The Price of Water in Finistère by Bodil Malmsten.

I'm in my garden in Finistère filling out change-of-address cards.  It's an afternoon at the beginning of September 2000, a  soft haze over the countryside.  The Atlantic is breathing tides and seaweed, the reassuring sound of the warning buoy like an owl.

I live in Finistère because I've moved here.  It wasn't by chance; for a woman of experience there's no such thing as chance.

Sleep with open eyes and you shall find.

... In the same way that there's a partner for every person, there's a place.  All you have to do is find your own among the billions that belong to other people, you have to be awake, you have to choose.

Extract from The Price of Water in Finistère by Bodil Malmsten.

Who could resist a book with an opening like that ...

I'm a reader who loves to fall in love with the opening paragraph.  I found this book today, by chance, in my favourite secondhand bookshop here in Belgium.  And fell in love.

I began reading it while waiting for the metro, read it as we slid through the underground on Tram 5, and will read it whenever I have a moment spare. 

It's beautiful so far.

 

View from the MAS Museum, Antwerp

I went out into the city searching for beauty today.  It had started well this morning ... there was blue sky and sunshine but I moved too slowly and voila, by the time I left the house, it was grey.

A few weeks ago, I had made one fast family visit to Antwerp's relatively new MAS museum and had found myself wondering whether the top floor might not feed my need for a view.  It's not bad but, by crikey, it's flat here. 

And then I found something beautiful ... De Veer van César

I left the MASS Museum and walked back through the grey city, carrying my heavy camera bag, wondering why an earth I had taken it out on a such a dull day.

I stopped to look through the window at my favourite art gallery here in the city.  It's the place where I consistently see art that appeals to me ... which is no mean feat.  And it's easy to pass-by, located in Maalderijstraat, between the Cathedral and Grote Markt.

Anyway, I decided I would blog about it and so asked Minske if she spoke English.  Of course she did.  Most Antwerpenaars speak English.  I asked if I might take a photograph of the gallery and share it with you here but  then ... I got distracted.

I asked Minske Van Wijk how she had ended up with the gallery and somehow, we kept talking and it turned out she had also made a short film titled De Veer van César.

I was curious to know more and, at some point, realised this film might be 'the beautiful thing' I was searching for in the city today.

And so it was.  I came home, organised my little world here, then sat back to watch.  It's delicious!  It has English subtitles (and French too), and it gives a delightful sense of this place.  A behind-the-scenes glimpse.   Oh I need to write of this in a better way but for this first taste, you only need to know that it is poetry, and beautiful cinematography, and wonderful animation ...

You can find out where to buy your own copy of the DVD over here.  Meanwhile, the trailer is below ... without subtitles.

Winter in Belgium, 2012

So ... Gert tells me, the last time we had more than 14 days without the temperature rising above zero degrees celsius was ... 1-17 January, 1941.

Tomorrow we hit Day 14 under zero celsius.

Back in 1987 and again 1997 there were 12 consecutive days under zero.

Zero celsius = 37 farenheit.

More often we've been down around -10 -14 celsius these mornings (converts to 7- 14 farenheit), and there have even been a couple of -20, when you factor in wind chill factor (-4 farenheit).

Nothing much in the way of snow but, by crikey, it's been cold here in Belgium lately.

Winter ...

Today, meanwhile, is a day of editing.  I have 2 big projects and a third smaller project to work through.  Miss 7 needs picked up from her new school way across the city and I foolishly just checked out the temperature.  It was -10 celsius at 9am.  The sky is grey, the ground in the backyard is white ... but more because the snow of a few days ago has frozen and frozen and frozen again.  They're talking of more today snow ... we kind of hope so because it pulls the temperature up. 

I rarely take off my thermal underwear in these days, and it's all about multiple layers when stepping outside.  The only question is whether to wear the leather and sheepskin coat, the one that weighs about as much as an adult polar bear, or the long black boiled-wool coat, with a polarfleece underneath. 

And then there's the hat, and scarf, the good gloves, and hiking boots, and woollen socks too.  Did I tell you it's cold here?  So very cold. 

But ... the days are getting longer!  We're hanging onto that.  The shortest days fell in the mild days of winter.  Now it's all down and dirty, weatherwise, but we have more light.  It makes things more bearable.

To work.

In a previous life ...

In one of my previous lives, and I've had more than a few so far, I used to bake, and to cook impromptu dinners for other people. 

I loved it but it was another time, before the pressure of a long list of things 'I must do' arrived.  Back then, I was a mother and a housewife, a dog owner, a wanderer but on a very small scale, while following my first husband's teaching career round the South Island of New Zealand.

I moved to Istanbul, the oven didn't work.  No baking was done.  Impromptu dinners were usually the stove-top cooked Persian Chicken.  Two years later and I arrived in Belgium where I was introduced to strange and unknown idea of a gas oven and really, I hated it.  Ours was a dodgy one.  The first and the second. 

Suddenly, due to an almost-Christmas-Eve oven failure, we have an electric one that almost works and voila, we're hosting Stephanie and Catalina tonight.  There's a big fat tasty Shepherds Pie ready to cook, with sultana scones as a dessert.   A 'dessert' fit for an Englishwoman and this homesick kiwi.  And quite immodestly, I'm delighted with the results.

And it seemed, to me, like the perfect way to say thank you to Stephanie and Catalina for inviting us along to our very first English pantomime here in Antwerpen on Sunday afternoon.  It was divine.  So very much what I had read of growing up but never actually attended.

Tot straks from this kiwi in Belgium

a few days and good friends ...

I have some truly remarkable friends and I've been busy with some of them.

Shannon came visiting from Holland, arriving on Friday night, she stepped straight into a wee adventure, racing off to view the latest Jane Eyre movie with Ruth and I.

I had forgotten how much fun the movies could be ... and it was a most excellent movie.

Shannon and I wandered through Saturday ... starting late, we headed into the city and spent most of the day chatting in the lazy lovely way old friends chat.

She left on Sunday but not before we picked up Peter, the lovely tenor bloke I know, from the Airport bus.  We strolled across the big square outside Central Station, here in Antwerpen, and popped into the Zoo Cafe for a small wine-quaffing session.

Shannon left, and Peter came home to stay with Gert and I.  He's here for a few days before he jets back to his base in Berlin and so our days are full of conversation and photographs.  Jessie and I are updating his professional information photographically and he is being generally entertaining.

In other news, my daughter photographed me today.  I needed a publicity shot too.  It's quite the bizarre thing to be on the other side of the camera but voila ... hello from me here in the flatlands.

These last few days ...

These last few days have been a psychedelic whirl ... somehow. 

No drugs were taken, I hasten to add.

If I attempt to put past few days together, I would tell you that we had a horrific random shooting here in Belgium, where more than 120 were injured and 5 were killed. I was told about it when it was still breaking news and no one knew what was happening.  It left me disorientated at the end of the day.

Then there was my 17 hour marathon Friday but as it ended with red wine and time spent with a lovely friend, I shouldn't complain.  

Actually, that day was a little surreal, in terms of all I experienced.  Even the train trip home took on an odd quality when a lovely older Moroccan woman next to me started talking and ended up getting me to try her Coco Chanel perfume.  The 'odd' could be applied when you realise she spoke French and Arabic and I spoke English and Nederlands.  No language in common but when has that ever stopped me ...  There was much laughter and family photographs were exchanged and smiled over

Saturday and Sunday were spent in the company of the truly delicious Miss 7, who came out to street Christmas party with us in the evening.  The street party where Gert and I, along with others, spent some time trying to help a guy who collapsed there.  It was a relief when the ambulance arrived. 

We stayed on for a while, catching up with good people, most especially the 'justice of the peace' who married us back in 2006.  Sunday I look at the 'chaos' on my desk (let's not call it mess) and realised I had an Eithopian cross (pictured above), a Turkish prayer bracelet and necklace from Lhasa, all lying next to each other here. 

I love the stories and relics that pop up in this crazybeautiful life I sometimes get to lead.

But mostly, if I had to explain this absence from blogging, I would tell you it's because I've been working on this new website.  The website where there is still work to be done but perhaps I just have to throw out here in front of me.  I always want things perfect and, of course, nothing is ever 'perfect enough'. 

So, here I am, launching this new website.  More work to be done in the days ahead. I hope you enjoy it.  The url should switch to www.dimackey.com but for now, it is here.

My Friend, Judy

It has to be said, I have the loveliest friends ...

Today, Judy was coming to town.  We had plans, that changed, and were all the better for changing I’m thinking. 

We immediately wandered from the train station to Caffenation, for some really good coffee.  Much talking later, we left, heading for my most favourite bookshop in Belgium ... De Slegte, in Antwerpen.  We both love books.

Lunch, and Judy introduced me to a cafe she knew once.  It was lovely and I recommend it so highly ... Moments, on the Meir at number 47.  Second floor, for those like me who have never noticed it before.

We walked on, finding delicious boots at Torfs (that were not purchased), my new favourite shoe brand, also found on the Meir at number 14-16.  Then to the Grand Bazaar ... which is nothing like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul but still, place of some favourite stores of mine. 

There, she bought me a birthday gift that made me smile.  I have never known anyone quite so convincing in the ... ‘well-it’s-better-if-you-choose-what-you-would-like-rather-than-me-guessing’ line of gift giving.  I do adore her.  And so, after quite some sweating, I chose a favourite author’s latest book.  I have all of Joe Simpson’s non-fiction and I have to confess, his work of fiction had me totally in its grip by the time I reached the supermarket, via the tram home.

Then, I took her to Lojola.  This youtube takes you to the cafe ...  it’s the cutest little cupcake and coffee or tea place in the city.

From there, after much laughter, we wandered back to the train station where ... after running for the wrong train, she decided to walk me to my tram, as she had time to spare.  The most commonly used sentence during the long walk to my tram was variations on ‘Yes Di, I can find my way back to my train, as I did Cuba alone’.  But there was so much more humour that doesn’t quite come through in that sentence.  Both Judy and I are terribly amusing.  Modest though.

So yes ... it was a magical day.  Unexpected really but all the more lovely for it.  As I write this, I’m listening to the Chan Chan Compay Segundo cd that she slipped into that birthday package for me. 

Dank u wel, Judy.  Today was truly delicious.

Autumn means Easter to Me ...

I’m not sure my unconscious will ever adjust to this upside-down life in the northern-hemisphere.

The leaves are changing colour and we’re waiting for our first frost which means ... it’s almost Easter.  But no, that was a New Zealand thing.  Here it’s already mid-October. although Belgium had been enjoying high temperatures as late as last week. 

I took the bike out this afternoon, needing to stretch. I took myself and my camera into the park on our beautiful day.  We’re blessed with this city park, and mostly I love it even while struggling to forget the massively busy European motorway right next door, the motorway that, if I wake in the night, sounds like a Spring tide at Tautuku, on the lower East Coast of New Zealand.

Anyway, today it was pretty.  There was a blue heron down at one of the many ponds, hanging out with the big white geese and the ducks.  The moles hills were there mocking mans efforts to tame nature too.  I love those moles ... there to remind us, surely, that we’re not quite able to tame and maintain everything out there in the natural world.

Eugenio Montale, Christy Moore and Pasta Hippo ...

I woke this morning, with ideas for my book demanding I note them down ... I gave in at 5.30am, grateful I hadn’t lost them to laziness.

This book will be full of images but I need text too.  This morning the images came marching into my mind so I got up and wrote the words for them.

Yesterday was a day spent going through all of my notes; a day spent working out the structure of the workshops I plan on offering soon ... the workshops where I see if you want to come spend time in my worlds, either via the chair where you read this, or physically come wandering.

As I do these things, new ideas come knocking on my door. 
What about this idea for a book?
Hey, where’s that manuscript ... that story you put down and forgot to pick up in your mad rush to live?
Don’t you wish you could draw ... imagine, then we could do this with that idea?.

Wednesday was a stunning day.  I had no idea it was going to be. 

It was enough when the postman delivered a parcel and I opened it to find a book titled Eugenio Montale, Collected Poems 1920-1954, a revised bilingual edition, translated and annotated by Jonathan Galasi.

I had wanted that book for research.  And it arrived unexpectedly.  Thank you, Gert.

But that wasn’t enough.  That night we had dinner at my favourite Antwerpen restaurant, Pasta Hippo.  The food was glorious, as always.  I remember I stopped going for a while.  I believe I may have run into the owner one time, if not, a staff member who was so rude, I remained offended for months however ... the food is that good. And the slightly expensive glass of Chianti I had while waiting for Gert ... it was divine.

Then to the concert of an Irish singer I had been loving forever.  I remember gifting a copy of his cd to my ex-mother-in-law, more than a few years ago.  On our recent trip from Dublin to Connemara, my first time driving in 7 years, I stopped enroute, stating that we simple MUST have a Christy Moore cd playing, as we wandered in Ireland.  It was grand.

Christy, at 60-something, is one of those musicians I could listen to for a very long time.  He’s a story-teller gifted with the loveliest voice. Individual political songs he has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly’s ‘On the Blanket’ about the protests of republican prisoners, his own ‘Viva la Quinta Brigada’ about Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and his own ‘Minds Locked Shut’ about Bloody Sunday in Derry.

Moore has endorsed a long list of left wing support causes, ranging from El Salvador to Mary Robinson in the 1990 Presidential Election.[2] At Glastonbury Festival in 2005 he sang about the Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie.

I loved his courage.  I loved his voice. It was a grand evening out, with Gert and the lovely Stephanie.  You know, if a fortune-teller had told me the story of where and when and with whom I would see Christy Moore perform live, back in those New Zealand days, I would have known that she was a charlatan ...

One never quite knows where life might take them, does one.

Wednesday was the loveliest day.  Thursday was spent hunched over my desk, I worked through into the night after dinner.

Friday ... let’s see how plays out.  There’s a plan that involves a private art viewing, a castle, and lovely friends tonight.
Note on the editing and re-editing: I started writing this about 5.30am.  Errors were made.  Now I must go and find coffee.
Have a lovely day and tot straks!

An Everyday Scene at the Stadsfeestzaal on the Meir, Antwerpen

Antwerp has 165 different cultures living within its city limits, and mostly we all do okay. 

I love the vibrancy of the cultural mix ... riding the tram is like wandering the world. To me, this foreign creature who found herself living here ... being Belgian stands for so many things but on the good days it’s all about a this tribe of people who have a huge degree of tolerance and acceptance of the other. 

Our Garden in Antwerp

The temperature rose unexpectedly today ... unexpectedly because I had imagined summer was done and autumn was here.  It’s at least 23 celsius as I sit here in the garden, as per instructions from Gert.  He told me to take the laptop outside and work in the sun, using the small table he bought me for precisely that purpose.  He said ‘rest’ and so here I am, sure that my neighbours, the ancient man and his lovely wife, are wondering what on earth I am doing out here, with all of my gadgets.  I brought my camera gear too ... just in case.  The garden has poppies and sunflowers and all kinds of other things tempting me.

It was painful moving everything out here and I processed the sunflower image without really being able to see the screen.  The roofers are a bit noisy just a few doors ... or rooftops away, although their music is good.  Blaringly loud workman-style music, the same the world over I suspect, as the sound of it surely takes me back to the sound of my dad working as a fibrous plasterer or wallpaperer,out on a job.  God only knows what toxins I’m breathing in as they weld their way across that rooftop but even that is the nature of Antwerp.  You can be 110% sure you don’t want to know what you are breathing in in this city situated on the crossroads of Europe ...

Gert finally found one of our black garden toads the other day, so I guess its wondering what I’m doing out here too.  We hadn’t seen them since the autumn but there he is, making his home in the compost heap Gert is developing up the back of his garden.  The birdfeeder has been left empty since spring, as if we could have saved the elderberries from the wickedgreedy pigeons who have spent the summer gorging on them anyway. 

And clearly I’ve made the delighttful discovery that I have wifi out here in the garden.  I’m less happy about spiders, wasps and toads when it comes to gardens and more about wine, the laptop and flowers.  Although today it will become more about painkillers or red wine sometime soon.  I read that red wine really does ease arthritic joints and my joints have been honouring the high-impact motorbike crash back when I was 18 ... they creak on the stairs and ache in the cold.  What’s that about then ...

Anyway, a little snapshot in words and image from this summertime day here in Belgium.

Het Internationaal Schutterstornooi - a toast

Sometimes, lovely friends pull you into the most magical experiences…

Dank u wel, Jurjana, for a day full of ancient wonders and beautiful photographs.

This photograph arrived, via Jurjana, just now and it made me smile.  It’s rare that I am ‘in’ a photograph but I had to post it.  There I am, in the midst of the archery guild members while they make their ancient toast, in the very old City Hall here in Antwerpen.

Photo credit goes to Tom Meeus.

The View from Antwerp Town Hall ...

On a good day, with a telephoto lens, this is the view from Antwerp’s town hall ... a beautiful ancient building here in the city of Antwerpen.
They say that it is clear that it was built by a city at the height of its power and wealth.  It was finished in 1564 by architect Cornelis Floris de Vriendt and the interior decoration dates mostly from the 19th century, or so I am told.  It was a good day.