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.

Dinner outside in Wallonia ...

There are two Americans, both from NYC ... an Australian, a Belgian, and a woman from Rwanda, and me ... that New Zealander.

There is lasagna, red wine, lots of Belgian beers and there's this exquisite sheepdog creature who chases that ball that he drops at the feet of anyone who might care to throw it for an hour and two.

There's an excellent soundtrack playing and the air is warm.  We're out in the countryside, all cooking and talking and mocking some ... as happens sometimes.

Life is kind of beautiful really.

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.

A small space next to a window out in the country...

There is not much better, I believe, than waking up out in the country. 

Wandering down the exquisitely substantial staircase this morning, unpacking my Nespresso machine once in the kitchen (well, yes I did bring it), and the bread, butter and peach jam, I realised I had really done it. I had moved to the country ... just for a few days.

The family surged in and around and out and then were gone ... in their car packed full of people and laughter, heading for France.  I waved them goodbye, with the Wwoofers - a lovely Australian and American couple - and the veryvery sad dog. 

The roof guys arrived ... Eastern Europeans I've been told.  And I wandered back up those stairs to create some desk space for me and my boxloads of research and work.

Here is my space.  I look down on a small forest from my first floor window.  The set-up is not ergonomic in any way, shape or form ... in fact, I suspect it runs more along the lines of one of the top 10 ways to deliberately destroy yourself.  I'll work on it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, 29 celsius is expected today.  The sky is a deep blue, as I sit here at the window.  The garden is full of courgettes, tomatoes and all kinds of other delights waiting for dinner tonight.  The hens are rumoured to be laying well.  I may have packed some of my favourite Spanish red wine ...

Now, to work.

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.

 

 

 

Amai!!! as the Flemish would say.

I have a new screen for my laptop !

It sits here, next to my trusty and much-loved 14 inch laptop screen ... dwarfing it, at 22 inches.

How have I suvived until now???

Gert talked me into the screen. 

Me, the sometimes wandering woman, who doesn't want to load herself down with or even get used to a mouse ... I just make do with my laptop's touchpad thingy.  It drives others crazy when they borrow my laptop.

Sigh.  I'm already in love with this massive screen.   5 minutes after test-driving it.

My photographs ... they look so damn good on the big screen.

Hmmm, I need to think how I can incorporate this into my wandering life.  Milan ground staff already give me trouble when they weigh my equipment hand-luggage.  The same hand-luggage I fly to Italy with is too heavy toleave with.  A 22 inch screen ... and maybe even I wouldn't dare to be outraged about that.

Mutter mutter, I shall have to practice driving on the wrong side of the road, and work on being far more aggressive.  I'll drive to Italy from now on ... shan't I.

Bliss... problems problems but BLISS.

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.

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.