MEDITATION 78

When I began my last meditation, a lone Parisian violin was playing in my mind. It was a poignant memory, if you remember, of a recent visit to Paris. As I light the candle beside me and begin this new meditation, another musical instrument is playing an equally poignant melody in my consciousness. It is a solo piano and the music is a nocturne by Chopin. A nocturne is a short night piece and meditative, so highly conducive to writing this reflection. I have the complete Chopin Nocturnes in my cd collection but I am not playing them at this present moment. The nocturne in my head is another memory from my recent visit to Paris.

The gentle tune takes me back to a morning visit to the Pere Lachaise cemetery in the heart of the city. I was standing in front of Chopin’s grave. Though he was Polish, he died in Paris in 1849, at the young age of 39 of tuberculosis, which he had suffered from for most of his adult life. As well as being a composer, he was also a great performer on the piano and of the stature of a rock star across Europe in his time.

A monument stood above his grave: a seated lady with a broken lyre in her lap looking down in grief. I have just discovered that the figure is of Euterpe, the muse of music. Behind the monument was a wall of trees, vibrantly green in the morning sunshine.

A small group of visitors stood in front of the grave. Some took a brief look at the monument then moved on. Other like me stood for a while to pay their respects.

People had left tributes to Chopin at the bottom of the monument: small plants, little posies of flowers, single roses and a few small Polish flags. One tribute caught my eye. It was a sheet of music of one of his compositions, though I could not make out the title clearly. It looked a little rumpled laying on the stone step in front of the monument as there had been rain the day before. A single flower lay across it.

As I stepped back from the grave, a piano began to play behind me. It was one of the nocturnes: delicate and sad. I turned round. A man standing in the group was playing the nocturne on his phone. Instead of listening to it himself, he had turned on the speaker so that we could all hear it. It was his tribute. We all stood still, looking towards the grave, as the tender notes floated on the spring breeze.

I wanted to cry. I am half – Polish after all. If you can’t cry in a cemetery, where can you cry. Poor Frederic so far from his homeland, I thought. Although his heart is buried in a church in Warsaw, in Poland, where his heart always was. And he lives on of course in his music. The nocturne finished, I gave a nod of thanks to the man with the phone and walked on. Short as it was, it was the most moving concert I have ever attended.

I have never visited the cemetery before. It is like a small town itself within the city. There are long avenues of trees between the sections of graves. It made for a peaceful walk in the spring sunshine. Despite having a map, the graves were rather difficult to find, however, as the map only indicated the section they are situated in and the sections are quite large. Also the graves are not in chronological order so recent ones are often laying side by side with ones over a hundred years old or earlier, as the cemetery opened in 1804. Well chronology has no meaning anymore for the dead in eternity.

There are many other famous people buried there and one of my reasons for visiting was to find the grave of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) the novelist. It is the centenary of his death this year and I have been reading his great seven volume novel: ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which I have mentioned in these meditations before. He was a great music lover and adored Chopin’s music, which is mentioned in his novel. I have also been reading several books about Proust himself. One included a map of the places where Proust lived in Paris. He spent most of his life there. With my patient friend Phil, I sought out these places the day before, most of which are near the Madeleine church. So, it was important to discover his final resting place, which is a simple grave of black marble with no monument.

This simplicity was unlike Oscar Wilde’s tomb, which I also visited, He had a simple grave at first having died a pauper in 1900 and was then buried outside Paris in Bagneux. However, he was transferred to Pere Lachaise in 1909 and then a grandiose sphinx – like monument (sculpted in 1911 by Sir Jacob Epstein) was placed there.

So many artists, musicians and writers are buried in the shady avenues of Pere Lachaise. We found some of them including: the composers Rossini and Cherubini, the novelists Balzac and Colette, the singer Edith Piaf and rock musician Jim Morrison from Doors, the actor Yves Montand, the composer Michel Le Grand and George Melies, one of the pioneers of the cinema. I would like to go back to find some others and revisit Frederic, Marcel, and Oscar of course.

Once outside the cemetery we found a good bistro for lunch. Opposite us were the opulent offices of several grand funeral directors. No doubt they provide opulent funerals over the road in the cemetery at a grand price. I began to think that it would be good to be buried in Pere Lachaise, when my time comes, though I doubt that I could afford it. I had this thought not because I would be buried among the cultural elite of the last two hundred years, or because of all the grand monuments, but because of the peaceful avenues of trees. Well who would visit my grave in Paris anyway? Although it would be as good an excuse as any for a Eurostar jaunt for my friends. Perhaps if I was buried there, one of my ex students might leave a few pages of one of my scripts on top of my grave with a flower across it. Perhaps not only as a tribute but also as an apology for the lines they never learnt properly!

The visit to Pere Lachaise was important to me to pay homage, to say thank you to some of those who have enriched my life. It is why I visit Shakespeare’s grave every time I go to Stratford- Upon-Avon.

You may have deduced from my meditations, that I something of a cultural tourist. Does that term exist or have I invented it? Well I am. It is easy for me to be reminded of my cultural tourism as I only have to look around the rooms in my house. Not only are there photos on display from my holidays but also pictures (I have two Rembrandts and a Da Vinci – but only copies of course!); framed posters (two Broadway productions I saw in New York for example) and on the shelves books I bought abroad, and cd’s, souvenirs posing as artefacts and of course my large collection of fridge magnets on display in the kitchen. Not to mention the thousands of photos on my I phone and laptop from my travels!

A photo encapsulates a memory, more than that, it evokes a memory if we look at it for long enough. Sadly these days we tend to snap away on our phones too quickly and look at the photos too quickly too, especially when we are scrolling through them to see which ones we want to delete. But do we really look at the ones that are left after our digital cull?

Along with the cultural souvenirs I have just listed, the photos can also be a trigger to our memory, if we stop and reflect, if we take a moment to remember.

Marcel Proust’s great novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’ is about memory. No-one describes how memories fade in and out of our consciousness as well as he does. He believed that as well as wanting to remember a memory, by looking at a photo for example or by trying to remember one, there is involuntary memory. This is when a memory comes to us clearly and concretely, unaided and unasked for, as a surprise, almost a revelation.

Like my lone Parisian violin and my piano nocturne.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Mediation 47

As I begin this meditation, the magnets on my fridge have attracted my attention again rather than the candle flickering beside me. There is a new addition to my collection and a new acquisition for my miniature art gallery on the fridge doors: a Rembrandt.

It is a sketch, a self portrait, executed when the artist was only 24 years old. He looks startled and surprised as if someone has suddenly taken a photograph of him without his permission. Apparently, Rembrandt made the sketch while looking at his reflection in a mirror.

The actual picture, an etching, is not much bigger than the magnet itself. It is a small square printed in the middle of a foolscap sized parchment, which makes it look even smaller and almost enveloped by the sea of paper which surrounds it. It is one of a series of self portraits he made of himself in his twenties, most were sketches but there are several oil paintings too.

As might be expected, I have been to a gallery and of course a gift shop too! This time I visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, for the ‘Young Rembrandt’ exhibition, which covers the first ten years of his career from roughly 1625-1635. Rembrandt made portraits of himself throughout his life and in many ways the ones in old age are the most moving, perhaps because he also drew many pictures of old people throughout his career. Evidently, from looking at the exhibition, this fascination with old age began right at the start of his career. He captures the elderly sitters’ resignation beautifully in their eyes, sensing old age as a time of reflection and contemplation. Their passive eyes contrast with their faces, worn and redolent of a life lived. This contrast is acutely drawn in his own self portraits in old age much later.

The younger self portraits in the exhibition are more animated as you would expect from an artist in his twenties. He wears a variety of hats and facial expressions and sometimes he has a beard, sometimes a moustache or is sometimes clean shaven. He is evidently toying with his self image as young people will. On a deeper level, he is trying to find himself by drawing himself as he discovers and explores his talents and tries to establish a career.

He is going through what I have termed ‘the terrible twenties’. So many of my ex-students have shared this with me: not knowing who they are or what they want to do or having the confidence to embrace what they want to do anyway. I was the same at their age so I have a little understanding of their situation. At least Rembrandt knew what he wanted to do and from his work he appears to be bold and confident in his skills – or was he? We will never know I suppose.

Perhaps this series of self portraits over the years are saying ‘Where am I now?’ or even ‘Who am I now?’ These are questions not confined to our twenties. We can find ourselves asking these questions or they can find us at other times of our lives. They have been hounding me since I retired six months ago. Writing this blog has helped me to work out or at least explore some answers, like Rembrandt exploring himself through his pictures. Perhaps there is no need to find any answers but just to accept, to be resigned with patience as Rembrandt’s elderly models appear to be. In other words, to move from my terrible twenties to a reflective retirement. Then I might achieve a little of the dignity, serenity even, expressed in their eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the faces in Rembrandt’s works and the expression in their eyes. It must be the actor in me. He has the ability to convey a whole life in the faces of his models, through their stillness. Any film or TV actor should study his works. He conveys so much with the models’ faces, giving them an inner life. Their eyes lead us into their interior lives. It cannot be any accident that the popular historian, Simon Schama, has written a biography of the artist entitled ‘Rembrandt’s Eyes.’

What is also remarkable in the exhibition is that, as a young man , Rembrandt was fascinated by the beggars and homeless that he saw in the streets of his hometown Leyden and in Amsterdam, where he lived later. There are a selection of his drawings of street dwellers in the exhibition and he incorporates some of them into his large scale pictures of Biblical scenes, which were also a strand in his output.

In his drawings of street dwellers, he finds a dignified humility in their bowed heads and bodies. He also finds great patience: the patience of the beggar waiting for a coin (or hopefully a job) to come their way. Like them, we are waiting too: for an end to lockdown, an end to the era of the pandemic. Perhaps, as we wait, we can learn from their dignified patience or from that of the beggars and homeless we see in our own streets and perhaps even rethink our interaction with them.

The first lesson I ever taught was about Rembrandt. I was in the sixth form and we had a few single lessons every week called Elective General Studies, which were an appendage to our A Level General Studies course. Several teachers were able to give short courses on some of their special interests. These linked up somehow with the main A level. One gave a course on Renaissance Art which I attended. Of course in that bygone age there were no laptops or projectors or Internet to illustrate the lessons. Although I seem to remember he did use a slide projector so we could see some pictures or statues projected onto the wall of the medical room where the lesson took place! Strangely, as far as I can remember, there was never a sick pupil out of lessons in that medical room whenever we had our weekly lesson. Of course the teacher also used large art books for us to look at as examples.

Through those lessons I began to develop an interest in Fine Art ,which has stayed with me ever since. I watched documentaries on the TV and especially the BBC series ‘Civilisation’ which was on at that time. I also plundered my local library and wandered onto one lesson with a book on Rembrandt under my arm to and showed it to Fr Ledwick the teacher. He asked me if I’d like to give a talk on the artist so, ever eager to perform, I agreed and a few weeks later, I took the lesson. I prepared a selection of pictures to talk about and to explain why I liked them and what I found in them (as I have done in this blog).

At that time the country was going through a period of industrial action, known as the ‘three day week.’ This meant that there were regular electricity blackouts (among other disruptions). These would last for three hours at a time. As we had electric heating in our house, this was a problem. I remember that some evenings, I would do my homework by candlelight in the kitchen so that I could stay warm by the gas oven, which was lit to heat the room. My mum, who had two very small daughters, would sit near the oven to keep them warm. It is difficult to comprehend this these days and it was one reason why I would sometimes get annoyed with my own sixth form students when they didn’t do their homework!

I do remember looking at those pictures in the Rembrandt book by candlelight sometimes, and thinking that he must have looked at the real pictures himself by candlelight too. I felt quite privileged then. In the candlelight, the faces were luminous and the eyes were so clear. There was one, a head of Christ, which greatly nurtured my faith. Similarly I was reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte at the time for A Level English. How marvellous to read a 19th century novel by candlelight as it would have been originally! Emily’s Gothic romance seemed so much more atmospheric, if it ever could be!

And now, here I am once again, sitting by candlelight and writing to you about Rembrandt! Sharing my knowledge – as ever!

I also remember that just as I was about to start my little lesson on Rembrandt in that medical room in my school all those years ago, one of the PE staff wandered in. I can’t remember his name but he was rather obnoxious and I had been quite scared of him when I was younger! He decided to sit down and stay for my little lesson. It was my first lesson observation I suppose – though I knew nothing of them then. It certainly made me rather nervous. When the lesson finished, he came up to me and told me that he’d enjoyed the talk very much. ‘You ought to become a teacher’, he said. And eventually I did.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here watching the flickering flame of the candle beside me, the whole world seems to be a flickering flame in the face of the virus that has engulfed us. Not even emperors or the powerful of our own time are able to totally control it. It is a humbling corrective to their own towering self-confidence, should they possess it. Indeed it is a humbling corrective to us all, in our own little busy worlds, which have now perforce been interrupted in the most dramatic and sudden way.

In the wake of the week’s events in our own country, indeed across the world, it seems pointless, even crass and insulting to the suffering of others to write a meditation about anything else. I must admit to feeling numb and powerless myself, as indeed we all are, like someone standing stock still in the street when an accident happens, a neutral observer but unable to do little if anything to prevent it. Nevertheless, despite our fears and inherent panic at the spread of the virus and the sudden restrictions that have been imposed upon us, life must continue as far as possible. We must take up again our preoccupations and activities with calm determination and above all hope, hope for the future. The flame, though flickering, is not yet spent.

So with this in mind, I would like to share with you an exhibition I attended early last week before the closures at the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square. It was a display of David Hockey’s portraits. They included works from his teenage years in the 1950’s to the present day. The passage of time was very evident in the drawings, prints and paintings. This was because the portraits were of four particular sitters who are close to him: his muse Celia Birtwell, his mother Laura, his lover Gregory Evans, his print maker Maurice Payne as well as a series of portraits of himself.

They were executed in various locations around the world which gave the exhibition an exotic feel though being portraits there was equally an intimacy about them. Hockney is a fine draughtsman. His drawing skills are remarkable particularly in depicting the clothing of the sitters: the detailed prints of Celia’s numerous dresses for example. He is also an acute realist: these were not flattering portraits but carefully outlined the changes time had wrought on the sitter (including himself of course!). Yet though he accurately showed how the effects of age had changed the subject, the expression on their faces changed little and so their personality, their inner spirit seemed constant.

It was the self portraits that fascinated me. I have always been deeply moved by the realism in Rembrandt’s self-portraits (especially his ones painted in old age) and the realism in Hockey’s moved me too. It is Rembrandt’s eyes that draw you to him and they show you the ages of man: from quirky insecure youth to benign accepting old age. But in

Hockney’s portraits the eyes are always the same: they look startled, almost scared like a deer suddenly disturbed in a forest. I suppose this may be a trope that he uses for all of them and this startled stare even looks out at us from his first drawings as a teenager in his room in Bradford. This constant expression helps us to appreciate the different backgrounds and locations, the different clothes he wears over the years, the different media he uses at times and of course the changes in his face wrought by age.

But it is an odd expression. It is as if he has been caught in the act of painting, as if his art is reprehensible. The title for each one might be ‘The Guilty Artist’! That was certainly the cumulative effect they had on me. For a moment I wondered if it was something to do with his sexuality, with being afraid to be who he is, especially when gay men of his generation had to be closeted and furtive, when every expression of their sexuality had to be behind closed doors and there was always that fear of the door being suddenly opened and being found out, exposed. But this does not sit with the fact that he has been openly gay and even flamboyantly so for most of his adult life in contrast with his contemporary and fellow Yorkshireman, the writer Alan Bennett who only ‘came out’ in his later years.

Maybe that startled look does stem from a primal fear of being found out that was deep rooted from his teenage years.

Or perhaps it is something to do with the embarrassment about being in any way artistic and creative when you are brought up with an ordinary working class background. But then I may be reading something of myself into Hockney’s paintings. My own feelings of embarrassment were unnecessary really as the adults around me and my peers accepted that I wrote little plays and enjoyed acting. My primary school teacher encouraged me. She thought I would end up as a producer or director for BBC Drama.

And yet it is an extremely courageous act to commit a portrait of oneself to paper or canvas especially when it is realistic rather than narcissistic! There are times when I have shied way from writing this blog because I have been a little wary of committing myself to paper as it were. It is a private act that becomes public. Perhaps it is my childhood and teenage embarrassment taking hold again.

In one way I found the exhibition depressing. Walking around and gradually observing these five sitters (including the artist) getting older and older made me feel as if I was growing old with them! In truth they made me realise my own age. I am not young anymore myself. Looking back on my walk around these portraits with their constant expressions, I see that Hockney has hit upon a truth about human nature: our bodies grow older but we look out to the world with the same eyes we did as a child or young person. This can make us forget our real age sometimes: we think we are younger than we are in reality. As I have been working with young people for over half my life, yes, as others

have repeatedly pointed out, working with young people keeps you young, but it can also lead to self delusion at times!

Inevitably the restrictions imposed this week for our own good have also reminded me of my age and vulnerability. I am but four years off 70! Living alone has compounded this. I have always said that living alone is an art form, something in the coming days of isolation we may have to learn. But so many friends, neighbours and colleagues and of course family have been in touch for which I am so very grateful.

So I am once again reminded of the stained glass window in St Pierre de Montmatre in Paris. That abstract stained glass reminded me many years ago about all my family and friends, each one a bright and colourful pane of glass welded to the other by the molten lead of affection and love. We may be well aware at present that we are an individual and isolated pane of glass. We may even feel that our bright and cheerful colour has faded but the sun will still shine through it. And we need to remember that we may be a single pane but we are surrounded by the molten lead of affection and love.

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

I am home again from my Canadian sojourn in British Columbia. Once again I am writing this meditation beside my familiar candle with its steady flame. It has taken a while to recover from my trip. My return flight was the customary overnight one and so I have been suffering from jet lag. This, combined with the extreme heat we have been experiencing here in the UK, has been quite a heady cocktail for me! Perhaps, when we suffer jet lag, our bodies are telling us that it is not right that we should travel such long distances in so short a time by air, (aside from the carbon emissions issue). Perhaps our bodies are telling us that we have travelled too far too quickly.

Nevertheless, it is wonderful to think that within half a day or so I travelled over 4,700 miles. And then made the same journey back again two weeks later. An impossible feat for Marcus – even though he was an emperor! Of course I did not have a real sense of those thousands of miles as I jetted through the clouds. Only a journey by sea would have given me a real impression of the distance travelled. It would take over a week, I imagine. This is the illusion that air travel creates: we do not realise how far we have travelled. Only a different time zone or a different language or culture reminds us of that – once we have landed at our destination of course.

Our lives sometimes create the same illusion as air travel. We do not realise how far we have travelled, how far we have moved forward. That is because we are thinking of the next destination: be it a job, a project or a relationship or another stage of our life. It is only when we have the chance to look back, to reflect, that we can see how far we have come as a person, and appreciate how much we have changed – hopefully for the better!

I do not think this perspective is only for older people looking back on their lives. It is a perspective we should all have, whatever our age. To do this we need to forget our immediate, pressing destination for a moment and take time to reflect, to appreciate how far we have travelled thus far. So often, when I was teaching, I have comforted a student with the observation, ‘You have come a long way since you started this course.’ It is a comfort. And it can be a challenge too to move on further. Reflection is rather like a plane landing to refuel before moving on.

So over the last few days I have been in the throes of heat and jet lag. I have also been bereft. I am missing the big skies and the ocean; the tall pines and firs and cedars; the beaches with their rocks and scattered driftwood blanched white by the waves and that special moon I mentioned in an earlier blog. And I have met with so many people, who have been kind and generous towards me. So I am missing them too. There is an emptiness when you come back to your house alone after seeing so many people.

When I have laid awake at night, unable to get back into my normal sleep pattern, moments from my holiday have flooded in: people I have met, places I have explored or stayed in, details of conversations, views and vistas I have seen and meals I have enjoyed. A myriad of impressions, like a frantic slide show on a laptop or like one of those kaleidoscope toys I had as a child. I would shake the tube and look through the glass at one end and the colourful pattern at the other end would have changed. The moments of my holiday seemed to change shape too, melding into eachother.

One place keeps coming back to me. Maybe it is because it is a place where I could see myself. It is in a little town called Brackendale and it’s quite near to Squamish, an hour or so out of Vancouver, up the ‘sea to sky’ highway. My godson Jonathan drove me there as he has a friend who lives there. The journey itself is very spectacular. You can see the ocean below one side of the highway and rocks and mountains towering over the highway on the other.

It’s a small community and there’s a rail track at the back of it. We heard the train go through while we were in Jonathan’s friend’s home – that old fashioned train bell ringing that you usually only hear in Western movies. It’s a really small town and calls itself ‘the World Centre for Eagles’ as it is near Eagle Run, which we visited, where thousands of bald eagles spend the winter. Understandably, as it was summer, we didn’t see any eagles (though there are other species in the area) but we did see hawks circling around in the sky.

And we also visited the Brackendale Art Gallery. It is a small wooden building set in a lush little garden of greenery, where statues by local artists are scattered about. There are First Nations designs on the outside walls too. As I went inside from the brilliant sunshine, the gallery looked quite dark but welcoming nonetheless. There were some artefacts by local artists on display and pictures by local photographers too. As I stood at the top of the steps at the entrance and looked down into the gallery, the place was a hive of activity. A group of volunteers were arranging tables and chairs for what looked like some kind of meal that evening or maybe a party or cabaret. Because of the wooden architecture of the place, inside seemed snug and cosy and the volunteers were warm and welcoming. Then I noticed the stage: a modest black platform at one end with a black back cloth, a few theatre lights and some old church pews for seating. At the opposite end was a tiny bar, more like hatch, for interval drinks I guess.

I was quite excited by that stage. I wandered down the stairs to take a closer look. Standing in the centre of the room, I could see myself in that gallery, helping to run the place, performing and directing. What a way that would be to spend my retirement! Looking around at the little gallery and watching those volunteers shifting furniture there was a real sense of community. In fact, it felt like home.

I went upstairs where there was a loft area with some local Squamish artwork and some striking photographs of the forests and of course eagles and hawks. There was even an office behind a screen. And there at one end, underneath a window, were some copies of pictures by one of my favourite artists, Emily Carr (1871-1945).

On my visits to Vancouver Island I have got to know Emily very well, through her pictures and her books. When she stopped painting, she had a whole new career in her 60’s and 70’s writing books, mostly quirky memoirs of her youth in early Victoria and the boarding house she ran for a while. I have mentioned her once before in my blog.

I have seen the permanent exhibition of some of her drawings and paintings in Victoria Art Gallery several times. She was a true original who embraced tribal art forms and frequently visited far flung Haida villages by boat and canoe to do so, an amazing feat for a single lady to do at that time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her paintings of totems have become iconic. Most of all she is a great painter of forests (especially in the last phase of her work) and she was an early environmentalist. She finds the teeming life force within tree trunks and branches. The trees are never still, they are always in motion, sometimes even dancing in the wind.

I don’t know why I like her pictures so much. I normally prefer portraits or scenes with people in them. That’s why I love Rembrandt. His portraits are such wonderful character studies. Any actor or director should go and look at them: the hands and the eyes say so much about the person sitting for the painting. That’s what acting is about: hands and eyes.

But Emily’s trees? I guess I like them because they are so full of life, her forests are teeming with life. Emily and the trees are rejoicing in being alive, rejoicing in being. She made several sketches and paintings of areas in the forest where the trees have been cut down. The logging industry in BC was taking off in the early 20th century, when she was painting. Those pictures have a real sense of desolation about them, of stark tragedy.

So apparently Emily came across the water from Victoria on Vancouver Island to Brackendale on the mainland to look after her two nieces who were ill. This was in 1913 so that would have been quite a journey then. She made several visits to the area and made sketches of the forests nearby which led to some of the tree paintings I have just mentioned.

Somehow Emily will not let me go. I didn’t visit her pictures in the Victoria gallery on this trip but here she was in Brackendale, reminding me of herself.
What was it about that little gallery and art centre that made me want to be part of it? It is amazing to think that a place thousands of miles away could have gripped me in this way.

Was it Emily? Or that little stage? Or the friendly community of volunteers? Or the cosy atmosphere? It was more than somewhere where I felt I could do. It was somewhere where I felt I could just be. Where I could live another life -not that different from the one I am living now – but different enough.

Now that I am home, I have learnt that British Columbia has become a part of myself. I have also learnt from Emily and her trees to rejoice at just being. Here where I am.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!
And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.
I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.
Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius