More notes from Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy because he says so many exciting things, and I can only choose some to share with the audience at Mythcon. My brain is pretty tired, but reading and writing text allows me to continue to stuff more and more information in without worrying about actually remembering […]
Fine Tuning: A Second Glance at Ong: Orally Based Thought and Speech Read More »
Flannery O'Connor: From Mysteries and Manners "I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of
The Anagogical Moment, Referencing the Mystery. Read More »
This is an astonishing project by poet Jen Bervin, who travels to different countries to learn about the traditional methods of silk cultivation, from the trees to the spinning worms in their silky-sticky cocoons — and then home again to see the remarkable cutting-edge technologies made with silk. Discovered to be bio-compatible with the human
Inscribing the Body with Bio Compatible Silk Read More »
I so enjoy reading John Le Carre whose masterful writing offers a lesson in how to write with precision, creating layers of meaning in finely honed phrases. Here is the opening passage from The Perfect Spy, a seemingly straightforward account of a man, Marcus Pym, striding across a square on a rainy evening, headed toward
The Perfect Passage: John Le Carre Read More »
As part of preparing for my talk at Mythcon — which will be focusing on the re-interpretation of myths in modern literature, especially as this is the anniversary of C. S. Lewis’ brilliant novel Till We Have Faces, based on the myth of Cupid and Psyche — I have been reading widely in the histories and
Orality and Literacy: The Sound of Language. Read More »
I have just finished reading Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Mexican author Yuri Herrera and it is an amazing and haunting work. A young woman Makina is given a note from her mother to take to the older brother who has disappeared into the North. Along the way, Makina encounters a series
Of Border Crossings and Mythic Journeys : Yuri Herrera Read More »
After I posted on the painting fragment of the unknown girl by a Dutch painter (also unknown) I went searching for other portraits — to see what in her might be considered the conventions of such portraits at that time, – and really, I found almost none that matched the uniqueness of this painting. There
Reading Art: The Maiden Read More »
I collect images that either amuse or inspire me. Sometimes they remind me of things I have written on or thought about–almost like proof of collective consciousness — and other times, they appear before me to ask that I consider them. Such is this lovely and haunting image that crossed my path in an unrelated
Reading Art: The Torn Away Girl Read More »
Above is a curious and captivating of two nude jousters — male and female(?) — on snails. This is from the Baldus de Ubaldis. Lectura super Institutionibus. 1480-1481. The best part of this image is that it remains an utter mystery as to what sort of allagorical or rhetorical meaning they were trying to express by
Jousting Snails: A Medieval Martial Art Read More »
Konrad Kyeser, Bellifortis, Germany 15th century (Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 1360, fol. 4v)
Sunday Marginalia: The Four Winds Read More »
