Blind Leading the Blind: Horror of Horrors

Abyssus abyssum invocat (Hell invokes Hell)  G.L. Geronimicus.

Inter caecos regnat strabo ("Among blind people the squinting one rules.") : A.D. Erasmus

Facio picture magnus commodo click is per vestri muris puga pyga gratias ago

(Please clicken the picture to make it big) A.B. Finnie.

Invocat Abyssum Abyssus ("el infierno invoca el infierno") or perhaps Inter caecos regnat Estrabón ("Entre las personas ciegas del estrabismo un reglamento."): Erasmus.

Estoy empezando a como el español.....Pero a menudo me dicen que mis calzoncillos están en mi cabeza!
 
This is for Illustration Friday: Proverbs. What a great topic. Thankyou for everyone who made comments on that last work! I will be back after a surf :)  Esto es para el viernes Illustration: Proverbios. ¡Qué gran tema. Gracias por todos los que hicieron comentarios sobre este último trabajo! Estaré de vuelta después de una resaca (it is supposed to say 'surf"!, not 'hangover') :)


PS more than a small  homage to Breugel . :)

Looking for the .... err Sixth Planet

Well I just received an email from an artist that I admire greatly. What they said has made me decide to add another image in the place of the first images. They are still there after the page break. I must warn you that they might disturb you - so please be aware of that, if you continue to the next point.

The image above is from a series I did on windmills last month but never posted. If you look carefully you can see two star gazers watching the stars appear with the coming of the sunset.

Star-light, star-bright

First star I've seen tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might

Get the wish I wish tonight.

A children's rhyme, oft repeated by adults in their prime.

Sincere apologies to those I disturbed with my previous image.

Illustration Friday: Satellite

Robert Jordan Junior was eleven years old when he first read about Laika.

Laika, a stray dog plucked from obscurity by Russian Scientists, had been propelled into space on Sputnik 2 in 1957.

Most people thought that for Laika it was a one way trip.

But Robert Jordan knew better. 

Even though the Russians had claimed that Laika had either suffocated or died a painful overheated death in her small metal container, Robert Jordan knew the truth.

You see, the very night Robert Jordan first read about Laika, he had a dream.

In that dream he was an astronaut sent by Nasa to rescue Laika.

As so often happens in dreams, the details were hazy; but in his dream Robert found himself suddenly surrounded by light, tugged from his bed by invisible hands, then catapulted through the earth's atmosphere on a beam of light.

In seconds, and with a great sucking sound as the beam of light vanished, he came to a sudden halt, suspended in space, three feet from the rusting hulk of Sputnik 2.

And there she was, the   dog Laika,  staring at him through a porthole, grinning and panting with happiness, her breath fogging the glass. She was still alive after all these years, suspended Robert knew, by the Russian's  super secret  hyperchromatic barium refrigeration. She'd been left to circle the world for ever and ever, as one of mankind's first satellites. 

But did Robert rescue her?

I'm afraid that's still classified ---- but I can say that I saw young Robert the other day playing ball in the park with a dog that looked like a part-Samoyed terrier.

One thing I did notice though: the dog barked an awful lot.

Of course Laika, in Russian, means "barker."

But it's probably just a coincidence. 

What follows is a few variations on Robert's dream. Thanks for looking! Please pardon the layout... I'll get it right one day!

Illustration Friday: Wilderness

"Tim enters the enchanted glade.": (From: "How Tim was Lost in the Forest and Never Seen Again.") Please click for big.

Not that it's related to this illustration, but after seeing spindlemaker's and dthaase' work, I realised that I always think of this poem by Wallace Stevens when someone says "Wilderness".

Wallace Stevens was an insurance salesman..... never a more un-poetic vocation there was - and yet that didn't stop him at all. "Anecdote of the Jar" is a strange poem, indistinct, as if it is feeling its way around the subject matter, before slowly petering out. Yet I think his poem succinctly sums up how we (as humans) try to make order out of chaos. Cliched it might be, the concept of making unnatural order out of natural chaos, but it stops us going mad - assuming we aren't already... just a little bit mad..... even slightly cookoo.... there are no trolls under the bridge, are there....?

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Wallace Stevens