A new booklet by Prof. Oddfellow promises a mystic vision in one minute.  (Staring at the sun isn't required; the effect will work with a light bulb.)

"As I stared at the sun, it no longer shone brightly but became dark, as black as a piece of black cloth."
—A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday

Vampire by Edvard Munch

Vampiric Colors

"Color?" said the vampire. "Is that all? Color iss eazy-peazy. How soon do you vant it?"
—Terry Pratchett, The Truth, 2001

Black silk, white incisors, blood-red lips, pallid complexions, deep purple velvet. Truly, "the horror of vampirism is expressed in color" (Diane Negra, The Irish in Us, 2006). The timeless lore of vampires has left a colorful and enduring mark on world culture. If you think most vampires sport Transylvanian accents and Carpathian fashions, think again. Chinese vampires (Geung-Si), for example, have a rich history of their own. Their limbs stiffened by rigor mortis, Chinese vampires move by hopping, their arms outstretched like zombies to seize their prey. They have long fangs and even longer fingernails, which they use to stab their victims and suck out the life energy. They wear traditional Manchu robes of black silk and round black hats from the Qing dynasty. What turns a corpse into a Chinese vampire? A lingering lust for revenge, an improper burial, a violent death, or a mischievous spirit. Chinese vampires can be stopped only by Taoist priests armed with magic talismans. The priest paints red calligraphy onto a yellow strip of parchment and slaps the talisman onto the vampire's ghastly white forehead, rendering him immobile. Makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin has a tip for making very dark vampire colors less extreme and severe. He recommends surrounding the vampire color with taupe or brownish-gray (Jessica Pallingston, Lipstick, 1999).

Because vampires are allergic to sunlight, vampiric colors often evoke the shades of midnight:

by LOKAOTICO

As vampires are sustained by blood, it comes as no surprise that there are a great many sanguinary colors:

by Wellstone

It takes a pointed tooth to draw blood:

Immortality carries with it the dust of the ages:

by Jim Frazier

No bedroom of the living dead would be complete without a coffin:

Some vampires sport unnatural complexions:

The classic vampire mane is black:

Vampiric wardrobes reflect the height of gothic fashion:

Has there ever been a vampire with garlic breath?

by msmall

The easiest way to break a vampire's heart is with a wooden stake:

A talisman can also do the trick:

[Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]

Is the universe truly a clockwork contraption?  A close-up of the sun's surface shows how ancient humans first learned to tell time.

From the nonist: This image is "a color composite I created combining 6 hand drawn black and white images, each by a different astronomer, of a total solar eclipse which occurred on July 18th 1860. Although photography already existed at the time of this eclipse it was nowhere near precise enough to make truly useful astronomical observations. The astronomers who recorded it continued on with the method of hand drawing observations, which they’d employed long before the invention of the telescope, let alone the upstart photography. This particular eclipse was special in that the drawings are now thought to be the first known representations of a coronal mass ejection."  See the fascinating full story and collected images here.

Graphic designer Paulus Bommarito "is part of a small but growing group of sun-gazers in metro Atlanta.  They are disciples of Hira Ratan Manek, a retired spice trader from India who says staring at the sun improves mental and physical health. Called HRM by his followers, Manek says he has rediscovered a practice used by many ancient cultures, from Greeks to Native Americans.  Manek, 70, advocates staring at the sun only near sunrise and sunset. Start with just 10 seconds, he says, and add 10 seconds each time.  He says sun gazing suppresses hunger and has allowed him to go more than a year without eating solid foods." —"Sun-Gazers" Praise Rays, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Photographer Eli Shams recalls the story of this portrait of a sun-starer:


Here are some other sun-starers, including this great painting by Edward Hopper.

DEAR DR. BARNEEZLES:
My daughter is engaged to an astronomer. I don't really understand what an astronomer does, but I've never* had the nerve to ask. Can you shed any light?

*ever

A: If I shed light, the astronomer won't be able to see what he's looking at. This notwithstanding, I will try to answer your question. Pardon me a moment while I consult my notes. [A, C, E, G-sharp . . . yep, they're all here on the keyboard where they belong.]

The job of the astronomer is to show us that various inconceivably distant and consequently, from our vantage point, inconceivably tiny objects would be inconceivably large if, by travelling for an inconceivably long time (which of course we can't), we arrived where they are -- or rather where they would be if they were still there, which they wouldn't be. These scientists continue to bend every effort to address the pressing question of whether a universe which is infinitely large is more or less infinitely large than it was when it came into existence. If you're interested (and even if you're not), you can find much more information on this complex subject by pestering the clerk in the gift shop of your local planetarium.

(Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0.  Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.)

Staring At the Sun




The biggest drawback to mirrorshades is that they simulate a state of permanent solar eclipse, a twilight world in which colors are distorted and shadows are deeper.  The sun has been both feared and revered throughout human history, but only a handful of people have actually had the courage to look it in the face.  Granted, the naked eye will sustain impairment if exposed to direct sunlight for too long.  Therefore, cyberpunk author Paul Di Filippo recommends optical implants as a solution.  “By stepping down the ratio of photons to electrons,” he suggests, “you can do such things as stare directly at the sun or at a welder’s flame without damage.”

But why stare into the sun in the first place?  Because it's dangerous.  Because it's deviant.  Because so few are man enough to try it.  Because radiation is natural.  Because it looked at you first.  Perhaps the best reason of all is that the sun frees us from the simplistic dogma of dualism.  Photons of light have no antiparticle.  That means that in the world of light there is no division between body and soul, good and evil, seer and scenery, past and future, man and fellow man.  In the world of light, 1 + 1 = 1.

Photographs of the sun are typically taken through telescopes.  Such photographs are pale substitutes for actually looking at the sun.  As naturalist Annie Dillard notes in an essay about witnessing a total eclipse, "The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience.  Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card."  Scientific instruments, then, limit our perception even as they extend the range of our vision.  No matter what apparatus we use to view the sun, at some point we will encounter a "blind spot."  Clearly, the naked eye (capable of detecting a single photon of light) or naked implant is the only way to go.

There are two steps to proper sun-staring.  First, stare at the sun with the eyes open.  This is not an easy thing to do.  Rochefoucauld, the Benjamin Franklin of France, once said that "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye."  He was correct.  In his novel Staring at the Sun, Julian Barnes warns that "You can't stare at the sun for too long--not even the setting, quiet sun.  You would have to put your fingers in front of your face to do that."  So don't have any preconceptions that it's going to be simple or pleasant.  Try not to blink.  Try not to look away.  Shield your eyes with your fingers at first if you must, but then slowly spread your fingers to reveal the awesome light of the sun.  If you must look away then do so, but slowly bring your eyes back to the sun.  If you find yourself involuntarily blinking rapidly, hold your eyelids open with your fingers.

Second, stare at the sun with the eyes closed.  The sun's afterimage will remain under your eyelids, indelibly etched into your cornea.  James Patrick Kelley describes this phenomenon in his cyberpunk story "Solstice":  "Cage shut his eyes and still he could see it: blood red, flashing blue, veins pulsing across its surface."

What is the significance of this afterimage?  No doubt each person must find his omn answer to this question.  In her novel Century 21, Ewa Kuryluk attempts a philosophical answer.  She says that "We must preserve the sun's afterimage under our lids" because it forces us to confront "ideals, abstract beings which are neither bodies nor forces dwelling in bodies."  Perhaps she means that we can harness the sun's forces, snatch them from the physical body of the star, and carry them with us--literally within our eyelids.  In any case, Kuryluk seems to be touching upon a deeper truth about the perception of reality.  

The French poet Paul Claudel agrees with Kuryluk that we can carry the body of a star within our eyelids, making us the center of our own private solar system.  "We can see in the eye a sort of scaled down, portable sun," he says, "and therefore, a prototype of the ability to establish a radius from it to any point on the circumference."  The German poet Yvan Goll describes such a private solar system:


The Maja-Ratri, a Sanskrit text, says that light is the source of all thought, since light is a combustion of star evolution.  That star evolution exists in the inner dimensions of your mind as a phosphene explosion.  Psychologist Carl Jung once wrote that "when our senses react to real phenomena, sights, and sounds, they are somehow translated from the realm of reality into that of the mind.  Within the mind they become psychic events, whose ultimate nature is unknowable."

If you're eventually going to have your eyes replaced anyway, why not burn them out in a single blaze of glory?  Besides, the combination of sunglasses and a walking stick is a timeless fashion statement.