Souvenirs de Voyages

Strange bittersweet feelings tonight considering the people that pass in and out of our lives. I have managed to rediscover a few old friends this year thanks to the power of the internet and having reclaimed my life from catering and it is so good when we catch up; just odd sometimes how water and bridges move on and you realise that whole chunks of life have passed by.

I hasten to add that this is not necessarily a bad thing; the friend I met up with today coincided originally with a bit of a wobbly phase in my life that really revolved around alcohol, work and feelings of inadequacy. Friend in question was essentially a shining light in quite dark times.

The title was brought to mind both by this feeling of friendships passing and enduring and because a lovely Canadian I once worked with found a map of Paris in an old coat pocket the other day - the classic keepsake rediscovered, wrapped in the memories of the last time the coat was worn. Love it when that happens, like finding a piece of clothing long lost but loved, or an elusive photograph that shows a group long since disbanded.

Bought myself an autumn cosy hoodie today, which was excellently timed as today was totally toasty and I arrived in town looking and feeling distressingly like a small hoodie-clad strawberry; very seasonal but not quite the look I was going for. Slightly disturbed that I might have overdone the college look and be mistaken for a Festival act in that 'Krankies' older lady in school uniform look - maybe lucky that it was warm after all..

My quest for Max Ernst and surrealists lead me to Waterstones, not very helpful on the art book front at the best of times and not very helpful at all today. Flicked through a book on Magritte, but he doesn't really do it for me it has to be said, so the quest remains unfulfilled for now. I read somewhere earlier in the week how the author of the piece had been in Dali's neck of the woods and seen the classic 'surreal' skies of his paintings with the low lying baguette clouds and huge defined shapes in the sky. They were just there in the sky like a huge 'Dali' without the melty clocks; and the assumption is that he made them up for his own artistic ends, but no...

Reminds me of some of the amazing skies I saw on Arran, especially on the winter mornings when the sea looked as if it was made of brushed platinum. My favourite clouds were the 'thumb smudge' ones that sat low in the sky like Dali's baguettes, really thick water vapour (or whatever it is!) that looked like thick oil or acrylic smudged through with a big fat brush or a thumb. Never managed to get the paint to do it as well as the cloud though; different medium I guess. Nature has all the good tricks.

Awesome clouds tonight, coincidentally, surrounding a cool peeking moon that rose behind the houses and launched up into full gothic horror mode ducking in and out of the light-rimmed clouds as it went up. Awesome.