The Restory Retreat Centre

House of Parliament, Sunset (1900, 1901) - Claude Monet (Claude Monet, the French impressionist painter developed cataracts as he aged, but refused to have them surgically removed.) Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of...

The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. -           William Carlos Williams Mily - Photograph by George Angus Warm night Women writes Man reads Cat chases moths Music from portable radio Outside, the sweltering day leans against open windows, watching listening resting -           George Angus

Photograph by Liz Burroughs taken at a Restory Contemplative Photography retreat On a recent visit to the island Lamu off the coast of Kenya, our friend Lizzie bought herself a beautiful ethnic bracelet. She constantly wears it. It is her reminder of an approach to life she often came across while being on Lamu that is captured in the word “polepole”. In Swahili it means " slowly, gently, softly, quietly; be calm, take it quietly, don't excite yourself, never mind ". For instance, on stepping off the pier into a dau, one of the traditional wooden sailing boats, the guide would say, “polepole” – “slowly, gently, don’t excite yourself”. Now, whenever she has a hectic day  at the office, or she’s in a stressful meeting she would look down on her bracelet, gently reminding her, “polepole”. I don’t know whether Pablo Neruda was familiar with Lizzie’s Swahili word, but he would have loved the idea behind her bracelet: KEEPING QUIET Now we will count to twelve and ...