are the rule rather than the exception. Frequently, I got confused. In a
closing discussion of the
'Annunciation',
Hood gives column heights
and widths in units of Florentine
'braccia'
but leaves me muddled on
front column spacing and side column spacing. All it
needed was a modest diagram measured in braccia, and a
handy glossary of terms like
'giornata' [amount of fresco painted in one day],
'intonaco' [fine-plaster finish],
'sinopia' [pre-fresco sketching with red-earth lines].
But, still, a book that discusses 15th-century Florence
and Fra Angelico in such loving detail, showing so many of
his frescoes, can only be good.
An intense sensation, almost like a flavour, hit me at times - as if
I could reach out and touch the bright Italian morning where mediaeval
suddenly meets modern, where belief overlaps with thought. That
the [to us] forward-looking, progressive art of Fra Angelico was part of
an antiquarian, backward-looking movement - the Dominican Observance -
came as a typical surprise. The very idea of a nostalgic,
back-to-basics faction in the 1440s trying to restore the lost
purity of the 1220s gave me a strange thrill of historical vertigo. As
that character in
Tarkovsky's
'Sacrifice',
says, art-history is as near as we get to worship these days.
July 30th;
Trapped at
Jeremy's
office by downpour, so leggy Wilma cooks us an Italian meal. Then I
catch the train to Robin's.
July 29th;
Scott, Christie &
J
u
l
i
e.
Cafe + teahouse.
July 28th;
Met
Fraser
at a bar where lots of Americans were registering to vote, including
Jake,
John, Rita & bouncy
Ildiko.
People actually discussing politics.
July 27th;
Tiling
(or rotational symmetry?) from Bob too.
July 26th;
A page of
gorgeous
tilings. Scroll down.
July 25th;
Demolition man
interviewed.
Big
bad sunspot.
July 24th;
Get up at 4am for long day of filming in
Scott's
film
about
Seress.
Director Sam
impressively sharp and focussed on details. Met Christie from Switzerland.
We all finish in
a
rather swish bar at midnight with Sam's
interest-rate
swaps trader cousin
from London.
July 23rd;
Costume fitting in
Fot:
Seress
again
tomorrow. Kind costume-designer Sosa drives us back into town.
July 22nd;
I might have those 20
words for
Miklos now.
July 21st;
You'll
never get to heaven if you're scared of getting high.
July 20th;
Swam with Lilla, met
Istvan
& Ilan. Ate
melon.
July 19th;
Serious
sunshine. Story meeting at hotel.
July 18th;
I float in
darkness.
July 17th;
Swam a 1/2 mile. Unseen by
oiled
bikini girls glistening uptop, a ring of
scuba-divers
knelt on the blue-tiled pool bottom, hissing bubbles like big black frogs.
July 16th;
Spent sleeping off
lurid
Thursday night revelry.
July 15th;
Seems mediaeval
monks ate a lot.
Capon,
posset,
sack,
rowanberries.
July 14th;
Tom & I talk sales over
omlette brunch, then
scrambled-egg dinner.
July 13th;
Nice
maps
of country names, via
language hat.
July 12th;
Having learned that I am now an
"asshole",
another woman friend repeatedly describes me as
"vile".
I think I see a pattern taking shape here, citizens.
July 11th;
Swam 3/4
mile. Met Terri, but Parisa away.
July 10th;
Started
house-price article research.
July 9th;
Jessica, back from
SF,
laughs over a white-wine
froccs
that I've become an asshole. Praise indeed.
July 8th;
Finished Robin's old friend's
ochre-coloured copy of
'The Sufis',
by Idries Shah
about the elusive mystics and their work in progress. This old paperback fell apart
page by page as I read it, just like a book about Sufism should. Delicate glueing
needed.
Few books can boast glowing reviews from both
Stevie Smith and
Ted Hughes on the back
cover, and an introduction by
Robert Graves.
(I'm still recovering from the blunder
of actually reading
'The
White Goddess' all the way through in 2000)
Perhaps
too much fun to be true?
Anyway, Shah's main story is that
Sufis
are not an ism and not a sect of Islam,
but a group who
have worked within many religions, avoid fixed descriptions and rigid methods, set up
schools which are meant to dissolve and pass away once their teaching diffuses into the
surrounding culture, and seek to develop all of us in selflessly loving God and freeing
ourselves from spiritual illusions. The role of the true teacher is so important, that
Sufis
go to great lengths to disguise their work from doctrinally-rigid believers of
orthodox religions, so that they can continue their work and so that false teachers,
fossilised dogma, & unprepared students can be kept at a distance.
Hence the riddles. Pretty much everything
about a range of mystical beliefs and mysteries over the last two thousand years can be
explained by attending to interlocking groups of words in Arabic losing their double
meaning once translated into Western languages. So
Freemasons,
troubadours
(we got measured
music from Arabic Spain? Interesting.),
court fools
in caps and bells, the apparently not-so-Jewish
Kabbalah,
er, Morris dancing,
Italian secret societies, the
Tarot
pack, the good old
Knights Templar
of course, and lots of other
unsolved puzzles boil down to deteriorated and misunderstood Sufi traditions.
Cor. The similarity of
Zen koans to the Sufi
Mullah Nasrudin
stories suggest a link - yes even
Hindu yoga &
Buddhism are part of the project...
An edition with Arabic lettering in the riddle bits would motivate me to get back
to Arabic.
I wonder how that chain-smoking Sufi in the blue suit I met back at
QIC
is these days?
July 7th;
Visit Sam's flat with Scott, Rita,
David,
to see editing of
Seress film in progress.
July 6th;
Rather Dionysian
evening with Lilla, Moni & Gyuri starts with a board game
borrowed from
Miklos,
and in stages becomes impressively disorderly.
July 5th;
A couple of weeks now since I ran into
Ryan's
friend Adrienn on the 47 tram. Chatted
for the 7 or 8 stops our journeys overlapped. I'd never really noticed before
just how haunting & piercing her grey/blue eyes are.
A couple of days ago Mariann & I went to the cake shop
5 minutes before opening time and found the open door blocked by a menacing
6-foot cardboard cut-out of an ice-cream cone. Somehow its big triangle resembled a
delta-physique doorman. Mariann got the giggles.
July 4th;
Last night stepped out for a late kebab. A huge butter-coloured
fullish moon
peered down my street.
July 3rd;
Brief, lazy swim at
Palatinus
on Margit
Island.
July 2nd
;
Moni signs me into the
refurbished
library where she works, and gives me my first
Persian
lesson. Eerily, my data is still on the system from almost a decade ago.
Excellent party at Heather's for
Zdravko's
birthday. Lots of bubbly law students. Oh, and
Microsoft patents
the
human body as a circuit component.
July 1st;
My young student in Erd has formed the singular intention of reading
'Emma' by Jane
Austen, a bold enterprise for which I fear she is poorly prepared. Finding I
could not influence her opinion towards a more amenable challenge, I urged her
to at least read slowly, and to approach her new ambition in measured steps.
-
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
contact at otherlanguages.org
back
up to top of page
