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noflagbigenough

In Washington DC, there is a swath of land that cups the waters of the Atlantic – not a beach, for there is no sand, but a tidal basin. The grass reaches right out to the water in an unnatural display of human ingenuity, where the land curves in a mathematically perfect parabola, a two-foot cliff that separates park-goers from the salty brine. Swans gather here, where their webbed feet are soothed by the gentle tickle of the grass as they beat their wings to descend into the water and fish for prey beneath black-blue surfaces. Here, in the springtime, the cherry blossom trees are in bloom and their petals form a blizzard in their descent, forming small flurries of white and pink against the macabre and gnarled shapes of black branches. In the spring, this tidal basin is crowded with fat tourists who snap poorly-composed photographs of the scenic surroundings in dumb awe that lasts exactly one-thousand-six-hundredths of a second when the shutter clicks and they move along. It’s part of an unspoken social discourse: a proclamation of wealth and culture that, perhaps, is not there at all.

Dr. Lecter sits presently with his back to the crowd in a secluded inlet on this basin, shaded in the early Sunday weather from the boughs of an old oak tree. Artists favor this spot because the tourists stick to the trail and cannot find it, so it produces the opportunity to sit in relative silence and enjoy the springtime colors and the distant white columns of capitol buildings built with gardens in the style of Versailles and architecture done in the style of the ancient Roman Empire.

With his charcoal against the page, he sketches the graceful shapes of the necks of swans bowing to one another on the water, and his mind is drawn inward, into the corridors of itself. Somewhere in his memory palace, he is reliving memories that never happened, touching the soft down of the swans with a little girl in his lap, smiling, frozen in time in her perfect innocence, struggling to pronounce his name. Anniba, Anniba.

He’s drawn out of his reprieve when the presence of another man prickles the hairs on the back of his neck. He can smell the man’s toil, salty sweat that means he is active in an athletic sense. But he also smells charcoal – a fellow artist.

“If you’d like, I’m nearly done. You can have my spot here.” Dr. Lecter offers when the scent nears him – not turning his head away from his work.

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MICHELANGELO Buonarroti, The Doni Tondo (framed) da Dina Dubrovskaya

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A Landscape with Flowers, Juan de Arellano

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I do not have an illness. I have an advantage.

Eli Leviathan

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Under-construction church building collapses; 3 killed, 14 injured

Construction of the St Peter’s church near the new bus-stand was on for the last few months and concrete work on its roof was going on last night when the scaffolding gave way leading to the wet roof caving in, police said. from News Nation http://ift.tt/1PPsbhn via IFTTT

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1755 - All Saints Day earthquake At 9:30 in the morning on November 1st, 1755, a massive earthquake struck in the ocean off the coast of Portugal, dealing devastating damage to its capital Lisbon. Being All Saints Day, most of the citizens were attending church at the time of the quake. The majority of the churches in the city collapsed with the citizens inside of them. Immediately after the quake, survivors sought safety on the sea and boarded boats, however 30 minutes after the quake a large tsunami struck the shore, causing further damage and dragging citizens and debris out to sea. Approximately 70,000 lives were lost on this day, and more than a third of the population of the capital. The physical damage is not the only impact this event had on Europe. Being a primarily catholic city, and having most of it’s churches destroyed on a holy day, the people of Portugal began to question the religious implications behind the quake. Many believed this was punishment from God for the sins of the people. Enlightenment philosophers would speculate and write about the event. Rousseau used the quake to justify his philosophy of natural living, stating that city living went against nature and that the earthquake was a sign of this. The quake also lead to the birth of seismology, as it was the first earthquake to be studied at an in depth scientific level.

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The Torment of Saint Anthony, Michelangelo. 1487-1488.

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Parmigianino c. 1534-1536

Cupid Carving his Bow (detail)

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To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent Seems the most guilty of them all. He’ll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he knows he can dress up murder In handsome words.

Medea, from Euripides Medea (via iinvulnerable)

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Florence Welch sentence ask meme

There are a lot, so they’re under a cut!

“I’ve come to burn your kingdom down.”

“Holy water cannot help you now.”

“I’ll be dead before the day is done.”

“You can’t choose what stays and what fades away.”

“I’d do anything to make you stay.”

“Tell me what you want me to say.”

“It’s a conversation I just can’t have tonight.”

Keep reading

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Put a ♪ in my ask box and I'll put my playlist on shuffle and make you a starter based on the next song that plays

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starter call? like this post for a starter?

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Melody : The Dance Of The Blessed Spirits 

By Composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787)

Performed By Violinist Hrachya Harutyunian And Pianist Paata Demurihvili. 

From The Opera Orfeo ed Euridice (French version: Orphée et Eurydice; English: Orpheus and Eurydice) - Composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the Azione Teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed in Vienna on October 5, 1762. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck’s “reform” operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of Opera Seria with a “noble simplicity” in both the music and the drama.