The Lovin Genova Blog
Sometimes, I write a blog post and it hits a wrong note. If it stays wrong in my mind, I delete it. Sorry about that ...
Nice news today is that the new Lovin Genova Blog, created by the Office for the Development and Promotion of Tourism of the City of Genoa, has one of my posts up. It's titled, From The Outside Looking In.
Davide Chelli has written a beautiful post that takes you inside the Oriental Market, on Via XX Settembre in Genova.
An Ideal Life ...
Lately I've been asked, more than once, what would my ideal life look like ...
I was asked to describe it today. I was quite lost. How many people know how to answer that question? 'If it could really happen, how would your ideal life look?' And so I stumbled and bumbled around, wanting to be nice, to be gentle ... but no, there was no nice gentleness allowed.
What would my ideal life look like?!
And it's interesting, to me, because I've quietly been working through Danielle LaPorte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions ... in lieu of having colleagues and friends wandering in and out of conversations with me. I live an oddly isolated life here in Antwerp. Maybe I even create some of the isolation myself, needing so much space to write and make photographs. To think. To read enough books. And to maintain the family and home we have here.
Danielle almost beats me over the head with her repetitive, direct questions regarding my professional life. Initially she set off a protective response in me ... protective, resistant perhaps.
How much money would you like to be making? Earned a tentative I would love to simply make some money ... became I would love to be financially independent.
Her questions focus you down on your business, your self, and your needs. The last question on her recent worksheet, as follows, was another invitation to dream.
So ... what would you like to do with your life and career? (Money is no object. Dream.)
This morning, a similar question, different requirement. Tell me how your ideal home life would look. Dream. And we're talking 'ideal', if it could be as you wish it to be.
I think I'm getting it. We need to go in the direction of our dreams. In fact, Henry David Thoreau tells us to Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
And as we step out, we increase the quality and satisfaction in our lives and so influence the lives of those people around us too. We're here to live our lives and become the best we can be during that time. To do the 'right thing', to be eaten up by guilt for not doing so, to conform to the outline of today's 'ideal citizen' ... often these things don't respect who we are. It seems a bit like a wing-clipping to me.
So here I am, writing a book, spinning a web of planned future actions that will spark financial independence. I'm having some off-the-wall ideas that just may work. All this simply because people are inviting/demanding that I dream my ideal worlds, both privately and in business, into reality.
I have no idea how it will go but let's see it.
This Time Last Year ...
On this day last year I was posting photographs of Mount Tongariro erupting because I was back home in New Zealand and had recently driven past that North Island volcano. On December 1st I had arrived at my sister's house, down in Dunedin, and was catching up with her and her beautiful family for the first time in 8 years.
Eight years can go by in a flash ... and they did. I was always coming home soon but getting home was a hellishly expensive business. Fortunately I lack a sense of time passing and, while I longed for home and family something fierce sometimes, I got by. I was even more delighted when I discovered everyone still there, where I had left them.
Old friendships had survived, babies and toddlers had grown, and there was enough good New Zealand pinot noir to make sure I survived how old all the babies were now, and laughter too, making every day there so very special.
I was talking to Dad tonight, harassing him in his 9.30am Monday morning from my 9.30pm Sunday night. Since I stopped traveling so much I've made a point of startling him with a phone call far more regularly. He's stopped with his startled, 'Is that you Di??!' and is no longer surprised when he hears my voice from some 16,000kms round the world. I used to disappear for months sometimes. It's that time passing problem ... no sense of it.
So anyway, all this to say ... this time one year ago I was home in New Zealand.
I may have even taken the photograph that follows today, precisely one year ago. Sandra popped us all into her car we wandered off down my beloved Otago Peninsula. This view, on the way home via the high road, is one that I had always loved.
Terry Windling, on Blogging
Here's what blogging is to me: It's a modern form of the old Victorian custom of being "At Home" to visitors on a certain day of the week; it's an Open House during which friends and colleagues know they are welcome to stop by. I'm “At Home” each morning when I put up at post. Here, in the gossamer world of the 'Net, I throw my studio door open to friends and family and strangers alike. And each Comment posted is a calling card left behind by those who have crossed my doorstep.
Terri Windling, extract from, Reflections on Blogging.
I love when this woman writes. She's wise and her blog posts are another of the places I go when I'm searching for those things I lack here in my world.
She has a dog, a forest, some hills. She writes, I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.
I loved today's essay on blogging and can only say yes.
Yesterday I was working with photographs and history of that beautiful fountain in Genova ...
Book Work ...
I first arrived in Genova back in 2008. I have been returning, as often as is possible, since then. I would live there in a heartbeat.
I have been reading through notes made and books I've bought. The port of Genova, active since 5 BC. I found the note that recorded the fact that I almost cried, in front of strangers, that first time I saw the Ligurian Sea from the path at Nervi. I had written in my journal that Genova seemed more and more, to me, like a place where New Zealand and Istanbul met and become something more beautiful than either ... back on 21 October, 2008
I saw this scene this year I think, and couldn't resist it
