Coincidences

My Swedish friend Anna wrote a post about generosity the other day, and it made me sit up with quite a start, and I blushed a little bit, and looked around the room with a slightly guilty expression as if to say “I have just realised that I have been remiss, and gosh I really hope no-one noticed.” Because I suddenly realised that when one receives an award in blogland, one should keep in mind that it is there to be passed on...virtually speaking...in a copy-and-paste sort of sense....to someone else. My blogging mob, I have found, are generous to a fault.

So I then began to ponder how I should pass on this award:

This is a difficult task because blogs, by definition, are the creative spaces of their....well...creators, and just as each person is unique, so is his/her own blog. My choice, it would seem, must be purely subjective. I must choose the blogger who is most inspiring to me, at this particular moment of my life, and I have therefore chosen the wonderous Esti from Bilbao, Spain.

And because it is often customary to give a little speech of introduction when presenting an award, I am now clearing my throat, and tapping on the microphone, and beginning.....

Exactly ten years ago (and I know this for a fact because my mother inscribed the book with the date and a loving message) I received a book as a present from my mother. Here is a picture of the cover of this gorgeous book, it is titled “Carl Larsson – Watercolours and Drawings”.

Now here is the frontispiece of this little book:
Yes, you are quite right to gasp out loud dear audience. You understand. For if this book were to appear in a Hollywood movie it would do so at the beginning, and this would be known as “foreshadowing”, because an entire decade later there would be such a thing as the internet and blogs and it would be possible for me to meet Anna from Sweden... who I’m telling you IS THAT YOUNG WOMAN HOLDING THE FLOWERS AND LOOKING ME DIRECTLY IN THE EYE.

Yes, very well, I hear you, dear audience, and well may you wonder “what has this to do with the wondrous Spanish Esti?” Well, dear audience – EVERYTHING. Because it was only through meeting Anna that I came across Esti, and it was only because of Anna’s insatiable love of colour that I came across a book in my Grandpa’s library which featured a Miro painting on its cover.

It was only then that I suddenly felt compelled to open up the book and read a quote of Jacques Doucet – a Parisian art patron of the 1920’s – talking to an artist about Joan Miro:

“You know, I have bought two paintings by that friend of yours...I have hung them at the foot of my bed. When I wake up in the morning, I see them, and I am happy for the rest of the day.”

And that quote, my dears, is WORD FOR WORD HOW I FEEL ABOUT ESTI’S ART.

I look at it as it blinks out at me from my little computer screen (please note, copyright laws are stringently adhered to by eleanorfromthecommentbox) and it just makes me so damn happy I feel like dancing and singing, and then quietly sitting in a soft armchair with a cup of tea and thinking about it.

So, Esti – I hardly know you, and you hardly know me, but despite that, I would like to pass on this award, whose origin is Swedish, via Australia, to you in your Spanish home – may it always be filled with colour and music and the laughter of a happy family.

And, finally, here is a little picture to make you smile a bit. This is a photograph of you, and me, and Anna.....strangers behind Miro’s facelike plaques (from a tiny photo on page 73 of my Grandpa’s book) peering out into blogland and having such a riotously good time. May the good times continue!