the circle or ‘tondo’
“Of all emblems, the circle or ‘tondo’ is the most soaked with meaning. From dimmest pre-history, it has symbolized the sun, whose power, in one disguise or another, flows through all matter. It represents, too, the seed and the cell, the head, the halo and the corona, bodily orifices, Zodiac wheels, the earth, the eye, and the egg, the unbroken cycle of life and the continuity of consciousness . . . as well as what Tibetans call the ‘mysterious golden flower of the soul.’”
The square
“The square, too, has symbolic overtones. Early Chinese used it to represent the world. It also has been glorified as a sacred portal, and its four corners have served as visual metaphors for air, earth, fire, and water.”
beige á vu
“In downtown Seattle, for some reason, most of the excess buildings are beige. Seattleites complain of beige á vu: the sensation that they’ve seen that color before.”
—Tom Robbins, ‘Canyon of the Vaginas’, Wild Ducks Flying Backward; the short writings of Tom Robbins, 2005.
Where are the men
“Where are the men today whose lives are not beige; where are the writers whose style is not gray?”
—Tom Robbins, ‘Till Lunch Do Us Part’, Wild Ducks Flying Backward; the short writings of Tom Robbins, 2005.
the boudoir color
“Pink is what red looks like when it kicks off its shoes and lets its hair down. Pink is the boudoir color, the cherubic color, the color of Heaven’s gates. (Not pearly or golden, brothers and sisters: pink.) Pink is as laid back as beige, but while beige is dull and bland, pink is laid back with attitude.”
—Tom Robbins, ‘The Eight-Story Kiss’, Wild Ducks Flying Backward; the short writings of Tom Robbins, 2005.
a poisonous fart
“The witch-girl who lives by the bend in the river is said to keep a fart in a bottle.
It’s a poisonous fart, green as cabbage, loud as a shotgun; and after moonset or before moonrise, her hut is illuminated by its pale mephitic glow. For a time, passersby thought she had television.”
—Tom Robbins, ‘Moonlight Whoopee Cushion Sonata’, Wild Ducks Flying Backward; the short writings of Tom Robbins, 2005.
the world is made of language
“I don’t believe that the world is made of quarks or electromagnetic waves, or stars, or planets, or any of these things. I believe the world is made of language.”
—Terence McKenna, quoted in ‘Terence McKenna’, Wild Ducks Flying Backward; the short writings of Tom Robbins, 2005.
dark poison-bottle green
“The water washed round the piles at the end of the pier, dark
poison-bottle green, mottled with seaweed, and the salt wind smarted on
his lips.”
—Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, 1938.
the heavy indigo clouds
“Behind the woman’s head the Brighton lamps beaded out towards
Worthing. The last sunset light slid lower in the sky and the heavy
indigo clouds came down over the Grand, the Metropole, the
Cosmopolitan, over the towers and domes.”
—Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, 1938.
Prof. Oddfellow’s Frames of Reference: An ampersand
