Plain Truth ...

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche



Time Unveiling Truth by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

The Sense of an Ending ...

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides,
from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which the scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind,
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn.
I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered and I roamed through the wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice directed me:
-Live in the layers, not on the litter-
Though I lack the art to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.
I am not done with my changes.”

Stanley Kunitz


Nude goddess with four arms walking through a field by Mario S Nevado



The cost of living ...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

Marianne Williamson

 

 

The Crossing ...

“I don't think that anything happens by coincidence... No one is here by accident... Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason"...”

James Redfield

 

 

Ramdom acts ...

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

Leo Buscaglia

 

 

Life passing by ...

“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.”

Garrison Keillor

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.