Random quote of the day:

“Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

—Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” Following the Equator

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Something for the Harry Potter fans.

ITALIANS*

*IT ALL ENDS

ETA: Fixed broken link.

Random quote of the day:

“Only great minds can afford a simple style.”

—Stendhal, On Love
(tr. Vyvyan Beresford Holland* and C. K. Scott Moncrieff)

*Some of you may know that Vyvyan Holland is Oscar Wilde’s son. Here’s an interesting article on Wilde’s legacy through the generations of his family.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Green Men are found in many cultures. They are commonly a symbol of rebirth and regeneration, the spring greening that inevitably follows the dying of winter.

I’m fascinated with them. I have two of them, one in the back yard garden near the peach tree:

The lovely lady to the left of him is the Roman goddess Flora, and the lady on the right is simply named Ivy. The man himself is cast iron and he is aging gracefully, starting to rust in interesting patterns.

I also have a Green Man inside, in my room:

He’s smaller, also made of metal, but I doubt he’s copper as the green of him suggests. I believe the “aging” on this one is artificial—but I still think he’s rather cool. Here’s the grouping in which he sits, right next to Freya and the prayer sticks, which you may remember from past entries:

Truth is, I’d have more Green Men if I had the space and money (so it’s probably a good thing that I don’t). I like the ones with serious and slightly sinister expressions, and I like them to be made of serious natural materials like metal, not these comical cast resin ones that you see here and there and everywhere (though I admit, Flora and Ivy are cast resin). Why am I so fascinated with these Green Man images?

This post is really about Nature.

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Random quote of the day:

 

“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”

—Sir Francis Bacon, Essex’s Device

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work, and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.”

—Henry Ward Beecher, “Summer Reading,” from Eyes and Ears

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

What books are currently on your desk?

I don’t have any books on my desk. There is a cat on my desk. However, on the table next to my reading chair there are these books:

Fairy Paths and Spirit Roads: Exploring Otherworldly Routes in the Old and New Worlds by Paul Devereux. This is a semi-anthropological exploration of landscape features which may be the remnants of “spirit roads” used in ancient religious rituals. Devereux gives directions on how to get to these places and any folk traditions that still cling to them.

The Creole by Ray La Scola. A historical romance from the 1960s.

Lover Revealed by J. R. Ward. A paranormal romance. Great escapism.

By Oak, Ash, & Thorn: Modern Celtic Shamanism by D. J. Conway. A how-to-do-it guide—which generally makes me very skeptical when dealing with something which disappeared two thousand years ago. BUT, I’m fascinated by the hints and fragments of Western shamanism that still exist and how Ms. Conway brings those together to make a coherent, modern tool for self-exploration. Not that I expect to become a shaman. I’m a writer. That’s as close to shamanhood as I expect or want to get. But I have been working on an idea about a prehistoric Western European shaman. There’s only so far Mircea Eliade is going to take a girl.

Inside the Live Reptile Tent: The Twilight World of Carnival Midway by Bruce Caron and Jeff Brouws. Beautiful picture-book exploration of this world.

The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists by Irene Taylor and Alan Taylor. A compendium of diary entries for every day of the year on a wide range of subjects and perspectives. I like looking at the entries on the same day that they were written. It’s fascinating to see what someone else was experiencing on that day.

Safe and sane, all that jazz. Here’s something from another summer, another world:

A book, that—lying on your back, while the wind shakes the leaves in your drowsy ears, and insects fill the air with a sweet tenor, and bees under your window hum and drone, and birds return thanks for the seed and worms eaten—floats you up out of sleep, which yet throws its spray over you, as the sea does on men who lazily float in a summer breezy day on raft or low-edged boat,—a book that now and then drops you, and then takes you up again, that spins a silver  thread of thought from your mind fine as gossamer, and then breaks it as the wind does the spider’s web,—this is a summer book.  You never know where you left off, and do not care where you begin.  It is all beginning, and all middle, and end everywhere….

I love clover-hay reading.  Spread out on an ample mow, with the north and south barndoor wide open, with hens scratching down on the floor, and expressing themselves in short sentences to each other, now and then lifting up one of those roundelays or hen-songs that are no doubt as good to them as a psalm-tune or a love-song; with swallows flying in and out, and clouds floating over the sun, raising or lowering the light on our book. Can anything be sweeter than such reading of power, or story-weaving magician, or magister? Yes.  It is even sweeter to have the letters grow dim, and run about the page, and disappear, while the hands relax, and the book, gently swaying, comes down on your breast, and visions from within open their clear faces on your, and the hours go by so softly that you will not believe that the sun is low in the west, and that those voices are of folks out after you to come in to supper!

—Henry Ward Beecher, from “Summer Reading,” Eyes and Ears

Random quote of the day:

“Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

—Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

I couldn’t really verify this quote. It’s widely propagated on the interdweebs and is probably a corruption or an alternate translation of something that appeared in the essay “Crop Rotation” (or, alternately translated, “Rotation of Crops”) in Kierkegaard’s book, Either/Or. I think this one is pithier than the quote I could verify: “Boredom is the root of evil; it is that which must be held off.” I can never resist a good pith, so I decided to use the one above.

(Thanks to handworn for calling my attention to this quote.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.