"The Calligrapher" [.]

[fiefoe]

<Vladimir Nabokov: 'the secret of durable pigments' >

• there's a whole world of craft skills behind the art - which flight feathers are the best and why, how to cure the quills with hot sand, layout grids, organic pigments, not to mention gilding or mixing gesso...
• The audience loves to listen to the piece, the professors love to analyze and deconstruct the piece, but only the musician really lives within its dynamic energy.
• (Skins are washed in baths of lime and water, scraped and stretched; whiting is then added to them before they are scraped again and dried under tension. Tough going by anyone's standards - dead or not.) If, as is most often the case, the skin is still a little greasy, the diligent calligrapher will first rub powdered pumice over the surface with the flat of his hand, then French chalk, then special wet-and-dry paper to "raise the nap."
• In fact, now I come to think of it, characters is a much better word than letters. It's no coincidence that the Chinese are the best calligraphers-they understand the difference.
• (Ravenna Chancery script) is meant to look idiosyncratic. Each place developed its own particular style and took great pride in it. They're like different dialects or different regional forms of architecture, all with their own oddities,
• I don't like the letter N as a rule-something to do with its austerity, I think, or its negative attitude: M's bony and resentful little brother.
• "And" (check) "burdenous" (check) "corpulence" (check) "my love" (so sometimes I let certain inseparable words through security together) "had" (check) grown" ...

<Colorful, lovable secondary characters: ex, shopkeeper, grandma, BFF>

• She keeps lists of things to do. She remembers what people have said but doesn't hold it against them. She seldom talks about her family.
• "Eschew your cashews?" I said helpfully. "Exactly. Exactly. That way I can build up an unacceptable surplus, and that will force me to have a half-price sale to clear stock, and that will bring the price back down to more or less what it should be, and that will get out of this... this mess."
• "At least he knew a few things before he died, which is all we can any of us really hope for."
• a certain dogged grace in everydayness that is not given the credit it deserves . You can get things done, for one thing. You can make progress in other areas of life.
• Then the inveterate boozer within overcame all rival personae and he asked with a stealthy curiosity, "What are you having?"
• In fact, that is precisely why stasis sets in. I believe in the copious availability of interesting wine and unseasonable fruit for all, and I believe in fewer delivery lorries on the road.

__ the grim slouch toward Christmas / summer - unworringly aimless
__ My thoughts gathered painfully, limping in from across the filthy battlefield one by one, under cover of darkness-wounded, bedraggled, dismembered. But soon they had mustered in such numbers as to require ordering.

Bodleian library, Piazza Farnese, 'that beautiful pea-green boat', coulisse, glabrous

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