okwallace

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bees collecting sap from bloodwood tree.

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“Sit with it an hour. And then…we’ll consider your choice made.”

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‘A Greenland whale’, I was informed by the old professor who was standing beside me, ‘so far only recorded in the Arctic.’The strange animal did not move and the city was at a loss what to do in the face of the impending danger. Some suggested bombarding it from a distance, but did we know how it would react to such an attack? We might merely succeed in provoking it, it might spit out poison and destroy what little we had left. Better wait and see, perhaps it would go away of its own accord.In the middle of the general confusion some bold spirits demonstrated admirable courage. It was the last surge of a natural, healthy instinct that I came across, later on everything was chaos and disorder. Two farmer’s lads, a soldier and a gamekeeper, all young men, offered to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community. Their plan was to take a boat and drift downstream on the current, come up quietly on the animal and drive it away with hand-grenades. They might even manage to kill it. It was a hazardous business, reckless yet brave.Their noble offer was accepted. Everyone ran up to see their youthful saviours. A priest in full vestments pronounced his blessing over the four, who each received the last sacrament. The crowd, deeply moved, excitedly crammed the river-bank from the mill to the cemetery.The four went to the sluice. They managed to make the last boat that had not completely rotted reasonably watertight and floated slowly down with the current, though two of the men still had to spend all their time bailing out. The boat grew smaller and smaller. Now it was at the bend in the river, it must reach the monster quite soon. Everyone was craning to see, everyone was holding their breath. The crowd was completely silent, apart from a quiet scratching. The expedition appeared to have anchored, unharmed, right next to the dangerous beast. To everyone’s surprise nothing happened for quite some time. Then there was a sudden flash in the distance and the gigantic animal slumped.A triumphant ‘Hurrah!’ from a thousand throats greeted the heroes’ success.To our general amazement it turned out that the ‘monster’ was a balloon that had come down over the Dream Realm and become entangled in the willows on the river-bank.

Alfred Kubin

The other Side (1909) p. 294-296

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how it feels to rewatch ep1 & realize that francis is the one walking behind jcr

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today my mind was destroyed by phantoms

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Hey tumblr we need to have a talk about something I noticed.

Specifically going by tags attached to images I’ve blogged or reblogged, there seems to be a misconception that marginalia means “any quirky medieval art”.

It’s not.

Marginalia is anything in the margins of a text.

The ones that will get posted on tumblr will more often than not be quirky drawings, but they also include notes, annotations, scribbles, and whatever else. The quirky drawings just happen to get a lot of press on here because, well. They’re quirky drawings.

For instance, see this image here of a platanista (river dolphin) chomping down on an elephant’s trunk?

This is not marginalia! This is a full-fledged illustration. It’s within the text (Liber natura rerum, Thomas de Cantimpré, Librairie de Valenciennes Ms 0320). It illustrates the entry on Platanista.

This is what it looks like in context.

But you know what are marginalia? Let me circle them for convenience.

Know the difference. It won’t save your life but it will make you more popular at a medievalist conference.

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A painted chest from a village house that kept valuables. Chest. XIX century. The city of Lebedyn, Sumy region. Photo from the album: Orel L. Painted tree. Naive painting of a Ukrainian village. Kyiv: Rodovid, 2003. Illus. 161.

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In the 2000s, phones had quirks and class....

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Emily Dickinson, from her poem titled "1188," featured in The Emergency Poet

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facebook marketplace listings within a 25 mile radius of you: One ugly rotten dog tooth. $470 NO LOWBALLS I KNOW WHAT I HAVE

facebook marketplace listings in a city 8 and a half hours away: the ark of the covenant $15 OBO

[okwallace]

Clean it up hiro….

[okwallace]

Don't go where I cannot follow

J.R.R Tolkien | Dune: Part Two. dir. Denis Villeneuve

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loaf with mama

[okwallace]

Literally there's something about the late Roman Republic about how all of these men were at the same time so self important about how civilised they were and so genuinely capable of political subtlety and were ultimately such complex often conflicted figures and at the same time they're doing shit like "I don't like this guy so I'm gonna hire a bunch of thugs to beat the shit out of him". Which is ultimately the contrast at the very core of Roman society as a whole, a very complex and refined machine run by the blood and tears of slaves.

Especially in the view of mainstream historical reception in the Western world that often held up the idealistic self-portrayal of these men as if it was the historical truth in order to claim themselves heir and justifying their OWN atrocities (the slave owners that wrote Americas constitutions calling their own chamber the Senate and their seat the Capitol Hill and building all of these beautiful neoclassical white marble constructions are probably the most familiar example but like. The Church did it and the British Empire did it etc etc).

This whole like. Having a shiny and well-produced surface of civilization covering a cesspool of infamy and human suffering. Plato's Republic vs Romulus' shithole indeed.

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Blue Birch Marsh, 2024 by Jef Bourgeau

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