Sentimento di appartenenza*

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)

~arguably the most successful painter in the Victorian era ~

he is photographed in his studio in St. John's Wood (1880s)

I came across this photograph as I was surfing the net this morning, and was immediately transported back into the bohemian world that existed inside granny’s house during the late 1940s. Granny was not my real granny. She lived across the street from the house I lived in with my real grandparents. Granny was the real grandmother of my first friend in life, Diane.

As I tap these words onto my computer screen, I can actually smell the musty rooms. Rooms that were lined with old books, and faded, dusty rugs. There was a velvet couch with worn-out cushions, in the Salon; a dinning room where stood, what must have been once, a regal Baby Grand. Her keys yellowed and chipped with age; and in one of two bedrooms, separated by a Jack and Jill bathroom with a claw-foot bathtub, was a double bed. Its feather mattress sunken in the middle and covered with shiny silk layers of bedspreads. There is a smell of incense in this room. It is understated, but there nonetheless.

The room pictured above is nothing like the rooms Diane and I played in, and yet the sence of it throws me back into a certain *sentiment of belonging. The same feeling I had every time I was in that house.

Peculiar how the mind clicks on a memory at the smallest of details and brings it to the forefront. Either by sight, sound or smell, the subconscious is programmed to turn-on at the slightest provocation, whether we want it to or not.

Spring
painted in 1894
by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema