A Thing of Beauty Is A Joy Forever.

I've heard of people getting Writer's block.. I've experienced it too. But a Reader's block is new for me. I didn't even know that something like this exists but, however hard I try I can't get myself to read more than two pages on a stretch. Hard Times - Charles Dickens. This BOOK is giving me a hard time coming to terms with reality. Perceptual, ofcourse. Or I hope. Why am I starting to think that I won't be able to finish reading this thing ever?

I mean I've read lots of Classics. Lots and lots of them. Then why not this. And I couldn't even get myself to read more than a quarter of A Tale Of Two Cities. It's something to do with the author, probably. Positively. It has to do something with the author. Moving on, like yesterday's obsession with groupies and supermodels, today we have Artists. Lawrence Alma Tadema. Particularly this painting called "A Favourite Custom" which was painted in the year 1909.



Breathtakingly beautiful. I couldn't take my eyes off this composition. And I didn't even know that I could call Fine Arts one of my obsessions. Phew. I loved this one a little less than the first, but considerably. Fascinating because the far left portion of it seemed to me like a photograph instead of paint. Incredible.


Take a look at it closely. Right here. There is -- Lord Frederic Leighton's "Flaming June". I truly believe a person looks the most beautiful when he or she's asleep.


No words. Absolutely no words. And there was one more I loved. "The Roses of Heliogabalus". Love of roses. Since time immemorial. I mean, since I can remember.


As The Roses of Heliogabalus was painted during the winter, Tadema arranged to have roses sent weekly from the French Riviera for four months to ensure the accuracy of each petal.

How can people not like Art? Whoever says that has to be lying. And when even sploshes of random colours on canvas is considered Art. Modern. Then what is not? My scribbles turn out to be works of Art when I finish joining them together. Voila! The precious work of a perpetually depressed teen. Oh, but that's private collection. Not for viewing. You won't even find them in some Art Gallery somewhere, so don't you even consider googling it. :D

School re-opens tomorrow after the Exams. Sad. There's not much to look forward to. It sharpens the sadness. But anyway, life's less than exciting but there is some sort of "peace" going around inside me. Is this what I asked when I wrote this poem of mine. I just happened to stumble upon it while going through my previous posts. The sadness gets sharpened with peace. Well, at least now I know Peace is NOT = Happiness. Not always. Not ever. Maybe substantially but not completely. Nothing's "enough for me". Yes.

The gloom always hovers over the joy like a troublesome raincloud. Ready to burst. And I never liked using umbrellas. Sigh.

Live it. Love it.

So I hunched over my laptop all day just to get to know more about what's behind Summer Wine. And the versions. And more versions. This isn't the original. The whole life story of Uschi Obermaier. It's the soundtrack for the biopic movie of Uschi's life : Eight Miles High or Das Wilde Leben.

Natalia Avelon, the lady with Ville Valo in the video. She plays Uschi. I absolutely adore Ville. Dunno why. Even though I don't like HIM much. I meant the band. I guess it has something to do with his heavenly voice. Hmmm..

So I moved ahead to reading all about Uschi, her life, her love affairs. My oh my. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and even Jimi Hendrix. And I didn't even know. She was a groupie but a video I viewed on YouTube, the guy stated that Uschi wasn't actually one, and that she denied it herself during interviews. She was anyhow, a model and an actress who was also a political activist.


Somehow, I always wished I was born somewhere around the 60s. Hippie culture fascinates me. Totally. Sandi Thom's music is inspiring too. Except, I hope she does know if punk rockers really had flowers in their hair. But rest of the lyrics are lovely. Following a string of Uschi related videos, I ended up going through the lives of Gia Carangi. I had already heard and seen a bit about the the Angeline Jolie starrer movie about Gia's Life : Gia.

All this reading about life is very exhilarating and depressing at the same time. When writers do stuff like making up stories. Fiction. I get scared thinking about how many lives they live at once. Best selling authors do sometimes get too much into the skin of the character. Hence, Schizoprenia. I actually have a newspaper article taped to one of my bedroom walls telling me about what happened with Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and more. The whole of the article escapes me except that they all killed themselves. Some of the cases were gruesome.

Back to Summer Wine. The original was by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood in 1967. Another popular cover is by Bono and Andrea Corr from The Corrs. The Corrs are amazing musicians. I went through all their history yesterday night with immense curiousity. Now I just HAVE to visit Ireland once in my life. I just loved this video of their "Rebel Heart" :

Lately, I've been playing with the idea that taking up a profession of a Travel Writer can be fun. Very interesting. It actually was with me a few months ago. Then I got distracted. I know it's very weird that I still don't know what I'll do. But if I DO decide and plan out my life right now, it'd all just end up in a way that's least expected. With me, everything's impulsive. Maybe I'd just think about going off to Istanbul and I'd leave the next day.

All the History studying is turning me into a more hopeless romantic than ever. I think I WILL do just that. Travel around the globe, come back home, settle down and have a family. Nice. Oh, but I still don't know. :D

Haze.

I craved for you
With suspended longing
A tryst with nature
Of my mental narcissus
Been out of my mind
With a thousand thoughts
Of a better tomorrow
When tomorrow is born of today
Today of sinful yesterday
A ray of light can do me no good
It's all a part of the game
I lost to the mighty big sun
I crumpled and burned away.

The Old Manor House

Another one of my poem's. This one's not just a result of emotional impulses. Started on it months ago, but never got around to completing it. Here it is, now.

The Old Manor House

The rusty old iron gate creaked with a sigh
As she entered the ancient Manor house
The unkempt garden seemed to sneer at her sight
And she felt as small as a mouse
The vastness of it all seemed to engulf her whole
She gathered around her the cloak that she wore

The curiosity seemed etched on her face
As she shuffled her feet ahead
The strangely beautiful mansion seemed to beck to her
As she stayed rooted where her feet did rest
Compelled to move ahead, instead she turned around
The gate had moved on its own to fling back with a resonating sound

Her lips did quiver, as she peered around the hedgerows,
With anticipation as she imagined what she’d find inside
As she gazed longingly at the door,
The wind whistling by her side
She felt a cold chill run down her spine
The tall trees had begun to roar and whine

The sun was high above her
It shone white with all its might
Beads of swear appeared on her brow
As she fought against her fear, slowly, steadily, blow by blow
She looked at the ground beneath her, strewn with dead leaves,
The dust rising in little swirls and settling, at ease

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought, she saw something move
Up, up on the window high up on the highest floor
Was it someone peering outside? Or just her eyes playing games with her mind?
The moth-eaten lace curtains flapped lazily
The glass of the window broken, cracked on one side
She saw a dark eye glinting from the shadows or was it...

Just the glass reflecting the light?
The enigma that surrounded the building was as dark as the night
But she had to know, had to see, had to prove
That nothing could stop her from going inside
She gathered all her might and set her mind to enter the house
Without even a sign of fright

The knocker on the front door resembled a snake
It shone a dull golden, which would have looked grand in it’s time
The door was dark mahogany which, with its shine and splendour,
Would have put the brightest, newest door to shame
She pushed it with her hand and it swung inwards
Baring to her a room filled with dust, cobwebs and scurrying rats

She shielded herself with her arm as a bat swooped towards her
Opening her eyes once more, she saw a colony of bats resting upside down
On the largest chandelier she had ever seen, which had slowly turned brown
The glass clinked softy as a few more bats moved in their sleep
Bustling around at the sunlight which had entered the room, unseen
Uncomfited by the sudden interference into their lives, they shut their eyes

She moved her eyes around the hall with its moth-eaten furniture
And a grand fireplace which still made the place feel warm
She moved towards it, enraptured,
Above the fireplace hung a portrait old and faded
The lady painted on it looked extremely aged
She stood with a young woman, a smile etched across her face

This must be the girl who had been left alone in the haste
While the others fled with the fear of being murdered by the enslaved
The Lestranges had been knowned to have kept quite a few innocents
Locked up in the cellar, while their glory lasted
And at last their threatening had come to no advantage
When the commoners had risen to power and they had been bated.

Coming back to the present and gazing at the face of the young, beautiful girl
Who had once lived in this very house, with her grandmother and her father, the Earl.
She turned her back to the picture, glanced around and advanced towards the staircase
Which rose magnificently to the next landing, she slowly trailed her hands over the banister.

Up, up she went steadily and turned left to a golden door which led…
To a beautiful chamber with a four-poster bed
The room still smelt sweetly of roses long dead
It was strange how she could still feel the sadness creep up over her
In the darkness of the room which mystified her with the enigma
She advanced towards the broken window,
They say the young girl had climbed up atop the window ledge...

She looked down at the haggard overgrown hedge
The saccharine smell of wilted roses reached her
It made her feel heavenly,
She looked towards the horizon, the distant sky
Only a lonely tree stood whimpering under the afteroon sun

The trees whistling her a sweet lullaby, the grass whispered beneath
Beckoning her to the man of her dreams, who stood there looking up
His face ashen, with tears in his eyes, he held a bouqet of roses
Raised a hand and smiled with lips that weren’t there..

She climbed atop the window ledge,
Dreaming of flying, weightless on the misery-filled air, while joyful laughter
Rang in her head, she felt a hand support her back,
She smiled and pushed herself out of the broken window
The moth-eaten lace curtains flapped lazily
While the eye looked for another story to go by.

Partly inspired by Vermillion Pt.2 by Slipknot.

Minus Eighteen.

Life has a weird way of "equalising" things. Even good things. No one can have too much of a good thing, but yeah, however much of the bad - MUCHO!! Eventually it ends up initial good being equalised by bad, but initial bad being loaded up with more bad, and more bad. And still some more. So, shit happens.

The phenomenon of "equilisation" works with grades, too. Why. I don't know.

I spend a whole day cramming up facts for the Fine Arts Theory Test and then..

I lean back in my seat at school to take a look at my question paper and there it is. Horror of horrors. Out of the five questions - each marked a BIG six - I have no idea where the last three came from! I frantically demand my teacher appear before me right now. There she is. I ask her.

"All of them are in the notes."

"..."

"Yes?"

"They are not. I think I didn't get all the notes."

"Your fault." So be it.

"But these three.. how. When. What. Huh." Dazed.

She turns to one single other FA student. "What about you?" The girl nods, feigning sympathy when I can see, almost as if in her thought baloon -
"Yes! Yes! Yes!! Woohoooooo!!! Finally. Not more than me."

Eighteen out of thirty vanish away into thin air. Simply. Kaboom.

I can register only snatches of the teacher's dialogue "Didn't you know.. how come.. must've been absent. Distributed.. long back. Very careless." Or maybe I nightmare-ed up the last "careless" bit. But it sure was there in her mind.

Sniffle sniffle. I feel my eyes filling up. On the verge. Then I feel hot all over. Then I feel this tingling. I cry.

"No problem. Do the other two. We'll see."

No problem, she says. We'll see, she says. Yeah right. The other teacher meanwhile observes me like I'm some rare specimen of an endangered species. Get a magnifying glass, Ma'am. Isn't it very interesting, Ma'am.

"You have the Practicals too. Score there." Ha!

Finally, when I care enough to get decent grades. More than decent, in some cases. Here comes someone who tells me average is okay. No, it is not. Murder. Good, so that's it then.. how did this happen? One big unsolved mystery.

Then I stare off into the distance. Down below, I see the horses going round and round as if in a circus, in the field. Galloping. Whinnying. Green grass. Blue sky. Cool wind gets in through the window with no glass.

I start writing my paper.