Soul Stuff ...

The practice of any art isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.

Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt's quotes seemed like an answer to my angst about money and art. 

Meanwhile, this singer is making me smile. Most particularly, her song, 'You and I'. 

I love the lines: let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.

I was out early this morning, 5 celsius, a clear-sky day but the air hurts the lungs we decided.  Cold or pollution, or both, we couldn't decide.

I'm using Frances Mayes book, Under the Tuscan Sun, to pull me through the quieter moments.  The tram was packed coming home but I was off in my mind and wandering with her in Sovana, where she wrote of being in ancient places, We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line.  Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.

Excellent Stuff Found Lately ...

I love the work of war photographer, Robert Capa.  I have his book, Slightly Out of Focus, and two fictions based around the facts of his life, Waiting for Capa, and Seducing Ingrid Bergman.

Last night I discovered a 1hour and 23 minute documentary about Capa, on Youtube, titled Robert Capa: In Love and War.  Brilliant!  I was searching for information on another war photographer at the time. 

Note to self, never watch two documentaries about war photographers back-to-back.

Erkan Saka's Daily News is one of my favourite news sources.  I have recently deleted my Facebook account and unsubscribed from so many different newsletters and updates but kept Erkan.   I think it's clear why he's undeletable.

Laurie, a lovely friend, introduced me to Ed Sheeran's music and this song has to be a favourite.  Peter Jackson agreed and this song was created for the Hobbit movie. 

Russell Brand, comedian and all kinds of other things, is out there doing his thing.  I can imagine how that red-necked friend of mine in Australia will love this link.  Here's the interview that started it all ... for me anyway.  Jeremy Paxman almost seems to take on more than expected when interviewing the Russell.

People, he's a comedian.  I've had to remind people although so is Jon Stewart...

I've committed to the NaBloPoMo month of daily blogging ... an interesting challenge, to rock up here everyday and write something that I've decided is okay to publish. 

NaBloPoMo ... I was inspired to sign up by this beautiful soul. It's all about turning up and writing, and I needed to work on that habit. 

I was gifted the documentary Restrepo recently.  Tim Heatherington was a rather remarkable war photographer, a rather remarkable human being actually, killed in Libya in 2011.  This documentary was the result of being embedded with a platoon stationed in Afghanistan.  He worked on it with Sebastian Junger, author, journalist and documentarian, most famous for the best-selling book The Perfect Storm.

Nate Thayer wrote of a musician's protest against 'working for exposure', as opposed to cash, going viral.  An important story.  One that is happening across the arts fields, as musicians, writers and photographers are increasingly told, by large corporations and organisations, that there is no budget for the ... 

A long overdue conversation. 

News to end this post with.  I sparked a bit of conversation back when I was still on Facebook.  Turns out that I might be the only person of my generation in the world who didn't know the music of Van Morrison.  To be fair, I knew a lot of songs once I started really looking but he has so many sounds ...

Okay, fairly shameful.  I was watching my favourite television show of all time ... The Newsroom, and there was Van Morrison, singing that song.  I picked up some lyrics, searched them, found him.

And now ...the Ostrich.

Amy Turn Sharp

Amy Turn Sharp writes poems I adore. 

On a day like today, when that UK storm is passing over us here in Belgium.  When the sun comes and goes.  When I am waiting on all kinds of things, unable to concentrate, I wander on over to 'Amy's Place' and find treasure like this.

I found Anna Sun over there once. 

Amy's poems are like this ...

Reading her website feels like going on a roadtrip, with good music and truly excellent stories.

Belly laughter and red wine, without hangovers.

I found the quote on the photograph below ... over on Amy's website, of course.

Verona, Italy

It's been a freefall into life and people and adventures lately ...

A.  Free. Fall.

Sometimes I've found myself wondering if I might hit the wall, other times it has been about 'when' I would hit that wall.

And people.  It has been a festival of folk I adore, or folk I have come to adore. And family.  And everyone else too.

But tonight ... tonight finds me, in Verona, Italy, listening to Zucchero, Pavarotti, and Bocelli singing Miserere.  Introducing Julie to the music of Zucchero actually... because we need him in the car as we roadtrip tomorrow and because she confessed that, like me, she loves Pavarotti.

We ate dinner at Locandina Cappello tonight and matched a delicious pasta with a delightful red wine ... a Valpollicella Classico Superiore Ognisanti Bertani DOC.  I wouldn't mind finding some more of that particular red wine. 

You see we had wandered through the old city centre, in search of the perfect place to have our 'first night in Italy' dinner, and realised that we are really looking forward to wandering in tomorrow morning's first light.  It seems like a pretty city ... and while Genova has my heart and soul, it seems my head could be slightly turned by Verona.

Although that turn of head might be because of the kindness of strangers here.  You see, just before we arrived at our 'tricky to find anyway' destination, and after Julie had driven 201kms, our NEW GPS died.  For some reason it wasn't receiving a charge from the car's cigarette lighter ...despite me pressing it in there when we got the low battery warning.

So there we were, in the ancient part of the city ...without directions.

I saw a man walking along the street, and stopped him to ask for directions.  He turned on his phone, pulled up his GPS, frowned, sighed a little, and gave us a couple of options on locating this difficult to find street.  He apologised for the complications we would encounter.

We set off and ended up taking the most difficult option while managing to follow his spoken directions then we saw two young men walking along the street and we stopped so I could ask them if they could help a little. They turned on their phones, turned on their GPS function ... our street didn't come up  and they admitted that while they were studying in Verona, they weren't from Verona.

We 3 stopped a woman walking by ... as you do, gently and politely, and she had no English but the young men spoke with her.  I saw some head-shaking and heard muttering.  I asked if it was complicated and yes, I was told.  Very.  She apologised and left.

We drove on.  I saw a guy walking along the street and stopped him to ask.  We had parked the car by now. He was a local and said he was in no hurry to go home and that he would walk us there.  And he did.

But, of course, we had no street number and so it was that another kind stranger, seeing us looking confused and staring at our papers while talking to our rescuer, came out and asked if he might help.  But he wasn't sure either ... and then another neighbour came over, and she offered her advice, and then another neighbour.

And suddenly, just as we were wandering off to the viccolo with the same name, The Guy arrived and we were rescued. He took up up upstairs to this cute little student flat/summer Air B&B.  And here we are, after a delicious dinner in this ancient city ... the location of a story I studied so long ago, back home in New Zealand, never imagining that one day I might wander by Juliet's balcony while searching out a place for dinner, one September evening in 2013.

Mosquitoes and Paul Kelly, Virginia Woolf, Vita and a Little Bit of Marlena As Well

The bite of a mosquito or some other insect turned feral on Friday.  I woke with a small disaster on my ankle and by Friday afternoon, I was at my local pharmacy, asking if she had anything for it.

She told me she had seen a few like it recently, the mozzies are mean this late late Spring and suggested anti-histamine which I didn't quite feel was right.  She sold me some cortisone cream and suggested I draw around the edge of the redness.  If it continued to spread, I would need a doctor.  I knew that but had never thought of drawing around the edges of it. 

So I drew around it, applied the cream but by bedtime, it was a bit hotter and I wasn't enjoying the feeling of air on the skin there.  Saturday, preferring to ignore these things, I applied the cortisone cream and pottered about but in the back of my mind my experience with cellulitis.

Years ago I barely escaped an antibiotic IV and hospital which, in retrospect, may have been simpler that complete bedrest and 6 courses of antibiotics, 2 at a time. 

Retrospect ... everything is so much clearer then.

I decided not to be a baby (because this New Zealander is tougher than tough, in a chickenhearted kind of way sometimes) and went shopping with Gert in the afternoon, we had errands to run but my throbbing ankle made me take a look mid-shopping expedition.  The area was a bit too red.  Gert sent me out to the car and finished up, then we wandered over to the emergency doctor ... with me still humming and haawing about it all.  You really had to prove you were injured or sick when I was growing up.  That kind of thing sticks.  'Was I just being neurotic?'

The doctor took a look and reassured me that it wasn't cellulitis but that it did need some attention.  That I could ice it if I wanted to, should cover it, and must take antibiotics. 

Antibiotics and I have a history.  They often affect me worse than the thing they are fixing.  So I woke up this morning, the heat had gone out of the area round the wound and it has turned a big corner but, by crikey, I feel miserable.  18 doses of antibiotic to go ...

So I'm bed-resting and reading today and have some excellent books next to the bed.  Paul Kelly's How To Make Gravy is superb.  And I'm playing his A-Z soundtrack as I devour it... it's the music he writes his 100 chapters of book about.  I couldn't travel with this book, it's a monster but tightly written.  Nothing boring yet.  He's an old hero of mine.  His Midnight Rain is the song I have loved best for years.

I found a TED talk Paul gave about the book ... with a song too.  It might give you a sense of what I love about him and his music so I added it at the end of this post.

I'm also dipping in and out of The Letters of Vita Sackwille-West and Virginia Woolf, another huge book that is best read lying down.  And then, in those other moments, different mood, I'm reading the third in a favourite series of mine ... Marlena De Blasi's The Lady in the Palazzo.

It almost makes the stopping and resting thing okay.

Di's Plush New Office Chair ... the song

It's been busy lately.  Really busy.  But I guess that's nothing new however, on the list of things that make me smile, this song arrived on Saturday night.  Peter and Julie are back in Berlin but they read of my plush new office chair over on Facebook.  Hilarity followed, as they penned and then sang me a song.

Then yesterday was a beautiful blue-sky Sunday so Gert and I got up early and wandered off to Waterloo.  There's an antiques/flea market over there.  300 stalls.  Europe.  It's delicious.  A 5 euro leather coin purse was found.  The gorgeous Wendy was there too and, somehow, we bumped into each other in the crowds.

We came home via the most glorious bakery ... I exaggerate not.  Located not too far from Waterloo,  the La ferme du Hameau du Roy makes the most stunning baked goods I've tasted in a long time.  Gert took the photograph at the end of this post, using his iPhone.  We sat on the bench outside, with our food, enjoying the idyllic scene laid out in front of us.

It's been like that, the sublime mixed with the mess of everyday life.

It's life.