"The rock incubates a void."  A bit of wisdom from a peppermint tin of mailart by Geof Huth and endwar.

Piecing together the secret of power . . .


 

Big diamonds, big blue diamonds, how they sparkle / But what can they do to warm your soul? / When you’re lonesome in the moonlight, and need some lovin’ / Big diamonds, big blue diamonds, are so cold.
—Earl J. Carson, "Big Blue Diamonds," first recorded by Little Willie John in 1962.

Today's Question:

Did the Beatles cross the Atlantic for an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964?

With hindpsych, the answer is "yes"!  In our Tarot spread, the card on the left is the Knight of Pentacles.  A hard worker who is dedicated to his chosen course, this knight symbolizes the Beatles.  The knight is face to face with the center card, the Page of Cups.  The Page of Cups is a symbol of an outpouring of emotions and a new love affair.  The page represents America's reception of the Beatles.  Note that behind the page is a body of water, symbolic of the Atlantic Ocean.  The final card in our spread is the Ten of Pentacles.  This is a symbol of affluence—supreme business success, long-term abundance, and all-around good fortune.  Note that the knight begins with a single coin and ends with a tenfold bounty.  We can say with confidence that the Beatles cross the Atlantic for an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964, and that it is a pivotal moment in their career.  We can now move on.

by mybloodyself

Inventing New Colors

Is it humanly possible to invent a new color? Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Mark Fairchild says "yes"! In fact, he suggests that all observant people invent new colors at various times of their lives. Dr. Fairchild explains: "As a color scientist, I think of colors as perceptions, that is things that we see. Of course those perceptions are not just caused by our brain (except when we are dreaming); they are caused by how our eyes and brain respond to the world around us. For color it is the light and objects that we are responding to. Most people would take this question to mean 'has anyone invented a light or object of a new color?' Personally, I have not, but I have invented new ways to understand and describe how we perceive and produce colors in places like the movies. Other people certainly have invented new materials that produce colors that people couldn't make before. Things like new paints, new inks, new kinds of televisions. That has happened often through the history of science. But, if we come back to color being a perception, then it is even easier to say that we invent new colors. I think we all do it quite often if we pay attention to the world around us. Have you ever had a time when you looked at something and it seemed like a totally new experience? Maybe a special rainbow, or a peculiar bird, or a strange way the light bounces around your room? If you have noticed a new experience like that, then I think you could say you have invented a new color. That is because color is truly a perception that is unique to you and any new color experiences could be considered 'inventions.' I like to just think of them as interesting parts of our world that make it fun to study science; in my case color science."

You can explore Dr. Fairchild's research on color perception and imaging at his website.

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

"An Abecedary" by Paul Dean:

Are maps poems?

The Making Maps blog highlights these symbols for nautical dangers and their poetic descriptions.

How many ways can one get tossed aside?  John Walkenbach checked Google and discovered the following:

• Tossed aside like a 7th grade boyfriend
• Like a forgotten dream
• Like a worn-out pair of boots
• Like a rag doll
• Like a useless bag of linseed
• Like a dog after his job was done
• Like a soiled tissue
• Like a dirty mop
• Like a master artist's sketch
• Like a broken appliance
• Like a taco wrapper
• Like a child's doll
• Like a piece of trash
• Like a wad of yesterday's news
• Like a used play thing
• Like a spent cigarette
• Like a sack of pork chops
• Like a Big Mac box
• Like a fat pedestrian
• Like a fad
• Like a goddamn rubber glove
• Like a moldy beanbag chair
• Like a dirty napkin

(Via J-Walk Blog.  Linked illustrations courtesy of Abecedarian.)

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw / Was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the wall / Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon

Oh, won't you stay / We'll put on the day / There's a sun show every second
—Joni Mitchell, "Chelsea Morning," 1969.

Piecing together the secret of the phoenix . . .


 

Earth–Moon–Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon)

Earth-Moon-Earth "is a form of radio transmission whereby messages are sent in morse–code from earth, reflected from the surface of the moon, and then received back on earth. The moon reflects only part of the information back – some is absorbed in its shadows, 'lost' in its craters.  Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata has been translated into morse-code and sent to the moon via E.M.E.  Returning to earth 'fragmented' by the moon’s surface, it has been re-translated into a new score, the gaps and absences becoming intervals and rests."

View the sent score and the crater-filled score received back, and hear excerpts of the score here.

If a cartoonist goes back to the drawing board, where does a satirist go?  Back to the irony board.

Bluebird blue as the sky- blue heart / Of my girl whose heart is the sky
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), "A Bird is Singing," from The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Donald Revell, 2004.

Did you hear about the Zen Nudist Monastery?  They meditate on volleyball.

I sometimes dream of reading a book.  It's a poetic, insightful, vastly important work.  As I continue reading, I begin to become lucid.  At first, I think myself capable of remembering this dreambook upon waking.  I vow to memorize the words and transcribe them.  Then, as consciousness slowly refracts the light of the dreamtime, my comprehension of the text begins to slip away.  Sentences that made perfect sense moments ago now seem cryptic or utterly indecipherable.  Finally, I realize I've lost all grasp of this vital dreambook's meaning, and I reluctantly open my eyes.  Elusive though it may be, I've never given up on one day remembering the dreambook or, perhaps more extraordinarily, stumbling upon it in waking life.  I'm gratified (though admittedly astonished) to report that, in a roundabout fashion too complex to detail here, I have finally located a physical copy of the dreambook.  It will come as no surprise that the author is an avant-garde artist and a literary savant who possesses a direct line to the unconscious mind.  J. Karl Bogartte's prose is so imbued with dream logic that the conscious mind is initially mystified, then simply enchanted and drawn into a vision.  The reason the physical copy is decipherable by the conscious eye is simple: physical pages don't tend to display the volatile calligraphy of dreambooks.  In the physical copy, we can read the same sentence twice and nothing will have changed (save our appreciation of the text's resonance).  If you've ever regretted forgetting what you're certain was a marvelous dream, it may be time to (re)discover the work of J. Karl Bogartte.

Piecing together the secret of the philosophers . . .


 

We entered the room, and my eyes fell at once on the picture. I looked at it for a long time. It was a pile of mangoes, bananas, oranges, and I know not what. . . . The colours were so strange that words can hardly tell what a troubling emotion they gave. There were sombre blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up vague memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; there were reds, shrill like the berries of holly — one thought of Christmas in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the pleasure of children — and yet by some magic softened till they had the swooning tenderness of a dove’s breast; there were deep yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as fragrant as the spring and as pure as the sparkling water of a mountain brook. . . . They belonged to a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides.
—W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919, a novel inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin.

by InfectedProject

Heterochromia: Eyes of Different Colors

Heterochromia is an eye condition in which each iris is a different color. It occurs when an iris has either excess or deficient pigmentation. The condition is hereditary, but it can also manifest after an injury or disease. Because the effect is rather striking, some people without the condition use differently colored contact lenses to simulate heterochromia. Famous people with the condition include English singer/songwriter David Bowie, American actor Christopher Walken, English actress Jane Seymour, American baseball pitcher Max Scherzer, Israeli basketball coach Oded Kattash, American actress Kate Bosworth, American singer Tim McIlrath, American actor Dan Aykroyd, and the Greek king Alexander the Great.

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