Sitting here, having just completed 100-shot photo-shoot, a hotwater bottle on my aching back, Miss 8 downstairs with that horrible flu/cold that's going around, waiting for the predicted snow to arrive on a zero celsius day ... I find myself missing those sublime days, back in New Zealand, on that roadtrip in the little red car.
I miss pies too.
I used to live here, and I loved both the house and the garden.
One morning, this time, I slipped out of bed and wandered off down Otago Peninsula alone. Revisiting the homes that I lived in for a while.
I woke early ... as always while back in New Zealand it seems ... and slipped out into the day before anyone else was awake. It's one of those things I used to do before leaving behind driving and beloved roads to known places.
There is no other road for me on a Dunedin blue-sky-summer-morning, it has to be the Otago Peninsula road and so I turned right and disappeared for a while.
It was bliss out there. The harbour was calm but the tide was out and so there was only one rowboat reflection. I'll have to go back before we leave ... I need one for the Belgian walls.
The weather folk tell me it was 17 celsius out there and I had taken a jersey but it didn't last and by the time I reached the Albatross Colony, I was all summer clothes and barefeet.
It's good to be back ... so good.
I woke from an anguished dream about working as a wedding photographer for a friend and experiencing complete and utter gear failure. My camera batteries ran out, the flash wasn't attached correctly, I had no memory card ... it was a horror of a nightmare and I woke in a terrible panic that I had missed everything important of the wedding.
I briefly caught up with family and friends in Belgium via Skype then ran out the door to the Botannical Gardens here in Dunedin. I was meeting with Nikki's exceptionally lovely family for a quick photography session. She's a much-loved friend of my sister's and so I knew it was going to be a pleasure to take some photographs, just for fun.
But this morning I realised that for all the lightness and joy in my posts about coming home there is the growing awareness that it's almost time to leave this country I love. Driving familiar city streets this morning left me wondering what it is that I want from my life ... maybe the weight of the nightmare was still there in my mind because it seemed like a heavy thought on such a beautiful morning.
You see I have devoured the air as we have wandered the South Island, overjoyed to be smelling the yellow lupin and the cabbage tree flowers, sniffing out and identifying the wet stone-scent of Fiordland, the intense forest-bouquet on the West Coast.
I have loved the food, I have loved the people, I am loving summer in this place that I know so exceptionally well. And is that the lure ... the seduction? The familiarity, after 10 years away from all that is known to me.
Driving the city streets today, I was wondering if Icould return to New Zealand ... the little island-continent out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the bottom of the world?
I think I need to go back to Europe now, revisit Genova because it gives me so much of what I require, check out Antwerp because I have this Belgian bloke who loves that city, maybe visit Paris on a day-trip once we recover financially ... just to explore what I need. And to try to understand what I would do if there were choices ... you know?
Meanwhile, my beautiful Katie-niece sat next to me as I sat here writing and downloading today's photoshoot. She photographed me at work ... so there you have it, a real-time photograph of the Di Creature.
I'm in Genova soon, then off to New Zealand. It's all starting to feel real.
It's a long weekend here in Belgium. It's All Saints Day today(an official public holiday), then tomorrow is All Souls Day (an unofficial holiday but some people, like Gert, have a bridging day)
The bridging day phenomena is explained most precisely on wiki: 'when a lone holiday occurs on a Tuesday or a Thursday, the gap between that day and the weekend may also be designated as a holiday, or set to be a movable or floating holiday, or indeed work/school may be avoided by consensus unofficially. This is typically referred to by a phrase involving "bridge" in most languages.'
It's November 1 and it's overcast and raining. Just 9 celsius and well ... it feels like autumn.
Anyway, a beautiful memory from a long-ago home in New Zealand, with my much-loved ancient dog walking towards me on the veranda.
The desire to go home is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.
Rebecca Solnit.
I used to sit there, near the top of the hill, at the edge. Located on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, it was a great place to sit and dream about the world ... 6,000kms away from my east coast they told me.
I'm beginning to believe that I'm finally going home ... after 8 years away. I never imagined, not even for a second, that I would ever spend longer than a year away from this landscape that owns my soul.
But I've looked around while I've been gone ... fallen for Genova, loved Istanbul, live in Flanders, wandered in Cairo and Paris and Amsterdam, Barcelona and Salamanca, Madrid too. Adored and was awed by Rome, smiled in Naples, survived Berlin. Enjoyed Ireland and England, France.
But going home ... it's as the quote says, I suspect.