NEW PORTRAITS

Italy came back to me in the shape of my niece Selene and her husband Gian Luca. We had a warm and wonderful four days together and they took home the portraits I finished last week of Mariam and Emanuele, their children who are in Milan and haven't yet seen these paintings.

1.Emanuele. NdA. Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16in. November 2022

2. Mariam with Lili the dog. NdA. Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16in. November 2022

3. Selene Guerrieri and Gian Luca Martinelli at my place, 27th November 2022

NOTHING?

I've been thinking about nothing. I don't mean not thinking about anything. I mean Nothingness, le Néant, emptiness. Here's a summary of what my thoughts have been playing with.

There's no such thing as nothing. What is philosophically or metaphorically or literally considered to be Nothing is actually the gaps or pauses between Something.

Look at the word NOTHINGNESS for instance: see the negative spaces between the letters?
That's the 'stuff'which gives each letter and the whole word its shape. An energy pushing and pulling space-stuff to form shapes.

Say the word aloud: the pauses your breath takes between letters or syllables, aren't they examples of the same energy translated into sound, like the pauses between notes sung or played on musical instruments?

We generally focus on the shape of things before we notice the space around them. But what if it's the other way round?

Suppose it's Nothingness which moulds shapes?

I made a rough initial sketch of this exploration.

LETTER TO MY SISTER IN OUTER SPACETIME

TO ANNIE WHEREVER WHOEVER YOU ARE NOW

When I arrived at Via Ortigara last week I put my hands on the sealed wooden box in which your body had been lying since Saturday the fifteenth of October when you left this planet.

I put my face against the pale brown coffin but no words or signals came up into my ears. There was only the heaving of my breath facing the reality of your departure.

Now the fire you requested has reduced your shape to ashes, the Annie crumbs sit in an urn waiting to be dispersed into the Atlantic ocean, as you demanded years ago when death was not even a flicker on the horizon.

We were so different you and I but both of us are rebels. Not because we want to break the rules but because we don’t believe they apply to us. I’m sure you told the gatekeepers of Wherever that you don’t need a password. Of course they let you in. Of course.

We had different kinds of anger you and I, different passions. The sandpaper wall between us could be painful sometimes and until I finish this letter I’ll still be angry with you for not waking me up on the morning Mom died. So I couldn’t hold her hand when she took her last breath.

I was asleep on the sofa in the living room, you were sitting beside her in the bedroom. You woke me only when she was already gone. I asked, enraged, why didn’t you call me sooner? You said: You were so tired, I wanted to let you sleep.

I wasn’t holding your hand either when you last breathed in but you are with me forever. Ti voglio tanto bene,je t'aime. Bon voyage my dearest nomad.

How and where to send this letter? I’m sending it electronically, in public and I’ve turned WIFI on because maybe cyberwaves have access to your present location.

Natou

MY SISTER ANNIE, GONE

Today my sister, Anne d'Arbeloff Guerrieri, died peacefully in her sleep at home in Rome aged 97. There is too much to say about her. It's all going round in my mind now, some of it is online in my unfinished autobio, some of it other people have written.

I just want to sit for a while in silence where one question only is written in huge neon letters on cosmic walls:

WHERE DO WE GO WHEN WE'RE GONE?

I don't want to hear all the answers that already exist, whether they are religious, anti-religious, humanist, new age, old age, spiritualist, philosophical, scientific, devil-may-care, devil-may-not-care, or WHATEVER. I just want to stare at the question. Meanwhile here are some photos of Annie. These are for her wherever she is, my amazing, unique, irreplaceable, impossible, infuriating, exasperating, unforgettable sister, with eternal love.

The first photo -left to right: our mother Blanche, Annie, me - was taken in 1986. In April that year, her husband Gerardo Guerrieri drowned himself in the Tevere river in Rome.

REMEMBERED DIFFERENTLY

Rest in peace Elizabeth and also all those who died yesterday on this little island and everywhere in this world and will not have a state funeral or state mourning or go down in history.

NOTHING NEW

Not going to mention Monday's news of the replacement of BJ with LT. We're living in a Déja Vu world, politically speaking. Politically speaking is the problem. The déja we have all vued. What would be truly NEW would be a world in which there are no politicians and no politics. Only human beings talking to each other like friends about matters which matter to all of us.

GRAPHIC NOVEL SLOWLY PROGRESSING

My graphic novel-in-progress, Double Entendre, is slowly progressing but at least it's progress and not digress. Here are the last pages before the beginning (i.e. Prelude). I have much of the material for the rest but it needs total reconstruction, re-thinking and re-drawing.

REMEMBERING BLANCHE, MAMAN

It was in 2001 on the 21st of August in London that Blanche, the beautiful, wonderful, unique individual who happened to be my mother, left this world. I celebrate her now and always. Below: Blanche in the 1940s, and in France with my older sister Annie and me.

And here's a slideshow I made in 2014 with some of Blanche's paintings. She began painting in 1994 and had her first and last exhibition aged 95.

A THANK YOU VIDEO

I've made a selfie video to thank you, whoever and wherever you are, for your presence here in my little corner of cyberspace. Here's the link to the video. I don't know if it will open right here or if it takes you to my Youtube page:

BIRTHDAY DINNER ON THE CANAL

This was the view from a table in the moored boat-restaurant on the canal in Maida Vale where I had a lovely birthday dinner with three close friends last night. If you look closely you can just about make out the stately procession of ducks which happened to be floating by when I snapped this shot. Obviously the parade was in my honour even if the ducks didn't know it. They were swimming too fast for me to get a close-up shot so I can't show you their facial expressions.