Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec and On Beauty

Today I plan to go to an exhibition of Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec with a writer friend of mine. Hopefully, I will see something interesting along the way...apart from the exhibition itself, which will be wonderful. Having an old friend, who knows me well and knows my writing is such a comfort. He's off to New York on Monday to lecture in Creative Writing...which I find extremely cool. Last night he read some of my work and is encouraging me to get off my arse, stop being so precious about my work and get the damn stuff published...which I plan to do...sometime.

I'm finding that since I created my other blog and am now making the effort to carry my camera around with me, I'm seeing more and more beautiful things everyday. I'm not sure if part of my soul is just waking up; that part that has been in such a morbid funk since I moved from Africa to London, or if I'm just growing up? In fact, what I'm doing seems to be the reverse of 'growing up' I seem to be tapping into that childlike delight that makes me who I am. I feel that beauty is a balm for the soul and have started two books that my beloved has been recommending for ages that I read:

On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
On Beauty by Umberto Eco