I first arrived in Genova back in 2008. I have been returning, as often as is possible, since then. I would live there in a heartbeat.
I have been reading through notes made and books I've bought. The port of Genova, active since 5 BC. I found the note that recorded the fact that I almost cried, in front of strangers, that first time I saw the Ligurian Sea from the path at Nervi. I had written in my journal that Genova seemed more and more, to me, like a place where New Zealand and Istanbul met and become something more beautiful than either ... back on 21 October, 2008
I saw this scene this year I think, and couldn't resist it
Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again. The world calls them its singers, poets, and story-tellers but they are just people who have not forgotten.
L.M. Montgomery.
Since autumn began I've been attempting to fit my book in around family commitments and being a housewife. It doesn't really work. I remember those days back when I left for the office. I recall the feeling of relief, of being in that safe space defined by clear boundaries marked 'work'. That place where the threshold was rarely crossed by 'family'.
There was a degree of separation found there. A door more-or-less closed on the reality that is home life and all of those things that happen there ... from poo-filled nappies and sleepless nights, to sick cats and people you have powerful emotional ties to.
Work was always a place where I existed at another level. Where, more often that not, objectivity was a state of being more simply found. And I was paid for my presence, my hours, my labour.
Working from home, around a family life I rarely decribe here, oh my ... it's a topic I almost never touch. But there is no degree of seperation. I use the bathroom here amd I realise that I am also the cleaning lady and dammit, I haven't cleaned the bathroom lately. I go downstairs for lunch and realise I'm the baker and that a new loaf needs to go in for breakfast tomorrow. I make a coffee and see the dishes need washed and dried and put away. I take a shower, need a towel and voila, I realise there are 3 loads of laundry there in the queue. And what's for dinner tonight ...?
And really, I just want to hunker down in that seperate space called 'the office', and work for my money, and be objective but it's so unrealistic. I was trained from a very young age that I needed to be responsible ... as the eldest sister, as a good little girl from Mosgiel.
Gifting myself permission ... no, gifting myself the luxury of writing all day, it's something I am battling with at every level. This last week has been impossible. There are moments where I can do my writing work but as it is only the'possibility of income' ... can I even call it work? Don't so many, as in those who know 'money doesn't grow on trees', view it as a luxury? This writing lark.
When you read of money and trees, did you find yourself adopting the deep voice of your father or some other remembered voice of authority? I think only men have said that to me. They get so mad with me and my lack of gratitude. It's only the housework and the family. You have it so easy.
But I'm wondering ... 'really?'
Anyway, I'll work it out and meanwhile, the image below. My childish self loves the notion that there are the possibility of other worlds in puddles.
For me, the fountain in Piazza De Ferrari represents the true heart of the city. Then again, I am a foreigner and I may have that wrong but anyway ... I've taken a few hundred photographs of that fountain since first visiting in 2008. Slicing it up, as I slice up everything. Examining it in different lights, falling in love with the fall of the water one day, then a reflection another day.
On this day the fountain was still and I was able to get close, wanting both the text and reflection of Palazzo Ducale.
Genova ... it's a city I could spend the rest of my life photographing. I never expected to find one place that would capture my interest in this way but it has. The more you explore Genova, the closer you go, the more there is.
Then again, if I was more than 2,000 years in the making then I might be fairly complicated and interesting too.
The government’s Environmental Protection Authority made an ‘error in law’ by allowing Anadarko to go-ahead without looking at several key documents, including reports on oil spill modelling and emergency plans to deal with an oil spill, according to the legal papers.
Lawyers for Greenpeace are asking for the matter to be ‘allocated an urgent hearing date’ due to the ‘national importance of the issue’.
If Greenpeace’s challenge is successful, it could bring a halt to Anadarko’s drilling plans, as they should not have been given permission to drill because the requirements of the law were not met.
Is there nothing at all who can appease your greed,
Could you please leave the air we breath Why is it something we've done You all seem to forget About nuclear fallout and the long term effects
... Let me be more specific, get out of the pacific Ki te la pacific, get out of the pacific Ki te la pacific
French Letter lyrics, by the Herbs. A protest song telling the French government to take their nuclear testing out of the Pacific back in 1982.
I have embedded a link to their song, a memory of a time when New Zealanders and the government came together to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific. At the time the French government was testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific and wouldn't stop. |The French government decided to get very serious with the kiwis and sent some of their crack troops to Auckland where they blew up a Greenpeace vessel in our second-largest city, killing one person.
These days evolution seems to be spinning backwards and the New Zealand goverment, in a moment of insanity has given a Texan oil giant, with a poor safety record, the right to carry out deep-sea drilling just off the coast of New Zealand. The risk of an accident is small, they say ... the consequences of just one accident, are huge in a place like New Zealand.
Anadarko started drilling in the wee hours last night, surrounded by a small flotilla of protests boats ... it's truly a David versus Goliath battle. Of course, with our very 'special' prime minister at the helm we see the New Zealand government threatening to send the NZ navy out to stop the protestors. New Zealand has changed and not for the better.
In the last few hours the New Zealand protestors were warned by the Texans that being closer than 500m to their oil drilling rig in New Zealand waters is ... illegal, because the NZ government also changed some rules for them, making it illegal to protest out there.
So not only has the NZ government broken trust with the people who hired them, as in the public who voted them in, they have lied and changed laws so that the NZ navy can now be used againt the NZ protestors in order to protect the big oil giant.
And they'll probably give Anadarko ships safe passage too, should the unthinkable oil spill happen.
It makes me heartsick because if and when the oil accident happens ... well, what do you with the worst-case scenario? The documents shows that up to 90 per cent of the wells have a worst-case discharge rate of 100,000 barrels, about 16,000 tonnes a day, but some could discharge up to 350,000 barrels.
"And a couple of months' worth of major spill - unlikely though that may be - would be a significant disaster for wildlife, for the health of our oceans, for our fisheries and for our tourism brand at a cost of billions of dollars to New Zealand.''
Congratulations to Mr Keys and a very shortsighted New Zealand government. I'm just going to be praying that your greed for immediate returns and thirst for oil doesn't leave New Zealanders with a mess that takes decades to clean up.
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
It's the first new U2 song since 2010. The lyric video was directed by Irish illustrator Oliver Jeffers and American artist Mac Premo. The video was primarily filmed at The Invisible Dog Art Centre (theinvisibledog.org).
The video features images of various mundane items: brick walls, fences, a blackboard, a globe, a painting. The lyrics are presented first in script scribbled by a moving ink pen over paper, and later over the many earlier images shown in the clip.
