Rex Whistler, Girl with a Red Rose, 1935

Asking by Dan Fante

For years I thought that
talking to the Gods
was an exercise
done privately
under
unforgiving
 
distant stars
 
ridiculous unrequited prayer
done by staring
at old cold books
with mean small print
 
But then I discovered
that just
ain’t
it at all
 
God can be found in the ‘thank you’ voice of the guy at the counter
at the 7-11
or
the quietness of a stranger’s parking lot smile
or
the rattle of weeds across a dry summer Mojave
or
watching my untethered fingers jump jump jumping
across the keys
deep in the middle of typing three hours worth of truth
 
God – for me – turned out to be
a conscious choice
a self-evoked experience
 
just
like
love

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Diogenes, 1873

Tom Samuelson, Owl and Mouse, Minnesota, 2013

Neil Leifer, Muhammad Ali Knocks Out Cleveland Williams, Houston Astrodome, 1966

Thomas Hart Benton, The Twist, 1964

Gabriel de Cool, The Muse, 1895

"the content was something like I'd never seen before, anywhere, the level of mayhem, violence, dismemberment, naked women, loose body parts, huge, obscene sex organs, a nightmare vision of hell-on-earth never so graphically illustrated before in the history of art." ~ Robert Crumb on the work of S. Clay Wilson

A bit late but Richard Kadrey finally got a UK publisher for Sandman Slim!

"The best B movie I've read in at least twenty years. An addictively satisfying, deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece, Sandman Slim swerves hell-bent through our culture's impacted gridlock of genres... it's like watching Sergio Leone and Clive Barker co-direct from a script by Jim Thompson and S. Clay Wilson." ~ William Gibson on Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim novels

The Earth and the Moon in scale to each other in terms of both size and distance.

The Known Universe by American Museum of Natural History

Ivan Aivazovsky, Moon Night, 1885

Po' Boy Blues by Langston Hughes

When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world's turned cold.

I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An' de road is hard an' long.

I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.

Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I's so weary
I wish I'd never been born.

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun, 1952

Henri Rousseau, Tiger in a Tropical Storm, 1891

Utagawa Hiroshige, Rough Sea at Naruto in Awa Province, 1856

Arnold Newman, Kurt Gödel, 1956