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Thursday, February 17, 2011

A (typewriter) love story

This is all I know about them:

He loves typewriters, bicycles, works by Keats and the colour blue.
She loves yellow.
She loves him.

She gave him a vintage typewriter last year, for Valentine's.
He types her poems and stuff, including a little tip-off about an impending proposal.
He loves her.

nawww moment
♥ nawww moment  

A few days ago on Valentine's Day, she asked if I could make her an artwork from my Typewriter Love series. It had to incorporate a bicycle, anything by Keats and the colours blue and yellow. Wow, I was absolutely honoured :)

I scoured the net for hours in search of poems by John Keats. He writes beautifully and I found his works captivating, but often peppered with sadness and melancholy. Then I came across one of his sonnets:


On The Grasshopper And Cricket 

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's -- he takes the lead
In summer luxury, -- he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, 

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

John Keats
December 30th 1816



I love its liveliness and that it involves twos...

grasshopper + cricket
summer + winter
warm + cool
vibrance + silence

All of which are equally beautiful, neither more superior than the other. There is something eternal about it; it's filled with feelings of hope and faith, as if to say - love persists, come rain or shine. I think that this would make a beautiful sonnet for a wedding :)

She made some wonderful suggestions, including making the bicycle a tandem one, and I'm so happy that she loves the finished product.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

They're getting married in May and this is her wedding gift to him.
Ain't love grand...
Happy Valentine's!