This And That, and a little bit more perhaps.

I have a new way of post-processing my photographs ... perhaps I should simply write, 'a new toy'.

It's so much fun!

And that's not written lightly.  I woke at 4.30am after an early night.  Well ... 11.30pm is early for me but sleeping before midnight seems to result in a ridiculously early morning wake-up.  My mind was racing so I gave in at 5.30am, slipping downstairs, turning on the radio as the coffee machine creaked into action, as the toast cooked. 

I sat awhile reading the new book about the granddaddy photo-journalist from way back there in the beginning.  I cannot begin to tell you how much I am loving that book, sad that I can't take it to Norway because ... along with my camera equipment and laptop, it would be too heavy to take with me.

I wanted to write a blog post from the quiet of this morning but my mind was noisy and busy.  I had a portrait session at 9am.  Two lovely Canadian girls from Texas ... from Canada.  And their cousins, the two girls from Belgium.  The shot of the day ... the one that made us all laugh most, was the one where Cloe had them all doing the 'fishface' thing.

It was about 2pm when I elegantly face-planted on the couch and napped for a little bit.  Oh those naps, they are getting me through.  I'm thinking, when I get back to Belgium, I might have an iron test.  It feels like it might be an iron thing, this tiredness.  I'm 'that age' these days.  And maybe some allergy tests too, as they're running out of control.

Soon though, I'm off to spend time with one of my most favourite poets in the world.  We hope to create some beautiful posts/art/something unexpected during our days together in Norway.  I'm curious.  I've never been there before.   But that's life, isn't it ... a big adventure.

I processed the photographs of the Air BnB apartment I spent some time in last time I was in Genova.  I loved this little place where my bed seemed to float, up there on the mezzanine floor, with a view up the narrow carruggi somewhere near the ancient Chiesa di San Donato.

So ... a combination of photograph, of new processing tool, and some stories too, written from another humid and hot summer day here in Belgium.

Tales to Tell ...

Tiredness continues to be an issue.   I'm doing all that needs done however approximately once every hour, I walk across to my bed and simply fall on it.  I'm exhausted it seems.  The 2 weeks in Italy was intense and my recovery seems to be complicated by 26 celsius nights ... and it's not that I'm complaining about the heat  but it does make the whole sleeping thing quite fraught.

I'm so tired that when I do wake at 5am, it's a simple thing to reason that the sound that woke me was someone walking on a huge dumpster full of wire coat hangers. 

I suspect this may indicate that I'm seriously 'tired'.

There's another huge story I want to tell.  I just need a little more time to sit down with the photographs and stories that unfolded at Palazzo Del Vice Re, located in Lezzeno, on the edge of Lake Como. 

I took the photograph that follows down at the lake edge, below the palazzo, when I slipped out early one morning wanting to capture a slice of the beauty and peace I found there.

Robert Capa Exhibition, Genova

I didn't have time to visit this Robert Capa exhibition while in Genova but only because I realised that it will be there for a while.  I shall return and make space for it.  He was a fascinating man.

Monday found me in my favourite secondhand bookshop here in the city.  I discovered a huge treasure, justified buying it, then had to talk myself into carrying the huge weight of it home.

It's John Phillips book, Free Spirit in a Troubled World. 

At just 21 years old, Algerian-born photojournalist Phillips was hired by Life magazine and assigned to cover Edward VIII, just as the story of Wallis Simpson and the king's abdication was about to break. Here, Phillips records his next 23 years as a correspondent, witnessing many of the 20th century's most dramatic events. Before World War II, he filmed the Wehrmacht marching into Austria, the Warsaw Ghetto, and turbulence in central Europe. From the Middle East, there are momentous photographs of King Farouk, King Ibn Saud, and the destruction of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. Reproduced from his negatives rather than Life's prints, the over 200 black-and-white images chronicle old worlds collapsing and new regimes seizing power. More so than most photojournalists' memors, Phillips's extensive text combines intelligence with delightful intimacy.

Of course I'm going to want to read his book.  And even better, for me, it was less than 20euro.

But anyway, at some point each morning spent in Genova, we would find our way to Douce Pâtisserie, in Piazza Matteotti, and this was the view from my table ...

Zucchini Blossoms and So Much More ...

I have been waiting for my writing voice to return ... waiting for my desire to process photographs endlessly ... waiting for my creativity to reappear.

Tonight, perhaps it has begun to arrive.

It was the oddest kind of day.  A 15 minute photo-shoot turned into 8 hours of, sometimes, epic journey that began as I leapt from my train, fearing the doors might close on me but knowing I must leap because Mr Crazy Dog was barking up a storm out on mainstreet, and Miss 10 appeared to be the innocent cause.  Or so I was told over the phone.

Crisis averted, I finally caught up with Simon and Paola, over in Brussels, photographed their renovations and talked ..a lot  :-)  Well, perhaps all that talking was me.  Paola is the friend who so generously allows me to use her apartment in Genova.  I wanted to catch her up on stories from Genova ... this is my excuse for all the talking.

8 hours after leaving home, I returned.  Falling asleep on the train between Brussels and Antwerp but waking in time to get off at the right station.

Tonight, 10.30pm,  I began to download a treasure trove of photographs.  A portrait session I did at Lake Como, with my delightful business partner, Helen. 

And during the downloading I discovered the image below, taken during a lunch with Andrea, from IC Bellagio.  Thank you to Andrea for the lunch and for the conversation.  It was a lovely way to say goodbye to this country I've come to love.

So many more stories to follow in the days and weeks ahead although ... I'm packing for Norway.  I have a photography workshop there soon.  Not only that, it's summer too.  My little cup runneth over.

Home Again ...

I arrived home late Wednesday night ... exhausted. 

Like so many of the other days, on this particular journey, Wednesday was a huge day.   It was a day where my lost ID card was handed back to me at Milan Airport.  I had been holding my breath a little as I reached check-in.  I had the police report tucked away in my camera bag and my driver's licence, with the photograph to prove I was me, at the ready.

The lovely woman behind the counter saw my name and told me I had 'lost' that ID on the plane coming in and while it was strange that Brussels Airline didn't phone or email me using any of the personal details I have fed into their system so many times, I was grateful.  So grateful to see my ID card again.

I had had this feeling that it might turn up, somehow and as a result I hadn't followed the protocol of blocking my ID.  120euro was saved.  Helen and I did a small happy dance after leaving that counter.

So many beautiful things had been happening along the way however this seemed like a fairly serious slice of 'excellent'. 

Then ... my bankcard wouldn't allow me to withdraw the money I knew was in it, in Italy, but I could buy lunch using it directly.  So that was grand. 

We flew ... still working, making new plans for other New Way of Seeing workshops and arrived, after an hour and 15 minutes, in Brussels.  We made our way to the luggage claim area and began waiting.  Helen's suitcase arrived.  The clock ticked.  Soon it became clear I was going to miss my 'once on the hour, every hour' bus back to Antwerp. 

My suitcase never arrived.  I recognised 'the look' on the faces of others waiting there.  Their luggage hadn't arrived either.  But on asking, I learned they'd just come from Florence.  I was the only one missing my luggage from Milan.

I was tired and a little bit grouchy perhaps.  We walked the length of the luggage claim hall until we found the queue at the Brussels Airlines missing luggage office.  We were walking towards it when I noticed my bag, standing all alone in the middle of nowhere ...

I checked it for bombs and for drugs.  It seemed fine.  I imagine someone had taken my bag by accident and abandoned it there in the hall when they realised.  Thank goodness the police hadn't wondered about it. So we left.  Wondering whether it wasn't time to purchase some kind of lottery ticket.

I strolled over to the bankcard machine, wanting to access my money for a train ticket.  Helen had decided she wasn't leaving until she was sure I wouldn't be walking to Antwerp. 

My bankcard didn't work.  I was tired.  Disbelieving.  I knew I had money there.

Helen reminded me that my money had been accessible directly in Milan so, we wandered on down to the trains level of the airport.  Voila, I was able to use the card to purchase a ticket from the machine.  A big thank you to you, BNP Paribas Fortis, what was that all about?

Finally, an hour and a half after landing, I was on a train heading directly for Antwerp.  Windows down as we screamed our way through that hot summer's night.   Gert met me at the bottom of the stairs in the station. 

Note: why don't European train stations have escalators on every platform?  What wrong-headed thinking leaves travelers almost destroying themselves carrying luggage up and down them?  I pack as lightly as possible knowing this thing but it seems not very 'first world'. Belgium and Italy both fail in this respect and the men have long ago learned to look the other way when there's a women struggling up those stairs with her suitcase.  No one but no one wants to help anyone else with their luggage.  It has made me appreciate Kiwi blokes because I know they'd be there in a flash.  But never mind ... I can do it.  I pack lightly.

And so I am home.  Yesterday looked and felt remarkably like a road smash.  I had this idea that I've spent these past two weeks traveling at 100km p/h and that yesterday I hit the wall.  I did laundry, I cleaned the house, I shopped for supplies, I cooked ... falling on the bed in-between times or working here at my computer.

Never mind.  Whiny moment over, I'll leave you with a photograph I took back in Lezzeno in Italy.  I have so many stories to tell about the exquisite palazzo located on the edge of Lake Como.  That exquisite palazzo where Helen and I spent those last two nights in Italy.

Last Night Down By The Lake...

One of the more difficult things about traveling is the quality of the screen that I work with out here on the road.  It's difficult to view images ... difficult simply because I am used to a better quality of screen back at my desk.

I don't know that I've done justice to this image but I wanted to post it anyway.  Last night, after dinner at a restaurant that cooks the fish of Lake Como, in a whole range of styles, we wandered down by the lake below the stunning hotel where we are staying.

To write that this trip has been extraordinary would be stating the obvious.  Or telling you that we have met and spent time with so many good people ... also clear.  But more than that, the scenes that have unfolded in front of us, as we've searched out ways to make our joint photography workshops absolutely first class,  have been exceptional.

I was back at the lake edge this morning and a whole news series of scenes unfolded in front of me.  I'm going to miss this beautiful place tucked away in Italy's mountains.

The Power of Women...

A photograph taken on our last evening in Genova

'Last evening' this time.  And we wanted to say goodbye to some of the women we so enjoy knowing there in the city.

There was Donatella and Barbara, Alessandra, and Georgia too.  We met at Douce and we talked.  So much.  Enjoying the company of each other on a warm summer's evening in Liguria.

I could write much about what each woman means to us.  Of their generosity and their kindness, of their various talents but that would be too long a post and it might sound like someone exaggerating. Perhaps it's enough to write that they are special.

Anyway ...I suspect that this photograph, taken on Alessandra's phone, captures something of the spirit between us all.  Needless to say, I suspect it's clear in the photograph, I'm exhausted ... but oh so very happy with the days spent over in Genova.

You Know When That Bubble of Joy Rises Up In You?

That happened.

We moved from Genova to a most exquisite location on the edge of Lake Como.  It's only 8am but already my camera and I have been wandering.

I love New Zealand, I love Italy.  Lately, I haven't been sure which country I loved best.

Here, in Lezzeno, Italy becomes New Zealand and vice versa.  A lake, the mountains, the mist and the smell of the air ...

As for the food, I will try and write of it soon.  Dinner last night, on that balcony overlooking Lake Como ... exquisite.

Magnificent Days ...

We are on Day 2 of this first A New Way of Seeing photography workshop and all I can say is that feels like both an extraordinary privilege to meet and work with these women but it is a huge amount fun too.

I almost fell over due to laughing so hard last night.  Lisa, the Australian, was responsible.  Trans-Tasman relations are at all time high.  Meanwhile I have a few million photographs to download and so many stories to tell but really lacking the time to do.  We're off to Lake Como tomorrow ... stories should follow.

Day One of the weekend workshop ended on a restaurant balcony located at the edge of the Ligurian Sea, out at Boccadasse, eating exquisite food and well, yes ... laughing often.

We are a small united nations, with the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and America involved. 

Now ... for Day Two.

Day One, Genova

Lying on my borrowed bed this morning, here in Genova, I spotted this trompe l'oeil just across the alley from me.  Loved it, wandered downstairs and grabbed my camera gear. 

It's a beautiful blue sky day out there.  We have a lunch planned with Stefano and a wine-tasting out in the city this evening.

It's good to be back.

Back in Genova, and loving it.

I'm back in Genova and it is so very good to be here.

The journey began with a 4.30am alarm, a 5.25am tram in cold early morning rain, a 6am airport bus, a 9.25am flight, Milan.

A bus from the airport, lunch at Milan Central Station... where some charm was showered upon us by the lovely chef there.  A train to Genova, then a taxi, as we were slightly exhausted.

Out again and off into the ancient heart of the city to visit with Francesca and Norma where a  wine-tasting at Le Gramole was confirmed for tomorrow, then a stop at the Bio shop for fruit and vegetables. Back to the delicious apartment we have here, then out for the best pizza ... in the world.  Truly. 

A walk through the storm, thunder and lightning, the rain had mostly stopped while we were out walking, down the port and back here to unpack and work a little.     And here we are, working behind shutters closed over massive old open windows.  The noise is reassuringly Italy at night.  I miss these sounds when I'm back in Antwerp.  People are talking and laughing, sometimes shouting... alive, out there on the streets a few floors below this beautiful apartment in an ancient building.

Sometimes I feel so extraordinarily fortunate.  I am living a life that is rich in stories and full of good people.

It's so good to be back here.

Hero, Family Of The Year

Miss 10 slipped a note into my pocket last night.  I'm famous for losing notes slipped into my pockets ...

This morning she appeared here, so excited, did I still have that piece of paper?  I wasn't sure.  She looked sad.  I wandered over and looked.  It was okay, I hadn't 'cleaned' my pockets, without thinking.

She had written 'Family of the Year', Hero.  I had to hand over my keyboard.  She's in love, with this song, and like me she plays favourites on repeat. 

She's delicious ... and needless to say, I have it here, playing, on repeat.

This and That & Everything!

If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday ...'

Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The extract was longer but perhaps this is enough to remind us to leave some time for our senses to do their work ... to smell the flowers perhaps.   There are more quotes from his book here.

These days find me rushing, like a mad woman, through life.  Cleaning, organising, packing, remembering, searching, sometimes finding. 

I am so tired I will probably sleep all the way to Italy on Wednesday.  Meanwhile the Belgian bloke is having a shoulder scan, this week I hope.  He's been in pain for far too long now and physio isn't helping at all.  It seems he has either torn a muscle or ... he needs something for inflammation of a joint somewhere in there.  We'll be so glad when he can use his arm again, and sleep without waking when he turns.

Jess has broken her finger.  Ignoring it didn't speed healing and so she's 'limping around' in terms of what she can do with that ridiculously painful middle finger.

Miss 10 has taken to lolling about and generally enjoying her summer holidays. And Sander is crossing Belgium 5 days per week for work, as usual.

I suspect, if we sat down together and talked of what we noticed yesterday, we might just be a small group of grouchy stressed people who noticed not much at all ... except Miss 10 who may have noticed things. 

I talked to my Dad this morning.  I wanted to wish him well for his hospital tests on Tuesday but, in good news really, his tests were on Monday and he had come through the actuality of them really well.  It was lovely to be talking to him as he had worried me with talk of having to go off his heart medication for the test.  He's staying at my sister's tonight.  They didn't want him to go home alone.

And so the new website needs fine-tuning.  There are emails to write and to reply to.  I'm behind on my writing course, yet again ...   I'm in and out with the laundry, packing ,and ironing while searching for some really important notes I had made.

But I did finish the family portrait series of shots I took last Sunday.  I'm so pleased with the results.  They were another really special family full of adorable little folk, as seen below.

Reading & Writing My Way Back ...

Sometimes I get so caught up in issues close to my heart that I lose my own way.

And really, I know that at any given time, in any given century, there are 'bad things going on'.  I would be naive to imagine otherwise.  And I do understand that I know very little of the facts of those 'things'.  I know I need to understand that an absolute 'truth' doesn't really exist.  No situation is black & white.

Perhaps the best is to seek a series of narratives from different sources, accepting that truth is in there somewhere ... in different ways for every soul involved.

I had to find a way back from the sadness that set in after spending days reading of things so bad and so sad that they slipped in under my skin ... like tics perhaps, quietly poisoning my peace of mind and stealing my sense of beauty.

I found my way back tonight.  I've been lost in other, rather beautiful, worlds for an hour or more, since discovering Jodi's blog - Practising Simplicity.

She 'introduced' me to Katie and Reuben's - House of Humble.  And they led me over to Inked in Colour by Sash.

And finally, I felt like wandering across this after-midnight-silent room, to pick up my beautiful shawl, having this sense of finding my way back to myself some.  The Russian tailor made the changes I asked him to make to the shawl and it's quickly becoming this beautiful thing that makes me smile whenever I wear it.

Martin Luther King said that, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'

I believe this, so strongly, but I also see that I need balance.  When I speak out there's a sense of standing some place alone.  I want the world's eyes to turn to this topic that seems so important to me but in pursuing that desire to share, to speak out, hurts me. 

I grew up watching The Diary of Anne Frank on television.  It was screened, at very least, annually.  And we studied her story ... more than once, in school.

For a long time, years really, watching that movie I would to hope that someone would speak up for those people trapped in that holocaust.  But no one seemed able to so effectively.  The excuse used later was, we didn't know.  And so it is that periodically I am compelled to share information that asks people to 'see' and to 'know'.  To help bring about change. To stop really bad stuff happening.

But the slope is slippery and the deeper I go the further I am from that place, that creative space, where I prefer to be.  I love being a photographer, observing and capturing without interfering too much.  I love writing ... telling stories the way I imagine them.  And I believe, so strongly, in justice for all even as I understand it's impossible.

Periodically I step into the ring and challenge peoples desire to turn away, not to see, not to know. 

And afterwards, after the sharing, I have to find a way back to way I prefer life to be.  The women I discovered tonight pulled me back onto those paths that involve flowers and fruit trees, beautifully captured, along with so many stories. 

It's good to be back from that other, much sadder, much harder place for a while.

July 4, 2006

Today was Antwerpen, tomorrow the road ... that was the title I chose, 8 years ago today.  And I wrote:

Antwerpen was stunning today ... 30 degrees celsius and we were out in the city with our American friends.  (Old friend and a favourite traveling companion, Mary Lou, and her, then, new husband.  Oh the adventures we've had ... in New Zealand, Turkey and Europe.) 

We ate lunch at het Elfde Gebold and it was lovely, as usual. And later we sat a while in the Shoemakers Alley a while, a secret space here in the city.

We ended the day in Rivierenhof, a huge park here in the city, wandering home, at 10.30pm ... still 21 degrees celsius.  (not unlike tonight, here in 2014).

But no ... I almost forgot, we got stuck in the elevator I've so often teased friends about.   (Our first place was top floor, tiny elevator the shook and wobbled a lot.)

FOUR OF US, in this tiny airless nasty elevator.  It was 11pm by then and none of us were carrying a cellphone!!

We were lucky, Gert pushed various buttons and managed to get us level with a floor eventually ... we spilled out and nothing but nothing would convince me to get back in. He rode to the top alone while we 3 took the stairs.

The elevator is officially no longer amusing. 

I found this blog post while searching for poems by Kapka Kassabova.  Google-searching, and I was beamed back to an old blog, the one I began way back in 2005.  I thought it might be fun to post something here from that  day back in 2006

Back when Mary Lou was still criss-crossing the world to travel with me.  She had not long arrived  ...

Perhaps I should have titled tonight's post ... Missing you, Mary Lou. 

I'm Back ...

There's no headache this morning!  It feels so unbelievably good.  I found this area in my neck at 5am ... because it was stiff and sore, so I rubbed and stretched it for a while and voila ... I woke with no pain.

Meanwhile everything continues to happen here.  My huge ring-binder folder, the one I use for my book-writing course, is full of assignments and we're only halfway through.  It's been beyond excellent having to work out things like defining your book's genre, imagining how it will look - ideally.  Hardcover or soft, photographs, text, binding-style, after learning about different options for bindings.

Creating a vision board, a mind map, a set of core values for the book and the process.  Listening to published author interviews, learning all that Christine Mason Miller knows from her publishing successes.  Writing a synopsis and so much more.

It's intense and although we only work with Christine for 6 weeks, the material remains available to us for 6 months.  This course is all about fitting a book in around real life and all the distractions that most people live with ... which is so realistic for a creature like me.

Last night I began trying to select books for the journey next week.  I love reading at night in Genova.  I'm still not an electronic book reader-type, although the Belgian bloke is working on me.  My camera gear makes me a little sad about the extra weight I can't really carry in books but read I must. 

I have Kay Cooke's 2 poetry books on my desk, and 2 of Ren Powell's too.  I'm thinking they would be a great study while I'm out wandering.  Gert found me another Claire Messud book, secondhand, and I picked up Christos Tsiolkas's book, Dead Europe while in France but I think that one might be a little bit darker than I expect.  Let's see it.

There's all that but then I adore La Feltrinelli's in Genova.  It's one of my favourite bookshops out here in the world.  The English selection isn't huge but it's good.  Really good.  Last time I didn't allow myself to go in.  This time, we'll see ...

Anyway, enough of that.  I'm behind with my photo-editing.  I was lucky enough to wander over to Brussels last weekend, to photograph my lovely colour therapist friend, Marcia's, beautiful family.  I need to get on to that now that my head has stopped aching.

They are a truly, madly, deeply exquisite family and I so love photographing them.  It took most of the day but it wasn't just about photography, there was also a delicious cooked lunch after the picnic captured below.

That Post Where I Chitchat ...

Lately, I've had a low level buzzing going on in my head, probably caused by a whole lot of must-do's, and it's just not conducive to any kind of work flow.  But you know that already.

I've come here to blog a few times but deleted after just a paragraph or two.  There was no fire, no words came.

Tonight, it's 25 celsius as I write this ... almost 10pm, still quite light outside, with swallows whistling up and down the street like crazy out-of-control children.  I know summer's coming when the swallows return.  I do love them.

Here in Belgium, our team of three have been hard at work on our A New Way of Seeing - Photography Retreats project, fine-tuning and preparing.  It just keeps developing in ways that excite and delight us.  It's hard work but we're having fun.  It's a big old dream coming true.

Next week I'll be back in Genova, and will spend two nights at Lake Como before returning home but more on that once I'm there.  Then there's Norway in August and a photography workshop that I'm so looking forward to there.

Which reminds me ... I met the loveliest woman on the train between Genova and Milan last time I was there.  Her name was Patrizia, I think, she lives in Denmark.  I didn't have any business cards left but she wrote her email address on a scrap of paper and I did the same.  We talked for most of those 2 hours on that train and I did so enjoy her company.  Unfortunately I lost the scrap of paper somewhere between Milan and home.

Patrizia, if you did manage to hang on to my details and do read my blog, I would love to hear from you.

As for today ... I biked over to the Russian tailor.  Dank u wel to Lucy for letting me know about him.  My beautiful shawl, purchased in Genova, needed some of its fringe cut.  It's a little bit long and perhaps a little bit too red on the ends too. 

Dimitrii was lovely.  I explained that I had a history of cutting things that shouldn't be cut and needed him to be doing this thing for me.  Actually mostly it's been my hair that I've cut (and regretted cutting) but it was enough to make me terrified of ruining the shawl if I shortened the tassels myself. 

Actually, I  had my hair in the 'about to be cut' position the other night but couldn't find scissors. It's  really long at the moment, and rather warm here in Antwerp.  To explain, I've had a lifetime of going to hairdressers who talk me into letting them cut my hair short and really, I hate it short.  But once I'm in their chair, I'm weakened by promises of end-result glamour.  Mostly they lie...

So I pick that beautiful shawl up on Saturday and then, I shall wear it whenever possible. I think it will be just right for evenings out.

My head must be clearing though.  I excavated my desk today, its drawers, the cupboard and all storage boxes within reach.  It's all rather beautiful again.  My typewriter has a permanent place but it's an interesting creature.  It has a European keyboard, with the A, M, and other important keys not in the place I prefer them to be.  I make mistakes.  I have a bottle Pritt Fluid.  One needs to really hit the keys.  After a typewriter session, the computer keyboard feels plush and luxurious.  The delete key is heaven.

I have begun packing the cords, cables, and equipment required for out there on the road.  A small pilot's bag is slowly filling with 'other' plugs for the slightly different Italian sockets.  The USB modem is  there.  The card reader, the tripod, the sunhoods for the lenses, and etc.  On Wednesday I will become my other self, the one known as Sherpa Di. 

The biggest news though ... Miss 9 will wake as Miss 10 in the morning.  We are so full of thanksgiving when it comes to that little person.  Today she presented me with a great big hand-made book of her paintings and text.  'Voor Di' is there on the cover.  It's something I'll treasure.  Her art works are stunning. She insisted on reading it to me tonight, translating it as she went.  We finished our most recent book series last night and so it was timely.

I think I may have prattled on a little but I wanted to catch up some.  I've missed blogging.  Actually, I have missed being able to access my mind and write coherently.  Here's to the headache being gone on the morrow and to lucid thought returning. 

Failing that, then I shall just have to wait for Italia to work its usual magic on me.

The photograph ... found in a beautiful village in France.

Home ...

You know, if the truth were known I have a perfect passion for the island where I was born. Well, in the early morning there I always remember feeling that this little island has dipped back into the dark blue sea during the night only to rise again at gleam of day, all hung with bright spangles and glittering drops . . . I tried to catch that moment . . . I tried to lift that mist from my people and let them be seen and then to hide them again.

Katherine Mansfield, Writer.

I am returning to Genova in July and already my head has begun to fill with what I would like to achieve while there this time.  That city brings me alive in a way that no other place has so far.  Perhaps Istanbul came close but Genova has everything ... in just the right proportions. It is imperfectly perfect for me.

Genova, once known as La Superba, is an ancient Italian city (at least 2,000 years in the making), nestled in the arms of hills that are topped by ancient fortresses.  And at the feet of the city you have Ligurian Sea. 

The first time I saw that sea tears filled my eyes.  It had been a long time since I had been anyplace where the sea looked like home.  I was out at Nervi, photographing a Genovese family, and suddenly I was overcome by this strange sense of being back in a place that was completely familiar.

I have been thinking about things and have this idea that if you ever leave the country you were born in and move someplace else, far away, then eventually the idea of returning home can become as strange or as foreign as living in another country.

And so you move countries and become 'the other', living amongst people who are 'the other' to you.  But when you go home you realise you have become something else there as well. 

And so my place on the edge of lives and cultures is confirmed, probably for life.   That said, there is something else that happens out here.  I love people.  I love when they invite me into their worlds.  In Istanbul there were Turkish families I adored because they took care of me when I lived alone in their city.  That experience of being a guest, of being invited inside, to be a part of this celebration or that, here in Belgium, in Berlin during those months spent living and working there.  Cairo.  Naples.  France. Italy.   It's those insider journeys that make this lifestyle of mine so very very worthwhile. 

Lately I've been reading a series of biographies and fictions about New Zealand author, Katherine Mansfield ... searching for clues I think.  Something about her story speaks to me.

She left NZ in 1908 aged 20.  By 1923, she was dead from TB but not before she had revolutionised the 20th Century English short story.  She was a part of the English literary scene at the time and yet very much the colonial from the Antipodes. 

Her masterpieces—the long stories ‘At the Bay’ and ‘Prelude’—are lovingly detailed recreations of a New Zealand childhood, reports from the fringe—the edge of the world as she felt it to be. She wrote as if she’d stayed. Of course these luminous re-imaginings are lit with the affection and nostalgia of the expatriate. They would not exist without their author’s estrangement from the scenes and places and people she describes. They are set in a New Zealand of the mind, composed at the edge of Mansfield’s memory.

Source: NZ Edge.com

I'm curious about her because I relate to her on so many levels.  I feel like reading her story might tell me more about mine.  I yearn for home.  Adore it, am passionate about it and yet ... could I go back and live there again?  I really don't know anymore. 

Ahhh but all of this when really I came to post a photograph I took at the antiques market in Genova, back in May.

Jeff Daniels, and some of what he is ...

I first noticed him on The Newsroom when the first of this 'Best Scenes' clip flew round the internet.

Fiction ...

Flying home to New Zealand, after 8 years away, I found The Newsroom series on that Singapore Airlines flight BUT I didn't find it until just before landing.  I didn't ask them to circle.  I caught the series eventually.  And being home was good.

Tonight I found out Jeff Daniels sings too.

An Unmoored Life

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.

Kurt Vonnegut, from Kurt Vonnegut - Letters, via brainpickings

An unmoored life ... I think I do a little of that in Genova.  And I'm currently yearning for those two days when I woke around 8am, opened the balcony doors, then climbed back into bed and slept till 11am. 

They were mornings unprecedented and, now, yearned for in these days of not sleeping.  It's been 2am or later two nights in a row, not by choice and with added misery of those early, as usual, starts upon waking.

Today is the day of discussing huge plans.  Then tomorrow is sitting back down with the writing course I put away while the Belgian bloke was on holiday. 

Time flew, or so it seems.

Today is also the day I stop coffee, bread, pasta, potatoes, wine, and all kinds of other things I know don't agree with me.  I shall quite possibly crash into the wall of withdrawal in the days ahead.  My body will thank me eventually but first it will sulk, I'm quite sure about that.

I am so healthy in Italy (except for allergy attacks) and it occured to me that I never eat bread when I'm there.  I drink the very best coffee but I eat minimally.  My body adores me in those times.  I come back to Belgium, the land where one has to think quite hard on how to avoid bread,  and the wheels of Di begin to fall off.

I'm not dieting, I'm only attempting to be a little more conscious of what makes my stomach ache ... what makes me feel ill.  I've been on the run, embarassed, quite mortified, and all of those other things that children of practical folk feel when a wide-range of foods make them feel ill.  Ice cream and jelly were much-loved back in my childhood but honestly they made me feel seedy.  Greed carried me quite far.  I was one of four children and competitiveness may have stalked that table of ours ...

It was the Belgian bloke who enquired about my habit of eating toast after a roast meal.  I told him, a roast makes my stomach hurt, like I'm hungry.  He suggested working out what caused it, the potatoes or the meat, and it's pretty much been all downhill from there.

Conscious eating I guess.  It's bit neurotic for this kiwi girl and yet, I suspect it's what's needed after all these years of using toast and other 'snacks' to deal with the pain caused by everyday meals. There's still a huge sense of embarassment in admitting to known allergies but give me 20 years ... I'll own it all.  Or I will have quietly moved to a better way of eating.

And so it was that I loved Kurt Vonnegut's words ... In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. Those unmoored times are the places and spaces where my body takes over and it does what it pleases with my eating and sleeping.

Perhaps everyone needs a lilttle of that unmoored life, just to know ...

The photo?  From France.