Inside, Outside

When I was a gel at Kelburn Normal School, playtime and lunch time were nominated by the deputy principal as "inside" (rainy), "outside" (fine) or "inside/outside" (overcast, or fine but cold) days. There was a hand-lettered cardboard sign at the end of each corridor which she flipped to show the rule for the day.


Being the book-obsessed sloth that I have (almost) always been, I preferred "inside" or "inside/outside" days.


As a grown-up (ish), I have discovered that inside/outside is one of my favorite spaces: a covered porch (hello 608 Ronald Street and 82 Tararua Drive), a chair, rain or beating sun just beyond the lintel, a book, a cup of tea or glass of wine. To be outside in the fresh air, but defended by human structures from the elements. To be exhilarated by the smell and rush of a downpour without getting wet. To look up from the page and see the brimming, blinding light on the garden from the luxury of deep shade.


Today we visited the cloister of the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik, and the Rector's palace, which has an internal courtyard, open to the sky and surrounded with colonnaded balconies on two levels. It is easy to imagine the pleasure of his daughter or wife, passing from room to room along the balcony, lifted above the business below and free to step forward and view it, or retreat to the privacy of the recessed niches.   


The palace was a place of business and activity; cloisters were designed for contemplation. They are places of thought, where, in all weathers, the monks could pace out the square, the garden always in view, their slow walk civilised by the measured bands of light and shadow shaped by the evenly-spaced columns.


In the garden of Dubrovnik's monastery, there are grapefruit and pomegranate trees, the pomegranates, at this season, overripe, blown and spilling seed, the grapefruit just turning yellow. The capitals of the columns are all different, dogs and flowers, faces and scrolls carved into the white stone. 


It is a beautiful place, and echoed in me memories of the cloister at Arles – another old and quiet place, an inside/outside, an elegant and understated explication of the relation of the constructed and the natural, movement and thought, the relation of human to god.