Reader Eleonore, whom I’ve had the pleasure of spending a few hours with, once in Berlin, once in Munich, commented on my last post that she, too, keeps a journal while travelling. Like me, she “sticks tickets, postcards, labels, tourist brochures, etc., on the pages of a notebook, with some comments.” And also like me, she finds that if she does “not finish it on the way, it will stay fragmentary in most cases, because after coming home, “normal” everyday life swallows me up.”
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| I was drawn back and back again to Victoria Crowe’s portrait of her mother’s friend Marion Pulford. Besides it being the attentive and aesthetically wonderful depiction of a woman in her senior years, I’m fascinated by the way she’s captured a psychological complexity here — an apparent ease of posture implied in the stillness but belied by the tension in mouth, brow, even the neck (which, poignantly, has shrunk so far from its collar. . . |
Yes! To that I have to say a resounding “YES!”
This week, I’ve been “swallowed up” trying to re-establish a fitness routine — oh, the sore muscles! — and hunting the Christmas boxes out of storage, deciding what kind of decoration is feasible and appropriate to the condo. I’ve shopped for the kids’ Christmas gifts — books, as usual — and we’ve done something with the Littles three afternoon-evenings so far, with a daycare seasonal “concert/recital” this afternoon. . . All of which has been absolutely delightful (the time with the Littles, especially, not so much the sore muscles!).
But I’m quite determined that this trip — which, after all, was about maintaining and creating some space about and for me as Solo Traveler rather than as a Retired Senior or as Nana or Matriarch (potentially swallowed up by family!) — not remain fragmentary in my journals. Actually, my concern is perhaps not so much that it not remain fragmentary, because what we recover from the past through memory is always necessarily just that. But I don’t want to compartmentalize my trip, to pack the ephemera into a box, eventually to erase the (several?) hundred photos I’ve taken, to allow the whole experience to be quite so easily effaced (and part of me with it. . . one meaning of “efface,” I see, is “to make oneself appear insignificant or inconspicuous.” Turns out I really, really don’t want to do that!
Nor, however, do I want to be stuck reliving the trip while life goes on around me here. I made a promise to myself about that while I was away, that I would pull the trip into my life here, use it as inspiration for enriching my creative life. I promised myself that I would make time back home to finish my journal account of the trip; that I’d sort through the paper ephemera and glue into my books whatever seemed significant and let go of the rest (a mini Marie Kondo project — I’ll show gratitude, first, to whatever gets sorted into the recycling basket); and that I’ll go through my too-many-photos thoughtfully, pausing to remember precisely what moved me to snap each one. After that, I’ll delete most of the photos, but I suspect before I do I’ll add a few notes to my journal. Artists I want to find out more about, streets I’d like to get back to, dinners whose sequence of courses I want to remember. . .
I know there’s got to be a difference between what I want to recall for myself and what you’ll be interested in reading about here. I’ve been doing some thinking about how to strike that balance between the general and the particular when it comes to talking or writing about travel. Next week, I’d like to share some of that thinking in terms of the way a trip (or a portion of it, a visit to a particular city along the way, for example) shapes itself, the way it materializes out of, and against, the research, the preparation we’ve made for it. The way that shaping can show us our priorities OR the way those priorities yield — too easily? pragmatically? happily? — to circumstances “on the ground.”
For now, as my day will soon be “swallowed up” by a Creative Morning and a DayCare Afternoon, I’m sharing some images from a wonderful exhibition I took in last month at Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery, an exhibition of exemplary paintings from Victoria Crowe’s decades-spanning career as a portraitist. I find the three preparatory sketches for Crowe’s portrait of the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, the intimacy of her focus on his cardigan, absolutely mesmerising. Compellingly intimate and revelatory. And fragmentary. The importance of the fragment, the effort, the attention paid to detail. The beauty, the undeniable beauty of those fragmentary studies. . .
I bought the exhibition catalogue (as I tend to do, as long as the weight isn’t too much for my carry-on), but have yet to make enough time to sit down and read through the introductory essay, although I have thumbed through the pages again, stopping at favourite portraits. I’m not going to put it away on the book shelves until I do. For now, it will stay on my writing table as a prompt. . . .
But speaking of “prompt,” if I’m going to be, for my event this morning, I’d better pack up. . .
Happy Friday to you, and I hope you might find time over your weekend to leave me a comment or wave me a wave. . . tr
Your fragment (or Victoria Crowe's) took me on a trip. My dad had a collection of sweaters from Scotland and the colours if not the pattern looked familiar. Scottish knitting of the 1980's. I'm deleting photos from trips that I have taken. Few are of interest to anyone else. Enjoy the concert/recital.
Those colours and pattern are wonderful in the way they come out of, and represent, a culture and a landscape. We don't see that so much these days. . .
Your thoughts on integrating travel experiences into the continuum of your life are timely ones for me. I am heading to London/Dublin next month so I look forward to hearing what you have to say on this subject and perhaps gleaning some ideas for 'journaling' my trip.
Two great cities to visit — although I say that only having passed through Dublin decades and decades ago and having since heard much good said about it. . . must get there someday.
Thoughtful musings. Thanks.
You're welcome
I thought at first that those sketches with text were your work. What a wonderful portrait. So very Bloomsbury-ish.
I've been struggling lately to keep up with my blog writing… and reading. Finding, as I work on getting my mojo back, that I just want to sit and contemplate our trip in the fall, and the books I'm reading, whatever, and not engage with the world at all. I know that's a bad thing if it becomes protracted… but for right now I feel the need to be inward looking. And it is, of course, THE most inconvenient time of year for that! Boxes of Christmas trimmings to be unearthed…. the tree to be chosen and collected on Monday…. baking, planning dinners, grocery lists, Christmas cards… Not in the mood. Still.. whining and moaning I seem to be excelling at. 🙂
Well, that's flattering! Although I'm sure your misperception only lasted a micro-second. Crowe's cardigan is so beautifully rendered, and of course it's just a study — I should post a photo of the actual portrait she painted, but it's really that sketch that impressed me.
And oh! I hear you re the turning inward. . . It does seem to be what the weather and the darker, shorter days push us toward. . .
While I consider myself a thinker and not a feeler-my meaning of that being I process my emotions through my mind, rather than gut, I do "feel my way" through travel, especially once I have returned home. Something about my routine or POV, or the way I present food changes as a direct result of my travel experience. By feeling it all while there, and feeling, thinking and living the changes once home, it stays present for me for a long time.
Taking photos, of course, features in my travels. Invaluable mementos utilzed when making greeting cards or put in frames or put under glass on a table top.
The whole experience of travel changes something in me, but most of all, I think of it as only taking a small bite-knowing, if I choose, I could go back for more. A tight schedule when traveling, forcing on myself a list of "must sees" gives me hives just thinking of it.
A weekend away, alone, or better, a week or more is heavenly for me.
Love him as I do, I have lots of little get aways from my sweetheart that are just for me.
A.in London
I think that's key for me as well, the "only taking a small bite–knowing, if I choose, I could go back for more." Whatever I take away from any one trip will change me in some way, but/and it's hard to predict what that might be.
And I'm absolutely with you on the solo time, as you know. 😉
Oh my, the sense of being "swallowed up" has felt rather overwhelming here. I've been back from my trip over the American Thanksgiving holiday for a few weeks now and I still feel swallowed. Of course I came back into the hustle of the holidays, of decorating and finding gifts and a sudden leap forward in the progress of my house construction and reconstruction. The sudden movement, the abundance of meetings and decisions, and redecisions, all of which I am told must be made immediately, except that I never have the information in a timely matter, have proven overwhelming. I too have fallen off blogging, and reading, and often just find myself seeing a little silent peace.
You capture everything I want to do and say with blog and life, but of course you are far further along the path to integrating it and making it both personal and universal. I like the way you are working through your trip, seeing how it fits back into your life, and the process you have been following for a while now, of looking back and forward, exploring how expectation and vision are changed. Carry on.