My Attempt at Fauvism. Fauvism was the earliest and briefest of the European avant-garde art movements of the 20th century peaking between 1905 and 1907. The start of the century was a period of societal and technological change. Inventions such as the motor car and radio, and the wider availability of electricity , were transforming people's everyday lives. It was in this context that Fauvism burst on to the art scene. Title of drawing "Poli Mudalali of Sri Lanka in America"

Write it Down

 

In Sigiriya, I met one of my relatives. He was quite old and from the things, he said I could never decide whether he was extremely intelligent or a little mad. Over a drink, he started his “advice to the young” though god knows I could hardly call myself young. “You know what the problem with the world is” began he “No,” said I. “Well, the problem with the world is that many people walk with only a vague idea of what they want to do.” I wondered secretly whether this accurately described his condition – senility (A decline in memory and other mental functions associated with old age). “Great wars have been fought, and millions upon millions have died because people don’t know what they really want.” “Take Hitler for example, he was a man who walked with a great anger about the injustices to his country after the First World War. But he never had a clear idea of what he really wanted, the result - 75 million people died in the Second World War, “True” said I, (though this was new to me), “and how do you solve this problem” said I, trying to sound intelligent. “A piece of paper,” said he “Just write all your problems on the left side, and the solutions to each of them on the right side, and suddenly everything is clear. No more walking vaguely with anger or greed in your mind” said he. I only wish somebody had given me a piece of paper and said this when I was younger. Come to think of it maybe someone should have given this paper to Kashyapa, there would have been much less trouble and many more lakes.

Walter Scott

 

Sir Walter Scott, (1771-1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, historian and critic. He was for many years one of the most widely read authors in Europe and America. His stirring tales of adventure brought to life for millions of readers the history of Scotland and England from the 12th through the 18th century. “The Lady of the Lake” (1810), a story of the Scottish Highlands in the 16th century, was the most popular of Scott’s narrative poems, and has been the most often reprinted. Critics consider “The Heart of Midlothian (1818), a novel set in 18th century Scotland and England, the best of all Scott’s works.

Scott’s popularity rested largely upon his descriptions of scenes and manners unfamiliar to his readers, and upon lively action and romantic episodes. He did not plot carefully, and wrote hastily and without revising. As a result, his novels and narrative poems lack unity and forcefulness. Most of his heroes and heroines are unrealistic, and their speech is stilted and trite. Except for some of the short lyrics incorporated in his narrative poems, his verse is second rate.

Scott’s importance is based on several valuable contributions to literary development. He created the historical novel and gave prestige to the novel in general. Among writers he influenced were Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Dumas the Elder, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and James Fenimore Cooper. Scott was the first novelist to present people of the lower classes as real human beings rather than as comic or sentimentally idealized figures. He was also the first novelist to use regional dialects in a serious instead of a mocking manner.

AN ASTRONAUT RETURNS

 

As I walk along this lonely beach

I hear the echo of a jungle tree

Or was it a parrot that tried to scream

Or the unknown shadows of a long dead beach

Is there a jungle to the left of me

Or just dead tree trunks that tried to flee

The sun is dimmer than it used to be

When and where can I now be

Is this the Earth I left behind

In the year 2049

Does anyone know I arrived

Is the sea more dead than alive

The Warmth of other Days - Short Story

 

The Ice Age a terrible reality in earth’s history has never touched man, for we lived and evolved during a period of unusually calm weather. But an Ice Age could wipe out life as we know it and a super Ice Age could wipe out all life. A scientist in my country had warned this would happen. His diligent and heartbreaking work over a period of 30 years had established beyond doubt in his mind that an ice age was imminent in the very near future. Unfortunately, nobody took him seriously.

As the Earth moves through space, it is subjected not just to variations in the length and shape of its orbit but also to rhythmic shifts in its angle of orientation to the sun – all affecting the duration and intensity of sunlight falling on any patch of land. These changes in position over long periods of time are related to the comings and goings of ice ages. This was discovered by the Serbian academic named Milutin Milanovitch in 1930 after decades of painstaking calculations, though like most people he theorized that it was the gradual increase in harsh winters that led to these long spells of coldness. Unfortunately, the process was more subtle and rather more unnerving than that. For the cause of ice ages is to be found not in brutal winters but cool summers. If summers are too cool to melt all the snow that falls on a given area, more incoming sunlight is bounced back by the reflective surface, exacerbating the cooling effect and encouraging more snow to fall. The consequence would tend to be self-perpetuating. Therefore it is not necessarily the amount of snow that causes ice sheets but the fact that snow however little lasts. So an ice age could start from a single unseasonable summer. If this happens, the process is self-enlarging, unstoppable, and devastating for as the ice sheet grows it would move as an advancing glacier.

But what all scientists had ignored was a drop in solar radiation of 5.7 percent that this scientist said had occurred over the past decade, which would lead he warned to cool summers, unmelted ice and a situation where the Earth loses its ability to hold on to its heat. Unfortunately, he was a loser who came from a tiny island in the Indian Ocean so nobody took him seriously. He was also an eccentric man unable or unwilling to play politics which less able scientists played. So while more socially adept scientists became famous he faded and died.

In the year 2054, the United States split into eight, being a land of machines there was utter chaos when the machines stopped moving. Due to the unbearable winter, most people in Canada moved south and the people already there faced untold hardships. The Antarctic was abandoned and Alaska was lost forever. In the Arctic Eskimos who had forgotten their old ways of living were trapped. Most people in northern latitudes faced unbearable winters and many tried to move south. In the Southern latitudes, the situation was even worse. It seemed hundreds of millions of people were trying to desperately reach the equator. There was starvation everywhere. Although nuclear weapons were used to try to stop the advancing glaciers they made almost no impact.

(To be continued)

Oil Pastel

 

In memory of many days that were happy

 In memory of many days that were happy

And some that were sad

From an Island I was born in

I don’t feel so bad

 

This ain’t no New Zealand

This ain’t no France

But if I had to choose again

I’ll always choose my land

 

In her quite beaches

On her restless sands

Some men call her thoughtful

Some men call her mad

 

But I’ll only remember her mountains

And her precious sands

Trees that seem to talk to me

Birds that sing I can

 

I only hear what I want to hear

I only see good things

Time here ticks to her own beat

The birds here always sing