Monet's Garden

[oldbill4823]

Monets Garden.    

I'll start off with an apology. I am not a writer.

However, I promised to write up some dreamwalking experiences and here is the first.
Its all about a dreaming experience I had whilst visiting Monets gardens at Giverny north of Paris.

Monet was a very famous French impressionist painter. His most famous paintings are of the flowers he saw in his garden. 'Water lilies 'is known worldwide.

I warn you now this may turn out to be long.

That is because I will literally write what I perceive as I follow a sequence of memories.



So lets begin.

Just relax, let go and fall into the descriptions. 

Let your breathing get deeper, drop any resistances and tensions you have, notice how the words take on an aliveness.

You can start to sense that these words are just an edge.
Here on the other side they are so much more.
The overall effect is a little trippy as you wander through this, daydreaming.
Please keep your thoughts to a minimum whilst in this dream memory, I am very sensitive.
I prefer visitors to remain silent.
I don't think there is anything else to say here, so....

I am now abandoning myself into memories.   

Plunging inwards..............

[oldbill4823]

It is morning. My wife and I are in our car. It is a small red sports car. We haven't really gotten over the novelty of owning it. I am driving very self consciously over an ancient stone bridge in the town of Vernon, following the directions towards the village of Giverny.
We grin at each other as people stare, still a little awkward at our conspicuous presence as we wizz past,  delighting in the attention. 

Houses from picture postcards surround the streets. They cascade past. Timber framed residences catch my eye, stone mullioned windows, and steep pitched roofs. This is another country up here compared to where we are from. I am drinking it all in with my eyes driving through the shifting scenes. The small lively engine drones on...

The signs to Monets garden are fairly easy to follow. The route twists and turns to the right and we seem to be following some kind of river or stream through manicured planting scheme of trees and tall grasses. Crème stone buildings, a plethora of garden flowers, roses, draping wisteria.

The village is a long line of houses sheltered by a steep ridge of hill directly behind it.
Soft floral adornments are covering the fronts of the houses underneath. There is a feeling that we are entering an area of something soft and genteel here. As we drive down the main street I see the delicate hand of nature has been channelled to create a village of timeless beauty.

The signs for Monet's Garden lead us on....

I go around a round-about several times to the annoyance and consternation of a tourist coach hot on our heels. I pull into the car park behind it and rather than face the wrathful stare of the driver, park some distance away under the cover of a small tree.

The images fade.

I have the scent of the memories track now.  The thread of things is now available to me. If I concentrate upon it,  I see something  like spider silk line with numerous glistening droplets along its length. Each silver droplet a distinct scene full of memories caught and hanging along a continuous thread of time.

I reach forward along the thread and tumble into a glistening scene further along.



The memories are getting stronger now and I am losing more and more contact with this world as I write. There is a strong current almost like a wind pulling me deeper back into a half forgotten experience.

Breathing the anxiety away, trembling slightly,  tranquillity comes,       
Relax and let go again................



I am in Monet's  sitting room,  set on the ground floor but lower than the rest of the house. A restful sunken area. The murmurings of respectful visitors surround me as we stare at the furniture he kept here in his place of relaxation. Across the middle is a rope to stop us, the tourists  .

I am aware that Monet was once  here in this room. Opposite me looking directly towards us is a life sized photo of him standing in this very same room in the very position his photo now rests in.  I stand staring at his features his short cropped white hair and massive long flowing white beard. Small dark eyes peer out from his aged face. He seems a short and compact man containing a great vitality and yet earthy sensitive nature. It is an incredible moment of peculiar alignment that twists perspectives somehow.  A bizarre pivot between past and present and its as if the barrier between the two has been erased. Monet appears in his photo staring out from this very same room from the very same position. Its as if  his awareness is still looking out from the surface of the portrait. I stare puzzled at the portrait. It seems to be staring back out captured in a different time.

I experience a few confusing moments and experience a  wrenching of sensation in the pit of my stomach. Something has just twisted deep inside. Momentarily I am standing lost, dazed, I do not know whether I am looking out of the photo at the tourists,  or whether I am with the tourists standing staring at a photo of myself.

Perception seems to have changed slightly. I am now very much older and there is smoke like film across my eyes. I have a huge long grey beard and seem to have shrunk in stature. My mind is unusually silent as I take in all these dreamlike people that I see  superimposed like phantoms against the walls of the room.

I am Monet in my sitting room, looking at a dream of the future of my things.

My eyes are not so good. They are like beedy small holes that smudge the definitions of objects. But everything has a distinct feeling. I can feel these smokey visitors. Each one a different mood staring at the memories of my house. The images of these things are curious to me.

I walk out through the hallway out towards the garden. I wait as smoke like figures move past me. It seems curious to have to wait for dreamlike figures to move past me before I exit my own door. But I wait for them as if I didn't really want to reach across the veil. There are sounds but they seem to have a distant echo to them. As if they are far far away. I hear them like they are distant memories or reflections. I can feel these reflections I have the sense that this is what I have tried to capture in my canvasses, the feelings of reflections and how they bur. I must try again.  I am conscious of a quiet desire to capture these things and bind them into a single moment. I am not interested in outside interruptions. My work is here. This is all that is important.

Yet this damn age is blurring everything. Everything is a smudge only feeling remains. Blues bleed into green, horizons into perspective.  I focus in.  I am holding a moment for them to see.  Who are these strange ephemeral people though?  Insubstantial impressions like the feelings I try and capture.

I walk out of the room. I am happy to be moving again. I seem to glide around rather than walk. Like a dark shuffle that I can hear whispering back to me.
As I leave the building the peculiar sensation of being someone else wavers momentarily.
I pull back into it.


Wandering through the garden there are two sets of images but I don't really trust my eyes anymore. There are two gardens heres it is a little cofusing so I look instead at individual flowers and trees I bend down to examine a flower with long dangling purple heads. I cup it in my hand and yet through beady eyes I seem to be looking at something else an old arrangement and the contrast of emotions created by the planting scheme.

Nasturtiums tumble across gravel pathway spilling their bright pockets of flowers like kicked over boxes of oranges and lemons.

I head down towards the stream, just like the last time. That's a peculiar sensation.
The last............time.

I shuffle quietly onwards, down towards the bridge and the ponds totally unobserved.
I want to see them in this peculiar light we have today. I walk under the towering trees that I found here all those years ago, guarding this oasis in waiting. The stream chatters to my right  as I turn the path towards the curved wooden structure.
In the distance the gold of willows bending down to drape into the water. I cant even make out where the colours lose their edges at that distance.
Dragon flies dart across the surface.
Here under the canopy of leaves I have the familiar sensations.


I am Monet standing on the bridge looking at the water lilies,

dreaming impressionist reflections.





EDIT:  If you type in a search for 'Monet water lilies' in google images you will see what was painted seen and felt.

oldbill.