August 26th
This is so wonderful that every day I can find something new and interesting and beautiful, be it about myself, or others, or a book, or a song, or a painting — for example as this one above. Painted almost 500 years ago, it seems very modern. And on the initial look, not quite melancholic as its title might suggest. Although on closer examination — those kids are playing with a ball pushing it with sticks through a hoop. Does it suggest in a symbolic way our planet and by extension our lives as being susceptible to random events/turns by unthinking and unreasonable fates (as personified by toddlers)? If so, then the sad countenance of a winged woman sitting there can be understandable. She is whittling another stick, will it be used to put additional pinprick in our already damaged world? The background in this painting is rather straightforward (except for the dog whom I cannot place in any context) — rocks/mountains/nature dwarfing human settlement, an army on horseback going to war, witches on flying pigs in a storm cloud ready to partake in bloody spoils of the said war. That winged woman also has a tired and resigned expression with pursed lips. She already has seen it all before — our human nature doesn’t change much. And that knowledge of our futility and inability to radically change the fundamentals of humanity can be very well represented as overwhelming melancholy.
