Oh no I’m hopeless with visual things, she said

And I remember thinking what a strange and sad thing that was to say.

Hopeless, with visual things.

Someone must have said something to her to make a notion like this stick.

I thought of my mum. someone said to my mother once when she was very young that she couldn’t hold a tune. So she never sang or whistled in her life. I can’t sing, she’d say.

Wasn’t til a lot later after she was gone that I recognized that for the preposterous notion it was. Can’t sing.

I can usually see a way to understand terrible things; Satanic worship, decaffeinated coffee, cosmetic surgery, but Renoir’s portrait of Madame de Bonnières? No. It cannot be understood or forgiven. And framed in gold plastic and spot-lit from above? No offence intended, Charlotte, there is not a chamber of hell hot enough for a woman of your taste.

Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska @vkphotospace.com