Yesterday, I went to London. Some days, though I was a little nervous travelling on my own, are a privilege to live through, to experience. Yesterday, was one of those. I spent some time in the National Portrait Gallery, just wandering. I am particularly drawn to sumptuous fabrics, but then I look up at their eyes.
Lady Colin Cambell, by Giovanni Boldini, painted 1894. I was tired by the time I found it, and I walked by too close to understand the beauty and the wonder of the painting itself. The strokes were thick and broad and meant nothing until you stepped back, just a little way. Then the silk/taffeta became tangible and I felt I could touch it, rearrange it around this woman’s feet. It left me a little breathless, with the gorgeousness of it though, there was much about the painting that I didn’t like. Her waist, that drew you away from her eyes, from where her life spilled out, to that tiny impossible circumference, like a band around her. The picture speaks of freedom and voluptuousness, (which I loved) and yet the impossibility of her shape, because of that tiny corset of tightness tempered the defiance writ large within her face. I only read the short note beside the picture, a paragraph to describe the nuances and wild storms of her day to day existence. I will find out more, if only to satisfy myself that what I saw within this work, was a little of the truth.
After spending supper talking with a friend, who allows me to scrape the top off my life, we then went to see Shadowlands. The story of CS Lewis and his short brush with love, when he himself admits, he began to live. But life is not happiness, it is the soaring heights of joy, interspersed with pain, such pain, (life in all its fullness), ably depicted by Hugh Bonneville. (Some actors with their craft and competence leave you to immerse yourself in the play itself, the words, the stage settings – disconcerting and yet simple). The walk back to Waterloo, across the bridge, mercifully in the dry was London at its best. The lights and life, the smells and clatter, beautiful if you don’t get too close.
I may have cried a little at the play. I may have been scared walking back to my car, 1 am along a dark and empty road. I may have been uncomfortable driving through the fog and rain, with scratchy eyes and aching hips.
But some days are meant to be lived, experienced, savoured. Such a privilege and I just wanted to share it.