"Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight." Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Horror of the Heights' #amreading #shortstories #bookchatweekly

It ys a moost terrible tyme. My greatest wisshe ys that you may fynde sum unpredictable moment of peace, delight, mirthe, pleasure, discoverye, connectioun, or fascinacioun that doth make yower day just a litel bettir, that doth helpe you thrugh. Ich wisshe thys for thee wyth all of myne hearte.

Another Tunnicliffe from the Portraits of Birds tea card album. The Magpie

the beatles and tennis coaches have very different opinions on love

IT IS GLORY TO BATHE IN THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES BUT TO ALSO BATHE IN THE SHOWER.

reel joy theater, king city, california, 1991

Man with a Beer Jug, by Frans Hals, 1630, 📸 by @zachosterman.bsky.social

If I had to choose one YouTube video to send into space to showcase early-21st century humans to aliens, it would be this one.

I love the saying 'I was beside myself' which to me seems like 'You made me so upset I became twins'.

“I think you equal to the gods in kindness, For you never took advantage or hurt me when I was in trouble.” Euripides, Elektra "My arms are too long" Not-thing, Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder #juxtapositions #quotes

I wish people could live in peace, not just rest in peace.

We're gonna need a bigger timeline cleanse

"A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times & never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, & if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, & there are worse things than tigers that inhabit them." 'The Horror of the Heights' #shortstories

Now half-way through the Penguin Weird Fiction anthology, story 5 is The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle. "Stay at home & read weird short stories on a Friday night while husband & son go out to hunt pizza" is, I feel, the correct way to do January. #amreading #shortstories #booksky

Reading Moth by Candlelight Fritz Schwimbeck (1889 - 1972)

The Haunted Park by Richard Doyle (1824-1883) #PhantomsFriday

"From the other world I come back to you, My locks are uncurled with dripping, drenching dew. You know the old, whilst I know the new: But to-morrow you shall know this too."   (Christina Rossetti)   🎨 Florence Harrison   #phantomsfriday

It's important to remember there are two sides to this, what happened, and what they say happened.

I'm sanity-adjacent ?

Maximum corvid. Corvus corax - the Common Raven #birds 🌿

Oh yes. Barn Owl from What to Look for in Autumn (Ladybird Books). Illustration C. R. Tunnicliffe. Text by E L Grant Watson

Figure drawing practice taken from an image of #LewisPullman. Not great likeness, I know, but I wanted to attempt the shadows #ArtYear #art

Charles Tunniclffe is one of my favourite illustrators. I am sharing his work from this Tea Card album (1961).

It's Friday - & that means, once again, that it's #FireHydrantFriday! 'Still-life of Fire hydrant & Postbox' Seen in the north #Devon village of #Appledore #Photography #PhotographersofBluesky #urbangaze #urban

According to a Flemish folktale, a rich, greedy farmer who stole from his farmhands was condemned to haunt this world in the shape of a duck after his death. Sometimes he appeared as a dog that bullied the non-ghost animals. Eventually, the ghost was banished to a woodshed. #PhantomsFriday

'Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? The transient pleasures as a vision seem, And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.' – John Keats in 1814 in a letter to his brother Thomas who was on his deathbed. #PhantomsFriday #poetry #booksky

'A Wicked Voice' by Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) is ghost story, time slip & fever dream all at once. It's taken me a whole week to read this short story & I feel like I've read a whole novel — feeling quite dazed, with a need to re-read it. But not immediately. #PhantomsFriday #ShortStories

'That she as spectre haunteth there Is only known to me' -Thomas Hardy 🎨Alphonse Osbert #PhantomsFriday

There's a dream I have - walking beside a river not of water but churning static. No cry of gulls. Just an unbroken hum. #PoemsAbout #Tanka

It’s an Icelandic tradition that the dead rise from their graves on New Year’s Eve. The shrouded ones enter the church, hold a mass and then vanish… #PhantomsFriday Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901)   Old Woman Watching Over a Dead Body II

“In my house I am helpless I begin to practice superstition I hear footsteps on the stairs Keeps on haunting me (I know there's no one there) ... ” ~ a great northern soul classic from R Dean Taylor (1966), you may have heard the cover version by The Fall (1988). #PhantomsFriday

'Ghost Mother and Child' - unknown Japanese artist, ca. 1890s. #PhantomsFriday #JapaneseArt

Sometimes i just like to set up finished work and have a gander

#TheAlienObservers So many stay closed off, shut in, trapped within themselves. Yet they would unfold at the warmth of another’s interest.

Pictures that explain things Contour lines Artist: Ronald Lampitt (Understanding Map, 1967)

Maya the Cat Girl

Creating beauty beyond simple mechanics. Carl Jung

Muhammad Ali, because brave people make you feel brave too.

Bed of frogs, Germany, C15th. #FrogsForFriday

Side effects may include: dry mouth, nausea, astral projection

Friday. youtube.com/watch?v=E1xa...

It shouldn’t be this difficult to explain to people living in the 21st century why invading countries so that you can pillage their natural resources is a bad thing.

Facts

Winter is a wonderful time to appreciate the subtle patterns and textures of different tree barks. #nature #art

"I felt my body melt...it seemed to me that I too was turning fluid & vaporous, in order to mingle with these sounds... I understood... that his singing must be cut short... that he was killing this woman, & killing me also" Vernon Lee, 'A Wicked Voice' #amreading #shortstories #bookchatweekly

They can't beat the arts and the artists. We are like mushrooms, we just pop up again - through cracks in the cement if necessary

And what if the world has failed us And we have, in turn, failed the world For here, this morning— you and I, #unadorned, content, heart to heart #vss365 #poetry

Henry Jones Sr's book from Last Crusade vibes.

Second finished project of the year - #medievalsky #plague #crossstitch #craftsky