things that quicken the heart

Held by the British Museum Collections, London.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTAoaPDfueM)

This vessel is modeled in the shape of a spiral platform surmounted by an open-sided structure with a figure inside. Architectural vessel, A.D. 400–600. Peru. Moche. Ceramic; H. 8 7/16 x W. 5 1/2 in. (21.51 x 13.97 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Nathan Cummings, 1963 (63.226.13)

A stronger girl would shake this off in flight, And never give it more than a frowning hour.

Lilies (1971), David Hockney

David Hockney, Lithograph

Lubetkin’s Penguin pool at the London zoo – one of most popular examples of 20th century architecture. Nice swimming pools don’t always have to be for humans. 

The girls are going to the pool regularly now. There seems to be no other way, these days, to move away from the sadness, the oppressing darkness of the small flat they are all staying in. Like black mist it creeps on me, you know, like something you see in an anime. she said, and I know. We swim, me head under, Anne nipping in regularly, eyes fixed and serious, because she’s not wearing glasses nor goggles. When the pool is busy, I get the feeling that we’re a swarm of fishes, swimming towards an unknown destination. 

This sounds like the Sailor moon sountrack, but it’s really Luxembourg’s (only?) winning song for the Eurovision Song Contest, in 1965. French singer France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg’s song ‘Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son’ was afterwards translated in various languages, among which Japanese. 

The blue of the pool or the sky, or both, as they reflect each other. Water as a mirror of the sky, the eternal blue, or black, or grey. Or perhaps the opposite of eternal, never the same, always moving, ripples on the surface. The deep unknown? Although so clear. The fear of drowning is taught, before knowing we don’t fear. One says that a drowning child has a peaceful, calm demeanour. A return? Humans have gills before lungs. Or so I heard. A friend told me of an aunt who had a hole where her gills were. A tiny hole, reminder of her underwater past. Florence says ‘There are many fish in the sea’, passing the men’s pond in Hampstead. We laugh, but it’s true. You’ll get over him.

Cracks on a bowl at a cafe, 1927, Kon Wajiro and Shozo Ozawa

Chris Marker

JOHN GLOVER View of Mills Plains, Van Diemen's Land, 1833 Oil on canvas, 76.2 114.6 cm Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Morgan Thomas Bequest Fund, 1951