(Photo by Paul Beard)
✸ Amazing photos of the privately owned Natural History
Cabinet of Alfred Russel Wallace, 19th Century
(via Morbid Anatomy)
✸ Holy cats, check out The Frantic Expressionist Art of Josef Fenneker,
a new post from my dear Mlle. S. Elizabeth (aka. Ghoul Next Door) she’s
been writing some exemplary blog posts for Coilhouse. I can always count
on her to turn me on to new and inspiring art and music! Cheers, sweet lady!
Oh man, and now I absolutely must see The Tragedy of Belladonna! Amazement.

Femme avec des fleurs by Romaine Brooks
✸ Portraits from a Romanian Women’s Prison
(via Marina Galperina at ANIMAL New York)
✸ I’ve been hearing a lot about China Miéville’s new book,
“Kraken”, from the enthusiastic tweets of writer Maria
Dahvana Headley and now I’m really itching to read it.
So far, I’ve only read King Rat and Perdido Street Station,
and enjoyed both immensely. The New York Times Book
Review article, Making Squid the Meat of a Story
makes it sound pretty damn tantalizing:
“‘Kraken’ fairly throbs with the fantastical: a squid-worshiping cult,
oppressed magical animals on picket lines, a very bad man who
is actually a tattoo on someone’s back, and a sorcerer who folds
people up like origami and puts them into tiny boxes for easier transport.”
and
“’The book is intended to be kind of a romp,’ Mr. Miéville said.
‘What happens if two apocalypses are scheduled to happen
at the same time? How cosmologically embarrassing!'”

(Photo by myriorama, on Flickr)
✸ You can download a new School of Seven Bells song
over at RCRDLBL right now, and listen to tracks from their
new album. I like them. They are absurdly pretty sisters, an
an also absurdly pretty boy, and they make floaty music.
This is how they got their name, which makes me like them even more:
“While watching PBS at 3am, Alejandra caught a show about
the School of Seven Bells: a mythical South American pickpocket
academy that may or may not have existed in the ‘80s. The idea of
seven minds working as one appealed to her, as did the phrase’s
cryptic musicality, and a creative spark ignited.”
✸ This article from the literary journal Brick is totally fascinating:
The Lizard, the Catacombs, and the Clock:
The Story of Paris’s Most Secret Underground Society
by Sean Michaels (of killer music blog Said the Gramophone)
There’s a few more bits on the secret catacomb theatre here:
In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema
and here:
Places: The Parisian Catacombs — Paris, France
✸ Also brings to mind this mysterious place:
Margate Shell Grotto – replete with mystical designs, all in glued shells

(Photo by Working Rex, on Flickr)
✸ The Reclusive Artitst: Joseph Cornell and Fernando Pessoa
from the great art blog Escape Into Life
(via A Journey Around My Skull)
✸ A shocking map of libraries being dismantled across the US – so, so sad.
(via Miss Emma)
✸ I want to live here: In a Crumbling Estate, Creativity and History Meet
(via Odette O.)

(Source unknown, alas – I think it’s a Russian body-artist’s work, perhaps?)
It’s possible I’ve posted this image at some point before, but it’s one of my
favorites. I want this to be my desk. I want to be jade green, cool and mossy.