A magical waking up

Rembrandt painted this

She, my friend,  paints pictures which transport you to the place she painted them, pictures of sky and its changing colours, pictures of places, familiar and loved.  Portraits of people she has met and painted, a few children but mostly people who have caught her artist's eye.  On the wall, they catch our eye and we begin to see the world as she has seen it.  When we look at those pictures we don't feel apart from the painter or the place.  

I wonder to myself if painting and writing are selfish pleasures because in a way so much delight comes from capturing the essence of a thing or a feeling or a person. But selfish or otherwise, capturing a moment for oneself or for another is compelling and as I wake up for the last of our mornings in Amsterdam I feel as if I am in a picture and want to capture it and send it to whoever wants to catch it.

A plaque over a door which
reminded us of our dogs! 

Dawn is later here so when I wake up in our room at the top of the house which has been converted into an hotel, it is still dark.  We sleep with all the curtains open and the windows too because the days have been uncommonly warm for early autumn.  It is like waking up inside an advent calendar, lights in gabled houses across the canal come on here and there and the lights show up the shapes of the houses.  Looking across the very large room which has been a welcome retreat during our days here, the pieces of furniture, the lamps and books on the table and the flowers too are all shapes emerging slowly in the dawn light.  The curtain is going up on the new day's drama for each person waking up.  Some to go to work, some to simply stretch and turn over and dream a little more, some may be happy, some less so but all wake up to this new day.  Waking happens in the heart of each person, we wake up first clear and empty and then moving to the mind and memory and thoughts of who and where we are, we start to imagine what is likely to come next.  

The wise, we have heard, wake up each morning and say: May all be happy, May all be without disease, May all creatures enjoy well-being and none be in misery of any sort.  Wise or not, we join that prayer knowing that everywhere people are waking up and facing whatever lies ahead and there may not be many who have had the chance of 5 days and 4 nights away in a small hotel on the edge of a canal in the heart of old Amsterdam where everything seems magic.

Flowers are nature's painting but irresistible to the painter and this writer in all forms