a point of no return

(Paintings from the darker side of life)

The nightmare, by the Swiss / British painter Henry Fuseli. Image taken from Wikipedia.

Last night I had this weird nightmare – I went back to my house (this was an old house I rented some years ago, but in my dream it was my actual house) only to found people living in it. A whole family. They told me the landlord thought I was not going to come back, since I had left for a couple of days, so he just let them move in. When I asked this family if my things were still inside, and they told me they had to put everything in a room at the back of the house, and that I could stay there if I did not have anywhere else to go. Now, here is where things get surreal. To reach that room I had to go through the back door and walk through planks and climb stairs up and down in what looked like a construction site (meaning of course that the room was nowhere near the house). One of the family members was the one guiding me through this maze, and when we finally reached the room he had to try one key after the other in order to open its door. Once inside, the place was musty, cold, and so dark I could barely see what was inside. My guide (who had been silent all this time) opened one of the curtains, and through the window I could see, right below it, a cemetery, with a few tombstones scattered here and there.  A few yards from it stood an abandoned church, gray and solemn.

So, taking that into account I thought I had to put here Henry Fuseli’s (1741- 1825) greatest hit, “The Nightmare”. For a quick summary on some of the possible interpretations for this painting you can go to the Tate Britain web page.