Balance ...

I am always searching for a kind of balance in life ...

I work hard. I work long hours.  There is no income.  However I have finally decided to commit to the life of an artist.  And I'm lucky, my Belgian bloke is pleased  that I am finally writing again.  It was the thing I loved first, the thing friends back in New Zealand most associated with me, it turns out.

So I write in the mornings these days and depending on whether I'm on the school pick-up run, which is lunch-times two days per week, my writing often runs on into the afternoon.  And the evening.

And I edit for friends and causes I believe in the way some people do crossword puzzles. That's my hobby.  I love making texts beautiful.

And I can be lured out of the house to shoot an event or a portrait for friends I admire or whose business impresses me. That was last night.  And I sparkle on the inside.  I love the energy that shoots through me when I'm working with my camera. And I always meet really superb people.  There was this wine-maker last night.  An extraordinary woman that I will interview on Saturday.

So I have all these things that I love doing but they rarely involve money.  And making them earn money while bowing to the gods of taxes, social security, and etc, can only be described as a Kafka story.

Do I kill all the art and get a real job? 

It feels so much like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I can create beauty.  I'm pleased with the shape the book on Genova is taking.  My photographs seem to please people and even if they don't, I find them pleasing.  I printed 20 of my Genova photographs off as A4 colour photocopies. 

I was like a mother with her new baby.  Who knows if the baby is ugly, I was that mother who was besotted.  The images looked so powerful laid out in front of me.  I needed that.  I was bored with looking at them on the computer.

The scales that weigh the content or purpose of my life are sensitive things.  Sometimes I have them in balance - my work is good, I should continue with photography and writing, the housework, and this crazy extended family of mine.  Other times it's ... who do I think I am.  Some princess who can live so irresponsibly and lightly in the world!?  I must find a job!'

We live in a world where the arts are always first against the wall in budget cut and yet art is the thing that makes humans different to animals, isn't it?  Art is the place we all escape to ... into books, into music.  And yet the raised eyebrow, the idea that we are spoiled ones ... oh how that messes with my head.

I was out with a friend last night and I said, I should get a job.  She said, but you work.  I said but I make no money.  She said you work really hard.  We laughed.  I do enjoy Ruth's company.  She keeps me sane.

So here I am, living what feels a little like life in bubble.  If I float out here, kind of disconnected from the world, then I can write this book I've been carrying inside of me for a long time but ... like being on the edge of a cliff, I can't look down.   If I look down, I'll may fall into despair and despair means I struggle to write and create.  Bitterness is deadly.

Lately I've read through a million job decriptions, trying to work out who would hire me, woman of strange abilities.  And I can't get past what I might gently call the 'wankspeak' of job descriptions.  I think you're meant to apply anyway and then everyone laughs and says noooooo, you're absolutely what we need but we had to write that other stuff ...like,  fluent in 17 languages, with the ability to get our newsletter out into the world in 17 seconds flat.  But maybe it's better those jobs have seemed impossible.

This morning began with a bit of a crisis.  Oh, you guessed.  Maybe I've written it out of me and tomorrow I'll delete this and we'll pretend it never happened. 

But make no mistake, this needs to be read knowing I'm smiling.  I have fought off the despair.  I'm going to write now. 

A Rather Fabulous Kiwi/Belgian Collaboration

Why yes ... that wonderful smell is coming from our kitchen.

As I write here, downstairs there is this stunning concoction that combines the best of Belgian and New Zealand cuisine, simmering away in the great big pot.

2.5kgs of Pure South New Zealand venison is cooking with a rather special bottle of Belgian beer.  There are onions, jenever (juniper) berries, cloves, fresh thyme, a pear and apple syrup-style spread,  and bay leaves too. 

It's Armistice Day here in Belgium and a public holiday.  How better to celebrate the end of that war that saw so many New Zealanders pour into Belgium, along with the rest of the 'Allies', in an attempt to save Belgium from the 'other side'.

I have fresh bread baking for the morning and the laundry is in, after a day spent hanging in biting sunshine.

It's all happening here tonight.  I don't quite recall how it was to spend spring, summer and autumn out and wandering.  It's fading ...

Oh, liked the look of this documentary by Leon McCarron and Al Humphreys. 

In November and December 2012, Leon crossed 1000 miles of the Empty Quarter desert in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The journey began in Salalah, Oman and finished six weeks later in the glitz and glamour of Dubai, UAE. The trip roughly traced some of the routes famously trodden by the British explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who criss-crossed the desert in the 1940's.

Merel - Life is an Art, Art is my Life

Merel is a Belgian artist who lives and works in the centre of Antwerp since 1980 and devotes herself entirely to the practice and distribution of her art. 

Extract from Merel's book, Life is an Art, Art is my Life.

I recently had the pleasure of attending one of Merel's art exhibitions. An opening reception for  Life is an art, art is my life, at Leonhard's Gallery, here in Antwerp.

My lovely Belgian friend, Ruth, had introduced me to Merel's art and invited me along to the opening.

There we were, it was almost time to leave, and I was looking through Merel's exquisite hardcover coffee-table book while Ruth and Merel chatted.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered the page photographed below.

There was some surprise, much laughter, and conversations about how it happened.  Anyway, I really admire her work ...love it, wouldn't mind some on my wall.  One day, when I'm working again, I'll go buy a copy of her book.

As always, Ruth, thank you for another lovely adventure.

On Being Filmed

I'm sitting here at my computer, being filmed as I type ... telling the story of my life here in Antwerp.  How I arrived, what I like about it, and what is difficult.

It's quite odd.  I have relaxed far too much but my interviewer is lovely.  She's Belgian and (it's almost an of course) her English is far more English than mine.  I'm almost resigned to this happening though.  The Belgians seem only to need a small exposure to BBC English and they own it.  Meanwhile, New Zealanders spend their entire lives struggling out here in the world with their strangely pronounced vowel sounds.

It's Autumn ... grey and windy.  There's a walk in the park coming up and some more conversations.  Meanwhile, I've been processing some of the photographs of that previous trip to Italy

Karen Karbo's Challenge - Live Like Julia

Rule Number 4: Obey your whims because you never know what you might find at the end of an impulse.

Some time ago, Karen Karbo invited bloggers to take up the challenge to Live Like Julia.

She had written a book, Julia Child Rules. Lessons on Savoring Life.  The challenge was to pick a rule and live it.

Rule Number 4 stood out for me - obey your whims.  Mostly because it's a thing that I do.  And just after she had put her idea out there in the world, a whim was offered up  ... a whimsical invitation, or two really.

I'm a New Zealander who lives in Belgium and I left home 10 years ago. I had two superb years living in Istanbul before meeting and marrying a Belgian bloke and moving to Antwerp. 

In August, 2013, I was over in Italy running a photography workshop for women.  My cousin joined me and returned to Belgium with me.  After just a few days, that cousin called Julie invited me to go with her on one of those road trips ... the kind that are born out of a few red wines perhaps.

So, how about, she proposed ... flying to Milan, stopping in Verona, heading into Croatia, driving on into Hungary for 2 nights in Budapest?  Then Vienna 'because of The Sound of Music', she said.  Back into Trieste in Italy, then into Venice (an impulsive whimsical stop as it turned out) before continuing on to Lake Como.

I said, Okay, as you do.

And we did.  8 days of whirlwind roadtripping.  I loved Budapest best of all probably but was impressed by Croatia as well.  I have loved Italy for such a long time that it doesn't need stated really.

Budapest won the best food award.  There was this dish called Sztrapacska (which may not actually be Hungarian but who cares.  I tasted it there for the first time and it was divine).  Or perhaps it was first equal with a stunning mushroom pasta I devoured in Trieste.  It still haunts me.  Al Barattolo is the restaurant if you find yourself there.

But wait ... there's more, as so many of those old tv advertisements used to promise.

My Belgian friend, Ruth, had emailed me weeks before the roadtrip was dreamt up ... describing a man called Jim Haynes. Based in Paris, he held weekly dinners in Paris.  Did I want to go with her?

Who could resist these words taken direct from his website: Every week for the past 30 years, I've hosted a Sunday dinner in my home in Paris. People, including total strangers, call or e-mail to book a spot. I hold the salon in my atelier, which used to be a sculpture studio. The first 50 or 60 people who call may come, and twice that many when the weather is nice and we can overflow into the garden.
Every Sunday a different friend prepares a feast. Last week it was a philosophy student from Lisbon, and next week a dear friend from London will cook.
People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn't be better. I love the randomness.
I believe in introducing people to people.
I have a good memory, so each week I make a point to remember everyone's name on the guest list and where they're from and what they do, so I can introduce them to each other, effortlessly. If I had my way, I would introduce everyone in the whole world to each other.

Did I feel like a short jaunt to Paris, she wrote. 3 hours by car, we would just stay the night?

It was a whim, an adventure.  How could I say no?

Of course I didn't.  Ruth and I set off at 8am on Sunday, 13 October, 2013.  We crossed the border into France and out came the sun ... on a day when torrential rain ruled back in Antwerp.

We arrived, we wandered Parisian streets.  We were lost, we were found.  We stopped to drink wine.  And we called in at one of my holy of holies ... Shakespeare and Company, a bookshop ... another Parisian legend, one you must also visit if you pass through.

And then to the dinner that evening.  Jim's Dinner. We were welcomed, as were so many others, and we began with a bowl of Borscht, and followed on with some kind of divine meatloaf and vegetables.  Pure comfort food on that cool Autumn night there in Paris. 

Best of all, I met Jim ... and so many beautiful souls from all over the world.  They came from San Francisco and Scotland, NYC and London, from Australia and Ireland ... from Germany, Italy, and France too.  And we ate, and we opened our souls some, there in that space that Jim Haynes has created.

Dessert was some kind of fruit-filled chocolate cake.  There was wine and water and all kinds of other drinks too.  But mostly, in spite of ... or perhaps due to the food there on offer, people talked.  And talked. And laughed.  And circulated.

I met the truly lovely Rachel, from 60 Postcards.com. and her friend, Caroline.  I met women running a workshop that brought joy back into the lives of women burned out by life.  I met a lawyer who had recently moved from Manhatten to London, and an Irish man who claimed he fled Ireland in fear of his life.  But I could tell, he had kissed that Blarney Stone on his way out.  He was delightful.  There was an Australian who said he would never go back, a German woman who had moved to the States many years earlier, and a lovely couple from San Francisco. 

There was the Italian actress/yoga teacher, the one who was following her dreams and had just moved to Paris, and the beautiful group of Scottish women.  The mother, her two daughters, spending time in the city before separating again, one bound for Canada, the rest going home.

The spirit, the soul of the gathering was an outpouring, it seemed, of being yourself in a place where it was permitted ... demanded even.  It was magical 3 hours that both invigorated and drained me.  It was an energy surge like nothing I had ever experienced.

I didn't take as many photographs as I had hoped to take but I had a most marvelous time talking with those people there at Jim's Place. 

A glimpse, just a glimpse below ... Lake Bled, in Slovenia.