Alive With Signs

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman.

Folkestone, Kent, CT19

I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a ‘fiancé,’ why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite.

Walker's Court, Soho, Westminster, W1F

So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

Brentford Docks, Brentford, Hounslow, TW8

As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Brewer Street, Soho, Westminster, W1F

Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt I had been happy and that I was happy again.

Percy Dalton's, Dace Road, Bow, Tower Hamlets, E3

For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Duke of Wellington, Toynbee Street, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

From Albert Camus’ L’Etranger (1942)

Lowest of the Low

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low.

Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, E1

All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

Highgate Hill, Archway, Islington, N19

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Seville Place, Dublin, Dublin 1

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

Caroline Street, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E1

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.

Long Street, Shoreditch, Hackney, E2

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Dock Road, Brentford, TW8

Vincent van Gogh’s Letter to Theo (1882)

The Dream

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed

The Stade, Folkestone, Kent, CT19

Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,

Spring Gardens, Coding Street, Vauxhall, Lambeth, SE11

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;

Church of St John-at-Hackney, Lower Clapton Road, Hackney, E5

They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,

Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,

Dawlish, Devon, EX7

And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past -they speak

Cleopatra's Needle, Embankment, Westminster, WC2N

Like sibyls of the future; they have power -
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;

RAF War Memorial, Embankment, Westminster, WC2N

They make us what we were not -what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by,

George Blackall Simonds' Maiwand Lion, Forbury Gardens, Reading, Berkshire, RG1

The dread of vanished shadows -Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? -What are they?

From Lord Byron’s The Dream (1816)