Black and White Challenge
Invited by an Egyptian Facebook friend, I accepted the Black and White Challenge to post a black and white photo each day for seven days. The biggest challenge turns out to be finding black and white photos from my life to post. The rules say the pix must be photographs that you’ve taken, not snaps or portraits of yourself.
The task set me to digging through old albums, followed by a deal of scanning. The trip down memory lane has well been worth the price of admission. An added bonus was the discovery of the black and white mode on my Samsung Galaxy 8 (cellphone) camera.
With great delight, I am being reintroduced to the universe of gray tone with all the nuance, dreamy mood and crackly reality that entails. Following are my posts. I’ll be adding each day as I share moments of my life through a different lens.
Day One. Zebras. Masai Mara, Kenya
Day Two. Vendor at Paris Flea Market
Day Three. Full Moon over Port San Luis
Day Four. Carpet Market
Day Five. Reflections on our Riyadh apartment 1976
Day Six. Thanksgiving mantle. Pic taken with b&w mode, Samsung Galaxy 8.
Day Seven. Books. Kaleidoscope Collage.
The charms of Aphrodite codified in the First Greek Sex Manual
Image from Greek drinking up 500 BC.
If you were ever in doubt about the realism of a Temple of Aphrodite with one thousand sacred prostitutes as I describe in The Emerald Tablet, you might enjoy this article drawn from Greek texts. Long before the kama sutra, a fair number of Greek women, both famous and unknown, codified in great detail the arts of love and carnal pleasure.
In this instance, the serving girl of the renown Helen of Troy, kidnapped wife of Menalaos, is credited with discovering positions for intercourse and other wanton acts.
Oculus in Aphrodite’s Temple in Korinth as featured in The Emerald Tablet
The oculus of the Temple of Aphrodite of Korinth featured in the early chapters of The Emerald Tablet might have looked very similar to this ceiling of the grand foyer at the Altes Museum in Berlin.
Oculus at Altes Museum Berlin
Roman mosaic from time of Hadrian and Elektra in Leptis Magna
This stunning, intricate Roman mosaic displayed at Altes Museum in Berlin could easily have been the floor of the triclinium (dining room) of the villa by the sea in Leptis Magna where Elektra of The Black Scroll finds herself enslaved.
Antinous from the Altes Museum Berlin
This glorious marble from the Altes Museum in Berlin shows Antinous in all his glory. This is the first, fully intact, full body sculpture of Hadrian’s renown lover I’ve personally seen. Is it any wonder that Isis, in her many incarnations in my trilogy – The Red Mirror, The Emerald Tablet and The Black Scroll – finds solace in his arms?
January Ice Mantel
My January Ice Mantel tribute to crystalline purity.
January Ice Mantel by night.
January 2017 chez moi
Happy Holidays from my heart(h) to yours!
Happy Holidays from my Heart(h) to yours!
Angel Chimes. A tradition at my home. Not Christmas without them.
