A life sometimes lived via the senses ...

I love people.  Each person I meet seems like an interesting, richly-textured book and I do adore reading. 

I love the parties we give at our house, enjoy bringing all the people we know together in one place but one of my ongoing works of fiction is about a woman who lives alone in the mountains with her dog. In the second storyline, she lives alone in Italy ... with her dog.

When I wandered out into the world, I was surprised to have people describe me as 'empathetic and sympathetic' ... immediately upon meeting me.  I didn't recall that happening back in New Zealand.  Obviously not everyone out here feels this way but it happens often enough to startle me.

Recently my psychological boundaries were described as porous which fascinated me because yes ...  The definition was a relief, in a way, because it could be said I don't come from a culture that is famous for its sensitivity.  It was mock or be mocked while I was growing up.  You had to learn to be fast to avoid the witty verbal slapping that is the affectionate norm.

I learned to laugh off my sensitivity, excusing it as a writer's imagination however when it comes to photography, I am finally learning to be grateful.  Those same senses I wish I could dull down a little in my everyday life come into their own during a photography session.

Photography, for me, is all about being completely and utterly engaged and present.  You need to be able to sense your client's needs.  If you're on a documentary photo-shoot it's more about disappearing completely while working but in portraiture, it is all about the attempt to capture the relationship between the photographer and the subject.  It's about trust and respect.  And there is that magical moment when you just know that they're with you.

I photographed these guys as part of the 24 hour family photo-shoot I recently completed and I think this was 'that moment' ... the moment when they relaxed into the shoot.  When they saw my respect and decided to trust me as their photographer.

This morning, I emerged from a nightmare at 5am and I fell straight into one of my anxiety attacks.  I've been under a lot of a pressure these last few days.  So many stories that don't get told here but that weave their way into my life and bite me anyway. 

To come back from one feels like making my way back down from Mt Everest without oxygen ... everytime.  I know the way down but, quietly, I'm never sure I will find my way because lordy ... I'm having an anxiety attack.

I love this sensitivity.  I don't ever want to lose it because my work needs it but I'm learning to recognise and manage these funny little traits of mine.  Let's see how it goes. 

It's 10.46am and I'm back from the mountain ... ready for the day now.

A post about why I shouldn't impulsively cook for vegetarians ...

Tonight, laughing some, my Rwandan friend and I decided to try and cook dinner for the vegetarians sharing this big old house with us ...

You need to know that she had been studying and I had been working all day long ... that we're not vegetarians, that we have a ton of zucchinis and eggs that need eaten and well ... yes, these are disclaimers.

So I found a recipe that seemed like a rather delightful zucchini patty, using eggs too... as a bonus.  The hens are all laying.  There is this constant egg avalanche going down here. 

We didn't take the excessive watery nature of the zucchini into account and ... the recipe didn't mention it either.  So we grated zucchini, broke eggs, realised we were going have to take a hit because we didn't have baking powder in the house, chopped onions, smushed garlic, added chilli (to their batch) and cumin. 

And I whipped up the little cherry tomato and feta cheese salad thingy that appears, quite oddly, in the middle of the recipe. 

I can't even think of tonight's zucchini fritters without giggling.  The excess of water made it seem like we'd added cheese AND as I cooked them, I had another of those 'recovered memories' of cooking in a previous life ... in a previous marriage ... in another country.  I remembered that I used to squeeze the excess liquid out of the potatoes when making potato fritters, or pre-cook them ... never mind.

The vegetarians, the charming Aussie bloke from Melbourne and the lovely woman from Long Island, soldiered on and took second helpings. 

I quickly wandered off and made a 'ohmygodi'msorryhere'sapavlova' dessert and all is good, here in this Wallonian world, that region where we completely lost touch with anything resembling summer.  Tonight the house smells of woodsmoke and food.  We had to bow to the weather gods and light the fire.

But last night's dinner ... now that is worth posting a photograph.  This is what happens when a vegetarian cooks vegetarian food.  It was stunningly  good.

The Belgian Summer ...

It's not happening this year ...the rain keeps returning, the grey skies reappear again and again.

We've had glimpses of a glorious summer but no, it disappears and is replaced by weather so foul that you forget that you had those warm and promising days.

On the bright side, the garden continues to thrive. The rhubarb, back home, has been prolific.  Here in Wallonia, the zucchinis are going crazy too.  We fight our way through a reasonably abundant supply of fresh tomatoes and beans.  The hens are all laying, so we 4 are dreaming up things to cook with those eggs. 

Peach clafoutis and pavlova are at the top of the list, quiche too.

I  have set up a work station at the dining room table, here in the light-filled kitchen, keeping company/kept company by the lovely Rwandan woman studying for her examinations.  I think we have given up on summer.  She mistook this morning's drizzle for snow. That it didn't seem impossible probably tells you how we feel about summer these days.

Anyway, here's a glimpse of the house where I'm staying ... just a corner for now.  I have to work out how to photograph it, in all its hugeness, and I need to learn the story of it more precisely.  There is a Nobel prize winner involved in its history ...

Tonight ...

I was going to sit downstairs here ... at the big outside table, near the forest, thinking I would attempt to capture the absolute joy that is living out here in the country but ... the table has these two lovely American girls talking of learning Nederlands and Italian, an Australian reading his book and smoking, trying not to annoy us with the smoke, and that dog ... the one that drops his tennis ball at our feet, waiting for us to throw it for him, again and again and again and again and again.

The church bells just rang, 7pm.

The air is warm.

It's good to be out of the city...

The journey is the destination ...

It's taken me years to understand this thing about me ...that for me, the journey truly is the destination.

It goes like this ... it's not that I simply want a cup of coffee and any old coffee will do.  It's that I want a coffee that tastes good, and I love it even more if it comes in a cup I adore.

My parents didn't raise me like this.  I suspect their preference might have been that I was the complete opposite, simply because they didn't intend raising princesses but there you go ... it happens to the best of families.

But journey doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, nor the destination.  My favourite house was a fairly grotty little one-and-a-half bedroom cottage that sat on the edge of Otago Harbour.  Everything about it was run-down and make-do but I loved the wall of old-fashioned wooden floor-to-ceiling-windows that gave me a view out over the lawn and the harbour.

I loved the drive home ... the twisting-turning kilometres between Dunedin city and Broad Bay, the narrow confines of a road that ran along the harbour-edge and tat was framed by a steeply-rising hillside in places. 

I packed my Nespresso coffee-machine for this time in the Wallonian countryside but told myself not to be silly about taking a cup too ...

Yesterday, we wandered over to Lille, France.  A car full of internationals and voila, what did I decide I might do.  I thought I might quietly keep an eye open for a cup for my coffee while I'm out here.

Voila!  I found this and it works.  That first coffee this morning was just so veryvery good in the red cup.

A Boy and his Scooter

A couple of weeks ago, I moved in with a family for 24 hours and proceeded to capture a slice of life of their life documentary photography shoot.

It was such fun.  As a family unit they have this incredible energy and work as a team in a way I've rarely experienced.  I've been curious about families since I was small ... a child ethnographer, for reasons I don't understand. 

Daily life was chaos and celebration, caught up in this energetic bundle of people and intelligence and kindness, and frustrations too.  Just as a family should be ... if that 'should be' was according to Di.

It was a privilege and so much fun.

At one point, it came about that I wasn't allowed to continue with the shoot until I had taken this photograph.  Mr 4 insisted, in so charming-a-way, who could resist.

 

 

The word home comes from a root meaning 'the place where one lies'.  The phrase refers to our physical place of residence and rest, our bed, but it also prompts me to consider where the core of the 'one' that is me - who I am, my soul - lies.

Lisa McKay, from Love at the Speed of Sound.

I found this today, over on Marianne Elliott's blog and, as always when it comes to questions of 'home, I paused to consider my sense of the word.

But then I wandered off outside, before the storm, and photographed the sweetpeas ... a favourite flower of mine, back in the days of my childhood because I have lived in so many homes, in so many places, since those stable days of a life lived in Mosgiel.

Moving to the other side of Belgium ... stories to follow

After 7 years spent living here in the heartland of Belgium ... I'm heading away from 't stad' and out into the 'parking' that is the rest of Belgium, or so some Antwerpenaars have told me.  't stad being 'the stad' abbreviated ... or the city.

I'm off on a 2 week Wallonian adventure, complete with one fierce rooster on whom I've been told not to turn my back. 

Stories will follow.  Meanwhile, meet the rooster.  He's the tallest scariest rooster I've ever seen.

 

 

 

Love After Love, Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Climbing back into a kind of beauty ...

Leaving facebook has taken me out of the news-loop. I know some interesting people over there.  There were the real life friends and the faraway friends, the new friends too but there were also the journalists and professors and peace activists.

I didn't want to sleep in life.  I had done that in New Zealand, where discussions about the situation in the Middle East and the history of oil and colonisation didn't really happen in my worlds.  Even later, at university, I opted to wander between literature and anthropology. Always seeking a kind of beauty as opposed to cold hard facts and sciences.

I'm going wandering next week.  Stepping out of this everyday city life and into another kind of life.  One that will involve living out in the country, eating freshly-laid eggs, and picking vegetables from the garden.

Did I tell you, I've been dabbling with becoming vegetarian.  I'm liking it so far, although still only dabbling.

And out there, in the peace of the countryside, I'm planning on writing like I haven't written since I reached 27,000 words in a novel back when I lived on that airforce base in New Zealand.

I'm thinking of early mornings, with coffee. out on the verandah.  The kind of early mornings where I get to see sunrises outside in a good way again.  And tasty coffee ... I'm packing the Nespresso machine because kidnapping a barista would just be rude, and taking their high quality coffee machine would be theft. 

And everything I have on Genova is going in too.

Meanwhile I've been playing in Photoshop, with one of my favourite Istanbul photographs.  Beginning again ...

Trust and Respect

I have just completed post-processing the 50th wedding anniversary photographs and, yet again, I realise just how much people trust me with themselves ... whether they realise it at the time or not.

I ended up with almost 220 images that told the story of a couple who have been married for 50 years, of their son, extended family, and their friends.

I was pleased with the results but there was one more job that had to be done.  One of the comments most made about my style of documentary photography is that people forget I am there ... that I disappear and, therefore, they are often stunned by the results ... by the ways I captured them or their event.

That final job is going through the results and taking out those images that reveal too much.  An emotion, a conversation, a sadness. 

It's done.  My new tally is 197. 

Now ... to show them.