“An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears”

 

 

HEY I’M BACK–DID YOU MISS ME?  Yesterday was Italian (just food no men) for lunch, then a book store where I bought an Allison Weir   http://alisonweir.org.uk/ on Jane Gray (if you have to ask don’t  just look here:  http://englishhistory.net/tudor/relative/lady-jane-grey/).   I picked up some new items—which will show up on my store:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/DragonLaire?ref=hdr_shop_menu  and ended the day with dinner an a movie:  IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT  https://www.criterion.com/films/27900-it-happened-one-night  now working on plans for the weekend.  Oh and honorable mention:  Orlando Art Museum  http://omart.org/  A bit of culture in the Central Florida (http://centralfloridatop5.com/2015/05/19/orlando-please-dont-redefine-us/)  .  See some of my better moments at :  https://www.pinterest.com/lindachase56829/omg-is-this-for-real/

 

 

 

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether it’s Jamie falling off his horse from loss of blood or falling for Claire because he wanted her more than anything he ever wanted before in his life….or us falling for Jamie and his alter ego Sam there’s a lot of falling going on with Outlander–it’s a win-win situation.  Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVEMCZ01TlU&index=3&list=RD6_QyGgrFFbA  for a great You Tube Mystic with lots of scenes of Jamie and Claire…warning nudity—or in the case of most of the fans of the show maybe I should just do warnings is there’s no nudity

 

 

 

 

I looked upon the scene before me–upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain–upon the bleak walls–upon the vacant eye-like windows–upon a few rank sedges–and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees–with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium–the bitter lapse into everyday life–the hideous dropping off of the veil.

 

 

 

 

 

When I look back on my prior life in the north I realize that fall and not the cold of winter bothered me more….the bright leaves of autumn were just a prophecy of what was to come—for soon the leaves would  became one in their dullness and dark colors.  And then the days would grow overcast and forbidding with the clouds heavy and  impregnated with rain that would soon too become something else.   I hated when the rain came, everything looked dark and foreboding.  The leaves no longer bright, no longer pretty were stripped by the steady pounding of the water from on high—the fall of the rain—causing the fall of the leaves and the trees stood contorted creatures against the pervading gray of the sky with an occasional lone leaf or a small cluster of survivors clinging against hope and fate to their origins, fighting against the fall that changed them from beautiful and alive to trash in the mud of the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart–an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While there are a few falls that bespeak good—most commonly Falling in love (and that can in the end be a good or a bad thing depending on many things—–many, many things.)  But many more that don’t.

The obvious falling off a horse, down a stairs or head over heals (which can also be used to describe the love issue).  Lesser physical damage but often worse mental is falling for a joke or falling for the wrong person (sorry for all the romantic issues here but falling seems to be all tied up with this love thing).

 

I think the ultimate fall is probably Lucifer, the Supreme  angel and heaven’s main star, who would after this  be more commonly be called Satan, due to his rebellion and subsequent fall from grace as well as from heaven—-something that has been remarked on and remembered through time untold.

 

There is the Rise and FALL of the Roman empire—(before them there was Greece  which did the same—I could go and on but ) what goes up must come down seems to be reinforced by the world’s history of Empires–the ones we know about and the distant and mysterious kingdoms we may never even know existed—again going high usually assures eventually you must fall.

 

 

 

 

It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world of Fiction like the world of Fact is full of FALLS:
In Legends of the Fall we see three brothers each very different, living on an isolated ranch in the wilderness of Canada.     “Legends of the Fall is a 1994 American epic drama film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond and Henry Thomas. Based on the 1979 novella of the same title by Jim Harrison, the film is about three brothers and their father living in the remote wilderness of the early 20th century and how their lives are affected by nature, history, war and love. ”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_of_the_Fall  The movie is full of death, betrayal and misdirected love and hate which results in lust, remorse, jealousy and even insanity.   It is a beautifully photographed movie that is utterly debilitating to the senses and a text book on the art of the rise and fall on a more human level than empires and even a bear doubling as fate.

 

 

Anti-heroes seem to be a favorite of our times—the man /or woman who starts out good (or not) and ends the prime character that has fallen from whatever grace the story line entails, but I think he’s been around for more years than you can count and he may or may not fall depending on his creator:  Take for instance Macbeth:  “Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.”   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth   Pride comes before a fall kind of morality tale then.  In our more modern society would the author have killed him off or made him something else—we seem to  like the morality of it all less now, which perhaps that could eventually be leading to our fall?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty

 

 

 

There are of course more fall and falls:   wonderful falls–ones containing water–sometime people and barrels—pratfalls that are purposeful and non- (for the most part) painful,  fall weddings (which again can be painful or not) and fall flowers (that bring fall showers—sorry negative again) and on and on for positive images but for some reason my mind went to the dark side today (–I’d get Darth in there some how but ….)….But don’t fall for that negative stuff and have a great weekend.

 

 

 

 

“And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the mental disorder of [Roderick]….He roamed from chamber to chamber….The pallor of his countenance had assumed…a more ghastly hue [and] the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out….[He gazed] upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“There was a long tumultous shouting like the sounds of a thousand waters-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher

 

 

 

The main picture by the way is from the Pittsburgh , PA   airport.  Oh and if you hadn’t noticed the quotes are from Poe’s  House of Usher.