Inspired by friends posting Spring days in Cortona and Prague. And by another friend who Facebooked a Heron ... I took my bike and my camera off to the park.
We wandered a while and discovered Spring.
When You Need To Go Home, Or Start Something Big ...
You know when you need to go home ... or perhaps you need a huge project.
It's like that in these days.
So I'm thinking, a lot.
View From My Train As It Left Antwerp
There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.
― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams.
Katherine Mansfield - a symposium on Flanders Fields.
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
Katherine Mansfield ... one of my favourite New Zealand writers, the only writer Virginia Woolf ever envied, a woman who truly went out there and lived life.
Stylistically, the influence of Katherine’s writing was profound. Virginia wrote: “You seem to me to go so straightly and directly – all clear as glass – refined, spiritual…” After Katherine’s death she confided to her diary it was: “the only writing I have ever been jealous of.”
She was a remarkable woman left out of all of my school curriculums - a fact that stuns me now that I realise just how remarkable she was, both as a writer and as a woman.
Anyway, September 26-27, 2015 ...
On Flanders Fields ...
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.
Marc Chagall.
Yesterday was one of those slightly epic days ...
Sander and I headed off to Flanders Fields on an assignment that involved using a panoramic tripod head to capture a series of precise images. I had prepared a folder of lists, directions, and maps however ... we couldn't control the weather.
And so it was that we lost an entire morning of work to raindrops on the lens when taking a particular series of shots. The umbrella didn't help as the rain varied between wind-blown sideways and simply drifting. It was never of the straight-down variety ... a fact I wouldn't have noticed unless trying, so desperately, to keep the lens dry.
Bone-achingly cold, we stopped for lunch. I found myself obsessed and watching the puddle out in front of the fries shop ... to see whether rain was disturbing its surface.
The rain stopped and we headed off again. We covered the kilometres required to find those specific shots, again. And the rain held off. Finally, at the last location and voila, Flanders Fields did what it has so often done to me after a day of trudging about in the rain with my camera. The clouds shaped themselves into something extraordinary, the sun broke through in places, and the landscape looked like some kind of beautiful painting ... just for a little bit.
I didn't manage to capture it in all its beauty but you get a small sense of it here, perhaps. Just as the change started to happen.
A Grey Day in Antwerp.
Some of my worst days in Belgium are surely the grey days. Belgium does 'grey' like no other country I have known ... which is saying something when you come from Dunedin, New Zealand.
The complication is that the greyness can't be relieved by a mountain or hills draped in mist. There are none. Nor are there any massive lakes or fast-flowing rivers. Nature always feels constrained here. So many people, such a long history. Then again, the history and culture is surely the bonus.
And so here I am, on a grey Saturday in winter, at my desk ... knowing I don't have the strength to go out. I've been reading Georgia O'Keeffe today ... almost finished now.
But I was distracted from Ms O'Keeffe by Here I am - the story of Tim Heatherington, War Photographer. It slipped in-between O'Keeffe and I. In fact, it turned out that I finished the book about Tim first. I couldn't put Alan Huffman's book down. And then, I couldn't resist returning to the dvd, Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?, by Tim's sometimes-colleague, the truly interesting Sebastian Junger (there's an interview with Sebastian attached to Sebastian's name).
So this is what I am doing with my winter ... although yes, I am preparing for Italy and fly later this week and this time it's something completely different.
I'm heading off to a small village on the side of a hill ... I think. My espresso is an 18 minute walk away and there are two dogs involved. I'm house-sitting for a New Zealand artist who lives there, somewhere between Rome and Naples :-) I love the idea of this. And I am looking forward to meeting her friend and neighbour Jack, and Cees too.
Once there, I have two tasks and I am trying to convince myself that 2 is hardly anything at all but okay, perhaps they are complicated. I want to finish my book about/on Genova. I have the photographs, I have interviews, I simply need to collate everything and create something exquistely beautiful.
Yes, I am a perfectionist who frequently terrifies herself into inaction because NOTHING is good enough.
The other project is all about the photography workshops. I know the workshop experience I offer is superb. I know that women have a most excellent time. I know that there's lots of laughter and really good conversations. But packaging it ... did I ever write that I struggle with marketing.
Mmmmhmmm.
And then there's tonight ...dinner with people we haven't yet met. The parents of my daughter's good friend. There is a pavlova involved and Jess is going to whip up a chicken pie. I have some Spanish Cava (champagne) in the fridge. I think it'll be okay.
Ohbutthismorning ... I woke from the depths of an intense dream to the sound of our doorbell. I'm the Antwerp Pavlova-Baker and it makes me laugh because I'm not a grand cook however I do have some set pieces that maybe create the illusion that I can cook. So most Saturday mornings, 8.30am, I'm usually awake for the pick-up of 1 or 2 New Zealand pavlovas. This morning ... not so awake.
In fact, so very asleep.
The good news is I didn't fall down the stairs as i dressed stumbling down them. And I didn't break the pavlova while moving it from the baking tray to the plate and wrapping it ... while barely awake. And ... I think ... I was lucid in the conversation I had as I worked.
Tomorrow ... no plans.
And in Best News ... Miss 10 has moved schools and is so happy that we are left wondering how come we didn't do this sooner. I guess you get used to things ... they seem normal and you know you're the problem. This new school oozes kindness and safety in ways that made us realise we had forgotten how a really good school can seem. Fingers crossed. It's only been 2 days but we are hellishly impressed. And it's good to see her so happy after so many months of something like misery.
They welcomed her with a card the kids had all signed. Another child made her a cookie, and yet another wrote up a timetable for her. The kindness of it all simply melted our hearts.