from Ellen Meloy's 'The Anthropology of Turquoise' chapter one, the Deeds and Sufferings of Light (my italics)
'Neurobiologists suggest that a keen human sensitivity to color begins when we are infants. An aesthetic sense, an intuitive link between a chromatic band and emotion, can then grow as strong as a fingerprint, defying logic and inviting the helpless surrender of a love affair. Intoxication with color, sometimes subliminal, often fierce, may express itself as a profound attachment to landscape. It has been rightly said: Color is the first principle of Place.'
latest cloth project: sewing pieces of home-dyed fabrics together, two layers thick, my favourite running stitch, letting it grow as-it-were-organically, resulting (I hope) in a table-cloth size piece; useful.....as such, or maybe hung in an open doorway during summer, preventing insects and small birds from flying indoors and becoming trapped
or else hanging curtain-wise as a shield against the sun's bright rays, softening the light; at night protecting one from darkened skies as we hurtle through space
 |
| personally I love close-ups of stitching |
 |
| yesterday, as we celebrated my 52nd birthday with family and a couple of friends, we were fortunate enough to witness these blue tits leaving their nest! |
I don't do a lot of quoting here, however I couldn't resist sharing yet another gem, this one from John William's novel 'Augustus' (so worth reading!)
this quote is from Book III, where Augustus aged 77 (A.D. 14) is composing a letter to his old friend and philosopher Nicolaus of Damascus
'I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he may understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself. I look now at my thin shanks, the withered skin upon my hand, the sagging flesh that is blotched with age; and it is difficult for me to realize that once this body sought release from itself in that of another; and that another sought the same from it. To that instant of pleasure some dedicate all their lives, and become embittered and empty when the body fails, as the body must. They are embittered and empty because they have known only the pleasure, and do not know what that pleasure has meant. For contrary to what we may believe, erotic love is the most unselfish of all the varieties; it seeks to become one with another, and hence to escape the self. This kind of love is the first to die, of course, failing as the body that carries it fails; and for that reason, no doubt, it has by many been thought to be the basest of the varieties. But the fact that it will die, and that we know it will die, makes it more precious; and once we have known it, we are no longer irretrievably trapped and exiled within the self.'
 |
| how edges meet |
