Window

John Singer Sargent - An artist in his studio (1904). Oil on canvas

"There’s this painting that I always keep with me, always. It's one of those little postcards reproductions. I've even made a gold frame for it out of balsa wood. The painting is called "The painter in his studio" and is by John Singer Sargent. The painting depicts a man painting a picture in his studio but his studio is not a artist studio but is the artist's home .. the man has the painting proped up on the bed in the bureau, there is no easel. You get the idea that the only things in the room are the bed, the bureau and the chair upon which the man sits. Much of this composition is given over to laundry and rumpled bed linens. The man is confined to extremely small quarters, the setting is grim and it contrasts with the painting that the man is working on, a landscape. Horses meander through a soft green medow, the trees are lush and full and the blue horizon is dotted with clouds.

Most Sargent comentators dismiss this painting they consider it to be nothing but a silly joke, an artist painting a landscape in his crammed dullful bedroom, but I consider this painting to be a masterpiece because it captures the idea that through art man is able to transcend his dismall swall surroundings.

This painting is not a joke, this artist is not painting a landscape. This artist is painting a window.

Look out this window for a moment, you'll find the view is brathtaking. I've spent my entire life looking for the way to get to the other side of this window. I've been told time and time again that I'm wasting my efforts but I've never given up. I've always known that there is a way to break the glass and crawl out over the window-sill, I've always been certain of it and I've made a vow that I'll never give up."

B.W. Theory of Everything

Old gilt

When out of exhaustion all you can pour on your exam is a nebula of approximative concepts.
When your head feels turgid and your eyes are sore.
When your shoulders feel you are carrying the world on them.
When your legs are weakened and your complexion weary.

It takes the breeze in your face while cycling back home,
the warm golden sunbeams of early spring
that makes Paris gleam
or just a kind bearded smile and a wave
from behind a windshield,
to remind you

that it's all worth it.

It was the year of Our Lord...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The unlived lives

We are made not only of what we did and accomplished. We’re also made up of all the things we discarded, all the things we failed to do, all the things we did not dare do. That’s part of us. All the things you renounced. The woman you didn’t marry. The woman who said, ‘No, I don’t love you’.

Javier Marias, “The Full English” by Robert Collins, The Sunday Times Feb. 14th, 2016