“Welcome back Professor.” Diego’s warm genuine smile indicated his pleasure at seeing his old friend again. David Brogansis – emeritus professor of biology at Stamford University hugged his old friend.

At seventy years of age, he knew that this field trip to the pacific coastal jungle of Colombia would in all probability be his last. David had devoted his entire academic career to the study of poisonous frogs like Phyllobates terribilis, the Golden Dart frog, and in particular the alkaloid batrachotoxins they exude from their skin for protection from predators. In the restricted world of academia, David was the acknowledged expert in his field. His friend and long time field researcher Diego Silva shared his passion for the tiny highly colourful amphibians.

Within an hour Diego had steered his Jeep Cherokee through the crowded streets of Bogotá and finally west to the pristine jungle both men loved. By nightfall…

Max Klinger-Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove 1. Place-1881

One of the most prominent artists of his time, the German Symbolist Max Klinger is now predominantly remembered for his series of ten etchings entitled Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove) first completed in 1877-1878, then revised in a mixed technique of engraving, etching and aquatint in 1881.

A Glove is widely considered to be an important link between Symbolism and Surrealism with it dream-like narrative, changes in size and scale and its symbolic fetishism. It is hard to deny the sexual significance of A Glove and it definitely lends itself to a Freudian interpenetration, though it predates Freud by nearly two decades.

Here is the entire series which I hope you enjoy and I would also be very interesting in what ‘A Glove’ suggests to my readers.

2.Action

3. Yearnings

Frederic Bazille-La Toilette 1870 It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Charles Baudelaire upon modernity. The entire Symbolism/Decadent movement that so dominated the 19th Century fin-de-siecle in Europe owed its very existence to Baudelaire.

Baudelaire’s importance extends far deeper that the creation of one transitory artistic school however. Although he didn’t invent the concept of dandyism (that honour belongs to Beau Brummel), his example gave it a wider cultural currency that eventually resulted in the carefully constructed persona of the ultimate aesthete and wit, Oscar Wilde. His wanderings around the Parisian streets led to Walter Benjamin formulating a new type of man, theflaneur. Thefigure of the flaneur recurs frequently inBenjamin’s massive, unfinished magnum opusThe Arcades Project. The spirit ofthe Baudelaireanflaneurguided the Surrealists in their impromptuflea-market jaunts and nocturnal adventuring. TheSituationist International (see Moving Images) took theflaneura step further and the central…

The Beach-Thea Kiros

In approximately 6 hours and 9 minutes both formats of my collection of 69 inter-related poems and short fictions Motion No. 69 will be available for purchase here. At the present moment only the e-book is available, somewhat ahead of schedule for a change.

Rather like its author, this collection is slim, elegant, charming and darkly attractive. Motion No. 69 shows also that there is truth in advertising after all. A must read for a rainy day on the beach, whether it is a Blue Monday or not.