Parking No Parking
Parking for Donna and Scott. The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain. Thomas Traherne (1636–74), English clergyman, poet, mystic. Centuries,“Fourth Century,” no. 95 (first published 1908), written c. 1672.
The Port Hole Fountain
The Port Hole Fountain - Portland, Maine Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Jean Cocteau, Journals, pt. 1, “War and Peace” (1956).
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Winter Sun, Cape Elizabeth, Maine The ocean, whose tides respond, like women’s menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves … it is unstable and threatening →
Fish Market
Portland, Maine Harbor Fish Market When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land. Samuel Johnson (1709–84), English author, lexicographer. Quoted in: James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 18 March 1776 (1791).
Coffee
The morning cup of coffee has an exhiliration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–94), U.S. writer, physician. Over the Teacups, ch. 1 (1891).
52 Wharf Street
The best number for a dinner party is two—myself and a dam’ good head waiter. Nubar Gulbenkian (1896–1972), British oil tycoon, socialite. Daily Telegraph (London, 14 Jan. 1965).
Morning Snow Portland Maine
Sunrise Snow Storm Portland Maine. Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. Ezra Pound (1885–1972), U.S. poet, critic. Ancient Music. The poem—originally dropped from Pound’s 1916 edition of Lustra when it was considered offensive, later reinstated—is a pastiche of an anonymous 13th-century hymn sung annually at Reading Abbey, England: Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing →
Commercial Street Flurries
Afternoon Snow Flurries on Commercial Street. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. Henry David Thoreau (1817–62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden,“Spring” (1854).
Sexy Pasta Snapshot
Sexy Pasta Snapshot - Found in a store window in Portland, Maine I can live without it all—love with its blood pump,sex with its messy hungers,men with their peacock strutting,their silly sexual baggage,their wet tongues in my ear.Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author. “Becoming a Nun,” in About Women (ed. by Stephen Berg and S. J. Marks, 1973).
Mermaid Portland Maine
Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part. Hermann Broch (1886–1951), Austrian novelist. The Spell, Foreword (1976; tr. 1987). Photograph of Nautical Door Handle found on the door to very unusual shop, while roaming the streets of Portland Maine.
Nubble Light Winter at Cape Neddick Maine
Winter at Cape Neddick, Maine - Nubble Lighthouse photographed from the rocks at low tide. For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), U.S. poet. maggie and milly and molly and may.
And I walked on down the hallway, and I came to a door.
And I walked on down the hallway, and I came to a door. What seems to be, is, to those to whom It seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful Consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of Torments, despair, eternal death. William Blake (1757–1827), English poet, painter, engraver. Jerusalem, ch. 2, plate 36 (1804–1820; repr. in Complete Writings, ed. by →
Portland, Maine 1 City Center Monument Square
Photograph was made from the steps of 1 City Center looking at Monument Square at 3pm after a snow storm. Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out. Agustin Gomez-Arcos (b. 1939), Spanish author. A Bird Burned Alive, ch. 1 (1988).
