the switch

fortune telling card, my collection

aretalogy

from recent journey, self- portraits at abandoned house

the book of the heart

The heart can be opened, read and interpreted like a book. For Clare of Montefalco, her "spiritual sisters came to believe so intensely that Christ had painted his cross in her heart that at her death in 1308 they threw themselves upon her body, tore out her heart, and found incised upon it the insignia of the Passion." Or, after the death of Ignatius of Antioch, "they took the heart out of his body, split it down the middle, and found there the name of Jesus Christ inscribed in gold letters ..."
see: Eric Jager, "The Book of the Heart: Reading and Writing the Medieval Subject"


Master of the View of Sainte Gudule, Young Man Holding a Book, ca. 1480

"This is what I want to do in my heart, in front of you, in my confession, and with my pen before many witnesses."
--St. Augustine, Confessions

a desperate light

Today when the sun began with its shafts
to tell the story, so clear, so old,
the slanting rain fell like a sword,
the rain my hard heart welcomes.



I must renew my bones in your kingdom,
I must still uncloud my earthly duties.

(words from Pablo Neruda's "The Separate Rose: I")

here, two eyes have once more become one

medieval alchemical texts, reworked + collage + drawings

<>

beating the bounds

Bartholomeo Eustachi (1500-1574), Tabulae Anatomicae


"In order that the boundaries of the parishes might be indelibly impressed on the minds of the younger portion of the community, it was deemed advisable to bump some promising boy painfully against the boundary stones; or better still, to publicly whip him while he strove to impress on his memory the exact position of the same landmarks."
--William Andews, Curiosities of the Church, 1895

"Children were originally the chief boundary-beaters thrashing away with their sticks on the relevant stone, tree, or other landmark which marked the edge of a town or parish. And the children were, in turn, beaten themselves, receiving a coin for their pains. Boys were pummelled with the sticks, ducked in waymarking ponds, dragged through intruding hedges, and even had to climb over building that straddled the boundary. This instilled in them a sense of place, with a wound for every landmark."
--Quentin Cooper, Maypoles, Martyrs & Mayhem: A Diverse and Diverting Guide to 366 Days of British Myths, Customs & Eccentricities

"... The outskirts are felt to be infected zones, where all kinds of monstrosities are possible, and where a different man is born, an aberrant from the prototype who inhabits the centre of things."
--Piero Camporesi, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Modification and Mortification in Religion and Folklore