lake huron summer 2012

on happiness

girolamo cardano on happiness - Italy, 1501

Let us live, therefore, cheerfully, although there be no lasting joy in mortal things, whose substance is evanescent, inane, and vacuous. But if there is any good thing by which you would adorn this stage of life, we have not of such been cheated – rest, serenity, modesty, self-restraint, orderliness, change, fun, entertainment, society, temperance, sleep, food, drink, riding, sailing, walking, keeping abreast of events, meditation, contemplation, education, piety, marriage, feasting, the satisfaction of recalling an orderly disposition of the past, cleanliness, water, fire, listening to music, looking at all about one, talks, stories, history, liberty, continence, little birds, puppies, cats, consolation of death, and the common flux of time, fate and fortune, over the afflicted and the favoured alike. There is a good hope for things beyond all hope; good in the exercise of some art in which one is skilled; good in meditating upon the manifold transmutation of all nature and upon the magnitude of Earth.

house on island in Guanabara bay

skeleton sketch… with some added features for fun

figure sketch 10 6 12

this week’s reading

‘The Physician’ by Noah Gordon —  simply good storytelling from an author whom I wasn’t familiar with before.  The young boy Rob in 11th century England is apprenticed to a barber-surgeon who is part entertainer/part con-artist going from village to village with his horse, cart, and potions. Later, in search of a real medical education, Rob ends up traveling through Europe to an Arab medical school in Ispahan, Persia.  This novel makes it easy to sink into another time and place, rather like The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, or Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett…

life sketch