Musings, ruminations, thoughts and discussions on life & living, music, religion, politics, love, philosophy, and all other eccentricities of this sort.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Bereavement… and of Francis Bacon.

My mother’s cousin died this morning.

GRIEF… wailing, neverending torment that infects others with its sickness. Though… does it really infect? We, all of us, intermingle, as do our breaths, our electrical fields (misname them ‘auras’ if you will), and suchlike. Grief melds with others and makes them feel the intensity of its passion, even — if heard — across vast distances.

TEARS… streaming. Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’ suddenly makes incredible and vivid sense. Francis Bacon’s melting faces portray the truth of our grief, torment and angst. What lies under our masks that we present to the world, to each other, oft times even to ourselves. The POTENTIAL there, underneath it all, awaiting catalysts.

Unadulterated grief so vivid it looks theatrical, abruptly even mocking. A window between us as the hearse drives away. I can say and do nothing since we cannot communicate — only look. I feel like a voyeur, like a character from a panel in one of Bacon’s triptychs. Studies from the Human Body, 1970 features, in the final segment, a man who seems painted on a door and yet also viewing as though through a window. He has a camcorder set up to record some private act or other. I suppose in a sense I too merge into him, since here I sit, typing about all this now.

Monday 5 September 2011

Does My Blood Thus Muster To My Heart;

From today I start my new exercise plan. Simple really: I work my way to one hundred press–ups in a row and two hundred sit–ups. The sites contain a plan of how many to do, and suggest I perform each exercise 3 times a week. I shall perform the press–ups on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the sit–ups on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. This leaves me Sunday to ‘recover’.


Tonight my list runs thus:

DAY 1
REST 60 SECONDS BETWEEN EACH SET (LONGER IF REQUIRED)


SET 1
10
SET 212
SET 37
SET 47
SET 5max (at least 9)


Tomorrow my sit–ups look like this:

DAY 1
REST 60 SECONDS BETWEEN EACH SET (LONGER IF REQUIRED)

SET 19
SET 29
SET 36
SET 46
SET 5max (at least 8)

I hope things go OK!

Saturday 6 August 2011

A la pointe de mon pinceau…

So I have started painting in earnest, having never really handled a brush for artistic painting since high school. In fact, I recall enjoying drawing at school (though I could not manage it very well), but disliking the painting because I would inevitably spoil my nice drawings.


I have taken up using acrylics, though I have had a go at watercolours too, and even some oil pastels. I have painted a few pieces, but I suppose it takes hard graft and practice to achieve decent results.

Currently reading: Quick and Clever Acrylics by Michael Sanders. He believes I can learn to paint!

The Out Campaign: Scarlet Letter of Atheism