W.
“Should I marry W.? Not if she won’t tell me other letters in her name.”
—Woody Allen, Selections from the Allen Notebooks, from The Insanity Defense; The Complete Prose, 2007.
the fake ink blot
“[I]n 1921, a group of biologists meeting in Hong Kong to buy suits discovered the fake ink blot. It had long been a staple of the Oriental repertoire of diversions, and several of the later dynasties retained power by their brilliant manipulation of what appeared to be a spilled bottle and an ugly ink stain, but was in reality a tin blot.
The first ink blots, it was learned, were crude, constructed to eleven feet in diameter, and fooled nobody.
However, with the discovery of the concept of smaller sizes by a Swiss physicist, who proved that an object of a particular size could be reduced in size simply by ‘making it smaller,’ the fake ink blot came into its own.”
—Woody Allen, The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot, from The Insanity Defense; The Complete Prose, 2007.
through the red grass
“The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. . . .
I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.”
—Willa Cather, My Antonia, 1920.
red gold
“All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.”
—Willa Cather, My Antonia, 1920.
pink and red
“Due to a quirk in the English language, pink and red are sometimes considered two different colors, when in reality red is just a more saturated pink. They are both the same hue. The word ‘pink’ in fact did not enter the English language until the eighteenth century. The color is named after the flower (not the other way around), a relative of the carnation. . . . The color we call pink was previously referred to (if at all) as ‘rose.’”
—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008.
a crystal cage
“The magic of any gem is dependent upon the magic of the light that gives it life and fire. Gems are complex things and handle light in complex ways. Light doesn’t just uneventfully flow through windows as it does through glass, or simple bounce back as from a black-hearted mirror. Instead it dances impatiently, refracts and reflects. It comes alive along with the gem. In a weird way, a gem is a crystal cage that traps the light and makes it fight to escape.”
—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008.
a flower among stones
“The ancient Romans prized the ruby above the diamond, calling this gem ‘a flower among stones.’ For the Greeks it was the ‘mother of all gems.’ And back in 1560 Benvenuto Cellini declared that the price of ruby was eight times that of diamond. Of course, that was before the brilliant cut was developed for the diamond, which significantly enhanced its looks.
The ruby has always been, and remains today, the world’s most precious gemstone. . . . A flawless ruby, for instance, is worth more than a flawless diamond of equal weight.”
—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008.
Burmese rubies
“[F]luorescence is triggered by ultraviolet light. . . . Burmese rubies fluoresce strongly to long wave . . . ultraviolet radiation and less strongly to shortwave radiation. . . .
Rubies’ fluorescence is apparent in both artificial light and in some cases even in daylight, making the gem appear truly radiant. The fact that many Burmese rubies actually fluoresce to visible light is rather unusual. . . . The ancient Burmese considered this feature supernatural—and in some cases a product of witchcraft. . . .
At one time it was believed that by looking into the strange, fiery fluorescence of Burmese rubies, one could see dragons and other mystical beasts.”
—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008.
The ruby laser
“Rubies have their practical, as well as their beautiful aspects. . . . Primary among these is the use of the ruby for lasers, although I should say that natural rubies are of no use here—the key element chromium must be ‘doped up’ in synthetic rubies to create the laser. . . .
The ruby laser was the first laser invented in 1960. . . . The key is chromium, that magic element that makes rubies red. Chromium atoms absorb green and blue light and emit or reflect only red light. Chromium is responsible for the ‘lasing’ behavior of the crystal.”
—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008.
the pallor of sand
“The desert. No seasons of bloom and decay. Just the endless turn of night and day. Out of time: and she is gazing—not over it, taken in to it, for it has no measure of space, features that mark distance from here to there. In a film of haze there is no horizon, the pallor of sand, pink-traced, lilac-luminous with its own colour of faint light, has no demarcation from land to air. Sky-haze is indistinguishable from sand-haze. All drifts together, and there is no onlooker; the desert is eternity.”
—Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup, 2001.