All is vanity.

It looks like I'm going to hit rock bottom emotionally, so hopefully there is nowhere to go but up in 2010.

I like that painting. It's by a guy named Caspar David Friedrich. He was German. I took an art history class while I was locked up, and I really was struck by his stuff. Most painters before him painted people as the primary subjects of their work, or beautiful scenes in nature. He took nature, painted it at its most violent, and stuck something human in the frame being subdued by nature, not the other way around. It was a humble statement, considering how European elites were going about their business at the time.

When I feel really, really depressed, I read Ecclesiastes. King James'. It cheers me up: "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again"



This painting was by an American, Ivan Albright. Is it a coffin, or a door?

He painted self portraits of his body decaying as he grew older and eventually died.

Winter. Blah.