A Brief Interlude (#14)

"What has mood to do with it? You fight [write] when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting [writing]."

  ~ Gurney Halleck, Dune

Apologies to Gurney Halleck and to my readers (all six of them). Yes, I used this quote before, and for the same purpose, but I cannot help myself. Certain quotes just pop into my head when I hear specific words, no matter the context. Mood is one of those words, and this is the corresponding quote (with the necessary insertions to shift its meaning for tonight's topic).

And, if you have been reading this blog carefully since the beginning, you will remember I used this quote to introduce a post that I had written on a night when I was not in the mood.

Well, this is another such night.

(I did not draw this picture. Explain the image in the post.)

Meandering Thoughts (#7)

"Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

  ~ Mark Twain 

"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." 

  ~ Franz Kafka 

I don't mind, and I can still see beauty, so I should be okay.

It's that time of the year. Forgive me, but I need a moment to figure out how old I am. In the meantime, here is some background concerning my general indifference towards my birthdays.

(IIRC, I shared Pierre-Auguste Renoir's A Dance in the Country before. I enjoyed looking at it so much, I decided to share it again. But in my search for a new link, I discovered that it was part of series. The two other paintings are nearly as beautiful, though a special fondness remains for the woman in a Dance in the Country.)

One Year Anniversary!

Okay, so while doing some preliminary research for this post (i.e., searching through this blog), I discovered something interesting and funny. For the past few weeks I have been anxious about not reaching my 100th post on the one year anniversary of this blogging.  You can read about it here and here. Yes, it is not that important, but it would satisfy a certain part of my mind to have those two numbers align.

Well, I am happy to report I discovered a post from back in September, a Weekly Checkup, that seems to have been reverted to "draft" status. Well, I republished it just now, and found the total number of current posts to have finally reached ninety-nine. 

Today's post is going to bring my to one hundred!

Sigh. I feel relief. And regret. 

Read on to find out why.

(BTW, for the more observant of you, yes, my first two blog posts were published on April 5, 2020. And, yes, this blog post will be published on April 4, 2021, around 10 pm. Unfortunately, for complex reasons, I need to officially publish the weekly blog post on a Sunday night around 10 pm, and quickly follow it up with a Facebook post linking to the blog. Hence the discrepancy in the dates. Trust me, it is complex, but it is worth it.)

(I have shared a lot of beautiful and powerful paintings on this blog, but this is the earliest, and one of my top ten favorite ones.)