Tram-Napping and Other Things ...

As I write this, the predicted snow is beginning to fall ... sigh.  We were all so hopeful when the temperature cranked up to 16-18 celsius last week.  So hopeful that Spring had arrived.  The current prediction is for up to 10cms of snow overnight.  I hope that they are so wrong and that it's less.

Meanwhile I've been holed up at my desk for weeks on end, or so it seems.  I have had all the photographs from Flanders Fields to process and get back into the world as quickly as possible for any publications that might have wanted them.  I had the wedding shoot too.  They are in-process and almost done.

One of the more difficult things about being the photographer is that your work can go on long after the event, long after those who did their work on the day ... in the moment, are finished.  It's a strange and lonely job sometimes, with 80-90% of the work happening after the event, in some lonely room somewhere.

However the adventures are grand.  And I'm pleased with the results.  There should be more than 200 wedding photographs by the time I'm finished.  Photographs that tell the story of a beautiful wedding here in Belgium.

Flanders Fields ... well, that's always about the people I find there.  Old friends, new acquaintances, and some delightful adventures.

I'm hungry to travel again but I am making myself sit still until I am organised here.  I have spent these grey freezing cold winter weeks organising my working life, exploring new directions, especially writing again. 

Old friends have appeared in my inbox and there was a whole lot of delight over the idea that Murray might pop over to visit.  Murray from those 4 years back when I lived on the airforce base in New Zealand.

One of my oldest friends arrives later in June and that will be grand.  It's been a long time since I've seen him.  And there's a wedding to photograph in France in August ... the photography workshop in Italy too.  The last being the pièce de résistance perhaps.

My life seems like a big old complicated tapestry.  I've been been woken at 5.15am these last few weeks, as my daughter wakes to go out to work.  Then I'm up and out the door, catching trams to get little Miss 8 to school on the other side of the city Tuesday till Friday.  It's a 2-hour round trip and definitely hasn't helped with the winter blues. 

Rinse and repeat, as I'm on pick-up duty Monday to Wednesday.  I'm dragging myself around by Wednesday, dreaming of open-roads and long journeys as I try not to fall asleep on the tram home.

I have been reading when not tram-napping.  Superb books ... two fictions based around actual lives: The Truth About Lou by Angela von der Lippe and Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh.

Lou Salome seems to be a fascinating creature who first came to my attention in Irvin D. Yalom's book When Nietzsche Wept.  I am now pursuing Lou via various means.  The second book is about Robert Capa's affair with Bergman.  I have a few books on him so this dip into a kind of fact-based fiction is delicious.

And I picked up the second book by BBC journalist, Frank Gardener.  The first, Blood and Sand, was a fascinating read. 

Still to come is my big book review of True Vines, written by the multi-talented Diana Strinati Baur.  A delicious novel that came with me across the world when I flew home to New Zealand.  The same Diana I'm putting the Your Beautiful Truth Retreat with in August in Italy.

I love books ... rereading the best again and again over the years.  I've had Isabel Allende's My Invented Country tucked away in my handbag for emergencies.  It's small and packed with wise words.

And that's me lately.  Photography, reading, tram-riding, houseworking, winter me.

The image: a tray of champagne that floated past me at the recent wedding.  Random but beautiful is my idea of it.

Out on Flanders Fields ...

And the struggle to return to Belgium continues ...

Belgians are all surprised by, and talking of, the long grey sunless winter continuing on into February.

Did I mention ... no sun, tons of greyness, and loads of pollution as all of Europe passes by us on our highways?

Anyway I've been busy.  I photographed the most delicious Belgian wedding on Saturday.  Truly lovely people and I hope to get permission to post some of those images soon but Sunday and Monday ... Oh My!

I was back out on Flanders Fields attending the reburial of a WW1 soldier from New Zealand ... he was recently discovered and although they did all that they could, and came close, they were unable to identify him for sure.

But where to begin because it was about so much more ...

Saturday night, just after the wedding, there I was at Central Station in Antwerp waiting for the talented London-based New Zealand, soprano Carleen Ebbs.  Gert and I spent a enjoyable evening with her before Martin, from the blog Messines 1917 picked us up, early Sunday morning.  We were heading off to  Flanders Fields, through snow, to participate in the reburial of the New Zealand world war one soldier.

The moment was captured by Belgian television (I am there at around 8 seconds, completely oblivious to the cameraman, as I planned my next shot).  New Zealand television was there too.  I only appear in the Belgian clip  and had to laugh, as I had no idea I was being filmed but do have a photograph of the cameraman filming me ... I discovered it today.  I was photographing someone near him.

But first there was Sunday, the day before the reburial.  Martin OConnor and I went wandering with some New Zealanders based in London.

It felt like a time of privilege as we were introduced to a little Maori history and protocol and I was allowed to photograph this man as he made his way through the cemeteries.

Anyway, below is a random series of photographs taken over those two days ...

Tot later!

Your Beautiful Truth Retreat, Italy

Planning and developing has kept me quiet here, as well as playing tag with exhaustion and flu the rest of the time.

And so to announce, with much pleasure, the first Your Beautiful Truth Retreat, in partnership with the extremely talented and inspirational Diana Baur.

Come take a peek  ...

On wandering ...

‘every journey outside my known world is a form of often painful, sometimes euphoric spiritual growth. I have to break out of the exoskeleton of safety I’m constantly accreting in order to be born into a new world — soft, vulnerable, afraid, eager, porous. I hate it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Nikki Hardin , an extract from Longing Not To Belong.

I loved these words.  I thought to myself, I know that feeling.  That's how it is for me too.

For awhile, back at my childhood home, there was a gap between the hedge and the wire fence and there I was, that creature you see scaling the wooden gate, slipping out into the incredible world of the school next door.

And I think I remember the mix of fear and curiousity ... the need to wander that made me escape anyway.  A need that still overrides my desire to stay safely inside my known worlds. 

I imagine all kinds of things before I leave.  The night before, there  I am, wondering why I do it ... Cairo, Istanbul, Italy, and America.  But wander I must.

I love leaving.

On the other side of the ohmygodwhat haveIdone pre-departure thinking, is that sigh of happiness as I settle into the airport bus and it leaves.  There is the delight in arriving at Brignole in Genova, of opening the shutters, buying the flowers, and settling into a different life, so full of noise and colour.

And on the other side of leaving there have always been marvellous experiences ... like the market that ran all night just below my balcony in Cairo, or the gypsy festival in Istanbul where I wandered with friends, wandering Flanders Fields with prime ministers and actors.

On the other side of fear is Life in a form that I love.

And I go, knowing that it is entirely likely that I will have times when I sink into the dark pit of despair and anxiety for a few hours, where going outside is impossible, where I am left wondering what the hell it is that pushes me to leave and step off into other worlds.  But I always recover.

Sometimes with a belly-laughter-inducing-Mr-Bean-style story of what happened while I was in that place of fear.

I'm the biggest baby in the world sometimes.  I find myself in situations that are retrospectively hilarious but challenging while in the midst of them.  The ambulance in Genova was sobering but it's a story that can't be told with me giggling throughout.  The heat-seeking missile attack over Singapore is another that comes immediately to mind when reminiscing this stuff.  And the taxi-kidnapping in Cairo was also gut-wrenchingly amusing, and should I ever decide to share it here on the blog ...you might agree.

You see, I was a writer before I took photographs ... or perhaps I thought I was a writer before I decided to become a photographer but then again, I had always been a photographer.  Maybe that means that I am a story-teller because surely both paths lead to the same place in the end.  I live with an Imagination that is as big as the Sun ... at least.

Mostly I have learned to live with that Imagination, to laugh over the stories that (don't really) happen along the way, and to leave anyway ...