evening disposition

summer evenings spent outdoors carry me away.

the setting of the sun, the gentle breezes, the clouds, the softness of everything.

even as a child i played hard all day and then i craved the soft peacefullness of

art,

music,

writing,

reading,

learning to understand

who i was

becoming.

jennifer's painting has that quality.

she lays bare the too bright clutter of the room beyond,

framed by the soft lilacs of the entrance way.

pass the portal

(like being birthed)

and you enter the world of everything

and everybody,

amplified

and garish.

warm but overblown.

i think she knows about all of this.

"evening disposition" jennifer o'connell

and charlotte had a clear sense of this as well . . .

the human heart has hidden treasures,

in secret kept, in silence sealed;

the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,

whose charms were broken if revealed.

and days may pass in gay confusion,

and nights in rosy riot fly,

while, lost in fame's or wealth's illusion,

the memory of the past may die.

but, there are hours of lonely musing,

such as in evening silence come,

when, soft as birds their pinions closing,

the heart's best feelings gather home.

then in our souls there seems to languish

a tender grief that is not woe;

and thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,

now cause but some mild tears to flow.

and feelings, once as strong as passions,

float softly back a faded dream;

our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,

the tale of others' sufferings seem.

oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,

how longs it for that time to be,

when, through the mist of years receding,

its woes but live in reverie !

and it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,

on evening shade and loneliness;

and, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,

feel no untold and strange distress

only a deeper impulse given

by lonely hour and darkened room,

to solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,

seeking a life and world to come.

charlotte bronte