Rob Angeli
Bio
sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt
There are tears of things, and mortal objects touch the mind.
-Virgil Aeneid I.462
Stories (160/0)
- Top Story - July 2023
Tragic CrownTop Story - July 2023
Frankly, I barely remember my own coronation--hardly surprising, given I was only a week old. Born a Queen: seems I was destined for greatness, doesn't it? Well, a week after my birth, my father the King, ill and bedridden, was said to have woefully bemoaned:
By Rob Angeli10 months ago in History
Love Before First Sight
This piece is part pastiche, part translation, and part original composition. It is intended to produce an impression on the English language reader of the beauty of the love poetry of the troubadours. This movement flourished in the south of France, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, in a language called Old Provençal or Old Occitane. Both poetry and prose will be used to render this.
By Rob Angeli10 months ago in Poets
- Top Story - June 2023
(Finding the Wings): Painted from LifeTop Story - June 2023
DISCLAIMER: Contains violence, minors in compromising situations, some strong language. I have used experiences from my own boyhood to lend realism to the persona of the young hero, Cecco, but most events are drawn from historical fact.
By Rob Angeli11 months ago in Art
Mesmerizing (Measuring Magic Tricks)
MESMERIZING Animal Magnetism makes All submit to the great Magnetizer; even though they appear to be asleep, his voice, a sudden look, a signal launched with the flick of the wrist, pulls them out of it. We cannot help but acknowledge the magnetic presence of a great power which moves and controls patients, never placebo, always
By Rob Angeli11 months ago in Fiction
AGAVE BLUES
But LO, the MIRACLE OF AGAVE BLUES the miracle of nature was the great goddess of the [Mexican Aloe], Maguey, the Goddess Mayahuel, whose flowers cluttered in pyramidal clusters, towerlapping above their dark coronals of leaves, like so many swords of dull blue flint. They can be seen unsheathing themselves to the sun in many a wide acre of the table-land. Its bruised pulp of spikes afford a paste to make paper; its juice when blades are cut is fermented into an intoxicating beverage called PULQUE, of which the inhabitants, to this day, are very fond; its leaves also supply an impenetrable thatch for the humbler dwellings. Thread for weaving coarse cloth and strong rope were drawn from its tough and twisted fibers; it made the weave of the paper they recorded their picture-codices with. Not only that, but its thorns at the extremity of the leaves were used as pins and needles used in ritualized self-mutilation of the tongue and genitals. The body part would be pierced with the agave needle, thereafter the blood was smeared on a bit of paper and burned in the fire as an offering. At last,the root, when properly cooked, made a sweet and wholesome dish. The AGAVE, in short, was vestment, mead, meat, and writing material for the Aztec People. It is certain that "Nature never before had bundled together so many of the elements of human comfort and CIVILIZATION!"
By Rob Angeli11 months ago in Fiction