A Quick Note

My photography exhibition opened Friday night and it was astoundingly excellent.

There were so many good people, all in one place.  I loved it. 

We have 5 houseguests so life is busy however photographs to follow.

x

 

The New Plan ...

The new plan is the one where I seek out joy and beauty.  I seem to have misplaced them.  And I'm hoping the blog will reflect my success at a life well-lived and more considered in the weeks ahead.  Let's see it.

Meanwhile, a beginning ... a late flowering of the Cosmos out in the garden here.

Suspend all the doing ...

2 // take a break from your carefully packaged & organised life; suspend all the doing, sit amongst the shambles of half-read books and empty cups, let blessed rest find you.

Leonie Wise, lifted from her beautiful blog.

Murray left yesterday and I collapsed into a small pile of crumple today.  I can do stuff ... I can but oh how I pay.  Just till the iron medication kicks in. 

I'm so impatient for it to work though.  And so I was always going to love Leonie's wise words, suspend all the doing.

Although, rather than suspend all, I'm doing slowly and carefully, then resting.  Multiple loads of laundry have been done today because ... it's 17 celsius here in Belgium.  Unusual perhaps, or simply an Indian summer.  It's good, as so many of my very best people are arriving on Friday.

Shannon and Erik are zooming over from Holland, Teresa and Kim from the UK, Jayne is coming and her Steve is flying back from Dubai, Ren and her lovely Norwegian are coming too.

Steven and Isabel, Martin and Gaby, Ellen and Anna, Marcia and her man ... I'm happy.

My photography exhibition has its official reception/opening on Friday night.  Saturday night is the night of the birthday party.  But honestly, it's mostly about my pleasure in catching up with these people I love. 

I'm scared I've forgotten to invite some people and they need to contact me because I am haphazard at the moment.  The anemia has surely caused problems with energy levels but also with concentration.  And I thought it was enough to take the medicine and move slowly but it's the 'not doing' that is making me most crazy.  It feels like someone has removed my larger station wagon motor and replaced it with the engine of a very small scooter.

Or that's the way I'm explaining this loss of forward motion. 

Slowly, slowly ... let's see how it goes.

Leonie, thank you for the music too.

On Flanders Fields ...

Murray arrived Tuesday and we've been incredibly busy in the days since then.  Then yesterday, the Belgian bloke joined us and we headed for Flanders Fields.

First stop was in Mesen (Messines, in French) where we caught up with the remarkable Steven Reynaert, a treasured friend and highly respected historian, he was able to give Murray a sense of the history of WW1 in and around the area.

We were photographed with the NZ Soldier before leaving Mesen, as per the first image.  Steven and Murray are there in the third image. 

The middle photograph captures another favourite friend of mine out there in the Westhoek.  Freddy Declerck is a truly special man and we were so fortunate in catching up with him in The Memorial Museum Passchendaele.

We had an early dinner in our favourite restaurant in Ieper - het Klein Stadhuis, as photographed below before rolling out the door and into the light drizzle, heading for the Menin Gate and the Last Post Ceremony.  More to follow on that ...

It was a huge day.   It was a good day.

Old Friends and Birthdays ...

An old friend from far-away flew in on Tuesday.  I knew Murray back in those days when I was an airforce officer's wife living on that base surrounded by wineries located at the top of New Zealand's South Island.

So, since Tuesday, we've had years of stories to catch up on ... his teenage children, my move out of New Zealand too but despite so many years passing, 'all that time ago' still feels like only a few months have passed since our last meeting.

And so we have been talking as I've introduced him to Antwerp and life here.  He's enjoyed Antwerp's incredible printing museum, the MAS ... the Red Star Line Museum too.  The photo above was all about me taking photographs using Murray's phone camera ... some laughter was involved, as I messed up more than a few images, adjusting to this new way of 'seeing'.

He arrived just in time for my birthday ... which was yesterday, and it turned out to be one of those lovely days where I just kind of birthday-ed the day away. Quietly.  Jess made me my mostabsolutelyfavourite cake in the world ... an orange cake, and I whipped up a big old dinner of Persian Chicken. 

I'm around but busy, just for a few days before he wanders on into Europe.  Stories shall surely follow.

Lunch with that View of Mont Blanc ...

 

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the long glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the sunbeams dart through them.

Percy Bysshe Shelly, Poet.

The excitement over breakfast these mornings is no longer about an espresso, toast and peach jam ... no.  These mornings it's all about my effervescent iron drink.  6 days into the 4 months before retesting and I can do the stairs a little more simply and the heart palpitations are almost gone.

I've stopped coffee for the moment and may not begin again until Genova, at the end of November.  Let's see it.

In the meantime, I've been torturing myself ... selecting, deselecting, and reselecting images for the exhibition that opens in 2 weeks.  Nothing is more guaranteed to leave my finding my photography lacking than imagining I can entertain a vast range of people with my images.

The only good news is that, while searching, I've found photographs of time spent in remarkable places ... like this table that offered a rather superb view of Mont Blanc.  At 4,810 m (15,781 ft) it is the highest mountain in the Alps.

For Liz and Fiona ...

There were 3 of us way back then at the beginning.

Tonight I'm over here in this northern hemisphere and two of my best friends are together back in New Zealand.  Sending you guys so much love and wishing I could be there too.

In the Quiet Time ...

I'm resting these days.  Not lolling about in bed but taking it easy, staying at home ... living quietly. 

And it's been interesting for me to see what has risen to the surface.  I have had no heart for real work, instead I've been content to read good books, sort through all those unsorted photo folders, and keep the house clean.

I usually go out on the bike once a day, just to the supermarket, respecting my body's needs ... just for a change.  I've stopped coffee, tea and red wine.  And I'm not eating anything I know my body can't tolerate. 

I'm quiet.

The photograph.  I missed it somehow.  I have a particular fascination with Genova's fountain in Piazza De Ferrari.  The image was yet another slice of the fountain.

A Little of This, a little of that ...

I feel like I've been quiet here but perhaps that's simply a part of my idea that some days are longer than 24 hours.  I have spent the last few weeks quietly nose-diving into the ground with very low iron levels.   Not that I knew it.  Suspected it but wasn't sure. 

And I have to admit that I have never been so glad to have a diagnosis of anemia.  I left New Zealand with terribly low levels, 10 years ago ... imagining, perhaps, that moving countries would magically fix them.  It turns out that this was wrong-thinking and these last few weeks have been so very difficult. 

Ignoring the problem didn't work either.

I'm on my second day of serious iron medication today and, although it's probably some kind of placebo effect, I feel stronger this morning.  My testing ground is the stairs to my office.  They've taken on an

Everest-like aura of late and while I was reading 'Summit Fever' I really got a feel for the high altitude, thin air feeling.  Puffing my way to the top.

And so I am back, tentatively excited about all that is ahead.  There's the photography exhibition at the end of the month but before that, a much-loved old friend is coming to stay next week.  Murray was one of my favourite people back in those days when I was an officer's wife and living on the airforce base in New Zealand.  It will be good to catch up with him.  We have Flanders Fields plans and I hope to introduce him to some of the special people I know there.

Then I'm turning 50 next week but the big party is happening in November although ... I haven't sent out all the invitations yet.  The anemia exhausted me organisationally, and I'm already not superb in that area.  I hope friends forgive me for being so late.

Logistically I've had a lot to do and no energy to do it with.

I'm back in Genova at the end of November, with much planned. And then a lovely friend has offered me her house in another part of Italy early in the new year and so, I need to organise flights and plan that too.

But mostly I've been exhausted and unable to think.  Here's to a return to 'normal', or perhaps something better than normal, if I fill up on iron :-) and Vitamin D (so the blood says).  The doctor also prescribed daily antihistamine for allergies to dust mites and grass.  I think I'll take a rain check on those pills though.  My body, the one that was formerly only familiar with mild painkillers, is taking in enough that is new.  I'll keep the allergy pills for emergencies ...

So that's my news.  I'm sure there's more to follow as the energy returns.  The image that opened this post was taken back home in New Zealand.  I used this path often when I lived in Dunedin.  It led to my favourite beach and I was most often found there following my dog as we made our way to and from Long Beach.

Leonie Wise & Waves

Leonie Wise lives in New Zealand these days, on an incredible heartbreakingly beautiful island called Waiheke Island. 

And she blogs, sharing small pieces of that country I love, allowing us all to drink in images ... text too.

I visited that island, once, long ago.  All indications are that it has improved over the decades since and that it offers lifestyle ... on steroids.  In a natural nature-enhancing way.

And she posted photographs today, and a song too, by Mr Probz called Waves.

So I went and found some waves I had photographed while we were out on a boat exploring Mercury Bay, up in the Coromandel, when I was back at home too.

a country girl again, by Kay McKenzie Cooke

The black-and-white photo goes back

to '67.  Taken around Christmas.  Perhaps a Sunday

drive out from Gore.  A bit of a breeze parts Nana's perm,

her own steady caution holding down hands

that shine below the folded-back cuffs

of her bri-nylon cardigan.


Grandad's road-worker's hands lie relaxed

over the roof of the car, taking ownership

of its dim-blue.  Both of them

caught by me at fourteen, when I press

the slow shutter of my Brownie box camera

with a pronounced click.  Just a moment ago.

Kay McKenzie Cooke, a country girl again.

I love this poem, so much.  It captures familiar scenes, people I almost know ... from my childhood.  And Kay's descriptions seem better than a photograph because I know the way her Grandfather's road-worker hands would have looked on the roof of his car.  I saw my Grandfather make that same gesture, so many times, back when I didn't know I was even looking ... or remembering.

3 sets of Kay McKenzie Cooke's beautiful poetry books have arrived in time for my 'Home & Away' Photography exhibition, soon to be mounted here in the New Zealand Shop, Antwerp. 

Kay has signed and written a small message in 6 of her books, the other 10 came straight from the publisher ... hot off the press and her new poems are just delighting this New Zealand girl so far from home.  

The new collection is titled, Born to a Red-Headed Woman, and the Otago University Press tells the story of it more fluently than I can: Using the extraordinary capacity of music to revive the places and people from our pasts, this poetic memoir springs from over 50 song titles or song lines and spans more than four decades.
Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke’s new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author. A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity to the natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.
Born to a Red-Headed Woman is documentary, vivid, ever grounded in the workaday detail of farming, the changing decades, family, city life and job. Yet at times the language peels right back to the tender nerve of major, formative losses.
If Cooke’s observations of the daily are the simple melodic lines that seem to coast on the surface, beneath that runs a rich bass line of meditation on time, on meaning, how to live a life true to oneself, and to familial love.

I love Kay's poems.  Not the least because they take me home.

An Absence ...

One of the most difficult things for me in these days is the absence of beauty.

I've always been a bit of a monster about my need for a particular kind of 'beauty'.  It's necessary for me to be happy, somehow.  And it's not about skin-tone or weight, it's not about fashion.  For me, it's just all about my environment.  A favourite beach, an old chair on a wooden verandah, a pier, or a view.

My history is littered with places found and colonised by myself ... and back home, in New Zealand, there were dogs too.

Belgium has challenged me.  In NZ I was known for not liking brick houses.  Not at all despite them being a sensible option.  They felt wrong to me.  There's a lot of brick here in Flanders.  Our house is brick however the Belgian bloke did paint the walls so that we live in a space filled with various shades of yellow through into terracotta.

And in all of the places I've lived there's been that place I would run away to.  The place that somehow restored my soul.  I don't know how to describe it.  It's a need not dissimilar to my need for music, perhaps.  I have a 17 song playlist that creates some kind of 'space' for me when I work.

I like what I like and it's looking more and more like I'm particular.

And so here, in this incredibly industrial city, located on the crossroads of Europe I struggle.  But I had found a variation of wandering.  I discovered the blog of Mystic Vixen - created by Elizabeth Duvivier, and she took me wandering with her and her dogs, via her words and her images.

But it's been summer, she bought a house too, she organised some massive international gatherings  ... I've missed her.

I also wandered with Nina Bagley, over on her blog called Ornamental.  But it's been summer and Nina, like Elizabeth, has been busy.  And so there's been no virtual dog wandering out there in Nature via my Plan B escape routes.

So I thought, 'Okay Di, if it's that important to you, why not write what you want to read?  Go find it here in the city.'

But I can't.  And it's so very frustrating.  I've been home here in Antwerp for a few months now.  Here, where there's no dog and where Nature is somehow smothered so that I struggle to walk in that beautiful park where the 'mist' from the massive international highway next door wraps itself around trees and softens vistas.

And I know this seems so very negative and yet it's my truth and so I think it's okay for me to write of it. 

Anyway, I'm sure of my ability to find those places.  I've been doing it for years and have become an expert at finding that space my soul needs.  I'll keep searching because oh how I miss it.

Don't be surprised if you read it here one day, Di got a dog and life is good.

The photograph was taken at Hunter and Claire's place ... down in Manapouri.  In Fiordland, New Zealand.  I went out walking one morning, amongst the trees Hunter has planted over years.  The light, the air, the birdsong.  It was quietly spectacular.

French Homework ...

Miss 10 and I have been studying French, via recordings, her books and my intention ... I never studied languages in New Zealand and so 'intention' is all I have to offer.

First up, there was much laughter as she tried to add Italian endings to words like 'ecole'.  Unashamed she told me, 'but i'd rather go to Italy.  France, not so much.'

My girl I think.

And so we laboured over the half hour of French study, and I may learn French as a result, before we broke open Sandi Thom and I Wish I Was A Punkrocker.  Then we moved on to the song that her mum and I used to sing along to, as we drove along the crazy winding road that was the peninsula road home, back in Dunedin. 

Blue by Eiffel 65.  It made those wicked tight corners, between hillside and harbour, 'interesting'. 

So yes, it's like that over here at the end of a long day here in Belgium.

Now this ... it had Jess and I in hysterics, one day back when we lived in Te Anau and waiting in the car for her Dad, this came on.  We almost died as the story unfolded ...