More specifically concerning: fortune
16.04.02 – Tuesday
16 April 2002, around 13.56.
A funny color has settled on the trees, a noxious youthful green promising both the plenitude of fall and the mishaps of summer. Idle much of the morning. And the rest of the day, too. O mind of man that does not know the end or future fates, nor how to keep the measure when […]
accidental augury
11 April 2003, around 11.06.
Two birds, perfectly white, pink-beaked, dark-eyed, pigeons, settled on the ledge outside my window, billing and cooing as birds will in spring. Startled, I stood hunched, half-risen from my seat at the desk, the pages of a book leafing shut; over the point where their shoulders would be my movement caught their eyes, and they […]
Montaigne 1.22
12 June 2015, around 11.00.
Hieronymus Brunschwig, Liber Pestilentialis de venenis epidemie The tradesman thrives only by the extravagance of youth, the husbandman by the dearness of grain, the architect by the ruin of houses, the officers of justice by lawsuits and men’s quarrels; even the honour and practice of ministers of religion depend on our death and our vices. […]
Montaigne 1.34
4 September 2015, around 8.59.
Illustration to Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender Montaigne presents an odd selection of (mis)fortunes to illustrate the precarious role of fate in the lives of men (and women). A pope mistakenly poisoned; a bridegroom captured in a tourney before his wedding night; a father and son condemned to death, killing each other to cheat the executioner’s sword; […]
let no man speak
13 December 2015, around 9.49.
It has been a wretched week. Black cats crossed my path, a man missing a leg turned up on my doorstep claiming to live in my apartment, the car which I have the use of declined to start, and the rain – normally a solace – has almost seemed a blight. For consolation I turned […]
A view (59)
27 September 2023, around 9.28.
Goris, Armenia, 27 September 2008 Certainly there are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune. —Jules Renard (Journals, trans. Louise Bogan & Elizabeth Roget, January 1905)