Day 298: Space and Light

Today I get to visit the house that was home to Sir John Lavery, the Irish painter.  The upstairs room that he used as a studio is breathtaking.  Vast, high-ceilinged, with the largest sash windows imaginable on both sides of the room, letting light flood in.  Just walking into a space like this is enough to slow your pulse and calm your mind.

Back in 2007, on a course, I was asked where I saw myself in five year's time.  It wasn't an interview.  I didn't have to square my shoulder pads and shout 'Sitting in YOUR chair, Mr Yesterday!'  But even outside of an interview, it's a difficult question.  Before I had a chance to think it through, my head was full of an image of a room just like Sir John Lavery's.  Huge, completely empty and full of light that filtered in gently through open windows that stretched from floor to ceiling.  I was walking through it, barefoot, and wearing old, soft, frayed clothes - shorts and a shirt.  There was nobody else there, no furniture, no ornaments.  It was so vivid and unbidden that it startled me.

I kept it to myself.  I think the questioner was expecting wildly ambitious outcomes (a published novel, a Nobel prize, a successful start up etc etc), and I thought I might have seen a portent of my own death.  (Probably because the light was very reminiscent of 'heaven' in the Nespresso adverts with John Malkovich and George Clooney...)

Either that, or the vision proved I was a total slug, with absolutely no ambitions whatsoever, except for a desire to not wear business dress.

Now from the five years on viewpoint, it's quite clear to me that I just time-travelled, and caught a glimpse of my future random visit to Sir John Lavery's studio.  Good.  Much more comfortable than a) death and b) slug-brain.