Most of my early childhood memories are associated with my grandmother's house, which I felt to be rather "sinister" then. Wherever we were hiding or simply daydreaming the sound of the calling bell would bring us back to "reality" ... the statue with the lit up torch at the bottom of the stairs that led to the bedrooms didn't diminish the fear of having to go to bed in those huge bedrooms that might have accommodated the three siblings together and yet didn't ... as if each of us had to handle isolation and fear on our own. Despite the fact that I used to feel mesmerised (still do) by the decorations on ceilings size did play an important part on my ever growing fear.
The reflexion of the painted image of my mother on one of the mirrors had always drawn me close as a warm embrace ... one she never gave us but until many years later ... when inadvertently she realised how the absence of physical affection had impacted us.
There she stood straight, stern and powerful (powerfully beautiful) the day she officially got her degree in Medicine and had to sit for a well known painter to signal out the occasion ...
The Music room with its piano, the angel musicians decorated ceiling and its tile decorated fireplace was one of my favourite rooms in the house, one where I used to spend most time ... playing ... composing those rather naïve piano "compositions" I felt would take me somewhere ... (how naïve ...).
The biggest room on the first floor wasn't accessible to us as children and it wasn't but when I turned sixteen that I had a thorough look at it with its wooden rudder-shaped ceiling ... a nude statue (the first nude representation I ever came across) ... once my grandmother felt I should have a party and be surrounded by friends (I hadn't been allowed to have) ...
I do recall my brother bringing some of his own friends along and even a few foreigners he had just met in the streets, as he and one of the servants went around trying to gather some youths ...
The embroidered tapestries covering several walls of the house did make me "travel"..., some depicted poetic and historical scenes but many far away countries, which together with the reading of books and the stern look and imposing figure of my mother played an important part in my childhood and youth years.
The little chapel at the end o one of the corridors in the second floor where the pictures of those who didn't conform (hadn't conformed) to the rules established by the family or had done something which was seen has having gone against some accepted social principles stood, had always frightened me. I could simply see my picture being put there ...
I used to look "high" up... and get lost in the intricate geometric and artistic designs of the ceilings ... the light and inspiration seemed to come from there ... those were my most truthful childhood companions ... of silence and loneliness ...
No comments:
Post a Comment