Pastels & Aquarelles. No Poetry.

Save your criticism! Never painted before!

Community – Communication – Forgotten Means of Getting in Touch

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…..just one more thing: stop Facebooking! By doing that you create your own dossier and make the fbi’s job so much easier….

The Last Colors of Late November.....

Just ….breathtaking!!!

As Below So Above....

The lips of Wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding.

When the ears of the Student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to fill them with Wisdom.

The Principles of Truth are Seven. He who knows these, understandingly, possesses the Magic Key before whose touch all the Doors of the Temple fly open:

1. The ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental
2. As above, so below; as below so above
3. Nothing rests; Everything moves; Everything vibrates
4. Everything is Dual
5. Everything flows
6. Every Cause has its Effect
7. Gender is everything

Intimate Portraits of Sycamore Trees

….just like people, pain and sadness is hard to hide…

"As I Walked Out One Evening"

...The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time....
"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed...

W.H. Auden(1937)

Per te, amore…

Io non so parlar d'amore
l'emozione non ha voce
E mi manca un po il respire
Se ci sei c'e troppa luce

La mia anima si spande
Come musica d'estate
Poi la voglia sai mi prende
E mi accende con i baci tuoi

Io con te saro sincero
Restero quel che sono
Disonesto mai lo giuro
Ma se tradisci non perdono

Ti saro per sempre amico
Pur geloso come sai
Io lo so mi contraddico
Ma preziosa sei tu per me…

Three Years Before the Apocalypse?

...Whether it is The Mayan Prophecy or prophecies of Nostradamus becoming true, or Planet X, Nibiru or a "killer” gamma-ray burst, or planet Earth's alignment with the center of Milky Way galaxy, or reverse polarity of the magnetic poles, whether this event will originate deep within the core of our planet, forcing a catastrophic change in our protective magnetic field… Will it matter when it comes?

Maybe it is a good thing knowing that there are only 3 years left…. Maybe everyone of us would make fewer mistakes during remaining three years and love truly…. Maybe we should start care for each other now… If the Apocalypse will not take place as scheduled (!), it would hurt no one’s pride to be nice to each other….
It will be a great test for humanity to prove its usefulness and goodness…

Allow me to quote here one of my old poems,
“…Live your life like there is one day to live.
If you can forgive yourself, God will forgive…”

Today I made you think.

Departure

"....The room is dark and weary…
Between your face and mine
A cloudy, smoky veil..."

“Late Night Departure”

…We sit on the floor,
The room is dark and weary,
I lit up a cigarette
And place between your lips…

So much to explain, to say
But talk we’d rather not…
This room will hold my scent
Long after I am gone…

I decode your thoughts
In your kind grey eyes –
How trivial uttering words
When the two can read each other’s mind…

In silence you gaze
Memorizing my face…
Am still amused and I smile -
How easy to read your mind!…

One thought made me quiver with pain,
“Will I ever see him one more time?”
“Will I ever touch her again?” –
Your thought is echoing mine…
**********************
The room is dark and weary…
Between your face and mine
A cloudy, smoky veil,
In this haze we’re slowly drifting apart…
August 1980

Dina

Dina. Dinah. Deena… My 26 years old Kotik (little kitten) moved away two weeks ago…

Park Slope, Brooklyn. This is where she lives now… An hour and half away from me…

Going Home from Brooklyn....

An old man is playing sax…. At first, I thought he was drunk… then, while waiting for my #1 train (late at night it may take up to 30 minutes, unfortunately) I was watching him: his wrists were swollen, his feet – crippled…. The tunes he played, at times, sounded crippled too: tired, broken, incoherent…. Yet, there were moments, when it sounded free and sweet and sexy, taking the listener into the warmth and spiciness of enchanting New Orleans…

14th street station. One of the ugliest and dirtiest station in NYC, where nasty rats are looking at passengers above and trying to make an eye contact begging for scraps of food…

“Tomorrow”

...Tomorrow is just another day,
Yet, people shall remember to be kind…
And every evening everyone would say,
“Today I made ten people smile…”

“Thinking Aloud” - to be read tomorrow

She’s looking. Looking, looking….
She thought yesterday, thinking again:
“What is there for me tomorrow –
Another somber day? More pain?”

“Tomorrow”, a mysterious matter,
Out of everyone’s reach and touch,
A rock-solid fence which crumbles
At the strike of twelve, at midnight…

She thinks beyond her pain and sorrow,
"Tomorrow, she thinks, shall be a better day,"
“Tomorrow is a Hope,
Tomorrow is always better than today…”
**********************
Tomorrow is just another day,
Yet, people shall remember to be kind…
And every evening everyone would say,
“Today I made ten people smile…”
May 31, 2009

A little update from the Greek section at the Met… Among others, a papyri fragment of “Iliad”…

The Central Park, NYC, on a soft May 1st, 2009

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Be your own art expert. Two paintings posted side by side, one – the original, the second is a copy (the “Doria version”, some do suggest that Caravaggio himself had copied his own work):
“…here’s the boy’s gaze caught the viewer directly, mockingly, whereas the eyes of the Doria boy seemed slightly averted, the smile distinctly less open…”

…he (Caravaggio) had been resurrected from obscurity, in large part by Roberto Longhi, who had written in 1941 that Caravaggio was “one of the least known painters if Italian art”. His eclipse occurred with astonishing rapidity. Caravaggio’s realism had initially attracted many followers – the Caravaggisti.
…By the end of the XVII century, he was regarded as a minor painter of low repute. The years passed and few connoseurs bothered to take a note of him. One who did , the nineteenth-century English critic John Raskin, wrote in disgust that “Caravaggio fed “upon horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin.”

When Longhi put together his Caravaggio exhibition in Milan in 1951, many of the visitors, art historians among them, knew little or nothing about the artist. His paintings had long been consigned to the back rooms and storage bins of galleries and museums…

Regarding this painting, St. John, most art historians thought Caravaggio had stolen the pose from Michelangelo, from a nude in the Sistine Chapel.

(from the book by Jonathan Harr, “The Lost Painting”)

Michal Kleofas Oginski - Polonaise "Farewell to the Homeland"

Michal Kleofas Ogiñski (born October 7, 1765, Guzów near Warsaw - died October 10, 1833, Florence, Italy) was both Belarusian and Polish statesman, rebel, composer, most known for his polonaise Po¿egnanie Ojczyzny / Farewell to the Homeland.
Ambassador, composer, the General Paymaster of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
He was born in Guzów near Warsaw. Graduated at home. Was good at music and foreign languages especially.

Happy Spring To All! Happy Travel to Some!

"There are souls, in these noise-tired times, that turn aside into unfrequented lanes, where the deep woods have harbored the fragrances of many a blossoming season. Here the light, filtering through perfect forms, arranges itself in lovely patterns for those who perceive beauty..."
Roy J. Cook

Anna Akhmatova:

"There are the words that couldn’t be twice said,
He, who said once, spent out all his senses.
Only two things have never their end –
The heavens’ blue and the Creator’s mercy."

"My my Delilah..."

"I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window
I saw the flickering shadow of love on her blind
She was my woman
As she decieved me I watched and went out of my mind...."