Oddities V (ca. 1983) page 5

 

 

 

Poetry/ collage by Roman Scott

Oddities V (ca. 1983) page 4

 

 

 

Poetry by Bruce Boston.  More info about Bruce Boston:  http://bruceboston.com/

Oddities V (ca. 1983) page 3

 

 

 

 

 

Work by Impasto Artaud

Oddities V (ca. 1983) page 2

 

 

 

 

Story by Jonathan Falk

 

Oddities V (ca. 1983) page 1

 

 

 

Work by Impasto Artaud, Larry Keim, and Paul McIntyre

Oddities V (ca. 1983) Inside front cover

 

 

The Cover of Oddities V (ca. 1982)

 

 

 

Cover by Roman Scott

Why has Bodhidharma left for the East?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artwork procured in Jirisan National Park, South Korea

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirisan

Thangka

 

 

The Second Season

Or the first, third, or fourth, depending on when one starts counting...

I am not an advocate for the season of summer, which is threaded with adumbrations of fall in the mornings at this time.  I know of two great grumpy essays:  Anton Szandor Lavey's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Lavey) Summertime, from The Devil's Notebook (1992) and Arthur Schopenhauer's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer) On Noise, from the selection of the philosopher's work titled Studies in Pessimism.   On Noise is contained in this link:  http://books.google.com/books?id=zJhJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=schopenhauer+on+noise&source=bl&ots=4ScVIWlLgK&sig=UevbHzbfd64l-Mqsz43LRzVjRF4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4vMDUuCPHrH2igLFtY.

It took me a certain amount of time to realize that summer is unpleasant not so much because of the weather, but because of the way humans can act during the hot days. Noise irritates. Schopenhauer complained about the abusive overapplication of whip cracking in his day, as destructive to thinking.  In our times, noise levels expand greatly from June 21 to September 21, give or take, with windows open, boom cars and outdoor activities. Schopenhauer's ears would not have been able to process the ambience.  And LaVey has some piercing remarks on summer in his essay.  Take such jewels as: "Taking the warmth nature has provided, he (man) has fashioned for himself an environment where his mindlessness flourishes most.  It is the only season which validates slobs."  Or:   "I would enjoy spring more were it not for the impending plague of summer with its human locusts thriving in an atmosphere far deadlier (if radiation levels are considered) than the worst blizzards." 

The New Zealanders and Argentineans have their own context for this.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860

Rainbow Falls, Hawaii

 

 

 

 

 

Card sent in the 1940s, with some Hawaiian words included in the text on the back.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Falls_(Hawaii)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea

Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania

 

 

 

 

Wrong side since memory know

Wrong side since memory know

Wrong side since memory know, non-eruption, just look at those places, lava talus marmoreal.  I generally from the western slope see,

The base of Mt. Hood ringed spectacles springboard notch, can you photograph at night from 45 miles away, Celsius or Canadian kilometers forgotten from 1970s mandates, drive with headlamps on, can’t convert, flash cubes breathing like neutron bombs, the moon leaves everyone alive save the buildings.  The root of the mountain is what’s major, scrape marks sidereal, the roads around Sam Hill’s manse are stationary, cars up and down none for miles, rattlesnake’s buzzer whistling, compass sclera overtone production, nearest star Ginnungagap fanning peacock wind generators.  Bayonet strike, purling intestine jacket, petroglyph motor.  Misplaced der Alte’s grave, the hills past the lintels, Stonehenge of dry times, take what shade you can get, oasis house umbrage scent too close to the road, shivered roses by memorial of war.

 

JF

 

August 2, 2013

 

 

 

 

Photograph:  Mt. Hood and Columbia River, outside Maryhill Museum of Art, Washington State,

June 8, 2013

 

Window Rock, Arizona

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Rock,_Arizona

 

http://www.lapahie.com/window_rock_capitol.cfm

 

Five Years

Here marks the fifth anniversary of the Adalbert blog.  Five years ago today I wrote my first three sentence post, and the first image I used in the blog was a deliberately mislabeled photograph of Aleister Crowley.  To suggest a circle, here are two images of the Master Therion from the time of the attempted summiting of K2 in 1902:

 

 

 

Frater Perdurabo is second from the right in the lower picture.

 

 

And here's a daruma doll someone gave me in Gunma-ken, Japan, years back. 

 

 



 

 

Open door & tree

 

 

 

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery (1962)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple nights ago finished re-reading Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery:  Eleven spooky stories for young people (and apparently for some big kids as well), from 1962.   I previously read it when I was about 10 or 11, gleaning the tome from the school library or the public library, can't recall which.  As with Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum (see entry of 6 July 2012), one of the aspects that fascinated me were the illustrations, in this case by Fred Banbery:  http://jaargang.blogspot.com/2009/10/creepy-beautiful-illustrations.html, http://illusstation.blogspot.com/2008/04/fred-banbery.html.  The whimsically disturbing Hitchcock faces growing out of furniture attracted some study.

 

While not quite up to the pitch of shock and fright of the Monster Museum, the Ghostly Gallery infected my imagination.  One of the two stories that affected me most during my initial reading were F. Marion Crawford's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion_Crawford) The Upper Berth, penetrated with gelid and extirpative dread.  The tale begins with a classic English ghost story framework (although Crawford was American, more or less), with a gentleman narrating the events over cigars...  Bit of trouble in the old Hindu Kush.  "He had about him, I thought, an air of rather dubious fashion:  the sort of man you might see in Wall Street, without being able precisely to say what he was doing there."  The second story in the anthology which impressed me the most in youth was H.G. Wells' The Truth about Pyecraft, which is amusing but now strikes me as more of a bagatelle than some of the other pieces.

Robert Arthur:  http://www.elizabetharthur.org/bio/rarthur.html, who apparently also ghost-edited the Hitchcock collection, along with the Monster Museum and some of the other Hitchcock-branded anthologies, is represented by no less than three good stories (ahem!):  The Haunted Trailer, The Wonderful Day, and Obstinate Uncle Otis.  Arthur's writing appears light-hearted at first, but contains some dark turns as one reads on.  Algernon Blackwood's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood) The Valley of the Beasts possesses one of the maestro's great atmospheric evocations of nature (the Canadian forest in this instance), but has a heavy-handedness about it at the end which places it at a lower grade than, say, The Wendigo.  Other (mostly) excellent works appear by Robert Louis Stevenson, A.M. Burrage, Lord Dunsany, and Walter Brooks.

Calibration II

 

 

 

 

near Alaska/ Yukon border

 

 

 

 

Border City, Alaska

Card sent in 1958

Portrait of Joseph Roulin

 

 

 

Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

 

Postcard mailed 12 September 1986 

Quebec

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third card from the Exel LeDuc file (cf. posts of 3 January 2013 and 18 April 2013), this one sent to her from Quebec City:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City.   Perhaps the upside down stamp signified something.

 

"This place eclipses everything I've seen before -- a dream of archaic city walls, castellated cliffs, silver spires, pointed roofs, narrow, zigzag & precipitous streets, & the leisurely civilisation of an elder world."  H.P. Lovecraft, postcard written in Quebec, to Donald Wandrei, 1930

 

The following is a transcript of the postcard to Exel, although I had difficulty deciphering a couple words.

 

Our festivities were a grand success.  The Corpus Christi procession through the city especially -- 50,000 people -- is a triumph one sees but once in a lifetime.  Wish you had been here for those 3 days to get an idea of the faith and patriotism of our good french canadians You'd have felt proud of your origin.  Well (?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1952

 

 

 

 

Cover art by Chesley Bonestell 

Ice-covered -- but good wine from these hills!

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beilstein,_Rhineland-Palatinate

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BeilsteinMoselPanorama1.jpg

Watching Jeremy Brett

The last year or so I have been watching many of the episodes of the various Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series -- Adventures, Return, Memoirs, Case-Book, made by Granada Television in the 1980s and 1990s.  I had originally seen a few episodes in the 1980s but missed a large number of others.  With an episode such as the adaptation of The Final Problem, for example, we see the advantages of the Brett-starring series.  With Brett, the doubled man -- both bipolar and bisexual (per Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Brett ) -- Holmes was rendered with depth and faithfulness.  His face mutable as an Alpine sky, a tic-like smile or angered frown appearing and fading in an instant, his abruptness and eccentricities, Brett was the ultimate portrayer of the detective.  With such adaptations as The Final Problem shot on location, with generous footage of the Alps, the soundtrack seasoned with cowbells and other local touches, the real life approach to production shows its superiority to today's fast editing and crappy CGI effects.  While some of the 1990s productions sank in quality, with shows such as The Last Vampyre showing an ailing, barely moving Brett, the series at its best had a peerless blend of acting and restrained period detail.

S.M.S. Falke

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than one ship floated under this name -- its predecessor played a part in the Franco-Prussian War.

 

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Falke_(Schiff,_1891)&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsms%2Bfalke%2B1865%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D745&sa=X&ei=n_HNUY2xHs3MigL2jICABA&ved=0CFIQ7gEwBQ

 

Calibration

 

 

Henderson Studio, St. Paul

 

 

Fruit Trees in Bloom, Grants Pass, Oregon (1909)

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grants_Pass,_Oregon

 

Bäume

 

 

 

 

 

Painting: Bäume, 1986

 

 

Acclivity

 

 

Bracken and colourless grasses nod in the precipice, always dark and upward, not struck by the sun.  The past, and arched bridge over the gulph of river shade, black fishes, and granite.   Only the half-apprehension of lightless bulk or upper land.

 

Musky imminence, the wood outside window and door, moth and coal oil.  Unaccountable stains of the whitened moon:  straw ridges and imperial alder.

 

Brow of boulder or hemlock, apparent on top of walls of  boughs susurrus -- standing in places just like that. Steeping ruddiness and a sadness, clumped and lit grasses, from the narrow ledge.  Wasted and snapped trees.  Palaeogean skirting, busy air of huckleberry and toadstool, dipping way of the road over.

 

An one blanched and shivered tree-crown, appearing through a gap in the rocks, height of hawk and golden bee.

 

A great staircase made in the summit, the summer-house no longer about, movement of clouds building and lifting down the mountain in the removed, brink, moss-shoared pond:  ovine and clotted rocks.

 

JF ca. 1990



Indian Chief

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Mescal Bean, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_Caverns_National_Park

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calia

Halfdan Egedius, meet Eanger Irving Couse

 

 

On 8 June 2013 I visited Maryhill Museum in Washington State and the nearby Stonehenge replica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge.

Jens Bjerre's The Last Cannibals

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I never met a Dane who wasn't bone-dull."  Thus wrote William S. Burroughs in The Yage Letters.  In spite of Burroughs' statement,  I've got at least one exciting Dane to present (there may be one or two in Christiania as well):  Jens Bjerre.

 



In these days I reread a translation by Estrid Bannister of The Last Cannibals (originally published in 1956;  this paperback edition from 1958) by Jens Bjerre:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Bjerre_(adventurer).  I don't recall where I procured this copy, probably at a flea market.  I once saw Mr. Bjerre himself, in the early 1980s in Portland, Oregon,  give a lecture on his travels in Tibet.  I remember little about the talk other than he showed some film or photographs of Tibet, the Potala, and so on, as part of the evening.  I also recall the fact that he used a gentle humor at times in his comments.

For the price of the ticket, one gets descriptions, in The Last Cannibals, of journeys not only in New Guinea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea, but also an extended stay with Australia Aborigines: http://www.apex.net.au/~mhumphry/aborigin.html.  The sequence in Australia, with an immersion in aboriginal life and an intensely evocative description of Ayers Rock, for instance, is as good as the New Guinea sections.  In spite of the book's title and the lurid promise of the front and back covers, Bjerre only makes a few incidental references to some New Guinean tribesmen still practicing cannibalism in the 1950s.  You don't get baked, barbequed, or boiled long pig, one of the original free range, cage free, local foods, or any eyewitness reports of anthropophagy, in the travel book.  You do get a glimpse of smoked corpses of deceased relatives in huts, of malarial lowlands and misty jagged mountains, of origin myths and the aftereffects of World War II in the island, among other things.  The book trails off at the end with a fever dream out of  De Quincey.