characters undecipherable

''the weird studies of harley warren were well known to me, ... of his vast collection of strange rare books on forbidden subjects i have read all that are written in the languages of which i am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages i cannot understand ... and the fiend inspired book which he carried in his pocket out of the world---the book which warren carried with him---that ancient book ... was written in characters whose like i never saw elsewhere.''

h.p.lovecraft, the statement of randolph carter.

i: a worksite by rene zandbergen on the voynich codex.

fragments of atmosphere

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconcious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


i: ''where courts of this kind are found close to each other in the city, they suggest an inward, closed world seperated from the street. one begins to get a reading of a neutral exterior urban space, left empty for the benifit of vehicles and representing some kind of stiff, formal public behavior, while behind the walls of the courts lurk all the forbidden temptations to act privately and freely...'', polyzoides stefano, etal; courtyard housing in los angeles: a typological analysis.

ii: ''a portrait, a painting ... paint it today. white pear trees and a wysteria... the wysteria long embedded in the under shingles of the low roof, ... the pear an english bartlett-a french cuissemadame ... yet a beautiful thing, a perfect thing is inevitably broken. the small bird, fallen from its nest was so hideous, so wormlike with a repellent gruesomeness the smooth, clean, snakelike angleworms or the flat garden grubs never had. the egg was so pretty ... the small bird was an uncanny monster. ... the child {claw like hands,} ... a bird or intermediate, of a lost reptile race, clawing its way into the pear-wysteria tangle ... a portrait? paint it yesterday, wreathed with cornflowers-paint it today ... crawling into the rabbit hutch ... scent of old straw ... crawling, crawling with the elbows scraping ... to be rewarded at the last with a vision of eight pink bodies. to be lifted one by one from the nest of tight packed straw...''. h.d, paint it today.

dream tree

''then near sunset of the second day there loomed up ahead the snowy peak of aran with its gingko-trees swaying on the lower slopes.'' h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

i: gingko-nuts, at tasteofhongkong, via tastespotting.
ii: gingko leaf memoirs, at appree-korea via designboom.
iii: tongsui-gingko with magah-bird eggs, at quaypo cooks, via tastespotting.