Daily Diversion #155: Who Needs a Pillow?

Who needs a pillow? Not Miss Zizi Jeanmaire.

Miss Z

Miss Z

“Although the sphere and importance of vision were expanding at this time, to say that visual experience was becoming autonomous would be imprecise. The aesthetic of illusionism engaged viewers as embodied spectators, physically drawn into an image or alert to beat a hasty retreat. One measure of an illusion’s success was its ability to provoke a bodily response-an impulse to touch or to flee. The challenges that modern life and modern illusions presented to modern subjects were too great for vision to handle on its own.”-from the essay Seeing, Touching, Fleeing by Michael Leja (Moving Pictures American Art and Early Film 1880-1910)

[Intermezzo] I Don’t Have Beautiful Things to Write, Tonight

Tonight, I don’t have beautiful things to write. I’ve a glass of Scotch in my hand and an ear vibrating from a cat’s purr. The words aren’t coming the way I want them to, anyway. They are halting and boring and clumsily misbehaving monsters. I should have known better. Why did I even try? They never mind me when I am out of sorts or blue. Words know when you are in no shape to order them into neat, poetic arrangements. They are intuitive to emotion, and easily scared away. The opposite of cats, really.