Painting Against the Enemy

"Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."~Picasso

(Nina Leen photograph of a fighter in her studio via LIFE Archives)

Red Queen's Race

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."-Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Life Creeps Up

However smart we may be, however rich and clever or loving or charitable or spiritual or impeccable, it doesn't help us at all. The real power comes in to us from the beyond. Life creeps up behind, where we are sightless, and from below, where we do not understand. -D.H. Lawrence

Life creeps up & so does bang (fringe) creepage. It will take all my will & strength to make it across town to cure this unacceptable state of hair-affairs. It's a welcome gray, cool day here today. Don't agree (entirely) with the Lawrence quote, but it's how life feels nowadays.

[photograph by Amanda Mason/all rights reserved/via Audrey Hepburn Complex tumblr]

Prowling for Flowers

It grew late. Through the open door, stealthily, came the scent of madonna lilies, almost as if it were prowling abroad.
--D.H. Lawrence

Well, close enough, though these aren't madonnas. They are Casablanca lilies on sale at White Flower Farm. I recently purchased a White Flower Farm 100-daffodil naturalizing kit for a friend & her husband's first anniversary. The bulbs will be shipped when planting time arrives. Meanwhile, today's White Flower Farm email highlighted these scented lilies & I can't resist showing them. I hope to resist buying any.

As a child, I was inordinately proud that my name means 'lily' in every language in which it appears. I was flower-mad from birth. My mother received a phone call from a neighbor at early dusk in late summer. Do you know where she is? She's naked in Mrs. N's rose garden. Uh oh. They split up & cornered me (I was a fast runner, even for 4 years old). I remember a thorn in my little paw--I blamed them (I must have been drunk on scent, to be so cheeky). As they rudely interrupted my communion with flowers, I'd clamped my fist around the (very few!) roses I'd pinched. My neighbor apologized for frightening me. My mother was annoyed, as one did not apologize to a child for anything. In her world, anyway. She said I was a bee in a former life. Or a dolphin. I wish she'd make up her mind.

If you have any room in your garden - you're lucky & here's the link to White Flower Farm. I've never had a thing go wrong with anything I've purchased from them. (I used to have a garden.) Many people shriek & say, the prices. Yes, well, you get what you pay for in these matters. (E.g., perfume)

[flower images via White Flower Farm]

Saturday Shoe Styles

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that fits all cases.--Carl Jung

Please bear with me; I'm trying out this new-fangled blogger template. Of course, I began doing so too late & while too tired. I'll just chalk it up to 'bricolage' - playing around, moving things here & there. Maybe I'll go back to the old one. Don't know. 'Night.

Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon

"In 1897, Henry James leased Lamb House, a villa in Sussex. He bought it a few years later and lived there until his death in 1916. One of his frequent visitors was his close friend the novelist Edith Wharton. In A Backward Glance(1934), Edith Wharton wrote about a day trip with Henry James to Bodiam Castle, near Lamb House: "Tranquil white clouds hung above it in a windless sky, and the silence and solitude were complete as we sat looking across at the crumbling towers, and at their reflection in a moat starred with water-lilies, and danced over by great blue dragonflies. For a long time no one spoke; then James turned to me and said solemnly: 'Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.'"' The Writer's Almanac, June 24, 2010

The 100+ (F) heat & sudden downpours (& power outages) continue, but the weather is to take a turn towards the fair & unusually clear the next few days here in DC (& beaches). So it may well be that the inn where I'm headed, ruled over by a benevolent Englishwoman, will indeed be rather England-in-the best-of-weather. And I didn't even have to buy a plane ticket.

This is an excuse to post a Walter Crane illustration - I use many on Julie's blog. It's titled Spring, but I think it's summery. Since when do marguerites bloom in the spring in England (or here)? Poor confused man. [second illustration is via here & is not Crane but it suits my whim.]

Moreau Making Waves

The Ocean On Bicycles from runrobot on Vimeo.

As long as you don't make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that's condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead. Jeanne Moreau

Lovely little film, The Ocean on Bicycles: A Gray Afternoon in June via Cycle Chic - The Original from Copenhagen. Here is Roger Ebert review of Jules et Jim ( 1962), many years later (in 2004). I may burst before I get to the sea (soon). I hope to have the energy to cycle at least one loop around a wildlife refuge. I'll try. In my Breton stripes, of course. Update - click through to the vimeo site above to see a larger version of the video.

[photographs by Raymond Cauchetier, uncredited still photographer; also Douglas Kirkland]

Week's End - Possibilities

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.--Herodotus

Go US v. England, today at 2pm EDT. (Well, we won in 1950, I hear. I wasn't born yet.) Go Azzurri on Monday. I saw the Italians play Mexico in the 1994 World Cup quarterfinals here in Washington, DC. I still have my l'il plastic Il Tricolore. Yes, it is possible to be a romantic & love sport. I am aware of the corporate-hyena stuff, spare me. You must understand that I look at these events through the prism of my Western classical academic training. Ahem. And it is stress relief of the first order.

Speaking of stress relief...American ex-pat in Italia, Michelle Fabio of Bleeding Espresso (visit her!) posted this hilarious Daily Show clip from Thursday's show on Facebook. John Oliver is just determined to undermine the Americans on behalf of the Brits. (It's funny whether you like football/soccer - or not.)

[photograph - a rugby footballer kissing his wife (or girlfriend) by the wonderful Australian photographer Sam Hood, 1934]

Camus on White Roses

The white rose of morning has the fragrance of water and pepper.

That phrase jumped off the page on a recent night of reading; the elegant photograph did the same that next morning. (I really must purchase some goggles.) I have photographs of vases of white roses--somewhere. Soon, I shall have to hold things up to be captured by the laptop web camera. Sigh. On that note, I'm dragging, really. But must drag self out into the snow & across town to attend to the dead keratin sprouting from my head. [photograph by elseachelsea via we heart it]

Week's End - Bird in Jerusalem

From the landscape of endless argument* The neck ribbon diverts one's attention from those talons. Someone needs a manicure. Forgive the pedestrian nature of titles, no words. Perhaps I've used this photograph in another post here. Seem to have wrenched something (not just my brain). Ouch.

Cheers from snowy DC. I wonder what everyone is up to...I shall visit after watching Georgetown v. Duke. (Yes, I watch college basketball.)

*I'm quoting myself (!) & I can't find magazine to scan. Yes, this is called self-sabotage, though it hardly seems important. Today.

Update on Tuesday, 2 February - hibernating but will post suitable photograph when I have energy to find it. Meanwhile, happy groundhog day.

Elegance on Wheels

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. ~Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

[photograph by Mikael of Cycle Chic from Copenhagen via flickr]

Ready or Not

Pack lightly we move so fast --It's a Young Country from World Hotel

The year, the decade begins without a header, a coherent design, etc., as I promised myself last year. Couldn't find the photographs I wanted (what else is new?) for a most amusing -- OK, to me it would be amusing -- post. But I liked this photograph from worldislandphoto's flickr stream (unattributed photographer) a few days ago. Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments &/or emailed the last year & a half (some for GG's blog). I can't take comments on GG but some of you have discovered that you can comment on the Facebook link there. I actually didn't realize that I'd successfully linked it until fairly recently. Yes, I blundered into it. This is perhaps an example of "happy accidents" to which The Clever Pup refers.

Happy New Year to all.

Year's End - Goodbye to All That

Call it what you will; I say good riddance to a thoroughly disagreeable decade. Cheers!

[unattributed photograph via LIFE archives]

Time, Timing

Time stays long enough for those who use it. --Leonardo da Vinci

That know-it-all.

[lovely & timely photographs by Aimee Ketsdever at deviant art; thelovelyexile/tumbler, & etreh - all via we heart it]