No screens after 8

Made this and ordered a metal print for our home tonight. Think it will work?

Author: Rhododendrites

katth putli

Winter is here—with my knees and ankles acting like I’m a marionette with broken parts, every stair yields a little joint wiggle inside, and a little limp on the outside

The Expansion

Have We not opened up your heart
and lifted from you the burden
that almost broke your back?
and We raised high your name.
For with every hardship comes ease:
truly with every hardship comes ease!
So when you are free, be steadfast,
and to your Sustainer turn with love.

-Quran, al-Sharh

spirals

sometimes I drive myself into depression thinking of how happy I am, and whether I deserve it.

talk to someone, and you’re not alone

I met up with one friend today and within 10 minutes, we discovered we’ve both been sitting on our respective couches all day long, looking at photos of places we want to visit when the pandemic is gone.

Just like that, I’m not alone or weird, and my feelings make sense. Magic.

Buying art

I am at times debilitatingly frugal. It is an event, me treating myself to a framed print of Osman Hamdy Bey’s Young Girl Reading the Quran.

I was going to be cheap and get a smallish canvas print, and spouse said, no, get it bigger, get a framed print.

I keep doing that, getting small, cheaply framed/ mounted /canvas prints. And they look all wrong, and it’s a waste of money. Spending money is an art of privilege.

I spend a lot of time on art seller websites, picking out vintage, Orientalist, animal, and landscape art, — and then, after several hours, deciding I can’t justify the purchase. That was me, wandering for hours in Liberty Market, and bringing home nothing!

I do still enjoy the visual experience.

Despite the framing of Orientalist paintings, I have a love for many like this one:

Martinus Rørbye: A Turkish Notary drawing up a marriage Contract in front of the Kiliç Ali Pasha Mosque, Tophane, Constantinople.

Unfortunately, most Orientalist paintings are entirely depictions of men (or naked women.) Unfortunately, too, there is the horrifying depiction of slavery.

The cobbler, Tangiers; by Jean Discart (1884-1920)

I enjoy the “lazy Arab” genre, and the level of detail here is gorgeous (not to mention CATS). But we had a family discussion over whether our teen would be subliminally induced to think positively of smoking.

All in all, a purchase of Osman Hamdy Bey’s painting was less ethically troubling.