Sisyphean task

I hate new year, I hate the retrospection of it all. Every year has its ups and downs, the rough with the smooth and Im usually a half full glass type of woman but to be honest , this new years eve thing?, its always a Sisyphean task for me. I try to be upbeat about it, really I do but its just impossible to get that boulder of joviality untinctured with retrospection up the hill, despite having not many gripes about the year in itself . I am very thankful I still have all those I love around me and in good health too.

But generally, its the emphasis thats poured on the celebration of the forward movement of time???WHY??? if thats the case why not have it in the middle of the week and the middle of the day??? Or in Summer??Ive made my peace with New Years Eve, we dont like each other and walk on different sides of the street. And if people want to go out and party, (which is any excuse-) fine and I am more than okay with the psyche the general population having closure on bad times.

I think I am just getting old to be honest..

Silhouettes on an airing cupboard

When I was about 17 I became very ensconced in the world of Illustration,Reiniger, Konewka, Neilson, Clarke, Fitzpatrick, Mouse in short, a hoard of artists where mesmerizing to me despite the fact that I had not taken art as a module at school. Having an obsession about mythology and the supernatural as a child it was a natural progression that an Artist by the name of Arthur Rackham shone to me most of all, his work was striking and unique, and his use of color and shading compensated brilliantly for the limitations of color printing of the period.

He stood shoulder to shoulder with my favorite pre raphaelite artists(with whom I became obsessional around the same time). Picking up a copy of Sleeping beauty I was spellbound by his silhouette work , so much so I marched out to the shed and grabbed some black gloss and brushes and went to work on both doors of my room. The Airing cupboard and the back of my bedroom door. I was very pleased with the end result and to my surprise so was my mother when I had finished. But above all what struck me about his work was although delicate, charming and rich in detail it had a pervading element of the slightly sinister which quintessentially is the appeal for me.

This christmas period with the snow making me housebound I shall take a trip out to the shed, liberate some paint and brushes and try and reproduce the cupboard door once more.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ive always loved rummaging through old dusty bookshops in search of wonderful, dog eared volumes with seperate quests of illustration, stories , non-fiction or whatever I was obsessed about that particular season.. I loved finding odd little books and came across a collection of works by an american poet Ella wheeler wilcox Poems of Passion- I considered myself to be a fairly deep thinker for my young teenage years and when I first read the lines of ' Laugh, and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone' in her 'Solitude' poem ,I knew my angst of youth had found a sounding board. Baring in mind that as a teenager nothing could have prepared me for the bittersweet empathy and understanding of another poem of hers that has haunted me ever since and one I could apply to every potential relationship I had ever wished for even into my adult life. Below is the quite gem that is entitled "Platonic". A poem of unrequited love , I find it bereaving but so beautiful and passionate.



I knew it the first of the summer,
I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted;
But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly
Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects --
The moon and the worlds above, --
And our talk was tinctured with science,
And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship
You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
Though both were in their youth.
What would you have said, my lady,
If you had known the truth!

What would you have done, I wonder,
Had I gone on my knees to you
And told you my passionate story,
There in the dusk and the dew.
My burning, burdensome story,
Hidden and hushed so long --
My story of hopeless loving --
Say, would you have thought it wrong?

But I fought with my heart and conquered,
I hid my wound from sight;
You were going away in the morning,
And I said a calm good-night.
But now when I sit in the twilight,
Or when I walk by the sea
That friendship, quite Platonic,
Comes surging over me.
And a passionate longing fills me
For the roses, the dusk, the dew;
For the beautiful summer vanished,
For the moonlight walks -- and you

Reality Bites

Ive decided to write again in the ol blog, just looking at the viewing numbers here in one day alone tells me either I was doing something right or I have a fuck load of people trying to spam past posts etc.. A lot has happened since I last wrote here, Ive become an aunt twice and also engaged and I caught the facebook bug. Yes , its the new generations equivilant of the Mtv syndrome (in the late 80s early 90s where one would promise themselves 'if the next video is shit Im going to bed and henceforth be caught in a vicious circle) There are lots of things also worthy of bitching about, the bankers, government , IMF and the snow but the post here will be short and sweet just to let you know who ever is out there thats been following my blog all this time I have returned and will promise to try and be a little less flakey ..