Fine Print

other day, i communicated w/ a lady who described herself as a 'people watcher'.
i asked if she actually meant face studier, because that's my tendency. i watch almost anywhere to see how expressions change, & once remarked to my mother how curious that we all had the same set of features, eyes, mouth, etc, but there was such variation out there. Once i became absorbed w/ Leonardos sketch books & drawings, & noticed how he too, had focused on faces. He was able via his genius to see things others of us maybe missed, but his work was invariably remarkable. i haven't studied ALL his drawingsbut undoubtedly he saw things the rest of us did not./actually, i'm not a big fan of the M. lisa


we have surrounding us, a fair no. of Hispanic people, & to me it is rather ASTOUNDING to suddenly see an INCA-----a face we have seen before carved in the stone of some temple, prehaps in pictures of Yucatan. perhaps a man or boy who is innocent of his resemblance, but his expression of innocence makes his features all the more amazing!!!!

i one time thought I'd like to try my hand at portrait photography, but now i'm too old & the cost of quipment is out of reach. still, i love to look at people's faces whenever i can do so w/o seeming to stare.
The reward today is how much mixing goes on----people from all over the world.

some poetry & what it can lead to

today. one of those perfect days for the books. some xtra pollen in case but everthing is in bloom, grape hyacinth, etc, vinca, so i opened to one of my fave poems, ee cummings, 'o purple finch, please tell me why, ' etc. etc. so i sat down actually on the bed, stretched out, & began to think about it. this morning i had thought about how Julie Christie was losing her looks, etc. but then i got to thinking, why a purple finch?


do p. finches know any more than the rest of us? ans. No. mainly they know how to sing. going on from there, i been studying the work of jacob needleman, & it leads somewhere, not purple finches.

something really really clever & original

recently (this morning) a columnist deplored the disappearance totally of decency in old blimey (guardian), & maybe raised the question of ethics or something of that stripe.

now that i'm in old age, i pick away serendipitously at things like, 'why are we here or what are we doing here', & the usual shallow nonsense. so. here's more. having read what i can of marcus aurelius' thoughts, i began to go along w/ his views until i began to question---why would someone go to all this trouble, if they're just writing to themselves? marcus' blog, we suppose.

one thought which keeps cropping up among the 'rons, is 'when does life begin?' actually, trained in natural hist. i keep being reminded by this---- that 'life' began so very long ago.

the 'rons claim life begins when the sperm encounters the egg. of course this utter nonsense (didn't i warn you?) because the sp. & egg have to be not alive or some such crap.

so instead,we are links in a very long chain of life that really goes back.I just put down a nice book (on sale)Moi ,covering the sequence of Egyptian dynasties that covers about 3000 yrs. in which the 'You know who's) left egyptian slavery is not even clearly spelled out. Which Pharoah, etc?but i likes to puzzle this one thoughe the religious peeps aren't much help.

cheers, ets. time for a belt. children's hr. a.