by beatriceotto | May 15, 2018 | triologisms
This is Jesus being spoken to by Peter, but unable to hear through the noise of his own turmoil or the roiling noise of the crowds come to witness an earlier crucifixion, for which Christ himself made the cross. This is a surprising start to the story of Jesus, as...
by beatriceotto | Dec 5, 2017 | triologisms
I picture scurf-surfing cormorants and carrion birds buffeted by winds in anticipation of sailors’ corpses washing up on the wind-blasted coast. And I like the straight line of continuity connecting today’s mariners to those of Menelaus, contending with...
by beatriceotto | Oct 30, 2017 | metaphors
Another unusual description of eyes by Virginia Woolf, as Orlando tries to confirm the gender of the girl he is falling in love with. And what do such eyes look like? Soulful and mysterious? See also her description of Orlando’s eyes. ‘No boy had eyes...
by beatriceotto | Sep 5, 2017 | triologisms
A blindingly white description of a sun-parched landscape. Elsewhere Leigh Fermor conjures another type of blankness, that of a face, by describing it as tundra-blank. Seeing ‘blankness’ repeated in this post, I conclude it is onomatopoeic, which is a good...
by beatriceotto | Jul 17, 2017 | metaphors
A journal as a beach gathering shells, seaweed and pearls washed up by the soul in the course of a day. ‘Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. This may be a calendar of...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
The clingon power of the barnacle is astonishing, as anyone who ever tried to prise them off the rocks in childhood acts of discovery will know. My memory of summer holidays by the English sea, or day trips to the seaside, includes endless coasts of weed-slithered...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
This evokes a few childhood seaside holidays in England, hopping over seaweed-slippery rocks, to play and paddle in rock pools. One such holiday was in a caravan near Hunstanton with our grandparents. I don’t remember seeing much of the sun, but I was happy to...
by beatriceotto | Jun 8, 2017 | a quote to note
A memorable Gaelic proverb, ‘dh’iarr am muir a thadhal’, given that the sea is sometimes welcoming and at other times rebuffing. Source: Adam Nicolson, Sea Room: An Island Life (London: Harper Collins, 2013 (2002)), p. 46 Photo credit: samsommer at...
by beatriceotto | Jun 6, 2017 | triologisms
This poem by the seventh century Irish poet-monk Beccán mac Luigdech captures the ruggedness and exhilaration of crossing rampant seas in small boats to create new settlements or monasteries. I love the ‘long-haired sea’ and its portrayal as ‘wild...
