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.

My Bonfire Heart ... James Blunt

People like us don’t need that much, just some one to light the spark in our bonfire heart.

James Blunt.

I had to go find that precise moment where James Blunt's song lights the spark in my bonfire heart.

It happens at 1.58. 

That scene.  Those mountains.  The roadtrip.  I miss New Zealand (even if this isn't New Zealand, it was close enough to explode my soul.)

There's an interview with James Blunt, confirming that the music video is all that it seems and more.  He explains: Then the most amazing bit of it was pulling up to a car park in the end and not realizing in the bar in the car park a wedding was taking place and the wedding party saw us and spilled out to see what was going on and so to the bride and groom I got out my guitar. I played them songs in the car park, I played them ‘Bonfire Heart’ and spontaneously surrounded by their friends and family the bride and groom had their first dance, in the car park and that is what we filmed that is the ending of my video. That’s what you see on YouTube now. Absolutely incredible, you could not have scripted it and it looked amazing. She was crying her eyes out, the crew were crying their eyes out too (I wasn’t crying because I’m a man, obviously!) so it was a huge honour to be part of and it became their wedding video!

But to start at the start, he explains  ... and it kind of made sense because the song is about no matter who you are no matter where you’re from it’s about the human condition which is we need to connect with people.

The lyrics are simple "people like us don’t need that much, just some one to light the spark in our bonfire heart.” And the video just really tied in with that, the video was really fun to make. I love motorbikes and so I went to Wyoming and Idaho and we went travelling across hundreds of miles across these two states. You don’t have to wear a helmet there, which was cool for that and with an amazing back drop to that part of the world and me on my bike it was ‘Top Gun’ meets ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and we used real people not actors because we wanted the song to be as honest and genuine as we could and we wanted a video to match that.

About people, of course, but sometimes, surely, the 'spark' can be all about lighting that bonfire of memories and places much loved. Much-missed.

Life, Divorce-Orphan Style.

Sometimes I describe the Belgian Bloke and I as divorce orphans ... 

We were both married long before meeting each other.  We divorced, completely unaware of each others existence on opposite sides of the world, and went on to lose almost everything collected over those years we were married to others.

I wandered off to Istanbul, and the Belgian got his own apartment here in the city and started all over again.  Later we met and since then we've been putting together a life that makes me smile sometimes.

I love our furniture but it's mostly from our favourite secondhand shop here in the city.  We rent the house that we live in but we are so rich in friends who come from all over the world.  There's much fun and adventure, mixed in with the more challenging times.

Today a new fridge/freezer arrived and I'm bemused by how happy this makes me.  You see we've been making do with a small fridge and a seperate tiny freezer since our beginning.  They came courtesy of somebody's caravan.  It's been YEARS!  I felt no sadness watching them leave the building this morning.  No sadness at all.

Meanwhile, that appointment I mentioned ... the one where I might get myself into trouble for not being fluent in Nederlands.  It went brilliantly.  I had an appointment with Districthuis.  Over years these appointments have varied in terms of success.  Not all of them ended well. 

I wandered along, signed in via their signing-in machine and my number was called.  I mentioned, Ik sprek Engels ... but that I could understand Nederlands. And I usually rush on explain that I do things to Nederlands that sometimes make it unrecognisable but no worries, she had already switched over to English.

That's the thing about Antwerp.  They're usually fluent in Dutch, French and English ... and other languages too.

Anyway, my new ID card is underway, and this is a good thing.  She was lovely.

Above, a glimpse inside the house the divorce orphans are creating  :-)  An 80euro oak table and 46 euro (total) for that beautiful set of chairs.  That secondhand shop is surely one of my favourite things about living in Europe ...

'The more personal you are willing to be' ...

found in Gent..jpg

The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are… And when I say universal, I don’t mean universal only within our culture… There’s a lot of balderdash thrown around — “You don’t understand people who live in Sri Lanka and their response to the tsunami because you just don’t know that culture.”

Well, there’s an element of that — but, to me, cultural differences are a kind of patina over the deepest psychosexual feelings that we have, that all human beings share.

Sherwin Nuland, extract from yet another brilliant Brain Pickings post.

One of the constant battles I have with this blog of mine is just how much raw and gritty truth I write here.  And in struggling with 'how much', I suspect I lose quite a lot. 

I do know that friends in real life enjoy catching up on the details I usually leave off my blog.  I have a complicated family life ... like so many these days.  I have much to write about on the subject of being a step-mother, perhaps.  And even more about being a foreigner in this day and age.  Or on traveling without languages (usually).  And on just making it home ...   And even more on why I haven't dedicated my days to learning the language in this country I'm currently a citizen of.

I have this theory ... but that's for another day.

I love red wine.   I mostly drink sparkling water though, with 2 espressos per day, and lately, a hot chocolate sometimes.  Most other drinks don't agree with me because they're full of sugar, or sugar substitutes, or have too much caffeine or tanin or goodness knows what.  I used to be able to drink and eat ANYTHING!  Now I have food allergies and grass allergies, and they just added dust mites to that list but I've only just begun to check the facts of it all. 

I prefer not to take anti-histamines.  

I'm not good at learning languages but I love people and traveling.  It seems to work out.  We 'talk' anyway.

'I'm from New Zealand ... ' gets me further than I could have imagined, in terms of excuses for everything.  We Kiwis are a delightful people from an exquisitely beautiful country.  So yes, what am I doing out here in the northern hemisphere?!  That's something else I could also write much and often about.

I love photography and books, and writing and people and other cultures, and conversations that go on into the night.  I love sitting down on that airport bus, leaving to fly someplace, and I love coming home to people and places I know.  I love music. All kinds.  I love people who are passionate about what they do, and I adore people who are kind.

I'm a grouch.  I should write on my blog on my grouchy days.  I'm quiet and need space, and if you hurt me I'll disappear into a silence.  I'll try not to argue ... so don't make me.  Just believe me, it's better you don't.  I also love talking.  And meeting new people.

So you see, I leave a lot of this off the blog but I'm thinking, in 2015, I might experiment with just being me on the blog. Let's see how that goes ... I'd like to be more universal.

A Little About My Beautiful Red Bookshelves ...

I have 3 red bookshelves next to me here at my desk.  On those beautiful shelves you will find my favourite books, except for those that are missing in action ... loaned out to friends that I really trust and admire. 

I hope to see those loaned books again one day but if not, okay.  They were good books, they will only enrich the lives of those who hold on to them.  Accidentally.  Inadvertently.  Although if the friend who has my Maurice Shadbolt book, A Touch of Clay, could return it I would be so grateful.

So I reorganised my books over two days.  It's important.  I don't have much but what I have, I like to have right.

The top shelf now contains some favourite novels (like Night Train to Lisbon and When Nietzsche Wept), some very small collections (like anything I can find by or about Katherine Mansfield), and biographies ... although biographies spreads over shelves because there are some in the travelers section ... the mountaineers, the war photographers and journalists ...

On the end of that top shelf there are a stack of travel books ... rarely used while traveling but referred to often when home.

The second shelf contains books written by wanderers and wise people (like Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me and Honey and Dust by Piers Moore Ede).  Then we move into a small collection about writing and creativity (like The Three Marriages by David Whyte).  And they stand next to my collection of books from the Middle East, (with favourites like Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and To The End of The Land by David Grossman.  And one of my most favourite books in the world, I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti, a poet who writes the most exquisite prose too).

The bottom shelf is closest to me.  It begins with my Italian language books, dictionaries, and the books I have on Genova.  Mountaineers appear next.  Andrew Grieg's Summit Fever is a favourite but I've slipped Simon Jakeman's Groundrush in there too (about Basejumping, an exploration written back at the start of that interesting sport.)

The bottom shelf also holds the stories of war photographers and journalists - factual and fiction.  Favourites ... Small Wars Permitting by Christina Lamb and Denise Leith's What Remains.  I have John Simpson's series of books, and both of Frank Gardener's.  I just purchased A Thousand Times Goodnight on DVD, that's there next to the dvd Which Way is The Front Line from Here.

That shelf, the one that sits closest to me, ends with a collection of poetry books.  I have Pablo Neruda by Adam Feinstein and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness ... the biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, by Adina Hoffman.  I have a collection of poetry by Eugenio Montale, sitting next to books full of poetry by Kay McKenzie Cooke and Ren Powell too.

And so you have it, unasked for ... a glimpse of those books best-loved by me.

Music I've been enjoying lately? 

Well, whenever I wander over this website, I can't resist staying a while, as their auto-play kicks in ...