of 2007. "Improvement of blasting destroys of rock arrays". In this work the huges-cale blasting of breaking in underground conditions is recommended to implement with charges of big diameter (d>150 mm), and on open areas in holes - with diameter more than 300 mm or in areas of close located holes, boiler cavities etc. So, was reviewed the perspective of development in modern conditions on underground and ground areas a new branch in drilling-and-blasting works of technology of large-scale blasting preparation of ore and rock blocks to seizure. But huge-scale blasting preparation of ore and rock blocks could be processed under decreased masses of hole and bore-hole charges and gradual energy savings. With the goal of sharp decreasing of specific BM on cubical meter of destroying rock with simultaneously strengthening of destroying capacity of destroying charger were developed new ways of blasting works. The new technology of blasting destroying of rock massif based on using high frequency explosion. Presented technology may be combined with current methods of explosions without gradual changes of blasting operations.
The improvement of blasting destroying of rock massif should be made by development of new technologies that could compete on the level of world standards. The new approaches on the solving of such kind of problems have to be supported by gradual energy savings, or more precise, by decreasing specific costs on boring works by using maneuvering boring equipment, decreasing diameters of well, by making the net of boring and decreasing the overbore-processing. Taking into attention the dangerous of blasting operations, it's necessary to support high level of safety, by decreasing the dispersion of rock particles and by implementation safe, cheap ammonium-nitrate BM, with a purpose on mechanization the process of preparation BM and hole charging.
Technology of high-frequency blasting is supported by simultaneous effect of
several factors of blasting process. First of all, dispersed and sharply accelerated speed of blasting process. Its duration measured in the range of time, which is counted in nano and micro seconds. Second, is made a dispersal blasting of big mass of explosive material in the unit of time. Third, being changed the direction of effect of accelerated products of explosion located perpendicularly to charge axis that supports dynamic stall of escaping of explosive gases from hole (bore-hole). Fourth, resulted concentration of voltage waves outside of charge in the destroying rock massif, by special form of charging material.
Decreasing the charge mass in the hole (bore-hole) do not decrease the energy of blasting, because it sharply increase the speed of charging process. The increasing speed of blasting gases supports the fullness of burn of all the components of BM and supports the decreasing the time of blasting impulse. The decreasing time of blasting impulse increases the output of explosive energy, because exuded same quantity of energy for the short period of time. Increasing the speed of products of detonation supports the fullness of chemistry reaction of blasting, decreasing the output of poison gases that supports to the standards of ecological requirements for making blasting works, especially operated underground.

The Noble Arts

In the lot by my work is a man who paints splatters, and sometimes through the door I can hear his voice and see his tanned hands as he tries to sell pictures to tourists. Lately he has had some success, due to claims that his own paintings were made by a four year old prodigy. And what a relationship to have to one's work.

Quite apart from that, indeed as far as may be, my dear Milwaukee brothers are deep in their art. It is found at http://www.wereanonym.us/
When we lived together I said I would sew them jackets like Wendy from Neverland, and they would wake me up at two in the morning to dance, and my room was covered in flowers, and one of them chopped off all my hair.

Mary Tofts born 1701

Mary Tofts hoaxed doctors into believing that she had given birth to at least sixteen rabbits.

"Tofts was twenty-five years old and married at the time, and despite a miscarriage in August had still seemed pregnant. She went into apparent labor and the Guildford male-midwife John Howard arrived to assist. Howard reported that Mary told him she and a friend had been weeding in a field when they saw two rabbits and chased them: the escape of the rabbits created "such a longing" in Mary that she miscarried and from then on could think of nothing but rabbits. Soon, Howard recorded, she began producing parts of animals: a rabbit's liver, the legs of a cat, and, in a single day, nine baby rabbits. Howard sent letters to some of England's greatest doctors and scientists asking for help investigating the situation, and among those who came to his assistance were Nathaniel St. Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London. Tofts gave birth to several more dead rabbits in their presence.

Tofts claimed that during pregnancy she had an intense craving for roast rabbit, that she tried to catch rabbits in the garden, that she had admired them in the village market, and that she had dreamed about rabbits. Based on this testimony, the doctors explained the births as a result of "maternal impressions", contending that a pregnant woman's experiences could be imprinted directly on the fetus at conception and cause birth defects.

In these early days of newspapers, the story became a national sensation. Lord Onslow told Sir Hans Sloane that it had "almost alarmed England". Rabbit stew and jugged hare disappeared from the dinner table. John Howard lectured to the Royal Society. St André wrote the forty-page pamphlet: A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets. Mary was brought to London, where she was bombarded with curious doctors and fashionable visitors. Lord Hervey told Henry Fox that:

Every creature in town, both men and women, have been to see and feel her: the perpetual emotions, noises and rumblings in her Belly are something prodigious; all the eminent physicians, surgeons and man-midwives in London are there Day and Night to watch her next production.

Sir Richard Manningham eventually exposed the birthings as a hoax after a porter admitted smuggling a rabbit into Mary's chamber."

The Lion and The Lamb

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play in the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

Yesterday I took my two charges, the dogs I nanny, to the animal hospital. They were wild and fierce- blind Jack ripped apart the waiting room teddy bear and happily snapped the doctor's arm. When I returned to pick them up they were sleepy eyed from pain and drugs, with the gentle faces of lambs. It all reminded me of this favorite painting, my copy left in Iowa:



Yes, Edward Hicks painted a peaceable kingdom, but the Lion's wide-eyes are to remind us that this is a radical break with what is.

And Hicks said things like: Christendom appears clearly to me to be one of those trifling, insignificant arts, which has never been of any substantial advantage to mankind. If the Christian world was in the real spirit of Christ, I do not believe there would be such a thing as a fine painter in Christendom.

Emily Post on a subject of concern to me.

Closing a Note

Ever since the Eighteenth Century the English-speaking have been busy pruning away all ornament of expression; even the last remaining graces, “kindest regards,” “with kindest remembrances,” are fast disappearing, leaving us nothing but an abrupt “Yours truly,” or “Sincerely yours.”

Closing a Formal Note:
The best ending to a formal social note is, “Sincerely,” “Sincerely yours,” “Very sincerely,” “Very sincerely yours,” “Yours always sincerely,” or “Always sincerely yours.”
“I remain, dear madam,” is no longer in use, but “Believe me” is still correct when formality is to be expressed in the close of a note.
Believe me
Very sincerely yours,
or
Believe me, my dear Mrs. Worldly,
Most sincerely yours,
This last is an English form, but it is used by quite a number of Americans—particularly those who have been much abroad.

Appropriate for a Man:
“Faithfully” or “Faithfully yours” is a very good signature for a man in writing to a woman, or in any uncommercial correspondence, such as a letter to the President of the United States, a member of the Cabinet, an Ambassador, a clergyman, etc.

The Intimate Closing:
“Affectionately yours,” “Always affectionately,” “Affectionately,” “Devotedly,” “Lovingly,” “Your loving” are in increasing scale of intimacy.
“Lovingly” is much more intimate than “Affectionately” and so is “Devotedly.”
“Sincerely” in formal notes and “Affectionately” in intimate notes are the two adverbs most used in the present day, and between these two there is a blank; in English we have no expression to fit sentiment more friendly than the first nor one less intimate than the second.

Not Good Form:
“Cordially” was coined no doubt to fill this need, but its self-consciousness puts it in the category with “residence” and “retire,” and all the other offenses of pretentiousness, and in New York, at least, it is not used by people of taste.
“Warmly yours” is unspeakable.
“Yours in haste” or “Hastily yours” is not bad form, but is rather carelessly rude.
“In a tearing hurry” is a termination dear to the boarding school girl; but its truth does not make it any more attractive than the vision of that same young girl rushing into a room with her hat and coat half on, to swoop upon her mother with a peck of a kiss, and with a “——by, mamma!” whirl out again! Turmoil and flurry may be characteristic of the manners of to-day; both are far from the ideal of beautiful manners which should be as assured, as smooth, as controlled as the running of a high-grade automobile. Flea-like motions are no better suited to manners than to motors.

Other Endings:
“Gratefully” is used only when a benefit has been received, as to a lawyer who has skilfully handled a case; to a surgeon who has saved a life dear to you; to a friend who has been put to unusual trouble to do you a favor.
In an ordinary letter of thanks, the signature is “Sincerely,” “Affectionately,” “Devotedly”—as the case may be.
The phrases that a man might devise to close a letter to his betrothed or his wife are bound only by the limit of his imagination and do not belong in this, or any, book.

Invisible-

Or the invisible button on gmail makes me feel like a shy superhero.

Organisms that are difficult to detect:
Crypsis is the ability of an organism to avoid observation. A cryptic animal may do this through camouflage, nocturnality, subterranean lifestyle, transparency, or mimicry.

Organisms that are difficult to distinguish:
A cryptic species complex is a group of species which satisfy the biological definition of species, that is, they are reproductively isolated from each other, but they are not morphologically distinguishable. They can, but need not be, parapatric, quite often are sympatric, and sometimes allopatric.

For animals whose existence is in doubt, see cryptozoology.

Terror, Wonders, and Marvels

Freaks is a 1932 horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning. It is about an hour long.

Old Favorite Music and A Picture

http://hannahheidegger.muxtape.com/

Borges: Dreamtigers

In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger: not the jaguar, the spotted 'tiger' of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of vegetation that float down the Parana, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger, that can be faced only by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I thing: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.

Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.

Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic

The epidemic seems to have started within a small group of students in a boarding school, possibly triggered by a joke. Laughter, as is commonly known, is in some sense contagious, and for whatever reason in this case the laughter perpetuated itself, far transcending its original cause. Since it is physiologically impossible to laugh for much more than a few minutes at a time, the laughter must have made itself known sporadically, though reportedly it was incapacitating when it struck. The school from which the epidemic sprang was shut down; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off.

Deep Joy

Recorded in the Arctic by Knud Rasmussen

"ONCE there were two men who desired to travel round the world, that they might tell others what was the manner of it.

 This was in the days when men were still many on the earth, and there were people in all the lands. Now we grow fewer and fewer. Evil and sickness have come upon men. See how I, who tell this story, drag my life along, unable to stand upon my feet.

 The two men who were setting out had each newly taken a wife, and had as yet no children. They made themselves cups of musk-ox horn, each making a cup for himself from one side of the same beast's head. And they set out, each going away from the other, that they might go by different ways and meet again some day. They traveled with sledges, and chose land to stay and live upon each summer.

 It took them a long time to get round the world; they had children, and they grew old, and then their children also grew old, until at last the parents were so old that they could not walk, but the children led them.

 And at last one day, they met—and of their drinking horns there was but the handle left, so many times had they drunk water by the way, scraping the horn against the ground as they filled them.

 "The world is great indeed," they said when they met.

 They had been young at their starting, and now they were old men, led by their children.

 Truly the world is great."

Also, I've been considering our tenth planet, Sedna.

"According to one myth, Sedna, similar to a mermaid, was the daughter of the creator-god Anguta. She is said to have been so huge and hungry that she ate everything in her parents' home, and even gnawed off one of her father's arms as he slept. According to some versions of the myth, she took a dog for her husband.

Anguta was so angry that he threw her over the side of his kayak. She clung to its sides, whereupon he chopped her fingers off one by one until she let go. She sank to the underworld, becoming the ruler of the monsters of the deep, and her huge fingers became the seals, walrus and whales hunted by the Inuit."

Reiteration

"His meditation wanders from ruin to mortality, from mortality to the
Christian church which had begun in the Roman underground and had
flowered into it's splendour in Roman basilicas; and through it all
the moon roved her pales solitudes amid the solitudes of ruined Rome."

"About the Colosseum they differed. Oswald with his strong Scottish
moral sense, could not overlook the luxury of its masters and the
blood of their slaves. Corinne told him that he must not bring the
rigour of his principles on morality and justice into the
contemplation of Italian monuments. The death of liberty filled the
world with marvels."

"Many travellers, rashly braving the Assyrian summer, succumbed to
fever; recovering and returning home, they half suspected that the
strange underground world they had seen had been part of their
delirium."

Am on the lookout for another copy of Dame Emilie Rose Macauley's The Pleasure of Ruins from which to continue cribbing. Also, looking for Edwin Teale's Near Horizons, and Billington's dear old Ikon & the Axe, as mine has utterly given up.

Dish Fetish

Maya Deren in Haiti

Silhouettes

"In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a
dialogue with the Islamic world. "I approach you not with arms, but
with words," he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his
book, "not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with
love." Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of the Whole Heresy of
the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens and segued repeatedly into
spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated the
"bestial cruelty" of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself
by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? "I shall be worse than a
donkey if I agree," he expostulated, "worse than cattle if I assent!"

Holy Springs National Forest, or I am an unreliable narrator

I remember walking with my sister and my father on rotten planks through a swamp, looking at giant water moccasins swimming beneath us, and pulling down Spanish moss to create birds nests out of. My father has never remembered where it was that we went, and I was four or five so I only know the snakes and trees. This is almost certainly where we were:




The name is really Holly Springs National Forest.

-that is, if I read that right and am not just inviting myself.

When O'Connor was five she taught a chicken to walk backwards, and it was this that led to her first experience of being a celebrity. The Pathé News people filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with her trained chicken, and showed the film around the country. She said, "That was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. It's all been downhill from there."



To her pen-pal:
"I go from bad to worse in your imagination- first a fascist and now Cupid. I can defend myself on the first score but the Lord only knows what line I'd take against this other. I'd rather be the Minotaur or the Gorgon or that three-headed dog at the river styx or ANYBODY. Just reconsider."

Come on in. The screen door is unlatched.

On the back porch are Esme, Harris, and Harriet: mint, tomato, & basil, respectively.

150 tomato recipes:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/recipes/carvertomato.html
"DEDICATED: To my esteemed friend and co-worker, Mrs. Adella Hunt Logan, who was tireless in her efforts to help the farmer and his family, and who saw in the tomato a panacea for many of his ills; and who contributed more data of real value along this line than anyone else with whom I have come in contact, I affectionately dedicate this bulletin."

Near these friendly benefactors is my beautiful new Beatrice, a Sears & Roebuck Free Spirit Sheffield. My search for her internet likeness yielded "Paul, apostle of the free spirit" and some psychics that live in Sheffield.

But this'll do:

I admire compression, lightness, agility, all rare in this loose world.

"The following brisk messages are for the twins and Boo Boo. However, kindly ask Boo Boo to read them by herself, absolutely without help from her parents, which she is perfectly capable of doing! That marvellous, black-eyed girl can do it if she tries!

Boo Boo, practice your writing of complete words! I am not interested in the alphabet in itself! Do not fall back on conventional excuses! Do not take any more crafty refuge in your tender age, I beg you! Do not throw it in our face again that Martine Brady or Lotta Davilla or any other child of four of your acquaintance is not required to read and write quite fluently. I am not their mean brother; I am your mean brother. On several occasions, I have given you my word of honor that you are by nature an exhaustive reader, quite like Buddy and myself; if you were not, I would gladly throw my meanness to the wind, with good riddance! For an exhaustive reader, an early start with pen as well as eye is very desirable. On the immediate, credit side, think what untold pleasure you will give your astonishing brother and myself, temporarily in exile, with an occasional postcard! If you but knew how much we admire and relish your handwriting and unimaginable choice of words! Just print two or three words in your customary fashion on the card and then race it to the mail box in the lobby or give it to a chambermaid of your choice. Also, my dear, darling, unforgettable Miss Beatrice Glass, please work harder on your manners and etiquette in private as well as in public. I am far less concerned about how you behave in public than how you behave when you are absolutely alone in a solitary room; when you accidentally look deep into a lonely mirror, let a girl with stunning tact, as well as flashing, black eyes, reflect!

Walt, we received your message from Bessie. We were delighted to get it, though it was frankly crap from the word go. We are all too damnably prone to take refuge in our tender ages. The age of three is no earthly, damn excuse for not doing the simple things we discussed in the taxi on the way to the train; I laugh hollowly down the years at the trite reports and customs firmly connected with the tender age of three! At the roots, you yourself are perhaps more capable of a healthy, hollow laugh at these prejudiced reports than anybody I have ever met! If it is too “damn hot” to practice as reported, then at least wear your tap shoes fairly constantly, such as at meals, on your feet under the table, or while strolling about the room or the lobby of which ever hotel you are staying; however, keep them on your haunting, magical feet for at least 2 hours per day!

Waker, the same request, utterly mean and tyrannical, goes for juggling in this heat! If it is too damn hot for juggling, at least carry some of your favorite juggling objects, those of reasonable size, about with you in your pockets during the stifling day. I know Buddy would heartily join me in being content if you incomparable boys should decide, quite overnight, to quit your chosen careers utterly. However, you have not yet come to that decision; until you do, it is terribly necessary that you do not estrange yourselves utterly from your chosen career for more than 2 or 2½ hours in a row! Your tap shoes and juggling objects must be treated like unreasonable, jealous sweethearts that cannot bear any form of estrangement from your person for even 24 hours in a row. Your splendid, elder brother and I, God knows, are keeping our own hand in at this place, despite countless impediments and embarrassments. If this is bragging, let God have the simple, rudimentary courtesy to chastise me in the severest manner, but it is not dirty bragging; I am merely saying that both you boys can do anything your elder brothers can do; our own instability, I assure you, will match anybody’s on earth!

Boo Boo, I am more than disgusted with myself for saying just one thing to you and having that one thing sound unfavorable and quite ugly. The partial truth is, as follows: Your manners and etiquette are getting more and more marvellous every day. If I slightly harp on one or two discrepancies, it is only because you love pleasant, ritzy things so much and have always preferred myself or Bessie to read you books with well-bred, aristocratic, uncrude children and adults in them, usually English persons with excellent manners on the surface, tasteful clothes and interiors, as well as unassailably high class in every visible respect. Oh, my God, you are a risible, amusing kid! You quite take your elder brothers’ hearts by storm! You are one of a precious handful of persons I have met in my time, here and there, who probably have God’s entire permission not to think anything out! It is a charming, magnificent blessing, and I have no intention of spitting in its beautiful face, but you are also stuck with me as your brother; I have no natural course but to assure you that if you grew up and knew in your heart that your excellent, ritzy manners in public were merely skin deep, leaving you free to be quite a dirty pig when alone in a room, with no one watching but yourself, you would be far from pleased; it would quite corrode you, in a subtle manner.

I will tyrannize no one any further! Goodbye to all for the interlude! We send you our naked hearts!"

Rebecca Rolfe

Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of Brentford for some time. In early 1617, Smith visited them at a social gathering. According to Smith, when Pocahontas saw him "without any words, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented" and was left alone for two or three hours. Later, they spoke more; Smith's record of what she said to him is fragmentary and enigmatic. She reminded him of the "courtesies she had done" and that "you did promise Powhatan what was yours would be his, and he the like to you". She then discomfited him by calling him "father", explaining that Smith had called Powhatan "father" when a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address, since Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter".
Pocahontas then, "with a well-set countenance", said, “Were you not afraid to come into my father's country and caused fear in him and all his people (but me) and fear you here I should call you 'father'? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman.”

Laziest of Birdwatchers

Yesterday I found piles upon piles of turtles by the creek bed, snuggling with the poison ivy. It is a great unrealized dream of mine to be able to recognize birds by sight or sound, and perhaps I'll use this to do it: http://ibc.hbw.com/ibc/

Also, need a cane fishing pole like I had years ago.

On the left, there.

On July 19, 2007, police arrested artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's triptych Phaedrus. The panel was an all-white canvas, and was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She is to be tried in a court in Avignon in October for "voluntary degradation of a work of art". Sam defended her gesture to the court: "J'ai fait juste un bisou. C'est un geste d'amour, quand je l'ai embrassé, je n'ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l'artiste, il aurait compris... Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l'art" ("All I did was a kiss. It's a gesture of love, when I kissed, I wasn't thinking, I thought that the artist would've understood... This gesture was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art"). The prosecution calls it "A sort of cannibalism, or parasitism", while admitting that she is "visibly not conscious of what she has done"; asks that she be fined 4500 euros, compelled to an assorted penalty, and to attend citizenship classes.

Library Pilgrimage

I often dream about libraries, especially infinite, magic ones. I've wanted to travel to this library ever since I heard of it, but more than that, I'd love to create my very own library touching on manners, ruins, Russian history, insects, eskimos, plant care, the diaries of writers, the solar system, children's rhymes and almost anything else.

"An e-epistolary romance blossomed. Megan was writing an essay about freeways on the American landscape, though she didn't have all the resources she needed. Rick responded that he happened to have, oh, maybe something like five or six boxes of largely unread books on the history and theory of freeways that she might find useful."
From this article: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/05/page/0049

Collections:
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger
http://home.earthlink.net/~alysons/library.html
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger_library

All this was a charge. But did you complete it?

For we, where we feel, evaporate; oh we
breathe ourselves out and beyond; hot ember to ember
we yield a weakening scent. Someone may say to us:
"you get into my blood, the room, the spring
is full of you"... No use, he cannot hold us;
we vanish in him and around him. And those who are fair,
oh, who shall hold them back? Incessantly, semblance
rises up in their faces and goes. Like dew on spring grass
there lifts from us all that we are, as heat lifts
from a steaming dish. O smile, where are you going?
O upturned gaze:
new warm disappearing wave of the heart-
it grieves me: but we are this. The space
in which we have dissolved- does it taste of us?

The Other Francis Bacon

When he wrote a letter, he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a by-matter.

Too many music videos.

So here's another one:



This will be more rounded soon, I'm sure.

Hold on, Magnolia

Profits from an afternoon:

He thought of belief and the gradual loss of belief and the piercing together of something like it again.

But, oh, how his blood had almost turned in color when once, in response to a sudden call from a window, he stopped on a curbstone and first thought,

Love, Love, Love.

-Tennessee Williams

This enthusiasm which must be held in check was a great burden for a child's soul ... to restrain meant to kill, to bury.

-Anais Nin

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

-Eden Phillpotts

Sunday Morning Cartoons

The untouched version of the same:

Music Museum

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/07/culture_shock_m.html

His reviews:
Here's another number - a doo-wop/calypso - about libidinal cravings for an attractive female, done by Havana heartthrobs whose Motown-style choreography and impeccable voices kept the palms of Cuban girls moist for much of the sixties.
&
"Tuareg" is an inauthentic name for the various tribes of the Saharan region given by North African Muslim marauders. It's an insulting Arabic term meaning "the Godforsaken." It's also the name of this Jorge Ben tune, recorded in 1969 by the Queen of the Tropicalia scene, that mashes up Brazilian psychedelia with the trippy desert music familiar to the people the song is named for.
&
Called "Jewish-Marxist noise" by the Nazis in 1932, this German singing supergroup broke up two years later after it was prohibited from performing due to the non-Aryan heritage of half its members. This piece of fluff was recorded a month before the split.

Etienne Charry

From the makers of 36 Erreurs, a cd that more than readied me for music that lacked a center. This song tells a little story, so it is not like that.

Shugo Tokumaru

Dim Sum

I go with the police men to a room, like a tea room, run with red lacquered carts and men bowing to me. The waiters smoke in the doorway downstairs, here they will not pass you, and will stop moving as you pass them. A three hundred pound Samoan orders for us, nodding or waving things away, and little wet & woven boxes pile up around us. Everything is wrapped, hidden in folded damp pastry. A fellow leans back and scratches himself, guns peeking out. The sugar trolley is also red, shiny, also with bells, but it has a clear glass belly lit up with pink lights.

I need to buy a notebook.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

&

It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult is more reason for us to do it.

The dogs come lie down next to me.

The Chronicle of Crows

http://www.archive.org/details/cawcaworchronicl00rmrmiala

"Caw caw!" the downy young ones say,
"How lovely is this peep of day,
Oh what a glorious sight is this,
There can be nothing here but bliss."
"Caw! Caw!" replies the mother crow,
"There is no joy unmixed with woe."

Everything in that first story is perfect.

Mallarme

The flesh is sad, alas! and all the books are read.
Flight, only flight! I feel that birds are wild to tread
The floor of unknown foam, and to attain the skies!
Nought, neither ancient gardens mirrored in the eyes,
Shall hold this heart that bathes in waters its delight,
O nights! nor yet my waking lamp, whose lonely light
Shadows the vacant paper, whiteness profits best,
Nor the young wife who rocks her baby on her breast.
I will depart! O steamer, swaying rope and spar,
Lift anchor for exotic lands that lie afar!

A weariness, outworn by cruel hopes, still clings
To the last farewell handkerchief’s last beckonings!
And are not these, the masts inviting storms, not these
That an awakening wind bends over wrecking seas,
Lost, not a sail, a sail, a flowering isle, ere long?
But, O my heart, hear thou, hear thou, the sailors’ song!

Texas

Snapshots by Trevor

Meditations on a permanent adolescence.

Dearly beloved,

The word "moister".

That is all.

A pile of shit has a thousand eyes.

Persephone

Betta persephone photograph like paintings.

Olaf Hajek

"an infinite storm of beauty"

Hopi verbs have no tenses indicating past, present, or future events, but they do indicate the duration of an event.

Pretend Progenitor

Ima Hogg was an enterprising circus emcee who brought culture and class to Houston, Texas. A storied ostrich jockey, she once rode to Hawaii to visit the Queen. Raised in government housing, young Ima frolicked among a backyard menagerie of raccoons, possums and a bear. Her father, "Big Jim" Hogg, in an onslaught against fun itself, booby-trapped the banisters she loved to slide down, shut down her money-making schemes, and forced her to pry chewing gum from furniture. He was later thrown from his seat on a moving train and perished; the Hogg clan then struck black gold on land Big Jim had forbidden them from selling. Ima had apocryphal sisters named "Ura" and "Hoosa" and real-life brothers sporting conventional names and vast art collections; upon their deaths, she gave away their artwork for nothing and the family home to boot. Tragically, Ms. Hogg (a future doctor) nursed three dying family members. She once sweet-talked a burglar into returning purloined jewelry and told him to get a job. Well into her nineties, she remained feisty and even exchanged geriatric insults with an octogenarian pianist. Hogg claimed to have received thirty proposals of marriage in her lifetime, and to have rejected them all. Hogg was revered as the "First Lady of Texas", and her name and legacy still thrive today.