How can we know the yawner from the yawn?

The lingual frenulum is rarely portrayed in art.

Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621), a Dutch sculptor and architect, created a spectacular one (see below) in 1615, it forms one of the lines radiating out from the protester's nose.  

Here's a bust Keyser made in 1615,

but the best-known portrayal of this neglected ligament was made by the extraordinary Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) in 1770;

It was after Messerschmidt's death that someone named this piece “The Yawner”, an appellation that seems to have stuck. Messerschmidt didn't name it anything. He didn't name any of the forty-odd “character heads” that he made after he had been forced from public life (he was thought by his aristocratic employers to be mad). Giving such a name to this piece seems reductive, there is far more than a yawn going on here, assuming there is a yawn involved at all. I suspect we keep our sublingual ligaments hidden when yawning...

Self portrait (circa 1783)

… a pandiculating Joseph Ducreux certainly did. We should pay attention to Ducreux, he was an exact contemporary of Messerschmidt

Self portrait (1893)

… and there wasn't much you could get past him.

Red Tree (1928-1930)

Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942)

Acceptance

Bees cover your body,

When I come to you

They swarm and swirl

And settle on us both.

SRP

Portrait of a Lady wearing a Green Dress

Herbert James Gunn (1893-1964)

Withdrawal

You accommodate me,

Then squeeze me out like a pip.

I catch my breath

Before heaving myself to one side

Of your nascent resolve.

SRP

Methodist Party-Animal

It's cadence that airs our emotion,

It's demeanour that signals our plight,

In vino veritas est bunkum,

Drunken words that get lost in the night.

SRP

Water closet

   This is an aquarium I found in a junk shop. I mounted it on a pedestal and painted the woodwork black. My intention is to found a colony of Cherry Shrimps (Neocaridina heteropoda var. red).

   Rearing from the floor of the tank is a cow's skull given to me by a friend who had found it in his barn. I'm hoping that the bolt hole left by the abatteur's stun gun will serve as a bolt hole for my crustaceans. Yes, there's nothing like an obscure subaqueous pun of questionable taste to get the party going.

   I have been on the lookout for a vertical tank for some time, they're quite rare and it wasn't until I was setting it up that I realized why; landscaping the substrate is almost impossible. Planting the Eelgrass (Vallisneria americana) was achieved by standing on a chair, stooping over the rim and submerging my denuded upper body.

   Had the chair toppled it would have resulted in a disconcerting discovery for those curious enough to eventually batter down my door (“Strange he left no note”), but it would have been in keeping with my original aim of creating a watery memento mori.

Green Flies

   At six years old I was morbidly attracted to a flame-haired classmate called Sandra Edwards. I would stalk her with the imperceptible stealth of a tick, insinuating myself into her anticipated path and waiting, aquiver, for her to brush by.

Once, during an S. E. reconnaissance mission, I came across a couple of boys peering at a small turd they had discovered just outside the school lavatories. They said it had been left by Gary Rowley in his haste to get back to the chaos of the playground (from the presumably even greater chaos of his lavatorial procedure). Soon an ever-changing group of children was keen to experience and spread news of this most mundane of apparitions as if it were a miraculous acheiropoiton - 'that not made by human hand', which, indeed, it wasn't. Sandra Edwards, on hearing the rumour, was quickly upon the scene and so, sensing a romantic opportunity, I prepared to exchange smirks over our shared derision of Gary Rowley. All that was needed was a moment of eye-contact. Unfortunately Sandra Edwards' gaze remained resolutely downcast, she had found something altogether more interesting to look at.

Seeing as the much vaunted “shared interest” approach had proved futile I decided to try a more traditional tactic; I would buy her affection. My bribe would be that ornamental scarab of my childhood, the Ladybird. At the next opportunity a reluctant Coccinella septumpuncta was plucked from a rosebush and dropped into a matchbox along with some Greenfly aphids to act as its packed lunch. For added intimacy I resolved to present my gift away from the bedlam of the school.

Due to my years I must have been escorted by my mother to the end of Sandra Edwards' street, though I remember being alone when I tapped on her front door. Mrs Edwards answered and summoned her daughter who appeared wearing the wary expression that she had come to adopt in my presence. I presented my tribute and the recipient, at her mother's insistence, took a tentative peep inside. Alarmed she dropped the box.

“It's a Ladybird - it eats Greenflies”, I blurted to a retreating mop of red hair.

“It eats flies?”, came an incredulous and distant reply.

“Green Flies”, specified I, to me.

Secrets of Interior Design

Interior Design has been with us ever since we left the Exterior.

Self-appointment to the rank of Interior Designer can be accomplished through spending a lot of time in IKEA. It can also be achieved by amassing dead birds, addressing them individually...

Source unknown

 and then sticking them all over the place.

My cranioteque

It is important to take the occasional break from the rigors of Interior Design...

C D Friedrich

 so that you are able to remain focussed on the task in hand...

J E Millais

even when the curious are trying to ascertain what exactly it is that you do all day.