Quotables

A recurring featurette where I type good stuff that I have read or heard lately, in an effort to procrastinate instead of reading more stuff.

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisabel come dancing

from hopscotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

baloonMan whistles

far
and
wee
--e e cummings (1923)
Yeah, I know it's not spring and I have read this poem aplenty before today, but the words "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful" were dancing around my brain today because it was 52 (FIFTY TWO) degrees and everything was muddy and slushy. But no matter. I spent some time tramping around the fields by my apartment while waiting for my laundry (getting my sneakers very gross in the process) and then opened all the windows in here. It is hard to be grumpy when the air smells like dirt.

"Rubens is the nastiest most vulgar noisy painter that ever lived. His men are twisted to pieces. His modeling is always crooked & dropsical & no marking is ever in its right place or anything like what he sees in nature, his people never have bones, his color is dashy & flashy, his people must all be in the most violent action, must use the strength of Hercules if a little watch is to be wound up, the wind must be blowing great guns even in a chamber or dining room, everything must be making a noise & tumbling about, there must be monsters too for his men were not monstrous enough for him. His pictures always put me in mind of chamber pots & I would not be sorry if they were all burnt."
--Thomas Eakins in a letter to his father, December 2, 1869, excerpted in American Art to 1900: A Documentary History: U of California Press, 592.
One thing I am learning from this American art class is that 19th century artists and art reviews are HILARIOUS. I don't feel this strongly about Rubens (I quite like his colors and compositions a lot, actually), but I enjoyed this too.

And near the unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
By her Spring cry the moorhen's nest is found,
Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
--Part of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet (I think it's a sonnet), Spring.
I came across this poem (sonnet?) while doing some research about Botticelli--Rossetti wrote it in honor of Botticelli's Primavera. And as I seem to be fixated on spring (spring spring spriiing) I copied it down.

"walnut church pews. 9ft. 7in. over 60 years old . good condition $100.00 each"
I was on craigslist looking for a chair (unsuccessfully, so if anyone has a chair they want to give me..) and under furniture was listed some church pews--with pictures!--for sale. My first thought was, "I want that," before cooler heads prevailed and I realized that they would be 1. probably uncomfortable, and 2. waaay too big for my apartment

On the reported Spice Girls musical, Viva Forever, "For many readers this may consist of Wannabe (their ubiquitous debut hit) and "the other ones". But for a sizeable minority of young people who were children when the songs came out but will have significant disposable income by the time the show arrives on stage the list of meaningful Spice Girls songs is much longer and includes the likes of Say You'll Be There, 2 Become 1, Mama, Spice Up Your Life and Viva Forever."
I don't know about the "significant disposable income" part, but would I go see a Spice Girls song-based musical? Absolutely I would. Check out the article here.

Un segno risplendente
della bontà di Dio!
Per tre sere dell'anno solamente,
all'uscire dal coro,
Dio ci concede di vedere il sole
che batte sulla fonte e la fa d'oro.
--Puccini, Suor Angelica
Translation:
A shining sign
of God's goodness!
On three evenings only in the year,
as we come out of chapel,
God allows us to see the sun
falling upon the fountain and
turning it to gold.
I went to see Il Trittico over the weekend (gushing blog post about that forthcoming) and while Puccini is not my favorite, Italian + nuns = win. Suor Angelica is lovely, lovely too. I think it's something about the all-female cast that I like.

Roux: I should probably warn ya: you make friends with us, you make enemies with everyone else.
Vianne: Is that a promise?
Roux: It's a guarantee.
--Chocolat. My friends and I watched it last night (after procuring all manner of chocolate and strawberry champagne from the grocery store). What a good move it is. And Johnny Depp (Roux) as a River Rat? I heartily approve of him, his Irish accent, and his French braid. I love the score, the dialogue, the scenery, and Vianne's clothes. Oh, and the chocolate, of course!

And a picture, worth 1000 quotations:Winslow Homer, Apple Picking, 1878, watercolor over graphite
Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago