September 2006 Archives

'The blond hustler stands outside the Gold Cup Coffee Shop.'

'John Rechy, from The Sexual Outlaw, 1977.

'The Patti Smith Group's new record is Radio Ethiopia on Arista Records. Patti says: 'Radio Ethiopia goes beyond the wax into a disc of light. Fight the good fight.''

'Patti Smith, from the L'Anarchie Flier, 1977; reprinted in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, 2004.

'THE ART/RAT DAWNS AGAIN! ART/RAT KNAWS THRU SPACE/ RUSHING TADPOLES/ A BLACK STREAK ACROSS THE WHITE HOTEL...THE GLASS THAT SEPARATES HIM FROM SOCIETY IS THE TRUE PRISON OF LIGHT...ART/RAT IN THE SHAPE OF A BOY DRESSED IN A COAT OF MILK...ACTION PAINTER...'

'Patti Smith, from the L'Anarchie Flier, 1977; reprinted in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, 2004.

'Dragons . . . Imagine one flying over one of the meadows, high above New York City's Central Park, one crowded Sunday afternoon. Maybe this dragon could be Joey Ramone. I don't see why not. He could be a beautiful golden-amber colored one with a silver lightning ambience radiating from his body and wings. He'd have two flashing and loving eyes and would wink down at everybody staring up at him in amazement. Then he would spread his fiery wings and fly towards the sun to California to go surfing and to have some fun.'

'Dee Dee Ramone, from Legend of a Rock Star, 2002.

'Visions of heavenly angels passed before Harrys mother as the psalmist sang so soothingly to her, before the buzzing of the phone in her hand, and the exploding of a bottle of cleaner into a white tornado, dispersed them.'

'Hubert Selby Jr, from Requiem for a Dream, 1978.

'Yes, History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and tittle graven red in human blood.'

'Eldridge Cleaver, from Soul on Ice, 1968.

'Proclaimed by criers in the county courts and public assemblies, exact gradations of fabric, color, fur trimming, ornaments, and jewels were laid down for every rank and income level. Bourgeois might be forbidden to own a carriage or wear ermine, and peasants to wear any color but black or brown. Florence allowed doctors and magistrates to share the nobles' privilege of ermine, but ruled out for merchants' wives multicolored, striped, and checked gowns, brocades, figured velvets, and fabrics embroidered in silver and gold.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'To the grands seigneurs of multiple fiefs and castles, identity was no problem. In their gold-embossed surcoats and velvet mantles lined in ermine, their slashed and parti-colored tunics embroidered with family crest or verses or a lady-love's initials, their hanging scalloped sleeves with colored linings, their long pointed shoes of red leather from Cordova, their rings and chamois gloves and belts hung with bells and trinkets, their infinity of hats'puffed tam-o'shanters and furred caps, hoods and brims, chaplets of flowers, coiled turbans, coverings of every shape, puffed, pleated, scalloped, or curled into a long tailed pocket called a liripipe'they were beyond iimitation.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'Many were the complaints, like that of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1342, that the clergy were dressing like laymen, in checkerboard squares of red and green, short coats, 'notably scant,' with excessively wide sleeves to show linings of fur or silk, hoods and tippets of 'wonderful length,' pointed and slashed shoes, jeweled girdles hung with gilt purses. Worse, . . . they wore beards and long hair to the shoulders contrary to canonical rule. . . .'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'People lived close to the inexplicable. the flickering lights of marsh gas could only be fairies or goblins; fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. In the terrible trembling and fissures of an earthquake or the setting afire of a tree by lightning, the supernatural was close at hand.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'The garden of Eden . . . had an earthly existence which often appeared on maps, located far to the east, where it was believed cut off from the rest of the world by a great mountain or ocean barrier or fiery wall. In the earthly Paradise grow every kind of tree and flowers of surpassing colors and a thousand scents which never fade and have healing qualities. Birds' songs harmonize with the rustling of forest leaves and the rippling of streams flowing over jeweled rocks or over sands brighter than silver. A palace with columns of crystal and jasper sheds marvelous light. . . . The mountain peak on which it is situated is so high it touches the sphere of the moon'but here the scientific mind intervened: that would be impossible, pronounced the 14th century author of Polychronicon, because it would cause an eclipse.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'When the plague entered northern France in July 1348, . . . [e]ither in mourning or warning, black flags were flown from church towers of the worst-stricken villages of Normandy.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'The physical suffering of the disease and its aspect of evil mystery were expressed in a strange Welsh lament which saw 'death coming into our midst like black smoke. . . . Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit! It is seething, terrible . . . a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry . . . a painful angry knob. . . . Great is its seething like a burning cinder . . . a grievous thing of ashy color.' Its eruption is ugly like the 'seeds of black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea-coal . . . the early ornaments of black death, cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like halfpence, like berries. . . .''

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'The Oriflamme [was the] forked-tongue scarlet banner of the Kings of France. . . . Legend derived the banner from Charlemagne, who was said to have carried it to the Holy Land in response to an angel's prophecy that a knight armed with a golden lance from whose tip flames of 'great marvel' burned would deliver the land from the Saracens. [It was e]mbroidered with [the] golden flames that gave it its name. . . .'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'Shop signs were gargantuan, the better to overwhelm customers. . . . A tooth-puller was represented by a tooth the size of an armchair, a glover by a glove with each finger big enough to hold a baby.'

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

[Glazed with] a paste of powdered egg yolk, saffron, and flour sometimes mixed with real gold leaf.

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'Like most affluent lords, [the Duc de Berry] had a good library of classics and contemporary works; he commissioned translations from the Latin, bought romances from booksellers in Paris, and bound his books in precious bindings, some in red velvet with gold clasps. He commissioned from renowned illuminators at least twenty Books of Hours, among them two exquisite masterpieces, the Grandes Heures and Tr's Riches Heures. His pleasure was to see illustrated his favorite scenes and portraits, including his own. Delicate multiple-towered cities and castles, rural occupations, knights and ladies in garden, hunt, and banquet hall, clad in garments of surpassing elegance, ornamented the prayerbooks. The Duke himself usually appears robed in the pure sky blue, whose pigment was so precious that two pots of it were listed in an inventory of Berry's 'treasures.''

'Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.

'I don't think I'd ever seen such a frump. The white wraparound uniform she wore, probably supplied by the restaurant, was about six sizes too large for her, and she appeared to be trying to fight her way out of it when she moved. Her hair was done up in what I can only describe as a wad. She wore a pair of tiny dime-store glasses which squeezed her eyes to the size of beans. Her severe little face was shiny, utterly free of so much as a little powder. Worst of all was her body, or perhaps her posture. . . .

I've said I was a not-so-much myself. Compared to her I was a combination of Prince Charming and Einstein. . . .'

'Jim Thompson, from Sunrise at Midnight; Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson, 1988.

'[I]t seemed unlikely that any metal but gold would have received so much careful workmanship.

It just wasn't done, . . . Diamonds were not mounted in tin. Expert craftsmen did not spend their valuable time on the intrinsically cheap.'

'Jim Thompson, from The Cellini Chalice, 1956; Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson, 1988.

'Dawn, and the little flocks of silver-enameled tanks on every hill and the fifty-five thousand barrel tanks in the valley made you think of diamonds in a dime-store brooch'so much wealth in such an outlandish place.

The purple ribbons of oil splashed down every hill and turned brown and gold in the sun. Up the valley the lights on the drilling rig winked out.'

'Jim Thompson, from Character at Iraan, 1930; Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson, 1988.

'My name is White''Blackie' White, to my friends. The nickname derives from the one I was actually given, which is Black. . . .

I'm a private detective.'

'Jim Thompson, from The Red Kitten; Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson, 1988.

''I get you alone, and I'm going to pop every pimple on your pretty pink butt!''

'Jim Thompson, the voice of Bobo Justus in The Grifters, 1963.

'Behold, ye Fair! how radiant Colours glow,
What dyes the Rose; what paints the heav'nly Bow,
The purpling Shade, the rich refracted Ray,
And all th' unblended Beams of various Day.'

'Henry Jones, Philosophy, from Poems on Several Occasions, 1749; quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'[W]ith a dash of white paint on your walls, you will be masters of yourselves. And then you will wish to be precise; to be right, to think clearly. You will surround yourselves with order when your work has created confusion. After work you will tidy up, you will see what it has produced. . . . The Law of White Lead would bring with it the joy of living, the joy of acting.'

'Le Corbusier; quoted in The Furniture of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld by Daniele Baroni, 1977.

'Limewash has been associated with man's dwelling places ever since the birth of humanity; the stones are calcinated, ground, distempered in water, and the walls are made of a very pure white: a white which has an extraordinary beauty.

If the house is white all over, the form of things stands out without the possibility of confusion; the volume emerges sharply; the color of objects is categorical. Limewash is absolute, everything stands out against it and is inscribed on it absolutely. . . .'

'Le Corbusier; quoted in The Furniture of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld by Daniele Baroni, 1977.

'Life like a dome of many-coloured glass
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.'

'Shelley, from Adonais; quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Fountain of Light, thyself invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st
Thron'd inaccessible.'

'John Milton, from Paradise Lost, referring to the 'Author of all Being'; quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Some range the colours as they parted fly,
Clear-pointed to the philosophic eye;
The flaming red, that pains the dwelling gaze,
The stainless, lightsome yellow's gilding rays;
The clouded orange, that betwixt them glows,
And to kind mixture tawny lustre owes;
All-chearing green, that gives the spring its dye;
The bright transparent blue, that robes the sky;
And indico, which shaded light displays,
And violet, which in the view decays.'

'Richard Savage, from The Wanderer, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'At thee the ruby lights its deepening flow,
And with a saving radiance inward flames.
From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean; and, of evening tinct,
The purple-streaming amethyst is thine.
With thy own smile the yellow topaz burns;
Nor deeper verdure dyes the robe of Spring,
When first she gives it to the southern gale,
Than the green emerald shows. But, all combined,
Thick through the whitening opal play thy beams;
Or, flying from its surface, form
A trembling variance of revolving hues
As the site varies in the gazer's hand.'

'James Thomson, from Summer, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'The milky way, whose stream of vivid light,
Pour'd from innumerable fountains round
Flows trembling, wave on wave, from sun to sun,
And whitens the long path to Heaven's extreme.'

'David Mallet, from The Excursion, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear
Seen in the Galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powdered with stars.'

'John Milton, from Paradise Lost, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

Just click to see more pictures of this insanely huge diamond mine in Eastern Siberia. Found via Fark.

'Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. . . . Our sight . . . may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of touch, that spreads itself over an infinite multitude of bodies. . . . We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight.'

'Joseph Addison, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Among colours, such as are soft and cheerful (except, perhaps, a strong red which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images. An immense mountain, covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue, and night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of sad and fuscous colours, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like.'

'Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1806; as quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects, so as in its effects exactly to resemble darkness. After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots, the impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus are two ideas, as opposite as can be imagined, reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime.'

'Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1806; as quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Darkness strikes the sense no less than Light.'

'Alexander Pope, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'Darkness has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself, our point supreme!'

'Edward Young, from Night Thoughts, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'The Sun's Light when he unfolds it
Depends on the Organ that beholds it.'

'William Blake, from What is Man', quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'That God is Colouring Newton does shew,
And the devil is Black outline, all of us know.'

'William Blake, from To Venetian Artists, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.

'And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.'

'The Bible, as quoted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr in The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

'The planet Mercury sings like a crystal goblet.

One side of Mercury faces the Sun. That side has always faced the Sun. That side is a sea of white-hot dust.

The other side faces the nothingness of space eternal. That side has always faced the nothingness of space eternal. That side is a forest of giant blue-white crystals, aching cold.

It is the tension between the hot hemisphere of day-without-end and the cold hemisphere of night-without-end that makes Mercury sing.'

'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

'Saint Elmo's fire is a luminous electrical discharge, and any creature afflicted by it is subject to discomfort no worse than the discomfort of being tickled by a feather. All the same, the creature appears to be on fire, and can be forgiven for being dismayed.'

'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

''The name of the new religion,' said Rumfoord, 'is the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

'The flag of that church will be blue and gold,' said Rumfoord. 'These words will be written on that flag in gold letters on a blue field: Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.''

'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

'There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive'

The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed.'

'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

'His Wig was as black and smooth as the plumes of a Raven, and hung as strait as the hair of a River-God rising from the water.'

'The Scriblerus Club (John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell and Robert Harley), from the fictitious and fanciful Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 1723.

'He it was, that first found out the Palpability of Colours; and by the delicacy of his Touch, could distinguish the different vibrations of the heterogeneous Rays of Light.'

'The Scriblerus Club (John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell and Robert Harley), Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 1723.

'In Architecture, he builds not with so much regard to present symmetry or conveniency, as with a Thought well worthy a true lover of Antiquity, to wit, the noble effect the Building will have to posterity, when it shall fall and become a Ruin.'

'The Scriblerus Club (John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell and Robert Harley), Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 1723.

''You want to fly through space' God has already given you the most wonderful space ship in all creation! Yes! Speed' You want speed' The space ship God has given you goes sixty-six thousand miles an hour'and will keep on running at that speed for all eternity, if God wills it. You want a space ship that will carry men in comfort' . . . He's given you a space ship that will carry billions of men, women and children! Yes! And they don't have to stay strapped in chairs or wear fishbowls over their heads. No! Not on God's space ship. The people on God's space ship can go swimming, and walk in the sunshine and play baseball and go ice skating and go for family rides in the family automobile on Sunday after church and a family chicken dinner!''

'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr; Reverend Bobby Denton, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.

'The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore. . . . He came from the yearly advertisements of the Coca-Cola Company. He wears the corporate colors'the famous red and white'for a reason: he is working out of Atlanta, not out of the North Pole.'

'James B. Twitchell, from Twenty Ads that Shook the World, 2000.

''Each memory in turn is treasured in the lovely, lighted depths of her engagement diamond, to be an endless source of happy inspiration. For such a radiant role, her diamond need not be costly or of many carats, but it must be chosen with care.'. . .

It was from the exhaustion of writing such carbonated prose [for De Beers diamonds] that the most compressed diamond of a headline was formed. In April of 1947, Frances Gerety was laboring mightily. . . . She was exhausted from trying to come up with a new line that would bring together all the intrinsic and romantic qualities of the diamond and have it not make any sense whatsoever. . . . 'Dog tired, I put my head down and said, 'Please God, send me a line.'' He must have because she wrote, 'A Diamond Is Forever.''

'James B. Twitchell, from Twenty Ads that Shook the World, 2000.

'The ivy had grown so profusely that many windows were now sealed up. The kitchen was so dark that they could scarcely tell a kettle from a cullender. A poor black cat had been mistaken for coals and shovelled on the fire. Most of the maids were already wearing three or four red-flannel petticoats, though the month was August.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'She, who believed in no immortality, could not help feeling that her soul would come and go for ever with the reds on the panels and the greens on the sofa. For the room'she had strolled into the Ambassador's bedroom'shone like a shell that has lain at the bottom of the sea for centuries and has been crusted over and painted a million tints by the water; it was rose and yellow, green and sand-coloured. It was frail as a shell, as iridescent and as empty.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'The letter S, she reflected, is the serpent in the Poet's Eden. Do what she would there were still too many of these sinful reptiles in the first stanzas of 'The Oak Tree.''

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928. S is the serpent in the Font Designer's Eden, as well.

'It now seemed to her that the whole world was ringed with gold. She went in to dinner. Wedding rings abounded. She went to church. Wedding rings were everywhere. She drove out. Gold, or pinchbeck, thin, thick, plain, smooth, they glowed dully on every hand. Rings filled the jewellers' shops, not the flashing pastes and diamonds of Orlando's recollections, but simple bands without a stone in them.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'Clorinda was a sweet-mannered gentle lady enough;'indeed Orlando was greatly taken with her for six months and a half; but she had white eyelashes and could not bear the sight of blood.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

''The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said . . . 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.''

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'Here and there burnt vast bonfires of cedar and oak wood, lavishly salted, so that the flames were of green, orange, and purple fire. But however fiercely they burnt, the heat was not enough to melt the ice which, though of singular transparency, was yet of the hardness of steel. So clear indeed was it that there could be seen, congealed at a depth of several feet, here a porpoise, there a flounder. Shoals of eels lay motionless in a trance, but whether their state was one of death or merely of suspended animation which the warmth would revive puzzled the philosophers. Near London Bridge, where the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty fathoms, a wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible, lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last autumn, overladen with apples. The old bumboat woman, who was carrying her fruit to market on the Surrey side, sat there in her plaids and farthingales with her lap full of apples, for all the world as if she were about to serve a customer, though a certain blueness about the lips hinted the truth. 'Twas a sight King James specially liked to look upon, and he would bring a troupe of courtiers to gaze with him. In short, nothing could exceed the brilliancy and gaiety of the scene by day. But it was at night that the carnival was at its merriest. For the frost continued unbroken; the nights were of perfect stillness; the moon and stars blazed with the hard fixity of diamonds, and to the fine music of flute and trumpet the courtiers danced.'

'Virginia Wolfe, a specially brilliant passage from Orlando, 1928.

'The person, whatever the name or sex, was about middle height, very slenderly fashioned, and dressed entirely in oyster-coloured velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish-coloured fur.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'[H]alting at length, out of breath, she said, panting slightly, that he was like a million-candled Christmas tree (such as they have in Russia) hung with yellow globes; incandescent; enough to light a whole street by; (so one might translate it) for what with his glowing cheeks, his dark curls, his black and crimson cloak, he looked as if he were burning with his own radiance, from a lamp lit within.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'He held that the mixture of brown earth and blue blood was a good one.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here he showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. . . . The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre.'

'Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.

'I do believe [San Francisco mural painter Hilaire] Hiller knows more about color than any man alive. He eats and drinks color. Himself he's the color of color. He's not just colorful, as we say of certain gay and charming birds, but he's color itself. That means that he refracts light extraordinarily well. Sometimes he becomes a veritable aurora borealis.'

'Henry Miller, from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945.

'A little beyond looms the face of the beloved. Ever larger, ever fuller, ever clearer it grows: a moon-glow that saturates an empty sky. Slowly, slow as claustral fever, the nebulae arrive. Little medallions constellate the panic that clouds the orifices of fright. Intaglio depths gleam from the precipitious walls of new world hearts. Through the laughing mouth oceans leap in to being and pain still-born is cried down again. The marvels of emptiness parade their defilement, the embryonic unsheath their splendor. Echolalia mounts her throne. The web stretches tighter, the ravisher is ravished. A slat gives way, an axe falls; little children drop like flowers on the burnished hearth beneath the open door. It is the morning of the day after the night before on the threshold of unsubjugated repetition. It fits like a silver-studded bracelet on a warm wrist.'

'Henry Miller, from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945.

Linds and Lu, collage by Paul Dean, 2006. Lu is Lindsay's favorite poodle, Lulu.

'Put a crayfish in a silent aqaurium, add a turtle and it gets eaten, but add some random background noise to simulate the crackling and popping we can hear on underwater recordings made with hydrophones and the crayfish escapes. This is called stochastic resonance. Aural white noise or visual white noise can help both humans and crayfish to distinguish the event they want to see or hear. The randomness of white noise allows more possiblilites of a very faint sound wave finding another wave with which it can resonate and so be reinforced.'

'David Toop, from Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory, 2004.

'I sat at my desk in the office staring down at the white tablet. It was more or less flying-saucer-shaped, a streamlined disk with the tiniest of holes at one end. It was only after moments of intense scrutiny that I'd been able to spot the hole.'

'Don DeLillo, from White Noise, 1985.

'[I]t was dark'all dark'the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.'

'Edgar Allen Poe, from The Premature Burial, 1844.

'Unlike CDs and other digital playback formats, the record is an object that perfectly symbolises and embodies its morbid role in the preservation and transmission of sonic culture. A spiral scratch, its gleaming dark circle is the black hole into which memories are poured, only to emerge again as ghost voices, life preserved beyond death.'

'David Toop, from Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory, 2004.

All I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world'
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

'Robert Browning (1812-89).

'I procured me a Triangular glass-Prisme to try therewith the celebrated Phaenomena of Colours. And in order thereto having darkened my chamber, and made a small hole in my window-shuts, to let in a convenient quantity of the Sun's light, I placed my Prisme at his entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to the opposite wall. It was at first a very pleasing divertisement, to view the vivid and intense colours produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction, I expected should have been circular.

And I saw . . . that the light, tending to [one] end of the Image did suffer a Refraction considerably greater then the light tending to the other. And so the true cause of the length of that Image was detected to be no other, then the Light consists of Rays differently refrangible, which, without any respect to a difference in their incidence, were, according to their degrees of refrangibility, transmitted towards divers parts of the wall.

Then I placed another Prisme . . . so that the light . . . might pass through that also, and be again refacted before it arrived at the wall. This done, I took the first Prisme in my hand and turned it to and fro slowly about its Axis, so much as to make the several parts of the Image . . . successively pass through . . . that I might observe to what places on the wall the second Prisme would refract them.

When any one sort of Rays hath been parted from those of other kinds, it hath afterwards obstinately retained its colour, notwithstanding my utmost endeavours to change it.'

'Sir Isaac Newton, from Optics, written during the plague years of 1665-66, first published in 1704.

'Some scientists (especially physicists) [and] some artists (especially musicians) . . . noticed long ago that a musical sound, for example, provokes an association of a precise color. . . . Stated otherwise, you 'hear' the color and you 'see' the sound. . . .

YELLOW . . . possesses the special capacity to 'ascend' higher and higher and to attain heights unbearable to the eye and the spirit; the sound of trumpet played higher and higher becoming more and more 'pointed,' giving pain to the ear and to the spirit. BLUE, with the completely opposite power to 'descend' into infinite depths, develops the sounds of the flute (when it is light blue), of the cello (when it has descended farther), of the double bass with its magnificent deep sounds; and in the depths of the organ you 'see' the depths of blue. GREEN is well balanced and corresponds to the medium and the attenuated sounds of the violin. When skillfully applied, RED (vermillion) can give the impression of strong drum beats, etc.'

'Wassily Kandinsky, from Concrete Art, 1938.

'How is it possible still to see the human face pink, now that our life, redoubled by noctambulism, has multiplied our perceptions as colorists' The human face is yellow, red, green, blue, violet. The pallor of a woman gazing in a jeweller's window is more intensely iridescent that the prismatic fires of the jewels that fascinate her like a lark.'

'F.T. Marinetti, from his Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto, 1910.

'I should lie out in the garden in a hammock, and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the book would fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds, floating like white-sailed ships, across its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds, and the low rustling of the trees.'

'Jerome K. Jerome, On Being Idle, 1889.

'Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable: it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged'never mind by whom . . . 'and even my proposal to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it into a charcoal has not been conceded.'

'G.K. Chesterton, On Lying in Bed, 1926.

'Once in khaki suits
Gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin' thru Hell,
I was the kid with the drum.'

'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime', music by Jay Gorney, words by E.Y. Harburg, 1932; quoted by Norman Mailer in The Naked and the Dead, 1948.

'The sunset was magnificent with the intensity and brilliance that can be found only in the tropics. . . .

It was a sensual isle, a Biblical land of ruby wines and golden sands and indigo trees. The men stared and stared. The island hovered before them like an Oriental monarch's conception of heaven, and they responded to it with an acute and terrible longing. It was a vision of all the beauty for which they had ever yearned, all the ecstasy they had ever sought. . . .

It could not last. Slowly, inevitably, the beach began to dissolve in the encompassing night. The golden sands grew faint, became gray-green, and darkened. The island sank into the water, and the tide of night washed over the rose and lavender hills. After a little while, there was only the gray-black ocean, the darkened sky, and the evil churning of the gray-white wake. Bits of phosphorescence swirled in the foam. The black dead ocean looked like a mirror of the the night; it was cold, implicit with dread and death. The men felt it absorb them in a silent pervasive terror. They turned back to their cots, settled down for the night, and shuddered for a long while in their blankets.'

'Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, 1948.

'Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams'Joseph intepreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, and ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.'

'E.B. White, Writings for the New Yorker 1927-1976, 1991, as quoted by Marcel Danesi in Brands, 2006.

'We are great fools. 'He has spent his life in idleness,' we say, and 'I have done nothing today.' What! have you not lived' That is not only the fundamental, but the most noble of your occupations. 'If I had been put in charge of some great affair, I might have shown what I can do.' Have you been able to reflect on your life and control it' Then you have performed the greatest work of all.'

'Michel de Montainge, from On Experience, 1580.

'The eye accomplishes the prodigious work of opening the soul to what is not the soul'the joyous realm of things and their god, the sun.'

'Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from Eye and Mind, translated by Carleton Dallery, 1964.

'As a medium, color is a go-between for the values weak and dispersed in ordinary experiences and the new concentrated perception occasioned by a painting.'

'John Dewey, from Art as Experience, 1934.

'First China's sons, with early art elate,
Form'd the gay tea-pot, and the pictured plate;
Saw with illumined brow and dazzled eyes
In the red stove vitrescent colours rise;
Speck'd her tall beakers with enamel'd stars,
Her monster-josses, and gigantic jars;
Smear'd her huge dragons with metallic hues,
With golden purples, and cobaltic blues;
Bade on wide hills her porcelain castles glare,
And glazed Pagodas tremble in the air.'

'Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), from Botanic Garden.

'. . . Light itself, which every thing displays,
Shone undiscovered, till his brighter mind
Untwisted all the shining robe of day;
And, from the whitening undistinguished blaze,
Collecting every ray into his kind,
To the charmed eye educed the gorgeous train
Of parent colours. First the flaming red
Sprung vivid forth; the tawny orange next;
And next delicious yellow; by whose side
Fell the kind beams of all-refreshing green.
Then the pure blue, that swells autumnal skies,
Ethereal played; and then, of sadder hue,
Emerged the deepened indigo, as when
The heavy-skirted evening droops with frost;
While the last gleamings of refracted light
Died in the fainting violet away.'

'James Thomson (1700-48), To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton.

'Revlon was founded in 1932 by Charles Revson, with his brother Joseph and chemist Charles Lachman. The brand name is a slight modification of Revson's name. Revlon lipstick and nail enamel became an instant market success story among female consumers, possibly because it was promoted with exotic names such as Tropic Sky, rather than merely descriptive ones such [as] dark red, medium red, pink, etc. The images that the Revlon names evoke are abstract ones associated with the exotic world of nature.'

'Marcel Danesi, Brands, 2006.

'The eye contact that the female is perceived to make with the viewer in [many] . . . ads is particularly forceful as a sexual signifier. The pupils are generally dilated . . . . This comes as no surprise since the female face is perceived as more sexually attractive when the pupils are dilated. In fact, in earlier times in Italy, extracts of the drug belladonna were used for its cosmetic effect, given that it produces extreme dilation of the pupils. . . . [This] explain[s] the origin of its name, which in Italian means 'beautiful woman.''

'Marcel Danesi, Brands, 2006.

'Consider the letter X . . . which comes from an Egyptian hieroglyph. As a rotated cross it acts, arguably, on our collective unconscious. It is what Jung called an archetype'symbols that are embedded in the collective unconscious of our species. The X was originally a pictograph and thus a symbol associated primarily with priests. It became an alphabet character later'every alphabet character, in fact, was born as a pictograph. The first alphabetic system emerged in the Middle East around 1000 BCE, and was then transported by the Phoenicians (a people from a territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, located largely in modern-day Lebanon) to Greece. It contained signs for consonant sounds only. When it reached Greece, signs for vowel sounds were added to it, making the Greek system the first full-fledged alphabetic one. . . .

In a fascinating book titled Sign after the X (2000), Marina Roy has traced the history of this sign, showing that it has had very little to do with phonetics at any period of its history. Here are a few of its traditional meanings:

' any unknown or unnamed factor, thing, or person
' the signature of any illiterate person
' the sign for mistake
' cancellation
' the unknown, especially in mathematics
' the multiplication symbol
' the Roman numeral ten
' a mechanical defect
' on a map a location
' choice on a ballot
' a motion-picture rating
' a symbol for Christ
' the symbol for a kiss
' the symbol for Chronos, the Greek god of Time
' the symbol for planet Saturn in Greek and Roman mythology.

Today, it stands for youth culture (Generation X), adventure comic heroes (X-Men), and erotic movies (X-rated).'

'Marcel Danesi, Brands, 2006.

'Mary Stagg, Thomas Stagg, crucifix, 5 dots, shoe, crucifix, WS, man with stick, HK, dog, Gwynson, X Mary Robinson, Liberty, bracelet on right arm, Eliza Smith, O Sun and blue marks and rings all over right hand; man and woman, two men fighting, TS WS LS LHHS 1842, anchor, MSCS on left arm, blue dots and rings on fingers of left hand, H Stagg, William, crucifix, sun and moon on breast, ABCDEFGH on left leg, large scar on upper right arm.'

'the tattoos of twenty-three-year-old Charles Stagg, as listed on a 'wanted' poster of the 1840s; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

Butterflies, a collage by Paul Dean, 2006. The newest piece in the exhibition Diamond Cutter, now showing at the Baton Rouge Gallery.

'So corrupt was their most ordinary language . . . that, in their dialect, evil was literally called good, and good, evil'the well-disposed man was branded wicked, whilst the leader in monstrous vice was styled virtuous.'

'William Ullathorne, a Catholic priest, on the convict society he encounted on Norfolk Island in the early 1800s; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

Tejo Remy's Chest of Drawers (detail), 1991; used drawers, maple. At the Droog store, Amsterdam. Photo by Paul Dean.

'[T]he Tasmanian bushrangers began as convict kangaroo hunters who stayed out in the bush and formed gangs. . . .

They had long ratty hair, thick beards, roughly sewn garments and moccasins of kangaroo hide, a pistol stuck in a rope belt, a stolen musket, a polecat's stench. When on raids, they blacked their faces with charcoal. Most of them would kill a man as soon as a kangaroo. Some joked about this.'

'Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

[T]hose who cut the panes out of shopwindows.

'Henry Mayhew, from an analysis of the London underworld in London Labor and the London Poor, 1862; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

[T]hose who steal clean clothes off the hedges.

'Henry Mayhew, from an analysis of the London underworld in London Labor and the London Poor, 1862; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

'The black-spice racket consisted of stealing bags of soot from sweeps. . . .'

'Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

'O all the myriad kinds of thief [in 19th century London] . . . the most dextrous were the files and buzz-gloaks, or pickpockets. . . . A pupil with no talent for this was scorned as a purple dromedary.'

'Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

'Even 25 lashes (known as a tester . . . ) was a draconic torture, able to skin a man's back and leave it a tangled web of criss-crossed knotted scars. . . .

The scarred back became an emblem of rank. So did silence. Convicts called a man who blubbered and screamed at the triangles a crawler or a sandstone. (Sandstone is a common rock around Sydney; it is soft and crumbles easily.) By contrast, the convict who stood up to it in silence was admired as a pebble or an iron man. He would show his shapes (strip for punishment) with disdain, and after the domino (last lash) he would spit at the feet of the man who gave him his red shirt. There were always more sandstones than pebbles.'

'Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

'And always, everywhere on the expanding limits of settlement, the Aborigine was seen as a mere native pest, like a dingo or kangaroo. He was a myall, a murky, a boong or (in a phrase that precisely expressed the whites' belief in his inevitable passing) a dark cloud.'

'Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

The color of eggs comes exclusively from the pigment in the outer layer of the shell and may range from an almost pure white to a deep brown, with many shades in between. The only determinant of egg color is the breed of the chicken. . . .

A simple test to determine the color of a hen's eggs is to look at her earlobes. If the earlobes are white, the hen will lay white eggs. If the earlobes are red, she will produce brown eggs.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

White light consists of all the primary and secondary colors in the spectrum. Each color is distinguished by the degree to which it scatters and absorbs light. When sunlight hits seawater, part of it is absorbed while the rest is scattered in all directions after colliding with water molecules.

When sunlight hits clear water, red and infrared light absorb rapidly, and blue the least easily. According to Curtiss O. Davis . . . 'only blue-green light can be transmitted into, scattered and then transmitted back out of the water without being absorbed.' By the time the light has reached ten fathoms deep, most of the red has been absorbed.

Why doesn't tap water appear blue' Curtiss continues: 'To see this blue effect, the water must be on the order of ten feet deep or deeper. In a glass there is not enough water to absorb much light, not even the red; consequently, the water appears clear.'

Thus if clear water is of a depth of more than ten feet, it is likely to appear blue in the sunlight. How can we explain green and red oceans'

Both are the result not of the optical qualities of sunlight but of the presence of assorted gook in the water itself. A green sea is the combination of the natural blue color with yellow substances in the ocean'humic acids, suspended debris, and living organisms. Red water (usually in coastal areas) is created by an abundance of algae or plankton near the surface of the water. In open waters, comparatively free from debris and the environmental effects of humans, the ocean usually appears to be blue.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

'Go where the branching coral hives
Unending strife of endless lives,
Where, leagued about the 'wildered boat,
The rainbow jellies fill and float;
And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The starfish trips on all her fingers;'

'Rudyard Kipling, from The Palms, the poem which opens A Matter of Fact.

''They prayed, an' the butter-fires blazed up an' the incense turned everything blue, an' between that an' the fires the women looked as tho' they were all ablaze an' twinklin'. . . . The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts clickin', and the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an' dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from the roof, and that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end where my foot was, stood the livin' spit an' image o' mysilf worked on the linin'. This man here, ut was.'

He hunted into the folds of his pink cloak, ran hand under one, and thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to Mulvaney.'

'Rudyard Kipling, The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.

''Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat'jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:'

'Rudyard Kipling, from Mandalay.

'Have you ever seen an opal' Well, the Burmese sky has just that sort of white glow, tinted here and there with iridescent flecks of light. To see marble towers spiraling up against such a sky makes you feel as if you are dreaming.'

'Michio Takeyama, Harp of Burma, translated from the Japanese by Howard Hibbett, 1966.

'With the help of the natives and of the monks from a nearby village, I managed to bury these corpses in the sandy river bank. And while digging in the sand one day I found a large ruby'one of the famous Burmese rubies. it shone like a deep red flame of dazzling brilliance.

As I held it in my hand this jewel reminded me of the souls of the dead. Since I could not carry their ashes around with me, I regarded this ruby as symbolizing the spirits of all the men who had died here in Bruma; and thereafter I always kept it on my person. Whenever I visited a temple I placed it on the altar to worship.'

'Michio Takeyama, Harp of Burma, translated from the Japanese by Howard Hibbett, 1966.

'It is not the black clothes that are trying to the sight'black is the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours make the eyes water after looking at 'em for any long time; but of all colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding, it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful . . . everything seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There's more military tailors blind than any others.'

'Henry Mayhew, quoting a tailor in London Labor and the London Poor, 1862; quoted by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 1987.

Florence Nightingale always wore a white uniform. White, of course, is a symbol of purity, and in the case of a nurse, an appropriate and practical one'white quickly shows any dirtiness.

Surgeons also wore white unitl 1914, when a surgeon decided that red blood against a white uniform was rather repulsive and needlessly graphic. The spinach green color he chose to replace it helped neutralize the bright red.

At the end of World War II, the lighting was changed in operating rooms, and most surgeons switched to a color called 'misty green.' Since about 1960, most surgeons have used a color called 'seal blue,' which contains a lot of gray. Why this latest switch' . . . [S]eal blue shows up better on the TV monitors used to demonstrate surgical techniques to medical students.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

Those white moons are called lunula. Lunulae are nothing more than trapped air prevented from moving up the nail by the closer fit between the finger and nail from where the lunula ends. These air 'pockets' serve no apparent purpose.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

From black pepper. The most popular of all spices (salt is not a spice) is not related to sweet red, green, or hot peppers, but is the dried berry of a woody, climbing vine knows as Piper nigrum L.

On the vine the peppercorn is neither white nor black. As the fruit ripens, it turns from green to yellow and then to red. To make black pepper, the berries are picked while somewhat immature and then dried. As they dry, their skin turns a dark color. When ground, the pepper contains both light and dark particles'because the whole peppercorn is used'but the general appearance is dark.

White pepper is left on the vine to mature, at which point it is easier to separate the dark skin. The berries are soaked to loosen the skin as much as possible and then rubbed to remove it entirely. After the dark skin is discarded, the naked white peppercorns are put out in the sun to dry. . . .

Why bother with white pepper' Often it is used solely for aesthetic purposes, such as in light-colored sauces and soups where little black specks may upset the chef's carefully orchestrated balance (or be misconstrued as little black insect fragments). Some spice wimps also prefer white pepper for its milder taste and smell. . . .

[Green peppercorns] . . . are immature berries not left out in the sun but either packed in liquid (usually wine vinegar or brine) or freeze-dried in order to retain the dinstinctive green color. Because green peppercorns are harvested at an early stage of the berry's development, they are quite mild, but they do have a distinctive tase, which is prized by nouvelle cuisine restaurateurs.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

Most homes in the United States have always been painted white. Paint was first used as a preservative as much as an aesthetic expression. White was evidently believed to be more durable than other mixtrues, but there were also historical reasons for its popularity. White was associated with the classic Greek and Roman architectural forms. Furthermore, Puritans viewed color as frivolous; the 'seriousness' of white continued to appeal to Americans as late a the mid-nineteenth century. . . .

In the late nineteenth century, white houses became the vogue once again, and although tastes in home colors have gone through many cycles in the past hundred years, white has never become unfashionable.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.

This term was first applied to the royalty of Spain during the Renaissance. The job of royalty, back then, was to loll around the palace, attempting never to lift a finger for any reason.

Because of their total lack of physical exertion, their blood was cool, lacking the oxygen induced by exercise. As a result, their veins actually showed through their skin, and so it appeared that their blood was pale blue.

'David Feldman, from Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise' and other Imponderables, 1988.