(via trav*l-*arth dot com)


"When asked about the disproportionately large hands found in his paintings, Pletka replied, "Frankly, there are two reasons. One is that I found hands to be difficult for me to do. So, I started focusing on them in order to do a really good job. The more I focused on them the bigger they became." "


   "A Bivouac

You came without a human sound,
  You came and brought my soul to me;
I only woke, and all around
They slumbered on the firelit ground,
  Beside the guns in Burgundy.

I felt the gesture of your hands,
  You signed my forehead with the Cross;
The gesture of your holy hands
Was bounteous--like the misty lands
  Along the Hills in Calvados.

But when I slept I saw your eyes,
  Hungry as death, and very far.
I saw demand in your dim eyes
Mysterious as the moons that rise
  At midnight, in the Pines of Var."

--B*lloc


"Whereas the historical eighteenth century lasted 126 years (from 1688 to 1815)...and the nineteenth century lasted ninety-nine years (from 1815 to 1914)...the twentieth century lasted seventy-five years (from 1914 to 1989)..." --ibid


Song.


"No wonder Southey could laugh when, having written fifty stanzas about the forthcoming royal wedding, he heard that the engagement had been called off." --Mark Stor*y, Rob*rt South*y: A Lif* (1997)