amuse yeux (don't fall on me)

Lover's Leap, Cumberland, Maryland (postcard from my collection)

Edward Gorey (1925-2000), on which she flung herself over the parapet, from The Object-Lesson

(source: Amphigorey: 15 Books by Edward Gorey, published by The Berkley Publishing Group, New York, NY © 1972)

excerpt from the diary of Nelly Ptaschkina (1903-1920), at the age fifteen:

October 20 (1918)

"I love to stand at the edge of an abyss, at the very edge, so that a single movement, and . . . today, stepping close to the brink of a precipice, although not so deep as I should have wished, the thought came into my mind that some day I should die thus, crashing headlong into the chasm.

My walk today has evoked this premonition . . . . But I feel it more now, after the walk, than during it."

"On July 2, 1920, in Chamonix at the foot of Mont Blanc, (Nelly Ptaschkina) mistook some moss for stones, misstepped and fell from an enormous height into the torrent of the Cascade du Dard. Her body was recovered many miles downstream and she was buried in Paris." . . . Go figure.

(source: Revelations: Diaries of Women edited by Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter, published by Vintage Books © 1974, 1975)


R.E.M. - Fall On Me