transichromatic.
Possessing the ability to change color temporarily. Some diamonds change color when brought into dayilight after being kept in darkness for a long timesay in a vaultand then change back to the original color after a few hours. Others change color under X-ray.
—The Book of Diamonds, by Joan Dickinson, 1965.
treated diamond.
A diamond that has been coated or otherwise treated to improve its appearance, including those diamonds bombarded for color changes.
—The Book of Diamonds, by Joan Dickinson, 1965.
very slightly imperfect.
A fine jeweler will use this term to mean that he can see flaws in a diamond under his special loupe that you cant. Very, very slightly flawless means it is difficult for even a trained eye with a ten power loupe to find the flawsbut they are there.
—The Book of Diamonds, by Joan Dickinson, 1965.
water.
A term principally used in England or in English literature for the color and transparency of diamonds and other gems. It is of the finest water, or It is a ruby of the second water.
—The Book of Diamonds, by Joan Dickinson, 1965.
yellow diamond.
A yellow diamond which may be canary or champagne.
—The Book of Diamonds, by Joan Dickinson, 1965.
the allure of absinthe
The allure of absinthe was threefold. One, its history; so many of the great writers and painters that I admired, from Verlaine and Wilde to van Gogh and Picasso, adored absinthe. Two, it was illegal in the United States. Three, better than any other alcohol I know, it created in me that most appealing state of languidness, dissolving muscle and mind so that I didnt really care what happened or didnt happen to me. So, while I enjoyed the way it made colors appear brighter and created halos around anything bright, the way it made the night sky itself fsem to breathe like a giant beast crouched over me, I became hooked on absinthe because it allowed me to escape, the way that reading allowed me to escape.
—Elissa Schappell, from That Sort of Woman, 2003, an essay in The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, edited by Francine Prose, 2003.
kew gardens
Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue.
—Virginia Woolf, from Kew Gardens.
the bright silent thousands of stars
The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight
in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness
of the grass, fathomless, the long blades
rising out of the well of time. Cars
travel the valley roads below me, their lights
finding the dark, and racing on. Above
their roar is a silence I have suddenly heard,
and felt the country turn under the stars
toward dawn. I am wholly willing to be here
between the bright silent thousands of stars
and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.
The hill has grown me like a foot.
Until I lift the earth I cannot move.
—Wendell Berry, from On the Hill Late at Night, first published in the collection The Country of Marriage, 1973.
Bluebird
Bluebird blue as the sky-blue heart
Of my girl whose heart is the sky
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), A Bird is Singing, from The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Donald Revell, 2004.
the pretty redhead
Her hair is golden they say
Like an hour of lightning
Or like the strut of fires
In small dying roses
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), The Pretty Redhead, from The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Donald Revell, 2004.