Room with a view, at night

Joke in the midst of the fray

"Don't worry, for $99m, I've got all the time in the world."


Auctioneer and Sotheby's head of modern art Tobias Meyer, at the auction of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream", which was bought for a swooping $119,922,500 (£74m) and which lasted 12 minutes. Most expensive work of art ever sold, dethroning Pablo Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" (which went for $106.5 m or £65.6 m) two years ago at Christie's.


Link to Sotheby's.

Snakes and Spiders

On my way to work, on one of the old stairways going down to the Loire (the one nearer the St Symphorien bridge), I came across this baby viper (about 20cm long) nestled in the corner of the tread and the riser. It's a common viper (vipera aspis aspis), but it really does look like a zinnikeri (vipera aspis zinnikeri), even though those can't be found under my latitude. It must have been basking all afternoon long in the sun, as the steps were still tepid. 

 

On my way back from work. On the handrails, left and right, of the St Symphorien Bridge (a.k.a Pont de fil "Rope Bridge") are dozens of spiderwebs. These spiders only come out at night. The picture above is a rookie blunder made possible because of the blue lighting peculiar to this bridge, the flash and the long exposure (which I had left on...). Below is a clearer version.

My guess is that it is the walnut orb-weaver spider (Nuctenea umbratica - 'umbratica' means 'living in the shadow' in Latin), a female judging by the size (approximately 1.5 cm). It can flatten its belly and crawl in very narrow crevices, leaving only one leg out, to which is hooked a signal thread in case a moth, a sandfly or a midge gets stuck in the web.

Quite a lively area, the bridge is at night.

Untitled

The Grey

"Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I'll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day."

Joe Carnahan, director/writer.


The lines appear in the movie "The Grey", which I highly recommend. Reminiscent of Shakespeare's Henry V ("Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; / Or close the wall up with our English dead." III, 1, 1-2) and of Tennyson's The Last Charge of the Light Brigade.

Interesting spin-off: Rudyard Kipling's much overlooked The Last of the Light Brigade (I'm root-quoting, dudes, so Kipling's poem has little to do with the subject I started with).

Stones

A pebble the shore yielded, I put in my pocket.

A rock the mountain gave, I stored in my satchel.

A stone my hand let go, I picked up again.

When I bent down its weight was that of a mountain.

Some stones I discarded. Some I threw as far as I could.

Some I skimmed across the ponds and lakes

During my peregrinations.

Some pebbles I assembled in towers for the dead.

Some rocks I quarried with my bare hands.

Some I polished on my skin.

There are stones which need not be hewn to build a house –

They lie on the tussocky plains, waiting to be pieced together.

Gemstones indeed are uncovered. No stone is heavier than them.

None more coveted. None more trenchant.

There were stone beads arranged in a pendant

Which lasted millennia. Mine were attached to a weak string:

They fell back into a river.

There are rocks which we use as pedestals, stairs, gallows.

There are rocks which shimmer at night.

Others are darker, and cover us in cold slabs.

Each older than all our ages added up.

Meandering near the Mouth of the Cow

Or down Khutumsang's ravine,

I have carried two obsidian pebbles,

A chunk of flint and one of fool's gold.

Stones always bear marks of a kind.

Pebbles always wash up for a reason.

Rocks always shape a path.

Go clubbing

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."


John Griffith "Jack" London, American writer, adventurer, sailor (1876-1916)

I know that I know (next to) nothing

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.""


H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Inner spirit

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."


Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965) 

Lost and found

Here's a haiku I found in one of my notepads. It is dated November 8th, 2011, morning, Orchha, India.


Warm feeling of homeliness
Far away from kin and fatherland
So much happens over tea


Twenty-four hours later, my life took an entirely different turn. So much happens over tea.