This table shows the diverse timing and repetition of flash dialogues from five firefly species. Shaded boxes represent repeating sequences. Blank boxes indicate “optional” flashes that reflect variation among individuals. Source: Lloyd, James E. (1966). Studies on the Flash Communication System in Photinus Fireflies. Table © AMNH/Hinterland.
What a doozy. If I read 44 terrible books this year, it would have been worth it for this one.
lovesexlifewords straight from nabohov’s mind to yours.
Did you know you change my life?
a meta-doublehandspring-morphosis in a few days.
THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW ANNA KARINA & JEAN-LUC GODARD FIRST “GOT TOGETHER”
Anna Karina: That happened while we were shooting the picture in Geneva. It was a strange love story from the beginning. I could see Jean-Luc was looking at me all the time, and I was looking at him too, all day long. We were like animals. One night we were at this dinner in Lausanne. My boyfriend, who was a painter, was there too. And suddenly I felt something under the table – it was Jean-Luc’s hand. He gave me a piece of paper and then left to drive back to Geneva. I went into another room to see what he’d written. It said, “I love you. Rendezvous at midnight at the Café de la Prez.” And then my boyfriend came into the room and demanded to see the piece of paper, and he took my arm and grabbed it and read it. He said, “You’re not going.” And I said, “I am.” And he said, “But you can’t do this to me.” I said, “But I’m in love too, so I’m going.” But he still didn’t believe me. We drove back to Geneva and I started to pack my tiny suitcase. He said, “Tell me you’re not going.” And I said, “I’ve been in love with him since I saw him the second time. And I can’t do anything about it.” It was like something electric. I walked there, and I remember my painter was running after me crying. I was, like, hypnotized – it never happened again to me in my life.
So I get to the Cafe de la Prez, and Jean-Luc was sitting there reading a paper, but I don’t think he was really reading it. I just stood there in front of him for what seemed like an hour but I guess was not more that thirty seconds. Suddenly he stopped reading and said,” Here you are. Shall we go?” So we went to his hotel. The next morning when I woke up he wasn’t there. I got very worried. I took a shower, and then he came back about an hour later with the dress I wore in the film - the white dress with flowers. And it was my size, perfect. It was like my wedding dress.
We carried on shooting the film, and, of course, my painter left. When the picture was finished, I went back to Paris with Jean-Luc, Michel Subor, who was the main actor, and Laszlo Szabo, who was also in the film, in Jean-Luc’s American car. We were all wearing dark glasses and we got stopped at the border – I guess they thought we were gangsters. When we arrived in Paris, Jean-Luc dropped the other two off and said to me, “Where are you going?” I said, “I have to stay with you. You’re the only person I have in the world now.” And he said, “Oh my God.”
Extract taken from an interview with Anna Karina conducted by Graham Fuller in Projections 13: Women Film-makers on Film-making, edited by Isabella Weibrecht, John Boorman and Walter Donohue (Faber & Faber, 2004)
(via Focus Features)
are you my caravaggioboy?
Dear Dad,
in a consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon on a corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the maner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no ways connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer in Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I have discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran from the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please!
Your loving son, Van
He carefully reread his letter – and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer.
Dad,
I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry!
Van
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—Are you radioactive, pal? —Pal, radioactive. —Has you the night sweats & the day sweats, pal? —Pal, I do. —Did your gal leave you? —What do you think, pal? —Is that thing on the front of your head what it seems to be, pal? —Yes, pal.
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I present the following:
A series of letters, condensed to decreasing lenghts
What matter? All goes to the flame.
