“All space lay before her, her direction dictated only by caprice.
She was almost the image of freedom, were it not for the Saturnian weight of her body and the abnormal span of her wings. However poised she seemed, especially at the take-on, one sensed the terror which motivated the daily flight.
She was at once obedient to her destiny and at the same time frantically eager to overcome it.

Each morning she soared aloft from her perch, as from some Himalayan peak; she seemed always to direct her flight towards some uncharted region into which, if all went well, she would disappear forever.
Each morning she seemed to carry aloft with her this desperate, last-minute hope; she took leave with calm, grave dignity, like one about to go down into the grave. Never once did she circle about the flying field; never once did she cast a glance backward towards those whom she was abandoning.

Nor did she leave the slightest crumb of personality behind her; she took to the air with all her belongings, with every slightest scrap of evidence which might testify to the fact of her existence. She didn’t even leave the breath of a sigh behind, not even a toe-nail.
A clean exit, such as the Devil himself might make for reasons of his own.

One was left with a great void on his hands. One was deserted, and not only deserted, but betrayed, inhumanly betrayed.
One had no desire to detain her nor to call her back; one was left with a curse on his lips, with a black hatred which darkened the whole day. Later, moving about the city, moving slowly in pedestrian fashion, crawling like the worm, one gathered rumours of her spectacular flight; she had been seen rounding a certain point, she had dipped here or there for what reason no one knew, she had done a tailspin elsewhere, she had passed like a comet, she had written letters of smoke in the sky, and so on and so forth.”.

(Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 1939)

“Even though I tried my hardest I still got ranked “Pre Alpha Minus” which is just adult code words for “You Stink”.” (Day 25)

Diary of A Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney, on funbrain.com.

Above: Greg Heffley, from Wimp Yourself.
Greg Heffley is ™ and © Jeff Kinney.

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“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever.
Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.”.

Gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. By Hugh MacLeod.

Above: Dinosaur (2006), print on paper, © gapingvoid gallery.

“For a long time, I always had at least two jobs, sometimes three. Life was good. In July of 2008, my corporation had mass layoffs, and I was among them. I have never been homeless before, but I plan to face this with humor and dignity.”. “As long as you’re alive and healthy and physically/mentally capable of coming up with a plan and executing it, you will be OK. There is always another avenue, another option, another choice, another route, another door to pursue if one is closed off to you.”. “Take care of yourself. Anything material that you have/had/lost? It can be replaced, or at least reasonably substituted. You cannot be.”. (Brianna Karp)

The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness. A true story. By Brianna Karp.

“The Espresso Book Machine is essentially an ATM for books.

Using digital files, it automatically prints, binds, and trims, on demand at point of sale, perfect-bound, library-quality paperback books with full-color covers.

The EBM’s growing digital library includes nearly two million titles.”.

“Saul Kripke uses the function exclusive disjunction to establish that there is no fact, either in one’s mind (inner) or in one’s past behaviour (outer), that fixes the meaning of the words one utters.”.

Oliver Jeffers “is an artist, designer, illustrator and writer from Northern Ireland.
These paintings are based on conversations about the relationship between traditional figurative painting, human behaviour and mathematics.”.

Above: Not A Something But Not A Nothing Either, oil and vinyl on canvas, from the Additional Information exhibition.

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“The boy was sitting on the bench, with his rucksack beside him, the girl was standing up, she was walking back and forth in front of him saying nothing.

I lifted up the dog which had dragged me there because I had a feeling that something unpleasant was about to happen, something that would make me wish I were elsewhere: the guy seemed subdued and she was furious.

Finally it happened. Slaps, with both hands, all over his head and face.
He didn’t move, he didn’t even defend himself. It looked as if it was all over when the final blow struck, violent, with a smack that obliterated the blackbirds calls.

She then took the rucksack and bike lying on the grass, and she walked off.
At the end of the path, or at the beginning, but it was an end in this case, where the sign was, she got on the bike and started pedalling.”.

(Alessandra Galetta, Cycling in the park is prohibited, 2008)

Text in italian

“Not long ago, friends of mine came to me with their their nine-year old son. He couldn’t write. Again, I suggested zigzags. Take a pen in your hand. Move it up and down, as if you were waving goodbye. That’s the movement you need. How do you turn zigzags into letters? You depart slightly from a regular movement, just enough to make characters. A closed top becomes the letter a. An extended line makes an ascender.”. (Gunnlaugur SE Briem)

briem.net: type, handwriting, and lettering, by Gunnlaugur SE Briem.
Above: La Operina, (Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, 1522), detail.
Meaning: “Enjoy life and health.”

“I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.”

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
42 : the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

“There exists a tale, handed down from times long ago, of two travelers on a pilgrimage. Hungry and tired from a long day’s journey, they come to a small, impoverished, medieval village, where they decide to rest by the side of the road.”. (The Stone Soup Legend)

Above: Anais Vaugelade, cover for the picture book Une soupe au caillou (A stone soup).