an old hoodoo formula
“Van Van is an old hoodoo formula for oil, incense, sachet powders, and washing products that are designed to clear away evil, provide magical protection, open the road to new prospects, change bad luck to good, and empower amulets and charms. It is the most popular of the New Orleans or “Algiers style” hoodoo recipes. As an amulet enhancer, it is closely associated with both the rabbit foot and the lodestone. . . .”
—Catherine Yronwode, Hoodoo In Theory And Practice, www.luckymojo.com, 2007.
The Blues
“1 – The Blues… It’s 12-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization. Bad luck and trouble are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls, yearning to be free from lifes’ responsibilities. Never ending beats repeat the chants of sorrow, and the pity of a lost soul many times over. These are the Blues;
2 – Found under the blazing sun of the Northern Mississippi cotton fields, it’s father, the old African tribal call and response, and it’s mother, the Gospel sounds which bellowed from the church choirs;
3 – A lead worker would chant the opening lines, and the chorus of workers would answer, falling into a regular pattern to match the task at hand. This ancient African call and response chant is the core of the Blues, found both in African American church pulpits (an elevated platform or high reading desk used in preaching or conducting a worship service), and antebellum (existing before the Civil War) plantations;
4 – W.C. Handy was the first trained musician to capture the sounds of Blues on paper. In 1909, Handy penned the first written Blues song “Mr. Crump Blues” in the Pee Wee’s Saloon on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennesse. . . .
5 – “If you wants to know about the Blues, you got’s to go back to the church” — Muddy Waters –;
6 – “We were always singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin’, but we made up our songs about things that was happenin’ to us at the time, and I think that’s where the Blues started” — Son House –. . . .”
—Harry’s Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.
this impression
“Was it not youth, the feeling he experienced now, when, coming out to the edge of the wood again from the other side, he saw in the bright light of the sun’s slanting rays Varenka’s graceful figure, in a yellow dress and with her basket, walking with a light step past the trunk of an old birch, and when this impression from the sight of Varenka merged with the sight, which struck him with its beauty, of a yellowing field of oats bathed in the slanting light, and of an old wood far beyond the field, spotted with yellow, melting into the blue distance—His heart was wrung with joy.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.
images and memories
“Beyond the snow-covered roof he could see an open-work cross with chains and rising above it the triangular constellation of the Charioteer with the bright yellowish Capella. He gazed first at the cross then at the star, breathed in the fresh, frosty air that steadily entered the room, and followed, as in a dream, the images and memories that arose in his imagination.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.
Fahrenheit 451
terror fax
the ‘Blue Moon’
“Thursday, May 31 brings us the second of two full Moons for North Americans this month. Some almanacs and calendars assert that when two full Moons occur within a calendar month, that the second full Moon is called the “Blue Moon.””
—Joe Rao, SPACE.com, May 25, 2007.
The irony mark
The lawyer’s grey eyes
“The lawyer’s grey eyes tried not to laugh, but they leaped with irrepressible joy, and Alexei Alexandrovich could see that his was not only the joy of a man who was receiving a profitable commission—here there was triumph and delight, there was a gleam that resembled the sinister gleam he had seen in his wife’s eyes.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.
a diamond of the first water
“[T]here was something in her that was higher than her surroundings—there was the brilliance of a diamond of the first water amidst glass. This brilliance shone from her lovely, indeed unfathomable, eyes. . . . Looking into those eyes, everyone thought he knew her thoroughly and, knowing, could not but love her. ”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.