Claude Verlinde and Jacques Poirier are two underrepresented French painters. They are both master illusionists/image makers/mirage makers.
I fell in love with the above painting when I first got introduced to Verlinde’s work in Paris. We all know hollow people, lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance – we have all met shallow people lacking in depth of thought, or feeling. In Persian we call them “hollow drums”: noisy but empty.
Thanks to the internet we can know of something without really knowing about it. We used to have to read, to see, to hear something in order to be able to talk about it but not anymore folks! everybody’s an expert.
I’ve been wanting to talk about V.S. Naipaul for the longest time. Every time that somebody tries to eat up my life/time, I remember the writer’s fabulous statement reported on BBC: “my life is too short, I can’t listen to banality”.
Staying with the trompe l’oeil of Verlinde and Poirier, take a look at this very clever ad:
You can see the rest of these very funny ads here.
Today is my blog’s first anniversary! If you like what you see, please subscribe.
Congratulations for the anniversaire. Sensitive and courageous notes,great itinary for an intellectual journey. In the last blog the concept of the hollow men invokes T.S. Eliot’s great poem the Hollow Men. This is how good blogs work. They jump-start our imagination and memory. Your grateful reader
Tamas
Bon anniversaire pour ce blog intéressant qui nous fait enrichir, surprendre et divertir pendant quelques moments.
Des photos très réussies, voire superbes…Des commentaires souvent pertinents…Longue vie au blog de Michele et joyeux anniversaire.
A propos de VS Naipaul qui dit que la vie est trop courte pour entendre des banalités…Certes, mais il me semble qu’il en va des banalités comme des imbéciles : heureusement qu’il y en a pour que les autres se reconnaissent. Au demeurant, qui n’a jamais dit de banalité? Qui n’a jamais été stupide?
Bravo, Michele! Your blogs are a very welcomed instigator for thoughts and ideas I might never have considered or fully developed. Appropriately, ‘Mirage Makers’ offers an excurciating tag for the disengaged (day, week, month, year) life. Thank you for the year. Happy anniversary.
Best!
Congratulations & Gratitude on your blog anniversary.
Colors passing through us
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
by Marge Piercy
Longue vie à toi et à ton blog
‘Tavalod è-digar’ — Autre naissance
Tout mon être est un verset de l’obscurité
Qui en soi-même te répète
Et te mènera à l’aube des éclosions et des croissances éternelles
Je t’ai soupiré et soupiré
Dans ce verset je t’ai, à l’arbre, à l’eau et au feu, greffé.
La vie peut-être
Est une longue rue que chaque jour traverse une femme avec un panier
La vie peut-être
Est une corde avec laquelle un homme d’une branche se pend
La vie peut-être est un enfant qui revient de l’école
La vie peut-être c’est allumer une cigarette
dans la torpeur entre deux étreintes
Ou le regard distrait d’un passant
Qui soulève son chapeau
Et à un autre passant, avec un sourire inexpressif, dit : “Bonjour.”
La vie peut-être est cet instant sans issue
Où mon regard dans la prunelle de tes yeux se ruine
Et il y a là une sensation
Qu’à ma compréhension de la lune et ma perception des ténèbres je mêlerai.
Dans une chambre à la mesure d’une solitude
Mon coeur
A la mesure d’un amour
Regarde
Les prétextes de son bonheur
Le beau déclin des fleurs dans le vase
La pousse que dans le jardin tu as plantée
Et le chant des canaris
Qui chantent à la mesure d’une fenêtre.
Ah…
C’est mon lot
C’est mon lot
Mon lot
C’est un ciel qu’un rideau me reprend
Mon lot c’est de descendre un escalier abandonné
Et de rejoindre une chose dans la pourriture et la mélancolie
Mon lot c’est une promenade nostalgique dans le jardin des souvenirs
Et de rendre l’âme dans la tristesse d’une voix qui me dit :
“Tes mains
Je les aime”.
Mes mains je les planterai dans le jardin
Je reverdirai, je le sais, je le sais, je le sais
Et les hirondelles dans le creux de mes doigts couleur d’encre
Pondront.
A mes oreilles en guise de boucles
Je pendrai deux cerises pourpres et jumelles
Et à mes ongles je collerai des pétales de dahlia.
Il est une rue là-bas
Où des garçons qui étaient de moi amoureux, encore
Avec les mêmes cheveux en bataille, leurs cous graciles
et leurs jambes grêles,
Pensent aux sourires innocents d’une fillette qu’une nuit
le vent a emportée avec lui.
Il est une ruelle
Que mon coeur a volée aux quartiers de mon enfance.
Volume en voyage
Sur la ligne du temps
Volume qui engrosse la sèche ligne du temps
Volume d’une image vigile
Qui revient du festin d’un miroir
Et c’est ainsi
Que l’un meurt
Et que l’autre reste.
Au pauvre ruisseau qui coule dans un fossé
Nul pêcheur ne pêchera de perles.
Moi
Je connais une petite fée triste
Qui demeure dans un océan
Et joue son coeur dans un pipeau de bois
Doucement doucement
Une petite fée triste
Qui la nuit venue d’un baiser meurt
Et à l’aube d’un baiser renaît.
Bon Anniversaire… and Happy 1st Anniversary!!! Love your blog and keep on sending it… It’s always interersting, exciting and take us to good old days….!!! hahaha… It is a joy to know you as a friend for so many yearsssss… Send my love to the family.
Love,
Soheila
Happy first anniversary! You are an international treasure. I value your challenging insights and keen photographic eye.
Al Garrotto
The Wisdom of Les Miserables:
Lessons From the Heart of Jean Valjean
available now at
http://www.lulu.com/content/1795167
and
http://www.blsinc.com/garrotto.htm
ISBN 978-1-4357-0868-6
Visit my blog at http://algarrotto.edublogs.org/
Congratulations! I’m already subscribed to your blog 🙂
“Invitation to play” has glazed my eyes
and beyond for many years now,
time has passed like a river
under the bridges made
never Pont Neuf or
the Bridge of Sighs, yet
between the crevices of quiet moments
in the fog of the night
wet to the mist of the morning glory
and early to the blue haze
I have found precious gems
of knowledge
music to my ears
inviting me to play
beyond the hollow curves
This enticing sense
reminds me of a childhood
when the scent of lemons and oranges
pealed in a spiral filled my room.
……You have released the fragrance….salute!
Congratulations Michelle on your blog’s first anniversary! When we realize Naipaul’s comment about the value of time, it becomes obvious that you’ve used yours productively. You’ve added value to your surroundings, and that’s the true measure of achievement.
Speaking of time, it is the great equalizer. Whether one’s the Sultan of Brunei or the petty thief on the streets of Rio, we all experience the same 24 hour interval each day, no less, and certainly no more. Like the perennial sky over our head, we are bound by the inevitability of time. We can’t escape it and with the fragility of the human frame, time’s claws continue to haunt and delight us. Naipaul’s statement about the value of time is significant, especially when we truly understand its fleeting abundance and eventual scarcity. We all have a finite amount of it on this earth. A less erudite, yet as profound a statement was made by Tolkien’s Gandolf the Gray, a character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The wise and benevolent wizard tells Frotto of the Shire: “All you need to do is to decide, what you want to do, with the time that’s been given to you!”
This simple statement is the common denominator of all our lives. The whole spectrum of humanity works within its framework. Every morning, we wake up and make simple, ordinary choices. Every now and then the significance of our choices dramatically changes the course of our lives and those around us. We either waste this valuable entity or use it productively. The choices we make about our time changes the course of history, and consequently our destiny. And like the intricate connectedness that links us all, humanity evolves from the fallout of such choices. Our time is limited; our choices must be wise.
je suis très en retard,mais le regard que vous portez sur ce qui nous entoure tendre et cruel, acéré ou feutré, avec vos colères sourdes ou la fluidité de votre vocabulaire…. tout ceci fait de moi une assidue de ce blog.
Je ne suis as bloggeuse par nature, mais vous êtes l’exception qui confirme la règle.
Joyeux anniversaire à ce blog, et un très grand merci à vous Michèle.
Marie
je te remercie pour ces images 😉
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. 🙂 Cheers! Sandra. R.