9 Years on the Blog: There are places I don’t remember, There are times and days, they mean nothing to me

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking on the days that are no more.”

(Lord Tennyson – Tears, Idle Tears)

John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856

Today my blog is nine years old! At first I didn’t really know what to say on this ocassion, I thought: nine years and that is that, whatever, nothing to say. I am a person who doesn’t usually enjoy birthdays or anniversaries because they remind me of the passing of time, but that is precisely why this nine year blog anniversary does matter and why I decided to celebrate it anyway. It matters because it is not only the nine years of this blog and almost a thousands posts published, it is also nine years of my life. Every year, every season on the blog, every painting, every post is a fragment of my life, and my soul. Every anniversary of this blog reminds me of the passing of time. Thinking about nine years that have passed sets me off into a reverie…

Thinking of transience, I cannot help but hear in my mind the wistful violins from Tindersticks’ 1995 song “Travelling Light”. The song’s lyrics hold a special meaning for me and the older I get the more I can relate to them; people come into your life and leave it without a noise, without a sound and days go on like nothing has changed. People die, and leave, and disappear, and yet you get up the next morning and drink coffee and life goes one. Hearts get broken and brokenly live on, to quote the Romantic Lord Byron whose “muse” I am. Well, I am not really but I named my blog so. Things that seemed so important back then now mean nothing to me, and faces from old photographs are like ghosts from another life. I am usually a person who clings to every littlest thing that has memory for me; a piece of paper, train ticket, pressed flower, for I am hopelessly clinging to the past, in vain trying to stop the unstoppable; the passing of time. But lately I had started to feel like Miss Havisham, suffocating in my little room full of spiderwebs, pretty objects and memories and so I am learning to shed myself from the burden of all those memories, like a snake sheds off its skin, so that I may walk lighter into the future. Here are the lyrics:

There are places I don’t remember
There are times and days, they mean nothing to me
I’ve been looking through some of them old pictures
They don’t serve to jog my memory

I’m not waking in the morning, staring at the walls these days
I’m not getting out the boxes, spread out all over the floor
I’ve been looking through some of them old pictures
Those faces they mean nothing to me no more

I travel light
You travel light
Everything I’ve done
You say you can justify, mmm you travel light

I can’t pick them out, I can’t put them in these sad old bags
Some things you have to lose along the way
Times are hard, I’ll only pick them out, wish I was going back
Times are good, you’ll be glad you ran away….

*

There are many reasons why I chose John Everett Millais’ painting “Autumn Leaves” for this post; firstly, because it is one of my favourite paintings; secondly, because it is poetic and beautiful and represent the mood I have been trying to cultivate on my blog for years; and thirdly, because its autumnal setting is a perfect setting for my thoughts about transience and the passing of time. The painting – a true Pre-Raphaelite gem – shows four girls in the dusk of the day gathering leaves in a pile. What a simple scene visually yet imbued with so much wistfulness, melancholy and lyrical beauty. The dried orange and brown leaves set the time of the year; autumn, a time for farewells and endings. The sky in the background, painted in purples and yellow, so romantic, a perfect twilight, as Millais had put it. The two long-haired girls in black dresses were the younger sisters of Millais’ wife; Alice and Sophy Gray. Their round faces are full of girlish innocence, but still melancholy is casting a shadow over them, and their large blue eyes are filled with yearning. Millais had painted Sophie on many ocassions and her face, with the blue eyes laden with sadness and cherry red lips is perfect for the Pre-Raphaelite art. Rosy cheeks and wistful gazes, these girls are caught at the border between girlhood and womanhood; fragile, sad days. One more autumn passing by, one more year passing by… how many are left?

I will take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been following my blog in the past nine years and everyone who shared their words of encouragment and kindness with me.