I may have mentioned before that here on wordpess you get a lot more for your money with tall thin pictures than with short fat ones. With that in mind I’ve turned the picture above sideways, below, so we can see it in a reasonable amount of detail. It actually consists of five frames that I stuck together using Photoshop; I bet you can’t see the joins. It’s of the island at the North end of our triangular-shaped lake. I’ve taken so many pictures of it over the past few years, and it’s hard to know why I find it so appealing; though it may be the animal-like ridge of its “back” with its bunny ears to the left. And I like the dense green object on a white background.
I apologise if it’s taking half-an-hour to load on your machines.
I forgot to say that the bare branches in the centre remind me a lot of some of David Hockney’s recent paintings of trees in Yorkshire. To me, one of the values of painting over, say, conceptual art is that, when it’s good enough, it can directly influence how I perceive the world. His work has always done that for me.
A Bad Guide 
Tengo tortícolis.
But it worth the effort.
It’s a breathtaking landscape.
¿Tortícolis? Imagine my tortícolis, taking all these sideways pictures. On a stepladder.
But thanks, Julia!
By the way, have you been to see los gatos del Botánico recently? How are they? I would have taken the grey one home, even though we’re allergic to cats.
You’re becoming an expert in Spanish, AJP!
It’s been a while since I went to the Botánico for the last time, more than year, in fact. But I pass by very often and the cat population seems to be quite ok. You should go when you visit Buenos Aires, of course.
Thank you, Julia!
[Thinks] …and thank you, Google!!!
“when it’s good enough, it can directly influence how I perceive the world”: I remember my father telling me once how he’d gone to view some Modern Art and had then walked around for weeks trying to decide whether shadows really could be deep purple rather than black.
Well, with a piece of abstract “Modern Art” the artist could have used deep purple shadows for some reason that I’m not going to recognise in nature.
Shadow colours are tricky. They depend on the colour of the material that’s in shadow and reflections that hit it; but because there’s no light emanating from your painting, as there is in nature, white paint is the lightest value you’ve got, so you have to compensate by making everything that’s darker than your brightest point darker than it really is. Rembrandt used blackish shadows in his pen & ink drawings, but IMO you have to be a pretty good draghtsman to go splashing lots of black around.
I haven’t read before the “I forgot to say” part. Amazing Yorkshire’s trees (they made me happy). And it’s very interesting your thought about seeing the world through art*. It’s true, how many times we do this without realizing it? Although the most common thing is to do it with fiction.
*I think my verbs aren’t right, google couldn’t help me. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say…
I added the forgot to say part later, because I had forgotten it. (I changed “after art” to “through art”. Hope that’s okay
I’ve only been thinking about this visually & I was thinking it’s most common with films, but you think it’s fiction? I suppose it depends on how you imagine fiction visually. My own mental images while I’m reading jump about quite a lot.
Thank you!
No, mine was a rather stupid and obvious thought, not like your interesting idea about images of the real world and the ones of modern art.
What I said is that we see life through fiction, like modern don Quixotes, sometimes we think of ourselves as if we are in a film or a novel, or we measure the success or failure of our lives by comparing it to fictitious standards.
“we think of ourselves as if we are in a film or a novel”
And then it becomes a question of what films, what novels… I felt uncomfortably reminded of my ‘life’ when reading the opening of Isherwood’s A Single Man this weekend.
Another case is that, because of a diverse set of experiences, I now have one book, Ah Pook is Here, by William S Burroughs, that perfectly encapsulates my interests in a way it didn’t when I first read it.
And then there’s the disparity, on the Dublin dating scene (2004), I felt myself starring in a Beckett play, surrounded by people keen to act out an episode of Friends, to the point that I was regularly referred to as “a Chandler type” (and no, not Raymond).
tortícolis
Me gusta! Cada dia un regalo de Julia.
word pess
Torticolis is the French word too.
So instead of Frances Crick, the scientist, we’d have the Spanish version, Francesco Tortícolis and François Torticolis…
>m-l, so is torticolis in French too, I had no idea. How it is pronounced it? In Spanish, as you can see, is “esdrújula”.
> pinhut, :-), thank you!
“esdrújula” (word with the stress on the antepenultimate syllable), this is a very nice word too, but I’m sure you already knew it.
O: a site that lists typos ? Sometimes I think there is too much space on the internet …
esdrújula
Nope, never encountered it, off to look it up. Ha! That’s great. Will no doubt never be required to say it, but still…
Julia, in French torticolis the final s is silent. We don’t have real stress in French, so it is just “t0r-ti-co-li”.
pinhut, the (palabra) esdrújula is itself an example of what it means. I think that “trochaic” would be the English (from Greek) equivalent, but esdrújula is more well-known among Spanish speakers than “trochaic” among English speakers, since Spanish helpfully puts an accent mark on the stressed syllable in words with this less-common type of stress.
“pinhut, the (palabra) esdrújula is itself an example of what it means.”
Thank you for pointing out the obvious, as if my dayjob involves throwing custard pies.
As if it wasn’t the very first thing I noted, being able to count syllables.
You also include three references to the word in that sentence, “(palabra)”, “itself” and “it”, maybe that’s for my benefit, also, perhaps somebody as stupid as myself may grasp it the third time around.
Thanks. If I need expert advice on being condescending, I will be in touch.
Oh, pin, please I don’t think that m-l was being condescending. When you said that you haven’t encountered that word before, I myself also thought of pointing you out the same thing she said. But then I saw she had already done it.
I was going to add that “esdrújulas” words are my favourite in Spanish, they are always so sonorous and funny. It would be a pity or a very depressing stuff for me, if this term produce an unpleasant situation.
Just forget that m-l put “pinhut” in front of the explanation, then. I really like hearing about all the differences between French & Spanish and English poetry, Pin. It’s certainly not in the slightest bit condescending, and I don’t want you to put m-l or Julia off doing it again in the future.
I like the idea of being paid to throw custard pies, though.
No, I *love* hearing about the differences, AJ, of course. But pointing out to me the blindingly obvious fact that ‘esdrújula’ is an example of what it defines… really, I can’t help but find that insulting, combined with the tone.
Would I have taken exception if Julia had pointed it out? Probably not, as I fancy any explanation would’ve been expressed with her usual charm.
But what does it matter? It doesn’t matter. They are only *my* feelings! I will eat a Toblerone and put it all down to experience.
pinhut, I am very sorry if I sounded condescending to you. Thus far I have never had a reason to consider you or any of the guests here to be stupid! If I write a comment of this kind, it is not just to reply to the person who first brought it up. Sorry if I don’t have enough charm or wit: I am an old (retired already) teacher, so I tend to give explanations on the basis that some reader(s) might find them useful even if they did not ask. I admit I have sometimes been called “pedantic”, but insulting others is never my purpose. I often have questions, and it also happens that someone points out to me something I already know.
In my opinion m-l has her own “usual charm”, very different from Julia’s. It is a quiet charm. It ingredients include a gift for clear and patient exposition, a friendly tone, and a striking unwillingness to offend or to take offense.
Also, as far as I know, professional pie-throwers are no more in need of having the obvious handed them on a plate than the rest of us are.
m-l, I forgot to thank you for your answer.
Charm, me? Jajaja, it must be my particular use and misuse of the English tongue…
And, m-l, I can assure you: you never sounded pedantic to me.
The lyrics here have a lesson for us all.
You are as wonderful a bunch of commenters as any blogger could hope to meet. Thank you all for being here.
=)
(Thank you, honoured guests and friends, for your nice comments above).
And you are a wonderful host, AJP! It’s a pleasure to visit your salon (and say hello to the goats of course).
dearieme, I can deal with most spoken English, but I usually have difficulty with songs, and I can hardly make out a word of the CD. Perhaps the lyrics are listed somewhere?
“and a striking unwillingness to offend or to take offense.”
Ø – I really don’t know how many subtextual digs against me you managed to pack into that post. The above was my favourite.
I’ll run it by J L Speranza, who some of you might have heard of, he can provide the full Gricean excavation of implicature.
I don’t know much about goats, but I know plenty about sheep. Baaa!
Me neither, m-l, but I found the lyrics here:
http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/i/iwantsomeofyourpie.shtml
I had just racked my memory for something that was custard-pie-positive. Julia has now revealed to me that the version of these lyrics that I have sung for about 50 years are a little garbled. But I forgive her. Mwah!
hahaha!
Do you have another version, dearieme?
Pinhut,
I could have written something like “I wish you wouldn’t attack marie-lucie like that. She’s such a sweetie — I know she didn’t mean it that way.” Instead, I made my post explicitly about her and not about you; but of course you still got the implicit message. I consciously chose to make it about praise of her, since praising (and defending) her was my primary impulse and I was really not trying to pick a fight. Or hardly at all.
In my phrase “willingness to offend or to be offended” of course there was an implicit “in contrast to some people”. But, truly, the “some people” was not mainly you. I’ve seen it in many commenters, and tried (not entirely successfully) to be careful about it myself: the danger of overreacting to a remark, or the danger of teasing someone in a way that gives more offense than expected, or teasing someone when they’re not in the mood to be teased.
I have long thought of m-l as a shining example of someone who appears to be devoid of those dangerous impulses.
Counting the digs is one of the big signs of willingness to take offense. (Yes, there’s a dig, but at least it’s not a subtle one.)
Your word is my command.
It is a very human thing, to state the obvious. At least that’s what Ford Prefect said, and he cherished this quality in Arthur Dent.
This one has Middle-Aged Dad getting caught up in the moment.
That transcription does not match what I hear in the fourth verse. “Says, I don’t care if I live right ‘cross that street / You cuts that pie, please save me a piece.”
Ahhh, this has more sense!
This line was a complete mystery to me.
I love the second video. (But I’m not implying that I dislike the first one)
Isn’t this a Led Zeppelin song too?
Yes it is.
I came here to see again your picture and I have some questions:
Which is the island?
Where is the lake in respect to your house? (o como se diga)
Would you draw us a map, pleeease?
I would love to, but my wife says the burglars will find out where we live. Apparently this kind of thing happens a lot. They find out when you’re going away, because you text your friends, and then they come and steal your goats. I’ll email you a map.
Of course, your wife is absolutely right. Very sensible.
This is something you may like if you didn’t know it: in Spanish “sensible” (pronounced different from English but written the same way) means sensitive. And sensible is “sensato” . It very common to mix the two words and meaning when someone is doesn’t know too much English (not like myself… ¡jajaja! [and google translate like I just experienced!!])
Related nouns: sense, sensibility, sensitivity, sensuality, sentence, sentience, sententiousness
and adjectives: sensible, sensitive, sensual, sentient, sententious, sensory
What have I left out?
You probably already know this, but the German word “sensibel” also means sensitive, while the English “sensible” is “vernünftig”.
Same in Norwegian (except it’s “fornuftig”). I never realised there was a second N in vernünftig, though.
Ø: sensuous?
sensible can mean those sorts of things in English, too. Johnson would rather it didn’t have its now-primary sense, but they’ve been coexisting pretty much forever, I believe.
In French it is as in Spanish: sensible = “sensitive”, sensé = ‘logical, having or making sense’. We also have a word sensitive which refers to a person having extra-sensory perception, as well as to a type of plant which reacts to being touched.
In the novel Sense and sensibility, the second word refers to being “sensitive”, not to “making sense”.
M’s right. I even use it that way myself occasionally.
The funny thing about Jane Austen is that all her books had different titles originally. Sense & Sensibility was “Elinor and Marianne”, Pride & Prejudice* was “First Impressions”, Northanger Abbey was going to be “Lady Susan” or “Memorandum, Susan”, some people think Persuasion was going to be called “The Elliots” (not very likely, if you ask me), Emma was “Ethel” . Yes, I made that one up; and I don’t know about Mansfield Park, either.
*(Darcy = Colin Firth)
“Darcy = Colin Firth”
Yes, Crown, as if I didn’t know that !
I read Northanger Abbey as “Lady Susan”… now this explains why my mother said she didn’t know that novel. I loved it!
And I just ended Emma.
It doesn’t speak well of my culture, but it’s a real pleasure to have mostly all her work ahead to read.
I don’t know if it’s something local, but for us someone “sensible” (that is, sensitive in English), rarely is “sensata” (sensible in English)
Is this the sort of chap whom the Spanish would call “sensible” ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_of_Feeling
Is this relevant?http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_199904/ai_n8840230/
Yes, d, I think we would call him “sensible”.
Completely OT, Crown, but I stumbled acoss this which I thought might interest you. “THE ROLE OF LARGE HERBIVORES IN SHAPING THE UPLAND LANDSCAPES OF BRITAIN” might be relevant to southern and not-too-high Scandinavia. I found the paper starting on p5 particularly interesting. And there’s a fine goat pic on the top cover.
Click to access Large_herbivores_in_Uplands.pdf
Julia, the Wet Shirt Effect, yet again?!
(Thinking of of Colin/Darcy and his ardent admirer Bridget Jones.)
Artur, the wonderful surprise of finding that singular figure at the bottom of this elongated sideways vertical panorama post, beginning his long tread up toward the surface so far above, was worth the crooked neck.
I see you still have ice and snow. We have snow on the peaks here, unusual. Not to mention the usual rain — interrupted briefly by a remarkable full moon last night.
Don’t blame me, Tom. HE brought it up!
AJP, I don’t want to contradict a goat keeper, but I looked in (my mother’s) the Complete Works of Jane Austin and “Northanger Abbey” is by no means the “Lady Susan” novel that I read.
“Lady Susan” is an epistolary short novel. Delightfully acid and mean.
Oh, dear. I’ve been out and time flies. Yes, now I see that says goat keeper and not “goal keeper”. This short “Lady Susan”, is it by Jane Austen? You know the real Jane Austen expert isn’t me, it’s Empty (though Tom is the real expert in English literature and he may know).
Tom, I saw an absolutely enormous full moon on the horizon just now from the car. I can’t believe it’s really the same size when it’s high in the sky. I’m glad you like that man, I’m rather interested in how the frozen lake looks better to me with people on it. I’m generally quite an antisocial bastard, I try to eliminate people from my pictures, but lately I’ve been liking them. I put a car in one the other day, but my wife said it spoiled it. Now I know my limits.
Dearie, thanks for that paper. That’s pretty interesting. Hazel has certainly thrived around here in our open areas with large herbivores (I’m thinking of the cows). There’s nothing mentioned about conifers, they are the current enemies around here of anything deciduous. There aren’t many oaks, but I’ve been taking acorns and planting them in open areas. In a hundred years there may be lots and it’s good to know the cows won’t hold things up.
I’m not a Jane Austen expert, just a big fan.
The impression I get from WiPe is that NA was a revised version of an early effort originally called Susan, and that Lady Susan was a very different early effort.
dearieme, I don’t keep any herbivores large or small, but I found that paper very interesting, thank you.
AJP, I had not noticed the person at first, but they give a sense of perspective, and also provide an implication of continued life and motion in the otherwise static and silent winter landscape.
Yes. They also remind me of a couple of Breugels. Most Dutch & German painting of people on ice has a horrible illustrational quality with pairs of people doing every imaginable activity on the ice: skating, carrying wood, etc. I find the Breugels much more realistic and evocative.
My favourite of the man-on-ice genre is the one of the meenister.
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/5327?initial=R&artistId=4399&artistName=Sir%20Henry%20Raeburn&submit=1
Wonderful painting, dearieme! I love the seriousness combined with the graceful posture (and the silliness of the red laces!)
So, that’s the lake? I mean, where the man in the photograph is ? ¡GUAU! (i.e. “wow!”)
Did I say “goal keeper”? I may say anything (in Spanish or English)
I’m going to see “You’ll Meet a Tall Stranger”, the Woody Allen’s film. Anyone saw it?
dearieme, why can’t I open that link?
Dearie, that’s wonderful, and it reminds me of the New Yorker’s figurehead “Eustace Tilley“. I wonder if he was copied from that picture?
m-l, I’m sorry. The link worked for me. Try google images “Sir Henry Raeburn” (it’s a man in black, skating).
Julia, you didn’t say goal keeper, but I misread it.
At the north end of the lake there’s a huge hill you can ski down, if you’re brave enough. Then there’s a stream that trickles into the lake and the man has come on to the lake from there.
I’m afraid (of the copyright police) to reveal I’ve copied/downloaded the photo of The Island so I could open it in Preview and rotate it. Now it fills my screen and I can scroll left and right. No crick. I would like to see the same view a little earlier or later when there is still daylight but the houses have their windows lighted. It is very beautiful and evocative.
Driving through France (speaking of viewing the world through art) ALWAYS looks so much like manuscrupt illuminations – sometimes even around here there are hills that look like the Limbourg brothers must’ve designed them…
But coming out of the cinema is strangest – I don’t get this effect very often any more – it is perhaps YEARS since I’ve been to the cinema. We have a projector and a big piece of white card as a screen and only watch DVDs from the library played through a Mac. I remember it seemed to alter reality so one felt the film was still going on when one walked out into the world. I miss it.
Thank-you for the nostalgia.
And the moon.
Julia, the lake is Duddingston Loch, which lies at the foot of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh – a fine volcanic plug of a hill. All around the hill, and the neighbouring Salisbury Crags, is The Queen’s Park i.e. a lovely public park, though with sheep rather than goats. Drunken friends of mine once drove the flock into our undergraduate Common Room and locked them in for the night. Happily they were made to clean up the filth in the morning. We used to go to the top of Arthur’s seat on May morning, purportedly to wash our faces in the dew. Or more likely to see whether there were any bonnie lassies washing their faces. Wasn’t it exhilerating being young?
Here we are. You wouldn’t think that there was city all around it, would you?
http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=duddingston+loch&hl=en&rlz=1I7SNYK_en&prmd=ivnsm&source=lnms&tbs=isch:1&ei=Jq5fTfCgA4Gr8APV17xZ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBIQ_AUoAQ&biw=1015&bih=607
Octagonal curling house designed by the architect, William Playfair, in 1823 for the Duddingston Curling Society. The upper floor was used as a studio by the Reverend John Thomson, landscape artist and minister of the church from 1805-40.He named his studio ‘Edinburgh’, allowing his housekeeper to say that he had ‘gone to Edinburgh’ if a parishioner called when he was painting. It lies on the shores of Duddingston Loch
Truthful but sneaky, the Scots.
Excellent, Crown. The yarn reminds me of my father’s advice to call my dinghy “After You”, so I could invite a girl out sailing, saying “I’ve named it after you”.
Thank you, dearieme! I love all of this pictures. Yes, it’s amazing that you have this wonderful place at 3 km from the city, I’m sure that we would have ruin it with contaminating industries or transformed it into a populated neighbourhood. This is an example of the utility of having a monarchy.
It always struck me how the landscapes of Scotland and England are similar to our Patagonia, specially Tierra del Fuego (the “provincia” were Ushuaia is). Britain and Tierra del Fuego are at the same latitude, one north the other south, you know.
“Wasn’t it exhilerating being young?” I wouldn’t know… I was so boring!
Catanea, yes I love to go to the cinema, its not the same for me to watch movies at home. I didn’t like too much this one, though. It was ok, but nothing fantastic. But as always all the locations and houses where W.Allen shoots are fabulous. I love to see the houses of their characters.
Sorry, this one was too long…
So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, adieu.
“…the frozen lake looks better to me with people on it. I’m generally quite an antisocial bastard, I try to eliminate people from my pictures, but lately I’ve been liking them. I put a car in one the other day, but my wife said it spoiled it. Now I know my limits.”
I think those who are given to constructing blog posts in the shape of elongated scrolls are fortunate to have their excesses checked regularly by skeptical wives, Artur.
But, had you tried to slip a car into your sideways frozen-lake pan, it probably would have skidded on into the lake before your wife had a go at it.
While falling out the window, it is to be supposed, all one can hope for really is a gentle landing.
A good one, dearie.
Britain and Tierra del Fuego are at the same latitude
I’d no idea. Britain benefits from the Gulf Stream, though. New York, which some British people think must be the same latitude as London is in fact the same as Madrid (and Peking). I think the highlands of Scotland must be quite similar to Norway.
Here’s more on your tower, Crown. I must say that the web continues to delight me.
http://www.drneilsgarden.co.uk/history2.html
I used to live in a remote area of Canada. To go to town (almost 100 km away) there was a dirt road which at one point skirted a long, narrow lake for about 10 km. Once, in the winter, some people went off the icy road and ended up, not in, but on the lake, which was frozen. After recovering from the shock of finding themselves still alive and well, they just drove on the lake until they found a boat launching ramp and got back on the road.
I like Dr Neil’s Garden too (though it ought to be Dr Neils’ Garden).
There’s been a big tractor on our lake recently. Today I saw it’s made a ski track from one side to the other.
Is it a man? Is he skating? I imagined a female on cross-country skis. So far away. Why did I think the lake was north of your house…perhaps some subliminaly sun-direction wrongly interpreted.
“there’s a stream that trickles into the lake”
In my American dialect THAT is a “crick”!
Possibly it’s a crick, or creek in Australia, but it’s not a word that’s part of my dialect of English.
He’s skating on skis. It’s hard to use skates unless the above-mentioned tractor clears some snow away.
I think it’s a man.
The lake is generally to the west of our house.
creek/crick: if it’s a stream, it is written creek even by people who say crick. A written crick usually happens to the neck, like a torticolis.
m-l: they just drove on the lake until they found a boat launching ramp and got back on the road.
There used to be public roads across frozen lakes and rivers in Norway during winters, and I’m pretty sure I saw them on roadmaps as late as in the eighties. I don’t think they do it much anymore, though, for safety reasons, and because of the long row of bad winters.
When I was a student in Trondheim I used to go to a cottage in the hills, and the road went along a lake. Once in the early spring it was a warm, moist wind, the snow was melting fast and there were wide ponds of free water on the ice. Everything I’d learned told me to stay away from that lake at that time. But dispersed across the lake were a number of cars with the wheels deep into the water and lines coming out of the windows. The locals knew how to avoid getting wet when icefishing.
AJP: He’s skating on skis.
When the American Bill Koch introduced skating in international cross-country competitions, and it spread quickly, it was seen, especially in Norway, as a bastarded technique, and this led to a split between “free” and “classic” style competition. In reality it’s an old way of skiing when you have to cross a hard, open surface like ice. What skiers realized was that modern tracks have more in common with plowed roads than with the natural habitat of skiers. One might say that the classic style forces the skiers to simulate natural snow.
The lake is generally to the west of our house.
The first morning you wake up and the lake has moved it’s a shock, but you get used to it.
Haha, yes.
because of the long row of bad winters.
My idea of a bad winter in Norway is a very cold one, but it seems you mean the opposite. I’ve heard that there was a series of warm winters in the 80s.