all heart

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The "Heart of Space" meteorite, a 4.5 billion-year-old fragment of a star that fell to earth in 1947: "A mind-boggling series of occurrences and accidents were necessary to make a meteorite of this rare shape," says James Hyslop, Christie's science and natural history specialist. "And what makes it even more endearing is the fact that this piece would have come from the very core of its initial protoplanetary body—it broke off from the heart of its originator."

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Handmade valentine in the collection of tihngs.

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Heart meadow created by Winston Howes in memory of his wife, Janet. Daffodils blossom in the center when spring arrives. 

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Poem by David Melnick.

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Heart by Alexander Girard, 1961, at the Compound Restaurant, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Horn spoon with flaming heart and romantic inscription: 

Die Freundschaft bringt Freude

Die Liebe bringt Ruh'

Erwähle sie beide

Wie glücklich bist du

Friendship brings pleasure, 

love rest to the heart; 

if both be thy treasure, 

how happy thou art.

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Personal Message by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, available here.

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It was a September afternoon in 1796, and Mary Wollstonecraft had one thing on her mind. “What say you,” she wrote to her lover William Godwin, “may I come to your house, about eight—to philosophize?” This use of code was typical. If she wanted him she would ask to borrow books or ink; he liked to say he needed soothing, like a sick child. In his journal Godwin used dots and dashes to log what he and Wollstonecraft had done, when they had done it, and where. After their third date he wrote, “chez moi, toute.”

Anahid Nersessian, "Love for Sale." The New York Review, 1/13/2022.  

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One may care about a character on television, but one must care for a character in a video game. In fact, The Last of Us suggested that care, by definition, means choosing to have no choice, holding onto another person so tightly their survival becomes an inescapable necessity. ... [T]he point is not that a video game, like other art forms, can show us something about love, but that love, at its most monstrous, can have the unyielding structure of a video game. 

Andrea Long-Chu, "The Last of Us Is Not a Video-Game Adaptation." Vulture, 2/9/2023. 

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“We’re not beginning to . . . to . . . mean something?"

micro-moments of positivity resonance

Bernard Perlin, The Lovers. 1946. MoMA.

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Reliquary Arm of St. Valentine. Swiss. 14th century. Silver, partial gilt, sapphire. On view in Gallery 306 of The Met. 

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Algorithmic love letter generated by a computer program created by Christopher Strachey in 1952. ("M.U.C." is "Manchester University Computer.")

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Hans Holbein the Younger, Simon George of Cornwall, ca. 1535–40.

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The language of flowers, via stopping off place.

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Jan Boon, Carnations. 

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Victorian gold heart token with a line from Keats' Endymion: "On every morrow we are wreathing a flowery band to bind us to the earth."

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Page from a first-edition copy of Washington Square by Henry James, via Honey and Wax Books.

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There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world—a world intense and strange, complete in himself. 

Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.

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Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either—but love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves, and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!

Ronny Cammareri, talking to Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck (1987). Written by John Patrick Shanley.

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According to the nineteenth-century American zoologist Louis Agassiz, the snail is “a very model lover” that “will spend hours…paying attentions the most assiduous to the object of [its] affections.” But there is a sting in the tail of snail romance, for as explained by another nineteenth-century observer, the courtship of snails “realises the Pagan fable of Cupid’s arrows, for, previous to their union, each snail throws a winged dart or arrow at its partner.”

Tim Flannery, "Tigers, Humans, Snails." NYRB Volume 58, No. 2, February 10, 2011.

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The German artist and theorist David Link, in his book Archaeology of Algorithmic Artefacts, observes that Strachey’s program was the first experiment in text-generating software, predating by thirteen years the M.I.T. chatbot ELIZA, which offered interactive psychotherapy. “Ultimately the software is based on a reductionist position vis-à-vis love and its expression,” Link writes. “Love is regarded as a recombinatory procedure with recurring elements.”

Siobhan Roberts, "Christopher Strachey's Nineteen-Fifties Love Machine." The New Yorker, 2/14/2017. 

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In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love ...  it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. 

Emily Esfahani Smith, "There's No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)." The Atlantic 1/24/2013. 

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Wishing you recombinatory procedures with recurring elements and micro-moments of positivity resonance.

modern love

Hoping to establish a breeding colony of gannets on the island of Mana, New Zealand conservation officers set out concrete decoys and played bird calls. One gannet responded; the scientists called him Nigel. A few weeks before he died, three other gannets arrived on Mana.

Nigel lived for years on his own on uninhabited Mana Island off the north of the country, surrounded by concrete replica gannets ... 

Nigel was the first gannet in 40 years to make his home on Mana, arriving alone in 2013 ... After he arrived, [Nigel] began courting one of the 80 concrete decoys which had been positioned on the eastern cliffs, with painted yellow beaks and black tipped wings.

The gannet was observed carefully constructing a nest for his chosen mate, grooming her chilly, concrete feathers, and chatting to her – one-sided – year after year after year.

Eleanor Ainge Roy, 'Nigel the lonely gannet dies as he lived, surrounded by concrete birds.' The Guardian, 2/1/2018.

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In the absence of a living love interest, Nigel became enamored with one of the 80 faux birds. He built her — it? — a nest ... He died next to her in that unrequited love nest, the vibrant orange-yellow plumage of his head contrasting, as ever, with the weathered, lemony paint of hers.

Karen Brulliard, 'Nigel, the world's loneliest bird, dies next to the concrete decoy he loved.' The Washington Post, 2/2/2018.

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We're only making plans for Nigel
We only want what's best for him
We're only making plans for Nigel
Nigel just needs this helping hand 

And if young Nigel says he's happy
He must be happy ...

Colin Moulding/XTC.

sunday tune: the 6ths with dean wareham - falling out of love with you

progress of seasons

Author unknown. Found by i like this blog.

man and wife

Husband Lies Next To Dead Wife, Ambrotype, circa 1856:

This husband has decorated his wife’s body with flowers. Then he lay down with her on her deathbed in order to be close to her for the last time, as they were recorded for posterity. Here the man acknowledges his wife is dead and simply stares lovingly at her.

From Sleeping Beauty II - Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography by Stanley B. Burns, M.D.

Via liquid night.

just an amateur

From Peter J. Cohen's collection of vernacular photographs at MoMA - one of my favorite things to look at in the city these days.

Via Old Chum/Old Faithful Shop.

before and after

William Hogarth: Before and After. 1732. In the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

sunday tune: loretta lynn and conway twitty - you're the reason our kids are ugly

lover's eyes

The secret history of 'lover's eyes':

 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, wealthy British and European lovers exchanged “eye miniatures”—love tokens so clandestine that even now, in the majority of cases, it is impossible to identify their recipients or the people they depict.

Experts believe that there are fewer than 1,000 “lover’s eyes” in existence today. 

Apparently, they were meant to be worn inside the lapel, near the heart. 

I discovered these just a few weeks ago in The Met's Gallery 754 (one of my favorite parts of the new American Wing—all portrait miniatures). I'd love to see the show in Birmingham. 

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Lover's Eyes locket. Watercolor on ivory with gold case, ca. 1840.

Stay me with flagons,

        comfort me with apples

        for I am sick of love.

Song of Solomon

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O Love, be fed with apples while you may,
And feel the sun and go in royal array,
A smiling innocent on the heavenly causeway,

Though in what listening horror for the cry
That soars in outer blackness dismally,
The dumb blind beast, the paranoiac fury:

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head,
Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood,
The shivering glory not to be despised.

Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark - a shining space
With the grave's narrowness, though not its peace.

Robert Graves, 'Sick Love'

Bohumil Stepan: Illustration for  Zelena Kobyla (The Green Mare) by Marcel Aymé, Prague, 1966. Via 50 Watts.

having a coke with you

Via R4TH.

Found here.

Duane Michals: This Is My Proof, 1974. Via lost.

Elliott Erwitt: Valencia, Spain, 1952.

Found here.

Walter Carone: Artists' Ball, 1948.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Normandy, 1926.

model lovers

 

According to the nineteenth-century American zoologist Louis Agassiz, the snail is “a very model lover” that “will spend hours…paying attentions the most assiduous to the object of [its] affections.” But there is a sting in the tail of snail romance, for as explained by another nineteenth-century observer, the courtship of snails “realises the Pagan fable of Cupid’s arrows, for, previous to their union, each snail throws a winged dart or arrow at its partner.”

Tim Flannery, "Tigers, Humans, Snails." NYRB Volume 58, No. 2, February 10, 2011.

Photo: Christer Strömholm - Jura, 1949.

francesca and paolo

Francesca da Rimini (1255–1285) was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri. Her father had been at war with the Malatestas of Rimini, and to solidify a peace treaty, Francesca was married to Giovanni Malatesta. Because Giovanni was deformed, the wedding was performed by proxy using Giovanni's brother, Paolo. Francesca fell in love with Paolo and was unaware of the deception until the morning after the wedding day.

According to Dante, Francesca and Paolo were seduced by reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and became lovers. Subsequently they were surprised and murdered by Giovanni before they were able to repent.

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L'Inferno, 1911. Director: Francesco Bertolini

Evelyn Millard and Henry Ainley in Paolo e Francesca at the Billy Rose Theater. 

Sir J. Noel Paton's Paolo and Francesca de Rimini as engraved by R. Graves

Detail: Rodin: The Kiss (originally titled Francesca da Rimini). Photo: Sarah Lee/Guardian.

Evelyn Millard and Henry Ainley in Paolo e Francesca at St. James' Theatre, 1902.

Ingres: Paolo and Francesca, 1819

Alexandre Cabanel: Death of Francesca de Rimini and Paolo Malesta, 1870

Gaetano Previati: Paolo and Francesca, oil on canvas, 1800s.

Ary Scheffer: Dante and Virgil Encountering the Shades of Francesca de Rimini and Paolo in the Underworld, 1835.

See also: Inferno, Canto V.