CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Chronic pain has its own devastating side effects, even in the absence of medication. Sufferers of migraine headaches sometimes report a phenomenon that amounts to color-blindness. Jeff of the Omegaword blog explains that chronic pain has a peculiar way of removing color from the world. He poetically describes his experience of a reality in which all color has been erased by bursts of red:
"Red has never been my favorite color. Bolts of hot pain sear the world, leaving me colorblind but for the shards that stay behind — jagged red reminders of pain past, and pain yet to come. Through the window, beyond the mute interplay of light and shadow on a white kitchen wall, bare branches against a pale sky remind me that it's all in my head. What color are light waves, anyway?"
A new study of synesthesia confirms Jeff's observation that the color of the world is all in one's head. Cretian van Campen, author of The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science (2007), explains: "A mysterious aspect of color is that it is created in the brain and seen to exist in the physical environment. But the physical environment contains only light waves and is in fact colorless. The colors are inside our brains, not outside."
Color palettes sometimes testify to hues that have been displaced or erased by profound circumstances. For example, COLOURlover Codename Gimmick envisions the frosty onset of winter as a time when "frequencies from red to yellow have been silenced." His "Frost-Over" palette celebrates red and yellow through their striking absence.
With the palette "Another Migraine?" COLOURlover Stefan depicts a reality reduced to lavender, punctuated by an occasional throb of neon yellow.
COLOURlover Manekineko envisions a world so desaturated that only dull grays remain.
Migraine-inspired palettes from the COLOURlovers library testify to the phenomenon that chronic pain can distort or dampen one's experience of color. Luckily, some artists seem able to retain a keen color sensibility even within the confines of a migraine headache.
[Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]
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Gia writes:
Interesting. Migraines are just the opposite to me. Imagine the brightest yellow, neon +++++, electrified, magnified, and shot directly to your brain. Behind the eyes, a violent pink, raw, bleeding and sore. Add some touches of green—outer space green. Glowing and undulating, slowly creeping over the entire length of your body, quieting your every cell.
Thesymphonywaswrittenin1922,firstpresentedinGloucesterCathedral,andrevisedbythecomposerin1932. —Tom Douglas Jones, The Art of Light and Color, 1972.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
While searching online for the key to eternal happiness, I encountered these two photos. It would seem that true happiness requires the help of a good dentist and optometrist.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
Santa Luiza the Pious Patron of Religious Atheists.
Santa Luiza teaches that humanity invented God, and that God is very, very real. Santa Luiza shelters her flock of unbelievers with a canopy of sacred art, symbols, stories, and histories. The photograph depicts Santa Luiza in her incarnation as the only atheist attending a Catholic wedding. The color palette "Saint of the Atheist" was created in her honor.
A collaged story we assembled for a singular Jan and henceforth dedicate to all the Jans of the world. Click on the thumbnails below to view an enlarged version in a new window.
Somefolkssaythatonceinawhileyou’llfindacoralsnakeinthere,heglisteningmagicinhisyellowandvermillionstripes,lyingtherenearyourfootlikeathingbewitched,thefatalspellofhisfangsinhiswonderfulcolor:cutething,prettylittleyellowandvermillionsnake.Thoserattlersintheswampsareofwonderfulcoloration:white,black,yellow,orange,red,blue,ingreatdiamonds.Notlikedesertrattlers,dry,dustyincolor,butmoistincolor,refulgentincolor. —Julian Lee Rayford, Cottonmouth, 1941.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Information Prose :: A Manifesto in 47 Points :: Version 1.0
by Jeremy P. Bushnell, jeremy@invisible-city.com
9. You can learn a lot about a person from a mixtape.
10. When at someone’s house for the first time, you tend to look at their bookshelves.
11. Fiction which builds characters without taking this into account has its head in the sand.
12.
The primary goal of the information prose writer is to document the
contemporary mind and environment in a way that takes the contemporary
importance of media and information seriously.
13. Many
contemporary fiction writers are afraid or otherwise unwilling to do
this. I submit as evidence the large numbers of contemporary novels set
in environments which lack informational richness: rural areas, the
past, "magical realism" worlds.
14. Information prose does not
attempt to depict a simplified version of the world. Information prose
attempts to contain as much of the complexity of the world as possible.
15. "Do you understand how tremendously dense? A minute in a room, together." — Don DeLillo, Valparaiso
16.
A fictional American present in which no one watches TV, listens to the
radio, or checks their e-mail is sentimental and false.
17.
Information prose writers should not aim to write work which is
timeless. The value of documentary work never lies in its timelessness.
18.
When writing about characters who inhabit dense fields of information
(both remembered and newly-experienced), the value of quoting,
sampling, and appropriation rapidly becomes apparent.
19.
Creative work utilizing techniques of appropriation has been produced
with regularity for nearly a hundred years now, in all forms of media.
Information prose writers should no longer need to defend these
techniques against charges of novelty.
20. A partial primer,
organized in a rough chronology: the Comte de Lauteamont’s Maldoror,
Dada collages, Tristan Tzara’s cut-up poems, William S. Burroughs’
cut-up and fold-in novels, Robert Rauschenberg’s media silkscreens,
Bern Porter’s found poems, Situationist detournement projects, the
poetry of John Ashbery, Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life In the Bush
of Ghosts, the novels of Kathy Acker, the albums of Public Enemy and
Negativland, and the films of Craig Baldwin.
21. All evidence indicates that much of this work is of lasting merit.
22.
All evidence indicates that these techniques of appropriation are
exactly the ones necessary to create a recognizable picture of the
contemporary present.
23. "As artists, our work involves
displacing and displaying bites of publicly available, publicly
influential material because it peppers our personal environment and
affects our consciousness. In our society, the media which surrounds us
is as available, and as valid a subject for art, as nature itself."
—Negativland’s Tenets of Free Appropriation
24. Information
prose writers should not be afraid to plagiarize. It is not their duty
to write citations. Our memories and experiences do not usually come
attended by complete bibliographies.
25. Information prose
writers should not overlook the technique of the fragment. Our
experience of the textuality of the surrounding world is largely
fragmentary; information prose should strive to reflect that.
Piecing together the secret of a rainbow in the heart . . .
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
Thewholeroomblazedwithlight—andnotwithlightalonebutwithathousandcolours,withallthegloriesofsomepaintedwindow;anduponthewallsofhisroomandonthefamiliarfurniture,theglowflamedbackandseemedtoflowagaintoitssource,thelittlewoodenbox.Forthereuponabedofsoftwoollaythemostsplendidjewel,—ajewelsuchasDysonhadneverdreamedof,andwithinitshonetheblueoffarskies,andthegreenoftheseabytheshore,andtheredoftheruby,andthedeepvioletrays,andinthemiddleofallitseemedaflameasifafountainoffireroseup,andfell,androseagainwithsparkslikestarsfordrops. —Arthur Machen, "The Inmost Light," found in the collection Masterpieces of Mystery, 1921.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Is it possible to accurately remember a given color? Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Mark Fairchild says "no"! Surprisingly, the brain is poorly equipped to remember colors. At best, Dr. Fairchild notes, "we can remember only general categories of color represented by significant color names. That's why there are so many sophisticated ways to name, organize, and measure color."
Here's a way to test your own color memory. Close your eyes and imagine a red stop sign at a trafficintersection. It's a color that drivers see every day in the European Union, United States, and many other places. Then open your eyes and see if you can identify the official stop sign color from amongst the following imposters:
Answer: According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the official stop sign color is HEX: #B01C2E, RGB: 176, 28, 46, Pantone® 187. It is the last color in our lineup. Did you guess correctly?
Here's a second try, with fewer options. Close your eyes and imagine the giant yellow "M" of the McDonald's® franchise. It's an eye-catching yellow known the world over. Then open your eyes and see if you can identify the official McDonald's® yellow from amongst the following imposters:
Answer: According to the McDonald's® Global Logo and Trademark Standards Reference Guide, the official yellow is HEX: #FCC917, RGB: 252, 201, 23, Pantone® 123. It is the first color in our lineup. Did you guess correctly?
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.]
Nonexistencecontainsexistence.Love/enclosesbeauty.Brownflintandgraysteelhaveorangecandlelightinthem.Inside/fear,safety.Intheblackpupiloftheeye,manybrilliancies. —Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273), from Paradox. The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems, translated by Coleman Barks, 2001.
Jonathan responds with a dialog between a Zen master and his disciple:
Disciple: Does the cold flint contain the warm flame, Master? Master: Tiny, sleeping monks with disposable lighters.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
In this diagram of human development, the pictures of the fetus at four and six weeks (top left and middle) bear a striking resemblance to Mayan hieroglyphics. The top right picture, of the fetus at two months, bears an uncanny resemblance to an Olmec head statue.
KingDeathwasarareoldfellow!/Hesatewherenosuncouldshine;/Andheliftedhishandsoyellow,/Andpouredouthiscoal-blackwine/Hurrah!forthecoal-blackwine! —Thomas Morton, The School of Reform; or, How to Rule a Husband, A Comedy in Five Acts, 1805. As quoted in Artist of Wonderland: the Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel by Frank Morris, 2005.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Aroundthepale-bluedomeoftheheavensafewpearl-coloredcloudshungmotionless,asthoughthewindhadbeenwithdrawntootherskies.Notacrimsonleaffloateddownwardthroughthesoft,silverylightthatfilledtheatmosphereandcreatedthesenseoflonely,unimaginablespaces.Thislightoverhungthefar-rollinglandscapeoffieldandmeadowandwood,crowningwithfaintradiancetheremoterlow-swellinghill-topsanddeepeningintodreamyhalf-shadowsontheireasternslopes.Nearer,itfellinawhiteflakeonanunstirredsheetofwaterwhichlayalongtheedgeofamassofsombre-huedwoodland,andnearerstillittouchedtospring-likebrilliancyalevel,greenmeadowonthehitheredgeofthewater,whereagroupofDurhamcattlestoodwithreversedflanksnearthegleamingtrunksofsomeleaflesssycamores.Stillnearer,itcaughtthetopofthebrownfoliageofalittlebentoak-treeandburneditintoasilveryflame.Itlitonthebackandthewingsofacrowflyingheavilyinthepathofitsrays,andmadehisblacknessaswhiteasthebreastofaswan.Intheimmediateforeground,itsparkledinminutegleamsalongthestalksofthecoarse,deadweedsthatfellawayfromthelegsandtheflanksofawhitehorse,andslantedacrossthefaceoftheriderandthroughtheendsofhisgrayhair,whichstraggledfrombeneathhissoftblackhat. —James Lane Allen, "Two Gentlemen of Kentucky," originally published in The Century Magazine, April 1888.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
Mine has the poem: show the sausage/to a peach/sweaty white flood. Although the peaches and cream implication is, well, disgusting here, I like the poem above better. I particularly like the way "a void" is created between the words that could otherwise be read as avoid. Thus, I offer:
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
Bigdiamonds,bigbluediamonds,howtheysparkle/Butwhatcantheydotowarmyoursoul?/Whenyou’relonesomeinthemoonlight,andneedsomelovin’/Bigdiamonds,bigbluediamonds,aresocold. —Earl J. Carson, "Big Blue Diamonds," first recorded by Little Willie John in 1962.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
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.
* Historians must reconstruct the past out of hazy memory. "Once upon a time" requires "second sight." The "third eye" of intuition can break the "fourth wall" of conventional perspectives. Instead of "pleading the fifth," historians can take advantage of the "sixth sense" and be in "seventh heaven." All with the power of hindpsych, the "eighth wonder of the world." It has been said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Therein lies the importance of Tarot readings for antiquity. When we confirm what has already occurred, we break the shackles of the past, freeing ourselves to chart new courses into the future.
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.]
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
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.
Bluebirdblueasthesky-blueheart/Ofmygirlwhoseheartisthesky —Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), "A Bird is Singing," from The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Donald Revell, 2004.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
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.
If you have a strange dream to share, send it along!
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
Weenteredtheroom,andmyeyesfellatonceonthepicture.Ilookedatitforalongtime.Itwasapileofmangoes,bananas,oranges,andIknownotwhat.. . .Thecoloursweresostrangethatwordscanhardlytellwhatatroublingemotiontheygave.Thereweresombreblues,opaquelikeadelicatelycarvedbowlinlapislazuli,andyetwithaquiveringlustrethatsuggestedthepalpitationofmysteriouslife;therewerepurples,horriblelikerawandputridflesh,andyetwithaglowing,sensualpassionthatcalledupvaguememoriesoftheRomanEmpireofHeliogabalus;therewerereds,shrillliketheberriesofholly—onethoughtofChristmasinEngland,andthesnow,thegoodcheer,andthepleasureofchildren—andyetbysomemagicsoftenedtilltheyhadtheswooningtendernessofadove’sbreast;thereweredeepyellowsthatdiedwithanunnaturalpassionintoagreenasfragrantasthespringandaspureasthesparklingwaterofamountainbrook.. . .TheybelongedtoaPolynesiangardenoftheHesperides. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919, a novel inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
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.]
Did you hear about the scandal at the Ephemera society? Apparently, their journal is printed on acid-free paper. No doubt there'll be a high turnover on their board of directors ... again.
OParis/Theyellowdiesfromredtogreen/ParisVancouverHyéresMaintenonNewYorkandtheAntilles/Thewindowopenslikeanorange/Comelyfruitoflight —Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), "The Windows," translated from the French by Donald Revell, 2004.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
When the landlord told the fashion model to vacate, she merely stared at him. When he told her to get moving, she walked away, pivoted, then came right back. When he said she was thick-headed, she was offended, but for the wrong reason.
* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy.
Information Prose :: A Manifesto in 47 Points :: Version 1.0
by Jeremy P. Bushnell, jeremy@invisible-city.com
1. Human beings are thinking creatures. In order to write about human beings in a complete fashion, one needs to write about how human beings think.
2. The ability of language-based stories to depict thought is precisely what keeps them competitive in a world flooded with stories. Image-based stories— movies, television programs —can depict how people act in ways that are seductive and successful, but very few possess an aesthetic mechanism complex enough to reliably depict the nuances of human thought.
3. Human thought reacts to its environment. Writing accurately about the way people think therefore involves writing accurately about the environment in which people live.
4. Human beings live surrounded by information. To write completely about human beings therefore means taking on the duty of writing about information.
5. The human mind references its own memory banks incessantly. Writing that seeks to document the human mind will reflect this.
6. The literary device of the extended flashback is not an illustration of the way we actually experience memory. We live in a perpetual wash of microflashbacks.
7. The memory stores remembered experience in the form of a collage of information drawn from hundreds of thousand of sources. Many of these sources are media sources. Many of our stored experiences are experiences of watching, reading, or listening to media, in either a primary or a supplementary capacity.
8. Media matters to people. It contributes to how we define and understand ourselves.
I was puzzled to note that there is a place in Nebraska called Town in Ohio, Nebraska. But it turns out there is a simple explanation -- it seems they named it after a town in Ohio.
Little-known fact #1: The total number of soldiers who died on the American side during the Revolution was "no more than the population of a small town in Ohio or Nebraska" (Ray Raphael, A People's History of the American Revolution, 2002, p. 89).
Little-known fact #2: "For every NYU kid [who has trouble adjusting to adult life], there's another student from a small town in Nebraska who goes to college in a small town in Ohio in hopes of fitting in" (Spiny, commenting on this blog posting.)
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
The key to saving the Caribbean's coral reefs could be the vividly colored parrotfish, according to the journal Nature. Reef ecosystems are increasingly strangled by encroaching seaweed, fertilized by agricultural runoff. However, parrotfish graze on seaweed, using parrot-like beaks. Since sea urchin numbers have dwindled in the Caribbean, parrotfish are the primary grazers. Scientists now believe that protecting the fish could help strangled reefs to recover. Parrotfish need protection because they are a sought-after delicacy in Caribbean culture and are easily caught in fish traps.
Parrotfish are as colorful as macaws. In fact, they are so variably colored that they are often mistaken for different species. Male and female parrotfish sport different colors. Females tend to feature browns, greens, silvers, and grays, while males have more vibrant colors such as pink, aqua, orange, yellow, red, and electric blue. However, in the Mediterranean, the coloration is reversed, with females sporting vivid hues and males drab ones.