Ugly Duckling

“Look, here comes another brood, as if there were not enough of us already! and what a queer looking object one of them is; we don’t want him here,” and then one flew out and bit him in the neck.
“Let him alone,” said the mother; “he is not doing any harm.”
“Yes, but he is so big and ugly,” said the spiteful duck “and therefore he must be turned out.”
“The others are very pretty children,” said the old duck, with the rag on her leg, “all but that one; I wish his mother could improve him a little.”

From Hans Christian Andersen, “The Ugly Duckling”.

A photo hack from the Great Barrier Reef.

Winterthur

I’d just finished reading Doris Lessing’s haunting short novel, “The Fifth Child” which challenges our notions of monstrosity and who is the monster – the goblin child or his mother…?

http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/doris-lessing-the-fifth-child/

Original GSV at http://goo.gl/maps/CQH7 tortured in Nik Color Efex and PS Puppet Warp.

Black Rain

Inspired by Masuji Ibuse’s wonderful telling of the Hiroshima story.

Kuroi Ame (Black Rain), a book by Masuji Ibuse, was hailed in Japan as the first true work of art to be inspired by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The title refers to the radioactive rain and fallout from the explosion.

Black Rain is based on contemporaneous diary and journal entries of the bombing. We follow the principal narrator Shigematsu, in the days after the destruction of his home, when the black rain begins to fall. Shigematsu begins re-writing his poignant journal of the events in the hope of finding a husband for his niece, Yasuko, who has been scarred by radiation sickness. Shigematsu, his wife Shigeko, and Yasuko reassure prospective husbands that Yasuko was not affected by the radiation, although she was under the black rain that followed the destruction. Shigematsu reads his wartime diary to understand his own life, and Yasuko gives up all hopes of marrying and falls ill with radiation sickness.

Alongside the horrifying wastes of the ruined city, he sets the gentle Japanese countryside with its unchanging people and traditions. Against the threat of universal destruction, he sets the small, unimportant – and hence infinitely touching – human things which triumph in the end.

More at https://redstarcafe.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/black-rain/

https://redstarcafe.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/sadako-and-the-thousand-cranes/

Google Street View capture artistically enhanced in Nik Color Efex, Alien Skin Snap Art Impasto and Photoshop.

Glassdrumman Road

Dylan Thomas described these little seaside towns so well in “Under Milk Wood”, a play for voices.

“To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now.”

Richard Burton’s pear-shaped tones transport the listener in this recording: UNDER MILK WOOD.

Garafia

I suppose that, when I saw the colour version of this image turning into a poster child for the Oregon Department of HIghways, I decided to go with Silver Efex.

And then this image reminded me of the 1990 Stephen King movie Misery with James Caan and Kathy Bates, and there’s James, as novelist Paul Sheldon, driving along a snowy road listening to Shotgun and, well, when you skid, you shouldn’t just hit the brakes.

Annie Wilkes: God came to me last night and told me your purpose for being here. I am going to help you write a new book.
Paul Sheldon: You think I can just whip one out?
Annie Wilkes: Oh, but I don’t think Paul, I know.

Misery (1990) Stephen King (Part 1)

Sky Furnace, RSS Konstantinov

Skyfurnaces are the most terrible sky warships on the service of the U.R.R.S.(United Republics of the Red Star). Ventral Arrays of Immolators sweep massive swaths of ground clear of life, leaving only ashes and rocks turned to glass by the immense heat. From small Gates that can transport a person near-instantaneously through moderate distances to enormous Gate Facillities that can send vehicles and personnel over vast distances, gates generated by skyships allow them to bypass our dimension entirely.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=658871096b390ac7822054a0a020bf4a

Les Bouquinistes

The Bouquinistes of Paris are booksellers of used and antiquarian books who ply their trade along large sections of the banks of the Seine: on the right bank from the Pont Marie to the Quai du Louvre, and on the left bank from the Quai de la Tournelle to Quai Voltaire. The Seine is thus described as ‘the only river in the world that runs between 2 bookshelves.

(Thanx, Wikipedia!)

Google Street View along the Quai des Grands Augustins, Paris, antiqued by me.

Time Was Soft There

Kilometer Zero is right in front of Notre Dame, on Ile de La Cité. It is the point to which all the highways in France refer.

If you stand on Kilometer Zero, facing Notre Dame, you will see a bridge called the Pont au Double. Cross it to the left bank of the Seine. The large street along the river is St. Michel. Cross it. Now there is a tiny park and after that, you are in front of Shakespeare and Company, the most charming bookstore on earth.

The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: https://redstarcafe.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/the-rag-and-bone-shop-of-the-heart/

Jeremy Mercer’s book, Time Was Soft There : https://redstarcafe.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/time-was-soft-there/

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Beach Road, Kakanui, Otago, New Zealand

The film by the same name opens with Joel Barish awakening one morning. Everything seems to be normal in the life of the downtrodden New Yorker, as he readies himself for a day at work. Yet each action evokes an air of unease, from the freshly beaten exterior of his run down car to the crowd at the train station as he awaits his daily commute. Waiting amidst a sea of strangers, he hears the announcement of a service to Montauk leaving from an adjacent platform, and feels compelled to ignore his routine with reckless abandon in favour of a scenic journey.

The literary reference is to a poem by Alexander Pope about Heloise and Abelard…

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

So this photo, enhanced from a Google Street View image for +Artistic Google , is my newest 5 minute mental vacation, handy to whip out at meetings where we watch paint dry for hours or just tuning out the people with bad headphones on the subway.

“Eloisa and Abelard” here: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1630.html

Intrigue

San Gimignano, the Tuscan hill town with 12 striking medieval towers. You could say it’s the sun or maybe the local white wine, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, but I think it’s the cool stonework in this old town and the climb up to see the towers. Which is what these two tourists are doing.

Or perhaps there’s some Dan Brown stuff going on.