Enlightened indifference

Johanna Harmon's Spanish Dancer

or farewell to youthful folly

I see now my ease of self was too dear a price to pay for your inconsistent fancy

Why, you taxed me free of elegance
Leaving me no more than an artless inarticulate toad
I’m unable to stand the sight of you and lament in the same vein all thoughts of you
I hold it as grudge Sir, the power you held over my once poised carriage
Made remedial fawning prepubescent malcontent and all for your smiles
So here in the light of day I, with competent solicitor am serving you with my intent to reclaim all
This means going forth your mere presence will not make of me the grotesque
There will be no more fumbling for speech, girlish giggles or delinquent declarations of tendre

My love my care,

Simone

My favorite place to spend an hour

I have, since childhood, had an unnatrual fascination with cemeteries. I love the solitude, manicured lawns, all the sweet sorrow carved into stone and fresh cut flowers.

Caspar David Friedrich's The Cemetery Gate (The Churchyard)

I've found the garden

In it we sleep eternally

Without worry of depraved indifference

For long before we had gone we would have seen all worth seeing

and eaten all the cake.

My love my care,

Simone

Time, love, beauty, wealth and happiness

Are all relative while one's health and the dignity that independence allow are necessary.

Robert Henri's Orientale

Brief

Come now hurry to me

Allow us precious moment
We’ll decide how we fit a lifetime in the time granted

My love, my care and a lovely weekend to all,

Simone

Sir Thomas Lawrence

He was the most successful portrait painter of his age. He might be said to have added a rather theatrical Byronic quality to his eighteenth-century masters long before Byron himself captured London in words. Much of our rather romantic attitude towards the Regency probably owes something to the impression Lawrence’s portraits have left with us.

Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington by Thomas Lawrence.

Born in Bristol in 1769 and studied for a short time at the Royal Academy. His reputation was established with the exhibition in 1790 of his portrait of the actress Elizabeth Farren. He soon won royal patronage, and after the deaths of Reynolds and Hoppner he became the fashionable portrait painter of his day.

Elizabeth Farren

His portraits of women are models of beauty and elegance, whether the sitter be a tragic actress, a social figure like one of the many Princesses who sat for him, or a personal friend.

Portrait of The Fullerton Sisters

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Lawrence was knighted and commissioned to paint the leading sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. When he returned to England in 1820, he was elected president of the Royal Academy; he handled the affairs of his office with tact and urbanity. He died on Jan. 7, 1830.

Master Charles William Lambton Sir Lawrence Opus Magnum

Following the English masters of the 18th century, Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney, Lawrence carried on the great tradition of society portraiture and raised it to new heights of dash and elegance, though not of psychological penetration. He was by no means an artist of the astonishing insight of Gainsborough, and he did not have the occasionally disconcerting originality of Reynolds and still his work had merit.

The Calmady Children

Lawrence's work had their faults: all were affected by the distorting demands of their fashionable clientele, and all succumbed to them. He had the least to say, and he reflected his sitters' own best views of themselves, yet even they must sometimes have been surprised at their own magnificence. Handsome his portraits undoubtedly are; all the women are strikingly beautiful, the men brave and distinguished.

Sir Thomas Portrait Arthur Atherley

Lawrence enjoyed his great success. He lived for his work, never married, and was a prodigious worker. He was of an exceptionally generous nature, as an artist and as a man, with a rare talent for appreciating and encouraging the talents of others. He was an ardent collector of Old Master drawings; his collection, which was dispersed after his death, was the largest and best that has ever been formed in England.

I would have liked knowing him, I'm sure.

My love my care,

Simone

Summer

It is finally here and I’ve vowed to all my love ones that I WILL make time to enjoy it.

John William Godward's Summer Flowers

Summer Holiday

We had been brilliant on those day stretched out on white sand by idle shore

Oh how we had perfected leisure you and I
Then it had been all vivid blues that summer
The ocean, sky and our pending end but it could not have last for more than the season
Now I long for it and for you
Only now you are permanent winter

Louis Aston Knight's Summer Afternoon, Normandy

Here is to aimless hours of wander and wonder in the warmth of the sun.

Jean Frederic Bazille's Summer Scene, which I love though my sister thinks it homoerotic

My love my care,

Simone

And Still

My wish for each of you, a blissful summer’s fling. It is just the thing for the contently married to rediscover each other and if you are single... well there is nothing quite as affirming as long lazy days spent uncovering sweet surrender.

Lord Frederick Leighton's Girl in Green

It had been tidy our little war

Compelled by sweet arrest we in spite pending tragedy went forth as Capulet and Montague

Unwilling to surrender to romantic ever-after we sharpened our blades in anticipation of epic end

Still we had been typical

Yielding in the waning hours as strangers full of fear

Allowing jealousy dressed as vengeance to take hold what was left of fond feeling and a near amiable break

Even here we had been as the others

Bending to loneniess giving into flesh time and again

Tormented by primal longing succumb to the weakness with glutton’s appetite

I measure now our little catastrophe as success for we at least had been civil in our carnage

All of it done in private

 under the covers

in one afternoon

My love my care,

Simone

I don't even think they are so alike...

The perceived similarities between these two paintings have caused many a contention in my set. I think it is as simple or as complicated as having an artist's life. They would have shared a vein and bleed on the tapestry of life in a similar manner. Here allow me to provide a clarity. Imagine if you will a groupie for a late 60’s to early 70’s rock band. Chances are what you conjure won't be identical to my interpretation but I would wager the farm that there will be a degree of truth that is accepted by all.

I would even go so far as to say more than half of you called to mind Pamela Des Barres, Bebe Buell, Marianne Faithfull or Kate Hudson in 'Almost Famous'

You know some bombshell without a brassiere.

Peder Severin Kroyer's Marie de perfil 1891

A proper fit

You ought to be bluer than indigo now I’m in bloom
So unlike the days when you would rouse to drench me in blush with no more than lustful stare
You wanted no more than my constant thought
My persistent want
For me to insist on forfeiting any life that did not include you
I could not abide your fanatical devotion and had in effort to free myself of you
Peeled from my body in violent desperation all you had touched
Leaving you an open wound susceptible to tender
You flinch at kindness due to my answer to your love

Abbott Handerson Thayer's Young Woman (Bessie Price) 1897

My love my care,

Simone

Brilliant change is in the air

I've been feeling it for a little while now and today I'm certain. It's odd for I haven't any proof only a nagging feeing that I've embraced it as truth.

Frank Dicksee's The Mirror

It was good to see you

I loved seeing you there out of the blue in a place that wasn’t ours
With your voice inducing shivers
As match in the dark your presence instantly felt
Lighting my path and making light my path
I love the way you inhabit space and because of it I’ve granted you thought

Allowing you to occupy useful hours with desire and fancy

My love my care,

Simone

Devotion to a happy thought

I’m irritatingly analytical about heart, love and relationships. Often dissecting with keen logic and trusty list of pros/cons leaving whimsy for my manuscripts. This leads me to wonder if I should see an analysis but then I remember acceptance of my own true nature is in itself a sort of ideal.

Peter Rodulfo's In The Evening

A purposeful  glance


We share a memory of a perfect moment neither was party to

In it we laughed at the simple, drank of the wine and made love until the setting sun was engulfed by the unhurried night

Both of us made new in a sort of baptism of flesh

Whispering until our voices were but hoarse rumbles

We are capable of it

You need only take hold of my hand and pull me close

I’m giving you permission telekinetically

Only you can’t hear me

Why can’t you hear me?

All my love. Now you take care,

Simone

Here

Now

I can't imagine where you could have gone but then I never bothered looking

You always return with tales of green skies and red seas

I love that you take the time to lie

You count on me believing and I do in the way of one who has had a near death experience

Fervently with a near manic zeal

We know it is unsustainable

Renior's Bather Arranging Her Hair

My love my care,

Simone

The idea behind writing

It comes from living. In bliss, in tear and heartbreak but mostly it comes for reading. Writers read every bit as much as they write if not more. Reading improves the state of my mind, giving it the foundation to create. It is the good bones needed to sustain my ideas.

All that is nothing if one does not write for as simple as it sounds, a writer writes.

Stephen Gjertson's An English Table

Bliss is more elusive than easy fortune but ever so often I stumble upon it
There in the curve in the road that leads to the perfect cafe where a smiling stranger waits
Only I’ve been thought never to engage strangers so I observe from a distance
It start to rain out and I open my book and pretend to read
The smiling stranger is soon joined by a pretty girl with wet hair and tragic shoes
He rise to greet her with fond smile and warm hug
I can’t hear what they saying but I imagine it is sweet and affirming
I’m thrilled for seeing them there together fully grown and knowing that they came from deep within me confirms for me bliss and my love for my craft

This I've written today.

My love my care,

Simone

Marie Skłodowska Curie One of the 100 Women that has Influenced Me

She was born in Warsaw Poland study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. Her husband Pierre Curie shared her Nobel prize in physics.

Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity, a term she coined, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers) using radioactive isotopes.

Madame Curie quotes I love

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas."

"...that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries."

"I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy. "

Here with here little one Eve and Irene

I think she did alright for her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, also shared a Nobel prize. It says something to me that Irène would pursue a life in science as her mother did.

Here she stands with her Pierre

and this she noted of her state of self after his death, she became  "... an incurably and wretchedly lonely person".

More quotes by this most brilliant lady

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained."

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful."

She and I share this thought of our live's work: "Sometimes my courage fails me and I think I ought to stop working, live in the country and devote myself to gardening."

And this is my favorite thing she said: "Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without the slightest doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organised society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research."

My love my care,

Simone