In 79 AD, the Roman city of Pompeii was completely buried in ash by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, then completely forgotten until it was rediscovered in the mid-18th Century. Many of its citizens attempted to flee but few made it.
This image is a fanciful telling of a fugitive from Pompeii who dove into the sea and was changed by Neptune into an octopus. He now drifts in the depths, dreaming of his former life.
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Such an amazing amount of snow for the coastline. It usually doesn’t start to accumulate until 200 feet from the cliff and never more than an inch or two. Now here we are at 50 feet and buried in snow. I think there is nothing quite as lovely and peaceful as walking on the shoreline in winter. It is especially enjoyable and surreal in all this snow. I can see this easily becoming too much of a good thing so I’ll enjoy it for now and hope it isn’t a trend. We’ve been fortunate (so far) and haven’t lost power for more than a few hours at a time.
The garden has completely disappeared. I haven’t see another living soul walk down our beach road for weeks. Little Nemo desperately wants to go out and investigate this strange new landscape. Freya is hibernating. I’m either in the crow’s nest working or in the cave learning the piano on the new Christmas keyboard. C.P. McDill is learning to play the guitar. Perhaps we’ll be real musicians one day.
There are seals sunbathing on the big rocks at the point. I bare the cold (literally) and follow their lead whenever there’s a break in these cold snaps. Otherwise, it’s the tanning salon for me. I prefer the rocks and the sound of seagulls to the humming slab and Britney blasting overhead but I do need my UV fix or I become cranky and my skin itches.
There is a garden under there somewhere.
Nemo looks out.
C.P. McDill looks in.
Andrew Wyeth was accused by his many critics of depicting a false world, a world that on the surface may appear to be realistic (he was viewed as a realist) but was actually false and not at all representative of the world he lived in. Wyeth depicted a selective, nostalgic view of a quieter, simpler America, akin to the themes of Norman Rockwell or Edward Hopper.
I’d have no problem with that even if I thought it were true. That could very well be the way he viewed his life and the critics just don’t get it. Then again, I have never been known to agree with the critics or modernist views on art. I’ve been experimenting with egg tempera so I had just started looking at Wyeth’s work again in December. I love this photograph. He looks like such a character.
“Wyeth remained a polarizing figure even as the traditional 20th-century distinction between abstraction and avant-gardism on the one hand and realism and conservatism on the other came to seem woefully inadequate and false.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/america/wyeth.3-409455.php
EDIT: Lord Whimsy’s wonderful post about Wyeth.
Obit on the “false world” theme pointed out by C.P. McDill Ricardo Montalban was most remembered for his role in Fantasy Island, wherein his character created virtual worlds for paying customers to act out their fantasies. Patrick McGoohan was the creator of a British Sci-Fi television series about a man who is transported to a fake village where nothing is as it appears.
Scribbling on scribbled on old book covers.
An amusing ebay listing:
Up for your amusement is this disbound, bad, stained, soiled, heap of crap. It smells of smoke, dead fish, cat pee and who knows what. It would serve as excellent fodder to start your summer campfire or supply your camp outhouse.
If you have millions & are looking for a good investment opportunity then take a look at this!!! All your friends have these rare & pristine books to show off, but YOU will have a one-of-a-kind pile of raggity papers no-one can do a one up (or down) on you with.
BOOK CONDITION: On a scale of one to ten this book doesn’t register. It is disbound, rubbed, worn, shelfworn, sunworn, cracked, cracking, stained, soiled, torn, ripped, dog eared, folded, faded, foxed, browning, wrote on, wrote in, wrote over, wrote off, but hey… you could truly own a one-of-a-kind book!!!!
Yes friend, there is rare art contained within these pages (scribbling, drawing, coloring) duly drawn and preserved in the contents by budding young artists who never made it & are deceased now, their work all but forgotten but for the pages herien. In 2 or 3 hundred years when handwriting is lost art this book will be worth millions!!!
Sounds like my kind of book except for the fishy feline odor.