Jorge Bolet plays Liszt - Sonetto 104 del Petrarca

Humanity is as it is, it's not a question of changing it but getting to know it.
Gustave Flaubert

and I think I might ask Santa for this ...

time passes

In three minutes, the largest dot will travel around the circle once, the next largest dot will travel around the circle twice, the next largest dot three times, and so on. The dots are arranged to trigger notes on a chromatic scale when they pass the line. More variations here.

Nevermore
Memory, memory, what do you want of me? Autumn
makes the thrush fly through colourless air,
and the sun casts a monotonous glare
on the yellowing woods where the north winds hum.

We were alone, and walking in dream,
she and I, hair and thoughts wind-blown.
Suddenly, turning her troubling gaze on me,
‘Your loveliest day?’ her voice of living gold,

her voice, with its fresh angelic tone, vibrant and sweet.
I gave her my answer, a smile so discreet,
and kissed her white hand with devotion.

- Ah! The first flowers, what a fragrance they have!
And how charming the murmured emotion
of that first ‘yes’ from lips that we love!

Paul Verlaine (Poèmes Saturniens: Mélancholia II), translated AS Kline

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
Goethe

The wind had also been at work, dispersing certain seeds. As the water reappeared, so too did willows, osiers, meadows, gardens, flowers, and a certain reason to live. But the transformation had taken place so slowly that it had been taken for granted, without provoking surprise. The hunters who climbed the hills in search of hares or wild boars had noticed the spreading of the little trees, but they set it down to the natural spitefulness of the earth. That is why no one had touched the work of this man. If they had suspected him, they would have tried to thwart him. But he never came under suspicion. Who among the villagers or the administrators would ever have suspected that anyone could show such obstinacy in carrying out this magnificent act of generosity?

from The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono - translation here

The trouble (if that's the word) with Switzerland is that it is such a beautiful country that it is almost impossible to resist taking 'picture postcard' images like the one I posted on Wednesday. Even as a young teenager with no real interest in photography I came back from visits to Swiss relatives with these kind of chocolate box photographs. Perhaps, when I think back, it was the success of some of them - taken with a very basic Instamatic camera - that encouraged my interest in photography. My grandmother, who originally came from Lausanne, was very taken with a couple of pictures of the village of Gruyere that I gave her, and had them framed. They were a bit cheesy, but I remember thinking that they didn't look too bad.

please help yourselves ...

I've been having a lovely time in Switzerland, land of high finance and toblerone.
More soon ...

this moment will be on holiday for a week. see you soon.

I was so angry I could hardly finish his letters. There you were, sending him Shelley, beef tea, lending him cottages, taking his photograph on the steps at Garsington - oft stuffing gold into his pocket - off he goes, has out his fountain pen and - well, as I say I haven't read it.

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, believed to be the model for DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley. Lady Ottoline's fling with 'Tiger', a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, was an open secret among the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf was deeply wounded by Lawrence's portrayal of her friend, although Lady Ottoline forgave him.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd take one every time.
Robert Doisneau ~ via

In certain almost supernatural inner states, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes...
Charles Baudelaire, from 'Intimate Journals'

The camera is the eye of the marvellous. When the eye of the cinema really sees, the whole world goes up in flames.
Luis Bunuel

I kept seeing this girl pass up and down the street. I couldn't speak to her. So I phoned her pretending to be an American soldier.... I put on an American accent and said I would be at the gates of Springfield Park, which was close by, at a certain time on a certain day. She said, 'I've never heard of such a thing in all my life. How dare you? Who are you?'... Anyway, I went to the gates of Springfield Park and she turned up. I remember it well because it was a drizzly day and she came to the gates and saw me standing there forlornly in a raincoat and cried out, 'Harold Pinter! What on earth are you doing here?'

A teenage Harold Pinter, whose birthday it is today, trying to get a date in war-time London

Song of the Ingenues
We are the artless ones,
hair braided, eyes blue,
we who live almost hidden from view
in novels barely read.

We walk, arms interlaced,
and the day’s not so pure
as the depths of our thoughts,
and our dreams are azure.

And we run through the fields
and we laugh and we chatter,
from dawn to evening,
we chase butterflies’ shadows:

and shepherdesses’ bonnets
protect our freshness
and our dresses – so thin –
are of perfect whiteness.

The Don Juans, the Lotharios,
the Knights all eyes,
pay their respects to us,
their ‘alases’ and sighs:

in vain though, their grimaces:
they bruise their noses,
on ironic pleats
of our vanishing dresses:

and our innocence still
mocks the fantasies
of those tilters at windmills
though sometimes we feel

our hearts beat fiercely
with clandestine dreams,
knowing we’ll be the
lovers of libertines.

Paul Verlaine, from 'Poèmes Saturniens', translated by AS Kline

There are no stars as lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps.
Robert Louis Stevenson, from 'The Scot Abroad'

Much as I like my Pentax digital SLR camera I'm not overly impressed by what photographers (the ones who refer to lenses as 'glass') call the 'bokeh' of the 18-55mm lens that came with it. The bokeh is the blurred effect in the background when you use a wide aperture to create a shallow depth of field. Compare the above image with the more subtle effect of my beautiful old Pentax 50mm manual lens here.

Let kings, then, and all their train of conquests, yield to poetry, to poetry let the happy shores of the golden Tagus give place. Let the vulgar herd set their hearts on dross if they will. For myself, let Apollo bestow on me cups overflowing with the waters of Castaly; let the myrtle that dreads the cold adorn my brow and let my verses ever be scanned by the eager lover. While we live we serve as food for Envy; when we are dead we rest within the aureole of the glory we have earned.

Ovid, from Elegy XV

I want a computer like this

this moment