Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais's Ophelia depicts a calm, drowning Ophelia surrounded by lush, blooming nature. Shakespeare's Ophelia, mad with grief, falls while picking flowers. Millais presents her floating in the water, her head, hands, and dress not yet submerged. The dark pool of water at her stomach on which her garland of flowers floats hints that rest of her body will soon sink below the surface. Ophelia's expression shows no panic or despair. Her skin glows with life yet, not death. The looming leaves and brush around her seem to swallow her as much as the water does. The flowers and green brush on the far bank and the brown willow reach out over her, while the green in the foreground closes in on her. Millais has not generalized the flowers on the bank or in her garland. He carefully renders the poppies and violets as symbols of her death and faithfulness.

The attention to detail--in the natural setting, the fading glimmer of her gown, and her elegant repose--characterizes a Pre-Raphaelite style, but here the effect of these details seems more poignant. Millais has captured a specific, fleeting moment just after her fall but before her death, and he has immortalized Ophelia. Every reflection and flick of light give the impression of frozen time, and it suggests that Ophelia, though unchanging on the canvas before the viewer, had not always been so close to death and would not remain afloat much longer. Millais painting presents a crystallized moment between life and death.

 

 

The time traveller ...

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”

 

Virginia Woolf

 

Rainy Parisian Sidewalk Cafe by Lindsarm2

 

The Name of the Wind ...

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”

Patrick Rothfuss

Franz Kafka is Dead ...

"He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children's hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees , Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind.

That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children wake up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone.

They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It's said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.” 

Nicole Krauss

 

 

Blindsight ...

“Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.” 

Anaïs Nin

 

 

Saints Cosmas and Damian and their Brothers Surviving the Stake by Fra Angelico

 

Painted between 1439-1442 this piece was once part of a predella, or lower register of Fra Angelico's most important altarpiece. Other parts of it are scattered in various galleries worldwide. The altarpiece was painted for the church of San Marco in Florence, and was commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici - whose name is echoed in the profession of Sts Cosmas and Damian (‘medici’ means 'physicians' in Italian).

 

Cosmas and Damian were two physician brothers living in Asia Minor in the third century. They and their three younger brothers were Christians, and during Diocletian persecutions they were compelled to prove their loyalty to the traditional gods with a sacrifice. When they refused, Lycias, the Roman Consul, submitted them to a series of brutal tortures. Miraculously they survived the torments but, finally, the enraged Consul has them all beheaded.

 

The episode represented here is the fruitless attempt to burn the five brothers. A circle of flames surrounds them, but the fire turns against the torturers, under the incredulous eyes of Lycias and his dignitaries.

 

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” 

Wayne W. Dyer

Children of the Sun by Dead Can Dance

We are ancients
As ancient as the sun
We came from the ocean
Once our ancestral home
So that one day
We could all return
To our birthright
The great celestial dome

We are the children of the sun
Our journey's just begun
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
There is room for everyone
Sunflowers in our hair

Throughout the ages
Of iron, bronze, and stone
We marvelled at the night sky
And what may lie beyond
We burned offerings
To the elemental ones
Made sacrifices
For beauty, peace and love

We are the children of the sun
Our kingdom will come
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
Our carnival's begun
Our songs will fill the air

And you know it's time
To look for reasons why
Just reach up and touch the sky
To the heavens we'll ascend
We are the children of the sun
Our journey has begun

All the older children
Come out at night
Anaemic, soulless
Great hunger in their eyes
Unaware of the beauty
That sleeps tonight

And all the queen's horses
And all the king's men
Will never put these children back
Together again

Faith, hope, our charities
Greed, sloth, our enemies

We are the children of the sun
We are the children of the sun