the tender yellow ponies of insomnia
“In the meantime . . . the candy animals made in the house were still being sold in the town. Children and adults sucked with delight on the delicious little green roosters of insomnia, the exquisite pink fish of insomnia, and the tender yellow ponies of insomnia, so that dawn on Monday found the whole town awake.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
white, like a dove
“The new house, white, like a dove, was inaugurated with a dance.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
little fishes
“With her terrible practical sense she could not understand the colonel’s business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and then converted the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating vicious circle.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
the red ants
“One morning she saw that the red ants had left the undermined foundations, crossed the garden, climbed up the railing, where the begonias had taken on an earthen color, and had penetrated into the heart of the house.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
Warm To The If In Life
A new collage by Paul Dean. The overall structure of this 30″ diameter piece is a frontal view of a brilliant cut (88 facet) diamond. Cutting an actual diamond in this manner is known as ‘brillianteering.’ Cutting paper and gluing it down is known as ‘collage.’ Posting these thoughts online is known as ‘blogging.’
truly forever amber
“Amber is the time capsule par excellence: truly forever amber. It formed initially as a resinous blob oozing from a wound or cut on one of several kinds of trees. . . . Insects and other creatures get caught in the ooze. Time darkens it and hardens it. After a few hundred years it becomes copal (often yellow and slick); then after a million or so it acquires the indefinably deep, golden-brown colour of amber. Amber is a resistant material that eventually finds its way into sedimentary rocks. But amber beads still carry within them the trapped insects, sealed until the end of time istself.”
—Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1998.
Jewel beetles
“Then there are Jewel beetles (Buprestidae), which in the living fauna shine with iridescent greens and blues as precious as emerald: and so they do in the Messel [fossil] specimens, a dance of colours preserved so perfectly as to mock time.”
—Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, 1998.
White bread and tea
“White bread and tea passed, in the course of a hundred years, from the luxuries of the rich to become the hall-marks of a poverty-line diet. Social imitation was one reason, though not the most important. . . . White bread, though it was better with meat, butter or cheese, needs none of these; a cup of tea converted a cold meal into something like a hot one, and gave comfort and cheer besides.”
—J. Burnett, Plenty and Want, 1966; Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, 1985.
White-handed mistress
“White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.
Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It.
the western mystery
“This is the land the sunset washes,
These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
These are the western mystery!”
—Emily Dickinson, This is the land the sunset washes.