Sometimes ...

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I were able to simply concentrate on one thing ... on just one of those wild and beautiful ideas that I have.

Perhaps it would be about me just going to Genova to work on my book.  Or if I stayed home and only worked on the photography workshops.  I wonder how it would be if I was a one-idea kind of woman.

Or if I just did the housework and cared for my family, deep-cleaning this quirky old Belgian house once a month, studying new recipes then cooking then, and taking the time to be sure my family was happy. 

And maybe I would have that dog I dream about too.

If I didn't enjoy meeting new people as I do ... or love exploring other countries so much, then that distraction-factor would be so much smaller and that much more manageable.  Perhaps.

But I am seem to be one of those people, genuinely deeply curious about almost everything.  I love photography, writing and people.  I love new people but old friends too.  I love family, and I love those messy new ideas that bubble up and spill all over the place. 

I tried staying in and working one rainy day back in Genova but the balcony beckoned and instead my camera and I attempted to capture some of the beauty just outside the glass doors. 

I miss that apartment and yet, at the same time, I am glad to be home. 

There was a BBQ last night, a reunion with some of Gert's university friends.  They were gracious and kindly allowed me into their circle.  The reunion was held in a beautiful location someplace in Belgium.  We were outside under this sail-like canopy that kept us dry while a Fiordland-New-Zealand-style tempest rumbled and crackled and downpoured around us.  It was a truly superb evening.

We hit 29 celsius yesterday ... summer is here.  The garden is luscious, between the heat and the rain, everything out there is celebrating by growing madly.

And today there's a 50th someplace in the city.   I should get ready but meanwhile ... another of the series of photographs taken from that balcony high up on Via Malta, one rainy day back in beautiful Genova.

Rain, Genova

Rain, by Hone Tuwhare

I love rain.  The heavy stuff ...the kind that used pound down on the iron roof back when I lived in Te Anau.  That small town located in Fiordland, a region of mountains, massive lakes ... a national park that is 1,260,740 hectares in size.

Heavy rain on a gloomy Sunday can actually rescue a Sunday.  It's when the day crosses over from 'lifeless and dull' into cosy and delicious', somehow. 

Real rain is joy-filled.  Drizzle is drab.  The stillness of a grey day, energy-sapping.

I took rain forgranted in New Zealand.  It simply was.  I realised I missed it in Istanbul.  My apartment was 5th floor and the closest I got to hearing the glorious sound of heavy rain on the roof was when the rain angled in and hit the big useless metal air-conditioning unit attached outside my apartment.

Belgium doesn't really do torrential ... although these last two years there have been downpours that have caused cellars to flood, due mainly to the problem of a massively concreted landscape that lacks drainage capabilities.  Te Anau was built on glacial moraine.  Rainfall is massive, drainage is fast.

Genova does rain that makes my heart sing although there have been some tragedies in recent years.  I think it used to be October for the real downpours but these years seem less certain, less defined.  Change is afoot.

I was caught in a Genovese deluge one night.  Unbelievable rain ... like a huge bucket of water pouring down from the heavens and it was so unexpected, so crazy, that I ended up laughing out loud as one of the umbrella-selling guys from Pakistan offered to sell me an umbrella.  It was beyond umbrellas.

What was it about that experience that made joy well up like a bubble.  I have no idea but we were laughing like fools in the impossible rain. 

Anyway, favourite poem ever ... just about.

I can hear you making
small holes in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind:

the steady drum-roll
sound you make
when the wind drops

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

But if I should not
hear
smell or feel or see you

You would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

The image that follows ... I took it on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand last year.  I'm looking down on Tautuku Bay, scene of more than a few school camps.  The rain there was flavoured by the sea and the beech forests.  Sweeter rain you couldn't know ... except in Fiordland ... or traveling up the West Coast of the South Island.

Actually, scratch that.  Rain in New Zealand's wilderness areas is usually sweet.  I was rapt to see some of these favourite places in rain when I was showing the Belgian bloke home.  There are places I just don't want to see blue skies and sunshine in ... it's like that.

Petrichor

Erik gifted me a new word, in response to the post about rain just below.

I think that word needs a post all of its own ... Petrichor.

petrichor (PET-ri-kuhr) noun

The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

[From petro- (rock), from Greek petros (stone) + ichor (the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology). Coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas.]

"Petrichor, the name for the smell of rain on dry ground, is from oils given off by vegetation, absorbed onto neighboring surfaces, and released into the air after a first rain." Matthew Bettelheim; Nature's Laboratory; Shasta Parent (Mt Shasta, California); Jan 2002.

"But, even in the other pieces, her prose breaks into passages of lyrical beauty that come as a sorely needed revivifying petrichor amid the pitiless glare of callousness and cruelty." Pradip Bhattacharya; Forest Interludes; Indianest.com; Jul 29, 2001.