Permission.
... But when we give ourselves permission, we move past this. The world once again reveals itself to us. We become open and aware, patient and ready to receive it....We give ourselves permission because we are the only ones who can do so.
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro.
I love catching up with the wise words of Terri Windling via her blog, Myth & Moor. She's a soul-soother somehow.
Meanwhile, I completely agree with the concept of time. Something beautiful always emerges out of taking the time to play ... some of the best art, or the beginning of a series idea.
Needless to say, I'm missing Genova. Here's an imperfect glimpse, taken between the portrait shoots I was doing for my book.
My Beautiful Katie-Niece and A Piece of Her Art
My niece, Katie, recently sent me a copy of her end of year artwork. It's a delicately beautiful static image. She received 3 excellences for this work but even if she hadn't, I'm so proud of her talent.
And although I adore her, truly, madly, deeply ... she melted my heart some more when she wrote that I was represented by an object there too, as one of the people she loves.
She was the littlest creature when I left New Zealand and when I went home, I discovered both her and her sister are becoming the loveliest young women.
Oh yes ... I'm so proud of these girls.
Exile, Charles Mudede
The natural place for the writer is exile. It can be spiritual or physical exile, but they always have to be outside of their society, because writers are outsiders. The writer is out of place when they're in their place. They need distance. They need to get away to process what it means to be who they are. Think of Jonathan Raban, Lesley Hazleton, W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Richard Wright, and on and on—the true home of the writer is always another country.
Charles Mudede, from James Baldwin in Istanbul.
Leonie Wise, Where the Road Ends
we wonder if there is a place here for us,
if we will tell our stories to island visitors some years down the line,
this island gets under our skin, into our blood
little remnants of it coming home in our memories.
Leonie Wise, extract from where the road ends.
Beautiful people, beautiful photographs, beautiful words.
Here is just one of Leonie's exquisite images from that particular post.
She has opened a conversation for me ... we wonder if there is a place here for us.
I know that curiousity. I have been looking for 'home' since forever. I'll know it when I find it and in the meanwhile I'll enjoy where I am, like always. I've spent the last 30 years moving towns, moving countries.
Perhaps it will always be like this for me but perhaps one day I'll arrive ... and somehow I'll know that I'm home.
The Daily Photo Challenge ...
The element of 'challenge' continues to dominate as I work at finding a photograph for every day of this year however my lovely friend and I are delighting as our stories and images roll out over days.
Today's image began as a shot of the beautiful dish with the delicate fern leaf imprint inside. The one that was gifted to me by the truly special New Zealand family I had the pleasure of photographing when I was home. But as I worked at composition and struggled with light ... because yes, I did leave it until the last moment, it soon became clear that it was more about the bracelets and necklace I wear everyday. They nestle there in the dish over-night.
The jade necklace was carved by Jayme Anderson, a talented New Zealand artist and jade carver. I was told that the jade is Marsden Jade and that delighted me. Hokitika and the wild west coast stole my heart way back when I was teenager.
A little from Jayme's business card , 'Jayme's love for jade and carving began in 1996, the first year of his Diploma of Visual Art and Design. He graduated in 1998.
Later it tells me that, 'From his 10 acre lifestyle block at Marsden, home of the flower jade, he travels internationally and pushes the boundaries in techniques and stone limitations. His innovative work is in the Spiritwrestler Gallery in Canada and private collections in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K...
I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have a piece of his work. It was well worth the horrific journey through my old nemesis ... the Homer Tunnel. That story is here.
Guitar Girl
Tickets have been booked and I'm off to Genova in February. I cannot begin to tell you how good it feels to have the promise of wandering back in my life. It's time ... more than time.
Miss 9 and I have begun reading a new book series together. It's delightfully creepy. And I have 'Italian for Dummies' here on my desk. Now to open it and begin serious work.
I have been struggling to fulfil my daily foto commitment. And I'm intrigued because I see it's so much about my inability to give myself too much time off. And the battle is there in the fact that I can't 'snapshot' this commitment. I climb into photography, working my way towards the right angle perhaps, seeking out the right light. I have to be prepared to do ... just do the photography for an hour each day. It's an interesting battle.
And emails ... I've been caught up in a few email exchanges that make me stop to take notes. And I'm printing out interesting blog posts and articles, sticking them into my journal.
My super-talented niece called Katie sent me an email containing the static digital image she made at school and it's stunning. I must ask permission to blog it. Katie's the one in the foreground.
So, I did a 'girl and her guitar' series for the foto-a-day shoot today. I was using my 17-40mm lens on the Canon EOS 5D MkII and I was all but climbing onto the couch as I took the image you find at the end here. I think, in future, I might just stick with my 70-200mm lens. I love that lens. It's my way of seeing ... and being. Potentially my photography subjects may appreciate a bit of distance too.
Standing Still ...
I've been standing still since Paris, 13 October 2013. It feels very odd. A little like sleeping, or perhaps napping.
As a result the house is looking pretty. My bedroom/office space has been refined. I like it. And Gert's building me a 2m wide corkboard ... so that I can hang the photographs I'm using for the book. Apparently he was inspired to create the corkboard when he arrived home and discovered my lines of nylon thread, filled with many pegged A4 colour images.
We negotiate this office space that we share here in our big old L-shaped Belgian bedroom. He is a very organised man. I am a chaotic-while-preferring-to-be-organised woman. I have my little nest of books and papers, photographs and paintings, memories and all kinds of other things too, tucked away behind a small shelf-wall. I'm in the corner, next to a window, where the predominant colours are deep red and terracotta.
It's winter here. I am in need of colour.
Creativity
This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.
“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.
Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.
Jessica Olien, extracts from her article, Inside the Box - People don't actually like Creativity.
An Ideal Life ...
Lately I've been asked, more than once, what would my ideal life look like ...
I was asked to describe it today. I was quite lost. How many people know how to answer that question? 'If it could really happen, how would your ideal life look?' And so I stumbled and bumbled around, wanting to be nice, to be gentle ... but no, there was no nice gentleness allowed.
What would my ideal life look like?!
And it's interesting, to me, because I've quietly been working through Danielle LaPorte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions ... in lieu of having colleagues and friends wandering in and out of conversations with me. I live an oddly isolated life here in Antwerp. Maybe I even create some of the isolation myself, needing so much space to write and make photographs. To think. To read enough books. And to maintain the family and home we have here.
Danielle almost beats me over the head with her repetitive, direct questions regarding my professional life. Initially she set off a protective response in me ... protective, resistant perhaps.
How much money would you like to be making? Earned a tentative I would love to simply make some money ... became I would love to be financially independent.
Her questions focus you down on your business, your self, and your needs. The last question on her recent worksheet, as follows, was another invitation to dream.
So ... what would you like to do with your life and career? (Money is no object. Dream.)
This morning, a similar question, different requirement. Tell me how your ideal home life would look. Dream. And we're talking 'ideal', if it could be as you wish it to be.
I think I'm getting it. We need to go in the direction of our dreams. In fact, Henry David Thoreau tells us to Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
And as we step out, we increase the quality and satisfaction in our lives and so influence the lives of those people around us too. We're here to live our lives and become the best we can be during that time. To do the 'right thing', to be eaten up by guilt for not doing so, to conform to the outline of today's 'ideal citizen' ... often these things don't respect who we are. It seems a bit like a wing-clipping to me.
So here I am, writing a book, spinning a web of planned future actions that will spark financial independence. I'm having some off-the-wall ideas that just may work. All this simply because people are inviting/demanding that I dream my ideal worlds, both privately and in business, into reality.
I have no idea how it will go but let's see it.
Terry Windling, on Blogging
Here's what blogging is to me: It's a modern form of the old Victorian custom of being "At Home" to visitors on a certain day of the week; it's an Open House during which friends and colleagues know they are welcome to stop by. I'm “At Home” each morning when I put up at post. Here, in the gossamer world of the 'Net, I throw my studio door open to friends and family and strangers alike. And each Comment posted is a calling card left behind by those who have crossed my doorstep.
Terri Windling, extract from, Reflections on Blogging.
I love when this woman writes. She's wise and her blog posts are another of the places I go when I'm searching for those things I lack here in my world.
She has a dog, a forest, some hills. She writes, I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.
I loved today's essay on blogging and can only say yes.
Yesterday I was working with photographs and history of that beautiful fountain in Genova ...
Really?
Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again. The world calls them its singers, poets, and story-tellers but they are just people who have not forgotten.
L.M. Montgomery.
Since autumn began I've been attempting to fit my book in around family commitments and being a housewife. It doesn't really work. I remember those days back when I left for the office. I recall the feeling of relief, of being in that safe space defined by clear boundaries marked 'work'. That place where the threshold was rarely crossed by 'family'.
There was a degree of separation found there. A door more-or-less closed on the reality that is home life and all of those things that happen there ... from poo-filled nappies and sleepless nights, to sick cats and people you have powerful emotional ties to.
Work was always a place where I existed at another level. Where, more often that not, objectivity was a state of being more simply found. And I was paid for my presence, my hours, my labour.
Working from home, around a family life I rarely decribe here, oh my ... it's a topic I almost never touch. But there is no degree of seperation. I use the bathroom here amd I realise that I am also the cleaning lady and dammit, I haven't cleaned the bathroom lately. I go downstairs for lunch and realise I'm the baker and that a new loaf needs to go in for breakfast tomorrow. I make a coffee and see the dishes need washed and dried and put away. I take a shower, need a towel and voila, I realise there are 3 loads of laundry there in the queue. And what's for dinner tonight ...?
And really, I just want to hunker down in that seperate space called 'the office', and work for my money, and be objective but it's so unrealistic. I was trained from a very young age that I needed to be responsible ... as the eldest sister, as a good little girl from Mosgiel.
Gifting myself permission ... no, gifting myself the luxury of writing all day, it's something I am battling with at every level. This last week has been impossible. There are moments where I can do my writing work but as it is only the'possibility of income' ... can I even call it work? Don't so many, as in those who know 'money doesn't grow on trees', view it as a luxury? This writing lark.
When you read of money and trees, did you find yourself adopting the deep voice of your father or some other remembered voice of authority? I think only men have said that to me. They get so mad with me and my lack of gratitude. It's only the housework and the family. You have it so easy.
But I'm wondering ... 'really?'
Anyway, I'll work it out and meanwhile, the image below. My childish self loves the notion that there are the possibility of other worlds in puddles. 
Woman Enough ...
Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas -- inspiration.
If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.
Doris Lessing.
This ... this is so true for me. I recently deleted my facebook account and experienced a most astounding silence. It took time to adjust to a life without interesting voices crowding in but I did. And I loved it. I wrote. Eventually though, I realised how little people-contact there is in my everyday world and so I went back to facebook.
The alarm goes every morning at 6.45am here. I have breakfast ready by 7.30am, when I'm home, and I'm usually here at my desk by 8.30am. And then I read my way into the place that I work from.
It's a mixture of going through email, a scan of my facebook wall for news of the world, catching up on my blog feed and picking through a selection of new reading there.
There's no physical journey, beyond climbing the stairs to the first floor but there is some kind of journey into that place where I work.
So much can go wrong ...
I think it's why painters have studios, photographers too. Ateliers. Mine would be locked some days, with no visible signs of life showing. I have this 4 hour window of time where I can concentrate intensely. It's the time when the best of my creativity comes out to play. I know this but I can't always hold onto it.
I'm studying the 'how' of it because I have had 5 disasterous days in a row, with life crashing into me, again and again. I think, in the process of opening your self to dig deep and create something that didn't exist before, or to write of something you love so that the passion leaps off the page and convinces people ... you need to go to a place where you can take off your skin and just kind of feel your way with your nerve-endings, with your senses perhaps.
An argument can lay waste to that 'place', to that state of being. Or realising that this person or that really needs you, or that the house is a mess. That particular 4 hours out is all that I require but it's so difficult to actually take that much time in the world where I live.
Exit Stage right, and Genova.
I have a favourite poem by a writer I've loved for years. I've posted it before so forgive me if you have already ready it. Otherwise, maybe this captures something of the struggle ...
Woman Enough
Because my grandmother's hours
were apple cakes baking,
& dust motes gathering,
& linens yellowing
& seams and hems
inevitably unraveling
I almost never keep house
though really I like houses
& wish I had a clean one.
Because my mother's minutes
were sucked into the roar
of the vacuum cleaner,
because she waltzed with the washer-dryer
& tore her hair waiting for repairmen
I send out my laundry,
& live in a dusty house,
though really I like clean houses
as well as anyone.
I am woman enough
to love the kneading of bread
as much as the feel
of typewriter keys
under my fingers
springy, springy.
& the smell of clean laundry
& simmering soup
are almost as dear to me
as the smell of paper and ink.
I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.
I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.
Erica Jong.
I had to shower, dress, go find a birthday present for a party this afternoon. I had to get lunch from the supermarket. After it all, I came back upstairs just after midday and experimented with layers and frames for my photographs ... trying to 'play' my way back into writing.
Let's see how the rest of it goes. The shot ... a city street in Genova.
Things I'm Learning About Writing A Book
I'm learning ...
I don't write a book in the same way I might train my body at the gym. It's not about pushing the limits and building up strength. It's not about endurance.
And it's not about 9 to 5. It's about 'anytime'. My most exciting idea, so far, came while I was walking back through city streets in the early morning, a 5 celsius day. I was thinking bad thoughts about Antwerp's polluted air.
I smsed my idea to myself. I had a book for the tram and I know how time stretches and warps on these journeys of mine. I need to make notes. Always. Because I forget stuff. Even brilliant stuff.
Always make notes.
I have a song, sometimes more than one but usually just one, that I put on repeat ... endlessly on repeat. It helps somehow. It disappears into the background but creates a state of mind. I recently heard Man Booker prize winner, Eleanor Catton, admit to doing it and I thought, 'So it's normal'!' Many have tried to convince me that it's so far from normal and I should stop immediately.
So, currently, whenever I hear Ben Howard's 'Old Pine' then I know it's time to work. Maybe I should put a dedication to him in the front of this book. I've played his song hundreds, if not thousands, of times already.
Obviously this can only be done when I'm working alone here ...
I am learning to steal the Belgian's bloke's desk-chair the moment he leaves for work, as my chair is an ergonomic disaster, even though we were careful in choosing it and paid more than we wanted to. He just sighs, rolls my chair away from his desk, and waits while I return his in the evenings. Thank goodness he works away from home all day ...
Most importantly perhaps, I'm learning not to panic when I can't think of what to write, how to dive in and begin when I have 'just 3 hours to produce something new!!!!' It will come. It does.
Oh and if I have the 130 photographs I have chosen (so far) for the book colour-photocopied to A4-size to work on, in batches of 20, then it seems less wicked. Or is that like the kid playing hide-n-seek, standing in the middle of the room with her hands over her eyes, pretending that she can't be seen. Hmmmm.
And finally, I'm learning that committing to writing a blog post everyday in November has been more helpful than I could have imagined.
Now, I'll leave you with Ben.
Oh ... I've posted this song before? At least you don't share an office with me :-)
Soul Stuff ...
The practice of any art isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt's quotes seemed like an answer to my angst about money and art.
Meanwhile, this singer is making me smile. Most particularly, her song, 'You and I'.
I love the lines: let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.
I was out early this morning, 5 celsius, a clear-sky day but the air hurts the lungs we decided. Cold or pollution, or both, we couldn't decide.
I'm using Frances Mayes book, Under the Tuscan Sun, to pull me through the quieter moments. The tram was packed coming home but I was off in my mind and wandering with her in Sovana, where she wrote of being in ancient places, We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line. Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.
The Magic of Myth, an enchanted journey by Elizabeth Duvivier
It would not be untrue if I wrote that I love this woman's blog best of all blogs.
I have written of her work before. A snippet here and snippet there. Mystic Vixen is where I wander when I need a fix of beauty, both in words and in images. There's quite some wisdom to be found over there too.
Wandering there is like opening a window onto a beautiful view ... it simply restores my soul.
And she shares her dogs too.
So, Elizabeth is even more than I knew her to be. I've attached the video where you get to know a little about her and work. She's responsible for Squam, as founder and director. You have to read about Squam to believe it but obviously any place where I read 'creativity as a way of life' in the subtitle I'm going to be interested.
Anyway, the video below, it's all about Elizabeth and an exciting new offering she has created for Squam - The Magic of Myth, an enchanted journey.
Take a peek ... see what you think.
the MAGIC of MYTH :: an enchanted journey from Squam on Vimeo.
Balance ...
I am always searching for a kind of balance in life ...
I work hard. I work long hours. There is no income. However I have finally decided to commit to the life of an artist. And I'm lucky, my Belgian bloke is pleased that I am finally writing again. It was the thing I loved first, the thing friends back in New Zealand most associated with me, it turns out.
So I write in the mornings these days and depending on whether I'm on the school pick-up run, which is lunch-times two days per week, my writing often runs on into the afternoon. And the evening.
And I edit for friends and causes I believe in the way some people do crossword puzzles. That's my hobby. I love making texts beautiful.
And I can be lured out of the house to shoot an event or a portrait for friends I admire or whose business impresses me. That was last night. And I sparkle on the inside. I love the energy that shoots through me when I'm working with my camera. And I always meet really superb people. There was this wine-maker last night. An extraordinary woman that I will interview on Saturday.
So I have all these things that I love doing but they rarely involve money. And making them earn money while bowing to the gods of taxes, social security, and etc, can only be described as a Kafka story.
Do I kill all the art and get a real job?
It feels so much like cutting off my nose to spite my face.
I can create beauty. I'm pleased with the shape the book on Genova is taking. My photographs seem to please people and even if they don't, I find them pleasing. I printed 20 of my Genova photographs off as A4 colour photocopies.
I was like a mother with her new baby. Who knows if the baby is ugly, I was that mother who was besotted. The images looked so powerful laid out in front of me. I needed that. I was bored with looking at them on the computer.
The scales that weigh the content or purpose of my life are sensitive things. Sometimes I have them in balance - my work is good, I should continue with photography and writing, the housework, and this crazy extended family of mine. Other times it's ... who do I think I am. Some princess who can live so irresponsibly and lightly in the world!? I must find a job!'
We live in a world where the arts are always first against the wall in budget cut and yet art is the thing that makes humans different to animals, isn't it? Art is the place we all escape to ... into books, into music. And yet the raised eyebrow, the idea that we are spoiled ones ... oh how that messes with my head.
I was out with a friend last night and I said, I should get a job. She said, but you work. I said but I make no money. She said you work really hard. We laughed. I do enjoy Ruth's company. She keeps me sane.
So here I am, living what feels a little like life in bubble. If I float out here, kind of disconnected from the world, then I can write this book I've been carrying inside of me for a long time but ... like being on the edge of a cliff, I can't look down. If I look down, I'll may fall into despair and despair means I struggle to write and create. Bitterness is deadly.
Lately I've read through a million job decriptions, trying to work out who would hire me, woman of strange abilities. And I can't get past what I might gently call the 'wankspeak' of job descriptions. I think you're meant to apply anyway and then everyone laughs and says noooooo, you're absolutely what we need but we had to write that other stuff ...like, fluent in 17 languages, with the ability to get our newsletter out into the world in 17 seconds flat. But maybe it's better those jobs have seemed impossible.
This morning began with a bit of a crisis. Oh, you guessed. Maybe I've written it out of me and tomorrow I'll delete this and we'll pretend it never happened.
But make no mistake, this needs to be read knowing I'm smiling. I have fought off the despair. I'm going to write now.
Adjusting ...
Alice came to a fork in the road. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go” responded the cat. “I don’t know” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “It doesn’t matter.
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Source: Oh Fairies
It's fascinating (for me) to watch myself struggle with having made space and silence to write ...
I didn't realise quite how addicted I had become to distraction. 'Addicted' for want of a better word. Facebook is perfect as a distraction. It's full of some of my favourite people and, often, it's the only place I easily and instantly reach them. It's playtime all day, if I allow it be. Or forget that it shouldn't be ... on a slow day when I am quite lost and lacking in self-discipline.
And my FB wall was full of interesting folk. It wasn't the tedious stuff you read about in the 'worst of FB' stories. They were posting politically and intellectually interesting stuff ... as well as day-to-day life, links to good music, and their stories too.
These days of allowing this silence to fall around me haven't been simple but slowly I'm growing used to the peace of it all. Instead of multiple story-lines telling of other worlds running there in my head, I only have my stories ... mostly.
The loveliest thing is that I am receiving long emails from friends who have either already left facebook or who want to stay in touch. Long emails are bliss and I find myself setting aside time to reply, instead of them being lost in the avalanche of action that my life used to be. And links to good music are often included. I would hate to lose those introductions to music others love.
Yesterday I was consumed by a desire to further prepare myself for the long winter ahead. Bookshelves were moved, the sofa went upstairs to Miss 9's room, replaced by a exquisite yellow armchair I found secondhand and today this office space/bedroom is so much more beautiful. When the sun angles in through the window behind me now, it is no longer absorbed by the other deep-red bookshelf, instead it reflects off the wall painted a warm terrocotta (I think) and lights the middle of the room with a warm glow.
Light, and that colour range from pale yellow through into a deep gold, they are things that I love. My desk area is clearer than ever, and the small round red patterned rug that we found is perfect under my chair.
The paddling-people delighted me, in the image below, but so did the house. If I had a Pinterest board, I'm almost sure that it would be filled with images of houses and rooms made for dreaming and writing in...
An Afternoon at the Antwerp Zoo
In my photography, there are themes that recur, images that I don't realise I'm chasing ...
Reflections would fall into that category.
Today was a sunny autumn day here in Antwerp. Miss 9 and I wandered off to the zoo. School holidays. And I had to smile as we worked on a miniature photography workshop while exploring the zoo together.
Her joy, as she worked out shutter speed and focus, was lovely. She really got it.
Anyway, she was given a zoo map when she paid for her ticket. Oh my, there were some conversations where I suggested her map-reading skills were dodgy. She laughed and, of course, we ended up at that funky slide over in the playground ...
Not so dodgy it seems, perhaps we were simply on different missions.
Eventually I was able to arrive at the giraffe enclosure. It's one of my favourite places there in the zoo but what I had forgotten was that there is a water course that runs round the edge of their space. I don't know what it is about the water but it reflects exquisitely.
The image that follows ... Antwerp's blue sky reflected with the stripes and paint on the giraffe house. Miss 9 and I could have stayed there all afternoon but for the fact we were cold and getting hungry.
Dank u wel for a lovely day, little Miss 9.
Perseverance ...
Of course you must perservere. Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
Some days, working my way into the state of mind I need to work, I am fortunate and begin by reading a post by Terri Windling, a writer, artist, and book editor, and so much more.
She offers up inspiration more often than not. I smiled when I read her Cartier-Bresson quote this morning. Just the first 10,000 photographs ... perserverance is all.
