Klee at the Tate! Happy New Year

Fire Full Moon  by Paul Klee

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-paul-klee-making-visible

From this far vantage point of March 11, I look back with wonder that the year started with one of those “turning point” events that take on new layers of meaning as the days go by.  I was in London visiting the family at the end of 2013 and had all of the 31^st to myself.  It was rainy most of the day with  breaks of bright sun so all was silvery and celebratory. I decided to go to the Tate Modern in the afternoon  - what better setting for the last day of the year, where you can walk alone along the embankment on the Thames and yet feel a camaraderie with others.

What was on at the Tate:  an exhibit of Paul Klee paintings.  I had not  known about the exhibit, nor did I guess that this visit would touch me so deeply.   Seeing the artist's paintings in person, many galleries of paintings  - well how to describe it?  You hear people say that when a person dies she sees her whole life pass before her vision in an instant.   In the shimmering spaces of the exhibit there was a visual sense of seeing the whole of a creative life on display with each canvas but a keepsake of a still living genius - so boundlessly joyful.   At times I had to stop and say  “how did he think of that color?  To put that color right there in that dark area....what is that color?”  The canvases floated on the walls, or seemed to, held up with light, not with hooks.  People drifted through the galleries  - it was not crowded -    gallery, paintings with the viewers in a slow dance.  

Much later, coming out of the museum at twilight,  the clouds had cleared and the pink sky reflected in the puddles on the embankment  where visitors  strolled along on their reflections…. a New Year's eve shift. 

the white house

Many days I drive along Sunset Street on my way home from a work errand.  Driving by, I always admired a small white frame house – vintage 1946 or so – that was set apart from the other houses on the street.   It was a pristine house, very simple and well kept, sitting in the middle of an expanse of grass with no fences, no complicated landscaping - just the house and its clean white color creating a satisfying contrast with the background trees and green grass.

It was for sale for quite awhile.  I told my friend Fran who is looking to buy a home about it.  “You might look at this lovely little house on Sunset,” I told her. To myself, I thought, “The house reminds me of a young girl sitting in the grass with her new dress spread around her at a picnic.”

One day I drove by and the for sale sign was gone and so was the house.  A bulldozer was sitting in the middle of the lot next to an excavated place where the basement had been. A large sign with a well designed logo from a building company or bank was posted inviting inquiries.  Lately several new structures are going up.  They are at this point situated along one side of the property so perhaps new buildings  are to come.  To my eye the spacing is off with these new buildings.  Like too many apples and pears in a still life. There is a kind of “more bang for the buck” feel to it. Today, a red haired man was getting out of a white car as I drove by. He was gazing at the building site as he closed the car door. 

“You never know” I thought.   I’d imagined an identity for the white house, and the for sale sign was part of the story.  Who would buy the house?  Would they landscape?  Remodel?   That it might disappear between one drive and another did not occur to me.   I remember feeling unsettled, the day I drove by and saw the empty lot.  Perhaps I felt that way because the actual story of the house was more true to life than the one I was imagining.  Or perhaps because the new story is not one I had thought up myself.

London visit Christmas and New Year’s 2012

This photo says it all. I am looking out of my hotel window onto Camberwell Church Street on Christmas morning.  It is the one day of the year with no buses running so I am planning my rainy walk to Rye Lane. It is so unusually quiet on the street, wet, yet a bit balmy – to my mind this is the perfect way to start Christmas.

Since the grandchildren have come along, my visits to London are not at all comparable to previous visits exploring the galleries, gardens, museums and theaters downtown. Lately my focus is on little boys and now an added little girl – and as my daughter is working on her PhD thesis, seeing London is a sideline to enjoying little tykes and with them exploring neighborhoods that I am getting to know and appreciate more with each visit. So here are highlights from each neighborhood – which I look forward to expanding now that the grandsons are getting older. These are a few of the locations along my walking route every morning where I pass through, in twenty five minutes three very distinct neighborhoods.

Camberwell - The Church Street Hotel. www.churchstreethotel.com I found this gem of a hotel on Google search some years ago when I first started making regular visits to see my grandchildren - it lives up to the photos and descriptions on their website so check it out!. Actually, the hotel is one of the key perks for my grandsons of having me come visit. “Let’s go to your hotel!” they insist every late afternoon. We pack a picnic and bring it to my hotel room, spread out towels and if we time it right, turn on the 60’s tv version of batman which they love. The hotel is also my vacation within my vacation. Though I often intend to “get into London – perhaps the theater” in the evenings after the children go to bed, I never do. I hop on the 12 bus from Peckham and head back to the hotel to crawl under the fluffy white sheets and get out my book, arrange my tea cup, open the complimentary dark chocolate bar, and relax. Like being on a stationary cruise.

No. 67 – Camberwell. www.number67.co.uk  It wasn’t until I’d been coming to the Church Street for two years that I discovered this cozy café adjoining the Camberwell School of Art, one of London’s renowned schools. Their menu debunks the “all English food is terrible” myth. They are on my list for next London visit.       Coming up…..  more about Camberwell and walking down Rye Lane

The words that come to mind for my first not so lonesome traveler post is "traveling is easy." Are those the words to some song? This title "not so lonesome traveler" was something I thought about some years ago; I had visions of filling the pages of this blog with travel links and photos of adventures - mine and others. However, though I get to London twice or three times a year to visit my daugher and family (three grandchildren), visits which I love, my mainstay travel experiences are traced in the footprints that criss cross through each day here in Boise. This is, for now, my Rome and Paris and Istanbul.

Over time I find that this home territory - ie my life at age 6o plus - is more spacious than is sometimes comfortable. I never expected that my grandchildren and my two daughters would live on another continent. It is because roles I expected to play at this stage of life are not necessary, that  the unexpectedness of having many options come in. Right underneath the surface of a work week is a kind of dangerous flexibility. If I can pay attention, it sharpens seeing, hearing and interpreting - then each day's sidetrips - walking down to Starbucks on Sunday morning or taking a ride down to Lucky Peak -  emerge in an un-plan. A day can be a routine, but if I look carefully, camouflaged in the moments, usually invisible, are arrows reading, "why don't you try going this way?" Yet to follow those arrows, it is almost as if I have to step over a network of little walls that box in the day as a series of timelines. Coffee, work, lunch, work, a walk, dinner, etc. There is always the open invitaton to break things up - "go outside and play" our mothers used to tell us.

Not long ago, a friend was vividly describing being in Mexico and taking a side trip where she got to go on a zip line. That would be a stretch for me, I thought as she described what it was like. What, though, is going on here in my Monday or Tuesday that is comparable to the zip line? What is going on today that would take nerve to do? Write? Call? Paint? Cancel the work day? I heard a talk  the other evening by someone talking about how you can change things up by giving. He was saying, "just start where you are.....if you have closet to clean, do it now. If you have clothes to give away do it now. If you have someone with whom you want to make amends, do it now.." and he went on, "in being faithful to the smaller things then the greater things will arise.." For many years travel, to me, meant the greater things. The trip to Rome or the walking tour of Scotland. Those are possibilities, yes. These days, though, I make a hearty toast to any small whisp of curiosity that remolds the Mondays and Tuesdays because then I can travel every day without a map or a plan.