Journey I...staying with friends

Well, here it is too much more than a month later, returned from my long trip to London, Scotland and Paris.  The other day someone asked me, "What was your favorite thing about the trip?"  And, you know...I couldn't answer.

It's the same with this post.  For weeks, though I felt I wanted to share it,  ought to share it with you here, I haven't been able to get past the enormity of the journey to put it into words.  It's not that the trip was disappointing, or boring, or troublesome. Far from it!  It was wonderful...I use that word literally...the wondering each day and night as I wandered, the absorbing of everything the senses allowed and the mind captured.  

I'd been to all those places before, so it wasn't as if everything was as if shiny-new in a foreigner's eyes.  But this trip, from the beginning, had a peace about it, a coming-back relief, release, an unravelling of my knots and fissures, some more painful than others to undo, and yet...  Throughout, I walked and walked and walked.

So how to begin relating it to you?  What is your favorite?  No? All right, then choose one of your favorites...it's impossible.  

When I did the Journal Workshop all those years ago, one woman came to a session foaming in frustration...how could I ask her to write "Where I Come From"...too much, too complicated!

I remember my response now...just pick a moment, an image and write that.  She did:  a poem of sorts about leaving for school in the morning, undoing when she got to the corner the braids that her mother had tightened behind her, and letting her hair go free.

It occurs to me this very second, that hers is a good metaphor for my own moment away.  There may not be braids to undo, but hair?  Yes.  Before I left, I had gone to the hairdresser and told her, This hair won't do.  She agreed, and cut it within two inches of its roots.  I loved it.  It reminded me of that Twiggy cut I had gotten a few days before graduation and took it to Aspen with me that summer.  Then, in Paris, wanting a trim, I'd had it shorn to barely one, strand by strand in the cutter's precise hands.  So that might be the feeling my journal writer described...going free.

You've already read how I made my plans...a visit to my friends in London and Scotland, and a side trip to Uncle George's sister Ada attached, of course (Paris was always there, the ride on the Eurostar always an easy glide into it).  It was only a few weeks before I left that I woke one morning thinking (demanding is more like it), I need to get out of town.  Under that a desperation building inside me that maybe I recognized, maybe not, pushing me along.  Things fell into place too quickly, too universe-designed.  

It's easy to write, yes, I've been to London, Scotland and Paris...isn't that grand.   But it's not the destinations, or at least the names of places that are difficult; it's the being there that befuddles.  Visiting friends, making friends, infusing each piece of the kaleidoscopic journey with _______ what?  Something I can't name, but could paint in colors if I sat down to it...a rush of brightness in dashes and blots, not superficial color but innate, like inks soaked into rag paper, thickening and illuminating a vision you watch grow into some sort of new understanding. 

In London, then Scotland, Will and Dorothy brought something refreshing to every day...a bowl of welcome lentils after a long journey, splendid gardens and towns to explore, endless conversations about our history, their history, the history of towns and families (not to mention insights into the current, dreaded political scene).  Will's apartment and Dorothy's cottage are homey, lovely, filled with family photos and curiosities, each in different ways.  Will, ever the collector, has made his into a miniature John Soane; Dorothy in a tribute to art, family, carved and potted collections, each piece in a little corner where it lives best.  Every day a new one to discover.  And their back gardens!  It's a sink-into-comfort visit with tours of places revisited and new on the side.  And care...they are perfect hosts, warm, easy to be with, stand-in-the-rain-to-see-me-off-on-the-train hosts.  

Ah.  There we are.  Care.  If this trip were a favorite dish, care would be the flavor that seeps up through its aroma and stays with you.  (Do you see how it takes the senses to explain?)

 To begin, Will meets me at Heathrow, hands me an Oyster card he keeps for guests, and we train back to Brockley for a rest and reorientation.  Then he makes me lentils for supper...the perfect arrival dinner after a long night's flight over the Atlantic.  

We walk through Hilly Fields to stretch our legs. 

By bus, we go to Lewiston, a town over, to shop for sturdy shoes in the Clark's store...I buy a pair my sister calls "bowling shoes"...don't laugh!  They carry me all over the UK and Scotland and Paris comfortably and neatly.  

There is a long street market there, too, where Will can buy 4 avocados for 1￡ .  

By train, then, to the Borough Market, between the Klink and the Bermondsly Road (I'm disappointed to find Bermondsly is no longer the famed furniture/antique/junk market), where we trudge up and down the tangled paths through the kiosks, gathering food for our Scotland trip and some spicey gifts to bring home.  

Will has basil with giant leaves growing in his small but prolific garden, so I buy seeds for Bolloso Napoletano Basilico at the garden corner there to try to grow next spring, then raid the spice market to fill Joseph's gift. 

 At an antipasto shop, run by girls from Bari, we get some marinated artichokes, mushrooms (the best!) and some meats to take to Scotland.  Cheeses from another favorite vendor.  Our carry bags are full by the time we go on to wander, with a stop at the Anchor Pub for ale (W) and lemonade (me).

We continue our wanderings to find a decorative clothing museum (it's closing soon, so we decide we haven't enough time, though it looks wonderful) and across the street a glassblowing shop.  Vivid colors in all shapes, clear and opaque, line the white shelves and tabletops.  I sigh over a beautiful asymmetrical vase, then think of how long it might last in my boy-run house.  More fancifully, there is a quill and inkwell I can't even imagine the making of.

Back at the closing Borough Market, with some complicated maneuvering, which requires help from one of the roving staff we manage to flag down, we make a reservation for Parella, a restaurant just outside its gates, and then wait a while while the restaurant opens.  

We get a table with a friendly server, and order glasses of wine...after today, we seriously need those...and wait for our skillful Italian dishes:  wild mushroom fettucine (it's wild-mushroom season here) and rocket and arugula salad...ah!  salad!...in a light barely-there dressing for me and fettucine with wild boar sausage for Will, I think.  The waiter has a soft Italian voice, so I strain to hear across the table in the crowded scene.  But love the nickelplated shiny bar with its light-splitting glasses. The couple next to us, girlfriends, were in line with us when we finally got "permission" to make a reservation. 

After dinner, we walk more...past the Globe Theatre, from which balcony hang not Juliet but some wealthier patrons sipping wine, from a new restaurant the theatre has added.  It seems a long way from tomatoes and oranges flung onstage.  Along the river, the lights across shine...St. Paul's the old man among the upstart high glassy towers of every geometric form.  The lit boats, tourist and working, float by.  

We are headed for the Tate Modern, where Will shares his pass for a members' night at the Cezanne exhibition.  Beautiful, uncrowded, I see everything but spend a very long time figuring out two particular works, their color and lines, their relation to one another (did C. know?).

 The next day, Will has a medical appointment across Hilly Fields, so in the foggy, rain-promised morning, I walk them, then sit down to sketch a little girl on a scooter...there are lots of kids on scooters, moreso than bikes but probably equally strollers.  I'd planned to sketch the whole trip, but this was my only one...sketching, I guess, wasn't meant to be part of this journey.  

With a cup of tea and a scone (I think...might have been a carrot muffin) from the coffee shop in the Fields, I  watch Saturday families, pairs and singles stroll, bike and run free through the paths and playgrounds.  

It begins to rain in earnest as Will returns, so we head back to his flat for lunch.  When it clears, out we go again to spend the rest of the day wandering more fields and visiting a garden shop, though Will will not consider a drink or supper in this nearby enchanting pub beside an expansive, bright view of London town.  Too expensive, he says.  I sigh.

We find this pair of boots along the curb...is there a story there?

Alas, into some rain some rain must fall...at night, I receive an email from the water company at home that something may be leaking...water use is high.  Here I am thousands of miles away.  I can't find anyone home, by email or text, to check it out.  Joseph is also away, in D.C. for the weekend.  I notify the water company to explain that I am away...far away.  I don't get an answer until the next day, but then two neighbors rush over and the man from OWASA arrives nearly the same time to shut it off, and two days later Joseph finds the problem and tries to fix it.  The water stays off til I get home...a lesson I already knew but hadn't heeded.  I breathe again, not thinking of the bill to be paid...or if I am thinking about it, I don't care. 

The Sunday's drive up into Yorkshire on the way to Dunblane is pretty, sunny and full of fields, sheep, cows, small clusters of cottages, some on the road, some well away of it, charming, charming postcard scenes.  

But where do we stop for lunch?  At the American Diner...a glistening red and aluminum round-edged place with signs tauting motor oil and Elvis and a juke box...Will needs his American breakfast fix; I order eggs with beans, a bit more in keeping with the country, but not really.

At the Scottish border, there are flags flying over a bridge and a fellow waving...calling for Scottish independence.  I can hardly blame them.  Scotland is its own country, its own story, its own culture, its own fierce pride.  I wish them well.

We watch the signs for gas (petrol) costs as we drive.  Will's car is electric, so it doesn't take as much, but when we find a less alarming price, we pull into the station.

Dorothy is waiting at the house for us, her charming, comfortable, beautiful, interesting Dunblane cottage.  We undo our Boroughs Market parcels and have a good dinner, talk awhile, then bed, I under the warm comforter (there's that word again).  I sleep and sleep.

There.  Have you had enough?  This is only the first three or four days of my 22. Do you see what I mean about not being able to tell the real story of this trip?   The above is what happened, yes, but not what it was.

I'll end for now, though I've written more.  Scotland is next.

The hand...and click...of fate

Sometimes fate brushes you past someone whose art transports you, and whose graciousness in extending it illuminates life.  I've been lucky that way, to have turned a corner, or crossed a street, or sat down to lunch to meet someone who inspires what Allen Ginsberg called "extending yourself".

Elizabeth Matheson, balcony

I think of them the morning after Elizabeth Matheson's amazing show at Casselhaus, itself a modern architectural wonder designed for exhibiting art, especially photography.  (I won't stop now to describe that house where light and art live; you can look it up at Cassilhaus.com.)  Please note:   I use "amazing" and "wonder" in their original meanings...not the mall and greeting card versions they have become.  

Elizabeth Matheson, self-portrait, Ayrmont

Elizabeth's photographs bring one into a maze wherein another world exists, some even in sight of your own, if you would only look, some so far out into the country of empty rooms and their unseen ghosts that we ordinary seekers might never find them otherwise.  I "met" her briefly a long time ago at a reception for one of Chris Brookhouses's books, Quartet, of four North Carolina photographers (Chris' photographs are not one of them, but being the owner of two of his, I wish he'd done a book of his own).  Then, I was asked to review another book of her photographs, To See.  I was startingly drawn to the way she saw.  I fell into one photograph, particularly, curtains blowing in through open French doors, an elaborate staircase going up to what could only be...there!  A whole story unfolded at once, one welling up from deep inside both the photograph and me.  I began to "know" her then.

But it was many years later that she and I shared enough time for me to appreciate what she is, where from her seeing and the feelings her camera acquires emanate.  I'd seen the photograph, above, on Instagram (matheson8698).  Taken in the early hours of the morning, when shadows graced a Hillsborough porch, mostly hidden from view, in that small space the curls of its wrought iron chairs became, with those shadows, images of my grandmother's dresses.  No one else, of course, saw that image except me, but that's art, isn't it?  It opens a vein inside where something new, something old flows.  And she, like me, likes windows and doors.

Elizabeth Matheson, mill windows late afternoon

Elizabeth Matheson, door

So, that Casselhaus showing:  Elizabeth's long journey through photography belonged in that space, even though it was almost an accident (fate, again?) that it settled there.  That's another story, though.

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What I want to say now is that in the morning, with the perfection of her show still in mind, I began to think of those who, like Elizabeth, fate has sent my way, often just in time to open new veins, inspiring a new way of looking, feeling, doing.

Leysis Quesada vera

Leysis Quesada vera

                     Our views daily.  We get [so] used to seeing everything withered and destroyed, that we insist on looking for beauty in all this.

I think of Leysis Quesada vera (@leysisquesadavera), whose quote above accompanied one of her images online.  Leysis has cataloged life in her neighborhood, Los Sitios, La Habana, and across Cuba. I found her (or she me) because her brother Leonel became, after my sister-in-law connected us, a genial guide and continuing friend.  I'd gone to Cuba to study the art there (that's what I told the US State Department, anyway, and it was mostly the truth), but the people...those wonderful people...were what I found most inspiring.  Leysis' work was in a gallery run by the granddaughter of one of Cuba's famous photographers; like her grandfather, she was a photographer, but of quite a different sort. But Leysis' lens captured the heart of what Cuba, in its everydayness, was...its beauties sometimes stark, always colorful (a contradiction, does it sound like?  I know, but it's true), the resilient, encumbered, enchanted people's days...the pulse of their lives.

Leysis Quesada vera

What does her work mean, now that I have seen Cuba and continue to see Cuba through her eyes?  I see how, in one's art, there must always be love and admiration, a nativity, that leads to understanding.  Seeing from within, as she does, one knows  meaning and captures it; she can because she is part of the scene in her lens.

gourds

When I moved back to Chapel Hill nearly 30 years ago, there was Jane Filer, the painter, but also the teacher who brought me to the shades and depths drawing could bring to simple lines.  (I look at the one above and marvel that it came from my hands.)  

[Forgive the missing image of Jane's work here...I've got to wait for permission to use it.]  

What I admire about Jane's own work is its fantastical, mythical being.  Color and shape people painting after painting, fascinating me with its invention.  Invention...that's what I found by her, learning to sculpt a drawing...not simply lay flat lines on a page, but pushing in and up until its character is revealed.  Jane Filer's own wild universe on canvas, and her student Eva Rubin's, were myths and legends I could read in their paint.

Carolyn Sleeper, pots

Once, in a sort of art-rut, I showed up at the Botanical Center for a class in encaustics.  I was dreaming of feeling the pressure and softness of wax and wanting to mold things in it, the way I used to feel clay in Carolyn Sleeper's workshops in Washington NC.  

I loved the wax form in Martha Petty's class,  but sadly it wasn't something I could continue at home in my small, closed space of a workshop. Still, I had met Martha Petty.  Though she lives nearby, I hardly ever see her, but her art is embedded in my being.  We send each other infrequent notes, each one a reminder of how a life can be informed by art, how it builds a body into a house that becomes, as one works, a home.  I admire so  much of what she does, whatever the medium, but one work (see above), at the Triangle Book arts exhibit four years ago, stunned me into a humility that draws me back to my work table time and again.  It's book art, its pages tiny pieces of worded paper tucked all that way down the sharp edge of that beautifully sculpted wood.  Her work is nothing like mine; it is powerful, strong, full of passion.  Our connection might be found otherwise in this quote she keeps on her website:  

    I was thinking about how images repeat themselves in work and what it means.  People expect you to move so quickly from one idea to the next, but the way you really develop is by returning again and again and again to images that you're really fascinated with and trying to understand why.

That quote calms me.  My own work is full of repeated images...tree, house, landscape, spirit-skies.  Martha brings me back to the point of art each time I see her art or hear her words, or read them.  Image after image, trying to figure their morality or intention.

Helen Rasplicka last of letters

In the beginning, long before those inspirers, there was Helen Rasplicka, the calligrapher and mixed media dabbler who pulled me gently into the realm of art, which I would probably not have stepped into on my own.  She took me to a course in drawing at the San Antonio botanical gardens, where I had to trade my pencil and eraser for a fine pen, and never looked back.  There, the gardens, their impulses to drawing, made a permanent place in me. The shoe you see here was a gift from Helen...a shoe last she covered with letters I'd sent her over the years...my words and her art conjoined in that endeavor.

There's Alexandra Bloch, too.  I can't remember our first meeting, but somehow she had ended up in the little town of Washington, provincial as it was for such a cosmopolitan couple as her and Joe.  She was a painter and thought of herself thus.  She painted the grace, the idiosynchracies of the body, unsentimentalized but understanding of its fullest needs. My intersection with her art is not anything I could emulate...but I recognized its potency in the care, dedication, and skill she brings to her work.  I think of her sometimes when I am working, more randomly, loosely (read haphazardly), and remembering her precision of pencil and the deep glazes of her paints gives me a mental backbone.

Susan Bradley, Michael's quilt and Spring Garden

I've already written about the marvelous quilts of Marty Mayer.  But long before Marty began quilting, there was my now-lost friend Susan Bradley, each in her way, bringing me back to fabric and the enjoining feel of piecing...what comes about when we pull together the scraps of our lives into a brilliant whole (even if it's not the last whole we make).  I once told her that her quilts were a kind of journal; though she looked a  bit skeptical, they are indeed.  They are where, beyond their art (and hers are spectacular art), we needle in our memories, our hopes, our histories...no matter how old and frayed...where they live on.

Susan Bradley, Stories in Another Language

That brings me to Betsy Cook, my next-door neighbor, whose art is nameless.  You could call it mixed media, encaustics, paint, textile, etc., but all those terms miss the point.  

Whatever form she works in, she is a storyteller.  Her quiet, almost mysterious pieces use every sort of material imaginable...she expounds with lace and wax and paint, flowers and braids, and words like secret talismen.  She is not afraid of sorrow or pain, nor of its beauty when released into a piece.  She gathers more bits of things, seeing their part in creation each time she works.

                Betsy Cook, GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION.

The ancient trio of Hebrew letters from Kabbalah that signify this transformation are embedded in the central "Tree of Life image.  There are 72 such sequences in the ancient Kabbalistic mystical tradition, said to represent 72 names or aspects of God.                       

She, like the others here, brings me out of my limitations (some of which I've drawn myself, as people do).  My list could be so much longer.

For now, know that it is Elizabeth Matheson, her photographs at Cassilhaus, that in this season of remembrance, binds me to them with gratitude.

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