I hardly ever read novels (I know, I was an English major, what's up with that?)

I wrote about Jonathan Swift in July from Dublin after visiting St. Patrick’s Cathedral where he was Dean. Also, he attended Trinity College where we stayed. I was taken with him and his revolutionary ways.

But I never read a word he wrote in all my years as an English major, or in high school, or as a child.

So this evening I scanned the bookshelf for a novel I haven't read and came across this combined edition of Gulliver's Travels and Baron Munchausen. Having just posted a photo of myself under a mushroom, I thought it must be time to go to Lilliput. I have no idea where this copy came from. My dad? A rummage sale? This edition has no date in it, but I think it's from the 1880's or 1890's.

In 1726 Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, a satire on the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Authorshop of Baron Munchausen is not certain, which you can read about if you click on Baron Manchausen in the previous paragraph, but it's sometimes called "Gulliver Revived." I don't know the story, but it was made into a film in 1988.

One reason I love old books is the beautiful embossed relief binding. Don't you think we've lost something, looking at the stack of books below? I'm sure the old methods of bookbinding must be too costly to be practical these days.

If you want to read about the "history of the book" (not this specific book, but books in general), which I think is fascinating, go here for the wiki piece.

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The Island

I have a new post at Paris Deconstructed, about the island in the Seine where the Notre Dame sits. Bridges, bridges and more bridges.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRS. M!

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Hyperreality II

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Hyperreality

Do you ever do something obsessively?

I stayed home from work today, not feeling too well. But not feeling bad enough to lie flat in bed. So, I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop.

This means multi-tasking. (“Multi-tasking” is what we who have dial-up do so we don’t go insane. Sometimes we go plow an acre while waiting for a site to load.)

• Read through my blogroll
• Read email
• Read newspapers online
• Start composing my next blog post
• Look at the new photo hunt season first week challenge at JorgDotOrg
  
• Organize photographs and look for something appropriate for the photo hunt

And that leads me to the next task. The photo hunt challenge this week is “something new.” I thought of the sumac trees out back that are just turning orange, which has been quite a theme for me this week after all (orange, that is). The newly orange leaves might be a nice seasonal subject.

I have a photo from under the sumac, looking up at the sky. But the sky is white, the photo taken on a cloudy day. Not very interesting.

Before photoshopping:


Hmm, maybe I can photoshop the sky blue! That’s where the obsessive behavior comes in. I’ve been photoshopping blue into the sky for hours now. (There must be a quick way to fill all the white with blue at once! But no, every white area goes like this: select tiny area with magic wand tool, edit, fill, ok, select, edit, fill, ok, select . . .you get the idea. If there is a quick way, and you know it, I don’t know if I want you to tell me now. Wait a few weeks. I have too much time invested in this photo. It might break my heart.) It’s like coloring, or finding puzzle pieces. It’s like playing a game. It’s mindless and when you’re not feeling well, mindless is good. It’s fun to do in between multiple tasks.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to wait for a sunny day and take another photo, you ask? Well, maybe. But then, I may have to wait several days, and by then the sumac will be entirely orange, which is fine. But I like how the leaves are part green and part orange in the photo.

Well, while photo-shopping the sumac, I opened an email from my brother Nelson saying that his son Dave in Sydney watches this site on wiki: hyperreality. Dave’s a smart guy, works in artificial intelligence, and I don’t have a clue, but I read the piece anyway.

Here are some examples of hyperreality from the wiki site:

Examples of hyperreality

• a sports drink of a flavour that doesn't exist ("wild ice zest berry")
• pornography ("sexier than sex itself")
• a plastic Christmas tree that looks better than a real Christmas tree ever could
• a magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer
• a well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal)
• any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts"
• the Gulf War, to the extent that America understood it: Baudrillard, in fact, claims that the Gulf War never even happened
• Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing' - 'creatio' is a noun) : Disney World, Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas
• TV and film in general, due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds

How about that! I was photoshopping a fake blue sky into a photograph while reading an article about hyperreality! I encourage you to read the piece and think about what you think reality is, and isn’t.

So, the photo. It seems obvious that the photo with blue is more appealing (maybe the blue is too dark though). But it’s a “lie.”

But then, as Nelson and I discussed, what photograph isn’t a lie? You can’t feel the breeze in your hair as you did when you took the picture, he said.

After photoshopping:

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More autumn orange

Click on photos to see larger views.

Yesterday while mowing Don came across this mushroom in the path. He hopped off his John Deere and ran to the house to get me.

It's so unreal looking we half expected a gnome to jump out any minute. I don't know what this type of mushroom is called. Anyone know? Update from Mei Shile: The mushroom is an 'Amanita Muscaria'. The English common name is a 'fly agaric'. It's a psychedelic mushroom. So, no wonder there were lots of illustrations of these in the '60s and '70s. If you click on 'Amanita Muscaria' above, you can read the wiki article about this mushroom. One botanist even speculates that these mushrooms are the foundation (literally and figuratively?) of Santa Claus!


Back under the spruce tree you can see more of them.

Here's a big "duh." I didn't realize yesterday that the mushroom in the path (first three photos) and these under the tree were the same type. These under the tree had opened, and the ball-like one in the path hadn't opened yet.


Here's the same mushroom as the top three photos, taken today, opened up. That's Don's foot (not a gnome's) for size comparison. He wears size 11 American (that's 10.5 English, 45 European, 29 Japanese :-D).

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Pumpkins in fog

Please click on images to enlarge.

This pumpkin stand has been out about a week now on the side of the road I take to work.


I'm reading William Everson's Birth of a Poet again, and this morning:

"If you think the cosmos is just a bunch of dead matter wheeling around and around in its own gyrations, a self-sufficient mechanism which just happened to happen, then nothing I say will make any sense at all. I am talking about the living presence of things, the unmistakable quivering energy alive in all things. Every form of apartness and togetherness is living and free, quivering and breathing. I bow before its majesty and before the living God, because the face of God is in everything."

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Shabby chic in Paris

I hope you'll visit my Paris Deconstructed blog to see and read a new post about the Shakespeare & Co bookstore.

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