It seems long past time I stopped and wrote of my summertime stay in Genova ... back when I met Massimo and Roberta while staying in their beautiful Air BnB.
I think they told me that it had once been the room of a servant. It was located in a massive old building in the ancient heart of the city and had its own kitchen and everything else you might want too.
The renovations had created an exquisite space.
A glimpse ...
There were 3 of us way back then at the beginning.
Tonight I'm over here in this northern hemisphere and two of my best friends are together back in New Zealand. Sending you guys so much love and wishing I could be there too.
I'm resting these days. Not lolling about in bed but taking it easy, staying at home ... living quietly.
And it's been interesting for me to see what has risen to the surface. I have had no heart for real work, instead I've been content to read good books, sort through all those unsorted photo folders, and keep the house clean.
I usually go out on the bike once a day, just to the supermarket, respecting my body's needs ... just for a change. I've stopped coffee, tea and red wine. And I'm not eating anything I know my body can't tolerate.
I'm quiet.
The photograph. I missed it somehow. I have a particular fascination with Genova's fountain in Piazza De Ferrari. The image was yet another slice of the fountain.
Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home - not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colours. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you. How you can fall in love with the light.
Ellen Melloy, Writer
Note, the photograph was taken on one of the Princes' Islands out in the Marmara Sea, Istanbul.
I feel like I've been quiet here but perhaps that's simply a part of my idea that some days are longer than 24 hours. I have spent the last few weeks quietly nose-diving into the ground with very low iron levels. Not that I knew it. Suspected it but wasn't sure.
And I have to admit that I have never been so glad to have a diagnosis of anemia. I left New Zealand with terribly low levels, 10 years ago ... imagining, perhaps, that moving countries would magically fix them. It turns out that this was wrong-thinking and these last few weeks have been so very difficult.
Ignoring the problem didn't work either.
I'm on my second day of serious iron medication today and, although it's probably some kind of placebo effect, I feel stronger this morning. My testing ground is the stairs to my office. They've taken on an
Everest-like aura of late and while I was reading 'Summit Fever' I really got a feel for the high altitude, thin air feeling. Puffing my way to the top.
And so I am back, tentatively excited about all that is ahead. There's the photography exhibition at the end of the month but before that, a much-loved old friend is coming to stay next week. Murray was one of my favourite people back in those days when I was an officer's wife and living on the airforce base in New Zealand. It will be good to catch up with him. We have Flanders Fields plans and I hope to introduce him to some of the special people I know there.
Then I'm turning 50 next week but the big party is happening in November although ... I haven't sent out all the invitations yet. The anemia exhausted me organisationally, and I'm already not superb in that area. I hope friends forgive me for being so late.
Logistically I've had a lot to do and no energy to do it with.
I'm back in Genova at the end of November, with much planned. And then a lovely friend has offered me her house in another part of Italy early in the new year and so, I need to organise flights and plan that too.
But mostly I've been exhausted and unable to think. Here's to a return to 'normal', or perhaps something better than normal, if I fill up on iron :-) and Vitamin D (so the blood says). The doctor also prescribed daily antihistamine for allergies to dust mites and grass. I think I'll take a rain check on those pills though. My body, the one that was formerly only familiar with mild painkillers, is taking in enough that is new. I'll keep the allergy pills for emergencies ...
So that's my news. I'm sure there's more to follow as the energy returns. The image that opened this post was taken back home in New Zealand. I used this path often when I lived in Dunedin. It led to my favourite beach and I was most often found there following my dog as we made our way to and from Long Beach.
Name an artist or inventor, anyone that affected social change on the most massive scale. Who were they before they became, say, Gandhi? Pasteur? Picasso? If they had waited to make a name for themselves, doing the very things by which they made a name for themselves, were deemed special, they’d have never done a thing. Gandhi didn’t know he was Gandhi until he became, you know, GANDHI. He just did his thing. And even then I’m pretty sure he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Who others thought he was and who he knew himself to be were probably always different. And I guarantee you it was not easy. Have you read his biography?
David duChemin, photographer.
I have been selecting photographs for the exhibition at the end of this month and so, it goes without saying, David duChemin's article, Forget Special, was incredibly timely.
The risk is more than we can imagine ... And until they get the answer they think they need to hear, they remain paralyzed, their art undone, their business unstarted. Waiting to be special, first.
