The journey is the destination ...

It's taken me years to understand this thing about me ...that for me, the journey truly is the destination.

It goes like this ... it's not that I simply want a cup of coffee and any old coffee will do.  It's that I want a coffee that tastes good, and I love it even more if it comes in a cup I adore.

My parents didn't raise me like this.  I suspect their preference might have been that I was the complete opposite, simply because they didn't intend raising princesses but there you go ... it happens to the best of families.

But journey doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, nor the destination.  My favourite house was a fairly grotty little one-and-a-half bedroom cottage that sat on the edge of Otago Harbour.  Everything about it was run-down and make-do but I loved the wall of old-fashioned wooden floor-to-ceiling-windows that gave me a view out over the lawn and the harbour.

I loved the drive home ... the twisting-turning kilometres between Dunedin city and Broad Bay, the narrow confines of a road that ran along the harbour-edge and tat was framed by a steeply-rising hillside in places. 

I packed my Nespresso coffee-machine for this time in the Wallonian countryside but told myself not to be silly about taking a cup too ...

Yesterday, we wandered over to Lille, France.  A car full of internationals and voila, what did I decide I might do.  I thought I might quietly keep an eye open for a cup for my coffee while I'm out here.

Voila!  I found this and it works.  That first coffee this morning was just so veryvery good in the red cup.

A small space next to a window out in the country...

There is not much better, I believe, than waking up out in the country. 

Wandering down the exquisitely substantial staircase this morning, unpacking my Nespresso machine once in the kitchen (well, yes I did bring it), and the bread, butter and peach jam, I realised I had really done it. I had moved to the country ... just for a few days.

The family surged in and around and out and then were gone ... in their car packed full of people and laughter, heading for France.  I waved them goodbye, with the Wwoofers - a lovely Australian and American couple - and the veryvery sad dog. 

The roof guys arrived ... Eastern Europeans I've been told.  And I wandered back up those stairs to create some desk space for me and my boxloads of research and work.

Here is my space.  I look down on a small forest from my first floor window.  The set-up is not ergonomic in any way, shape or form ... in fact, I suspect it runs more along the lines of one of the top 10 ways to deliberately destroy yourself.  I'll work on it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, 29 celsius is expected today.  The sky is a deep blue, as I sit here at the window.  The garden is full of courgettes, tomatoes and all kinds of other delights waiting for dinner tonight.  The hens are rumoured to be laying well.  I may have packed some of my favourite Spanish red wine ...

Now, to work.

Amai!!! as the Flemish would say.

I have a new screen for my laptop !

It sits here, next to my trusty and much-loved 14 inch laptop screen ... dwarfing it, at 22 inches.

How have I suvived until now???

Gert talked me into the screen. 

Me, the sometimes wandering woman, who doesn't want to load herself down with or even get used to a mouse ... I just make do with my laptop's touchpad thingy.  It drives others crazy when they borrow my laptop.

Sigh.  I'm already in love with this massive screen.   5 minutes after test-driving it.

My photographs ... they look so damn good on the big screen.

Hmmm, I need to think how I can incorporate this into my wandering life.  Milan ground staff already give me trouble when they weigh my equipment hand-luggage.  The same hand-luggage I fly to Italy with is too heavy toleave with.  A 22 inch screen ... and maybe even I wouldn't dare to be outraged about that.

Mutter mutter, I shall have to practice driving on the wrong side of the road, and work on being far more aggressive.  I'll drive to Italy from now on ... shan't I.

Bliss... problems problems but BLISS.

Lewis, Jung, Crowther, Juska and Dylan Thomas

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

C.S.Lewis, from Till We Have Faces

Yesterday ended in a frenzy of activity around midnight ... after a long 2 days of processing a few hundred photographs.

A few weeks ago I had fallen while carrying my laptop.  I was lucky and only the cd player was broken but it has taken until now to replace it with an external setup.

Last night was 'the burning' of images - onto cd  and dvds. 

In the end, there are only 600+ images - flying off to various friends in Madrid and Brussels, and sitting here on my desk for Antwerp too.

But yesterday wasn't all about photographs.  I did stop periodically.  I listened to this tv interview with Carl Jung.  And, at some point, I had a craving to search for an old old favourite of mine ... Harry Chapin.

I have Mr Tanner playing as I write this, reminding me of those long-ago days, back in Christchurch, when Trevor first introduced me to Harry.

In days past, I emerged from a beautiful book by Yasmin Crowther - The Saffron Kitchen.  Absolutely recommended.  Also, from the same secondhand bookshop, I have just started A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska.  It makes me smile.    Who can resist a back cover that states, “Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

I'm loving the way it turns the notion of aging on its head.

"Do not go gentle into that good night"

We mustn't.  We must live until we die.  Mustn't we.

Expecting 32 celsius today ... before the thunderstorms come, around 21.00, and if the Buienradar is to be believed, they look impressive.

Now ... back to the to-do list with Harry.

Climbing back into a kind of beauty ...

Leaving facebook has taken me out of the news-loop. I know some interesting people over there.  There were the real life friends and the faraway friends, the new friends too but there were also the journalists and professors and peace activists.

I didn't want to sleep in life.  I had done that in New Zealand, where discussions about the situation in the Middle East and the history of oil and colonisation didn't really happen in my worlds.  Even later, at university, I opted to wander between literature and anthropology. Always seeking a kind of beauty as opposed to cold hard facts and sciences.

I'm going wandering next week.  Stepping out of this everyday city life and into another kind of life.  One that will involve living out in the country, eating freshly-laid eggs, and picking vegetables from the garden.

Did I tell you, I've been dabbling with becoming vegetarian.  I'm liking it so far, although still only dabbling.

And out there, in the peace of the countryside, I'm planning on writing like I haven't written since I reached 27,000 words in a novel back when I lived on that airforce base in New Zealand.

I'm thinking of early mornings, with coffee. out on the verandah.  The kind of early mornings where I get to see sunrises outside in a good way again.  And tasty coffee ... I'm packing the Nespresso machine because kidnapping a barista would just be rude, and taking their high quality coffee machine would be theft. 

And everything I have on Genova is going in too.

Meanwhile I've been playing in Photoshop, with one of my favourite Istanbul photographs.  Beginning again ...

Trust and Respect

I have just completed post-processing the 50th wedding anniversary photographs and, yet again, I realise just how much people trust me with themselves ... whether they realise it at the time or not.

I ended up with almost 220 images that told the story of a couple who have been married for 50 years, of their son, extended family, and their friends.

I was pleased with the results but there was one more job that had to be done.  One of the comments most made about my style of documentary photography is that people forget I am there ... that I disappear and, therefore, they are often stunned by the results ... by the ways I captured them or their event.

That final job is going through the results and taking out those images that reveal too much.  An emotion, a conversation, a sadness. 

It's done.  My new tally is 197. 

Now ... to show them.