Getting Ready To Return To Genova.

There is something truly delicious about lying in bed here in Genova, listening as the street comes alive, my windows open behind shutters closed for privacy  ...

I hear the first footsteps ... quiet voices followed by louder voices as people roll up the metal doors of their workplace.  The clank of the coffee cups hitting saucers begins soon after.

I doze a while longer then wake again, this time to the laughter of men at the cafe below.  I imagine them stopping for an espresso as they head off to work ... friends who meet everyday on their way ... and I envy them their routine for a moment.

There's music but I nap just a little longer ... until it becomes impossible to ignore my craving for one perfect crema brioche with an espresso.  I pull on my clothes and head out, almost into a neighbour.  She laughs and apologises in Italian.  I reply in French for some early-morning-not-quite-awake-reason.

I don't speak French.
The Bonjour feels strange in my mouth and I only recover when I find her holding the street door open for me.  And I say, Grazie, and smile, located in place and time.

I have some days without shape or form ahead of me.  Days where I can organise the creative chaos that is a part of my everyday life.  I have been waiting so long to reach this place of peace and isolation, located in the midst of the everyday noise of the beloved ancient city.

Here, back in Genova, I'm always a little off-balance and some days shyness will find me more easily.   But it is so very good to be back here again  ... good to be writing again.




Here I am ...

I've been busy with putting together advertising texts and images.  Busy with family matters.  And with other complicated things too.

Basically I've been messing with my life/work balance ... that's to say I haven't really had any balance as my life is a blend of 'both' and 'everything'.

Then today ... I began pulling out all the equipment and cables I travel with.  Charging camera batteries, adding my USB modem to my camera bag and finding sunhoods for lense.  And that cable that hangs from the window in Genova, enabling me to receive an internet connection that has to fight its way through the massive stone wall built centuries ago, the one that was inspired by a Genovese desire to keep the Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa out in the 1100s.

As it turns out, that city wall is still an effective barrier today.

Miss 10 changed schools a few months ago and the route is no longer 2 trams and an hour each way.  These days, when I take her, we ride through the park and arrive after 10 minutes of cycling.  This morning I came home raving about the air out there. 

It's Spring and it rained all night.  That beautiful juicy, sweet-smelling rain that inspires me to open windows while I work at my desk.  This morning we woke to moist warm air that smelt of flowers, wet beech trees, and oaks, and the earth too. 

Nature was in the ascendent and it was divine.

Steel-grey clouds have filled the sky for now, and as I write this, a massive torrential downpour is happening.  The rhubarb will be loving it.  And I am too.