“I have no time to describe my plans. I should say a good deal about The Hours, & my discovery; how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment.”
Virginia Woolf, in her diary, August 30, 1923
Today’s Google front page show one of Jackson Pollock‘s artworks… Yes, today is his bee day… The image took me back to my London days, when I first saw his works at the Tate Modern and started to fall in love… People are seldom concerned what the idea, the story, the message is behind his paintings… Whatever it is, it is in your eyes… and it’s “good” art (whatever that means) in your eyes as long as it puts a smile on your face… His work does it for me!
Happy birthday Mr. Pollock… Wherever you are!
S
Oh, this is brilliant… How can someone be such a great writer at ‘grand old’ age of 18… I’m reading “Bonjour Tristesse” by Françoise Sagan right now, which I’m finding amazingly well (and purely) written… Added bonus: just before the story starts, on the first page, there is a French poem published by P. Eluard…
Adieu tristesse
Bonjour tristesse
Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond
Tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j’aime
Tu n’es pas tout a fait la misère
Car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncent
Par un sourire
Bonjour tristesse
Amour des corps aimables
Puissance de l’amour
Dont l’amabilité surgit
Comme un monstre sans corps
Tête désappointée
Tristesse beau visage.
A love-at-first-sight piece… Even if you don’t fully understand the language, I’d reckon the flow of the poem gives you the beauty and the sorrow behind it…
S
Oh, I *heart* this one…
“Here’s a chart that shows my coffee bias over the years.
For good measure I have added my bagel preferences over the same period. (1) Drip coffee, (2) Starbucks, (3) blueberry bagels, (4) sesame bagels, (5) poppy-seed bagels, (6) everything bagels
Please don’t hold my brief affair with blueberry bagels against me. I cured myself of this aberration.”
— By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times
“I get a lecture from my therapist every week which boils down to: pull your socks up. Okay, it’s a bit more sophisticated than that… it’s working and I love it.
Thoughts, my therapist says, are very untrustworthy things. Don’t buy into them. some thoughts are useful – learn to recognize these. Ditch the others. And just because you feel something, it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
OK… Let’s talk a bit about culture here… The past few weeks have seen me already meet a few of my new year resolutions… Well, only one of them, come to think of it… I watched a few good films, the kind with great acting and artistry… “Doubt“, a great movie with an even greater cast, creating much doubt in the audience… “The Reader“, a stunning film, played beautifully by my all-time favorite actress, Kate Winslet, winner of not just one but two Golden Globe awards… This was a movie that reminded you of true love lasting a lifetime… “Milk“, starring the incomparable Sean Penn, actor extraordinaire…
I finally made it to the AGO as well… The new addition to the building has been amazingly designed by Frank Gehry… Unfortunately, the exhibitions at the time of my visit were not too interesting to me, but hey, there are always more to come…
Toronto is cold but sunny these days… I was working from home yesterday; though craving my morning walk in the fresh wintery air, my coffee, and the live underground stories made me come to work today… In one fine cold day!
S
“Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.”
And the story continues… The story of the “never-working” espresso machines!
“My inner accountant quickly convinced me to buy one of those little espresso machines (for the price of approximately 10 tall lattes). It had a steam nozzle to heat milk, which one should clean very thoroughly after each use. I didn’t have the patience to do so. Within a few uses, an unappetizing, dark brown, organic lump developed around the nozzle. A few days later it had become unremovable, and I reverted to getting my coffee outside.”
— By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times
– I guess it’s not too late to make a new-year’s resolution. This year I resolve to stop doubting myself and have faith in my decisions… I wonder how long THAT will last.
– Four seconds by my watch!
And his charming story still continues… Happy Friday lovelies 🙂
“When I came to New York in 1995, I was delighted to discover deli coffee. At the time, I was focused less on taste and more on quantity and price. Thus, I was in caffeinated paradise. In January 1999 a friend seduced me into switching to latte. Within weeks a considerable portion of my budget ended up at the L Cafe in Williamsburg.”
— By Christoph Niemann – The New York Times