The quality of what you said ....

And when I returned home to my flat in London it stayed with me.  What stayed?  Not the words that you used.  It was the feeling of the quality of what you said.  It went with recognition, as if I had been reminded of something I knew very well.  I was possessed with a low simmering fear that I would forget again, let go - what I had been as a child. It was the same feeling one has after waking from a strong dream which one knows has importance for oneself, or for a friend.  You wake fighting to keep the dream, its flavour, its texture.  Yet within a few minutes of waking, that country of dream has gone, its taste and reality has drained away into ordinary life.  All you have left is an intellectual conviction held in a set of words.  You want to remember.  You try to remember.  You have a set of words to offer your friend, or repeat to yourself.  But the reality has gone, evaporated.

Excerpt from Briefing for a descent into hell by Doris Lessing

'The feeling of the quality of what you said .... ' says the character in the passage above, it reminded her of being a child.  These words I underlined with my red pencil.  That child-like feeling .... filled to the brim with wonder, free from sadness and fear.  Other words also float in my mind .... innocent, carefree, trusting, luminous, hope.  The child in the painting is my daughter.  She's playing on a beach in Cornwall where I used to play at the same age, feeling the same feelings.  It's an evening in early May, the sea is unusually still, milky white, the sky drifting, pale grey.  The adult figure is her beloved father.  It's the first time our new puppy has had a taste of the ocean, literally.  Someone said that this painting reminded them of poetry.  I like to think it captures and evokes a little of that child-like feeling.  The strong dream-like quality mentioned above, pledged in paint instead of words. Those halcyon days ....

Painting:  Porth, Newquay - Still Waters

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