I woke up around 4 this morning to the sound of a torrential downpour. I have a second floor apartment in an older building. When it rains hard, the noise takes on the sound quality of rain on a tent. It makes me wonder how thin my walls and roof are but I think that it mostly has to do with the poxy material of which the roof is comprised. Do you like how I artfully avoided dangling a preposition there?
I have a J.W. Waterhouse print on the wall of my office. It is entitled The Crystal Ball. A graceful woman with pale skin in a crimson dress holds a fist sized clear ball in her hands. Her face and eyes are downcast, so the viewer must imagine that she is gazing into the ball. Her thick dark brown hair is gathered into a large bun at the back of her head. Her dress, though fitted at the top, has extra folds at the waist and elbow of the arms. She is standing in a study, filled with a table, on which a rather large book sits open, and a dark wooden chair with a red cushion. A half moon window fills the back of the picture and the blurred shapes of trees are visible. I alternatively wonder, what is in the crystal ball and would I look that beautiful in the picture? There is a sense of loneliness about the woman, as there is in most of Waterhouse’s works, but there is also the isolation that comes with a long day of study.
–Jane obviously has noting much to say