Friday, November 24, 2006

aesthetic truths


Evelyn de Morgan, "Earthbound" (1897)


you wanted blues and reds; you knew what was white and what was not.

i have lived my life in the decadence of marines and merlots. you called for me to let down my hair so you could scale my tower. instead i shaved it, letting it run down: pools of ink in the floor; you thought you would fall in. i dipped my toes in it, tipped with diamond, and wrote my name on the mahogany. you demanded simplicity so i discarded my bracelets and silks and walked barefoot over floors the color of january and rugs of anger. you cursed the nakedness of my body; the hue voluptuous was too much for you, and you could not distinguish between glorious and heretical. you accused me of witchcraft: eyes of threatening apocalypse, lips the shade of orpheus. you lashed out at the impertinence of my palette and i shattered like porcelain underneath those blows. but still i cut you, splinters of me beneath your skin. in a voice of primary colors you denounced me, pronounced me unholy, named my tower Traitor and left me alone to refashion myself in the shades of complexity: i who knew the difference between yellow and gold.

-LoA

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, powerful and intricate and it almost makes sense. If it is the aesthetic truth each perceives differently, or a vision of Eve, or God molding Adam from clay, or I don't know what, I keep reading it, and perhaps that is what is its purpose. In our appreciation of beauty, we sense the Infinite.

Ya Haqq!

Lawrence of Arabia said...

i admit that i am not entirely sure what is going on here either. i have my reading of course, but at a certain point the writer becomes just another reader, lol. writing at 2am is not conducive to a lot more than stream of consciousness. all i had was the one idea, contrasting the voice of primary colors with a voice more complex and defiant. i suspect this is something i will return to down the road.

Anonymous said...

Good thing you're not sure, because I've no clue what's going on here, but I love it nevertheless.

BTW I'm doing a site overhaul and am looking for a central banner image - something Pakistani, maybe architecture, soulful, reflective. Since you're the artist among us, maybe you have some ideas. Oh yeah - and it's gotta be free, no copyright.

Lawrence of Arabia said...

yes i kinda like it too, despite my own cluelessness. maybe its just vanity on my part.

i will give some thought to your question about a banner while i am on the road tomorrow.

best wishes,
LoA.

Lawrence of Arabia said...

there are some wonderful images of pakistani architecture at wikimedia.

my personal faves are from the shalamar gardens, and this one

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mosque_by_gul791.jpg

which i thought was beautiful.

all the photos at wikimedia commons project are for public use.

pakistani architecture is found at ….

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Architecture_of_Pakistan


best wishes,
LoA.