Damn, Its Only The 14th. New Years Seems Like Months Ago

Damn, it’s only the 14th. New Years seems like months ago 💀

Wood Engraving Wednesday

JOHN FARLEIGH

A few weeks ago in a post about English engraver John Farleigh‘s 1939 wood engravings for a play by George Bernard Shaw, we mentioned that Farleigh had previously worked with Shaw on the first edition of Shaw’s controversial satirical allegory The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God published in London by Constable and Company in 1932. Farleigh’s risqué wood engravings for the edition did not help quell the controversy.

We happen to hold a copy of that first edition and we show a few of the engravings from that book. The story revolves around an African black girl, recently converted to Christianity, who leaves her home in search of God. She encounters different versions of God, including a wrathful god, a philosophical god, and two versions of Jesus, a kind but ineffectual one, and one who makes a living as a model posing on a cross for an artist. She also meets an atheist behaviorist with a strong resemblance to the Russian behavioral psychologist Ivan Pavlov. She is eventually persuaded to abandon her search and settle down with a “coarse” red-headed Irishman and rear a “charmingly coffee-colored” family, but resumes her search after her children have grown.

The edition was designed and engraved by Farleigh and printed in Edinburgh by R. & R. Clark. The book is bound in printed paper over boards with additional wood engravings by Farleigh who also did the endpapers shown in the last image.

View more posts of the work of John Farleigh.

View more posts with wood engravings!

This movie kind of sucks but has so many amazing images.

Sweetie (1989) | dir. Jane Campion

2023 was the lowest I’d ever been and hopefully the lowest I’ll ever be. I swear my 2023 was filled with stress, sadness, self-doubt. Like I was lowkey having an episode and felt so alone throughout the entire year. I had a depressive episode that started in October/November of 2022 and that shit lasted until maybe last month? Like damn, before that, my longest uninterrupted depressive episode was probably 6 months. I had such negative and spiteful energy towards myself and was always so exhausted. I just wanted to do everything, but at the same time I wanted to do absolutely nothing. I gained probably like 30 pounds, lost 15, then gained 20 throughout the duration of this episode. I hate to be vain, but I feel like my weight has a lot to do with my mental health. I feel like when I was at my thinnest, I was the most happy. Not solely because I was in a thinner body, and didn’t hold the shame of being fat, but because I had finally stopped binge eating. Eating is definitely my biggest coping mechanism. I have been eating like crazy lately and just hoarding food, hoping that it’ll make me feel better and for a moment, it does. Then reality sets in and I realize I’ve consumed about 5000 calories in one day.

But whatever, I’m trying to get better, not just for vanity reasons, but to find healthier ways to cope with depression.