New Directions ...

And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.

Rainer Maria Wilke

It's like that ... this year.  It's full of the promise of things that have never been.  Exciting things.  And if I can just work through this winter thing, this frustration with ice and snow, the isolation of working alone and without colleagues or friends After 5 fabulous weeks back amongst my people, then all would be grand.

It's been a rough week, one where I picked up more responsibility than I like, cleaned the house more often than usual, and struggled to juggle all of the balls/projects I seem to have up in the air.

And I've been on a mission, trying to work out what is possible, which projects are feasible when it come  to time and what might lead to employment ... the usual angst but with a clearer head.

I'm developing an exquisite project with a much-adored and respected friend ... to be unveiled as soon as it's ready to fly.  And I'm interviewing the people in my neighbourhood here.  The Flemish people I enjoy doing business with ... enjoy knowing, and I'm loving their stories. I need to pick up and start running Camera Journeys again ... but need to wait for the new direction to be confirmed, with dates and a place to book.  There's a newsletter to get out soon ... there's stuff to be done and no more time can be spent on my knees, feeling sorry for myself.

It's been like that ... I needed to give myself a bit of a talking to.  And it helped that I was reading Diana Baur's superb book titled 'Your Truth'.  It's been the perfect companion through these challenging days.  At only $5.99us, it's the best kind of read.

And the quote at the beginning ... I found that over on Cynthia Haynes website ... via the truly lovely Leonie Wise.

So, there's a vegetarian lasagne to bake now, and some bread too.  I was going to make a pavlova for dessert but I think that might be raising the bar higher than I want to commit to longterm.  I don't love housework.  I'm more like Erica Jong in her poem Woman Enough. 

I'll leave you with a favourite subject ... an image that I think best sums up the promise of things to come.  Tot straks.

Artists ...

Artists are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime....
Every day, artists face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again.
Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every role, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg.
Why? Because artists are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that line, that laugh, that gesture, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Artists are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another's heart.
In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.
David Ackert


Travel Ephiphany, Frances Mayes

One of those flash ephiphanies of travel, the realisation that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them.  The vitality of many lives you know nothing about.  The breeze lifting a blue curtain in a doorway billows just the same whether you are lucky enough to observe it or not. 

Travel gives such jolts.

Frances Mayes, from A Year in the World.

The Bird, Zeeland

You can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree.
Then a taller tree. Then the sky.
That’s how you’ll end up … If you let yourself love a wild thing.
You’ll end up looking at the sky.
Truman Capote.

We were over in Holland today, in Zeeland, on a couple of their emptier beaches.

I love photographing birds in flight.  And so I did.

Maybe it's animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.

Carol Emswhwiller, from Carmen Dog.

Momo took all the balls to his bed under the stairs ... game over.

Quote found over at Terri's marvellous blog.

Terri Windling and Brenda Ueland

"But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”

Brenda Ueland, from If Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

I found this extract this morning, just as I had set up my work station for the day, down here in the big country kitchen, and I thought it was surely something to share. 

I have Terri Windling's blog in my google reader and most days, she has something like this to share with whoever cares to read her.  She is a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.


 

Lewis, Jung, Crowther, Juska and Dylan Thomas

 

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

C.S.Lewis, from Till We Have Faces

Yesterday ended in a frenzy of activity around midnight ... after a long 2 days of processing a few hundred photographs.

A few weeks ago I had fallen while carrying my laptop.  I was lucky and only the cd player was broken but it has taken until now to replace it with an external setup.

Last night was 'the burning' of images - onto cd  and dvds. 

In the end, there are only 600+ images - flying off to various friends in Madrid and Brussels, and sitting here on my desk for Antwerp too.

But yesterday wasn't all about photographs.  I did stop periodically.  I listened to this tv interview with Carl Jung.  And, at some point, I had a craving to search for an old old favourite of mine ... Harry Chapin.

I have Mr Tanner playing as I write this, reminding me of those long-ago days, back in Christchurch, when Trevor first introduced me to Harry.

In days past, I emerged from a beautiful book by Yasmin Crowther - The Saffron Kitchen.  Absolutely recommended.  Also, from the same secondhand bookshop, I have just started A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska.  It makes me smile.    Who can resist a back cover that states, “Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

I'm loving the way it turns the notion of aging on its head.

"Do not go gentle into that good night"

We mustn't.  We must live until we die.  Mustn't we.

Expecting 32 celsius today ... before the thunderstorms come, around 21.00, and if the Buienradar is to be believed, they look impressive.

Now ... back to the to-do list with Harry.

Nora Ephron, and good advice

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady.  I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.
Nora Ephron, Wellesley's Class of 1996 commencement speech.

Life

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin… but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid… at last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Alfred D’Souza

Of course ...!

Still idealistic, aimless and broke, nothing stopped us from becoming adults.

Found over at idiomill blog.

I loved that sentence. 

I thought, 'Yes, despite all that. And despite mad choices, bad choices, the choices made by others ... I still became an adult.'

'Idealistic and broke.'?

Oftentimes.

Delighted by life so far?

Of course! 

take-root, a blog

Just woke up thinking of some of my favorite faraway places, and how I carry them around with me, like home, wherever I go. 

And how when I settle in someday, plant my roots for good (or nearly good) I want that place I make—wherever it might be—to be a testament to all these other quietly loved places that have made, and continually make me awake to the world.

Found on take-root blog

Whoever writes this blog made me say, 'yes!' as I read the above.  I found it over on facebook, thanks to Diana.  I recommend you calling by to check out her blog, A Certain Simplicity.

When I settle down one day, I'll know it's the place because there will be something of every other place I've loved, woven into that home, that location, that country ...

I took this photograph from the lawn of my funny little cottage, located on the edge of Otago Harbour, Dunedin ... in 2001 maybe.  The dates are imprecise now but it was after that divorce, way back then.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. 

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Time ...

"Gradually my perspective on time had changed. In our culture, time can seem like an enemy: it chews us up and spits us out with appalling ease. But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God, and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it.

A friend who was educated by the Benedictines has told me that she owes to them her sanity with regard to time. "You'll never really finish anything in life," she says, "and while that's humbling, and frustrating, it's all right. The Benedictines, more than any other people I know, insist that there is time in each day for prayer, for work, for study, and for play.

" Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness rather than always pushing to "get the job done."

Kathleen Norris,  extract from The Cloister Walk.
The truly lovely Diana, introduced me to the blog of Sofie and I believe I may have found a delicious new blog to add to my google reader.  I particularly enjoyed Sofie's post titled The Liturgy of My Hours ... oh yes.