In Genova, there is always something happening ... something extraordinary.
This time there was the International Music Festival, and there is a Robert Capa exhibition on too. One I wish I'd had time to visit. But it's on until October, 2014.
Then last night, out at Boccadasse, I photographed this ...
That is how I experience Genova. It's a city that is rarely 'ordinary'.
One day we were invited to lunch out at the beautiful B&B Terre Rosse, Portofino. As they write, it's not your average B&B. The setting is astounding.
But more than that, we were able to spend time with the truly lovely Leah.
There was Prossecco and the most delicious food, a view out over Portofino, in Italy. What more could anyone want?
We are on Day 2 of this first A New Way of Seeing photography workshop and all I can say is that feels like both an extraordinary privilege to meet and work with these women but it is a huge amount fun too.
I almost fell over due to laughing so hard last night. Lisa, the Australian, was responsible. Trans-Tasman relations are at all time high. Meanwhile I have a few million photographs to download and so many stories to tell but really lacking the time to do. We're off to Lake Como tomorrow ... stories should follow.
Day One of the weekend workshop ended on a restaurant balcony located at the edge of the Ligurian Sea, out at Boccadasse, eating exquisite food and well, yes ... laughing often.
We are a small united nations, with the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and America involved.
Now ... for Day Two.
This morning, in dire need of an espresso after a superb yesterday, I wandered over to Mentelocale Cafe with my laptop hoping to put together a post while drinking that coffee.
I sat down and set myself up at Mentelocale Cafe then realised I stepped into the maelstrom that is the International Music Festival. The 'background' music playing as I work here is mind-blowingly good. As in, non-stop concerts at the major courtyard of Palazzo Ducale - from 09.30 until 13.30.
Genova retains its superb reputation with me. It's a city where I have learned to accept the unexpected will happen. Later, wandering the ancient city streets, marching bands would appear randomly ... complete with baton-twirling girls, smiles pinned in place, uniforms immaculate.
Let's just say it was surreal but quite 'Genova' for me.
But this post is really about yesterday.Yesterday I passed by a lovely local woman I had photographed and chatted with, by chance, more than two years ago. She had been leaning on a windowsill and I had asked if I might photograph her. She agreed then had come down to chat with me.
Fast-forward to May 2014, last time I was here in the city, and I recognised Paola at a table next to me at a cafe here in the city. I said hi, not sure she would remember me photographing her but she did.
Then yesterday, on the way back to the apartment, I passed her again. She lives in a beautiful fishing village not too far from the city and I live in Belgium. I don't take these random meetings forgranted.
We stopped and chatted for a little bit, as she was wondering if I was still here from May. I ended up telling her of the 'New Way of Seeing' project. I mentioned I was taking my business partner out to the village I had met her in and she invited us to visit her.
After a coincidence (or two), we ended up spending some enjoyable hours talking with her. It was so very good to finally sit down and talk.
But honestly, the coincidences that are happening on this visit are remarkable. We are meeting the people we are meant to meet but that seems to be the way it unfolds here in Genova. Every time I come here, I find another reason to love the city more ... if that's possible.
Then last night, we had another sublime dinner at Stefano Di Bert's remarkable restaurant, at the invitation of singer and bass guitarist, Donatella and Luciano. I met these three via Alessandra, a woman I feel so very privileged to know. I met Alessandra via Barbara, again it feels like a privilege to call her a friend, and I met Barbara via the most adorable Francesca.
It's like that here in the city.
Stefano, once again, presented a huge range of the most divine wines matched to the most exquisite food. It felt like we were eating and drinking some kind of sublime art collection ... perhaps. A marriage of beautiful food and really good wine was almost overwhelming at times.
It was another rather relaxed 'after midnight' walk 'home' through this city I love so well.
Voila .. it has been like that so far. No camera, no photos. I'm sorry. I arrived here so tired that I have been leaving my camera behind. This situation should change tomorrow ...
Meanwhile, the shot that follows ... I was up on my bed working on my computer, mezzanine floor, old Rolli palace, huge windows open, beautiful view of the street down below and realised I really must share. I am so loving this place.
I'm lying here, on my borrowed bed, looking out through the massive open windows in front of me, wondering I might go back to sleep here.
I love this apartment. It's just a divinely small package of cute but the fact that it's located above two bars in the 'happening' centre of the city means that falling asleep is something you need to relearn. The noise kicks off about 10pm and has still been going at 2am, when I've finally fallen asleep.
But the view and location is divine otherwise.
Life is delicious otherwise. I'm slowly slowly catching up with everyone I quietly adore here. Last night we wandered along to a tasting of the loveliest wines at Le Gramole. Wine like I had never tasted before. They don't have a website but the white wines were extraordinary and the reds were good too. The company was lovely and I need to find out more before I write on what we tasted.
We had a lovely university student called Raffaele patiently translating my questions to Italian to the guys in charge of pouring and explaining the wines. Then Barbara arrived at Le Gramole too and there was much laughter.
Back at the apartment, we 3 had a dinner made up of food from the Bio shop and from Le Gramole. Mozarella, with sweet juicy tomatoes, focaccia, and a bottle of the white wine just tasted down at the Le Gramole wine-tasting.
Tonight is about meeting up with Donatella and Luciano and there's a good espresso to find this morning and some people to see. The weather is exquisite, the people lovely. It's so very good to be back.
Below is a glimpse from the wine-tasting. We were the first people there ... it filled up later.
My Dad's been in hospital these last few days and we finally got what seems like good news. Fingers crossed.
Lying on my borrowed bed this morning, here in Genova, I spotted this trompe l'oeil just across the alley from me. Loved it, wandered downstairs and grabbed my camera gear.
It's a beautiful blue sky day out there. We have a lunch planned with Stefano and a wine-tasting out in the city this evening.
It's good to be back.
If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday ...'
Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
The extract was longer but perhaps this is enough to remind us to leave some time for our senses to do their work ... to smell the flowers perhaps. There are more quotes from his book here.
These days find me rushing, like a mad woman, through life. Cleaning, organising, packing, remembering, searching, sometimes finding.
I am so tired I will probably sleep all the way to Italy on Wednesday. Meanwhile the Belgian bloke is having a shoulder scan, this week I hope. He's been in pain for far too long now and physio isn't helping at all. It seems he has either torn a muscle or ... he needs something for inflammation of a joint somewhere in there. We'll be so glad when he can use his arm again, and sleep without waking when he turns.
Jess has broken her finger. Ignoring it didn't speed healing and so she's 'limping around' in terms of what she can do with that ridiculously painful middle finger.
Miss 10 has taken to lolling about and generally enjoying her summer holidays. And Sander is crossing Belgium 5 days per week for work, as usual.
I suspect, if we sat down together and talked of what we noticed yesterday, we might just be a small group of grouchy stressed people who noticed not much at all ... except Miss 10 who may have noticed things.
I talked to my Dad this morning. I wanted to wish him well for his hospital tests on Tuesday but, in good news really, his tests were on Monday and he had come through the actuality of them really well. It was lovely to be talking to him as he had worried me with talk of having to go off his heart medication for the test. He's staying at my sister's tonight. They didn't want him to go home alone.
And so the new website needs fine-tuning. There are emails to write and to reply to. I'm behind on my writing course, yet again ... I'm in and out with the laundry, packing ,and ironing while searching for some really important notes I had made.
But I did finish the family portrait series of shots I took last Sunday. I'm so pleased with the results. They were another really special family full of adorable little folk, as seen below.
Sometimes I get so caught up in issues close to my heart that I lose my own way.
And really, I know that at any given time, in any given century, there are 'bad things going on'. I would be naive to imagine otherwise. And I do understand that I know very little of the facts of those 'things'. I know I need to understand that an absolute 'truth' doesn't really exist. No situation is black & white.
Perhaps the best is to seek a series of narratives from different sources, accepting that truth is in there somewhere ... in different ways for every soul involved.
I had to find a way back from the sadness that set in after spending days reading of things so bad and so sad that they slipped in under my skin ... like tics perhaps, quietly poisoning my peace of mind and stealing my sense of beauty.
I found my way back tonight. I've been lost in other, rather beautiful, worlds for an hour or more, since discovering Jodi's blog - Practising Simplicity.
She 'introduced' me to Katie and Reuben's - House of Humble. And they led me over to Inked in Colour by Sash.
And finally, I felt like wandering across this after-midnight-silent room, to pick up my beautiful shawl, having this sense of finding my way back to myself some. The Russian tailor made the changes I asked him to make to the shawl and it's quickly becoming this beautiful thing that makes me smile whenever I wear it.
Martin Luther King said that, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'
I believe this, so strongly, but I also see that I need balance. When I speak out there's a sense of standing some place alone. I want the world's eyes to turn to this topic that seems so important to me but in pursuing that desire to share, to speak out, hurts me.
I grew up watching The Diary of Anne Frank on television. It was screened, at very least, annually. And we studied her story ... more than once, in school.
For a long time, years really, watching that movie I would to hope that someone would speak up for those people trapped in that holocaust. But no one seemed able to so effectively. The excuse used later was, we didn't know. And so it is that periodically I am compelled to share information that asks people to 'see' and to 'know'. To help bring about change. To stop really bad stuff happening.
But the slope is slippery and the deeper I go the further I am from that place, that creative space, where I prefer to be. I love being a photographer, observing and capturing without interfering too much. I love writing ... telling stories the way I imagine them. And I believe, so strongly, in justice for all even as I understand it's impossible.
Periodically I step into the ring and challenge peoples desire to turn away, not to see, not to know.
And afterwards, after the sharing, I have to find a way back to way I prefer life to be. The women I discovered tonight pulled me back onto those paths that involve flowers and fruit trees, beautifully captured, along with so many stories.
It's good to be back from that other, much sadder, much harder place for a while.
Meet the team. Belgium's Red Duivels - aka the World Cup Football team.
The story of the photographer and this project is over on Fans of Flanders.
The game begins in 15 minutes. People wearing 'the colours' of Belgium have been streaming by, on their way to the nearby park to support the team with like-minded souls. Apparently beer glasses were joyfully thrown in the air last time, Belgium had scored, so no one seems too worried about possible rain.
It's been muggy all day ... we're absolutely 'in theme' for Brazilian weather here.
Let's see how it goes.
Belgium 0 - Argentina 1.
There's no headache this morning! It feels so unbelievably good. I found this area in my neck at 5am ... because it was stiff and sore, so I rubbed and stretched it for a while and voila ... I woke with no pain.
Meanwhile everything continues to happen here. My huge ring-binder folder, the one I use for my book-writing course, is full of assignments and we're only halfway through. It's been beyond excellent having to work out things like defining your book's genre, imagining how it will look - ideally. Hardcover or soft, photographs, text, binding-style, after learning about different options for bindings.
Creating a vision board, a mind map, a set of core values for the book and the process. Listening to published author interviews, learning all that Christine Mason Miller knows from her publishing successes. Writing a synopsis and so much more.
It's intense and although we only work with Christine for 6 weeks, the material remains available to us for 6 months. This course is all about fitting a book in around real life and all the distractions that most people live with ... which is so realistic for a creature like me.
Last night I began trying to select books for the journey next week. I love reading at night in Genova. I'm still not an electronic book reader-type, although the Belgian bloke is working on me. My camera gear makes me a little sad about the extra weight I can't really carry in books but read I must.
I have Kay Cooke's 2 poetry books on my desk, and 2 of Ren Powell's too. I'm thinking they would be a great study while I'm out wandering. Gert found me another Claire Messud book, secondhand, and I picked up Christos Tsiolkas's book, Dead Europe while in France but I think that one might be a little bit darker than I expect. Let's see it.
There's all that but then I adore La Feltrinelli's in Genova. It's one of my favourite bookshops out here in the world. The English selection isn't huge but it's good. Really good. Last time I didn't allow myself to go in. This time, we'll see ...
Anyway, enough of that. I'm behind with my photo-editing. I was lucky enough to wander over to Brussels last weekend, to photograph my lovely colour therapist friend, Marcia's, beautiful family. I need to get on to that now that my head has stopped aching.
They are a truly, madly, deeply exquisite family and I so love photographing them. It took most of the day but it wasn't just about photography, there was also a delicious cooked lunch after the picnic captured below.
Lately, I've had a low level buzzing going on in my head, probably caused by a whole lot of must-do's, and it's just not conducive to any kind of work flow. But you know that already.
I've come here to blog a few times but deleted after just a paragraph or two. There was no fire, no words came.
Tonight, it's 25 celsius as I write this ... almost 10pm, still quite light outside, with swallows whistling up and down the street like crazy out-of-control children. I know summer's coming when the swallows return. I do love them.
Here in Belgium, our team of three have been hard at work on our A New Way of Seeing - Photography Retreats project, fine-tuning and preparing. It just keeps developing in ways that excite and delight us. It's hard work but we're having fun. It's a big old dream coming true.
Next week I'll be back in Genova, and will spend two nights at Lake Como before returning home but more on that once I'm there. Then there's Norway in August and a photography workshop that I'm so looking forward to there.
Which reminds me ... I met the loveliest woman on the train between Genova and Milan last time I was there. Her name was Patrizia, I think, she lives in Denmark. I didn't have any business cards left but she wrote her email address on a scrap of paper and I did the same. We talked for most of those 2 hours on that train and I did so enjoy her company. Unfortunately I lost the scrap of paper somewhere between Milan and home.
Patrizia, if you did manage to hang on to my details and do read my blog, I would love to hear from you.
As for today ... I biked over to the Russian tailor. Dank u wel to Lucy for letting me know about him. My beautiful shawl, purchased in Genova, needed some of its fringe cut. It's a little bit long and perhaps a little bit too red on the ends too.
Dimitrii was lovely. I explained that I had a history of cutting things that shouldn't be cut and needed him to be doing this thing for me. Actually mostly it's been my hair that I've cut (and regretted cutting) but it was enough to make me terrified of ruining the shawl if I shortened the tassels myself.
Actually, I had my hair in the 'about to be cut' position the other night but couldn't find scissors. It's really long at the moment, and rather warm here in Antwerp. To explain, I've had a lifetime of going to hairdressers who talk me into letting them cut my hair short and really, I hate it short. But once I'm in their chair, I'm weakened by promises of end-result glamour. Mostly they lie...
So I pick that beautiful shawl up on Saturday and then, I shall wear it whenever possible. I think it will be just right for evenings out.
My head must be clearing though. I excavated my desk today, its drawers, the cupboard and all storage boxes within reach. It's all rather beautiful again. My typewriter has a permanent place but it's an interesting creature. It has a European keyboard, with the A, M, and other important keys not in the place I prefer them to be. I make mistakes. I have a bottle Pritt Fluid. One needs to really hit the keys. After a typewriter session, the computer keyboard feels plush and luxurious. The delete key is heaven.
I have begun packing the cords, cables, and equipment required for out there on the road. A small pilot's bag is slowly filling with 'other' plugs for the slightly different Italian sockets. The USB modem is there. The card reader, the tripod, the sunhoods for the lenses, and etc. On Wednesday I will become my other self, the one known as Sherpa Di.
The biggest news though ... Miss 9 will wake as Miss 10 in the morning. We are so full of thanksgiving when it comes to that little person. Today she presented me with a great big hand-made book of her paintings and text. 'Voor Di' is there on the cover. It's something I'll treasure. Her art works are stunning. She insisted on reading it to me tonight, translating it as she went. We finished our most recent book series last night and so it was timely.
I think I may have prattled on a little but I wanted to catch up some. I've missed blogging. Actually, I have missed being able to access my mind and write coherently. Here's to the headache being gone on the morrow and to lucid thought returning.
Failing that, then I shall just have to wait for Italia to work its usual magic on me.
The photograph ... found in a beautiful village in France.
You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
Napoleon Bonaparte.
I was wandering through the Château de Fontainebleau and found this room. I've never taken much interest in the things Napolean did however his great big old palace suggests he was an excessive kind of guy.
However I'm reading Eduardo Galeano's book, Mirrors, and this means I am never going to form a good opinion of Napolean. Not via these pages.
Galeano's journey though ... highly recommended.
I love the work of portrait photography ...
My idea is that portrait photography is an attempt to put someone so at ease with who you are that they give you something of who they really are.
I think everybody is capable of being photographed in a way that is beautiful.
It's about letting the real self bubble up to the surface. It can take time but it's more than worth it in the end.
I first noticed him on The Newsroom when the first of this 'Best Scenes' clip flew round the internet.
Fiction ...
Flying home to New Zealand, after 8 years away, I found The Newsroom series on that Singapore Airlines flight BUT I didn't find it until just before landing. I didn't ask them to circle. I caught the series eventually. And being home was good.
Tonight I found out Jeff Daniels sings too.
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.
Kurt Vonnegut, from Kurt Vonnegut - Letters, via brainpickings
An unmoored life ... I think I do a little of that in Genova. And I'm currently yearning for those two days when I woke around 8am, opened the balcony doors, then climbed back into bed and slept till 11am.
They were mornings unprecedented and, now, yearned for in these days of not sleeping. It's been 2am or later two nights in a row, not by choice and with added misery of those early, as usual, starts upon waking.
Today is the day of discussing huge plans. Then tomorrow is sitting back down with the writing course I put away while the Belgian bloke was on holiday.
Time flew, or so it seems.
Today is also the day I stop coffee, bread, pasta, potatoes, wine, and all kinds of other things I know don't agree with me. I shall quite possibly crash into the wall of withdrawal in the days ahead. My body will thank me eventually but first it will sulk, I'm quite sure about that.
I am so healthy in Italy (except for allergy attacks) and it occured to me that I never eat bread when I'm there. I drink the very best coffee but I eat minimally. My body adores me in those times. I come back to Belgium, the land where one has to think quite hard on how to avoid bread, and the wheels of Di begin to fall off.
I'm not dieting, I'm only attempting to be a little more conscious of what makes my stomach ache ... what makes me feel ill. I've been on the run, embarassed, quite mortified, and all of those other things that children of practical folk feel when a wide-range of foods make them feel ill. Ice cream and jelly were much-loved back in my childhood but honestly they made me feel seedy. Greed carried me quite far. I was one of four children and competitiveness may have stalked that table of ours ...
It was the Belgian bloke who enquired about my habit of eating toast after a roast meal. I told him, a roast makes my stomach hurt, like I'm hungry. He suggested working out what caused it, the potatoes or the meat, and it's pretty much been all downhill from there.
Conscious eating I guess. It's bit neurotic for this kiwi girl and yet, I suspect it's what's needed after all these years of using toast and other 'snacks' to deal with the pain caused by everyday meals. There's still a huge sense of embarassment in admitting to known allergies but give me 20 years ... I'll own it all. Or I will have quietly moved to a better way of eating.
And so it was that I loved Kurt Vonnegut's words ... In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. Those unmoored times are the places and spaces where my body takes over and it does what it pleases with my eating and sleeping.
Perhaps everyone needs a lilttle of that unmoored life, just to know ...
The photo? From France.
Doris Lessing.
Today was mostly about a birthday, not mine but an early Miss-9-celebrating-10. Her birthday falls in the school holidays and she has made some precious school friends here in the city.
It was all about water fights and laughter, a toast made with plastic goblets, and gifts that made her swoon.
It was a good day here in the flatlands of Belgium.
Oh, and about this Flemish side of Belgium, the place where I live ... VRT News channels made this. It so captures the Flemish I know. They have their serious face ... and then there is this crazy-beautiful side that I sometimes forget about.
On my facebook page I wrote, 'One of the biggest secrets about Belgium is how amusing and wicked the Flemish folk are. VRT-Nieuws is our news channel of choice and it was hilarious (and yet unsurprising) to see them ALL dancing to Happy here. They wear a serious face oftentimes but scratch the surface and ... well, you get a sense of them here. Loved this.'
I had to smile yesterday, as photographs of me appeared on my own Facebook wall. I had been photographing a lovely family, organising the feet for a matching sneaker shot as I recall, unaware that I was being photographed by this lovely woman I know.
Thank you, Marleen. It's rare that I see myself like this.
It was a huge day in France today ... and while in the area, of course, we wandered off to explore Napolean's place in Fontainebleau.
Favourite moment was escaping the 3 tour groups (with guides) who dogged our footsteps and finding ourselves alone when we reached this magical corridor.
I am quite the brat when it comes to preferring to visit popular places alone. We achieved that illusion today.
See.
Belgium, 2-1 against Algeria.
Second goal at 80 minutes.
