Worldly Wordy Efforts

Memory being what it is- an often delusional trap built on what was thought to be but surely is not and never was, I made a mistake in assuming that a certain painting (Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill by Pieter Clasez) which I found myself enjoying the other day was used on the cover image of a certain book (that of Robert Burton's Antatomy of Melancholy), but this was clearly not the case upon a quick check of the bookshelves.  Mistakes will be made, but I thought that my visual memory served me better than that.

"Worldly efforts are in vain" reads the description of the painting, and in particular relating to the plight of the writer- which may well be true in most cases, but yet some do shine still, no? Or is that all too a dream? Come what may, keep on writing, but only if you absolutely must.

Writing your fingers to the bone, like Balzac, who appeared again (in a smaller model) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but whom I seemed to have never quite seen in that walkway of sculptures (although I have looked at that St John the Baptist many a time)- yet, there he was, looming larger than life...