First lesson – stick them with the pointy end. Jon Snow, Game of Thrones

Winter is coming (Shaun) 

What cat?

“Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.” 


from The Claw of the Conciliator
by Gene Wolfe

For the libraries they cannot touch.

A photo taken this morning of one of the many 

free libraries in our neighbourhood.

"One summer night several months later, a violent thunderstorm swept through the city, scaring all the dogs and burning up the sky in what looked like almost continuous threads of mad lightning. Her father used to call such storms real rock and rollers, and this one certainly was. The phrase and the memory of her father saying it was the last thing she thought of before falling asleep while the storm rocked and rolled the night world outside her window."

from Played Your Eyes
by Jonathan Carroll

full story here

https://www.tor.com/2018/04/04/played-your-eyes-jonathan-carroll/#more-351052

Saturday High Tea

We went to high tea today in our old stomping grounds of Kensington. We were married in the park there. We found a new (to us) shop selling Japanese pottery, clothing and paper products. It will merit a closer look. We also paid an expensive visit to Pages Bookstore, but we do like to support independent bookstores. (Great Stuff)

Turnips are turnips, and prunes are prunes.

Whether eaten with forks, or eaten with spoons.

            ADDEE GORRWY, 'THE POST CARD POETESS'

The city, one day after

"A stillness, absolute as death,

Along the slacking wheels shall lie,

And, flagging at a single breath,

The fires shall smoulder out and die.

The roar shall vanish at its height,

And over that tremendous town

The silence of eternal night

Shall gather close and settle down.

All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,

Shall be abandoned utterly,

And into rust and dust shall fall

From century to century.

Nor ever living thing shall grow,

Or trunk of tree or blade of grass;

No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow,

Nor sound of any foot shall pass.

Alone of its accurséd state

One thing the hand of Time shall spare,

For the grim Idiot at the gate

Is deathless and eternal there!"

In case of emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puM1k-S86nE

poem from The City at the End of Things, 

Archibald Lamp

                                                                                              

photo adapted from 

Frank R. Paul's ill. for "City of the Living Dead",

Laurence Manning and Fletcher Pratt (May 1930)

One day we will fly free again. (But sadly, it's not today)

"Old pirates yes they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly


All I ever had, is songs of freedom
Won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fullfill the book

from Redemption Song/Bob Marley 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55s3T7VRQSc

On our walk today.

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.”

― Annie Dillard,
The Writing Life

"It does a man good to turn himself inside out once in a while: to sort of turn the tables on himself: to look at himself through other eyes—especially skeptical eyes, if he can. It takes a good deal of resolution to do it: yet it should be done—no one is safe until he can give himself such a drubbing: until he can shock himself out of his complacency. Think how we go on believing in ourselves—which in the main is all right (what could we ever do if we didn’t believe in ourselves?)—a colossal self-satisfaction, which is worse for a man than being a damned scoundrel." from Walt Whitman Speaks

Snow gone, blue skies melding to grey

"Half the walk is but retracing our steps."

Thoreau

April 11, a bit of an unexpected treat.

“Sara Kendell once read somewhere that the tale of the world is like a tree. The tale, she understood, did not so much mean the niggling occurrences of daily life. Rather it encompassed the grand stories that caused some change in the world and were remembered in ensuing years as, if not histories, at least folktales and myths. By such reasoning, Winston Churchill could take his place in British folklore alongside the legendary Robin Hood; Merlin Ambrosius had as much validity as Martin Luther. The scope of their influence might differ, but they were all a part of the same tale.” 

from Moonheart
by Charles de Lint

Annals of the Former World

"The world has not always been as it is today.
Much knowledge had to be gathered, and much patient observation was needed, before this was recognized. There are still things to be discovered, for the veil of mystery has not yet been stripped from all these secrets. Perhaps they will be discovered tomorrow, perhaps in a year, perhaps not for a hundred years. Time is not so important as the certain knowledge that one day they will be brought to light and that the darkness which surrounds all mysteries will melt away."

Prehistoric reptiles and birds, Dr Josef Augusta, 
Ill. by Zdenek Burian, Trans. by Margaret Schiel, 1961

A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died