Grass Ties

Ophelia (1894)

So, while searching for images inspired by Hamlet, I came across this painting of Ophelia by John William Waterhouse.

Apparently, it is not his only painting of Ophelia, as he has, at the very least, two others. One made in 1889 and the other in 1910.

Ophelia (1889)

Ophelia (1910)

There is a third that is called Gather Ye Rosebuds, which may or may not be a study of Ophelia as well.

Gather Ye Rosebuds or Ophelia (a study) (1908)

I will be mostly speaking about the first painting in this post, but I thought it was interesting that he had so many different interpretations. (My source for the above was Wikipedia 😉 )

So, this painting (see right to refresh your memory 🙂 ) appears to depict Ophelia before her death, described by the words:

There is a willow grows askant the brook

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream:

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

I know that the quote kind of cuts off… but, I thought this excerpt best fit the image that Waterhouse depicted in his painting. Although, cornflowers, daisies, and nettles seem to be what most of her garlands are made of. I really don’t see any long purples.

long purples

nettles

crowflower?

Okay, to be honest I’m not entirely sure which flower is supposed to be a crowflower, but I think that the picture I found is the safest bet, so I went with it.

I left out a picture of a daisy since they are a pretty common symbol/image/flower used nowadays in pretty much everything you can think of. (Example: typical bouquets/gift baskets, as a cute/girly image for marketing products, etc.)

The exact medium of this painting is oil on canvas, and I believe it is held in a private collection at present, but my sources (the Internet, all-powerful and all-knowing) could be wrong (I didn’t check to see when the information was last updated).

I read somewhere on the World Wide Web that his three paintings of Ophelia represent the events leading up to her death (her youth, when she was in love, and when she went insane), so that might point towards why each painting seems to be an almost completely different interpretation of Ophelia and what she is supposed to be like.

Anyway, I like Waterhouse’s depictions of Ophelia because he emphasizes her close relationship to nature and flowers, making her a much more interesting character than if you just read the play without analyzing it (which makes her seem much more bland). In fact, I didn’t quite realize her connection with nature until after I saw all three of these paintings together.

Also, you know how Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” speech is supposed to be about him contemplating suicide? Well, looking at this painting one way, it almost seems like Ophelia is going through the same thing with her aloofness and separation from the rest of the world. Looking at it another way, it might seem like Ophelia’s eventual fate (if you believe she committed suicide) was because of a loss of her will to live after her father was killed by Hamlet, who was supposed to love her and whom she may or may not have loved. And her aloofness in the painting is not caused by her contemplating her demise, but about her contemplating her love for Hamlet, or even her following through with her brother and fathers’ requests for her to stay away from him.

If you do not believe she committed suicide, but rather fell into the water by accident during her madness, this scene explains why she would have been there in the first place: because it was a favorite place of hers to rest and maybe enjoy the scenery, to be at peace. Maybe it even calmed her down to be there. (See? Nature.)

If you do not believe she committed suicide and do not believe she was really crazy, this scene could depict her moments before she died and it may have been that she was pushed in to the water (murdered) by Horatio (who was sent to watch her by Claudius) or even Claudius himself because they viewed her as a hindrance. They may even have knocked her over the head first, which would explain why, if she was not truly insane, she was unable to save herself before she drowned.

Another option is that her food was poisoned, which led to her falling into the water. After all, I’m sure all of us who have read Hamlet are very aware of Claudius’ love for poisons. Claudius may even have foreseen that it would enrage Laertes (her brother) further, and took steps to ensure that Ophelia would not survive long after her father’s death.

I say all this, but it’s all pure speculation. Since Ophelia’s death is not explicitly explained in the play, all of these are equally possible in my mind, and there are even more possibilities that I have left unexplored. In the end, it all comes down to which scenario you choose to believe.

The Stripes and The Lion

Okay, time to talk about my cats….

I have two and they’re both adorable and I love them. Belang is the oldest (and the smallest); she is a short-haired tabby. Singa is the youngest (and the biggest) and she is a long-haired Maine Coon.

We got Belang in 2007 (I think). My family had just finished relocating and me and my brother had been very hopeful that this tragedy to our lives would result in a new member of our family (a pet). For a while, my mother considered getting a rabbit, but we decided it would be too much work. I kind of wanted a bird, but after my dad explained how a pet bird would be kept in a cage and never allowed to fly free and happy; I stopped asking.

In the end, my brother and I returned to our original preference: a cat. We checked out books and books about the caring of cats (and rabbits just in case). Then, in March of 2007, we took a trip to the shelter.

It was a rainy day, although I would like to believe that it was sunny. The sky was grey with clouds, but it was one of those surprisingly bright cloudy days. You know, where its brighter outside than it is inside, but not by much. It wasn’t raining very hard, just a few big drops here and there and once in a while a downpour.

We got to the shelter reasonably early. Nobody else was there, which made it feel kind of special. My brother and I were super-excited, as you might expect, and not even our father’s repeated “We’re only going in to look” couldn’t put us down. We knew that it would be pretty easy to convince him otherwise once we found the perfect cat.

The shelter looked pretty normal and unassuming as we walked up to it. I remember being surprised at how small it appeared inside. A lady at the front desk took us to the next room which was full with rows and rows of cages all along one wall filled with cats of varying ages and colors. Almost immediately, a small cat started meowing at the cage bars and rubbing up against them. I would like to say that me and my brother immediately were smitten with the small cat; however, we looked at the other cats first.

One of them was extremely fluffy and seemed to always be annoyed. Her name according to the cage label was Jojo, and she was already claimed; her owner was coming back for her later. Another cat, Midnight, was all black with short fur that looked extremely soft. I wanted to take her out to see if she was as soft as she looked, but the shelter lady only let us take out one cat at a time and I had to settle for futilely trying to stick my fingers through the bars far enough to touch her.

My brother became extremely attached to a male orange tabby by the name of Cricket who was in the middle-age years of his life. He spent the entire time playing with him and coaxing purrs out of the tabby.

After being rudely rejected by Jojo, my mother had opened the cage of the friendly small cat and almost immediately it latched onto her shirt with its claws. While my father tried to help extricate my mother from the cat, me and my brother looked at the cat’s label. It read “Angelique”, which we mispronounced as “Ann-jell-ih-koo”. Honestly our version was a prettier name, in my opinion, but we didn’t figure out the true pronunciation until quite some time later.

The label and the shelter lady said that she was around 6 months old, but my dad, knowledgeable animal whisperer that he is, thought she was younger than that. We put her back in the cage to look around some more, but me and my brother knew that it had already been decided. We had won. We were getting our first cat.

Back home, we tried to come up with a new name for her (the shelter people told us she was a she). We ran a few names through our heads, many of them focused on her stripes and her tabby-ness. If I remember correctly, Ginger was one of the choices, as well as Socks, but we decided against them in favor of “Belang”, meaning stripes in Indonesian.

A few years later, we got Singa at a pet store during one of the “Adoption Days”. This was in 2011 and we weren’t planning on getting a cat when we went there. Our original plan was to get cat food.

It was a nicer day than the day we got Belang; there were clouds in the sky, but they didn’t cover the sun as completely as before and there was a light breeze, but not too much.

Our father was telling my brother and I about how the other day he had seen this black kitten up for adoption with little white paws that was extremely sweet, and when we asked why he hadn’t gotten it he said it was simply because “we already have a cat”.

As usual, in the pet store we split off. My dad to get cat food and litter, and me and my brother to go look at the pets that were always there. To our delight, a shelter group for cats had set up near the entrance and we were able to go and visit those there.

Almost immediately, she caught our eye. She was reasonably young and had the fluffiest fur we had ever seen on a cat. My brother and I were overjoyed, me especially… because of… reasons….

Anyway, these ladies were much more… how to say it nicely… rude… brisk… and extremely impatient compared to the other shelter people I had had experience with before. But I didn’t let this bother me and instead focused on the wonderfulness of a fluffy kitty!!!!

So, I’m sure many of you are familiar with the begging and pleading that follows the discovery of a pet that is dearly wanted. Well, ours went something like that, although my brother and I had to be a bit more creative with our arguments (you know, it gets harder each time you get something you want). Our mother had wanted a lap cat, and we demonstrated how calm the cat was and how she would let us pick her up and hold her without complaining. She even stayed in our lap after we put her there. Our father told us it was up to mom, partially because (so he said) he was still weak after seeing that kitten.

In the end, we got her and took her home. As usual, we got rid of her old name “Lily” and on the way home came up with a new one for her. Scarily enough, Fluffy was high on the very short list of names and for some reason “Singa”, meaning lion in Indonesian, wasn’t really a big candidate. However, it stuck in the end and that’s what we called her.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering: “How did the other cat react?”. Well, I can assure you that they weren’t happy to discover they were sharing lodgings. Belang is a very tolerant cat, but she’s lazy too. After several years of eating her fill and then sleeping it off, involving very little movement in her life, it was a big shock for her to suddenly realize that she had competition.

Meanwhile, mild-mannered Singa turned out to not actually be that mild-mannered and actually had quite a temper. Apparently, the shelter people had drugged her to make her more complacent when they moved her around and she recovered right around the time when we took her home and set her loose.

Belang and Singa hit it off right away with Singa deciding it would be most fun to chase Belang around the house on a day to day basis. This obviously got Belang back into shape real fast, but it was still a bit uncertain who ruled supreme.

You’d think that Singa would be the new cat in charge after this, but a few weeks in, Belang began fighting back. Every once in a while you’d here skittering and thumps and it would be Belang chasing Singa instead of the other way around.

Oh yeah, here’s the best part. I’ve established that Singa is extremely fluffy, right? Well, she also has fur on the bottom of her paws….

….Aaannnddd most of the floor in our house is tile or wood….

….Sooooo…. Whenever she runs, she goes one direction just fine, but whenever she tries to turn, you hear skitter-skitter thump!

She can’t actually turn and just slides until she hits a wall, then she gets up and keeps running. It used to scare us, but now its common place. Kind of like how Belang makes yowls when she’s lonely.

oh oh. Funny story: My aunts (on my mom’s side) came to visit and one time they were alone in their room and all the lights were off accept for the ones in their room. Then they heard a ghost and freaked out.

Now, the truth of the matter was that it was my cat (Belang) yowling because she was sad… but they didn’t find that out until later and were quite freaked out by it. Ever since, my mother’s younger sister has been terrified of Belang, when she should really be scared of Singa (she’s the one that bites).

 

 

Giving Thanks

Hey, guys! I just thought you should know ahead of time that I’m not going to write a blog post, since it’s the week of Thanksgiving and I’m going to be super busy with a bunch of my family coming over and the usual rush on Black Friday. However, I’ll be back again the week after, so don’t forget about me!

Anyway, as per the usual Thanksgiving sentiment, this post is going to be all about the big question that’s always asked: What are you thankful for?

Now, I’m sure you guys all have equally important things to be thankful for, and if you want to share, feel free to put them in the comments (please put them in the comments, I’m feeling lonely because of a lack of much feedback). Since I do not know the extent of anybody else’s feelings of thankfulness, I think I’m going to just start with sharing mine.

The first thing I’m thankful for is my life. I love living it, and even though it has its challenges and low points, it is my life and the only one I’ll have.

The second thing I’m thankful for is my family. I love them and I know that they love me, and I know that this is not always true about other families. For that, I’m grateful that I was born into my family. My family, of course, includes my cats who I adore and who I wish would come keep me company more often, but I think I’m a bit too clingy for them.

The third thing I’m thankful for is my parents. I know that this is kind of the same thing as being thankful for my family, but I feel like my parents deserve a special mention for all that they’ve done for me. All my life, they’ve been extremely accepting of my hopes and dreams and I can share everything with them. My parents are my role models, and I hope that I’ll eventually become just like them.

The fourth thing I’m thankful for is my brother. Again, kind of the same thing as being thankful for my family, but my brother is also a very special existence in my life and I would probably be a lot more spoiled and arrogant without him. Although we tend to argue a lot and often hurt each others’ feelings, I know that deep down we have a very special bond and I hope that it stays that way throughout our lives. Sometimes we get mad at each other, but I always feel, deep down, that this only brings us closer together. I love my brother dearly, and I hope he will one day find his other half and live his life to the fullest.

The fifth thing I’m thankful for is my opportunities. Many people don’t have the opportunity to get a good education in this world, and I’m very thankful that I was able to get as much of an education as I did. Education opens up a world of possibilities (cliche, I know, but its true) for someone looking to make their way in the world, and even though I have not reached my goal yet, I feel confident that I will be able to in the future (even if it is very far off).

The sixth thing I’m thankful for is that I started playing soccer when I was little. Without soccer, my life would be much more miserable than it is today. Soccer has taught me, and is still teaching me, discipline of the mind and body and without it, I would not be as strong, healthy, or mentally stable as I am now.

The seventh thing I’m thankful for is the invention of chocolate. Chocolate is, in my opinion, the invention that has impacted the world the most to this very day. If you simply consider the very origin and nature of chocolate, you may be surprised by the many ways it is used and the high demand for it. It is a rare group of people who don’t like chocolate, but for the few who don’t, I’ve always felt sorry for because for me; chocolate is a necessity in life and makes all the colors and beautiful things in the world much more real.

The eighth thing I’m thankful for is food. Food is sustenance and sustenance makes sure that people don’t die from starvation. I know for a fact that I couldn’t live without food (both literally and figuratively); although, I guess I should probably eat a bit less of it… You know, because being in the low range of the Body Mass Index for your height is better for you than being in the medium-to-high range. (I really hope what I just said makes sense, because I’ve steadily been losing sleep and am not really sure if anything I say is even remotely coherent).

Anyway, I think that this list is long enough for now. There are quite a few things that I didn’t put on here, but I feel that I’ve added on the most important things to me. They are not necessarily listed in order from most to least important, because many of them are similar in importance to me.

That’s all for now. Have a happy Thanksgiving!