Diamond Cutter
“The Diamond Sutra is the world’s oldest known complete and dated book. Published in China in A.D. 868, it was printed in ink with woodblocks onto paper sheets that were then assembled into a scroll.
Within the text, the title of the book is explained in this way:
Subhuti asked, ‘World Honored One, by what name should this Discourse be known?’
Buddha answered, ‘This Discourse should be known as The Vajracchedika Prajna Paramita—The Diamond Cutter of Transcendental Wisdom—for it is the Teaching that is hard and sharp like a diamond that cuts through misconception and delusion.’”
—translation by Edward Conze.
Full Strawberry Moon.
“June. This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!”
—from the online Farmer’s Almanac, 2006.
Full Pink Moon.
“April. This name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.”
—from the online Farmer’s Almanac, 2006.
brown-eyed girl
“Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow,
Going down to the old mine with a
Transistor radio.
Standing in the sunlight laughing
Hide behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and a-sliding
All along the waterfall,
With you, my brown-eyed girl,
You, my brown-eyed girl.”
—Brown-Eyed Girl, written and recorded by Van Morrison in 1967.
Green-eyed lady
“Green-eyed lady, windswept lady
Moves the night, the waves, the sand.
Green-eyed lady, ocean lady
Child of nature, friend of man.”
—Green-Eyed Lady, by Sugarloaf (Jerry Corbetta, J.C. Phillips and David Riordan), 1970.
blue and orange birds and silver bells
“When they’re dancing where the lights are soft and low,
All the glory of the sunset’s purple glow
Is reflected in your eyes where beauty dwells,
And I hear blue and orange birds and silver bells.”
—Blue and Orange Birds and Silver Bells, recorded by Della Reese with the Jimmy Hamilton Orchestra in 1953.
a shiny pale-blue sky
“I got into bed and lay there . . . thinking of that picture advertising the Biscuits Like Mother Makes, as Fresh in the Tropics as in the Motherland, Packed in Airtight Tins. . . .
There was a little girl in a pink dress eating a large yellow biscuit studded with currants—what they called a squashed-fly biscuit—and a little boy in a sailor-suit trundling a hoop, looking back over his shoulder at the little girl. There was a tidy green tree and a shiny pale-blue sky, so close that if the little girl had stretched her arm up she could have touched it. (God is always near us. So cosy.) And a high, dark wall behind the little girl. . . .
And that used to be my idea of what England was like.
‘And it is like that, too,’ I thought”
—Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark, 1934.
two spots
“There was a spot on the ceiling. I looked at it and it became two spots. The two spots moved very rapidly, one away from the other. When they were about six inches apart they remained stationary and grew larger. Two black eyes were staring at me. I stared back at them. Then I had to blink and the whole business began all over again.”
—Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark, 1934.
the grey-brown or grey-green sea
“There was always a little grey street leading to the stage-door of the theatre and another little grey street where your lodgings were, and rows of little houses with chimneys like the funnels of dummy steamers and smoke the same colour as the sky; and a grey stone promenade running hard, naked and straight by the side of the grey-brown or grey-green sea; . . .”
—Jean Rhys, on England, in Voyage in the Dark, 1934.
that sable colour
“I liked the room and the red carnations on the table and the way he talked and his clothes—especially his clothes. It was a pity about my clothes, but anyway they were black. ‘She wore black. Men delighted in that sable colour, or lack of colour.’ A man called “Coronet” wrote that, or was it a man called “A Peer?””
—Jean Rhys, from Voyage in the Dark, 1934.