Lightning rips through the sky over White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

spring's flowers in the desert (South of Tunisia). X

Chavela Vargas − La Llorona

Lucinda Williams photographed by Danny Clinch, circa 2005.

Sunday, Outside Studio, 1975

James Barnor

“A particular species of tree was continuously mentioned as sacred in various ancient records…. This tree is actually the Near Eastern ficus sicomorus, the sycamore fig… References to this sacred tree are found in the writings of Egypt, while representations of it appear on Egyptian murals. The Goddess Hathor of Egypt, revered both as the Eye of Wisdom and the Serpent Lady, was also known by another title — the Lady of the Sycamore. This tree was known as the Living Body of Hathor on Earth. To eat of its fruit was to eat of the flesh and fluid of the Goddess… The type of tree represented on the signet rings of Crete was perhaps the same one… Evans suggested that the fig was sacred to the Cretans and described a section of a mural at Knossos where the tree alongside the altar was a fig. He also mentioned a group of sacred trees portrayed within the walls of a Cretan sanctuary, whose foliage showed them to be fig trees. Cretan seals and rings repeatedly depicted the Goddess or Her attendants alongside small fruit trees, caring for them, almost caressing them, as if in sacred devotion. In India, where the fig is known as the “pipal tree,” it is still considered sacred.”

— When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone

“The tree of Hathor was a tree of life in Egypt. It was the sycamore-fig tree, from the fruit of which a divine drink of the mysteries was made. Therefore it was a tree to make one wise, which became a tree of wisdom or abnormal knowledge…this was the tree of dawn, the tree of wet or dew, which was a veritable tree of life in Egypt. It was the emerald tree of Hathor in her character as goddess of the leafy-green dawn.”

—

Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World.

Ficus sycomorus, the Ancient Egyptian Tree of Life, is a fig tree, not the plane-tree (genus Platanus) that is also called a sycamore.  This fig tree was widely cultivated, for fruit, timber, and shade in gardens.

The giant sycamore tree  (Ficus sycomorus L.,1753) featured on the Eritrean five Nakfa banknote (Five Nakfa tree) near Segeneyti, in the highlands of Eritrea, Africa

“Masks are made of different quality materials: cardboard, velvet, flesh, the Word. The carnal mask and the verbal mask are worn in all seasons. I soon learned to prefer to all others these off-the-market stratagems. You study yourself; you add a wrinkle, a fold at the corner of the mouth, a look, an intonation, a gesture, even a muscle… . You create for yourself several clearly defined vocabularies, several syntaxes, several ways of being, thinking, and even feeling—from which you’ll choose a skin the color of time.”

— Claude Cahun, Surrealist Women: An International Anthology

Josephine Baker getting a manicure and pedicure, 1937.

Eartha Kitt

“Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth. A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin (via jonnoxvxrevanche)

‘Before Egypt Was’, c.1940 - Eduard Buk Ulreich (1889–1966)

Dunes, Oceano

Artist name Edward Weston Date created 1936

Flor Garduño Abrazo de luz, 2000

Brett Weston: Dune, Oceano (1934)