Reflet de Robert

[I]t was hard to pierce Robert de Montesquiou’s carapace — and he wouldn’t have wanted you to. He was perhaps at heart a melancholic: he liked to say that his mother had “given me the sad present of life”. His restlessness and furious inquisitiveness might have been a response to this. He was vain without being especially self-reflective, one of those who, rather than look inside to discover who they are, prefer to see themselves in the reflections that come back from others. — Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat (2019), pp. 192-3


Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

Portait of a Peacock — Cornelia Otis Skinner’s essay on Montesquiou
Le Paon dans les Pyrénées — review of Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat

Green Seen


When you stare at the cross for at least 30 seconds, you see three illusions:

• A gap running around the circle of lilac discs;
• A green disc running around the circle of lilac discs in place of the gap; and
• The green disc running around on the grey background, with the lilac discs having disappeared in sequence. — Lilac Chaser, Wikipedia


Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

Troxler’s fading at Wikipedia

Bored Bard

Pol. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a Fishmonger: he is farre gone, farre gone: and truly in my youth, I suffred much extreamity for loue: very neere this. Ile speake to him againe. What do you read my Lord?

Ham. Words, words, words. — Hamlet (c. 1600), Act 2, Scene 2

Bore is More

Why boredom is anything but boring — Implicated in everything from traumatic brain injury to learning ability, boredom has become extremely interesting to scientists”, Maggie Koerth-Baker, Nature, 12i2016.


Elsewhere other-engageable…

Beard Tales — a review of Alan Moore’s The Devotee of Ennui (2013)