He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso’s Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes ‘with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs.’ There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and ‘by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe’ the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her color. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspirates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger by fire. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sep 02, 2011 | Categories: Industries | Tags: puppets | Comments Off on Niki Ulehla’s Jewelry & Small Puppets
Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it’s all a part of the carnival, isn’t it? Federico Fellini
The principle of laughter and the carnival spirit on which the grotesque is based destroys this limited seriousness and all pretense of an extratemporal meaning and unconditional value of necessity. It frees human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities. For this reason, great changes, even in the field of science, are always preceded by a certain carnival consciousness that prepares the way. Mikhail Bakhtin
Fly me to the moon Let me play among the stars Let me see what spring is like On a, Jupiter and Mars In other words, hold my hand In other words, baby, kiss me Fly Me To The Moon, a song written in 1954 by Bart Howard
May 11, 2011 | Categories: Essentiality | Tags: Moon, wildlife | Comments Off on Fly Me To The Moon
She couldn’t have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul. Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
The man just opened his mouth, which meant that all kinds of secret doors in his body gave way. He did not sing so much as let his soul free. Ray Bradbury
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Mar 04, 2011 | Categories: Solipsism | Tags: Iphone | Comments Off on Self Portrait #2
When I take a black-and-white portrait, it’s not particularly meant to please you. It’s meant to talk to you; it’s meant to shame you. It’s meant to scream out at you, and it has a message. Don McCullin
No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone, She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it. AVIGNON Poem: Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol
Hell is oneself. Holloween Solipsism in Los Angeles…
What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone. T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. Galileo Galilei
