Here I am ...

Curled up on my borrowed bed in this magnificent Genovese apartment, top floor, listening to my small music playlist of absolute favourite songs ... the ones that I always play.  I should post that list one day, so you can throw your hands up in horror perhaps, but these are the ones that I listen to, over and over, making sharing an office space with me all but impossible.

Or  so I've been told.

I have lived more quietly today.  The result of one of my allergy/anxiety attacks last night - 4am before I slept.  It seems that I am one of those creatures who 'feel the fear and do it anyway'.  It's always been like that.  The desire to go versus my chicken-hearted fears.

Most amusing, probably, was flying to Istanbul when flying wasn't my favourite thing.  Moving to Istanbul alone wasn't the best thing for a chicken-hearted soul to do either, actually.  But there are many things I have done that left me wondering what I was thinking?!

Cairo was both so beautiful and so terrifying for this girl from small-town New Zealand.

Anyway ... it seems, despite being as much in denial as is possible, I have some allergy/food intolerance issues.  Some things affect my mouth, others my throat, a few my stomach and etc.  I'm thinking, after last night, that I might finally get tested because the allergies are definitely increasing and I have say, they're just not fun at 1, 2 and 3am, in a country not your own when you're alone.

And today ... I'm laughing as I write this blog post, it didn't go well at the pharmacies.  They didn't really have English, and I'm famous for not being good at other languages.  Ohdeargod ... so, I have some antihistamine drops (I think), and I'm meant to take 20 drops once a day, (I think) and some asprin too (which I'm pretty sure I don't like). Not really what I was looking for but they're in the building. 

I'm someone who thinks if the medicine is in the building it's enough.  It makes Gert crazy.

But this isn't what I meant to write of ... really.  I had a nice invitation today, to supply photographs of Genova to a Ligurian magazine here.  I love Liguria, there's no hiding that, and so I said sure. 

The bonus was getting a copy of their latest and it contained an interview (and an A4 photograph) of my first football hero.  Well, technically he's my second but as Milito left, I don't talk of him anymore. 

Oh the fickle world of Series A football.  I don't recall New Zealand rugby players doing these things, these transfers, however ... he has promised he will stay with my team next year.

How many readers will I lose for revealing the truth about who I follow in football ...

Last night, after eating pizza at my favourite pizzeria, I was wandering along Via XX Settembre and found the image that follows this post.  I had to move quickly because there were others around and I'm not sure they all saw what I saw.

But this visit to Genova, I have to  say, there has been just so much ... so many good people, so much divine food, and superb wine.  Great music.  Brilliant conversations. 

Genova has been like that ... and so much more.

It was an extraordinary day ... yesterday

I don't even know where to begin ... last night perhaps, when Alessandra organised a dinner for a few of her friends and I was invited along.  It was outstanding.  

Donatella Soranzio sang, with Luciano Susto on bass guitar, and they were sublime.  I felt so very fortunate to be there listening.  Video by Federico will follow, as it was he who packed his camera and filmed events as they unfolded but they are on youtube as Susto e Soranzo.  And you will see, it was one of those 'pinch me, I'm dreaming' moments, there at Stefano Di Bert's exquisite restaurant called Pacetti Antica Ostaria.

And Stefano ... what a host.  He brought out plate after plate of truly divine food, accompanied by the loveliest of wines ... so many divine wines that came along on that gastronomic journey.  Food and wines from both Friuli and Liguria.  Stefano, Alessandra, Federico, and Donatella are all from the Friuli region. 

1.30am saw Stefano, Barbara, and Alessandra walking me back through quiet city streets to my apartment. This morning, I have to admit that I woke, and lay very still ... checking for hangover damage.  It turns out, the story is true, there is no hangover with good wine and believe me, we had had a lot of very very good wine.

It was one of the most enjoyable evening's I've had in a long time.

Today I had appointments all over the city, ending with a Napoli pizza at my favourite pizzeria on Via Ravecca.

Actually, yesterday I also had lunch with Francesca.  'The' Francesca from Le Gramole.  We laughed often but the dish below, the Troccoli, that made us laugh most of all because I told her of New Zealand's Huhu Grubs ...

I have eaten a Huhu Grub and if you clicked on the link you will have seen why I might have found my Troccoli slightly disconcerting.

I'm too tired to write of everything, although I must add that I also had the pleasure of meeting Sibilla Iacopini.  And I'm enjoying this new apartment in another part of the city.  I'm top floor, with a small balcony and french doors that I open each morning as a way of beginning the day.

I'll take some photographs when my days stop spinning but really ... I love the spinning.

In These Days ...

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves

Erica Jong, extract from Women Enough.

I've been busy ... a project, of course.  A new website specifically for the project, and all kinds of other things too.

At night, I shift my aching body from my ergonomically-disasterous desk and creak to my bed ... tired from sitting rather than anything deliciously active.

But the website is almost done.  I'll launch soon, via a newsletter that shall become regular.  I'm eyeing Instagram too ... I'm in Genova next week, it seems like a good time to work out all this social media stuff that I've mostly ignored, as the new project is all about Genova.

I've been cooking and cleaning, imagining myself quite marvelously productive there too, although wanting more applause than I get for fitting everything into my day.  I've always been dubious about this housewife stuff.  It seems to run along the lines of 'if a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to see it ...'  Same with housework.  A clean house is the result of many lost minutes and hours.  Many.

Erica Jong wrote the perfect poem when she wrote Women Enough. 

So precisely, yes.

But I must work.  I have one more in the elderberry series to post.  It's been up to 28 celsius, thunderstormy, calm and cool too.  It's Spring.  I'm loving it.

Out in the Garden ...

This morning my camera and I wandered out to the garden but it's not really my garden at all.  The Jasmine ... okay, I carried that home from the Amsterdam Flower Market one year, on the train, traveling with my favourite Australian, Clare.

And I pushed for the lavender plants and the honeysuckle too, bought one of the raspberry canes, and asked if we might have a fern.  I was rapt when Gert's parents gave him a part of their rhubarb plant ... while wishing I could have had a slice from the root of the mythical rhubarb plant back home in New Zealand.

Nana and Grandad grew the best rhubarb in the world, or that's how we told it.  Mum and Dad were given a section with roots and voila, we had some of that Invercargill perfection growing out back in our Mosgiel garden.

But I'm more of an admirer of gardens ... as opposed to being an actual gardener.  My mother would have told you that I was a bit of a lazy wench when it came to gardening.  I preferred reading or walking my dog, or just simply watching.  I should have been ashamed, as I come from a long line of hardworking, dedicated gardeners but I wasn't.

Then  I met Gert, who didn't garden but does now ... just like the New Zealanders I grew up around and so our garden is all thanks to him.  The big fat toads living out there simply amuse him.  He brushes off spiders, and goes into battle with the Ivy when it threatens to overwhelm all.

He BBQ's too, and this time I don't have a dog to get rid of the evidence about totally not being a Kiwi when it comes to BBQ food.

So these photographs taken by me mostly capture the result of his hard work and dedication ...

It was a Sunday morning impulse to attempt to capture a sense of how this beautiful day is playing out in our tiny pocket-sized Belgian garden.

A Lightness of Being ...

For me, there is this feeling of an incredible lightness of being that comes with that first really summery Sunday morning of the year.

We can finally open the door to the garden and enjoy the scent of the Jasmine I'm growing not far away.  But better than anything else, in those early morning hours, Nature often wins out as the dominant scent in the air ... especially on a Sunday when the roar of that massively busy highway nearby becomes so much less.

I wandered outside with my camera just now, startled a thrush, then watched a pigeon fly clumsily away.  The lawns will be mown today, there is a BBQ planned for our evening.  It's the first of this summery season. 

And the rhubarb is going crazy out there, so are the raspberry plants.  The fern has experienced new hope and is growing accordingly, and my beloved New Zealand Lupins are finally making an appearance too.  The yellow ones, the kind found growing at beaches back home.  Those ones that have a scent I love like nothing else.

Somehow they manage to contain both this huge celebration of summer and the promise of the sea.  I would fill my garden with these if I could.  But they're not in flower yet so I still don't know if they will grow and smell as they do on the other side of the world.

But it was the Elderberry blossom that turned my head this morning.  Perhaps more photos will follow.  The elderberry berrries are usually gobbled up by the pigeons but the birds were here first and do so little to harm the environment that it feels okay to let that situation be.

A good morning to you out there in the world.  I hope your Sunday is lovely in that way you need it to be.

Found ... as I wandered, reading.

Did you know, the British Library has put 1,200 literary treasures from great Romantic and Victorian writers online?  It's true.

This TED talk, Does Money Make You Mean?  was interesting.  There's some lovely stories of good things that people with money are doing ... at the end.

Glen Greenwald, fearless journalist & scrappy fighter, has turned up again, thank goodness.  He's now the editor of a 'news website describing itself as being committed to “fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues'.  You can find The Intercept here.

New Zealand takes 3rd position in the Global Peace Ranking.

A Sherpa and a native Nepali paraglided off of Mount Everest in 2011, they flew into history, and I read nothing about it.  There's a new book ...   Western-orientated media, you break my heart sometimes.

And perhaps that's enough.  Maybe 'more' than enough ...

Another peony.

In Celebration ...

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin, Writer.

 

There's a new project ...

Or perhaps it's a new way of seeing a project that has shape-shifted, changed, and developed so much since I first imagined it.

And it keeps getting better.  Maybe that's because it continues to move closer to my original idea ... that orginal intention.

I'm so excited.  There will be a newsletter from me next week.  And I'll be giving away copies of my favourite photograph too.  To celebrate.

And ... there's so much more to tell but not today.  It's 5pm Friday as I write this and I need to rest for a little bit before beginning again.

Meanwhile the peonies I bought from Dieter are exploding in soft pink lushness.

Processing ...

I've been trapped in chair here, processing a series after series of photographs over weeks ... or that's how I'm telling it. 

I finished the latest series tonight.  170 ... a most beautiful Irish/English family.  I am pleased.  I hope they are too.

Etel Adnan's book, Sitt Marie Rose, arrived in the mail today.  I photographed her while working in Berlin and wish I had read this before meeting her.  It shall be read, over days, on those trams that I ride here.

I'm off to Genova soon.  I am very much looking forward to that. 

This photograph was taken there, in Piazza De Ferrari one day ...

'The House Protects the Dreamer' ...

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard, Philosopher.

I needed to try and capture that place where I spend most of my hours for a project I discovered recently.  I'll write more on that when it happens.

Today the sun came out for a while and this is what I saw ...

Climbing That Gate Again ...

There are mornings when I wander back through the city, feeling something like happiness.  It's not that the pollution has disappeared, it rarely disappears.  And it doesn't seem to be weather-dependent, as I've noted this 'feeling' on drizzly misty mornings too ... no, it must be some random thing, like the stars aligning someplace else. 

Perhaps it's partially about whatever I'm reading.  At the moment I'm moving between C.K. Stead's novel Mansfield, and Piers Moore Ede's All Kinds of Magic.  Both are rereads ... old favourites that live on the red shelves next to my desk here.

I also have Marsha Mehran's Pomegranate Soup underway ...

All these books probably say something about my state of being at the moment.  I'm a little restless perhaps.

This month and the previous, I have spent time with the loveliest families, attempting to capture something of what I see when each of them  come together. 

Then Sunday evening I slipped into the abyss that is a Monday, 9am dental appointment.  A broken tooth was involved and I was a bit nervous but my dentist ... she's the best that I've ever had and so there's always the confusion of catching up with someone I very much enjoy seeing.

It went well.

I'm transcribing interviews from those days spent in Italy.  And processing photographs too.  I'm cleaning and cooking ... and failing to cook and clean too.  I'm losing and finding myself via books and good movies.  I'm waiting to fly. 

I'm back in Genova at the end of this month ...

Climbing that gate again.

Things Found ...

I use Facebook.  It works for clients who want to come along for the ride, it works as a place to escape for a few minutes when I'm alone here at the desk for days on end. 

And I find and share things there but they're lost, quite fast, as that world scrolls through the days, weeks and months.

So I might start noting my best finds here once a week. 

I loved this story about two anonymous artists known as Dangerdust.  Art students who, once a week, sneak in a create a chalk masterpiece at Columbus College of Art and Design.  There's an interview with them over here, one where they retain their anonimity.  

Jaron Gilinsky writes an important article titled When a Kidnapped Journalist is a Freelancer.  Freelancers are often people driven to tell the story, capture a truth, however this was sobering: 'Like most freelancers, Ricardo went into war zones sans insurance. The reason has more to do with cold, hard economics than with bravado.

Photos rarely sell for the price of a train ticket. Videos rarely sell for more than the cost of a plane ticket. Trusted insurance policies that cover death, terrorism, kidnapping, extortion, etc. cost thousands of dollars over the course of a year. For the majority of freelancers who are living hand to mouth, such policies are simply unaffordable.'

I was introduced to the work of Tyler Knott, author, poet, photographer and artist.  A visit to his website felt like a rather lovely gift to myself.

I rediscovered one of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroes, Sophie Scholl.  She was born in 1921 and while she was a university student in Munich, she and her brother, Hans formed a non-violent, anti-Nazi resistance group with several friends.  They called it the White Rose. The group ran a leaflet and graffiti campaign calling on their fellow Germans to resist Hilter's regime.

At her execution, Scholl made this final statement: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"

There's a movie.

And that reminds me, I discovered a website called A Mighty Girl.  Having grown without the influence of strong role models this seems like a gift to pass around.

Then there was the story of The Missing in the Mediterranean.  Every month, hundreds in north Africa and the Middle East leave by boat to seek new lives in Europe. But many vanish without trace.  Immigrants are very much a political football in our time but I suspect that many of those violently opposed to freedom of movement in times of danger and difficulties would be first to flee countries where violence and poverty reign.

The New Zealand Movie, Pa Boys, is finally out on dvd.  I've been desperate to view it but so very stuck on the other side of the world.  I just need to order it now.  They're also running a talent search for unpublished music for the sequel.  I'm rapt.

There is so much more but this is more than enough for a first listing of things I've read and enjoyed. I hope there's something for you too.

 

A Hangi in Belgium

I thought I could be tough on what was 'good enough' with this documentary-style series capturing the Hangi. But I'm finding that I want to include almost everything because all the photographs seem important to the story.

I realised that it's not just about cooking food in the ground, it's about the community that forms as people work together. And it was about the people who came and went during the process - it was kind of tidal, with different folk appearing at different stages.

But most of all, it was about the people who worked on it - those on a tour who saw help was needed and climbed into it with their experience from 'back home in NZ', with their strength, despite wearing boat shoes or white sneakers.

In the end it was all about the feeling surrounding the process ... it was quite staggeringly beautiful.

At the moment, I'm not sure one photograph captures it all. It's a story to be told with many photographs.

A Day ...

I'm off to Norway in August.  There's a photography workshop to run for the rather extraordinarily talented woman who is Ren Powell.

And there was an invitation to a Hangi too, in London.

However there are 137 documentary photographs from this day of labouring, 137 that I a really pleased with ... although there are 'quite some' to go.  I think it might be another night and day here in the chair.

Meanwhile ... I love this image of the Maori flag firmly planted in a Flemish field ...

And now, to cook some Persian chicken for dinner.

The Arts, Kurt Vonnegut

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country.

This song, by Ingrid Michaelson, seemed the right kind of sound for the sunshiney, whimsical afternoon this day became ...

Needing the Sea

There's a beach over in Zeeland, Holland.  It's as good as it gets within a short driving distance and so we go, occasionally ... so this kiwi can breathe some sea air and collect some more shells for here at her desk.