This is My Penance.

I really hate to admit this, but I think I might just be madly in love with Matthew Bellamy. Observe. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I really sincerely like this band. Ugh. I hate myself. I know that this, fundamentally, contradicts almost everything I stand for but...in my defense, I have loved them since before they were cool.
Anyhow enter improvisation. Despite the fact that I inherently loathe the piano. There's no piano in this song.

Icy Spicy Leonie

For some reason, I thought of you, Kenji.

Dimmesdale vs Stansfield

So I've been having the opening couplet of Sonnet 147 running through my mind for the past weekend, without knowing what it was to. I mean, I knew it was Shakespeare, because of the language, which is so easily identifiable, but you know, I started writing a sonnet that mirrored it somewhat. Well, not as such, but the same basic concept of the sonnet, in a different way. I'll post it when I scrape the last six lines together, as I only have eight insofar. And this one is written in proper iambic pentametre.
Also, I just got through watching 'The Scarlet Letter,' the one with Gary Oldman. It's wretched how little of him we see in that film, I got a bit nauseous of Demi Moore's singularly mannish acting. Not that I dislike her particularly, only, I've never cared for her, either. I also much prefer Gary as a gutwrenchingly psychotic sadist. What can I say? I have some serious issues with how I perceive talent.

Beastly

Mood: Five Minutes to Bed-Time
Listening To: Albion, Babyshambles
Reading: The Golestan of S'adi, S'adi
Eating: Nothing. All bloody day.
Drinking: the ink from my pen
If you're looking for a cheap sort set in false anticipation,
I'll be waiting in the photo booth at the underground station,
Oh, come away, say you'll come away, we could go
Anywhere in Albion.
This song is the sex. Almost as much the sex as Jeremy Brett. You know, I just realised he's the little poufter who plays Freddie in My Fair Lady. I always thought he was such a little wanker, letting himself get dragged about by a girl who didn't really care about him. And he's so masterful as lovely S.H., you'd never know he was a poncy little Scorpio boy who smoked sixty cigarettes a day. Brings a whole new meaning to desperately needing a fag.
Who am I kidding? Nothing's going anywhere, and neither will it.
Nothing new under the sun, and all that.
I really just want to be snuggled, damn it. And the damned Ocker's gone away. So I shall indulge myself in petty nonsense like this.
Beastly Little Things!

Souped-Up SoHo Mincer

I'm staring into my tea, and it's quarter past seven in the morning. Grumb. Good thing I've got a wiry darkhaired Brit to stare at when I roll over.
So I've become addicted (belatedly, I realise) to the coolest swing band out there, and certainly the one with the most risqué name. Go check out the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. They rock. Hard.
Also, I worship Luis Aquino and Pedro Eustache. The brats, with their brass and woodwind instruments, thinking they're so awesome. They are. Buggrit.
Here, have an art link. It's the LeStrange bros.

A Ten-Minute Dream in the Passenger's Seat

Last night I slit open a pack of canvas panels. They're small, nine by twelve inches, and since I grid in half inches, usually, I'll call them eighteen by twenty-fours. I've found that canvas panels are generally just a few millimetres shorter than what they're meant to be. Something to do with the size of the canvas wrapping over the cardboard or somesuch nonsense.
I'm also thinking about doing some arbitrary studies of hands, since I'm so useless at them. I mean, the new study I'm doing involves hands...but one of them is a bit deformed, so I don't think it qualifies. It's more of an abstract shape. Gah. I love hands. They're such beautiful things. And I've been seeing some lovely hands lately. Anyhow.
I think pretty much the only thing I ramble about is art on this blog, really. I don't talk about personal issues or things that are happening to me, because really, who wants to hear that? It's like...someone said something to me a bit ago about how they felt like they'd not been getting any sleep, even though they'd been having a good seven or eight hours a night, and my first reaction (both because I'm a heartless scoundrel, and because I'd not yet had any tea that morning) was, 'who bloody cares?'
That is why I don't ramble on about my personal life, and also because (see above), I am a heartless scoundrel. Erm. Oh, but I do post some very personal poetry, and I think that qualifies. Speaking of which, I do have a piece that no one has seen, ever, but I have read it to a friend over the telephone. I wrote it haaages ago, and I'm sure it has something to do with Ockers.

Brindling, like a fascist child,
I wear the uniform of love,
The barest hint of subtle sweet,
The faintest hum of music.

And o, the wounded sounds you make
When for you I sigh in fear,
If time were ours, how we would feast
On one another's bones.

You are the silk of palm fronds,
Sleek and barbed across my mouth.
A hook, a charm you gave to me
To fletch for you, as I saw fit.

We cut our time in half, for pride,
We chased our own false smiles.
I never gave you more than love,
You never knew the difference.
(finis)

Gosh, I need to learn to be more subtle, don't I? Also, to stop using open quatrains to do my dirty work. I don't know, rhyming seems so pretentious to me, even though I was once really good at unusual rhymes, despite the fact that I used a whole arseload of assonance.
Also, I really, deeply dislike Latin. It's an ugly language. I don't care who says what, it has never sounded anything beside overheady and sepulchral. Honestly! 'Haerebantque in comintante sedebam' blah blah it sounds wretched. It's an ugly language.
Furthermore, I don't really know if I like English, either. Not spoken, anyway. It looks lovely written down, all those curved letters prancing out of my pen so joyfully and meaningfully. You can represent so much in writing, the steadiness of your hand, the slant of your letters. Unfortunately, I need to write sideways because otherwise my handwriting slants left, but that's just a habit from training my hand to lie outside my paper when I'm drawing, so it doesn't smudge. Speaking English has proved to be a near impossibility. I find myself drowning in a phrase that should be simple to speak, but I have made it odious to myself, and others have made it mean nothing. I can't even say some things when I am alone. And I'm talking about ordinary words, nothing sacreligious or any such nonsense. I mean simple things, which are simlpe to type or write. I can't express myself for fear of drowning people.
I blame all those little footnotes in the dictionary saying 'obsolete.' I also blame Gary Oldman, but only because I just happen to be a bit mad for him at the moment. Guh. Cobalt blue and Payne's grey eyes.
Damn him.

A Pikey with a Knowledge of Scripture

I'll tell you a story, but you won't listen,
It's about a nightmare steeped in tradition.
It's the story of a coked-up pansy
Who spent his nights in flights of fancy.
Yaz, I know. I've been a bit neglectful. Which really doesn't matter. I blog for myself, which is good, because bloody no one reads this little corner of cyberspace.
News.
Erm, I've nearly finished the first face of the grisaille portrait, and I'm working up the courage to start the next and fill in the clothing details. Looking for some reference, but I think I'll just cop out and do it from memory. There's texture in the canvas. Blah.
I bought some ink the other day, but I was very disappointed to find that it's not viscous enough to work with my pens, and I already have watercolours to work with my brushes. I don't want to do the sumi-e thing.
I started this sketch today...it was meant to be David Thewlis, but it ended up not being nearly sensual enough...his nice, expressive mouth turned all tight and forbidding. I can't imagine David Thewlis looking forbidding--can you?
I just found out that he's a novelist. The brat. And of course, the critics absolutely CRAWLED to him.
Perhaps I will begin to paint postcard-sized heads. It shall be my own little protestation at minimalism.
Other than that, there isn't much on the brain, besides the fact that I'm getting worse and worse at holding myself back. I'm turning into an emotional hedonist, indulging myself in feeling at every opportunity. It's shameful, really. I've been so good at not for ever so long. And I remember why I didn't. Because, when you're really let go, it's as though the sky itself were incinerating, little polyps like stars all gleaming like pinprick angels.
And then your lips begin to gleam, as well, in a rictus smile that beguiles and makes everyone think you're a pleasant person.
Pastry-chefs, I expect, are shamefully adorable boyfriends.
However! I wouldn't know, because I only ever flirt with them when I feel the need to 'suit up' in all the masks and sugar-tartness of candied cherries and glossy tea-cakes.
Maybe I'm only feeling like all the colour has gone out of everything because it's the tail end of winter, and spring hasn't yet shown up to tell me that things always move in cycles, and it really will be all right, but there are far too many layers to my life, and I just want it to go out of this present one and into the next.
Because emotional excess doesn't always need to be present in the life of a girl, even if she is young and moderately attractive, with good posture and nice teeth.

Sod it, He's Mine!

John Cleese, I mean.