A ballet of swans in the red-light district of Amsterdam.
Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away?
—from ‘Wild Swans at Coole,’ W.B. Yeats
As a child, he moved so much that it cut off almost all friendships, and this left a lasting mark on the adult. “I have only a vague address and a heart that is breaking,” he once wrote in an essay of a bicycle trip at 13, when he tried to find boys who had been his closest friends at an earlier residence. He never found them.
Teen girl to sailor in uniform: Can you do me a huge favor and let me kiss you?
Sailor: Man, you’re really twisting my arm huh?—Top of Empire State Building
(proposition found at Overheard in New York.)
(photo found at LIFE: `Nautilus’ crewmen sightseeing at top of Empire State building, 1958.)
Some more rain in the night & a little this morning. Some sunny periods, & not cold. Finished the flower garden. Planted two rows cabbage (36 plants). Cleared the place where the gooseberries are to go (it is too early to move them yet). Made experimentally a few briquettes of coal dust & clay. If successful will make a mould & a sieve for making them on a larger scale. Evidently it is important to use only fine dust, also one must have a large metal receptacle for mixing in.
Tonight found a kind of phosphorescent worm or millipede, a thing I have never seen or heard of before. Going out on the lawn I noticed some phosphorescence, & noticed that this made a streak which constantly grew larger. I thought it must be a glowworm, except that I had never seen a glowworm which left its phosphorescence behind. After searching with an electric torch found it was a long very slender wormlike creature with many thin legs down each side & two sort of antennae on the head. The whole length about 11/4”. Managed to catch him in a test-tube & bring him in, but his phosphorescence soon faded.
5 eggs.
Pale yellow, very wriggly. (legs relatively thinner than this.)
—George Orwell’s journal entry for this day, seventy years ago.
(via Orwell Diaries)
Don’t leave the lights on, Rune Guneriussen.
Nuit Blanche aux Buttes-Chaumont.
Their flashlights were following the advance of the little fishes.
Nathan Coley installation aux Buttes-Chaumont, Nuit Blanche 2009.
Previous years taught me to never again leave the house during Nuit Blanche, as the night would, unquestionably, devolve into Nuit Désastre. But as one of the designated zones this year was just around the corner, I felt obligated to check it out. I did just a very quick tour; it’s a completely new experience when sober. I was also excited to get to cross the pont des suicidés, which I’d never before seen open.
La même voix, toujours
Yves Bonnefoy
I am like the bread you will break,
Like the fire you will make, like the pure water
That will go with you on the earth of the dead.
Like the foam
That ripened the harbor and the light for you.
Like the evening bird that blots the shores.
Like the colder, brusquer, sudden evening wind.
-translation by Paul Auster
![La rose de Paracelse, Jorge Luis Borges.
[The other man] took out a pouch and, with his right hand, emptied it onto the table : out flowed a stream of gold coins. Paracelsus turned his back to light the lamp. When he turned around again, he noticed, in the man’s left hand, a rose. The rose troubled him.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kom7yjOIJz1qzrgv5o1_500.jpg)
La rose de Paracelse, Jorge Luis Borges.
[The other man] took out a pouch and, with his right hand, emptied it onto the table : out flowed a stream of gold coins. Paracelsus turned his back to light the lamp. When he turned around again, he noticed, in the man’s left hand, a rose. The rose troubled him.
old-timey toy displayed in La Pedrera
This was one of the very few times I took out the camera during my short holiday in Barcelona, which mostly involved but the sand, the sea, and the drink. (Needless to say, was more than a bit wistful returning home.)
rose et bleu et pomme et gingembre.
currently been savoring : borges and homemade confiture.
MY AUNTS
By Meghan O'Rourke
Grew up on the Jersey Shore in the nineteen-seventies.
Always making margaritas in the kitchen,
always laughing and doing their hair up pretty,
sharing lipstick and shoes and new juice diets;
always splitting the bills to the last penny,
stealing each other’s clothes,
loving one another then complaining
as they walked out the door. Each one with her doe eyes,
each one younger than the last,
each older the next year, one year
further from their girlhoods of swimming
at Sandy Hook, doing jackknives off the diving board
after school, all of them
being loved by one boy and then another,
all driving further from the local fair, further from Atlantic City.
They used to smoke in their cars,
rolling the windows down and letting their red nails
hang out, little stoplights:
Stop now, before the green
comes to cover up your tall brown bodies.
(photo via LIFE archive: “A view of the beach at Atlantic City, the site of the Atlantic City Beauty Contest,” 1944.)
petit tuyau pour les parisiens : Cinéma en plein air started tonight.
This year’s theme — Traversées :
…Mais ces voyages qui ont écrit l’Histoire étaient aussi des voyages intérieurs, réponse à l’éternelle question de la découverte de soi à travers celle du monde, comme dans la fameuse Chanson des Gardes suisses - “Notre vie est un voyage/ Dans l’hiver et dans la nuit/ Nous cherchons notre passage/ Dans un ciel où rien ne luit”…
Lucien Logette, Conseiller artistique du Cinéma en plein air
I will most likely be there for Into the Wild, Brokeback Mountain, Golden Door, and Fitzcarraldo.
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Bal populaire du 14 juillet 1912 (Paris) —Fête nationale française - Wikipédia
How I wish my tomorrow would look more like this..
You can’t fool me into thinking this film is steamy, sexy times. I’ve seen that nightmare-demon show of a trailer.
