Boletellus obscurecoccineus, photographed in Australia.
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
Vincent Van Gogh
Bryde’s whale carcass lying in a mangrove forest carried onto shore by a large wave.
It had occurred to me that all human beings are divided
into those who wish to move forward
and those who wish to go back.
Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night
Deep-Sea Animal Species Look Like Mushrooms but Defy Classification
The new animal species Dendrogramma enigmaticaI, shown here, was pulled from the deep sea off Australia in 1986 but has only now been scientifically described. The opaque portion is its highly branched digestive canal. Two species are recognised and current evidence suggest that they represent an early branch on the tree of life, with similarities to the 600 million-year-old extinct Ediacara fauna.
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
Aristotle
Tibetan sky burial
For centuries, Tibetans have practiced a unique form of burial that doesn’t put the body in the ground. Adept Tantrics typically dissect the corpse in a ritualistic fashion and leave it on the mountaintops for the birds and elements. In much of Tibet the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and with fuel and timber scarce, a sky burial is often more practical than cremation.
I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.
Werner Herzog
סלומה 