The Lighter Side of JzB

Here you will find photos, poetry, and possibly some light-hearted foolishness. For the Heavier Side
of JzB
see my other blog,
Retirement Blues. (There be dragons!)

I claim copyright and reserve all rights for my original material of every type and genre.


Every day visits*
From Moose, Goose, and Orb Weaver
All seized by Haiku


"Why moose and goose?" you may ask. Back on 2/04/13 Pirate wrote a haiku with an elk in it, and I responded with
one with a moose and then included him every day. A few days later in comments Mystic asked "Where's the goose?"
So I started including her with this post on 2/07. A week later on the 14th, Mark Readfern
asked for and received a spider. The rest is history.

*Well, most days, anyway. Grant me a bit of poetic license.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Carpe Diem #669




I was walking along the road with two friends
the sun was setting
suddenly the sky turned blood red
I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence
there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city
my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety
and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.


© Edvard Munch


Not all art is to be liked, in the sense that it is pleasant or comforting.  There is a place for that.  But there is also a place for the eerie, the disturbing, the square root of nightmares, and this panting certainly qualifies in that regard.

The mis-shapen androgynous face is weirdly reflected by light colored regions [tongues of fire?] both above and to the right.  The walk-way and the railing are realistically rendered; the two apparently nonchalant walkers in the distance more in the manner of traditional impressionism, and these things only heighten the strangeness of both the central focal figure and everything else in the background.

I didn't know the story behind The Scream and somehow I've always associated it with Picasso's Guernica.   So, I see in it an anti-war statement that Munch probably never intended.  But what more than mankind's greatest evil, with all it's collateral damage on life and mother earth could evoke this scream?

I find this idea reinforced in both the surreal turbulence of water and the tortured bleeding sky.


this dying planet
plagued with murder rape and war
screams along with you



5 comments:

  1. Yes, that all-encompassing scream --
    Powerful stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "..the square root of nightmares.." Loved that. Also love the haiku. I too have seen images of this painting over time not knowing much about it. Just wanted to shun it. But like you said, not all art is for 'pretty', some is to make you think. A nice one you have here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You have managed to capture the reason mother nature is screaming right now...wow!

    ReplyDelete

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