A Monet for tonight

A painting for Sunday

The Nativity , by Piero della Francesca. c. 1470

A poem for a cold day

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
(Byron)

Art Sunday

Landscape near Chatou (1905) , by André Derain.

Thursday afternoon

Nude Descending a Staircase

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh.
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.

(Painting by Marcel Duchamp. Poem by X.J.Kennedy)

Rainy day

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what is is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
(e.e.cummings)

the painting is Rain, by Gustave Caillebotte

Art on a cold Sunday

Called a masterpiece from the very first day,Manet's train station, the Gare Saint Lazare, is a favourite of mine. I love airports and railway stations, mainly because I like to sit there watching the people go by, guessing where they come from and where they're going to, I am the little girl on Manet's painting, also from the first time I saw this work.

de profundis

OH why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
(Christina Rossetti)

A sea of one's own

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1906

Painting by Edward Hopper

An Atlantic mood

Atlantique, painted by Jean-Louis Courteau

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

(Lovers on Aran, by Seamus Heaney)

A lighthouse of one's own

"When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself 
with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, 
came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently 
as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came 
lovingly again." ( Virginia Woolf, To the 
Lighthouse)

the painting is The Lighthouse at Colliure (1905) by fauve artist André Derain

Southern Gardens

(painting by Paul Klee)
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as handmade lace,
Or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun ( poem by Sylvia Plath)

Their words

Jane Austen's house

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.—"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!—Selina would stare when she heard of it."—But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. ( Emma, by Jane Austen)

Music for Monday

And so it was that later as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.



Procol Harum, one of my favourite bands. Inspired by Bach ( Air on the G String,from the "Suite No. 3 in D Major"), and with the only reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in rock music,this is one of the best songs of the sixties. It is also one of John Lennon's favourites , they say he bought a lot of copies to keep it playing after each of them wore out.

On the edge of the world

A painting by German artist Joachim Lehrer. Dedicated to Sal and to all those who like lighthouses.

It's Halloween

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us! ( traditional Scottish prayer)

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
--Marcellus.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
--Horatio.
( Hamlet, act 1, scene 1)

Some still say that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact. In case you weren't born on Christmas Day watch out tonight. Happy scary Halloween!

Book Tuesday

Yesterday I posted the closing lines of Ulysses here, today my Book Tuesday is about Opening Lines.
How long does it take for a book to hook you? A whole chapter? The first fifty pages? Or just a few lines? Some books will grab us right from the beginning , you may not read much Dickens anymore but nobody will forget lines such as " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." . Other books will need much more of our time until they can claim to be part of us. I have a little challenge for you, let's share our favourite opening lines.

Here are some of my favourites:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ( from Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy)

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. ( from The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, by Dante)

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.( from Emma, by Jane Austen)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. (from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.(from The Hobbit, by Tolkien)

Have a nice day everybody!

Closing lines

" ...and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

( from Ulysses, by James Joyce)

Can you order it online?

Includes a silk blindfold, two feathers, body dust, body and foot massage oil and a champagne-scented candle. Also includes instructions.

Kathleen Battle and von Karajan

Looking into the future, the voices of Spring in Autumn.

Art on Sunday

Coin de table, by Cézanne. Good morning!

Need reading glasses?

Peekabo, I Almost See You , or a poem by Ogden Nash

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm
isn't long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said
Good evening to his grandfather clock under the impression
that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and
you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he says one
set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Keats's
"Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to strange
wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on
your reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading
glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because without
them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such misshaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Music in the night

Smashing Pumpkin Shot

A fun shot that tastes like the spices in pumpkin pie. You can light this one on fire for entertainment! Go here for recipe.

Flamingos

With all the subtle paints of Fragonard
no more of their red and white could be expressed
than someone would convey about his mistress
by telling you, "She was lovely, lying there
still soft with sleep." They rise above the green
grass and lightly sway on their long pink stems,
side by side, like enormous feathery blossoms,
seducing (more seductively than Phryne)
themselves; till, necks curling, they sink their large
pale eyes into the softness of their down,
where apple-red and jet-black lie concealed.
A shriek of envy shakes the parrot cage;
but they stretch out, astonished, and one by one
stride into their imaginary world.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Good morning

Did you wake up with the blues? Or the "mean reds", as Holly Golightly would say? Nothing like breakfast at Tiffany's .

Absolute beginners

The early bloggers used to post their images on the walls.

Opening lines

One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said." I've known you for years. Everyone said you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than you were then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."

(from The Lover, by Marguerite Duras)

Expectations

TODAY I will let the old boat stand
Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in
To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway.
And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck
Watching the world go by
And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember.
I will choose what clouds I like
In the great white fleets that wander the blue
As I lie on my back or loaf at the rail.
And I will listen as the veering winds kiss me and fold me
And put on my brow the touch of the world’s great will.
Daybreak will hear the heart of the boat beat,
Engine throb and piston play
In the quiver and leap at call of life.
To-morrow we move in the gaps and heights
On changing floors of unlevel seas
And no man shall stop us and no man follow
For ours is the quest of an unknown shore
And we are husky and lusty and shouting-gay.

Waiting, by Carl Sandburg

Dancing to Brel

Paris

A Vue on Notre Dame by Dufy

the beginning

I'm starting with a Vermeer, good morning.