Ubuntu ...

Ubuntu: I am what I am because of who we all are.

Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee

These days seem to be full of lessons about community and communication and there is a concept I remember reading of once, so I searched out the quote and found a photograph in my archives.

The concept is Ubuntu, is a Nguni Bantu term roughly translating to "human kindness." It is an idea from the Southern African region which means literally "human-ness," and is often translated as "humanity towards others," but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity."

On the image below I used the note I made in one of my journals back in 2011, despite wikipedia presenting it more clearly.

Note: there are many different, and not always compatible, definitions of what ubuntu is...

Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

As for the photograph ... I was out on Flanders Fields back in October 2007, covering the Passchendaele commemorations.  The London New Zealand Rugby Club was over playing a French side, and a delightful group of veterans had flown in from New Zealand.

I was fortunate enough to capture a traditional Hongi, or Maori greeting, between a rugby player and a veteran.  It seemed like an appropriate image for this idea that seems so very important in these times.

I Am A Reader ...

There's not much that gives me more pleasure than finding a really good book.

I have two 'suppliers' here in the Flemish city of Antwerp.  The first is De Slegte aan de Wapper, just a couple of doors away from Rubens House.  The second is more of a secret.  It's the place where I find quietly superb books for .25 cents to 1euro.

We hired a city car for a few hours today.  Jess had an appointment with the dental surgeon and we delivered her to the hospital.  Then the Belgian bloke who is on holiday, and I, slipped away to the secret book supply shop and voila, treasure was found.

We found 4 beautiful hardcover Roald Dahl books for Miss 10, printed in Nederlands.  Then I discovered Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storage (.50 cents), Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali (.75 cents), and The Colour of the Moon by Alkyoni Papadaki (1euro).

I love the randomness of secondhand bookshops.  I find so much treasure in them.  I just finished Tim Parks novel, Dreams of Rivers and Seas tonight.  I had loved his 'ethnographical' book titled A Season with Verona.  This fiction was something else.  Someone else's treasure, now my secondhand treasure.

But really, the reading is done on the trams mostly.  I was back on that early morning school run this morning.  Jess had her dental surgeon appointment today but turns out she can't have her wisdom teeth out until Thursday as there is an abscess which, combined with the pain of her teeth, is knocking her around something fierce. 

We were quite traumatised by our 5am ER visit and by the time she had been treated we didn't even dare ask which painkiller they'd IVed in to her, much less insist they might be wrong and that there was an abscess involved. 

We actually laughed as we walked out into Saturday morning afterwards ... that stunned ohmygoddidthatreallyhappen kind of laughter.  But today was an experience so opposite as to be surreal.  It was very healing and I confess, we were very very relieved.

So there is work to do and family to work around ... Gert has his appointment with a shoulder specialist on Thursday.  We're hoping he doesn't need surgery but it's not looking good.  He's been in much pain for 2 months now. 

My football team played a brilliant game in Italy last night.  I was glad not to be here.  The tension ... missed chances and the fact that they lost in the final minutes.  All this against one of the top teams. It might be an exciting season this season based on the exciting squad they've put together.

I was wandering out on Flanders Fields one frosty morning, with a small group that included then New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark.  I noticed these trees and stopped for a few moments, wanting to capture something of the light. 

The quote.  Justine Musk ... I enjoy her writing.

 

Homelands ...

Listening to Avicii.  That Wake Me Up When It's All Over song, the one that somehow got under my skin and into my head earlier this year.  Miss 10 just asked me to 'play it again' and so there I was, trying to work out font colour for the photograph below, listening to that music.

Miss 10 heads back to school tomorrow, after the last week of school holidays where it seemed Autumn had arrived.  As traditionally happens ... 26 celsius is predicted for next week. 

Ms 28 and I rushed off to ER early on Saturday morning, 5am actually.  We were mostly the only ones there but that didn't help.   Turns out you're not meant to race off to ER, you're meant to go to the after hour-doctors however ... we were both concerned about abscessed wisdom teeth and the possibility of blood poisoning. She had never had pain like it and I found her pressing a plastic ice pack directly onto her face.

They loaded her up with an IV painkiller and anti-nausea meds.  We walked out there sometime around 8am I think.  The IV dose worked for quite some time but there's no real way of avoiding pain when you have wisdom teeth actually pushing your real teeth out of their socket. 

Turns out she needs 6 teeth, in total, removed.  She's looking into that tomorrow ...it can't be too soon I suspect.

Yesterday was full of 'things that had to be done'.  Two trips to the emergency pharmacy on the bike, the supermarket too.  Cleaning the house in preparation for another lovely guest ... Inge, the Belgian living in New Zealand.  She's back home for a visit and had a 24 hour window of time just for us. 

And there was the pavlova to cook for the BBQ at 1.30pm and then ... once there, Fiona committed to filling my glass while we caught up with Ruth and Lucy.  Marc, Charlie and Benoit too.  And Tom, the lovely Belgian doctor, just home after some years spent living in NZ.

It was a day full of the most marvelous folk really.

I was running on 3 hours sleep and crashed out of this world sometime after 10pm.  Feeling so tired that I felt ill. 

Today has been a new day.  Gert, Miss 10, and I spent the morning spent talking with Inge and Elise. Then I had a few more hours of sleep after our guests had returned to the Westhoek - home for Inge when she's in Belgium.  Elise starts school in the morning too.

As so often happens here in my world, it's been a magical, difficult, exhausting, quietly superb couple of days.  Inge and I spent quite some time comparing our experiences in each other's countries.  Same same but different would best sum them up.

I would love to write of the good, the bad and the ugly of the immigrant thing but perhaps that's for another day, when I'm less tired than tonight finds me.

I noted the following quote in one of my journals.  It's a favourite, by Susana Fortes, and I found it in her interesting book Waiting for Robert Capa.

And the photograph ... it was taken at Herculaneum, in Naples.  I spent some hours wandering there one hot summer's day.

Mojave 3, Most Days

Liking the music embedded here tonight.  New music for me.

The Belgian bloke and I have spent the entire day moving our desks and creating a new office space.  Yes he has a swollen tendon in his shoulder, one that no longer moves through the bone without pain but he was careful, and I was helpful ... or tried to be.

I love our new space.  I haven't moved much but he did and the result is quite drastic ... to us.

Photographs to follow in the days ahead, if I work out how to capture it all.

Walker Creek, Fiordland

Welcome to Walker Creek, Fiordland.  My favourite place when I lived in Te Anau.

Technically, the last image isn't the creek, it was actually taken further into the national park, at Mirror Lakes but I added it because it gives you a sense of the same kind of mountains just beyond 'my' creek.

On arriving there, I would make a small seat for myself in the long grass while my dog, Sandie, made herself at home in the creek.  We could spend hours there, dreaming the day away.

When I returned, back in 2012, I was so intent on breathing in both the air and the scene that I didn't take any photographs of this creek.  These images all belong to the Belgian bloke who made a beautiful job of capturing those places I loved to well while I wandered off into dream-mode again.

I yearn for that particular air, the peace of the place and the overwhelming sense of Nature pressing down on me but ... I have also become accustomed to Italy, France and to being here in the centre of the world. 

I am divided in these days, unsure of which place is more for me.  Loving Genova, and loving the memories of home.  Perhaps it's best that I wander a bit longer.

A Beautiful Confusion ...

These days have been about a mix of good friends who have wandered through, coming from the UK and Italy, with New Zealand due at the weekend.  And into this mixture there is also what feels like the end of summer, a yearning for New Zealand, planning for Italy, laundry and dishes and vacuuming, and sometimes ... exploring my photography archives, wishing I had more time to just write too.

A beautiful confusion perhaps.

I feel like a cat, turning and turning and turning again, attempting to settle into my life, clear on a way forward. 

I found myself writing this blog post after searching to see if I had a photograph that captured Walkers Creek, a favourite creek in Fiordland National Park.  That creek my dog used to swim in while I sat on the grassy bank, with a beautiful mountain range directly in front of me. 

I think I wanted an image that confirmed my memories of that place.  It was about 60 kms into the park, back when I lived in Te Anau.  60kms ... like so many of my 'runaway' places.  Anakiwa when I lived on the airforce base back in Marlborough, the Arrow River when I was in Cromwell, and Pilots Beach when I lived out on the Otago Peninsula.

But there was another favourite place and I did photograph it last time I was home.  I was up  recording a New Zealand dawn chorus to bring back to Europe, staying at Hunter and Claire's place.  I was wrapped up in warm clothes, out on the veranda, voice recorder mounted on my camera's tripod when I suddenly saw all that was directly in front of me.

I love this view ... Manapouri, New Zealand.

Or have made your home in a country not your own ... Anne Michaels

I think, one of the things that become most obvious when you leave the country where you are known and understood, is that those invisible unspoken things protecting you ... the habits, the customs, the family and known behaviours will disappear.  Out here, it's just you.

One of my favourite poets, Anne Michaels, writes in her poem Blue Vigour:

I think, if you have lived through a war,

or have made your home in a country

not your own, or if you've learned

to love one man,

then your life is a story.

Yes.  A story because all that you have known and understood is somehow broken. Smashed even.  Each country is different.  The way I lived in Turkey is different to the way I live in Belgium.

Those 3 months in Berlin ... so different to all my 2 and 3 week stays in Genova, Italy.

And I feel like a blind woman sometimes, reading braille. The braille of being human ...

So this behaviour, I wonder, where did it come from? 

What formed these people, their culture? 

Why is this acceptable here and not there?

I'm always curious.  And not learning the language of each place I arrive in helps somehow.  I do try learning but I am beyond terrible.  I think I have some kind of learning disability however these weren't invented until after I was educated and so ... I am simply judged lazy.

But not learning the language ... sometimes I'm not sure it's some kind of gift.  It means I have had to become a close observer of body language.  I was a photographer alreadyand so perhaps I always was a close observer of body language.  Even in that country called Home.

There's a massive birthday approaching this year and I have this feeling of being filled in ways that I didn't expect.  Filled with so many stories, of so many people and places, that perhaps it's time for me to re-evaluate who I am and where I am heading. 

Anyway, enough ...let's leave this post with the ultimate in wise men, quoted there on the photograph below.

Wandering With Barbara ...

Barbara took the photo that follows.  This Genovese woman who told me she was quite unable to take good photographs ...

It's rare that I approve photographs of me for publication and, while I don't look like Sandra Bullock (at all) in this image, I don't mind it too much.

Barbara, meanwhile, considers this publication of her image a 'great gift' due to knowing how terrible I am about photographs of myself ... writes the photographer.

Cairo ...

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time ...

C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992.

These frantic busy days ... they just keep coming at me.  I'm hoping to complete so much in the days ahead, allowing me to concentrate on one or two things instead of juggling 20.

So here I am, taking  a little time out, needing some peace of mind, I was searching for something beautiful to note down, then decided to share old photographs from other adventurous days.

Back in 2008 I found myself in Cairo, working with good people, meeting lovely Egytians, having one of those delicious adventures.

I wrote of arriving in Cairo: I felt an incredible overwhelming of the senses as the taxi flew through the (far too) long underground traffic tunnel taking me to downtown Cairo ... the driver completely ignoring the 50km speed limit, then calmly settling down to wait, windows open, when we were caught in the middle of the tunnel’s 3km length with carbon monoxide choking us.

I noticed that Cairo drivers talk to each other via their car horns ... a gentle reminder they are there, that they want to change lanes, and anything else that needs discussing out there on the road.

I hadn’t known what to expect ... perhaps Istanbul but the only similarity to Istanbul was only that it was so different to most of my everyday life.

Later, I read that Cairo has some 17 million people in the metropolitan area and is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan areas in the world ... a busy city.

It was full of people and pollution and when I looked round, from my 6th floor balcony, I could see this layer sand and desert on rooftops.

The first 48 hours was challenging in almost every way.  Challenging but oh so excellent to be out again.

Rob, the Scottish Guy Living in Ireland

A long long time ago, I met a lovely bloke online ... in a chatroom called Travel and we became friends.

He was one of many really good friends I made there.  There was Mary Lou and Marco, Diede and Eltje, Maddalena and so many others.  We're all still friends today but it was Rob, the Scottish guy who used to live in Australia that I wanted to write about here.

He and his wife moved back to this side of the world a few years ago, to Ireland of course, that lovely Scottish couple.  And we were once again on the same side of the world.

We wandered over to stay with them there in Oughterard back in 2011, it my first time driving in years.  Oh how I loved that!

And days unfolded with visits to stations of the cross up in the hills, tree-creatures, and we met highway robbers there too.

It was lovely. 

Today I remembered it all when I found the red rowboat photograph from Oughterard.

Colin Monteath, and the Poppies

Over years I have filled my journals with notes, quotes, and photographs too.  Some of those journals traveled from New Zealand with me, and many many new ones have been filled since I flew.

I love quotes and extracts.  They seem like small pieces of intense wisdom or pure beauty but I keep them all locked up in my journals.  So ... I've decided to go through my extensive, sometimes unexplored, photographic archives and merged some of these collected wisdoms, from others, with my images.

I met with Colin Monteath, author of today's quote, a couple of times during those years before leaving New Zealand.  And even then, I still didn't know quite how to describe him here.  Photographer, mountaineer, adventurer, Antartic expert, writer ... and probably so much more that I don't know about.

Anyway I found one of his books here in Antwerp, wrote to him full of laughter because it cost a lot more than he was selling them new but still, I was working at the time.  How could I resist.

I've never regretted buying that book.  I found the quote, the one on the photograph below, and feel it gives a good sense of the man himself.

As for the poppies.  That was me, crawling around on the edge of the church garden in Mesen, out on Flanders Fields, here in Belgium.  I had some time and really wanted a good poppy shot.

Lately ...

Lately, so much has happened that I seem to have lost my ability to process it all ... and to write the stories.  I so very much want to write the stories.  From Genova, Lake Como, and Norway.

Italy was intense, followed by a stint at home where I played 'catch-up' ... which was intense.  Before flying out to Norway, to give a photography workshop that was all about more intensity and more beauty.  Day after day after day when the electricity of a life lived intensely hummed inside of me.

Home again to an impressive 'to-do' list that has me dreaming of two weeks of doing absolutely nothing.  But I think the problem is mine, no one else's.  I suspect, even if I were set down on a deserted island, a castaway or two would wash up and we'd talk for days and nights until rescued. 

I'm like that.  Intensely curious, intensely interested, in almost everything.  I'm beginning to understand this thing about me.  I don't rest but it's my fault.

Kim and AP came over from England last week and that was so good.  Then I caught up with Marcia, my lovely Irish colour therapist friend, from Brussels.  We had another kind of day filled with a different intensity ...  one that involved everything from walking and singing to her 8 week old baby, to talking of e-courses and all kinds of other things too.

In-between times I photographed two lovely Belgian families, laughing but intense as we worked with the bright light and 5 beautiful children under 8 years of age.  I rode home on the tram, jeans splattered with mud, exhausted but happy.

Then today ... an unplanned visit to the city, because I was almost out of coffee beans, netted an unexpected bonus.  5 fabulous books! 

A  Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron.

Tim Parks, Dreams of Rivers and Seas.  A novel.  I already loved his book, A Season With Verona.

Then, Jon Snow, one of my favourite journalists wrote a book i didn't know about.  Lately I've been finding so many good books by and about war journalists and photographers.   His book, Shooting History, was published in 2004.  Jon had already spent 25 years reporting and is  'one of the most highly regarded newsmen of our time, renowned for his independence of mind and his unerring ability to get to the heart of the matter.'

I particularly love this, 'he presents his uncensored views on the new world order: how the West's constant search for an enemy has helped unhinge the world, and why the media have been less than helpful in drawing attention to key political and global developments'.

And then there was a book I had forgotten I was waiting for.  Daniel Pearl's wife wrote about her husband's life and death in A Mighty Heart.   ' A journalist in her own right, Mariane is, as was her husband, profoundly committed to the idea that a more informed public makes for a better world, and to the idea that risks have to be taken to uncover a story.'

And the final book, before I stepped away from that dangerous 50% off shelf is one by New Zealander, William Brandt.   Titled The Book of the Film of the Story of my Life, I couldn't resist.

It's been a good day here in the flatlands of Belgium.  I'm also working on the very first A New Way of Seeing Newsletter.  And processing the family photography session, and trying to decide which book I should begin reading while knowing that, at this very moment in time, I should step away from the computer and go organise dinner.

On Expecting Better of Myself ...

One of the things I'm struggling to come to terms with at the moment is that if I can't 'lose' myself in my photography, my photography suffers.

I already knew I couldn't interview someone and capture their portrait at the same time.  I knew couldn't tell the story in both ways, simultaneously, but oh how I've fought 'knowing' this.

The Belgian bloke asked me last night, 'Does a painter teach painting and paint at the same time?'

Well of course not but ...

I always expect better of myself.  But always.

I read something yesterday where a woman is complaining about her boss: she doesn't give me enough praise, barely lets me take a day off,  will not give me a pay raise. She goes on and on about how we must invest profits back in the company.

Then she talked of her employee: often doesn’t show up to work, comes and goes and she pleases, treats her job as a hobby.

Artist & CEO of Ann Rea, Inc.  Founder of Artists Who Thrive.

Of course, the woman was self-employed and talking of herself.  It's an interesting article and well worth a read if you're trying to create your own business.

And it's true.  I rarely take time off and yet I fit a million other things in around the work that must be done. 

Justine Musk wrote something I love on this particular subject: 

I have come to believe that perfectionism is a kind of evil, that it’s poisoning my gender and holding us back, as individuals and as a group. I wish more women knew in their core that they have a right to be who they are without trying to please or worrying about what other people think.

Perfectionism is the endless chasing of external validation, and it steers you away from your inner guidance system, your soul-voice. It makes you think that the small things are just as important as the big things, or that everything is a big thing, and this just isn’t true.

You can choose your priorities according to what truly gives you meaning, and you can let the other things slide. You don’t have to do everything.

Men know this. Men go for the touchdown. Women head in that direction, but then start obsessing over the state of the grass – and blaming themselves for every little weed, every little bald patch.

I wish more women knew to trust themselves more – to be themselves on purpose – to allow themselves to express their own power, creativity and greatness instead of trying to keep everything so controlled. Life will not be controlled.

Justine Musk, from The Self-Love Series.

And so you see how it is today.  I'm pulling out everything I know on the subject while trying to put together a life where I concentrate on the things that are important.  I understand that it's quite possibly okay that I'm willing to work all the time but some praise to myself wouldn't go astray.  Prioritising 'distractions' might be a plan too.

Let's see how it unfolds.

One Of Those Days ...

On how one orients himself to the moment, depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.

Henry Miller, reflecting on the art of living, extract from a superb article at Dangerous Minds.

Today is the day where I step back into the 'fray'.  While I get to travel and have some truly marvelous adventures, there's a price to it all.  I live in a house full of people and I'm what might be called the chief cook and bottlewasher.  Mediator, babysitter, housewife, wife, mother, cleaner ... all those roles that so many women fulfil on top of everything else that they do.  So it's nothing extraordinary and yet it is challenging sometimes.

And it's not so much that our partners force us into that space... For me it's simply the fact that I was shaped by those expectations of womanhood from the time I was small and so yes, I clean the house as thoroughly as I can before I go traveling.  I clean it up when I return.  I speak for those who don't speak here and generally organise life when I'm in town.

I was the eldest child and somehow I carry that with me too, that feeling of being responsible.

And so I have returned to process a portrait shoot I did for friends before leaving, an interior shoot too, and I'll be photographing another family during the week.  There is ongoing work with A New Way of Seeing, the advertising and still the web content needs enlarged.  My book-writing course (which has fallen down into a hole that looks more like a crevasse than a crack but I have until December to finish up on that), my book about Genova, and so much more.

I dream about being one of those people who simply lines up one thing at a time, or of being at ease with the beautiful chaos of my life.  I dream of having a personal assistant, someone who does all the work I can hand over, that doesn't need me, leaving me free for the intense stuff only.  I dream of having a cleaner ... oh how I dream of that in this quirky old Belgian house.

So I write, with so much joy, of my adventures woven into a work day but there's the other stuff too.  It's life.  It's normal but I decided to write of the other side of my life ... the things I don't write on because they're less about joy and more about that grittiness that is everyday and real too.

Now ... to make a list and get things lined up and in some kind of order.  That list will be long.

Denise Leith, 'What Remains' ...

I flew today, waking at 4am for a 6am flight from Stavanger to Copenhagen, Denmark.  And I have to confess, I love this feeling of the world making itself real as I travel.  Norway and Denmark were places that confused me back in New Zealand during those long-ago geography classes but today I learned where they were, having bravely taken a window seat, no longer fearing there may be dragons at the edge of my known world.

Copenhagen ... on an island so flat, or so it seemed from the air, that it looked like one big wave might roll over the city and cover it. 

But as I flew, I was reading.  Devouring one of the best fictions I've read.  'Best' because it was well-written ... best because it was written by a war journalist too, and their stories are the non-fiction genre I read most.

Denise Leith has a Ph.D. in International Relations, which she teaches part time at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her special interests are the politics of war, human rights and humanitarian action, peace keeping and peace enforcing, Middle East Politics, the Rwandan genocide, the United Nations and US foreign policy.

Denise has two published non fiction books, The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia (University of Hawaii Press 2002) and Bearing Witness: The Lives of War Correspondents and Photojournalists (Random House 2004) and the novel What Remains (Allen & Unwin 2012). She is also a contributor to the anthology Fear Factor: Terror Incognito (Pan Macmillan and Picador 2010) and 'A Country Too Far (Penguin 2013).

I was reading her book, What Remains, and I read as the plane climbed up out of Stavanger.  I read, glancing just briefly out as we passed over fiords in Norway.  I read as the pilot flew low over the North Sea, landing at the airport in Copenhagen.  And I read as I snacked there, breakfast, and continued to read after boarding that second plane returning me home.

And while I was curious about the view from those plane windows the book held me fast.  I dove into the story of Kate Price and war zones, of Pete McDermott, and a big love. 

I read the closing chapters on the 45-minute bus ride from Brussels Airport to Antwerp, wiping away the threat of tears while reading it right through to the end.  Then, still not quite home, I spun back to the start, just to be sure of what I had read there ...

I fell into bed here in Belgium, slept for 2 hours and was woken so that I would sleep tonight, only to realise I was missing the story that had carried me across a small part of Europe.

Denise Leith also knew the journalist, Marie Colvin, who was killed while reporting in Syria.  She has included an interview she made with Marie.  It appears in her book Bearing Witness but that particular interview is there on her website.

If things are never spoken of, if people accept all without informing themselves, then incredibly horrific things can happen.  I so very much admire those who go out and bear witness for as long as they can.  The price is huge.  I'm recommending Denise's book ... so very highly.

Meanwhile, I'm still playing with my new photo-editing tool.  I was out on the Stavanger fiord yesterday and took the shot below.  It was stunning out there.  Just stunning.

Norway ... Just So Much.

I'm not even sure how to tell my stories from these days spent in Norway.

The days have been intense, the company superb, the food a delight, the weather ... all that I needed it to be.  I've met lovely people and smiled often. 

Today, after a session with some exquisite horses, Ren took me on a boatride out into the fiords here.   No words but here I am, doing the 'selfie' thing while out there on the boat.

In Norway Today ...

I love the amusing things I'm finding here in Stavanger, Norway.  The big red supply ship, with the huge mouth and sharp teeth painted on the bow, parked in the harbour below.  The hairdresser's sign in the photograph at the end of this post.  And the graffiti ...the graffiti here needs a whole  its own post.  It's divine.

And Norwegians speak the most beautiful English.  Ylvis prepared me for the English but oh... it is everywhere in this country I've not known until now.  The interview I'm linking to, switches to English at about 1 minute but these guys were my very first introduction to Norway.

Today though, we were in the most exqusite teahouse I've ever had the privilege of visiting.  Thank you to Selman, for his hospitality and kindess, and his truly good tea.

Rebecca and Karoline were such a pleasure to spend time wandering with, and I'm loving the light and the photography too.

It's like that.

About How It Is To Live About 16,000kms From Home ...

I grew up in a small town called Mosgiel, population something small, a place where people raised their families.  Near a city (Dunedin) but not a city.

I grew up with aunts and uncles living 'away' but close enough to visit sometimes.  I adored my Nana and Grandad (mum's parents) and often begged to go stay with them in their Invercargill house.  3 hours away in those days ... cars got faster, roads improved.  It's not so far in these days. 

My Grandma and Grandad were delightful too but that appreciation of them came later.  When I was small, it was all about Nana.

My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 1998, my Nana (her mother) slipped away before her, with undiagnosed cancer.  Surprising us all. 

These days, so many years later, I still imagine them alive and so I have these conversations with them going on in my head.  Not 'voices'.  I guess I simply talk to the memory of them.  The memories of who they were, the memories of how they would react to things in my life now.

But I 'find' them via my senses too.  There might be a sight Mum would love, or an experience I wish I could share with her, or questions I so want to ask her.  And then I've wondered, in the years since losing her, if Nana ever wanted to travel ... but I never knew to ask.  Who knew I was going to do what I did. 

And, of course, I thought they were forever folk. We never considered that thing called Death while they were alive, there was no, 'this is last time I will see them'.  And then it was complicated by the fact that Mum wasn't even 60 when she died and that she so very much wanted to live.

Fast-forward to Now and I was invited to visit Lake Como.  I went, full of misgivings, knowing the Genova was the place that had captured my soul ... but curious to see what was there at this much-talked-about lake. 

It turns out there was a whole lot of 'home' just waiting for me to discover it.  The lake and the mountains there created a bizarre, and yet beautiful, split in my reality.  It was so very like Queenstown, New Zealand ... and yet, not.  The scent of lake rocks warmed by the sun, cleaned by a massive lake ... so very familiar.  The early morning peace ... 6am lake-lapping, birds calling, and air so clean that it took me back home in the peace of it all.

But another 'experience' was the food.  That first night Helen and I ate on the lakeside balcony of Ristorante Helvetia, in Lezzeno, and oh how we dined.  We ate every course, unusual for us but we were celebrating the end of a first fantastic workshop back in Genova.

For me, the course of the evening was this incredible piece of pork, with cheese and ... other stuff. It took me back to those times, when I was safe in the kitchen of Nana, eating meals that comforted me at some deep soul level, even while she denied she could cook.

I wish I could share my journey with these women who formed me.  I feel that they watch over me since dying, and I hope that they do because I miss them.  My sister will come here one day and we'll travel for sure, toasting those women we loved as we wander.  Those women who made us the creatures we are today.

But anyway, all of that just so I could post this photograph of a dinner that I hope to repeat sometime soon.