3 beautiful things i found today ... day 1

There was this image ... captured while wandering Istanbul streets.  I need to go through the 8,000 photographs I took there on that visit with my beloved Canon 5D MkII. 

The quote from Lisa St Aubin ... I'm still considering whether I agree with these words or not.  I think I'm an odd traveler sometimes.  I love to return to those few places I love and I dream of being there when I'm away from them.  New Zealand, Genova ... wondering where I would most like to live.

And this song, from the band Sleeping at Last.  I love their name, as I've been an insomniac for days now The song ... I'll Keep You Safe, or perhaps All Through the Night.

Climbing out of sad ...

Today was one of those really shitty days ...

I never used to write out of them but I will today ... write as I climb out the other side of some serious sad.

I usually go on a reading-jag, or a find a beautiful movie, or listenhard to music.

Tonight I found all this new music to consider.  I'll see if it's some to love.

There was Andrew Belle and In My Veins.  Laura Marling.  Lissie.  Olaf Arnalds, Old Skin.

Sometimes I just need to find someplacebeautifulenough and tonight I found hernameismoon.

I found her site perfectlywonderfullybeautiful.  And stayed there until I started to feel okay again.

And I had an idea that everyday over the next month I'll post 3 beautiful things found during my day.  Perhaps being proactive about beauty is how it should be. 

I noted quotes in my journal as I devoured the new website.  I loved ... 10 years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn't settle for it.

Mandy Hale.

hernameismoon introduced me to awelltraveledwoman who wrote ... you should not have to rip yourself into pieces to keep others whole.

Wise advice I thought, wishing they sometimes taught useful things in school ... rather than all that other stuff that still involves me finding algebra, and other silly things, terrifying.

Georgia O'Keeffe photographs appear, randomly, throughout awelltraveledwoman's website.  It seemed like a place I was meant to find too.

Which reminds me ... Annie Lennox was there as I started to climb out of sad.  I was searching for an album she put out just before I flew from New Zealand.  The sculptor who moved into my cottage on the edge of the harbour told me of it.  She did a good thing, introducing me to Annie ...

Did I ever write of this song?  I love it so much at the moment ... Ghosts in the Orange Blossom Air!!

Perfect. It is.

Now, to for the roadtrip so I can play it all.

'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 Communicative Moment ...

In the modern world, parched of ritual and starved of mystery, we don't register these communicative moments as often as we might. The idea of a conversation with a landscape is foreign to minds schooled in the separation of humans and nature. Well-seen photographs, wrought in the attuned moment, can help us renew the connection. They invite us to the necessary work of addressing the land.

An edited extract reproduced with permission from Spirit of the South by Andris Apse.

The article is so very worth reading.  I miss the wilderness here in Belgium.  It is one of those lands that have been peopled forever - New Zealand's precise opposite perhaps.

I'm off to Genova soon.  It can't come too soon.  I miss the Ligurian sea, the hills that almost surround the city, the caruggi and the people too. 

And the espresso.  How could I forget the espresso.

But a photograph I found when I was back home in New Zealand.  I was photographing the hot pools in Rotorua and captured a Taniwha.

What else could it be ... Taniwha are supernatural creatures whose forms and characteristics vary according to different tribal traditions. Though supernatural, in the Māori world view they were seen as part of the natural environment. Taniwha have been described as fabulous monsters that live in deep water. Others refer to them as dragons – many taniwha looked like reptiles, had wings and ate people. They could also take the shape of animals such as sharks, whales, octopuses, or even logs. Some taniwha could change their shape, moving between different forms.