“The deep purple Pacific sky was turning pink when I got back, blossoming all the way to Malibu, making a big show of what a beautiful day it was going to be. I knew it for a lie and that there weren’t ever going to be any more.”
—Kin Platt, The Pushbutton Butterfly
The above quotation is courtesy of my artist friend Coleman Miller. We were talking about a podcaster/YouTube guy who’d interviewed him and then we veered into James Joyce (my go-to quote from Ulysses: “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.”) and Coleman shot me over the above quote by illustrator-author Kin Platt (1911-2003), without including the second sentence.
Which, if you ask me, makes the first sentence seem that much more ominous. Or maybe you find it elating, given it was written in 1970 and we’re now in 2022.
Or maybe you’ve just got questions.
I know I do.
The mystery deepens, and there’s not much we can do about that.
Or can we?
I’m still glowing over last week’s interview with Matt Liddy. It got me thinking about things I used to get all Stargazy about (oh, like piano playing, stamp collecting, classic movies, Victorian artwork aka Pre-Raphaelite, children’s literature, the history of magic, The Flying Glass of Water (1932), just to name a few), so I thought I’d make that the core of this week’s In the Sandbox before we all float off to whatever fresh hell the forthcoming week has in store for us.
And welcome new subscribers! Just to get you up-to-speed, In the Sandbox is our regular Friday community confab around each aspect of Daytalking, Nightwalking, and Stargazing. If you’re unclear on those terms, the links above will steer you to primers on the subject!
So here’s this week’s prompt. It’s super simple and I hope you’ll chime in with your thoughts.
Name 3-5 fascination topics that used to hold your interest but don’t any longer. Can you briefly explain why?
As always, please join us in the comments below. Or don’t. You know the drill.
Also, did you know we all die one day? That’s a subject of Stargazing.
Well, like many kids growing up in the seventies, I was fascinated by UFO’s, Bigfoot, and, yes, the Bermuda Triangle. (I watched “In Search Of” every week!) Well, those mysteries are not really mysteries anymore, so I like most others, I lost interest. But as a kid, it was fun to wonder “What if”, and it probably stretched my imagination.
The Bermude triangle of course:)