puhpine's Journal, 24 May 14

Saturday (day 6)

norm: restday
ch 1: 6+6+4+4+6 = 26 push-ups
ch 2: square dancing...
ch 3: 1.5 hour upper body work out at the gym.


Today i had to rewrite a part of my book. It was about a beautiful painting my main character sees that was so awe inspiring that he forgot he was in the middle of a palace and had to go to an important meeting with the emperor to discuss the terms of war.

I looked up on the internet the most inspiring painting i have never seen, but am still willing to see for real. The painting of the sixteenth chapel by Michelangelo. I never knew the hand of god and Adam, where only a small part of the ceiling. And i also never knew that Michelangelo wrote a poem (in Italian) about painting the ceiling.

http://i.imgur.com/af2yteJ.jpg[/img]

Before i knew it i was at least two hours further, and i am now truly inspired. The poem is about work, how every great result, may look like god's creation and may feel like a magical inspiration. But every great creation takes offerings, sacrifices and load and loads of hard work.

So people, if YOU are struggling with, what well may be YOUR greatest achievement of your life. Please read this poem. In the end Michelangelo states "i am not a painter". I think he means that the hard work he does (for 4 years), has got nothing to do with the awe-inspiring end-result. Like him, we too get sidetracked and overwhelmed by the amount of work that is ahead of us, loosing track of the end-result. But like Michelangelo finally finished the chapel, we too must hit the grindstone until we hit OUR targets!

1509 - translated by the American poet Gail Mazur:
I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

---

2733 kcal

Fat: 118.74g | Prot: 102.75g | Carbs: 297.28g.   Breakfast: Kroger Dried Plums, Tomatoes, Herbalife Multivitamine Complex, Nature Made Calcium, Coffee, Water, Snack A Jacks Chocolate Chip. Lunch: Cookie, Gouda Cheese, Optimel Griekse Yoghurt Kers, AH Blauwe Bessen. Dinner: Remia Knoflooksaus, Ground Beef (Cooked), White Bread. Snacks/Other: Apple Pie. more...

2595 kcal

Exercise: Conditioning exercise (health club) - 1 hour, Calisthenics (heavy, e.g. pushups) - 10 minutes, Sleeping - 8 hours, Resting - 14 hours and 50 minutes. more...