out of chaos

“Invention does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”

—Mary Shelley; quoted in Feynman’s Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow, 2003.

Removal from the Social Unit

Removal from the Social Unit, a collage by Jimmy Kellough, 12.5″x12.5″, 2005. Kellough, a multi-media artist who lives in Durham, North Carolina, has inspired countless other artists, including myself. I love this guy!

the White Face and the Red Nose

“‘There are two types of comedian . . . both deriving from the circus, which I shall call the White Face and the Red Nose. Almost all comedians fall into one or the other of these two simple archetypes. In the circus, the White Face is the controlling clown with the deathly pale masklike face who never takes a pie; the Red Nose is the subversive clown with the yellow and red makeup who takes all the pies and the pratfalls and the buckets of water and the banana skins. The White Face represents the mind, reminding humanity of the constant mocking presence of death; the Red Nose represents the body, reminding mankind of its constant embarrassing vulgarities. . . . The emblem of the White Face is the skull, that of the Red Nose is the phallus. One stems from the plague, the other from the carnival. The bleakness of the funeral, the wildness of the orgy. The graveyard and the fiesta. The brain and the penis. Hamlet and Falstaff. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Laurel and Hardy.’”

—Eric Idle, The Road To Mars, 1999.

His eyes

“His eyes gleamed with a hard, dull light the color of glue and almost never displayed emotion, except occasionally to shutter open as though in mild surprise.”

—Kenzaburo O’, A Personal Matter, translated by John Nathan, 1969.

a night sky vaulted with black stars

“Wordless, Bird stared for an instant at the numberless antholes in the ebonite receiver. The surface, like a night sky vaulted with black stars, clouded and cleared with each breath he took.”

—Kenzaburo O’, A Personal Matter, translated by John Nathan, 1969.

a somber yet truly vivid green

“Bird looked up at the trees billowing above the rooftops in their opulence of leaf and saw that the squalling rain had washed them to a somber yet truly vivid green. It was a green that transported him, as the traffic light had done at the highway intersection. Perhaps, he mused, he would see this kind of vibrant green when he lay on his deathbed.”

—Kenzaburo O‘, A Personal Matter, translated by John Nathan, 1969.

her eyes

“I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were like a deep spring in the shade of cliffs, which no breeze could ever reach. Nothing moved there, everything was still. Look closely, and you could just begin to make out the scene reflected in the water’s surface.”

—Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun, translated by Philip Gabriel, 1998.

Brown paper

“Brown paper, especially wrapping paper, is very pleasant, very cosy to paint on. Many an experienced artist has used it when he wasn’t up to anything grand or grandiose.”

—J.D. Salinger, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, from Nine Stories, 1953.

the cylinder-seal

“[T]he seal impressions of the Uruk period are little masterpieces. At that time the stamp-seal of earlier periods was almost entirely superseded by the cylinder-seal. This was a small cylinder of ordinary or semi-precious stone, varying in length from 2.5 to 8 centimetres, as thick as the thumb or as thin as a pencil, and pierced lengthwise throughout, so that it could be worn on a string around the neck. On its surface was engraved a design which, when rolled on clay, could be repeated ad infinitum. These early cylinder-seals were already made with great skill, and the designs—which ranged from friezes of animals or plants to scenes of daily life or mythological subjects—were compsed and arranged with considerable ingenuity.”

—Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, third edition, 1992.

an amulet

“[T]he object itself [the cylinder seal] was adopted by the Egyptians, who engraved it with their own traditional designs and, having no clay tablets on which to roll it, used it for centuries as an amulet.”

—Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, third edition, 1992.