once, in early october, maybe 1992 or 1993, at dusk, i found a gitano family washing a carpet they'd rescued from the village dump .. four stout women spread the huge old rug across the shallow tank and patiently trod every inch until the last grain of dust was washed away to the nearby river

later ... its called a LAVOIR ... obviously !

there's even an encyclopaedic website ...

https://www.lavoirs.org/

blithely ignoring the elephant in the room ... "my" lovely new physician took me in at a glance and blurted out "you're morbidly obese ! let me weigh you and take your blood pressure ?"

dora maar was a first class creative photographer ... and spectacularly picturesque ... i can't work out yet if her self portrait came before these picasso portraits of her

portraits of dora maar by picasso, two of many, most were famously unflattering

cf

self-portrait by dora maar

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997)
Double Portrait with Hatc. 1936-37
Gelatin silver print, montage, from negatives with handwork
29.7 x 23.8 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of David Raymond 2008.172
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP

In Double Portrait with Hat(1936-37), Dora Maar radically altered and reconfigured photographic materials to generate an image. In her quietly gripping self-portrait, Maar cut and scraped directly into two negatives to create a heavy and forbidding halo above a torn and divided self. Works such as these… explore the formal definition and limits of photographic ‘content’ and anticipate the experiments of non-narrative filmmakers Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas of the 1960s and 1970s. (Text by Julie Nero)

text and photograph downloaded via ARTBLART

dora maar was a professional photographer and worked as assistant to man ray ... she also took a lot of photographs of friends and artists ...  it must have been a great occasion when the original negative of her picture of the ukrainian model assia granatouroff was first hung out to dry in 1934

i think this last picture may have come from the same studio ....

in about 1965, when i asked my lady maths teacher ( miss chance ) why a minus times a minus makes a plus, she replied that i probably wouldn't understand the explanation and that i'd have to take her word for it

still vexed about her reply fifty years later, i asked the internet the same question ... it turns out it really wasn't that complicated

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.negxneg.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLm5lRxt1rE

thomas moran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Moran

isn't she lovely ? only two hundred and thirty years ago ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uopjMuYY3F8

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles
Nées sous le signe des gémeaux
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do
Toutes deux demoiselles
Ayant eu des amants très tôt
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do

DELPHINE

Nous fûmes toutes deux élevées par Maman
Qui pour nous se priva, travailla vaillamment

SOLANGE

Elle voulait de nous faire des érudites
Et pour cela vendit toute sa vie des frites.

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

Nous sommes toutes deux nées de père inconnu
Cela ne se voit pas, mais quand nous sommes nues
Nous avons toutes deux au creux des reins
C'est fou...

DELPHINE

... là un grain de beauté...

SOLANGE

... qu'il avait sur la joue

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles, 

nées sous le signe des gémeaux
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do
Aimant la ritournelle, les calembours et les bons mots
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol rédo.

DELPHINE

Nous sommes toutes deux joyeuses et ingénues...

SOLANGE

... attendant de l'amour ce qu'il est convenu...

DELPHINE
... d'appeler coup de foudre...

SOLANGE
... ou sauvage passion...

DELPHINE et SOLANGE
... nous sommes toutes deux prêtes à perdre raison
Nous avons toutes deux une âme délicate

DELPHINE
Artistes passionnées...

SOLANGE
... musiciennes...

DELPHINE
... acrobates...

SOLANGE
... cherchant un homme bon...

DELPHINE
... cherchant un homme beau...

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

... bref un homme idéal, avec ou sans défauts
Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles, 

nées sous le signe des gémeaux
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do
Du plomb dans la cervelle, de la fantaisie à gogo
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do

SOLANGE

Je n'enseignerai pas toujours l'art de l'arpège
J'ai vécu jusqu'ici de leçons de solfège
Mais j'en ai jusque-là, la province m'ennuit
Je veux vivre à présent de mon art à Paris.

DELPHINE

Je n'enseignerai pas toute ma vie la danse
A Paris moi aussi je tenterai ma chance
Pourquoi passer mon temps à enseigner des pas
Alors que j'ai envie d'aller à l'opéra

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles, 

nées sous le signe des gémeaux
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do
Deux coeurs, quatre prunelles, à embarquer allegreto
Mi fa sol la mi ré, ré mi fa sol sol sol ré do

DELPHINE

Oh ! Midi moins le quart. Cà y est, je suis en retard.

SOLANGE

Delphine !

DELPHINE

Oui.

SOLANGE

Tu vas chercher Boubou ?

DELPHINE

Oh tu peux pas y aller ?

SOLANGE

J'irai cet après-midi.

DELPHINE

J'peux pas sortir avec ça ! Oh puis si. Oh puis non. 

J'ai rendez-vous à midi
avec Guillaume, je n'y serai jamais.

SOLANGE

Qu'est-ce qu'il veut encore celui-là ?

DELPHINE

Je ne sais pas... me voir.

SOLANGE

Oh bien il attendra. Tu rentres déjeuner ?

DELPHINE

Oui. Mais pas avant une heure. 

Qu'est-ce que j'ai fait de
mon poudrier ? Ah non je l'ai.

DELPHINE et SOLANGE

Jouant du violoncelle, de la trompette ou du banjo
Aimant la ritournelle, les calembours et les bons mots
Du plomb dans la cervelle, de la fantaisie à gogo
Nous sommes soeurs jumelles, nées sous le signe des
gémeaux

SOLANGE

Au revoir.

DELPHINE

Au revoir.

might as well include stravinsky's firebird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHmk7yccvws

for no particular reason ... the rite of spring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFPjFjUonX8

kuniyoshi gels

it never occurred to me that there would be so many kinds of ginger ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zingiber

picasso colombes/doves ... not encyclopaedic

richard eurich ... i've been trawling for images ... will hope to add more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Eurich

happy birthday to noa

eat your heart out, eminem ... subterranean homesick blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doing it again
You better duck down the alleyway
Lookin' for a new friend
The man in the coonskin cap, in the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills but you only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A. look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try "No Doz"
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You're gonna get hit
But losers, cheaters
Six-time users
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin' for a new fool
Don't follow leaders, watch the parkin' meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don't want to be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles

yesterday, even though i worked with flu ...

3BT, 15^th July 2016

Stopping for five minutes at the top of Ashdown Forest, just to admire the long view of about fifty miles along the South Downs beyond the crowds of tree tops.

Five young swifts in close formation, jet black, shrieking with what I always take to be laughter, zipping through an invisible gap in some very big trees and turning one perfect circle around the chimney of a pub before rocketing off in to the great blue yonder.

At Vauxhall Station, a very tall women with a heavy rucksack ascending the 42 steps to Platform 3 … two at a time !

her indoors, it's her birthday

a red pond in picturesque wyoming ... a nice spot of local colour

http://deq.wyoming.gov/shwd/rcra-facilities/resources/sinclair-casper/

reasons to be cheerful ... because humans usually are !