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Showing posts from April, 2018

The core of mystery is reality. The core of reality is mystery.

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I was struck by Leonora Carrington's paintings... ...at the same time as I was re-reading The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.... It occurred to me that mystery can be transmitted best when it contains, or is contained by, reality. Pure abstract art (like some music with no lyrics and some abstract paintings) may sometimes trasmit emotions but I reckon that mystery, the unsayable stuff, you know what I mean, is most effective when connected to concrete things we are already familiar with.

The pretty smiling waitress.

Sometimes you are in a restaurant of an evening, with good friends, good food, flowing wine, it's dark outside and warmly  lit inside, and you notice the pretty smiling waitress. And the cook comes out of the kitchen to say hello, joking and happy. And you laugh with the jolly and ironic waiter. Then, on the way to the bathroom, you catch a glimpse of all three, glum and sad in  the kitchen.

I'm not one for monuments but...

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I recently made a trip to Sicily. I'm not one for monuments but I love the Pretoria Fountain (Fontana Pretoria) in Palermo. It is lovely, above all the wonderful animal heads in all four quarters... The fountain has the added attraction of having annoyed the eccliasiastical authorities. Sometimes it is called the Fountain of Shame (Fontana della Vergogna) maybe because of the naked ladies and gentlemen. I didn't take photos of those. Google will show you plenty. There is a legend that says that the nuns in the convent  next to  the fountain only came out at night so they would not see the naked ladies and gentlemen. I walked around the fountain twice to get a good look at those animal heads. And it occurred to me that the sculptors did better work than the nuns who lived next door to the fountain, and who competed to see who could whip themselves with thorn branches the most. As I saw these sculptures with my own eyes, I saw the hard sharp thorn

Citizen

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