Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Bert squinted through the hooded twin lenses. At first he was dazzled and confused by the rapidly whirling light-images, but these quickly resolved into geometric figures, an inconceivable number of them, extending off into limitless space in a huge arc, revolving and tumbling like the colored particles in an old-fashioned kaleidoscope. Cubes, pyramids and cones of variegated hues. Swift-rushing spheres and long slim cylinders of brilliant blue-white, gleaming disks of polished jet, spinning..."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"'And dreams are such curious things, containing knowledge we did not know we possess. And deep within our subconscious dreaming are other layers of night vision, unremembered and unsuspected. Sometimes we need assistance so as to unlock those compartments of dream.' She went to a stand and unwrapped a piece of plastic, from which she took a small cone of incense. This she placed in my lap, along with an incense burner shaped as an Eastern deity, an elephant god whose nomenclature I could not recall. 'These will help you to understand. Burn this incense before you go to sleep. Perhaps someday my mother will overcome her sense of guilt and tell you all. Please watch over her, she can be so childish at times. Oh, what a creature of wild dark moods she is, with what an intricate mind she is possessed. She's mentally feral, at times savagely so - and I was borne of such madness. I thank her for it.'"

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"My room was cool and welcoming, and kneeling before the widow I welcomed fresh air with gulps of greedy inhalation. Without undressing, I sat on the bed and placed the figurine onto the bedside stand. I studied for a moment the cone of incense, studying the weird miniscule symbols that had been somehow etched into its surface. Then I placed the cone in its place on the ornament and lit it. Musky smoke found my nostrils, and deeply I breathed it in. My heavy eyes closed. Blurred lines and muted moving spots writhed before my tightly shut eyelids. They moved with shaping, until they formed an image of ancient ruins that stood upon the apex of a black hill. I floated closer to the ruins, saw within them a spot of unhallowed ground where a woman danced. She was Diane, and she danced with provocative movement before an enormous statue of an elephant god that squatted upon a jeweled throne. Dream had altered - horribly so - the features of the silent god. Its ears had lengthened, as had its blasphemous trunk. The trunk and tusks and ghastly mouth were coated with dripping gore."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

The Skin Area. After their meeting, at the exhibition of war wounds at the Royal Society of Medicine's new conference hall, Travis and Catherine Austen returned to the apartment overlooking the zoo. In the lift Travis avoided her hands as she tried to embrace him. He led her into the bedroom. Mouth pursed, she watched as he showed her the set of Enneper's models. "What are they?" She touched the interlocking cubes and cones, mathematical models of pseudo-space. "Fusing sequences, Catherine - for a doomsday weapon." Later, the sexual act between them became a hasty eucharist of the angular dimensions of the apartment. In the postures they assumed, in the contours of thigh and thorax, Travis explored the geometry and volumetric time of the bedroom, and later of the curvilinear dome of the Festival Hall, the jutting balconies of the London Hilton, and lastly of the abandoned weapons range. Here the circular target areas became identified in Travis's mind with the concealed breasts of the young woman with radiation burns. Searching for her, he and Catherine Austen drove around the darkening countryside, lost among the labyrinth of hoardings. The faces of Sigmund Freud and Jeanne Moreau presided over their last bitter hours.

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

I am afraid I have said very little about the astonishing flora and fauna on Venus, and it is obvious that I cannot do justice to this tremendous subject in these few lines. I hope some day, as a matter of fact, to write a monograph on the explanation, in their mythologies, for the similarity of flowers and trees found on Venus, on Aldebaran Minor, and in the Hesperide System.

The Goffur plant is popular with Venusian women who use its flowers as decorations in their homes. The long, waving Snake plant was called so by the colonists because of the soft, sibilant hissing of its leaves. The Sova plant, which releases an almost invisible mist when clumsily handled, usually puts the person handling it to sleep. And then there is the Bibul Tree, at the feet of which Venusian sages have taught since time immemorial, - a huge purple cone that whispers with a particular language of its own when the rains come.

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

Just found this:

Cone-nundrum (2003) (dir. Alan Estridge) (animation)

About the film:

"Alan's first film, the award-winning Cone-nundrum, is a traditional 2D piece exploring a young boy's problems distinguishing dreams from reality."

"A boy dreams of ice cream. Or is it a dream? Ice cream blurs the line between reality and the subconscious in this "thrilla in vanilla."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...AL._SS500_.jpg

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"'You say the idea came to you in a dream?' the voice jabbed out. 'You're sure no one else gave it to you?'

'No,' M. said flatly. A couple of feet away from him a spot lamp threw a cone of dirty yellow light into his face. He dropped his eyes from the glare and waited as the sergeant paced over to his desk, tapped his fingers on the edge, and swung around on him again.

'You talked it over with your friends?'

'Only the first theory,' M. explained quietly. 'About the possibility of flight.'

'But you told me the other theory was more important. Why keep it quiet from them?'

M. hesitated. Outside somewhere a trolley shunted and clanged along the elevated. 'I was afraid they wouldn't understand what I meant.'"

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Using the jutting thumb as a stair rail, I climbed up onto the palm and began my ascent. The skin was harder than I expected, barely yielding to my weight. Quickly I walked up the sloping forearm and the bulging balloon of the biceps. The face of the drowned giant loomed to my right, the cavernous nostrils and huge flanks of the cheeks like the cone of some freakish volcano."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"The giant's remaining foot rose into the air, a steel hawser fixed to the large toe, evidently in preparation for the following day. The surrounding beach had been disturbed by a score of workmen, and deep ruts marked the ground where the hands and foot had been hauled away. A dark brackish fluid leaked from the stumps, and stained the sand and the white cones of the cuttlefish. As I walked down the shingle I noticed that a number of jocular slogans, swastikas, and other signs had been cut into the gray skin, as if the mutilation of this motionless colossus had released a sudden flood of repressed spite. The lobe of one of the ears was pierced by a spear of timber, and a small fire had burned out in the center of the chest, blackening the surrounding skin. The fine wood ash was still being scattered by the wind."