It caught my eye, it caught my eye,
That fluttering flake of fallen sky.
It rode the wind as cars bored by
And did not die:
And shall not die,
That fluttering flake of fallen sky.
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
A poem written months ago about a briefly glimpsed blue butterfly flying along — and over — a busy road. I don’t know the species, but Polyommatus icarus seems a reasonable guess.
The deep-sea octopus Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, which lives around hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Pacific (image from Octolab)
Elsewhere Other-Engageable
• Guise and Molls — review of Front cover of Octopus: The Ocean’s Intelligent Invertebrate: A Natural History (2010)
• Magna Mater Marina — review of The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Marine Fish and Sea Creatures (2007)
Mandarin duck, Aix galericulata (Linnaeus 1758) (from the In-Terms-in-ator)
Peri-Performative Post-Scriptum
“I Like Aix” corely references “I Like Ike”, a slogan for Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s presidential campaign in the 1950s. Aix galericulata means “crested aix”, the word αἴξ, aix, being used by Aristotle for an unknown variety of water-bird. In Greek, it would have been pronounced something like “aye-ks”, which is what I’ve used in the title of this incendiary intervention. But “ay-ks” is probably better in modern English.
Photo of unrolling fern frond, frondlets and frontletlets (from Free Photos)
Elsewhere Other-Engageable
• Farnsicht — beautiful black-and-white photograph of ferns by Karl Blossfeldt
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
“Free-Wheel Ferning” is a pun on the title of core Judas-Priest track “Free-Wheel Burning”, off core Judas-Priest album Defenders of the Faith, issued in core Judas-Priest success-period of 1984.
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” — Iris Murdoch (1919–1999)
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
Floras Freude means (I hope) “Flora’s Joy” in German.
White bird-eggs of various species
(click for larger image)
Elsewhere other-accessible…
• Eggs for Eyes — colored eggs of various species
Photo of developing ferns by the German nature photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1866-1932)
(open in new window for full image)
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
“Farnsicht” is a pun on German Farn, meaning “fern”, and Fernsicht, meaning “view” or “visibility” (literally fern, “far”, + Sicht, “visibility”).
Blue-and-yellow macaw, Ara ararauna (Linnaeus, 1758), by Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Previously pre-posted
Eggs of various common species of British wild bird
(click for larger image)
“A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.” — Howard Whitley Eves (1911-2004)
