LIMINAL/LIMNING (TAKANO SOJU)

A line of spider’s thread

Crosses in front of

         A lily.

Yardbirds: White Summer (Live At Anderson Theater Link)

EARTHQUAKE (THE WORLD KEEPS GOING ROUND)

Henry Tresham (1750-1814), Messina After The Earthquake, Nave of Ruined Church, 1783.

May 11, 1786

Today we bade farewell to our valiant vetturino and rewarded him for his conscientious services with a liberal gratuity.  We parted in friendship, after he had found us a local factotum who was to take us at once to the best inn and show us the sights of Messina.  Our host of last night was eager to get rid of us as quickly as possible and lent a helping hand with the transport of our baggage to a pleasant lodging nearer the living part of the city, that is to say, outside it.  After the enormous disaster in which twelve thousand people were killed, there were no houses left in Messina for the remaining thirty thousand.  Most of the buildings had collapsed and the cracked walls of the rest made them unsafe.  So a barrack town was hastily created in a large meadow north of the city.  To get a picture of this, imagine yourself walking across the Römerberg in Frankfurt or the market square in Leipzig during the Fair.  All the booths and workshops are open in the street. 

Vue de l'Optique composition (Hand colored copper engraving used in the Laterna magica technique) showing sea ships and boats endangered in the rough waters of the Messina Strait disturbed by the 1783 earthquake.

 

Only a few of the larger buildings have entrances which can be closed, and even these rarely are, because those who live in them spend most of their time out of doors.  They have been living under these conditions for three years, and this life in shacks, huts and tents, even, has had a definite influence on their characters.  The horror of that tremendous event, the fear of its repetition, drive them to take their delight in the pleasures of the moment.  The dread of a new catastrophe was revived about three weeks ago, on April  the twenty-first, when a noticeable tremor shook the grounds.  We were shown a little church which was crowded with people at the time.  A number of them, it is said, have not yet recovered from the shock. 

An early map of the 1783 Calabria volcano and earthquake-areas plotted in the mid-19th century (from BERGHAUS 1845-1848).

A kindly consul volunteered to take care of us and acted as our guide; and, in a world of ruins, this was something to be grateful for.  When he heard that we wished to sail soon, he introduced us to the captain of a French merchant vessel, who was about to sail for Naples – an opportunity which was doubly desirable because the white flag would be a protection against pirates.

Cy Twombly (1928-2011) , Goethe In Italy, 1978.

The Lancastrians (1963-1967): The World Keeps Going Round (wr. R. Davies; feat. J. Page)(Link).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey (1786-1788), translated by W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, New York, Pantheon Press, 1962.

Conjuror

        Conjuror:  A 19th-century device for cooking meat rapidly with burning paper as the fuel.  It seems to have been descended on 'necromancer' to which Hannah Glasse (1747) referred, ascribing its invention to an actor, Mr John Rich, and declaring it to be much admired by the nobility (in 1735).  However, the necromancer can be traced further back, to Bradley (1736), who gave a recipe for 'Thin Beef Collops, Stew'd.  From Oxford' which uses the same technique. Stead (1983) surmises from this that the method and the equipment might have been previously practised by students at Oxford University ('student bed-sitter makeshift cookery') but also utilized by the theatrical profession when in need of a hot meal and away from normal cooking facilities.

        The best description of the conjuror is Eliza Acton's in 1845, which was accompanied by a rare  illustration of the conjuror device (see title graphic above):

              'Steaks or cutlets may be quickly cooked with a sheet or two of lighted paper only, in the apparatus called the conjuror. Lift off the cover and lay in the meat properly seasoned, with a small slice of butter under it, and insert the lighted paper in the aperture shown; in from eight to ten minutes the meat will be done, and to be remarkably tender, and very palatable:  it must be turned and moved occasionally during the process.  This is an especially convenient mode of cooking for persons whose hours of dining are rendered uncertain by their avocations. The part in which the meat is placed is of block tin, and fits closely into the stand, which is of sheet iron.'



Text from Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion To Food. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995

Killer Video Link:  Georges Melies, The Conjuror (1899)
 

Sir John Dee (1527-1608), Adviser and conjuror to Queen Elizabeth I of England. 

"The Prestige" (2006) (Slightly disappointing but worth seeing anyway. By Inception director/screenwriter Christopher Nolan.)

Compulsory Aleister Crowley photo (b. 1875- d. 1947)  (Several years ago, we visited Loch Ness and stayed at Craigdarroch House, a lovely small hotel adjacent to Crowley's Boleskine House "bad vibes" manse, later purchased by Jimmy Page, who apparently rarely visited the place.  I highly recommend the journey on all counts, but particularly for Loch Ness "monster viewing".)