Hand on the heart. Hand on the card. La Dame aux Camelias. We are not at the opera. We’are eating tongues. Among the thousands of cards worth hundreds of thousands – that no one will buy as they are beyond price. The green Holmblad who passed through hands in 1800. The one and only copy of gold on green. My hands rest on it. The fortunetelling pigs, gay women, and treacherous kissing. But the woman with her camelia in her hand beats them all. The other old Holmblad. The one in the book of psalms. Holmblad’s samlede værker. The one and only that only collectors with a heart have. ‘Take this,’ the shaman says, while handing me something soft. ‘You’ll feel better.’ ‘Not your babies,’ the wise woman says. ‘I have another set, the shaman says, the last one. The black one. I’ll keep that one for myself.’ So now I have the one and only red spirit, made by the shaman himself. It saves me from a horrible death induced by coveting Holmblad’s queen. I say farewell, but I swear I can smell that camelia.
Ineffably beautiful.
Yes. So much beauty can send you to heaven. A very strange feeling to sit with those cards. By the time I got to Holmblad’s samlede værker, I was in the presence of grace. And then I swooned with the card of the dame de carreau in my hand.
Swooning now from the other side of the world.
Everyone should see those cards. Frank is a very generous man.
Those marvellous cards are each a new set of glasses through which to see life, old glasses to see with the Shamans eye. Or as Armand said: “la vie est charmante, mon cher, c’est selon le verre par lequel on la regarde” With those glasses to look through life really is enchanting, charming and lovable! Thank you for this!