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. 

On Flanders Fields ...

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”

- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front 

I was feeling quietly devastated by the loss of life represented by the 1,000s of Commonwealth headstones we saw stretching out in all directions, on Friday, out there on Flanders Fields.

I'm always left imagining the ghosts of those brave and beautiful young men who believed they were saving the world when they agreed to fight in the 'Great War' ... I imagine them standing round as we visit their graves, and I wonder how many are bitter.

And then a butterfly arrived on the flowers in front of one those tombstones.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission does a magnificent job in taking care of the memories of all those who died.  The flowers, the closely-mown lawns, the pristine white headstones.

Dead but not forgotten.  Never ... Meanwhile our governments go on creating new wars, borders and boundaries.  I suspect nothing was learned.

An Old Friend from Far-Away ...

We met at Taieri High when we were 13 but didn't start talking till we were 14.  Then we talked a bit.  Some evenings on the phone, the old dial-style phones, plugged into the wall.  His father or mine occasionally threatening death as the phone lines were blocked.

We were discussing serious things and the world.

David was another much-loved old friend from those days.  And, occasionally, I took photographs of them on their bikes with that very first camera of mine.  I remember the time Dave deliberately spilled tomato sauce over that shot of him landing badly after some kind of jump at the Brick and Sand quarry.  We were in the midst of a post-motorcross pile of fish 'n chips at the time.

I still have those photographs in storage back home in New Zealand.

Paul arrived here in this Belgian world last weekend, fresh from his advanced para-gliding course in Doussard.  That place where Gert and I had so enjoyed staying.  Paul showed us the video footage of the stalls they had to practice ... heart-stopping moments where the 'chute' lost air and needed correcting.

Like us, he raved about the scenery, the mountains.

This last week has been a week where two old friends from smalltown New Zealand wandered in Europe. We visited The Somme, finding the grave of his great-great-grandfather.

I introduced him to Antwerp where he hunted down the wrought iron and he, perhaps without realising it, gifted me a new view on the city.  We checked out coffee and wine places, I introduced to more than a few beers that were 'a bit malty'.  I laugh as I write that ... I'm not the best beer advisor when an Aussie bloke knows what kind of beer he prefers.

He forgave me, I think.

I insisted he visit Flanders Fields where we were fortunate enough to catch up with both of my favourite Belgians down there in the Westhoek.  Modest experts in their areas of knowledge.  Steven found some more information on a WWI relative Paul had been curious about, and a book about the Otago Mounted Rifles.  It seems that Paul's Alfred William Johnson was in the same battalion as my grandad, George Gidion Murray.

Locating the book seems to be another story and I've had to write off to the Westhoek to check that I have the right title.  I do believe it's a book I'd quite like to read.

But enough, here's a photograph I took for both David and Fiona ... we wished them both here.  Liz too.  Remember those days ...