SHUMASH
Create beauty, fear nothing
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Back to Paint
My dear friend Mori recently told me the story about the regrets dying people have. She said, "You don't wanna be thinking: 'Damn, should have done more art!'" And just like that I decided, that no unearthly apocalypse, let alone mundane worries about grad school and success, will stop me from making art.
Here's the start of my new painting (modeled, of course, by Mori). Painting a head feels a lot different now that I've been drawing skulls in my anatomy course. Somehow, things fall into place much smoother. And no, of course this work won't be just a portrait study! There will be a dark streak in it, just in time for Halloween.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Black Roses
My thoughts stop scattering and I can hear black ink-filled roses bloom in my heart.
I wonder: is their darkness beautiful or hideous?
But it doesn't matter, because no matter what - I want to pick up a brush and trace the unwrapping of watery petals, turbulent ink blots, rainbows of black streaks, drowning, unquenchable.
Life is but the interplay of water and black ink. Cherish the chaos.
Monday, August 12, 2013
The Maker
Stumbled upon an excellent short:
Eerie and beautiful. It leaves a pang and a question. Makes one wonder if our life is as lonely and fleeting.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Review: Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
This was my first excursion into the authentically Japanese literature dealing in concrete terms with Japanese society, and I found striking the attention devoted to propriety and politeness. Unceasing concerns about proper gestures and polite excuses for this or that taunt the characters, accustomed to the rigidities and subtleties of customs. The novel takes place just before WWII, and the larger part of it covers the unsuccessful miais (the formal meetings of bride and groom in an arranged marriage) of one of the four sisters, Yukiko, who has passed the marriageable age. The marriage negotiations, the accepted practice of formally investigating each other's families through special investigation agencies, and the considerations that govern the final outcome seem unworldly to Western ears. The family considers man's age, fortune, his ability to take alcohol, his family, his province of origin, history of insanity and other diseases in the family into consideration, but it is the maneuvering go-between that tries to sway the family's opinion of the groom.
I am very much opposed to arranged marriage, but it is wonderful to see in detail on paper the society that has now gone extinct. To a large extent, it seems the novel's intention to preserve that era at the verge of its demise. The Makioka sisters are an artifact of the passing age, and Tanizaki shows their struggle with the changing ways of the world and with each other to stay faithful to the traditions of their youth. Only the youngest sister gives way to modernity.
The novel doused in melancholy. After all, its subject is the pre-war Japan that has vanished forever, like the cherry petals fallen into the pond. The story is replete with references to inherently Japanese activities. Three sisters clad in traditional kimonos contemplate cherry blossoms every year on their traditional spring pilgrimage. One sister, taught by geishas, does traditional Japanese dancing and doll-making. Another two practice calligraphy and play the koto and the samisen. The paper and the care with which the calligraphy in the letters is executed merit much attention. All sisters love Kabuki performances. There is also poetry writing, traditional autumn moonviewing (tsukimi, which may also indicate egg yolk), and summer light-bug hunting.
This beautiful age, though, is swept away. The storm, the flood and the tragedies in the second half of the book (miscarriage, death) mirror the shaken foundations of the Makioka life, and are a premonition of the coming doom. This beautiful, pensive novel ends incongruously with Yukiko's diarrhea on the train ride to her wedding.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Review: Haruki Murakami, "Sleep"; Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "Rashomon"
"Locked inside this little box, I can't go anywhere. It's the middle of the night. The men keep rocking the car back and forth. They're going to turn it over."
These men are not burglars, but men in general, and life of this Japanese woman - a dark little box with no exit, fully in their control. The story begins almost hopefully: an intelligent woman, destined for housework as the result of choices imposed by society, awakes at night from a shocking vision and realizes what she has been missing. She stops sleeping and devotes the night, when her benumbed husband and son are sleeping, to herself - to reading, to thinking, to being alive. She feels energetic, her thoughts penetrate effortlessly the deepest layers of meaning within the novels, and yet the stealthy, unassertive method of sacrificing sleep in order to gain time away from housework reeks of desperation.
Yes, she reads, she thinks, but, unable to denounce housewifery, she steps acceptingly toward the onset of dementia. It is an unequal fight. The story is written in first person and the reader is free to judge the woman, but nonetheless Murakami has not made her admirable. He has made pitiful her prideful thoughts, her visits to the pool, her delight in husband-forbidden chocolate. And the story ends in gloom, there is no way out, no boat to sail in against the current. This is the way it is, the only way it can be right now. Murakami also suggests through the choices this woman makes in her life, that the plight of women in contemporary Japanese society is their own fault.
Unnerved and reluctant to descend even deeper away from the secure sunshine over NYC, I put Murakami back on the shelf and picked up Ryunosuke Akutogawa instead. Upon read Rashomon, I found myself watching undignified malcontents fight over plucked hair amid corpses piled atop the Kyoto gate in 1100's and decided that I am not prepared to deal with Japanese literature.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Мартышка Судьба
Но трагедия трагедии рознь, и почти все можно пережить. Можно пережить измену, смерть, ампутацию, и сохранить любовь к жизни. Я говорю подруге, что бывает и не такое, что люди оправляются, а она отвечает: «только не я.» Пожалуй не оригинально считать свое положение уникальным, но необходимо убеждать себя в обратном. Нужно менять уклад упрямых мыслей, но подруга всегда была неуступчивой, готовой отдать себя на растерзание обстоятельствам и чужому мнению прежде чем что-то поменять в своем отношении к жизни и себе самой. Мне так трудно поверить в то, что она изменится. Может быть, то же самое подумала и убежавшая спутница. Вообще трудно поверить в то, что кто-нибудь из тех, кого я хорошо знаю, действительно изменится. Неужели все наши планы изменить себя - самообман? Но тогда мы действительно живем в фаталистическом мире!
Нет, мне кажется, что силой воли можно себя изменить, и штурвал судьбы можно успеть повернуть, если вовремя прозреть. Только как узнать во что смотришь ты, в лупу или в телескоп?
Мартышка Судьба
Мне темно, но что такое?
Свет кругом, а мне темно.
Может облако чумное
мне ресницы занесло.
Может снег случайно выпал
мне, в морщину меж бровей?
Может голосом забытым
ты шепнул мне из теней
про года, что уж забыты,
про супругов, что зарыты,
и про хрупкие сердца
и про чувства без ограды,
про прощанье у крыльца и
смятенье без отрады.
Может ты шепнул о том,
Как невечно наше время,
Как без передышки
Плетут полотно,
коварные лапки мартышки?
Но злобу свою сохранила,
И путает с радостью людям года,
Что не распутают чернила.
Не будь судьба жестока так,
Мы знаем сами нашу кару,
Дойдут и без тебя лета
До неизбежного портала.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Rilke, Blaue Hortensie
Голубая Гортензия
Сухие, тусклые, шершавые, как остатки зеленого
В скляночке краски, эти листья
За зонтиками цветов, что голубой не носят
На себе, а лишь издалека отражают.
Как будто и вовсе хотят потерять,
В них желтизна, как в голубой бумаге
Старых писем, и серо-фиолетового след;
Давно не ношенном, с которым уж не будет ничего:
Как чувствуется краткость жизни малой.
В одном из тех соцветий, и кажется, что
Нежная голубизна зеленому обрадовалась цвету.
Rilke, Blaue Hortensie
So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln
sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rauh,
hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau
nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln.
Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau,
als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren,
und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren
ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau;
Verwaschenes wie an einer Kinderschürze,
Nichtmehrgetragenes, dem nichts mehr geschieht:
wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze.
Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen
in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht
ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.