Remembering:
We passed this store in Vila Nova de Foz Côa every time we walked up from our little flat to shop on the main pedestrian street. There were often men standing around outside, talking. Were they discussing politics or house repairs or weather? Who knows. On the day we went into the store to buy a corkscrew (our flat didn’t have one and the kind woman in the little grocery store gave us one to use but we thought we should buy one and leave it in the flat), I’d practised the Portuguese for corkscrew –saca rolhas, saca rolhas — and the man went directly to a wall of boxes and located two for us to choose from. We didn’t need pesticides, didn’t need the sack of alfalfa pellets by the front door; we didn’t need a rake or a coil of pvc pipe.
Eating:
At the Nepalese restaurant in Kew, I loved the dal saag and will try to make it here. At a little bakery in Hampstead, just after we’d been to the Keats House and just before we hopped on a bus to visit Freud’s House, I had the best sourdough toast with soft avocado and a single poached egg, dusted with chile.
Watching:
The sun is going down earlier and earlier. Yesterday we were driving home from Sechelt just after 4 and the whole western horizon was orange with its setting.
Listening:
Somehow I found myself listening to one of my favourite songs led by Dick Gaughan, accompanied by Emmylou Harris, the McGarrigle sisters. Rufus Wainwright, and others. Emmylou breaks my heart (in a good way. I think…).
Finishing:
I’d like to finish this single cloth (two single lengths, actually) I am making, using linen dyed in summer in an attempt to learn more about the dye process. I’ve used indigo (which I’m quite familiar with, although I can never predict the results) and rose madder and sitting with it, a section taut in the wooden hoop, I am back in summer, my dye pot simmering on the little hotplate, the fabric held down in it with a big rock. I am back trying to find in colour a correlative for my wistful sense of the world. I’d like to finish.
Appreciating:
The work done by the team at Thornapple Press as they prepare my book, The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze, for publication in the spring. (I love the endorsements…)
Hoping:
As I listen to Emmylou sing, I am hoping that the summers will return to us, warm and sweet, the roses tumbling over the garden fence, bees in the oregano, honeysuckle weaving through the deck railings, scented geraniums brushing my legs as I climb the stairs to the front door.
I will build my love a bower
By yon clear and crystal fountain,
And all around the bower,
I’ll pile flowers from the mountain.
...Theresa Kishkan 