From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

SADISM: Moments during the vernal equinox when sunlight turns into honey.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

VULVA: Wind chimes that use the bones of children.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

STARLIGHT: Liquid used to power a whispering machine.

[This posting is in honor of Wilfried at Crystalpunk.)

It is poetically said that when one raises a shell to the ear, one hears the ocean.  Could it also be said that when one raises a shell to the eye, one reads poetry?  In his masterpiece Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann holds a magnifying glass to the "indecipherable hieroglyphics on the shells of certain mussels" and conchs, questioning whether Mother Nature expresses herself in an organized, written code, and whether ornament can ultimately be distinguished from meaning.  Mann describes the calligraphy on a shell that practically begs to be understood: "The characters, as if drawn with a brush, blended into purely decorative lines toward the edge, but over large sections of the curved surface their meticulous complexity gave every appearance of intending to communicate something."  The shell's calligraphy bears a strong resemblance to "early Oriental scripts, much like the stroke of Old Aramaic."  But how is one to get to the bottom of such symbols?  Mann admits that "They elude our understanding and, it pains me to say, probably always will."  Yet this elusion need not be a source of discouragement.  Mann explains that ornament and meaning are like conjoined twins: "When I say they 'elude' us, that is really only the opposite of 'reveal,' for the idea that nature has painted this code, for which we lack the key, purely for ornament's sake on the shell of one of her creatures--no one can convince me of that.  Ornament and meaning have always run side by side, and the ancient scripts served simultaneously for decoration and communication.  Let no one tell me nothing is being communicated here!  For the message to be inaccessible, and for one to immerse oneself in that contradiction--that also has its pleasure."  In other words, the shell calligraphy communicates a profound mystery, pregnant with meaning and delightful to behold.  Mann admits that, "were this really a written code, nature would surely have to command her own self-generated, organized language," adding that nature's fundamental illiteracy is "precisely what makes her eerie."

Mann's allusion to "early Oriental scripts" reminds us of the lost "shell" style of calligraphy discovered in Shang culture artifacts (14th - 11th centuries BCE).  That ancient system of writing, more stylized than the early picture words, was brushed onto shells in vermilion ink.  (For a full discussion of shell-style calligraphy, see Chinese Brushwork in Calligraphy and Painting by Kwo Da-Wei, 1990.)

In our collage below, we imagine King Triton conjuring the Platonic ideals of shell calligraphy.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

SWIMMING POOL: A kind of mist secreted by pyramids when fending off an attack of vicious glow-worms.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

X-RAY: A sewing machine that uses sparks instead of thread.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

WHORE: Apparatus for telling the future; similar to a tuning-fork.

From A Surrealist Dictionary by J. Karl Bogartte:

VESTAL: Bright yellow flowers that grow out of mummies.

… three reasons to suspend disbelief

∞ a conclusion of forever

* a star in the mind

? the hook that catches

- a stitch of text

) the end of whispers

{ a crumpled page

! surprising the ending

\ the path to

: two eyes that follow

; two eyes and one grain of sand

^ the hat of the missing

$ the sibilance of sermons

` a grave way of speaking

• dividing the string into threads

† the graveyard of the second thought

§ the pregnancy of sections

From our friends at Crystalpunk: "Apes in the wild have language and it takes only a small leap of imagination to try to give them a second, human, language.  For over forty years researchers have been trying to do this with increasingly good results.  Our language, when it is passed on to a different species, becomes a new language. PrimatePoetics is born from the realization that this language should be appreciated in its own right, as the greatest revolution in literature since the invention of written Chinese 4000 years ago.  'PrimatePoetics is Here' is the first primer to this new field.  It explains where it comes from, it gives an overview of the field on an ape-by-ape basis and closes with an extensive anthology of relevant scientific and artistic sources.  But most of all 'PrimatePoetics is Here' hopes to give a feel for the outsider charm of the language of the apes."