shy as a wild creature

shy as a wild creature

[cma-medieval-art]

Crossbow Bolt, 1500s-1600s, Cleveland Museum of Art: Medieval Art

Size: Overall: 37.2 cm (14 5/8 in.) Medium: wood, leather, steel

https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1758

[mushitology]

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[sibylls]

Hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn Remember me love, when I’m reborn As the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

[sibylls]

I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little, or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the state. They were interested in truth, and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity—creation.

Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus

[sibylls]

[sibylls]

The sea air will burn my lungs. Lost climates will tan me. I will swim, trample the grass, hunt, and smoke especially. I will drink alcohol as strong as boiling metal—just as my dear ancestors did around their fires. I will come back with limbs of iron and dark skin and a furious look.

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

[sibylls]

He trekked through bitter cold into the mountains to see the cedars of Lebanon. One night as he slept under the stars, he was roused from sleep by a weird animal noise; before he was fully awake, he grabbed the loaded rifle with which he slept and shot a hyena, just as it was about to bite down on his companion’s head. He helped to quell a mutiny aboard the steamer carrying him from Beirut to Constantinople, and he found time to gather oleander seeds for Millais’s mother to plant around her cottage at Kingston.

On William Holman Hunt; Gay Daly, Pre-Raphaelites in Love

[sibylls]

Evans ranged over the remote corners of Serbia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina by foot, horseback, and steamer. He traversed the wild countryside to investigate reports of Turkish atrocities in remote villages, stripped off his clothes to ford icy rivers, and scaled cliffs to meet with fierce Turkish overlords in their mountaintop command posts. He was often uncomfortable, usually inconvenienced, and occasionally imprisoned. None of this seemed to bother him much.

On Arthur Evans; Margalit Fox, The Riddle of the Labyrinth

[peninsularian]

Visit Original Link

[sibylls]

Once I was a soldier and I fought on foreign sands for you Once I was a hunter and I brought home fresh meat for you Once I was a lover and I searched behind your eyes for you

[sibylls]

Ceylon, c. 1800s

[sibylls]

Parked outside the reception, their Land Rover and trailer were packed with everything they owned—cameras, tent, clothing, supplies, food—enough to last them for months. Instead of throwing rice, several of Alan’s drunken buddies had put fresh elephant dung under the Land Rover’s wheels and poured boiling water on it, so when the newlyweds drove away to the cheers of their friends and family, elephant shit sprayed in all directions. It was, everyone agreed, a real Kenya wedding.

On Alan and Joan Root’s wedding; Mark Seal, Wildflower

[sibylls]

He is the success story of the bush. Much to the pleasure and anguish of his friends, he remains the absolute eccentric, the clown, the daredevil, the mimic, the misanthrope, the life of the party, the irrepressible idealist of nature. He will die for a sequence in a film, a joke, a game of tennis. In short, Alan is so consumed by living that every day requires some proof that he has cheated death.

On Alan Root; John Hemingway, No Man’s Land

[sibylls]

‘Come now,’ I said to him, 'and let us risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this: that they have got none.’

Karen Blixen, Out of Africa