The Maltese Falcon: Today's "Did You Know"

"After seven years of moving from place to place in Europe the Knights [Hospitaller] became established in 1530 when Charles V of Spain, as King of Sicily, gave them Malta, Gozo and the North African port of Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon, which they were to send on All Souls Day to the King's representative, the Viceroy of Sicily."

Who knew?
Not a fan of the Hammett book or the Bogart/Huston movie (neither of which apparently has anything to do with this falcon), but I still was amused to learn this.

"From our birthday, until we die...

...Is but the winking of an eye" - W.B. Yeats


"Age is a high price to pay for maturity." - Tom Stoppard

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to a hundred. - Woody Allen


Here's to maturity.

I feel, therefore I am

"I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism." - Milan Kundera, Immortality (205)

No wonder its afterglow survived defeat and death:

somnambulating waves caress the face of the moon

catastrophic appendages flounder in the distance

Tetris calculations obscure the vision of curators and ideologues

under the bridge, skirts and hairnets hide true natures to the detriment of the whole


basement ontologist

closed doors that creak

open legs that don't think

vanishing windows

an unearthed passion


producing varying effects
nipples that right off taxes

drunken candles and eaten airships

by the terror stricken vandals and their captors

and if then eyes could neither close nor cry

the end result would be pi times why and divided by the time you sang a Donny Hathaway song to a girl on a rainy summer night in Brooklyn

Wanderer by Antonio Machado

a terrific poem I stole from this fine blog I just discovered. Enjoy.

Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.

"There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art."

- Goethe
























crazy art work on a door in Barri Gotic, Barcelona
















Paul Gauguin's Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) at The Getty Center in Los Angeles




















Gaudi's Park Guell in Barcelona



















Nice, France



















Marina Del Rey, California



















View of San Francisco from Oakland, CA





















Pinocchio and the Bug in Le Suquet, the old quarter of Cannes, France
























Rogier van Otterloo draped in red on a bench. Haight, San Francisco

Songs: For An Untitled Lady

It's a lil past Valentine's Day but...

1. Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information
2. Freddie McGregor - Apple Of My Eyes
3. Os Diagonais - Eliana
4. The Guinness Cassanovas - Ain't No Loving
5. Con Funk Shun - (Let Me Put) Love On Your Mind
6. Bobbi Humphrey - You Make Me Feel So Good
7. The Fuzz - I Love You For All Seasons
8. Bill Withers - Let Me Be The One You Need
9. Terry Callier - You And Me (Will Always Be In Love)
10. Conjunto Libre - Risque
11. Donny Hathaway - Misty
12. The Velvet Underground - I Found A Reason
13. The Beach Boys - Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
14. Joao Gilberto - 's Wonderful
15. Natalie Cole - La Costa
16. John Betsch Society - Song For An Untitled Lady
17. Tim Maia - Contacto com o Mundo Racional
18. Linda Perhacs - Dolphin
19. Love Unlimited Orchestra - Whisper Softly

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