Sunday, February 18, 2018

homesick; a series of dreams

     When my family moved from England with my family to America at first I was very excited .  After a year I became homesick and began having dreams that I was back  in England.  In the dream would be a passenger in a car driving through fields.  Hedge rows opening closing revealing the landscape as it stretched toward God I thought. The car would be driving at dusk and at night in these dreams.  Forms would appear and disappear in the warm, yellow eye of the car head lights.  There was a sadness that would come over me when I awoke and realized that I was not in England but only briefly transported and was now back across the sea.
   When I returned to England as an adult I walked from my house to my old primary school.  All the smells came back to me from the bushes that lined the walk.  A smell that was no where else on the planet it seemed. My body shrank to three feet tall again.  I could also hear for a moment the sound of children's voices echo through time on the courtyard of the school where we used to play, and our playing seemed important.  I remembered children dotting the old Colchester park like sheep on the hillside.  Where did we all go?  The forest that lined the walk to Matthew and Stefan's was now a housing development.  The little nook that I brought a pan to if I was going to run away from home was now no secret place but exposed to concrete and houses.
     I am realizing that painting is like a time machine.  We can travel to the past and future and connect to those memories and the feelings.

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