( lanny quarles / via )

Duality.

"There must be dogs barking at the bottom of chaos--great, hoarse hounds whose voices bounce eternally against falling rock and echo and reecho in the crevices of eternity. Only a dog's voice out of the deep abysses carries the proper menace and at the same time preserves the weird objectivity and indifference which is part of the hunting pack. A lion's voice is great but personal, a dog's bark by contrast contains the maniacal essence of chaos, dumb matter come alive in the dark and howling its voice endlessly and stupidly against the sleeping quiet of nonexistence--but I overelaborate--perhaps you have not heard as I have hounds beneath you as you cling desperately to a cliff wall. When I get to the bottom they turn warm and wagging and friendly--again with the total irrationality that obtains over the great cliff of chaos. Did they take me finally, because of my successful descent, as a demon like themselves--for if I had fallen, they had given every indication of devouring me--or are the dogs of Cerberus, the hoarse-voiced, much-feared guardians of Nothing, actually abysmally friendly and lonely creatures? Since that long, agonizing descent before I reached the city on the plain, I have never been quite sure. When I come to the Final Pit in which they howl, I shall, without too great a show of confidence, put out my hand once more and speak. Perhaps the great hounds of fear may wait with wagging tails for a voice who knows them. It may as well be mine. For who is to know one demon from another in the dark..." --Loren Eiseley

Salome's Last Dance.

"And from afar Tedaldo's spires espies." --Hoole's Ariosto

The palindromes of Bletchley Park. "Many of the great palindromes we know today were published immediately after World War II in the British journal Notes and Queries by one man, an itinerant engineer from the northwest suburbs of London." (via metafilter)