Paul Klee ...

I met Jay at the Millennium Bridge, with the Tate Modern behind me, like a beached surreal Cunarder, full of wonder - I'd walked along the South Bank, up from Waterloo Station - I counted the grey twisted cocoons of homeless people, saw serene jets cross the sky - 

A warehouse wall behind the Oxo Tower bore the names of the Muses - a dandy with tapering sideburns lounged against a barber's chair -

A dark skinned couple looked down upon the foreshore - a man was delving with a spade into a bank of bright yellow sand - I thought it might be a short lived installation - 

Jay strode over the bridge, talking excitedly into his mobile phone - he was very happy, justifiably so - the Institute had got just outstanding for its Ofsted - 

We were there to gaze at Paul Klee's paintings - once within the exhibition we soon forgot the colourless world - 

The paintings were hung in white high ceilinged rooms - each one was a delicate portal to an invisible beautiful kingdom - 

I was reminded of Daniel Pincbeck's recollections of a DMT universe - there, before me, were glimpses of jewelled cities, numinous glowing symbols, benign entities - 

I entered strange underwater worlds, full of calm movement and archaic life - magical fish shone with hidden wisdom - 

I watched mysterious clouds, imagined flying over spellbound islands - I saw the cruel shapes of fear - 

One painting was like a Rosetta Stone for dreams - 

It seemed to me that each painting exhaled a mood or emotion - I was assailed by joy, desire, sadness, fear - I could hear music, too - subtle piano pieces, poignant symphonies - 

Jay looked in vain for Klee's Angelus Novus - I thought of Walter Benjamin, holed up in Port Bou, the unsparing eyes of the Fascist policeman, the bedroom in the Hotel de Francia - 

I remembered that Jane had visited this exhibition before me - she'd gazed at these paintings with her calm eye - I thought of her, painting, in her marble house -