Lucky

Jan. 21st, 2021 02:14 pm
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)
Random quote of the day:

“How can the artist justify himself? The answer is that he cannot, and should stop boring himself with his egocentric need to try. The artist is a lucky dog. That is all there is to say about him. In any community of a thousand souls there will be nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky dog painting or writing about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

—Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

“You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice.”

—Ernest Hemingway, speaking to his son Gregory, as quoted in Papa, A Personal Memoir by Gregory H. Hemingway

luck4WP@@@

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: (Default)

old shoe

Shoes are magic. Many a woman will tell you that they have the power to ensorcell. Imelda Marcos, for instance, seemed to be the victim of a particularly strong shoe enchantment. But aside from the compulsion to buy these items, shoes have a traditional protective magic which seems just as strong.

I first learned of this aspect of shoe folklore when I read The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic by Ralph Merrifield, a wonderful survey of European (mostly British) folk magic and ritual from prehistoric to modern times. Shoes, as it turns out, were the most common protective magic for buildings, from at least the 14th century into the 20th. Generally they are found walled up in structures, sometimes pairs or new but usually an odd shoe and very worn, sometimes in groupings, but often solitary. These hiding places are usually spots where it’s unlikely they would have arrived accidentally: bricked up in chimneys, under well nailed down floorboards, behind pristine plastered or bricked walls and the like. This practice is found all over Europe, as well as Canada, Australia, and the USA—anywhere, I suppose, where the European diaspora happened. There may well be non-European examples of this belief.

It was apparently quite a secretive rite, considered bad luck to talk about. The last known examples of concealed shoes are from the early 20th century, but who knows? Given its secretive nature, the practice could still be going on. We can only speculate and piece together other superstitions to figure out what it may mean. Mr. Merrifield does an excellent job of this:

There are a few known superstitions about old shoes that may be relevant. There was a belief that a shoe thrown after someone setting out on a journey would ensure good luck and a safe return. This is a custom still observed when the bridal pair departs after a wedding…There is a strong association with fertility; we all know the fate of the old woman who lived in a shoe, and there used to be a custom in Lancashire of trying on the shoes of a woman who had just had a baby in order to conceive.

He also makes extensive use of the work of a paper written by June Swann, a pioneer in the study of shoe magic. (Thanks to the Apotropaios website for hosting a copy of this article.)

Concealed shoes might also be a magic device for containing evil spirits, a tradition at least dating back to the story of John Schorn, a 14th century priest in Buckinghamshire, who supposedly conjured the devil into a boot to trap him. This may be why shoes are often found near entryways to houses, so that they could contain evil spirits which might try to get in.

I can’t help wondering, and Mr. Merrifield also speculates about this, if it has something to do with a person’s soul being imprinted on items closely associated with them. Shoes and clothing were enormous expenses for people in centuries past and folks tended to wear things and repair them until they were in shreds, then repurpose parts thereof before actually discarding them. And if something has been worn that long and that extensively, might not a person leave some essence of themselves imprinted on the object? Might that essence bear some protective quality, some ability to guard and protect a building in the owner’s stead, a soul outside the soul?

I’m not sure I’d want to remove one of these shoes if I somehow found one in my walls. If tradition isn’t a strong enough motivator, the possibility of hauntings might give me pause.

There was an episode of Syfy Channel’s Haunted Collector featuring one of these concealed shoes—in this case, an old boot. (Episode 2.6 if this episode list from Wikipedia is correct.) Now, I think all paranormal T.V. shows should be taken with a grain of salt, sometimes an enormous boulder of salt. (And yet, I still watch them, a guilty pleasure.) But I found this episode genuinely fascinating because of my familiarity with the subject. John Zaffis, the curator of a Museum of the Paranormal, investigated a home from the 1800s in Lorain County, Ohio. The current owners reported that when they decided to renovate an old fireplace, they found various objects concealed within it, including an old boot. As soon as these objects were removed, they began experiencing paranormal activity. Zaffis determined that the shoe was the focus of the haunting (I can’t remember how), had it blessed in some way (memory fails me), and removed from the premises to his museum. According to the show, the paranormal activity ceased thereafter.

What’s interesting from a folklore perspective is that Merrified reports a similar haunting via June Swann:

Miss Swann is of the opinion that this is essentially a male superstition connected with the building trade, and understands that it is considered to be unlucky to remove the shoes from the house. There is even a story of an apparent haunting that began when a shoe was sent of the Museum of London for identification, and ceased completely when it was returned.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe. Please pass the salt.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: (lilith)

Random quote of the day: 

“From time immemorial, human beings have been wary of good fortune….In every culture there are ancient recipes for disguising joy, for paying homage to suffering in the midst of celebration, for deflecting the envy of gods and neighbors: rub soot on the face of your beautiful child; spit when you get a compliment; throw salt over your shoulder at a wedding; let cider spill from your glass to offset the bounty of your harvest; say ‘break a leg’ when you really mean ‘good luck.’ ”

—Noelle Oxenhandler, The Wishing Year

 fortune4WP@@@

  

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Bad cess

Aug. 2nd, 2012 09:32 am
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

 

“Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world.”

—Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy

 

 


Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: lascaux (art)

Here’s the entire excerpt for today’s quote.  I liked it so much I thought you might like to see it in full.  The letter was quoted in Raymond Chandler Speaking.

May 25, 1957
To: Helga Greene
…To accept a mediocre form and make something like literature out of it is in itself rather an accomplishment.  They tell me—I don’t say this on my own information—that hundreds of writers today are making some sort of living from the mystery story because I made it respectable and even dignified.  But, hell, what else can you do when you write?  You do the best you can in any medium.  I was lucky, and it seems that my luck inspired others.  Steinbeck and I agreed that we should like the writer who is to be remembered and honoured after we were gone to be some unknown, perhaps far better than either of us, who did not have the luck—or perhaps the drive.  Any decent writer who thinks of himself occasionally as an artist would far rather be forgotten so that someone better might be remembered.  We are not always nice people, but essentially we have an ideal that transcends ourselves…There are, of course, cheap and venal writers, but a real writer always at the bottom of his heart, when he runs across something good, makes a silent prayer that “this guy may be better than I am”.  Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better.  An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to.  A lover cannot deny love.  If you believe in an ideal, you don’t own it—it owns you, and you certainly don’t want to freeze it at your own level for mercenary reasons.

pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


“We aren’t exactly cursed, but we’re pretty damn close to it. Yes, we’ve had our share of luck. We’ve been to the mountaintop. But there have been entirely too many tragedies, mostly of our own making."

—John F. Kennedy, Jr., quoted in American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy by C. David Heymann









Illustrated version. )


Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Persistence

Oct. 3rd, 2008 10:17 am
pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


"One of the things I just told the class was not to worry about things like talent and inspiration and luck because the real ability that you need in writing is the ability to persist, to learn from your mistakes and keep working, even though you're being rejected all over the place."

—Octavia Butler, interview, Marian Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, 1999



Illustrated version. )

Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] norilana for this quote.
pjthompson: (Default)
With all the brouhahaing on LJ over whether or not to quit writing, I thought this quote popped out of the random quote file at a rather ironic time:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use in being a damned fool about it."

—W. C. Fields

Although I love Fields, irony and synchronicity, I much prefer the quote from Octavia Butler posted by [livejournal.com profile] norilana a few days back:

"One of the things I just told the class was not to worry about things like talent and inspiration and luck because the real ability that you need in writing is the ability to persist, to learn from your mistakes and keep working, even though you're being rejected all over the place."

—Octavia Butler

Vera also referred her readers to the interview which contained that quote (and many others equally inspiring).

I guess, by Fields's standard (and others), I'm a damned fool because although I have nothing to show for years of writing except hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, a few honorable mentions, and several attaboy letters, I have no intention of giving up. I have to write. I will always write as long as I have brain cells left to write with.

I do seriously consider giving up the quest to get published. I've been doing quite a lot of that lately. But giving that up presents problems, too. There's that whole "writing in a vacuum" issue. I'm not really looking for money and glory and fame—I'm looking for readers. I suppose fame is a corollary of gaining readers, but it's not my motivator. I just want people to read my stuff; I just want to tell cranking good yarns that make people keep turning the pages.

There is the whole self-publishing route, but that's not really viable, it seems to me, without a reputation ahead of time. It means, for the most part, trading laboring in obscurity and having your friends read your manuscripts to having a garage full of unsaleable books and forcing your friends to buy those. Kind of like Girl Scout cookies or those awful chocolate bars your friends are always asking you to buy so their kids' school can buy new trombones for the marching band or the troop can head off to Camp Weegeesqueegee in the summertime.

So, I keep trying the traditional publishing route. I keep my expectations low, and I think—if it ever comes to that and I do give up on the traditional publication game—that I'm going to slap my stuff up on a website somewhere. That way nobody's forced to buy inedible chocolate or cardboard cookies.

True, no youngsters will benefit from the free inedible writing...except maybe my inner child. And she's always been a damned fool. That's not likely to change.

P.S. I loved this quote, too, from Ms. Butler:

"When young writers want to know the "secret," I'll generally say there isn't any. You have to find your own secrets."

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