About Me

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Adalbert is a forum for me, to post ephemera, photography, poetry, occasional travel notes, and various spontaneous motions. Cover photo: Parsonage where my great-grandfather spent his early years. Taken near Liegnitz, Silesia, ca. 1870. The "xothique" portion of the web address is a nod to Clark Ashton Smith's fictional continent of Zothique.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Dreams in the Witch-House

A few hours ago watched Stuart Gordon's 2005 tv adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House ( I guess it sounds more contemporary if one drops the article). Kind of a mixed bag, and I feel the same ambivalence I feel about all of Gordon's HPL films (having also seen Re-Animator and From Beyond). The film has little to no atmosphere and leaves out most of the quantum mechanics and cosmic elements that infuse the source tale. Walter Gilman opening up a laptop? C'mon. The hilarious audience participation-encouraged, amateur version of Dreams I saw at the HPL film festival will probably stay with me longer. And the whirling sound accompanying the film is originating from Swan Point in Providence.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Elevated Railroad on the Bowery, New York


Stereoscopic card, from around the 1890s or early 20th Century.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Winter


Winter

Wild blackness rolls in the skies. Its whorls are city coals, sheets of skeletal water shimmer in the harbor.
The feathers of winter, a harbinger tolling over the land, snapping fires feed morning twilight. Air seeps over my arms.
On the ridge of trees, birds settle, rasping of distant waters. Light rays and fills land heights, a drained reservoir, thorny leaves. The wind carries grey ashes, squash loads the lands, rippled grey roofs meet the sea, winter's coils sink against the star-flashing nightfall.

JF
Chinhae City, South Korea
1995

Monday, January 23, 2012

Dolmen in the Wood of the Small Port, Nantes, France


Unsent postcard from Nantes in Western France, depicting a neolithic dolmen or portal grave.

Friday, January 13, 2012

T.J. Masurian


Photo of my great-grandfather Ludwig Falk (cf. entry of September 10, 2010, and others) in old age, together with, from left to right, his wife, Margaret, grandson, his daughter (my great aunt), my maternal grandmother, and part of someone's side (my grandfather?). Ludwig looked pretty dapper there with the beard and suit. Probably taken in Milwaukie, Oregon, ca. 1924.
What model car is it? Whose car? Who was standing behind the camera at that moment?

Monday, January 9, 2012

petrol cedar Emily Carr sky



Hand-coloured stereoscopic card depicting a scene from the Russo-Japanese war period. I don't suppose "foraging" is anything like "looting."

Thursday, January 5, 2012