black mud
“[They s]end bubbles to the surface of this ooze
As glancing roundabouts you may observe.
Fixed in the slime they say: ‘Sullen we were
In the sweet air cheered by the brightening sun
Because of sulky vapors in our hearts;
Now here in this black mud we curse our luck.’
This burden, though they cannot form in words,
They gurgle in their gullets”
—Dante Alighieri, The divine comedy, translated by Thomas G. Bergin, 1969.
Night Thoughts
“This is creation’s melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow. . . .
This is the bud of being, this dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule.”
—Edward Young, from Night Thoughts, 1741.
He would close his eyes
“Belacqua made a long arm and switched off the lamp. It threw shadows. He would close his eyes, he would bilk the dawn in that way. What were the eyes, anyway? The posterns of the mind. They were safer closed.”
—Samuel Beckett, from Yellow, the penultimate story in More pricks than kicks, 1970.
a gleam and shimmering
“I see at the confines of this restless gloom a gleam and shimmering as of bones.”
—Samuel Beckett, from The Beckett Trilogy: Malone, Malloy dies, The Unnamable, 1979.
all stirring
“the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fulness of the great deep with its unchanging calm. . . . But at long intervals they close. . . . Perhaps it is then he sees the heaven of the old dream, the heaven of the sea and of the earth too, and the spasms of the waves from shore to shore all stirring to their tiniest stir. . . .”
—Samuel Beckett, from The Beckett Trilogy: Malone, Malloy dies, The Unnamable, 1979.
Light of a kind
“One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark. Light of a kind came then from the one window.”
—Samuel Beckett, As the story was told: uncollected and later prose, edited by John Calder, 1990.
$135 million
“A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.
The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist’s masterpieces.”
The New York Times, just today. I say why not and right on!
those colors that we call red, orange, yellow, and maroon
“in the Philippines there is a group of people called the Hanunoo. They divide all colors into just four—mabiru, malagiti, marara, and malatuy. Marara, for example, includes those colors that we call red, orange, yellow, and maroon. If you show a Hanunoo man a red shirt and a yellow shirt he will tell you that they are both marara. If you press him he might add that the first is “more marara” or the second “weak marara,” but they will both remain as marara.”
—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.
a handful of palm nuts
“Divination is [a] technique commonly used by therapists, especially in Africa, to impress their patients. Nigerian babalawos, for instance, do not take a history from their patients. Rather a patient whispers his problem to a handful of palm nuts; the babalawo then casts the nuts and from their position makes a diagnosis.
Other methods of divination include throwing “bones” (wooden blocks with markings), feeling the patient’s pulse, constant gazing at water, star-gazing, watching the flickering of an oil lamp, listening to the wind, and watching the trembling of the hands. It should be emphasized that these procedures, frequently ridiculed in Western descriptions . . . are methods used by the therapist to increase his reputation and, thus, increase the patient’s faith and expectations. Often the therapist is in possession of accessory information that allows him to make an accurate dianosis.”
—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.
the evil eye
“Mal ojo, the evil eye, is commonly used [by Mexican-Americans] to explain psychiatric symptoms. It is caused when a person with “strong vision” admiringly or enviously looks at another. . . . Its causation is usually assumed to be inadvertent and the person is not held consciously responsible; implicit, however, is responsibility for unconscious desires. . . .
Clinically mal ojo occurs more often in the younger age groups. Headaches, crying, irritability, and restlessness are common symptoms. . . . Traditional treatments include prayers and “sweeping” or “cleansing” the patient with a raw egg. Another approach to treatment is to try and locate the person who inadvertently caused it (usually within the preceding 24 hours); if this person simply touches the afflicted the illness will be cured.”
—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.