the true confessions of a bibliophile.

As the good daughter of a librarian, I love books. I've always known this, but now that all my worldly possessions must fit in my 12'x12' room, my book collection seems even more impressive. In fact, they - along with my embarrassing clothes collection - are taking over my room like Napoleon in early 19th century Europe. At least they're still organized. Sorta.

poetry, literature, and note the bear knick-knack.

literature as a doorstop.

art and politics.

religion, architecture, and language.

thesis material.

pienza.

The flower is the poetry of reproduction.
It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
Jean Giraudoux

birds.

birds at s. biagio

Technically I shouldn't be posting this, nor technically should you read the following, however I'll consider this free advertisement...? I thoroughly enjoyed his pigeon poetry as well.

Into the Sun
Andrew Mealey

Spreading wings, soaring into the sky
Warming light lifting higher and higher
Sounds becoming infinitely softer in flight
Never fearing melting pinions of joyous desire
Come with me next time

paestum.

Temple of Hera

Somewhere amid the election chaos, I forgot to post about Paestum. And my apologizes to color enthusiasts in regards to my blog as of late... And because I'm procrastinating, I found some modern Greek poetry that may or may not have anything to do with the above photo. And reminds me of Faucault (doooork).

The Veil

A man locked in a labyrinth never looks for the truth
but only for his Ariadne.
Truth is not unveiling which destroys the secret;
it is the revelation which does it justice.
Our experience remains the captive of a knowledge
which is no longer our experience;
our knowledge is embarrassed by an experience
which has not yet become knowledge.
We must weave new intellectual patterns,
searching for the potential spaces of a "truth"
that would be neither true nor false;
for a "truth" that would be
implausible

improbable

incredible

thereby making error (pathos)
the thread of life.

Haris Vlavianos, POETRY Greece, January 2000

palladian countryside.

The following is actually about love, or more specifically, Cupid (or Eros), but I felt it fitting for the subject of the photo.

Sonnet I

Ancient, winged god, thou who didst first draw breath
With sun and stars together at one birth,
Thou who to all things givest life and death,
Flying by devious pathways through the earth,
My heart which languish thee in bitter pain,
Seeking for thorny and malignant grief
A thousand remedies, but all in vain,
In thee, O Time, alone findeth relief
Thought thou uprootest, with forgetfulness
Healest our wounds, and lastly dost dispel
The mists which have these royal cloisters sealed;
Truth in her pure, unveilèd loveliness
Thou hast uplifted even from the well
Where she lay hid, and to all eyes revealed.

Torquato Tasso, 1544-1595
(Palladio and Tasso were contemporaries)

sultanahmet camii.

Sultanahmet Camii and lone worshiper.

I thought this was a fitting quote:

Before the art of illumination there was blackness and afterward there will also be blackness. Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to "See"! To know is to remember that you've seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness. The great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that color and sight arose from darkness, longed to return to Allah's blackness by means of color. Artists without memory neither remember Allah nor his blackness. All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time.

Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red, p.76

ocean.

"There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, with music in its roar."
- Lord Byron