Caravaggio’s Saint Jerome

This painting by Caravaggio (1571 – 1610) of Saint Jerome, deep in study, is one of the painter’s best examples of deep, rich colors, light, and his attention to detail.

Most renditions of Saint Jerome by painters and illustrators find him in his study because he was commissioned by Pope Damasus the 1st to revise the Latin text of the Bible, known as the ‘Vulgate’ that is still in use today.

Saint Jerome was born to a pagan family circa 365 C.E., to later study the law and become a lawyer. However, he soon later changed his subject of study to theology, where his true conversion to Christianity occurred. He was also baptized around this time.

Caravaggio’s life was short though full. But, to my way of thinking, he was a true genius with a hot temper, a love affair with alcohol, and was often described as “extremely crazy.”

This painting is not one of his best however reveals his genius for color and “realism”; now considered the founder of the Baroque period where his emphasis on deep shadow contrasting blinding light is the art movement’s definitive trademark, so to speak, and made him famous at the time.

Some art scholars have written that it was only in the early twentieth century that Caravaggio’s work had come back into vogue. I find this astonishing considering the man’s genius.

Saint Jerome is not so much remembered for his scholarly works but for the incident where he came upon a lion with a thorn in its paw. He removed the thorn without any protest from the king of beasts…and as legend has it, the lion remained at Saint Jerome’s side for many years.

He lived the last thirty years in the Holy Land, more or less a recluse, continuing to translate texts, write prayers biographies, and collect a vast library of scrolls.

Because he was a scholar of the Church, his patronage included: archaeologists, archivists, Bible scholars, librarians, translators, and school children.

Saint Augustine said about Saint Jerome:

What Jerome is ignorant of, no man has ever known.

This painting of Saint Jerome has to be one of my favorites of the artist’s entire body of work.

 

Love, and Forgotten (Notes from an old Journal).

 

I noticed that I haven't posted an entry for some time. I came across this recent piece in my "miscellaneous file" and thought I'd post it here…

When you are in love, everything matters and nothing matters; all that really makes a difference is that you are with them, in time, place, or circumstance; the area can be elite parties, train platforms, stranded in peak hour traffic; a large and beautiful church in the heart of the city or alone in a crowded café talking about the first time met… time and circumstance can be any hour any situation, all that you know is that love is lovely, and only when the vagaries of existence inevitably move in, does one realize how vital the passing seconds and minutes of life can be.

The morning was perfect, the air crisp, clean, and the expressions on those who walked through the city streets towards various destinations smiled, some frowning with worry. Yet, at the same time, others looked blank, half asleep and seemingly meandering without purpose, last night's dreams hovering around their heads.

Realizing that I had never had the opportunity, she wanted to show me St. Patrick's Cathedral and looking up towards the cityscape, the church's spires pushed towards the clear blue autumn sky. Looking down and ahead, the traffic whizzed along the streets heavy and without respite, as she would hold fast to my arm, pushing forward and towards the curb, believing she was steadily guiding my body from specific danger.

We arrived at St. Patrick's, the neo-gothic spires grand, pointing tall towards the heavens, standing with time, suddenly realizing that this architectural marvel will continue existing when this body is long gone.

Walking into the church, we knew a memorial, an essential remembrance of an individual of influence was taking place, an Australian whose most extraordinary claim to fame was not his "time on the football field" or "involvement in organized crime" but his groundbreaking work into medical research. The church's pews were filled to maximum capacity, the medical community paying their respects to a medical researcher who made the history books, contributing to a greater understanding of the human body's processes.

We found ourselves, it seemed, amongst Melbourne's entire medical community, a day off from their duties with their families to attend the funeral of Dr. John Billings, the co-discoverer of the relationship between cervical mucus and fertility, resulting in what was then known as the "Billings Method" or re-named in the early 1970s by the World Health Organization as the "Billings Ovulation Method" (BOM). This discovery has led to many unwanted pregnancies being "guiltlessly" avoided. Dr. Billings began his research while assisting marriage consultancy for the Catholic Family Welfare Bureau in the 1950s. (1)

I thought that this is an individual whose work and legacy stand firm and should be acknowledged in our national media. But, still, it wasn't… somehow the mainstream media were more concerned on that particular news day with injured footy players and the private lives of Australian 'celebrities' overseas.

After leaving the funeral, we silently walked the church grounds, admiring the statues of the saints, observing the parched lawns, the Asian tourists, and one another.

Melbourne is a beautiful city in the autumn.

I felt so much admiration today: for the loss and lack of proper acknowledgment of a critical Australian of science, but also finding myself falling into a state of fuzzy sentimentality...love. Trying to harness these feelings into a rational view is all but impossible on this day, at least.

Attempting to connect the Heart and the Head is a never-ending task that has proven, according to the great writers of the last few centuries, an improbable, if not futile, endeavor.

Today was a moment where neither the past nor the future existed, and only the ongoing and pleasant seconds of the passing present.

Diana Krall – The Girl in the Other Room - Comment.

 

The breezy and haunting sounds of The Girl in the Other Room has moved through the air of my home, gently filling the space with the resonating notes of a steady bass, the soft tapings of a high hat and cymbal, and a voice that feels to whisper the lingering lyrics of songs written from the soul. Diana's fingers seem to barely touch the keys of her instrument, her heart expressing the existence of languid spirits, lost loves and memories of abandonment, past affairs and the fading scent of summertime.

The music of Diana Krull redefines the meaning of the word "cool" or more so, brings its meaning back to its original roots, where cool can really only be expressed through the sounds of jazz and blues.

Most of these tunes are a creative collaboration between Diana Krall and the genius of Elvis Costello. (husband) It is entirely evident that these two artists' have that mysterious ability to bring their minds and souls together, creating some extraordinary music.

Hearing track twelve for the first time, Departure Bay, Diana's voice, like the magical chanting of an ancient magi, entered my being and opened my spirit to the endless possibilities of music, seemingly transporting the soul to other realities, beautiful worlds and landscapes, places the soul always yearns for in secret, waiting for the chance to finally go there...and stay.

Diana and Elvis Costello have truly exceeded themselves with these songs.

This CD is magical, strangely enchanting and truly mesmerizing.

War: propaganda, lies and more lies

It's getting to the point where having a calm and rational conversation with someone about the Russian/Ukraine war is near impossible. The propaganda in the West is particularly vile and one-sided. Since 2016 the American people and the West generally were led to believe that the elected president (Trump) was a Russian agent and the election was infiltrated by Russian spies and therefore invalid. The media pushed these evidence-free allegations about Russian interference and Trump as a Russian shill non-stop for over 4 years. The Mueller report found no such evidence about Russian meddling, let alone Trump being a Russian spy. But the damage was done. Not since the 1950s has Russia been so demonized as a true enemy of the Western world.

During any war or conflict, propaganda abounds from all sides of the information spectrum.

When teaching Year10 history, we devoted a week to WWI propaganda. Revealing to the students are the emotive posters and lying news clippings at the time; these examples brought them to laughter. "How could anyone in their right mind believe this nonsense." Granted, the current propaganda is much more sophisticated, but it's propaganda nevertheless.

Yes, for certain, the non-stop Russia-Gait lies had a profound effect on the psyches of the masses. However, now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, it's as if simply one day Putin decided to invade because of imperialist intentions to conquer Europe!

When one attempts to explain even the last years of Ukrainian history to someone, they refuse to listen and prefer to believe the propaganda. Delving more profound in the whys and wherefores for war is a thought process many refuse to entertain. What's even worse, even attempting to dig deeper into the geopolitical situation, simply asking questions, you're either censored, called a Putin puppet, or unpatriotic. This is insane.

Those governments in the West, specifically the UK, USA, France, Australia, and New Zealand, have zero moral right to criticize Russia for invading Ukraine. The US and their allies have been waging war on sovereign nations since at least the 1960s. This is not to mention the violent meddling in Southern American countries since WWII. Indeed, currently, the US is occupying a part of a resource-rich area in Syria; and as then-president Trump proclaimed: 'We're protecting the oil".

Over the last 20 years, the US set the middle east on fire. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc. Israel is recognized by the United Nations as an apartheid state. The Israeli government has occupied and oppressed the Palestinians for well over 50 years. Palestine has been called by many a genocide in slow motion. Libya is now a failed state when once it was the most flourishing state in the continent of Africa. The US, UK, and NATO ensured Libya's destruction. Yet not a peep from our current protesters against the above war crimes on record for "democracy" and "freedom" that they're currently ranting and protesting for Ukraine. Is this ignorance or intentional memory loss by the world?

I believe it is a bit of both compounded by the unrelenting anti-Russia propaganda that's been waged on the people of the West for the last 5-10 years.

I've been protesting and writing against war for many years. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a war crime. But let's not forget the western allies' war crimes over the last 30 years. The occupation of Syria, the genocide in Yemen; the occupation in Somalia; the total destruction of Libya; the 20-year war in Afghanistan that is now being sanctioned, causing undue starvation and a vast exodus of women and children out of the country.

These people in the middle east are deemed "unworthy victims" once coined by the writer of Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky. Then there are "worthy victims" like the Ukrainians in this war. Spot the difference... it's not that difficult.

As citizens of the world, we should all despise war. War is a tool of the powerful to gain more power and profit. Ideas like democracy, freedom, and patriotism are rhetorical tools to hide the genuine reasons for war. This has been the case for 100 years, at least in the time of our modern world.

The only people who suffer war are the innocents, and those pushed to fight it.

Diplomacy (communication) in the case of Ukraine must reign to avoid the total destruction of the entire planet: 

WWIII.

“Enigma” by Gustave Dore.

 

The word "enigma" is defined as a mystery, secret or closed book. It can also be described as a puzzle, a problem requiring solving. An enigma is something that baffles understanding and can never be explained: a secret that will remain a secret no matter how hard we attempt to discover, define or describe… an actual unsolvable event or thing.

This has to be one of my favorite drawings of all time. What kind of man could actually create something so enticing, odd, and somehow "real," calling the work: Enigma?

This drawing by Gustave Dore is one of those works of art where one can sit and look for hours, continuing to discover new aspects, new things that are never seen before.

For me, the painting somehow makes "sense" but on a very abstract "imaginative" level.

So what is Dore's "Enigma" showing us?

The scene is a battlefield as dead soldiers lie everywhere. In the background, smoke fills the air giving the impression of enormous fires continuing to rage across the land…

This particular battle was fierce, a no holds barred situation of desperation, as if the victor will Rule… ALL.

This is not the beginning of the battle but its end.

The central focus of the drawing is of two strange beings: a winged character, perhaps an angel, and a sphinx, a "man" with the body of a lion, appear to be embracing or the winged one asking the sphinx for mercy, begging for a truce because everything is destroyed…nothing is left to rule - a battle in heaven between Good and Evil; any interpretation is possible, however, the drawing remains a magnificent example of the human beings capacity for imagination and representing that imagination in a concrete form, an image, sharing this vision with the rest of us.

Art in the truest sense of the word. ( Left click on image for better view)

Gustave Dore's "Enigma" is currently housed at the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.

Vladimir Nabokov -Speak, Memory - Review

It is known that the great author worked on this project for many years, collecting photographs, letters, scraps of unfinished poetry, searching his past to write a close to an accurate account of his early life. In fact, this autobiography is atypical, similar to a wandering mind, grasping at images, sights and smells, recollections, reminisces, rather than a chronological,' factual' version of a life lived.

The opening sentence of Speak, Memory, to my mind, is probably one of the most moving and haunting recollections in an autobiography ever read:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

The narrator continues on to describe a young chronophobiac who experienced panic when he viewed an old home movie, seeing his mother waving from an upstairs window and below, a brand-new baby carriage standing alone, realizing that the carriage was his own days before his actual birth. This disturbed him as the feeling of peering at a world days before he came into existence, sort of a reverse course of events, was akin to staring directly into eternity.

Nabokov's childhood and adolescence were an enchanting one, part of an aristocratic family, a beautiful mother, and a liberal-minded father who had a vast library, where little Vladimir would arrive home to find him practicing his fencing, the clanging of blades, with a colleague. This was a civilized existence in St. Petersburg before the onslaught of the Russian Revolution. Like most aristocratic families at the time, the Bolsheviks seized the family fortune, forcing the family to flee their beloved Russia to Germany. But when Nabokov looks back at this tumultuous period, he says,

"My old (since 1917) quarrel with the Soviet Dictatorship is wholly unrelated to any question of property. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes."

The book is strewn with old black and white photographs of Nabokov's family. One particular picture of his father and mother was taken circa 1900 at their estate at Vrya, which really depicts the author's father's aristocratic demeanor and pure strength. In the background are the birches and firs of the countryside where Nabokov discovered his life-long passion for butterfly collecting.

Even if the reader is not familiar with the great novels of Nabokov: Lolita, Pale Fire, The Eye, and many others, will undoubtedly enjoy this unique and brilliantly written autobiography by one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

The Green Manifestation in the Sky.

It was in the summer of 1970, walking towards home after visiting a friend, where, looking up in the sky, a deep green object hovered above without the slightest movement, as if stagnate, placed, a "thing" not of this world. The sighting did not frighten me but brought on feelings of exuberance, the vital energy of absolute vigor.

As a young boy at the time, through my innocence, anything was possible.

It remained motionless, this deep, green blob in the sky.

To ensure I was not hallucinating, I looked around the street for someone to corroborate this vision, proof that I wasn't merely "seeing things."

When the sun was about to disappear, it was that time of warm summer dusk.

Looking around, not one person could be seen, all inside at this beautiful time when day turns to night. It's a lovely evening, I thought, where is everybody?

My stare turned upward again, and the green blob continued to remain stagnate for all the world to see.

I began to run as fast as possible towards home. Then, out of breath, bending over and placing my hands on my knees, and finally home, I looked up at the sky, and the green blob had left as if it was never there in the first place.

Told my mother and sister about the sighting, and they nodded their heads as if to say, "You've seen things all your life. What's so different now?"

Many years later, in my Year 10 English class on a hot afternoon without air conditioning, it is now fifty years later.

On these occasions, students simply do not want to work: Friday, last period, hot as heck, and re-learning "conjunctions" is out of the question.

"Tell us one of your stories, Mr. M?"

I've been telling this particular English class stories the entire term because it stimulates discussion - true-life stories and some concerning the supernatural.

"As I recall, this story was during my time living in Brighton in a haunted house...

"Has anyone else experienced something out of the ordinary?"

The class was silent, unusual for that time of day. Then, one of my shy students, Rachael, raised her hand.

"Believe it or not, and I don't care if you believe me, but I saw something in the sky that shouldn't have been there...I was around 11 years of age, and in the sky was this dark green "thing" that didn't move; it looked like a big, green blob. I looked around to see if anyone was around to see it too, but no one...then it disappeared. But I swear I saw it, and I'll never forget it!"

A chill went down my spine as I sat on the desk in front of the class. All their eyes turned to me as my expression must have been a little strange.

Then Andrew piped up, "Have you seen the same thing, Mr. M?"

Reluctantly, I admitted to having had seen something very similar at age eleven and have never heard about it for thirty years until Rachael told her story.

The class was silent, then burst into animation as it was only a few seconds before the bell rang to begin their weekend.

The bell rang, and I duly dismissed the class. Rachael stayed behind and asked,

"Did you really see that "thing"?

I merely nodded.

She left the classroom with the biggest smile on her face - at last, some kind of corroboration.

'At least I'm not the only crazy person in the world.'

This green manifestation in the sky has never appeared again.