Engineer's Daughter

thewless

Don't touch!  Pictures from Electricity is Dangerous, Germany, 1933

tin god

Krishna and Radha embrace, illustration from Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, India, c.1825

foursquare

FETISH

I have in my possession
an angel's wingbone:
valueless, I gather,
without the certificate
of authentification
which can only be signed by a bishop,

I treasure it, however,
and almost religiously love
the sweet feel of its curve
between thumb and forefinger
deep in my jacket pocket,
the way I'm fondling it now.

--Christopher Reid

casuistry

Gerardus de Harderwyck, illustrations of senses and faculties of brain functions, c.1501

nestor

"my recording for columbia was done on my own machine in my own home in malibu.  the machine isn't much, but there are good machines, and i am in favor of this procedure for writers, rather than the procedure which involves recording studios, technicians, signals, signals off, and the rest of it.  technical deficiencies are balanced by naturalness.  i tend to believe that the ideal record will be more than just a straight reading of a given piece of writing.  it will be something of the writer himself.  if this were not so, if the reading were the important thing, then it would in order for a professional reader, or actor to attend to the matter."

William Saroyan writing in the January issue of High Fidelity magazine, USA, 1955

scupper

'His Master's Voice', India, 1960s

kickshaw

Photograph of the scent of a rose by Devaux-Breitenbach (from Verve), France, 1939

discomfit

Unknown photographer, erotic ring and cigarette, Germany, 1940

enceinte

NEDDA: SICILIAN SKETCH

"The family fireside was for me a figure of speech, useful as a frame for the mildest and calmest of emotions, on a par with moonbeams kissing blonde tresses; but I used to smile whenever I heard people telling me that the fire in the hearth is a sort of friend.  There were times when in truth it seemed to me to be too demanding a friend, annoying and despotic, that would have liked to take you gradually by the hands, or by the feet, and drag you into its smoky cavern and kiss you after the manner of Judas.  I was unaware of the pastime of poking the logs, or the joy of feeling yourself engulfed in the warmth of the flames; I had no understanding of the teasing language of the log that crackles and grumbles as it burns; my eye never grew accustomed to the bizarre designs of the sparks rushing like fireflies over the blackened firebrands, to the fantastic shapes that the wood assumes as it blazes away, to the thousand and one chiaroscuro effects of the blue and red tongues of flame that timidly lick and gracefully caress before bursting petulantly and arrogantly into life.  But once I was initiated into the mysteries of the tongs and the bellows, I fell hopelessly in love with the hearth's potential for blissful idleness.  I fling my body on to the armchair beside the fire as though I were casting off a suit of clothes, allowing the flames to make the blood flow more warmly through my veins and cause my heart to quicken its beat, and entrusting the sparks, darting and fluttering like enamoured moths, with the task of keeping me awake and making my thoughts wander off in the same capricious fashion.  There is something charming and indefinable in the spectacle of your thoughts taking leave of you and flying off at random into the distance, whence they shower your heart with unexpected tokens of bittersweet melancholy.  Your cigar half-spent, your eyes half-closed, your fingers holding loosely on to the tongs, you see your other self careering dizzily off into the far distance; you sense the currents of strange worlds passing through your sinews; you smile as you experience a thousand and one sensations that would turn your hair grey and line your forehead with wrinkles, without moving a finger or taking a solitary step."

--Giovanni Verga from Cavalleria and Other Stories, 1890

gedankenexperiment

TOP: A hotel sign in Malaysia banning visitors from eating the durian fruit (photo: Hiang Kee).
ABOVE: the foul-smelling Durian (W.H.L. Skeen & Co.'s studio, c.1890)