A Grey Day in Antwerp.

Some of my worst days in Belgium are surely the grey days.  Belgium does 'grey' like no other country I have known ... which is saying something when you come from Dunedin, New Zealand.

The complication is that the greyness can't be relieved by a mountain or hills draped in mist.  There are none.  Nor are there any massive lakes or fast-flowing rivers.  Nature always feels constrained here.  So many people, such a long history.  Then again, the history and culture is surely the bonus.

And so here I am, on a grey Saturday in winter, at my desk ... knowing I don't have the strength to go out.  I've been reading Georgia O'Keeffe today ... almost finished now. 

But I was distracted from Ms O'Keeffe by Here I am - the story of Tim Heatherington, War Photographer.  It slipped in-between O'Keeffe and I.  In fact, it turned out that I finished the book about Tim first.  I couldn't put Alan Huffman's book down.   And then, I couldn't resist returning to the dvd, Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?, by Tim's sometimes-colleague, the truly interesting Sebastian Junger (there's an interview with Sebastian attached to Sebastian's name).

So this is what I am doing with my winter ... although yes, I am preparing for Italy and fly later this week and this time it's something completely different. 

I'm heading off to a small village on the side of a hill ... I think.  My espresso is an 18 minute walk away and there are two dogs involved.  I'm house-sitting for a New Zealand artist who lives there, somewhere between Rome and Naples  :-)  I love the idea of this.  And I am looking forward to meeting her friend and neighbour Jack, and Cees too. 

Once there, I have two tasks and I am trying to convince myself that 2 is hardly anything at all but okay, perhaps they are complicated.  I want to finish my book about/on Genova.  I have the photographs, I have interviews, I simply need to collate everything and create something exquistely beautiful.

Yes, I am a perfectionist who frequently terrifies herself into inaction because NOTHING is good enough.

The other project is all about the photography workshops.  I know the workshop experience I offer is superb.  I know that women have a most excellent time.  I know that there's lots of laughter and really good conversations.  But packaging it ... did I ever write that I struggle with marketing.

Mmmmhmmm.

And then there's tonight ...dinner with people we haven't yet met.  The parents of my daughter's good friend.  There is a pavlova involved and Jess is going to whip up a chicken pie.  I have some Spanish Cava (champagne) in the fridge.  I think it'll be okay. 

Ohbutthismorning ... I woke from the depths of an intense dream to the sound of our doorbell.  I'm the Antwerp Pavlova-Baker and it makes me laugh because I'm not a grand cook however I do have some set pieces that maybe create the illusion that I can cook.  So most Saturday mornings, 8.30am, I'm usually awake for the pick-up of 1 or 2 New Zealand pavlovas.  This morning ... not so awake. 

In fact, so very asleep.

The good news is I didn't fall down the stairs as i dressed stumbling down them.  And I didn't break the pavlova while moving it from the baking tray to the plate and wrapping it ... while barely awake.  And ... I think ... I was lucid in the conversation I had as I worked.

Tomorrow ... no plans.

And in Best News ... Miss 10 has moved schools and is so happy that we are left wondering how come we didn't do this  sooner.  I guess you get used to things ... they seem normal and you know you're the problem.  This new school oozes kindness and safety in ways that made us realise we had forgotten how a really good school can seem.  Fingers crossed.  It's only been 2 days but we are hellishly impressed.  And it's good to see her so happy after so many months of something like misery. 

They welcomed her with a card the kids had all signed.  Another child made her a cookie, and yet another wrote up a timetable for her.  The kindness of it all simply melted our hearts.

A Grey Sunday Post

I am allergic, or perhaps intolerant, when it comes to grey Sundays.

There were more than a few while I was growing up on the east coast of the lower South Island of New Zealand.  And back then everything closed on a Sunday.  Telephone wires hung from poles rather than being buried underground and sometimes, on a particularly miserable Mosgiel Sunday, the wind would whistle through the telephone wires.  It was deadly and there was nothing that might perform a 'distract and save' mission.  A grey Sunday could suck the life out of me faster than anything ... joy, pleasure, hope, energy, drive, all gone.

Now, when looking for someplace else to live, I always imagine how this place or that would be on a grey Sunday.  Small villages in Belgium seem especially deadly.  Red brick rows of houses, skies that do grey regularly, and the complete silence of empty streets.

I'm suspicious of French villages too. Germany, where all is closed on a Sunday, feels flat and listless to me when the sun is hidden.  And it's not about the distraction of shopping.  I dislike shopping.  It's about the absence of life somehow.

A spark that seems extinguished in some places.

The remedy.  A beach, a forest, a lake, a river ... or maybe a drive.  Movement. 

I love Nature and yet I loved my life in Istanbul too.  City of 14 million+, there was always a feeling of life, an energy of some kind, pulsating in the air there.

I suspect it simply means that I need to live amongst people who like to be outside.  In Genova, down by the sea on Corso Italia, there is life.  People walk and jog there, talk there, move.  I loved Salmanca in Spain for it's Plaza Mayor and the life that appeared there in the evenings.

Even Te Anau, that small village in Southland ... a tiny population enriched by tourists who always move outside of time.  It's never a Sun-day in a tourist area, it's a Holi-day and I feel the difference most powerfully.  That energy, when managed in a good way, energises me.

I can choose then ... work, curl up in my warm bed with a book, or wander into the life outside.

Today is a grey day here in Belgium.  The streets are empty of both people and cars.  I am feeling the bite of not traveling already, only one month after that quick trip to Paris.

It's a grey Sunday today but it seems I never photograph them.  I can't show what I am writing about but here's an image from that other grey day, that one that wasn't a Sunday, when I had to go into the city.  I took my camera ...

Colours ...

There are two devices which can help the sculptor to judge his work: one is not to see it for a while. The other... is to look at his work through spectacles which will change its color and magnify or diminish it, so as to disguise it somehow to his eye, and make it look as though it were the work of another.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1590 -1680

As I work though my photo folders, putting together a collection of work for the exhibition, I began to see I have this thing about colour but it's not limited to one colour ... it seems that each place has had its own colour for me.

Genova is, for me, predominately gold/yellow/orange.  Naples was red.  And Rome was that grey/off white found in the exquisite marble sculptures.

As I recall, New Zealand was blue and green, and so vivid in a different way.  Now to 'revisit' France, Cairo and all those other places, see what colour they were ...

Meanwhile I'll leave you with one of my favourite angels in Rome, by Bernini.