triple_entendre
Solitude and rest from strife, inner contemplation, exile.
-- from Shadowscapes.com
A figure holding a sword to his/her chest, and three more swords in the tangle of long golden hair, drifts through space under a white flowy shroud. The figure appears to be asleep. Are the lotus blossoms surrounding the figure floating, or falling? Is that a reflection of a white bird on the water that the blossoms float on, or are they all flying? Or does the bird lie sleeping, or dead, belly-up on the white shroud?
The lotus carries great significance in Eastern mythology and religion. The Hindu deities are often painted as seated upon lotus flowers. In Buddhism, lotuses are a symbol of enlightenment because of how such beauty can grow out of muddy waters, like spiritual clarity out of the mundane.
If the white bird is a nightingale, it brings to my mind the fairy tale by Hans Andersen, of the Emperor who took in an odd kitchen girl who was friends with a nightingale. She cared for a single nightingale bird, which the Emperor enjoyed the song of... until a tinker brought in a music box in the shape of a bird. When the Emperor realized that he couldn't force the living bird to sing the songs that he wanted to hear, he banished the bird and its caretaker both, enjoying instead the mechanical bird's music. When Death came to the Emperor, however, and the Emperor knew somehow that he must have music to save him, the mechanical bird broke. It ends happily when the living nightingale returns from exile, in the nick of time.
-- from Shadowscapes.com
A figure holding a sword to his/her chest, and three more swords in the tangle of long golden hair, drifts through space under a white flowy shroud. The figure appears to be asleep. Are the lotus blossoms surrounding the figure floating, or falling? Is that a reflection of a white bird on the water that the blossoms float on, or are they all flying? Or does the bird lie sleeping, or dead, belly-up on the white shroud?
The lotus carries great significance in Eastern mythology and religion. The Hindu deities are often painted as seated upon lotus flowers. In Buddhism, lotuses are a symbol of enlightenment because of how such beauty can grow out of muddy waters, like spiritual clarity out of the mundane.
If the white bird is a nightingale, it brings to my mind the fairy tale by Hans Andersen, of the Emperor who took in an odd kitchen girl who was friends with a nightingale. She cared for a single nightingale bird, which the Emperor enjoyed the song of... until a tinker brought in a music box in the shape of a bird. When the Emperor realized that he couldn't force the living bird to sing the songs that he wanted to hear, he banished the bird and its caretaker both, enjoying instead the mechanical bird's music. When Death came to the Emperor, however, and the Emperor knew somehow that he must have music to save him, the mechanical bird broke. It ends happily when the living nightingale returns from exile, in the nick of time.
