gkwriter - Tumblr blog

[gkwriter]

Shade of Pines in a Cloudy Valley, Wang Jian, 1660, Cleveland Museum of Art: Chinese Art

Size: Overall: 128.2 x 61 cm (50 ½ x 24 in.) Medium: hanging scroll, ink on paper

https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.105

[gkwriter]

My essay about ghost stories from The Dead and the Quick, published by @baptonbooks

[gkwriter]

Beautiful drawing...

Farmer resting under a willow tree, Haruki Nanmei, 1830s, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Japanese and Korean Art

The thatched hat and shoulder basket suggest that the man resting in the cool shade of a willow tree is a farmer who has been working in the fields. He may have stopped to take a sip of water from the gourd that hangs from his left hip. Resting his chin on the end of his hoe handle, he looks like he’s dozing off while he enjoys the gentle breeze that wafts through the willow branches. Nanrei renders the branches with brushstroke-like lines that reflect his training in the Chinese literati mode of painting. Size: 15 x 19 ¼ in. (38.1 x 48.9 cm) (sheet) Medium: Woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/42404/

[gkwriter]

I’ve always loved Chinese paintings like this...

Washing the Feet (from the Dusty World), Wen Boren, 1570, Cleveland Museum of Art: Chinese Art

A scholar on a boat in the middle ground bathes his feet in the cooling stream. The vast river scene is depicted from a high viewing point. The motif of a scholar washing his feet illustrates the phrase, “When the waters of the Canglang are clear, I wash my capstrings. When the waters of the Canglang are muddy, I wash my feet [only]” (from Songs of Chu, written before 256 BC). The passage evokes the image of the virtuous scholar-official who avoids government service when the ruler is corrupt (the rivers are muddy) and resumes service (washing my capstrings) when the waters are clear. Whether the artist here alludes to unfavorable times of government is not clear. Size: Image: 170.2 x 79.4 cm (67 x 31 ¼ in.) Medium: hanging scroll, ink and color on paper

https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.103

[gkwriter]

A temple on a mountain at Ishiyama under an autumn moon, in honour of the enormous full moon I saw while walking home earlier this week. (The image is from the Library of Congress)

[gkwriter]

Tanznacht Berlin – found in Prenzlauer Berg

[gkwriter]

[gkwriter]

A worryingly familiar feeling...

Me: i love books! I love them so much! I am such a bookworm!

Friend: cool! How many did you read this year?

Me: OK, so here’s the thing

[gkwriter]

I love this shop, although it’s been a while since I was last there.

Leakey’s Bookshop, Inverness. Scotland’s second largest secondhand bookshop, with around 100,000 books. The building, dating back to 1793, used to be a Gaelic church, giving the shop two floors, high ceilings, and beautiful windows.

[gkwriter]

Perils Chapter One

Chapter One of my Haphne fanfiction, Perils & Dangers of the Night, has just been uploaded to Fanfiction.net (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12816681/1/Perils-Dangers-of-the-Night) and Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org/works/15405027). Here’s a sample; if you like it, please check out the rest!

A week after his meeting with Slughorn, Tom Riddle sat in the Hogwarts library, deep in thought. It had, Tom was now sure, been a serious mistake to ask Slughorn about horcruxes. He had not been happy about the idea to start with but the information he had managed to piece together from his long hours of research in the library had been vague and contradictory; the one thing which he had gathered from it was that making a mistake would have dire consequences and so it seemed like the only thing to do was to consult Slughorn. Old Professor Slughorn, who he could play like a Mozart piano sonata, or so he had thought. But, he thought, it seems that I have underestimated the professor.

    He had first realised that something was going wrong with his carefully planned scheme when all of his small collection of library books which contained material dealing with horcruxes was recalled. He had tried to think who else might be interested and concluded that it had to be one of the professors; he couldn’t believe that another student would know enough to be able to select and recall every single one of those books because he himself had spent months patiently working through the references to find them. That realisation had made him furious and he had vented his anger to gratifying effect on two first-years who had been playing some American rubbish on a modified record player in the Slytherin common room that evening.

    Tom sighed. This little alcove was his favourite spot in the library, hidden away among a maze of shelves, and he knew that even during daylight hours it was an isolated spot. Now, in the evening, not long before closing time, privacy was practically guaranteed. He could hear rain pattering against the window that was set high into the wall, somewhere in the darkness above. There was a lamp on the table, and another in a sconce set into the wall nearby, and they illuminated the shelves and little else. A small golden bubble in the dark, quiet library, it was a perfect quiet place to think away from the common room.

    His initial anger having died away, Tom decided that he was simply going to have to abandon the idea of horcruxes. If Slughorn had decided to act, particularly if he had decided to tell someone else, the whole plan was simply too risky. Having to abandon so much work was deeply frustrating, of course, but there was nothing doing. Nobody, he thought grimly, ever said that eternal life was going to be easy. He glanced at his watch; it was getting very close to closing time now so he started to pack up his things. He decided to come back at the weekend. The coming Saturday was a Hogsmeade day, and even his closest followers would want to go down to the village and indulge their appetites for butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks and sweets from Honeydukes. While they were gone, he would be able to get some peace and quiet and start work on a new plan, one which wouldn’t require asking questions of Horace Slughorn.

[gkwriter]

The Beginning

To start off with, one of my favourite quotes, from A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel:

‘there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.’