Travelogue 1249 – 31 May

My Cell

Why shouldn’t I play the monk, don the white habit and the black cappa, be properly old, like a man who has worn his service like heavy shoes?

There was a cat yowling in the yard this morning. He caught me dozing over my reading. It was that hour before Lauds again, when I like most to read and contemplate. Even the hard tile under my knees isn’t enough to keep me awake some mornings. I glance at St Dominic in Fra Angelico’s fresco, offering his own penance to Jesus. Forgive me my sloth, I murmur. I murmur, and I startle myself with the sound of it. Mary will forgive me if I like the echo as much as the words.

I met Fra Angelico in passing on an earlier visit to Florence, a mild man, a cheerful man. I see why everyone is so fond of him. He had left for Rome before I came to live. The brothers speak of him like a saint, an artist who cried for Jesus as he painted his suffering.

The face of Dominic is so expressive. It whispers things to me.

Travelogue 1248 – 14 May

My Cell

Sometimes I return to the cell at San Marco, settled within its white walls, and I recollect the sounds there, the echoing halls, their hollowness a hint of God’s nature; the birds in spring, as the day breaks, as Lauds approach; the rustlings of being human.

Forty-four cells there, and endowed with a small fresco by Fra Angelico. I dream in the cell with the picture of St Dominic kneeling at the crucifixion with a scourge over his bare shoulder. They say this picture is Gozzoli’s, in fact. I don’t love it less for that.

My floor is red tile, less than two metres each direction. I have one window, small and arched, with a heavy wooden shutter that I swing shut in winter.

From the hallway, all sound is echoing. From outside, all is sharp. I am content to pray while the sounds find their place.