I’ve started a little collection for myself of ridiculous things people say in complete seriousness on facebook and twitter. I’m not keeping names attached to them, and I don’t know if I’ll ever curate them into anything, but collecting is a basic human property, and this collection will take up less space than shoes or silver spoons. If you want to send me gems, like stamps, I welcome all contributions.
In the meantime, here is a nice paragraph, from Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
The courtyard was dark with its own shadows as well as the dusk, and ghostly with the pale light filtering down from the still sunlit upper air, through the gutted palace, burned because of the plague, which formed its fourth side. It looked even more fantastic than we had thought it in the Cathedral square. At a window on its ground floor a tree stood like a woman looking into the courtyard, and on the floors above the trees, some of them clothed with blossom which in this uncertain light was the color of a grey Persian cat, shot forth from the empty sockets of vanished rafters in the attitudes of acrobats seeking the trapeze. The courtyard itself spoke of something even older than this palace, for it was full of carved stone; slabs bearing inscriptions or low reliefs had been let into its walls, and there set about many statues and fragments of statues, some of which were Roman. It held as well an infinity of glowing things, of flowers bursting from a lead cistern and a sarcophagus, full fleshed leafy plants and bronze-backed ferns, a great many of them in little pots hung on lines of string secured to details of sculpture. We were reminded of what he had sometimes forgotten during this water-logged spring, that this was the far South, accustomed to seasons when grass is a recollected miracle and everything that can be coaxed to grow in a flowerpot is a token and a comfort. On the other side of the courtyard, facing ruin, was another palace, also Venetian Gothic and of the fifteenth century, but intact. It’s great door was open, and showed a dark room and another beyond it that was lit by the soft white light of a chandelier. Towards this reserved and even defensive interior the Cardinal now led us. But I delayed to admire the richness of a design impressed on the lead cistern, and he told me, “Those are the arms of my family. But now we do not use such cisterns. We have modern methods. See, there is a great cistern under this courtyard.” He brought down his heel on the pavement, making a sharp ringing noise that sent a little bird whirring out of one of the plants back to its home in the ruined palace. “Trees and water,” said the Sitwell, “they are more precious to us on the island than gold.” “We will have all we want of them under Yugoslavia,” said the Cardinal.
And you thought my sentences went on rather a long time. Have a lovely day!
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