Something else that makes me happy ...

Whenever I leave Genova, I go through a withdrawal as I leave the source of some truly superb coffee, found at Caffè degli Specchi.

I know there's a shift to make ... from the sublime back to the-best-I-can-find-here.

This was my answer to the spotty quality of coffee found outside of Genova.  A small machine, the most I could afford and yes, it makes me happy.

The small cup is just the perfect size.  An exquisite gift from the mother of my first husband, given to me when she came over and spent a couple of weeks with us last summer.  Thank you, Valda :-)

What people say about working with me ... and some of my work

 

Any time I raise anything on stage, I ask Di Mackey to join the project. Her photographic work is magnificent and I love her presence: her portraits are stunning, they expose intimacy, humor, and pensiveness; her photographs capture the space, the movement, human interaction deliciously, in a way that one feels invited to an event long after it disappeared from the public scene.

In all her unobtrusiveness when working with the camera, Di is great fun to hang out with, the artists, scholars, thinkers, curators of our big Berlin exhibition highly appreciated her, and when working together in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, or wherever else, I enjoy her kindness, humor, and delightful presence. 

I miss her at the time when we are “in between projects.”  One of the first things I will do when starting a huge new project is to ask Di whether she wants to do the photographic work.  I hope she will. 

Shulamit Bruckstein, curator, director of TASWIR projects / ha’atelier.

 

That Desire for Home ...

The desire to go home is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.

Rebecca Solnit.

I used to sit there, near the top of the hill, at the edge.  Located on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, it was a great place to sit and dream about the world ... 6,000kms away from my east coast they told me.

I'm beginning to believe that I'm finally going home ... after 8 years away.  I never imagined, not even for a second, that I would ever spend longer than a year away from this landscape that owns my soul.

But I've looked around while I've been gone ... fallen for Genova, loved Istanbul, live in Flanders, wandered in Cairo and Paris and Amsterdam, Barcelona and Salamanca, Madrid too.  Adored and was awed by Rome, smiled in Naples, survived Berlin.  Enjoyed Ireland and England, France.

But going home ... it's as the quote says, I suspect.