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Books, Subtext and Art

5 min readJun 10, 2021

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In a vivid way, you can learn a lot by reading books, while you can master the art of stock market trading, Can be a trader or an investor, know the basics of any sports, can indulge yourself in therapy by reading self-help, know about The American revolution and can devote healthy amount of time in identifying various geographical regions. While you can know a lot about someone by just knowing the kind of books they read, I think it is also a slightly misguided saying, for example I read a lot of romance, not because Beneath all these layers you will find a hopeless romantic but because I sometimes try to escape this life and go to a place where guys know exactly what to say. Very cliche, I know.

However, all said and done, I also think books can make you read too much into subtext, Have you read Books by Katherine Center?, if not you need to. Her books completely focuses on finding happiness, you know what she says? She says that we should choose joy, and keep on choosing it everyday not because of the pain we feel but despite of it!, she writes that “Choosing to love — despite all the ways that people let you down, and disappear, and break your heart. Knowing everything we know about how hard life is and choosing to love, anyway.. That’s not weakness, that’s courage.”Her books are shelved in Romance genre but I think romance is just a subtext here, her books will help you in picking joy over every other demon which life will throw at you, her writing will give you a purpose, Will make it easier for you to wake up in the morning. One of it deals with a girl, with bright future in front of her, a perfect fiancee (On paper), who was suddenly paralyzed and had second degree burns due to a plane crash, a plane ridden by her fiancee, who actually cheated on her while she was laying on bed for months, recovering, dumped her because “She is changed and was not herself, anymore” and the journey she encounters to have a mediocre amount of pleasure in her not-so-normal-life, her ways of dealing with an overachieving mother who told her that since her face is not pretty anymore, she deserves to give another chance to her cheating fiancee. Katherine will make you trust that healing is possible, despite the nature of your wounds. I deeply ask you to see her books, at least read the blurbs of, “Happiness for beginners”, “How to walk away”, “Things you save in a fire”, if it was for me, I would shelf it as Women’s fiction, self-help because that’s what her writing does to me. She says that when you don’t know what to do for yourself… do something for someone else and that, it is the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do, Just try.

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I would bore you in the subtext of one more book I read yesterday before I come to the topic of art and modelling. The book had 5 people who were in the same room when one of them choked and died, I would not like to disclose the thrill of it but it made me realize that we hide so many things, intentionally from outside world, For the fear of being embarrassed or looked untoward or being judged. We try to blend in the outside world under our own terms and conditions, We want to be a part of the crowd and never gather attention of insiders. One of these characters had hidden that she cheated on her boyfriend of 3 years, one of them never disclosed his true sexuality, and etc. That makes me wonder that we can never truly know anybody in and out, 100% until we can creep in their minds, which is never going to happen. We have to settle for what they tell us. We can live with some for over 30 years but there will always be something new that will make us grimace, and will be a bombshell revelation to us. How bewildering it is, don’t you agree? This reminds me of a saying, “I am changing everyday, but I am not sure anymore, that I am changing into what”. Maybe reading so much has made me look and find connotation into everything I hear. I often agree that you can see someone in a completely new light if you simply read their blog, I am not talking about publishing writers but amateurs like myself. Because, If you are an honest writer, a reader will be able to see through you, penetrate through your flaws and perforate the true meaning of your identity. For this reason, I never show my parents anything I write, I believe in lie of omission, I show them bits and pieces of myself but never the complete picture, and even though both my parents support my writing and knows that I write for satisfying my soul, I don’t know how will they react on several musings and opinions of mine.

I was once told to give a brief on how art and modelling are interconnected in a way, by a cousin of mine, who is an artist, an architect and a former model. I wrote it on a piece of paper and sent it to her, But recently I am realizing that over the years I have written so many things, here and there, without any context backing them up, without an technology saving them, even Emily Dickinson used to write on papers, letters and preserve them, What if someday when I die, people find hundreds of papers with my disapproving opinions, how great that would be and that is one of the reason and the extremely important one to start a blog, so that I can collect everything at one place like Emily and peacefully wait for my death while my after life would be admired more than my life ever was — — the next Sylvia Plath but with less terrifying ending .

Art and modelling, are two sides of same coin. Both, an Artist and a model aspire to influence and inspire people with their performances and imagination, trying to seek a world of creativity and expression. Each of them, can create tremendous impact on society and the combination of both is more likely to be a cherry on the top. While Art can cherish the subject by adding colors and making it as black and gray as the subject would like, showing the rosiness without actually asking for true colors and being as tedious and messy an object would approve of, modelling does its magic in a completely divergent way, models can represent many endless emotions and accessories. They can make your collection look monotonous, or dramatically striking, without even saying a word they can convey thousand different opinions in the eyes of the audience. The common artifact is, both these styles are extraordinarily graphic in their own solitary ways.

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Nupur
Nupur

Written by Nupur

I read everything which interests me. I write about empowerment.