Fresh summer, new beginnings, so a new tumblr felt right.

Who knows what may come?

I'm watching, with a smile.

de Stijl

Picasso said some fantastic things. So did Mondrian and my, do I love Mondrian.


“What first captivated us does not captivate us afterward (like toys). If one has loved the surface of things for a long time, later on one will look for something new.... The interior of things shows through the surface; thus as we look at the surface the inner image is formed in our soul. It is this inner image that should be represented. For the natural surface of things is beautiful, but the imitation of it is without life.... Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality. Between the physical sphere and the ethereal sphere there is a frontier where our senses stop functioning.... The spiritual penetrates the real... but for our senses these are two different things. To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual. We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man.” - Mondrian, 1914

Blossoming Apple Tree, 1912, Mondrian

Try as hard as I possibly might, there is no way my enjoyment of German language can continue much longer from just the pages of a textbook. Garish pages that fall miserably short because they are not the living breathing people, the land, the sights and sounds.
Take me away there, to restore my desire for study!

There is a crescent in your moon, and I'm sorry, but it's because I took the first bite.

Mermaid

"My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music?"


-From Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

I miss my drawing class already. Give me more life drawing! More sketchbook studies of the figure! Pleeeease!

Thank goodness I get to take anatomy next year.

Sigh of relief.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians3.12-17

"This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."

I Corinth 4.1

Paper art.

…so too, the many levels of consciousness are just successive stages in the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit. To know the good, it must know the real; to know the real, it must know the true; to know the true, it must know the intelligible; to know the intelligible, it must attend to the data.
So from slumber, we awake to attend. Observing lets intelligence be puzzled, and we inquire. Inquiry leads to the delight of insight, but insights are a dime a dozen, so critical reasonableness doubts, checks, makes sure. Alternative courses of action present themselves and we wonder whether the more attractive is truly good.



Bernard Lonergan, Method

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
- Jack Kerouac



Sometimes I agree. Usually I am the yawner saying commonplace things, and I like other people who yawn with me. But deep inside me there is the blue centerlight, desiring sometimes to pop and make everybody go 'awww'.

No longer a survival-culture, we live in an identity culture.
Case and point: blogs.

Forbearing one,

Your new morning mercies have to sometimes be militant with me, it seems.

I am finishing a report that is overdue so I can sit in class tomorrow happily, without the knowledge that I am not on schedule with my work.

But I really just want to keep reading my borrowed biography of Henri Matisse. Technically it is research for an art history review paper, so I have good reason to read it. It's taking alot of self control, which I am somewhat short of right now, to leave it on my bed.

I tried to force myself into reading biographies and watching documentaries at one point, but I really hated them. I suppose to really learn from them it just has to be the right time. Wait for a spell, you'll probably reach a time of curiosity again, then all such histories will slide into you easily like liquid.

We need a little more time and space to be curious at Gordon I think.

...for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Raining, in a beautiful library, books shelved in aisles on either side of me...

Life written down onto pages and pages; from pregnancy to literature to public administration and law.

We are about to relocate ourselves to a café, where we can eat and continue our studying. I feel embraced and safe by my place right here though, flanked by all these books and physically un-present people. Goodbye botanists, carpenters, feminists, Buddhists, war historians, chemists and travelers. Enjoy this afternoon.

When I woke up this morning, I laid in bed thinking about the class assignments I should be further along in, the usual kind of dreams which I had to sort out a little, my need for a shower. And somewhere in the middle of that I wondered about it being saturday. I imagined Christ lying dead on a dark slab, his mutilated body finally left alone but lifeless, because it was both murdered and self-gifted. I imagined his friends and followers, the ones who philosophized and the ones who thoughtlessly believed him, walking around their houses and slowly making another meal with disappointment thick between them, weighing down any talking. I wonder if it rained like it is raining today.

I know now that tomorrow something will have happened in the greying body on that cold slab, something electric and scientific and completely new. The self Jesus was would return to the scarified muscles and skin, he would get up, and somehow his real and hot death would be pushed back into a memory of his history. He would be alive, untouchably so, and he would go in search of the ones he knew were sad and hopeless without him.

Today is Saturday though, he is still a body without a person inside of it wrapped in linen and preserving spices.

Oddest to me is that my next thoughts shifted seamlessly into breakfast and the decision between wearing a green or coral shirt for the day.

Found a book of children's story illustrators with Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen's work in Gloucester on Saturday, and I keep wishing I had bought it!

Sleeeepy.

How did I ever manage to stay up all night last year?