WORK
It began in mystery and it will end in mystery. However many of life’s large, captivating principles and small, captivating details we may explore, unpuzzle, and learn by heart, there will still be vast unknown realms to lure us. If uncertainty is the essence of romance, there will always be enough uncertainty to make life sizzle and renew our sense of wonder. It bothers some people that no matter how passionately they may delve, the universe remains inscrutable. ‘For my part,’ Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, ‘I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.’ The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
—Diane Ackerman
—from A Natural History of the Senses
WORD(S)
absquatulate /ab-SKWAH-chə-layt/. verb. To abscond. To steal away. Rarely: to die. A mock-Latin combination of abscond + squat. See also, absquatulize.
“He certainly had his hump up. He absquatulated. The bung cried: ‘Square the omee for the cream of the valley!’ But the splodger had mizzled with his half-a-grunter.” (Angela Carter)
“And to think that Doña Estefanía absquatulated with all your beautiful chains! That just goes to show you it never rains but it pours.” (Miguel de Cervantes [trans. David Kipen]
“The former owners having been in some haste to absquatulate, random items of inventory had been left behind, the usual two-headed dogs in jars and pickled brains of notable figures in history, many from long before pickling as we know it was invented, the Baby from Mars, the scalp of General Custer, certified to be authentic…” (Thomas Pynchon
“I mistook her for a Tarkington student, maybe the dyslexic daughter of some overthrown Caribbean or African dictator who had absquatulated to the USA with his starving nation’s treasury.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
WEB
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Dude! No, seriously, fun stuff… → Top 10 Most Extreme Substances
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“The book was, we can now see, crying out for the invention of the web, which would enable the holding of multiple domains of knowledge in the mind at one time that a proper reading requires.” → Finnegans Wake – The book the web was invented for
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I don’t read French (the gist: meet a hipster who only watches movies on VHS); it’s the awesome vintage VHS box illustrations for contemporary movies that are worth a click. → De Game of Thrones à Gravity : un hipster parisien regarde tout en VHS
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“Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.” → William Faulkner Makes Us Wonder: What’s So Great About Poetry, Anyhow?
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Today in 1527, an army of German Lutherans and Spanish Catholics (contempt breeds strange bedfellows) led by Charles Duc de Bourbon of France begin the Sack of Rome, considered by most the end of the Renaissance. This was, for obvious reasons, a significant victory for the Protestants. It was also a significant factor in the terrible and popular story of Henry VIII: Pope Clement VIII—who only escaped the sack with his life due to the bravery of the Swiss Guard (of the 189 members of the guard, only 42 survived), a gigantic ransom payment and a secret passage from the Vatican—was from then on unwilling to offend the Spanish Emperor (Charles V) and thus unwilling to grant Henry’s requested annulment from the (Charles V’s aunt) Catherine of Aragon, which resulted in Henry’s break from Rome. Though responsibility for the whole thing undoubtedly lies with Charles V, there was an immensely complex group of forces at work, not least the Duc de Bourbon’s ongoing protection racket that had ensnared the Pope, conspiracies and betrayal inside the Vatican, and the King of France’s attempts to take advantage of the strife.
WATCH/WITNESS
“Apostle Islands Ice Cave” (Andy Rathbun)
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader V. shares a link to complement the Surreal Type Samples: “Browsing further, I discovered more surreal type samples. Enjoy!”
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Reader B. writes in: “What a feast! ¶ Just blogged that fine alphabet.”
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