Night had fallen in Lancre, and it was an old night. It was not the simple absence of day, patrolled by the moon and stars, but an extension of something that had existed long before there was any light to define by its absence. It was unfolding itself from under tree roots and inside stones, crawling back across the land.
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
How can anything present itself truly to us since its synthesis is never completed? How could I gain the experience of the world since none of the views or perceptions I have of it can exhaust it and the horizons remain forever open? Open to continual renewal ... a flight from the old, solid, concept of necessity. A centre must emerge, a centre is allowed to emerge.
Merleau-Ponty
(thank you, Manuela and Black Sun, for the quotes and the darkness posts which have inspired mine today)
Merleau-Ponty
(thank you, Manuela and Black Sun, for the quotes and the darkness posts which have inspired mine today)
you build a world of shadows and innuendo's, overwhelmingly gloomy and pierced by the brightness of hopes...
ReplyDeletethank you gabi. shadow and innuendo are crucial, aren't they?
ReplyDelete(I will answer your questions soon :-)
Do you know, when I come here, it is every time into a new, a different world. Today I feel underwater here, the darkness has substance, is liquid, inky, almost overwhelmingly so. I feel it physically. Your photography has so many facettes, so much depth, quite amazing.
ReplyDeletea bewitching series
ReplyDeleteI want to share with you my reaction to your photos and post, but words don't feel enough today. So I turn to music:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUGGaCezuE4&e
Arrigo Boito - "L'altra notte in fondo al mare", Mefistofele with Maria Callas
oh! you read terry pratchett? he's one of my favorite authors (I've read all of his discworld books). he's got plenty of irony and humor 9which we have discussed, is necessary like air) and insight on the human condition (paradoxically a lot of it is expressed through use of characters which are not human).
ReplyDeleteWhich one is this quote from - wyrd sisters? lords and ladies?
Roxana, I feel a murder has taken place (in these pictures). Thank God it's still morning here! :-)
ReplyDeleteLoved the last photo and the poem.
on right click-not that I know how this works-I think you *should* protect/save your stuff. Those who want to 'borrow' can always ask.
Keep well,
b.
nicely done....
ReplyDeleteMarjojo, what you tell me makes me so happy and it is really an honour, so much more because I have such a great admiration for your work.
ReplyDeletebewitching is such a beautiful word, dear FFF :-)
ReplyDeleteoh Manuela, words are not so important (cateodata sunt, dar nu intotdeauna)... thank you for your gift...
ReplyDeletezuma, I'm afraid I must disappoint you here, I don't know T.P. yet, it is a quote I found on Manuela's blog and I liked it and borrowed it for this post (it is from Lords and Ladies). but if you too recommend it so highly, I will read him.
ReplyDelete(my list gets longer and longer)
b, which poem?
ReplyDeletethank you, Marian, for visiting...
ReplyDeletethe tree and the light
ReplyDeletesurprisingly it is the flash/light which makes tree so gloomy
eneles, yes, this tension between light and dark, each making the other stronger, bringing the other closer to its essence. thank you for seeing.
ReplyDeletedo they really have essence or is it more of an illusion?
ReplyDeletedoes anything have essence?
I am looking, just fail to come up with compliments of literary type
who said that 'compliments of literary type' were needed? :-)
ReplyDeletebut who are you, mysterious eneles? what does your name mean?
I have just realized (sorry I am not that quick :-)
ReplyDeletethat reading your name backwards leads to 'selene', so perhaps you are the moon in my pictures playing games :-)
indeed, I am the moon, turned inside out
ReplyDeletei do not play any games anymore, however
who said so? any bouquet artist would say, who puts a clover into a "bluemenstrauss"?
what a sad thing, a moon who doesn't play any games anymore. why anymore? and what happened to her, that she is now 'turned inside out'?
ReplyDeletesorry about the many questions, but who can fight curiosity in front of such a moon, and a german-speaking one at that :-)
"Leise schwimmt der Mond durch mein Blut... Ich kann deine Lippen nicht finden..." (Else Lasker-Schueler)
[took me a while to find an answer is it refers to my most immemorial year]
ReplyDeletein the old times there was a city, Atlantis, which had drawn its energy from the moon. the moon back then was further away than it is now, and was smaller to a naked eye. it also had no craters, miraculously. People, even wisest of people of Atlantis, eventually grew anxious about it - why is our god smaller than the god of our neighbors, the sun? so they asked the moon to come closer. the moon did know that it might be a bad idea and was reluctant at first. "wouldn't it be dangerous for you if I am so close?" "No, they said, if you are as big as the sun - your pull will be smaller than that of a mosquito sitting on our hand".
The Moon could not counter this logic and came close. As it did so, and became as big as the sun, the huge tidal wave came up and destroyed Atlantis, only part of it surviving. The universe was appalled and removed moon's magic screen, also making it incapable of changing its orbit.
eneles, I had no idea when I wrote my first answer to you, even the second one, that we would end up talking mythology. I appreciate Moon's effort to recall such immemorial events, as you put it yourself.
ReplyDeletehowever, as it happens with all myths, their origins are blurred and there are many versions circulating in the world, and many interpretations of those versions as well. in this specific case that you brought up, there are some who argue that the Atlantis people thought the Moon to be the only possible home for them in the whole universe, and asked it for permission to build their city on the Moon's surface. but the Moon chased them away (there are many and contradictory reasons given for this account). so the people of Atlantis always felt to be in a kind of exile, longing to come back home, they didn't need any comparison to other's people Sun to abhor that distance.
there are also many and different versions as to what happened after the tidal wave came. there is a lot of doubt as to the Moon orbit, whether it had been changed or not. one version even states that it was actually the Moon itself which covered its face and prevented the surviving people of Atlantis to work and rebuild their city, thus plunging them into eternal darkness and eventually erasing their remains from this world.
alas, philology is such a fickle field, dearest friend, what are all these endless interpretations and analyses for? they are useless, and people discuss them to no avail. the only thing that matters is this: that now, millions of years afterwards, the Atlantis is only a vague memory in the mind of some scholars, but the Moon, the Moon is as beautiful as ever, shining up in the sky and its mysteries are still celebrated by countless initiates all over the world. and where it is supposed that Atlantis once was, there is now an ordinary city where people go on about their business, cultivating their earth and eating their food, bringing up their children, a dull ache in their chest when they look up at the empty sky above their head, as they know no religion anymore.
somebody could and will say: it's come as it should be, it's all for the better, mankind has made such a huge progress. but I, as an old myth lover, know otherwise.
I would have to agree, reading Plutarch's recollections of Atlantis. Apparently in their spiritual and physical qualities people of Atlantis were vastly superiour to anything in modernity, initiate or not.
ReplyDeleteI liked the duck series, but you have to increase jpeg quality and use greyscale jpg for such [maybe], if I am allowed to suggest
and to what avail? :-) their so called 'superiority" didn't bring anything good for them (and much less managed to bring them to the Moon). and now they are dead and forgotten.
ReplyDeletethank you for your advice. normally I use jpg 10 quality for posting, otherwise they get too big. I don't understand what you mean about 'greyscale' jpg, I am not a technical person. the film was black and white to start with, no conversion.
forgotten? quick search on google give 35mio hits on "atlantis" with 60mio on "moon" and meager 3 on "selene"
ReplyDeleteyou scan film into rgb, usually.
image/mode/greyscale
quality 10 is pretty pointless, 8 is the usual choice
thank you. I didn't know I had to choose grayscale when scanning b/w. but as it happens some of my teachers have always been hopeless.
ReplyDelete[I don't trust numbers
:-) or I am that arrogant to think that I know better than google statistics]
no, he or she was correct, low-end film scanners are better in color mode - one has to convert afterward
ReplyDeleteand strictly speaking it is not very relevant for high quality jpegs, but yours is somehow very small
but you of course know better than the numbers on jpeg quality slider, I should not intrude into your art ;)
the woman on last pictures looks exactly like high priestess of atlantis, strange
eneles, re 'intruding into my art', irony is always welcome here :-)
ReplyDeleteyes, she is the highest priestess, of course - I will tell her that, she will be happy! but I find it strange that you seem to know so much about Atlantis (which only shows my deep distrust that the one I am talking now with is really the Moon :-)
I am only the bright side of it, dark one is dead since the tidal wave, so strictly speaking i am a pancake
ReplyDeletethere are few things comparable to atlantis in human history. persepolis maybe known for philosophy, but who can be bothered for long? the twin cities of black and white shine for performing arts, but who can have earth to listen? so we have to focus on atlanitis history
strictly or not strictly speaking, the Moon can never become a pancake, I don't know what you are talking about. and the dark side of a Moon never dies, this must be only a momentary illusion.
ReplyDeletebut, eneles, such a huge compliment for Atlantis, you must really be fascinated by this lost ancient city :-)
if the people of Atlantis still lived today, they would die of happiness to hear such a thing, even the wisest among them... or so I imagine.