Recently, a friend showed me a painting of a woman asleep in her bed. I found it very interesting, and we chatted for some time about it. It actually made me think more deeply about some things. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, and maybe it is. But hang in there as I wrestle with my reaction… how it made me feel.
The first, Félix Vallotton's Femme couchée dormant (1899), is quite simply a bed ablaze with red, orange and yellow, and the wallpaper behind her patterned in lavender and small florals. I found myself thinking that it was too much colour, really, for how still she is, but maybe that's just me.
Mid-autumn, that’s what I was looking at, and I realised, leaning in closer, that it was: Entre deux saisons (between two seasons). It’s not summer, or winter; it's, as it says, the season in between. Outside, the world is greying, the days shortening. Inside it’s all colour, and memory, whatever it is.
To me, the busier the room, the calmer she seems to become.
That seems like it’s the whole paradox. The chaos created by the colour holds her. That’s exactly how our own in-between seasons work. I’m finding it hard to describe how I feel, but maybe it’s something like our obligations and memory and hope are all still there together, just quieter somehow.
Three more rooms are waiting on the other side of this door, each one pulling the same thread a little tighter. If you’re already an Annual Subscriber or Mighty Supporter, keep reading below. If not, this is exactly the kind of afternoon MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise® was built for.
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