A Delightful Day Despite That Insomnia

I breakfasted at 4am Saturday morning because I couldn't sleep and by 4am, it seemed like the best thing to be doing.

I had spent the wakeful hours catching up on some of the emails I owe.  I had read, tried to quiet my busy little mind but, in the end, it became about breakfast . 

2 pieces of toast with peach jam, a Voluto Nespresso and voila, I slept ... until 10am.

2.30pm and I was out on my bike, navigating new city streets here, heading out on a photography shoot.  And it was one of those photography sessions where the children were divine, the dog made me smile, and Jayne ... well she poured me a glass of white wine when I was done.

A lovely way to spend a day really. 

I'm rapt with the results and hope all those involved are too.  Here's one ... a simple shot that needs no permissions to post. 

It's 11.21pm as I work away here.  Smiling like a maniac.  So happy about my today.

 

On Days Where Joy Bubbles Up ...

Perhaps it began yesterday ... that bubble of joy that floated up out of me as I laughed with my new hairdresser.  He's about 65 and he's a delight.

I took my long hair to him a couple of months ago.  I went in knowing it was serious, that I hadn't had a professional cut in a very long time, maybe 2 years ... and that the time of the supermarket, do-it-yourself, dyes had to come to an end.

He sighed, he worked for hours, he fixed everything, cutting away so much hair I wondered, over the days that followed, if I wasn't related to Samson ... that my strength hadn't disappeared with my hair.

But a strange thing happened.  It wasn't as short as it initially felt but, even better, I had more hair than I'd ever had.  He had worked some magic that made it all lively and almost wavy.  A miracle really but one that I hadn't thanked him for.

Some colour 'adjustment' is required and so I biked over to book an appointment and voila, before I knew it, joy was simply bubbling out of me as we talked of my hair.

Last night, after a very warm 27 celsius day, I slipped outside with my laptop and sat in the  garden a while.  The swallows were still screaming around like the kamikazes they are but as the sun went down, out came the bats ... on an insect-eating mission.  I didn't know we had bats but we do.  It was beautiful out there in the garden that Gert made.

This morning began with the arrival of a most exquisite and much-longed for book.  Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days - a calendar of human history had arrived.  Thank you very much, Gert!  I opened it and fell in.

It's as beautiful as imagined, more beautiful than I knew a book could be perhaps.

29 January

HUMBLY I SPEAK

Today in 1860 Anton Chekhov was born.

He wrote as if he were saying nothing.

And he said everything.

But there was still more joy out there waiting for me.  I had promised to phone Dave and Jude, another set of old friends from far-away.  We had enjoyed catching up with them when back home at Christmas. visiting just as they were just setting off on their grand return to Africa, with children.

Talking with them is like drinking from an ocean of joy.  Somehow they fill me up.  We talked for 2 hours and more about everything important and good.

The bell rang again and more parcels arrived.  Gifts for Miss 9, all the way from New Zealand, t-shirts for Gert, and voila, a  gift of music all the way from Australia.  I'm listening to that as I write this.  Thank you to Paul.

Tonight I have a 3-hour photoshoot.  I'm working with a friend who has pulled me into an exciting project of hers.  I suspect it will be intense but foresee more joy is entirely possible. 

Money ruins so much and while I need it, getting involved in projects that engage my heart and soul ... they're not to be sneezed at. 

In these days I tell myself that, okay, perhaps I'll die poor but by crikey, I feel so rich in stories ...

I owe email and phone calls.  Please forgive me.  Replies to follow in the weeks ahead. 

And so, the rooms ... B&B Baur, Italy

After I had wandered outside for a while, I stepped inside.  Oh my, I could  spend weeks in some of those rooms ... walking through the early mornings and out into the evenings but writing, just writing, all day.

They're inspirational rooms but see for yourself.   And this, incidentally, is one of the rooms our workshop clients will be staying in ...

Note: I had no tripod this trip and so I made do with a ledge which was limited.  I was sherpa enough without carrying a tripod this trip.

Before Photography ...

Before I committed to photography, I was pursuing a writing career.

I attended writing workshops with New Zealand writers and have this novel I've been carrying since the early 90's.  As I develop, move countries, learn new things, so too does my main character.  By chance.

Currently she's a war photographer who was in Iraq but who somehow ... happens to have relocated to Genova, Italy.  Before that, she was a woman in retreat, living in the mountains of New Zealand, alone with her dog, once again retired from a previously intense life.

There's a book of interviews with New Zealand climbers and mountaineers, almost published, two publishing meetings and an apology but 'they didn't think there was a big reading public for it', despite them liking it a lot.  The Everest tragedy happened later and climbing literature became more mainstream however, by then, I had enrolled at university: age 34.

I was heading for Bill Manhire's writing course in Wellington.  I ended up in Istanbul.

It makes me laugh to write that.  One never knows where life might take them if they allow it to take them ...

Anyway, back in my days of writing I used to drive my first husband crazy.  No, that's not why he divorced me.  I used to edit and correct as I wrote.  I would reach 27,000 words and edit it down to 3,000 words.  I was brutal and a perfectionist too. 

But it was my editing that made him crazy.  As I got closer to the final edit ... on a first chapter (hence I never finished the book), my editing would become minute.  I would give him the manuscript to see what he thought of my edit.  He would say, 'there's no change!'.  Exasperated, I would explain that I had moved two 'the's' and deleted an 'and'.  How could he not see the difference that made.

Children, never edit an unfinished manuscript.  Write it.  Fix it afterwards.  Or you will never finish.

The reason I write all of this is because ... there was another photograph of B&B Baur, like the previous one  but different.  I think the edit isn't so small but perhaps it is tedious to those reading this blog.

This is me and I need to 'see' both of them here, so that I can happen upon them unexpectedly later, and really 'see' them as a stranger.