Road of Peas

This post has been created for the Circus of the Spineless for August. It is number XII, and will be hosted at Sunbeams From Cucumbers. The butterfly pictures, and the first dancing aquatic worm picture were previously posted at Middle-Fork.

I found this butterfly, along with dozens more like it, near a trail to Skipper Lakes. This is on a ridgeline at somthing just over 5000 feet, on the south side of the Calapooya Mountains, overlooking the Boulder Creek Wilderness, part of the North Umpqua River drainage. There were many hundreds of butterflies very much like this one, but twice as large. The larger variety flitted away if I came within ten feet. The smaller ones ignored me, and fed away.

The Dancing Aquatic Worm was wiggling around over the crestline of the Calapooya Mountains and down on Staley Creek (which was once called the South Fork of the Middle Fork WIllamette.) There are some fine carved rock channels here. Two weeks ago I found an orange frog, which thrilled my boss, who had spent a few years researching chromatophores.

But, I’d seen frogs before.

This worm is something else entrely. As the creek flow dwindles, it leaves ponds behind. The worm was in a still water pond, and was constantly twisting and flexing. Every few seconds it touched the surface, perhaps to breath, but it may have been accidental, as it also bumped a couple water stiders, which did what they do best, and skedaddled.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2006: I made an exploratory plunge into little lake country to see how the mosquitoes were doing. There are quite a few close to the lakes, but by keeping my distance, I managed to avoid most of their attention. This is good; they will be gone soon. Not my favorite invertebrae.

But this critter! Wow! I think it’s my favorite. It looks like a common garden spider all dressed up for Gilbert and Sullivan. It was sitting in the sun, busy working on its web, 5 feet in the air and 20 feet from its anchor trees, and swinging wildly back and forth in the wind. It ignored me completely from this side of the web, but as soon as I walked wide around to the other side, it popped right into threat posture.

This is a marvelous book. Set in the late 1500s in Istanbul, the plot revolves around a illustrated manuscript being prepared in secrecy for Ottoman Sultan Murat III, which is to include painting techniques developed in western Europe, specifically perspective and painting from life. Great tension develops between the adherents of these imported styles and traditional technique, with which painting is done in a manner which has been inherited from Persian artists and depicts objects in a stylized form, which is how they are perceived by Allah, and arranges them in a flat space, as though seen from a height.

In Islam, there is controversy arising from any depictation of the things in the world, as this is seen as an arrogant assumption of the perogatives of Allah’s vision of the world, and thus a heretical activity. There is a passage from the Koran

The blind and the seeing are not equal “The Creator” 19

which is cited as a defense of the stylized depictation of objects, but the controversy rages, and as various artists come to realise what they are engaged in, the view that this is heresy drives one fellow to the verge of denouncing the effort, bringing it to the attention of a fundamentalist group who engage in murder of heretics and the destruction of their work and properties.

The ripening whistleblower is murdered, and the events leading to his murderer’s discovery comprise the framework of the novel.

But the clothe draped over the plot is a fascinating account of the history of Islamic illustration, and the conceptual evolution of style, ideas about the personal claim to work, vision and blindness. Islamic illustrations are historically all based on stories, both historical and fabled, and many of these stories are told. This makes the novel a bit clunky at times, but the chunks are like diamonds and precious artworks, a joy to read and very thought provoking.

This is a great novel, well worth reading.

Orhan Pamuk is a popular Turkish writer.
He is on trial for alleged violations of the 301st article of Turkish Penal Code, which includes this text:

“a person who insults Turkishness, the Republic or the Turkish parliament will be punished with imprisonment ranging from six months to three years.”

His trial has been postponed. Turkey seeks membership in the European Union, which frowns on these proceedings. Recent news articles lead me to think that Turkey will try to sidestep the EU’s disapproval by dropping the trial, and moot the issue of the law.

I support freedom of speech and the press, and believe that societies are strongest when individuals can speak freely and without fear. Vaguely worded injunctions against hard to define concepts are particularly abhorrant. I urge the Turkish authorities to drop the charges against Orhan Pamuk, and the Turkish people to eliminate this draconian and ill-conceived law.

Artists struggling with their concepts of art owe it to themselves to read these novels. These novels are often found to be difficult reading, in particular,

The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch.

This story occurs over the last 40 hours of Virgil’s life. He arrives by ship at a port near Rome, is carried ashore and through some odd parts of town to a room where he spends a fever ridden night. In the morning, some friends, including the Emperor, visit, and then Virgil dies. The real story is Virgil’s ongoing meditations on the nature of life, art, and the spirit. This is the only book I’ve ever read that put me through spiritual changes. The prose is extremely difficult, partially as a result of the way it was translated.

The Complete Review is a great source for literature reviews.
Their review of The Death of Virgil is excellent. It briefly addresses the translation choices.

This is a difficult book, but it will reward careful reading. Work at it!

The Recognitions by William Gaddis is the best novel ever. It tells the story of a painter who works in the style of the Old Masters, and does this so well that he gets roped into counterfeiting old paintings.

The Complete Review’s take.

This novel is not so hard to read as DV but it helps to have some background in the history of art and Christianity. There are reading guides available, such as at The Gaddis Annotations and Steven Moore’s William Gaddis.

This is required reading! They are not dime novels, you need to put some mental elbow grease in, slather it on, they will reward the effort!

Hear me, Zephi!