What Have I Achieved... ?

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I enjoyed?'

Walter Farley

A wholehearted yes to this quote, found over on Terri Windling's beautiful blog, Myth & Moor.

I have decided that to die rich is stories is another way to measure a life.  I have never 'achieved' in the normal sense of the word but I like the way my life has played out so far.  I've lost everything twice but not in a traumatic way ... it's more that I simply stepped away from 'stuff'.

I read of people desiring, quite desperately it seems, to declutter their lives and I think, 'move countries' and take only the 23kg limit allowed by most carriers out of New Zealand.  It was the same when I moved from Istanbul. What you can't leave behind becomes clear ...

Obstacles ...

I discovered a graffiti park, here in the city, once upon a time ...

Of course developers took it over, 'fixed' it, and these days it's a shadow of its former luscious self.  But here's a photograph I made before it was fixed.

Those Landscapes ...

When I went home, back in 2012, one of the places I had to revisit was the river in the photograph below.

It was the scene of much childhood joy.  It was my river.  I loved the smell of it as it flowed out of the valley and onto the plains.   I loved the scent the stones would throw up from under our wet and wriggly bodies as we baked ourselves on top of them, teeth chattering, after being ordered out of the river to warm ourselves a while.  I loved picnics there ... warm Greggs cordial in big glass beer bottles, and egg sandwiches and cakes Mum had baked.   And I loved the way my hair would smell, full of river water, on the way home.

Later, when body consciousness forced me out of the river and those idyllic childhood days, I returned with my dog.  She seemed to share my passion for the river.  I would skim stones for her from the shore.

Fast-forward decades and everyone warned me, when I went home ... things will have changed.  You will have idealised it.  So I was cautious with my expectations, knowing that the landscapes I had loved might seem different, now I was older, more traveled.

But no ... those old landscapes, they rose up in front of me and kissed me full on the mouth.  A bear hug, or more, and this deep feeling of joy over simple things like bird song and the scent of bush in the rain at Tautuku. 

Nothing had changed.   All of the big passionate love I had felt was still there.   Those 'scapes allowed me to slip back in and love them like always.  No recriminations about leaving. 

Well, maybe .... just a few sly questions like, have you found anywhere better?  Name one place where the air smells like this ...  

Did you miss us?

There Are People I Miss In My Everyday Life ...

I rolled up my sleeves and waded into my photo-archives, wanting to begin the selection process I need to do for my exhibition opening at the end of October.

I popped back to the surface of life when reminded of an 11am appointment, at 11.15am.  I'd forgotten in spite of having my appointments book open in front of me.  An appointment with a friend but still, I forgot.

Photographs were taken, the last in a series.  She made me a coffee, we shared our stories since last meeting, then I returned to my desk ... after lunch and a little more laundry.

Then came a conversation about 9/11, a link shared that pulled me into the world of the 2,200+ engineers and architects who want the event properly examined.  Using real science.  And I read the discussion that followed amongst friends and bommpft, I fell off the edge of my creative world ... again.

I have 8,000 photographs in the archives of my 2010 visit back home to New Zealand.  I have photographic archives that I have never fully reviewed ... folders where I have skimmed off the best and most obvious at the time, meaning to get back to the rest but life has raced on, like a galloping horse sometimes.

Slightly destroyed, I wandered across to my bed.  Note: having an office in a large bedroom means that the space isn't big enough to stop the bed-walk from occurring when sadness kicks in.  I flopped there for a few minutes before the Belgian bloke phoned from his first day back after his long summer holiday.

Guilt.  Caught being so lazy. 

So here I am, back at the computer, exploring all these archived images of mine.  I love what I'm finding, in terms of memories of home and people I adore but I'm  fighting the sensation of overwhelm as hundreds upon hundreds of moments I never want to forget appear here in front of me.

Meet Fiona, my friend Fiona.  She has been described in this way since I first left the place where we grew up.  My friend Fiona ... my very best friend since I was 13 and still, so many years on, much-adored ... much-missed because we live about 20,000kms apart.  I wish we lived closer. 

Missing you today, Fiona.

Love,  Di

That Creative Place ...

I used to ride horses when I was a teenager.  Quite often they were slightly insane horses that the owners had tired of.  There was Mickey who used to paw the ground when we crossed streams ... indicating she was about to roll and you could only stay on if you imagined you could stop her.  There was Nutmeg who made a vet turn away in horror when he health-checked her for her owner. 

I was that horse-mad kid for a while.  The vet had spotted multiple 'issues' with that big, slightly crazy, ungainly chestnut called Nutmeg.  And then there was her paddock-mate, Cinnamon, the ex-racehorse who occasionally raced off with whoever was riding him.  He was a geriatric.

I survived. 

But there were days, few and far between but enough to keep me going, of sublime happiness.  When, just occasionally, everything would come together. The sky would be blue, the air warm, and the horse would be having a best-behaviour kind of day.  Those days were the days where being out with the horse was like floating along on my own private cloud of joy.

Writing is like that for me.  Just sometimes it all comes together.

Photography I can do anywhere.  I enter that state of non-thinking ... that creative space, easily and work almost unconsciously, losing my self in the process.  But writing, that's something else entirely.

Writing, for me, comes from another place.  It's a space more consciously created.  I feed it like I might feed a fire.  Building the flame from a spark up into, if I'm fortunate, a roaring fire.  And I'm finally learning that sustaining that space or that mood, is the trickiest thing.

I'm almost bullet-proof as a photographer and yet I am as fragile as a butterfly when I write.  I had spent two hours building that creative space yesterday.  I have a photography exhibition opening on 31 October and the theme is complex.  I want to get it right.  Dreaming it into being involves writing.  Writing involves building the fire.

I was horrified to realise how fragile I was yesterday.  How fragile the creation of that space is.  At the same time I was glad to finally understand the different creative spaces I inhabit when I move between the two things I love doing best.

I knew I couldn't interview someone and photograph them at the same time but I didn't know why.  I think both disciplines ask for a similar depth but they're different.  With photography I'm simply searching for the soul, or for a small glimpse of the true core of a person.  I want to capture something of who they really are ... to show them their own personal beauty.

When I interview someone it's completely different.  I am listening, intently, consciously.  I can't lose myself in that photographer space where I don't really exist, where it's all about slipping under the surface of the person I'm photographing. I have to be present with an interview.  Later, when I'm writing it up ... perhaps then there's that slippage into the soul.  Or, more nicely put, into the shoes of that person.

I was a writer first.  I thought that was what I would be in my spare time, after I found a sensible job that paid ... but I never ever learned to protect the space.  Photography allows me to move in and out of the creative space with ease.  Well ... coming home after a photography shoot is sometimes slightly fraught, as I am empty and exhausted by all I've given but ... I can flick in and out of photography without building a fire slowly.

I love that I will be 50 soon.  I love that I'm finally getting curious about who I am and what I do.  And I love that I have the opportunity to put together this photography exhibition and explore complicated things while knowing I need to keep the line through it simple and clear.  I love that I have to find the poem within the story... the few images that capture multiple layers.

But most of all, I love that yesterday, I finally understood that I need to create and protect the space where I write.  That I begin with a spark and build a fire. 

Mmmhmmm, only took me 49 years to learn this simple thing ...

Listening to Van Morrison's Into the Mystic today.  Working now ...

Freedom and Passion ... two remarkable females

Life is so short. The world is rich. There are so many adventures possible. Why do we not gather our strength together and live. It all comes to much the same thing. In youth, most of us are, for various reasons, slaves. And then, when we are able to throw off our chains, we prefer to keep them. Freedom is dangerous, is frightening.

Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand modernist writer.

I loved this story of 6-year-old Australian surfer, Quincy Symonds.  Her story is simply inspiring.  I found her via this useful website I follow on Facebook ... A Mighty Girl.

A small surfer makes big waves from ABC Open on Vimeo.