Internet Connection
43April 15, 2015 by petrujviljoen
Folks, this blog is still working, just have no internet connection in the remote spot where I live at present. It crashed a few weeks ago and it’s a problem having it reinstalled.
Working from the library in my closest town and impossible to load a proper post.
Greetings
petrujviljoen 
I have felt that my feet, alternatively, were either glued to the floor, or that I was out of control of them. Fortunately, I have no RED shoes and didn’t have to ask a woodsman to chop off my feet at the ankles! Though I am about to write about a red stone. 🙂
Stones, pebbles, indeed. I’ve been carving or engraving on the softer kinds. I did a post on a set I shaped – was a compulsion, couldn’t do anything else until the need kind of resolved itself. It ended with a greenish stone, already shaped in a form of an ancient goddess figure that I just needed to sand down and polish a bit. https://pviljoen.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/lapis-self-portraits-in-little-stones/
I am also rather grateful that another understands one’s condition. It’s not easy to explain and if one does people thinks … you know what they think. And no, no red shoes. But am wondering about Cinderella’s glass shoes. Next post will have a mention of it. Thanks a stack, this helps. Glad I found you.
I’m laughing at the glass shoes construct! Your green stone is delicious. Well, it looks like it might be. A green man, or fertility figure, talisman. I like splitting stones open – it’s probably why I like fossil hunting. I think you have to split things open, get beneath the surface; not geese, though! (I expect you know the fairy tale). I have a fossil a bit like your green stone. I call it my ‘linga’. I’ll have blogged about it. I’ll find it and send the link. 🙂
Here’s a few links to some blogs incorporating my ‘Linga’ fossil:
http://annisikarts.com/2012/04/21/the-books-of-the-dead-a-hurricane-a-comet-and-of-course-ufos/
http://annisikarts.com/2013/05/17/a-code-of-cups/
http://annisikarts.com/2013/04/15/incomplete-art-project/
Thanks. Visited each and something in each. I agree with the concept of an artwork having an energy of its own. I once made a portrait of a woman, unknown to me, and she spoke to me all the time. I gave it to a friend and she had the same experience.
I began detailed drawings of ‘women’ when I was 16-17, with startling results! But also, at 20, my first ‘engagement’ with a painting was in the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). It was Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’, the last one he did of a woman from his famous ‘Guernica’. I knew almost nothing about art at the time. As I stood looking at this painting, the woman’s head began to move around and I actually heard her weeping. It was the most desperate weeping I’d ever heard in my life. Later I learnt it was of a woman weeping over her dead child (murdered). I wanted the power to rock people in their shoes as that painting had rocked me. I am full of stories. I would have liked to see your portrait of a woman. I’m sure we would have had marvellous conversations! You are a better artist and more advanced being than I. I am trying to ‘catch you up’.
Compliments! Nothing but. Your work is very sophisticated. I thought the Weeping Woman was of Dora Maar, one of his ex-lovers. He was a terrible abuser of women.
Yes, it was based on Dora Maar and I agree that he was an abuser of women. He was always ‘El Toro’. But it was also a time when women were more subservient, too and trained for ‘decoration’. I think he thought they were ‘silly’ – I’m thinking of all those 50s women’s hats. Later in his life, his opinion of them got worse, I think. One of my university lecturers told me he’d met Picasso on a beach in Spain, while he (my lecturer) was doing a painting. Picasso came over and made a drawing for him on a scrap of paper and gave it to him. My lecturer asked him if he would sign it, but he didn’t! Imagine the change of fortune of my lecturer if he had!
I have lots of stories! 🙂
Oh, the jerk. A part of his cruelty. I’ve gone off his artwork mainly because of the kind of person he was. I was relieved when a (male) lecturer here in SA agreed with me that he wasn’t so great anyway. Fernard Leger was much better.
I wrote my fine art BA dissertation on Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ to get him out of my system. When I got a ‘first’ I was mystified and my ‘mentor’ told me that my diss had been considered “… an outstanding achievement for an undergraduate study.” I still don’t know why. There was a section which it was recommended I leave out as there was no ‘evidence’ to back up my theory. I was a bit like the linga and yoni idea of cup and ring markings (neolithic). I kept the section in anyway. 🙂
Oh well done, do you still have it? I’d like to read it. By the way, got your email but it came with a phishing alert so didn’t open it and can’t answer! Won’t you check your computer for stuff please? Would love to talk back and forth via email.
Yes, I still have it, but it’s hefty and a lot of rubbish. I’ll check out my email. It’s probably my spam blocker doing it’s thing.
I can’t see anything untoward with my email. You were probably sent a ‘challenge’ question by my spam company. You are asked to put some letters or numbers in a box to ‘prove’ you are human. Sorry! Try writing a test email. I should get it and then I can ‘authorise’ you as a human myself. You are human, aren’t you? Just joking. 🙂
I actually thought as much. Remembered last night it happened once before with another site. Will answer shortly.
Thought of exactly that last night. Will answer shortly.
I wish I still had a photograph of the artwork. I made it back in 1989. The friend and I grew away from each other so can’t ask her to send one, even if she still has it. Last time I visited her the drawing was rolled up and stored in a cupboard, she couldn’t take it anymore.
There are many people who couldn’t take me anymore!
Same here, I can assure you.
But it’s their fault! 🙂
Often, but I’m no little angel either I’m afraid. too many issues to mention. When you get your email fixed we can swop stories.
I hope you like horror, as a genre.
I don’t! Scares me stupid!
Don’t know this fairytale? Tell me?
An Aesop’s fable: The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs. To get ‘all’ the eggs out of the goose, it was slain. Of course, there were no more golden eggs. 🙂
Oh of course. I have Grimm’s original folk tales here. The popular Cinderella never had glass shoes apparently, that came later and I’d like to know by who? And no fairy godmother either, it was the spirit of her own mother who passed away in the form of a bird that helped her. And read The White Snake, very similar to the Garden of Eden story. So many tales distorted over time!
I googled The White Swan and came up with the Arne-Thompson Tale Type Index. It’s a multi-volume listing of tales by plot pattern apparently. It’s vast! I love it and it will be very useful in story writing. Thanks for a nod in that direction, accidental though it be.
Was reading some more Grimm’s fairy tales and found another story very similar to that of Cinderella, same plot, different name. Reading it before, the whole set of tales, I was astonished how many times it was in fact the princess charming having to come to the rescue of the male protagonist. I’ll look up Arne Thompson. The origin of these tales are obscure. The Grimm brothers only collected the tales, they didn’t write it themselves. Can’t help laughing at their name: these tales are rather grim, each and every one of them.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’ taught me how to ‘read’ the psychology of fairy tales and dreams. And Marie Louise von Franz (student of Jung) is known for her psychological interpretation of fairy tales. I have a couple of her books: ‘The Three Feathers’ is entirely devoted to the interpretation of the tale of the same name. I’d recommend that book.
I’ll get it! Did a search on the Cinderella folk tale last night. A Perrault person made the changes to the Grimm’s edition : I knew it would’ve been a man that would think of glass shoes for a girl.
Charles Perrault. He was born and died in Paris. He wrote Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au Bois Dormant) at the Chateau d’Usse, (pron. Oosay) in the Loire Valley. We’ve visited. There is a tower and at the top, with little rooms all tricked out with scenes from the story. It’s peculiar. I have some pictures somewhere. Yes, glass shoes, immensely easy to dance in, I guess. 🙂
I feel for you. I am also amazed that you could get WORD PRESSS to work for you. I find it incredibly complicated, thought of you so often in the two months I have been trying to get it off the ground. Resorted to Website Builder instead. No Blog facilities there. Hope you can get fixed up soon. We do pay a price for living in the sticks! All the best. Liz
Hi Liz, finally got up and out of the slough and got myself organised again today. Tons of stuff obviously to catch up on and am already incredibly frustrated. In the month or so of not having had internet at all, it was such freedom to not have to reload a page five times (at least). Been briefly on Linkedin too, but herewith thanks for the recommendations. It’s appreciated.
Wonderful to have you back. And I ‘crashed’ just after April 4 and was only able to post a blog today. My problem wasn’t my Internet connection. Maybe I was ‘out in sympathy’!
To be an empath isn’t easy. I have A LOT on my mind, family stuff, friendships that haven’t been working for a while. It is rather strange that we both seemed to have been ‘out of it’ at more or less the same time.
This brings tears to my eyes. Thank you! No, I mean it. It is wonderful to have met someone who understands the difficulties faced by empaths. It gets better – I’m getting better at separating what’s my own mind and what’s somebody else’s. I expect you suffer from ‘overwhelm’ as I do and have to retreat! Thank goodness there are immense compensations. I think it’s even odder that when I ‘came back’ from my watery depths, the first blog is write is about stones, in latin ‘petro’. 🙂
I am indeed in a state of overwhelm. I live where I do exactly because retreat is so much easier. The current issues however are very close to home, siblings and a close friend of 23 years – all of whom I love or have cared for immensely, in that order. The latter is coming into a perspective that’s extreme. The details aren’t meant for a comment to a post. The cat and I are otherwise fairly fine. Can, at least, work.
I know how you feel; I can’t go into details either. We must lead parallel lives. It’s a pity we can’t fold the world over and meet at the joins.
Maybe internet is doing that? My email is on my blog.
I can’t find it. Can you point me in its direction? 🙂 Ann
proartist.viljoen79@gmail.com
Thanks. I’ll email you. If you email me back, I use a company to filter out spam and you might be sent a ‘challenge’ email unless I intercept it first. Sorry, but you know how it is. The world is mad. 🙂
Of course I’ll email back. Memo to self: check spam folder …
Actually could’ve gotten myself sorted out sooner with internet, just couldn’t get up to do it.