Internal fever

I’m getting better, coughing less and able to stand up strongly. I have a strange feeling of an internal swarming, just like the echo of an unconscious fever that agitates my body and my mind. At the Pykes’ today I managed to get away from the hollow chat of the lady of the house. She had things to do, and left me, kind of sadly. I could work and finish painting that old basement, whose arches made me think of Plato’s cave. The place’s destitution and simplicity reflected back at me: I wanted to purify my conscience in its scoria. I sat down for a long while to contemplate those white walls that enclose a story that I can hear murmuring behind. Here, the Templars are never far away…It’s almost as if it were a mirror, in which I was looking for familiar symbols. They were written in the secret part of my memory, and I could make out their shadows, hearing the questions that they asked me. I could have stayed there until nightfall, but my two dripping paint pots brought me back to work of another nature. Speaking of painting, I discovered the new acquisitions in Edinburgh’s National Gallery the last time I was in the city, on my way back from Kilmartin. A picture from the Frenchman Girodet held my gaze for a long time.The scene was entitled “Malvina Lamenting the Death of her Fiancé Oscar”. I’m pretty sure there’s something of Malvina in me.