Wednesday 31 October 2007

It's Halloween

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us! ( traditional Scottish prayer)

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
--Marcellus.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
--Horatio.
( Hamlet, act 1, scene 1)

Some still say that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact. In case you weren't born on Christmas Day watch out tonight. Happy scary Halloween!

Tuesday 30 October 2007

Book Tuesday

Yesterday I posted the closing lines of Ulysses here, today my Book Tuesday is about Opening Lines.
How long does it take for a book to hook you? A whole chapter? The first fifty pages? Or just a few lines? Some books will grab us right from the beginning , you may not read much Dickens anymore but nobody will forget lines such as " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." . Other books will need much more of our time until they can claim to be part of us. I have a little challenge for you, let's share our favourite opening lines.

Here are some of my favourites:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ( from Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy)

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. ( from The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, by Dante)

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.( from Emma, by Jane Austen)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. (from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.(from The Hobbit, by Tolkien)

Have a nice day everybody!

Monday 29 October 2007

Closing lines

" ...and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

( from Ulysses, by James Joyce)

Can you order it online?



Includes a silk blindfold, two feathers, body dust, body and foot massage oil and a champagne-scented candle. Also includes instructions.

Sunday 28 October 2007

Kathleen Battle and von Karajan



Looking into the future, the voices of Spring in Autumn.

Art on Sunday


Coin de table, by Cézanne. Good morning!

Saturday 27 October 2007

Need reading glasses?


Peekabo, I Almost See You , or a poem by Ogden Nash

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm
isn't long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said
Good evening to his grandfather clock under the impression
that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and
you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he says one
set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Keats's
"Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to strange
wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on
your reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading
glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because without
them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such misshaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Friday 26 October 2007

Music in the night

Wednesday 24 October 2007

Smashing Pumpkin Shot


A fun shot that tastes like the spices in pumpkin pie. You can light this one on fire for entertainment! Go here for recipe.

Monday 22 October 2007

Flamingos


With all the subtle paints of Fragonard
no more of their red and white could be expressed
than someone would convey about his mistress
by telling you, "She was lovely, lying there
still soft with sleep." They rise above the green
grass and lightly sway on their long pink stems,
side by side, like enormous feathery blossoms,
seducing (more seductively than Phryne)
themselves; till, necks curling, they sink their large
pale eyes into the softness of their down,
where apple-red and jet-black lie concealed.
A shriek of envy shakes the parrot cage;
but they stretch out, astonished, and one by one
stride into their imaginary world.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Good morning


Did you wake up with the blues? Or the "mean reds", as Holly Golightly would say? Nothing like breakfast at Tiffany's .

Absolute beginners



The early bloggers used to post their images on the walls.

Sunday 21 October 2007

Opening lines

One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said." I've known you for years. Everyone said you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than you were then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."

(from The Lover, by Marguerite Duras)

Expectations












TODAY I will let the old boat stand
Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in
To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway.
And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck
Watching the world go by
And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember.
I will choose what clouds I like
In the great white fleets that wander the blue
As I lie on my back or loaf at the rail.
And I will listen as the veering winds kiss me and fold me
And put on my brow the touch of the world’s great will.
Daybreak will hear the heart of the boat beat,
Engine throb and piston play
In the quiver and leap at call of life.
To-morrow we move in the gaps and heights
On changing floors of unlevel seas
And no man shall stop us and no man follow
For ours is the quest of an unknown shore
And we are husky and lusty and shouting-gay.

Waiting, by Carl Sandburg

Friday 19 October 2007

Dancing to Brel

Paris


A Vue on Notre Dame by Dufy

Wednesday 17 October 2007

the beginning


I'm starting with a Vermeer, good morning.