The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (12 page)

An interesting point is that in this particular “ideal” theme, the fundamental diagram of the face is the same as the one of the whole body; the link between the two is that the height of the face is equal to the vertical distance between the middle of the body (intersection of the legs in “ideal” specimens) and the navel (the
minor
of the two segments in the Φ proportion determined by the navel) is equal to the distance between the tip of the medium finger (the arm hanging vertically) and the floor or horizontal level supporting the whole.

The movement made to swing the left arm holding the muleta, which is crossed in front of the body, out and past the right side to get rid of the bull is called crossing. Any time the man does not make this cross he will have the bull under him. Unless he swings him far enough out the horn is certain to catch him.

Sometimes the ice is black and glossy, blasted smooth by the endless wind, with only a few swaths of snow lying on it. Sometimes it is hummocky, with drifts of snow sheltered behind the hummocks. Sometimes it is ridged and buckled from the enormous strains of the wind, the currents and the line of advancing bergs.

Although on a hilltop, the fortress has a comparatively low-lying profile and is sunk into an encircling dry ditch. The towers and the revelin do not rise above the parapet of the curtain walls, so that the whole fortress appears flat-topped with the exception of its traditional square mastio which rises higher in the centre of the fort.

The process begins with a simple geometric form, a triangle, positioned in three dimensional space. The midpoint of each edge of the triangle has been connected to the other midpoints dividing the original triangle into four triangles. The midpoints are deflected randomly upward or downward to give volume to the form.

Above him Escher’s head grew smaller and smaller against the bright circle of sky at the mouth of the moulin. At this depth the shaft divided into two parts like the legs of a pair of trousers. Agassiz chose the wider of the two ways but soon found it repartitioned into a number of impassable holes. Upon signaling to Escher, he was hoisted back up to the bifurcation and then allowed to descend the other passage. He was now more than 100 feet below the surface of the glacier.

... detailed features are shown not by conventional signs nor by their outline ground-plans, but by pictures of their actual appearance as viewed from above at an oblique, near vertical, angle. At first sight this seems to be simply the technique of the bird‘s-eye view, and we might say that Varle’s plan of Philadelphia is a mixture of bird’s-eye view and map.

The house, leading straight on from the stables, is in the shape of a flat dome surmounted by open work walls as in a lighthouse.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the logger-head there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it joggs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out.

On the other side, to their left, Geoffrey’s house came in sight, almost a bird‘s-eye view, the bungalow crouching, very tiny, before the trees, the long garden below descending steeply, parallel with which on different levels obliquely climbing the hill, all the other gardens of the contiguous residences, each with its cobalt oblong of swimming pool, also descended steeply toward the barranca, the land sweeping away at the top of the Calle Nicaragua back up to the pre-eminence of Cortez Palace.

He was left alone with his gray sandwich in the now spacious compartment. He munched and gazed out of the window. A green bank was rising there diagonally until it suffused the window to the top. Then, resolving an iron chord, a bridge banged overhead and instantly the green slope vanished and open country unfurled—fields, willows, a golden birch tree, a winding brook, beds of cabbage.

I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock.