We're honored to have captured the spirit of Brentwood for DGuides' resource on the greater Los Angeles area.  Our photo shows the hilltop Getty Museum from the Angeleno Hotel.

It's no secret that we love the greater Los Angeles area, and we'll take Brentwood's portrait anytime Brentwood wants us to.

Inspired by Andrew Lovatt

"The only difference between Comedy and Tragedy is when the curtain falls.  After the applause, Time keeps on its relentless march."  —Myrlin A Hermes, The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet

Prof. Oddfellow exits a door to nowhere at Portmeirion's colonnade.

We have a new item for the running joke about how water and other things spin clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.  In New Zealand, the rotary phones went from 9 to 0.  (The illustration is from Peter Jackson's horror/splatstick film Dead Alive.)  Our insightful friend Tamara notes that in both hemispheres the zero is fixed at the bottom of the dial.  Aha!  That's why we sometimes put a slash through the zero — it represents the equator, angled in honor of the Earth's axis!

Why I Have Never Left Portmeirion

(for Ken Smith, in the style of Emily Dickinson's
"I Never Saw a Moor," and hyperlinked to photos)

I never saw the port,
I never heard the sea;
Yet I waved down a flagstone boat
(an Atlas guided me).

A Golden Dragon's treasure:
the Buddha's missing hand;
A wild, Gwyllt-y pleasure:
the estuary sand.

The Watch House has no clocks,
The bell tower makes no sound;
Yet the humming of a Mermaid's rocks
has rendered me spellbound.

Apparently, cutting out the faces of ex-boyfriends dates back to the mid-1600s.  (Actually, this an intermediate plate from when Cromwell's head was replaced with Charles I's.  See the before and after of Pierre Lombart's engraving here.)

"He wondered briefly if the waiting was getting to the Medusa like it was to him, and then knew it wouldn't be."
—Marvin Albert, The Medusa Complex, 1983

To read Jeff's entire piece, click here.

Thanks to the Mystic Medusa for showcasing our Tarot of Portmeirion this week!

Athanasius Kircher invented the "polydyptic theater," "in which about sixty little mirrors lining the inside of a large box transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library" (Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler).

Don't miss Janet Boyer's lovely review of our Tarot of Portmeirion deck.

Did you know you can generate and download your own symbolic calendar each month (for free)?  Visit our MysteryArts.com/magic site, scroll to the bottom of the page, and give it a try.

From our "Magic Words" outpost at Blogger:

Don't miss this clip of our eccentric short talk entitled "Jeff McBride and His Precursors," in which we trace one stage magician's effect on art backwards through time.

"'And? And?' he prompted."
—Katherine Kurtz, The Temple and the Crown, 2001, p. 178

Image by Tobias Battenberg.  Image source.

"In a cloud of people, we humans still can easily recognise and then be attentive to the voice of a particular person(s) we know." —Tetsuya Hoya, Artificial Mind System

Photo by Alexey Titarenko.  Image source.  Via fffound.

"My Mummy says I'm her little eyes and ears."
—Terry Bazes, Goldsmith's Return

Photo by Tommy Oshima.  Via ffffound. Terry Bazes writes, "Little Lucretzia and her mummy say hello."

"He couldn't unlatch the chain so he broke the door open with his shoulders."
—Wang Ping, Foreign Devil, 1996.

The Defendius Door Chain by Art Lebedey Studio.

An Animated Collage of a Hans Freibusch Mural

At the fairy-tale Welsh village of Portmeirion, Hans Feibusch's classical-style ceiling mural graces the archway of the Gate House.  The figures are pagan deities, reminiscent of ancient zodiacal personages at play in the heavens.  Acrobatically tumbling through the ethers, one figure atop a horse reaches out to join hands with another whose cape billows like a parachute.  Though their fingers haven’t yet touched, their eyes are locked.  The composition suggests a Yin/Yang balance and a clockwise cyclical flow.  These figures may symbolize a connection, bonding, or affinity.  They epitomize the quest for the Other that stretches us as human beings, at the risk of breaking our hearts.

The mural is too large to be photographed in a single frame.  We have animated the reconstruction of the complete image from 23 separate photographs.  Click here to choose your perspective.