New Orleans street signs
Standard street signs no longer exist in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. In response to the damage of Hurricane Katrina, locals have resorted to making their own signage system with hand painted letterforms or stencils and spray paint on plywood or telephone poles. Heres a look at this crude typography:
Essay and photos by Kari Cesta, a graduate student in Graphic Design at LSU. Isn’t this shocking!
long hours dreaming before a white page
“To write, to be able to write, what does it mean It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible work and turns into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
under the greenish gas
“My street, under the greenish gas at this hour, is a morass of toffee-like, creamy mudcoffee-coloured, maroon and caramel yellowa sort of crumbling, slushy trifle in which the floating bits of meringue are lumps of concrete.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
As for candle-lightI give it up
“[T]is evident to me, when they affirm, That they who have seen Paris, have seen every thing, they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light.
As for candle-lightI give it upI have said before, there was no depending upon it . . .”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 7, 1765.
the rubies about thy neck
“I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return moreevery thing presses onwhilst thou art twisting that lock,see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.
Heaven have mercy upon us both!”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 9, 1767.
A WHITE BEAR!
“Didst thou ever see a white bear cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:No, an please your honour, replied the corporal.But thou couldst discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of needHow is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw oneTis the fact I want; replied my father,and the possibliity of it, is as follows.
A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one Might I ever have seen one Am I ever to see one Ought I ever to have seen one Or can I ever see one
Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it)
If I should see a white bear, what should I say If I should never see a white bear, what then
If I never have, can, must or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one Did I ever see one painteddescribed Have I never dreamed of one
Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear What would they give How would they behave How would the white bear have behaved Is he wild Tame Terrible Rough Smooth
Is the white bear worth seeing
Is there no sin in it
Is it better than a BLACK ONE”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 5., 1761.
a blush of joy
“My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on;but it was not a blush of guilt,of modesty,or of anger;it was a blush of joy;he was fired with Corporal Trims project and description.”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1759.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;they are the life, the soul of reading;take them out of this book for instance,you might as well take the book along wit them; . . .”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1759.
an Old Person in Black
“There was an Old Person in Black,
A Grasshopper jumped on his back;
When it chirped in his ear,
He was smitten with fear,
That helpless Old Person in Black.”
—Edward Lear, There Was an Old Person in Black.
a collection of Rorschach blobs
“There were several empty seats at the bar and at the tables but Alvine did not want to commit himself to such a permanent step, for the customers were not ordinary bar types or even bohemian types but seemed a collection of Rorschach blobs in the watery pink light.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.