Tuesday, July 18, 2017

18/07/2017


Today I stepped off the bus into ACSI and saw this verse flying on a banner.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. - Proverbs 4:23

It reminded me of the Frost poem I read a few days ago. Tender, tentative but also sure.

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

You come too - is that a question, a command, a reassurance?

I felt quite fragile when I got home. Sad. I took all my clothes out, discarded the ones I no longer need, and folded the rest back into neat piles, the fabric stacks a comfort. I did some yoga on the new carpet. digging my hands and toes in to the thick soft hair of the carpet. And then after dinner I heard this beautiful, soaring song, and it reminded me of a wonderful, wise friend in Cambridge, so I sent her the song and a little gratitude spiel, and for some reason telling her how much she means to me made me feel so much happier.

National Gallery 12/07/2017


When in London, more often than not my feet lead me to a specific room in the National Gallery. UP the stairs, turn right, through on room and into the next, and then right again to look at the painting in the corner.

A Wheatfield with Cypresses, a painting that brings me inner calm, the warm glow of sunshine that penetrates every part of that painting seeps into me. How much time have I spent in front of it, feeling it? Looking at it does not cover the experience of it. And of course, always, still, listening to 'The Mighty Rio Grande'.

Except this time.

I walked through the doors, to the right, through the room, to the right, and the crowd parted and I wanted the meeting of person and painting to be just like it had been that very first perfect time. But the floor disappeared beneath me and I found myself looking at 'Long Grass with Butterflies'.

I can't really put into words why I felt so sad. It isn't a rational reaction to the loss of a painting, more like the reaction you have at the loss of a dear friend. But it was entirely natural to me - tears in my eyes, that cold feeling of shock, my eyes ran up and down the other paintings, trying to analyse, distract myself from the missing one that mattered.

I went up to the gallery attendant. 

'Excuse me, I was wondering. There used to be a painting, just there, and it's gone. A Wheatfield with Cypresses. Do you know where it is?'

'Ah, that's a favourite of mine. It's on loan to another museum. I could look that up for you if you'd like?'

'Yes - yes please.'

He flipped through a clipboard of paper. 

'Here. Melbourne. On loan until the 9th of July. So it should be on it's way back right now.'

'Oh thank God. I was afraid they'd decided to put it in storage or something.'

'Nah never that one. They'd have to get through me before they could do that.'

The floor materialised again under my feet. I went to another gallery. Breath returned, and with it my eyes to see the paintings before me, beautiful as well, although not quite as beautiful to me as that one.

But come September. Oh, September please come.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Back



Hello.

Hello can you hear me?

It's been a long time, but I can't say I'm sorry. This space is always a joy to write it, and if my joy is beckoning from other places then I chase that. But today, after a wonderful day meeting with Nat, joking around with Tim, listening to a good audiobook and having just popped an apple crumble in the oven for later, I had the strongest desire to sit down and write again.

I have been writing - letters and post cards, diary entries, whatsapp texts, facebook messages, exam essays. But now once again I'm drawn to this limbo of public and private, eternal and erasable and my small audience of you.

Dribbles of what I've been up to will probably surface here at points but one of the sentences that I wanted to write here was:

I am extremely proud of my ability to make an apple crumble in less that 15 minutes.

and another was:

I've been thinking all day of how to phrase this to my family and I think I've got it. News to be digested along with the crumble.

This morning Nat and I went to the Yayoi Kusama Art Exhibition in the National Gallery, which was spectacular. So much detail, so much enduring patience and precision, but also so much playfulness and joy (although there were some troubles/sad/provocative pieces too) We had lunch at a new acai place and then dessert, and we just talked and talked and talked, all the leftover words that can't fill skype/whatsapp conversations. We overlap for just this one day, before she goes back to Melbourne, and so I was full of gratitude that we managed to meet. I shall miss you, dear friend. Be yourself and be happy (the two, of course, are so closely linked)