Oakley the Labrador

As Oakely, the exquisite chocolate-brown labrador pup, inches ever-closer to my slipper-clad feet, I find myself moving my chair back from my desk to ensure he is comfortable.  Then I reach down and we have a wee conversation.  I stroke him some, rearrange his chin so it's on his beanbag instead of my foot and then I move the chair back to the desk again.

I've always been a pushover when it comes to a good dog.  I'm the boss but I'm not opposed to contact and conversation while working.  Occasionally he licks the bare part of my foot and it's okay, I'll survive. 

It's been 10 or 11 years since I last had a dog in my house.  After a lifetime of labradors, beginning at age 9.  Wandering the world dogless has been kind of strange.  They are true companions and there's nothing like a dog when it comes to beaches and rivers, and long lonely walks.  To working at whichever desk or table I've had during those days out here in the world.

Somehow, when a dog is involved, it's okay to talk outloud as you write.  Someone is listening.  And as I have written this, my right foot has become all snuggled and warm, as Oakley has sprawled himself over it ... using just one quarter of his beautiful beanbag.

So this is a first shot, taken when Oakley was more interested in being next to me than stepping back to a more appropriate distance for my 70-200mm lens.

Oh, I should truth-tell.  Jessie organised this.  She agred to dog-sit for 24 hours.  Last night she had him up in her room but this morning I have him while she is on the morning school-run.  I'm very happy about this.  She knows it.  Not having a dog has been one of the more difficult things about living in places not my own.

Thank you, Jessie.

 

 

A Little Bit of Happy

We left New Zealand, a 1am Singapore Airlines flight, on this day a year ago today.

The days leading up to leaving were full of the things I love best.  Solitary early morning walks, the beach, good people, and sunshine at Christmas.

The clothes- line pictured is loaded down with swimsuits after a swim in the river at Cooks Beach.  And the little hut at the end reminds me of the much-hated longdrop toilets that occasionally featured in my  childhood memories.  This was was decommissioned and could therefore be  defined as picturesque.

It's a blue-sky 5.2 celsius day in Antwerp as I write this.  It reads colder than it feels.  I have the bedroom window open and we've already been out for a short walk.  Coats and scarves were involved but we still haven't even had many serious frosts.  There was blossom out there.  And there was that one evening of snow that didn't settle a while ago.

Gert was cautioning me, explaining that the Belgian winter kicks in in January and February.  Last winter was simply brutal and long.  December through into June, more or less.

Anyway, from the backyard of a New Zealand crib (South Island) or bach (North Island), holiday home (rest of the world) ... a little bit of simply happy.

The Jandal of Joy ...

When I changed my jandals for something more sturdy the plump and middle- aged dog was seized with a puppyish urge. He pounced on a jandal, ran to the lawn with it, tossed it high, pounced again as it landed and shook it to death like a rat. Then he looked at me with both ears cocked and the jandal pinned and I had to smile at his joy. Don't let anyone tell you that beasts don't feel.

Indeed, as I tied my shoe I asked myself when I was last as happy as the dog was now. And the answer was Wednesday.

Joe Bennett, extract from, Happy as a Dog.

This captures something of what my New Zealand life was like sometimes.  Although I only fished off the wharf and out of a lake.  No fly-fishing.  But it was possible to live so much closer to Nature than it is here in Antwerp.  And lately I've found myself attempting to weigh up what means more to me ... the proximity of Genova, Paris, and the rest of Europe, or quiet moments spent wandering on an empty beach with my dog.

I loved the morning hours back then ... dog-walking, or dreaming over breakfast coffee taken on the steps of some house I was living in.  I lived in so many houses between 1985 and 2004.  And all over the South Island of Home.  Each place I lived would be added to my list of places colonised by my soul.  Mosgiel, Dunedin, Cromwell, Blenheim and Te Anau, before circling back to Dunedin.

I had one dog for most of the years of my first marriage.  She and I had so many places we loved.  She knew the joy of jandals although we were happiest with stones or sticks, a tennis ball, a lake, river or beach.  We needed so little to be joy-filled.

Joe Bennett's article set my soul singing a song of longing this morning.  I'm just in from zero celsius and horrific pollution.  Miss 9 and I headed out into it at 7.30am, mostly laughing our way across the city.  We're both very amusing ... we tell ourselves.  We shared Gert's big old woollen gloves.  She wore his left glove, I wore the right glove, we held hands with the hands left bare and were warm enough out there in the mist and the frost. 

She's wearing the cutest little bear hat these days, with long sides that hang down as pockets for her hands but more effectively, those long  bits can be worn as a scarf.  I hand it to her some mornings saying, what did the fox say?'  It's our signal to begin ... she says, 'It's a bear!!!'  but we can't help singing that bloody song.  'Bloody' as explained in this interview with the guys who created it (the language switches to English quite quickly, if you haven't viewed it already).

And here I am, still smiling over the long answerphone message I left for my baby brother over in Perth.  It's Kim's birthday today.  He's surprisingly old, not the 17 year old I still imagine him to be.  There was that surprise of time moving on when I picked up our Nana's ancient birthday book, looking for the year he was born.

I'm nursing a pollution-inspired ache in my head, putting off beginning the work I know I must do.  My Genovese friends are in Brussels today and I'm cooking them dinner tonight.  The skies have been clear since they landed, this morning's mist is already gone ... 10am.  They'll never believe me next time I'm in Genova, when I tell them I'm fleeing the grey grey skies of Antwerp.  They just haven't experienced those skies, and I'm torn between glad and compromised.  They leave on Monday.

But anyway, today's quest ... I would like a small jandal of joy moment like Joe's, like his dog too.  I looked through my this time last year photographs from New Zealand and found this one.  It was taken on a beautiful sun-rising morning while out wandering Cook's Beach in the Coromandel.

Rain, by Hone Tuwhare

I love rain.  The heavy stuff ...the kind that used pound down on the iron roof back when I lived in Te Anau.  That small town located in Fiordland, a region of mountains, massive lakes ... a national park that is 1,260,740 hectares in size.

Heavy rain on a gloomy Sunday can actually rescue a Sunday.  It's when the day crosses over from 'lifeless and dull' into cosy and delicious', somehow. 

Real rain is joy-filled.  Drizzle is drab.  The stillness of a grey day, energy-sapping.

I took rain forgranted in New Zealand.  It simply was.  I realised I missed it in Istanbul.  My apartment was 5th floor and the closest I got to hearing the glorious sound of heavy rain on the roof was when the rain angled in and hit the big useless metal air-conditioning unit attached outside my apartment.

Belgium doesn't really do torrential ... although these last two years there have been downpours that have caused cellars to flood, due mainly to the problem of a massively concreted landscape that lacks drainage capabilities.  Te Anau was built on glacial moraine.  Rainfall is massive, drainage is fast.

Genova does rain that makes my heart sing although there have been some tragedies in recent years.  I think it used to be October for the real downpours but these years seem less certain, less defined.  Change is afoot.

I was caught in a Genovese deluge one night.  Unbelievable rain ... like a huge bucket of water pouring down from the heavens and it was so unexpected, so crazy, that I ended up laughing out loud as one of the umbrella-selling guys from Pakistan offered to sell me an umbrella.  It was beyond umbrellas.

What was it about that experience that made joy well up like a bubble.  I have no idea but we were laughing like fools in the impossible rain. 

Anyway, favourite poem ever ... just about.

I can hear you making
small holes in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind:

the steady drum-roll
sound you make
when the wind drops

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

But if I should not
hear
smell or feel or see you


You would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

The image that follows ... I took it on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand last year.  I'm looking down on Tautuku Bay, scene of more than a few school camps.  The rain there was flavoured by the sea and the beech forests.  Sweeter rain you couldn't know ... except in Fiordland ... or traveling up the West Coast of the South Island.

Actually, scratch that.  Rain in New Zealand's wilderness areas is usually sweet.  I was rapt to see some of these favourite places in rain when I was showing the Belgian bloke home.  There are places I just don't want to see blue skies and sunshine in ... it's like that.

Friends Around the World.

I just had a rather special experience, one that couldn't have happened without Facebook ... that social forum I'm not always convinced about.

It was my birthday on Tuesday 22 October and while we were still back in the evening of 21 October, 11 hours behind New Zealand, friends there woke up there and began wishing me a happy birthday via Facebook.

It was lovely.

Midnight my time, rolling over into the European 22nd October and up popped birthday wishes from this side of the world.  And in the morning I woke to some more beautiful wishes and emails came rolling in too.  I was feeling pretty special by now.  Bemused by the role Facebook was playing but special anyway.

And it occured to me as American friends woke that these greetings rolling in from various time zones seemed like one of those great big Mexican Waves you sometimes see in stadiums at sporting events.  The Americans arrived in the afternoon of the 22nd, some 6 hours behind Europe.

And on it went.  There were photographs sometimes ... and so many smiles were inspired by these people I love and adore, all over the world.

The photograph below ... there's a story.  I met Jason in Istanbul.  He was my colleague in both private schools we worked at there.  He became honorary family and I adored his beautiful soon-to-be wife, Beste. 

They took me home to her parents and sister ... a family to surely adore.  I loved the times I was invited home to the Asian-side of Istanbul city.  And Beste's parents insisted on meeting Gert before he was allowed to take me away to Belgium, standing in for my absent parents, making sure that Belgian bloke was okay.

But the story didn't end there.  I met Jim, Jason's old history teacher, when he came to Istanbul.  We struck up a friendship that continues to this day.  He's a much-loved facebook friend of mine too.

Then came Cloe.  Cloe was moving to Belgium.  She was an ex-girlfriend of Jason's and had worked with Jim on a political campaign.  Both Jason and Jim wrote to her and I, telling us of one another and yes, we became friends ... as you do.

There are so many stories about how I met those friends I have over on Facebook.  It's not about numbers, it's about staying in touch when you're 16,000+ kms from home, when you're a woman who moves countries, when you simply enjoy talking with people.

But imagine, there were over 100 messages that rolled in over 36 hours and the photograph below is just one of those that made my soul feel like it was full to overflowing with the pleasure that comes from knowing some really excellent people.

And yes, I did ask permission to post.  You can see why I love them.

Awake ...1.29 am in Italy

I did the crime ... an Italian espresso at 5pm in Venice.   And although it was in celebration of finding our way out of the maze that is Venice, it seems I must do the time.  It's 1.29am and I'm still awake.  Wide awake!

Today has been all about leaving Trieste, then impulsively stopping for an hour or two of wandering through Venice, and driving on afterwards, another million miles towards Milan then Lake Como.

An impulsive couple of hours in Venice that became 4 hours when we were lost for a while on our way out of that ancient city. 

And Venice ...!!!  I'm not even sure how to write up the experience.  Not yet.  But tonight, once we found our way to Bellano, Italy, there was this dinner consisting of this divine smokey cheese, provided by our lovely Air B&B hostess, and a bottle of Italian red wine we had been carrying since Budapest.

Julie made herself pasta but it felt too late for me to be eating something so serious and anyway, I was still recovering from The Most Delicious pasta dinner I had ever tasted ... the previous evening, back in Trieste.  Something to do with mushrooms, a cream sauce, and pasta at Al Barattolo.

If you find yourself in Trieste, I can only tell you that you must eat at Al Barattolo because the food is divine. The house red wine is also delicious but that's a whole other story.

That said, tonight's pasta did inspire Julie to write up a blogpost about our roadtrip so far.  But our journey is almost done and tomorrow we're off to the airport.  I'm heading back to Antwerp while she's continuing on her long journey home, with Athens as her next destination.  

I will miss that cousin of mine after almost 2 months of living and traveling together.  We do have the most excellent adventures though.  Always.  Last time we wandered all over England, wondering about speed limits and road rules as we went, occasionally phoning home to seek wise counsel on these serious matters.

We drank wine with mercenaries on that journey.  I actually went through a stage where I met 3 different groups of them socially ... by chance and yes, I found it bizarre.  We also managed to accidentally walked out of a cafe without paying, realised, then found a branch of the same chain in another town over there, confessed, felt the love ... well actually, their surprise that we were so honest.  I think they might have been stunned but anyway, they'd written it off, much to our relief.  And so much more.  It's never sedate when we get together.

Anyway ... tonight finds us in a lovely Air B&B in Bellano in Italy.  It seems to be located on one of the arms of Lake Como, not Como itself though.  Everything we've viewed online tells us it's lovely however ...spending time lost in Venice complicated our arrival here and made us some hours late, in fact, after darkness had fallen.

The light was fading fast when we began driving the 50 minutes alongside Lake Como to Bellano.  Darkness AND there were masses of tunnels, some as much as 5kms long.  And while The Homer Tunnel experience in New Zealand last year, seems to have cured me of my previously intense dislike of tunnels, I wasn't the happiest creature when I realised we had driven an extra 16kms beyond our destination exit road, due to our troublesome GPS losing its satellite connection while in those very same very long tunnels.

But arriving here, meeting Laura - our lovely B&B hostess, settling in, drinking the last bottle of red wine Julie and I will share in a while ... somehow everything took on a rosy restropective glow and voila, we were happy again.

We are fortunate, it doesn't take much to right our sometimes wonky worlds.  Well ... I could have done without the whole 'sleepless in Bellano' thing but you wouldn't have this post and nor would you have this small glimpse of a scene I spotted in Venice.

In These Days ...

I've been wanting to swing by here and write of these crazy-beautiful days filled with old and new friends.  There was a house full of a guests, a party, a pre-opening visit to Antwerp's new Red Star Line Museum, and all kinds of other things too.

It all began on the weekend before last really.  There was a family photo-shoot in the park, with a few of the results in the posts that follow this one.   Dimitris and Donal called over too ... gifting us an exquisite Greek white wine and the very finest Greek λουκούμι or loukoumi.  We have all been enjoying dipping into that box on a daily basis.

Friday was the day it was all happened.  Julie and Sara jetted in from Lisbon in Portugal, while Shannon and Erik rode over from Holland on 'the bike'.  Old friends, family, and new friends ... our house was full and overflowing with laughter, wine and much conversation.

Saturday was all about last minute prep for a small party but after a visit to my favourite Spanish wine shop, we ended up having a vertical tasting of what might my most loved red wine so far - a Valduero Crianza from Ribera Del Duero.  Divine it was and Sara gifted us all a 2004, 2005 and 2009, and photographed the tasting too.

The party was fun.  I was disorganised and it was all about 'last minute' but never mind.  There were more than 15 of us in the end and, as always, conversation and laughter ruled the hours we were all together.

Sunday and Gert and I were out the door, having accepted our pre-opening invitation to wander through the Red Star Line Museum.  I think that anyone coming to Antwerp should take the time to visit this superb museum.  I moved between tears caught in the back of my throat somwhere and a strange anger.  It is a superb museum, one that captures the stories of those Red Star Line European immigrants so beautifully.  The anger was born out of the knowledge that politicians, the world around, spend so much time trying to stop people moving and make 'their citizens' fearful of this very human action.

Freedom of movement ... immigration, whatever, is a necessary part of being human.  People have moved since the beginning of time.  The story of it all unfolds so convincingly there in that impressive museum.

Ludo Van Campenhout is the Belgian politician who fought hard for this museum, working constantly towards it over the years, and he deserves so much praise now that all he imagined, and more, has come to pass.

But then Sara returned to Paris, and Shannon and Erik rode off at the end of the day.  Julie stayed though and we have all kinds of adventures planned for the days and weeks ahead.  It's so good to have family here for a while.  All of us kiwis here in the house are enjoying her presence.

And I fly again soon ... as Julie's traveling companion.  Back to Milan but, for first time ever, I won't be stopping in Genova.  We're heading for Verona, Trieste, Senj, Lake Bled, Budapest and Vienna. 

So yes ... let's see what stories unfold during those days on the road.

Amedeo Baldovino, Artist

I met Amedeo Baldovino a few years ago now ... I wrote of it here.

A few months ago, I received bad news.  He had collapsed in the city and was on life-support.  It didn't look good and I grieved for both the man and the talented artist.

Karla kept me informed.  He came through surgery, he was recovering ... it was so good to hear but this morning, out picking up breakfast, I stopped to say hi to the artists in Via San Lorenzo. 

Angelo gestured to the cafe, I walked in, and it was Amedeo!!!  Back painting, back in his weekend spot, BACK.

I didn't quite jump all over him like a happy puppy but I was so very very pleased to see him. 

That man ... he painted this painting as a gift to me. He painted me into Genova.  You can imagine how much I loved that.

Today I am celebrating Amedeo here on the blog.  Everyone should have some Amedeo hanging in their home.  If you think you would like to see some of his work, let me know, I'll go photograph some of the delights he has hanging and we'll work out the shipping costs. 

Back in Genova, and loving it, as always.

Ciao!

A Most Beautiful Day ...

I don't know if I have the words to capture half of the beauty that happened todayon our Beautiful Truth Retreat.

I am learning that something extraordinary happens whenever women come together in a small group to talk and learn.  Something so powerfully beautiful that it feels a privilege just to be a part of it.

Yesterday some of us met for the first time.  Today, dare I claim it ... we're friends.  It has been an intense day.  It's only 9.42pm as I write this but I could easily sleep now. 

This morning we gathered for breakfast ... a divine breakfast of fresh fruits, Italian coffee, tea, muesli, and pastries. Freshly-squeezed orange juice too.

Then there was a photography workshop with me ... out by the pool.  It was made up of more than a little laughter and many photographs were taken out there in the blue-sky summer's day that was today.

But then a most extraordinary thing ... we jumped in the car and headed off to Carla's restaurant.  We spent the next few hours learning how to make pasta and bruschetta the old-fashioned way ... no machines.  Carla made us all smile as she opened a bottle of some divine Piedmont white wine and we began with a toast. 

Of course, as the hours unfolded, there was more laughter and so many courses of beautiful food that we almost had to be rolled away from the table.

There was bruschetta, a pesto cream sauce for our handmade pasta. There was this turkey, pot-roasted, in sauce made from its juices, some cream, dried mushrooms and other secret ingredients.  Some of us could have attempted that as the soup course.  The gravy was divine.

And we ended with a bowl of plain gelato ... no flavour, not even vanilla just gelato and I had never tasted anything so good.  And understand, I could have stopped with the bruschetta, I definitely could have stopped after the pasta.  But I ate it all, well most of it, like everyone else.

And like everyone else, I left having absolutely fallen for Carla.  She hugged and kissed us all when we left and, I think I speak for everyone, when I write that we left feeling like the sun had been shining on us ... just us, for those hours spent in her company learning those everyday things that meant so very much to us.

Dinner tonight and we gathered in the kitchen, a selection of beautiful Italian meats and vegetables there in front of us, some red wine ... all of talking, and laughing.  I needed this laughter.  Life so serious so often and to gather with these women who simply astound me ... it is good.

Perhaps the photograph that follows captures a little of fun of it all.  Then again, I said quite a lot ... didn't I, writes this bemused woman, hoping she will be forgiven for raving, again.

There is more, there was the visit the ancient home of an artist, his lovely architect wife, and his film-making son.  But I don't dare try to add that on here.  That story is a whole other post.

The photograph below ... Diana and Carla, serving up the pasta we made. 

 

To Market ... Acqui Terme, Piedmont

Acqui Terme has been a revelation to me.  I  had imagined a small Italian village that serviced the farming community. 

I am now so ashamed of my extreme ignorance.  I should have searched Diana's name with 'Acqui Terme'.  She wrote a lovely piece over on Slow Travel Italy, with the title: So, Ok, But, Well, Why Acqui Terme?

I need to go back and photograph it all but imagine, I dipped my hand into this fountain ... La Bollente, a fountain built in 1879 by Giovanni Ceruti that is arguably Acqui Terme's most famous landmark. At all hours of the day and late into the night men, women and children can be seen visiting La Bollente (literally "the boiling source"), filling jugs and buckets with the curative waters that rise to the earth's surface here at 75 degrees celsius.

Today it is a thriving town surrounded by vineyards that produce some of the most remarkable wines I've ever tasted.  But more on the wines another time, although this wine was indescribably delicious.

We were there for the market and I managed to replace that hat I lost in Genova too. 

Diana bought a chicken from a man who grows the tastiest chickens (I imagine I might be getting boring with all this 'exquisite' and 'best ever' stuff, I know.  It will pass.  Forgive me.)  And she selected some cheeses and some gloriously sweet juicy tomatoes. 

Diana roasted the chicken until it was golden on the outside, some potatoes, and whipped up a tomato salad too.  Micha opened another delicious Piedmont red wine and voila ... dinner was truly divine.

To Step Out of the World ...

To step out of the world, to stop for a little bit ...  I discover that I am tired.

I discover so many ideas clamouring to be explored. 

I see a need to change how I live.

Here in my exquisite room, going over workshop notes, I need to lie on my bed periodically ... to rest, just for a couple of days.  And there's time, we don't begin until Sunday.

My mind was still racing and so I began with one of those meditative visualisations ...imagine you are lying on a beach in a beautiful place, then smiled, as I understood my reality.  I am here in a beautiful place, lying on a comfortable bed in a exquisitely decorated bedroom, in Italy.

Viktoria Mullova is playing Bach on my laptop, quietly, without destroying the peace of the Piedmont countryside. 

Sitting outside earlier, just before Diana and I set out to the market in Acqui Terme, I looked up ... of course there are grapes growing overhead here.

One Of Those Quietly Joy-filled Days ... in Italy

 You know when you step into so much beauty that you almost cry ... ?

It was like that today, as I arrived at my new 'location' for these next few days.

Diana and I are preparing our  Beautiful Truth Retreat for a small  group of women who are flying in from all over the world.

And while we made plans together over months, the reality of where I am to spend the next few days is truly overwhelming today.

I remember my first visit to Diana and Micha's place.  During the tour I noticed a small table next to a green-shuttered window, with a view out over a lush Italian hillside, and I imagined how it would be to inhabit that space for a while ...

Today I am writing this from that exquisite location.  And it is as good as I imagined. 

There is work to be done in the days leading up to Sunday but for today, I am luxuriating in the quiet joy that has filled me to overflowing.

A glimpse ... just a really small taste of what I am talking about. 

Only a glimpse because I am running on a few hours of sleep, after a 3am start for the 4am airport bus and my 6.30am flight to Mlian.  Despite that, it has been a day filled with quiet joy.

I woke while my plane was crossing the Italian Alps.  Laid out below me and not too far away, it seemed, was ridge after shadowy-sunrise ridge, rising up out of the delicate early morning mist. 

It's been like that today  ...

A Delightful Day Despite That Insomnia

I breakfasted at 4am Saturday morning because I couldn't sleep and by 4am, it seemed like the best thing to be doing.

I had spent the wakeful hours catching up on some of the emails I owe.  I had read, tried to quiet my busy little mind but, in the end, it became about breakfast . 

2 pieces of toast with peach jam, a Voluto Nespresso and voila, I slept ... until 10am.

2.30pm and I was out on my bike, navigating new city streets here, heading out on a photography shoot.  And it was one of those photography sessions where the children were divine, the dog made me smile, and Jayne ... well she poured me a glass of white wine when I was done.

A lovely way to spend a day really. 

I'm rapt with the results and hope all those involved are too.  Here's one ... a simple shot that needs no permissions to post. 

It's 11.21pm as I work away here.  Smiling like a maniac.  So happy about my today.

 

On Days Where Joy Bubbles Up ...

Perhaps it began yesterday ... that bubble of joy that floated up out of me as I laughed with my new hairdresser.  He's about 65 and he's a delight.

I took my long hair to him a couple of months ago.  I went in knowing it was serious, that I hadn't had a professional cut in a very long time, maybe 2 years ... and that the time of the supermarket, do-it-yourself, dyes had to come to an end.

He sighed, he worked for hours, he fixed everything, cutting away so much hair I wondered, over the days that followed, if I wasn't related to Samson ... that my strength hadn't disappeared with my hair.

But a strange thing happened.  It wasn't as short as it initially felt but, even better, I had more hair than I'd ever had.  He had worked some magic that made it all lively and almost wavy.  A miracle really but one that I hadn't thanked him for.

Some colour 'adjustment' is required and so I biked over to book an appointment and voila, before I knew it, joy was simply bubbling out of me as we talked of my hair.

Last night, after a very warm 27 celsius day, I slipped outside with my laptop and sat in the  garden a while.  The swallows were still screaming around like the kamikazes they are but as the sun went down, out came the bats ... on an insect-eating mission.  I didn't know we had bats but we do.  It was beautiful out there in the garden that Gert made.

This morning began with the arrival of a most exquisite and much-longed for book.  Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days - a calendar of human history had arrived.  Thank you very much, Gert!  I opened it and fell in.

It's as beautiful as imagined, more beautiful than I knew a book could be perhaps.

29 January

HUMBLY I SPEAK

Today in 1860 Anton Chekhov was born.

He wrote as if he were saying nothing.

And he said everything.

But there was still more joy out there waiting for me.  I had promised to phone Dave and Jude, another set of old friends from far-away.  We had enjoyed catching up with them when back home at Christmas. visiting just as they were just setting off on their grand return to Africa, with children.

Talking with them is like drinking from an ocean of joy.  Somehow they fill me up.  We talked for 2 hours and more about everything important and good.

The bell rang again and more parcels arrived.  Gifts for Miss 9, all the way from New Zealand, t-shirts for Gert, and voila, a  gift of music all the way from Australia.  I'm listening to that as I write this.  Thank you to Paul.

Tonight I have a 3-hour photoshoot.  I'm working with a friend who has pulled me into an exciting project of hers.  I suspect it will be intense but foresee more joy is entirely possible. 

Money ruins so much and while I need it, getting involved in projects that engage my heart and soul ... they're not to be sneezed at. 

In these days I tell myself that, okay, perhaps I'll die poor but by crikey, I feel so rich in stories ...

I owe email and phone calls.  Please forgive me.  Replies to follow in the weeks ahead. 

And so, the rooms ... B&B Baur, Italy

After I had wandered outside for a while, I stepped inside.  Oh my, I could  spend weeks in some of those rooms ... walking through the early mornings and out into the evenings but writing, just writing, all day.

They're inspirational rooms but see for yourself.   And this, incidentally, is one of the rooms our workshop clients will be staying in ...

Note: I had no tripod this trip and so I made do with a ledge which was limited.  I was sherpa enough without carrying a tripod this trip.

Before Photography ...

Before I committed to photography, I was pursuing a writing career.

I attended writing workshops with New Zealand writers and have this novel I've been carrying since the early 90's.  As I develop, move countries, learn new things, so too does my main character.  By chance.

Currently she's a war photographer who was in Iraq but who somehow ... happens to have relocated to Genova, Italy.  Before that, she was a woman in retreat, living in the mountains of New Zealand, alone with her dog, once again retired from a previously intense life.

There's a book of interviews with New Zealand climbers and mountaineers, almost published, two publishing meetings and an apology but 'they didn't think there was a big reading public for it', despite them liking it a lot.  The Everest tragedy happened later and climbing literature became more mainstream however, by then, I had enrolled at university: age 34.

I was heading for Bill Manhire's writing course in Wellington.  I ended up in Istanbul.

It makes me laugh to write that.  One never knows where life might take them if they allow it to take them ...

Anyway, back in my days of writing I used to drive my first husband crazy.  No, that's not why he divorced me.  I used to edit and correct as I wrote.  I would reach 27,000 words and edit it down to 3,000 words.  I was brutal and a perfectionist too. 

But it was my editing that made him crazy.  As I got closer to the final edit ... on a first chapter (hence I never finished the book), my editing would become minute.  I would give him the manuscript to see what he thought of my edit.  He would say, 'there's no change!'.  Exasperated, I would explain that I had moved two 'the's' and deleted an 'and'.  How could he not see the difference that made.

Children, never edit an unfinished manuscript.  Write it.  Fix it afterwards.  Or you will never finish.

The reason I write all of this is because ... there was another photograph of B&B Baur, like the previous one  but different.  I think the edit isn't so small but perhaps it is tedious to those reading this blog.

This is me and I need to 'see' both of them here, so that I can happen upon them unexpectedly later, and really 'see' them as a stranger.