I got up early this morning and had a long meditation – well, long for one of my self-guided morning meditations, anyway, about twenty minutes. It’s misty outside the windows, the sort of grey that covers and clings to everything, the only touches of colour the red tiles on the roof of the bungalow opposite and the new green leaves breaking out on the horse chestnut tree.
Sometimes in the morning the mist rolls through the river valley even though a short distance away may be brilliant sunshine, leading to the bizarre situation where you need sun glasses and fog lights all at the same time. But there won’t be too many mornings now when I drive across the river to pick up my daughter from her boyfriend’s house, not now she has her own car. For as long as we’ve lived in this house – almost nine years – there have been mornings like that, before the boyfriend it was taking her to school when she had a late start or missed the bus, collecting her from other friends, or before that taking her to catch the bus to her previous school. But now she has her own transport, that era is at an end, no more mornings of watching the sun burn through the mist, one less thing she needs me for.
I hadn’t thought before about the fact that they will be much more of a rare event from now on, those mornings when you just know how good it is to be alive and able to appreciate the beauty of the morning. Something I’ve taken for granted for so long, which seems like a chore, even, can have its own beauty that you don't notice until it's gone.
I got home from rehearsals at 9:30 last night to an empty drive. No messages on the phone. I made myself a coffee, found my Grateful Dead CD, went looking for a book. I started ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ by Anthony Powell, recommended to me by a friend as her absolute favourite book (or series of books). I know it's considered a classic by lots of people, I’m not sure it’s really me, but I like to be broad in my reading. It’s a Folio Society hardback, with lots of lavish illustrations, so I won’t take it to Paris - damn, I just typed it as ‘Parish’ again! The original Poussin painting is in the Wallace collection, apparently, I must have seen it but I’d forgotten, maybe I’ll go and look at it next week when I’m in London.
Hubby rang at 10:30 from Basingstoke to say he was just leaving – I assumed he was ringing to say he was staying down there. I don’t know why he keeps driving backwards and forwards, I tell him he should stay. He says he comes home to see the cats. It was 1:15 when he got into bed, I felt him getting in but went straight back to sleep again. And now I can hear him getting up so he can drive back down there again. I suppose I should go down and talk to him over breakfast.
We are all caught up in the dance, like the seasons in the painting, holding hands and looking outwards with our backs to one another, circling round and round while the old man plays on his lyre and the babies laugh.
There is one painting in the Wallace Collection that I love, ‘The Shepherd Boy Paris’, I have no idea who it’s by. Of course, in one of my incarnations he is my little brother, but the feelings the painting evokes are not sisterly ones. Yes, I will go there next week if I get the chance. Put me in the right mood for Paris (the city, not the shepherd boy/Trojan prince).