A sea of one's own

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1906

Painting by Edward Hopper

An Atlantic mood

Atlantique, painted by Jean-Louis Courteau

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

(Lovers on Aran, by Seamus Heaney)

A lighthouse of one's own

"When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself 
with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, 
came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently 
as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came 
lovingly again." ( Virginia Woolf, To the 
Lighthouse)

the painting is The Lighthouse at Colliure (1905) by fauve artist André Derain

Southern Gardens

(painting by Paul Klee)
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as handmade lace,
Or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun ( poem by Sylvia Plath)

Their words

Jane Austen's house

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.—"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!—Selina would stare when she heard of it."—But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. ( Emma, by Jane Austen)

Music for Monday

And so it was that later as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.



Procol Harum, one of my favourite bands. Inspired by Bach ( Air on the G String,from the "Suite No. 3 in D Major"), and with the only reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in rock music,this is one of the best songs of the sixties. It is also one of John Lennon's favourites , they say he bought a lot of copies to keep it playing after each of them wore out.

On the edge of the world

A painting by German artist Joachim Lehrer. Dedicated to Sal and to all those who like lighthouses.