Ochota

shroomowanie

1 took me a long time to spot the bottom


2 unhemmed has gone hi-res - or higher-res - click on these snaps for an eyeful


3 having said that, this one's not so sharp when blown up - do you know what you're looking at?


4 in the New York City style


5 we wanted to buy half a punnet, but the woman at the market wouldn't let us - it had to be the whole darn lot


6 i've heard it said that the photo-essay is the future - but the future of what, exactly?


7 Pedigree Chum? yum yum yum

between two thorns

the good ship vanitee

diasparaction?

"Coleridge, to many people, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to wander the most when in fact, his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest - viz., when the compass and huge circuit by which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into remote regions before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed he had lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of his thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme."
The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson, vol. II, pp. 152-3.

joggers and dogwalkers notwithstanding

5 things I saw on my constitutional around the duck ponds.

1 Virulent weeds with ugly stalks - overlong and alien - but beautifully vivid flowers atop them. Two distinct kinds: some unusual deep purple trumpetty flowers wound round railings up at the top of the scarp; some much more common ones down by the ponds, with open-faced lilacky flowers towering above the municipal shrubs.

2 A tracksuited middle-aged man on a bench with his head droopy, his back to the play park. I thought at first he was on his own, but as I passed I noticed next to him a woman with her head in his lap, motionless, tracksuited.

3 A dozen or so young lads in unmatching sports kit, listening to their football coach, or PE teacher. Further along, older kids doing an exercise I'd never seen before, that involves trotting towards someone whilst they trot towards you, jumping in synchronised manner and gently bomping your chests together mid-air, then trotting off to bomp someone else.

4 Sound asleep, a baby in a pram. On the adjacent bench a slightly decrepit-looking chap, possibly the grandfather, sound asleep.

5 An old man, orange of face, with a shock of milk-coloured hair, thick, like a paintbrush dipped in white paint, perched on a wall and drinking, with the help of a teaspoon, something grey and lumpy from a sawn-off squash bottle. A few yards away from him, his scrap-gatherer's trolley, empty.

packrat

'My head was alwaies working; never idle, and even travelling (which from 1649 till 1670 was never off my horsback) did gleane som observations, of which I have a collection in folio of 2 quiers of paper + a dust basket, some wherof are to be valued'
John Aubrey, Brief Lives (1693)

Moose | Jenny Colon

Lunchtime. Again, blogger denies me as I endeavour to share a photograph with my dear readers. It was to be a moose. Another time, another time. Until then, maybe this will keep us going.

This deserves a separate entry, really, but what the hay. I discovered this morning that Gerard de Nerval's Adrienne - you remember, the one of whom his hopes proved false, or something like that - is a composite figure. One of the people she's composed of was called Jenny Colon, an actrice from the Varietes. I'm not sure what kind of relationship they had. She died in 1848. I really like her name.

Fay Wray and friends

Just idly browsing a list of 'Well Known People Who Happen To Be Canadian', compiled by a particle physicist unknown to me. There are 52 entries, not all referring to a single well-known person (WKP hereafter) - some point to a consortium of some kind, e.g., The Tragically Hip or McGarrigle, Kate and Anna. I note, with slight disappointment, that after a quick count, it seems that I've only heard of 17 Canadian WKPs. It's taken me a moment or two to cotton onto the fact that, in spite of the page's main title, the 52-strong list is exclusivlely the province of musicians. But, no, hold on a tick, a few deft clicks and I'm at the main menu, which gives me 14 different categories of WKP to choose from. Overwhelming! I recognise none of the artists, though I like the sound of Tom Thomson. A wonderful resource for helping you to choose your favourite Canadian, which is never a straightforward business.

Jef

OK, so the textual revolution didn't last too long. Not to worry. Text is like, so, totally for losers. The clip below should work - if, like me, you're not a super-super-fast connection, then I advise clicking on play and then immediately on pause & then waiting patiently while the whole clip cues up. Otherwise you can only watch it piecemeal. Non sequitur alert: it has been a stupid morning, waiting for electricians; not entirely understanding them (and vice versa) when they finally show up; standing about like a lemon whilst they unscrew everything and prod their little yellow current-meter - if that's the right word - in sundry sockets. They failed to sort out the problem: more electricians on their way this afternoon. Hurrah. This cheered me up, as did the comparative form of 'awesome', as put to excellent use by my favourite exponent of joke folk.



Some vocabulary I learnt from Jacques:

rossignol = nightingale (apparently it also means 'unsaleable piece of junk', which is weird)

mome (with a wee hat on the 'o') = nice-looking young lassie

sangloter = to sob (does it have anything to do with sang = blood?)

Alternatywy 4

imdb helping me out with my TV watching -

"The beginning of 1980s was a difficult time for Polish people. This series tries to show it. While it is a comedy and some things can be exaggerated, it has the spirit of these times. The action takes place for few months in some building (with the title address "4 Alternative Street") of Warsaw's newly built district. Everyone has his/her own life and fights socialism problems. So, you have a house-master, who believes to be the most important person in the building. He does nothing and make people, whom he should be about to serve, do all the work for him. There is also a minister, who lives in the building with his lover. He says privately different things than he does in TV. Everyone had to wait for one's flat for years (true in Poland), but there is a man, who has lots of flats. There is a man, who was shown in TV that he got a flat, but he had not and no officer wants to help him. There are two families with similar names, who were given the same one flat, so they have to live together, having no understanding in bureaucracy. And so on. Not everything is true, but I say -- the main idea of socialism is shown. The people are treated like animals, with no respect, only the top of the iceberg has lots of privileges. The success of the series was reached because everyone in Poland could identify with the characters of the movie and everyone could say 'it's an absurd, but could also happen to me'.

Was the above comment useful to you?"

Yes, very much so. Thanks!

Angelus Novus

Last night I spent, oh, let's say, more than 5 minutes trying to post a beautiful photograph of an aubergine on unhemmed. To no avail. The software consistently bailed out at the crucial moment. Shame! Could have been the start of something big. A new departure. I was even going to append a brief comic dialogue on the subject of said vegetable, spoken by two unnamed - but unforgettable - characters.

My new tack this Tuesday lunchtime involved a painting by Paul Klee called 'Angelus Novus'. You can see here the very image I was going to cheekily paste across - it would have looked lovely nestled between this paragraph and the last. Sadly, the same technical problem that first reared its ugly head last night rears yet. This minor hiccup triggered that most uncommon of events: a blog staff meeting. (And some mild confusion of tenses.) So, after a good deal of deliberation and a bit of voting, it is my very great pleasure to announce, that, for a trial period of unspecified length, unhemmed is going textual. So look out.

no one serves coffee, no one gets up

żabki

bigbitowiec

A HANDY INSTRUMENT

"The article illustrated today (did you guess?) is a snow-gauge. There are very few of them in Ireland at present. It is made of copper, and consists of a funnel or catch-pipe for the snow, which widens inwardly, then drops eighteen inches, allowing the snow to fall into a pan beneath. A casing which can be heated with hot water surrounds the gauge and is used to melt the snow. By this arrangement the snow cannot escape; it melts and runs into the buccket beneath, where it is accurately gauged.

So what, you say. I will tell you what. There is one great advantage in having a snow-gauge on your premises. Supposing some moon-faced young man who reads Proust happens to be loitering about your house, blathering out of him about art, life, love, and so on. He is sure to have a few cant French phrases, which he will produce carefully at suitable intervals as one produces coins from a purse. Inevitably the day will come (even if you have to wait for it many years) when he will sigh and murmur:

'Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?'

Here is your chance. This is where you go to town. Seize the nitwit by the scruff of the neck, march him out to the snow gauge, and shout:

'Right in that bucket, you fool!'

I'll bet you'll feel pretty good after that."

(from the 'Research Bureau' of Flann O'Brien, reprinted in The Best of Miles)

party like it's 1538

Here's Death playing the bagpipes and about to get deathly on some poor old codger. (You can see all of Hans Holbein's Dance of Death here.)

where the Corporal don't live

sortes Virgilianae

Praise be to the OED -

"In phrases sortes Virgilianae, Homericae, Biblicae: divination, or the seeking of guidance, by chance selection of a passage in Virgil, Homer, or the Bible. Also ellipt. and transf.

a1586 SIDNEY Apol. Poet. (1595) sig. B4, Whereupon grew the worde of Sortes Virgilianæ, when by suddaine opening Virgils booke, they lighted vpon any verse of hys making. 1646 T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. V. xxi. 272 The first an imitation of sortes Homericæ, or Virgilianæ, drawing determinations from verses casually occurring. 1700 J. WELWOOD Memoirs 100 Lord Falkland, to divert the king, would have his Majesty make a trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgilianæ, which..was an usual kind of augury some ages past. 1740 H. WALPOLE Let. 25 Sept. (1974) XXXVII. 79 In three words I will give you her picture as we drew it in the Sortes VirgilianæInsanam vatem aspicies. I give you my honour, we did not choose it. 1801 M. EDGEWORTH Belinda II. xiii. 25 Several volumes of French plays and novels were lying there, and Clarence Hervey raking up one of them, cried: ‘Come, let us try our fate by the sortes Virgilianæ.’ 1845 G. E. JEWSBURY in A. Ireland Sel. Lett. G. E. Jewsbury to J. Welsh Carlyle (1892) 179, I send it you by way of a ‘sortes’, and the Bible has as much virtuethat wayas Virgil! 1886 D. C. MURRAY Cynic Fortune xv. 183 In the practice of the sortes (which was a favourite occupation of his) [he] was elevated or depressed by the text he fell upon. 1897 A. C. BENSON Diary June in D. Newsome On Edge of Paradise (1980) ii. 63, I took a Sortes Biblicae before refusing. 1947 H. NICOLSON Diary 11 Dec. (1968) 118, I consult sortes Biblicas. My Bible opens at Ezekiel XL 22. 1969 G. GREENE Travels with my Aunt I. xvi. 170 The Sortes Virgilianaea game my mother considered a little blasphemous unless it was played with the Bible. 1975 V. CANNING Kingsford Mark vi. 105 He acknowledged the encouragement of the sortes. All the omens were right."

In The Star Factory, Ciaran Carson advocates the sortes Ashberyae (although without my inelegant cod-Latin). Paul Muldoon I rather suspect of having committed, perhaps even more than once, the sortes OEDae. When in the direst of straits I have considered a sortes Unhemmedae. (Actually, that's not true.)

saltimbanco?

The First Lady of Hollywood

Hullo!

That might be the first greeting ever on unhemmed & if so allow me to apologise for being a little behindhand.

In the second verse of Bob Dylan's wonderfully wordy number "Desolation Row", Cinderella 'puts her hands in her back pockets / Bette Davis style'. If anyone can send me a photo of Bette Davis herself doing this, I would be most grateful.

Yours,

Jon

tempus fugit

Ballack?

feel like i'm always looking this word up

It's an illusion, though, isn't it?

INSPISSATE

"1. trans. To thicken, condense.

[...] fig. 1732 Historia Litteraria III. 249 When the Subject is limpid of it self, he frequently inspissates it, by throwing in a heap of Circumstances not Essential to it. 1884 E. E. HALE Xmas in Narrag. v. 117 No method..by which you can inspissate entertainingness into a dull article.

2. intr. To become thick or dense, to thicken.

[...] 1836 MACGILLIVRAY tr. Humboldt's Trav. xvii. 225 Until the yolk..has time to inspissate."

help!

Last night:

On Donnington Bridge, two milk floats in quick succession, at about 11-30pm. And huge quantities of horsedung.

This afternoon:

A young cyclist executing a perfect arm signal, his left arm fully - almost flamboyantly - horizontal. And right behind him, an older man, donnish in appearance, his bike helmet on bassackwards.

What's going on?

whelks

nomoclastic

I was reading an essay by Frank Kermode today, called 'Can We Say Absolutely Anything We Like?' It was originally an MLA paper in 1974 but first published in a 1977 book of essays dedicated to Lionel Trilling, who had died 2 years previously (he was 70). Kermode talks about Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), the Hungarian-British physical chemist and philosopher - who reads Polanyi anymore? - and uses the word 'anamorphosis' quite a bit, and the opposition 'proximal' and 'distal'. This is what the OED gives as the primary definition of 'anamorphosis':

"A distorted projection or drawing of anything, so made that when viewed from a particular point, or by reflection from a suitable mirror, it appears regular and properly proportioned; a deformation."

(The other two definitions: one is botanical, the other rare.)

In passing, Kermode calls Roland Barthes 'nomoclastic', by which I think he means, that Barthes messes with the names of things, or even destroys the names of things (by analogy with 'iconoclastic'). The OED has nothing to say about 'nomoclastic' and nor, amazingly, does Google.

ich bin

somewhere near Cumnor

maybe even Cumnor itself

satori

Zen Buddhism. 'A sudden indescribable and uncommunicable inner experience of enlightenment.' (OED)

Lunakhod

bat out of Hull

Richard Bentley (1662-1742)

"I wrote, before I was twenty-four years old, a sort of hexapla, a thick volume in quarto, in the first column of which I inserted every word of the Hebrew Bible alphabetically; and, in five other columns, all the various interpretations of those words in the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate Latin, Septuagint, and Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, that occur in the whole Bible. This I made for my private use, to know the Hebrew, not from the late rabbins, but the ancient versions; when, bating Arabic, Persic, Ethiopic, I read over the whole Polyglot. And I made, too, another volume in quarto, of various lections and emendations of the Hebrew text, drawn out of these ancient versions, which, though done in those green years, would make a second part to the famous Capellus's Critica Sacra."

derrick

A clear winner in this month's website-of-the-month competition: boatnerd.com. Enjoy!

OMG

I'm not his biggest fan, but I feel compelled to tip my hat to Dave Gorman. What to make of this other life of mine?

balletolatry

tarsier

tarsiers are nocturnal creatures of the Indonesian rainforests - they mainly feed on insects, such as this cicada

nautilus (that supremely Joycean object?)

the good life (and no, I'm not being snide)

"Twice a week every week, the retired IT manager, accountant and teacher make their way down Colesbourne Drive, through Campbell Park, along the canal ("Milton Keynes has more waterfront than Venice you know") and into the centre of town for a couple of afternoon pints."
(It was in the paper back in January 2004. I remembered reading the article earlier this evening when someone was telling me about a trip to go dry-slope skiing in MK.)

Winnebago

Has there been a change of mood at unhemmed? Not necessarily a sea-change into something rich and strange, but just a barely perceptible relaxation of some kind? These would seem to be the questions on everybody's lips.

I'm all for a change. I hear it's as good as a rest.

I met a man from Winnipeg today. The place-name insistently reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite get hold of it. A few hours passed and it came to me: the Winnebago.

* * *

- Danke schon!
- Gern geschehen!

illustrated Quoof

As Paul Muldoon would have it, The Unicorn Defends Himself.



Also in Quoof: a poem about Edward Kienholz's The State Hospital.
You can have a much closer look using the Image Viewer here.

one thousand tyres on fire

xrefer

xrefer - or maybe it's xreferplus - kindly send me a quiz every Friday, which usually makes me think, 'Cripes! Friday again! How did that happen?' I like the xrefer quizzes because they're pretty easy, but they usually have a couple of questions that I don't know. However, today's quiz proved to be enjoyable for a different reason (I knew them all in a flash because of my secret past as a mathematician).

1. What is the normal word for one half of a circle?

2. Which word is used to describe a triangle that has all its sides of equal length?

3. How many sides does a quadrilateral have?

4. A rectangle is the same as an oblong: true or false?

5. What is the word to describe a triangle that has two sides of the same length?

6. How many sides does a pentagon have?

7. What is the two-letter word for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter? Its value is about 3.14.

8. How many sides does a dodecagon have - six, eight or twelve?

9. What is a wet nurse?

10. How many sides does a rhombus have?

time: explained

"The human mind has two main scales on which to measure time. The large one takes the length of a human life as its unit, so that there is nothing to be done about life, it is of an animal dignity and simplicity, and must be regarded from a peaceable and fatalistic point of view. The small one takes as its unit the conscious moment, and it is from this that you consider the neighbouring space, an activity of the will, delicacies of social tone, and your personality. The scales are so far apart as almost to give the effect of defining two dimensions; they do not come into contact because what is too large to be conceived by one is still too small to be conceived by the other. Thus, taking the units as a century and the quarter of a second, their ratio is ten to the tenth and their mean is the standard working day; or taking the smaller one as five minutes, their mean is the whole of summer. The repose and self-command given by the use of the first are contrasted with the speed at which it shows the years to be passing from you, and therefore with the fear of death; the fever and multiplicity of life, as known by the use of the second, are contrasted with the calm of the external space of which it gives consciousness, with the absolute or extra-temporal value attached to the brief moments of self-knowledge with which it is concerned, and with a sense of security in that it makes death so far off."

Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 43-4

GP

layers

Literary Opinion

"There was a tremendous thing said by the poet A. E. Housman, in the preface to an edition of a Latin author: he said that the German professor A when he read the German professor B, must have felt like Sin when she brought forth Death. Now I am willing to confess I have sometimes felt like this when reading modern literary criticism, but not at all often. People aren't such fools as all that; the thing settles itself."

(big Bill Empson, 'Literary Opinion', a radio broadcast, 20 October 1954)

ayurvedic massage

Where can I get a decent ayurvedic massage these days?

kiddo?

"I think of my poems as my kiddo, and no doubt Tennyson felt that way too, 'Deep as first love and wild with all regret, Oh death in Life the days that are no more.'"

Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper (1926)

dandiacal

hello mum!

such a sad, sad situation

There was an old man whose despair
Induced him to purchase a hare:
Whereon one fine day,
He rode wholly away,
Which partly assuaged his despair.

(Edward Lear)

... several experiences in consciousness that I have had ...

"You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you City Block as the richest in content of any 'fiction' that has appeared in the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic's vision. His apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky's Tertium Organum lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest."

Hart Crane (in Ohio) writing to Allen Tate (in Kentucky), 15 Feb 1923

turning Japanese - snippets

Medbh McGuckian: "I also love Paul Muldoon's Japanese side, and recall a happy occasion in New York in a sushi restaurant where we felt really exalted!"

Ciaran Carson: "The desktop image of the PC I am writing this on is a reproduction of Hokusai's great print, 'Sudden Gust of Wind': under Mount Fuji, travellers' papers are scattered up into the air, they are holding on to their hats. I love its clarity, its movement, and its sense of humour."

(Journal of Irish Studies, XVII, 2002)

those are the pearls that were his eyes

Jambalaya

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have good fun on the bayou

Jambalaya, a crawfish pie and a file gumbo
’cause tonight I’m gonna see my machez a mio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

Thibodeaux, fontainbleau, the place is buzzin’
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style, go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

[corrections / quibbles positively welcomed]

found tv

a joy for ever

fair / not fair

unhemmed hereby pledges its support to a spanking new blog. It looks like it's going to engage with politics rather more explicitly than unhemmed does. (But then it's quite possibly true that all blogs would do well to engage with politics more explicitly than unhemmed does. Is unhemmed anxious about this? And why this mannered avoidance of the first person singular? It's been a long day.)

"Over the next month he'll be monitoring, meeting and observing the BNP candidates in his local area, Greenwich ..."

I don't envy you - but best of luck, old chum!

the rumors are true

Kenneth Koch

"On graduating in 1948 he moved to New York, where he lived in the same building as the painter Jane Freilicher, on Third Avenue at 16th Street, in an apartment only yards from the tracks of the El. One of his favourite recreations there was to don a rubber gorilla mask and gaze out of his window at passing trains."

(from Mark Ford's mini-bio in The New York Poets: An Anthology)

toybox

shameless self-promotion

It was only a matter of time. Historic recordings duly disinterred, dusted down, and digitally remastered.

the series is really shaping up, non?

Presenting ... Graham Allcott and the Peters Projection! (Why is he looking at us like that?)

a little chit-chat, April 1819

"Last Sunday I took a Walk towards highgate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park I met Mr Green our Demonstrator in conversation with Coleridge - I joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be agreeable - I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for near two miles I suppose in those two Miles he broached a thousand things - let me see if I can give you a list - Nightingales, Poetry - on Poetical sensation - Metaphysics - Different genera and species of Dreams - Nightmare - a dream accompanied by a sense of touch - single and double touch - A dream related - First and second consciousness - the difference explained between will and Volition - so my metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousness - Monsters - the Kraken - Mermaids - southey believes in them - southeys belief too much diluted - A Ghost story - Good morning - I heard his voice as he came towards me - I heard it as he moved away - I heard it in all the interval - if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at Highgate Good Night! It looks so much like rain I shall not go to town to day; but put it off till tomorrow -"

Keats, writing to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana

numberland

In the second of what might be a whole series of pop posts with 'Rugby roots', unhemmed invites you to lend your ears to numberland.

Dubes

I've not asked Dubes if he minds me 'promoting' this fantastic slice of pure pop magic, but until he complains that's what I intend to do. I only heard it for the first time a moment ago: if you listen hard you can hear Rugby in the background. (Or is that just me?)

Bernice Rubens on Elias Canetti

"It was during this time [in the 1950s, shortly after her marriage to Rudi Nassauer] that a Mr Elias Canetti came into our lives, and seemed to lodge there permanently. I disliked him from the start. I thought him a scrounger, but Rudi was much taken with him. Mr Canetti had written one novel, Auto Da Fé, which Rudi had read and was deeply impressed by. According to its author, so was the whole of Europe. Over the years I got to know this man and I realised he had but one single talent. That of self-promotion. He created mystery about himself. If you wanted to phone him, for instance, you had to let it ring twice. Then you had to put the phone down and ring again. Certain people could approach him, but only if they'd had a reliable recommendation. I thought it all rather pathetic. My father met him once and declared him evil. And as it turned out, he was right, though evil might have been an overstatement. He did not have the imagination to be evil. He was wicked rather, depraved, vicious and spiteful. His own life was dull and uneventful, and to compensate he would create intrigue in the lives of other people.

"My marital situation fascinated Canetti, and he curried favour with K [Rudi's mistress] in order to stir the pot. He moved around Hampstead couples and loners doling out destructive advice and waiting, with infinite pleasure, for the shit to hit the fan. He himself was married to a rather gentle victim, Vesa. He told me once how he envied me my children and what a sorrow it was for him that Vesa couldn't have any. Later I was to hear from Vesa herself that it was he who did not want any children and insisted on taking steps to prevent it. I hated that man. He was the only person in my life that I have ever hated. And I loved that hatred. It inspired me. It was almost a creative force. One day, I was driving up Haverstock Hill and Mr Canetti, deep in filthy thought, crossed the road in front of me. It was not a pedestrian crossing, and I could, quite legally, have killed him on the spot. "He came out of nowhere, m'Lud. It was impossible to pull up." But I refrained. I needed him around so that I could go on hating him. About 30 years later, he left England and went to live in Zurich. Nobody regretted his departure. As he had so often predicted, and had no doubt promoted, he won the Nobel prize and eventually died of old age. I marvelled that a man of such perverse nature could die of natural causes."

Strong stuff.

hungry sailors

"Accordingly our day's ration was brought out, and seating ourselves on a detached fragment of rock, we proceeded to discuss it. First we divided it into two equal portions, and, carefully rolling one of them up for our evening's repast, divided the remainder again as equally as possible, and then drew lots for the first choice. I could have placed the morsel that fell to my share upon the tip of my finger; but notwithstanding this I took care that it should be full ten minutes before I had swallowed the last crumb. What a true saying it is that 'appetite furnishes the best sauce.' There was a flavour and a relish to this small particle of food that under other circumstances it would have been impossible for the most delicate viands to have imparted."

Herman Melville, Typee (1846), Chapter VII

there's no two ways about it: some places have funny names

Candid Wajda

Strictly speaking, I didn't ask his permission to slap this up on my 'semi-inaccessible' (thanks to Herr Douglas Ross for this most elegant adjective) webspace; nor indeed to take the photo in the first place. However, I felt in my bones that the great man not only wouldn't mind, but might even approve. (He's the chap with grey hair, looking towards the windows. He turned 80 the other day, you know.)

a great band to play at your birthday party

Sławomir Mrożek 19.x.1963 Chiavari

Gazety czytuję. Z Echa Krakowa wciąż się dowiaduję, a to, że raz Józef Panek, z Technikum z Krzeszowic, znalazł pieczarkę o nóżce 14cm, średnicy kapelusza 21cm, to znów ktoś bardzo duże dwa pomidory wyhodował, z Przekroj zaś, że w Lipsku pokazano wynalazek polegający na tym, że marynarki się nie będzie już szyło, tylko kleiło. Na razie opracowano tylko technikę sklejenia górnej części marynarki, ale praca trwają. Było nawet zdjęcie tej marynarki, całkiem porządna marynarka, niczego sobie.

that's just, like, your opinion, man

'The Early Christian Father's "inter urinas et faeces nascimur" clings to sexual life and cannot be detached from it in spite of every effort at idealization.'

Pelican Freud vol. 8 Case Histories I 'Dora' and 'Little Hans', pp. 62-3

Yerevan

Yerevan, capital of Armenia

a flamboyant bow

'His respect for Hierarchy, and particularly the Dignitaries of the Church, has been more than once exhibited in the course of his work. Mr Seward saw him presented to the Archbishop of York, and described his Bow to an ARCH-BISHOP, as such a studied elaboration of homage, such an extension of limb, such a flexion of body, as have seldom or ever been equalled.'

Boswell's Life of Johnson, April 1783

sur le volcan ne pousse pas l'herbe

Ivor Cutler RIP

clafoutis

a first-class 'almost'

'Protection against stimuli is an almost more important function for the living organism than reception of stimuli.'

Freud, 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'

conjecture in the saddle

One of Baudelaire's definitions of beauty: "something slightly vague, giving rein to conjecture".

(The Essence of Laughter, 1956, p 166; scooped up by the beautifully vague Charles Simic)

Howard Nemerov?

Donald Davidson on 'the underlying paradox of irrationality'

'If we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background of rationality needed to justify any diagnosis at all.'

(from 'Paradoxes of Irrationality' in Philosophical Essays on Freud, eds. Wollheim & Hopkins 1982)

Kalmykia

As even those merely given to casual pottering around these parts (and no shame in that) cannot help but have noticed, unhemmed has got to the ground its ear, on the pulse a finger, and generally oodles of nous when it comes to things cultural, things countercultural, and things shonkily tertium quiddish. It will come, then, as no surprise to hear that Radio 4's Book of the Week is to thank for sending us in the direction of all this stuff. I particularly like this snap of Warwickshire's finest.